Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (10 page)

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What had she done? Naero shuddered.
Intense ripples of guilt and embarrassment washed over Naero.

How had she lost control?

Of what? She didn’t know what she or Om we’re capable of.

Please, don
’t let them die. Don’t let them die. Don’t let them die.

Klyne
looked worse off than the others.

If she had contact with Om again,
perhaps he could assist them. She called out to him in her panic-flooded mind.

Om, can you affect repairs on these others?

He felt more confused and out of whack than she did, exposed to all of the stimuli of the open world for the first time in over a standard year.

What…
is happening? They attacked us. Why should we help them?

Om, Haisha! Please, focus and get it together.
They were
testing
me. I agreed to it. They weren’t trying to kill me or hurt me permanently. You should not have attacked them–or the ship we’re on.

So much to process and absorb…
These others…had your permission to do this, testing? You granted them this access?

Yes.
Now I need to know. Can you heal them?

Through you I can, but you have yet to develop any of your true biomancer abilities.

Biomancer? I thought before that I was a teknomancer?

You have many abilities that you have yet to awaken and master. But
I cannot fully affect repairs on all three of these others in our current state. Our energy levels are far too low.

Screw that.
I want you to heal them as much as you can. Immediately.

I will
try, but you cannot command me to harm us or allow harm to come to us by my actions or by refusing to act.

Anything I can do to help?

It would assist us greatly if you could intake biomechanical fuels to replenish our form’s reserves.

Naero crawled
over to a working wall and activated programmed panels. She located and yanked out bins of energy bars and lix packs.

One by one, she
crawled back over and sat next to the Intel people, one hand resting on them, the other hand stuffing her gullet with as much food and lix as she could choke down.

While Om did whatever he could for them.

Biomancing was weird. She could feel the electrical impulses and energies snaking through her, like thousands of microscopic filament anacondas, trying to eat their way out of her body through her arm and hand.

It. Hurt.

She almost blacked out a few times before the end.

The Intel rescue teams
finally blasted through the crumpled doors to the training room with shaped micro charges.

Naero grinned.

She knew exactly how to do blast holes through bulkheads and doors like that.

By then, Klyne, Makita, and Iselle rested comfortably on the floor around her
. Still unconscious and injured, but at least they were completely stabilized and out of immediate danger.

Naero let out a satisfying belch of her own, so weak she couldn
’t move. Barely able to keep her eyes open. Was she dreaming? Hallucinating again?

She babbled out loud.

“Om, I think we’re about to be in serious trouble. You just can’t do stuff like this.”

I tapped into your abilities, Naero.
You possess all these powers and much, much more. I can only trigger them in our defense at great need. You must learn how to use these powers...before they destroy us, and everyone around us. I can help you, but you must find the way.

Pudgy
General Tobias Ingersol squeezed through the breach first. Strategy savants were among the few Spacers who ever got fat.

The guy always looked constipated and angry.

A bit more so today. Thinning, dark stringy black lines of greasy hair smoothed back. Piggy black eyes. A thin nose and bluish lips like two drowned worms.

Naero felt a little punchy and loopy. She still couldn
’t stand up.

She had never really taken the time to study Ingersol. Intel strategy savants were normally unpleasant. They sat in planning rooms crunching numbers and didn
’t get out too much.

An Intel strike force
popped in right behind the general, all of them amazed at the damage.

“Hey, guys.” Naero tried to wave, but couldn
’t get a hand to lift up.

“
What in the blazing hell happened in here, Maeris?” Ingersol still gaped at the squashed walls of the Intel warship’s main training room.

“
Mystic testing,” Naero said, her speech slurred and groggy. “I think I passed.”

“
Get those medbeds in here. No, carry them out and put them on them. Get them all to Medical, ASAP!”

“
Thanks, Om,” Naero mumbled

“Y
ou’re delirious, Maeris,” Ingersol said. “I’m not your mom.”

“Huh?”

Rest now, Naero. Om was inoperative for long while, but he has never left you, and he will be here to protect us. Om does not require rest.

“J
ust don’t kill anyone,” Naero said, her speech slurring.

“
Why would I kill anyone?” the general said, looking rather startled.

Something just not
right with the man. Why couldn’t she put her finger on it?

Naero no longer had the strength to explain, or even shake her head.

*

Ingersol kept Naero under heavy guard in a secure, shielded cell within the
infirmary. An empty white room with nothing but her and a medbed in it.

More of a dangerous prisoner than a patient.

She recovered quickly and chafed at being kept locked up. Yet her incarceration also gave her time to catch up with Om.

She worried
a great deal about Klyne and asked about him repeatedly.

When they informed he
r that he would recover fully–after regenerating a few fingers and learning how to re-use them–Naero felt very relieved–and still guilty.

Makita and Iselle avoided her
like they would any dangerous freak.

Understandable
, since she nearly destroyed them.

