Ahead Full Read online

  No crying, though, Scott added. I think maybe ten is the minimum age of those we should allow to come into this room of the Haunted House.

  I didn’t ramp the fear up nearly as much as I did for that first batch, she replied. I think I was trying to go for too much effect the first time.

  John watched as the kids raced to meet their parents at the end of the hall. Their excitement at seeing the avatar of the Empress’ displeasure, even if many were saying she was just a hologram, was evident in their expressions and loud chatter.

  I think you might have started a tradition, John told her. I hope you won’t regret this.

  I’ll get a hologram project going, she replied. I can use that same technology to display Bethany Anne from a distance. It will be good for us to have a backup plan to prove I’m around.

  And do it where? Scott asked. He walked over to two arguing human boys. The larger one pulled his hand back, only to have it enveloped in another hand. When the boy pulled it didn’t budge, and he looked up to see that the problem was Scott.

  The boy swallowed as Scott glared down at him. “Do you want,” Scott asked, “to have a personal discussion with Baba Yaga?” Scott looked around the large cave. “This is part of where she lurks.”

  “Uhh…” The boy, his eyes flitting around the hallway, looked uncertain. “I thought she was a fake.”

  From above, a cackle could be heard. Those kids still in the room looked up to see a black-skinned woman, white hair floating in the wind and eyes red, looking down at them. “Do I look like a fake to you?” she hissed.

  Scott had to catch the boy before he hit the ground when he fainted.

  YES! Bethany Anne cackled in their minds. I’ve still got it! Bullies ain’t got nothing on the Baba Yaga.

  Scott shook his head as he lifted the young boy into his arms and turned toward the door. “And how am I supposed to know which set of parents he belongs to?”

  “Oh, I know,” the other boy told Scott.

  “Yeah?” Scott asked as they walked toward the door.

  “Sure,” the young boy replied. “He’s my older brother.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Planet H’lageh, Two Jumps from Yollin Sector

  The bar was very nice; even modern-looking to Christina’s eyes. The H’lageh world wasn’t very large. In fact, it only had four major cities, plus the Holy City and the occasional very small scientific outpost.

  All these areas were situated on ground that rose above the darkness, the lower areas of the planet where the heavier gasses had settled, and no light penetrated.

  This planet was, Christina thought, nice and tidy. She had been on other planets, many larger than Yoll itself, which were covered in cities built anyplace that wasn’t too wet or too steep.

  Or in the case of Yrrmock, too volcanic.

  This particular city probably had about two million inhabitants and her most recent boyfriend—or alien friend, whatever—hailed from this city. Christina had decided to ask about swinging by to transact business, since they were jumping through the gate anyway…

  Unfortunately, Prometheus, their ship’s EI, had pulled her contact’s name from the information he had plundered from the memory module of the robot entity Beethlock. A follow-up communication with Beethlock was simple, since he had been inserted into Bad Company’s hierarchy after a failed attempt to take out Bad Company’s primaries. His new role was nominally called “Keep your mouth shut and do what we tell you or suffer”.

  He was very supportive about locating additional information on Christina’s latest interest. That person hadn’t checked out, though, and Prometheus had notified Christina of the information.

  She’d had an equally quick conversation with Prometheus, requesting that he not tell her mom…or her dad.

  Especially her dad.

  Now she was waiting patiently for Allahnzo to show up. He was a Torcellen, which was why Christina had never bothered to check his background herself.

  Torcellens, by and large, didn’t like violence. Given that, who would think one of them would get into the rough-and-tumble business of crime?

  Certainly not her.

  “You think he is going to show?” her Yollin uncle R’yhek asked while placing his now-empty drink back on the table.

  Christina briefly thought back to how she had convinced R’yhek to join Bad Company years and years ago.

  “If he doesn’t,” she answered, “I’ll find his absent ass and carry him back up here so I can throw him out the window.”

