Don't Cross This Line (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 14)

by Michael Anderle

  “I tollldd youu, Kieellll!” the sinewy monster next to him laughed, “It is but for us to be warriors and race to do that which we were BORN TO DO!”

  Every being in their mechanical suits heard Bethany Anne’s shout of joy as they all rushed through the caves, “Catch up to me, my people, for today we WILL KICK EVERY ASS WE SEE!”

  —

  “WHAT THE HELL IS COMING AT US?” Patrick yelled over the video connection in his operation’s room to Ztopik, who had never left his own.

  “Your yelling, Lead Operations Patrick, will not support an effective method of leadership,” Ztopik replied tersely. He was watching those getting closer as the system registered their approximate position due to seismic calculations and occasional snippets of video.

  The lasers in the system were useless. They barely had time to fire one, maybe two shots before something took them out.

  “Get your people to the bottom level, Lead Operations Patrick, or we will have no one protecting us from below,” Ztopik commanded.

  “How the hell do they know the caves?” Patrick bitched, keeping himself from yelling in his frustration. “We would have seen any humans or…”

  Patrick’s voice dropped off. Ztopik presumed Patrick had figured out a possibility. For Ztopik, the how didn’t matter at this point.

  It just was.

  One didn’t argue with reality, not when the proof was coming straight towards them.

  “Should we bring back XJ-02?” Patrick asked.

  “No,” Ztopik responded,” If we need support above us, they will be there for you. I doubt this group hasn’t planned for fighting the ships inside the caverns.”

  Patrick hated asking Ztopik for help, but he had to admit he had been waging a silent fight with TQB for the past few years.

  And his failure was staring him in his face as TQB raced through the cave system coming straight at him.

  Ztopik sent out a mental command, “I will provide support, tell your people to not interfere with my Grays.”

  Patrick nodded and Ztopik cut the connection.

  —

  “We have light ahead.” Bethany Anne told the group, “It’s time to fly, folks.”

  Having made their best effort to trip any traps in their path, Bethany Anne and her team slowed to a stop in order to wait for the Pricolici and the Yollins to catch up. When those team members arrived, Bethany Anne spoke to Kiel, “Do you use this same tactic?”

  “This leap-frogging?” Kiel asked. “No. Our suits are usually more advanced than those we fight, so we haven’t had to do this.”

  “Well, we have an enemy of unknown abilities and another alien, somewhere in there.” Bethany Anne told him, “So, I want it thinking.”

  Bo’cha’tien chuckled, “You want it thinking that Yollins are attacking?” The eyes on the Yollin female narrowed. She was liking the thought they would be the first in view.

  “Hell yes. So, you will be dropping in first. Start creating a mess and get their attention. When we get enough of their defense showing up, we will leapfrog you and drop in.”

  “What do we do at that point?” Kiel asked.

  “What we plannn to do allll night,” Peter answered, “Catch UUUp.”

  Multiple round disks arrived above all of those in the suits. Each had two bars hanging from the bottoms of the disks. As each lowered above those standing, they would reach up and grab the bars. The controls were simple.

  Bethany Anne looked around, “Time to earn your money, DeathBringers!”

  With a bone vibrating chittering, the six Yollins lifted up into the air and headed towards the large flat area ahead of them.

  “Ready Bitches?” Bethany Anne asked looking around. Then added, “And Nathan.”

  His guttural laughter reverberated off the rock walls as another seven bodies, encased in armor, rose into the cavern darkness.

  —

  Patrick’s face popped back up on Ztopik’s screen, “What are those, Ztopik?” His voice was half angry, half frustrated because the enemy had now come into the viewing area of their high powered video cameras.

  And Patrick had no idea what the large and obviously not human mechanized suits were as they dropped down right outside the landing field.

  There was no mistaking the opening conversation with the aliens. They unlimbered guns and started shooting into anything that looked like it was valuable.

  They weren’t here to play nice.

  “Those,” Ztopik answered, anger flooding his carefully cultured voice, “are Yollins!”

  His mind racing, Ztopik could not figure out how Yollins could be, or even would be attacking them. They should have fifty ships up in orbit and delivering an ultimatum.

  Patrick spoke commands to another screen and Ztopik could now hear the crack of normal weapons fire from the men Patrick had hastily moved to the lower levels.

  “Those guns are not going to accomplish anything against the Yollin,” Ztopik paused his talking, sending commands to his slaves, “My Grays are arriving now, they will even up the fight,” he promised.

  —

  The constant pinging of projectile weapons hitting Kiel’s suit was annoying as hell, but the bullets didn’t represent a danger to him or his people. Each time a face, leg, or arm showed itself, half a dozen bolts either blew it apart, or damaged the area it had just been in.

