Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run (34 page)

“Even their stars were destroyed in those final confrontations.”

“The Kexx could destroy stars?”

Shalaen nodded. “
For their part, the G’lothc and their minions fought with great ferocity and cunning, to the last ship, to the last being. When it ended, the great enemy lay utterly vanquished and obliterated.

“Yet in doing so,
the intricate cultures of the Drians and the Kexx nearly destroyed themselves as well. Within a handful of millennia after the long war ended, both races vanished mysteriously, without a trace of their passing. It is said among the Yattai that all of Creation still mourns for their loss to this day.”

“What happened to them all?”

“Some say that they sought ascention, to higher planes of existence where their agonies and corruptions from the Vast War could be purged and assuaged. Others say that they took their own lives, driving their great ships into singularities and other powerful phenomena in an effort to end their immense shame, regret, and pain.”

“
Why are you telling me all of this?” Naero said. “What does this have to do with me?”

“
I know that my mother and the other Yattai believed that the Kexxian Data Matrix would not appear again by accident. It’s possible that the Matrix even has a will of its own. Perhaps more than one.”

“It does. I’ve met one of them. One of its guardians, a presence I have named Om.”

Shalaen stared at her. “Yes, I sense him now. Om. Very curious.”

Naero still didn’t know what Om was capable of.

Haisha
, she didn’t even know that much about herself.

And Om was on the verge of tapping into abilities and powers within her that she had yet to explore and master.

“Do you understand the purpose of the Kexxian Matrix, spacechild? The Kexx left it to the universe as a legacy to the younger races, to assist them against oppression and annihilation by excessively violent and greedy forces. Forces such as the G’lothc.”

“
Sounds like the Corps took some lessons from the latter.”

“
That may not be entirely untrue.”

“
What do you mean?” Naero asked.

“
The G’lothc are no more, but even the Yattai now believe that some of their servants survived, perhaps among the Dakkur or the Kahn-Dar. Once again, vast powers from beyond your regions have grown great, and bide their time impatiently. Separated from the worlds you know only by distances of time and space.

“But beware.
When their ambitious gaze turns this way seeking dominion and conquest, they may threaten both Corps and Spacers alike. And it could all happen much sooner than any of us might think. It may have already begun.”

Naero’s head ached. All she wanted was to find Jan again and get them both and their halves of the Kexxian Matrix safely in the hands of Spacer Intel. Then she could pursue her own course and get back to living her own life.

That was all more than enough for now.

“
Well, when that day comes, we’ll talk,” Naero said “But until then, the Gigacorps are our biggest problem. They’re out to absorb as much as they can. But they aren’t going to absorb me and my people, and they aren’t going to get the Matrix.”

“Good,” Shalaen said, releasing her. “
I hope that your people will aid us then, Naero. We are desperate for allies. But first, we all need to survive the turmoil of the next few months.”

“
I’d be happy to survive the next few days. Can you see the future? Can you tell me anything that might help me?”

Shalaen stepped away, shaking her head. “In truth, I only get impressions of things. Just feelings, flashes of insight. Glimpses, really. When I try to focus on the future, s
o much remains unclear, so much uncertain. Prophecy is not dangerous in itself, you see. When push comes to shove, it is the interpretation of foresight, visions, and prophecy that prove perilous.”

Naero pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “Anything would help. I’m just so overwhelmed by all of this.”

“To you, I say this: Your enemies will be more than what they seem. Look clearly.”

“I still have problems accepting it all. None of this seems real.”

“Y
ou need, to develop your innate talents,” Shalaen said. “Otherwise you will wither and consume yourself in the flames to come, blasted away before your destinies like so much dust.”

“Greatttt...How...awesome.”

“Learn patience. That lack is one of your greatest weaknesses, a flaw of the young you can ill afford. Now, before my father returns, may I ask you a few things?”

“About what?”

Shalaen’s face suddenly beamed. Literally. “About your young friend, Tarim.”

“There’s not much to tell. This is what I know.”

Shalaen listened intently. It took only a few moments.

“Thank you,” she said, after Naero finished.
“I feel certain somehow that he will be precious to me during my life. Already he would lay down his life for me, but I cannot let him do so. He must journey with you for a time.”

“I’m not so sure that’s going to be any safer.”

“I adored him from the moment our eyes met, but if we stay together, I feel certain that I will be his death. If you can, will you look after him for me?”

“If I can.” What certainty was there for anyone?

“I know that is foolish of me, but please try. If things get better, I hope to see him again one day. If not, it won’t matter.”

Nevano rushed back in. “Change of plans.
We’re making a run for it, sooner that we thought. Triax is planning something big; we don’t know exactly what. You and your people will be released right before we take off.”

