The heavy blast panels to Aunt Sleak’s private quarters on board The Dromon swung open.
Naero had never been cleared to go up there.
She stepped into wide space, a luxury unavailable on any of the other ships, but still not as opulent as what she expected, for a Spacer Merchant Captain of Aunt Sleak’s wealth and fame.
In fact, the more she observed, the more austere and even militarily efficient it all looked. All off-white and muted pastels, soft-lit and serene. The huge chamber was mostly oval, yet irregular in many regards. Art pieces of gleaming gold and precious metals, glowing clusters of gems and alien crystals on the ceiling and walls here and there, backlit in tasteful arrangements.
Most likely there were hidden smartwall panels and pop-up consoles she only guessed at.
Serving as one of a few active touches of anything living, fresh purple flowers of some alien variety bloomed in planter sconces set along the pale walls at medium height.
Their sharp, sweet fragrance filled the air. But the serviceable, fixed furnishings were sparse, adding to the sense of space.
She walked on and gazed up at the stars through a ceiling that consisted of an enormous viewport, the ponderous blast shutters on the uppermost level of the planetoid wide open on the outside.
Panels whispered open on one wall. Aunt Sleak came out of an adjoining room wearing plain flight togs, stripped of her fleet captain’s rank bands.
That stunned Naero right there. Spacers always displayed their rank, except when threats were severe–or they went to war.
Aunt Sleak wore her thick, auburn mane of shoulder-length hair pulled back in platinum clips, Spacer battle-style. She even wore a side arm and an energy cutlass. Naero very seldom saw her aunt carry weapons openly. She knew about some of the cleverly concealed ones.
All Spacers had their own little concealment tricks and secrets.
“Intel has ordered all Spacer fleets, ships, and crews on full alert after the loss of The Omaria,” Aunt Sleak said. “The Corps are denying any knowledge or involvement in the incident, but tensions are running high. All that we know so far is that your parents were trading with the Cumi concerning some kind of ancient alien tech.”
“So who is this Baeven guy?” Naero said. “He seemed to know something more about it.”
Aunt Sleak stiffened and shot her such a look of pain, anger, and hatred that Naero nearly fell into a defensive stance.
Aunt Sleak looked away. “I have to be sure it’s him. What did he say? What did he look like? Not that he couldn’t make himself look like anyone or any thing.
“Deets and descriptions,” Aunt Sleak snapped.
Naero gave them.
Aunt Sleak finally sighed and hung her head. “It must be him. Sounds just like the bastard. He can change his name and his face, but not his height. He was always so damn tall.”
“He said to mention that he wanted to make up for Toraga-5.”
Aunt Sleak’s eyes narrowed to dark lines. Her fists tightened and shook.
“Sure he does. It’s gotta be him. I’m sorry, Naero.” Aunt Sleak sighed again. “Sorry about your parents, and sorry you ever had to meet this creature. He would show up, especially now. ‘Baeven’ is just one of his aliases. How fitting; a baeven is–”
“An Otaran scavenger bird,” Naero said. “Sort of like a Terran raven, but nastier. I looked it up.”
“They’re utterly ruthless,” Aunt Sleak added, “completely opportunistic. Given the chance, they eat their mates, even their own young. How fitting.”
“How was he involved with Mom and Dad?”
“Your mother and I knew him very well. Once. That was long ago. I hope for his sake he didn’t have a hand in what happened. But for him to take an interest, this must be very serious. Destruction and death follow this creature wherever he goes. Avoid him at all costs, spacechild. Don’t speak to him. Flee if he approaches you again. That is a direct order.”
Naero couldn’t stop herself from a wide-eyed blink. She recovered quickly.
“Aunt Sleak, you’re holding back on me. What is his connection to Clan Maeris? Who does he work for? He is a Spacer, after all–”
Aunt Sleak shot her the look again and even advanced a step. Naero retreated into her defensive posture.
“He was a Spacer, Naero. He will never be one of us, ever again.”
Naero’s jaw dropped.
