Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets)

by Michael Anderle

  When Pete was within thirty feet of the tent, Todd came out of the brush pretty quietly for a human. The hope was to keep gunshots to a minimum and then go take out the second camp. The suppressed M4 Todd had slung in front of him was chambered for 300 Blackout and loaded with 200 grain FMJ subsonic rounds. If shots were required the screams from the dying would be louder than the weapon’s report.

  Todd reached for the door handle but waited for Pete. Pete smiled and then took off his black shirt and dropped it. He pulled his knife and handed it to Todd who winked at him.

  Then Pete thought about his sister from another mister. The blood that had been all over her when he had seen her life draining down her neck in a valley in Turkey.

  The night turned bright. Todd looked shorter as Pete grew to dwarf the man in front of him. Todd never looked away and never looked concerned. As far as Todd was concerned, he would stick his head in those massive jaws. He trusted Pete Silvers with his life, his wife, and his knife. Well, since his divorce papers were signed Pete could fuck her all he wanted! But he would suggest Pete find someone better than that two-timing bitch.

  Pete rolled and popped his shoulders and stared back over his left shoulder to where his men were ready to go into the tents.

  His voice, deep and guttural, carried to their ears easily.

  “Engage!” Todd opened the door and Pete Silvers, the first Pricolici in four hundred years, stepped out of the night and into each of these men’s personal nightmares.

  Pete didn’t waste time or energy. Stepping into the darkened tent, he saw the cot to his left was occupied. He took one step over and ripped out the man’s throat and then grabbed his head and twisted it, breaking his neck. Pete’s madness at the evil these men had caused threatened to overtake him. He was clenching his jaws. He wanted to howl at the moon as he went from man to man, killing them quietly. By the time he went around the first room in the tent, four were dead by his hand. Todd had used Pete’s knife to kill the one to the right of the door.

  The two men turned towards the canvas door at the back of the room to move into the next section of the tent when a gunshot and a ‘you fucking prick!’ broke the stillness of the night.

  Well, that blew it! Pete ran ahead and burst through the opening into the second. There were three men there, two had jumped off their beds and one was trying to find his glasses.

  Todd came in behind him. Pete howled, getting all of the men’s attention and a bullet for his efforts. Pete was reminded that these weren’t new recruits, but rather men who had fought in other wars and other battles. Pete looked down at the hole in his chest and then back at the bastard who was staring into death’s face.

  Pete’s deep and malicious voice broke the stalemate. “You teabag repository! That fucking hurts!” Pete’s right arm shot out, grabbing the man who had been in his bed, trying to remain inconspicuous. Pete pulled him out of the bed by his head, his clawed hand easily engulfing the struggling man who was unsuccessfully trying to peel off the claws digging into his eye. Pete lifted him a foot off of the ground and used one of the clawed fingers on his left hand to slice his neck open. “Welcome to retribution. The Queen Bitch sends her regards!”

  The dying man’s scream unfroze the man with the pistol and he shot Pete two more times before the back of his head sprayed brain matter when Todd’s shot took him between his eyes. Pete tossed his kill off to the side and walked to the second man who had been trying to make it to the radio.

  Todd spoke. “Touch it, and die.” The third man looked over at Todd’s gun aimed at him. He froze for just a second, a second he didn’t have, when Pete’s huge hand grabbed him around the neck.

  He struggled as this demon from hell shook him. He beat at the arm then reached down and grabbed for a knife, a knife he hadn’t been wearing while sleeping. His hand was caught by the monster’s left hand. He screamed in pain when the claws dug into his wrist, severing blood vessels and breaking his bones.

  Pete brought the man’s face to within inches of his own. “You and your fucking DILF riders have made us angry. How does it feel to have your life bleeding out of you? Are you ready for your afterlife, you cocksucking cretin?” Pete’s voice was guttural and probably almost impossible for the man to understand, but his anger was speaking volumes into the man’s brain. Pete squeezed harder, the man still unsuccessfully beating at Pete’s arm as his life was draining away.

