But he was a military man, so he preferred to get to the point. His job wasn’t to help nurture people to greater heights, and if he remembered anything from his time in school, the gods were here to nurture them, not give them handouts.
He sure hoped that nurturing was the right strategy. If it proved not to be, Terhle believed this Etheric Empire would eventually be on this planet killing his people.
If he didn’t do it to them first.
Tomorrow he would start the strategy sessions, and together his council would work on two major offenses to crush the Etheric Empire under their feet.
Now, if the Etheric Empire would just give them a few years to get setup, all would be perfect. He pursed his lips and realized he would need to sacrifice some ships over the next few seasons to keep the Etheric Empire focused on small battles and not the war.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
“This is John Grimes,” the voice said over the speaker system in General Lance Reynolds’ office. The general turned and raised an eyebrow when the video came to life. “Have you seen Darryl, by any chance?” John asked, annoyed. “He hasn’t shown up for his first shift.”
Lance’s door opened and Cheryl Lynn stuck her head in. “Bethany Anne anywhere? No one knows where she is.”
Lance’s eyebrows started to come together. “Come on in, Cheryl Lynn, and close the door.” He turned back to the video. “When was Darryl due?”
John’s lips pressed together. “Two hours ago.”
Lance looked at Cheryl Lynn. “One hour.”
The door opened again, and Admiral Thomas and Kael-ven came into the general’s office. “What the hell are you missing?” Lance asked the two gruffly.
Thomas, his face annoyed, slowly switched to thoughtful. “What are you missing?”
John spoke up from the video. “A Queen’s Bitch.”
Cheryl Lynn added, “The Empress.”
“And a superdreadnought that happened to have the missing Bitch on it,” Thomas finished.
John spat a curse. “So, how did we lose Bethany Anne again?”
“She has a week off,” Cheryl Lynn pointed out. “I bet if I look, there will be a request for vacation or some other note in my inbox.”
Lance put his fingers up to his eyes, and started massaging them. “She’s going to give me a Gott Verdammt migraine.” He looked at Admiral Thomas. “Yes, I know, I’ll heal.”
He looked at everyone in his office. “Ok, folks, back to business, but quietly start getting stuff prepared in case we have to stage a rescue.”
“If?” John chuckled. “I mean, I assume you don’t mean rescue Bethany Anne, but rather to rescue someone else from Bethany Anne.”
“It was so much easier on Earth.” Cheryl Lynn shrugged her shoulders when she saw Kael-ven look at her with a question on his face. “Back in the good ol’ days. She might disappear for a few hours, then she would be back and happy again for a while. We would hear that this terrorist group or that terrorist camp had been destroyed, and no one would know why.”
“She always got busted by the description of the sword cuts,” John continued the explanation, able to see Kael-ven turn his head in his direction from his side of the video. “No one else on Earth had the strength to decapitate a bunch of men fighting in the dark. She said it was therapeutic.”
“What we are sorely lacking,” Admiral Thomas spoke up, “is a small group of extremists she can kill. What we do have are systems full of bad people who might take her a few years to decimate.”
“She only has,” Cheryl Lynn looked down at her tablet, “six days.” She turned it to Lance. “Here’s her vacation request.”
Lance reached for a cigar, stuck it in his mouth unlit, and chewed on it for a moment before looking at the admiral.
“Well, shit.”
QBS Reynolds
“I’m telling you, we are going to have to change your name,” Bethany Anne was sitting in the chair behind the captain, speaking to the visage of her father on the screen.
“Because humans cannot ascertain which Reynolds you are speaking about from the context of the conversation?” Lance’s gruff voice was appropriate, she thought.
“Hell, my own AI couldn’t tell, because I gave him no context, so shut the hell up and start thinking about name changes. The Reynolds back there,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “has dibs on the name.”
“But I am Reynolds,” Lance’s voice shot back.
“You are the son of Reynolds, basically,” Bethany Anne told him. “So come up with a name, and we will tack on Reynoldsson at the end to denote your sire.”
