SUED FOR PEACE (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 11) (22 page)

“Tell me!” she said to her father, her voice sounding like a command from a mythological god, heavy with age and saturated with the promise of untold pain and death to come.

“The base is fine,” Lance said, keeping his hands in his pockets, “Two missiles.”

“Those two you told me the team went to get?” The red eyes never blinking, the voice still causing Todd’s blood to run cold.

“On Pods and knocked out. Arriving back here as soon as it is clear, probably five minutes,”

“I’ll see them outside,” she said and turned, glancing at Peter, who nodded his head in understanding to a mental command sent his way.

“I’d hate to be those two fucks,” Todd commented after Bethany Anne was gone.

“No, I’d hate to be whoever sent them,” Lance replied. “I suspect we will find out it is China, and that is going to be bad. Ares, keep all armament and defenses online. Why did you not try to shoot those missiles down?”

“There was a point two percent chance of variance that a Pod could be hit.” the E.I. replied.

“Well, remind me tomorrow to speak to Adam about the parameters regarding defensive armament,” Lance said and then turned towards the door himself, “I’m heading up top.”

“Are you concerned about her?” Peter asked as he stepped up to walk with Lance.

Lance turned to look at the Guardian leader as they walked out of the Ops Center. “Her? Hell no, I want to see what happens and if she is thinking of letting them live, I’ll vote for the death penalty. I’ve had about as much of this bullshit as I ever care to take,” he said, and stepped through the hatch opening.

Peter nodded his head in agreement and called over his shoulder, “Todd, tell the Guardians to prepare, the Queen has just told us we are going to war.”

Lance looked back at the younger man in surprise and Peter tapped his head, “Got it direct, I don’t think she wanted to trust speaking.

Lance’s lips went tight as the two of them continued walking towards the exit, “Well, now they're fucked for sure,”

QBS Battleship - Manufacturing Facility 01 - Asteroid Fields

PO2 Robin Thomas reviewed the most recent Etheric power module he had to work with in the backup power room. They had a hundred and two in this room alone when the alarms started shrieking.

“This is not a drill, this is not a drill. This ship is hereby commanded to finish all final preparations and move towards earth. The Australian base has been attacked. Repeat, The Australian base has been attacked. This ship is commanded by Bethany Anne to head towards Earth as soon as safely possible, The Australian base has been attacked.”

PO2 Robin Thomas, sent home from the sandpit a quadriplegic when an IED hit his protection detail, started moving fast, sure and in a rhythm. He thought he was done as a man until one fateful night when there was a knock on his door, and an angel was standing there when he finally opened it.

He had found out her name was Gabrielle and the man with her was Lance Reynolds. Together, they offered him a chance to fight again, this time for the world.

He listened, he understood his options, and he agreed. It didn’t matter what he did, but he was willing. Then, he spent a week on the QBS Consanesco and walked off of it a whole man. Up top, walking on two legs again. He had been informed that he left the ship a free man, owing the company nothing for healing him due to previous services rendered.

His future was his own.

The hell with that, he told them. He would have crawled to help these people with no working arms and legs, however possible. Now that he had them? Well, he would do whatever he could for them with arms and legs.

Right now, his duty was preparing this ship to go to war, and he slammed the last Etheric Module in place and tightened it down, making sure the connections were solid.

He was usually capable of getting ten checked out in an hour. He looked at the twenty-four he had to accomplish.

He would just have to do better than that.

—

“Bobcat, there is an urgent command from Bethany Anne,” Samantha told him.

“Play it,” he looked up from the table where he was working on the details for the final outfitting.

He could see she was walking through the Australian Base, her eyes were fiery red, probably the most he had ever noticed.

She was beyond pissed.

Her voice was different, angry, determined and full of fury, “Bobcat, button the ship up and bring it to me. The Australian base has been attacked. As soon as safely possible, but I don’t want a second wasted beyond that, Bethany Anne out.”

Her visage faded.

