Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (52 page)

Then she screamed.

Korleth shot into the loading bay from below
, stunning and flinging the others back with the force of his massive, dense body.

His razor-sharp tail impaled
Zhen wide-eyed and gaping on its glowing length.

“
Aww…too bad,” Korleth rasped. “So very close.”

“
No!” Naero screamed.

She
tapped without thinking and ripped herself open, trying to unleash her Dark Beast and keep control of it.

Moving faster than thought, she severed the long tail with her blades.

Concussive beams from all three of her eyes punctured Korleth. A mindblast crushed and deformed one side of his hyperdense skull. Her sonic scream slammed into the huge Dakkur. The force punched Korleth out of the open loading bay as the dock as the doors closed and the starship swept away.

Paralyzed and
grief-stricken, even Naero’s Dark Beast failed and shrank back in weakness, brought on by her intense, overwhelming grief.

Naero fought off b
lacking out, Cosmic glowing ichor and blood streaming from her orifices.

She somehow
crawled over to Zhen and placed her hands on her dying friend.

No power in the known universe could heal such a horrible, mortal wound.

“No, no,” she muttered over and over again, sobbing. “I’ve got you, Z. I’ll save you. I’ll make it right somehow.”

Zhen stared up at her,
her eyes starting to glaze over. With the last of her strength, she reached into a pouch and pulled out a small metal cryo case, pressing it into Naero’s hand.

“My babies…N. Ty…protect–”

Zhen was gone.

Naero pulled Zhen’s
body off the gigantic Dakkur tail blade.

A torrent of blood rushed out everywhere. Zhen’s small torso was nothing but a gaping hole.

Naero still struggled with biomancy to heal such an impossible wound, even though doing so remained utterly hopeless. Not even Shalaen could do so.

Naero still struggled and fought against the undeniable with her weak, feeble efforts, drenched with her abani’s
gore. Her hands and forearms were stained dark red.

Zhen’s long
, light brown hair lay spread out, soaked in her own blood.

Naero
nearly went mad herself, sobbing and babbling.

“
No, stay with me, Zhen! I’ve got you. You’re not going anywhere, you quack. I swear to you. I’ll find some way to make this right!”

The others of her crew began to come around and pick them
selves up.

When Ty saw what had happened, he really did go insane.

It took six crew to hold him down.

Finally,
Naero curled up together with him around Zhen’s slender, still form, until the two of them wept and passed out.

47

Naero
remained in the medical bay.

She stayed wi
th Ty as he mourned over Zhen’s lifeless body.

Ty
wept for the longest time.

Naero wept with him.

Ty took his beloved in his arms time and time again, and sobbed and convulsed with gut-ripping sorrow.

And
like him, Naero felt she might go mad with grief. So helpless.

Losing her parents had been horrible
beyond belief. At times, when she thought about it all too much–it still was. All the loss everyone suffered during the Annexation War, and ever since.

And yet somehow, all of that and–e
ven losing Gallan–had not been this bad. And Naero did not know why.

She and Z had been like sisters, but they were completely different people.

Perhaps she felt responsible for Zhen’s death.

For being too weak to protect her.

Maybe it was just the last straw.

Perhaps seeing the horrific effects on
Ty made things even worse.

Then Naero spotted it clearly. A small bright point of light.

She knew what it was: Zhen’s soul–her essence–dispersed from her ruined body and about to escape.

Forever.

She was the only one who could see it. Ty had passed out again.

Naero
lunged and reached out. She barely caught it, cupping the glowing soul orb in her hands. Then she sealed it within a small globe of pure Harmony.

Just as she had done with Jia’s essence,
Naero kissed the soul orb and breathed it deep within herself, in order to keep it safe.

Oh, Z. My sister…I have you.

She even heard Zhen’s voice deep inside her, calling out in fear and confusion. “Where am I? What is this place?”

With her force of will, Naero put Zhen’s soul into a deep sleep, to comfort and protect her
, in the safest place she could find. It was very similar to controlling one of her replicants.

Naero
kept her vigil of mourning with Ty, unsure of what to do next. She was always stumbling into unknown territory. She needed time to think.

Baeven and Jia. Ever
yone from the rest of the crew–even Gaviok, filed in to pay their condolences as the hours passed, and tried to comfort them both.

