The Valkyrie Returns (The Kurtherian Endgame Book 7) Read online

  Ships

  QSD Baba Yaga

  QBS Izanami (decommissioned)

  QBS Sayomi

  QBS Cambridge

  QBS ArchAngel

  QBS Wolfstar

  QBS G’laxix Sphaea

  The Penitent Granddaughter

  Battlestations

  QBBS Guardian

  QBBS Helena

  QBBS Exuberant

  Ooken Images

  by Eric Quigley

  1

  The Etheric

  The mists swirled, matching the erratic rhythm of Gödel’s heartbeat.

  She sat in her meditation pose, her intent on regaining control of her body and mind. At least, that had been her intention when she’d stepped into the Etheric to clear her mind of the headache that had begun to pulse at the base of her skull when she received the notification one of the crystals she’d thought destroyed had been activated.

  The irregular pulsing of the mists only served to accentuate the pain at the base of her skull. The area behind her eyes throbbed as the familiar headache grew with every forced breath.

  Clarity of mind was getting harder to attain when she was swatted aside by Death and her minions at every turn. The headache blocked her from attaining the peace she sought before commencing with her vengeance.

  Why did she keep coming out unfavorably in these encounters? Once again, her plans had been thwarted by Death’s emotions and instinctive reactions, and she had been powerless to prevent it.

  These were failings.

  Twice now, she had lost an entire species to weak traits her people had weeded out of their genome centuries ago. Moen was a blow, but it was still accessible to her as a resource. Qu’Baka had been obliterated. Worse, Death and her consort had stolen part of her library.

  Gödel had hundreds of information caches, but this one contained information she could not risk being made public knowledge. She could rebuild after the planetary losses, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to find other species willing to exchange the dregs of their societies in exchange for the ability to vanquish their enemies.

  What she couldn’t recover from was the revelation of her identity.

  The loss of the Bakas’ genetic material was a huge blow to her plans to bring Ascension to the universe, but it did not leave her waking from sleep short of breath and shaking. Her library cache should have been safe on Qu’Baka. The theft was a complication she had not accounted for—could not have accounted for.

  Gödel knew Death had found a way to incapacitate her creations. Figuring out a way to maintain contact was the only thing she’d been able to do without upsetting the delicate balance of her soldiers’ minds. She would know if Death entered the hive mind again. Her preparations would have to be enough.

  Gödel’s rage ran deeper than mere frustration at finding an opponent her equal. To add insult to injury, Death had desecrated the body of her chosen and stolen the sacred technology. Gödel was sickened by Death’s propensity for twisting the technology to her blasphemous purposes.

  However, hindsight was the best preparation for the future, and the news had been enough to light a fire under even the most circumspect of her adepts.

  Consequently, she had the resources to act. Her only recourse was the library’s immediate retrieval and decimation of the humans on the planet to punish Death for her infraction. Primitive they might be, but Gödel had to admire the creativity humans had shown in their histories when it came to disciplining the masses.

  Gödel put the thought aside and abandoned her meditation to leave the Etheric for her staging post. The staging post thrummed with malicious intent; the hive mind of her soldiers in the holds was soothing in its intensity. She was greeted with the obeisances she expected, as her due. Wherever she walked, the workers dropped to their knees.

  As was proper when in the company of deity.

  Gödel brushed against the hive mind as she mounted the ramp to her flagship, thrilling in the adulation she felt from her creations. They were primed and programmed to kill everything in sight, bar Kurtherians and each other, and having the adepts control them directly would cancel out any interference from the humans.

  “Soon,” she promised, sending images of the destruction her creations would cause in her name into the group consciousness. “Soon you will gorge yourselves on human flesh and drive my enemies insane with fear.”

  The adepts were already aboard the ships they captained, waiting for their goddess to grace the fleet with her presence and order the invasion to begin.

  Gödel entered the bridge of her flagship, her mind wandering back to the time before she’d had the power to take the fight to the humans. When her pleas to be heard by the Pilots had fallen on mostly deaf ears.

  They saw only a young female of low birth, not the skewed genius capable of sifting through probabilities their fixed minds had no way to comprehend. They had not listened to her when Death escaped her planet. Rejected her again when Yoll fell. That fool Gorllet had heard her.

  But who listens to the insane?

  It was a pity for the Phraim-‘Eh. They had been sound tacticians, but at that time, she had not contained the True Knowledge, so they had to be removed by baser means.

  Manipulating Death into taking care of her dirty work had not proved to be too difficult. She at least could be counted upon to rush in with weapons blazing whenever an uncultivated species looked to be in need of defending.

  Getting the Seven to act on even a mathematically perfect opportunity was a different matter. Or it had been until she had seen the light and returned a changed Kurtherian. Those who had rejected her warnings hadn’t lived to regret their ignorance, and she had learned how to avoid human attention before superseding the more powerful among them on her path to glory.

  Gödel’s head still ached. It was little comfort that the fleet was assembled and ready to depart so soon after the rift battle. Open conflict within human territory was to have been the last resolution to the issues humanity had caused with the Ascension plan.