He considered what needed to happen, “Samantha, send this out to ship, Alarm level three, this is what I want you to say.”

—

Bandile Annane, the lead of the slag manufacturing received an urgent message from Bobcat. He put a hand out to Jeo who was speaking to him who also looked down to his own tablet when it beeped to read Bobcat’s message to him.

The two men’s eyes met, and their faces were grim.

“I’ve got some men to update,” Bandile told Jeo.

Jeo replied, “You get me the materials, I’ll make sure they have the armament.”

Bandile put his fist out, “Jeo, you run the machines, we will keep them supplied.”

Jeo bumped Bandile’s fist, and they both walked out of the meeting room, heading in separate directions.

—

Where there had been about twenty Pod landings an hour, now the Pod Deck was doing over seventy-five, as more and more of those who had been lodging at the hotel grabbed their go bags and got on the next ride out to the big ship.

William and Marcus arrived at Bobcat’s office and walked in at the same time.

“Time to kick the tires and light the fires?” William asked as the two of them sat down at the table with Bobcat.

“Yes.” Bobcat said, “Samantha, play Bethany Anne’s message.”
 

The two men watched it as Bobcat made another note on his tablet to confirm an order.

“She seems a little pissed,” Marcus said.

“I don’t recall seeing her so…” William tried to find the right word.

“Red?” Marcus supplied.

“Uh, kinda,” William agreed, “That voice is new, isn’t it?”
 

Bobcat shook his head, “Not so much, John mentions that when she is infuriated about something that she feels strongly about in her core, it tends to show up in her voice and face.”

“I’d say someone hit a pretty raw nerve.” William agreed.

“They went after the base with some sort of bunker buster missiles or some such,” Bobcat said, “One of the teams caught two merc’s employed by person’s unknown to set up the rockets, make sure nothing seemed amiss and fire them off. Apparently, since the team didn’t respond with a cancel, the missiles got fired off without a call in.”

“What happened to the merc’s?” Marcus asked.

Bobcat looked to him, “Do you really want to know? Cause I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty.”

“No, I guess not,” Marcus admitted.

“You know that question I had about Bethany Anne going soft?” William asked.

“Yeah?” Bobcat admitted after thinking a second, “I remember.”
 

“I take that shit back,” William told him. There was a pause before William asked, “How do you think Dan knew before?”

“He’s been fighting for thirty years, hell he has ADAM and Lance down there. I’m sure it was only a matter of time, myself, but my guess is that they haven’t told us everything they are dealing with, just like we don’t update them with every challenge we have.”

“How much do you think Bethany Anne knows about what’s going on up here?” Marcus asked aloud.

“Well, you talk with TOM,” Bobcat answered, thinking aloud, “Samantha rats us out to ADAM all the time, so probably just about everything she wants to know.” He smiled at the two men, “I happen to know it isn’t the details. She trusts us to do that. I can’t tell you what her threshold is before ADAM or TOM will speak up.”

“How long before we can move?” William asked.

“Samantha?” Bobcat said aloud, “Estimated time to leave?”

Samantha answered, “Seven hours, forty-three minutes.”

Bobcat looked to his two friends, “Based on previous calculations, and my safety margin, for now, it’s going to be twenty-four hours before some of those on earth can even possibly see us, and forty-eight before we can get there.” He held up a hand, “Bethany Anne wants us there as safely as possible, and I’m not comfortable going too fast, just yet. So, unless she releases that constraint, it won’t be balls-to-the-wall.”

Marcus looked at the visage of Bethany Anne, still projected on the wall, “I hope there is something left when we get there.”

“Of who, TQB or China?” William asked.

“Both.” he replied.

Space in route from Australia to Pacific

Bethany Anne’s team were in their Black Eagles, heading to the Ad Aeternitatem from Australia, the world turning beneath them.

>>Bethany Anne, incoming call from the President of the United States.<<

“Bethany Anne,” she spoke aloud.

“How are your people?” he asked.

“Alive.”

“Can we help?”