This time the EI was silent for a moment. “How about your father’s middle name?”
“Alexander?” Bethany Anne thought about that a moment. “Ok, but just be ready to answer to Alex as well.”
“I can certainly make that change to the programming.”
“You are hereby christened ‘Alexander,’ or ‘Alex.’ Natalia?” Bethany Anne waited for the Captain’s Chair to spin around enough that the captain could answer.
“Yes?” Captain Natalia Jakowski asked her Empress.
“Preference?”
“Let’s stick with Alexander. It isn’t often used, so it will be easier to call a person ‘Alex’ and the ship ‘Alexander.’”
“Ok,” Bethany Anne stood, “fine by me. Make the adjustments. I’m going to go speak with my annoyed protector.” She turned to her left and walked off the bridge.
Outside the door, Darryl was standing guard. “Ready?” she asked him.
“I hope you know John is going to be pissed.” Darryl started walking right beside her as they went down the hall.
“Of course. It will do him good.” Bethany Anne turned left and Darryl had to double-time his steps to catch up. “Actually, it will do me a lot of good, and him a little good.”
“What is the plan?” Darryl asked.
“You, me, old clothes, a clunky ship that just happens to be in the hold of the Alexander—”
“Alexander?” Darryl asked.
“Sorry, I renamed the ship. Well, technically he renamed himself. It was a pain in the ass to have a battle station named Reynolds and a superdreadnought called the same,” she answered.
“A couple of us were wondering,” Darryl admitted as they came to Bethany Anne’s suite.
The single guard stepped aside and the two of them walked in, the door sliding shut behind them.
“Well, it’s done now,” she admitted, grabbing a box from her table. In this suite there were couches, a large dining room-looking table where she held meetings, and some chairs. “I’m going to change, so go get into some civvies that make you look normal.”
Darryl noticed Ashur to the side. “Uh, what happened to you?” he asked.
I changed the pigment in my hair. It is an advanced ability TOM says is rare. Tabitha has been trying to work on herself for a while with little success, Ashur replied.
“Well, you look, different,” Darryl answered, “but don’t lose your white. It’s a classic look,” he called over his shoulder as he stepped out of the room.
Bethany Anne was bemused as she and Ashur watched Darryl load the small spaceship with boxes of weapons.
“Real armor, for when we go into battle,” he said as he slid a box into the hold.
He turned and picked up another case. “Four beam rifles and sixteen extra ammo cartridges for said rifles,” he called, and slid it in.
“Case of grenades.”
“Two months’ worth of nutrient pouches.”
“We are only going to be gone four fucking days,” Bethany Anne told him, looking at the pile of boxes behind Darryl. “It will take you four days to load all this shit on the ship.”
“Case of Team BMW portable shields.” He loaded it while Bethany Anne’s head turned from right to left to right again.
“Case of Team BMW pucks, remote-guided.”
“Small case of four Etheric energy boosts, usable by you, o
f course.”
“Another case of Jean Dukes pistol rounds.”
“Case of skin armor.”
Bethany Anne rolled her eyes. “I’m going to get the ship warmed up,” she told him. “You act as if I’m going to start an interstellar war or something.”
“I’ve got no idea, but I’m going to be like the Boy Scouts. I’m going to be prepared.”
“Whatever,” drifted back from inside the ship as she walked to the cockpit.
The QBS Alexander receded into the distance as Darryl confirmed what he could with the controls as he sat on Bethany Anne’s right in the two-seat cockpit. “Why does everything look so old but work so well?” he asked.
“This is my little ship,” Bethany Anne answered, flipping two switches to her left. “ADAM, take over for a bit.”
ADAM’s voice came over the system. “Which location did you wish to visit?”
“Do we have any info on which spaceport is the worst?” she asked.
“Port Sharn, Section T-772 in the borderlands is reputed to have a group of Darkness for Hire mercenaries reforming their group.”
