Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial (8 page)

Yet Naero held the ship’s intellect just below being self-aware. It would not develop a personality of its own like Om or Alala, unless she chose to start one up. For right now, it was still just a vessel, awaiting programming, commands, and direction.

Naero had to be careful about creating new sentient minds.

It took her and Jia five hours to learn and comprehend all of the ins and outs of the enemy wyrmhole projectors. Another three hours to teknomance and install the alien tek on
The Shadow Fox.

There was, as yet, no time to test it.

Naero had vanished off the radar for more than a day, and the situation on Kalathar was still dire.

Intel and everyone else would be going nuts, but wait until Naero and Gaviok showed up with their prize, delivering it to Intel and the Clans on a silver platter.

These were exactly the kind of tek breakthroughs that they had been waiting for.

9

The first thing Naero did before she and Gaviok left the island in the refitted, cloaked enemy spyship–now their ship–was christen it and give it a new designation.

She smashed a bottle of champagne Baeven gave her on the side of the thick, black, pill-like hull. She had even thought up a new name for the vessel. “I name thee
The Black Spot
!”

When they lifted off from the island, they caught up on the chatter of the Alliance fleets, still patrolling above stricken Kalathar. Naero’s stealth fighter barely fit within one of the small cargo holds.

Just as Naero thought, everyone was calling out and searching for her.

They quietly docked with her flagship,
The Flying Dagger
, and made sure to take an hour or two to install the new wyrmhole projector and a few other nifty mods they had come across. Upgrades were always great.

Then Naero took a breath, and she and Gaviok made straight for
The Kathmandu
, to finally turn over their prize and all of its tek secrets.

The fixer clouds would have a field day refitting the fleets.

Naero would strongly suggest to Klyne that only Spacer naval warships be given the new projector arrays. She felt certain that he would agree.

If the Corps got their hands on that tek, they’d soon be flooding the Gamma Quadrant with a raging tide of exploitation–not exploration. That would mess up things even worse than what they probably already were.

Naero turned to Gaviok suddenly. “Why in the heck did you insist on coming along, my prince? And what is with all of the luggage? I’ve never even seen you carry a duffle.”

Gaviok displayed his mandible version of what passed as a mantid smile.

“Baeven and Jia and I have been in deep discussion for months. I have business to conduct with the Spacer Mystics, you will be happy to know.”

Naero knitted her brows together for a moment. Gaviok had trained with the Mystics for a while. She took a stab at her friend’s motivations. “You really want to complete the entire Mystic training? You want to be a Spacer Mystic?”

“I do. The first non-Spacer Mystic, and more.”

She was afraid of what the “more” was going to mean.

But they were about to dock with Admiral Klyne’s flagship.

Once on board, she and Gaviok, by default, were more or less placed under arrest and brought before Klyne and the High Mystic Masters, where they were all busy discussing the dilemma on Kalathar from the bridge and the viewscreens looking down over the stricken planet.

Klyne immediately began to dress her down for pulling off another one of her patented vanishing acts.

Naero endured all that she could and then interrupted him.

“Admiral Klyne. Please allow me to speak. There were good reasons. I have vital information to turn over to you, our Clans, and to the Alliance. Please, hear me out.”

“Unless you have a cure for the possession wyrm plague on the planet, I don’t want to hear a lot of excuses and crap from you.”

Naero smiled slightly. “As a matter of fact, I have found a cure within the KDM, and we can begin implementing it across the planet’s surface. The Kexx defeated this scourge long ago. And now I know how to combat and defeat it.”

Klyne had to sit down. So did Master Tree and Master Jo.

Klyne couldn’t speak and only stared at her for a while. “So, does this mean you’ve unlocked the secrets of the KDM?”

Naero held up both hands. “Whoa. Maybe just one, and that was pretty tough as it was. And if that was any sort of a preview, pulling secrets out of the KDM is going to be like pulling teeth out of your own jaw. Not fun.”

Klyne started making the arrangements. “Tell us what we need to do, Naero. Then we can prepare to implement the cure.”

