A few ships from Straiphus, and miners from the asteroids.
There was a whisper that she was going to be there. The rumor? The Witch—the one the Empress sent into the universe to strike for the Empire.
To scare those who thought fear was their personal weapon. She reclaimed it.
She had white hair, the stories said, and her eyes would glow like the Empress' own. Many said she was the sister of the Empress, or a demon friend.
Some whispered it was the Empress—her darker half.
When asked, Empress Bethany Anne would only say that might didn't always make right, and even the mighty could fall to the Witch of the Night.
Baba Yaga.
But this person had never been seen, so the stories were just that.
Stories.
They said she had six who traveled with her, where the Empress had only four. Six who killed with and for her. The roster changed as to who would go, as the Empress commanded.
Baba Yaga and the Six Horsemen, one human had joked. But someone else had changed it to Baba Yaga and the Shinigami, and that had stuck.
A hush fell over the crowd, and then a strange feeling came over them. Their anger turned to caution as they looked at each other, not knowing what to expect as the Guardians locked arms below them.
John, Eric, Darryl, and Scott had their helmets on, and their black armor’s matte finish drank in the light. Two more armor-clad men joined them. John nodded. "Stephen, Peter," he acknowledged through their suits’ comms.
"Death." Peter's voice was light, playing off what the team had code-named John.
"Where is Baba?" Stephen asked, then shook his head. "Never mind."
No one needed to be told when Baba Yaga would arrive. The fear she was pushing had increased, and they could feel her coming closer. Bethany Anne had decided to play her role to the hilt. She had agreed that those outside the Empire couldn't know the Empress would be sucked away again, as she had been to support the Yaree.
So she had created a new version of herself, an Avatar—one she was ready to christen with the sacrifices of those who defiled her fallen. Her people.
Her Guardians.
Stephen has been asked to stand in for Akio, Bethany Anne sent, her mental voice rough in their minds. Let’s go, she told them, and started walking out of the hallway.
The six Shinigami swept into motion behind her, striding side by side.
Bethany Anne had told John that no one needed to protect Baba Yaga, but he itched to get ahead of her anyway. Not that it mattered; Reynolds was watching this event to make sure no one tried to attack Bethany Anne.
In the second row, behind those who formed the front line on the main floor, stood a younger Yollin male. He had signed up a few years ago, and had been through Guardian training. He had been planet-side supporting the Guardians’ recruitment efforts when the first hastily-pulled-together teams had been sent to Merrek, and it had pissed him off.
He needed to go, and soon. No one should treat the dead as his fellow Guardians had been treated, and he was ready to explain that clearly by shoving his rifle down the throat of a Leath and pulling the trigger. In solidarity, he linked arms with a human to his left and another Yollin to his right. He had hoped to see the Empress and John Grimes and the others on the floor, but the whisper was she was sending the Witch.
He snorted. He had seen the Empress' videos, so he wasn't sure if sending someone else was going to do much. He was still considering this when fear struck him. He noticed that his compatriots’ muscles locked, as did his. He craned his neck to see Baba Yaga walk out of the hallway with the six Shinigami behind her.
Drk-vaen locked his limbs in place, but the sweat coming off his forehead betrayed the lie; he was afraid. A quick glance around the floor showed him he wasn’t the only one.
Where the Empress was beautiful, Baba Yaga was hideous, for a human. Where the Empress was fun and light unless she was angry, Baba Yaga was born of fear. The Empress had dark hair, but Baba Yaga’s white filaments floated on the wind, making her appear as a vision of Death who walked in the light.
Where she shouldn’t be.
The Shinigami behind her (not that Drk-vaen knew what the name meant, but he had been told it translated as “death gods” so he chose to believe it) radiated resolute death.
The Leath had angered the Empress, and now the Empress was sending her response. Baba Yaga didn’t stop to speak as the Empress would. She swept across the floor, her black face surrounding sharp white teeth and white eyes with red irises and walked toward the…
“Holy shit!” the human beside Drk-vaen yelped.
Baba Yaga had disappeared, and so had the Shinigami. Collective breaths of surprise and relief when the fear disappeared swept the multiple levels of the Open Court.
Soon enough, thousands all over the court realized the pictures and videos of Baba Yaga and the Shinigami on their tablets had been corrupted. No one had a recording of any kind. The Witch of the Night remained only a story.
But this time, thousands of Etherians and others from multiple star systems all told the same story.
Baba Yaga was real, and she was Death.
Drk-vaen almost felt sorry for the Leath on that planet, but after he had watched the video one more time, he decided the Empress had made the right call. She had called upon Death and pointed her toward Merrek.
And the Leath were about to die.
Planet Merrek
“Confirming that all Etherians have been pulled from this planet,” Bethany Anne asked as the Tramp Princess dove toward the planet.
In space, ArchAngel and the renamed Alexander were facing off against four of the Leath superdreadnoughts, with both sides having an assortment of other large ships on their flanks.
The Leath weren’t sure what the humans were up to, but they had confirmed there were no troops on the planet now, to the best of their knowledge.
So they brought in upper-level politicians to create a message for their PR machine, which was being broadcast across the planet.