  Todd watched in fascination as Pete’s body ejected two bullets at the same time as he was casually strangling the man. Pete looked around, then tossed the dead body on top of the one Todd had shot.

  Pete was full of rage, the killing he had just accomplished wasn’t enough. He turned to look around when Todd stepped up and popped him on his chest. “Get ahold of yourself! We have a job to do and if you don’t pull yourself together, I’m telling Bethany Anne!” Todd’s grin would have looked weird if someone hadn’t known the close friendship these two had. The tall monster looked down at the shorter human and growled, “Tattle-tellerrr!”

  Todd shrugged as he pulled a backpack off of his shoulder and put it on the table with the communications equipment. “Tough shit. I had to get you to focus and while you’re scary-as-fuck my friend, you don’t hold a candle to Bethany Anne when she gets righteously pissed.”

  Behind Todd, Pete’s normal human voice retorted, “You know, I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or not.” Pete heard three more shots from the south side of the camp and then one round from one of the snipers above them. “Sounds like some of our guests were leaving the party.”

  Todd said, “Isn’t this their home? Aren’t we the guests here?”

  Pete came over and started grabbing papers and helping Todd stuff them into the pack. “Beats the fuck out of me. We weren’t invited, so I don’t know how we could be considered guests.”

  “True. Why don’t you check out who fired that first shot?” Todd said while he pulled out a box to check it. “Let them know they ruined a perfect record!”

  Pete retrieved his knife from Todd then walked towards the door leading to the other room in the tent. “How can we have a perfect record? This is our first op.”

  “That’s my point, we fucked up on our first op!” Todd’s humor confirmed Pete’s assumption that Todd wasn’t too upset. But he did make a good point. They had gotten a little sloppy.

  Todd’s voice followed him out into the night, “Ten bucks says it was Rickie.”

  Pete chuckled, no way was he taking that bet.

  —

  Pete checked in with everyone. Sure enough, it was Rickie that had been shot. He was taking a pretty nasty ribbing from the guys. Pete said, “Report.”

  Tim spoke first. “Ten in my tent. Mostly late teen or younger twenties. One bed was messed up but empty, it smelled of the one who was out at the latrine.” Pete nodded. The rest of the group went in turn. While there was occasionally an older guy in the group, most were young.

  Finally, Pete looked at Rickie. “And what’s your excuse? You fucked up our perfect record.”

  Rickie looked confused. “What record?”

  Pete replied, “The one we won’t have now that our first op was fucked up! What were you doing, mouthing off with each one of your kills?”

  Rickie’s sudden flush told everyone there that was exactly what he had been doing. Pete asked, “What, did you have to say something snarky with each and every kill?”

  Rickie tried to answer Pete, but every time a justification came to his lips it left just as quickly. Finally his shoulders slumped. “I screwed up.”

  Pete pointed at Rickie. “That’s going to be another two rounds with Gabrielle when we get back. Each time your mouth says something, I’m going to ask her to provide a counterpoint to remind you to keep your yap shut.”

  Rickie groaned at the thought of rounds with Gabrielle. He truly had worked hard to control his desire to always be a cutup. He couldn’t help it if he found everything in life to be so fucking funny!
And it just seemed like it was in his blood to provide his own unique brand of commentary.

  Except when sparring with Gabrielle one-on-one. That wasn’t fucking funny at all.

  They were interrupted by Scottie’s accent coming down from above them. The Guardians looked up to see him leaning out the open doors of his Pod. “Ya think we might put a sock in it and move on to the next camp? Light’s going to be here soon enough and discussing your little sparring match isn’t going to help get the other bag of terrorists meeting their maker any sooner.”

  Pete nodded. There really wasn’t much to do until Todd confirmed he had what he wanted. “You know what?” His Guardians looked at him. “What do you think it would do to those who find this mess if they find a bunch of wolf tracks everywhere?”

  Matthew spoke up, “Probably confuse them, the native wolf isn’t very big. Even the pipsqueak wolf over there would frighten them.”

  Joel said, “Who the hell are you calling ‘pipsqueak?’”

