Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (3 page)

When i
t went off, they and half the room would be obliterated.

Naero flip-kicked the leader and shattered the
armored face shield.

The
snoutface of an Ejjai-alpha snarled back at her.

“F
ilthy, spack bitch! Let us die together!” She charged straight at Naero.

“L
et’s not.”

Naero
flipped again, ramming both blades deep into the Alpha’s brain.

Their fight carried them right to the feet of Aunt Sleak and Zalvano
, still crouching in front of the elder.

She shouted for all to hear.

“Fusion bomb. Take cover!”

Naero rol
led the dying alpha and its battered armor over the device.

Not
enough.

“G
et down!” she yelled. She sprang at her Aunt and Zalvano, knocking them and the elder onto their backs and carrying them down behind the heavy duranadium dais.

They and half the room were still
about to die.

Naero
rose up and tried to tap into her lost abilities in desperation.

Tried to summon her third eye.

Nothing.

Baeven appeared
right before them. Two blazing silver spheres humming and hovering over him.

He gave one command.

“Protect!”

H
is white-hot silver emulators flung up visible waves of heavy shield spheres in layers concentrated over the fusion bomb at the last instant.

The
device ignited, disintegrating the dead leader.

Layer after layer of heavy shielding collapsed.

One emulator fizzed and went down.

The shock of the fusion blast
’s pulse wave knocked everyone else off their feet. Baeven even withstood the teeth of that, full force. Lifting one arm to shield his face.

The other
emulator held fast, saving them all from the intense heat and concussion.

Baeven turned around and grinned at them.
Tendrils of smoke still roiling off him. He laughed slightly, looking directly at Sleak and Zal.

“
I still owe you guys a few. Consider it a wedding gift.”

Baeven vanished, even as the Spacer Marines
, Klyne, and other Intel people recovered, spotted, and closed in on him.

And just like that, the attack was over.

Zalvano tucked his spent blaster in his belt, looked around, and started laughing. He took Aunt Sleak into his strong arms. “Well, my love. I guess our wedding shouldn’t be any different than the rest of our life together.”

Aunt Sleak narrowed her eyes to slits
and set her stance right beside him. “They’ll never take us down without an all-out war. And I will fight to the death by your side, my heart. Any time. Anywhere. If the bastards want to cut us down, they’d better bring it hard and hot.”

The elder rose up and dusted himself off.
He looked shaken and upset. “To screaming hell with this! I am far too old for all of this bullshit. Get me out of here. Haisha! You two kids are married. Kiss and go make love. The fun’s over for this old codger. I need to lie down.”

Aunt Sleak smiled at her new hubby a
nd took his hand again. “For us, it’s just beginning.” After one more long kiss, she fell right back into her Admiral’s voice, barking commands.

“A
lright, hop to it and be lively. What are you standing around staring at? Scoop this garbage up and get it the hell out of here. Move it people. Clean this place up. We’ve still have one hell of a party to throw!”

3

Later t
hat night, Naero thrashed around again in her troubled sleep.

N
ightmares. About slaughtering people. Not enemies in battle. Random strangers, acquaintances, friends and family. Old, young–even little kids.

Both
sick and scary.

Ye
t she wondered if it was all inside her own bent mind.

Sometimes she couldn
’t tell if it was Danner’s twisted, demented laughter echoing in her head…or her own.

Could
that sick freak be doing some of this to her, wherever he was?

He
had
taken over Janner’s mind from afar, eventually.

But the two of
them were twins, and twins were always linked in weird ways.

How much could
a wretch like Danner really affect her directly, and were there ways to defend against stuff like that?

So much Naero
did not know–but needed to.

She
didn’t even have her full abilities back. So how could she defend herself against mind attacks even if she wanted to?

Coupled with her
other growing problems, the entire mess made her increasingly jumpy and very nervous.

And there were
still other times where she either dreamed about or had visions involving Janner and Danner being tested, tortured, or both by those who held them prisoner. Probably one or more of the Gigacorps, who strove to learn their secrets and then use them as some kind of weapon against the Clans and the Alliance.

She didn
’t even know if these visions and dreams were real or just imagined, but they still tore her heart out.

Jan cried out
repeatedly for the torment and agony to stop, but his faceless handlers ignored his suffering.

