“He will be conversing for a while with Prometheus, R’yhek.” Nathan called to the door, “And you can come on back in, Shi-tan.”
The door opened and the Shrillexian walked back in with the body parts under his arm. “This would have been kind of funny to put on a wall,” he grumped as he placed the chunk of body back on the table.
“Yeah, true.” Nathan clapped him on the shoulder. “Pepsi time?”
“Oh yeah,” R’yhek agreed, and started for the door himself. “I got dibs,” he called over his shoulder as he went through the doorway.
“I wonder if he knows the ladies got into the stash after their spa?” Shi-tan asked Nathan as the two men left the room. A few moments later the room darkened as the EI shut down unnecessary lights.
If one had exceptional hearing, one just might have been able to hear Beethlock’s scream as he gibbered in fear, the EI reviewing his criminal life right inside his own brain.
11
Noel-ni Mother Planet Dorasei
>>If that missile explodes it will harm at least seventy-two percent of the people within thirty feet, Bethany Anne.<<
Guess we’ll just have to play catch, she told him.
“Guys, I’ll be right back.”
“Why?” John asked as he continued to monitor the situation while holding the young Yollin in his arms. He trotted back toward the vehicle Bethany Anne had been using.
The Bitches saw Bethany Anne put out an arm toward the incoming rocket, and it slammed into her location. Those around her screamed as both Bethany Anne and the missile disappeared.
“Someone shoot that ass!” John bitched. “I’ve got my hands full!”
Down the street, the Noel-ni policeman stared at the place where the Empress had disappeared in confusion until he noticed three of the alien guards staring straight at him.
“Oh—” he got out before two of them, arms blurring, shot him. He crashed back into the street, moaning.
“DAMMIT!” Noel-ni Officer-in-Charge Co’mins was screaming into his radio. “Who gave Tellek a damned rocket? And where did the Empress go?”
“Sir,” someone reported, “they’ve shot Tellek!”
“Good!” Co’mins snapped back. “It saves me from doing it!”
“But, sir—” Someone else wanted to argue, but Co’mins had heard enough.
“Listen to me.” His voice went cold as he hissed, “If we don’t maintain a healthy Empress, we might find a shit-ton of rocks laying waste to our finricken planet!” He saw someone holding up another radio and mouthing, “President.” Co’mins wanted to start slapping the idiots around him who weren’t paying attention to those they were supposed to be protecting and watching out for.
“Last time I checked, the empress of a powerful star-faring race doesn’t randomly kill people. Help her people find out who she hit before she disappeared. Co’mins out!”
He slammed his radio down, cracking it. “Someone get me a new finricken radio!”
He put a hand out. “Channel?” he asked. He was handed a headset and told the number. He switched the channel and hit the connect button.
“Co’mins here, President Aerlix.”
Bethany Anne reached out to where she calculated the tip of the missile should strike. As it drew near she started twisting her body, pulling her hand away from the missile, and as it slid by her, she moved herself and the metal-based missile into the Etheric.
It made it about twelve feet before it exploded in the whiteness of the Etheric, pelting her with a few pieces of its casing and the strong surge of energy that was its real payload.
Most police tried to use non-deadly weapons.
Bethany Anne wasn’t outside the range of the energy that was designed to electrocute its targets, driving dysfunction through their neurosystems.
Her armor intercepted it and used it to power up, which was a good thing since Bethany Anne had collapsed to the ground from her effort.
>>That took a bit out of you.<<
Fucking metal shit. She rolled onto her back. I’ve got to figure out how to move metal into the Etheric better than I do.
Well, TOM cut in, now that I can see what happened, we can work on it. However, I can’t promise anything. Our understanding never involved moving large amounts of metal. My tribe worked to move organic bodies. Anything we know about metal travel and the Etheric is more accidental than planned.
Noted. Bethany Anne grunted and turned over, pushing herself up off of the ground. Ok, guys, let me juice back up for a minute, then we will go back like a blazing inferno.
“Incoming on your six,” Darryl’s voice declared in John’s ear. “Looks like a worried mom.”
John placed the Yollin girl in the car and turned around. He put up a hand and spoke in Yollin as the mom crossed the distance at a healthy pace. “She’s fine, so slow down.”
The mom, her mandibles clacking in fear, looked at the armored alien and then tried to see around him. He stepped away from the vehicle and pointed inside. “Get in with her. When the Empress gets back, I imagine we will cut this short.”
“In?” D’leck asked him. His accent was a little strange.
“Yes, in,” John confirmed. He looked up and drew D’leck’s attention to the sky.
D’leck stopped just outside of the vehicle after seeing Sis’tael was ok and looked up, her mouth open.
There was a monster spaceship coming out of the clouds, and it looked deadly.
The president was not happy.
“I have a Yollin superdreadnought coming through my atmosphere right now, Co’mins. I’m sure you’ve seen the same video I have, where our police officer shot at the empress of the alien race?”
