Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run

by Mason Elliott

  At the station Naero felt the heat pouring out from the open counter. A tall, lanky human female pecked at a handcomp. The Station Manager, surrounded by eight huge Sterodan bodyguards.

  Corps Sterodans, fighters and gladiators pumped up on genetic muscle enhancers. Anywhere from two to three meters tall. Enormous torsos, arms, and necks rippling with muscles that made their heads look puny.

  Not particularly cunning or fast, but incredibly strong. Strength that even Naero feared.

  Naero’s father had referred to them as “pukk-heads” from his fighting days: a Spacer term referring to a nasty boil or infection. Rumor held that Sterodans were so stupid because they had very little brains left, just pus-like pukk in their skulls.

  Then the supervisor’s throat bag swelled.

  Naero corrected her assessment to the Station Manager being a Silesian female, arguably the most annoying of all sentient, near-human humanoids.

  “You there, dummy,” the supervisor shouted. “Stop your fucking staring and give me your fucking manifest chip. We don’t have time for fucking sightseers.”

  One of the Sterodans held out a gigantic, passive hand.

  Naero ignored him and tossed the manifest chip onto the Station Manager’s desk in front of her.

  The supervisor glared at Naero and snarled. “You stinking, little gash. Dump your fucking load and get your stinking, fucked-up crew off of my dock. Your ship is on report.”

  Another freight shuttle settled down to the left of theirs.

  “Are you finished?” Naero shouted back, not intimidated in the least. Silesians were masters of intimidation, and only respected the same in kind. “You listen to me, you putrid heap of rotting filth. Me and my crew came here to finish our deal. I don’t want any grief from you, or your freaks and goons.”

  “Is that so?” the Station Manager responded with a smile. She hurled the chip back at Naero. Naero caught it.

  “Lucky for you this all checks out. Now listen up runt, because I’m only gonna say this once. Get your draining holes out of my sight. And if you don’t like it, you and your boss can suck the shit out of my ass.” The Silesian burst out laughing until she choked. “Hah-hah. I love using that one. It just makes my day.”

  Naero laughed with her. She and her friends backed away.

  “That’s a good one. I’m gonna have to remember it,” Naero said.

  The crew from the other transport began to unload.

  A twinge raced through Naero.

  Her old intuition, like before Om awoke in her mind.

  Had that been him all along, trying to warn her?

  Naero, I’m sensing a large number of military grade weapons nearby.

  She scanned the area.

  A Joshua Tech transport that just landed didn’t seem to hold any cargo.

  Just packed with miners.

  All of them heavily armed.

  36

  “What the hell?” the Silesian manager yelled. She pointed at Naero and her crew, caught right in the middle. “It’s an attack. They’re in on it. Blast them all!”

  The miners charged forward, screaming.

  Naero and her friends scrambled to reach their craft in the confusion, but quickly found themselves cut off.

  “Hold it,” the apparent, rebel leader’s voice boomed through a voice amplifier. “Nobody move!”

  Everyone moved.

  Weapons barked and pulsed.

  An intense firefight erupted.

  The alpha female of the Ejjai sprang through the air at Naero and her people.

  She shot Gallan in the back point-blank.

  Ellis and Tarim tried to defend him and got swatted to either side.

  The slug opened up a ragged flesh wound in Gallan’s side.

  He swept up with a kick, knocking the slug-pistol from the Ejjai’s hands, flinging her into the rushing mob.

  Gallan grunted in pain and went down.

  The outer energy barrier protecting the mining compound collapsed across its entire length.

  The rebels swept most of the battle toward the objective of the manager’s station.

  Naero rolled free and came up fighting, blaster pistol in one hand, battle blade in the other.

  The Station Manager backed up behind the Ejjai and her Sterodans, pale and frantic, shrieking into her com, her throatbag quivering in terror.

  “They’ve broken through across all sectors. Send gunships. Troops. Cut them all down. Just get me the fuck out of here!”

