Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (38 page)

Naero frowned.
“Now that you mention it. Yeah. That too.”

Baeven only hesitated a moment.

“We’ll start tomorrow. If Vane did his job, at least I won’t have to go easy on you anymore.”

Naero
slugged down some more Jett, wondering how much she should be looking forward to all that. Baeven was never going to go easy on her.

Over on the South Shore, Max Li
i burned up one of her favorite tunes of his. The crowds ate it up.

Naero closed her eyes and hummed along.

*

Shortly after dawn the next day,
Naero crashed into some of the island trees. Again.

Part of a pattern it seemed.

She shot back out at Baeven, fighting with everything she had.

Baeven spin-kicked her across the surface of the lagoon.

Skipping her across the water like a stone.

She rose up and transported back on top of him, trying to land a hit.

Baeven continued gauging her skills and Mystic abilities.

By kicking and punching the living crap out of her.

She tried every trick she knew.

Baeven apparently had seen them
all.

H
aisha! He was worse than Hashiko. More or less up there with Master Vane, although not as annoying and sneaky.

Thus far at least.

Baeven simply stomped on her.

“Y
ou’ve really improved,” he told her.

After he cratered her in the sand once more with a thunderous flip and punch.

Naero spit out sand. “I’m clearly not in your league yet.”

“N
o. But you’ll get there. Remember, I’ve been honing my skills and abilities for many years longer than you.”

“Y
eah, yeah. I know. Everyone keeps telling me. Increases in Mystic speed and strength take time.”

“I
’m serious. You shouldn’t be frustrated at all. You’ve made remarkable progress. Faster than anyone I’ve ever heard of–and that includes both me–and your mom. She learned things faster than anyone. But I think you might even surpass her, given time.”

“M
y mom was fast?”

“O
ne of the fastest, in nearly every way. They didn’t call her the Invincible Cyclone on the fight circuit for nothing. You never watched any of her matches?”

“I
did. I guess I just always thought that they were rigged or scripted somehow.”

Baeven glared at her.
“Are you kidding? Some parts were for show, to make them more exciting. All of the contestants agreed to that. But the competitions were always real. When it really counted, they fought with honor to decide the winner. All of them. Spacers wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Naero beamed.
“So, mom was fast?”

Baeven smiled.
“She was. You can be just as fast as I am, maybe even faster than her. And you have your father’s strength on top of it. You can even become stronger that me, I think.”

Naero stared at him eagerly.
“Show me. Show me how.”

“I
can help set you on the right path. But I gotta warn you, it will be hard work. Danjen can help us with the speed.”

“H
e is fast.”

“A
nd Gaviok with the strength. You can’t believe how strong he is, and he keeps getting stronger.”

“A
mazing.”

“B
ut eventually you’ll need to go back to the Mystics and train with the other two High Masters. They’ll round out your training, and balance all of your abilities so that you can continue to grow, and properly optimize your total effectiveness.”

“B
ut we share the same affliction,” Naero said. “Only you’ve learned to control yours some how. I desperately need to learn how to do that. When I lose it, I could easily kill someone.”

Baeven held up both hands.
“I can only control a small part of my dark side. That’s my secret. I can only control a portion of it. If I set it all loose, I’d be just like you. A danger to everyone.”

“S
o, what is your secret? How do you manage to control even a small part of your Dark Beast?”

Baeven grinned.

“Through love.”

She stared at him.
“Come on. Seriously?”

“I
am serious. It’s the only way I know. And I learned it by accident.”

“A
ll right, Baeven. I want to hear your whole story. What happened to you. What your training was like with the Mystics. Why they banished and tried to kill you. How you became an outcast. I want to know everything.”

“
That’s going to be a very long story, and it’s all in the past,” he said, looking away. “Perhaps some day. Not now.”

Naero sulked.

Then he grinned.

“H
ow about I tell you something better. How about I tell you all about your mom?”

Naero perked up
at that.

She felt
as if beams of light began shining out of her face. It suddenly made her want to cry.

Baeven smiled sadly.

“Train hard with me, and after each session, I’ll tell you a story, or something interesting about your mother. She was really something. And you’re a lot like her. Your dad too. The best of both of them lives on in you. I see it all the time.”

“Y
ou honor them and me. I’d hug you, but I’m still really sore from you beating me up.”

Both of them laughed.

Naero cast down her eyes suddenly as several other worries and stray thoughts crossed her mind.

“What do you think these aliens are after? Besides wanting to cram us all into those Darkforce generators?”

Baeven shook his head. “That’s bad enough. But I think their plans go a lot deeper I fear. The Dakkur don’t do anything half-way. They’re fanatics bent on the dominion of others. And they’re not the only new players on the board. I think more are going to pile on in the years to come.”

“The big black ship with the tentacles? Do you know who they are?”

“I don’t know who’s using it, but Jia is certain that black alien vessel with the tentacles is in fact a G’lothc ship. Those Darkforce generators are G’lothc tek also.”

Naero shivered all of the sudden, feeling her blood retreat into her core.

If it were possible, Om had a similar reaction.

That confirms my worst fears, Naero.

