Ingersol screamed, but his voice sounding shrill.
“It is a clear question of survival!”
Naero turned her back on him. Ignoring him. She held her hands out to her people, imploring them.
“When this is all said and done and these threats are no more. We can sort all this out with the Corps tyrants. Just like we did with Triax. Joshua Tech and the Alliance has proven that things can be different. Landers can live in peace with us and be our allies and our trade partners, for the advancement and the good of all. But they can’t be anything if we murder them. Or stand by and allow them to be murdered by foes who plan to do the same thing to us. Do we have the right to allow that to happen?”
“You fools! Don’t listen to her. Every one of us will perish!”
Naero ignored him and asked:
“Who are we? What kind of a people do we intend to be? Liberators, or conquerors? Warriors, or murderers? Do we keep our honor and fulfill our destiny as a people, or do we fall, and corrupt ourselves like others have? Do you want to drown in the blood of innocents? Can you in good conscience stand by while others murder them, until the real foe comes for us? Can you kill zillions and still call yourselves Spacers? What honor is in that?”
Ingersol shrieked. “This is folly. This is madness. The landers can’t be trusted! They call us spacks. They hate us. They want to kill us. How can we make them our allies?”
“So your answer is murder them all? All right. Then lets do it, I say. And after we drowned ourselves in oceans of innocent blood, what have we then become? Who are we? What are we? What do we stand for then, after we have given up everything we hold sacred and true?”
The assembly grew deathly silent. Naero’s powerful words thundered softly and rippled among the throng.
Ingersol strove to win them back.
“Don’t listen to her. She’s a fool trying to trick you with words, with useless compassion that will destroy us all!”
“My good and noble people. My Clans–whom I love with all my heart. I ask you this. Can we do these things? Not once, but multiplied a trillion times–an infinite number of times: Can any of you stand a frightened little lander boy before you. Unarmed. Scared. Helpless. Shaking. Can you shoot him in the face, blow his head off, and take his life? Steal it away like a murdering thief? Is that who and what you wish to become?”
Up in the crowds, many faces grew pale and shook their heads.
Naero went on. “What about an old woman, who has lived a good life and done no one harm? Can you cut her throat and be stained all over with her blood? Look on as she gasps and bleeds out before you? Gut a terrified little girl and spill her steaming guts at your feet while she screams? Blow up a young married pair of lovers? Set their newborn babe on fire and watch it twitch and die?”
The throng looked stricken to their cores, and shaken by her relentless inquiry. Many more now shaking their heads. Many weeping, covering their mouths in horror.
“Can you repeat such terrible crimes, over and over, zillions of times, until you are completely soiled and sickened by them? Can we really do such things and not be utterly destroyed ourselves? The landers are like us. They are people like any sentients. And they deserve a right to live and be free, the same as we.”
No one said anything.
“You and I know these things to be wholly wrong and irrevocably unjust. In order to do such things, we would cease to be who and what we are. We will not just become filth–like the enemies we despise...
“We will BE that enemy, and something far worse.”
Even Ingersol hesitated.
Naero stumbled in her fatigue and nearly collapsed.
When she walked, her feet left bloody footprints.
Many in the crowd gasped.
“Someone help her!” a woman cried.
Naero held up a hand and lifted her violet eyes up to them, filled with tears shooting down her face.
“My beloved people. Look. If only for once, see with your eyes and your very hearts what is happening to us here. The stark, yawning abyss whose brink we teeter upon. This is our moment of decision. The moment we decide our own fate. Our enemies commit these atrocities. Not us. Are we to join them and forsake all of our sacred ideals, just to become as evil and without honor as they?”
“No! Never!” many cried.
“What is your solution then?” Ingersol snarled.
“There is only one solution. We must be brave enough to put aside even our just hatred, and do all that we can now to make the landers our allies, as quickly as possible. In order to defeat the common foe. Together.”
“Absolute folly!”
“I have had my say. Once I have rested and recovered my strength, I will return to fighting our foes, with every ounce of my blood. With all of my courage and determination. And I say to you that I shall help any who will stand against these foes and fight beside me, whether they be Spacer or lander. I call upon every true Spacer to go forth and do the same.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Ingersol shouted. “We’ll all die. We must kill them all in order to be safe.”
Naero called to her people one final time. She pointed an accusing finger at all of their staring faces.
“The choice is not his or mine to decide. It is yours, my people. I have made mine. But let me say this. I am glad, that my parents are not here this day. They would have been ashamed to see so many of our kind driven to madness by loss and grief and rage. They would be ashamed to see so many of us even considering such a fall from our great Truths:
Liberty.
Honor.
Justice.
Naero emphasized each word as with a ringing hammer.
“But if you can do these terrible things. If you can murder zillions of innocent men, women, and children in cold blood, just so that you can feel safe…then you are no longer my people. And by the names and the honor of my parents, I banish myself from being your blood!”
