Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Read online

  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.”

  “Naero.”

  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.”

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

  “What 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.”

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

  “Nothing.”

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

  “Yes. 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.”

  “Agreed. But back to the matter at hand.”

  “What, 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.”

  “Just 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.”

  “So? 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.”

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

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

  “Naero. 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?”

  “Possible, 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.”

  “Where’s the phantom ship now?”

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

  “Sightings?”

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

  “Anyone 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.”

  Klyne sighed and knitted his fingers.

  “Then there’s only one explanation, as crazy as it sounds,” Naero said. “Somehow The Dark Star is running under its own power and has gone completely rogue.”

  “Is that even possible, Naero? What exactly did you do to those two vessels that could have caused such a thing? Is this something from the Kexxian Data Matrix? Self-aware ships? What if they gain the ability to create or command fixers to help them reproduce? What kind of real dangers are we looking at here, Naero? Machine intelligence? This sounds like an open Pandora’s Box to me.”

  “Klyne, I didn’t even know about this until two minutes ago. I don’t know what happened. Back then we were under attack and trying to stay alive. My teknomancer powers were completely new to me. I was barely able to make them work. I–I still don’t exactly know what I did.”

  “Take a look at those sightings again, Naero. Notice any pattern?”

  Naero studied them.

  Then she gasped.

  “They’re heading straight toward me…and my fleet.”

  Klyne nodded. “We think so too.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Cut to the chase? Make contact. Go out and meet with this phantom. Try to make peace with whatever intelligence or whatever is operating that ship. If we can get the ion cannon tek, so much the better. But either way–we can’t have a rogue ship that powerful running amok out there, armed with such dangerous weapons.”

  “Very well. I’ll hand-pick a strike force of my own ships and crews to accompany me on the intercept. I’ll make contact with The Dagger.”

  Klyne nodded. “As I hoped. But Intel will have a fleet waiting in the wings near the rendezvous, just in case. A comrade of mine, General Tobias Ingersol will be your liason on scene. He’s gruff and a little bit of an ideologue, but a very capable strategist. One of our best. Along with his twin brother, General Thadian in the High Command.”

  “I don’t know either of them, but I’ll do my best to coordinate actions with him if you say so. But Klyne, I have a personal request.”

  “Personal?”

  “I want to get tested…for the Mystics. ASAP. Things are getting…weird for me again, Klyne.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That might not be good for anyone Naero.”

  “I don’t think it can wait any longer.”

  Should she tell him about her pain attacks? Trashing her quarters at night? About Om?

  Klyne looked both grim and concerned. “Very well. Take care of this matter for me and I will arrange the testing myself. But I want you to understand: once you step into that world, there’s no turning back. You will enter a new and much broader reality of discipline and enlightenment. A world most of your family stepped into bravely. And it will change you, Naero. Just as it changes everyone…for better, or worse.”

  Great. Just what she needed. Something else dangerous and uncertain.

  More shifting threats. Wahoo!

  Well, at least the pain attacks might stop. And she might be able to know love with another person again at some point, without taking the risk of slaughtering some poor snoozing slob in his afterglow.

  Those two things alone would be worth any risks.

  She really had no idea what to expect.

  An
yone who trained with the Mystics was honor-bound never to speak of it. On pain of death. Even her parents wouldn’t ever talk about it.

  “All right then, Klyne. Let’s do whatever we need to do.”

  She rested her hands on her hips.

  “Let’s locate that phantom ship.”

  4

  Naero had lunch with Zhen and Tyber in The Dagger’s mess hall the next day at noon standard. The round galley about fifteen meters in diameter, off-white duranadium hull walls and open view screens. A lighted ceiling and air filters another six meters up. News and vid screens and busy INS feeds.

  The mess fed and sat about thirty to forty, crew max. But their small ship didn’t book any passengers, and kept its crew contingent small during peace time. With transport staff and loaders, two dozen hands total.

  Their cook, Tolen Kothari and her assistant, Eugene Blooding, worked to serve regular, nutritious and tasty meals on a standard schedule.

  Her Co-pilot Enel Maeris, another young distant cousin, had bridge duty.

