Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  Liberating troops already poured in after she was finished.

  Om caught Naero before she crashed down through some tall trees. She could barely keep her eyes open, she felt so weak. Om began their regen.

  At least millions of civilians did not blow up and die as the enemy had intended.

  A large number of stunned pirates could now be captured and secured as well.

  But a substantial unit of active pirate troops erupted from hidden ground shelters and swarmed toward her last known location before anyone else. In her condition, Om could not get them out.

  Naero staggered to her feet, preparing to try to fight them off until help reached them. Om tried to operate their gravwing to escape, but multiple grenade blasts rocked the area all around them.

  These blasts cut through her shields and damaged her gravwing.

  Vengeful pirates rushed forward to lay violent hands upon her.

  Three lines of Zouaves charged in out of the darkness, blaster rifles blazing, energy scimitars and sabres flashing. Some of the Zouaves secured Naero, protecting her with their own bodies, while the rest crashed into the pirates full tilt.

  One of the Zouaves shielding her took a blaster bolt to the helmet and dropped down dead.

  The Tygers proceeded to sweep the pirates from the field.

  When the remaining pirates turned to flee, they ran smack into a line of Shetannas wielding deadly red chaos energy katanas.

  The stubborn and resourceful Voga Raiders had put up a surprisingly stiff battle in the end, on all three worlds, against both the GSA and Irregular forces.

  The pirates slew a large number of innocent hostages and civilians before they went down in defeat, but not as many as they had intended to kill, by far.

  Naero had originally sent in GSA Marine strike units and surgical teams of her reps to help break the pirate strongholds and put the enemy down quickly.

  None of that had turned out as planned.

  Much of combat was liked that at times. All battle plans had to rapidly evolve on the ground as situations unfolded.

  The naval battles with the much reduced Voga Raiders up in the black had been even more one-sided.

  The GSA then faced another problem.

  Once they retreated, the pirates could simply bide their time. After Naero and her people left, the pirates might swoop back in and take control of those three worlds once more, if they could cobble together enough of their surviving forces to do so.

  Naero knew very well that there were still some of the Voga Raiders out there in the black, trying to regroup and plot their next moves. No one knew just how many enemy survivors and ships there might actually be.

  They had endured a substantial defeat. It was quite possible that they might not ever rise again to become a major threat in those regions.

  Naero made a demanding deal with the HFM thereafter.

  If they rallied their available forces to protect those three planets and their sentients, the GSA would allow the HFM to help colonize those worlds under the current strict guidelines. That would not give them ownership of those worlds, but they could support colonies there by proper charter, and make full use of many working starports in order to further explore those areas.

  GSA forces promised to check back with them. If the HFM abused any of the rules or the locals, they could be removed as easily as the pirates, if not easier.

  Khai impressed that fact on the HFM leaders, as well as several other important concerns.

  The Irregulars also decided to leave a recruiting outposts on each world as well. And that included long range sentry probes, and fast courier ships in case anything major went wrong.

  Both groups and the growing wyrmhole relays would put those three worlds on the colonial map.

  The tide of exploration would swing that way in a matter of months, especially now that colonists would know that established starport facilities were already waiting for them. New worlds could be located and explored, now that the threat of the violent Voga Raiders had been greatly reduced, and possibly eliminated.

  The holographic banners of the flaming skulls would no longer terrify, exploit, and control whoever came out that way.

  There was no rest at all for the wonderful.

  Naero and her compatriots were forced to continue to press on within a matter of hours, and it was a good thing they did.

  They overtook yet another large group of HFM fleets, fighting a running retreat from an even larger group of Kuldek fleets who pursued them hotly.

  The Kuldek had some amazing capability allowing them to trace and pursue the HFM, even after the latter jumped.

  That made it difficult for the HFM to ever fully get away.

  Naero ordered the surviving HFM forces to make a run for it and keep going, all the way back to the three new colony worlds.

  The GSA held the line, waiting to try to negotiate with the rampaging Kuldek Conglomerate forces.

  The Kuldek at first halted, stood down, and listened to everything that Naero had to say and share with them.

  These colorful dinosaurs turned out to be quite rational and accommodating…in their own peculiar way.

  After further talks, they even agreed to a basic trade and non-aggression treaty.

  Surprisingly enough the dinos politely insisted on a naval battle, a small one. The battle would consist of one of their fleets against one of Naero’s.

  She tried to explain. “This is no longer necessary, now that we have reached agreements.”

  The Kuldek admiral insisted that to their mind, such a battle was now quite unavoidable. “This battle must occur. In fact, if your GSA does not agree to our terms, I want to make it quite clear that all of the Kuldek fleets will immediately renew our attacks with all of the resources that we have at our command.”

  He remained calm, rational, and completely serious while stating all of this.

  Reluctantly, Naero agreed to his bizarre request.

  The remaining forces of both sides pulled way back to monitor the contest.

  The Kuldek fleet of sixty ships came at Naero’s hand-picked fleet–Fleet-53, led by Strike Fleet Captain Penelope Lewis and Naero’s tactical replicant Marsha.