  R’yhek glanced out said window, from which there was a drop of about four hundred or so feet to the ground below. The building they were in wasn’t the tallest in the city, but it was close. “I don’t think he will have anything polite to say to you after that drop,” he commented, looking across the small table at Christina.

  “I wouldn’t want him to speak to me again in that case.”

  “That will do it,” R’yhek agreed. “He can’t speak if he is dead.”

  “There would not be a need to warn him to stay away from me then, right?” Christina asked, her eyebrow arched the same way R’yhek had seen the Empress’ do from time to time.

  “I think you are trying too hard to be like the Empress, young Lowell,” R’yhek answered, lifting his glass to tell the waiter that he wanted another drink. “They brew a good Pepsi here.”

  “Tastes more like New Coke to me.” Christina took another sip of her cola and swished it around her mouth. “Yup, New Coke.”

  “Whaaaat?” R’yhek looked aghast. He opened his mandibles wide, then lifted the glass to his nose and sniffed. “Smells different, but taste is closer to Pepsi than Coke.”

  “It’s a thing from old Earth,” she answered. “At one time, according to uncle Scott, Coke was getting its ass kicked by Pepsi in something called the Pepsi Challenge. So, Coca-Cola, in their ignorant wisdom, decided to fuck with the recipe. They tried to create a taste similar to Pepsi.”

  “How did it go?” the Yollin asked, intrigued with an event on a planet so far away he couldn’t write enough zeros after the first number.

  She smirked. “They took it off the market once the fans rose up with pitchforks and matches to get their Original Recipe back. From the standpoint of introducing a new product, it failed miserably. From the standpoint of energizing the true believers, it was amazing.” Christina thought for a moment. “I imagine we can blame the Empress for this.”

  “What?” R’yhek looked at the glass of cola the waiter had just brought. “Why?”

  “She thought the whole Pepsi thing was funny, until she realized that when she is off on one of her walkabouts she can’t get Coke a lot of the time.”

  R’yhek smirked. He loved the Empress, but it was rather funny the royal lady couldn’t find Coke because of a snafu in her plan to distribute Pepsi in areas that weren’t supporting her.

  He saw Christina’s head move and looked up to see that Allahnzo had arrived, accompanied by two goons. Oh, they dressed better than normal goons, but most Torcellens didn’t keep Skaine mercs around them unless they were into mischief.

  The odds were much better that an individual Torcellen would be into crime than that two Skaine were doing something legal.

  R’yhek noticed that everyone else in the bar was moving to the walls. Allahnzo wasn’t getting any closer. Apparently, he knew about human females’ feelings when they felt shafted.

  “Toss me out the window?” Allahnzo asked conversationally.

  “Oops,” Christina said aloud. “You have me on microphone?”

  Allahnzo glanced at the Skaine to his left. “Apparently it is for my own good,” he said. The Skaine smirked and nodded his head. Allahnzo returned his eyes to Christina. “You are not quite the docile little business mogul’s daughter I thought you were.”

  “Nor are you the proper Torcellen I was expecting,” Christina admitted. “I’ll admit I allowed your white hair to sway me a little.” Her eyes flashed yellow so fast Allahnzo was
n’t sure if they had changed or he had just caught a reflection.

  He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. “I am proud of my hair, that is true,” he admitted. It ran halfway down his back. “But it is a pain to brush out.”

  “I know,” Christina hissed, annoyed. “I did it for you twice, you prick.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know what you just mumbled,” Allahnzo called.

  Christina smiled. “Come closer and I’ll repeat it for you.”

  “I think not,” Allahnzo admitted. “My advisors suggest there is only one way to appropriately end this relationship.”

  “Oh?” Christina cocked her head. “And what is that?”

  Allahnzo snorted. “Turn you in and collect your bounty,” he told her.

  R’yhek smothered his response.

  Christina rolled her eyes. “I’m not wanted by the Empress’ Rangers, dickhead.”