She drew her cutlass and flung it clattering across the floor as if it were garbage.
The throng gasped, shocked and horrified to the breaking point.
The elders rose up and shouted in complete refusal.
“No, we shall never do such things!”
Ingersol charged Naero from behind suddenly and knocked her down with a heavy two-handed blow to the back of her head and neck.
She had no strength to stop him and crumpled to a heap at his feet.
He kicked her as she lay helpless.
The assembly gasped again. Enraged. Many protested, calling for his removal.
Ingersol whirled around, fat, bloated, and sweating. His hair wild and out of place. A maniac. Shouting and screaming orders like a deranged madman.
Even the soldiers of his command looked confused as to what they should do. They lowered their weapons in shame and looked sheepishly at the elders for guidance.
“I’m still in command here! I give the orders. Martial law is still in effect! Obey me or be placed under arrest!”
A very large officer flashed in so fast he was nothing but a dark blur.
No one believed anyone that big could move so fast.
One punch from a massive fist sent Ingersol’s bulk flying. As if that fist were a block of solid iron.
Ingersol sailed ten meters into the crowd, to crash among the seats and lay stunned and bloody. No one touched him.
General Walker rose up, towering over everyone else. A man among men. A true and proven leader among the Clans. His very presence seemed to clear the air and restore order.
He spat on the floor where Ingersol had raved.
“Been meaning to tag that mouthy pad-poker,” he muttered, under his breath. “For years!”
He stooped and gently scooped up Naero in his enormous arms.
Detachments of marines in full battle dress quickly moved in, disarming Ingersol’s uncertain, lackluster followers amid cheering from the throng. Ingersol’s dupes offered no resistance and surrendered willingly.
“The Laws of the Grand Conclave are hereby restored,” Walker announced. “According to the rule of law and the chain of command. Let all who wish to speak, have their say.
“And let it also be stated–clearly and for the record–that this young woman is one of the bravest warriors I have ever seen or had the unmitigated joy to serve with. Her honor and valor are without question. Period. Anyone who seeks to insult or lay hands upon her, will answer most dearly to me personally, and to my direct authority, and that of the High Command!”
The elders came forward, amid the jubilant cheering of the crowds.
Tamerlane Atani Maeris himself, picked up Naero’s discarded cutlass and first presented it to her. Then he himself kissed the blade and returned it to her sheath in one fluid motion.
He placed one hand gently upon her face and half-smiled.
“You’re parents would have been proud, spacechild,” he told her. “You’ve manage to both shame and honor us all at once, in the same day. You reminded us who we are. Who and what we should be, what we should stand for. And what we should do.”
He smiled at her again.
“You are most definitely our blood, and the blood of your mighty mother and father. There is no greater praise.”
General Walker stood Naero back up on her feet, allowing her to lean against him.
“War is upon us,” he shouted. “And so it begins.”
The general commanded every heart and hand present, still protecting Naero with one arm.
“Everyone fights. Ever forward, my brave Clans. Prepare for battle!”
54
The Spacer onset took everyone by surprise.
The enemy. The Gigacorps.
Even the Spacers themselves.
The Spacer Clans committed all of their forces to piling in and assailing the Ejjai invasion wholesale and entirely, without hesitation.
On both sides of the border.
On every system, planet, and colony.
They left the derelict Corps fleets floating behind them in their wake. To refit and restart their own systems and follow in as best they may. As soon as they were able.
The Spacers abandoned even their own defensive positions. They even left many of their own territories wide open.
And hammered the invaders wherever they could be found. Sending them reeling.
Trillions of Spacer forces flooded the border systems, fighting with a ferocity and fury that even the vicious and blood-thirsty Ejjai could not match.
And the bewildered populations and leaders of the Gigacorps worlds blinked and stared in wonder, that it was in fact the hated spacks that they had been taught and told to fear and hate–and fully hoped to destroy–who came to their succor in the end.
Who freed them from the horrors of their nightmarish enemies?
It certainly was not the Gigacorps.
At first the landers trembled in fear that the spacks they had been conditioned to hate so much came to subjugate and perhaps do even worse things to them than the Ejjai.
But the Spacers showed great compassion. They avenged the dead and crushed the Ejjai invaders in ways that even made the landers cheer them on.
To the helpless they gave comfort and aid. They healed the injured and the sick. To the lost and the down-trodden forgotten, they gave security and freedom. They kept multitudes from starving or going without clean water or shelter.
They used clouds of miraculous fixers to help the ruined cities rebuild, seemingly overnight. Then they simply drove on.
Both Spacers and landers began calling the war: The Crusade to Save Humanity. Or simply, The High Crusade.
And spear-heading that crusade were the Spacer Marines of Bravo Command, armed with amazing new weapons and gear that continued to come online. Out of virtually nowhere it seemed.
