Forever Defend Read online

  Bethany Anne tapped the table to get their attention. “Listen you two, we need to have a discussion between you, TOM, ADAM and myself.”

  Gabrielle turned, her mouth dropping. “The babies?”

  Bethany Anne nodded. “Yes. Although we aren’t at the crisis stage yet, there are some problems and we need to make some decisions.”

  Eric lifted Gabrielle’s feet, sat down in the chair, and put them into his lap. He pulled off her shoes and started massaging her feet. “We talked about it some,” Eric said. “You guys have had her in the Pod-doc once a week from the beginning, but twice in the last two weeks. What is going on?”

  TOM’s voice came out of the speaker system. “The Pod-doc is having trouble manipulating the programming for the twins’ nanocytes while they are inside Gabrielle.”

  Bethany Anne noticed that Gabrielle was surreptitiously wiping away a tear, and wanted to scream. She could throw fireballs and destroy hundreds, but she couldn’t wave a hand and make sure life was fair for two of her closest friends.

  Gabrielle’s voice was soft. “You told me that the birth would be tricky and possibly challenging, TOM.” She looked at Bethany Anne. “BA, I can feel your emotions from here. We knew this might be a problem when we talked about changing the programming to allow me to get pregnant.”

  Eric nodded his agreement.

  Bethany Anne looked at them both, and her voice cracked as she spoke. “The team of ADAM and TOM believe the best chance for them to be healthy would be to put them into the Pod-doc now. That way…” Bethany Anne wiped away a tear of her own. “That way, the analysis can continue twenty-four/seven.” She noticed Gabrielle circling and rubbing her stomach repeatedly.

  “What is the earliest a baby has been safe, being born prematurely?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one weeks, back on Earth,” ADAM answered from the speakers. “Technically, the Pod-doc can handle it earlier, but the longer the gestation the better. These babies are advanced for their age. They can be born safely now and placed in the Pod-doc.

  Eric’s eyes were vacant, Bethany Anne noticed. She thought he was staring at the future.

  “Look, we didn’t try to hide information from you, but this last week has been crazy, and we have been waiting for ADAM to finish the simulations before we told you anything.”

  Eric stirred. “What are the simulations saying?” he asked. He moved his chair closer to Gabrielle, who grabbed his outstretched hand and squeezed it.

  “That is the good news,” TOM answered. “Most of the simulations show an eighty-seven percent chance of success.”

  “Yeah,” Gabrielle sniffed, “but thirteen percent is too damned high when you’re the mom.” She looked down, hair falling across her face, her shoulders silently shaking, as Eric gently laid her feet down and enveloped her in his arms.

  Bethany Anne’s heart was dying.

  ADAM spoke up. “We will be constantly watching and adjusting as we go, Gabrielle. I promise you, my personal promise, that I will dedicate my resources to watching over your children until they are delivered into your arms in good health.”

  Gabrielle reached under her hair to wipe away the tears. “Thank you, ADAM.” She sniffed. “That means a lot to me.”

  Bethany Anne put her hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder. “We have your back, Gabrielle. These two will join us safely.”

  Gabrielle just nodded her understanding silently.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Military Meeting Room

  When Lance walked into the medium-sized meeting room, he nodded to Dan, then Admiral Thomas, John, Frank, Gabrielle, and Patricia in turn, then pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat down.

  “Good morning, everyone. I hope you brought your thinking caps this morning.”

  The quiet laughter did nothing to assuage his concern. He looked around the table. “Ok, someone say it.”

  “Well, we’ve talked,” Dan spoke up, “in twos and threes, and we just don’t see a way to keep her out.”

  “John? Gabrielle?” Lance directed his stare at the Empress’ guard and guard captain, who were sitting next to him.

  Gabrielle beat John to the answer. “No fucking way. Not an ice cube’s chance in hell.”

  “Well,” Lance sighed as he eyed her, “no need to sugarcoat it for me.”

