Never Submit

by Michael Anderle

  Vic ground his teeth together. The figure wasn’t puking, it looked like she was bent over laughing.

  Soon enough, the figure stood back up and then calmly raised her arm giving the universal gesture that told Vic his offer wasn’t accepted.

  “Alright…” Vic started but stopped when the figure took a couple of steps forward, coming into view of the video better. She, and it was now damned obvious it was a she, pulled her coat back, and grabbed two pistols out of their holsters. She used one of the pistols to offer a “come get me” gesture.

  “I don’t think she wishes to submit, sir.”

  “Yeah, I got that Jennings,” Vic agreed. “This is what I want. Have team Bravo…”

  He never got out the whole command.

  —

  Bethany Anne flew through the air, waiting until the very end to transfer into the Etheric, stopping. One of these times, she would understand the real relevance of moving and mental commands. She was sure there was a way to just wish herself somewhere else, but she hadn’t figured out the solution.

  At least, not yet.

  Bethany Anne peeked out into the real world and then ducked back into the Etheric. She ran twenty steps and peaked again. Swearing in frustration, she turned and crossed where she had started and ran the other direction.

  She hated when she guessed wrong. It took her five more movements, and quick peeks, to confirm she now had the right location.

  She stepped out of the Etheric.

  —

  John liked this part of the trip. Ever since these bars had been built, an offspring of the technology used to attack the XJ-12 base, the idea of an attack from above had excited him.

  Well, he had enjoyed the trip down until someone below had located his black armored ass and started shooting at him.

  So much for silent and deadly.

  Although the occasional hit by the standard 5.56 X 45 Nato round was more of an annoyance, he wasn’t too worried, CLANG ... he was violently twisted to his left.

  “FUCK!” John swore, turned around, knocked ass over appetite. “We got .50 Caliber down there folks!” He looked around, “ADAM drop me, three times speed.”

  A tracer ran through were John might have been before he plummeted down towards the ground as he continued in his conversational tone, “Those .50 cals aren’t fun, don’t suggest allowing them to play ‘kiss the pretty’ with you.” He grated out and braced his knees. When he hit the ground, he rolled and then stripped his hands out of the bar and tossed it into the air.

  Time to bring the Pain, now.

  —

  Tabitha heard John’s call and warning and bolted forward towards the house. She had Bethany Anne’s position pegged on her schematic and John’s as well. The gun must have been hidden somewhere on the other side of the building for them not to have found it with her deployed spies.

  She hadn’t been thinking war, she was thinking cop. She wouldn’t make that mistake again in the future. Now? Now she would take out the motherfuckers who had tried to punch a hole through her friend.

  When Tabitha had spoken with Ted in that coffee shop, she was trying to get across the relative difference among a Bitch, her, and Bethany Anne.

  When the gloves came off because you attacked her friend, though? Well, a Queen’s Ranger wasn’t someone to fuck around with, either.

  Soon, three men manning the large machine gun died, never seeing the figure that threw a triangular object into their hole in the ground.

  “One gun dismantled,” Tabitha called over the operations net.

  —

  Danny Niadener nodded to the two soldiers outside of the door and pulled out his badge. The two men stepped aside, allowing him the opportunity to slot his key into the lock and open the door to the small room where the hostage was laying, still drugged.

  He wasn’t sure if she was going to get out of this alive, after all. It was supposed to be a straight up, bag and tag.

  Now, they had kidnapping, deaths, bodies and evidence back in New York City and a cop who wasn’t accounted for. Originally, the cop was going to die, there wasn’t much Vic could have done about that. The lady here, though, was supposed to be drugged through the operation and wake up in her apartment none the wiser.

  It was still possible it could happen that way, but Danny wasn’t sure.

  He stuck his head in the room, and it exploded in a shower of gore.

  Bethany Anne walked out of the room, slamming one gloved fist into the guard on her left, her right hand holding the Jean Dukes special which blew apart the second guard’s head before he had time to recognize his boss’s head had already disintegrated. It wasn’t his problem anymore, anyway.

  Bethany Anne pulled the first body out of the way, closing and locking the door.

  Seal it, ADAM - Safest place for her right now.

  >> DONE. <<

  Bethany Anne jogged down the small hallway, her footsteps easily heard, the metal crunching onto the concrete floor.

  She passed a fire alarm, stopped and stepped back before driving her fist through the glass and yanking it down.

  Washington D.C., - USA - DUCC Underground Bunker

  “Sir, we believe we have the problem figured out.” Agent Colson turned towards the President.

  “Yeah?” he grunted, annoyed.

  “There is a team fighting TQB in upper New York near Heckscher State Park. We have reports of heavy gunfire from that area.”

  “So? Why don’t we land a ton of whoop-ass on them? Are those our people taking on TQB?” he asked.

