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

was Kexxian in nature, they had no better luck with the belt than with the KDM. And Riel had left in such a hurry that she had not told Naero how to unlock the belt’s secrets.
    But she did say that they were all children–wards of the Kexx. The Kexx were a race who had explored numerous galaxies and protected sentient species in their early eons and proto phases of development. If the tek of the Pelani was pseudo-Kexxian in nature, perhaps Naero should start with something simpler, such as that.
    From the moment she began studying the nanobelt of the Pelani, she sensed that it was, in fact, a Kexxian storage device at the smallest nano and pico levels of existence. It resonated with the same or at least a similar such resonance.
    She spoke to it in Kexxian. “ Ekdobae! Activate!” The alien nanobelt shivered and wiggled slightly, but it did not do anything else.
    No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t doing it right.
    Naero put the Pelani nanobelt on her own slender hips.
    Yes, she teknomanced and understood. The belt became part of the wearer in a sense. It did not respond to audible commands.
    They needed to be psyonic–telepathic in nature.
    The experience was similar to that with the KDM barrier, only much less daunting and self-aware. It was but a simple AI for a simple storage and activation device, with presets for shields and gravlifts–even a stealth mode that included cloaking. There was tek data on Pelani weapons, armor, and even warships, advanced computers, and several knowledge bases.
    And like the KDM, if one did not know what to look for, she would never find it.
    Naero thought into the nanobelt with telepathy. Ekdobae .
    Per her command, the nanobelt came online with her teknomancing and opened its presets to her.
    Dath riiba zhunru . Naero activated shields, level ten. She sensed the waves of shielding pulsing around her physical form. Kurr zhunru , shields down.
    Naero quickly dumped copies of all of this vital data into her wristcomp, shunting it through the translation matrix and passing it on to Spacer Intel for their perusal. From just glimpsing at the tek flows, they would have many useful things to gain from a hi-tek knowledge exchange with the Pelani. Their tek seemed relatively on par with current Spacer tek, and even slightly more advanced in certain aspects and applications.
    She would need to thank Riel, if they ever met again.
    Pelani tek and knowledge was very much based on Kexxian tek and principles, but it was still very simple and basic, comparatively. It was still eons behind the true complexity of the KDM. And perhaps that was how it should be. In the wrong hands, the knowledge locked within the KDM would be incredibly dangerous.
    Naero took time to study Pelani stardrives. They even had their own experimental version of the leap drive, and the enemy’s wyrmhole projection arrays.
    Yet they weren’t any more advanced than the attempts made by Spacer Intel and their teks. They seemed more or less stuck at the same places.
    If they were going to pursue or strike at the enemy in the Gamma Quadrant, Spacers and their allies needed a reliable way to travel back and forth. The enemy still had that advantage over them.
    Riel herself had left in a great hurry, not wanting to miss the chance to attach her small spyship to one of the hyper-advanced alien vessels in piggyback fashion to hitch a ride back. She desperately needed to return to the Gamma Quadrant in order to help her people there. Only vessels such as the Dakkur hordeship and the G’lothc squid-like ships, powered by the Darkforce itself, could travel back and forth across such vast distances.
    One of the G’lothc possession wyrm samples and its frozen host in a stasis tube had already been delivered to her quarters, off to one side. Naero brought the lights up in her small but spacious quarters. Now that her meditation work was done for the time being, she might as well look at what she and the Alliance were up against.
    The wyrm