Naero's Run Read online

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  Naero awoke in a voiceless scream, thrashing in terror and clutching her throbbing forehead.

  She sat up in her darkened gray, three-by-four meter crew cabin, still serving with her aunt’s Merchant Clan Fleet, still on their way through Triax Corps space to Irpul-4.

  But in an alarmed daze, she glanced around at her inactive wall and ceiling screens rising two and a half meters above her bunk panel.

  Her morning alarm chimed.

  She sprang naked from her cluttered bunk–Naero always slept nude.

  She tripped over the stinky junk on her floor, and punched up a blinding splash of lights and a mirror on her port screenwall.

  Her wild movements scattered and splashed muted pics and vids of family, friends, and new ship designs and schematics she could only drool over all across the other screenwalls and ceiling like panic-stricken birds.

  Her preset systems struggled to light, wake up, and compensate in response to her frantic movements. Winking as they came online.

  Naero gasped for air and pulled her long raven hair apart. Checked for the gaping wound in her forehead that she fully expected to see there.

  Nothing. Not a damn thing.

  Just a few inflamed zits and her stupid pale forehead under her slender, trembling hands that held up her long, jet black hair over wide, dark violet eyes. Eyes and hair she got from her pretty, champion mom.

  She caught her heaving breath, nostrils still flaring. She stepped back and let her hands fall back to her sides. Her black hair drooped back down over her face.

  Her latest nightmare had seemed so real.

  She sat down slowly on the edge of her bunk, still confused and shaking.

  Naero shook her aching head, staring down at empty ration cans of Spum, the only blue meat on the market, in its mysterious sweet-and-sour, blue jelly sauce. Along with various packages of other assorted bizarre snacks and junk food, hoarded from numerous interstellar ports of call.

  She had gathered them all together for one orgasmic private pig-out session the night before her birthday. She had even skipped dinner with her mates in anticipation of her little guilty pleasure feast.

  The smell in the aftermath grew rank.

  Eating all that crap must have really done a number on her brain. No wonder she’d had nightmares and flipped out.

  Four time. The first four bells of the new day. Her birthday.

  No time like the present to get her ass in gear and get on with life. Plenty to get done before her duty shift.

  Back on Old Terra it would have been April first by the old calendar, the basis for the Spacer standard year, day, hour, etc.

  What once people on the old homeworld called April Fool’s Day–before humans finally left their dying world behind, and took to the stars, thankfully. Some even had the foresight to evolve into Spacers.

  Her ancient history said that it had once been a day for people to play tricks on each other and fool one another with fake nonsense.

  Hell, Naero already played so many goofy jokes and scams on her friends and family. They expected them from her on a regular basis.

  Almost.

  Therefore, in honor of her birthday, she had a special joke planned for everyone. It would be a master stroke of genius if ever she had come up with one.

  And only she could pull it off.

  First she had to get her mates started for their secret training session.

  She punched up Gallan on her com.

  “You up, big guy?”

  Her extra-large, bestest friend answered, his holo floating in the air at about half-size as he slipped into his togs, sealing them up.

  “Just getting dressed. Meet you in Practice Room 35 with the others. Sheesh, put some clothes on, N.”

  “I intend to. Nothing you haven’t seen before, buddy. What do you care? You like guys.”

  He grimaced. “Still, it’s just courteous. See ya.”

  Next, wake her Spacer gal pals.

  Punch up Chaela.

  Audio response only; holo blocked. Animalistic groan.

  “I will kill your dumb ass.”

  “Uh, okay, Chae. I’ll get back to you. It’s Naero? Remember, we agreed to–”

  Another louder groan.

  “I will hurt you!”

  “I’ll just check back in ten. Bye.”

  That hadn’t gone too well.

  Call up Saemar. Always taking a chance with her as well, in other ways.

  Holo blocked on her end this time, thank goodness.

  “Hey, Saemar. Wakey wakey.”

  “Oh, Naero? Hi, sweetie. Thanks for calling.”

  Unfortunately, Saemar flipped her holo on, revealing flashes of some strange guy’s naked back, arm, and hairy butt.

  Naero could even hear the guy snoring.

  “So…can you join us, Saemar? You aren’t too…busy, are you there?”

  “What, him? We were at it all night in one of the flight simulators. He comes over ta my place for a couple more runs–and then he passes out on me.”

  “Who…is that? Bad, bad idea. Scrap that. I don’t wanna know.”

  Naero heard a groan and the guy mutter. “Wha? It’s…not even five yet.”

  “Just some tek from maintenance–a new one. Had ta break him in, ya know. Hey, you–”

  “Don’t wake him up!”

  “Hey, chum, what’s your name again? Wadda ya mean, why? Because my friend wants to know. Oh, you’d really like her, she’s just like me, a real looker.”

  “Uh, join us in P.R. 35…if you can. Saemar.”

  “Of course ya gotta get up. Hurry up and roll over already. I gotta go. Okay, sweetie. See ya there. Just gimme a few. Ten, twelve, maybe fifteen tops. Won’t be too long. Like a lotta teks, this guy’s pretty quick. Ya know what I mean?”

  “Uh…sure. Saemar.”

  “And let me wake Chae up. You know how she gets just a little testy when it’s early like this.” Saemar signed off.

  Noted. Fighter jocks. If Naero hadn’t trained with them so closely, she’d have never understood their type. Saemar was worse than Jan, even. Different guys all the time. Any time. But it hadn’t always been that way with her. Chaela, on the other hand, had a steady guy from accounting.

