Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (36 page)

“
I’m not arguing against that,” Naero said. “But I’m just trying to understand. Where are the Driathans? Why don’t they fight? What are these sentry worlds, and what are they protecting? How can they be in such terrible danger, if they are all hidden away where no one can find them?”

“
That’s just it,” Jia said. “If they capture one Driathan and break him or her, they can use the information they gain to expose all the rest of us and hunt us down, one by one. Each of the sentinels only control part of the truth.”

“
And what is that truth?” Naero said.

Baeven cleared his throat.
“That the vast population of immortal Driathans are currently helpless–and ripe for the picking. They sleep in a self-induced stasis, hidden within their lost homeworld, the sacred world of Ur-Jahal. If the enemy takes them all over–our foes will become immortal.”

“
Okay,” Naero said. “Very well. To Zoa it is then. So, you are telling me, that there are millions of helpless, immortal, indestructible Driathans asleep on some lost world somewhere–just ripe for the picking by our worst enemies–who plan on destroying and possessing them?”

Naero clenched her fists.
“Well I tell you what, all of you. None of us are about to let that happen. Not on our watch. The enemy is moving with all of these sinister plans of theirs. I say we keep on exposing, uncovering, and disrupting them as best we may. Whose with me?”

All
present shouted in the affirmative.

35

When the others had all gone, Naero sat beside Baeven.

“Uncle, the time has come. Tell me what happened on Janosha with your alien artifact statue. Tell me why you were declared an outcast and sentenced to death by our Mystics?”

Baeven frowned and sighed. “Oh, Naero.
That seems so long ago now. I had so little free will in the matter.”

“I know,” Naero said
, taking his hand. “A very similar pattern of events ensnared me, I’m guessing.”

“I told you not to go near that, thing, Naero.”

Naero smiled sadly. “Like you, Uncle, I’m afraid I was given very little choice.”

“I haven’t had time to ask you very much
about your ordeal, Naero.”

“We haven’t had much time for anything, but now we do.”

“Did you really kill High Master Vane?” he asked.

She looked down. “I did. I’m not proud of it. It was an accident, really.”

“Good. Vane needed killing. That vicious old bastard. He’d lived too long as it was. That was his problem. Life meant nothing to him. Did you know that he stole the body of one of his adepts who died accidently? The jerk did it to replace his own. That’s how he lived so long. Too convenient, I always said.”

Naero thought she might be shocked, but
found that she wasn’t. Vane had mentioned some such, once.

But then…how did Vane take over the body of another without it wasting away on him? Even the G’lothc had not been able to perfect that trick, not even over millions of years of trying–at the expense of other sentients.

“Tell me what happened with you and the artifact on Thanor-4,” Baeven said.

Naero thought her eyes might pop out of her head and fly around.

“Haisha! No way in hell, Uncle! You are going to sit right there and tell me your story first–every bit of it–and then and only then will I tell you mine. You owe me that much!”

Baeven laughed. “I guess you’re right.”

*

Naero, y
ou need to remember that I was a Mystic prodigy. I left to train on Janosha before the age of ten. Master Vane did not like me much, and he was very hard on me. Like you, he was fearful of me and my abilities. Yet there could be no denying that my powers were very strong, even from the very beginning. No one understood the alien artifact on Janosha, and until I came along, it remained dormant.

Each year I trained hard and my power grew.

Eventually, the artifact began giving off more and more strange Cosmic energy readings from time to time–readings that were very frightening in nature. No one understood what was happening, least of all myself.

Even for the strange world of Janosha, with all of its bizarre energy f
lows, the energy readings on that artifact were terrifying to all who attempted to study it.

Several Mystics and adepts who
tried to examine the artifact were slain, or maimed, or driven mad in terrible ways.

Even the High Mast
ers were at a loss.

The situation grew worse all the time, and there was no apparent connection yet to me, or my rapidly maturing abilities. I was assisting Master Vane with retrieving the bodies of two such casualties, when I some
how grew disoriented and dizzy.