  “Tim,” Matthew replied.

  “Oh. Well in that case you’re right.” Joel smiled. Except for Pete’s hybrid form, Tim’s wolf was the largest of the group.

  Tim walked past Matthew and slapped him on his back, “Nice try, dipstick receptacle.” Matthew took a step before getting his balance. He rubbed his shoulder to ease the pain. When Tim hit someone he hit really fucking hard!

  Pete went around to confirm the dead and was good for four of the tents, but he came out of the fifth with his thumb and forefinger rubbing his eyes. “Rickie!” A tan wolf came around the corner from two tents away and padded over to him, looking up at him. “Change, you ass!” Pete commanded.

  Rickie changed.

  “Yes?” Rickie stood before Pete naked, smiling at what he figured Pete must want from him.

  “Can you give me a fucking practical reason you put half those guy’s heads into the other half’s crotches in there?” Pete thumbed over his shoulder back at the tent.

  “Just thought I would fuck with the enemy, sir.” Rickie offered.

  Pete considered Rickie’s response. “You know what? I’ll accept that this one time. Next time, you will request permission before you go off and pull a stunt like that. I have no idea what will come of this and if it screws with the plan, I’ve got to accept the blame for your shit. If you ever do this again, you and I will have our own attitude adjustment session, you understand me?” Pete’s eyes were flashing in the night, his anger obvious.

  Rickie swallowed and nodded. While he didn’t want to spar with Gabrielle, he sure as hell didn’t want an ‘attitude adjustment session’ with Pete. Rickie would probably be healing for an hour, painfully. When Pete decided that a ‘physical attitude adjustment’ was called for, a person’s life was incredibly painful for a while afterwards.

  Pete looked around and saw Todd coming out of the tent. “Get fucking dressed and don’t pull that shit again.” Pete walked away from Rickie and headed towards Todd.

  Five minutes later there were seven Pods available for everyone to jump in. Todd threw his backpack of papers into one of the Pods and sent it away, back to the ship.

  Todd spoke to everyone assembled. “Ok. We’ve struck silently.” He eyed Rickie. “Make that mostly silently. Now we’re going to show these fuckers what happens when we strike loudly. You guys stand back and let the Guardian Marines show you pussies how to really fuck up a camp!” The human Marines all smiled and gave him an ‘Oo-rah!’ The Guardians grinned toothily, the rivalry between the two groups was as strong as ever.

  The plan for the second camp called for the Marines to lead while the Wechselbalg had their back.

  But there was one thing that Todd hadn’t shared with Pete, wanting to keep it as a surprise.

  Todd loved working with the Wechselbalg, but they could really stomp on a Marine’s ego with their damned skill and ability to take a beating, so Todd figured he would have to up the amperage of their own ability to deal death to keep up.

  There was only one person Todd felt could help them step up and Todd had made sure to speak to her.

  Now, the Guardian Marines were officially going to kick some ass.

  Tonight, Todd’s people were pulling out guns no service had ever used, guns provided by none other than Jean J. Dukes herself. From here on out, if the Guardians radioed for ‘shock and awe,’ they were calling for their Marines.

  Tonight, death would literally rain from the sky, and even God himself would be challenged to sort them out.

  18

  Todd got into his Pod, pulling the door shut. He reached up and locked it. Then he swiped his hand across the glass to pull up the menu.

  “Gentlemen… and Rickie.” His voice went across the ether to each of the Pods in his group. Todd smiled at the laughs his comment produced.

  “The Guardian Marines would like to request you pay attention to the forward viewports in each of your respective Pods. Each of your second generation Pods has been modified by the Queen Bitch’s Navy on the Ad Aeternitatem to load out a new weapon introduced by the wickedly delightful Jean J. Dukes.” Todd ignored the wolf whistle. “Besides being our very creative gunnery officer for the Polarus, we have co-opted her as our very own weapons consultant.”

