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  “DAMMIT! WHERE ARE YOU ASSHOLES!” she screamed, her voice reverberating from the walls of the chamber.

  She slammed an armored hand against the table and looked at the screens, then opened a communication line. “Dan?”

  “Here.” There was gunfire on the line. “One moment please.”

  Baba Yaga tapped her fingers on the table as she waited. There was screaming in the background.

  “Eat hot lead that really isn’t lead but a very refined advanced metal that won’t melt like lead in these weapons, you scurvy llama-sniffers!” Dan’s voice said over the rapid fire of Jean Dukes guns of some sort. “That’s right!” Dan yelled again before he came back to the line.

  “So, you were asking a question?” He seemed pleased with himself.

  “’Scurvy llama-sniffers?’” she asked.

  “I have a bet with Lance that I can curse without cursing this drop.”

  “Right,” she replied. “Have you seen my contact?”

  “No, nothing so far.”

  “Ok, keep an eye out.” She shut off the comm as she watched the video, then her eyes narrowed as the clip of the Kurtherian finding Jerrleck in the shed started. The blood drained from her face. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, and looked around. “Tear this place apart. Those fuckers have to be somewhere,” she commanded as she looked at her HUD, willing the information to come to her.

  TOM, any ideas?

  Look for hidden paths, doors, hallways, he supplied.

  She walked from the room, her guys following her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Bethany Anne looked around, her hair floating as she tried to sense where her quarry had gone, then snapped her head to the right and walked over to a wall.

  “Got something?” John asked as he kept his rifle in a ready position.

  “Maybe,” she admitted as she ran a hand along the wall.

  “Bethany Anne, this is Admiral Thomas.” His voice rang in her ear.

  “Go ahead,” she answered, still searching the wall.

  “We found their superdreadnoughts,” he told her drily.

  “Should we expect incoming kinetics?” she asked.

  “No, it’s four against four, plus two more I’m pulling back off the planet. It seems that whatever your guy did, the planet is happy enough with you being there.”

  “Okay, six against four. They should be content with a stalemate. I just want these motherfuckers, and they can have their planet back.” She pushed on a small square and it clicked. “YES!” She grinned and turned around. John and Darryl were already headed in her direction. John gently but firmly pushed her out of the way and stepped in first.

  She crossed her arms, her red eyes watching as first John, then Darryl walked past her into the secret entrance. “Baba Yaga doesn’t need you to go first,” she grumped.

  John’s voice traveled back from the hallway. “Baba Yaga isn’t going to get blasted into little particles if I can help it.”

  Scott spoke up as he walked into the room. “Deal with it.” he told her as he snuck through the entrance. She walked in after him, and Eric brought up the rear.

  The hallway was made of stone. Actually, soft stone. It had been excavated a long time in the past, and the floor had been smoothed more by use than tools, she figured.

  There was a call over her system. “BA?” John commed.

  “Yes?” she replied, looking at the first room and the weird artifacts that were on the walls.

  “I’m sorry to say I found your contact,” John replied. “He didn’t make it, boss.”

  Baba Yaga turned and left the room. “Show me,” she said, ignoring Scott’s comment about taking a guard with her as she raced to where her HUD said John was.

  Within two rooms, she started seeing skeletons and the horror coming from TOM started to impress itself upon her.

  What the hell? she asked.

  I think they are doing something similar to what King Yoll did, TOM supplied, although perhaps not as efficiently as he did.

  All these Leath who were killed to use their bodies? She looked around in shock, slowing to a walk because the hallways were full of skeletons, many haphazardly tossed to the side. Do they not even care about the dead?

  They would probably consider them just a sub-species, Bethany Anne.

  “These were innocents!” Bethany Anne hissed as she turned a corner into a huge room with fresh dead lying in a pile, as if their spirits had just left the bodies and floated away.

  John was standing guard over two bodies off to the side. One was a female Leath and the other was Jerrleck, who had crawled from where his body had been dropped over to the other and grabbed her hand.