  Bo’cha’tien spoke privately, “Why are we hiding?”

  “Because our employer told us to, Bo’cha’tien.” he replied.

  “Well, I think this is stupid,” she said to him, “it is obvious that these humans have nothing that can hurt us, watch!”

  Kiel turned in time to see Bo’cha’tien jump out from behind her protection and start shooting randomly. She drew attention away from Kiel, and the heavy patter patter of the bullets lessened on his armor. His order for her to return behind her protection was lost as she yelled over her loudspeaker.

  “Eat Yollin Plasma and DIE MOTHERFUCKERS!”

  —

  Sam Bollard was pissed. Despite its heavier bullet his M14 wasn’t doing shit to these aliens. But, at the moment it was what he had. The alien bastards stayed behind the outcroppings just outside of the flattened landing area and their return fire had already killed three of his people.

  Then, one of the aliens jumped out and started blasting heavy bolts of hot shit everywhere. It started chittering over a loudspeaker on its suit. No one could understand shit, but the last two words at the end.

  Greg yelled over to him, “Did that alien just say ‘die motherfuckers’?”

  “Yeah!” Sam agreed, “Who the fuck is teaching them English?”

  —

  Goowek sent out the command, “Place all debilitation devices on max power. We are not acquiring specimens. We are commanded to kill these Yollins.”

  The five other Grays with him all checked their weapons and set each of the three settings to max. While they had fewer shots...

  They were powerful shots.

  The elevator opened and Goowek stepped out. They emptied into a short hallway that would enter into the landing cave. He could see two men were using their weapons from the exit outside. He and his people were not fast, but what they lacked in speed...

  They made up in firepower.

  He walked calmly towards the opening.

  —

  “HAHAHAHAHA…Kiss my Yollin ass you pink hairless bunnies!” Bo’cha’tien yelled, slamming two more shots towards the large rock two of the men were using to hide behind.

  Bethany Anne’s voice came over the system, “WE HAVE ALIENS, WE HAVE ALIENS!”

  Kiel twisted around to look and saw a short Zeta Reticulan step up into view just inside one of the built entrances. He was lifting his hand up, aiming.

  “Bo’cha’tien lookout!” Kiel told her. He jacked up his power and shoved off the ground. Time seemed to stop as he jumped at Bo’cha’tien’s legs. He could see a brightness to his left before his visor darkened.

  �
��

  Ztopik watched the view to see what was going on. He watched as the Yollin stood there, accepting the humans weapon fire and playing with the humans. Then, he noticed another jump towards the one in the open.

  Ztopik calculated the timing and wondered at the outcome.

  —

  “WE HAVE ALIENS, WE HAVE ALIENS!” came over Bo’cha’tien’s communicator. She looked around, surprised to hear Bethany Anne’s voice and then saw the Zeta Reticulan. It was a short Gray, it’s unblinking eye aiming a …

  “Oh Shit!”

  Sometimes, humans had the best words for any situation. She had already used motherfucker, and now she had to cross off shit, too.

  Her desire to get out and prove herself had finally got her killed.

  Fuck her life.

  She started turning her gun, because who knew? Maybe they would miss, maybe they…

  SLAM!

  Her body violently rocketed to the side, having been smashed into by something from her left. That’s when her suits alarms all went to yellows and reds.

  Before she blacked out, she noticed that her left arm was listed as red with a mark through it.

  The drugs hit her system and helped her body not go into total shock. She had a passing thought as her thoughts dimmed.

  “I’ve lost my arm.”

  —

  “Move, Bitches.” The command came from Bethany Anne and she and her team, who had been holding steady up at the top of the cave, out of sight, dropped down quickly holding on to the grav carriers. Then, twenty feet from the floor they let go.

  Seven bodies, encased in the world's most advanced mechanized armor, dropped into the midst of the defenders with Bethany Anne landing just to the side of the hallway opening.

  Goowek had been watching to see if he could get another shot at the two Yollins who had disappeared behind the rock on his left. He didn’t have enough shots to shoot indiscriminately.

  He barely had time to register the deep red armored person before his head exploded.

  Fractions of a second later, his five team members had also been targeted and killed.

  “Kiel!” Bethany Anne called out.

  “Here,” came back his voice over the comm.

  “How is Bo’cha’tien?” she asked. She looked to her left, a man was pulling up a pistol to shoot her. She reached down, and grabbed it out of his hand. Crumpling it up, she tossed it to the side. He reached back for the rifle he had been using a moment before and she reached down to her leg, issuing a command, one piece separated. She used the armor sized Wakizashi to cut off the man’s head before she reattached the sword. “Stupid ass,” she muttered as she walked towards the elevator.

