Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (53 page)

“Gotta fly. Literally. Something’s gone hot, Baeven. Keep me posted.”

“Give ‘em hell, Naero
. I’ll join you when I can.”

Naero’s battle smile snapped up. “You know I will.”

The remaining enemies who could still act decided to go for broke. Abandoning their own stricken forces, they regrouped and attacked the largest gigacity onworld–Delevor–home to over eighty million people, packed into an urban area of about four hundred square kilometers.

It was a
bloody mess. The enemy raiders scattered everywhere, causing death and more death among the sick and the helpless locals.

Naero despised Ejjai
–and the Dakkur were even greater killing machines.

Om, send our fixers in. I want every enemy out there pinpointed. Tell the Marines to bring in ground and air support
. Coordinate all firing profiles to reducing the enemy, as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Naero, to modif
y one of your metaphors, those are an awful lot of needles to find in countless haystacks.

Lots of people are dying right now, Om. Let’s get in there and do what we can.

The Spacer Marines and other personnel who could still fight performed beyond their best.

Everywhere they located the foe, fierce fir
e fights erupted, and took the enemy down hard. In the face of such horror, even Baeven and Khai went on the hunt, in the areas Naero and the other units couldn’t reach yet.

They went in and took on the largest pockets of foes the fixers could locate, and single-handedly taught the enemy the true meaning of fear and terror.

But the battlefield was too spread out, and the defenders simply didn’t have enough personnel on the ground.

The battle raged over
three terrible days and nights. More Marine companies trickled in, but the defenders still could not contain the mindless, spreading destruction.

Three days of intense fighting, and they only cleared
and secured one quarter of the battle zone.

Losses among the stricken
civilians became sickening. Most of the landers remained helpless from the plague, unable to flee or even hide.

Naero kept hunting, fighting, and killing, e
xhausting herself several times over. The advancing Marines and a few local defenders marched in right behind them in rotating shifts, every four hours.

Whenever she collapsed from utter fatigue, Gaviok slung
Naero onto his back as if she were an infant, secured her in a modified nanorig, and kept tracking the foe.

The
mantid prince became her dauntless champion.

Gaviok alone could match Baeven’s ferocity in combat. And where the Destroyer went, the enemy soiled themselves, fled, an died. The mantid moved with incredible speed, churning and smashing through their foes. He shielded himself and Naero with Chaos energy, and not even starship batteries could touch him. Ejjai, Dakkur–the possessed
–Gaviok moved through them efficiently in a blur of death. He left them eviscerated or pulverized and crushed.

His mandibles, claws, and legs tore through gravtanks, gunships, and armor as if they were paper. Scarlet beams of destroying energy lanced out
from his three eyes, sliced through warships, and cut down entire swaths of attackers. He trampled the enemy and kept fighting.

For the enemy, Gaviok became a nightmare unleashed.

While Naero drained herself, and was forced to periodically rest and regenerate, Gaviok had the endurance to stay on task, and continue hunting and killing the enemy raiders.

No rest. No let up.

She often came to amid the cries of dying foes, took up her weapons, and re-joined the fight.

Another two days of grueling, close-in combat, and they had secured half of the battle zone.

They got a break of sorts, at the start of day six.

Naero, Intel bioweapons labs found a way to boost our countermeasures. The plague will subside for us, and start to kill the Ejjai. The labteks haven’t been able to make it work against the Dakkur yet.

The Dakkur are far fewer in number anyway. Taking down the Ejjai will eliminate their numbers, and inoculate our worlds against further invasions.

But
other reports flooded in from every area.

Now that the locals started feeling better, they were fleeing in abject terror. They fled by the millions, scattering in all directions, sometimes right into the
bloody claws of the enemy.

The c
haos and madness were near total, and that was only going to make things much worse.

We need t
o organize these landers, Om. Have Intel use our fixers to spread the word. Tell the non-combatants to find a safe place to hide, with enough food and water for three days. Bunkers, basements, mines, underground strongholds. More help is arriving each hour, and this madness will end. Anyone who can and wants to fight, have the fixers make weapons and grenades for them. Intel will instruct them how to organize themselves into fighting units. The fixers are our lifeline to the local population. These people can fight back, and we can help each other turn the tide.