  Bethany Anne knelt and reached over to his face, running her hand down to close his eyes. She looked at the other body and realized she was his love, and her heart just broke. Red tears started dropping down her face as she turned her head, taking in all the dead in this huge cavern. “This is injustice at its worst,” she hissed.

  “Boss,” John told her, “keep it together. We can still find them.”

  Bethany Anne closed her eyes and released her senses. “That way,” she said a moment later, and pointed behind John. He turned around and started jogging in that direction. She caught up to him and then took off at a run.

  “FUCK, BA!” John yelled and started running after her, but she had disappeared into the hallway. John followed, the three others running to catch up to him.

  —

  “Where are you fuckers?” she hissed, head turning left and right as she came up to an intersection. She turned right and followed her instincts as she took turn after turn, running as quickly as she could to find those who had been the masterminds.

  There is someone ahead, TOM told her. The mind… No, minds, are powerful.

  Bethany Anne slowed to a jog as she entered a cavern that was at least three stories tall, probably forty feet wide, and almost a football field in length. It was lit by old-style lights, which were more than bright enough for her to see in the cavern and spot the Leath in a robe at the other end of the cavern. It was holding a walking stick in its hand.

  “So, Baba Yaga … or should I call you ‘Empress?’” it hissed.

  “You may call me ‘Death,’” Bethany Anne supplied, walking toward the other.

  “You may call me ‘Terellet,’” it supplied, this time in a different voice.

  Oh, shit, TOM said. We have a crazy Kurtherian here.

  That covers pretty much everyone in the seven clans, TOM.

  Ok, I mean “schizoid.”

  How does that even work? Bethany Anne checked the area to confirm she wasn’t about to be caught in a trap. If she walked into a trap, John was going to be pissed.

  No idea yet, TOM admitted.

  That was when the mental blast hit Baba Yaga, the desire to bow before the creature working to overwhelm her ability to choose for herself.

  “I think not, bitch.” Baba Yaga pushed forward.

  “How typical of the young,” a male voice said from the female Leath’s mouth.

  “And bastard,” Baba Yaga responded again, surprised.

  I might have been wrong with that armchair psychological assertion, TOM amended. How about we have two Kurtherians in one body?

  “Fucking hell!” Bethany Anne’s eyes closed when a mental blast hit her, forcing her to focus on keeping her atoms together—or at least that was how it felt.

  “A … little … help … TOM?” she ground out, her hands pushing on the sides of her head to keep it from exploding.

  Stop pushing on your skull or you will kill yourself! he quickly commanded, freezing some of her muscles himself. Your strength is being used against you.

  “Gott Verdammt sneaky fucking aliens,” Bethany Anne grated. “Give me a straight-up fight.”

  Not going to happen, TOM remarked. Sorry.

  “You have some support, some help.” The female sounded impressed. “I’m surprised your kind would have melde
d with anyone, Essiehkorian.”

  Bethany Anne was fighting to not do something which would kill her.

  Mind if I speak?

  Be my guest, she ground out. Not that you aren’t already. I can’t trust myself to move my own fucking limbs at the moment.

  “Do you know the difference between you and me, Phraim-‘Eh member?” TOM’s voice emanated from Baba Yaga’s mouth.

  “You are weak, blinded by a limited mindset on what it takes to Ascend a sub-species, and have chosen a weak vessel?” it replied.

  “Hardly,” TOM replied. Bethany Anne’s arm lifted with a Jean Dukes Pistol held in it. “I work with my host, not against her.”

  The Leath’s eyes opened in surprise and it dove to the side when TOM, using Baba Yaga’s hand, squeezed the trigger.

  A scream sounded from the other side of the cavern and an overwhelming amount of Etheric energy slammed into Bethany Anne, knocking her on her ass. She pressed her eyes shut and slammed her hands into the rock floor as the pain came at her in waves.