  Kiel came back, “She will live, but the weapon disintegrated her whole arm.”

  “No shit?” Bethany Anne asked, then turned around and walked back to the first alien. She bent down and picked up the weapon the alien had used. She pushed it into the Etheric.

  Walking back to the five other bodies, she picked up every one of their weapons and pushed them into the Etheric as well. Better to not leave this technology hanging around.

  “Folks,” she put out over the radio, “the little gray guys have something that will disintegrate you, so if you see one of those, put them down fast. Grab the weapon, I want them for R&D.” She switched to the command channel, “You got that, Dan?”

  Dan’s voice came back, “Watch out for the little gray guys, their weapons will atomize you.”

  “That’s right. We have a Yollin down, she’s missing her whole arm,” Bethany Anne told him, “So, let’s get this going but make sure everyone is super careful.”

  “John’s going to be particularly happy about this,” Dan quipped.

  Bethany Anne thought about it, “You know, that’s not a bad suggestion.”

  He agreed, “I know, it’s why you pay me the big bucks, Bethany Anne.”

  She watched as her guys took a few moments to check everything out and get their stuff back together. “Ok, bring up the teams, Dan.”

  “We have a problem with the group for entrance three,” he told her.

  “What problem?”

  “Their paths are totally blocked by explosives. We are pulling them out, putting up a Puck Curtain and moving them around to entrance two at this time, but they will be a couple of minutes behind those who are already in the group.”

  “Any change on the Pods flying in here for cover?”

  “Nope, we still have something messing up the computers on the Pods, until that stops, we continue to be stuck.”

  Bethany Anne turned and looked at the elevator, “It’s like the damned scene in Star Wars where we have to turn off the tractor beam,” she huffed. “Ok, keep them coming, we have to deal with this elevator.”

  “Good luck,” Dan told her and closed the connection.

  Bethany Anne looked to her guys, “Who's feeling lucky?”

  All of the guys started looking back and forth at each other as Kiel came walking up along the side of the group. Now, she had seven males from two species looking back at her.

  “Ok, anyone who wants to volunteer, take a step forward,” she told the group.

  Six sets of feet shuffled one step backwards.

  Kiel turned and looked behind him to the guys all smiling. He turned back around to see Bethany Anne smiling at him as well.

  Except, her smile seemed just a touch malicious.

  Kiel looked down at his feet, and then everyone else’s feet and realized he was now in front of everyone. He turned back to Bethany Anne, “I want it on the record that I have been screwed.”

  Bethany Anne reached out to him, “Sorry, I can only take one more with me and you just volunteered.”

  “Take me whe…” the Yollin got out before they both disappeared.

  The humans all chuckled in the sudden silence before they spread out to make sure no one took them by surprise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The operations room of the base was full of people. Patrick had a team watching all video cameras, but really focusing on the ones that showed the elevator and elevator shaft. Another group of his people was busy setting up explosives they could drop down the elevator shaft.

  The final descent into the bottom landing field was through one hundred and twenty feet of damn near impregnable rock.

  Patrick’s eyes narrowed and he hit the buttons to switch through the video streams from outside. So far, TQB had destroyed twelve of their cameras, but they still had another four in operation.

  TQB had not brought along any devices to dig through rock as far as he could determine. He jerked a little when the video stream that he was watching suddenly went to static.

  Make that three video cameras still in operation.

  He gritted his teeth. They had defensive preparations up top, but not nearly enough down at the bottom. They were between a rock and a hard place and the final choice he had was to call in the US military.

  But, if he did that, they would be screwed a second time. A few or even most of his people might get away from the human’s group. There was no way the experiments in section two could be allowed to leave.

  Or even found.

  Patrick was watching the video stream of the team working to booby-trap the elevator shaft when his brain could not…no, dared not believe what his eyes were telling him.

  Etheric

  “What…is this place?” Kiel asked when looking around the grey amorphous landscape. The light was bright enough, but with the fog in place he couldn’t see. The sensors of his mech suit were not helping, either.

  “Follow me,” she told him and then answered over her shoulder. “This is the Etheric dimension. We can’t travel too far because between the two of us, the energy to transfer this much metal drains me every damned step we take.” Even now he could start to hear her breathing harder.

  “Where are we going and how far is it?” Kiel asked, looked around him trying to get a sense of where he was.<
br />
  “Fuck all if I know, but it had better not be too far.” She stopped and seemed to lean forward just a bit and then they continued, walking another five paces before she stopped and leaned forward again.

  “What are you doing?” Kiel finally asked.

  “Looking out from inside the elevator shaft to figure out if we are at a floor yet,” she answered and then resumed walking. She did this another three times before pausing longer. “Oh…well, that’s just fucking rude.”