“Let me speak with them. Perhaps we can help.”

“My guards will take you down to detention. Your crew is already on their way there. Your big friend is there. He’s a quick healer, that one.”

“Spacer
smartblood was a marvel of genetic engineering,” Shalaen noted. “Despite the high costs to your race in the beginning. The Corps have never been able to match it.”

“
Let’s hope they never do,” Naero said. “My people stumbled upon it by terrible accident.” She turned to Nevano and held out her hand. “I suppose this is goodbye, then. Thank you, sir.”

“
I suppose so.” Nevano smiled sadly and took her hand, his grip strong but not painful. “There are not many who would take the hand of such a butcher as myself. When you hear worse of me, do not believe all of it.”

Now it was Naero
’s turn to smile. “I will strongly advise my people and any others to help you and the mining rebels if they can. Consider this an alliance with my Clan, if nothing else. Give Triax hell. And don’t feel bad. Remember, I’m a bloodthirsty Spacer terrorist.”

She touched Shalaen
’s face with her fingertips as she went past, not knowing why, feeling the same surge of peaceful energy flow into her once more. “Goodbye, Shalaen. Thanks. Take care of your father.”

“
I will. Remember my words.”

“
Can do. Luck to us all. You’re up against a lot.”

“
More than you know,” Shalaen said. “For now we must part. Both of our struggles go on. Yet we may meet again one day.”

“
I’d like that.”

“One more thing. Your parents loved you and your brothers. They made the decisions they made for you all, and for your people. Their last thoughts were of you before they passed. Honor their memory.”

“I will.” What did she mean “brothers?”

There was no time to ask. They had already split up.

On her way to the detention area, Naero thought of her parents again, and wept a little. If Nevano’s guards noticed, they said nothing.

“
Naero!” a familiar voice called out. She wheeled.

“Gallan!”
She ran to him and hugged him. She took his hand, jumped up and kissed him on the forehead. “Feeling better?”

“Much. Glad to see you, too,
abani
,” he said, grinning. “I came to meet you. They’re going to release the others.”

“
Wouldn’t miss Aunt Sleak’s face when we come to rescue her. The leader of the mining revolt’s letting us go, while he and his people make a break for it.”

“
I take it there’ll be a lot to discuss back on the ship.”

“
You got that right. How are you feeling?”

“Like a million creds.”
He yawned. “Took a nice little rest.”

“
You lazy–”

A tremendous explosion rocked the entire mountain range.

Naero and Gallan fell down in shock, along with the guards. More shocks walked in above them, like the pounding of gigantic hammers.

“
Those are a mass driver strikes.” Gallan said. “Triax means to lay waste to this entire region.”

“They
can’t…”

Gallan’s
frown cut her off.

The Corps
put their interests above all law and morality. Spacers and miners would all get mashed together.

“C’mon,”
Naero said, “We need to get the hell out of here.”

Even as
they turned to run, the miners behind them cried out in terror.

Naero glanced
back over her shoulder into the billowing clouds of dust and debris raining down.

Something dark and menacing ripped through the dust and the miners. Tearing the miners apart
before they could fire their weapons. Parts of bodies and gouts of blood spattered in several directions. More guards dropped back and fired their blasters in unison, before whatever it was fell upon them.

More screams erupted.

Gallan shoved her in front of him. “Run, Naero. Don’t look back.”

A whirling howl of bizarre and frightening origin erupted behind them
.

It swept
closer. Naero felt a twinge in her head.

Extreme danger
from multiple threats. I must have access to our defensive protocols.

More
strikes hit the mountain range. Worse than before.

The cavern buckled
. The thing behind them and the miners vanished under tons of rock and stone. Naero raced toward the detention center.

Yet deep within the rubble, it sounded as though
something ripped through stone, boring through the very rock of the cave-in itself to pursue them.

To get at her
.

39

The blast doors to the detention center opened even as Naero and
Gallan ran up to them. Irith and Aunt Sleak rushed out, dressed in Spacer togs, followed by the captured Intel strike teams.

“
Aunt Sleak, over here!” Naero shouted. She turned to one of the guards. He was trying to listen to what came over his helmet com.

“
Our weapons, our transports–where are they?” Naero demanded.

The man
pointed to several containers. Naero pulled them open, finding them filled with Spacer weapons and gear.

“Gallan
, Naero!” Aunt Sleak said. She quickly embraced them both. “We thought you were dead.” She glanced at Naero’s com band.

“
I should be dead, shouldn’t I?” Naero said. “I’m sure it’s a long story.”

A
nother distant impact shook the area once more, closer this time.