  “Boss!” John called.

  She could hear his steps running toward her. “Stop!” She willed a hand up. “Kurtherian!” She pointed toward the other side.

  “No one there, BA,” John said, kneeling next to her. “Quit beating the ground. You’ll break your hand.”

  Bethany Anne and TOM both froze in shock, then she rolled over to get up, pushing off the ground with a knee and one hand. “That cock-sucking psychotic cretin,” she gasped.

  She, he, whatever, tricked us, TOM supplied. Don’t go anywhere again without support.

  Got that right, she admitted. At least this time, she amended.

  “Where are the others?” she asked, working to clear her head as she started walking toward the other side of the cavern. As she asked the question, the rest of the Bitches came running out of the hallway behind them.

  It took the five of them five more minutes and a little backtracking, but they finally walked up a hallway that led to the surface. Bethany Anne looked at the large valley walls surrounding this location, and the grass at the bottom. There was flat rock in the middle of the valley, and a river running off to the right.

  “Gone.” She looked up. “Get me my ship!” she snarled, her eyes glowing red. “I’ll find those fucking killers and pull their Kurtherian asses out of their mouths.”

  “Boss,” John said as Baba Yaga gazed at him, no emotion on her face. “We got cleanup to do. We won. They aren’t here.” He pointed back the way they had come. “The planet doesn’t want them. The Leath can be free, but not if Empress Bethany Anne can’t be found to confirm their freedom and lay down the plans that will help them heal and move on.”

  “He’s right,” Scott added. “Everyone needs BA now, not Baba Yaga.”

  “Stephen needs you,” Eric reminded her.

  “And Peter,” Darryl added. “He lost Todd.”

  The red eyes flared as she looked from one man to the next, all of them looking back and then nodding their agreement with John’s assessment.

  “FUCKING SHIT!” she screamed before she turned around and walked back into the tunnel. Her four guards looked at each other before following her.

  Yoll Space, Yollin System

  The majestic ships were in formation and the Empress, in full regalia, stood silent as the coffins were arrayed in the massive docking bay of ArchAngel II. Two had gold flags adorning them. The Empress walked from casket to casket, touching each one, her lips moving before she went to the next and did the same thing.

  There were one hundred and seventy-two caskets.

  Bethany Anne stopped at the first of the two gold-draped caskets and said, “Maria, you knew your duty, and at the end you kept the enemy from harming your Guardian as the Marines have been doing since we left Earth so many generations ago. May you gently go into the future that God has provided you, to rest knowing your sacrifice was not in vain, that the Leath were liberated through your actions.”

  She stepped to the next coffin, laying her hand on it more firmly.

  “Todd, you knew your duty, and at the end you kept the enemy from harming your friend, your Guardian as you have been doing since we left Earth so many generations ago. May you gently go into the future God has provided, to rest knowing your sacrifice was not now or ever in vain, that the Leath were liberated through your actions and that your friend was saved in body, if perhaps not in spirit. May your final letter give him solace as he walks into his future without your hand on his shoulder to guide him through the misadventures to come.” She reached up to wipe away her tears.

  As she walked to the podium, she stopped to touch the casket which represented Jerrleck of Leath, honored forever in the Etheric Empire as the sacrifice who enabled the Leath to celebrate their own freedom.

  Stepping up to the podium, she turned to address those who stood at attention behind the caskets, and those across the Empire’s worlds who watched the live feed of this video.

  “It is with a humble heart,” she started, looking forward, shoulders straight, “that I consign these brave souls to our star, releasing their atoms to float freely in the brilliance of light and the creation of heat, representing life.”

  She nodded to the caskets. “These are the final souls, the final payment, which we hope concludes the Etheric Empire’s effort to eradicate the Kurtherians from Leath.” She bit her tongue, keeping her anger and hurt in check. “The Leath are a free people now, and they will be allowed to create their own government as they wish. Our disagreement was always with their false gods, not the people themselves.”