Then, e
ven Om chose to go strangely silent on her after a while.

Now that we have renewed our direct link, I must return to my efforts to
fully access all of our protocols and abilities. That is the priority now. There is still much damage to repair. New links to form. Doing so will require most of my full attention.

I will be here, at your call, if you need to confer with me. I am very happy with this turn of events
, Naero.

Me too, Om. Glad to have you back. Do what you have to do and let me know if I can help
along the way.

A call came in over her wristcom.
The one that still had the neutron detonator. The call came directly from Klyne.

“H
ey–”

“J
ust listen, Naero. We don’t have much time.”

“W
hat’s–?”

“L
isten! Intel has taken this matter out of my hands. Your little display rattled everyone–including the Mystic High Masters. They’re demanding to test you on their own as a grave threat. They’re sending you directly to Janosha itself.”

One of the three, secret Mystic homeworlds.

“Is that…bad?”

“I
t almost never happens. Almost no one ever goes there this soon, except for a few of the highest level adepts. The ones being groomed to become masters themselves. Even Intel has never been there in force, except for a few chosen adepts, very close to the three High Masters. And they are deathsworn never to speak of whatever they see there.”

“W
as Baeven one of those adepts?”

Klyne hesitated.
“Yes. And he was also the only one to ever escape from Janosha, against the will of the High Masters.”

Naero grinned.
“That sounds about right.”

“T
hat was only part of the reason why he became an outcast, and why the Mystics still have a death sentence on his head.”

“V
ery well, then. What do I do?”

“I
’m not sure. Janosha is the homeworld of High Master Vane. He is beyond contrary, the most difficult, demanding, and abrasive of all the Three. Chaos practitioners usually are somewhat anti-social. Vane has take that to an art form.

“U
nlike the other two High Masters, Vane is unforgiving, brutal, unpredictable, and a harsh taskmaster.”

Naero laughed.

“Can’t be any worse than Aunt Sleak.”

“D
on’t bet on that. Vane has absolute power over his adepts–including the power of life and death. He has executed several of them over the years, without question or explanation.”

“M
aybe that’s why Baeven got the hell away from him.”

“C
ute. Being a Maeris isn’t going to earn you any points with Master Vane either. And you’ll still be very vulnerable. You’re burned out. Or, at least we thought you were. But at best, you can’t control your abilities.”

“H
ah. I don’t even know what they are.”

“B
e on your guard, Naero. Learn and develop everything you can on Janosha, but do your best not to provoke Master Vane. Hold that curt tongue of yours that gets your family into so much trouble. In raw power, only the two other High Masters combined can match Vane. You will be under his direct authority utterly. And after this little incident, he will most surely decide your fate.”

“
Great…”

The link cut off abruptly. Ingersol must have been made aware of it.

Klyne was right.

Intel tested
and grilled her over the next week.

Ingersol explained at one point.
“We need to make some more copies of the KDM and the index before we turn you over to the Mystics.”

“Y
ou guys made over a thousand copies before. I know deciphering it’s a major pain, but don’t tell me they’ve already burned through that many?”

“M
aeris, I just follow orders. Intel says we need more copies. I gotta make more copies. So just lie there and don’t give us any crap. Believe me, I want to get you the hell away from me and my people as soon as possible. Troubles swarm around you like scavengers and carrion eaters following an army on its way to a battle.”

“H
aisha, I love you too, Ing.”

His eyes narrowed to slits and he sneered.
“That’s General Ingersol to you, merchant captain.”

“U
h-huh.”

“S
hut up or I’ll have you sedated.”

Om cut in.

Why are they making more copies of the Kexxian Data Matrix? Is this authorized?

Calm down, Om. Ingersol
’s a major butthole, but he’s still with the good guys.

Naero, they
’re not just making copies. They’re also experimenting with erasing parts of the KDM from you.

But that would ruin the entire
data matrix.

Should I
attack them?

No! D
on’t alert them. They don’t really know that you’re in there Om, or to what level. Let’s hold you back as our wildcard. Can you stop them, throw up a decoy or something?

In progress. I can create surface copies at will. They
’re manipulating and interacting with one now.

They can
’t read the KDM yet anyway. How would they know whether it’s the real Kexxian Matrix or not? They can’t tell the difference any way.”

Correct. Again I ask. Should this be considered an attack?

Let them do their worst and let’s see what their intentions are. Keep me updated on their progress. Ingersol might be following orders, or he might even be going rogue with his own agenda.

Klyne had
called him an ideologue.

Good strategy. We
’ll let them show their hand.

*

After three days of playing dumb, they finally had their answer.

General Ingersol has congratulated his staff quietly. They seem very pleased. They
think that in fact they have made several thousand copies of the KDM with some kind of new tek breakthrough. And they also feel confident that they have erased it completely off your DNA. To their mind, they have deleted it from you. And they are the only ones who now control the copies.