Capture Death (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 20) Read online

  “This fucking sucks!” she grated out. “Shinigami, lay waste to the herd.”

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  “Interesting use of the local creatures,” Torik commented as the massive herd of four-legged creatures broke out of the trees to head in the direction of Baba Yaga.

  “Behome’t is testing her,” Levelot commented.

  “She is obviously willing to kill those who attack her.” Var’ence shrugged. “As if the dead Leath were not witness to that.”

  Torik picked up a tablet that was lying in front of him on the table. “That ship of hers is dangerous,” he said as he started typing. “I did not add it to my calculations.”

  “She is very good at using tools,” Levelot agreed, and almost to herself she added, “both organic and inorganic.”

  “Adding that,” Torik noted.

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  Bethany Anne, TOM’s voice was agitated, your energy reserve is going down. What are you doing?

  “It’s ‘Baba Yaga!’” she hissed.

  Give me a fucking break! TOM argued. How about I call you Shirley Temple Puss for the rest of time? Just answer the damned question!

  Her eyes blinked twice with his antagonistic response. NOTHING! she hissed. It took her a moment to process the problem. Shit!

  Exactly…shit! TOM agreed. You jump into the Etheric and we don’t know why you are dropping in power? You could stay there.

  “That doesn’t make any damned sense,” she hissed, looking about but glancing at the HUD from time to time.

  TOM seemed distant when he answered. I’m checking the nanocyte programming. Give me a minute.

  She swung her head around, pissed at the change, and feeling a little lethargic.

  Then the ground shook, then shook a second time.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed as she turned in a circle, explosions blooming all around the middle of the open grass area in which she was standing.

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  “The nanocyte programming has been uploaded successfully,” Var’ence confirmed, looking at her tablet. “Let Teret know she can start her efforts.”

  “She already has,” Torik commented as he saw the huge tentacles erupt from the ground. “She has awakened the beast.”

  “One should always know why a location was named,” Levelot smiled. “Some are just too cocky for their own good.” She reached forward and pushed two buttons. “Now, attack the ship.”

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Baba Yaga watched as tentacles rose into the air. “Who uses a Kraken in a fight?” she asked, gaping.

  They do, TOM answered. I’ve stopped the promulgation of the nanocyte hack, but we are going to suck at energy acquisition until I get it reprogrammed. Yet another backdoor I didn’t know about.

  Baba Yaga didn’t move, just watched the tentacles.

  Hey, Shirley Temple Powderpuff! get a fucking move on!

  “Fine!” she grumped and started running. “Shinigami, puck the fuck out of those tentacles.”

  Nothing happened while Baba Yaga ran through the middle of the grassy area, trying to figure out where she could possibly stand that was equidistant from the Kraken tentacles. “SHINIGAMI! Any-fucking-time now would be appreciated!”

  She glanced up, wondering what was taking the ship so long.

  “Seriously?” Baba Yaga’s arms went up in the air in exasperation as she bitched. “Now they’ve stolen my ship too? Those cock-biting ass-munches!”

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  Var’ence watched the blip on their screen, and made a face. “The ship is not adhering to commands,” she said.

  “It isn’t in the proximity of the Witch. We will call it a win,” Levelot admonished. “I am curious which of the three will deliver the killing blow?”

  “What do the calculations suggest?” Torik asked.

  “All of them,” Levelot responded, “or none of them. The answers are not prime.” She looked at the screens to see what was happening on the planet below them. “Therefore they are not to be trusted.”

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  ADAM, you have a connection to Shinigami?

  >>Yes, together we are working against the intrusions into the system.<<<br />
  How the fuck did they accomplish hitting our systems in the first place? she asked in exasperation as the first tentacle stopped aimlessly waving and started moving toward her.

  There was a pause before ADAM answered, >>It seems the Etheric is not as unhackable as we thought.<<<br />
  TOM spoke up too. They must have abilities I’m not aware of. Remember, pilot? He disappeared once again from the conversation.

