Never Submit (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 15) Read online

  —

  Bethany Anne was about to swing around the corner, and take on the two emplacements of fighters at the end of the hall when a man started speaking.

  “My name,” he said, “is Vic Kingston. All personnel, stop firing. I repeat, all personnel, stop firing.”

  The shots coming at her stopped immediately. If nothing else, Bethany Anne thought, his people were sharp.

  Bethany Anne heard John’s shots hitting the outside walls.

  Hold John.

  Yes, Ma’am.

  ADAM, throw me up a schematic of the building again, see where this guy is…

  —

  Vic took another breath before continuing, “I don’t know how you did it, but you obviously got to the President of the United States…”

  Wow, I did? Bethany Anne thought to herself.

  >>Yes, your Father did.<<<br />
  Oh, she smirked, Couldn’t keep his little General fingers out of the fight, huh?

  >>I think he gave a Queen Bitch ultimatum if I’m not mistaken.<<<br />
  Ok.

  >>And you have another audience, when you are done here.<<<br />
  I do?

  >>Yes,<<<br />
  With who?

  >>The President in the White House DUCC room.<<<br />
  Oh, that explains.

  >>I’ll show you the video.<<<br />
  In a minute, I need to finish here, first.

  >>I found the operations room.<<<br />
  Show it to me. Ok, next stop…

  —-

  Tabitha slowed down her run when she believed the first figures were about fifty yards away. Too much brush for them to easily see her.

  For her, they were varying shaded squares on her HUD. The closer the target, the brighter the green. Those far away were deep, dark green.

  “Achronyx, adjust pistols for proper penetration at will. Monitor pain levels to penetration.”

  “How do you want me to calculate their pain levels?”

  “Not their fucking pain levels, you idiotic IBM PC Jr.,” she huffed, “My sodding pain levels you senile abacus.”

  “Calculating your pain levels to damage inflicted, ignoring illiterate descriptions for E.I. Achronyx.”

  “Ignore them all you want, but if you fuck this up, I’ll personally wipe your electronic ass, you understand me?”

  “I’m calculating the maximum damage for the least power, confirming this damage will take targets out of the fight.”

  “Damned right,” Tabitha murmured as she started shooting. She made it to six before she needed to hide behind a tree, the random bullets heading in her direction was impressive.

  That’s when speakers from the building started blaring a command to cease fire.

  —

  Vic sighed, he refused to get all of his men killed, and it was evident, without support, all of his men were going to die.

  —

  Mission Specialist McGowen heard the boss issue the command to stand down. He wasn’t sure what he saw in all of this, or why, but he was pretty sure if they continued as they had, it was going to be a slaughter with their side eating most of the bullets.

  Whoever these three were, they had brought their Pro “A” game, and what he thought was a good effort from their side turned out to be only for the benchwarmers.

  They were going to get fucked. He turned to sneak another peak at the boss when a woman in deep, dark red armor appeared a couple of feet from the boss.

  Her eyes were only on Vic as she told him, “We are going for a talk!” She pushed Vic. Then, they both disappeared.

  “What the FUCK?” He spat out, pointing to where Vic had been just a second ago.

  Etheric

  Vic felt the violent shove from his right, which caught him by surprise. He tried to reach for the chair that he was going to hit as he stumbled, only to find himself hitting the ground in a new place.

  He wasn’t in the operations center, anymore.

  Laying on his side, his eyes adjusting to an amorphous area, light reflecting through the mist, no discernable anything.

  Except for, her.

  “What are you trying to accomplish,” the contralto voiced woman asked him. Her helmet retracted, and her eyes were fiery red.

  Like, roaring fucking bonfire looking red.

  “You even try for your pistol, and I’ll rip your leg off and let you bleed to death out here, then I’ll go back and lay waste to everyone in the compound. You wanted this conversation, and now you got it.”

  Vic licked his lips, “You her?”

  “Probably.”

  “Bethany Anne?”

  “Yes, don’t you have a picture of me to know if I’m the right person?”

  Vic slowly pushed up to a sitting position, being careful not to make any moves towards his pistol. “We do, but not in a red suit of exo-armor with flaming red eyes.”

  “That’s because I’m pissed, and you broke up a chance for me to play hooky.”

  This answer caused Vic confusion, he tried to figure out her comment, “You were playing hooky, in body armor?”

  “Only way John will let me play with the terrorists anymore,” she told him.

  Now, Vic was even more confused. “Am I right to think your people aren’t, right now, killing all of my men.”

