Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run (15 page)

“
What are you gonna say?”

“
I’ll think of something. We loved them. They’re gone. What’s there to say? You okay, Jan?”

He shook his head.
“I dunno. I feel so weird. Ever since that long medtest for that plague, I’ve been having these awful headaches, and really weird dreams. Like someone’s been torturing me–for years. Pretty scary stuff. Sometimes, sib…I think I’m losing it.”

Naero put her arm around him as they floated.
“I’ve been having similar problems. We’re stressed out. We need to work through it and keep it together. Just remember the good times. That helps.”

Jan started laughing. Then he covered his face.
“Mom was such a terrible cook.”

Naero sobbed and caught herself, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Dad wasn’t much better. Good thing they hired some good ones to work the galleys and mess halls.”

The two of them hung upside down against the wall like a couple of old Terran bats and cried together. Their tears floated out around them, bobbling like crystal gems.

Naero reached out and took her brother’s hand.

Jan squeezed back. Both of them broke down.

In spiral, it was okay. No one bothered them. No one judged them or any of their actions.

*

After a few hours of updated gunnery and fighter simulation training that evening following dinner, Jan snoozed at his comp tutor, mildly drooling on his arm. Their screens were the only glowing lights in the darkened library.

Naero finished up her own work.

Go figure.

Jan lived and breathed advanced math and
interstellar physics.

History and system archeology put him to sleep. He couldn
’t care less about all of the various known cultures and races in the galaxy.

Humans and near humans:
gray-skinned Besh and their small ears. Red-skinned, tough Ramorians from the mining sectors. Matayans. Naivatch and their dark purple skins and strange culture. Furry, leopard-spotted Mahri and their tapered, tufted ears. Silesians and their sonorant throat bags. Zotchans and their floating hair tendrils that they used to sense and communicate with. Quick, tiny Piettos that stood only as high as your knee or hip.

True aliens, some of them not even humanoid in any way.
Sleek, agile, cat-like Mndar. Feathered bird-like Quess in astonishing varieties, stoic and wise. Gigantic but gentle Moh-Karran, five meters tall with multiple eyes and tentacles. Blobby, floating, gelatinous Blurgs and their glowing brains.

Just as exhausted
, but being Jan’s opposite, Naero ate up anything about alien worlds and their ways. Her parents’ love of alien cultures, archaeology, and exploration lived on in her heart.

Reality
; always better than fiction.

She
poured through captured classified Corps text-only files, centuries old, about the lost Ku-Shai, and the bizarre alliance between the two odd races. A unique partnership that led them to sustain an empire for over three thousand millennia.

Too bad the Corps
stumbled upon them during a period of decline.

After several disastrous wars
–bad for both sides–the Corps banded together as they had never done before and had never done since, to eradicate nearly every trace of the Ku-Shai from the known universe.

Spacer
s had no further contact with them. The eradication all took place in Corps space.

S
he couldn’t even find a picture, a vid, or even a description of what the two species looked like. The Corps did their insidious best to wipe out all information on them from all archives for some reason, and make it appear as if they had never existed.

All of their history, art, culture
–everything. Completely deleted.

The Corps
simply couldn’t withstand any serious competition in their sectors, alien or otherwise.

Would they do the same thing to
Spacers one day? Re-write history to make them vanish? Only time would tell.

Strangely enough, t
here was even still a bounty on Ku-Shai. Despite the fact that none had been sighted or known to exist for many decades.

Jan snore
d louder. Naero finally quit when she began to nod off herself. She dumped Jan into his quarters, and stumbled back to her own to pass out.

16

Naero dreamed and mused in flows of poetry and emotion.

Then her nightmares returned, more real and horrifying than ever.

This time, she dreamed about murdering her friends.

She stalked them one by one and cut them down, shot them, throttled them, or crushed their pleading faces as they begged.

The dream was terrifying, chilling, and secretly exhilarating.

She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t break free and wake up.