  An Ejjai fell back on top of the Silesian, its legs blasted off by an explosive round to the groin.

  The manager pushed the dying creature off her and scrambled for its weapon.

  Miners swept over her, beating her senseless.

  Naero had a moment’s respite in the chaos.

  She checked Gallan. Ellis and Tarim tended the wound. With treatment, he might survive.

  Then another Ejjai sprang at her.

  The alpha female rose up from a knot of bodies and slew its way toward their position to get at them again. It scooped up a fallen pulse rifle, murder burning in its eyes.

  Naero activated her concealed gravwing and flew over her friends. She fired a pulse blast right into the bared teeth of the foremost Ejjai. The back of the creature’s head exploded into pink shards and brain vapor.

  She wheeled in the air, booted the corpse aside, and met the charge of the prime female. It sprang up to bring her down.

  With the added weight, they spun toward the ground and slammed into the crowd. A stray stun blast hit Naero’s gun hand, knocking her pistol away.

  She kicked the Alpha Ejjai square in the jaw, breaking its charge. She shattered half of the creature’s teeth with a rocking impact, snapping its thick neck back.

  Naero grabbed the hot bore of the Ejjai’s pulse rifle with her gloved hand, slashed the creature’s other claw around the pistol grip and trigger.

  The flesh of her own hand sizzled, scorched badly. Yet she wrenched the rifle away and flung it off to one side.

  The Alpha Ejjai roared in pain and body-blocked her. One claw grazed her arm and ribs.

  They separated into fighting stances.

  The Ejjai drew a short stabbing sword and a punch dagger. Naero drew another battle blade. She snapped the extended spike handle open to make it into a short stabbing spear.

  They charged again.

  “Going to gut you,” the alpha snarled.

  Naero ducked a vicious angle cut from the short sword.

  “Going to eat your heart and liver while you’re still screaming!”

  Naero slashed her snout, then jabbed the spear into her lungs.

  “I don’t think so,” Naero said. This creature would kill her friends, just like the slave woman she saw murdered.

  She couldn’t allow that.

  The alpha Ejjai staggered back, then attacked again.

  Both stood their ground, fighting close in.

  Slices, cuts, and stabs pelted her. Naero blocked and parried and gave back better.

  Now she understood the Ejjai rep for toughness.

  For several moments she fought the alpha toe-to-toe, dealing serious and deadly blows and wounds that would have dropped most other opponents.

  The Ejjai grunted and bled, but kept at her.

  Naero slipped her battle blade under the alpha’s ribs. Knifed deep into the creature’s lungs and finally its heart. The Ejjai gasped and vomited blood, still ripping at her.

  Naero flipped them up into the air and dragged her foe down, ramming her short spear through one eye and into the brain.

  At last the alpha female went limp, reduced to a mutilated pile of steaming meat.

  Naero looked up and saw several more Ejjai leaping toward them.

  Shots rang out behind her, rapid-fire.

  Well-placed hits nailed the first six Ejjai, snapping them down with careful precision.

  A tsunami of rebel bodies and concentrated fire swept away the rest.

  Rebels had th
e Station Manager completely stunned and trussed up by then.

  Naero rushed back to her friends.

  “Good shootin’, Tarim. How’s Gallan doing?”

  Tarim shook his head, slinging his collapsible scoped carbine over his back. “Not so good. He needs more help than we can give him. I think there’s internal bleeding.”

  What she wouldn’t give for a medbed.

  No chance of that here.

  “Come on, guys. We have to get him back on the transport and try to get out of here. Don’t attract any attention.”

  Together they dragged Gallan back toward their transport.

  “Irith,” she said quietly over her com. “Open the loading doors just enough for us to get in. We’ve got Gallan, but he’s hurt.”

  No one paid much attention to them yet.

  “I see you,” Irith said. “I’ve alerted the ship. Signal as soon as you’re secure, and I’ll blast us out of here.”