Co’mins glanced to the side, his aide mouthing “officer stunned, not killed” and he shook his head.
“Before those aliens shot our police officer!”
“Stunned him,” Co’mins replied.
“What?”
“I’m being told that they stunned him, they didn’t kill him.”
“Well, thanks for small favors. Perhaps our people aren’t going to war…if we can find their Empress.”
The monitors around the van Co’mins was using as a mobile Ops Center started displaying the giant warship parting the clouds as it flamed through the sky, burning the atmosphere like the Chariot of Death itself.
Co’mins felt the first few drops of sweat leaking down his forehead. “Sir, the Navy—”
“Will be unable to fire inside our atmosphere, as we don’t have Naval units that large. Also, our systems have been locked. I’ve got citizens screaming at me right now. So get your people on the ball, find that Empress and…”
The president’s voice dropped off, obviously seeing the same thing Co’mins saw.
The Empress was back, and she was on fire.
Jhrex tried to move his muscles, but his body just kept spasming. The crowd around him had already been moving away when the aliens yelled in his own language to “get back on pain—”
They never declared what the pain would be, and frankly Jhrex wasn’t too interested in finding out.
His friend had tried to help him, but with one look the alien had caused him to jump back.
Then she disappeared.
He was busy trying to get feeling back in his arms when she reappeared, and Jhrex hoped that maybe she could reverse whatever it was she had shot him with.
But then he saw her blazing face and the lines of bright red breaking through her skin. Her helmet was off, and red balls of energy blazed in her hands before she threw them into the air.
“BRING ME THE ONE WHO HURT MY SUBJECT!” she screamed, her bright red eyes staring at Jhrex.
For once in his life, Jhrex wished he hadn’t pranked someone, and at this point he wasn’t sure if his father could get him out of this trouble…
Or not.
Darryl walked toward the Noel-ni and clicked a command in his HUD as he touched the Noel-ni’s spasming body. He waited while his armor sipho
ned off the energy. The convulsions of the youth, if Darryl had figured his age correctly, started to slow down.
“You are in a world of hurt,” Darryl whispered to the alien, “so stand up and take your punishment like an adult.”
An alien came over and put a hand on Jhrex, his spasms slowed and the alien grabbed his arm, helping him to stand and started marching him toward the Empress.
Jhrex looked to his left, noticing six police officers coming from a block away.
“Don’t even think about it,” the fiery woman said, and reached for him.
Seconds later none of the aliens were on the ground, since the Empress had disappeared, and the vehicle she had been riding in went straight up into the air. That left the police officers with no one to deal with except those who had been on the side of the street moments before.
The president terminated the latest phone call, his lips twitching. The Empress’ ship could apparently operate just fine inside atmosphere, and she was traveling toward the capital.
Even now, that massive ship didn’t look friendly. Worse, her ships in space were arrayed above her, and their Navy didn’t give a damn for the instructions his people had offered. When he had tried to get a direct connection to the Empress after she reappeared, he found himself talking to someone who looked just like her.
But wasn’t.
She called herself ArchAngel and she informed him that the Empress would be there in moments.
And so she was.
The Noel-ni had arranged a large podium and stage where they had been expecting to meet with the Empress after she completed her parade and arrived here in the main area of the city.
She was going to be early.
President Aerlix stood up from his desk and strode out of his office. His guard swung in behind him as he strode out of his wing of the Capitol building, practically flying down the two stories’ worth of stairs two steps at a time and then down the main corridor into the bright afternoon sun.
Aerlix was very aware of his people’s focus on themselves, how insular their society was. When he was young, he had traveled to multiple other planets. He had been trying to explain to his own people that to play on the larger stage they would need to be less judgmental of others.
Now it might be too late.
He shook off the offer from a few to help cover him from the sunlight bearing down on him. He was sweating, but he doubted it was from the heat.
Rather, he could see the shape in the distance coming over the horizon. Clouds parted in front of it as the massive nose of the ship pierced the sky, ignoring the laws of the gods and gravity as it floated through the atmosphere.
The ArchAngel II had arrived.
His eyes flicked away from the alien’s ship as he saw his Air Force’s jets at its sides. He appreciated that the massive starship didn’t just swat them like the little insects they probably were to it.
It was doubtful if any of their bombs would do anything to the shield that ship could produce. Ten minutes earlier, the Air Force had decided to play chicken with the ship.
And lost.
The warning had been clear, but the distance the Air Force was told to maintain had been breached.
The fighter that had been tasked with accidentally coming too close had been halted in mid-air by some sort of tractor beam. The video had captured the pilot trying to eject.
He made it a full three planes’ distance into the air before he too was caught in the tractor beam and pulled into the ship.
So far the Etheric Empire had been rather patient with his people, for all the good he felt it was going to do.
The ship’s shadow began to cross his city. He could see it travel down the street in front of him, its darkness creating the illusion of a monster consuming the buildings to the left and right.
