Don't Cross This Line

by Michael Anderle

  Bethany Anne, her helmet in her hands, turned to look at the woman. She had mascara streaks that tears must have made. But, at the moment, she glared at Bethany Anne.

  “You bitch!” she hissed, “You have killed my friends here ... for what?”

  “You tried killing my people first,” Bethany Anne retorted.

  The scientist spat, “we are trying to make the US the most advanced superpower in the world, what are you doing?”

  “Saving the world from Aliens, you self-centered, poor excuse for a human being.” Bethany Anne replied, then handed Eric her helmet, “I don’t have time and she isn’t worth my pity.”

  “What are you doing?” the scientist started fighting Peter’s hold, trying to kick backwards. “Stay away from me!” Her foot found his armor and she cried out in pain.

  Bethany Anne, eyes turning red, spoke, “Hello Dr. Eva Hocks,” her voice dripped with disgust, “I was wrong, you aren’t a poor excuse for a human being, you aren’t a human being at all.”

  “What are you doing,” Dr. Hocks eyes, jerking around, looking to each man there, “Stop her!”

  John spoke up, “BA, you need me to slap her if she speaks?”

  “Iiii cannn biiiitte herrrr,” Peter offered.

  Dr. Hocks was twisting for all she was worth, but it barely budged Peter’s arms, her pleading became crying.

  “You seek knowledge above everything,” Bethany Anne spoke, her head turning to the side. “You have experimented on humans.”

  Dr. Hocks, tears spilling, noticed the eyes which had held no emotions toward her now looked at her with judgement.

  A thought made its way through all the emotion. She wasn’t getting out of this alive. She felt something digging through her mind.

  “Where are the two keys, Eva?” the woman in the crimson armor asked her. “What are we going to find down the second shaft, Eva?”

  A minute later, Dr. Eva Hocks sobs turned to screams and then her screams died along with her.

  Bethany Anne wiped the blood off of her mouth, “I fucking hate that shit. But if there was ever a bitch that deserved to provide me energy? This tea-bagging self-centered fucktwat was one.”

  Bethany Anne’s hand dropped to her right leg where a sword extended, she grabbed the sword and bent down and cut through Dr. Hock’s neck. Returning the sword, she told the team, “Not taking a chance she can come back alive. Now, let’s go get keys. We need the teams.” She walked back towards the operations’ room to get one of the keys off of the dead Operations manager.

  “We have some nasty shit below, people.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The hallway was silent when the woman in the crimson armor appeared. She stopped fifteen feet in, and behind her the elevator doors opened.

  “Would you stop doing that shit?” John bitched as he and Eric walked past her and continued down the hall. The elevator doors closed and went back up for the next group.

  In ten minutes, they had a large group searching out the level.

  They found nothing and no one.

  “Thoughts?” John asked.

  “Bethany Anne,” Dan’s voice came across the line.

  “Yes?”

  “Team two has run into a few humans trying to escape, two down, two captured.”

  “Thank you, we have any other holes they are trying to leave out?”

  “So far, no.” He told her.

  “We have some shit ahead of us. According to the woman in charge of science, we have aliens manipulating humans genetically down here and many of them are ugly.”

  “Why are you going in personally?” Dan asked, “Why not just release the E.I. anti-personnel weapons?”

  “Because…” Bethany Anne replied and closed the comm. She popped her helmet latches and pulled the helmet off, scratching her head, “Is it me, or do these things make your head itch more?”

  —

  Outside, Dan swore under his breath.

  Kael-ven turned to him, “She didn’t answer the question, did she?” The alien asked.

  “Yeah, she answered,” Dan told him. “The answer was BBADWT.” Kael-Ven moved his shoulders, his version of a shrug.

  Dan made a face, “Because Bethany Anne Doesn’t Want To,” he supplied.

  —

  “Fucking shit,” She griped, “If I could jump out of this armor, I could jump through the Etheric and …”

  “NO!” six different voices yelled at her in unison.

  “Yesss!” one Pricolici added, a second late. Everyone in the group turned towards Peter who smiled, “I’llll join youuu!”

  “Fuck it,” she told the group, her eyes started to glow, her cheeks showing lines of red power as she pulled energy like crazy. Locking the helmet back on, she started walking down the hallway. The men all got in behind her, two by two.

  They went down the hallway and dropped down five levels using the stairs.

  On each side, her armor opened and she reached down, grabbing the swords. The armor folded back in, hiding the sword locations.

  This time, though, she fed energy into the hilts of the swords and the blades started glowing and elongating.

  Jean had done wonders, and now her swords could channel some of the Etheric’s energy.

  She kicked open the sixth level door and screamed, “Dress Rehearsal for HELL boys!”