  “If you want me to sugarcoat it,” Gabrielle started, but Lance put up a hand.

  He grimaced. “No, I’ve got the same feeling.” He looked around again. “Ok, now that we are all agreed Bethany Anne is going to be in the fight on the Karillians’ home planet against a Kurtherian-modified race, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Well, let’s first determine why she will be there,” Patricia spoke up.

  “She needs to fight,” John answered. “There is only so much Empress-ing that we can hope to get her to do. Her Bitches, including me, are there for her if she needs something done up close and personal. Or she has Dan’s team go in, or the Navy, or whatever. She has been slowly pressure-cooking and she is going to blow her top sooner or later. When you have the Kurtherians in the fight, you are not going to be able to keep her out of it.”

  “She’s the damned Empress,” Lance groused.

  “She’s your daughter,” Patricia shot back. “Maybe you shouldn’t have told her so many ‘leadership is from the front stories.’”

  “Duly noted,” Lance agreed. “Next daughter, I’ll work on that.”

  “Oh?” Gabrielle perked up, looking between Patricia and Lance. “Do you have something to announce?”

  The room started chuckling at Lance’s expression when Patricia didn’t answer right away. After a few seconds, she winked. “Not at the moment, but trying is still fun.”

  “Gott Verdammt! Give me a heart attack, woman,” Lance mumbled.

  “Wouldn’t do you any harm. You would just heal from it,” Dan told him.

  “It would still hurt like a sonofabitch,” Lance replied.

  “Well, I want to be there when you tell Bethany Anne she has a sister on the way,” Gabrielle informed Patricia.

  “I’ll let you know first, honey,” Patricia confirmed.

  “Ok,” Admiral Thomas interrupted. “We know she is going to insist on being there, so why don’t we sequester her in a low-risk area? We have the Bitches protect her. That way she’s there more or less safely, and if a few combatants come along, she gets a little action.”

  The table quieted down. Dan looked at Lance, who turned to Patricia.

  She just shrugged her shoulders, so Lance glanced at Frank, who was taking notes but spared a second to flip his hand back and forth in a universal maybe gesture. Finally, he raised an eyebrow at John and Gabrielle.

  The two of them looked at each other. “What do you think?” she asked him.

  John scratched his jaw for a moment, then spoke to the whole table. “That’s about the best we are going to get, I think. She will see through it in a moment, so keep hammering the message that she isn’t supposed to be there in the first place. It might mollify her.”

  “Ok.” Lance looked at his wristwatch, an anachronism from Earth. “We have ten minutes until our meeting with the Karillians. Let’s not all hit the door at the same time.”

  The meeting adjourned, and Lance waited for Patricia to step around Frank before he pulled her over to the side for a personal conversation.

  Frank closed his notebook and winked at Dan.

  Dan shook his head and hoped Frank wasn’t feeling the winds of the future again. Maybe the Yollin breakfast this morning just gave him gas.

  At least, that is what Dan hoped was happening to Frank.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Large Meeting Room

  Empress’ Guardian Peter walked into the semicircular room, where rows of chairs ascended like an old university auditorium up to the top row. At the bottom was a table that could seat eight if they needed to face the people in the seats, or eighteen if they sat around the table.


  There were already people from all over Meredith Reynolds in the seats. Bethany Anne was a big believer in allowing second- and third-tier support personnel to listen in on major discussions. They might not get a chance to contribute at the meeting, but history had shown they would speak with their bosses later.

  The Karillian delegation was led in a minute later by Eric. Bethany Anne was already speaking with a small group of her military whom she didn’t normally interact with.

  The Karillians’ eyestalks were darting all around, trying to take in everything at once.

  Tomthum leaned over to Caspise. “This is more than I expected.”

  Caspise nodded. “Not quite a Festival of Assembly, but she is committing a lot of resources to this discussion.”

  “Notice how she is laughing with them.” Tomthum pointed with his eyestalk. “Her people do not fear her.”

