“Anything else we should know?” John asked as he pointed to himself, Nathan and Scott for the first elevator test.
“Yeah,” she came back, voice calm. “There’s another elevator shaft and I don’t have any video in that section.”
“Understood,” John replied and the connection went silent.
Darryl quipped, “That’s not like, ominous or anything.”
Ztopik watched as the humans died in the operations room, his little mouth pursed. The Yollin was calmly and efficiently shooting them. He noticed that he would not have to worry about dealing with Patrick before a replacement was put in charge.
“Meehine,” he pointed towards the secondary exit, “go to the research lab and prepare to release the fourth wave.”
The little gray alien obediently turned and headed toward the research floor.
Now, how did the Yollin get through Patrick’s defenses?
—
John, Nathan and Scott stepped into the elevator. John pushed the button for level three.
The three men, two in human mech suits and one in a Pricolici suit stood there, waiting for the elevator to go up.
“Sure wish we had some music,” Scott said. “Hell, I’d even take some Barry Manilow right now.” Nathan snickered behind him.
“Not exactly music to take over an alien base with,” John commented.
“Well, neither is this dead air,” Scott said when the elevator slowed to a stop.
“Wonnndeerrr hhhoowww wee finnddd herrr,” Nathan growled.
The doors opened and the men heard the sound of gunfire coming from down the hallway. John stabbed the button for the elevator to go back down to the lowest level. “Follow the audio crumbs of destruction and chaos,” he said as the three of them started running down the hallway.
—
“Bethany Anne, I’m running out of ammunition!” Kiel called out.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“We don’t know if they have more of those weapons!” Kiel retorted. When the ceiling had lost a chunk Kiel realized he had almost become the Yollin Mercenary Company’s first death.
“It’s not about that,” Bethany Anne said. “It’s about…”
The roar reverberated down the hallway and poured into the room. The gunshots coming into the room had stopped. But gunshots continued, just aimed elsewhere.
Then, the screams of terror and bodies getting ripped apart, or slamming into walls started.
Bethany Anne put down her sword. “Okay guys, don’t say we didn’t save some for you.”
“FUCK!” Scott called back. “Did you have to get them all worked up?”
“Stttoppp Youourrr bitttchhhinggg!” Nathan growled. His laughter sounded pretty damned evil when it accompanied the dismemberment of humans, their cries suddenly silenced.
“Fine!” Scott yelled back. “Don’t say I wasn’t polite.”
Kiel walked up to the doorway, peeked around and saw the huge Pricolici, a human in his left hand who was trying to beat his arm as he dangled in the air. Nathan squeezed his neck. The loud snap preceded Nathan dropping the dead body. Nathan’s right hand grabbed the face of another human. That one’s scream of pain ended suddenly with the shattering of his skull. “He he hee hehhhehhh.”
Soon, there were no more humans opposing them.
Bethany Anne walked out into the hallway and spoke to the guys, “Remind me to tell Ashur I’m sorry, I could have used his furry ass on this operation.”
“We need to look after the Queen, she is weak,” Kiel said as he came out of the room.
Bethany Anne turned around. “You just fucking ratted me out!” She bitched at Kiel. “Gott Verdammt! The alien mercenaries are stabbing me in the back!”
—
Ztopik watched the humans and the non-humans kill the Majestic-12 people. He considered options and then his tiny mouth turned up. He pressed three buttons and all of the computers in the room shut down.
Turning around, he headed toward his research level.
There was no time, he considered, like the present, to determine which of his creations was the deadliest.
—
It took the teams twenty minutes to run through the rest of the levels. Those humans that gave up were rounded up and taken back to the caves.
If they fought, they were eliminated.
Bethany Anne and her team found the scientists shaking in their offices. Peter brought a female to her. “This is the heeeaddd Doctorrr,” he said.
Bethany Anne, her helmet in her hands, turned to look at the woman. She had mascara streaks that tears must have made. But at the moment, she glared at Bethany Anne.
“You bitch!” she hissed, “You have killed my friends here... for what?”
“You tried killing my people first,” Bethany Anne retorted.
The scientist spat, “We are trying to make the U.S. the most advanced superpower in the world, what are you doing?”
“Saving the world from aliens, you self-centered, poor excuse for a human being.” Bethany Anne replied, then handed Eric her helmet. “I don’t have time and she isn’t worth my pity.”
“What are you doing?” the scientist started fighting Peter’s hold, trying to kick backwards. “Stay away from me!” Her foot found his armor and she cried out in pain.
Bethany Anne, eyes turning red, said, “Hello Dr. Eva Hocks.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “I was wrong, you aren’t a poor excuse for a human being, you aren’t a human being at all.”