  “Unknown, we haven’t performed a final review of the blackest of operations at this time, sir.”

  “Well,” the President leaned forward, his voice growing softer, “I don’t think that we should allow TQB access to our airspace, dropping one of their damned alien spaceships right on top of our airfield without doing something about it, do you?”

  The lights in the DUCC flickered, computers powered off, then back on. Two ladies had screamed at the sudden power interruption before the power was restored.

  On all of the screens, the same image came up. It was a younger-looking man, chewing on a cigar, eyes squinting as he seemed to be looking around the room from his location. He was wearing a uniform with a recognizable sigil on his collar.

  It was the vampire head.

  “My name,” he said, his voice deeper than the President would have guessed, “as you probably know, is General Lance Reynolds. I am the ultimate military authority for the Etheric Empire. If you so much as move a goddamned piece of artillery in any way, shape, or fucking form towards the Queen, I will drop a kinetic projectile that will make the DUCC you are in a fucking sinkhole. They won’t even be able to figure out who you are by your DN-fucking-A.”

  The cigar moved to the other side of his mouth.

  “Right now, there is a fight to rescue a woman taken by those malcontents in an effort to capture one of our people and force a conversation, or something else with the Queen. Well, she already took the gloves off due to your last stupid act. She is going to rescue that woman and the New York cop that was used as bait. The lives of those involved in this action are forfeit.”

  The General leaned back in his chair, his eyes locking everyone to their seats.

  “You fucktards didn’t realize how much she has been holding back her hand. Well, here, let me give you a hint. Right now there are seven operations against our people in different countries around the world. They will all fail, and this time? This time the Etheric Empire isn’t going to give a shit about your casualties because you obviously don’t value our people. People, by the way, who are giving their lives to save this planet from a greater threat.”

  “That is what you say…” The President started.

  General Reynolds cut him off, “If I wanted your opinion, I would have shoved my arm up your ass and used you like a puppet, you jackass. Sit there and listen while the adult speaks. Next time I have to deal with you, the Vice-President wi
ll be talking with me.”

  The President was trying to figure out what to say when the General pulled his cigar out of his mouth and used it to aim at the camera, “You can’t get out, you can’t call out, but you will be visited by my daughter soon, and you best pray she is in a good mood.”

  He leaned back in the chair and smiled, “That’s fucking right you righteous windbags, Bethany Anne Reynolds, Bethany Anne Nacht, the Queen of the UnknownWorld, the Queen of the Etheric Empire and the Queen Bitch herself is about to visit you. I hope your life insurance is paid up, you arrogant sons-of-bitches.”

  The smile he offered never made it to his eyes, “Shut their precious room down and lock them in, ADAM.”

  The screams started when the DUCC went dark.

  Dulce, New Mexico - USA

  “Get a shot of this!” Jesse called over his shoulder, pointing up to the large flying saucer, “Oh my god, we’ve cracked it, guys!”

  Colin let out a loud whoop of excitement, “What happened?” He was looking around with his flashlight, “There are marks like a gunbattle happened.” The six-foot-six redhead bent down, “There are all sorts of brass casings all over the ground. Picking one up, he called over his shoulder, “Guys, we are going to be famous.”

  “Damn, the battery is getting eaten up like crazy,” Edward’s voice came back to the two of them. “This Sony sucks batteries like a vampire goes down on O positive.”

  “Get a shot over here,” Colin called back to the third one in their group, “And make sure we get some shots of you this time, Eddie. We are all going to hit it big.”

  There was a moment of silence, each guy thinking about the future when the first voice, floating through the air, arrived at their ears.

  “But I wants sssssommme…” it came from everywhere, and nowhere.

  A second voice, pitched higher than the first, replied. “We aren’t supposed to eat from the humans. That’s what the master toldsss usss.”

  The guys, their lights flicked out from looking at the bottom level of the XJ-12 base, where TQB hadn’t scrubbed all of the proof, out into the cave system.

  The three moved closer together.

  “Did you hear that?” Edward asked, his Sony camera shaking in his hand.

  “Yeah,” Colin agreed, looking off to his right.

  Jesse turned his flashlight to look under the large UFO, “That shit can’t be real.”

  “In case you missed the memo,” Colin hissed back, “We are standing by two real fucking UFO’s, who said Aliens don’t eat humans?”

  “They thinks usss aliensss, Sssssaaaammmmmuuuuel. The mastersss never saaid that aliens couldn’t eattss the humanss.”

  All three lights turned and pointed to the right.

  “Guys…” Edward whispered.

  “I’m still saying,” Jesse tried to keep the tremor out of his voice, “That this isn’t real. It’s some government cover-up trying to scare us.”