Was this really in her
?

Part of her insanity
?

They kept trying to get away. She shot Gallan in the back and gunned him down, shooting him to pieces with a blaster.

He died with his head twisted around, staring up at her in shock and terror.

Why
?

Then she went after Ja
n, stalking her brother in the Spiral, slaughtering anyone who came her way. He looked so afraid.

Orbs of blood everywhere. Her arm and knife hand dripping with gore. She was splattered with it.

Get away, Jan!

A blast of blinding light caused her to draw back.

A female form took shape, comprised entirely of light, her hair like white-hot plasma, her eyes like the flare of pulsars.

Naero could barely look at her.

The glowing girl stood radiant and defiant before her, interposing a glittering hand to stop her. Her voice rang out.

“
Who are you? What and where are you? Is this what you want? Is this what you want to become? Choose carefully.”

Naero snapped
straight up in her bunk.

“
No!” she shouted.

She covered her face with her hands and slipped back down.

Haisha
! The only thing she had to console her were the happy faces of her dead parents on her walls.

They both had taught her so much. They’d taught her everything she knew.

They were her mind, her heart, her hands. They had taught her to look out and to see. To touch, taste, listen, smell, and fell. To learn and do. To crawl, stand, walk, run, and climb. To tumble and fall, get back up, and keep trying and going forward until she could go no more.

They were her head, heart, and hands. Her wings. They had taught her not just to fly, but to soar.

They had taught her how to protect and defend herself and all that she loved.

With great passion and controlled violence should the need arise, in a dangerous and uncertain universe. As borne out in their own fates.

Five bells gently sounded.

Naero and the crew spent the
second day after morning PT in more flight simulation of various types of craft and vehicles.

Of course,
she and Jan relished piloting the simulation programs of all the great starfighters throughout history to the present.

T
ogether they were an almost unbeatable team.

Only Zalvano and Aunt Sleak could take them on, and even then it
stayed a pretty fair fight.

Naero and Jan spent a lot of their extra time in the simulators, making sure they could fly most of the major
rigs available to both Corps and Spacers.

Their obsession paid off big time against anyone who chose to take them on.

Naero spent her down time later that day taking it easy in her quarters. Still moping.

Cleaning took a
little while. Not much, really, just the stuff off the floor. Yet even that made her cabin seem bigger all of the sudden.

She watched some silly vids with half-interest, romantic comedies or action-adventure dumps.

She got out the oldfashioned journal her dad had given her. The one that could erase or archive any sketches or writings put on the pages.

The last entry she made was from before her parents departed. For the last time.

Naero hadn’t known that then.

Her parents were always overly concerned about unintentionally bringing back some kind of deadly unknown alien plague or super virus from their explorations.

They had forced her and Jan to take all kinds of routine, boring medical scans. Some took over an hour.

Of course, they all turned up absolutely nothing.

The Cumi–one meter tall mouse-like aliens and their medteks who partnered with her parents–repeatedly gave them totally clean bills of health. Plague- and virus-free.

As usual, Naero had been furious with her parents for wasting her precious time again. She had fumed at them the whole while.

Instead of telling them how much they meant to her.

Naero fished out a pen and tried to write a new poem in her journal. But the words kept dying in her mind.

Her father had been a fairly decent poet, actually. He even had a few collections circulating among the Clan literary circles. But they never got much serious attention. Naero smiled.

The Poet-Warrior. The Philosopher-King.

Her father always said that they should strive to become just that. That was what the universe truly needed. The wise and harmonious mind of the inventive artist and benevolent leader to guide people into the future. Not just for the benefit of the self, but for the mutual benefit of all.

When she found herself staring at the pictures of her parents flashing by on the walls and crying too much, she decided to break out.

It dawned on her that she was famished. Naero stared at her delusional hands with their added fingers. She might as well put them to good use.

It was already late night when she snuck into the mess hall galley to cook for herself. Unlike her parents, she had drawn enough duty with the cooks to learn how to prepare several dishes that she and her family and friends cherished.