Then Darkness rolled over the planet, and a new video showed up. It spoke seven languages, one of them Leath.
The video featured a dark background with an even darker figure speaking, glints of her white hair appearing on the outer fringes. The voice was gravelly, but the message was clear.
In seven languages, it claimed it had arrived with the Darkness. Nothing would save them; they were cut off. Baba Yaga was here.
It was time they met their gods in the afterlife.
Planet Merrek, Minor Continent, Outside Zone 02-3433
“The weather is horrible,” Se’zal grumped as he ate his food while sitting on a large rock. He turned to Chanto, who was picking up his own food. “You think that Bobo Yaha is going to dare show its face here?”
“What?” Chanto asked as he opened his pouch. “And it’s Baba Yaga, and I wouldn’t know. However,” he pointed his eating utensil at his friend, “we are the ones who made the video, so if she’s real, what do you think?”
“I think—” he began, and then stopped talking, his head having disappeared in a splash of color.
The Leath contingent had been reinforced from the twenty-eight survivors back up to a complement of sixty-four when Bethany Anne and the Shinigami surrounded them.
They had no clue. A total of five messages had been sent to Command saying they were under fire and taking casualties when suddenly all communications from their location ceased and Command could no longer raise them.
There were only seven moving bodies remaining, and all were human.
Images which could be matched to the videos sent to the news agencies were forwarded to ArchAngel. The Shinigami had been videoed, but you never saw the face of Baba Yaga. In one picture you could make out her black leather-like hands and in another the back of her head with her floating white hair could be seen, but that was it.
The group finished their job, encircled the white-haired Witch, and disappeared. Above, th
e ship waiting for them turned toward the east and vanished.
Planet Merrek, Leath Command Center
Prime Quarter Leader Conclek ground his teeth, his tusks rubbing on his lips. “Are you telling me,” he snarled, “that we have lost seventeen support outposts in six days?”
Conclek listened to the incoming report and took a few deep breaths before responding, “Well, pull the other twenty into five groups, increase the guards, and have everyone hunker down. We will make that Bitch Witch come to us.” He closed the connection and turned to his aide. “Somebody get me a connection to those shits up in space!”
Bethany Anne watched as the Leath detachments started moving to centralized locations. She scratched her normal face, having decided that looking like Baba Yaga was a bit off-putting when she saw herself in the mirror. “ADAM,” she called while she, Stephen, and Scott were working at the table that had been set up in the main room on her ship, “how are we doing on cracking their communications?”
“We’re exactly nowhere,” ADAM replied. She heard John walk down the hall and stop at the doorway. She assumed he was leaning against the wall and listening. “They are using high-quality technology, and we haven’t been able to break it yet.”
She tapped her lips, thinking. “Do we know for certain which location is the main base?”
“With eighty-seven percent accuracy, yes,” ADAM answered.
“I hate guessing,” she whispered. “How long before they finish their efforts to pull their people together?”
“Best guess,” Stephen answered, “it will take up to a week.”
“Can we attack the smaller groups?” she asked Stephen.
Stephen thought about it for a moment. “Well, we could always do that, but what they are doing is exactly what we hoped they would. It would take us a lot longer to go after individual locations, so they are hunkering down. Just be thankful they aren’t trying to hide behind non-combatants.”
“Probably don’t think of them as protection,” Scott commented. “They seemed pretty assured of their own importance.”
“Well,” Bethany Anne looked at the map once more, “let’s hope they don’t get that idea before we eradicate them.”
John stepped into the room and stepped up next to the table, looking down at the map that had been projected.
It took a moment, enough time for Bethany Anne to look up to see if he was studying the map or what. She saw him point to the table, so she looked back down.
“What about staying here and seeing if anyone passes in the night?”
Bethany Anne considered the valley and shrugged. “I don’t think it would be any better than waiting.”
“No,” John reached up and scratched his chin, where a beard was starting to grow in, “but if we got lucky, we could have some fun.”
Bethany Anne’s eyes flashed red. “I like fun.”
“Stupid stupid stupid,” Cor’rida commented as she humped her weapon and loaned armor through the forest, a branch popping back to hit her square in the face. “Dammit!” she called. “Remember there are others behind you.”
Cor’rida had been in her assigned location working to create a viable government oversight office for a total of two days when her life had changed. She, like many others, went from important to so much dead weight in the estimation of the military. She was given a rifle, a suit of armor that almost fit, and a sum total of one short afternoon of practice with both.
Jum, the troop ahead of her, chuckled. “This is what we do every time a command comes down from either military or you political zeenoobs. Just, now you get to do it with us.”
“What happened to pick-up by vehicles?” she asked, stepping over a large rock.
“Flights are shut down; we don’t have the resources. That damned Baba Yaga destroyed our ships on-planet. They hit four air command locations simultaneously. I understand it was pretty damned bad for the Leath stationed there, but even worse for the ships. Nothing was left.”
“One Etherian did this?” she asked, grabbing the branch from Jum before he let it go, which saved her a smack in the face.
“Nah, there had to be at least four or they couldn’t have hit them at the same time,” he answered, waving his hand around his face to shoo off some sort of insect. “Reports are, more than one location had two combatants, so probably about eight.”