Their efforts had limited success throughout the next day. The population as a whole was still weak and demoralized from the
effects of the plague, malnourished and dehydrated. And they were terrified of the enemy–with good reason.

The humanitarian effort of dealing with such an explosion of refugees quickly became overwhelming, and while the main battle was still being prosecuted, it had to be left to the landers.

Only the fixer clouds could help with logistics, but that was considerable.

Another priority alert reached Naero and Gaviok.

What now, Om?

Naero, a large battle group of the enemy is forming up around one of the largest remaining population centers that our forces have yet to reach. Our foes have encircled it with thirty thousand troops and are closing the circle, killing all that they find.

How many landers in that circle, Om?

Almost twenty million, packed into domes and pyramid complexes. And we have no one to send.

Send us, Om. How many Marines do we have attached to us?

Nearly a thousand.

Thirty to one odds. Less than a full battalion, but they had to get in there. Naero got on the horn to her Marines.

“Leftenant Colonel Steiner, this is Strike Fleet Captain Maeris. You and your Marines and reserves feel like jumping into an all out firestorm today?”

“Well, when you put it that way, N. How can we resist?”

She shunted the SitDat to him via Om, so that he and his team could start planning up front.

“That’s going to be one helluva shitstorm to dive into,” Steiner admitted.

“We go in hot, and it only gets hotter. We’re pulling in what ground and air support we can cobble together. But we’re the only hope that any of those people have of surviving the next standard day.”

“N, it’s still going to be a blood bath. You know that, right?”

“It never stopped.”

Steiner nodded. “But I agree. It will be unbelievable if we don’t go in. Damn it! We’ll have all the help we need in just another day.”

“Heinrich, my friend…none of us have an extra day.”

“When do we hit them, N?

“Now. We hit them now,
as hard as we can, with everything we’ve got.”

48

The enemy was shelling the enormous local domes and pyramids of the gigacity with scattered artillery fire as they tightened the noose and swept in on the trapped population.

Marine air support began knocking out the enemy fighters and gunships, while others strafed exposed enemy armor and artillery units in coordinated attacks. Close assault ships took up defensive positions over the population centers, blanketing main approaches in interlocking waves of fire. But the foe was still too numerous, and too spread out to contain them all.

The defenders could slow them down and punish them–but not stop them.

Gaviok went out into the teeth of the fighting, taking on the possessed wherever they reared up.

Naero made an attempt to rally
the terrified locals.

The night before, she startapped and made two dozen replicants of herself, in full-on
Shetanna mode, blazing red katanas and stealth armor, bristling with weapons and ordnance, like some futuristic, warrior goddess.

Each of her replicants went out among the local population to speak with them and their leaders. A heavy rifle team of fierce Marines and a fixer cloud accompanied each
replicant. They were all linked to the original, and they could converse, but they would also echo her words if need be.

And each of Naero’s reps could fight with her battle prowess, weapons, and basic skill–just not all of her full array of Cosmic abilities. Those only Naero herself could unleash.

Wherever they went, the story was the same. The locals and their leaders looked stricken, and cowered in abject fear before the might of the advancing foes.

Naero
and her replicants chose key vantage points where tens of thousands could see and hear their words. They used
the voice
. The locals put her up on every vid and holoscreen nearby.

“
People of Delevor, citizens of Hezzen-5. This is it. Your moment of truth. Your call to arms. You must stand together, and rise up and fight
!”

Many protested. “We’re not soldiers. We’re not warriors. We’re just people! How can we fight these monstrous invaders?”

“Who are you to tell us what to do?”

Then a murmuring began in the crowds as people began to recognize the legend that stood before them. It spread like fire through a dry forest.

“That’s Shetanna. Shetanna has come! It’s her, I tell you. I saw vids about her from the High Crusade. No one can fight like her. The enemy are terrified of her. She’ll help us!”

They cried out to her.

