Through The Fire and Flame (The Kurtherian Endgame Book 3) Read online

  >> These aliens have you worried?<<<br />
  Bethany Anne snickered softly. Not worried, cautious. We’re coming up against a new type of enemy. These are not Leath, and neither were the last scavengers who came sniffing. They’re smart, and they have tech that’s as good as or better than ours. Her eyes narrowed in thought. We have to outthink them as well as outfight them.

  ADAM chuckled. >>Shouldn’t be too much of a problem.<<<br />
  The battle is the perfect distraction for us to get in there and find out more about the kind of minds we’re dealing with.

  >>Know your enemy.<<<br />
  Like I know myself, and when it comes time, it will be them and not me on the losing side of our confrontation. I’m bringing Peter home, and if I have to take a step back and think for a moment before I squeeze my fist to do that? That’s what I’m going to do.

  >>No matter how much you want to unleash the Queen Bitch on them?<<<br />
  Oh, no. That going to happen. Just not until Peter and the others are safe.

  Bethany Anne reached the elevator, then changed her mind and went through the Etheric when she saw that she would have to wait. She checked that the way was clear before stepping out close to the hangar bays.

  They want to get into a war of mental abilities? I’ll strip their psyches down to raw nubbins and stamp them into the ground, but first I want to know how they think so I can learn their weaknesses. Looking at how their tech works is one way of doing that. We have the opportunity, and there’s no way I’m passing it up.

  She turned at an intersection in the corridor, then again into the hangar where the SSE fleet was based for this operation.

  Despite the seriousness of the reason she was here, what awaited in the deafeningly loud hangar was one of her favorite things in the universe to walk in on.

  It was hot, and the air was barely breathable through the stink of oil and grease and the sweat of the people working their derrieres off to reach a common goal.

  She fucking loved it.

  Every one of the people in the hangar was working, in this instance, to build more scout ships or repair the ones who had enough in them to make it back after being hit. Everywhere she looked she saw action, but she couldn’t find the person she wanted amid the barely-organized chaos that was the hallmark of a Jean Dukes workspace.

  Jean, are you in here?

  Yeah, came the reply. In back, with the Loralei.

  Bethany Anne made her way her circuitous way through the hangar, ducking here and there to avoid people acting as handlers for machinery moving pieces of the ships into place or to avoid showers of sparks as others were welded into place.

  She saw Jean putting the finishing touches on a gen IV scout ship. She stood back from the side of the ship, filling in the third letter of the stencil reading, “SSE Loralei II.”

  Bethany Anne looked the ship over and chuckled at the way serendipity had presented her with a gift like this. “Hold off on that a minute, Jean.”

  Jean turned and smiled, dropping the spray-painting wand to her side. “Hey, you made it.” She nodded at Bethany Anne’s appraisal of the scout ship. “She’s a beauty, right? I might have gotten a bit missile-happy, but I think it adds to the overall design.”

  >>I’m in complete agreement,<< ADAM told her. >> Nice, work, Jean. BA, you should see inside this sweet ride. Oh, nice! Are those what I think they are?<<<br />
  Jean swelled with pride at ADAM’s reaction. “If you’re referring to the modified guns, then yeah. They have some special features. I didn’t want Loralei to get taken out like that again.”

  Bethany Anne received a message from the bridge. “Shit, two more ships have gone down.” She climbed up, pulled the stencil off the side of the ship, and held out her hand for Jean’s spray wand. “You’ll have to pass my apologies on to Loralei. This ship is needed elsewhere.”

  >>Double sweet!<<<br />
  Bethany Anne raised the spray wand. Don’t thank me just yet.

  Immersive Recreational and Training Scenario: Shipwrecked In Space

  Addix received a message from Eve informing her that the next stage of the scenario was now underway. She scanned the details and closed the message. “Children, the next part of this game is timed. We have five hours to work out our objectives and complete this stage.”

  Gabriel dropped the door release lever. “It’s jammed.”

  Alexis shoved her brother out of the way and focused her external camera on the mechanism. “It’s not jammed, there’s no power to it. The ship is dead.”