I somehow touched the artifact to steady myself.

My transport powers went out of control. I thought I was going to explode. I started popping all over the planet, so rapidly that I could not stop or control it.

Then, even more frightening, the statue came to life and came after me, transporting right behind me. Even worse, it was disrupting all of the energy flows of Janosha, causing fierce Cosmic storms and dangerous energy vortices. If the process continued, the entire planet might be torn apart.

Next thing I knew, I ended up out in space, far beyond the planet itself. I barely had enough air to survive. One of the Intel naval vessels guarding Janosha rescued me in time.

Down on Janosha, the artifact statue went inert again, and appeared back in its original
place and position. It was around that time that the High Masters determined that it was comprised completely of pure Ur-metal–the very material needed to forge the Cosmic Swords of Legend.

After my
strange incident, I was strictly forbidden to go near the artifact again. Vane said that I was clearly the catalyst causing it to malfunction. He said that it was caused by some growing evil within me.

The High Masters built a fortress around the artifact in an attempt to isolate and contain it. That seemed to work. More years passed.

When I came of age at twenty, your mother, my beloved little sister, Lythe Ivala Maeris was almost seventeen. She had just completed her two years of naval service training, and elected to join the Mystics. She did Change Wisdom first, and then Order Wisdom, leaving her training in Chaos Wisdom for the last. My training was nearly finished, but I was so unique, that I was kept on as a prime adept while she went through her final training.

Things quickly seemed to go wrong
near the end of that time.

First, the time dilation protection that the High Masters had worked so hard to put into place, suddenly collapsed and went down without warning.

Then one day, the protective fortress around the artifact imploded. All of the careful defenses completely shattered or dissolved.

Vane
rushed to me and told me that the artifact statue was starting to melt down or do something very strange. It was feared that if the thing dropped through the planet to the core, it might even become a singularity and engulf all of Janosha.

The artifact
had come to life somehow, and was suffused with Darkforce and Chaos energy. Tendrils and tentacles of Darkforce had slain many of the guards, and even destroyed several warships sent to attack it.

If the artifact reached critical mass, it might destroy the planet in a variety of ways.

High Master Vane ordered me to depart from Janosha. He gave me direct orders to do so.

I said that I would not–not until I found Lythe and made sure that she was safe. I couldn
’t find her. Vane would not tell me where she was. He kept lying. First he said she could not be found. Then he tried to tell me that she had been slain–that she was already dead.

I didn’t believe any of it. I knew in my heart that my
little sister still lived, even though she must be in great peril.

There was something Vane wa
s hiding–something involving Lythe that he wasn’t telling me.

I went to the site of the implosion, a scene of tremendous devastation.

Lythe was there. I could see her, floating unconscious in the air, trapped within some kind of Cosmic energy sphere.

T
endrils or tentacles from the artifact were holding onto her sphere, trying to drag it in through the rubble of the destroyed fortress.

“She’s still alive. I have to save her!” I said.

Vane interposed himself between myself and Lythe.

“You can
’t help her, you fool. She’s as good as dead. You’ll be drawn in as well, adding your power to the artifact. It will reach critical mass and destroy us all!”

“Get out of my way!”

I fought Master Vane to a desperate standstill over the next few seconds. He held me off, our battle drew us closer and closer to the artifact. It dragged and the sphere holding my sister nearer and nearer to itself.

When I sensed that the artifact was trying to zap me, I transported at the last instant. It nailed Master Vane
, instead, captured him, and began drawing him in also.

I thought to use Cosmic energy
absorption against the artifact. I had become an expert in that technique, but this was a level of power beyond anything I had ever encountered.

I transported around the artifact statue to a different point at random, each second, taunting it.

“You don’t want them. You want me,” I told it. “Let them go. Fight me. I’m the one you want!”

The thing warped and shifted shape. It stopped drawing the others in toward it.

