“ADAM, drop the null-communications shield,” Stephen said.
“What if they do something that hurts Bethany Anne, what then?” Peter asked as he got undressed, then the two of them walked to the edge of the building.
“Well, then there will be no gloves,” Stephen replied as he stepped off the edge and dropped behind the troops below.
The roar of the Pricolici transfixed the men as two monsters fell from the sky right into their midst.
—
Private First Class Chung was the third man through the door into a dark warehouse. He turned to the left and aimed his QBZ-95. The man couldn’t see anything, but his gut was telling him to run. He swept the area again.
Two of the men had lowered their weapons. Chung hissed at them. He’d been out in the forest for a short tour, and he still trusted his gut.
“What are you hissing for?” the first asked and rolled his eyes. “There isn’t anyone to fight. This isn’t the wilds, and you need to stop blaming your time there fighting the cats when you jump at shadows!”
He had barely got out his remark when a primal roar from outside startled everyone. Men twisted around, aiming back at the door as fear rolled in from that direction, forcing them to fight the urge to run further into the warehouse.
Chung never stopped looking around the building. He saw the wolf, its eyes flashing yellow, streak out from behind the nearby CNC lathe and leap. The animal’s jaws were coming straight for his throat, and he pressed his trigger in reactive fright. Two bullets slammed into the wolf, throwing its trajectory off enough that it collided with him, but limiting its bite to his arm, not his neck.
His gunfire was enough to warn those who had turned around to look back over their shoulders. But few bullets were fired as people dressed in black slammed into them. Guns were ripped out of their hands and growls joined the roars coming from outside.
Chung screamed as the wolf’s jaw snapped his arm, his fingers releasing the gun to drop beside him as he landed on the floor. He tried to ignore the pain and reached for his knife.
A booted foot stepped on his left wrist, pinning it to the floor. Chung looked up into an American’s face that said something in English. While he didn’t understand the language, the gun barrel in Chung’s face needed no translation.
He slowly pulled his hand away from his knife.
“That’s a good choice, mate,” Todd said. “I’m sure Tommy over there will heal. But if you stab him with that silver knife you got there, I’m pretty sure Stephen won’t give a shit if Tommy just rips your throat out for real next time.”
“You got that right,” a male voice, half human, half growl caused Chung to turn his head.
Where there had been a wounded wolf a second ago, a naked human male was getting up. Chung’s eyes widened in fright when the man tossed two slugs on Chung’s chest. “I think these belong to you.”
—
Stephen bent his knees and landed gracefully. He had worked on his Etheric skills since TOM and Bethany Anne started playing with Etheric forces and antigravity. He hadn’t yet figured out how Michael went to myst, but he was able to lighten his weight.
John thought his trick was fantastic and made him watch the opening sequence in Underworld where Selene dropped from a significant height right onto the stone, stood up and then walked away.
Looking sexy the whole time.
His arrival was noticed when hundreds of pounds of snarling Pricolici landed and started tossing around bodies like a kid tosses a present after opening it on Christmas morning, reaching for the next.
Stephen smiled and pushed his fear. There was a soldier on his left that was pulling up his QBZ and Stephen was there in a blink, yanking the rifle from his hands before elbowing his helmet. The man went sideways hard enough to take out another who was trying hard to overcome the double dose of Stephen’s fear plus having a seven foot tall werewolf howling and cursing gutturally so close to him.
Peter, bitching when one man pulled his pistol and shot him, tossed the soldier he was holding. Stephen watched as Peter grabbed the gun, bent it enough to make it useless then put his large misshapen hand under the shocked soldier’s armpit and threw him. The soldier flew fifteen feet only to stop when he bounced off of the cement wall of the warehouse and landed, unmoving, in the few pitiful shrubs outside the warehouse.
There wasn’t much light in the parking lot. Two soldiers just pulled triggers, and four other soldiers went down under friendly fire.
Stephen, enhancing his speed, reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol with modified tranquilizer shots and rapidly starting shooting those who seemed the most likely to cause them problems.
Then he shot the rest as Peter howled in frustration. “Oh be quiet and see who we have left in the trucks, Peter,” Stephen said.
“Theresss gooeesss my fuunnnzzzz,” the huge Pricolici bitched as he jogged over to the trucks to find the driver’s doors open, but no sign of the drivers.
“Cleeannnzzz,’ Peter called out.
“ADAM, bring them down,” Stephen called out, and in seconds, eight-inch anti-grav plates came down and floated by the trucks. “No, Peter!” Stephen yelled at the Pricolici who was eyeing the soldiers that were running away. Stephen commanded, “Change back or we’ll have another talk.”
