11
Naero returned to her nanocabin on the surface of Thanor-4 after midnight, a long day of catching up behind her. She needed to sleep more, and that was just as well.
With her aunt’s weird dream still fresh in her own troubled mind, Naero braced herself. She worried that she would start dreaming more and more about the obelisk–the alien artifact that seemed to keep taking her form.
But she did her best not to think about it, and pushed it completely out of her mind.
That was a great relief.
The nightmares she did have…were, oddly enough, about dragons.
Gigantic, long, sleek, glowing dragons of every color, some with horns and rippling tails and claws, a few with wings. There was an entire cloud of them, like monsters, writhing and breathing flame and lightning, and some even shooting bolts of Darkforce energy out of their eyes and gaping maws.
Massive destruction followed in their wake.
They laid waste to entire fleets.
They destroyed entire worlds, and devoured both the flesh, and absorbed the life force energy of anything living.
What were these visions and where were they coming from?
Om suddenly came to her aid, as she woke up startled.
“You are seeing visions of the Kahn-Dar. That is how they go to war and attack. They are Cosmic energy creatures, and very difficult to kill. They are more dangerous than most of the Dakkur in that they can fly, and move at great speed, both through an atmosphere, and through space itself. Some of them can even shapechange, and take on humanoid, or other forms.”
Naero attempted to go back to sleep with all of that in her head.
Some point past four bells, Naero’s sense of warning spiked off the charts, sending stabs of pain through her head. A second later, alarms and warning sirens went off all over the camp.
In the distance, Naero heard the unmistakable sounds of battle being unleashed. She knew those sounds very well.
The heavy Spacer Marine regiment guarding the obelisk was unleashing total hell on something.
Could the enemy be invading the planet?
Master Tree came straight for Naero and placed his arms protectively around her. Even his normal iron composure seemed shaken.
“What’s happening?” she asked. He didn’t answer her.
Then she smelled the charred, smoky ozone smell of a Cosmic energy blast. And blood. Tree was wounded. Blood ran down both his arms and over his hands.
“You’re hurt.”
“Our smartblood will close off my minor injuries. The artifact is moving, and we must re-locate to a secondary camp, on the opposite side of this continent. You will come with me, Naero Maeris.”
“Jan, Aunt Sleak, the others!”
“The other High Masters will get them to safety. You are my charge. Come. We must transport.”
“Wait,” Naero said. “Listen!”
They heard nothing.
Seconds before, a great battle was being unleashed.
Now there was no sound at all but the light wind.
Then the ground shook and rumbled, as if a great earthquake was splitting and cracking the planet wide open, like an egg.
Coming right for them.
Master Tree teleported them in a flash of blue lightning.
They re-appeared near a beach on the eastern side of the continent of Nashara. Sea cliffs stood nearby.
Thanor-4 had no moons, so the Marines at hand labored quickly and efficiently to finish expanding the outpost into a full camp, aided by clouds of construction fixers.
In the nearby woods, Mystics work with the construction teams to create another sparring field, similar to the other, but twice its diameter, to be ready for the next day.
Huge Marine troop transports stood ready, Naero guessed, in case a mass-evacuation was required.
Naero rose up on her gravwing briefly and surveyed the camp, expanding rapidly before her eyes.
Another full division of Spacer Marines set up an extensive, defensive perimeter all around the camp. Gunships, starfighters, and close support ships floated up in the air at the ready. Gravtanks, meks, and artillery units took up their positions.
Naero spotted several naval destroyers and a few cruisers higher up in the atmosphere.
When Naero returned to the ground level, she was relieved to see Jan with Master Jo, and Aunt Sleak with Master Vane. Naero hugged Jan and Sleak.
“High Masters,” Aunt Sleak said, “as both a retired naval admiral and an adept, I demand to know what has happened. Did the enemy attack us again?”
“Come with us,” Master Tree told her, his face grim. “We will explain all that we can.”
They followed the Three High Masters into one of the private, Mystic starships that the masters used for their needs. A small emergency starport existed, but it was being greatly expanded as well.
Along the way, the prime adepts for each of the High Masters joined them. Makita and Iselle backed up Von.
Yet all five prime adepts looked pale, bloody, scorched, and beaten up. They had clearly all been through the ringer.
Makita and Iselle looked even more spooked and terrified than they had been with Naero’s little accident. The one that had nearly killed them. Yet even as they stood there, each of them began the process of healing themselves and regenerating. High Mystic adepts were a tough lot.
In a large conference room on the Mystic starship, the High Masters took places at a nanotable and seats they pweaked up from the nanofloor for their numbers.
The masters called up several large holoscreens above them to assess all that had transpired within the last standard half hour or less. Everyone still seemed stunned.
“Let us start from the beginning,” Master Tree said. “A moment. Backup feeds from the Intel vidcams are still coming online.”
They all studied a long, aerial shot of the west coast Mystic camp late that night, as it came into view in the dark. Time, around 4:13 in the morning.