“Shetanna! Shetanna! Shetanna!” And as they shouted her name, hope began to grow and sweep out from those locations, while the battle raged and pounded all around the outskirts of the enemy ring of death.

Naero lifted her hands to speak, and they all grew silent.

In other corners of the battle zone, Naero’s replicants took their cues from her before similar crowds.

“
Good people, my forces and I will fight to defend you to the last warrior, to the last drop of blood, but we cannot prevail alone. Any of you who are able to fight must arise, take up arms, and help us. You must fight beside us
.”

The crowd still resisted.

Naero shook her head. “
Alas, our numbers are still too few. We are outnumbered thirty to one. Fearful odds, yet we still fight on. The enemy are thirty-thousand strong, yet you are millions. If you want to fight, step forward. We will give you weapons. Your numbers can turn the tide before we are all swept away. Don’t just lurk here, waiting for the enemy to burst in and kill you all. Stand by us! Fight beside us
!

“
Who will defend your precious children and your helpless ones against the invader, if not you? You have all heard the terrible accounts. You all know very well what the enemy will do to them. This day will decide if you all live or die. If you are to die, is it not better to go down fighting? I say it is
!

“
Stand with us. Fight beside us, and your numbers can turn the tide. Your numbers can defeat this foe and crush them, if you will only fight beside us. What say you all
?”

‘Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The throng took up the chant, and brave men and women, teens and the middle-aged, came to the fore, ready to be armed for battle. Naero could still see the fear in their eyes.

The fixers quickly broke down nearby items and equipment from shops, dwellings, and restaurants into raw components, and began passing up blaster rifles and grenades in large quantities to be distributed.

“
I am Shetanna, the Dark Angel of Death, and I shall lead you into battle. Together we shall teach our enemies to rue any day that they seek to invade our worlds, and butcher our children! Rise up with your numbers and crush the invaders. Rise up good people, and find the great strength within you all. Let us fight together. Death to the invaders
!”

“Death! Death! Death!”

“Shetanna! Shetanna! Shetanna!”

Within
six hours, nearly three million landers armed themselves and swept out to overwhelm the advancing enemy forces.

The enemy was caught completely off guard and swept away in a tide of intense blaste
r fire and grenades. The unleashed ferocity of the pent up locals finally ignited an incredible firestorm in the hearts of the defenders. Led by Shetanna and the Marines, they could not be withstood by any force. Nor one ten times as great.

Naero, Gaviok, and the Marines barely had time to rush here and there, to take out the remaining Dakkur and a few of the
remaining possessed. They fought as bravely as ever, but it was the fighting people of Delevor who won the day.

By the time the Allied forces began to pour in the next day, the locals were in charge of their own defense
s, and the Marines and Intel only acted as advisors to them, helping them mop up and hunt down enemy stragglers.

*

Alliance, Spacer, and even Mystic forces continued to converge on Hezzen-5.

About the same time that enemy reinforcements arrived.

Above the planet, a furious naval battle erupted, two days later.

Onworld,
the final assault on the enemy stronghold got under way.

N
aero acted as the distraction once again, her favorite role.

Bust
in, cause maximum damage and mayhem.

Something she exceled at.

She had prepared herself for this assault for an entire day, building up her reserves, honing her skills with Baeven, Gaviok, and Khai, discussing strategy.

The enemy’s dense, living shields still barred their way.
A lethal, active barrier, immune to most weapons.

Naero could feel the
waves of Darkforce energy lashing at her like the whips of a billion devils from hell itself.

First she transformed into an energy form. Then she went into her partial Dark Beast mode. That was t
he key to the process.

She wasn’t just Chaos energy, not just Darkforce.

Naero became every form of Cosmic Energy there was–in perfect harmony.

Sh
e stood twelve meters high and was unstoppable.

She hit the enemy’s barriers
running. She strode through their strongest, most lethal defenses, and they melted before her.

Not
without strain or effort–or even suffering–but she penetrated them with sheer determination and defiant force of will.