“Sure, in a moment. I’m not finished, yet. On top of the cure, the ship that we docked in your landing bay is a captured alien spyship of hybrid G’lothc and Dakkur tek.”

She sent three data fixers floating over to Klyne. “These fixers have all of the data stored on the alien ship, the enemy wyrmhole projectors, and the tek secrets of another advanced race from the Gamma Quadrant called the Pelani, as I have mentioned before.”

Klyne and everyone else stared at her once again.

“Uh, when you’re done with
The Black Spot
, I’d like to have it back as part of my fleet. I could use a specialized craft such as that…in my line of work. That’s quite reasonable, don’t you think? I’m not asking that much in return, am I?”

Klyne and his crew exploded into action, not sure of what to do first.

Gaviok went over and quietly began speaking with the two High Masters, once he could get their attention.

By then, Naero was very tired. She would need to rest, gather her strength, and do a great deal of startapping to power the Kexxian cure on Kalathar later that night.

By then, the Spacer fleets should be going through the fixers to refit them with the new tek upgrades, and prepare to seek out the enemy.

Klyne and the Naval strategists were already discussing how they might proceed.

Naero had a hurried dinner with her crew. Captain Tyber and
The Dark Star
would arrive for their refit that night as well. She needed to hurry if she was going to grab some badly needed rest.

Khai showed up from his various errands and missions.

“Naero, I’ve heard the news. It’s so amazing what you have done.”

“Baeven did a lot of it. I keep telling you how much we owe him.”

“I have so much to tell you on my own.”

Naero rubbed her eyes and slumped against him. “Please, could it wait? It’s been a very full couple of days, and I’ve hardly slept. If I’m going to start implementing the Kexxian cure on the planet tonight, I desperately need some rest. Will you just hold me? Just protect me and give me peace.”

Khai’s eyes flared and he drew in a deep breath. “I can do that. Nothing shall get past me. In my arms, you shall be safe and warm. Have you given orders to your crew not to disturb your rest, my heart?”

“Only if the galaxy catches fire,” Naero said with a chuckle.

Khai offered her his hand. “Then come, know peace beside me, Naero. Let me be thy bed.”

Naero smiled up at his handsome face. She was too exhausted to kiss him.

Within minutes, Naero blacked out.

Khai woke her gently, six standard hours later.

She briefly welcomed Ty and his crew, and couldn’t wait to hold little Gallan. She spoke briefly with Alala, the entity on Tyber’s self-aware ship, welcoming her, as well.

Then she had to prepare for the implementation of the cure to rid Kalathar of the G’lothc possession wyrm infestation, and reverse most of the negative effects. The reversal cure could not bring back any who had already perished. It was not a cure for death.

And by the time she was finished purging the planet, Baeven and
The Shadow Fox
could be back from their maiden test flight through the wyrmhole projectors, back and forth across the Gamma Quadrant.

When she explained the process to Klyne, the Intel Medical Corps, and the High Masters, at first they didn’t believe her. And for some strange reason, Gaviok was there also. Apparently, Klyne and the High Masters had taken the Prince of the Shai into the Alliance. He was now part of the inner circle.

If only they knew that Gaviok was the closest thing that Baeven had as a brother. Most likely he did not tell them that fact in its entirety.

“I’ll show you how it’s done. Bring in the remaining test subjects, and put the wyrms back into them,” she instructed.

Again the medteks blinked at her as if she were insane.

“Put them back in?” one even muttered in disbelief.

Naero rolled her eyes for a second. “Yes. The wyrms must be destroyed while they are still within the host in order to completely free the host of them and their influence. That’s why the test subjects were dying. Once infested with the wyrm, it must be purged from them not only on a physical level, but also on a psyonic and a Cosmic level.”

The medteks looked to Klyne and he nodded.

In the end, all eleven of the remaining victims in stasis tubes and gravlifts were brought in and positioned around Naero.

“Everyone get behind me,” Naero warned. “This might get a little crazy.”