“If we live to argue
about it,” Naero added.

“
Your transports are in the loading bay at the end of this corridor,” the guard told them. “Follow us; we’re on our way out.”

“
Corp raiders have infiltrated the complex,” another guard shouted. “We’re holding them off, but they’re blasting everyone.”

Aunt Sleak racked four high intensity
rounds into her quad-barrel khotgun. “I’d like to see ’em try,” she said with a smile. “Move, move, move, people!”

The Intel
agents fanned out around them in close assault formation. Screams and rapid bursts of many weapons echoed from the loading bay. Several miners pulled back into the corridor, weapons blazing.

The rebels
put up a fierce resistance, but they remained pinned down. Bursts of heavy fire tore into and through the solid rock around them.

“We’re cut off. They’ve taken the loading bay,”
a bleeding miner shouted. “Too many of them. We’re trapped!”

“
Attack strategy Delta-18!” Aunt Sleak shouted.

One of the Intel people act
ivated a device that projected holos of their groups ten meters in front of them.

At first t
he holos drew the bulk of the enemy fire, allowing the Spacers and miners to burst into the loading bay right behind.

They
split off into three-person fire teams, picking and popping targets at will.

In the midst of the chaos, four Ejjai in partial blast armor sprang at Aunt Sleak. The slugs from their weapons
rebounded off her personal deflector field, barely forcing her back.

Naero picked off the foremost with an aimed headshot.

Aunt Sleak took out two more with double blasts from her khotgun. The last Ejjai raced at her, an alpha female with a short sword in her other hand.

Personal s
hields didn’t stop blades.

The Ejjai alpha was fast. Naero
’s hurried shot barely grazed her. The alpha sprang at Aunt Sleak with a with a roar.

Aunt Sleak
dropped her empty khotgun and swept out her energy cutlass in a flash.

S
words descended in killing strikes. They crashed into each other, sparks blazing.

Aunt Sleak dove to one side
, still slicing.

The energy blade cut the Ejjai a
lpha to pieces, gore splattered all over their transports. The scent of blood and fire thick and rank in the air.

Naero stared at Aunt Sleak,
a metal sword impaled straight through her shoulder. The muscled arm of the Ejjai still hanging from the hilt.

“
That was close,” Aunt Sleak said.

Irith cut the sword off on either side of the wound with a microtorch
and sealed both sides of the wound.

“
Leave that chunk of blade in there for now,” she said. “You’ll lose too much blood if we take it out.”

Aunt Sleak nodded, wincing at the pain. She leaned on Naero until two other
Spacers picked her up and ran to the transport with her.

In less than a minute, the raiders
holding the launching bays had been put down, while miners and Spacers alike scrambled for their craft.

“
We’re ready!” Irith shouted from
Lobo-3F
. Spacers converged on the transport and filed in.

Packed ships and c
raft launched without warning, nearly colliding with each other in the panic to escape.

A Shadowforce officer shouted to the miner commandos, pointing at two huge battered suits of power armor standing empty against the wall.

“Can any of you operate those tank suits?”

The leader of the miners shook his head, reloading. “No. We captured them, but none of us ever learned how. We could sure use them now. We ain’t gonna last here very long.”

There wasn’t enough time to get the ships out.

Naero
watched in growing horror.

Gallan
and the Intel officer didn’t hesitate.

Both of them climbed into the old battlesuits, activating field-level defensive screens
, covering the main corridor, the launch bays, and hundreds of miner commandos.

“Gallan!”
she shouted, “What are you doing? Come on. Get out of there!”

M
iners screamed in terror. “Here they come!”

“Get your people through,”
Gallan yelled, charging his cannons. “Then blast the enemy to hell. We gotta hold this corridor while the rest of the ships launch.”

Miners streamed through, frantic with terror, trampling anyone who fell in front of them, man, woman, or child. All
of them desperate to reach the transports.

“
Haisha
!” Gallan said. His eyes got big as he read what was coming on the sensors.

Then he caught the rapidly approaching glow on visuals. “
Get back. Incoming. Fire in the hole!” The Intel agent and the miners took cover to either side.

An instant later, a tremendous blast knocked Naero
and others flat. A scarlet blizzard of meat and bone swallowed up screams of the refugees still caught in the tunnel.

A gout of intense flame and heat followed, roaring out of the corridor, sucking up the air.

Like a taste of hell itself.

Naero lifted her head up from the floor and shrieked at her
friend. “Gallan!”

Destruction imminent.

He gave her a last look, a sudden intense look.

The rear guard wouldn’t make it out
.

But some of the remaining ships still might
.

Gallan
was her true friend.

Naero
had very few true friends.

