The general could not help but swallow hard at the open threat in her words, and with a very pale face.
“I assure you, General. My mission is a diplomatic one. Talk with us and learn the truth of that. Contact your leaders, and convince them to call off the big attack that they are planning. That will not end well. Tell them what you and the others have seen. Advise them that force will not avail them.”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
“Make them believe you, general. From what you have seen of my kind and our tek, do you really wish to test our military?”
“No. I think not.”
“Very well. At least we agree on that much. We are already monitoring all of your frequencies. I will withdraw to the city of Vulind. You can reach me there and we can arrange to continue our negotiations. Know this. If you attack the city for any reason–as you were planning–or in an attempt to destroy me, you and all of your forces will be blasted to oblivion. Every fleet that is sent against us in aggression shall be vaporized. All of this folly and waste can be avoided, if we all simply agree to negotiate in good faith together.”
“Only because your kind is forcing us to do so against our will,” he stated.
“Yes. Yes we are. I never said that we were not doing so. But instead of simply wiping out both species, we are giving both of you a chance to evolve further along the rational, sentient path of enlightenment. Isn’t that far better than merely letting the two of you go on murdering each other for the next hundred years? If we must use force to grow beyond such folly and madness, then sobeit. Pardon our intrusion.”
In the days to come, both species were forced to accept many new realities.
Time and time again, Naero had to persuade both sides that they simply couldn’t ruin the game by finding a way to destroy the peacemakers, and continue with their war.
But the Zenek needed far more convincing. They proved rigid, stubborn, and stiff-necked to the point of idiocy.
After several attempts to kill or capture her, Naero finally gathered a large batch of their leaders, placed them in energy globes, and shot them up into the black in orbit around Pelaz.
She left Poly below to monitor the others.
The Zenek leaders floated about in a jumble, but there was plenty of air.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOUR CONSTANT ATTEMPTS ON MY LIFE ARE BOTH ANNOYING AND AN ENORMOUS WASTE OF TIME. SINCE YOU ONLY SEEM TO RECOGNIZE DEMONSTRATIONS OF VIOLENCE AND POWER, LET’S HAVE DONE WITH IT. USE YOUR VARIOUS COMMUNICATION DEVICES TO SUMMON AS MANY OF YOUR MOST POWERFUL FLEETS AS YOU CAN SPARE TO LOSE.”
“Ambassador Maeris, what are you proposing? What do you mean by lose?” This came from Prime Emissary Cabbem, one of the Zenek Homeworld leaders chosen to negotiate on their behalf.
“I mean destroyed, the warships and all of their crews, for all time. How many do we need to destroy in order to convince you?”
Cabbem paled.
Naero gave the signal.
The gargantuan Alliance Strike Force suddenly uncloaked all around Pelaz-3, and registered on all Zenek scans for several seconds of concentrated shock.
Then they vanished just as suddenly.
“I PROPOSE NOTHING. SUMMON AS MANY OF YOUR FLEETS AS YOU WANT US TO DESTROY, TO PROVE TO YOU THAT WE DO IN FACT POSSESS THE POWER TO WIPE OUT YOUR MILITARY FORCES AND YOUR ENTIRE WORLDS AT ANY TIME.”
Cabbem was suddenly robbed of the power of speech, and looked as though he might become violently ill.
“Summon them,” Naero insisted. “Bring them on. Again I ask, how many will it take? One fleet? A hundred fleets? A thousand? How many Zenek will need to die before you come to grips with the fact of what is taking place here? End these petty attacks. Now. And then negotiate with us in good faith. Is untold death the only way to convince you and your people that we are in earnest? Are you that backwards and ignorant?”
Prime Emissary Cabbem licked his lips and rubbed his strained face with his long fingers. “No, please. We have…reconsidered. Such demonstrations, like the ones you propose, are wholly unnecessary, Ambassador Maeris. We can be reasonable. Please, return us to the negotiations,” the man said flatly. “With great apologies, I assure you that there will be no further…disruptions, proceeding forward.”
The negotiations progressed somewhat faster after that interlude.
Naero introduced Poly in Spacer form as her assistant, who joined in to help.
Within one standard day, Poly reported to Naero that both races were quite busy, campaigning hard to get her to take their side over the other.
One evening while Naero was at another location, Zenekian commandos attempted to seize Poly, and take her away on a military transport.
The commandos vanished because Poly ate them.
Then she destroyed the transport and returned to her mission.
She and Naero both strongly advised the Zenek not to make any more such attacks.
The next day, Poly came up with a fresh idea. “I think it would help greatly if we shapechanged the leaders of both sides into the other species. They need to experience life as their enemies do. Perhaps then they would not be so hateful to each other.”
“I don’t have a problem with shapechanging others for a short time. I think that’s an inspired idea, Poly.”
With a few reservations and precautions, Naero agreed.
They made the arrangements with both races, insisting that Naero and Poly were the ones who wanted to take time to get to know ordinary Zenek and Chath.
On both occasions, the leaders went ballistic when Naero and Poly shape-changed them into the other species and brought them along.