Medteks backed up. They didn’t need to be told twice.

Some of them who had heard of Naero even left the medical bay.

Klyne brought up shielding to protect the observers.

Naero focused her biomancy abilities and opened her third eye.

She saw through all of the test subjects as if they were crystal, and detected the insidious G’lothc possession wyrms almost instantly. Their sickening aura of malevolence. How could such things even exist?

And fiends such as these had her child.

Naero shook her head. She couldn’t afford to be distracted, even by that. She needed to concentrate.

Obliterate the possession wyrms, purge them from the victims, and keep the people alive.

She tried to unleash just a part of the Kexxian cure to affect the purge.

The forces she unleashed blew out that entire side of the flagship’s hull. Emergency beacons flared. It was all that Naero could do to keep herself and the stasis pods from being sucked out into space.

Finally the emergency shields sealed off the massive hull breach. But the room and the ship were still heavily damaged. Fixer clouds raced in from both sides, within and without, to make repairs.

Finally the medteks could check the test subjects.

“They’re all alive. Their life signs are little stressed…”

“Big deal–at least they’re not dead,” Naero said, cutting to the chase. “That’s what matters, isn’t it? Sorry about your ship, Klyne, but I don’t think this was meant to be unleashed out in space, within a vessel.”

Klyne raised both eyebrows. “I kinda noticed that.”

Naero rubbed both hands together eagerly. “Now, we just have to spread these effects over the inhabited areas of the planet Kalathar. We have the medical scanners adjusted now to detect the possession wyrms, correct?”

“Affirmative,” another medtek noted.

“Then I go down with Khai and some of the Prime adepts to guard me while I sweep the planet until all of the wyrms have been purged. The people should revert back to their original forms. They’ll be weak for a day or two, and then they’ll recover. And the good news is, that once they’ve been purged and cured, they cannot be re-infested again. Then Kalathar can begin to return to normal, minus the victims who perished in the attack, of course. We can’t bring back the dead.”

Klyne looked a bit worried. “This is a big job, Naero. You’ll need to sweep over forty percent of the planet’s surface from up in the air. Can you do this without exhausting or harming yourself?”

Naero grinned. “We’ll find out. Once again, I’ve never done this before. No one has, except for the Kexx, eons ago. Theoretically, it is possible, but like I said, we are entering uncharted territory here, and we’ll need to learn as we go along. Haisha, if anything we do ever comes easy, I think I’m going to faint, or wet myself, or something!”

Klyne, Gaviok, Master Jo, and several others laughed at that.

“By the way,” Naero asked Klyne, as she continued to prepare for the main event, “how’s it going refitting the naval vessels with the new tek?”

Klyne nodded. “The upgrades are going well, but it’s still going to take a long while. And many teks are going without sleep to explore all of the new ramifications for shields, and sensors, scanners, coms, and weapon systems. You’ve opened up countless cans of new worms for us to explore with this flurry of breakthroughs, Naero. It will take us months, perhaps years to fully grasp and implement all that we have just been exposed to. But those are awfully good cans of worms to have to study and explore.”

“Good,” Naero said. “Our foes have had the advantages for too long as it is. It will be good to fight more on their level for a change. Have our leaders and the military decided yet what should be done about the enemy in the Gamma Quadrant?”

Klyne’s face turned very grave. “Heated discussions are going on even now. While you are purging Kalathar, I will be attending many of those sessions via holo.”

“We can’t let the isolationists hold us back,” Naero said. “You know I’m right, Klyne. Now that we have this wyrm-hole tek, we need to put it to good use. Instead of just sitting back and waiting for our foes to hit us again and again, we have to take the fight to them, and make further alliances with the sentients in the Gamma quadrant, who are apparently getting their butts kicked. We need to go help them before those sentients are enslaved and sent to fight us as enemy shock troops.”

“I know your arguments, Naero. General Walker and many others agree with you, but there are many who still don’t. We also have more than enough problems in our own quadrant to deal with.”