Naero made a small pot of seafood chowder in a nice creamy white sauce. A few of the ingredients she had to program in the food synthesizer. Potatoes and fresh lobster, scallops, and crab meat.

She ate it in a small, hollowed-out loaf of soft, orange Dovanian sweet bread, with the bread chunks and tiny salted crackerlets that always went so well with soups.

Gallan found her in the mess hall, eating there alone. She smiled at him. He pulled out the large spoon he always kept with him, like a knife fighter drawing a battle blade.

He sat down across from her, helping her finish the soup and then the loaf itself, tearing off delicious, soggy pieces.

“I love it when you cook,” he said. “This is so good, N. I think you should be a chef.”

“
Yeah. That’s my dream.” She stood up and smirked. “To be a cook.”

The uneasy silence opened the gulf between them once more.

This time, Gallan said his piece.

“
Naero, I’m sorry about your folks. Everyone loved and respected them. They treated me like I was your brother.”

Naero touched his hand. “You are,
abani
. You’re just like Jan to me. You always have been, since we were little.” Abani was a Ramoran word that Naero liked to use with Gallan–a term of great respect an endearment, for one’s closest family and best mates.

“
I know. I feel the same way. I’d do anything for you, Naero. I...I know how much you must be hurting. Is there anything I can do?”

Naero shook her head
and leaned against him briefly. “No. There’s nothing I can do either. Just keep being my friend. That’s all. Stand by me.”

“
I can do that. Always will.”

17

Third day
came.

Finally, a break from the nightmares.

Naero woke up and checked her hands first thing.

E
xtra fingers? Gone, thank goodness.

What would it be next? She shuddered to think.

After PT, they studied biology, medicine, healing, and advanced first aid. The fleet surgeons, medics, nurses, and first response teams kept them updated on the latest med tek. The instructors broke the students off into rescue teams, and finally worked with them one-on-one in various scenarios, dealing with different kinds of emergencies.

Some of the scenarios were live training with casualty holograms and robotic simulators, or others were Spacers pretending to have certain illnesses or injuries.

Naero ran into Danaldi again, the young flirt from the spiral, pretending to have a Vegaran throat parasite.

Naero winked at him. He blushed.

Gallan, who was a particularly and astonishingly terrible actor, kept busting up everyone in his exercise into suppressed laughter. Even the instructors.

Despite his fake, slap-on blaster wounds to the chest and abdomen.

She had lunch with several friends. Saemar brought Chaela, her foot in a regeneration cast. Chae was just glad to be mobile once more.

On her own, back in her quarters after lunch, Naero struggled to figure out what she’d say at her parents’ wake that night.

She sat down and tried to recall and write down everything they ever taught her.

In desperation, s
he turned off the gravity in her quarters.

Somehow she found it easier to think in
zero-G.

Even that didn
’t help.

She floated and bobbed about with all her junk that wasn
’t locked down. Mostly crumpled sheets of paper with false starts and goofy rambling. Snatches that babbled on for too many pages.

She read some of her ideas out loud to herself.

“Freedom. Freedom is the most import gift and treasure my parents ever gave to me. It’s the most important thing anyone has. We should never trade or give it away–whether for security, wealth, access, or power. Anyone or anything that tries to take any part of our freedom away from us makes themselves our enemy.”

She stopped herself again.

“Wow. Now I sound like my dad expounding on his soapbox.” Just like that in fact. When she was young she could listen to him expound, going on and on for hours.

Or at least until she fell asleep.

What she wouldn’t give now to hear his deep, rumbling, authoritarian voice again. He could go on about whatever he wanted to. And she would look up into his intense, wise face, and watch and listen.

She would not fall asleep this time.

If only she could be with him again, see him, and smile up at him.

