Even on their rest days, morning would come early in the summer.
The parents took turns reading from their holy book from their religion. Usually they were stories that taught a lesson. They were pleasant enough, but the words and strange names meant little to Naero.
Then Mama Kincaid sang a nice song, and all of her daughters joined in. It wasn’t a sad song, but it still nearly made Naero cry. Something was still troubling her deeply.
The family spoke of their plans for the next day, and then Mama Kincaid sent them all in to wash up and get to bed.
At first, Naero was going to sleep alone in one of the guest rooms in the big farmhouse, the one she had been taken to when she was first brought in, in order to tend her wounds.
“Mama,” Yisel asked. “It’s Naero’s first night in a strange place. Can the star girl sleep in my room tonight?”
“If she doesn’t mind sharing a bed, and you snoring.”
“Oh, Mama. I do not snore.”
“You do snore, sister,” Bekah noted.
“Like a big fat sow,” Riith added.
Some slight laughter followed that.
“I wanted to sleep with the star girl,” Riith complained.
Mama Kincaid smiled at her daughters.
It wasn’t every day that they had one of the star people literally crash in among them.
“Naero is free to choose,” Mama Kincaid said. “She can sleep in Yisel’s room, if she wishes, and both of you, Bekah and Riith, can join them on the floor, if you bring some bedding and quilts in with you.”
All of the girls looked eagerly at Naero, happy and waiting for her to say yes. Riith couldn’t suppress a squeal of delight.
Naero hesitated, and smiled, still somewhat confused and befuddled by all that had happened. “Sure; why not?” she said.
After they all washed up for bed, the four of them sat around on Yisel’s bed, brushing each other’s long hair.
Naero found doing so very relaxing, and it soon made her sleepy.
Bekah brushed Naero’s black hair. “Your tresses are like corn silk in my hands,” she said. “It is so black and shiny–just like Riith’s.”
“Ouch,” Riith exclaimed. “Not so hard, Yisel. At least the star girl doesn’t have my curls and knots.”
Her older sister laughed. “Little bug, if you brush them out more, you won’t have so many pulls. That’s how you keep the snarls and tangles out.”
“I can’t help it.”
When they were finished, the sisters kissed each other on the cheeks.
They all made a point of kissing Naero on her cheeks as well.
Riith ran out briefly to go kiss her brothers good night.
Yisel’s bed was large and comfortable enough. Naero did not mind sharing it.
Out their upper floor window, with the lights down, Naero saw Papa Kincaid walk out to the barn.
Yisel smiled. “Papa’s going out to check the barn again,” she said. “Same as he does every night.”
Bekah giggled slightly. Naero was somehow missing their little private joke.
Riith ran back in and tried jump up on the bed with Yisel and Naero.
Yisel shooed her away. Then the Kincaid girls all knelt and said their nightly prayers.
After that, Riith tried to jump up on the bed again.
“No, no, Riith,” Yisel insisted, “down on the floor with you!”
“Come on, little bug,” Bekah said, wrestling the child down. “I’ll hold you, little sister.”
“I’m not a little bug, Bekah. And I’m not even little anymore. I’m nine.”
“Of course you are. You’re very big. Come here, now.” Bekah patted the spot in the thick quilts right beside her. “I’ll stroke your hair and sing to you, just like Mama does.”
The two sisters settled in.
Naero spotted movement and light outside once more.
“And there goes Mama, Bekah,” Yisel said, grinning wide.
Bekah laughed. “Papa sure does need a lot of help checking the animals each night,” she added.
Naero finally figured out what was going on.
Yisel grinned even wider at Naero. “Out there in the hayloft, there’s a cozy little room and a big bed set up. Up there, Mama and Papa can be as loud as they want. During the winter months, Mama often has to stifle herself. She doesn’t like that.”
Bekah laughed again. “Yes, sometimes Mama even puts a pillow over her head when she cries out.”
“Bekah!” Yisel chided her.
“It’s the truth, sister. May our husbands need as much help from us to check the critters at night!”
“You shouldn’t talk that way, Bekah. Not at least until you’re married yourself. And even then, it’s not very nice.”
Bekah stuck her tongue out at her older sister.
As they all drifted off to sleep, Naero kept watching the dark sky.
Something about the sky bothered her greatly.
As with most planetary shields, she could not see through it to make out the stars.
It occurred to her at that moment that she was starting to recall certain things.
Then bright, ominous flashes seemed to impact and pound on the energy barrier from without.
Someone–or some thing–was trying to force its way through.
She had an awful feeling that she should know what this was. Why couldn’t she bring it to mind?
What was this thing or these things trying to break in?
What would take place if they did?
The flashes continued as Naero and the Kincaids went to sleep. But Naero woke up several times during the night as the flashes continued.
What was going to happen?
Naero expressed her vague fears to Mama and Papa Kincaid the next day.
“Those bright flashes in the sky last night. They are a sign that I need to use one of the elders’ radios to try to contact my people. I know it in my heart.”