  >>Likely your movements are giving the creature beneath us the ability to home in on your location.<<<br />
  Baba Yaga slid her left pistol into the holster and clipped the lock shut, then pulled her sword while she continued to shoot the tentacle with her right pistol. The Jean Dukes was blowing basketball-sized chunks out of it, making it look a little like a nasty dirt-encrusted moving chunk of swiss cheese.

  Baba Yaga’s eyes opened wide when she determined the ends of the tentacles were two feet thick. Back where it erupted from the ground must be the size of a Pod, she thought as she dodged the first effort by the tip of the tentacle to grab her. She whipped the sword overhead and had sliced two-thirds of the way through it before her sword was almost yanked from her hand.

  >>Move!<< ADAM called, and Baba Yaga ran back the way she had come. She wasn’t sure why he was telling her to get out of that location, but ADAM’s abilities to see the HUD were occasionally superior to her gut feelings.

  The first tentacle, followed by a second, slammed into the area she had just vacated. Fortunately for her, moving that much flesh wasn’t easy or quick. Two moments later one of her pucks slammed into them, throwing dirt, tentacle, and debris into the air to rain down upon her forty yards away.

  >>I’ve gotten some of the weapons online while Shinigami fights the efforts to control the ship.<<<br />
  Why aren’t you fighting for control and Shinigami fighting the creatures?

  >>Her ship, and she is righteously pissed.<<<br />
  How does an EI get righteously pissed? And her? she asked while jumping over a chunk of the tentacle that had been destroyed.

  >>Well, about that…<<<br />
  Baba Yaga was worried about what bringing an AI into existence in the middle of a battle might cause, but it was too late for her to do shit about it now.

  Shinigami was going to have to battle for her fucking life like the rest of them.

  She dodged some sort of crab-looking creature that was trying to cut her off. Tell her I believe in her, and as soon as I can, I’ll be up there to kick some ass too!

  >>Will do.<<<br />
  TURN AROUND! TOM yelled.

  Baba Yaga slammed her feet into the turf, and pivoted.

  That crab is one of the Kurtherians! His comment rushed out and he her mind once again.

  “HUD, follow!” she commanded, and took off with a renewed vengeance.

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  “We are having difficulties with the attack on her ship,” Torik commented. He was busy making a few changes to the programming. “I’m not sure I will be able to take over the ship.”

  Levelot leaned over to see what he was working on. “Just keep it out of the fight. It has already cost us one of Teret’s shots with the tentacles.”

  The three of them worked in silence before Levelot turned back to Torik. “I am wondering how a computer program can possibly care so much about the results?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  Chrio’set aimed her creature toward the Witch, but she pivoted and dodged her like she wasn’t there.

  Maybe catching her unawares given all the other efforts to kill her needed to be rethought. She started to run towa
rd her right, working her way around a chunk of flesh to try to find out where the Witch had run off to.

  Behome’t, where is the Witch? she called mentally.

  A little busy here. She has someone or something trying to change the nanocyte programming! He paused just a moment. BEHIND YOU!

  Chrio’set stabbed the turf with her right front claw, allowing her momentum to help her pivot in time to see the sword which took her dead in the chest as the Witch slid by and cut her chest halfway through.

  CHRIO’SET! Behome’t yelled, but it was too late.

  The sword had cut her body in half as well.

  —

  Baba Yaga’s expression was one of glee. She could feel the Kurtherian now that she was close and paying attention. She felt the lifeforce get snuffed out as her sword cut through the creature, and when she turned around she saw explosions around most of the large tentacles.

  GOT HIM! TOM yelled in exaltation. Bethany Anne, run toward that big purple tree to your right, fast!

  She had been a bit winded a moment before, but now she could feel a bit of energy coming back.

  ADAM, prepare pucks, TOM called to both of them.