  The Kuldek warships moved quickly, and in good coordinated order. They had adequate shields and powerful weapons.

  They made good use of their cloaking abilities to try to confuse the Spacers.

  Naero remained in constant contact with Fleet-53, partially merging with Marsha.

  At first the Spacers tried to disable and neutralize the Kuldek warships, in order to limit the loss of life.

  Then the damaged warships started blowing themselves up in order to damage the Spacer vessels nearby.

  One Kuldek cruiser even activated its jump drives and ploughed through its opponents, destroying itself in a suicidal blaze of glory. Several Spacer vessels took heavy damage.

  The dinos cheered.

  Naero finally understood.

  To the Kuldek, this contest was clearly to the death.

  She decided to get the troubling battle over with as quickly as possible.

  She gave Marsha the orders not to hold back.

  Fleet-53 went full on and blasted the remaining Kuldek warships to dust.

  The Kuldek Admiral remained calm, grateful, and gracious thereafter.

  Half of Fleet-53 had been damaged.

  Naero thought it a good idea to make a further point.

  She had the fixer nebulae re-fit Fleet-53 in record time, while the Kuldek watched and scanned the process with surprise and great interest. The dinos possessed no such capabilities.

  The Kuldek thanked her again, and promised profusely to uphold their agreements to the letter. They left as quickly as they came, after all of their ruined ships were detonated, leaving very little of value to scan or pore over.

  Such were the dealings with the Kuldek Terraforming Conglomerate.

  The biggest fire set by the HFM loons, however, remained to be extinguished
.

  19

  When Naero and Khai reached the contested regions of the mighty Gixx, it was already too late for the HFM forces who had originally informed the beetles about who now owned the Delta Quadrant in its totality.

  Khai noted, “The highly advanced Gixx have not only defeated and readily overwhelmed the inferior HFM surplus fleets, but all of the HFM personnel have already been devoured, in a great victory feast that the Gixx celebrated and gleefully rejoiced in.”

  Om chipped in. The salvageable HFM ships have already been efficiently converted over and upgraded to Ultrium ships for the Gixx Navy and crewed by Gixx crews.

  Naero’s standard line warships and systems were only somewhat more advanced than Gixx ships according to Om’s initial analysis. She did still command many elite fleets that were thankfully much more advanced than Gixx tek.

  Naero tried to hail the Gixx, pretty much knowing what their response was going to be. By all known accounts relayed from the HFM, Gixx were not very big on negotiation.

  The Gixx currently yearned for another yummy feast, courtesy of the GSA this time around.

  “Let’s make an impression on them, Naero stated. I’m guessing that force is all that they understand to begin with. Let’s give them a show they won’t soon forget.”

  Naero’s task force held their ground and opened fire with all available batteries.

  They obliterated the first ten advancing fleets that the Gixx sent at them.

  The Gixx withdrew for a short while.

  Next they sent a hundred fleets at the GSA, which was most of what the Gixx had at that time, including their reserves.

  That turned into a pitched battle that lasted for nearly eight standard hours.

  Naero’s task force still held the upper hand by the end of that time, but just barely.

  By the end of that battle, Naero had hundreds of heavily damaged warships that badly needed refit, dozens of them almost to the point of being destroyed or lost.

  Then things grew a bit more interesting.

  Three wyrmholes opened up near the last surviving enemy vessels.

  Naero and her Intel people scanned and made note of the Gixx wyrmhole tek.

  It was very similar in function to the same tek of the Great Adversary.

  Also of note, more than a thousand Gixx fleets swarmed out of those portals.

  Naero withdrew and re-organized her formations to meet these substantial new threats, refitting her fleets as fast as she could within the fixer nebulae in the rear areas.

  She brought up her reserves from the Irregulars to uncloak and help carve these new forces up.

  Some few of the Alliance ships became separated by accident or chance during the chaos of war.

  The Gixx instantly swarmed on and boarded those hapless ships very quickly, overwhelming the crews in many cases.

  Some of those Alliance ships and crews detonated their cores and jump drives, rather than allowing themselves to be taken and devoured.

  Others were not given enough time to do so.

  The loss of life and warships for the insectoid Gixx grew more horrific. Heavy losses seemed to mean little to them.

  The Irregulars managed to get their secret weapons set up and working just as two more Gixx wyrmholes opened up, and hundreds more Gixx fleets flooded in.

  These cumbersome, but lethal complex beam arrays that Jaer commanded were the secret Dalineth vortex cannons. These weapons represented the lost tek that Jaer and Al had uncovered from an ancient alien race. This race, the Vrek, had once been ancient allies of the Drians.

  To make the best of these extreme long range weapons, Jaer and Al held them way back behind the front lines. Just four of these vortex cannons blasted great swaths through the packed enemy lines. The carefully vectored vortex blasts shredded, disrupted, and incinerated all physical matter that their energies came into contact with.

  These terrifying weapons targeted the fresh Gixx fleets pouring through the two new wyrmholes in great numbers, only to be wiped out before they could even come online. The secret weapons engaged great swaths of targets.

