The signal went out and the ten shield ships started pushing forward, the first disappearing through the gate.
Ten shield ships, four battleships and the two massive dreadnoughts slipped through the gate, all guns powered.
Karillian System
Admiral Thomas sat in the belly of the superdreadnought. “Reynolds, where are we going?” he asked the EI of the ship in a calm voice, grabbing his cup of coffee.
The admiral hadn’t even finished his question when a hologram of the system was displayed above his operations table. The Yaree planet was to the left—behind them for all practical purposes—and there was a small red spot halfway through the system. “Well, damn.” The Admiral exhaled, looking at the new gate.
The little spy EI they kept in the Leath system had let them know how many ships they would be facing, but the Leath had been too damned smart. They had changed their entry area, so his group would have to fight all of them.
Right now he was in Reynolds, of a design similar to ArchAngel II’s but with fewer people aboard. Reynolds had not worked with humans in his efforts before, and therefore preferred to have bots on his ship. The only reason Admiral Thomas was on Reynolds along with his staff was because they had left ArchAngel II back in the Yollin system to transport Bethany Anne on her good will tour.
Internally it was known as the “We aren’t out to eat your babies tour.” It seemed a few of the newsies were starting to paint Bethany Anne as a horrible monster.
Nothing like kicking some serious ass to make some groups scared of you.
Plus, what was attractive to humans had scared the hell out of a couple of the alien groups, and caused a couple of others to send marriage contracts. Cheryl Lynn didn’t even bother with asking Bethany Anne if she wanted to answer the requests.
Cheryl Lynn figured it would be less inflammatory that way.
“What the hell?” Admiral Thomas exclaimed as he looked at the best information they had at the time. It wasn’t real-time, but their closest sensors were only a light minute away.
Captain Natalia Jakowski stood up from the Captain’s Chair and wandered over to the admiral’s area. As of this moment she had confirmed all of Reynolds’ questions related to permissions for the ship’s movement, and it would be a little while until their group reached the Leath.
“Natalia,” Admiral Thomas pointed to the ships that had come through the gate, and how they were building a large sphere, the later ships sliding into the protection provided by the first ships, “thoughts?”
“Seems like what you would typically do, protect the…” She paused a moment, leaning forward. “Are those their two big ships sliding in late?”
Reynolds answered through the speakers. “Yes, those are their two largest ships. This is in direct contrast to the last operation where they brought the big ships in first.”
“And had their asses handed to them,” Natalie added. She reached forward and zoomed in on the ships as close as she could. “Those ships in front look…wrong.”
Admiral Thomas put his mug of coffee to the side and rested his elbows on his chair arms. Leaning forward, he reached out and twisted the hologram so that he was looking from the back. “They have set up a defensive position with those ten ships. I imagine they are a bitch to bust through to get to the inner core, which is another set of ships that won’t be easy to crack.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Sonofabitch, they are upgrading their tactics.” Thomas looked to his left and flipped a tablet screen to review other sensors. “We don’t seem to have any other ships coming in sneaky.”
“Well, none that we’ve found.” Natalie walked back to the Captain’s Chair. “If they are sneaking properly, we won’t.”
“Too damned true by half,” Admiral Thomas admitted. “I hate this defensive bullshit, but we can’t attack their system any more than they can attack ours.” He looked at the screen where Lance Reynolds’ face stared at him. “Dammit, Reynolds. Can’t you give me another avatar to look at?”
“Why?” the EI replied. “Does the general’s face bother you, sir?”
“It’s like having BA looking over my shoulder,” he told the EI. “Lance is good, but I don’t need to see him all the time.”
The visage on the screen changed, and Admiral Thomas looked at it for at least fifteen seconds. “You know what, Reynolds, forget my complaint.” He could hear Natalia trying to cover her snickering. “I’d rather look at a general of the Army, than a brewmeister. Take Bobcat’s face and flush it. I’ll look at Lance.”
“As you wish, Admiral,” Lance’s face replied.
Thomas looked at the map. “Reynolds, provide me with the locations of our asteroids with offensive capabilities on the hologram.”
The map started exploding with different colored areas all over space.
“Good.” Thomas nodded as he cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get to work.”
Ixtali System, Ixtali Nation’s Floating Court, Two Months Later
Ixtali Court Member Addix stood in front of the giant two-story clear membrane in the dark. The room, easily big enough to hold a hundred who were mixing and mingling and up to a hundred and fifty if they got close, was empty but for her and one other who had just entered.
Addix continued looking out into space at the massive ship of the human Empress, and the ship’s escorts.
“It is impressive.” Court Member Jondence spoke quietly, maintaining the reverent feel of the moment as he stepped up beside Addix.
“The ship?” Addix asked, turning to Jondence.
He nodded.
“Jondence, that ship doesn’t compare to the Empress. I know you and the others think she played with my head, my emotions. Just do me a favor, if any of you intend to be inflammatory, give me enough warning that I can get out of the way.”
Jondence’s hissing laughter soon had Addix laughing as well. “We laugh, but I’m serious.”