  Surina Marshall her com officer, Passaendra Wilde, a gunnery and weapons specialist, and Rendar Nelson the engineer waved to them and continued eating, arguing over stuff from the INS feeds at the next table over.

  Lunch was a tasty pot roast of some kind of marinated brown meat with mashed pomatoes, coupled with another kind of purple, tangy vegetable shoots with herbs. And white grabble-berry cobbler.

  Eugene made this black mystery gravy that was out of this world and made anything under it taste ten times as good. You could eat the damn stuff with bread or biscuits, or by itself with a spoon and roll your eyes as you slurped it up.

  It was that tasty.

  He claimed his ‘black gravy’ was a carefully guarded, ancient Clan Blooding recipe.

  No one really cared, as long as he kept making it.

  Naero enjoyed her chow while Zee and Tye teased one another.

  They always seemed so happy together. Naero liked that about her two friends.

  If she couldn’t be with someone and be happy herself, at least it was nice to know that people she cared about could do so.

  Tye and Zee sat close together. He ate with his right hand and had his left arm scooped around her slender back and waist.

  Zhen absently had her left handed knitted with Tye’s, and leaned into his casual embrace, eating with her right hand from her tray.

  Since the two of them had been kids, they were inseparable.

  When they started dating, that only seemed natural too, and everything that followed.

  Now that they were all of age, the rest of her friends’ future seemed certain.

  Tye laughed. “You’d better get around to marrying me some day, Doctor Zhentisa,” he warned. “You know, a fine catch like me isn’t going to wait forever.”

  Zhen’s eyes widened and sparkled with mischief. She even jumped and choked on a little of her chow. The she leaned away from him on one arm in wide-eyed disbelief.

  “Excuse me? I think I just barfed in my mouth a little. You think you’re a fine catch? Who in their right mind told you that? Are you hallucinating? Should I scan you for a blast addiction? You’re a tek-monkey. I’m a skilled physician and surgeon. I’m five pay grades above you.”

  Tyber grinned and twirled his spork, chewing his food pouched in both sides of his mouth like a famished rodent.

  “Yeah, but who else can repeatedly make your eyes roll back up white in your head, while we’re having fun in the sack?”

  Zhen blushed slightly and smirked. She glanced down at her food trying not to laugh.

  “Well…there is that.” She let him nuzzle her slender neck for a moment.

  “Got ya.”

  Zee sighed. “You sure do, you loveable goofball.”

  She smiled at him and ran her slender fingers through his messy, curly dark hair. “You’re gonna be a great daddy to our babies some day. They’re going to love goofing around with you. You’re always so full of fun.”

  “Kids?” Naero said, trying to disguise her wide-eyed disbelief. “When is this going to happen? Not too soon, I hope.”

  Zhen shrugged and flashed Tye a smile again, patting his leg.

  “Not for a while still. But some day. After I marry this greasy bum.”

  “Hey, I take offense at that. I may be a lot of things. But I am never greasy. Unless I’m working with grease. But I clean up well.”

  Naero blew out a breath. “Wow. I guess I just don’t picture any of us with kids yet.”

  “Like your Aunt Sleak and Zalvano?” Tye said

  “Yeah, and twins even. Hard to believe that. But they’re old.”

  “What about Chaela and Remy?” Zhen noted. “They got married after the Alliance War. They might decide to have kids too.”

  “Not for a handful of years at least, Chae says.”

  “Still,” Tye said. “It’s going to happen at some point. It’s just what people do.”

  “I guess.”

  Naero still felt uneasy about the future. Even after the wedding, she still felt like something inside her kept trying to warn her about something.

  What could it be? Just the future in general, or some specific threat?

  Around dinner time, Naero and Tarim took her shuttle over to The Dragon’s Teeth, an old burned out wreck of a strike carrier that they picked up for a song.

  A long-term project for their fixers to refit.

  She put Captain Saemar and her fighter pilots, teks, and crew in charge of that mission.

  Naero opened and closed her hands, staring at her fingers.

  She kind of missed tecknomancing. Merging with starships, fighters, and high tek gear. Feeling the flow of Kexxian tek data through every fiber of her being. Understanding and manipulating tek on an almost magical level.