“Naero, we’ve already spoken about this,” Mama Kincaid told her. “There’s plenty of time. You’ll just have to be patient and wait.”
“You saw the flashes as well as I,” Naero told them. “Something’s wrong.”
“We have indeed seen such flashes at times before,” Francis said.
“Yet never so many, and all night long,” Nelena admitted. “The star girl may be right, my husband.”
Papa Kincaid thought a moment, and then nodded. “Very well. I will petition the elders after church. The star people would warn us if there was danger. And either way, the barrier will protect us. It always has.”
The family went to church at their local parish. Their local minister gave a very moving speech about the accepted ways of peace and goodness, peppered with readings from their holy book. Lukas sat with his betrothed, taking his turn with her family. Yisel made eyes at her rancher boy beau.
After the service, Mama Kincaid brought Naero forward before the elders in the church meeting room.
Papa Kincaid was already there. “Something more is wrong,” he told Naero. “I have learned that the radios we normally use to contact the star people are no longer working at this time. We are cut off from them for some reason. The elders are greatly concerned.”
“And the great barrier is under some kind of sustained attack,” another elder said.
Naero could swear that someone or some thing was trying to say something to her–in her own mind.
“The radios and their signals are being jammed,” she told the elders.
She wondered how she knew that.
“Is there any place that your people can hide, if the barrier should collapse?”
The elders just stared at her.
Some of them even blinked, like fish.
“Basements,” someone mentioned.
“Storm and root cellars,” another said.
“An ice house.”
“Perhaps some caves here and there,” one elder suggested.
Naero frowned. Somehow, she ha
d an extremely bad feeling that those options weren’t going to work very well against anyone or anything that could get past a planetary defensive shield.
The elders were already at a loss, and did not want to alarm anyone.
Someone else noted, once again, that the barrier had protected them for centuries. To their mind, it always would.
Naero could readily see that they had no plan in place if the barrier ever did fail.
Even while Naero rode home in one of the two Kincaid family buggies with her Yoderian family–a flaming star fell burning from the sky.
That was definitely not good.
The elders rang a certain signal with the church bells that ordered everyone to their homes, while a group of several single men still at the church with the men’s circle were sent to investigate the crash site.
Naero was adamant about going with them. She and Papa Kincaid joined the men on the investigation team. She told them that it could be other star people.
It wasn’t.
Clearly, this was a section of a starship that had crashed down and was completely destroyed. And from the mangled guns and weaponry, it was obviously a warship made of some kind of strange, red alloy with weird markings.
Next came the shocking and mind-numbing sight of the charred alien bodies. These creatures looked tough, vicious, and animalistic, all in armor and bristling with weapons, explosives, and blades All of the aliens were apparently female, if that mattered.
The elders quickly ordered any weapons collected to be disposed of, and the bodies buried. For now, the wreckage was left smoking where it was, in a crater.
But when they were burying the bodies one of them suddenly exploded. The concussion knocked everyone off their feet.
Naero flew back and smacked her head into a tree.
When she regained her senses, she at last heard the actual voice speaking to her clearly in her mind, and quickly began to recall her memories, who she and what she was and why she had been sent to Yoder-3.
She gasped as everything rushed back into her head.
Haisha! The Ejjai invaders were coming, still ahead of the main forces of the Spacer Navy and Marines.
If even a small number of the enemy broke through the planetary defense barrier, the peaceful Yoderians would be completely helpless against the invader onslaught.
Even worse yet, the Ejjai could capture the planetary defenses, put the barrier back up, and then take their time sucking the farm world dry and processing the entire population to bloat the meatships.
There wasn’t any time to explain all of that to the Elders.
It wouldn’t do any good in any case, N. Glad to be back with you.
You too, Om. Just let me think a moment, while I’m still recovering my memories and my wits.
What could she accomplish?
Naero returned to the wreckage and teknomanced a couple of fixers. From there, she put the fixers to work, cannibalizing the wreckage, and forming armor, weapons, and ordnance for her to use.
“Get to your homes,” Naero told the farm people. “If the star people can protect your world, they will. But if they cannot, you will see death and destruction beyond anything you can possibly imagine. These invaders are destroyers. You cannot reason with them. You cannot negotiate with them. They only know how to kill, torment, and destroy all that lives.”
All of the Yoderians fled the crash site to reach their homes.
Another, even larger star fell out of the sky.
Naero recognized it as an entire invader battleship, all shot up, descending toward the rich crop fields, still barely under its own power. The bright, blood-red warship was on fire in several places along its massive length.
Then it rolled over in midair and exploded, continuing to go up in flames above the fields as it crashed. Papa Kincaid raced himself and Naero up to the farmhouse. They leaped out of the buggy.
Papa rushed inside to warn his family.
Naero led the horses and the buggy into the barn and left them there. She met with her small fixer cloud and her awaiting armory and gear.
She teknomanced into it all. Then she flew out of the barn upon a new set of gravwings. The Kincaids rushed out of the farmhouse to take shelter in the storm cellar along the one side.