  Gabriel’s voice was small. “Then we really are trapped.” He moaned. “I’ve changed my mind about space. We’re going to get smooshed by a comet if we stay out here.”

  Addix saw that Alexis was coming to some conclusion or other. The small child was a study in deliberation in the other corner of her screen.

  “The power,” Alexis stated, a small, determined line furrowing her brow. “The Pod-docs with the colonists will fail unless we can find a way to get it back on.”

  Addix nodded. “So we have two objectives. Get inside the ship, and get the power back on. ” She switched to her external cameras and onboard sensors to check their surroundings, confirming that the next stage of the scenario had begun. “The ship has left the proximity of the meteor shower. We can take a few minutes to discuss it before we act.”

  “We need to be careful, Aunt Addix,” Alexis cautioned. “Our exosuits aren’t charging anymore. Look.”

  Addix checked her suit’s charge; it had four hours and fifty-five minutes remaining. “You’re right. But that won’t matter because we’re going to be inside the ship as soon as the two of you work out how we’re going to get in.”

  “I can open it from here, I just need something heavy.” Gabriel regarded the hatch through narrowed eyes. “Mommy would just punch her way through.”

  “Daddy would turn to Myst and find a way in,” Alexis offered. “And Aunt Eve would find a way to hack the door even if there wasn’t any power.”

  Gabriel was silent for a moment. “We can’t do any of those things. We’re not as strong as Mommy, and we can’t Myst like Daddy. We can’t use our bodies to power the hatch.”

  Alexis leaned into the camera. “We can use our brains and think.” The line on her forehead suddenly vanished. “What would you do, Aunt Addix?”

  Addix’s mandibles twitched in amusement. “Thank you for asking, Alexis. I would take stock of my resources and work out the best course of action from there.”

  Alexis vanished from view for a moment. All Addix and Gabriel could see of her was her dark ponytail bobbing around at the bottom of the camera while she worked at her console. “We have… Oh! We might be able to power the door with our bodies after all, but it’s risky.”

  Gabriel leaned forward in his harness. “Our bodies?”

  Alexis giggled. “Not our actual bodies, silly!” She waved her finger in a circle above her head.

  Comprehension lit Gabriel’s face. “You want to divert power from one of our exosuits to the door?”

  Alexis nodded fervently. “But like I said, risky. If we don’t get it right the exosuit could fail, and then whoever is wearing it would die while we were still trapped out here.”

  Gabriel frowned. “Aunt Addix, is there anything that says we all have to make it through the scenario to succeed?”

  Addix checked the scenario guidelines. “No, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel hit the clips on his harness and almost fell out. He caught himself and scrambled the rest of the way out. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Boys.” Alexis rolled her eyes as she undid her harness. “I didn’t say it was a certainty.” She struggled out of the last straps and pulled the hood of her shipsuit over her head. “Just that it was a risk, and not even a big one if we’re careful. Besides, do you know how to wire this thing?”

  Gabriel stopped with his hood halfway over his face. “Um…no? Do you?”

  Alexis sniffed. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn
’t. We’re going to use my suit as the power source. I’m the smallest, so if anything goes wrong, it will be easier for me to hitch a ride with Aunt Addix.”

  She slipped around behind her seat and pressed the panel with the picture of a wrench and a screwdriver. The panel drew back, and she grabbed the toolbox from inside the recess. “Aunt Addix, how long can I stay outside in just my shipsuit?”

  Addix checked in the scenario handbook. “You have thirty minutes.”

  Alexis giggled. “Oh, I won’t need that long.” She tethered herself to her exosuit and wrapped the tether around one foot. She held onto the tether with one hand and grabbed her toolbox before flicking her foot to start her shuffling descent.

  Addix and Gabriel met her on the hull outside the ship twenty-two minutes later.

  Alexis looked up from where she knelt in a circle of stripped wiring, connector blocks, and scattered tools. “Just a minute. This is the last one.”

  She was looking clammy, her lips beginning to show the telltale blue tinge of oncoming hypoxia.