Peter shook his head in the negative and moments later, he stood in front of the vampire. “Do you,” he started to ask before he turned his face and spit something out next to the truck before turning back to Stephen. “Do you always have to threaten to beat the shit out of me again?”
“Yes,” Stephen said as he grabbed one of the floating plates and got on his knees to find the right spot under the bed of the transport truck and locked it in place.
Peter started down the other side of the vehicle, putting the plates on as Todd and his people began the process with the other truck.
Stephen grabbed the next plate. “You need to control the Pricolici, not allow it to control you. If you don’t, there will come a day when a very tough decision will have to be made, my friend. I’m not going to make it easy for you now, and have to do something I’ll forever regret in the future.”
“Yeah, well,” Peter answered, locking his third plate in place, “the last time you kicked my Pricolici ass, it got the message pretty well. I can feel the hackles on the back of my neck stand up and then my monster brain remembers you breaking my legs and my left arm. And slapping the shit out of me.”
Stephen locked his fifth plate in place. “That kind of power needs control, or its benefit is lost. It’s what killed the berserkers. Individually, they were indestructible. But, get a good team that practiced, and you could take one down easily.”
Peter bent down to look under the PLA troop truck. “You knew berserkers?”
“Huh?” Stephen asked and then, recognizing Peter’s voice was coming from under the truck, bent to stare at the young man. “Did I know berserkers?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “I’ve always admired them. They often helped break up shield walls before they could get set. A useful thing in fights, I was reading.”
“Yes, I knew two.”
“So, tell me about them,” Peter asked.
“What do you want to know?” Stephen asked. “They tasted pretty good,” he winked at Peter and then stood up, moving to the next plate.
“Hey!” Peter called as he grabbed the next floating plate. “You can’t say they tasted pretty good and then drop the story.” The two men locked the last plate at the back of the truck and walked up to the front where two of Todd’s Guardian Marines were affixing the last two plates.
Stephen patted him on the shoulder. “How about you get dressed? Talking with a naked man isn’t the biggest deal to me, but you’re causing a ruckus.” Stephen pointed at some of the female Wechselbalg who were dropping tied up PLA soldiers outside of the building.
Peter looked up to the roof. “Well, shit.”
“Oh, don’t be a wimp,” Stephe
n said as he grabbed Peter under the arms.
“What the hell are you… FUUUU!” Peter screamed as Stephen took three fast steps towards the building then threw Peter up. The sound of Peter’s landing caused Stephen to smile. The werewolf finished yelling, “UUKKK!”
“Hurry up,” Stephen called to him as he turned to find Todd with a smile on his face. “Are the packages ready to go, Todd?” Stephen asked the Guardian Marines leader.
“Aye, sire, that they are,” Todd told said and then grinned even wider when Stephen’s mouth pressed together.
“I’ll get my Queen back one day for giving me a title,” he complained and then smiled when he heard Peter’s loud ‘son-of-a-bitch’ when he landed after jumping from the roof.
“ADAM, two presents to return to base.”
“Understood, Stephen.” ADAM’s voice came through the receiver in Stephen’s ear. It vibrated the bones and produced sound. No one else would ever hear it.
Moments later, the two huge PLA transport trucks started lifting into the air, accelerating in speed the higher they went before the night swallowed them both.
“You know that rocks hurt like a bitch, Stephen?” Peter said as he came up beside him. “That roof had a shitload of them.”
“Then next time, young and unlearned,” Stephen looked over at Peter, “I suggest you think ahead about clothing needs.”
Military Base, Kaifeng, Henan Province
“No sir,” Private First Class Mi said to his commanding officer. “We lost communications with them right after they said they were entering the parking lot, sir. We have not been able to contact them since.”
“What could be the problem?” Captain Zhia wondered. “This was supposed to be a secret mission.”
“Sir?” radar operator Bolin called out. “We have two strange craft heading this direction.”
Captain Zhia turned and stepped over to the radar operator. He hit a button on the console. “Those are too big to be planes. When was the last time this equipment was looked at?”
“Sir, last quarter per regulations,” the radar operator answered. “Look, they’re coming this way.”
“Should I hit the alarm, sir?” Another radar operator asked, seeing the two unidentified objects approaching.
“Where did they come from?” the captain asked.
“We picked them up coming from Zhengzhou, sir. Ten kilometers this side of the city.”
The captain’s eyebrows drew together. “Show me.”
The radar operator pointed to the location on the map.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he murmured and then picked up the phone. “Give me the base commander.”
