Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  THE CITATION SERIES, BOOK 4

  NAERO’S

  WAR:

  THE GAMMA QUADRANT

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  by Mason Elliott

  1

  The night before the mission into the Interdimensions, Naero had a dream where the stars fell.

  If they did not actually fall out in space, then their light was being extinguished, one at a time and then in whole bunches. What did it all mean?

  It was as if the darkness itself had come to life, like some predatory thing, and was penetrating and devouring them from within.

  Then a very bright star appeared, placing itself before all the rest as if defending them. It came against the darkness, but in the end, it too was finally overwhelmed and it was consumed. All of the rest quickly perished, until there was only silence, darkness, and death.

  The last thing Naero recalled before she started up out of her nightmare was the weeping and tormented cries of children, all suddenly silenced.

  After all that, she found it very hard to get back to sleep.

  For her, such dreams were almost always a warning of some kind.

  Despite bad dreams, on the morrow, Naero and her strike force slipped into the Interdimensions for only the second time.

  Shalaen and several more cautious, even frightened Yattai stayed close together.

  The energized aether of the various folds and pocket dimensions they zipped through were all brightly colored, each in their own way, with varied, fractal patterns and bursts and splashes of Cosmic energies.

  Yet with their third eyes, and all of their heightened senses from being in their energy forms, all of the joined realms they passed through pulsed and reeked with Chaos, destruction, slaughter, and subjugation of the resident sentient beings within.

  Something was very wrong.

  Thank goodness not all of the Interdimensions were linked.

  Many might yet have survived the sweeping tide of violence that had struck hard in these places.

  From the information that they had gathered thus far, these regions of Interdimensions adjacent to the Gamma Quadrant were being ravaged and torn apart by waves of deadly, invading forces.

  Unknown until just very recently, the escaped hordes of vile, G’lothc spirits, shades, wraiths, or whatever it was appropriate to name the evil things, had waged a horrifying war. This was clearly a campaign of attrition, enslavement, and destruction that if left unchecked, could spread outward against the energy being races far beyond.

  SpaceTime operated with much greater variation in the Interdimensions. Vast distances were traversed much easier by beings in energized, Cosmic forms. Much like the Astral Plane, in many cases such enormous distances could be leaped with the speed and power of thought.

  It usually helped to have the conceptual reference of a starting and ending point.

  This new enemy war, however, struck hard and without warning among most of the energy being races close to the Gamma quadrant.

  Most of the known species of energy beings were being ruthlessly and systematically farmed and enslaved with impunity, to the point of extinction. Who knew how many other energy being races, yet to be encountered were also being attacked in this grave fashion as well?

  Now that the majority of the great enemies were once more contained in their prison of near annihilation, a full assessment of the terrible losses suffered among those other, many and elusive interdimensional beings needed to be made, or at the very least attempted.

  The Alliance could not simply hang back and cede the newly discovered and vital Interdimensions to the Great Adversary.

  Naero’s friend Shalaen and her valiant people, the energy beings known collectively as the Yattai, proved to be invaluable new comrades, and offered to assist the sentient, Prime Material races and allies in the known galaxy and beyond.

  The Interdimensions were nearly as strange and beyond as one could find, save for the actual Beyond itself.

  Naero and Shalaen remarked to each other about what amazing times of terror, wonder, and enlightenment they lived within.

  How odd that the Yattai energy beings had once stood firm and stubborn as the staunchest isolationists.

  All of that had changed and been swept away by their near destruction at the hands of the great enemy.

  Near genocide quickly convinced them that they could no longer ignore the greater threats at hand, to them and others.

  Not even near ascended energy beings were safe any longer. In fact, the enemy and its slaves hunted all such beings down now on a wide and regular basis, in order to use them as power sources for Darkforce generators…or for things far worse.

  In the uncertainty of the Interdimensions, especially now, they stuck together and maintained their telepathic links to each other. That was the most efficient form of communication.

  We have heard grim rumors from among the surviving remnants of the other energy being races, Shalaen informed Naero and her people. It is said that Nahaxrathrax, the most ancient and most powerful of all the Dakkur Dark Emperors, has taken to devouring energy beings whole, by the hundreds as if they were grapes. He does this horrid thing, not only to increase his vaunted power, but because he enjoys devouring souls. We know of nothing that can stop this monster. And he has also willingly joined with legions of the fell spirits of the G’lothc housed within himself, and added their power, knowledge, and influence to his own malignant force of will.

  Even worse, another Yattai known as Jaeyar added. He has sworn to somehow bring back The Six G’lothc Champions of the Darkforce!

  Shalaen gasped. That would be a great evil and disadvantage to us.

  Jaeyar shook his head. Indeed. It would mean the end.

  Now just wait a moment, Naero said. The Seven Kexxian Dreamers destroyed the Six in their final battle together, millions of years ago. How could such fiends be brought back into existence?