In the null circle surrounding the alien obelisk, something ominous began to move. Multiple vidcams and scanning drones attempted to zoom in on it from every angle.
The closest ones disrupted and burned out immediately.
Long range zooms revealed the alien obelisk beginning to move, and spin, and shift shape as it often did, without warning.
Then it took the shape of a young, athletic spacer girl with long hair. Like a statue all in muted shades of dark gray
The heavy waves of layered shielding began to buckle and disrupt next, sending showers of sparks and bursts of explosions from destroyed shield pods and generators.
All along the defensive perimeter, the heavy Marine regiment stationed there activated, calling up all reserves to the line, as alarms and sirens sounded.
Tanks and heavy weapons heated up and began to glow, preparing to fire. They prepared to unleash enough firepower to destroy an entire army, or a large city.
The alien artifact, now in the form of a young woman, opened its blinding violet eyes.
A radiance that fleets in orbit suddenly noted down on the planet below, as energy scans spiked beyond known limits and destroyed entire sensor and scanning arrays on every ship.
The statue with the blinding eyes stepped down, and the surface of the planet yawned and split, fissuring out from it, as the bedrock of if Nashara heaved and groaned.
More strange energies and lights pulsed from the walking juggernaut, and all remaining shields in that area collapsed.
The Marines opened fire in that instant.
They poured blazing ordnance, beams, and explosive blasts at the statue, cratering the ground further all around it.
Nothing living–nothing known to exist could have withstood such intense, destructive fire.
Yet the statue ignored every attack and kept walking, entirely invulnerable, oblivious. Nothing could harm whatever it was made of. Many of the attacks seem to deflect or bounce off.
Yet other attacks, the statue appeare
d to absorb, directly.
Scans revealed that the statue was drawing in energy at a fantastic rate.
“What direction was the artifact moving in?” Aunt Sleak asked, her face, like most of the others in the room, pale and in shock at what they were watching.
“Yes, Master Vane,” sneered. “Tell us, what was it heading for?”
Naero guessed, and blurted out quickly. “It was heading straight for me.”
Everyone turned and glanced at her. Her analysis proved exactly correct.
“Watch what happens now,” Master Jo said. They all swept back around to stare at the holoscreens.
As the Marines attempted to increase the ferocity of their attack, a blinding pulse of violet energy fanned out from the statue in the sweeping flash of an instant.
The energy ring’s diameter widened faster than thought, and passed through the entire defensive perimeter instantaneously.
As it did so, gravtanks, meks, massive artillery pieces leveled straight at the statue, and heavy gun emplacements, flared for a brief instant and were swept away.
These advanced weapons did not explode.
They were all completely disintegrated in one blinding flash of total destruction.
Naero thought she noticed something strange about the statue’s face.
High Master Tree froze the vidfeeds for a moment for them all to take in what they had just witnessed.
“An entire heavy Spacer Marine regiment,” Jan noted, nearly stammering, “completely annihilated in the space of a thought.”
Master Jo was about to speak, but the mantid interrupted him, his carapace solid black, in his extreme defensive mode.
“What power is this?” Gaviok asked. Even he sounded as if he were at a loss.
Shalaen spoke up, striving to remain calm on her own. “There is no power such as this,” she said. “There is none like it, that any of our peoples have witnessed or ever known to exist. Nor even among our enemies. Even removed from the scene and watching these vids replay, one can feel it. There should be no such power as this. It threatens my sanity. We should all take the time to be very afraid.”
Master Vane spoke up, glaring casually in Naero’s direction. “We have witnessed such a power–once before–with another of these alien artifacts, on what was then, Janosha. It behaved slightly differently, but it was much the same. We tried to study it, as we are attempting to study this new one, now. Yet, much like the other, it is nearly beyond all comprehension, and any attempt to control it.”
Vane hesitated. Shame rife in his voice when he spoke again.
“We attempted to do so, and were soundly punished.”
Naero closed her eyes solemnly. “Did none of those thousands of brave Marines survive? Are we certain that they are all dead?
That very thought tore her heart out of her chest and stomped on it.
“I was going to say, before,” Master Jo added, “as amazing as it it sounds, none of the Marines are dead. The strange energy wave stripped them of all weapons and armor–even their uniforms, somehow. It left them all smoking, stunned, and naked where they fell.”
Naero covered her mouth with both hands, her relief was so great.
Master Tree continued. “When we are certain the danger has passed, we will send their brothers and sisters to collect them, and see to their conditions. They still lie where they fell–unconscious.”
“Let’s watch the rest of the vids,” Master Tree said. “The High Masters and I did make an attempt to contain the artifact, much the same as the way we suppressed your more violent, abilities, High Adept Naero.”
Master Vane rubbed his apparently aching head, his robes, like those of the other two High Masters, still blasted and scorched. “For all the good that did us,” he muttered.
Tree started the vids again.
The three High Masters transported in and formed a triangle, directly in the path of the approaching statue, with Master Vane, the strongest of them all, out in front.
Orbs of intense, blazing scarlet, azure, and gold Cosmic energy encased each of them. And around all three, an even larger sphere of shining white energy protected them.