“
We need to speak to you, Naero,” Baeven said. “We sent out a distress call. All of your–former allies are coming to help. But they won’t be here for days. The enemy hasn’t fled. We hurt them, but we haven’t beaten them. They’ve regrouped and entrenched their position. Their energy fortress seems impregnable for the time being. It’s like they’re waiting for something else to happen.”

Something tried to click in Naero’s mind, but she could not tell what it was.
Her thoughts were still too broken and distracted.

Baeven went on. “
We’re researching another way to negate the enemy’s defenses and get at them to shut down the rest of those Darkforce generators. Come to us when you’re ready, Naero. We need you.”

Danner.
Her family, and the rest of her friends, would have to deal with Danner. And Admiral Korleth–with or without his deadly tail.

And anything else the
ir vile enemies threw at them.

Naero’s eyes felt as if they were on fire again.

More of the people she cared about could die–very quickly and easily–if she did not rise up, and fight the enemy again, with all her heart and soul.

It was at that moment that
Naero suddenly realized how sick of fighting she truly was.

What were their foes
waiting for?

Baeven was right.
It didn’t make any sense. Naero knew that she should somehow know the answer, but everything in her head was clouded, both by grief, and a growing desire–for vengeance.

She
struggled to come out of her fog and think rationally. Her people needed her at her best.

Naero
stepped out of the medical bay and called to Baeven. “I’ll be there. Count me in. How soon do we move?”

Baeven looked
back and smiled. “Week to ten days. Plenty of time to plan and prepare. We’ll time our assault to begin as soon as help arrives and starts to pour in. That way, we can do what we need to do, and bug out when we have to, to make good our escape. We can crack their defenses without being destroyed. And by then, we’ll have plenty of help, despite all of the enemy’s current forces.”

Jia tried to find something positive
. “At least we shut that big wormhole down when we disrupted the generators on the planet surface. The enemy can’t bring any more of their fleets through.”

“
For now,” Naero said. “Admiral Korleth let slip that their generators could repair themselves, given time. We already knew they could regenerate. Then they’ll open the wormhole again, and their invasion hordes will continue to pour through.”

“
You said we took out the megagenerator they had a Yattai in,” Jia said. “We’ve relayed that knowledge to Shalaen. Maybe we can take the other generators down before they can find any more hosts.”

“
Maybe this, maybe that,” Baeven said. “That’s too many maybe’s.”

Ty
snarled suddenly from back inside Medical. “My Tisa’s still dead, and she’s not coming back!”

Nobody knew what to say when he lashed out like that.

Ty was still like a madman. So they just let him work through his sorrow and loss.

“
Jia,” Naero whispered. “Please, stay behind with me after the others go. I…I need to speak with you, about a matter of great importance. Privately.”

Jia looked at her curiously, but did so.

They went off into a corner of the hallway and spoke together quietly.

“
I have Zhen’s soul, Jia.”

“
What?”

“
I was barely able to capture it as it fled her body. But I have it. It sleeps inside of me, but I can feel it. It’s her. I…just don’t know what to do with it, now.”

“
Naero. There’s nothing you can do. You must release her and let her go on. To take the next journey, as Spacers say.”

“
No, I won’t give up that easily. We have her genetics. We can biomance. What about a clone?”

Jia slowly shook her head.
“Naero, no.”

“
Why not? We make a clone. We put her soul back into it. She’s alive again.”

Jia
sadly shook her head again. “It won’t work.”

“
A replicant then–an exact copy, even down to the neural net. I’ve made them myself. I can do it.”

Jia took her hands.
“You can only make replicants while the original is still alive. That won’t work once the person is already dead.”

“
Then it’s back to the clone idea.”

“
No. That won’t work either. No one can do so, Naero. Not you. Not anyone. Not even the Kexx or the Drians could conquer death.”

“
What?”

“
Why do you think the G’lothc are having so much trouble with their hosts rejecting their spirit possessions? The Cosmic energies of the host eventually rejects the soul essence. Even if you made the best clone or replicant possible for Zhen, it would never be an exact, perfect copy of her original body. You could put her soul into another body, but she would merely die again, and suffer greatly.”

“
Is there nothing we can do?”