Even into
their teens, their father would find her or Jan asleep at the education screens, studying, or working late on some task. He’d scoop them up gently into his huge arms as if they weighed nothing, and carry them to their bunks to tuck them in.

At times she was only half-
asleep, and waited patiently for her turn, still and smiling.

He
’d shush any crew they came across not to wake them, even her mom. Often her mom would follow along.

Her parents usually kissed their foreheads lightly before they left.

Other times, they’d stand smiling for a while, just watching their kids breathe peacefully before they secured the panels, making sure she and Jan were safe.

Several times she swore she saw tears slip down her father
’s face as he smiled down at them.

Their dad was big guy.

They were like dolls in his arms.

But he was the one who checked on them each
and every night, without fail.

Tarthan Wallace Ramsey: The A
nnihilator, Heavyweight Champion Fighter of the Galaxy. A devoted lovesick giant of a husband and father.

A gentle pushover for his family.

How could she explain to anyone what her father meant to her? What her parents meant to her?

The white fire of her mother
’s quiet, indomitable spirit.

What both her parents meant to her and Jan?

How to speak of all that from the heart, without losing it and simply bawling.

Perhaps tears were meant to be.

But Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted that.

They
had lived every day to the limits, pushing themselves, driving everyone in their crews to be their best and pursue their dreams, helping them if they could along the way. They shared their profits generously with their fleets and crews. Paid better than the best wages for the best people.

They
’d helped everyone, never held anyone back.

Most of their commanders and officers went on to have their own ships, even their own fleets
like Aunt Sleak. Many of their friends joined their ill-fated expedition to the Unknown Sectors, standing by them to the end.

And her parents had adored each other. Even in their late forties, their passion for each other and their joint dreams to explore the beyond still burned bright.

Naero was proud of them. They had gone out fighting side by side against impossible odds, living their dreams. Even dying for them.

She suddenly stopped and blinked.

Perhaps that’s what she should say. Give voice to all the beauty and poetry about them and their lives that would always live on. That lived and danced around in her head, mingled with joy and sorrow.

In a way, few could be so lucky.

She still missed them.

Time raced by. She slowly lowered herself and all her trash to the floor, cleaned
up her cabin and herself, brushed her long dark hair that fell to her waist, and got into her dress blacks and boots.

Jan arrived at her door to collect her, wearing his best uniform.
He looked so handsome.

Together, they made their way to the Grand Hall on board
The Dromon,
where nearly fifteen hundred people of Clan Maeris awaited their arrival. Her parents were famous throughout the Clans and all the known systems. Their funeral would be transmitted far and wide.

No pressure there.

Along the way, honor guards with gleaming swords and polished energy rifles snapped to attention and saluted them, honoring Clan Maeris and the memory of their parents.

The huge blast doors to the Grand Hall stood wide open.

Traditional Spacer music filtered out. Oldfashioned, folksy thiolin and string music, accented by pipes and drums.

A romantic blend of stirring flight tunes and old romantic ballads that most
Spacers knew. Some of them even old Spacer shanties and drinking songs. Many voices sang along.

Her parents enjoyed singing and dancing, and often sang aloud whenever and wherever they wished.

A Spacer wake was a celebration of the lives of those who had passed and taken the final journey, the final jump into the Unknown.

Pictures and videos, and holos of her parents flashed by and cycled on the remembrance walls
, collected from many sources.

Anything from them as children, their many accomplishments, their courtship during their championship fighting days, their wedding, and them as parents themselves.

The latest shots were of them overseeing the construction of
The Omaria
, named after the great Spacer explorer Shelan Omaria, a distant ancestor of Clan Maeris and most Spacers.

Then the launching of the exploration flagship, and the assembly of its fleet.

Their fleet setting out on one of their missions.

INS
interviews with them and officers of the exploration fleet, marking the historic occasion of them blasting off, beyond the deep range detection buoys of known space.

Into the vast Unknown Sectors,
more than three quarters of the unexplored galaxy.