Time was allowed for them to stop freaking out.
Naero and Poly told them that if they did not go through with the plan–the results transformations would remain permanent.
Finally the leaders on both sides gave in.
It also took a bit for it to catch up to them, but it later freaked them out even more that Naero and Poly could blend back and forth into either species with incredible ease.
When each species quietly asked if they were currently being infiltrated and observed by other shapechangers, Naero and Poly left such possibilities up to their imaginations.
But after a week or so of literally living life inside the skins and minds of their hated enemies, a strange thing happened.
Most of the leaders finally had epiphanies, and came to the conclusion that the war had been horrifically wrong in almost every way.
They now understood that neither side was the demons and monsters that they had been made each other out to be. That had merely been escalated by hysteria and hate, fueled by the folly of both sides.
Naero and Poly turned the affair over to the Alliance negotiation teams thereafter.
Just in time, Baeven summoned them back, informing Naero that he had discovered an important new Cosmic sphere for the Alliance Champions to train in. He wanted them to check it out more together before they brought in others.
Not all spheres were safe to work in. Some were quite dangerous.
She and Poly joined him back at The Shadow Fox.
Baeven and Naero ventured out into the Expanse the next day, bidding Poly and the others to monitor things on the war front while they were gone.
Her uncle took them into a unique sphere in the Prime Material Plane where by scale, their energy forms were somewhere between the size of gas giants, and failed stars such as the numerous red and brown dwarfs.
Instantly upon entering that sphere, Naero felt the same rush of Cosmic power that Baeven had warned her about. They were awash within it.
That sphere seemed to hold, sustain, and store great quantities of rarified power within its nodes, and the very aether.
Only the Darkforce energy pocket depots of the enemy had acted similar to that, but this was naturally occurring version of Cosmic energy storage, and it was also a specialized version of raw Cosmic power, somehow integrated with Dark Matter, but not with
the destructive tendencies of actual Darkforce energy.
Most spheres of Cosmic energy were not like this one.
As just one example, the very next sphere accessible to them up the spectral scale was that of low-mass stars. But that sphere was very rigid and limiting in its composition and basic flow structure, for many reasons not worth pursuing for them at that time. It simply was that way.
They went there for a short time just for the comparison, but then they dispensed with it, returning to the much more reactive and fascinating red and brown dwarf sphere.
The vast majority of the brown dwarf nodes were of the standard M, L. T, and Y sub-stellar varieties. To the ranges of normal vision, they were combinations of orange, magenta, orange-red, reddish-blue, bluish-violet, and violet gray in their color and appearance.
As failed stars went, they were not massive enough to burn hydrogen in their cores; their internal pressure and heat were not intense enough, but unlike gas giants, they could still manage deuterium fusion and the burning of Lithium.
Yet in this sphere, red and brown dwarf Cosmic energy flows by sheer volume were incredibly considerable and highly concentrated. Such conditions in the nodes and the aether itself were unique, and lent themselves well to rapid, efficient tapping and absorption by energy beings that did not use the Darkforce.
Naero tapped into them right along with Baeven and felt their magnificent flows.
The power at their command was almost intoxicating.
Was this really akin to what the Six G’lothc Champions felt when they tapped into their various depots of the Darkforce? No wonder they felt so triumphant and overconfident all the time.
“Exhilarating, isn’t it?” Baeven said.
“Haisha!” Naero shouted back over the Cosmic roar of the energies at play all around them. “Suffused in such power, I feel as if I could accomplish anything. What a power rush!”
Baeven laughed. “Don’t get carried away. These energies are very useful, but they certainly won’t make us invincible.”
Naero examined her hands before her face, gauging the ready power flowing through her.
She fired a Cosmic blast into the open distance. The far off detonation was quite impressive.
“The flow and the concentrations are so strong and quick to use. It’s so fluid, so easy to tap and apply. I love these flows and their composition!”
“Let me show you something else. Take my hand and use your teknomancy to follow along with what I do. We’re going to shrink down to a much smaller scale.”
She pulled away for a moment. “Shrink down? But that will kick us out of this sphere if we scale down. I like this place. I want to try a few things out here before we leave.”
He took her hand again. “Don’t worry. It’s like that in most of the spheres, but not here. This one’s very different, once again. Follow my lead like I said, and let me show you something vital. Trust me.”
Naero smiled and nodded, activating her own considerable teknomancing powers.
Her eyes went wide as they zipped down multiple scales in a flash.
Yet they were still connected–linked to the same sphere.
That was extremely unique.
For some reason, the size and scale of their energy forms did not matter in this place and when they were connected to it.
They played with it and sparred with each other vigorously in several scales, from their normal Spacer human size, right on up to the size they came in at, the ginormous scale of being fifty thousand, to one hundred thousand kilometers tall.
And with minimal Cosmic energy deterioration at any point along the way.
Leaving one sphere for another usually led to serious energy depletion, caused by the demands of moving from one level to the next, and the corresponding adjustment in energy form size, whether greater or smaller.
Those concerns did not hold in this unusual place, or when they remained linked to it.