  Before discovering the real reason for the headaches, she had wondered if her constant head pain was a result of time spent considering illogical paths with the aim of attempting to predict how Death was going to move in reaction to her.

  Thinking like a human was no easy task. The first conclusion she had come to was that wasting resources on subjugation was illogical. The old adage that a Yollin was more easily tempted with sugar than bitterroot was true for a reason. Here she was a god among mortals, and most mortal leaders were more than happy to worship at the altar of Ascension in return for a taste of power and an extended lifetime.

  Gödel had switched to working far outside of human territory, no easy feat when every galactic year saw the Federation expand farther and faster. Sending her soldiers to seek out the species she needed and force their subservience had worked until she had stumbled upon Death’s hiding place and sparked this war. Negotiating, she found, was a game all its own. Using the weaknesses of those she needed to make them beg for her intercession was light relief from the heavy machinations of the larger game.

  Of course, there would always be those who jumped to accept her bounty. Lu’Trein had been one of those. He had begged her to take the dregs of his society in return for power. That was a fair exchange, not anything that should have brought the humans running.

  How was she to know that the sibling he’d ousted would return, having formed an alliance with Death? It was these unexpected personal connections that threw her grand scheme off the rails.

  Her carefully laid plans, some a century and more in the making, all triggered some primal urge to destroy in the humans. She lacked context for the motivation behind Death’s continued attacks on her efforts toward the advancement of all, despite endless meditation on the subject.

  Therefore, the only thing she could do was exercise her military might.

  Gödel opened the Etheric around her ships, then closed it again once the fleet was inside t
he realm. Damn Death to a single existence for being the antithesis of logic, and damn her again for forcing her hand.

  The library held the key to her destruction. The only question was, could her forces retrieve it before Death discovered what she had?

  Time would tell.

  Devon, The Interdiction, QSD Baba Yaga

  Jean looked around the lab one last time to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind. She dropped the box she was holding when John’s arms snaked around her middle and squeezed. “Dammit, John!”

  John swept the spilled contents to the side with his foot as he turned Jean to face him and pulled her against him. His regret at the end of her visit to Devon creased his face into a rueful half-smile. “It’s going to be awfully quiet without you and the girls here.”

  Jean smiled and went up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips. “Careful there, hot stuff. You’re getting dangerously close to making us both late. You know I have to get back. Qui’nan would bust her shell if I told her I was staying any longer.”

  “I know.” John chuckled and released Jean reluctantly. “Can’t blame me for being in a romantic mood.” He glanced at the packing crates scattered around the lab. “It’s been like our third honeymoon having you here.”

  Jean bent to gather her spilled belongings, tossing her gadgets back in with deft movements before casting a chastising smile in his direction. “Fourth,” she reminded him. “You always forget the moons of Ixtal.”

  “Oh, yeah.” John grinned at the hazy memories he had of their centenary anniversary vacation. “I don’t know why I never remember that trip. Must have been something to do with Nathan’s gift.”

  Jean picked the box up and tucked it under one arm so she had a hand free to point at John. “That was your fault for not reading the delth-alcohol level on the bottle.”

  “It was a good thing one of us was sensible,” he admitted. “It’s just a shame to have you go so soon.”

  “It’s been weeks,” Jean teased. “You know, you could always escort Lillian and me back to QT2.” She smiled, seeing the same look of indecision she always did when it came to the internal struggle between his duty to Bethany Anne and his desire to be with his family. That was being married to a man of service. She had learned to trust that he would choose her when he could, and their marriage stayed strong because of that trust.

  She bumped him affectionately. “If you can take the time. If you can’t, we’ll get back just fine with Barnabas. You know that.”

  John considered whether it was practical for him to leave Devon for a couple of days. “I’d feel better about both of you traveling with me to protect you if the Ookens show up along your route. I’ll have to check with BA first to make sure she doesn’t plan on leaving the system, but I can’t see it being a problem otherwise.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Jean balanced her box on top of the three crates stacked on the antigrav pallet she had waiting by the door. “I have to drop this armor off for Michael before I can leave.” She grabbed the controller and activated the pallet with the press of a button. “We can find out now.”

  John eyed the crates speculatively as he and Jean followed the pallet out of the lab and into the main corridor. “They look a little on the large side for holding armor.”

  Jean lifted her hands. “I’ll be able to build Michael a new set of battle armor just as soon as I get back to my workshop. Best I could do from here was take his most recent armor from the display gallery and tweak it to add a few of the newer features—like the chameleon tech—to make up for the step back in maneuverability. It’s not a very workable material compared to what I’ve been producing with the new nanocytes.”

  “You’d better hope he doesn’t leave this set in the path of an angry BA before it’s ready.” John didn’t think Michael had anything to complain about. He remembered that the set Jean was describing had a shitload of hidden armaments that hadn’t made it to the next mark due to streamlining. “What about whatever it is you do to make the armor easier to bear inside the Etheric? Were you able to add it?”

  Jean pursed her lips. “You don’t remember how it works?” She snickered at John’s lost look. “Gotcha. But no, this set doesn’t have that ability. It requires the polymer infusion, which can only be manufactured—”

  “Let me guess,” John interrupted, grinning. “In your workshop at QT2?”