Then she was simply there in the street two blocks away. She had four guards around her, and she seemed rather irritated.
If he was any judge of her physiology.
President Aerlix stepped up to the microphone and tapped it, making sure it was on. “Empress Bethany Anne, our sincere apologies for the mess-up.”
No one expected the apology to accomplish much, so Aerlix was surprised when the Empress’ eyes started fading back to normal, and her face ceased to radiate fire.
She stopped about twenty feet from the podium, hands on her hips as she eyed the President. “Well, that’s a lot better response than I expected, President Aerlix, considering my experience just a little while ago.” She looked around at the video cameras from the news agencies and a few people who had arrived hours ahead of schedule to get good seats before returning her gaze to the President.
“Perhaps we might have a better discussion inside? I’m not really up to a speech today.”
President Aerlix reached down to his microphones and started pulling them off. Unclipping the last one, he dropped all the electronics on the podium and walked toward the steps leading to the street.
Two of his guards looked at him, then at each other and then realized he was going, with or without them, so they quickly caught up and went down the stairs alongside him.
“I hope it would not be amiss…” the president began. She had on armor, and he noticed weapons on her suit. He continued, “If we have the conversations on your ship? Perhaps it would be a bit safer.”
Apparently, the videos hadn’t been manufactured. She really was the Warrior Empress. The Boogeyman, they called her.
“For me?” she asked, amusement written in her eyes.
“No,” he admitted, “for my people.” He looked around. “I would hope that if I were on the ship, they won’t be so quick to shoot.”
Bethany Anne could hear the guards speaking into their microphones, warning the others of the president’s plans.
“Request accepted,” she told him and stepped forward to grasp his hand. Her Guards closed in, and the eight of them disappeared.
In bars across the planet, the televisions were turned to the news. Patrons watched, talked, and ordered drinks even though their last drinks were still on the table, full.
They forgot to drink.
The alien had grabbed their president and his guards and disappeared. There were some who wanted to attack the massive ship above the capital.
Even when the military pundits explained it would rip apart the city and kill untold millions in the capital, they could not be dissuaded.
They relished the opportunity to attack those different from them, no matter the cost to those who lived in the blast zone.
Their gods were mayhem, destruction, and death, not necessarily in that order.
Many of the less inebriated told them to shut the hell up. The stupid little fucker deserved what he got.
By then, the pundits watching the many videos of the Empress’ parade and the altercation had been able to pinpoint what had actually happened and who had started the problem.
It was clearly the teen Jhrex. His stabbing of the young Yollin had caused her to push people over in the crowd ahead of the Empress.
While the Noel-ni were not fond of aliens, they weren’t fond of their own people stepping out of line either. Therefore, the general consensus was that he needed to be punished.
However, his punishment, the video wags suggested, shouldn’t include being eaten by an alien, either.
Bethany Anne knew all this since ADAM had been watching the multiple channels, translating and pulling together the common threads from the news reports.
“I don’t eat kids,” Bethany Anne growled to John Grimes when the two of them were alone—the President was being shown around ArchAngel. She walked over to the machine that could give her some coffee. She didn’t need it for the pump of caffeine; she needed it to feel human again.
“Boss,” John called to Bethany Anne, then nodded to one of the ship’s crew who had stepped into the small eating area. When he saw the Empress’ expression, he decided that maybe he could get a snack from one of the other areas o
n the ship. “What do you expect, exactly?”
John walked over and accepted the cup of coffee Bethany Anne had pulled for him. “Well, not being called a cannibal would be nice.”
“Can you be a cannibal if you aren’t eating your own kind?” John asked, then took a sip of his coffee.
She looked at him. “Really? I’m all upset because they think I might eat their children, and you want to know the etiology… Wait, is that the right word?”
“Don’t know, what are you going for?” John asked.
“The history of a word as much as the definition,” she clarified.
>>You are looking for ‘Etymology’.<<
Thanks!
“Ok, I meant etymology,” Bethany Anne corrected herself.
John walked over and stuck his head out of the little kitchen area, then pulled it back in. “Must be nice having a speaking dictionary with you at all times.”
“It has its benefits, that’s for sure,” she agreed, “but occasionally there is a downside.”
“Like what?” John asked.
>>Like what?<< ADAM echoed.
“ADAM is a best friend who never sleeps and never forgets unless I specifically command him to forget something, in which case he will delete the knowledge from his storage. For an encore, he now is best friends with an alien who can make the most frustrating comments at times.”
“How much storage does he have?” John wondered aloud.
ADAM’s voice came over the speaker in the room. “Let’s just say the old libraries don’t hold a candle to my memory stack, Mr. Grimes.”
John chuckled. “Occasionally I forget I could just ask him myself.”
“Pretty much,” Bethany Anne agreed. “And that is the last thing. My two friends are with me twenty-four seven by three-sixty-five.”
You would miss us, TOM claimed.
I would eventually, that’s true, she agreed.
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 80