  This run had been set up with Bethany Anne and TOM in advance. This set of Pods had been loaded onto the ship two days after Bethany Anne had spoken to them all and called Pete and Todd onto the table with her. Todd went to find Jean the very next morning and by that night, the Ad Aeternitatem had been pointed to another port where they were able to pick up the necessary armament.

  Todd hit the button to start their next run. The new Pods screamed forward, yells of excitement and jubilation drowning out any other chatter.

  —

  Lord almighty, Todd thought, Jean and Team BMW have outdone themselves. It had taken every trick Todd could think of to keep the nosy Wechselbalg away from the banging and clanging going on in the lower bay where their Pods were being worked on. As the designated Pod Carrier, the Ad Aeternitatem was getting some changes inside and out. Jean wasn’t happy with the complete lack of any defensive armament on the ship, so she had three weapons added to the pickup list when they went for the Pods. Her team had come aboard to help install the guns and show Captain Wagner’s crew how to use them.

  Captain Wagner had set their direction south to get into the middle of the Mediterranean as clear of other ships as possible. Once they had the Pods below decks, out of the main bay area, TOM’s ship landed. Marcus, Bobcat and William had arrived with a large group of enhanced output engines that the team then energized on TOM’s ship. Once that was completed, TOM’s ship went back into orbit and Team BMW flew back to the USA. With the new and improved Pods, they were achieving unheard of speeds. For the longer flights, they would go up to the thermosphere and fly around the globe before descending through the mesosphere and stratosphere to get back down into the troposphere and into the clouds and cloud cover. There was extra distance involved travelling via the thermosphere (approximately 200 miles up). But the slightly longer trip caused by larger arc was offset by the lack of atmospheric wake issues. The team’s trip was close to fifteen minutes from the Mediterranean to the base in Colorado.

  Todd had been standing by the last Pod to watch its enhanced engine get locked in when Jean Dukes came up. “How’s it going, soldier?” She slugged him on the arm, “Hey Todd, have you played pattycake pattycake with any assholes in dive bars lately?”

  Todd smiled back at Jean. The two of them plus John Rodriquez had an altercation back in Nassau that left three friends of the original dirtbag owner of Bethany Anne’s Superyachts dead. “Without you and John along it just wouldn’t be like old times, you know?”

  The two of them watched as the ammo was loaded into the rotor housing area. Todd continued, “These things are a work of art. The amount of destruction is going to be a sight to see.”

  “I’m pretty proud of it myself. The electrical power those small Pod engines pu
t out is, literally, off the charts. Being able to power these little railguns is completely within their abilities. But don’t expect to fire more than maybe a half mile out with them before you start to see degradation of their flight path. I’m sure we can do better, but this was on short notice. The test we did this morning at sea was phenomenally successful.” She turned to look at Todd. “Why did you want tracer plugs added to the mix? We don’t use bullets for this, we use quarter-inch diameter, three-inch-long metal rods. Cheap as hell and not something your enemy will see without using heat-detecting goggles. You’re potentially opening yourself up to return fire, and for what?”

  Todd’s face turned from delighted to angry as he considered the video of the France terrorist attacks. “That’s because I want the motherfuckers to know that death comes for them. These six barrels fire once a second, so six rounds each second going downrange. I’ve had them add the tracers every fifty to ninety rounds. With TOM’s help, we’ve organized a dance that causes the Pods to rotate position and jink up and down through. None of the Pods will ever cross each other and with the tracers being staggered like that no one on the ground is going to be able to draw a bead on black Pods at night moving so fast. Of course, I expect them to be dead in seconds once the onboard targeting system has them in its sights. Bethany Anne said no survivors.” Todd looked at Jean. “And by God, I’m going to make damn sure we obey her command.”

  Jean said, “These things are pretty fucking awesome, but somebody could be under metal and you’d never know if you got all of the people.”

  Todd’s smile turned ugly. “That’s why I have one special package compliments of Team BMW to deliver as we leave.”

  With that, the two turned to less deadly topics.

  Arra Meer was pretty damn proud of himself. He had made it to Libya and worked his ass off to train and learn. In three days, he and his cohort would be sent out to use their training to fight the injustice against his people.