  Gabriel rushed to her side. “Sis, we’ve got this. Just talk me through it.”

  Addix wanted nothing more than to complete Alexis’ wiring job. However, her job was to guide, not to solve the problem for them. She knew exactly how to deal with this situation, but the children had to come up with their own solution.

  Besides, she didn’t know what Alexis had done to the door mechanism. The child clearly understood what she was doing, but the system she had used was like nothing Addix had seen before.

  Alexis stood. “It’s done, we just need to… To…to twist…”

  Gabriel took Alexis by the shoulders. “Do what? Alexis?”

  Gabriel saw a brief flash of turquoise in her mind as her eyes rolled back in her head. Her legs gave way, and she crumpled into his arms.

  Alexis!

  14

  Addix kept her voice calm. “Gabriel, let me take her.”

  There was no possible way for the bright white sparks to exist within the game construct, but nevertheless, there they were. Each spark spun on a dizzying axis, forming a sphere around Gabriel and Alexis in his arms, tinged pink by the red glow from his eyes.

  He bared his teeth, which Addix would have found adorable if not for the imperative nature of the situation. She had lost the children on Colonnara, she would not be the one responsible for them when their first game deaths occurred.

  She spoke softly but firmly, the voice of comfort and authority that children needed in times of high stress. “Gabriel, Alexis is not actually dying. We are inside the game scenario. Do you remember?”

  The vortex around the twins increased in intensity. Gabriel glared at Addix and clutched his sister to him.

  Addix’s mandibles clicked in understanding. “Okay, Gabriel. Can you take her to the exosuit, then? Alexis will be fine once she gets medical attention, but only if we get her there quickly.” She remained calm—the anchor Gabriel needed.

  She had spoken at length with Eve and Michael about the possible psychological impacts of allowing the children to experience things that they would be mostly immune from in reality. It was important for her to understand why Michael and Bethany Anne would allow such hardship to befall their precious children.

  Because in adversity we grow, Michael had replied. And since I have no intention of allowing my children to experience real suffering for as long as I have breath in my body, the only way to teach them is through play. Besides, he had added with a cocky smirk, do you see them complaining?

  Of course, Michael had been correct, as he always was. Addix had not heard any complaints from the children, even in the more exacting scenarios they had played.

  What she saw was Gabriel battling to get control of his emotions, and she knew he was too damn hardheaded not to win. She could help him along a little.

  She took a step back and swept a hand toward the exosuits. “I know you can do this, Gabriel. Alexis needs you to make a decision. There isn’t much time.”

  Gabriel returned to his senses when he heard the confidence in Addix’s tone. The whirling sparks winked out, and Gabriel’s eyes returned to their usual hazel. “Sorry, Aunt Addix. I panicked. I thought I was protecting her.”

  Addix bent to take Alexis from Gabriel’s outstretched arms. “That’s quite all right, Gabriel. You backed down when you realized that you weren’t. You were a good brother to your sister.”

  She turned and climbed swiftly into her exosuit with Alexis cradled in her arms. Gabriel followed up the tether behind her.

  Addix laid Alexis across the bucket seat and sealed the floor hatch after checking to make sure Gabriel had enough room to move around. The cab pressurized, and they stripped back their hoods to better tend to Alexis.

  Gabriel peeled Alexis’ hood back and put his ear to his sister’s mouth to check her breathing. There was nothing. He turned to Addix, who emerged from a storage compartment with the emergency med kit. “I’m fine. Just get Alexis breathing again!”

  Addix crept carefully around the other side of the chair and placed the med kit on the floor beside her. Alexis’ skin was waxy and even paler than usual.

  Addix handed the oxygen mask to Gabriel and pressed two defibrillator patches onto Alexis’ shipsuit; one over her heart, and one over her ribs on the left. “Stand well back, Gabriel,” she cautioned.

  Gabriel finished adjusting the mask and took four steps back to press himself against the wall of the cab.

  Addix activated the defibrillator and Alexis spasmed in the chair. Her spine arched and then released, leaving her limp on the seat.