  “Hurry, load up as much as you can,” a commanding voice shouted nearby.

  She looked over at a short, nondescript man of medium build, perhaps in his late thirties. He wore the emitter, broadcasting his reverberating voice all over the area. He wore his receding black hair plastered to his skull as if oiled. His skin had a reddish tint to it.

  “The gunships will be on us shortly,” he announced calmly. He pointed in the direction of Lobo-3F.

  “Commandeer that craft and any others. Load up. Keep families together if possible. Tell the rest of our people to scatter into the wilds where others will attempt to pick them up or hide them. We’ll blast a way through the defenses on our way out.”

  Naero suddenly realized that the craft the rebels rushed to commandeer was hers.

  Haisha. This could not be happening.

  “Hey you,” she shouted at the rebel leader.

  In an instant, more than forty guns were trained on her.

  The rebel leader and his small motley entourage came toward her and her friends.

  No way they could sneak back into their ship now.

  The man had fierce gray eyes, hard as steel, but a soft fleshy red face that made him look almost childlike. But his nose curved like a hawk’s beak. He resembled a predator.

  “That’s my craft,” Naero said. “My friend’s injured. He needs help back up on our ship.”

  The leader turned away from her, glancing at the dozens of dead and wounded lying about from that brief battle alone.

  Then he looked back at her.

  “Trader, I need that craft to save as many of my people as I can. Triaxian gunships will soon strafe this entire area, killing anything that remains. We cannot take them all; we don’t have enough ships as it is. I am sorry for you and your friend.”

  He turned back to his people. “Take their vehicle. Leave them and their cargo behind unharmed.”

  He strode forward a few steps more, and then turned back to her.

  “Wait. I saw your duel with that Ejjai alpha. Very impressive. My compliments, young lady. I’ve never seen anyone fight like that in years. Your style of combat. I’ve seen it somewhere before.”

  He actually bowed to her.

  “My friend’s badly hurt,” Naero said. “Please. Help us.”

  Naero’s flesh tingled like it might catch fire.

  Warnings buzzed in her mind.

  A Cosmic power approaches.

  Om, what are you–

  The mob of fighters parted. Something glowed among their ranks.

  Some of the warriors even knelt and bowed their heads in reverence.

  A small female miner girl of about fifteen emerged and walked right up to the rebel leader.

  As if she’d been invisible before and now appeared among them suddenly.

  The girl’s eyes began to glow.

  Ah, the rogue psyon Triax warned everyone about.

  The girl leaned over and whispered to the rebel leader, but Naero still picked it up with her acute hearing.

  The girl pointed back at Naero.

  “This one is very, very special, father. She could help us and our people, but we cannot hinder her for long. She has destinies all her own, even more important than ours. Encourage her to journey with us for a time. I wish to get to know her and her friends–especially the young dark-haired boy. He is one of us.”

  The leader turned to Naero once more. “I will aid you and your friend, if you will agree to pilot your craft to a destination of our choosing. Keep any supplies on board that might help us. Dump the rest. You can save us many precious minutes overriding your security codes. Tell the authorities we forced you to do these things. When we are safely away, we will release you, unharmed.”

  In the distance, the high-pitched whine of approaching gunships grew in intensity.

  Naero looked down at Gallan, then back up at the leader. “I agree to your terms.”

  She glanced at the girl, who smiled a deep, knowing look back at her, through eerie eyes that somehow seemed ancient.

  The leader’s bodyguards lifted Gallan up and loaded him into the cargo hold of the transport. Refugees packed themselves in where the useless sensor cargo had been shoved out.

  The rebels sent the rest of the refugees away, fleeing from the camp and into caves and the rocky wilds.

  Naero signaled to Irith over her com.

  “You get all that? We’re going to travel with these folks for a while.”

  The Intel agent had monitored the situation the entire time.

  “We can’t do much else. Get up here. Bogeys coming in hot.”