  Edward slapped Jesse’s arm, “Well, they are doing a fine fucking job, Dr. Don’tTellMeWhatToDo!”

  “Shoot the video,” Jesse hissed back. Edward slammed the camera into Jesse’s stomach, knocking the air out. Jesse was left gasping, trying to hold onto the valuable camera when Edward released it.

  “I’m huuUUUuuunnnngry!” the whisper hissed out from behind them, all three twisted around, shining their lights desperately over the rocks trying to catch sight of anything that would uncover what they were hearing.

  Colin looked over his shoulder and froze.

  Not fifty foot back, in the darkness, were two red eyes staring at him.

  “G…G….Gu….Guys!” He finally got out, popped Eddie on his shoulder.

  “What!” Edward asked, then saw where Colin was looking. He turned slowly, hoping whatever he was looking at would disappear so he could have a good laugh at Colin’s expense.

  A red pair of eyes were staring back at him.

  Edward’s scream pierced the darkness.

  The red eyes disappeared when Jesse turned around, “What was it?” he asked, pointing the camera out into the darkness.

  “Monster,” Colin answered, his voice breaking, “monster!”

  “Yeah, what he said,” Edward agreed.

  A rock cracked against a wall behind them, all three guys jumped.

  ‘They are trying to SCARE us!” Jesse argued, “If they wanted to hurt us, they would have… FUCKING OW!” Jesse called out, dropping the camera as he fell to his knees, holding his head, blood matting his hair.

  “Way to go, brainiac!” Edward told his friend.

  A deep voice surrounded them, reverberating from the walls as it cut into their conversation, “I think we have us some supper, boys.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Heckscher State Park area, NY - USA

  Tabitha didn’t wait to see if they had missed another hidden gun. She reached into her jacket and threw out her four globes.

  “Achronyx, seek and find all metal within a quarter mile, feed to my HUD.” she commanded. She turned slowly and looked to her left. According to the new X’s listed inside her goggles, she had four new combatants heading toward her from the north.

  Tabitha dialed her gun up to eight. Unlike some of the others, it was damned painful for her to shoot her pistol cranked too high, but for this effort eight should be sufficient. “Place aiming reticule on gunsight and approaching targets.”

  Four targets, green squares, showed up on top of the foliage that she couldn’t see through. Tabitha started firing in bursts of two rods at a time.

  —

  “We have,” Sergeant Daniel Gallium was looking at his number 2, Brian Fader, and started to direct him and his partner Kerry Pollard when, in front of his eyes, Brian Fader was violently blown back, blood spraying out behind him, a grunt knocked out of him. Daniel hit the ground and crawled towards Brian’s body when Kerry Pollard screamed in pain. Daniel turned to see Kerry’s arm hanging by just a piece of ligament before his head exploded and his body dropped.

  “GET DOWN, GET DOWN!” Daniel yelled to his partner, Robert Rojos, hoping that whoever had targeted them couldn’t get a bead on them this low to the ground.

  He finished crawling over to Brian and gritted his teeth.

  Brian had been wearing the same chest protection Daniel had on.

  And it hadn’t done him a damn bit of good.

  —

  Two down, their squares red before slowly fading. The other two were hugging the Earth trying to stay out of her fire.

  She doubted it would do any good if she cared to fight. But, for now, they were out of the fight and Tabitha ran back towards her first location. Thirty red squares must have been behind her when she dropped down into the facility, and they were approaching quickly.

  —

  “Fucking hit me with a .50 caliber? Screw the grenades!” John bitched out loud. He stomped towards the building, cranking up his pistols to ten, he started blowing holes into the walls ahead of him.

  —

  The operations room was tense. The inside fire alarm had just been shut off, and no known fire had occurred. However, that meant they had at least one if not more enemies inside the building. Vic had ordered sweeps and setups to interdict any internal enemies.

  Externally, they lost the female. Then, machine gun placement 1 went offline, and by offline, they could tell from an external video monitor it was blown the fuck up.

  Now, he had one four-man squad, half of the team dead, the other half on the ground trying to figure out who had shot them.

  Plus, one black armored asshole was shrugging off their weapons as he stomped towards the building, blowing fist-sized holes into the Perma-Crete.

  And Vic had just learned that the air-cover he had expected to bring towards them was stuck on the fucking ground. No one could raise the President to issue orders to bring in additional firepower.

  That had been the plan’s ace-in-the-hole. Those above Vic had known what a hot-head the President would be. Bring T
QB into a fight on American soil, and the President would use everything at his disposal to attack them.

  Which wasn’t happening.

  “Give me all speakers,” Vic growled as he clicked on the microphone, his toothpick moving to the other side of his mouth.

  —

  Bethany Anne was about to swing around the corner, and take on the two emplacements of fighters at the end of the hall when a man started speaking.