An outcast. The man was an outcast.
Only the worst elements of Spacer society became outcasts, many of them executed for their crimes. To all the Clans, Baeven was worse than a criminal. Worse than an enemy. He was dead to his people, completely ostracized as if he never existed.
A sad smile crept over Aunt Sleak’s face. “Now you know. This Baeven has been a curse to our family. Everyone who has dealt with him has either died or lived to regret it. He will tell you anything to manipulate and use you for his own ends. He works for anyone who will hire him, but he serves only himself. Don’t ever trust him Naero. He’s one of the most dangerous people in the known universe.”
“What did he do? To become an outcast, I mean?”
Aunt Sleak visibly shuddered.
“He repeatedly betrayed our people, as well as his employers, playing all sides against the others. He has caused many conflicts, and countless deaths. He is an incredibly dangerous man, and one of the deadliest warriors I have ever known. He trained extensively with our Mystics and in fact was a prodigy of theirs. But in the end, he betrayed them as well.
“Even they haven’t been able to capture...or kill him.”
Their Mystics wanted him dead?
And this guy was still alive somehow?
Naero blinked a second time. Spacer Mystics were among the most adept combatants in the known systems.
“You’re still not telling me everything, Aunt Sleak. How do you know Baeven? He said his last deal with you went bad. Said he wanted to make it up to you. What was Toraga-5?”
Aunt Sleak hung her head and ran her fingers up through her auburn hair. She sighed again.
“You were a small child the last time I had dealings with this creature. He sent what was then my fleet and a few others on a vital political trade negotiation mission to Toraga-5–straight into a deathtrap. We lost fourteen ships and their crews in heavy fighting. I barely escaped with half of my crew on my flagship. The incident helped escalate the Fourth Spacer War with the Corps. Baeven vanished, like he usually does.”
“I noticed that. He blipped out on me and I still can’t figure out how. But he warned me and Janner to stay close to you, not to go off on our own. He said that powerful factions might be looking for us, in connection with whatever Mom and Dad were doing. He gave me...”
Aunt Sleak turned on her. “What? What did he give you?”
With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about the damn chip. Her fingers fumbled as she tore the crystal out of her comp and held it up.
“He said it was a bit of intercepted transmission. I forgot. Told me to decode it when I got back to the ship.”
Aunt Sleak snatched it from her and popped it into a terminal she snapped up from the floor. “Let’s see what we have. Hmm...tricky as usual. Mikiri crystal–expensive. Self-erasing. We’ll only be able to play it once, so I’d better clone some copies.”
Naero looked on for several moments while Aunt Sleak went to work on it. How was her aunt this adept with this kind of stuff? It all begged a lot of questions.
“Looks like a captured com blurt,” her aunt said at last. “Either secret Corps military or Corps Intel. It’s chopped, scrambled, and encrypted. I think its Triaxian–maybe even Hevangian.
“This might take a while longer to break.”
Aunt Sleak looked at her suddenly. “Why are you wearing that headband? That’s not your usual style.”
Naero flinched, instinctively covered her forehead with her hands.
“Had a bad rash of pimples.”
“Won’t your hair cover them?”
Naero grimaced and sighed. “Not this time. Aunt Sleak, I still don’t see any harm in talking to this Baeven guy if he shows up again. Maybe we should listen to him, find out what he knows.”
“If what he said to you is true, Naero, then you and your brother are in serious danger. You may be right. We might want to talk to him, to learn his game. I’ll have to contact some of my friends in Spacer Intel again.”
“You know people in Shadowforce?”
Aunt Sleak frowned. “It’s time you learned the truth, spacechild. Most of our family was Shadowforce until about fifteen years ago. You just weren’t old enough to be told yet. All Spacer merchants collect data for Intel. Some more than others.”
“That’s where you and Mom knew this Baeven guy from, right?”
Aunt Sleak averted her gaze for an instant. “Your mother was very close to him at one time, Naero. Before his disgrace.”
“She...she loved him,” Naero guessed aloud.
