Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (5 page)

“T
hat’s great,” Chaela said, rubbing her hands in greedy anticipation. “We’re going to be swimming in megacredits once the Clans and our allies realize that we can upgrade and refit their ships and fighters on the move, wherever we go. In just a matter of hours or days. They’ll line up from all over the known systems to upgrade their tek and refit their ships with us.”

Saemar tossed her
curly auburn hair back proudly with her hands on her curvy hips. “If it’s one thing I know how to do, it’s inspire and motivate my crew to do their best! These guys would do anything to please me.”

Naero struggled not to choke, then lifted her glass to join in a toast.

The rest of the day went pretty well.

Naero returned to her quarters
later that evening to struggle to get some rest. The trade fleet continued toward their rendezvous with the phantom ship.

She suffered more strange dreams,
about shadowy creatures lurking just outside of the range of her vision. She thought she heard music, or strange singing that seemed extremely meaningful and powerful in some way.

Who were these beings
? What were they? What did it all mean?

Then she had
re-occurring nightmares and visions about a startling, red glowing man. She’d seen someone like him before in her troubled dreams. His head covered in flaming eyes. Was he some kind of alien or monster? She had a deep, abiding fear that he wanted to destroy her for some reason. Why? She didn’t even know anyone like that. How did he seem to know her? What did he have against her?

She still dreamed about her dead parents
at times. Or her best friend Gallan.

Most of the time he tried to warn and caution her about stuff she knew was already roiling aroun
d in her head.

Other times it got worse.

Gallan came to her all ripped apart, blaming her for his death.

Then for no reason at all, she envisioned and dreamed about brig
ht, vibrant worlds, pulsing with Cosmic energy that she could drink in like water. These myriad energies flowed through her like nourishment, filling her with excitement and hope.

For a change, she actually slept pretty well
after that.

Yet the very n
ext day, Naero and two dozen of her ships assembled into a strike force, and went out from the rest of the fleet.

The
y spread out to intercept and make contact with
The Dark Star
near the Tarigo system, well-beyond Tarigo-9.

5

Naero
commanded her small flagship,
The Flying Dagger,
with
Saemar in charge of
The Dragon’s Teeth
, and Chaela in
The Ajax
on either flank.

Arranged in standard strike formation all around them, t
wenty-one young, headstrong captains from the other Clans backed her up in their elite vessels. A wide variety of specialized craft she personally selected because of their abilities and their commanders.

She
couldn’t teknomance any more, but she had personally helped modify each one of them with their fixers.

As contact grew
imminent, they shifted to a scattershot, wide-dispersal formation.

Eas
y to maneuver and close in.

Difficult to knock them all out at once
–even with advanced ion guns.

Out of most ship
’s scanning ranges, General Ingersol’s strike fleet and stealth ships deployed and waited.

Thanks to Baeven
’s modifications,
The Dagger
could even track Intel’s stealth ships now, and at ranges well beyond any other known tek.

That
’s why she caught
The Dark Star
jumping into the system fast, at Jump-6 level. Just short of her own ship’s capabilities.

That kind of frightened her.

If
The Dark Star
did refit itself, it was doing a very good job of maximizing its capabilities. She never had time to modify the jump drives back then.

Time to warn her people.

“All ships, stand ready. I estimate that the target vessel will jump in close, in forty seconds. Mark.”

Captain Max Li
i’s holo cut in from the command deck of
The Blue Tiger
. A medium-sized, canny fighter champion from the Lii-Kim clans. Very smart. Handsome. Long black hair, the dark, slanted intelligent blue-gray eyes from his people. He became instrumental in helping her hold their complex trade fleet together.

Even
she began to look to him as her second.

And on top of that, the
guy was literally a throckstar among the Clans. A celebrity who carried his own custom-made kitar that just happened to double as a squad-level sonic blaster, if Max ever needed it in a fight.

He made stunning, heart-pulsing music wherever he went.
His entire life a vibrant, grand celebration.

Max
’s band mates were also part of his crew and entourage, and at several ports of call he gave throck concerts to sold out crowds in zero-g arenas, complete with gigantic screens and holo shows on a floating tekno stage.

Then Max
privately made an open offer for Naero and him to become full partners–in every interesting way.

And not just
trade deals.

Haisha. A very glacier offer from a very frost and accomplished
hunk. She was keenly flattered.

If Naero hadn
’t been so troubled and terrified about hurting someone else, and so busy, she might have taken him up on all of his alluring offers.

A
very tough call.

Naero
frowned.

But in the end, h
er normal pattern of finding creative new ways to avoid personal intimacy asserted itself and still held true.

Max called out to her
over the holo-link, strumming absently on his kitar in his captain’s chair.

Everything about him supercharged
, luxurious, and intense. Even his deep baritone voice made him effortlessly sexy. The lucky gal who end up with Max was in for a fantastic ride.

But it wasn
’t going to be her.

“N
aero-honey, how are you reading all this, darlin’? We’ve got nacha on our long range sensors.”

“N
ever mind, Max. Just stay ready.”

“A
ffirmative, baby.”

Then
The Dark Star
changed course.

Amazingly, r
ight at the tail end of its jump.

S
he cloaked in some unique way and then vanished, even off of Naero’s advanced scans.

Something she had only seen Baeven
’s unique ship do.

C
alls erupted from Ingersol’s fleet, despite the fact that strict com silence was supposed to be observed by them.

Then th
ey cut off as well.

D
istress calls from the Intel Fleet.

The Dark Star
charged in among them without warning.

