Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run (41 page)

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Baeven alerted them via a floating holo screen that popped in out of nowhere.

“The enemy corvette will be arriving at Moon Durris. We’ll attack it just as it’s about to land, causing it to lose power and make a short crash. None of its smaller craft will be able to launch, either, so they’ll be forced to take him off the useless ship on foot. Make your move to win him back when he’s out in the open, during the transfer.”

Naero checked her weapons again. “Will do.”

Baeven smiled. “My crew and I will back you up from my ship, and pick you up as soon as you’ve secured him. Get ready to pile out on my signal. We only have a few minutes.”

Baeven cut out.

The holo screen showed the enemy’s secret base, units of troops guarding the area, and other ships and vehicles outside of the landing zone.

Just as Baeven predicted, the corvette came down, suddenly lost all power close to the ground, and dropped like a stone.

After only a few minutes, a company of heavily armed troops rushed out of the ship, surrounding someone secured on a medbed.

A close-up showed Jan, clearly Jan, unconscious on the medbed. From his wounds and bruises, he must have put up a pretty good fight.

The enemy troops made for the apparent safety of an enormous, nearby hangar.

Baeven flew them into the open hangar, hiding behind the bulk of a much larger enemy ship within, and opened the hatch for them to charge out.

Naero signaled for them to spread out and position themselves quietly. They’d take Jan back as soon as the troops closed the hangar doors or attempted to board the larger ship.

The enemy pulled Jan in and headed directly for the ship.

A loading bay opened.

Lady Drianne Imiviel waited for them, along with her personal body guard, heavy troops all in shining powered suits of assault armor.

“Hurry, you fools,” she said. “The evacuation’s underway. We launch immediately.”

That wasn’t going to happen.

Naero gave the silent signal to launch their attack.

Their initial barrage of interlinked fire cut down most of the troops covering Jan.

Amid the shock and surprise, Naero even managed to reach his medbed and pull him to one side, mowing down any stragglers around them.

“Baeven,” she called out over her com. “We’ve secured Jan. Get us out of here.”

No answer.

Then heavy fire from Drianne’s warship forces drove them back behind the cover of some heavy machinery.

“Change of plans,” Baeven finally responded. “This appears to be some kind of elaborate trap. Their fleet is converging on this area and activating some kind of planetary shield. We won’t be able to leave the atmosphere unless I can force that shield down.”

“We’re kind of in a bad way here, Baeven. What do you advise?”

“Stay alive. Fight your way onto that warship and prepare to take off. I’ll signal you once the planetary shield is down. How could they have known we were coming?”

“They knew we’d come after him. They used him as bait to try to nab me, too.”

“Do what you have to to get out of there, with or without Jan.”

“Naero,” Tyber yelled. “A little help here?”

Squads of enemy heavy armor advanced on them behind impenetrable deflector shields.

“Disruptor grenades!” Naero shouted.

Thirty grenades knocked the heavies around, shredding their shields. The other Spacers kept firing, blasting through face shields and helmets and other known weak spots in the armored suits.

“We have to fight our way onto that ship and fly it out of here,” Naero said.

“We’ll never make it,” Zhen cried.

“We’ve got to,” Naero said.

They rose up to charge.

All of her friends fighting to either side of her.

Concentrated sheets of fire poured from their weapons. Ripping into the enemy forces.

Massive stun blasts exploded right over them, like those used back on Boon-3.

Shielding us from mass stun effects.

“My friends!” Naero cried.

All of them stiffened and fell back.

They are merely unconscious. Our enemies seek to capture us. They will use them as leverage to force you to cooperate.

Lady Drianne called out.

“Surrender, Naero. Both yourself and your brother, or I’ll order my forces to execute your comrades where they lay, stunned and helpless.”

Take them, Naero. Unleash our defensive protocols and crush them all. They have no idea what we are. What you are capable of. Only you can save us. Merge with our protocols!

“This is not a negotiation,” Drianne added. “You have five seconds.”

Naero stood up and threw down her assault blaster. “I surrender. You got me.”

Drianne smiled at her victory. “That was relatively easy. Indeed I have.”

Her pretty face twisted into a snarl of hate. “Get her on a medbed like her brother. I want her in stasis for transport. Once we have the Kexxian Data Matrix in Gigacorps’ hands, no force in the galaxy will be able to oppose us.”

The heavies closed in, towering over Naero.

Now it was her turn to grin.

She linked with Om’s defensive protocols and perceived them in a flash of insight.

“Think again, bitch.” Naero unleashed the power locked within her.

Tendrils of light and darkness burst from her, fanning out in all directions like long energy blades.

They neatly sliced through the armored suits of the heavies like molecule-thin razors.

The troops inside them struggled to scream and escape.

Several heavies exploded.

Others imploded, compacting to the size of a helmet, the super-dense hunks dropping through the plascrete.

Naero waded through her foes, layered in defensive spheres of energies, ignoring their attacks, shredding and flinging their shattered, gory pieces to either side.

Lady Drianne retreated in terror.

“What in the hell are you?”

Naero smiled fiendishly. “You’re going to find out what I am.”

Behind us!

Naero gasped, transfixed, rising up on her toes so high she nearly floated.

She heard some kind of weapon fire.

A white-hot wire of intense agony pierced her skull from behind and out the front of her forehead, paralyzing her so that she could barely keep breathing.

As if she hung suspended on that burning wire, like a thin filament of scorching pain.