  Indeed, Jaeyar told them. Their mighty physical forms were obliterated, but their dark souls–their evil spirits–still lurk among the G’lothc within their Cosmic prison realm. They wait only for their release at the end times of the Cosmic Prophecies. Even the G’lothc themselves feared the Six–whom they mistakenly created after many millennia of evolution and genetic and Cosmic manipulation.

  For until they stood before the Seven Kexxian Dreamers, the Six knew no equals. They were unstoppable, unmatched in ruthless villainy and depraved atrocities splattered all across several galaxies. Sentients took their own lives in wholesale panic before letting themselves or their children fall under the hands of one or more of the Six. Time and time again, entire populations were tormented and finally wiped out, according to their whims. What monsters they were.

  Shalaen wept into her hands, seeing those age old memories in the hearts and minds of her people for the first time. What mad folly is this? Such horrors cannot be unleashed on the universe again.

  Naero sighed heavily. Alas, I have both seen and sensed the hideous power of the Dark Emperor of the Dakkur. Nahaxrathrax will dare much, and stop at nothing. The enemy has the same insane plan that it has always pursued: destroy all life in the universe. They seek to somehow create or summon the Great Destroyer to accomplish this. That is a great part of what drives the ancient, Cosmic Prophecies.

  We and all free sentients must band together and stop him. Like all of our greater foes, the Dark Emperor must be hunted down and utterly destroyed, before he does the same thing to us.

  They passed into another realm, and the terror and death that filled it for light years and parsecs at a time sickened them almost instantly, even in their energy forms.

  Naero had not thought that possible.

  What is this dread place? Naero asked her Yattai friends.

  Jaeyar frowned. This was one of
the wide realms of the Laelor, a race of energy beings slightly younger than the Yattai.

  What has happened here? Shalaen cried. I sense torture and death all around us on a scale that is nearly unimaginable. Countless energy beings perished within this dimension. The aether itself is thick with the after effects of suffering and violence beyond reckoning.

  Even Naero could sense in part what was overpowering the Yattai. Terrible things had taken place here, and the psyonic memory and screams of the fallen still hung in the aether and echoed in the minds of all who passed that way. Spirit beings left horrific scars behind them in their passing.

  This entire realm was scarred, scorched, and stained with horror.

  It was a place haunted now by destruction and terror.

  She also sensed in every way, the passing of the Dark Emperor and his fell servants, as well as something else that she could not yet define.

  Where they had passed, the enemy left death and oblivion in their wake.

  Now there were only what seemed to be flakes and bits of glowing, energized cinder and ash scattered upon the aether winds. Cosmic bits, shades, and shadows. All that remained of many Laelor energy beings and whatever constructs they had made.

  A vibrant, advanced society and culture now forever ravaged and lost.

  It was almost as if everything had been disintegrated, but how?

  Naero asked. Shalaen, can you tell how many Laelor perished in this realm?

  Shalaen glanced at Jaeyar and a few other Yattai, confirming first with them. By our reckoning, some four hundred and sixteen thousand, three hundred and eighty nine…and counting, Naero. From the energy readings and shadow images left behind, the Laelor made a brave stand, and did their best to hold back the enemy. But the Dark Emperor and his hosts were still far too powerful for them to withstand. Many were taken away as energy slaves. The rest were merely slaughtered, in some terrible way that even we cannot yet comprehend.

  Naero gathered data and readings from Om, the Kexxian AI defensive protocol merged with her mind. As always, his essence came along with her. Their findings together were even more frightening and ominous.

  Shalaen, I don’t want to alarm you and the other Yattai, but something else was at work here. Even the Dark Emperor and his servants could not have wiped out so many powerful Laelor on their own, so quickly.

  Shalaen turned to her. Then what could it have been?

  I’m sensing some kind of low level, Darkforce energy residue in the aether. That’s part of what’s making us so sick and uneasy. I fear that this was some new super weapon of the enemy, designed especially to work within the Interdimensions, on an immense scale. Something we haven’t seen before. And perhaps more than one kind of it.”

  What was it? Jaeyar asked.

  Naero shook her head. I don’t know yet, but by my calculations, these new threats tore the Laelor defenders apart as if they were paper. And they just didn’t simply consume the Laelor–these new threats converted them somehow, and made them part of the attacking swarm, or whatever it was that the Dark Emperor unleashed against them. I have never sensed such malignant powers before. They defy definition, but the results are clear for all of us to detect.

  Ahh! Shalaen cried out, rubbing her arm suddenly.

  Naero rushed over to her to see. What is it?

  Shalaen continued to wince painfully. It’s nothing. One of those bits of Cosmic ash. It really burned when it-

  Naero asked, How can it possibly harm your energy form?

  She was screaming in pain an instant later, by the time Naero studied the arm wound with a mix of biomancy and teknomancy.