Her heart tumbled and scorched its way through her like a burning hot coal.

Gallan grinned, nodded back at the last ship to her, and then focused all of his attention on the tunnel.

He
poured fire from his heavy blaster cannons into the corridor in controlled bursts, driving back and disrupting the advancing Triaxian Marine heavies.

“Here they come again.
Pour it at ’em!” she heard him shout.

Naero got up to run
to his side.

Two
agents grabbed her arms and dragged her back. She punched one and kicked another. Almost got free.

Klyne nailed her with a
jolt from a neural paralyzer. She spasmed and froze up, then went limp.

She could still see
, her vision blurred, Gallan fighting side-by-side with the Shadowforce agents and miner commandos.

While Klyne and others
dragged her up the loading ramp.

The sheer ferocity of fire from the enemy pushed and blasted
Gallan and the others back from the opening.

The
Intel officer took the brunt of it on his shields, got torched. He went down.

Gallan
overloaded his deflectors full front, still jacked into the charging lines, and stepped directly into the teeth of the enemy fire.

Naero’s craft lifted off and pulled away as if in slow motion
.

Gallan’s overtaxed shields shimmered and held in
in front of him.

The miners
rallied behind, firing and tossing grenades and mining charges.

Multiple explosions rocked the launch bay, obscuring almost everything in swirling clouds of dust and debris.

Another enemy assault drove the defenders back again, just as the remaining ships fled.

Gallan’s cannons whirred and clicked empty.

He activated his suit’s bright humming energy blades close-up.

He crouched, ready to fight
, and charged forward, bright blades flashing through the air in Spacer attack patterns.

He cut through a squad of enemy Marines in heavy assault armor, slashing and hacking them to pieces.

Before the transport ramp doors slammed shut, Naero saw the large whip-like terror from the cavern leap upon her big friend out of a sheer torrent of expanding dust and enemy fire.

In the haze and smoke, it was a green-yellow blur. But she caught one glance of its thick head, horribly scarred with deep hash marks of slashes and lines.

Gallan got one stab in, and another deep cut.

The thing
tore his armor apart and fell upon him, impossibly strong and fast.

The miners withered like chaff before the firestorm once
Gallan went down.

She heard
him cry out once.

The transport
doors latched and sealed.

Her ship pulled away up into the atmosphere.

Whatever that thing was, it worked for Triax.

It
just killed her best friend.

Naero swore her vengeance silently
. Fists clenched, chest heaving. Tears rivered down her face. She shook, still somewhat paralyzed.

Through the view screens, she saw a
dozen Triaxian fighters suddenly swarm at them and the other helpless transports from out of the clouds.

Just as suddenly, the
enemy fighters lost power and tumbled away.

“What the hell was that?”
Klyne yelled. “Those bogies had us cold.”

Shalaen
, Naero thought.

The sky swarmed with miner ships and transports, desperate to escape Hadar-1
in any direction.

“
Make for the ocean!” Aunt Sleak said. “The coordinates for the tertiary rendezvous site are loaded under Epsilon-Option-91.”

Naero thought about
Gallan, about her parents, but her mind floated in a haze of shock. Too much horror and loss to fully process and concentrate.

O
ut the view screens, she watched as not all of the miners escaped. Despite Shalaen’s efforts, many miner craft fell under attack as they dispersed. Sent spinning and burning back to the surface, filled with screaming, dying refugees.

Such was war, prosecuted by Triax and the Corps.

Naero closed the blast shutters, closed her eyes, and bowed her head for a moment, only imagining the screams still echoing in her troubled mind.

Gallan’s final scream before he died
.

They penetrated the surface of the water, and travelled submerged for a long while until t
hey met up with
The Rio Lobo
.

Once b
ack on board, they prepared for immediate departure.

“
Clean up and prepare to be boarded,” Klyne shouted. “We have clearance to leave, but Triax has two entire fleets surrounding this system now. They won’t let anyone through without a look-see, of that I’m certain.”

When they were set,
The Rio Lobo
departed the planet.

As Klyne guessed, two destroyers, a light cruiser, and seven fighters moved immediately to intercept
them.

They beamed their c
learance to depart at the naval forces, but the cruiser fired a blast from one of its big spinal guns directly in front of them, nearly taking off their nose.

The
enraged boarding party silently and violently shoved them around violently, and tore up half of the ship. But in the end, everything checked out, so the officer reluctantly gave the all-clear sign.

She and her
pissed-off troops left without a single word or apology.

Aunt Sleak
had already prepared to jump before they were gone.

Naero watched as the beleaguered miners tried to flee, their ships staggering into jump, as the Triaxian fleet bore down on them.