Om’s voice faltered and garbled.
Shot…head. Behind…trying…

She couldn’t even turn.

Drianne smiled in triumph and came forward again. “Excellent. You got her. Nice shot. Get the grav restraints on her.”

Naero felt a spray of blood squirt out of the exit wound in her forehead. Someone had shot her through the skull from behind.

Jan stepped in front of her.

To her complete horror.

Jan? How could he?

Suddenly it all made sense.

He was the traitor.

He shook his head, twirling the sliver pistol in his left hand. “
You couldn’t make it easy for me could you, sib?”

She struggled to speak and only croaked.

Jan switched the gun deftly into his right hand, then tucked it in his belt. He fixed grav restraints on her wrists.

“No use struggling. I shot you in the back of the head with a mind control sliver. It’s lodged in your brain. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you…unless we want it to.”

He punched in commands on his wristcomp.

“There now, that should allow you to speak. Be nice.”

She gulped in air.

“Jan? Y
ou’re with them?”

“Have been, sib. Whenever possible.”

He grinned and waggled his hands in the air. “
All of you were so paranoid about Ellis. Oooh, a Matayan. Gosh. Too stupid to notice the obvious. The Corps needed an inside man. How do you think they knew where to intercept Mom and Dad? It was me. I set them up.”

“Mom and D
ad? Jan, no. You couldn’t have.”

He shrugged. “
They were already well on their way to becoming dead anyway; they just didn’t know it, N. They thought they alone could control a secret this big? Not a chance. Then they made the colossal blunder of actually giving it to both of us. But they didn’t expect the process to change us
all
so drastically, did they?”

Jan’s eyes glowed for an instant with scarlet fire, aching to be unleashed. “And here’s another surprise. I’m not Jan. That young fool did his best to resist my efforts. But in the end, it was so easy for someone like me with my psyonic powers to slowly take over his unprotected mind. Even he didn’t suspect it until it was far too late. But I am your brother, at least genetically. Didn’t you hear the story?”

“Danner? You’re Danner? But you were murdered.”

“I didn’t die. I only wished I had. The Hevangians put me back together, somewhat, and sold me to the Corps, to Triax. My parents, my family, my Clan, my people–they all abandoned me and left me to be tortured and experimented on for years as I grew.”

“Danner…everyone thought you were dead.”

Danner snarled. “But somehow I survived, thriving on pain…and hatred. A prisoner in my own mind, my powers grew exponentially, until even my captors feared me and my abilities. I allied myself with them in order to get what I wanted: Vengeance. Through me and my sporadic links with Jan, we were able to spy on you and your parents, and Jan didn’t even know, until it was far too late. With my abilities, I slowly took over Jan, mind, body, and soul. In order to exact my revenge…on everyone.”

He paced around her, hands clasped behind his back.

“Of course, Jan’s h
alf of the Kexxian data was easy to retrieve once I had control of him. But you, you became the real problem. So adept. So resourceful. Every time I set you up–I gotta hand it to you–you came up with some way to screw everything over completely.”

“
That’s why we could never get away. You were letting them on to us.”

“
Right as rain, sib.”

“Danner
, no one knew you were still alive. Let us know where you are. We won’t stop until we rescue you. We can help you. Don’t do this to Jan, to me. The Corps are the ones who did this to you. They’ve been lying to you for all these years. They took you from us. They can’t be offering you enough to betray everyone, Jan, me, your parents, your family–your own people.”

“Are you kidding? Now I have this great new body that isn’t crippled and shattered. I’m not just some
thing
floating in a lab. With my brother’s body, I can go anywhere I wish. Do anything I want. None of you ever gave a shit about me.”

“That’s not true. Our parents were heartbroken. If they knew you were alive, they would have never stopped trying to find you.”

He glared at her, his face twisting like a maniac’s. “I’m glad they’re dead. I want all of you, everyone, dead!”

“Where is Jan?” Naero begged. “What have you done with his mind? Where is he? Our Clan and I wont stop until we free him from your madness.”

Danner laughed. “I just switched with him. He simply doesn’t know how to switch back. He’s trapped in the same crippled hell I was stuck in for seventeen years. Let him rot there. Whatever form you die in when you die, you’re still just as dead.”

He patted her on the head. “To hell with all of you. The Clans. The Corps. Everyone. Screw
all of you. They’re paying me an awful lot, Naero. I yearn to join the ranks of the gods. Go where I want, do as I please, however and to whomever I please, whenever I feel like it. That’s what they’re offering me. I can play anywhere I want; do anything I want. Complete and total freedom, with absolute impunity.”

His grin widened. “You know, they gave me a taste. They gave me some other bodies to try out the mind-swapping process. Sure, I burned them out with my abilities and they had to put me back into mine in the end, but I got a taste of being a god.

“They let me kill…everyone…every living thing on an entire continent of some nameless, backwater world no less. It was…how shall I describe it? Liberating. Exhilarating..”

“You’re insane, Danner.
They’ll continued to use you like a weapon. As soon as they have what they want, we’re all good as dead. They won’t keep their word. You’ve betrayed everything, destroyed your entire life. For nothing.”

“I. Don’t. Care.
Everyone wants the same thing, N. Power. Nice abilities of your own, by the way. Very different than mine. Didn’t know you had ’em in you. But I’ve been growing as well, in secret. My new skill? Quite convenient really…

“I can absorb the abilities of others, like eating their heart out of their chest with a spoon. How about I take those new powers of yours for my own? You won’t be needing them any more.”