Some even added to his pain out of their own sick
desire for pleasure.

“Y
ou like that one, spack? Here. Suck on this one. How does that feel?”

Naero couldn
’t do anything to help him or make the torment stop.

A
t other times Danner just glared straight out into the void. Drooling and insane, as if he stared right back at her.

Right flipping into her.

The utterly weird creep.

Maybe he could somehow.

Dark eyes filled with oceans of the deepest, darkest hatred. His very look threatening the worst revenge possible.

She
had other, still unrelated visions out of the black, where she saw multitudes of normal people and creatures on countless worlds. They carried within them what seemed to be secret, glowing parasites or seeds of some kind of dark Cosmic power deep down inside.

Like a
hidden danger or a plague just waiting to erupt.

Most others couldn
’t see it.

When th
ose horrifying powers awoke within them, these people and weird aliens lost all control and went mad, glowing and pulsing with strange, violent Cosmic forces that they could not control, transforming them into lethal killing machines.

Ravenous, dangerous foes
immune to most normal weapons, nearly impossible to put down.

U
ntil the destructive energies that fueled their raving rage burned out the host, leaving behind a charred, blackened shell or skeleton.

What
in the hell was all of that?

Was she envisioning any of this real time
? Was it actually happening now? Or perhaps some time in the future? She just did not know, and that drove her crazy as well. How could she make sense out of it all?

What was real?

What wasn’t?

Naero awoke
abruptly back on her own ship late that night, gasping, shaking, and sweating as if from a fever. Her head whoozy from her earlier bouts of celebratory drinking.

Plenty of potent Spacer poteen to go around for all
at first.

So delicious.

Until it flattened you on your ass like a punch from a mek.

Naero
still did not consider herself a drinker in any shape or form, but it had been a happy occasion after all.

She suddenly
blinked and stared around as her holo zilk sheets and her nanoroom slowly hued up the lighting.

Her c
aptain’s quarters. Completely trashed. Almost everything ripped apart. Equipment shattered and disrupted. Scorch marks and deep gouges in the hull itself.

One of her paintings and a
smaller, glowing figurine. Ruined.

A
nd this wasn’t the first time.

Awww…she had even broken up her Spican walnut table and chairs into splinters.
Where was she going to find another?

Naero st
ood her favorite knife-fighting-girl statue back up and secured her again. Thankfully, she was okay.

How
in the blazing hell was she doing all of this in her sleep if her powers were still blocked?

Incidents
just like this discouraged her from inviting any handsome guests to stay with her overnight.

How could she
ever love someone or ever hope to have a relationship?

What if she
killed someone?

Naero shuddered and felt sick
just at the thought.

What if she
lost it and murdered her lover in her sleep, without knowing it?

Woke up to him dead in her room
next to her, or torn to pieces like her table?

By her own
two hands.

No.
No way in hell. She couldn’t live with anything like that.

Maybe she
did drink a little too much at the reception party. Maybe that added to her loss of control.

Was Om trying to contact her?

She just didn’t know. And it was all really starting to drive her bonkers.

But
the wedding party had been great fun.

D
espite the small matter of the enemy assassination attempt.

A quiet alarm activated on her private com.

From a secure channel. One that almost never sounded.

A
priority call directly from Spacer Intel.

Most likely Admiral Klyne.

She sighed and blew out a deep breath.

Good.
Now she could inquire again about arranging that long-delayed testing with the Spacer Mystics. That became increasingly vital.

She
’d never find the Mystics on her own. The hidden locations of their heavily-guarded homeworlds remained deeply protected secrets, entrusted only to Shadowforce and the Clan Elders.

Naero went over and sat down before her private com array.
At least she hadn’t trashed that.

Just before she opened the link, it dawned on her.

Uh…Still naked.

She activated a nano
wall panel and called up a random storage bin.

One where she pitched
some of her gag-gift sleepwear. She reached in and dug around with one hand.

Blazing white push-up bra?
No.

Hot pink
corset? Nah.

Klyne might enjoy the
corset, but then again…maybe not.

He was decidedly stuffy.

Ahh, finally–a glittering blue pajama shirt, nearly a robe on her petite form, set with holographic dragons flying and either fighting or mating across it. Too hard to tell.