  “Who said it was an Empire bounty?” Allahnzo answered, smiling. “And while I will miss you running your hands through my hair, you are going to have to…”

  “I won’t be taken anywhere alive, asshat.” Christina’s eyes flared yellow.

  “Who said anything about alive?” the Skaine goon on Allahnzo’s right asked as he raised a small tube he had been holding at his side and fired.

  Christina didn’t see R’yhek move, but she was shoved violently out of the way. A small rocket raced across the space and hit the older Yollin in the chest, blowing him backward to crash through a window.

  “R'YHEK!” Christina yelled as she untangled herself from the chairs he had just shoved her into. She raced for the broken window. “You haven’t heard the last of me!” she cried as she dived out the same window.

  There was a chuckle from beside Allahnzo. “Diving forty-four floors? I think we have heard the last of her.”

  —

  “Bistok shit!” R’yhek had shouted when the small rocket slammed into his chest. Fortunately, he’d worn a chest protector over his carapace, or he probably would have more issues to deal with than falling at a phenomenal rate toward the ground somewhere under him.

  He was annoyed when Christina Bethany Anne Lowell threw herself out the window in a dive, heading in his direction.

  Really fast.

  He squinted and caught a slight blue line under her clothes.

  R’yhek opened his arms just before Christina managed to slam into him, grabbing him securely and twisting herself under him. For most humans, that would have been a good way to ensure they died quickly—smashing into pavement under him.

  For Christina, it was a way to brace him as the anti-gravity pucks in her suit slowed them down.

  “Didn’t you think about the fact that we were going to be on a high floor in a building?” she scolded, gasping in relief when it became obvious she had caught him in time. “When we get somewhere safe I’m going to kill you for scaring me!” She glanced over her shoulder to see what was below, looking for a place to land.

  He pointed with his left hand. “That building with the orange roof. We have a back entrance to the tunnels over there.”

  They stopped going straight down and turned, heading toward a building three blocks away.

  —

  “Mong, you are the basest individual I know.” Allahnzo grimaced as his Skaine bodyguard walked over to the broken window, his boots crunching across pieces of shattered glass.

  “It’s not every day you get to see a couple of nice splats from so high up,” he called back. “Don’t worry your Torcellen sensitivities, I won’t give you a detailed description of the two bodies. Their blood and gore—” He smirked when he heard Allahnzo rush behind the bar to throw up in the sink.

  He looked over the ledge, being careful not to cut himself on the broken panes. His eyes narrowed in confusion.

  He didn’t see any splats. While there were some shrubs and trees, he had been expecting big splotches and the little dots of beings milling around two dead bodies.

  He heard Allahnzo’s hoarse whisper from behind him. “I hate you, Mong.”

  Mong backed away from the window and turned around, glancing at Ming and shook his head. Ming’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Then you really are going to hate what I tell you next, boss.” Mong looked at the Torcellan, who was using a bar rag to wipe his face. “She’s not dead.”

  Allahnzo’s eyes opened wide.

  —

  “I think you are getting fat,” Christina grumped as she released R’yhek a yard or so above the ground. She sent the message to cut her antigrav suit’s power and dropped the last couple of feet herself. She landed lightly, barely bending her knees when she hit the ground.

  R’yhek waved her off. “And you didn’t have your armor on.”

  “What good did your antigrav suit do you here?” she retorted as the two left the back lawn. R’yhek took the lead as they went down a flight of stairs.

  “Like your antigrav suit would have stopped that rocket, little one,” he replied as he entered a fourteen-digit code into the locked door. It clicked and he cracked it and stuck his head inside, then opened the door fully and nodded her in.

  She walked past him and checked out the room as he shut the door behind them. “Can we leave it with, ‘We were both caught with our pants down and together we made it through another close scrape?’” She looked around. “Now, where is the weapons cache in this place?” She walked over to the walls as R’yhek watched her. “I need something rather large to return the fucking favor.”

