Despite her new craziness, it surprised her how good she felt about the wake after it was all said and done.
It did help. She could focus more. It all didn’t weigh her down so much. She could go forward.
Strangely enough, she felt a desire to spend the day reading. Maybe write some poetry.
After lunch, however, the rigorous Spacer training schedule snapped back into effect.
That day was weapons and small unit tactics.
Jan, being viciously clever and tricky, had a special knack for them.
Naero usually did better on her own than as a unit leader or part of a team. But she recognized that as a weakness in her nature, and struggled to overcome it. The lone wolf bit didn’t always pay off.
Part of her simply didn’t like depending on others who weren’t as adept as she, but it was sometimes good to have mates watching her back.
Naero led her four-person strike squad of Gallan, Saemar, and their other friend Trendan, on a simulated snatch and grab against Jan’s security forces guarding a Corps building.
They got in and got the package–a set of restricted codes–but then alarms went off on their way out.
Jan’s forces outnumbered them three to one. Not good odds.
They got in and got the package, a set of restricted codes, but then alarms went off on their way out.
Jan and his people closed in fast and a pitched firefight erupted.
“You’re boxed in, N. You’d better surrender, sib.”
“He’s right,” Saemar said, returning fire with her machine pistol. “No way out.”
Trendan took a stunbolt, stiffened, and dropped.
Gallan kept firing his heavy pulse SAW. He took out two of Jan’s troops who tried to rush them.
“Better think of something quick,” he shouted.
Naero pulled out a live detonation charge and activated it on the wall.
“Stun grenade!” Saemar yelled.
“Deflector pulse,” Naero said. She set hers and hardly turned around.
The heavy EMP pulse and flash from their personal deflectors barely kept the rest of them from getting stunned when the enemy grenade went off.
Naero glanced back at her detonator. “Keep ’em on. Overload them, now. Burn ’em out.”
“You’re insane; that’s a live charge,” Gallan said. “You’re going to kill us at this range!”
Naero reach over and overloaded Trendan’s deflector as well.
“Break for it after the blast. Shield your eyes.”
The shaped-charge micro-explosion flared, knocking an actual hole through the inner hull wall.
The backblast negated their deflectors and knocked them all into Jan and his unit charging forward for the kill.
“Up. Get up!” Naero shouted, forcing herself to rise against the pains in her battered body and her smoldering strike armor.
Gallan and then Saemar struggled to their feet.
They systematically zapped the shell-shocked enemy as they struggled to rise.
Naero pointed her stun carbine at Jan and kicked his weapon aside.
“Bang. Got you, sib.”
They carried Trendan out the gaping, smoking hole and made good their escape, while real sirens and fire detection alarms sounded.
Aunt Sleak rushed in with a fire suppression team.
She was livid. Her jaw dropped.
“Naero! This is a standard training exercise. What in the holy hell were you thinking? Live explosives? You could have killed someone. And just look at the interior damage to this bulkhead? You put a real live bloody hole in my ship!”
Naero smiled and looked at her team. Then she shrugged. “Some things you just can’t simulate. We improvised. We overcame the odds.
“We won.”
“Well, savor the victory, because heir or not, you’re on report, former leftenant.”
“Report?”
“You heard me. You know this was way out of line. Maybe losing a stripe or two for a while will make you a little less cocky next time. Not to mention stupid. Now assemble your team and move on to the next training exercise. And you’d better believe we’ll address this matter fully during the strategy and tactics analysis session.”
Sleak shook her head at the damage. “Damnation. Somebody repair this blasted hole.”
Naero set her teeth and snapped to attention, saluting smartly.
The rest of her squad followed suit.
“Yes, sir, Fleet Captain, sir.”
“Get out of my sight, you clowns.”
She might get demoted for a few months, but Naero’s friends clapped her on the back for being both brazen and crazy enough to break the rules to get them their win.
Later, when she was studying with Saemar and her other friends, they broke into a running argument concerning the ramifications of her actions, the consequences, and a favorite philosophical hot button: real freedom.
Saemar laughed. “True enough, sweetie, you was free to act, even to use illegal, live explosives in a training exercise. But as our superior, your auntie also has the right to hold you accountable for those same actions, especially when your actions threaten others, and cause significant damage to her property.”
Naero laughed back. “Dad always said that we must aspire to be worthy of our freedom, and responsible for our own lives and actions. Part of being free is to not seek to cause harm to others or enslave them to our will and opinion, even if we are convinced we are absolutely right.”
Saemar reclined back in her gel chair, hands folded behind her head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Well, you didn’t check with me to see if I wanted to get blasted across the room,” she said. “I crashed right into two of Jan’s people. I nearly broke my leg on one of their helmets. I’ll be sore all night and won’t be able to enjoy my nightly exertions as much with whoever, thank you very much.”
“There wasn’t time to take a vote on it.”
“So, then I guess this is a gray area where you decided to make that choice for everyone. Don’t they call that the will of the tyrant, sweetie?”