“Oh, that is perfect.” Bethany Anne’s eyes flashed red. “I warned them not to do that.”
“I don’t think they are worried,” Darryl pointed out. “We are way more than a couple days’ travel from there in this ship.”
She whispered, “Oh, but there you are wrong, my friend.”
“Yes.” TOM’s voice came over the speaker. “Welcome to the—so far only—small ship in the Etheric Empire which can gate.” There was a pause, “Please don’t scratch the paint, Bethany Anne. We don’t have another one.”
“I imagine that if I scratch the paint,” she replied as she belted in and gestured to Darryl to do the same, “neither one of us will be alive to care.”
“Wait, what?” Darryl asked. “I didn’t get a last kiss from Natalia.”
Bethany Anne checked a couple of screens for TOM’s sake. Then, just as she confirmed the last information, she said, “Hope you got some last-minute nookie last night.” She looked over and winked as she told ADAM, “Punch it!”
“We have come out approximately eleven hours from T-772,” ADAM told them a few seconds after they reappeared. The stars were different than they had been a moment ago.
“Any chance someone is going to be able to tell we gated in?” Bethany Anne asked.
“Only if they were looking right here when it happened,” TOM replied.
Darryl spoke up. “You mean it approaches a hundred percent, then?” He looked at his Empress and saw Bethany Anne gazing at him with a raised eyebrow. “What? If this was a movie or a book, then the one-in-a-billion chance that someone saw us would be a ‘yes, they did, and they would have a battleship ready to pounce on us.’”
TOM snickered in her head as she turned to view the instrumentation. “You have a point, but I’m going to choose to believe the probability is infinitesimal.” She unbuckled her belt. “You might as well make yourself comfortable. It will be a few hours until we get to the port, which is good. It’s morning there now. By the time we arrive it will be early in the evening.”
“Perfect time for barhopping.”
“Exactly.”
“So, tell me something about yourself,” she asked.
“Well, you know the basics,” Darryl replied. “Special Forces, sandpit operations, on loan to Frank’s group when all hell broke loose.”
“Two siblings, brother and sister. Both parents passed away, right?”
He nodded.
“Why stick with me in Florida?” she pressed.
Darryl smiled, “All this time, and this is what you want to talk about?” He shook his head. “Sure, I guess it’s time. Hell, Natalia is wearing me down.”
“Should I put my fingers in my ears and go la la la?”
“Wear me down, not wear me out.” He chuckled. “I’ve got the special nanocytes, so I don’t ever have to worry about wearing myself out.”
“LA LA LA LA LA!” Bethany Anne had her fingers in her ears as Darryl shook his head. She pulled the fingers out an inch and asked him, “Are you done yet?”
“Sure, sure.” Darryl smirked. “My brother was an ass, really into himself, and he went down the wrong path. I sent money to my sister for ten years, until she finished college and got married. I gave her and her husband the money for a down payment on a nice home in an upper Chicago neighborhood, and the last I knew they were popping out little nieces and nephews. Their plan was to have six babies.”
“I’m sorry.” Bethany Anne glanced down before looking at him, knowing they had most likely died. “They didn’t want to come with us?”
“Bethany Anne, I never asked,” Darryl admitted. “They were fairly liberal, and when the group of people they hung around with decided they were against the war, I got thrown out with their previous concepts of family. It wasn’t but three weeks later I got asked to go on a very special assignment, one they had to admit had a high probability of dying for my country and so black that you might as well just have told your family you wouldn’t be back.”
“Frank’s stuff?”
Darryl nodded. “Yes, Frank’s stuff.” His eyes went a little vacant. “It was hell fighting across the US like we did, but in our group,” he looked at her, “it wasn’t about if you were white or black or red or whatever color you might be. It was us against them. Those we fought might have been fellow Americans before, but when we fought the Nosferatu we were protecting the rest of our country from something truly evil. It was the walking dead day after day after day. Our rest days were used to travel to the next outbreak, forever heading east across the country, until we hit Florida and the final showdown.”
