Saemar sparred with Naero first in Practice Room 35, a semi-circular slice of empty, flat gray-black nanoroom wedged into the ship’s hull, ten meters along its widest length, four meters along the shortest, five meters high.
Her other friends sat watching the match on a preset bench they pulled up from the nanofloor. As their medic, Zhen stood by a little closer, scanning them both for psyonic activity.
Saemar looked for an opening, using her passive telepathy to gauge when Naero would make a move.
A defensive technique Naero always found incredibly annoying.
No matter how Naero attacked, Saemar read Naero’s mind an instant before and countered every technique thrown at her, almost before they began.
Squaring off, they were almost the same height, with Saemar being only slightly heavier and somewhat more voluptuous. Curly, shoulder length auburn hair, big blue eyes, and a somewhat sharp face. A decent fighter in her own right, but Naero far outclassed her in speed, strength, skill, and natural ability.
Only Saemar’s psy talent for reading her opponent’s moves leveled the field. From experience, Naero could wear her down and eventually win, but it took longer and longer to do so.
Naero heard, or felt Saemar’s voice in her mind.
You’re straining, sweetie. I can sense it. You know you can’t force a talent.
But psy abilities usually came out during the intense focus of physical sparring, especially in the face of other psy abilities.
Almost every Spacer was a trained martial artist, practicing and conditioning and sparring with others on a regular basis from birth. For them, it was a warrior way of life.
Saemar attacked with a weird mix of seemingly clumsy and then efficient combinations. She baited Naero, off-speed and tricky.
Naero barely blocked a knifehand to the throat, a scrape kick down her shin, and then a spin elbow to her back ribs.
Naero held up her hands, backing away. “Hold. You’re right, Saemar. Let’s try something else. I’m not feeling anything.”
She glanced at Zhen, who monitored them with a psy meter. The pretty olive-skinned medtek wore her light brown hair long and wavy today. A bit taller than Naero and skinny, she studied and observed everything intensely with her intelligent hazel eyes.
With her psy ability, Zhen could touch people and see into their bodies and their functions directly.
Healer’s sight, perfect for the medical professions. She wasn’t much of fighter herself overall, but she could use her gift to spot weaknesses. She was very adept at throwing knives, spikes, and shaken stars–some of them poisoned, drugged, or stun-charged. Throwing blades was sort of a hobby of hers, one that she shared with Naero.
Zhen shook her head and looked down slightly.
“Sorry. Nothing from you, Naero. No triggers. No readings. I clearly picked up Saemar’s latent telepathy.”
Naero frowned, went to her bag of illicit tricks, and popped some fast acting psy-tabs.
Within seconds her head buzzed with a dull ache, as the psychotronic chemicals flooded her bloodstream, rushed through her brain, and affected her mind. Or at least they tried to.
Naero motioned to Gallan. “You and me this time, big guy. Let’s go.”
Gallan rose up, two heads taller than her petite form and almost three times as broad. Yet despite their size disparity, Naero was actually the stronger of the two and much faster, inheriting both enhanced physical abilities from her champion parents.
But Gallan was never a pushover. He knew how to fight, and he could take a lot of punishment and keep coming. His psy talent was similar to one of her father’s: an ability to psyonically increase his density and physical toughness.
No big surprise, with Gallan being a distant cousin on her father’s side of the family, where such abilities weren’t all that uncommon.
Naero darted in, attacking again and again. She landed nearly two blows for every one of Gallan’s, but he covered his vital areas and sought to get a hold on her and grapple.
He attempted to go strength-to-strength and eliminate her natural speed advantage.
Sometimes the psy ability of an opponent triggered a reaction out of sheer defensive response.
Naero turned briefly to Zhen.
“Anything yet?”
A massive sweeping back kick from Gallan caught her in the midsection, surprisingly fast.
Naero flew back into the wall with the force of the blow, back-flipped off the wall, and re-directed off the ceiling to a crouching position on the floor.
“Not a thing,” Zhen noted. “Just Gallan adjusting his density during the match.”
Naero clenched her fists, gritting her teeth, groaning in frustration. “Damn it. Why can’t I do this?”
She stomped back to her bag. She swallowed a different group of psy-stims–twice the recommended dosage.
“Uh, Naero,” Zhen objected. “Loading up on those on top of what you already have in you might not be such a good–”
Naero lashed out at her. “I gotta try something, Z. Even you said these alien lander drugs might not have any affect at all on a Spacer mind and metabolism. With our genetically enhanced healing ability and our ability to neutralize toxins and disease, they might not affect me at all. The buzz I got from those other stim-tabs is already fading. Let’s see what happens now. Is my heart going to explode or something?”