They attempted to form such an orb of light around the statue, and for a moment, the artifact halted, and appeared to be either confused, intrigued by, or studying the sphere’s composition.
Then it lifted one hand.
A ray of intense violet energy punched out from that hand, expanded into a cone of the same might, and shattered all before it.
The spheres and energies of even the High Mystic Masters disrupted and shattered like glass, dissolving in mid-air.
The three masters were hurled off their feet and flung back, battered and set on fire, like mere children before a hurricane of violet flame.
They recovered their wits and retreated, transporting away.
The statue resumed its forward march, three-quarters of the way out of the crater, and nearly at the stricken defensive perimeter.
Intel forces and the prime adepts led a brave, but futile attack from all directions, trying to slow the statue down.
The thing blasted and swatted them away like insects and kept walking. Nothing could stop it.
The naval destroyer, The Mikado, swept in close to the ground and strafed the statue, pinpointing the area around it with heavy, concentrated cannon fire.
The statue absorbed the attacks as before.
Dazzling rays from its glowing eyes disintegrated the entire warship in a blinding flare of naked power.
One hundred and eighty stunned crew slowly floated naked to the ground and lay still with the vanquished Marines.
Nothing known to Spacers or any other sentient race appeared capable of stopping this thing–or even slowing it down.
Finally, for no apparent reason, the statue mysteriously halted, shifted shape a few times, and then froze where it stood.
Master Tree cut the vidfeeds. “It has not moved or even flickered since, by all reports.”
“Why did it stop moving?” Naero asked.
Tree turned to her. “I believe that was the exact moment that you and I transported from the west coast camp, to the east coast camp here, Naero.”
“I’m guessing,” Master Jo said, “that once you were out of its sensory range, the very purpose for its actions was no longer present. It no longer had a reason to act.”
Naero shrugged. “So, I am its reason to act. Why? I guess we could transport back in and see if starts advancing toward me again.
Even Master Vane’s eyes widened. “Oh, hell, no, Maeris. None of us are getting spanked by that infernal thing again, just so that you can conduct a silly experiment.”
“Are we certain that it is evil?” Naero said. “I did not detect any Darkforce energy, or any presence of alien tek, like that of our enemies, that makes you feel sick inside to be near it. And it appeared to go out of its way to avoid killing our people, when it clearly and easily could have done so. It selectively destroyed all weapons and gear, leaving our troops stunned and helpless–but still alive. How could it even do that? No weapon can do such a thing.”
Shalaen placed a hand on Naero’s shoulder. “The more important question to ask, my sister, is what does this thing want with you? Why is it so interested in you?”
Master Vane snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? Why do any of these strange, elusive beings want to capture Maeris and make use of her for their purposes? She’s a monster–a living, breathing, potential weapon of mass destruction–just waiting to be exploited and unleashed, and she also has the KDM within her. Isn’t that all enough?”
Shalaen shook her head. “I do not think that is it. We have all witnessed but a fraction of this artifact’s frightening power. None of us can even conceive of matching it in any way. I think that it could very easily wipe out this entire world in an instant, if it but chose to do so. Yet it is not bent upon destruction. It wants something, and it clearly is not about to let anything stand in its way when it is about to mov
e.”
Gaviok took up Shalaen’s train of thought. “I think I follow you. Yet the artifact does appear to have some kind of limitations, also. It stopped moving toward Naero once she was too far away for it to track and follow her exact location. Perhaps its sensory abilities are limited, in ways that we cannot understand.”
“Yes, yes,” Master Tree said. “It is specifically goal-oriented. Once the goal passed out of its range of perception–it stopped moving and went dormant once more.”
“What does it want with me?” Naero said. “If it had been able to reach me…what would have happened? What would it have done to me?”
The three High Masters grew very silent suddenly.
All three of them were hiding something. Naero knew for a fact that her outcast uncle had directly encountered one of these things–a very similar alien obelisk or artifact–if not exactly alike. She didn’t know the details, but she more or less guessed that the results had been catastrophic in some way. Baeven and many others had been very nearly destroyed, including Naero’s mother, who was also present at the time, and somehow involved. Baeven had almost died as a result, and he had never been the same, since that time.
The encounter and his involvement with that artifact had helped destroy his life among his people.
It was Aunt Sleak who spoke up.
“We need to know what happened with the other artifact like this one,” she said. “You mentioned that there was another one. What happened to it? Perhaps that will shed some light on what we should do now with this one.”
“We cannot speak of such,” Master Tree said flatly.
“We will not speak of it ever again,” Master Vane said flatly, “not upon pain of death.”
“Cannot. Will not,” Aunt Sleak said. “What rubbish. Tell us what happened or at least why you will not even broach the subject.”
Master Jo spoke plainly. “Because we can’t recall them. All traces of those events have been purged from our minds, by the power of the artifact itself.”
Tree nodded. “To this day, all that we know are the events leading up to the…mysterious occurrence. And those that followed.”
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 9