“What are you doing?” Dr. Hocks looked at each man there. “Stop her!”
John spoke up, “BA, you need me to slap her if she speaks?”
“Iiii cannn biiiitte herrrr,” Peter offered.
Dr. Hocks was twisting for all she was worth, but it barely budged Peter’s arms. Her pleading became crying.
“You seek knowledge above everything,” Bethany Anne said, her head turning to the side. “You have experimented on humans.”
Dr. Hocks, tears spilling, noticed the eyes which had held no emotions toward her now looked at her with judgment.
A thought made its way through all the emotion. She wasn’t getting out of this alive. She felt something digging through her mind.
“Where are the two keys, Eva?” the woman in the crimson armor asked her. “What are we going to find down the second shaft, Eva?”
A minute later, Dr. Eva Hocks’ sobs turned to screams and then her screams died with her.
Bethany Anne wiped the blood off of her mouth. “I fucking hate that shit. But if there was ever a bitch that deserved to provide me energy? This tea-bagging self-centered fucktwat was one.”
Bethany Anne’s hand dropped to her right leg where a sword extended. She grabbed the sword and bent down and cut through Dr. Hock’s neck. Returning the sword, she told the team, “Not taking a chance she can come back to life. Now, let’s go get keys. We need everyone.” She walked back towards the operations room to get one of the keys off of the dead operations manager.
“We have some nasty shit below, people.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The hallway was silent when the woman in the crimson armor appeared. She stopped fifteen feet in, and behind her the elevator doors opened.
“Would you stop doing that shit?” John bitched as he and Eric walked past her and continued down the hall. The elevator doors closed and went back up for the next group.
In ten minutes, they had a number of people searching out the level.
They found nothing and no one.
“Thoughts?” John asked.
“Bethany Anne,” Dan’s voice came across the line.
“Yes?”
“Team two has run into a few humans trying to escape, two down, two captured.”
“Thank you. We have any other holes they are trying to leave from?”
“So far, no,” he said.
“We have some shit ahead of us. According to the woman in charge of science, we have alien geneticall
y s manipulating humans down here and many of them are ugly.”
“Why are you going in personally?” Dan asked, “Why not just release the E.I. anti-personnel weapons?”
“Because,” Bethany Anne replied and closed the comm. She popped her helmet latches and pulled the helmet off, scratching her head. “Is it me, or do these things make your head itch?”
—
Outside, Dan swore under his breath.
Kael-ven turned to him. “She didn’t answer the question, did she?” the alien asked.
“Yeah, she answered,” Dan told him. “The answer was BBADWT.” Kael-Ven moved his shoulders, his version of a shrug.
Dan made a face. “Because Bethany Anne Doesn’t Want To,” he supplied.
—
“Fucking shit,” she griped. “If I could jump out of this armor, I could jump through the Etheric and…”
“NO!” six different voices yelled at her in unison.
“Yesss!” one Pricolici added, a second late. Everyone in the group turned towards Peter who smiled. “I’llll join youuu!”
“Fuck it,” she said. Her eyes started to glow, her cheeks showing lines of red power as she pulled energy like crazy. Locking the helmet back on, she started walking down the hallway. The men all got in behind her, two by two.
They went down the hallway and dropped down five levels using the stairs.
On each side, her armor opened and she reached down, grabbing the swords. The armor folded back in, hiding the sword compartments.
This time, though, she fed energy into the hilts of the swords and the blades started glowing and elongating.
Jean had done wonders, and now her swords could channel some of the Etheric’s energy.
She kicked open the sixth level door and screamed, “Dress Rehearsal for HELL, boys!”
—
Ztopik stood behind the last cage, the one he refused to yet open. He wanted to see how each group of his mutants worked against these attackers.
Mentally, he could feel their approach and the sheer power of the female in front.
Then, they arrived on his level and it was all he could do to pay attention to the slaughter.
—
“You’re telling me,” Eric asked, shooting something that was a cross between an ape and a female human, the deformed experiment’s scream tearing through his soul. “These were all human at one point?”
“YES!” Bethany Anne yelled. “FUCKING SHIT!” She threw her two red, glowing swords up into the air and kicked something running at her. She caved in its head, stopping it in its tracks. She grabbed the swords as they came back down and used her left sword to cut off the head.
Nathan and Peter were off to her left, ripping through the surge of mutants. The Yollin mercenaries were off to her right, beating the shit out of anything they could grab, saving their ammunition.
She could hear the roars of the Pricolici as they ripped into genetic mutations that came from a truly twisted imagination.