Zhen frowned. “No, not yet, at least. Your pulse is racing, but nothing critical. Your neuro-chemical scans are very weird, but I guess…under these circumstances, that’s understandable. But we’re getting into unknown territory here, Naero. I just don’t know–”
“Good enough. Let’s keep going. Chaela, you’re up.”
Chaela was the next tallest among her friends, but still a head shorter than Gallan. Athletic, quick, and powerful, she was a true brawler, a real Amazon, her blond hair in a long golden braid down her broad back. She had fierce, steel-blue eyes
They teased her about being a Valkyrie from Old Terran myth, or at the very least, a Viking berserker. Her fighting style was pretty similar.
Pysonically, Chae was a cryokinetic, just the opposite of Naero’s brother.
Plus, she was an accomplished fighter. Not as strong as Naero, but pretty fast, and with a lot of fighting skill and experience. She spent a good chunk of her free time sparring against other fighting styles.
They closed and broke, neither of them landing any clean hits.
Naero shivered, feeling a chill creep over her muscles, slowing her down slightly.
Naero saw her breath in front of her.
“Come on, Chae. You know you don’t have the chops to freeze me solid.”
Chaela grinned. “Nope, just have ta slow your speedy little ass down a bit so that I can nail you.”
Naero laughed with her and then stopped short.
Her back foot was frozen to the floor in a chunk of ice. That was new.
A gigaton freight hauler named Chaela careened straight at her on a collision course.
Naero dropped under a heavy punch, dodged a knee to her face and flipped Chaela’s bulk to one side. The move twisted her leg painfully, but she had time to free it and stomp the ice block off her numb foot before Chae rolled free and charged back in.
“Hold,” Naero shouted, lifting her hands. She turned to Zhen.
“Now there had to be some kind of reaction during all that. My head feels really weird.”
“I don’t doubt that, but still nothing from you on any of the psyonic wave lengths. Not a thing.”
“Damn it all to hell and back!”
Naero stomped back over to her bag.
Zhen made an attempt to intervene once more.
“Naero, I know how bad you want this.”
“No. You don’t. None of you do.”
“We do. We get it,” Gallan said.
Naero exploded. “None of you get it. Haisha!”
She pulled a nanoinjector out of the bag and punched yet another psy-stimulant into her arm.
<
br /> She grunted and dropped to her knees.
The rapid rush of stims punched into her brain.
“Naero!” Tyber yelled. They all rushed toward her.
Naero groaned again, fighting against the blinding pain and rapid disorientation. She forced herself back to her feet and shoved them away as they all closed in.
“Get off me. I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not,” Zhen said. “You’re all doped up on who knows what. Your readings are all over the place. I can’t tell what those drugs are doing to you.”
“But nothing psyonic?”
Zhen checked the reads again on the meter.
“No. Not a blip.”
Naero steeled herself. “Then let’s keep going. Tyber. Saemar. Both of you fight me at once. I mean really fight. And both of you use your psy abilities against me full on, as much as you can.”
They squared off.
Tyber liked to spar with a Spacer jo staff made of duranadium–the same stuff as the ship’s hull, about a meter and a half long.
He was a so-so fighter on his own, but a good match for Zhen as a mate. Medium height and build, fit, dark hair and eyes, brown skin–Tyber had a round, friendly face. A very accomplished tek, he worked as an engineer, mechanic, and systems specialist all rolled up in one.
He and Zhen were both so different that their personalities meshed almost completely.
Pysonically, Tyber could translocate himself over short distances by line of sight. If he did it too much, it exhausted him. But in a short fight, it could be decisive. He could vanish and reappear behind his opponents when they least expected it.
When he teamed up with Saemar and her telepathic reading ability, Naero quickly found herself in a spot of trouble.
Tyber jabbed her from behind with his staff, knocking her off her feet.
Saemar kicked at her face. Naero twisted, rolled, and swept Saemar’s legs out from under her, then dodged Tyber’s charging attack. He did his best to keep her off balance.
After five more minutes, it was Zhen who called hold.
“Naero. I’m sorry. I’m just not getting anything from you. You have to face the facts. You’re a nud. You can’t do anything about it. You don’t show even the slightest sign of possessing a psyonic ability of any kind whatsoever.”
Naero ran over and grabbed the psy-inducing helmet. She quickly shoved it over her head and flipped the switches on full power.
The helmet lit up and hummed ominously. Everyone stepped back.
The neural net jolts to her brain staggered her. Naero screamed, clutched the helmet, and fell against one wall.
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