“I guess so,” Naero said. “To be free, we must allow others to be free, but all within reason of course. Sometimes decisions must be made, and quickly. Freedom is not an excuse for a failure to act.”
“So I guess it was reasonable then to blow us all the hell up?”
“I knew our strike armor and overloading the deflectors would save us…kinda.”
Gallan chuckled. “Glad you did, N. You surprised the holy hell out of me. I like to crapped myself. But you should have seen the look on your sib’s face when he realized he’d lost.”
They all laughed together.
Gallan sighed. “Ahhh...it was classic. But seriously, N. It was a training exercise. So we got stunned. So what? It happens all the time. We don’t have the right to harm or oppress others ourselves by action or inaction. We establish laws and authorities over us to enforce the rational limits we agree to set.”
Naero nodded. “Alright, I admit it. Live explosives don’t exactly fit under the definition of rational limits.”
“Your dad was a philosopher, N. Oops, sorry, sweetie.”
“It’s okay, Saemar. You can talk about him and my mom. Really, it’s all right–all of you. We should talk about them and remember them all we want.”
“But come on, sweetie. Wouldn’t even he agree that if we are reckless or break those laws, we pay the price for those consequences?”
“Yes, but only in a system where the wise temper justice with fair judgment and mercy.” Naero lifted her arms, now missing a stripe of her glowing rank.
“But now this–this is completely unfair. A severe demotion, loss of rank and pay.”
“You aunt said it was only temporary,” Gallan noted. “Just a month or two.”
“Privy to her review.” Naero still sulked.
Gallan patted her arm gently. “Then you’ll be reinstated as a fleet leftenant. The individual enjoys freed
om in an educated, enlightened culture where he or she can excel and expand their talents and abilities. And shows good judgment. Like not blowing crap up.”
“I’m just saying, the punishment didn’t fit the crime. Where’s the justice tempered with mercy in that, abani?”
Yet the culture, like ours, a society of enlightened individuals, has a right and even a duty to sustain and even protect itself from the license, poor judgment, and harmful whims of individuals. No one can just do whatever they think is right, regardless of the potential or real harm to others.”
“No one got hurt, Gallan. Well, not permanently. Maybe banged up a bit.” Naero winced at her own healing bruises.
“Not this time, N. But if your parents were here, they’d side with your aunt. The universe as a whole and societies within it do not exist for certain individuals to flagrantly ignore their reasonable rules and restrictions and impose their will or opinion on others, for good or ill. Where will that lead?
Naero rolled her eyes and threw up her hands.
“Okay, okay. So, I was wrong.”
Gallan pressed his point. “And what does history teach us? Look at the Corps.”
Naero threw up one hand again. “That lies, sophistry, and individual philosophical deceptions always lead to tyranny. Tyrants tie themselves in knots to justify their self-serving actions, fake traditions, and institutions to entrench and perpetuate their tyranny.”
“How does it feel to be a tyrant?”
Naero smiled. “That’s the worst part about it. I’d say it feels pretty damn good. That’s probably why human beings are so addicted to power and so easily seduced by it.”
Saemar sighed and then chuckled. “Heaven help us if you should ever get a ship of your own, sweetheart.”
“You can count on that,” Naero said. “The me getting a ship part, not all that tyranny crap.”
“Oh? And why not?”
Naero stuck up her nose. “For I, like my my father before me, am a philosopher king. Er, queen. No, I’m a queen. Not my father; he wasn’t a queen, I mean.”
Gallan poked her. “I think you’d better quit while you’re behind, your majesty.”
19
The nightmares returned.
Somehow she floated in space, destroying the fleet. Tearing ships apart and scattering the bodies from them like small insects from broken habitats.
The darkness overtook her.
The shape or form of a young man came to her in the cold horror of that devouring darkness.
He was blacker than the night, darker than the darkness itself, his eyes like the cores of singularities. Unlight. A darkness so deep that even light could not escape from it.
“Where are you?” he asked. “You know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Right?”
“Who are you?” Naero asked. “What’s happening to me?”
“We all carry the seeds of the shadow within us. We can control it. We can learn wisdom.”
“Help me.”
“I don’t know how. We don’t even know where or what you are. But your wild energies frighten the universe. Your dark potentials fill the Void itself with despair and threaten all.”
“We?”
Naero’s eyes blinked awake. She lay naked and alone in the darkness of her cabin.
The fifth and final day before they came out of jump later that afternoon.
After PT, their morning studies concentrated on economics and trade, market and investment strategies, review of the ship’s business and projected itinerary.
Thank goodness the weird snakes or whatever popping out of her head were gone. But the insane voice in her head switched to a new chant.
Me. Me, me, me, me…
Like the other one, she did her best to ignore it. but it was still there, droning in the background of her mind.
With the added burden of the increased Spacer security alert, a lot of heated debate erupted among the ship captains and officers as to how they could still best maximize the fleet’s profits while maintaining an increased security profile.
They were still primarily in Triaxian Space, trading deep within the wide open Corps Sectors where almost anything could happen.
