Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (29 page)

Naero shuddered and convulsed, instantly curling up into a tight, opaque sphere of Cosmic energy. She hugged her knees at what she was and wept.

She
was
a monster. No way to deny it now.

Om attempted to reach her.

Naero, it’s all right. Our physical form is still waiting for us back on the ship. No one else was hurt; we survived the blast.

Had they?
Had Om seen and perceived what she had just realized? Could he see it? Or had it all just been another of her mad delusions?

She shook her head and sobbed.

I’m not so sure about anything anymore, Om.

Womi tried to cut in.
Are you speaking to someone else telepathically? I keep hearing this buzzing sound and these echoes when I try to link with you. The explosion is past. Should I take us back, now?

30

Naero
actually struggled to rest, after her intense ordeal, tossing and turning–experiencing further nightmares, fears, and many, very unpleasant visions.

Jia, Alala, and Om woke her, four hours later
, calling to her in her quarters.

Om, what is it
, now?

They think they
’ve found where Baeven might be.

Naero reported to
The Darkstar
bridge minutes later.

“
Looks like another secret enemy base of some kind,” Alala informed them.
The Star Fox
was still docked and linked with them. Both ships took up orbit around a strange new planet.

Jia
jumped right in. “Now that we’re this close, I have a good feeling that Baeven is in fact down there, somewhere. And whatever has happened to him–I was right. He is definitely in trouble. We must find him and extract him, as soon as possible.”

Om cautioned her.
Naero, the enemy has gone to much greater lengths to mask and cloak this facility than any of the others we have found, thus afar. It has advanced tek that my scans can not penetrate. You will need to be extremely careful.

My middle-name, Om.

No. It most definitely is not. I’m serious about this, Naero. This place shrieks trouble, and we’ll be walking right into it. There is tek here that we’ve never encountered before.

Then let
’s learn what we can, before we go in.

T
ogether, Naero and her comrades performed a quick survey of the new planet, and especially the secret base. Jia provided them with a full report.

“
We think it is some kind of weapon’s lab or R&D development base; it must be important. Our enemies have invested a lot into this one location. The facilities are extensive, much of them underground, armored, well-shielded, and even cloaked. We barely stumbled upon it because of the G’lothc ship signatures out this way. It must have stopped here, and more than once, according to the traces. We remain very lucky that the enemy still thinks that it can pop around with impunity. They don’t believe that we can track them in any way.”

“
Where’s Baeven?” Naero asked. “What kind of tek and defenses are we up against?”

“
I was getting to all that,” Jia added. “Be patient. We have a lot of ground to cover. The defenses are high tek and layered. Here are the specs. Use your teknomancy to absorb them.”

Naero connected fluidly with Alala and did so.

Haisha! These were incredibly intricate defenses.

“
There are also full battle groups of
active
Ejjai, hidden in mountain bases, backed up by hunter-killer teams of Dakkur–led by Dakkur champions.”

Naero envisioned her battle royal with Oth, back on Janosha. Where she had taken her revenge on the creature that slew her best friend, Gallan.

“The enemy also has dozens of fleets, just waiting to swoop out from hidden planetary bases scattered throughout the system and attack, if the planet should ever come under siege. We don’t want to kick over this hornet’s nest. With any luck, we can sneak in, get Baeven, and get out without attracting any attention. That’s the plan.”

“
Do we know where Baeven is?” Naero asked directly.

“
That’s the problem,” Jia said. “We don’t. We can’t actually see into the base, either. Some kind of shielding or tek defense is keeping our penetration scans from getting through. It is heavily defended in every way. On the outer layers we can detect various hi-tek sensor arrays and robotic gun emplacements. This installation could withstand multiple heavy attacks, and defend itself very well against attackers, and most likely, careful infiltrators as well.”

Naero let out a sigh.
“Copy that. That’s where I come in. I’ll slip in all stealth mode and locate Baeven. I just wish we knew what to look for or where.”

She
did feel somewhat better having
The Shadow Fox
along with them for the ride. They could get into deep trouble very quickly this time.

Naero hadn’t even thought of a way to tell them that she was both slowly dying from a
growing Cosmic infection she couldn’t stop, and that she might also explode and kill them all at any moment.

There was not good way to spin all that.

Nor did they have any back up.

All flags
stood against them. No friends any longer, ever since she killed High Master Vane. Anywhere they turned, everyone who had been their greatest allies–would now be on the hunt to take them down.

It hurt
Naero deeply that her own people–her own beloved Clans would view her as an enemy, now. She was a wanted, heinous criminal–a murderer.

The
Spacer authorities would have to formally capture her and bring her to trial before they could ostracize her, making her an outcast liker her uncle.

Only then could they
strip her of her name and all she was.

Time to check out the
planet surface in stealth mode.

Immediately, something wasn’t right. Naero’s small cloud of spyfixers started sounding warnings.

For starters, the region all around the enemy base was highly toxic–unnaturally so. Good thing she was already buttoned up in her stealth armor.