A
t this level of Cosmic awareness, she could vaguely make out Danner nearby, like a bonfire of Darkforce power. He shrieked, twisted, and laughed maniacally in his prison restraints, trapped in the private hell of one of the enemy’s megagenerators, that continually tormented their hosts and sucked them dry.

Danner’s bottomless sources of Cosmic force were beyond scary.

Naero hated to admit it, but Danner had always been strong–even stronger than her.

Danner
was pure destruction. Madness. He thrived because he fed the Darkforce on endless hate–something they both shared and understood intimately and extremely well.

At times she pitied Danner, and all that his life of agony, fear, and malice had twisted him into. He had never known the love that she and Jan had known.
Danner had never known a moment of true happiness as a real, fully-functioning person. Naero cursed all of their hated foes rolled up into one. No person should ever be forced to endure such a life, especially her brother’s twin–her former blood.

The enemy transformed all of
Danner’s hate and might into the Darkforce, in order to power their efforts, and hurl those forces against Naero and everyone else.

Baeven agreed with her.

Danner served the enemy far too well, both as a power source, and a potential weapon.

One way or another–
that needed to end.

Naero c
lenched her fists and crossed her forearms in front of her, leaning into the vortex of Darkforce annihilation as she punched straight through it.

Her third eye burst into
blue-violet flame.

Wings of light and darkness flared and feathered out from her back, beating like her thundering heart, sweeping her forward against the
Cosmic hurricane of destroying force that the enemy unleashed against her.

She perceived and sprung their trap
–on purpose.

A
s long as she was crashing through the front door anyway, she might as well announce her arrival for all to see and hear.

The enemy counterattacked.

She endured the brunt of it in her fury, keeping the enemy fixed upon herself, making no attempt to deflect it. That alone kept those destroying forces from laying waste to the planet surface, for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, and incinerating whoever survived among her companions.

Some of the energy, she absorbed. Some she shunted into her Dark Beast to sate its ever-burning hunger. Even more she reversed, and sent
straight back into the universe itself.

But no matter what it cost her
–no force in all the universe was going to keep her from penetrating that enemy stronghold.

Even if doing so tore her to atoms.

Finally, she reached the other side. She launched herself at Danner as soon as she spotted him.

Her blinding, all-out attack smashed into him, and shredded the megagenerator
with her weapons as they tumbled and wrestled, and fought.

Danner stared at her with his burning eyes, and laughed and laughed.

The enemy retaliated again.

Multiple weapons slammed into
Naero, batting her around.

But the damage was done.

Without Danner boosting their Darkforce energies, the enemy defenses around their stronghold collapsed.

Solid stone
near Danner and the Dakkur hordeship erupted–bursting and exploding in glowing shards like a volcano.

Baeven
and Gaviok led the strike force up from where they waited for Naero’s signal. They had tunneled right through the planet’s bedrock.

They and the strike team punched into the enemy hordes
, right behind the Mystic Enforcer.

Naero recovered
and shrank back down to make herself less of a target. She swept toward Danner to rip him free of the remains of the shattered megagenerator.

She was ready to either fight him to the death, or take him prisoner–whichever way it went.

But a wormhole appeared behind Danner and sucked him away, into the Dakkur hordeship or somewhere else. Naero couldn’t even sense his presence any longer.

What was going on?

Baeven and Gaviok pressed their attacks on either flank, and the strike force rallied behind them.

Even as the enemy ship prepared to launch.

Naero had a bad feeling suddenly, that they were all being played.

She tried to contact their ships.

“Jia, report.”

The response came back garbled.

“Naero…Bae…help…enemy…swarming all over us. We…can’t break free!”

The link went dead.

The Dakkur hordeship blasted off.

It was all a decoy, a clever diversion.

Naero wondered why Admiral Korleth Tulkas had not shown himself.

Korleth was up in orbit already, going af
ter the enemy’s real objective–Jia and Govae’s body. They would stop at nothing to obtain them.

They would torment Jia, and strip her mind of all of her secrets, and
destroy her for all time, just as they had done to Govae. G’lothc spirits would then have two perfect hosts in such immortal, android bodies. Then they could lay waste to Ur-Jahal, and all else thereafter.