Five minutes later, two hundred men, all with weapons at the ready but dressed only in underwear were standing on the edges of the runway. They watched in confused silence as two large empty PLA troop transport trucks crashed down out of the night in the middle of the base’s main runway.
The base commander ground his teeth together as he waited for the four men detailed to go look inside the transports. Seconds later, they confirmed no one was in the trucks. The base commander turned around and growled.
“Someone find my damned men,” he told his sub-commander as he stalked off towards his office to call Beijing.
All Guns Blazing, Outer Docks, QBBS Meredith Reynolds
“So, there are the four of us,” Eric said to the four men and two women who were at his table. Thirty had been picked to be a part of the evening’s festivities. The backdrop was outer space as the guys each told stories at different tables on the viewing deck. Each time they held this celebration, they would invite a handful of those new to the teams, whether Wechselbalg, Marines, Operations, Navy, Engineering or Defenses.
They shared some drinks, some food, and stories. Together, they grew by passing on the emotions, the pain, the effort to fight through the fear to do what was right.
For each other, and for the world.
Eric pantomimed holding his rifle, looking left and right. “The four of us thought we had one Nosferatu to deal with. Now remember, we were entirely human, no enhancements at that time. Nosferatu were fast fuckers, stronger than cement head over there…”
“Heard that, Escabar!” John called over his shoulder and resumed his own story.
Eric winked at his table. “Stronger than John, I mean. We were out in the Florida Everglades, and if you don’t know that part of the United States, it’s hot, muggy, filled with water and small patches of land and alligators. It’s getting on towards the evening, and we have a fucking Nosferatu to take down, and there are four of us. We’d been fighting these sonsabitches for months all across the United States. We lost a lot of good men, and we had just one vampire to help us. This little switch of a girl with black hair…”
“Heard that Escabar!” Bethany Anne sang before she went back to her discussion.
“I mean this full-bodied woman with raven hair…”
Bethany Anne called to Eric, “You’re so full of shit!”
Eric rolled his eyes and looked at Bethany Anne. “Why is it I can’t tell my story here?”
She waved him off. “Okay, zipping my lips… maybe,” she said to him and turned back to her table again.
“So, Bethany Anne and the four of us hear that Dan is under attack. John tells BA to go help them. Otherwise, they’re all dead because we were in a trap, a setup. The Forsaken that had planned this did a good job and we were fucked. Our ace in the hole was the recently changed vampire. But we didn’t know her, she didn’t know us.”
“You had never worked together?” one of the engineers asked.
“Nope. John and I went to the airport to pick her up as she arrived in a jet fighter from Europe. We didn’t know how to act around her because vampires are notoriously touchy. They could just as soon rip your face off as help you.”
Bobcat came to the table and started grabbing empty bottles and replacing them. Bobcat and William had to start bussing these events because their usual help would listen to the stories and forget to do their jobs.
“So, she agrees, and John sees her disappear. Which, let me tell you is still freaky as hell now but was blowing our ever-loving minds back then. So, we have one Nosferatu, and Bethany Anne has about twelve. I said something about it seemed fair we get one, and she gets twelve, and Scott says,” Eric smiled, “I shit you not, he says ‘We wouldn’t want her to think we gave her the easier task because she’s a girl, right?’”
Eric was slapping the table laughing as Scott called out across the room, “Escabar, kiss my ass!”
Eric’s team was enjoying the antics between the four Queen’s Bitches as Eric flipped Scott off over his shoulder. “So Darryl says ‘I wouldn’t let her hear you’ and Scott is like ‘FUCK No!’”
Eric wiped at the tears in his eyes. “So, we’re feeling kinda cocky and loose at this point. Then, God help us, we find out we have two of the Nosferatu, not one like we thought. Let me tell you, we all thought we were going to bite the bullet and die that night. So John takes command and tells Scott when he counts to three to light up one of the Nosferatu and keep it busy so the three of us can maybe get the drop and kill the other Nosferatu that’s in front of us.”
Eric took a pull from the beer Bobcat had left him and then set it back down.
“So, our chances of living would go up a million percent if we can just kill one of these fuckers. Now, we start cussing, but we’re having to do it creatively because if not, we all figure the ghost of the recently departed vampire helping Dan’s people would jump out of the bushes and make us do a hundred pushups or some shit. It’s getting pretty hairy, and we all know we’re up shit creek without a paddle. So, in one of my less lucid moments I scream out, ‘Come get me, you ginormous shit eater! Hey, spanky love nuts and your friend fudge slapper maximus over there,’ to get their attention.”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 38