“The only suggestion I have is not getting in our way. They have declared war, and I’ll bring it. I’ve already told them they had two choices and they apparently chose option one.”

“Which was that?” he asked.

“Try to kill me,” she said.

“Option two?”
 

“Sue for Peace. But I’m not allowing that option until they understand if they fuck with me again, I’ll use the bricks in their Great Wall to erect the highest cairn in the world above the dead of their military.”

“Not much for diplomacy at the moment?” he asked.

“Tried it, I call it patience but it didn’t work too well for us.”

“They can be rather petulant over offenses given them over the centuries,” he told her, “as I’ve been informed when I’m rather pissed at them myself.”

“I’ll file that under shit-I-don’t-care-about.”

He chuckled, “You’re kind of a straight talker, aren’t you.”

“You are the one asking the questions,” she allowed, “No need to blow smoke up anyone’s ass right now.”

“No, there isn’t. However, that brings me up to another reason for this call. I have a request on the behalf of others that have requested to find out if I can engage with the CEO of TQB and whoever is responsible in China to come to the negotiation table.”

“Mr. President, I’ve been attacked with missiles sent to destroy my base in Australia, they have killed a reporter asking questions related to Chinese solar energy efforts from an American congressman. They tried to kill our D.C. legal representative and failed. They have attacked several of our companies, killing three security guards, one researcher and an unborn baby girl named Alexandra.”

There was a pause on the other side of the line as the Pods started their descent into the night. Bethany Anne told TOM to make sure they came through the sky as hot as possible.

She wanted to make an entrance.

The time of hiding their abilities was passed. If staying under the radar wasn’t working, then it was time to awe them into submission and stomp on those who remained belligerent.

“Why do I believe the unborn baby girl is the one that hurt the most?” he finally asked.

“Because you have empathy. I delivered a message, and they replied in kind. I’ll do my best to stay away from non-combatants, but this time, it’s to the knife, Mr. President.”

He sighed, “Please leave enough infrastructure around so the world doesn’t go down in flames.”
 

“I’m well aware of the socio-economic aspects. I know which general is responsible for this. I’ve already been to his office but he isn’t in, or I would have delivered my grievance personally.”

The President understood how that could happen and realized her pistol wasn’t for show.

“I appreciate your understanding.”.

“Very good, Mr. President, Black Eagle One out.”
 

Disconnect ADAM.

>>Disconnected.<<

The President stared at the phone in his hand for a moment before hanging up. Something was tickling his memories from the morning reports about TQB and how she had just signed off. Then, he connected the dots. In a lot of those reports, the female that was leading the fighters, the one who was involved with the French and over in China was call sign Black Eagle One…

This woman was personally going to war.

QBS Base Australia

Yuko reviewed on the screens the applications that she had been running. The teams had doubled-down since the attack at the base. Most of them had a hard time believing that they had been attacked until they had gone outside to see the scorch marks from the blast outside of the shield.

Everyone’s headphones got an alarm that said they were going to join together for a meeting with ADAM. Yuko could hear everyone’s clicking clacking on their keyboards slow, then stop, and the room got quiet.

ADAM’s voice came through each headphone, “Our original mission was to use normal attacks, ones that we have been accomplishing effectively for over a year with a fair amount of success. However, based on conversations with another hacker in our group, we have new targets.”
 

“Please view your screens, and I will explain our new strategy,” ADAM told his group.

“We are going to bring China to her knees.”

FUTURE

Ahrgri-vactix of the Ristorian Sept looked out to his class of three hundred and five. Out of all of his courses, the one on the Queen Bitch was his most popular and his most well-attended.

He smiled to those out in the audience, representing over twenty-four different worlds and three different systems.

“Today, we will study the response of TQB and Bethany Anne the first time they had an altercation with a significantly larger target that should have caused them to hesitate. TQB might have negotiated after showing an impressive amount of abilities rather than get involved in military actions with the country, China, on their own home world, which almost certainly should have caused loss of life in her teams.”