Read Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit for Free Online

a whacky kind of sense somehow as she drew her conclusions.
    “S o, despite all of the issues we’ve been dealing with, we’re way ahead of schedule. Refit bays one, three, eight, eleven, and fifteen will be open for business in three days. The rest will all come on line within the week. We can practice by upgrading our entire fleet on the go.”
    “T hat’s great,” Chaela said, rubbing her hands in greedy anticipation. “We’re going to be swimming in megacredits once the Clans and our allies realize that we can upgrade and refit their ships and fighters on the move, wherever we go. In just a matter of hours or days. They’ll line up from all over the known systems to upgrade their tek and refit their ships with us.”
    Saemar tossed her curly auburn hair back proudly with her hands on her curvy hips. “If it’s one thing I know how to do, it’s inspire and motivate my crew to do their best! These guys would do anything to please me.”
    Naero struggled not to choke, then lifted her glass to join in a toast.
    The rest of the day went pretty well.
    Naero returned to her quarters later that evening to struggle to get some rest. The trade fleet continued toward their rendezvous with the phantom ship.
    She suffered more strange dreams, about shadowy creatures lurking just outside of the range of her vision. She thought she heard music, or strange singing that seemed extremely meaningful and powerful in some way.
    Who were these beings ? What were they? What did it all mean?
    Then she had re-occurring nightmares and visions about a startling, red glowing man. She’d seen someone like him before in her troubled dreams. His head covered in flaming eyes. Was he some kind of alien or monster? She had a deep, abiding fear that he wanted to destroy her for some reason. Why? She didn’t even know anyone like that. How did he seem to know her? What did he have against her?
    She still dreamed about her dead parents at times. Or her best friend Gallan.
    Most of the time he tried to warn and caution her about stuff she knew was already roiling aroun d in her head.
    Other times it got worse.
    Gallan came to her all ripped apart, blaming her for his death.
    Then for no reason at all, she envisioned and dreamed about brig ht, vibrant worlds, pulsing with Cosmic energy that she could drink in like water. These myriad energies flowed through her like nourishment, filling her with excitement and hope.
    For a change, she actually slept pretty well after that.
    Yet the very n ext day, Naero and two dozen of her ships assembled into a strike force, and went out from the rest of the fleet.
    The y spread out to intercept and make contact with The Dark Star near the Tarigo system, well-beyond Tarigo-9.

 
     
     
     
    5
     
     
    Naero commanded her small flagship, The Flying Dagger, with Saemar in charge of The Dragon’s Teeth , and Chaela in The Ajax on either flank.
    Arranged in standard strike formation all around them, t wenty-one young, headstrong captains from the other Clans backed her up in their elite vessels. A wide variety of specialized craft she personally selected because of their abilities and their commanders.
    She couldn’t teknomance any more, but she had personally helped modify each one of them with their fixers.
    As contact grew imminent, they shifted to a scattershot, wide-dispersal formation.
    Eas y to maneuver and close in.
    Difficult to knock them all out at once –even with advanced ion guns.
    Out of most ship ’s scanning ranges, General Ingersol’s strike fleet and stealth ships deployed and waited.
    Thanks to Baeven ’s modifications, The Dagger could even track Intel’s stealth ships now, and at ranges well beyond any other known tek.
    That ’s why she caught The Dark Star jumping into the system fast, at Jump-6 level. Just short of her own ship’s capabilities.
    That kind of frightened her.
    If The Dark Star did refit itself, it was doing a very good job of maximizing its capabilities. She never