  They could even engage and disrupt the actual wyrmholes that the Gixx had opened, if attacked at the right vectors.

  They dealt with the reinforcements, and then proceeded to take the wyrmholes down one by one.

  Naero and Om calculated the odds for the outcome, based upon this new tek on their side.

  We can defeat these vast numbers of Gixx, but at the cost of about half of our own forces. The battle could take three or four standard days, my friends.

  What if this new enemy has even more additional forces to commit during that time, Om?

  Naero and her allies were already all-in.

  Even with the vortex cannons, they could not call in any more reserves. There weren’t any to call in.

  She took counsel with Khai and the other GSA Champions, and they devised a new strategy.

  As the new expanded battle with the aggressive Gixx continued to unfold, Naero, Baeven, Khai, Jia, and some of Naero’s most powerful reps broke off and assembled out in the black in stealth mode.

  They brought along all of the cloaked spyfixers that they could wrangle.

  In secret, some of these same spyfixers had already infiltrated and cracked the beetle data bases and secret coded files. Enemy wreckage from the other engagements was still being analyzed.

  The Gixx were reportedly extremely afraid of an unknown enemy that had nearly annihilated them deep from within the Delta Quadrant, about a half century before the present day.

  Naero, Khai, and every high level rep she could pull out set up a huge deception with the spyfixer nebulae that remained cloaked.

  They fabricated the appearance of thousands of Great Adversary fleets and forces pouring out of several new wyrmholes.

  Not only that, but they also created the illusion of swarms of mind control wraiths and enemy phage waves.

  The capper came when Naero replicated the appearance of a fake Dark Emperor.

  Khai and Baeven teamed up to pose as a fake Elazethrek, even channeling Darkforce energy to cover them doing so.

  On scanners, everything about the great enemy’s Darkforce energy levels would appear to be real.

  They unleashed this massive deception on the unsuspecting Gixx.

  By wholesale numbers the Gixx halted their attacks, and fled in abject terror. They panicked and their jammed up vessels slammed into each other doing so.

  Naero and her team had guessed correctly.

  Somewhere in the depths of the Delta Quadrant, the Gixx had encountered the Great Adversary, and now recognized those Darkforce energy signatures.

  By imitating those energy signatures and images, the GSA succeeded in throwing the Gixx into chaos, thinking that their great foe had found them yet again.

  In less than half a standard hour, the mighty Gixx jumped out of the battle, fled through as many wyrmholes as they could generate, and voided the field in a state of complete terror.

  They did so all in terror of a hoax–a pure deception.

  This finally proved that the vicious Gixx were in fact afraid of something greater and more destructive than themselves.

  So great was their grim memory, apparently, of taking on the Great Adversary, and suffering crushing defeat after defeat, that they fled far away and kept running.

  Spyfixers attached to the Gixx fleets would now track and relay data on their activities. The Gixx remained a major threat to all other sentients.

  Naero had also used psyonics to sense and confirm much of what was going on in the Gixx minds, memories, and collective psyche.

  Khai, like many of the defenders, knew what was fast approaching. One day soon enough, the GSA would need to pursue such leads, and take on the real Great Adversary forces in Delta Quadrant. “Haisha! No tricks or ruses are going to help us then.”

  For the present, even Naero and the GSA leaders knew that they were not in any position to do any of that just yet.


  “At least we’ve chased the Gixx off for now, and diminished the direct threat of their great numbers.”

  Naero shuddered to think what that insectoid horde could have done to any of the other sentient colonists who prepared to flood in that quadrant.

  Everyone on any side will need to be on guard against this powerful new alien force, N. The Gixx are still out there, deep beyond these regions.

  Her fixers attached to the Gixx would also send out warnings to any other sentient beings.

  20

  Naero’s strike force had to take at least a standard day to refit and repair her many damaged ships through the fixer clouds. Doing so put them even further behind schedule, and in increased demand on several fronts.

  She didn’t like to admit it, but she was also forced more and more to utilize synthezoids, Remos, and rep replacements to fill in key fleet positions and situations, due to casualties.

  Then without warning, less than a day after their latest conflict resolution, Naero received desperate, deep space distress calls further inside the Delta Quadrant.

  What a surprise this exact turnabout turned out to be.

  “Amazingly enough,” Naero informed the others, “these fresh pleas for aid come from none other than the rapacious Gixx themselves!”

  From what the frantic beetles described, and the unbelievable data they transmitted, they were under heavy attack.

  From some kind of impossibly destructive force that came at them from the Interdimensions near their own borders further within the Unknown Regions.

  Whatever this new threat was or where it had come from, it was colossal in size and extremely ancient, nearly two billion years old by all of the scans.

  “How can that be?” Jia said. “How could any single organism survive for so long?”

  Om remained linked to them all via Naero.

  “My friends, this is one massive creature by all the evidence the Gixx sent to us, about one quarter the size, mass, and energy of an average star. No such living thing has ever been known to exist. Not even close. There is nothing to compare it to–not even in the KDM.

  Naero and the other champions had trouble believing the data reads and scans.