  —

  Ztopic stood behind the last cage, the one he refused yet to open. He wanted to see how each group of his mutants worked against this group of attackers.

  Mentally, he could feel their approach and the sheer power of the female in front.

  Then, they arrived on his level and it was all he could do to pay attention to the slaughter.

  —

  “You’re telling me,” Eric asked, shooting something that was a cross between an ape and a female human, the deformed experiment’s scream tearing through his soul. “These were all human at one point?”

  “YES!” Bethany Anne screamed, “FUCKING SHIT!” She threw her two red, glowing swords up into the air and kicked something running at her. She caved in it’s head, stopping it in its tracks. She grabbed the swords as they came back down and used her left sword to cut off the head.

  Nathan and Peter were off to her left, ripping through those attacking. The Yollin mercenaries were off to her right, beating the shit out of anything they could grab, saving their ammunition.

  She could hear the roars of the Pricolici as they ripped into genetic mutations that came from a truly twisted imagination.

  “WE HAVE ALIENS!” one of the Yollins yelled, it’s voice suddenly cut off.

  “SHIT!” Kiel’s voice came over the line, “they have disintegrators!”

  “Bitches, TO ME!” She yelled, as more and more Queen’s Guardians and Queen’s Marines flooded into the huge cave, guns and growls everywhere as men and women fought for their world, for their friends, for their Queen.

  The glow of the swords died when she pulled the energy back into herself and holstered the swords. John, Eric, Scott, Darryl and, with a roar of vengeance, Peter came tearing through the different groups of those fighting. “I’ve got that motherfuckingcunt and he is going to DIE!” She spat, anger at the inhumanity of this alien’s twisted efforts on display and the hell that was the situation her people were in.

  Having to kill those twisted into inhuman forms.

  These beasts looking out with very human eyes.

  Bethany Anne’s right hand went out, palm forward and a glowing red orb developed. This time, it didn’t stop at six inches, in her anger, it continued to grow.

  “Uh, Boss?” John called out and Bethany Anne threw the ball.

  The explosion occurred two-thirds of the way towards the clear, mental siren call of the alien. Towards the back of the massive cavern spread with the dead, the dying, and the burned, its energy continued through the air. Cages, some melting, were blasted out of their way.

  The Queen Bitch and her protectors striding across the floo
r, destroyed anything that remotely came close to them. The few aliens that looked in their directions lost their heads when Kinetic projectiles slammed into them.

  It was mass carnage.

  Bethany Anne and her team finally noticed a large ass cage and the beast within.

  “What the fuck is that?” Eric asked.

  “Target practice,” Bethany Anne told them and threw a ball of Etheric Energy. It streaked across the remaining distance and exploded outside, electricity arcs racing all around the cage.

  That wasn’t so smart, a voice commented inside of their heads, The Zhool’tai’ch is a very vicious beast. The best I have created. Interestingly, it wasn’t made with any human DNA at all, the voice informed them.

  “Well, the bigger they are,” John said and flipped his pistols up to ten, “Crank it up, Bitches.”

  Bethany Anne pointed to the large, fifteen-foot cross between a crocodile and an orangutan, “Kill that thing,” she commanded.

  The cage energy dissipated and the beast roared as it pushed open it’s door. It started running quickly towards Bethany Anne.

  Ztopik watched with interest. The female was calmly walking towards him, but the Zhool’tai’ch would certainly get to her, first. She didn’t even have any obvious weapons nor was she creating those glowing red balls of destruction.

  His eyes flashed pink as the Zhool’tai’ch charged and it went right through her when she disappeared and then reappeared. Enraged, it started to turn around when those behind her started shooting it, massive chunks of flesh exploding from its body. It turned back towards those attacking it.

  The woman, however, kept coming towards him.

  This could almost be humorous. The alien’s voice entered her mind, if you and your people had not just destroyed seventy years of my hard work!

  “Cry me a fucking river. You got a name or should I just call you shit head?” She retorted.

  “You can call me Ztopik, or Master!” The alien said and Bethany Anne’s body froze up.

  Bethany Anne fought the mental commands stopping her in her tracks. The harder she fought, the more her body wouldn’t move.

  Bethany Anne, straining with all she had, started cursing violently as the alien snickered at the sub-level being in front of him.

  “You see,” Ztopik pulled out a disintegrator from the sleeve of his robe. “I might not be as physically impressive as you, but when you are a superior species, it is enough.”

  Ztopik felt another enter their conversation and his blood went cold.

  MOTHERFUCKER, the alien voice said, WHO SAID MY FRIEND LACKED MENTAL DEFENSES?

  “WHO!”…Ztopik cried out as immense pain slammed into his head. His frail arms reached out to catch himself as his knees buckled.

  MY NAME IS THALES OF MILETUS, I AM KURTHERIAN AND YOU ARE MY BITCH!