She had her spy fixers scatter and perform a toxicological survey.

Naero carefully gathered some samples from the poisoned streams and pools, now a real life contaminated dead zone. Nothing lived there. Not even bugs. The trees and plants–even the grass–were either all dead or carefully replicated fakes–all camouflage.

Once they
shunted those samples back to Zhen for analysis, they might have a better idea about what kind of bio-weapons program the enemy was operating. The research base maintained a disciplined, very low profile operation–within striking distance of their foes.

At least thus far
, anyway.

And e
ven if someone did look for enemy activity, the searchers would have to stumble upon the Intel base in the middle of nowhere to even have a clue. They wouldn’t have access to Baeven or his sensor drones and passive and active probes. And even then, nothing around or on the surface of the planet gave off any sign that serious tek was at work there, unless you got right up close to it.

The level of security and secrecy
began to scare Naero.

Even Intel did not operate
on any kind of a level like this.

What in the hell were
their foes up to? They were definitely planning something, and as usual, it was going to be both big and nasty once they unleashed it.

And
that begged even more questions. What had happened to Baeven? Baeven never got stuck like this. What had he run afoul of that
he
couldn’t handle?

Maybe there was a first time for everything. But every second on
this bioweapons world raised more troubling questions.

Word from Jia on their secure channel.

Still no sign of any signal from Baeven.

Naero and the two ships
sent specially coded signals out on all of their special frequencies and channels. Calls and signals that only Baeven would recognize.

No response.

He was either separated from his own formidable tek–again–rare if not impossible. Or he was captured, or hurt badly enough that he could not respond…or worse.

Naero had a very real sudden fear.

What if the enemy had somehow captured Baeven…and had him prisoner in one of those nightmarish, Darkforce generators? That would certainly explain a lot.

“
Jia, we’ve searched all day. Other than attempting to infiltrate the base itself, I don’t see how we’re going to find him. I’ve got to make an attempt at getting inside.”

Silence.

“There is another way,” Jia said. “Something difficult that we haven’t tried yet. A special kind of telepathy that only I can perform.”

“
Then let’s do it. What are we waiting for?”

“
It’s…problematic.”

“
How so?”

“
To make it work, Naero–I need a host body to place my mind and essence in, temporarily.”

“
Huh? Your mind runs the ship? You don’t have a body, Jia?”

Welcome to my existence.

Quiet, Om.

“
No,” Jia said. “I do in fact have a physical body…but for many good reasons, it isn’t really here with us right now. I kind of had to leave it behind.”

Naero wasn’t going to ask, for now at least
, just how Jia had her mind and soul separated from her physical body–or what that physical body happened to look like.

Her head was already spinning.

Jia went on. “For my special type of telepathy to work–I must have a physical body.”

Naero did not hesitate.

“If it will find Baeven, then use mine.”

“
Be warned, Naero. It’s not as easy as it sounds, taking someone’s mind and soul inside of you. Being a host to another sentient’s consciousness…even for a short time, can be difficult, dangerous, and incredibly painful.”

“
Yeah, yeah. Bring on the pain, then. What else you got?”

“
Alright. Let’s rendezvous at the Delta-3 landing zone and take it from there. I’ll instruct you what to do.”

“
Jia. I just naturally assumed you were a person–of some kind. Am I correct?”

She laughed.
“I am a person, Naero. I just don’t have my body right now. It’s …a little complicated.”

Everything with
Baeven and his weird crew usually was. Where did any of them come from? They were all individual members of their species. Where were their homeworlds?

“
Sooo…if you don’t have your body with you, Jia–what exactly are you?”

“
For now–I am
The Shadow Fox–
Baeven’s sentient, self-aware ship, a living ship, much like Alala and
The Darkstar
. I function as a large part of its mind–its intellect. I bolster its raw computing power. But the ship can also function very well without me, when necessary.”

“
Okay. Question answered. See you soon. Tell S’krin and Danjen to keep their togs on.”

“
I don’t understand, Naero. Neither of them wear togs.”

“
Just an expression.”

What in the hell was she getting herself into now?
Becoming a host body for yet another personality?

Om could
n’t help commenting.
Could be fun. A self-aware intellect working in conjunction with a complex machine? With Jia and Alala around, I could be in love, Naero…again.

Haisha
, not Om in love again. Please, anything but that.

Whatever
there was between Jia and Baeven, Naero was pretty sure it was love–and not the platonic kind either. Naero would bet the fleet that if they ever did see Jia’s body, it would be a definite eye-opener.

Keep your togs on too, this time, Om. I can’t speak for Alala, but I got a serious hunch that Jia is already taken.

Dang. They say the good ones usually are.

Who are they? You do
n’t even know any ‘theys,’ so don’t get cocky, Om. Sheesh, I should have never let you develop a sense of humor.

“
Ah, but I have. Too late now.”

Naero
sighed, continuing to worry about whether they could slip into that enemy facility or not, without being detected or captured themselves.

If Baeven couldn’t find a way out, how
would she?