Mysterious uncharted regions that swallowed up ships and entire naval fleets, and never gave them back.

And did so again.

Naero gasped when the crowds parted and she
first spotted the coffins.

A shudder rippled through
her. She dropped Jan’s hand and rushed up to them.

Twin obsidian coffins, their edges rounded, polished to mirror finishes and decorated with gold letters. Her parents
’ names, their clan and fleet rankings and their many, lifetime accomplishments.

The flags and banners of the
forty-nine Clans and their fleets hung at half position, in honor and respect for the dead.

Naero touched the closest casket
–her mom’s.

I
t startled her when it went from opaque to transparent.

Shining within, she saw what could only be a holo of her mother’s small body in her admiral blacks, lying there at peace. As if she were only sleeping.

As if she might open up her eyes and–

Naero
backed away and gasped. She almost sobbed.

Then
her temper flared; she snarled like an animal.

She pointed at the coffin.
“This is wrong. It’s a lie. They’re not in there. Where is Aunt Sleak?”

Jan tried to calm her down. She pulled violently away from his hands on her arms.

“They’re not really in there,” Naero insisted, almost in a panic. “Who ordered this charade?”

Aunt
Sleak jumped down the ten meters from the balcony as if it were a step off. She rose up tall, elegant, and cold in her captain’s long dress coat and high boots.

A
gilded energy cutlass decorating her hip. A sign of high honor and rank in the Clans.

“
Calm yourself, Naero. I didn’t know this would–”

“
You didn’t think this would upset me? I can’t see them again. I will never see them again. They’re not really in there. We didn’t retrieve anything. I’ve lost every part of them. Forever.”

Aunt
Sleak clamped a hand of steel on Naero’s arm for an instant.

“
Walk with me, Naero. That’s an order. Do not cause a scene. Not here. Not now.”

Naero shuddered, took a deep breath, unclenched her fists, which were shot down at her sides, and followed orders.

They walked on alone together, away from where the crowd was gathered. At last her aunt broke the silence.

“
You may yet be a captain yourself one day. Then you will learn that wakes and funerals aren’t just for Clan and crew who have passed on. They’re milestones for everyone, even for the dead themselves, and not just for the immediate survivors. People die all the time. This is part of life, and it must be cherished and celebrated.”

Naero stopped and point
ed back behind them. “Those coffins, are empty.”

Her aunt turned slowly to face her.

“Of course they are. Everyone understands that. It’s a standard procedure for bodies not recovered, for remains that can’t be recognized. A file holo of the departed shows them as they were. At peace now. As people should remember them. We can do nothing more for them, Naero. Yet we can respect their memories, adore them in honor, and take strength from their accomplishments and the way they lived. Their love for us, each other, and ours for them. It is fitting and proper that we do these things.”

Naero suddenly realized that she had
misread everything and grossly overreacted. Like a fool, like a child, like a total idiot.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, taking in a deep breath.

She actually went down on one knee. “I…apologize. I thought only of myself and my own selfish grief. I’ve always avoided wakes.”

Aunt Sleak walked to one side and smiled sadly.

“
Your parents were beloved by many, Naero. And not just in the Clans. They belong to the galaxy. In ways that I never will. Many more knew and respected them for who and what they were. What they represented. Courage. Compassion. Hope. Love. They lived a great passionate love story for all to see, and went forward not to conquer, but to know. To make our times better by them being among us, not worse. The universe is much poorer without them in it.”

Naero bit her lip and nodded.
“Again, I most humbly apologize. I can see now that you have only the highest respect and admiration for them. And that all of this clearly honors them and their lives.”

Aunt Sleak nodded.
Then, the most surprising thing of all, she pulled Naero up, flung her arms around her, and held her close.

“
I loved her. I loved my sister, Naero. For all that we fought over and disagreed about over the years, I would have gladly given my life in exchange for Lythe’s, and your father’s, a thousand times over. I loved them both. They live in my heart to this second; them, and all they stood for.”