He put up a hand. “I’m well aware you are serious, Addix. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have backed you for so many years. Of all of us, you had the clear eyes we needed to meet with the Etheric Empire in the first place. It would be devastatingly stupid to choose you for the negotiations and then ignore your recommendations.”
“Even when the recommendations are ripping apart the fabric of our society?” she questioned, a hint of doubt in her voice.
Jondence’s four mandibles made the sign of confidence. “You have now survived two attacks on your life to bring us this information. Those who would use our own technology against us have proven your argument, probably better than you might ever have done. This,” he pointed to the Etheric Empire superdreadnought, “is but the proper time to announce what we have already approved in the court. The die of the future has already been cast. Now we wait for time to show us what the future holds in its hands.”
The two of them took another long look at the superdreadnought. While they were watching, a battleship slid down the flank, dwarfed by the motionless ship.
“Is that a Skaine battleship?” Jondence asked.
“Yes,” Addix answered. “It seems one of their police groups—Rangers, they call them—captured a Skaine battleship.”
“Remarkable,” Jondence muttered, his mandibles chittering in surprise. “Simply remarkable.”
6
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
Yelena pursed her lips. She could see Bobcat sitting at their kitchen table, his shoulders hunched. She could tell he was sipping a beer and thinking.
He wasn’t happy.
She folded the towel in her hands and inhaled deeply before letting the breath out, and with it the hope that he was happy with what he and his two best friends had accomplished over the years. She had not only listened to the stories Bobcat had told her, but had also sought out a few of Bobcat’s friends in the past couple of months.
He was slipping into a sort of funk. Not a depression really, she reassured herself. He was here for her. She had his heart, but she neede
d to trust that by supporting him, she let him fly and be who he was born to be.
Kicking ass and taking names in a way only he and those two brainiac kids could. In the last few years she had been happier than she deemed would have been possible for a woman who had previously thought going to work in an expensive suit would provide her bliss.
Now she was happy with Bobcat, the dogs, and beer. Oh, they had close friends, but for a while it had mostly been her, Bellatrix and Bobcat.
A siren call had him as well, and Yelena had felt the jealousy and fought it. Both the jealousy and the siren call. Just because she understood it didn’t mean she didn’t have selfish reasons for it to go the hell away.
She opened the closet door and placed the towel inside. Closing the door, she settled her shoulders and started toward the man she loved.
Sometimes there was pain in doing the right thing.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, All Guns Blazing, Viewing Deck
“So,” Tina, Cheryl Lynn’s oldest, glanced at the scientist, a smile on her face as the two of them looked at stars they couldn’t have seen worth a damn from Earth, “do you remember the first time we went out in a pod?”
Marcus pulled back from looking through the ancient telescope the two of them had set up in the glass-walled room of All Guns Blazing.
He looked at the young woman and smiled. “That was a while back!” Marcus chuckled. “What I specifically remember is your mom chewing my ass out for not asking her permission.”
His eyes glazed over for a moment, but Tina caught it. Since the fateful time Marcus had interceded on her behalf, and because of her time in the Etheric Academy, she had grown into a perceptive woman who cared about what this man did with his life.
And what he didn’t.
“How come you haven’t gone sightseeing or done other things?” she asked him.
Marcus frowned. “I’ve done other things!” He pointed down the stairs to her left. “I’ll have you know I’m part-owner of the most famous bar in multiple systems.”
“Uh huh,” Tina tapped the telescope, “but was that your goal in life?”
Marcus chuckled. “Well, to be honest, I just wanted to prove the existence of aliens.”
Tina slowly looked around the large room with its two-story-tall glass window that provided a view of space and the planet Yoll in the far distance. In this room she could count three different alien species. “I count three right here, and I bet if I went downstairs there would be another four.”
“Five,” Marcus corrected.
Tina turned to him. “Five?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I have everyone let me know when we get a new alien species in the bar. Two months ago we had a multi-alien group show up and we had twenty-two different species at the same time.” His eyes glinted in humor. “Bobcat thought I was going to shit a…” He stopped, eyes wide, and looked at Tina in alarm. “Oh shit, woman present! I’m so sorry, Tina.” He fumbled a moment. “I’ve been around Bobcat and William too long to place a filter on my mouth.”
“Well.” She patted his hand. Marcus looked young, until you noticed his eyes. Right now, they were looking way older than she had seen them in a long time. “I appreciate your concern, but given that Scott is my dad, my uncles are John, Darryl, Eric and Peter, and my aunts are Gabrielle and the Empress, and that doesn’t even include…” Tina scrunched her eyes. “Well, shit. Just about everyone who cares about them cares about me. I tend to be around some harsh and brash language.”
Marcus nodded in agreement. “I bet you are, at that. But in my time, there were a few things we didn’t casually talk about to a younger woman and I’ll ask you not to have me change too much.”
Tina moved her hand to pat the older scientist on his arm. “That is why so many women don’t understand the amazing person you are, Teacher my Teacher.”
Marcus smiled and placed a hand on hers. “You know that there is never going to be a good enough guy for you, right?”
Tina snorted. “Do you know how hard it is to get a date? Hell, my dad is a Queen’s Bitch and my uncle is famous, or infamous anyway, in how many systems for the death and destruction he can cause?”