  She reached up and cleared a tear. “I will sign the Treaty of Peace on Leath in fourteen days, formalizing the cessation of hostilities, and participate in a discussion of reparations between our peoples. At that time, the Leath will decide whether they wish to have the Etheric Empire as friend or foe.”

  She glanced at the coffins. “I, for one, would wish them to choose ‘friend,’ for too many have died on both sides for me to wish more to lie in coffins like these should they choose ‘foe.’”

  She stepped back from the podium and General Lance Reynolds and Admiral Thomas took her place, taking command of the ceremony as the caskets slowly lifted one by one to head out of the bay and slip through the force shield between them and space.

  Heading toward the star, and their final resting place.

  Bethany Anne glanced into the crowd and caught Stephen’s eyes. She dipped her head.

  At least the Universe, bitch that she was, had given her one back.

  The QBS Princess Alexandria, In Transit

  Franath D’Tzaa, the D’tereth vid-reporter, touched the recording symbol again after reviewing her notes. She looked up into the tired face of the Etheric Empress, Bethany Anne, who waited patiently for her questions.

  “You seem exhausted,” Franath commented. “Don’t worry, we aren’t recording,” she told the Empress.

  “It’s ok. I am tired,” Bethany Anne replied. “I’m tired of death and destruction. I’m tired of those who do evil walking away from the judgment of their evil. I’m tired of friends I’ve loved for hundreds of years and those I barely knew dying. I’m especially tired of my friends dying for me,” she finished.

  Franath looked at her video camera, which actually had recorded the Empress’ comment. She reached over and hit two buttons.

  One to stop the recording, and the other to delete the information that had been stored on the camera. She turned back to the Empress. “You know what?”

  Bethany Anne shook her head.

  “Perhaps the camera is having problems, and you need more time to deal with everything. It’s like all of the weight of the universe has been placed on your shoulders and no one realizes what it does to you.” Franath looked around. “Besides, the lighting in this room is horrible.” She turned back to Bethany Anne. “Maybe tomorrow?” she asked, a smile on her face.

  Bethany Anne nodded and smiled in appreciation. “Tomorrow it is, Franat
h.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Planet Leath, Main Continent, Noel-ni Consulate

  The Noel-ni Ambassador adjusted his official robes and smiled into the reporter’s camera. His teeth were freshly cleaned, as bright as he could get them.

  He’d wanted to look his best, and he hoped the reporter showed his good side. She was famous for her original interviews with the Etheric Empress herself. She had, in fact, traveled here to Leath with the Empress, he had been told.

  “Welcome, Ambassador,” the reporter started.

  He nodded his head. “Reporter Franath, it is a pleasure.”

  “Now that the Empress of the Etheric Empire is here and formalizing the peace plans with the Leath, what do you believe the future holds for the other societies which have been militarizing? With the Leath and the Etheric Empire not focusing their guns on each other, do we risk having another war break out?”

  “So, pulling no punches, is that right?” He hissed a laugh. “I like your style of reporting, Franath. As it stands, our people have been studying this same issue for many months. Of course, our internal conversations intensified when we got word that the Leath and Empire war seemed to be concluded.” He tried to smile without showing too many teeth. “As the two systems who have been at war the longest, they have the largest and most well-organized militaries.”

  “So, they would be hard targets,” she asked.

  “Well, certainly hard targets, but also the ones which could choose to become aggressive with the least provocation. It behooves the other advanced societies like the Noel-ni to tread lightly when we negotiate with either the Leath or the Etheric Empire.”

  “It is true that the Noel-ni have a better relationship with the Leath, is it not?”

  The ambassador waved his hand. “We do not have a bad relationship with the Empire, even though we had a rough time after the assassination attempt many years ago. We have proven to the Empire, I believe, we had nothing to do with the setup or the attempt. So, while we do not have bad relations with the Empire, we have stronger relations with the Leath.”