  The mote of Cosmic ash flared with modified Darkforce and in another second, had burned through and consumed most of Shalaen’s spirit form arm from the elbow down.

  Even as it consumed Shalaen’s hand, Naero quickly ensnared the particles and froze them solid within a concentrated sphere of countering Cosmic energy. She tucked the sample away for further study and turned back to Shalaen.

  Her good friend struggled with the pain.

  This was rapidly becoming very frightening.

  The clouds of energy infused ash floating nearby suddenly came to life and swept toward them, rushing at them all with menacing focus and intent.

  Naero cried out psyonically in warning.

  Withdraw! Don’t let those particles touch you. It’s part of an attack!

  Naero instantly vaporized the concentrated particle clouds directly around them in a bright flare of Lifespark energy. Such positive energies passed through them all and did no harm. Yet it consumed the attacking, microscopic Darkforce particles, and purified any residual portion of Shalaen’s virulent, spreading wound.

  Naero’s longtime friend clutched her own damaged arm, struggling to regenerate it. You stopped it! Thank you. The pain was agonizing, N.

  I imagine it was. It appears to be some kind of malignant, Darkforce phage that converts other energy forms into more of itself. That is one major way that the Laelor were crushed so easily.

  Jaeyar raised the alarm. There is another entire nebula of those Cosmic phage particles sweeping straight at us, half a parsec in diameter.

  Even Naero could not take on a swarm that enormous.

  Order everyone out of this sector, she shouted telepathically. Flee! If that nebula overtakes us, we’ll be completely devoured and converted, just like the Laelor. This is another new super weapon of the G’lothc.

  Together they sped out of that region, but it was touch and go for many moments.

  The phage storm continued to gather speed and pursue them closely, reaching out with long tendrils of Darkforce particles stabbing forward at them with great, deliberate speed.

  The phage operated as if it were a living, ravenous collective organism with intent, purpose, and force of will.

  At the last instant, Naero and her allies escaped that diseased realm, sealed off the access to it, and then destroyed the portal in that region behind them.

  Until they had a way to counter this new threat, no energy beings could ever enter such a place safely again. The phage swarm had to be cut off and kept from infecting and attacking any other Interdimensional realm or separate pocket dimensions.

  A large scale cure or defense against the enemy Darkforce phage would need to be developed. If the enemy used this new weapon successfully once, they would clearly press their advantage again.

  The Yattai sent the warning out to all of the other known energy being sentients in the Gamma Quadrant and beyond.

  Naero brought out and studied the frozen sample of the phage she possessed, with the necessary Cosmic mix and Om’s help. The phage was yet another relentless threat that their ruthless and resourceful enemies inflicted upon them.

  She and her allies had also sensed other threats yet to be revealed.

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  If you have not read Book One of Mergeworld, enjoy this teaser by Mason Elliott and Garan R. R. Faraday.

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  Mergeworld

  Book One

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  by Mason Elliott and Garan R. R Faraday

  1

  David Pritchard woke up gasping from one nightmare and went straight into another. A terrible agony tore through him as if the universe twisted him inside out.

  Then he snapped back again.

  What i
n damnation had just happened? Something…was very wrong.

  Startled, groggy, it only took an instant for his bleary mind to figure out.

  Flames engulfed the front of his college apartment building. The stench of smoke, screams, and breaking glass outside only confirmed it.

  He was dazed and blinked his scratchy eyes. The first thing he instinctively reached out for was the framed picture of his dead parents.

  That was the last picture he had of them from a few years back, right after he started college in South Bend.

  They hugged and smiled at each other in medieval garb at the Bristol Renaissance Fair up in Wisconsin. The picture froze both of them happily in time, retired in their forties. Unlike many parents that age, they weren’t divorced and they still loved one another. One of their ren-fair pals took that picture for them on their digital camera.

  The same camera retrieved from the car accident on the Illinois highways on their way back home from Bristol. A tractor-trailer jackknifed in the heavy rain and took them away.

  The same weekend David begged off going with them.

  He blew that picture up in Photoshop, printed out an 8 x 10, and bought a nice oak frame for it. He kept it with him wherever he went. He’d die before he’d part with it, fire or no.

  All that history and pain flashed through David as he clutched their picture close to him in the dark. He didn’t even have to see it, just cling to it in his hands. That picture always sat prominently behind his small alarm clock on his night stand with his smart phone and wallet while he slept. That was how he found it, even in the semi-dark. He also grabbed his phone and wallet.

  His clock normally flashed bright green. Power outage, probably from the fire. And the back-up battery must have gone dead. Light switches? Nothing, of course, do to the fire.

  The growing reek of smoke triggered his desire for self-preservation. Once he got out, he could call his friend Mason Tyler, who lived in a duplex over on Allen Street. His buddy Mace would help him.