If only they were back home, in the Spacer Sectors among the Clans. Or even in Joshua Tech Space close by.
But Naero had helped her parents pweak deals and profits since she was nine. She scanned the manifests. Studied the market patterns on their next five stops.
“Captain Sleak,” she said, “we can’t improve much at Epsilon Sextanis-6; maybe a few points on the textiles and rare minerals. The electronics and machine parts are a loss, I’m afraid. Their markets spiked a few days ago.”
“I noticed that.”
“We can hold them for two jumps or trade for medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, grav equipment, and heavy mining machinery and paramilitary weapons, vehicles and ordnance. Triax has big problems with a serious mining revolt across eleven systems and counting.”
Captain Maradi of The Ardala raised an objection. “Restricted Zones are popping up all around us. That’s not good, however you look at it.”
They haggled over the details for a couple of hours.
Naero made a few other decisions that the captains liked–even Aunt Sleak. And none of them took the fleet into the heart of the mining revolt.
Jan’s suggestions were just the opposite, all over the board. All of them screamed high risk, high profit.
Aunt Sleak remained somewhat more cautious, but she did take calculated risks.
Jan kept trying to convince them to run some of his plan, to no avail.
“We’ve got more than enough to consider here,” Aunt Sleak said. “We’ll post our final decisions on the Clan Net. All crews, take a breather. We’re out of jump in less that two standard hours. Everyone on duty needs to be at their ready stations. Dismissed.”
Naero went back to her quarters to do some laundry and a little more reading before they emerged. With regular effort, her quarters were less of a disaster than usual. She’d kept her bunk and her floor more or less cleared off, and slept in her bunk regularly now, instead of on the floor or in zero-G or a float bag.
And definitely not in her flex chair, as she had for years because she either couldn’t get her bunk panel out or it was too piled up with crap.
Being small had its advantages. She could curl up like a cat and get comfortable almost anywhere for a snooze.
But keeping her quarters in better shape was a promise she made and kept–to herself–and her parents.
They emerged from jump with the customary shuddering of the ship. The fleet spread out into is standard formation, emerging back into real space-time.
Naero punched up their positions on one of her screens, even though she didn’t have bridge duty for several hours.
The Shinai flanked The Dromon on the port side, with The Slipper posted starboard. Their two smaller ships, The Nevada and The Ardala, brought up the rear this time.
A red hot scarlet particle beam, 60mm in diameter, lanced through Naero’s walls like they were paper, disrupting her wallscreens.
A direct hit from a big gun.
At the very least, a heavy destroyer.
Warning lights flashed immediately.
The rupture in the hull led to an immediate explosive decompression.
Naero held on tight to her bunk and went flat on the floor as the hull sealed itself.
All ships were vulnerable coming out of jump. They couldn’t activate their shields until right after they emerged.
Someone had been waiting for them.
The Dromon continued getting rocked by multiple hits from what felt like several spinal guns and secondary batteries.
But the big planetoid could take it and give back plenty, her quad main guns humming and whining to life, coming online.
Naero hit her wristcom. All her screens down.
“Bridge. Status?”
“We stepped into it. They were waiting for us. W
e’re under heavy fire. Multiple bogeys.”
The general alert sounded.
“Battle Stations. Battle Stations.”
Aunt Sleak cut over the com. “All hands. All hands, to your stations. Prepare for battle. All ships, all batteries, return fire. Launch all fighters.”
Naero suited up and raced to the drop bay of her fighter. She met Jan along the way.
More intense fire. Dromon reeled and fired back.
She and Jan almost got rocked off their feet again.
A security team intercepted them at the launching bays.
Their fighters had already dropped with their backup pilots.
“The Fleet Captain wants you two at your secondary defense stations, not out in the mix.”
Jan started to protest.
“Orders are orders. Get to your stations.”
They ran to their remote gunnery stations, small secured cubicles with a chair and a console, operating triple pulse turrets on the hardpoints above them.
Naero brought up her autotargeting displays, weapons already powered up and humming.
The secondary battery gunnery stations operated independently and were well-protected. They were also fully automated, but they still functioned more effectively with a human interface.
Coordinated targeting profiles came online as she watched.
Jan operated a torp turret nearby.
Directly ahead of the fleet. Twelve elite Matayan destroyers, each with a dozen escort fighters.
Half of their number pursued and attacked a convoy of two dozen independent mining freighters.
Aunt Sleak’s fleet scrambled, launched, and deployed a total of threescore fighters in a standard Alpha-Charlie-1 defensive screen.
Outnumbered two to one.
“All batteries make ready. Incoming torps,” the Bridge com sounded.
Countermeasures took out half of the blips heading their way.
Spacer fighters and the forward defensive batteries blasted the rest.
“That attack’s a diversion,” Naero muttered.
Shinai’s fire control and com computers fixed on and monitored all channels. Including those between the hapless freighters and the corsairs.
“Mayday, mayday, we are under intense corsair attack. All ships. Assistance, assistance. Heavy damage and casualties.”
Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run Page 14