  She sighed. Even that pleasure was denied her these days. It figured.

  Her lander friend Tarim had settled in and performed well as her security chief and personal body guard.

  Tarim had always been tall and lanky, but living with Spacers conditioned him into a wiry, athletic hunk with dark hair and eyes.

  He wasn’t a Spacer, but his finely honed skills as a marksman and mastery with nearly all kinds of firearms made him a deadly shootist, and an impressive fighter in his own right.

  She knew he missed his people the miners, and especially the unusual romance he had with the enigmatic Shalaen, daughter of the Miner Consortium leader, Nevano Kinmal.

  Shalaen was half-Yattai, a race of Cosmic energy beings from a nearby dimension.

  That alone made things…interesting.

  But their duties and obligations took Tarim and Shalaen to different places, and for now they accepted that. They kept in regular contact as best they could.

  Naero hadn’t told Tarim yet, but she planned for their trade fleet to make a lucrative sweep through the rapidly expanding and developing mining sectors.

  Now that Triax was gone.

  And good riddance. Nobody missed the fallen Gigacorps.

  The miners did very well for themselves in the aftermath of The Annexation War. With the guidance and assistance of the Clans and Joshua Tech, the industrious miners created vast new spreading markets on their expanding boomworlds and colonies. Plenty of robust trading opportunities for all.

  Their huge repressed populations expanded into the mining worlds and beyond into the colonies and even the Unknown Regions out their way. They brought their growth and hope for the future with them. Everyone seemed to benefit.

  Naero hoped that they might even link up with Nevano and his amazing daughter at some point, giving Tarim and Shalaen a chance to rekindle their relationship.

  Captain Chaela met them in the docking bay from her refitted battleship, The Ajax.

  All of them embraced.

  “How’s Remy?” Naero asked. A twinge of discomfort.

  Why did Chae have to be so damn tall? With her long blonde braids, and her amazon physique, she always looked like a Viking shiel
d-maiden from ancient times.

  Chae grinned. “Sweet and ornery as ever. Did I tell you he likes to cook for me now? Good thing too, cause I hate cooking. Unlike some people I know.”

  “Cooking isn’t so bad,” Naero protested.

  Chaela just shivered. “Ugh!”

  “How is Remy’s cooking?” Tarim asked.

  “Passable, very passable. He’s getting better, so I don’t want to discourage him. My honey’s such a sweet guy. When our work’s done each day, we can’t wait to relax and just be together.”

  “That’s nice,” Naero said, checking the time. “Uh-oh. Hey, we’d better hurry. Saemar’s going to be waiting for us.”

  All of their wristcoms chimed in unison as if on cue. Saemar’s voice blurted out.

  “Where are you guys? Hey, sweeties! I’ve got a dinner all prepared. It’s getting cold. What are you doing? What’s taking so long?”

  “Keep your knickers on,” Chaela shouted.

  “C’mon, sweetie. You know I never wear any. They just get in the way, ya know?”

  “We’ll be there shortly,” Naero said, laughing. She closed the link.

  “C’mon, you guys,” Chaela told them. “We’d better not keep the Whore of Babylon waiting. You should have never given her this command, En. She was bad enough as a flight leader on The Ajax.”

  “What Saemar does in her private time has always been her own business, Chae. It’s not like any of us can stop her. You know her better than I do. She’s a force of nature.”

  “I sure do. She’s a force of something. Now she’s in full command of a bunch of randy, hot-headed fighter jocks. They’re not just competing with each other for top flight status, but for on-top-of-her status too.”

  Naero lifted both hands. “Be that as it may, she’s doing a great job so far. The rest is up to her. She thanks me all the time and tells me how she’s in heaven. How can that be so bad? Her people love her. They perform for her on levels that are off the charts.”

  Chae rolled her eyes. “Yeah. What’s not to love? Literally. But mark my words, if anyone can find a way to screw herself to death, it’s Saemar. And the female fighter jocks are starting to grumble, saying all the guys get special consideration.”

  Naero shook her head. “All right, I’ll talk to her. That can be dealt with. She can stay Saemar and still find a way to be fair.”