“We have over forty-four with us right now!” she grumped. “We can’t take them out with how many of you guys? Are you all useless?” she asked, just as a rather large branch caught her in the face, sending her slamming backwards into the muck. “YOU GROMBULD!” she screamed. She rolled over on the ground and stood up, reaching for her lip. She pulled it out; it was bleeding. “Jum!” she yelled, and ducked under the branch, storming forward. She saw a body lying in the grass ahead. “Get off the ground!” she hissed, and went over to him. “It’s not like you can hide from me!”
Her voice dropped when she realized Jum was missing a large chunk of his head and bleeding from multiple locations in his chest.
She started to hyperventilate, and turned around. Behind her was an alien with floating white hair and a weapon pointed at her.
Cor’rida put up her hands. “Hold! I’m not military!” she cried, only to fall into the dirt a second later, blood dripping from her lips.
The black-faced, white-eyed alien walked over to her. “I’m aware you aren’t military, but all Leath on this planet have been condemned by the military’s actions. The Kurtherians you call gods will pay for what you did to my people. If I have to track them for the rest of my long-assed life, I will find them and put them in a grave.”
She turned around, holstering her pistol. “Perhaps your ancestors should have chosen different gods.” She finished her speech to a Leath whose open eyes stared into the planet’s atmosphere, her dead ears unable to hear anything the Witch had said.
23
QBBS Asteroid R2D2, R&D
“I’m thinking I should grab a large wrench and beat the box William is working on with it.” Tina put her head down on the work table in front of her as Marcus, five feet farther down the long rock table, looked at her.
“Um,” he pulled his glasses off and used them to point at her, “that might be a catastrophically bad idea.”
Tina turned her head to look at him, then reached up and moved her dark hair so she could see better. “We go boom? I’m kinda ok with that at the moment. This is so damned frustrating.”
Marcus inhaled. “Yes… Yes, it is.” He scratched his cheek. “Isn’t that your personal project?”
“Yes,” came a muffled reply from under her hair.
“How long have you been working on it?”
“Half my life,” she told him.
Marcus chuckled, “Tina, we haven’t been on this asteroid that long.”
“Time is relative,” she answered, reaching up to move her hair again. “Space, time, existence, gravity, energy. I bet I could stumble on a way to time-travel with all this math.” She lifted her head off the table.
“Why isn’t R2 helping you with it?” Marcus pulled his chair next to hers. She saw his eyes moving across the equations on her tablet. He reached forward and advanced the digital page to the next, and kept reading.
“Are you doing the math in your head?” she asked, curious if it was Marcus or one of the EI’s or TOM or ADAM.
“Some of it,” Marcus answered, his voice soft, his focus elsewhere as he tapped her tablet to change the page again. “Why didn’t you ask for help with this?” he asked while his eyes scanned her work.
Tina’s eyes narrowed. She probably knew Marcus better than anyone who wasn’t presently on this asteroid, and his scientific curiosity was totally focused on her math in front of him. “What are you seeing?”
Marcus didn’t answer. He just flipped another page, reading as his lips moved silently, and flipped again. After a couple of minutes he reached the end of her notes and thoughts. He looked at her for a moment, his brain st
ill partially in some other mental location, and leaned back from the table, chewing on the earpiece of his glasses. He finally answered her question.
“Genius,” he told her. Then he looked up. “R2, please call Bobcat and William. Tell them we are holding an immediate mandatory meeting.”
Merrek System, Outer Space
“We will bring the auxiliaries to this location.” Prime Commander Mehnib of the Leath Navy designated an area in 3D space. “From here we should be able to block the Etherians long enough to pull Prime Quarter Leader Conclek and anyone else left on the planet out.”
“Casualties?” Commander Unt’er asked from his destroyer.
“Hopefully minimal,” Commander Mehnib replied. “We can’t just leave them there when we have a decent shot at retrieving them.”
“Sir?” a voice called from outside the discussion tank. It took a second for Commander Mehnib to realize he was the target. He turned to look through the haze the holo caused in his vision. “Yes?”
“We are tracking two new Etherian ships, sir.”
“Type?” Commander Mehnib asked. They maintained full awareness of the Etheric Empire’s shipbuilding capacity, and they shouldn’t have been able to field any new ships.
“They are ArchAngel-class superdreadnoughts, sir.” The operator glanced at his screen, then back at the Prime Commander. “New designations, sir. We haven’t tracked these before.”
Commander Mehnib swore under his breath as his jaws grated together. The Etherians had been able to build ships somewhere they didn’t know about.
They had just changed the spacescape. Commander Mehnib stepped out of the holo and walked toward Communications. “Get me a private line to Prime Quarter Leader Conclek.”
Planet Merrek
Conclek listened to the voice on the other end of the comm and kept his face relaxed with an effort. “I understand, Prime Commander Mehnib. Don’t worry, we will take care of this annoyance and finish our original task. We took out dozens, so I’m sure we can take out a handful of Etherians, no matter how scary they believe they are.” Conclek nodded. “Yes, of course. We will be here.”
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 92