3
The room kept spinning. Naero struggled to remain on her feet and not black out.
All she could smell was ozone.
Zhen turned her psy-scanner off.
“
I can’t be a part of this.” She turned to leave. “Don’t ask me to be here if you aren’t going to listen to me, Naero.”
“
No!” Gallan said, blocking her way. “We need you here, Z. In case something goes–”
“
Look at her,” Zhen said. “All of you. Something is going wrong.”
“
I can handle it,” Naero said, positioning herself in front of the exit. “It’s just pain. I’ll heal. All of you guys know how fast I recover. Please, just one more go, and after that I’ll stop. I promise.”
Naero assumed her fighting stance and bounced on the balls of her feet.
“Now come on. For all the creds. Everyone. Use your abilities and attack me. Just try to take me down. That will have to trigger something with this helmet on.”
Saemar looked at her.
“Z’s right, sweetie. You need to stop this before–”
“
No, dammit.
Haisha!
I’m not giving up yet. All of you. Please, do this for me. Because the only way you’re getting through this door is through me. Now let’s rumble.”
Gallan
looked at them all.
Zhen sighed, shook her head and flipped her
psy-scanner back on.
Everyone attacked Naero at once without warning, startling both her and Zhen.
“Wait!” Zhen cried. “It won’t…I need to recalibrate–”
Naero punched
Gallan right in the solar plexus and drove his bulk back several feet, winding him.
Tyber crashed down on top of her suddenly from above, clipped her jaw with his jo staff and smashed her to the ground.
Naero rolled and spin-flipped him hard into the floor.
Chaela froze her left hand to the wall.
Saemar grabbed her kicking legs, got one and then went flying from the other.
Chaela rocked her with a heavy punch that nearly snapped her head off.
“Got you now,” Chae said. “You’re going down.”
Trapped against the wall, Naero endured punishing blows. Chaela pummeled her mercilessly.
Naero slumped to her left.
Chae prepared a finishing blow.
“You asked for this, N.”
Naero darted away. Chae
’s spin kick shattered the ice pinning Naero’s hand to the wall.
Naero
flip-kicked Chaela under the chin, flinging her back.
Gallan
, Tyber, and Saemar rushed in again.
Zhen
’s psy-meter disrupted in her hands.
She screamed and dropped the burning pieces to the
nanofloor, letting the nanos extinguish the small fire.
“
Hold, stop, stop. Dammit,” Zhen added.
“
What happened?” Naero asked. “Did I do that? Was it me?”
“
You didn’t do shit,” Zhen yelled.
She had to be really upset to lose her cool, and then cuss on top of that.
“I tried to tell you idiots. I needed to reset the scanner. Everyone spiking their psy abilities all at once simply fried the meter. This is a delicate neuromedical instrument. Now look at it. Do any of you morons have any idea how expensive these are? No. Of course you don’t.”
Naero couldn
’t believe it. “So there was nothing? No reaction? Not even a hint of any psy ability?”
Zhen glared at her. Then bit her lip and shook her head.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it? No. There was nothing. Not a blip. You’re nud, Naero. Deal with it.”
Naero slid
slowly down the wall, ignoring the growing, throbbing pain in her skull, and the sick feeling roiling in her belly.
She slumped to the floor and slowly took off the psy-helmet, dumping it on the ground. She rested her forearms on her knees and stared absently at the broken psy-meter in smoking pieces through her legs.
Zhen went on lecturing her, her ire up.
“
And if you ask me, it serves you right, Naero. You’ve always been better at everything than the rest of us. A better pilot, better leader, better fighter, better trader. Do you know what that has been like for your friends?
“
Naero Amashin Maeris: prodigy child. The perfect Spacer born of the perfect parents. And you’ve got all the pride of your illustrious family too, along with their superior genetics. How fitting, then, that there’s at least one thing to humble you. One thing that you have no chance of ever excelling at. Psyonics. Something almost every other Spacer can do.”
“
Zhentisa,” Gallan said. “That’s enough. You’ve had your say.”
“
Maybe this will teach you some humility, Naero.”
Even Tyber had to stand up and say something.
“’Tisa. Ease up. This would be hard for any of us. You know that.”
Now
Zhen glared at him.
Naero continued to stare at the ground. Then she convulsed and vomited all over the nano floor. She fell to one side, still gagging and
dry-heaving as the floor auto-cleaned itself.
Her friends gathered around her, doing their best to hold her still as she thrashed.
After she stopped heaving, they rested her comfortably propped up on her back.
Gallan sat with his legs crossed and held her head and shoulders cradled comfortably in his arms. Chaela elevated Naero’s feet while Saemar and Tyber hovered helplessly over Zhen, who placed her hands on Naero and examined her with her healer’s sight.
“Is she okay?” Gallan asked.
“
She’s obviously not okay,” Tyber said. “Is she going to be okay?”
Zhen regained her composure,
ignoring them while she completed her examinations, looking right into Naero’s body and its functions.
“
She put a lot of junk into her system. Her body started rejecting and neutralizing it all, just as it would any toxins. I don’t see any permanent damage to any of her organs, though. Amazing. She has the fastest healing rate of anyone I’ve ever seen. Even among Spacers.”
Naero licked her dry lips.
“Don’t worry guys. I’m going to be okay. Can you get me some water?”