In an instant, it transformed and looked just like me. It even started turning from Ur-metal into flesh. It looked at me with my own eyes and spoke to me with my own voice.

“You are correct
,” it told me. “You are the proper match.

It focused all of its attention on me. The energy spheres containing Lythe and Vane rolled away downhill.

It charged me and we locked together. It tried to overwhelm me. I tried to drain away its energies. The fight escalated, beginning to melt and break down the wreckage all around us.

It was reaching critical mass, just
as Vane warned.

A Cosmic detonation like what was coming could destroy the entire continent.
It would definitely kill us all.

Then I sensed it. The Darkforce monster lurking within my mind and soul. It was ravenous for power.

Instantly, I funneled those great quantities of Cosmic energy into my dark monster in an effort to avoid the approaching blast. But that only made my monster stronger. It struggled to break free. I began to transform into an energy creature, bent only on destruction.

If that hyper-violent thing broke free, it would be just as devastating as the blast itself.

I grappled with the artifact statue again. It redoubled its efforts to overwhelm me, fighting against the dark thing trying to emerge from me. Both powers tried to overwhelm my force of will. I struggled to pit their might against each other, but I was still between them. They were tearing me and each other apart.

It wasn’t enough. I felt the detonation coming, and did the only thing I could think of. I let the monster within me engulf the artifact statue, swallowing it whole. It gulped
it down, biting off the arms that fell away.

Then I took my monster back within me and trapped it within my mind, in the prison where it had been locked away.

When the blast came, I tried to direct it out from me. I funneled it straight up into the sky and out into space. I became not just an energy being, but some kind of conduit for Cosmic power.

I remembered screaming and doubling over, curling up in a knot.

The force of the blast ripped through the artifact, my monster, and myself, fusing us all together as one.

The shock wave and blast effects damaged and disrupted everything within six hundred kilometers. It knocked out all electronics, and all the Mystics within range suffered psyonic blast trauma, and bled
psyonic ichor from their mouths, noses, eyes, and ears.

I came to and at first I was deaf. I was still smoking and the upper portions of my body were
badly scorched and burned. I felt half-dead. I hurt everywhere, especially when I tried to move.

When I did look up, I blinked at
the circle of blazing sky far above me. I was in a steaming hot, black-glass, crystalline tube that appeared to have been bored nearly forty meters into solid bedrock. The diameter was about half that.

When my senses returned, I realized that I wasn’t alone.

Somehow I had found my little sister Lythe, and curled myself around her protectively. She was so small and I was always so big.

Somehow, my last act, my last thought before I thought we were all about to die–w
as to find her and protect her–to shield her, even with my own body if I must.

And she seemed to be fine. Except for some vapor rising off her, she was unharmed
, not even burned like I was. Her breathing, heart rate–all strong. She was merely stunned.

I was so glad that I ignored my own pain, and picked her up in my arms and wept.

When I had it together enough, I transported us up out of the tube.

The deva
station around us was…incredible. Everyone within the Mystic compound was injured and in shock. All tek was disrupted. I found Master Vane in some rubble, barely alive, burned worse than I was. I did my best to stabilize both of our injuries. Then I carried him and Lythe to the nearest structure still partially standing–the nearby starport.

All the ships there were tossed about and disrupted as well.

I was injured and growing weaker. I couldn’t transport any longer. I barely made it to the starport. Some Intel guards and several adepts recovered enough to start doing triage. Then the naval ships on patrol in orbit came down to assist. Their tek still worked, and a naval cruiser was set up as an emergency field hospital.

I know it was only minutes, but it seemed like hours before someone came by to help us.

With proper treatment, I regenerated rapidly over the next few hours. But I didn’t feel right inside. Something was still very wrong, deep within me. I was sick somehow. I could feel it. I didn’t know what to do. At times I would experience these spikes of intense agony, and for an instant, it felt as I was going to explode all over again.