  Bethany Anne, released from Ztopik’s mental hold, resumed her walking towards the alien. Her left arm shot out and a two-inch red globe of power streaked across the cavern to blast away two aliens that had cornered a Wechselbalg and her Guardian Marine partner.

  “FUCK YEAH!” she heard the screams of her people and she grinned ferociously.

  “Kurtherian?” Ztopik cried, the pain causing him to whisper.

  Bethany Anne reached for her sword but TOM stopped her.

  YES, he spoke into Ztopik’s brain, KURTHERIAN. MY FRIEND HAS A SAYING ABOUT REDUCING BAD GENETICS AFTER THE BIRTH AND I’VE DECIDED SHE IS RIGHT.

  “What?” Ztopik whispered, looking up into the flaming red eyes of the human. Her helmet in her right hand.

  Ztopik heard the woman in the Crimson Armor’s voice through his ears at the same time the Kurtherian’s voice slammed into his cranium.

  “DIE YOU BASTARD!”

  TOM, Thales of Miletus, Kurtherian Pilot lost on an alien world broke through his own conditioning and reached deep into the alien’s brain and found the link keeping him alive here in the physical world.

  This is my friend, TOM whispered telepathically, No one touches her mind without permission!

  Ztopik’s eyes glazed over, dead, as his brain seized, then cratered from TOM’s mental attack.

  Bethany Anne turned around and viewed the carnage. She could see that at least seventeen of her people on the ground.

  Putting her helmet back on, she walked towards the middle of the large cave. The carcass of the Zhool’tai’ch, looking like hamburger, laid some twenty yards to her left.

  They had some cleanup to do and she opened her palms, red balls starting to glow in her hands.

  Let’s do this, TOM told her, I got your back!

  I never doubted it, TOM.

  New York City, NY - USA

  “So, we are in agreement?” the other three ambassadors nodded.

  “The President is willing to make the call as soon as we have signatures,” the United States Ambassador told Zhou.

  Ambassador Zhou opened his briefcase and pulled out the document and placed it on the table.

  The document had many countries already pledged by their signatures. The US Ambassador’s eyes opened in surprise. He picked up the document and read through the who’s who of major and minor countries represented.

  He failed to see Japan, Australia or Germany on the document, but there was sufficient space for them to be added later.

  He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a pen. With a flourish, he signed the document on one of the top lines and put the pen back in his jacket. “Sorry,” he pulled it back out and held it out to Ambassador Emeka, “Do you gentleman need to sign as well?”

  The other two ambassadors took their turns and signed the document before the US Ambassador accepted the pen back and he moved it to the other coat pocket.

  That pen was going to be worth money one day.

  Unfortunately, he wouldn’t realize that it would be infamous, known as the Pen of Destruction. It was true, some would say, the pen did accomplish what the sword never could.

  “There is no time like the present to make the World’s will known,” Zhou told the US Ambassador, “Here is the location of one of their ships presently over Japan.”

  “We can’t fire a sub nuke over Japan,” the Ambassador stated.

  “True, but if they move east or west, we have them,” Zhou told him and the US Ambassador nodded his head and reached out for the information the Chinese Ambassador provided.

  Japan - EARTH

  Captain Natalia Jakowski hugged Yuko and shook Akio’s hand, “See you when we see you,” She told the two and walked back into the G’laxix Sphaea and her crewman closed up. She walked up to the front of the ship and sat in the captain’s chair.

  It was her week to rotate into this ship and she loved it.

  Within a minute, the sleek craft crested above the tree line and started to break towards the west, heading towards Europe to drop off a couple of stashes.

  There were barely over the East China Sea when the alarms started squealing.

  “We have inbound SLBM, Trident II D-5 on intercept,” The G’laxix Sphaea’s E.I. spoke.

  “Implement Defensive Puck Field, Seek and Destroy!” Captain Jakowski spat out. Admiral Thomas had them run drills all of the time and being attacked was but one of them.

  The holographic tank sprang into view in front of Natalia’s seat. She pulled her hands apart and it zoomed out, showing the location of the submarine-launched ballistic missile.

  “Defensive Puck Field in place. Calculating intercept of incoming missile at seventeen point four nautical miles.”

  Seconds later, G’laxix Sphaea responded again, “Missile has been destroyed through kinetic collision. No nuclear explosion, chance of radioactive residue calculated as likely.”

  “Fuck those assholes!” Natalia bit off the rest of her comment, “G’laxix Sphaea cloak us.”

  —

  “SIR!” the radar operator on the US Ohio class submarine called out, “We’ve lost the target.”

  The Captain’s sharp no
d accepted the result.

  He had followed his orders, may God have mercy on the souls who made that decision.

  —