  “Not in the regular sense, that is true.” Caspise glanced around as Eric provided seats for the two delegates. The Karillian guards Keth and Bonn stood behind the delegate and sub-delegate. Eric took their ship’s captain over to the first row of seats facing the table at the bottom of the auditorium.

  Bethany Anne looked around the auditorium, then raised her voice a little. “Park them, ladies and gentlemen.” She nodded to the people she was speaking with. They turned and went toward their own seats.

  Bethany Anne walked to the side of the table closest to the seats, opposite Lance, Dan, Admiral Thomas, and the two Karillians. There was a seat for her, one for Frank, and an empty one.

  “Peter?” she called.

  Peter looked up from his conversation with Todd and blushed.

  “You’re up here this time,” Bethany Anne told the Were. “Todd, we’re short one chair for you, sorry.”

  “No worries, ma’am.” the captain of the Guardian Marines smiled. “I’m good with Peter shouldering the load.”

  She watched as Peter squeezed Todd’s shoulder, causing his friend to wince. “No worries.” Peter smiled at Bethany Anne as Todd surreptitiously rubbed his shoulder.

  Bethany Anne turned to the assembly after Peter passed her. “Ok, folks, we have some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is, we have less than six months to prepare.”

  Bethany Anne’s smile turned harsh. “The good news is, we know where some Kurtherian lackies are going to be.”

  She allowed the resulting hubbub to continue for a minute after that declaration, then put her hand up for quiet.

  Conversation stopped. “Now, I realize that we won’t be going against the Kurtherians right away. This is an enhanced and select group. From my understanding, the Karillians were first attacked some five hundred years ago. They were able to beat off that group, and since there was no follow-up attack, they allowed themselves to relax after thirty or forty years. Unfortunately, seventy years later, a second attack occurred, and killed a quarter of their population. Between the second and third attacks, the Karillians figured out enough to get into space. Since that time they have kept their world’s location a secret, fearing that all aliens were evil, but there have been three more attacks. That’s six attacks so far.”

  “The seventh attack will be launched in about six months.” She faced the front wall of the Auditorium. “Meredith, show us the map.” Those at the table could look at the smaller screens hanging from the ceiling to see what was being displayed up front, or turn in their seats.

  The screens at the front had merged to become one, showing the Etheric Empire and the three systems that had previously been part of the Yollin Empire. A blue dot appeared directly at the bottom of the Straiphus System. “That is Karillia. It’s actually easier to get there from a secondary system rather than Straiphus, for gravitational reasons that include a lot of math.”

  Bethany Anne turned toward the audience and gave them a thousand-watt smile. “I don’t do math.”

  They chuckled along with her. Their Empress might not do math, but she kicked ass like Einstein did math and that was enough for them.

  She turned back to the map. “We know amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics, so that is why many of you are here.” This statement caused more than a few of the people responsible for logistics to sit up a little straighter.

  Lance covered his smile with a hand. His daughter rarely missed a chance to compliment even those in the operations side of her organization. Perhaps she was a bit of a pain in the ass about fighting on the front, but he wouldn’t change one damned thing about her.

  There was only one thing that had kept her alive so many decades ago, and that was her deep-seated belief in fighting hard for what she believed in. It had caused Michael to choose her when she was dying, and it was the quality which brought the guards to surround her and fight for her with their lives.

  It was why everyone loved her to this day. Well, not everyone, but many. Those who didn’t appreciate that violence was an appropriate answer to some questions, would never love Bethany Anne.

  And that was just fine with her.

  “We will need to figure out the quantity of fighters required based on past experience, the enemy’s probable enhancements based on the delta between each invasion, and what they need to get in and back out again. I’ve spoken with the Karillians and we think this is their final push.”

  She looked at those in the seats. “They are here to exterminate the population of the Karillian’s world. We don’t know if they intend to occupy it, or just leave it empty. Our consultant on the issue believes they might use the planet as a forward base.”

  Caspise leaned over to Tomthum, who met him in the middle. He whispered, “They have a consultant?”