Aunt Sleak nodded. “We both did, in our way. But Lythe was always closest to him. She even fought to defend him, even though it hurt her own career. He nearly took her down with him.”
“What about you?”
“After a while, he and I never got along very well. That’s all I’ll say. You don’t need to know any more about him. If Baeven turns up, I don’t want you and Janner alone with him, and don’t go anywhere with him. I want to be present when you talk to him, and our people need to watch him at all times, understood?”
The terminal signaled that the chip was decoded and ready to play.
“There, finally got it. Listen closely. I don’t know what we’re going to get.”
Naero held her breath. Aunt Sleak punched up the coded message. Both of them leaned in, making out two voices.
“What do you mean it’s not there You’d better have it! This little intercept cost enough, damn you. Nine elite strike ships destroyed, two in tow, five others damaged. We’re risking another Spacer War. What do you mean you can’t deliver? What do you think we keep your kind around for?”
“Your intelligence was in error. The item in question was not on board the Spacer exploration flagship. We’ve gone over the wreckage and all of the bodies repeatedly. Both mine and your own teams are going over it all again. But I can assure you...there is nothing to retrieve.”
“Then we’re dead, you bastard. Within a month, we’ll be swimmin’ in pain bugs. But you go first... I go down, you go down.”
“There is another possibility...”
“Better be rutting good.”
“These Spacers didn’t have their son or daughter with them.”
“So what?”
“Spacers almost always travel with their children. They must have known how dangerous this trip was going to be. But this wasn’t the first run they made into the Unknown Sectors. Perhaps they didn’t even know what they had found. What if they left the secret to the Kexxian Data Matrix with their children somehow? Their kids are probably traveling with some relative.”
“Find them, find the missing secrets, and perhaps we’ll both survive this.”
“Thin. Very thin. But snagging those kids might buy us some time. Do what you need to. This is an Alpha Negative Priority. The Corps will cover your activities. Gut those brats and their entire spack family if you have to, but get what we need. There’s blood between your house and theirs. That ought to make it easy enough.”
The recorded transmission cut off. Where had Naero heard one of those voices? The calm one?
It was a Matayan voice.
The blurt ended. Naero nodded to her aunt. “So, I guess Janner and I will be sticking close to the fleet for a while.”
“Not tonight,” Aunt Sleak said. “We’re going to that Corps party on Lady Drianne’s yacht with Janner. We’re deep within Corps Space. If we panic now and try to escape, they’ll run us down. They don’t know if we even have anything yet. Running will make it look like we do. They’ll hesitate doing anything in public to avoid another costly war.”
“We don’t know if we have anything either,” Naero said.
“There’s too much we don’t know and too many big players flooding the game. I want to sort out a few things. We’ll go to that party tonight and see what shakes out. Just stay on your guard.”
“On the blurt they mentioned the Kexxian Data Matrix,” Naero said. “What the hell is that?”
Aunt Sleak breathed out hard. “Just a legend. The Kexx were an ancient race of near-godlike beings who ruled much of the galaxy in the Unknown Sectors, millions of years ago before most sentient life was somehow wiped out during a galactic event known as–”
Naero finished her sentence. “…The Great Destruction.” That was an extremely ancient period of galactic history.
“We don’t know anything more about the Kexx or what happened–yet. That’s...something your parents were trying to find out.”
“Think Baeven will show up tonight?”
“He might. If someone is after you and Janner, going to this party might flush them and their reasons out into the open. We’d better have a talk with Jan about all of this. And Naero...?”
“What?”
“I want you fully armed from now on, and not just kid stuff. Talk to Zalvano about some suggestions from my personal armory. He’ll fix you up with items that’ll make it past Corps security. If there’s any trouble, I want us all to be ready. I’ll keep the fleet on standby, and bring enough of our people along to back us up.”
Naero nodded. “Sure thing.”
What in the hell were they all getting into, and who were the bastards that had murdered her parents and all their crews? And for what?
The deeper they went, the more they didn’t know.
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