Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial by Mason Elliott Page B

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.”
    “Which are only going to get worse if we keep suffering attack after attack, and invasion after invasion. I say, take the fight to these bastards.”
    “But Naero, you also have to understand the valid points that the other sides are going to bring up, if you are going to find a way to persuade them to see things your way.”
    Naero shook her head. “That’s why I’m a better warrior than a diplomat,” she said. “I trust you, Klyne. I know you always have the best interests and the greater good of our people in mind–even when I disagree with you.”
    Klyne patted her on the shoulder. “Let me deal with the elders and the factions,” he said. “You go do what you alone can do. Save Kalathar and its people. Just be careful, Naero. Just as you said, everything you’re ever involved in always ends up far more difficult that anyone could imagine that it would be.”
    Naero grinned again. “I’ve got the Mystic Enforcer to back me up. “What the hell can go wrong?”

 
     
     
     
    10
     
     
    Naero hovered over the first infested gigacity from a few kilometers up. She and Khai and the six Prime adepts guarding her from behind were all still cloaked.
    She prepared herself, as best as she could.
    The gigacity of Shandoora wasn’t that huge. Only a hundred kilometers in diameter, approximately.
    Only.
    She had never unleashed the Kexxian purge on an area this large before. Millions of infested hosts, the vast majority of them now dormant.
    Naero didn’t quite know what was going to happen.
    She startapped as much as she could and then opened the floodgates.
    This was different.
    Unleashing the Kexxian purge on Shandoora–on the planet of Kalathar–was like being impaled on a molten hot pillar of Cosmic agony, shoved all the way up through her and out of her shattered face.
    There was no gasping or crying out. There was only being transfixed–crucified on raw pain and suffering itself. There was indeed a high price to be paid.
    Purging the planet focused massive quantities of Cosmic energy through her physical form, which could not withstand such naked might.
    She struggle to save herself from being consumed.
    She tried to stop it. Tried to turn it off.
    Yet once it was unleashed, the Kexxian purge had a will of its own, and hunted down the possessed in the largest numbers it could find, stepping up its efforts.
    From several kilometers up in the sky, the ribbons and tendrils of light and darkness ripped through the gigacity and penetrated the population below, blasting and incinerating the G’lothc possession wyrms from out of their bodies,