Naero gasped slightly, coming to another realization. “Uncle, if we could master this process, we and the others could magnify our powers everywhere, without being forced to expand our size or density.”
Baeven laughed. “I know. I figured out the same thing with Jia, after I brought her here. We were waiting to show it to you first, and then the others. From my studies of the Darkforce and the G’lothc, I believe that this is exactly how they tap into such great quantities of the Darkforce. Before she was destroyed, Elazethrek routinely pulled off the exact same feat. I kinda sensed it at the time when we were fighting her, but I could never figure out how she actually did it, until I came here and began working on these levels.”
“You’re right, uncle. The enemy is already a master of these techniques, and we must become so as well. I can see that even the Dark Emperor uses them from what we know. We need to bring the others here. We must all master these processes and abilities. We’ll be able to utilize much more Cosmic energy, and remain the same size without being automatically kicked into another sphere and forced to adjust!”
“Remember all of the Creature’s battle forms?” Baeven said. “They were on different scales and connected to different spheres as well, without changing her size very much at all.”
“Yet they increased her powers significantly and even morphed some of her battle forms. I think that further study will bring about all sorts of breakthroughs.”
Within days, they brought Khai and the other Alliance Champions, energy beings, and Mystics into their newly discovered training sphere of expanded power.
8
A certain set of GSA missions and additional planning sessions required that Khai, Naero, and some of their forces, at the very least, pass through parts of the Alpha Quadrant and scan those areas.
Much of what they conducted thereafter were routine security and Intel sweeps.
Strangely enough, there had been continued numerous enemy probing attacks, sightings of enemy fleets, and strange activities that defied description on the borders with the Beta and Delta Quadrants.
Large groups of human colonists piled up in those areas in preparation for large pushes into the unknown. These landers remained especially vulnerable to any enemy activity in those extents.
But the countless numbers of yearning settlers and colonists would never pay attention to threat or reason.
Some enemy activity might have been seen as commonplace on the borders of the uncharted regions. The enemy showed up in many odd places.
Nothing, however, could explain many of the same suspicious activities occurring deep within the heart of the Alpha Quadrant itself. Those places had been settled for a long time, and were considered well within the largely accepted human and Spacer quadrant.
Nothing like these actions had occurred within any part of the Alpha Quadrant to this degree since the time of the High Crusade. And in some cases, they took place in systems that even the Ejjai had never reached during that widespread conflict.
The GSA and a slim few of the unallied lander systems tried to make sense of it all. To date, almost all of the current heavy fighting with the enemy was contained within the far off regions of the Gamma Quadrant.
There was much debate at Intel as to whether this was all about to change in some major way. The GSA attempted to inform and involve more of the unallied human worlds in the process.
The latter showed little interest or concern as a whole.
Naero and Khai’s forces expanded and stepped up their patrols and sweeps. They never encountered the enemy directly, but they definitely found considerable evidence of enemy activity in over two hundred locations. They concluded that the enemy was conducting major intelligence ops of their own. But what kind of information was the enemy after, and for what purposes?
While they investigated, at every stopping point, Naero arranged to meet with local system leaders among the former Gigacorps worlds. Some of these worlds were still grateful to her because of the role she had played as Shetanna during the war.
Other sy
stems did not know her directly, as Naero Prime. Yet they did know her from her Shetanna replicants that she had left behind as monitors, expanded throughout the lander systems on every world and colony. These secret monitors helped guard against, prevent, and expose dangerous political extremism.
They also used their ever-expanding powers to watch for and defeat enemy infiltration of any kind, by control wyrms or mind wraiths. Destabilization was still a major threat.
The Shetannas also fought any attempts by any former Corps forces or factions to gain control. The outlawed Corps could never be allowed to rise to power again. All threats, whether from within or without, still needed to be guarded against.
First Naero would link with her reps and upgrade them directly, using a complex combinations of psyonics, biomancy, and teknomancy to do that and gather all of their memories, knowledge, and information.
Then she would meet with the leaders of those worlds, if they were willing to do so. They would discuss the war and all of the very real threats in the galaxy. Always Naero advised the hesitant independents to join the GSA for safety and protection.
On too many of the independent lander worlds, however, Naero’s diplomatic efforts were regularly ignored, laughed at, and even rudely dismissed.
What did a bloody spack mindfreak know about the needs and concerns of the free lander worlds?
Many landers had never learned that Naero and the Spacers had been integral not only in saving hundreds of Corps worlds during the Ejjai Invasion, but of helping free them all thereafter from the tyranny and the excesses of the now outlawed Gigacorps.
At least the Corps are no more, thankfully.
Yes, that’s good news for everyone, Om. But it has still led to power vacuums, apathy, stagnation, and confusion among the landers.
Many systems thrive in the new era of expansion.
Others seem to still function in a perpetual state of shock.
Frankly, N, many landers are wallowing in laziness.
Genetic Humans as a whole remained chaotic and unpredictable. Oddly enough, they still did not always get it together enough to pursue their own clear, best interests. They could be their own worst enemies.
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