  “No weapons,” R’yhek answered, and Christina stopped abruptly. “What? Why?” she asked, confusion writ large on her face as she turned around. Then she saw that a video connection had turned on.

  Her lips pressed together as she saw who was staring back at her.

  “Hello, Father,” she said, knowing Allahnzo was going to get his just desserts.

  It just wasn’t going to be from her.

  Prometheus Major, Three Hours Later

  Nathan Lowell had just finished reviewing the incoming intelligence from the planet below when there was a knock on the door. He shook his head and looked up, waiting for the small green light to flash above it. He leaned back as the door slid open and his daughter entered.

  “Don’t say a word, or I will have you shipped back to the Meredith Reynolds so fast your seat won’t even be warm from your butt hitting it before you have to exit the shuttle.”

  “I am a—” Christina started to say.

  Nathan cut her off. “Out-of-control human female who isn’t thinking past her emotions at the moment.” He nodded at R’yhek, who looked like he didn’t want to enter the room. “Come in and close the door.”

  The large Yollin nodded and stepped in, allowing the door to shut.

  “If Mother were here—” Christina started, and stopped again when Nathan put up his hand.

  “Your mother is not here because I told her she couldn’t come until she stopped throwing shit around and screaming at you.”

  Christina stopped, her mouth open. A moment later, she closed her mouth.

  “Exactly.” Nathan nodded, then pointed to the two chairs between them and his desk. “Sit your asses down.”

  Once they were settled, Christina’s shock at her mother’s reaction started to wear off. “Um, how did Mom know about it?”

  “You wore an atmosuit, which you checked out before you left. They have full audio-visual interfaces.” He raised an eyebrow. “Remember?”

  “Oh!” was all Christina could say.

  “Yes, ‘oh’ is right,” Nathan agreed. “Your mother is mad enough to first punish you for putting yourself in danger like that, and then hit Allahnzo down below so hard his dead grandparents back on Torcellen for the last six generations will all feel it.”

  “Well,” Christina looked up, fire in her eyes, “they can’t take a shot at Bad Company like this and expect to get away with it!”

  “And they won’t.” A new voice joined the conversation. I
t was female, with a slight old-Earth Latina accent. “Because this is a Ranger problem, not something Bad Company should get into.”

  Christina and R’yhek looked toward their right at a life-sized hologram which had just appeared. The woman in it buckled her belt before she slid a pistol into the attached holster. “Hello, Niece. R’yhek.”

  The look of resignation that washed over Christina’s face was priceless. Well, at least Nathan thought it was. “Hello, Aunt Tabitha.” Christina bit her lip. “I don’t suppose you would want any help down below?” she asked, her voice softer than a moment before.

  An Asian male’s head popped into the hologram next to Tabitha’s, but his body didn’t appear. “No.”

  The head disappeared.

  “That’s not fair!” Christina called. “You can’t just pop in and say no, Uncle Hirotoshi!”

  The head popped back in. “Yes I can.”

  The head disappeared once more.

  Nathan was doing all he could to keep his face stern. Christina knew how to manipulate her parents, but she got flummoxed when she dealt with Tabitha and the Tontos. Especially if Ryu or Hirotoshi got involved.

  Tabitha lifted a necklace over her head, the “2” pendant dangling. She caught it and put it under her shirt. Grabbing a long coat, she slid her right arm in and then the left. “We will be leaving in twenty minutes. See you in about seven hours, Nathan. We will call with the coordinates of where we want to meet in ten minutes.”

  “Understood, Tabitha. Nathan out.” He cut the communication and turned back to his daughter. “You both need to see Bastek. She wants to make sure you’re ok after your unscheduled flight.” He looked at R’yhek. “And you need to decide if you are going to be nanocyte-modified or step out of operations.”

  “What?” Christina turned to look at R’yhek. “You aren’t considering quitting, are you?”

  “That discussion,” his Yollin voice softened when he noticed the anxiety in her eyes, “will happen at another time.” He stood up. “Let’s go see Bastek before she darts us.”