Saemar jumped up. Zhen stopped her.
“Wait a bit. Give it to her now and she’ll just throw it back up.”
Zhen looked a little worried and placed her hands on Naero
’s head again.
“
What’s wrong?” Chaela asked.
“
Haisha
…I…I don’t know. I’ve never seen energy signatures in the brain like this before. They’re fading slowly. Must be feedback from the psy-helmet, still bouncing back and forth in there. But no psyonic activity still. Sorry, Naero.
Zhen paused a moment before going on.
“Yet that’s weird as well. Even in a nud, the areas of the brain where psy activities originate aren’t usually this completely inert or inactive. Normal brain energies still flow through them. They just don’t generate psy energy.
“
But with you, it’s as if your entire brain has those areas totally blocked and shut down, using completely different parts of your brain so that you don’t need them. Kind of like a re-routed back-up system. Wow, I could do an article on this for the neuromed journals.”
“
Great,” Naero muttered. “Even my nudness is unique, and surpasses all other nuds.” She chuckled weakly.
Her
mates laughed nervously along with her.
“
Naero,” Zhen said, “I’m sorry. I apologize for going off on you like I did. It was wrong. I was upset about the scanner, which I still don’t know how I’m going to explain or pay for. But I’ll think of something.
“
Anyway. I said stuff that wasn’t right. I didn’t mean it to come out as harsh as it did.”
Naero licked her lips again.
“No, you were right. All of you guys know it. I am too proud. I can be a real pain in the ass. Stubborn. Hot tempered. Impatient. Argumentative.”
Tyber kept going for her.
“Bossy. Demanding. Inconsiderate.”
Even Naero had to laugh along with them.
“Not to mention all the lame, cheesy tricks and scams you’re always pulling on us,” Tyber said. “Like the time you switched my body wash with hair remover. I was bald and hairless all over. For a month.”
They laughed harder at that.
Zhen smiled and ran her fingers through his curly dark hair. “Aww…you were cute. Like a hairless kitty.”
“
Like the time she hacked all our accounts and left us all with a single cred,” Saemar recalled. “
After
she insisted we go to that expensive restaurant on Darius-3.”
“
Or the time,” Chaela noted, “when the three of us were on that live training exercise, and you somehow filled the cockpits of our fighters with expanding crash foam.”
“
Yeah,” Saemar added. “They had to tow us back in and get us out with pressurized foam solvent. They never pinned it on you, but boy, was your aunt pissed. That stunt had you written all over it.”
“
I admit to nothing,” Naero said.
Gallan
groaned. “What about all the times we were kids, and she hacked the codes on our rooms and set goofy traps for us.”
Zhen laughed.
“Or snuck in while we were sleeping and drew tattoos or stupid stuff on our faces.”
“
Yeah,” Chaela said, turning red. “I spent an entire day walking around like that, going from one training class to another. And none of you bastards would tell me. I wondered why everyone was giggling. I didn’t find out until I went home for dinner that evening and my parents gaped and stared at me like I was a fricking alien or something.”
“
And keep in mind,” Gallan said, “today’s her birthday. That old joke day back on Old Terra.”
“
April Fools’ Day,” Zhen corrected him.
“
Whatever. Who knows what she has planned for us all today. So watch your backs. You all know what’s coming.”
Naero sat up a little more.
“I have absolutely no idea what you people are babbling about.”
“
Riiight,” Tyber said. “That squares it. We’re in for it now, people. I bet she has something absolutely diabolical planned.”
“
I do not,” Naero said.
She grimaced and winced, suddenly rubbing her temples.
“More pain?” Zhen asked. “I warned you about that, N. You’ll probably suffer episodes several times a day. Maybe for quite a while. You haven’t started hallucinating or seeing anything strange yet have you? Delusions could set in.”
“
I’m fine. I’ll handle it.”
Despite the bouts of pain, h
er plan for her master joke on her mates was working to perfection.
Naero hesitated.
“Seriously, you guys must really hate me sometimes. I know I can be a jerk. How do you put up with me?”
“
Well to tell you the truth, it’s not easy,” Tyber said.
“
Screw you.”
“
Really, N?” He threw his arm around Zhen’s slender waist and yawned. “Hmmm…I’m kind of booked up. How about next month sometime?”
Zhen made
a face and pushed away from him. “In your dreams, tek-monkey.”
Naero sighed.
“Well, I guess today the joke’s on me then.”
She pulled away from
Gallan and stood up. Her friends rose up with her.
“
I’m a nud. I’ll just have to accept that. Happy birthday to me.”
All of their coms chimed at once, calling them to morning PT, mandatory for all
Spacer crew in the fleet. Six times out of a standard seven day week.
The panel to Practice Room
35 slid open.
Naero
’s younger brother stood there. tall and lanky in his own black togs. Gray eyes. A tousled mop of black hair like their dad’s and a winning smile.
He
only played at being the bad boy because it got him girls. Especially stupid girls, but he wasn’t choosy.
“
Hey, what are all you people doing here already?”
He loo
ked behind them. “Is that a psy helmet on the floor over there? Gosh…aren’t those illegal?”
Naero rushed over and snatched it up
before he could, stashing all of her illicit stuff away.
“
Stow it, Janner. You didn’t see anything.”
Jan yawned.
“I never do, sib.”