Wherever the Ejjai invaders thought themselves the strongest and the most unstoppable, the Spacer Fleets sent Bravo Command roaring in to stomp the once fearsome enemy into puddles of red, scorched mud.
And on world after world all across the border, the tales and battle legends abounded about a small Mystic warrior. A young spacechild with blue-black flowing hair and fierce violet eyes, who fought beside the fierce marines all dressed and masked in black armor.
A young girl who fought the enemy with the strength and speed of a hundred–no–a thousand. She fought the fierce foe with fantastic Mystic abilities, wielding her signature, twin blazing, blood-red katanas.
A warrior who knew no equal.
Everywhere she went, every place she was spotted, the landers took heart and cheered in renewed hope. They called after their new legend in awe. In hushed tones.
Landers made vids about her and her exploits that became wildly popular throughout the known systems. And risked their lives at the front to capture actual vid footage of her in action.
And the legend grew.
Shettana–The Dark Angel of Death.
Even the Ejjai took up the name, screaming it in terror wherever she fought against them.
Shettana.
*
One evening during a stand down, Naero chose to mix things up.
She wore a slinky midnight blue evening gown and long matching gloves–instead of her dress uniform–to a formal dinner with General Walker, his officers, and the captains of her fleet.
Nearly every head turned when she entered. Walker smiled and raised a shining glass to her.
“You clean up well…Shettana.”
Naero grabbed a glass and smirked.
“I do, don’t I?”
“Half my officers want to marry you.”
Naero laughed. “Yeah, and the other half just want me for sex.”
They both cracked up.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Naero sighed a little, but it was all right.
At times, she did feel very lonely. Despite all her friends. Still afraid that if she let someone get too close, she might destroy them by accident somehow.
No. She’d sworn off relationships until she could fully control herself.
“You did the right thing,” Walker told her. “More importantly, you convinced the Clans to do the right thing. The Crusade was the right way to go. Now the landers have gone from hating us, to working with us and thinking of as their saviors and allies.”
“Let’s see what they do when we leave.”
“That won’t be for a while. The invaders don’t surrender.”
“Good. Then we can wipe them out.”
Naero clinked glasses with him and smiled.
If only the General wasn’t so old.
Haisha. Like enough to be her father.
And happily married too, with about fifteen kids. Alyssa was a great lady.
But Walker was a great man, and a good guy. Tough as steel, but fair.
Maybe she could find someone like that. Eventually.
Someone her equal.
Some day.
Naero had her pick of dance partners that night.
55
The brutal war continued, the sweeping tide finally turning against the invaders.
Intel hacked the Ejjai atrocity channels and took them down.
They played vids of Ejjai being defeated and killed all along the battle front in their place.
And every now and then, vid footage of Shettana, the Dark Angel of Death in action.
She had a special message for the Ejjai.
Her ferocious violet eyes filled the vid screens.
Gigantic.
Ejjai dying by the scores reflected in them.
“We’re coming for you all, Ejjai cowards. This is Shettana, the Dark Angel of Death. We will teach you the meaning of fear. Wherever you filth see our flames raining down from the sky, your extermination is coming. Vengeance, is at hand–scum. Fight and die. Or flee and die.
“Just die!”
With each world The High Crusade liber
ated, more of the same horror stories abounded.
Meatship factories. Clone factories.
Terrified helpless children shivering and dying in pens like cattle, waiting to be butchered alive and devoured.
Death and atrocity.
Slowly the Gigacorps fleets came back on line and joined the fight.
Coordinating their actions. Fighting right alongside the Spacers.
For once in history, all humanity: Spacers and landers alike rallied together under a common cause. To defend the future of humanity and all the other known races–against a relentless and insidious alien invasion bent on Cosmicide.
Anything the enemy attempted to do, merely fueled the fires of that crusade.
The enemy, it appeared, had made a huge miscalculation.
When the last subjugated Corps world fell, and the last Ejjai horde lay defeated, crushed, and dead. Naero and Bravo Command were there.
All of humanity rejoiced and celebrated as a new day dawned.
They seemed to breathe a great collective sigh of relief.
But Naero still felt very uneasy.
Something remained very wrong.
Shalaen felt it too, but neither of them could identify what troubled them both so much.
They held a conference with Klyne and several others.
“Where are the aliens and all of their advanced tek?” Naero asked.
“That’s a good question,” Klyne said. “Perhaps they cut their losses. They played their hand too soon. We know it. They know it. The Ejjai are just clones. They can always make more.”
“I doubt they are that stupid,” Shalaen said.
“We’re missing something vital,” Naero said. “Up until now they’ve always been way ahead of us. Why would they simply fade away? Disappear and let their invasion fail, when their advanced tek still might have turned the tide against us?”
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 37