  Addix leaned over to check for a pulse.

  “Is she back?” Gabriel craned his neck to see.

  “No,” Addix told him. “We have enough charge for one more attempt.”

  Gabriel slapped the walls of the cab, his eyes beginning to glow again. “Then attempt it!”

  Addix gave him a second to calm down while she set the defibrillator to charge again.

  This time when Alexis arched her spine she gasped.

  Then she screamed.

  She sat up straight and flopped back down onto the chair again. “OWWWW, that bites!”

  Gabriel pushed off the wall and all but dived on her with his arms wide. “Alexis! You’re okay?”

  She pushed him away. “I’m fine. How long was I out?” She sat up again and looked at the charge indicator on the screen. “We have less than four hours left! We need to get inside the ship.”

  Gabriel frowned. “But this is exactly what we didn’t want to happen! You’re stuck in here; your suit has failed.”

  She slid down from the Ixtali-shaped chair. “I need a replacement suit so I can get that door open.”

  Addix placed a hand on her shoulder. “There isn’t one.”

  Alexis shrugged. “Then I need to borrow Gabriel’s. Aunt Addix, I need you to strip the power cells from Gabriel’s exosuit while I open the door.”

  Gabriel was less than impressed. “So I have to just stay here?”

  Alexis raised an eyebrow. “You have to stay here and memorize our route to engineering.”

  Gabriel’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Okay. Won’t my eyeballs explode when you open the exosuit?”

  Addix shook her head. “There is shielding. It was deactivated before to conserve power.”

  A complicated dance ensued.

  Alexis donned Gabriel’s shipsuit, exited the exosuit, and completed opening the hatch. Addix joined her once she had stripped the power sources from Gabriel’s exosuit, and they cycled through the airlock to the inner ship. Then Alexis stripped out of the shipsuit and gave it to Addix, who took it back to the exosuit and returned with a spooked Gabriel.

  He looked back toward the end of the corridor as they left the airlock behind. “Bad news. We’re heading back into the meteor shower. I saw it from the exosuit cameras.”

  Alexis increased her already brisk pace and looked around as she jogged down the corridor. “All the more
reason to hurry up and diagnose the problem so we can fix it.”

  Addix cocked her head. “How do you expect to diagnose the problems?”

  Alexis nodded at the power cells Addix was carrying. “By getting Phyrro back online, of course.”

  Planet Hastran, Krimlex Industries

  Hyden N’xen pressed a digit on the pad to end the call, having been put more than a little off balance by the human named Giselle Foxton-Thomas.

  N’xen had heard a lot about the humans, but she hadn’t really seen many outside of the ones who ended up before the Justices for brawling in bars on repose days. Those humans promptly paid their fines, and even helped to repair the damages in most cases.

  It wasn’t that Giselle was frightening, unlike some of the yellow-eyed humans she’d seen in the vid-reels. In fact, she had been pleasant, had observed the cultural traditions of N’xen’s people, and charmed N’xen—right up until the point where she had revealed the reason for her call.

  Nobody needed that much metal.

  N’xen had played along just in case her suspicions were actually paranoia. Years of bitter competition with her closest rivals in the steel industry had taught her to take the emotion out of business if she wanted to succeed on this cutthroat world. However, she had ended the call feeling outraged at being sucked into such a cruel practical joke. She had liked the Gisele female until she realized the human was there on behalf of Harphran to ruin what had up until then been a fairly good day.

  N’xen tried to get on with clearing her schedule, but the sheer pointlessness of such a prank pulled at her until she could stand it no longer.

  She cleared her screen and called the bastard.

  Harphran’s gloomy face appeared on her screen a moment later. “Calling to gloat, are you? That was a fine trick you pulled with that human, N’xen.”

  N’xen smirked and ended the call.

  A little bit of careful investigation revealed that the human had approached Trexis, and Gravis, too.

  The massive order was real. N’xen praised herself for holding her temper until she had all of the facts. This contract would put her company in the top three on-world and give her the boost she needed to pursue the new technologies she was currently priced out of.