Marcus turned to look out the window. “Do you regret it?” He waved toward space. “There is a whole galaxy out there you could lose yourself in, Tina.”
She took her hand away. “You think? Do you really believe that my mom and dad wouldn’t know exactly where I was?” She tapped the side of her head. “I know these wonder gadgets inside my skull can be used to track me as well as let me translate and all the other badass stuff they do.”
“So,” Marcus asked, still looking at the stars for a moment before turning back toward her. “Do you want it removed?”
“Haaayllll no, as Uncle Darryl would say.” Tina laughed. “I have ADAM and everybody, including you, on instant connect. Plus, you allow me to wake you up whenever I want.” She shrugged as she looked at the stars. “I’m special.”
Marcus chuckled. “Tina, you will always be special, and not just because you’re my favorite student.”
“I’m your only student.”
“Not true!” Marcus grinned. “I have a lot of students.”
“No, you have a lot of people you help in the Etheric Academy from time to time. Those are ‘here today, gone in six weeks.’”
Marcus shrugged.
“I’m the only one you seek out to show the latest cool stuff that’s going on,” Tina proclaimed
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, my ass,” Tina responded.
Marcus looked at her, shocked.
“What? Marcus, I’m pretty old now. You think maybe I can cuss a bit if I want to?”
“You still look like a young woman.”
“I look no younger than you do.”
He stared at her.
“Ok, maybe five years younger,” she amended. “However,” she tapped the side of her head in a different location, “I’m smart and you know it.”
Marcus smiled. “Why do you think I keep pestering you?”
Tina turned to the bar table next to them and picked up her glass. This time she had gotten one of the guys in the back to try brewing Dr. Pepper. She mumbled an answer under her breath to Marcus before she took a sip, wrinkling her nose.
“What did you say?” he asked. Still facing away from him, she rolled her eyes.
I said, she thought to herself, well, you don’t pester me because I’m beautiful. Aloud, she told him, “This Dr. Pepper might be an acquired taste.”
He raised his eyebrows, so she grabbed her drink and passed it to him. Surprised, he accepted the drink and took a small sip, then another one. “Hmm.” He looked down into the glass. “Actually, from what I remember they got it right.” He took another sip. “This came from Texas originally.” He looked down the stairs. “Who did you bribe to make it?”
“Like I would rat someone out!” Tina told him. “I have my sources.”
“Probably Chester,” Marcus continued, ignoring Tina’s remark. “He’s the best down there, and he’s already married.”
“What does being married have to do with anything?” she asked.
Marcus turned to her and raised the glass and one eyebrow in question. She shook her head so he shrugged, then upended the glass and finished the drink. “God,” he reached around her to put the glass on the table, “that was good.”
“Elementary, my dear Tina,” he told her. She didn’t get worked up about his comment since she had read all the original Sherlock Holmes books. “It’s in our glass, so it’s one of our people. Besides Chester, we have only two others who are good enough with brewing this stuff that you would even bother asking. Barry is young and still deathly afraid of Scott, and the other is so scared of Bethany Anne she probably wouldn’t even touch the ingredients.”
“She wasn’t even willing to look at a printout of the recipe,” Tina answered, thinking back to her conversation with Jackie before she looked at Marcus, smiling. Then s
he played back the conversation and realized she had given up the truth. “Gott Verdammt!”
Marcus chuckled some more. “Ok, my little Padawan, why are we up here?” He pointed to the telescope. “We aren’t really looking, so what did you want to talk about?”
ADAM? Tina reached through her connection, the technology placed in her skull behind her ear.
>>Yes, Tina?<<
Would you please ask Meredith to give Marcus and me some space?
Moments later Tina noticed the small conversations start to diminish. Fortunately, a couple of years back Bethany Anne had had the same technology installed up here on the viewing deck that she used in the throne room.
Startled, Marcus looked around before returning his gaze to Tina. “Seriously? It’s so important you want audio privacy?”
“Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I need to tell you something, and I want your full attention. That is why we aren’t in the lab.”
Marcus nodded. “Good choice.”
“Tell me about it,” she agreed. “If we were, I wouldn’t remember what the hell I wanted to talk about because we would be concocting something.”
Marcus looked at her a moment before barking a laugh, his smile wide and his eyes crinkling in delight. He pointed at her. “That’s right!” He smiled some more, the most fully animated he had been so far with her, and it caused her to stare back at him.
“What?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t be the problem child in the lab, you would!” He stepped around the woman and pulled out a bar stool for her to sit on at their table before he pulled out one for himself. When she was seated, he continued, “I think you might be worse in the lab than I am.”
“No,” she shook her head, “I’m just a little younger and more excitable in the lab.”
“Yeah, there is that,” he mused. “Ok, Padawan, you have my full attention, and your own.”
Tina took a deep breath, running through the speech she had been working on all week. She folded her hands and placed them on the table.
Here goes nothing, she thought to herself.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set Three: Books 15-21, Never Submit, Never Surrender, Forever Defend, Might Makes Right, Ahead Full, Capture Death, Life Goes On (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 75