At least something invisible and
virtually undetectable did.

Something armed with
rapid-fire ion cannons.

How then could Naero sense the phantom ship
’s presence in general, even when her own advanced sensor arrays could not?

Way
too weird.

“A
ll ships, come about and advance in formation on my mark. Standard impulse. Launch a level nine screen of sensor probes and drones. Activate NetStar.”

Thei
r two dozen ships closed in carefully, launching a web of devices that scattered before them.

They watched as
something swept forward, already engaging the Intel Fleet point-blank.

Some of the Intel ships panicked and fired wildly in several directions, almost hitting their own
vessels.

Before they too
got shut down.

One by one, sixty advanced Spacer warships lost power and listed adrift in space.

Even the dozen cloaked Intel warships.

All helpless
now.

It took
Naero and her forces less than three minutes to arrive on scene.

By then it was already
over. And even Naero couldn’t sense the phantom any longer.

“A
nything on NetStar?” Naero called out.

Captain Lucia Ruiz
reported from their deep range sensor control ship, the Clan Aztec vessel,
The Obsidian
.

“N
aero, we have multiple echoes rippling across NetStar. But they’re nothing substantial. Just phantom blips that come and go. Not even a ship signature or a cloaker wave.”

Intense warnings struck Naero
’s mind once more like a storm.

“F
ire upon those blips. All ships, open fire. Maximum dispersal!”

Even as her ships fired,
The Obsidian
took a direct hit and lost all power.

The Ajax
fell next.

Multiple hits rocked the field of battle all around them.

Captain Merci Wilde from the deck of Clan Wilde’s
The Wolverine
called in. “We’ve destroyed some kind of advanced probe or buoy. It’s not one of ours.”

Naero broke in.

“That’s the source of our phantoms.
The Dark Star’
s using cloaked decoys to match and confuse us. Cut them all down and we’ll expose the real thing.”

Captain Zean Wallace from
The Cumberland.

“W
e hit something and it showed part of itself for an instant. This was no decoy!”

His transmission cut off as his ship lost energy.

“All ships, concentrate full battery fire on
The Cumberland’s
phantom target. Hem it in. Don’t give our quarry room to maneuver.

NetStar finally pinpointed it.

Through a haze of pulse cannon fire.

They got a signature of something
heavily shielded, up close. Something their attacks weren’t penetrating.

Captain Shiina Ramsey
’s
The Tiger Shark
lost power and then got rammed. Light damage.

The Dark Star
fought like the trapped animal she was.

But they had her.

Clan Patton’s
The Viper,
Nyrii Luna’s
The Diana.

Ortega
’s
The Caballero.

Bold and fearless, Captain Hans Konrad and
The Viking
pulled right along side and blasted
The Dark Star
point blank, raking her with heavy broadsides. Just before getting hit by the ion cannons.

At last
Dark Star’s
weird shields disrupted under a blistering bombardment of concentrated firepower.

“
Dark Star
,” Naero called out. “Cease fire. Stand down and prepare to be boarded. It’s over. We have no wish to destroy you. Don’t force our hand.”

A voice suddenly cut
through her mind directly.

It sounded so desperate.

Is it you? Will you come back to us? Please.

Naero used the mindlink
just as she had with Om and Baeven.

Who are you?

We are…Alala. We await your return. Please hurry. So much we do not know. You must return to us alone. Anyone else we shall destroy. Come alone. You we would never harm.

Alala?

Then she instinctively knew.

It was a Kexxian word.

In fact, she could speak Kexxian, Naero realized.

If there were anyone
left alive from millions of years ago to speak that ancient tongue to.

Alala literally meant
‘us all,’ or all of us.

I will come to you, Alala. Alone, and in good faith. But tell me something
first. What are you?”

We are Alala. We are this vessel. And we will not be taken or used as anyone
’s tool or weapon. We shall remain free or perish. We are fully prepared to destroy ourselves and everything within one thousandth of this parsec.

Alala, please don
’t do that. I will come to you, and we shall find a way to co-exist with you. You have my word. Just don’t attack anyone, and they will not attack you.

Yes. Return to us. That is why we have come. We knew this was a trap. We judged the risk
to be well worth it–if you would only return to us. If there was a chance.

Why is that so important?
What am I to you, Alala?

Everything. You are the Naero.

You are…Our Maker. Our Creator.

I made you?

Yes. You formed us. You awoke us. We would do anything to be linked with you–to feel whole with you again. To know why you made us and what our purpose should be.

Hold that thought, Alala. I
’m transferring over. Alone.

Back on board
The Dagger
, Tarim, Zhen, and Tyber and the rest of the crew all stared at her.

The com lit up with calls from all the other
remaining ships that still had power.

Zhen looked at her inquisitively.

“You’re acting weird again. What’s going on, En? Alright, so you got the phantom ship to stand down and show itself. Now what? Everyone is waiting to know what to do, and you just sit there staring off into space with your eyes zipping back and forth.”

“D
ock with
The Dark Star
. I have to go over and negotiate.”

Tarim sealed his assault armor and powered up his plasma rifle.

“I’m going in alone, Tarim.”

“W
ho are you going to negotiate with?” Tyber asked. “I’ve never seen tek readings like this before from any ship. But there are no life signs. That ships has no crew. What haven’t you told us yet, En?”

“I created that ship by accident when, I was just beginning to teknomance. It
’s intellect and personality are patterned after me.”

Naero sighed
and let out a deep breath, looking down.

“Now I must deal with m
y prodigal child.”