  Tomthum’s eyestalks made the gesture which conveyed he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “The Etheric Empire has sent Articles of Agreement to the Karillian leadership, informing them that they are now members of the Etheric Empire.” This caused a murmur in the group. Bethany Anne put up a hand. “This wasn’t necessary for our help, but rather recognition by those in the delegates’ party that it was the least they could do to repay us for the blood and effort we would be expending.”

  Bethany Anne’s face grew somber, her eyes looking across as her voice became firm.

  “Let everyone know the Etheric Empire will forever defend our own, forever defend our friends, and forever defend the helpless!”

  Her eyes flashed red, the energy causing her hair to lift and float as the men and women in the auditorium stood up and started cheering.

  “AD AETERNITATEM!” Her voice rang clear both in ears…

  And minds.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Personal Ship Powerdrive

  Kiel’s eyes opened at the slight nudge. He focused on the large green hand poking him. “I’m awake,” he spat.

  “You are a light sleeper,” Shi-tan mused.

  “You provided a shitty bunk for me to sleep on,” Kiel told him. “I realize all you Shrillex are supposed to have a personal code of Loyalty.”

  “Not Loyalty,” Shi-tan corrected the Yollin. “Honor. We only give Loyalty to those who are superior to us in battle; people for whom it would be an Honor to fight.”

  Kiel sat up, his hands bound and small chains on his feet. He looked down and split his legs.

  The damned metal was strong.

  “So is it honorable to get paid more than your contract by your mark and let that mark go free?”

  Shi-tan just looked at him.

  Kiel shrugged. “Ok, is it honorable to beat the crap out of you and put you under obligation to let me go free?”

  “Little Yollin,” Shi-tan bent over, the red in his yellow eyes more pronounced, “I’ve had many try to get me to let them go free. None have succeeded, and I must say, your effort is pitiful.”

  Kiel shrugged. “Hey, I gotta ask. It’s required. Personally, my family will forgive me and, while my holiday is going to be cut short, give them five years and I’ll be back in their good graces.”

  Shi
-tan pursed his lips. “I was wondering why you were not more worried.”

  “Well, I’ll admit this was a bit of a test of their forgiveness,” Kiel ad-libbed. “And if it is all the same to you, I’d rather extend the vacation. But I’m the favorite child, so I’m expected to do crazy stuff.”

  Shi-tan looked at the screen on the wall, which was telling him the hangar had been filled with air and he could lower his doors safely. “Well, your family reunion will happen soon, so stop your bellyaching. We need to finish this.”

  Shi-tan reached down to pull the Yollin up by his arm. “You are dense, aren’t you, Yollin?”

  Kiel considered letting his muscles relax and forcing the bounty hunter to hold him up, but with his luck, Shi-tan would let him drop and Kiel would bounce his head off the seat. So he stood up.

  “Oh, you mean ‘heavy,’” Kiel got out as he stood. “Not ‘stupid.’”

  Shi-tan laughed, his voice sounding like a wheezing human. “You are about to be delivered to your group for stealing the company’s money. That has already demonstrated that you are stupid.”

  Kiel kept quiet.

  —

  The trip through Security took Shi-tan a little longer than he would have hoped, but not as long as he’d expected. The humans apparently knew about bounty hunters, and had a procedure for handling them and their captives. Once they confirmed his mark was the Yollin on the bounty and that Shi-tan was a legitimate hunter, they switched out his personal restraining cuffs for their own, and provided Shi-tan with the key.

  He was sure they could open it too, but such was life.

  Interestingly enough, they gave him directions to All Guns Blazing when he was finished processing, which was nice of them.

  When the two came to a public hallway, Shi-tan watched the door they exited from melt itself back into the wall. He frowned.

  No going back that way.

  “Let’s go meet your family.” Shi-tan pulled on Kiel’s arm.

  William was working the door at the entrance to the bar. It wasn’t busy, since it was the third shift for most on the Meredith Reynolds.