  LEFT! he commanded, and the black armor-clad human dodged under a tentacle that was rising from the ground and jumped over another that had just slammed into the ground.

  Got you, you bitch! TOM whispered. Here, ADAM! he called, and then, MOVE YOUR ASS, BETHANY ANNE!

  Drawing deep, beyond her Etheric energy, she put everything she had into running. She was a hundred yards from the location TOM had picked out when the first puck slammed into the turf.

  ADAM wasn’t playing around. The pucks were heading down from the upper atmosphere to gain momentum.

  She was tossed off her feet when the second and third pucks slammed into the same hole the first had created.

  Baba Yaga rolled end over end, then got her feet under her and pivoted. Her eyes scanned the area, watching the tentacles slowly fall back to earth as if a puppet master had cut their strings.

  >> Move at least ten feet to your left,<< ADAM told her. She didn’t wait to ask, just moved twenty feet as another tentacle collapsed just a couple of feet from where she had been standing.

  There was movement in the dirt to Baba Yaga’s left, and she turned to see another one of those damned creatures. Before either ADAM or TOM could say anything, she had already filled it full of holes with both of her pistols.

  She would later swear she heard screams of pain suddenly cut off.

  A couple of quiet moments later Baba Yaga cracked her back, grunting in pain.

  “Where’s Shinigami?” she asked no one in particular.

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  The three Kurtherians said nothing.

  Levelot placed her hands on the bridge’s table and stood, walking to the main computer and standing in front of three screens. As she moved before each one her lips moved as she spoke the invocation of ascension, and she turned it off.

  “We are now the Three,” she said.

  Levelot walked to the main pilot’s station and opened the coordinates system. She was about to enter their planned destination when explosions surprised her, and she screamed as she was knocked off her feet and violently slammed against the wall.

  Both Torik and Var’ence had been tossed out of their seats, and had blood all over their faces as they tried to get up after their own abrupt ejection.

  A new voice hissed over their speaker systems.

  “Who the HELL do you think you are?” A visage appeared on their screen, similar to the Witch’s but different. Unique. “Attacking me, my body, and my mind!”

  Just a few hundred kilometers distance a black ship with a fanged vampire logo spewed missiles, which turned to head in their direction.

  Levelot painfully got to all fours and then heaved herself over to the controls at the pilot’s station. She had no idea how much power was available for a jump—and frankly no idea where the coordinates were heading—but she did know one important piece of data which made the rest superfluous.

  It was not possible that their ship could withstand the missile attack heading in their direction.

  As the first missiles struck home and explosions rocked the K’galeth, it disappeared.

  Analyses by ADAM and TOM would later confirm it hadn’t exploded, at least not in this system.

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  >>She went to destroy the Kurtherians,<< ADAM replied.

  “She WHAT?” Baba Yaga demanded, slamming her fist into a ten-foot chunk of tentacle. She slowly pulled her arm back out, since it had gone into the organic mess like it was jello.

  Baba Yaga looked at her tentacle-fat-covered arm and sneered in annoyance, shaking her arm to try and get some of it off.

  >>Well, I imagine she went to have a discussion, but since she has modeled herself after Baba Yaga I can’t calculate any other response than maximum carnage.<<<br />
  She slammed her foot down. “She is leaving me out of my own Gott Verdammt VENGEANCE!” Baba Yaga screamed in response.

  TOM said, She probably wanted to save you, keep you from danger.

  “WHO THE HELL IS SHE TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO WITH MY LIFE?” Baba Yaga shrieked. She reached up, hands shaking as she grabbed the locks of her helmet and undogged, then yanked the helmet off her head and yelled in frustration as she threw it fifty yards away, “GOTT VERDAMMT AIs!”

  So AIs shouldn’t make choices with your life and what you can do with it so that you are safe? TOM asked.

  HELL NO! Baba Yaga shouted back in frustration, wishing she could choke an AI at the moment.

  Then why, TOM asked, his voice calm, did you do it to your friends?