That would do. She slipped into it and wrapped it around her. Anything to cover up with.

It probably didn’t pay to flash an Intel Admiral, if one wanted to get tested by the Mystics.

Then again…

She smiled slyly and shook her head as she opened the link.

Admiral Klyne
’s rugged countenance smiled confidently at her through his floating holo, showing him from the waist up. His dress uniform from the wedding gone.

Back
in his simple gray Intel togs.

She nodded.
“Klyne.”

“N
aero.”

It occurred to her that she never learned his first name. Klyne was probably not even his real name, whether it was a first or Clan name. There was no Clan Klyne.

“I’ll get right to it,” he said.

Naero liked that about the man. Direct. To the point. A hard driver, just like herself.

“Do you recall those two ships you somehow managed to combine during the battle of Nuratine-5?”

Naero thought a second and then nodded.
“My strike cruiser,
The Brightstar.
We were captured by a larger enemy stealth ship when we tried to get away. Both our ships were heavily damaged. We dropped back into the planet’s gravity well. I had to merge both ships. I barely kept us from burning up and crashing to our doom.”

“W
e know now that the enemy capture ship was called,
The Dark Hawk
.”

“W
hat of it? My people and I fled the ship and fought the enemy ground troops there. That entire location was being blasted to dust. In the resulting chaos the enemy either grabbed Jan, or our former brother Danner had already taken over his mind and body by then. If it wasn’t for Baeven helping us, we would never have been able to go after him.”

“A
ny word from either of the outcasts, or your lost brother?”

“N
othing.”

Klyne hesitated.
“Would you tell me if there was?”

“Y
es. I’ll take any help I can to find Jan and bring him back safely. I won’t give up on that. Ever. The Corps could be doing anything to him–like what they did to Danner. We have to find him. We need to find them both. Danner could still be dangerous.”

“A
greed. But back to the matter at hand.”

“W
hat, the two merged ships? What about–”

“
The Dark Hawk
possessed the only known working versions of Triax’s advanced, rapid-fire ion cannons. All of their other stealth ships either escaped or were destroyed.”

“I
always wondered why Triax didn’t used that tek against us during the rest of the Annexation War. It could have given us hell, maybe even beaten us.”

“J
ust as Intel feared. But thank goodness they did not have many of those ships, nor did they possess the ability to refit the rest of their fleets with said ion cannons in time. Yet that dangerous tek is still out there somewhere, and we need to get our hands on it or develop a way to counter it. One way or another.”

“S
o? Why do you need me? I’m swamped in trade deals and profit negotiations. Just go back to Nuratine-5 and salvage the ion cannons from the wreck.”

“W
e can’t, Naero. There’s nothing left to salvage.”

“S
o the wreck was completely destroyed? I knew the enemy blasted that area pretty–”

“N
aero. There is no wreck. The ship flew off and escaped…on its own power. We don’t know exactly how.”

Naero paused for a moment and looked away, completely flummoxed.
“Well, it wasn’t any of my people. It must have been the enemy.”

Klyne shook his head.

“Our last scans of the merged vessels recorded no active life forms on board. Nor any since.”

Naero held up both hands,
totally confused. “Maybe enemy robot or AI pilots, activated to keep the ship from being captured?”

“P
ossible, but still unlikely. We don’t even have tek that good. And the merged ship has gone rogue. It’s cunning and won’t let the Corps near it either.”

“
Too bad we don’t have ion cannons.”

“
Agreed. Naero. This is top secret. Black Ops. That merged ship somehow refitted–on its own. It healed itself and fled the scene, navigating a safe course of retreat and jumping out of the midst of a highly complex battle.”

“W
here’s the phantom ship now?”

“W
e’re not exactly sure, but we have a rough idea. We call her
The Dark Star
. These are the latest sightings.”

“S
ightings?”

He sent her data about se
veral encounters by merchants, Spacers, military on both sides–even a salvage team that tried to take her.

“A
nyone who get’s too close to her gets zapped by those damn, advanced ion guns and left dead in the water, while she jumps away again. Whatever’s controlling her is both smart and spooked. No one can get near her, and all scans support the same conclusion. No life signs on board.”