He sighed. “If I had died?” He shook his head slowly. “I would have died with family. My brothers, who had fought in hell right beside me, and this one scrawny little woman with a mouth that would embarrass sailors.” He smiled, talking like she wasn’t right next to him.
“I got to tell you, she was hell on wheels. You could feel her passion, her need to protect all of us. She was like a momma bear looking after her cubs, but shit, we cubs all towered over her.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll never forget that day we choppered out of those Everglades and then set back down. None of us spoke about what we were going to do, but we didn’t need to. By then the four of us could read each other’s minds. We stepped off that copter, and if anyone had wanted you, they were going to be coming through us.”
He turned to gaze at her once more. “You got to remember, you were the boogeyman, the Baba Yaga, the vampire, the enemy. So when you came back for us, we were a little worried someone might try to off you right there at the end if you were too tired.”
Bethany Anne reached out and put a hand on Darryl’s shoulder. “I never knew that.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t need to know. You had our backs, we had yours.”
He chuckled and shook his head, smiling to himself. “Baba Yaga. Maybe we should start using that as your code name.”
Inside her mind, ADAM gave Bethany Anne an update on the name and the Slavic mythology behind it. She snickered. “Ok, I like most of it except the old crone thing.” She paused a moment, her eyes narrowing. “However, that gives me an idea.”
She laid back in the pilot’s chair, “If I scream or something, ignore it. It’s just some pain I need to get through. TOM?” she called.
“Yes?”
“How long will this take? Don’t want Darryl to worry.”
“Probably at least two hours. He will see the changes, of course, if he wants to, and he can ask me anything while it is going on. However, I’m going to put you under so you don’t feel the pain.”
“Ok.” She turned to Darryl. “Baba Yaga?” She nodded. “Baba Yaga indeed.”
20
Planet Leath, Tienemehn, Defense Planning
“I’ve called you here in order to see if we have a shot at attacking the Etheric Empire directly.
” First Line Prime Commander Tehrle looked at his war council. It included four from the Navy, four from Intelligence, and four from the Army. “I’m aware that we have a contingent who are asking why we don’t attack them and get it over with, and who think the Etheric Empire will be attacking us directly.”
He paused a moment to look up, as if he were searching the skies above their location. “Which they won’t.” He returned his focus to the Leath at the long black table in front of him. “Now, I could give a few explanations, divulge previous reports from the honorable previous First Line Prime Commander, but I would rather give our Intelligence group a chance to show footage of their base in action.”
Prime Intelligence One stood and nodded to those in the room. “We have pulled together videos of Etheric Empire ships provided by others, plus some video from our own ships when we engaged with them over the planet Karillia.” He touched a button on a remote he was holding. “This video is our ship-to-ship action over Karillia. You can tell that the humans and Yollins move their ships more independently than we do, yet they still seem to be able to protect each other. When our ships decide to do something independently…”
He pointed to a ship that had attacked one of the smaller Etheric ships, causing considerable damage. Everyone was excited by the destruction until the video advanced and their ship was blown to pieces. “The Etheric Empire takes every opportunity to destroy ships who stick their tusks too far out.
The previous excitement took a dip when the Leath ships started dying. “We are outclassed and outgunned on a ship-to-ship basis so far,” he clicked another button, “but here is a video many of you have seen. I am bringing it back up in this meeting to set the context.”
He pointed to the screen, his voice deep and his speech slow. “The main Etheric Empire ships were drawn into the Straiphus system due to a Navy uprising by the Kolin and Chloret castes. The upper castes did not appreciate the new Empress’ edict that all Yollins were created equal, and they revolted. I have to give them,” he clicked a button and a multi-system map showed, “respect for coming up with a daring plan, and it worked at first.” He clicked the button again, and the display showed a line going from system to system. “Most did not know the Yollin superdreadnoughts could gate themselves. It was a huge secret, so imagine the Etheric Empire’s surprise when all their main ships were suddenly in another system.”
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 89