“I…I thought the G’lothc were all dead? The Kexx and the Drians exterminated them all.”

Baeven raised one eyebrow. “
And it took both advanced races to barely accomplish that. We’d better hope they did. But I think someone else is attempting to use and replicate G’lothc tek. Just like Spacers are trying to understand and use the KDM. Minions like the Dakkur. They’re further along than we are, but I’m guessing they don’t have much of that Tek up and running right now. Maybe just those two ships we’ve seen, the ion guns, and those Darkforce generators.”

Om jumped in with a sudden announcement.

Naero, I’ve just learned from the KDM that most G’lothc tek used and was built almost exclusively around Darkforce energy. That was what made them and their tek and weapons so formidable and destructive. On a level with the KDM itself.

Naero gas
ped suddenly. “I bet that’s why they’re so desperate to capture as many hosts as they can and create all of the Darkforce energy they can produce. They can’t replicate any of the G’lothc tek without it. If they could have done so on their own, they would have used it to overpower everyone by now.”

Baeven knitted his brows at her.
“You’re very insightful, Naero. Jia and I think so too. I’m guessing the enemy is focusing all of their efforts on producing those Darkforce generators. Next they’ll need hosts to power them all. People like you and I, like Hashiko and Shalaen. Anyone who can channel any form of Cosmic energy.”

Baeven hesitated. “Don
’t forget Jan and Dan either.”

Naero gritted her teeth. “Believe me, I haven
’t. They weigh heavily on my mind all the time.”

Om
put forth another observation. This time hesitantly.

Naero, I
’ve discovered something else. What you call your Dark Beast inside you is comprised of Darkforce energy also. Corrupted and twisted Cosmic energy that you carry within yourself. It is part of you.

I know Om. I
’ve sensed and feared that truth for a long time. But I just haven’t had the courage to tell anyone.

Perhaps Baeven would understand, if anyone could.

“Baeven, I’ve learned that my Dark Beast with me is comprised of Darkforce energy also. I’ve been afraid to admit that, and what that might mean.”

He sighed.

“Trust me. I’m well aware of that fact also. We carry the same curse, along with your two siblings.”

“S
o, you do you think we’re all monsters then, like Master Vane says? Monsters that will need to be destroyed some day?”

Baeven shook his head in denial.
“We all have the potential to become monsters if we let ourselves. But to answer your question. No, Naero. Vane is wise in his own limited ways, but he’s wrong about you. Just like he was wrong about me and a lot of things, the rigid, myopic bastard.”

They both got a chuckle out of that.

“You’re no more monster than I am. And even if we are Cosmic Destroyers and Tricksters–there are things far worse than us out there. Trust me.”

“I
do. I’ve seen some of them.”

Baeven laughed.
“Who knows, when all is said and done, the universe might just need a couple of monsters like you and I.”

Naero worried
about all that. A lot.

The fear of those dark potentials and possibilities
all weighed very heavily on her overtaxed mind.

She looked up at Baeven.

“If I don’t ever get a chance to say this, I want to say it now. I love you…Uncle Kean.”

He shook his head violently and his countenance darkened.
He rose up and flung his chair behind him. It clattered and bounced across the sand.

“Y
ou cannot call me by that name, Naero! Please, you must stop doing so.

“W
hy? Why not?”

He actually snapped at her.
“You joke lightly about deep things you know nothing about. Don’t be a stupid child!”

Naero
’s mouth fell open.

Baeven clenched both fists and
struggled to calm himself.

She never intended to upset him.

“That name was taken from me. Stripped from me by my own people, by my own Clan, along with my honor and everything I was. I have yet to earn the right to bear the honor of that name again. To be proven worthy of it once more. That is an old promise I have yet to fulfill.”

“W
hat promise? To whom?”

Baeven looked up from his clenched hands deep into her eyes
.

W
ith great sadness and inner pain.

She could
sense how much it tormented him.

“
A promise to your beautiful mother, Naero. My beloved little sister, Lythe. Perhaps the only one besides–”

He stopped himself from saying too much.

Baeven retrieved his chair, sat back down, and knitted his hands in front of his face.

“
She loved me as her older brother, fiercely and honestly. And she did so at a very dark time of my life, when all the universe turned against me it seemed. She did so as she always did everything, with great passion and defiance, at great risk to herself. She took my side, defending me even with her own life.”

Baeven
sighed, recalling his ordeal.

“S
he was training on Janosha when Master Vane sentenced me to death. She stood up to a High Master and defied him, when she was barely an adept herself. Lythe threw herself before me. Utterly fearless as she always was.”

He hung his head. “She would have died for me.
She would have died defending me, against Vane–against all comers. Even him.”

Baeven sighed heavily. “
I could not have endured that. Yet even worse than death, I knew that Lythe would have even gone with me into exile. Become dishonored herself, a hated outcast like I was. She could not see that the die was cast for me. By my own choices, I was already wholly ruined. She could not save me.

“B
ut to save her, I made her this promise: if she would forsake me and live her life, the life that I never could, filled with honor, love, and glory for herself and our Clan, then I would always strive to serve our people in whatever way that I could. And some day, win back the honor of my once given name.”