  Jean tilted her head and winked at John. “Give the man a gold star.” She shrugged. “It’s not that much of a step back since even our most up-to-date productions are still causing Michael too much drag when he takes them into the Etheric. It’s why he had to leave his armor behind in the first place.”

  John nodded in understanding. “I wondered why you weren’t mad at him.”

  Jean fixed him with a stern look. “Oh, I’m mad. Don’t kid yourself. That armor is not easy or anything close to cost-efficient to produce, but it’s not any fault of Michael’s that he can’t Myst in his armor. I’m angry with myself for not finding a way around the problem so he doesn’t need to leave his protection behind to fight effectively.”

  2

  Bethany Anne was waiting for Jean and John when they arrived at the top deck armory. “I thought you were leaving today?” she asked as Jean guided the antigrav pallet in ahead of them.

  Jean stopped the pallet just inside the door, where there was space to unload the two smaller crates onto the table. “I was going to catch a ride with Barnabas, but my husband is feeling protective.”

  “I’m going to take them,” John told Bethany Anne. “If that’s good with you. You’re not planning to go after the Seven in the next few days, right?”

  Bethany Anne folded her arms and tapped her lips with a finger. “Not unless I can fit it in around visiting the shipyards.”

  John grimaced, and his shoulders dropped in disappointment. “That time already?”

  Bethany Anne lifted her hands and smiled apologetically. “It’s got to be done.” She was reminded of Ashur’s presence on Devon and decided to cut him a break. “Go with Jean, I’ll be fine with Ashur. I’m definitely not going to start a fight in the next week.”

  John grinned. “I don’t know whether to say thanks or be hurt that you can replace me so easily.”

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. “How about you go with the first option and run before I change my mind?”

  John’s grin widened, and he snapped a cheeky salute. “You’ve got it, Boss.”

  Bethany Anne narrowed her eyes.

  John held up his hands. “I'm going! I’ll let Lillian know about the change of plans on my way to the Sayomi.” He kissed Jean goodbye and left, whistling quietly as he walked out of the armory.

  Bethany Anne shook her head fondly as he walked out of sight. “I think you two have it hard enough being stationed in different galaxies. A few days off-schedule is just what you need. Am I right?”

  “You’re not wrong.” Jean turned her attention to her delivery. “You sure about taking Ashur? Bellatrix won’t be happy to leave Yelena and Bobcat.”

  Bethany Anne’s lips quirked at Jean’s subtext. “You mean, she won’t be happy to spend time anywhere near me.”

  “That too,” Jean conceded. “You’d think she’d stop blaming you by now.”

  Bethany Anne shrugged. “Who’s to say what’s rational when it comes to protecting your children? Bellatrix had two of hers stolen by an experiment I should have done a better job of supervising. I really can’t blame her for being protective toward the rest.”

  Jean wrinkled her nose. “I’m glad I only had the one child, and leave it at that.” She frowned. “Still, you should take one of the guys, at least.”

  Bethany Anne shook her head. “Everyone who came to Qu’Baka needs some downtime. They’re not all here, anyway. I sent the guys to spend some quality time with their loved ones after the stress we’ve been under these last few months. Darryl is on leave to visit Natalia, although I’m not sure if t
hey’re meeting in the Vid-doc system since he hasn’t gotten any farther than High Tortuga. Cheryl Lynn dragged Scott to that monastery world Tabitha helped out back in the day.” She paused. “I’m not entirely sure where Gabrielle and Eric went. I’m happy to travel without a guard, but you know as well as I do that Bellatrix’s temper tantrum isn’t going to bother me. I’ve made my choice. Bellatrix can stay behind if she doesn’t want to come with us.”

  One side of her mouth curled in amusement. “Besides, I haven’t had a chance to see the Wolfstar in person. I want to take a look at a ship that’s made for dogs.”

  “We don’t mention that PITA ship,” Jean grumbled. “I don’t know where you got the idea for a ship that’s fitted for dogs, and I have even less of a clue why the team I put on it decided to go all-out on the accessibility features. I just know it gave me a bitch of a headache from start to finish, and all I had to do was the approvals.”

  She moved to the antigrav pallet. “Where’s Michael, anyway? I’ve got his temp armor.”

  “He’s on his way.” Bethany Anne’s curiosity drew her over to inspect the three crates. “Is one of those for me?” she rubbed her hands together as she eyed the boxes. “You know I love new goodies.”

  “Save your excitement until you see what’s there.” Jean nodded at the smallest crate. “That one first. I came up with a workaround for the integration issue with the boots, so you don’t have to worry about snapping a heel. It’s not the fix for the durability factor that you wanted, but you can at least take your boots and helmet off.”

  Bethany Anne smiled as she opened the crate to get a look at the helmet inside. “It’s a step in the right direction. I didn’t know you’d made another breakthrough with the nano-materials.”

  “That’s because I haven’t,” Jean complained bitterly. “Eve and Tina went crazy for the Kurtherian armor you brought back from Qu’Baka. We’ve started the process of reverse-engineering, but it’s going to be a while, I guess.”