That would not protect them much, but it was all that they knew.
Naero dropped down to warn them.
They stared up at her in all her armor and weapons in almost complete fear.
“I’m going to do my best to protect you all and this area. I don’t know if I can or not.”
Down in the cellar, she spotted pieces of an old, rusty iron stove for heating and a wood burning kitchen stove. She used teknomancy to quickly fashion the pieces into a makeshift barrier with a hatch. Then she had the fixers whip up a hasty shield generator.
“Stay behind those barriers. They won’t protect you for very long, but it’s better than nothing. I’m going out to fight.”
“You don’t have to do that for us,” Papa Kincaid told her, holding the hatch open. “Fighting is not our way.”
Naero smiled sadly. “No. It is not. But it is mine. For I am a warrior, and I will give my life for you all, if I must.” With that she had the fixers activate the shield, and seal them in.
Naero flew out into the sky to assess the evolving battlefield before her.
“What are we up against, Om?”
Dozens of gravtanks and gunships, hundred of invader shock troops pouring out of the crashed battleship.
Copy that. How far away is help?
At least an hour or more, N. The Navy and Corps ships are doing their best holding off the invader fleets. The one invader battleship broke through on a fluke and was nearly destroyed.
We can’t wait, Om. We know the invaders can do a lot of damage in an hour’s time. Let’s go take them out. We’ll go in cloaked and try to take them all down. We have to destroy the rest of that ship, first, and any forces still on it. Then we clean up the stragglers.”
That’s a lot of stragglers, N. You know very well that you’re going to exhaust yourself before all of this is done. We might not be able to stop them all.
I know, Om. Put up a fixer net. Keep us informed on every enemy location and their actions.
We know exactly what they’ll do.
Naero went directly on the attack.
She knew she had to conserve her strength if she was going to fight this many of the enemy alone. She could not afford to pass out.
Chaos bursts exploded the power cores and obliterated the remains of the crashed battleship, while more Ejjai were still trying to pour out.
Then she cloaked and went after the gunships. After that, the gravtanks.
The Ejjai shocktroops continued to scatter and spread out to scout the surrounding area. They cut down animals, livestock, anything living that they came across.
Shetanna found herself low on strength and still outmatched, with more that a hundred enemy troops scattering in all directions.
She hunted, attacked, slew, and eradicated the foe as the desperate minutes wore on.
The fixers alerted her. Thirty Ejjai moved to attack the first farmhouse they came across.
Naero barely transported there to battle them to the death, hand-to-hand.
She was torn between the need to take them all out quickly, and yet conserve her energies.
She engaged the attackers one-on-one and in small groups. Blades, punches, whirling, spinning kicks sent the invaders flying with their chests and heads crushed and their bodies sliced open or in pieces.
Speed and strength. She unleashed the fury of the whirlwind upon them, transforming into a flashing cyclone of death.
She vanquished them all, yet the farmhouse still burned to the ground as she left. The Yoderians living there had fled away as the battle began, hopefully to one their neighbors.
At least Naero had given them the chance to get away from the enemy.
Fixers warned that yet another platoon f
rom the invaders now moved upon the Kincaid farm to attack there.
Naero gasped and stumbled. She could no longer transport.
She raced at top speed to intercept the band.
The rest of the enemy spread out, gleefully killing cattle, horses, sheep, and other livestock exposed in the open fields or the thin forests.
Naero continued to fight to the last ounce of her strength and ability, hunting down the invaders as efficiently as possible.
She engaged them along their own arc of attack.
She remained cloaked as much as possible, so that they could not see where she struck from. Or that she stumbled and staggered toward them, sometimes gasping for breath.
She fought the final dozen as they charged the Kincaid farmhouse. Om did all that he could to sustain her and keep her up and fighting. He took out three of the enemy on his own.
The last Ejjai Alpha blasted the storm shelter doors open and poured fire down into it, trying to punch through the shield. The alpha was about to toss a shield disruption grenade within.
As Naero rushed up, she saw Papa and Mama Kincaid desperately shoving the heavy iron hatch up the stairs before them, trying to shield their children.
The chortling alpha cut loose with her mini-gun and activated the grenade.
Naero split open the alpha’s head with her energy cutlass and swept the body away with a kick into some trees. The grenade flared harmlessly off the side.
The last several Ejjai in the area must have detected the fighting, and now converged upon her position from a distance.
Shetanna staggered around to face them, going down to one knee. Her legs would not respond. She couldn’t stand.
Om.
Bravo Marines from 36 uncloaked around the invaders, gutting them and punching big glowing holes through their jerking bodies with precise, interlocking automatic fire.
The invaders convulsed in the twitching dance of death and then dropped.
Naero groaned and nearly pitched over onto her gasping face.
Then she heard cries from the Kincaid children down in the storm cellar.
She dropped her cutlass and crawled down into the storm cellar to help. Mama and Papa Kincaid had shielded their children with the shot-up hatch–and their own bodies.
Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade Page 30