  Back in the cockpit, Naero jumped into the co-pilot’s chair and hurried to launch the craft. The other vessels had already lifted off.

  The leader and the girl joined them in the cockpit, along with a few guards, making for tight quarters.

  “We can’t outrun those gunships,” Irith said. “They’re too close, and they already have long-range locks on us. We’re dangerously overloaded.”

  Naero glanced at the leader.

  “If you don’t have some backup, this is suicide,” she said.

  The leader strapped himself in behind Irith and helped with the attitude adjustments for the extra weight. “Just get us up and out of here, pilots. I’ll tell you where to go. Skim the tree lines and mountain tops.”

  “Several of them just fired!” Naero said. “Incoming missiles. We have no way to stop them.”

  “They’ll be stopped,” the leader said with a smile. He didn’t bother looking over at his daughter.

  The girl closed her glowing eyes to concentrate. “None of them will reach us, or do any harm.”

  Irith flew. Naero helped stabilize, watching the scanners in amazement.

  One by one, each missile barrage either exploded or dropped out of the sky, well short of them.

  The gunships swept in at maximum attack speed.

  A strange energy field enveloped the four fleeing craft full of rebels.

  The readings on Naero’s sensors went wild.

  Some weird kind of electromagnetic force.

  Any gunship that came within four kilometers of them lost all power and dropped out of the sky. Their crews screamed over the comlinks.

  But the same force at work caught them before they smashed into the trees and rocks, and set them down safely.

  One remaining gunship broke off, unaffected, returning to the mining facility to strafe the grounds.

  The girl suddenly collapsed, toppling sideways out of her seat.

  Tarim caught her, gasping as he suddenly stared into her veiled blue eyes, cradling her in his arms.

  The girl reached up with a slender hand and touched his face. Tarim shuddered. He gasped for breath once more and smiled back at her, completely enthralled.

  She laughed softly and seemed to regain a portion of her strength

  Was she an empath? Did she somehow use Tarim to recharge her energies, or was she actually flirting with him?

  “Father,” she said, “my talents are spent for the
moment. I have done all that I can. The rest is up to you and our new friends.”

  Tarim held her hand in his for a moment, then folded it back over her. She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest and nestling in as if she had known him for years.

  “You have done enough, daughter,” the rebel leader said. “Rest now. We will have much need of your abilities later, I am certain.”

  He looked Tarim over. “This miner boy is acceptable to you?” he asked her.

  “Very much so, father. I knew from the moment I sensed his presence. This one will never harm me. Not on purpose, at least.”

  The leader nodded, smiled sadly, and turned away.

  The young girl continued to stare into Tarim’s brown eyes until her strength left her. “If only you could see what I see in him. Then you would know.”

  She started to drift off again.

  “Hold me while I rest,” she whispered to Tarim. “Your touch helps me somehow, in ways even I cannot understand.”

  Tarim finally found his voice. “It’s all right. Rest all you want. I’ll protect you.”

  Naero stared at them, her mouth gaping.

  Major points for Tarim.

  Dozens of new questions and problems arose.

  Irith snapped at her. “Stay with me, co-pilot. This is tight flying.”

  “Sorry. I’m with you.” She focused all of her attention on maintaining their heading, skimming the surface. And not slamming into mountains.

  The leader studied their efforts and smiled. “You’ve kept your word. Good. I would have hated to shoot you all.”

  “We wouldn’t have enjoyed that either,” Irith said flatly.

  “Where are we headed?” Naero asked.

  “I’ll input the coordinates. More pursuit will come, but they won’t find us now. We’ll be here for a few days until the others can be collected and brought to bulk ships by our people in the wilds. You will need to be our guests until then, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course,” Naero said. “Under the circumstances, I understand.”

  The leader looked at her. “Do you?”

  He stared off into the brightening sky. “I find that surprising. I don’t understand very much anymore. Now we are hunted animals. We only do what we can, what we must to survive and help our people.”