  “We didn’t start the fight, you gold digging fuckwit,” she told him after a moment, “but we sure as hell can finish it.”

  Vic nodded, “I got that. I don’t need all my men killed. This operation went bust when you did whatever it was to keep the President out of the loop.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, her voice going velvet over steel, “Tell me more.”

  He shrugged, “What is there to tell? This is a deep-black operation to get enough technology from TQB before you leave the solar system.”

  “This is a smash and grab?”

  He nodded.

  “How many out there are mercenaries?”

  “Maybe a quarter. All of the external fighters. My backups are all black-ops.”

  “Why?”

  “To gain TQB technology…” he explained before she cut him off a second time.

  “No, I have that. Why are you using black-ops?” she asked.

  “We can deny involvement at the top. This operation was to get the White House to react and then pin you between a rock and a hard place.”

  “You, your boss, your boss’s boss and that cunt nugget in the White House are idiots. There is only the Earth, and a rock I drop on your asses. THAT is being between a rock and a hard place. I said no technology. Interestingly enough when I say that, it fucking means NO TECHNOLOGY.”

  The helmet started assembling itself around her face again, “Any questions on what that means, now?”

  Vic shook his head.

  Her voice came out of a speaker on her armor, “We are going back to your Operations Center. My Ranger is coming in to grab Monica, who you will have your men bring up to us, and then we are all leaving. If another person so much as sneezes in the wrong direction, I’ll start dropping rocks around the fucking United States. Not that you will care at that time, you understand?”

  Vic nodded his head, he not only understood her threat, but he understood that his boss and the boss above them didn’t have a fucking clue who they were dealing with.

  She wasn’t the pushover he was told she would be.

  She waved her hand, “Now get up, let’s get this going, I already have another fucking appointment I have to keep.”

  Vic got up, a burning question in his mind he absolutely wasn’t going to ask.

  Who plays hooky with terrorists?

  —

  In New Jersey, the Alien spaceship sitting on top of the Air Force runways slowly faded from view, causing some, who had been filming the event, to assume it was a great, big holographic hoax.

  —

  The faint lights from so many cell phones gave the DUCC under the White House an eerie glow. It had been over twenty-seven minutes since almost ever
ything had been shut down.

  Except the air conditioning, thank God.

  At first, it had been a mess of people calling out, talking, yelling and crying when all of the lights went out. Since those first five minutes, a few more calm minds started putting together the clues.

  One, Bethany Anne was his daughter. No wonder he moved to their side.

  Two, they didn’t think a retired US Army General would play around with the fact that she would be willing to kill people. The whole life insurance comment got a few of them thinking it answered more than a couple of questions that were open about her.

  Three, don’t be arrogant. More than a couple of people covertly aimed their eyes toward the President. He wasn’t known for being very humble. One staffer, if she admitted it at all to herself, was hoping that pompous ass would say the wrong thing.

  Four, how the hell had the Etheric Empire subverted all of their equipment? Right now, the doors were locked. They could hear people on the other side of the doors trying to figure out ways to get in.

  Five… They never got to discuss five.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dulce, New Mexico - USA

  Annette watched as three more men lowered themselves into the hole with ropes. Aina wanted to follow, but when asked if she had rope training, she had to admit she did not.

  Both women had to make do with staying above.

  Over the next three hours, Annette knew two things positively.

  Aina wasn’t going to get fired for lack of results, which was rather important to Annette.

  The second was most of the good and easy to find information had already been taken. All sorts of computers had been removed or destroyed. There were enough hints to know that something had been going on, but they had no details.

  Those below reported there was blood everywhere, body parts and frankly it was a mess, with horrible smells.

  There were dead bodies on multiple floors, as they made it down staircases, plus they had two more elevator shafts that were filled in. It could take weeks or years to pull out all of the rock. More than likely, they would try to figure out where it went, and drill in from another direction.

  Annette set up a perimeter outside and she now considered this a secured military operation. They had enough clues, now they needed more hard proof.

  She looked around and sighed, seeing where this knowledge was going to go on the Military side. Annette wanted to figure out how she could make sure that her ass wasn’t assigned to this detail for who knew how many god-forsaken years.

  Aina, however, had that look on her face that made Annette believe she wanted to move in and stick her toothbrush in the nearest bathroom down below.

  This base was her new boyfriend.

  —

  Edward ran, stumbling, falling and banging his knee painfully when he tripped over a rock.