  Naero flipped up Zhen and of course got the bonus of Tyber right there with her. The eternal odd couple, giggling and cooing together, their heads bobbing in their mist shower.

  “Hey, Naero,” Tyber called out.

  “Good morning, spacechild,” Zhen added formally. “Don’t worry. We’ll be there. Happy birthday, by the way. You sure you still wanna try out that alien psy helmet? As your physician, I still think that’s exponentially ill-advised.”

  Naero laughed. “Who asked you? You’re still just a medtek, you quack. What do you know?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who gave me an illegal neural-medical stimulation device to check out for you. That thing could fry your brain like a Spum meatball.”

  Naero grinned, glancing at the empty ration paks littering her floor. “I like Spum. Just be there to monitor me.”

  All hands accounted for. All of her best friends coming to her rescue on her birthday to help her trigger her psy talent, once and for all.

  She ignored the general disorder of her quarters and ducked in for a quick mist shower herself, a relaxing, refreshing start to any day. The firm cleansing mist massaged her toned body. She didn’t even bother using mist wash.

  Nanoparticles wicked the excess moisture away, leaving her small, slender, well-muscled form instantly and comfortably dry.

  Naero peeled open a package and snapped out a crisp new set of black flight togs. Nytex was the best thing next to one’s skin besides nothing at all. She slipped into the luxury of the nanomaterial, attached her gear, her hidden blades, and a few other weapons. Next she put on her wristcomp and programmed or ‘pweaked’ up her three blue, glowing rank bands on her forearms.

  No way she’d forget them.

  Especial
ly the rank she’d worked so hard to earn in the Maeris Clan Fleets.

  The Nytex smart-material adapted and held all her gear tight and trim, as well as regulated her temp, controlled body odor, and monitored her vitals, ready to obey the presets she programmed into them. She could form boots, gloves, pockets, pouches, or even pweak up a quick bubble face shield and a sealed EV-suit in a pinch.

  She could change the color or pattern if she desired, or add flair, the way some of the Spacer kids did. But she’d always liked basic Spacer black.

  Unfortunately short and small like her champion mom, if she couldn’t be tall and stacked with bulging muscles like her champion dad, at least she could still look great.

  She pulled her long black hair into an efficient ponytail with a golden clip that had once been her mom’s, and then pweaked her wallscreens back together, more or less.

  Naero glanced at her pitiful life savings account for her first ship.

  The ship she and her mates all dreamed about, with her as their captain, and them her crew.

  Sigh. 6,713,448.21C.

  Less than seven megacredits.

  Even the cheapest, lousiest crap buckets that could still jump ranged around forty to fifty megs at least. And she had been scrimping and saving like a fricking miser all her life.

  The sleek, showroom-new beauties lining and sparkling on the walls of her dreams were nearly beyond reality. Five or six times that much or more, they were better than most of the stuff in most fleets, even among Spacers.

  Her younger brother, Jan, however, was just the opposite of her in almost every way possible. He blew every chunk of change he could get his hands on and was always either flush with creds right after pay day, or broke soon thereafter.

  He usually wasted his pay on what else? Girls–Spacer girls, even lander girls. He didn’t much care as long as they were female and willing. Janner had become a hound early on, and a full-fledged-womanizer by the ripe old age of seventeen–two years younger than her. Jan was always on the make for a good time.

  While Naero herself–so busy earning rank and trying to get ahead–was still pretty much a virgin.

  Even her closest friends didn’t suspect the embarrassing truth.

  Oh, sure, a few close calls and hot, steamy near-misses with cute Spacer boys here and there, that she made believe went farther than they did. Everyone just naturally assumed.

  But she was always so damn busy.

  And driven.

  And choosy.

  And completely hopeless.

  Not only that, worse than her pathetic romantic life–as a Spacer, she had yet to develop a psyonic gift or talent.

  Most Spacers had at least one. Her parents were famous for theirs. Even Jan was already a strong, albeit lazy, pyrokinetic.

  While she was quickly in danger of becoming a nud–some washed-out loser without any kind of psyonic talent at all.

  A virtual evolutionary dead end.

  Sigh again.

  And nobody ever got a talent after their coming of age.

  Ever. Twenty standard years was the rock-solid cut off.

  She opened a hidden stash compartment and brought out her emergency kit. Its contents weren’t exactly legal, even among Spacers: psyonic enhancing and stimulating treatments and genetic drugs from several worlds and alien races known to have psyonic abilities. Then came her crowning glory, the outlawed psyonic trigger and amplification helmet.

  The sixteen Gigacorps dominated half of known space and remained brazenly human-centric. Spacers were also homogenous and kept to themselves for the most part and controlled the other half. The Corps kept all of the other known races oppressed and marginalized.

  This made acquiring such a stash of psyonic boosters incredibly difficult.

  All of these illegal, psyonic options were desperate, last-ditch efforts to avoid nudness. She was going to develop her talent, or at the very least trigger it, and figure out what the hell it was. Or reduce part of her brain to mush in the attempt.

  Naero felt more than tired of her friends’ jibes and annoying allusions to her lack of psy abilities. And her little brother was worse than all of them put together.

  Today could very well be the day all of that could end. Yay. Happy birthday to her.

  No time to eat. No time to lie around writing or reading poetry like her gigantic dad. Time to meet the troops for a little secret training session, before morning PT with Jan and Aunt Sleak. Training, and then their duty shift making the fleet transport deliveries.

  Haisha, wasn’t that all enough?

  Naero slipped out of her trashed quarters and let her panel auto-secure behind her, kicking some of the junk back in so it could.

 

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