  Baba Yaga stood in the middle of the Valley of the Damned and ever so slowly hung her head. A tear tracked down her cheek and her shoulders dropped as the words cut into her heart and released the dam of her pain.

  Then she knelt slowly on the ground, shoulders shaking.

  If you cry on a foreign world, can anyone hear you?

  Kurtherian Ship K’galeth

  Levelot laid Torik on the medical bay bed, coughing as she tried to get the smoke from the fire on the bridge out of her lungs.

  She had placed Var’ence in the medical pod half an hour ago and it was working feverishly to keep her Leath body alive. Torik had been okay, she had guessed, and now he was hooked up. When Var’ence was healed, she would switch the two of them.

  Making sure the system could notify her if anything went amiss, she worked her way back to the bridge.

  It was a mess. A portion of the back wall behind the table was black with scorch and burn marks, and her nose wrinkled as she stepped over a piece of the wall which had collapsed. Once at the pilot’s station, she brushed off the chair and slowly slid her too-big body into it.

  Unlike others of their kind, the Phraim-’Eh clan planned for operation of their spaceships with a variety of bodies.

  She turned on the computers, and was pleased they seemed to be fine. She waited patiently as they tried to figure out where in the Universe they were.

  Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned

  The solitary figure with white hair and red eyes and ink-black skin slowly rose from her kneeling position, then turned to look around her at the death and destruction. The edges of the field in the distance were murky, indistinct, hard for her to focus on.

  She reached up and wiped the tears from her face. “TOM, you are a real asshole,” she said aloud.

  I love you too, Bethany Anne.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, her skin started changing. Her hair roots became dark and then her hair strands slowly changed from white to black.

  Her eyes dimmed, stopped their glowing, and returned to her natural color, her human teeth returning to their natural shape in her mouth.

  Bethany Anne didn’t even allow herself to whimper in pain.

  In minutes, perhaps many minutes, the Empress of the Empire stood in the
Valley of the Damned and surveyed the grassy plain.

  “Are they all dead?” she asked, her voice quiet on the wind.

  Here? TOM asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, and above. Did Shinigami get them?”

  I can vouch that those here are dead, TOM replied.

  >>We will need to confirm the video, but missiles did hit their craft,<< ADAM added.

  “That’s something,” she murmured to herself.

  Bethany Anne thought back to Earth, to a phrase she hadn’t heard in over a hundred and forty years since soon after they left Earth.

  “Hello Darkness, my old friend,” she said aloud, then sighed and looked up to the sky above. “I really fucked up.”

  “How?” a voice—her own—responded in her mind.

  “I failed to bring those who love me with me,” she answered, and tried to remember where she had thrown her helmet. “Now even my vengeance may be incomplete.

  “Is it important that your vengeance is incomplete?” the voice asked. “We aren’t finished yet. We have the option to continue. There are three of them, and three of us.”

  “Two trinities battling it out?” Bethany Anne asked aloud, walking toward her helmet. At least, she hoped she was walking in the right direction. There were a few tentacles she couldn’t see past. “Where is the Shinigami?”

  “There is but one trinity, one three-in-one. The other three are trying to be that which we already are.”

  “We aren’t gods, Darkness,” Bethany Anne corrected.

  “We are if you want to be one,” the voice replied. “You are, if you want to stay one.”

  “That is not what I want. My friends are not beholden to me.” She looked around. “Where the fuck is my ship?” She walked toward the massive hole which ADAM had created and stopped at the edge. “My God, what have we wrought?”

  “Death, destruction, justice, and vengeance, which we can continue to dispense forever if you but choose to do so.”

  Bethany Anne shook her head. “You seem like you really wish to go around beating people up and righting all the wrongs.”

  “Who said anything about merely beating them up?” the voice retorted. “I’m not here to be nice. I’m here to be the final solution. I’m not called the Avatar of Death for laughs.”