“
There is…something. A procedure the Drians gained from their allies the Kexx. With your help, we could make it work, since you already have her soul. But I warn you, Naero. It is limited in scope and far from perfect.”

“
How limited? What will it do?”

“I will not bring Zhen back permanently, but only revive her for a short time, in order for her to settle her affairs, say her goodbyes. The way she never
had a chance to.”

“How short, Jia?”

“Hours. Not even a full, standard day. Every case is different. At first she’ll be all right, but eventually, she’ll start to weaken. Then she’ll die again, in about an hour. No pain. She’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. Would that be worth it, Naero? To see your friend die all over again?”

“Yes,” Naero said, without
hesitation.

She knew what Ty would say.

What Zhen would say. What Naero herself wouldn’t give to have even another few minutes with any of her loved ones that she had lost.

“What do we do, Jia?”

“This is only going to work once. We’ll have to repair her physical form with your biomancing.”

“
We can close the wounds and repair the flesh. What good will that do? She’ll still be lifeless. I know that much from my replication experiments.”

“
Then your insights will help greatly. You can directly control and manipulate Cosmic energies, Naero. Using the techniques I’ll teach you, we can bring her back to life–but only for a short while. You’ll need to speak to Tyber once he’s cogent enough to–”

“
I know what Ty will say. He’d give his own life–just to have even a few more seconds with Zhen–not to mention a few hours. But I’ll talk to him, when the time is right.”

“
We don’t have long. We’ll need to prepare the body and keep it frozen until we’re ready for the procedure. And then you’ll have to put Zhen’s soul back inside her.”

“It will have to wait, until after we deal with this enemy threat.”

Jia hesitated, and then nodded.

*

The enemy chose not to let the week to ten days or so pass quietly.

The
very next day, nearby Spacer Marine units from General Walker’s Bravo Command and all the other Marine divisions began to pour in across Hezzen-5. Most of these forces were ship’s troops, or troops stationed on nearby systems.

Now that they were full
y exposed, large units of Ejjai, backed up by Dakkur and the possessed, had scattered all across the Gigacorps border world and were causing untold havoc and death.

The locals, about a billion total, were no match for the invaders.

Easy meat.

The Marines hunted the enemy down in good order, but even they had trouble with the possessed.

Naero and Gaviok joined the hunt, ready at a moment’s notice to pop in and help deal with any greater threats.

Then something worse happened.

Within a single day, almost everyone on the planet became violently ill.

Landers, Spacers, the enemy–everyone who wasn’t in a sealed suit.

Naero, the enemy plague has finally struck. The biowar missiles.

She gasped inside her helmet. What about our countermeasures? Is everyone going to die?

Too early to tell. The enemy strain is virulent, still attempting to mutate, and fulfill its original objectives. Our countermeasures are trying to fulfill theirs.

What can we do?

Don’t come out of that combat suit until it’s resolved. I don’t want us suddenly transformed into a puddle of biomatter.

That would be inconvenient.

She got on her link to Baeven. “This is what the enemy was waiting for all along, just as we warned. This attack will saturate the entire Alpha Quadrant. That’s what they were waiting for–our enemies expected over ninety percent of us to die.”

“
And instead,” Baeven said, “for the time being, everyone’s just too sick to stand or function. Good thing the enemy is also affected.”

“Not the Dakkur,” Naero warned. “They’re immune. And the Ejjai that are still in sealed suits or vehicles can still fight. That’s going to be a problem. We’re rallying all the Marines on our side who can
take them on, but we’re still way outnumbered. Damn that wormhole!”

“Naero, a small percentage of the locals and our people are immune…including me
, Jia, and Danjen. S’krin wasn’t so lucky.”

“Interesting. How small a percentage are unaffected?”

“Two, maybe three percent at most. That’s all.”

“Better than none.”

“But it’s random. And they are already overwhelmed, dealing with the sick–and the enemy attacks.”

Naero fumed. They really missed Zhen’s expertise with bio-weapons now. “Coordinate all data with the Intel bio-weapon teams. Maybe they can come up with something to help tip the scales. If someone has an immunity, that needs to be studied.”

“I’ll have your people take care of that,” Baeven said. “Intel and I still don’t play well together.”

Naero received an urgent alert on her wristcom.