“WE HAVE ALIENS!” one of the Yollins yelled, its voice suddenly cut off.
“SHIT!” Kiel’s voice came over the line. “They have disintegrators!”
“Bitches, TO ME!” she yelled, as more and more Queen’s Guardians and Queen’s Marines flooded into the huge cave, guns and growls everywhere as men and women fought for their world, for their friends, for their Queen.
The glow of the swords died when she pulled the energy back into herself and sheathed them. John, Eric, Scott, Darryl and, with a roar of vengeance, Peter came tearing through the fighting. “I’ve got that motherfuckingcunt and he is going to DIE!” she spat, anger at the inhumanity of this alien’s twisted experiments on display and the hell that was the situation her people were in.
Having to kill those twisted into inhuman forms.
These beasts looking at them with very human eyes.
Bethany Anne’s right hand went out, palm forward and a glowing red orb developed. This time, it didn’t stop at six inches, in her anger, it continued to grow.
“Uh, Boss?” John said and Bethany Anne threw the ball.
The explosion occurred two-thirds of the way towards the clear, mental siren call of the alien. Toward the back of the massive cavern spread with the dead, the dying, and the burned, its energy continued through the air. Cages, some melting, were blasted out of the way.
The Queen Bitch and her protectors striding across the floor destroyed anything that came remotely close to them. The few aliens that looked in their direction lost their heads when kinetic projectiles slammed into them.
It was mass carnage.
Bethany Anne and her team finally noticed a big-ass cage and the beast within.
“What the fuck is that?” Eric asked.
“Target practice,” Bethany Anne said and threw a ball of Etheric energy. It streaked across the remaining distance and exploded outside, electric arcs racing all around the cage.
That wasn’t so smart, a voice observed inside of their heads. The Zhool’tai’ch is a very vicious beast. The best I have created. Interestingly, it wasn’t made with any human DNA at all.
“Well, the bigger they are,” John said and flipped his pistols up to ten. “Crank it up, Bitches.”
Bethany Anne pointed at the fifteen-foot cross between a crocodile and an orangutan. “Kill that thing,” she commanded.
The cage energy dissipated and the beast roared as it pushed open its door. It started running towards Bethany Anne.
Ztopik watched with interest. The female was calmly walking towards him, but the Zhool’tai’ch would certainly get to her first. She didn’t even have any obvious weapons nor was she creating those glowing red balls of destruction.
His eyes flashed pink as the Zhool’tai’ch charged and it went right through her when she disappeared and then reappeared. Enraged, it began to turn when those behind her started shooting it, massive chunks of flesh exploding from its body. It turned back towards its tormentors.
The woman, however, kept coming towards him.
This could almost be amusing, the alien’s voice entered her mind, if you and your people had not just destroyed seventy years of my hard work!
“Cry me a fucking river. You got a name or should I just call you shithead?” she retorted.
“You can call me Ztopik, or Master!” The alien said and Bethany Anne’s body froze up.
Bethany Anne fought the mental commands stopping her in her tracks. The harder she fought, the more her body wouldn’t move.
Bethany Anne, straining with all she had, started cursing violently as the alien snickered at the sub-level being in front of him.
“You see,” Ztopik pulled out a disintegrator from the sleeve of his robe. “I might not be as physically impressive as you, but when you are a superior species, it is enough.”
Ztopik felt another enter their conversation and his blood went cold.
MOTHERFUCKER, the alien voice said. WHO SAID MY FRIEND LACKED MENTAL DEFENSES?
“WHO!” Ztopik cried out as immense pain slammed into his head. His frail arms reached out to catch himself as his knees buckled.
MY NAME IS THALES OF MILETUS, I AM KURTHERIAN AND YOU ARE MY BITCH!
Bethany Anne, released from Ztopik’s mental hold, resumed walking towards the alien. Her left arm shot out and a two-inch red globe of power streaked across the cavern to blast away two aliens that had cornered a Wechselbalg and her Guardian Marine partner.
“FUCK YEAH!” she heard the screams of her people and she grinned ferociously.
“Kurtherian?” Ztopik cried, the pain causing him to whisper.
Bethany Anne reached for her sword but TOM stopped her.
YES, he spoke into Ztopik’s brain. KURTHERIAN. MY FRIEND HAS A SAYING ABOUT REDUCING BAD GENETICS AFTER THE BIRTH AND I’VE DECIDED SHE IS RIGHT.
“What?” Ztopik whispered, looking up into the flaming red eyes of the human.
Ztopik heard the woman in the crimson armor’s voice through his ears at the same
time the Kurtherian’s voice slammed into his cranium.
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 53