  Soon, he heard Colin yell at him, “Slow down! You’re going the wrong way.” Edward had just enough logic still firing in his mind to understand the scary shit behind him was a probable death sentence, the scary shit of getting lost in these caves, however, was an absolute death sentence.

  Edward stopped and turned, to see Colin’s head gear about a third away from the UFO’s coming in his direction. Jesse, behind Colin, was screaming in anger, that none of this was real.

  Edward struggled to get himself to move anywhere back towards Jesse where the scary voices had panicked the shit out of him when Colin caught up.

  “Dammit! You should know better than to freak out and run off in a cave system!” Colin grabbed Edward’s arm and shook him, his concern for his friend fueling his anger on top of the desire to run out of the caves, himself.

  “Have you ever,” Edward asked, allowing himself to take direction from Colin, “had voices talk about eating you?” He gasped out, starting to feel the pain from his fall a minute before.

  Colin looked around the area, the tall stalagmites rising from the floor, wondering which cave dwellers would jump out from behind one to eat the two of them. “Reminds me of the Dungeon and Dragon’s Tomb of Horrors.”

  “Third greatest adventure module of all time,” Edward responded, in a clipped fashion, his breathing shallow.

  Colin looked back at his friend. Dammit, Edward was losing it.

  It took Colin a minute to finally get Edward walking back to the UFOs on his own. They got to within thirty feet of Jesse when Colin realized Jesse was just sitting there, rocking back and forth.

  “You got this Edward?” Colin asked his friend, patting him on the back and when his friend nodded, he let go and jogged back to his other friend. “What the hell, Jesse?”

  “It’s gone,” Jesse answered, rocking back and forth, arms holding his two legs.

  “What’s gone?” Colin looked around, hoping the voices weren’t attacking them.

  “The camera, it’s gone.” he answered.

  Colin squeezed his eyes shut, wanting to yell out his frustration. “No way, we have got to find the - FUCK ME!” Colin shouted, and jumped back away from Jesse, pointing past his friend on the ground. “Red Eyes, Red EYES!” Colin took another couple of steps back, running into Edward. Jesse didn’t look, he just crawled towards his two friends before turning around when he couldn’t go any further.

  “Hello, children,” a deep voice called out from the same direction the guys were all facing, they couldn’t see the speaker, their lights flashing across the stalagmites, casting shadows throughout the large cave.

  Their blood ran cold when a whispering voice spoke from behind them, “tasty, tasty childrennsssss.”

  “Oh God,” Edward cried out, his voice as high as a child’s.

  That’s when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

  French Airspace, Near the West Coast of France.

  The four French Rafale delta wing fighters came screaming along the shoreline, heading towards Le Havre on the north coast. Le Havre was located northwest of Paris. It was a large commercial container ship dock for transporting materials overseas and for receiving products for shipping inland.

  As the jets headed north, cutting across Rennes, six black shapes surrounded them.

  Captain Charles Ardant in the lead aircraft looked over, then looked again when he realized he wasn’t looking at one of his own men off his wing.

  “What are you doing?” he spat out. Everyone in the French Air Force knew these aircraft.

  “Warning you,” came the reply, in French.

  “We are in French Air!” he argued, “You, TQB, are not allowed in French airspace without permission!”

  The voice came back after a small chuckle, “You had control over your airspace as long as we wished. That you felt you managed it was allowed, not earned. We are loading our last containers from Le Havre. If you so much as come within firing range of that location, you will be immediately shot down.”

  Charles was forming a reply when the TQB Black Eagle, and his five wingmen, shot off and disappeared into the sky ahead of them.

  Leaving the four Rafale fighters, each cruising at 750 knots, behind in mere moments.

  “Base,” Captain Charles Ardant called out, “we have a problem.”

  Washington D.C., - USA

  “I see,” a voice broke into the conversations inside the DUCC, multiple cell phone lights whipped around to find a female figure, in dark red armor, face protected behind a mask, in the corner staring at them. No one could see the face behind the mask, but none doubted who it was.

  Two men pulled their guns, aiming at the woman when she negligently waved a hand, and both men dropped their pistols, the metal burning hot, shaking their hands, “I came here to talk you toadstools, not be worried about you shooting some of your own people.” One of the guys reached down for his gun, then jumped back when it fired. The bullet embedding itself in a metal cabinet.

  The armored figured looked over at the agent that had tried for the gun, “Keep that up,” she told him, “and I’ll rip your spine out your ass.”

>   The agent looked at his gun, looked up at the figure, looked down at the weapon, and when he flipped his eyes up to her again, she was playing with a ball of red energy.