Liberation_Age of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Craig Martelle

  Christina’s breath caught in her throat. She looked at her shoes. She didn’t need more, but a new pair would make her feel better. When she looked up, she found Marcie and Kae watching her. “I can’t blame you,” Christina admitted. “Does TH know that you’re leaving?”

  “Yes, but he hasn’t accepted it. That’s where you come in. If he has confidence that you’ll fill my shoes well, then he’ll be more comfortable. All he can see is that his family is being torn apart by something he’s been expecting to happen since we joined his war against evil.” Marcie sighed.

  “It’s something we would do no matter what. Dad thinks he coerced us to join, but Marcie and me? We had two kids, a family, but we were denying who we wanted to be, and that was defenders of the oppressed. The one thing that has made the most sense in our lives is Dad’s commitment to helping others. He always says that if you have the ability to act, you have the responsibility. We believe that. Few people are built for war. Humanity’s basic instinct is to live more sedate lives. Travel for excitement, but return home at the end of a long day to a happy family, a good meal, and a warm bed. My parents have been killing themselves for as long as they’ve been alive to give others that life. The FDG is our chance to do that on a planetary scale. If we can help bring peace by crushing an enemy’s army, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’d say you fuckers were raised wrong, but my parents and their friends raised me to believe that, too. I get angry and in my—” Christina looked around to make sure no one was close by. “—Pricolici form, I want to shred them like cabbage.”

  “Step back from that and don’t change form. As Terry’s deputy, he’ll need you to help him oversee the battle, but when the rubber meets the road and you’re forced into close combat, the gloves come off and you crush your enemies,” Marcie explained. Her lip twitched as the adrenaline surged. She clenched her fists.

  Christina punched her in the chest. “I’m in. Let’s go buy some new shoes to celebrate.” Marcie smiled, not in humor, but in the way warriors did as they prepared to engage the enemy.

  It was the confidence of someone who was more at home in war than in peace.

  Christina smiled the same way.

  Kae watched expressionlessly. He felt sorry for the clerk in the shoe store. I think I’ll wait outside, he thought. Until Marcie and Christina each grabbed an arm and propelled him between them toward a store called Camper, a store brand taken from the fashion scene of old Earth’s London. Kae groaned and frowned as the women sought a future addition to their wardrobes. Kaeden looked at their feet. They were both wearing shoes. What the hell do you need another pair for?

  He didn’t dare say it aloud.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Keeg Station, TSP’s Fine Dining

  Terry and Char stood in the corridor watching the flashing lights as each restaurant, bar, and store tried to attract customers through their signs and displays.

  “It looks like Chinatown,” Terry said. Char raised one eyebrow. As Felicity pushed for opening Keeg Station to the general public, the shop owners were attempting to expand their reach, and be successful enough to petition for more space.

  “It looks like success, you mean. Capitalism at its finest. It reminds me of Kingston Town.”

  Terry agreed. “Better. It’s the Kingston we grew to like. Vendors hawking their wares. They made everyone happy to be alive.”

  Char’s face turned dark at TH’s comment.

  “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” Terry wrapped his arms around his wife and hugged her. He closed his eyes to be more present in the moment, more aware of her. She didn’t sob, but he knew she was crying.

  Again.

  Am I heartless? he wondered. Terry’s sadness was for his daughter. He missed those he lost in combat, but he considered it an honor to die in battle, especially while saving another. It was the epitome of sacrifice. Glory to those who die in service to others.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find Felicity and Ted standing there. Char leaned back, her eyes red, but recovering quickly thanks to the wonders of nanocyte technology. She smiled and hugged Felicity first and then she went for Ted. He tried to lean back, but she caught him and pulled him close. She made it quick.

  Terry followed suit, but settled for shaking Ted’s hand. Ted looked just as uncomfortable shaking hands as hugging. Terry chuckled and showed them to the maître d.

  Felicity held up four fingers. A woman dressed in a long gown nodded and ushered the group in, giving them a private table in the rear shadows. Terry approved.

  As soon as they sat down, Ted started to speak. The server stood there, ready to take drink orders, but Felicity stilled her with one finger.

  “I’m sorry, TH, for all of it. I know you didn’t bully me, even though I felt bullied, so I turned into what I detest. I’m a bully.” Ted hung his head while Felicity rubbed his back. She looked at TH, her eyebrows raised expectantly. Char nudged her husband.

  Terry looked to the server, who only shook her head. Damn!

  “No one deserves to be bullied, Ted, no matter the reason, but I understand how you feel. I also understand how hard it is for you to talk about this. Know that you can tell me anything at any time. We’ll work it out because the last thing I want, or any of us want, is for you to be uncomfortable. You made it possible to fight those bastards. The things you’ve done for us have made us all better. For that, I thank you, but we won’t be hailing Ted. We all put our pants on the same way.”

  Felicity started shaking her head.

  “We don’t put our pants on the same way?” Char had to ask.

  “No. He jumps, both legs at the same time, because it’s more efficient.”

  “It is…” Ted mumbled.

  “I’ll take a glass of your finest dark beer!” Terry ordered loudly. The server wrinkled her nose in distaste. “You don’t have good dark beer here?”

  “Wine is best served with the meals in TSP’s,” she replied.

  Terry looked like a stunned carp.

  “He’ll have the beer, but I expect since I’ll be having a bistok steak, rare, that I’ll go with a complementary red. What do you recommend?” Char asked.

  “I want a bistok steak,” Terry grumbled. “And a damn dark beer.”

  Felicity held up a finger. “We’ll take a bottle of Asplesian Cabernet. Do you have anything that’s more than five years old?”

  “We have a ten-year old case, just arrived, Madam Director. Excellent choice showing a cultured palate.” The server bowed slightly while watching Terry Henry. He tilted his head as he met her gaze. Ted didn’t bother ordering anything as water was already at the table. He’d said his piece and was itching to get back into his lab. He folded his hands in his lap and started to fidget.

  Felicity took it all in, astutely, as it had helped her throughout her adult life. Her ability to read people in order to better appeal to their sensibilities was legendary. Once the server retreated to the kitchen, she turned to Ted. “Thank you for sharing with us, my love. You have to eat first, keep up your strength, and then you can go back to your lab.”

  He stopped fidgeting as he looked her in the eye. He smiled and nodded. “Okay.”

  “And you.” She looked sharply to Terry Henry Walton, but couldn’t maintain her glare. “This isn’t a place to order beer, you Neanderthal. Can’t you order wine once in a while?”

  Char laughed out loud. She brushed the silver streak of her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “No. He absolutely cannot order wine. I think it’s a genetic abnormality, although I’m sure there are clinical terms that apply.”

  “I like beer, what can I say?” Terry countered. “And I’m way behind. How long did I go without a decent brew? Although the reestablishment of Jamaica’s Red Stripe brewery made me feel warm all over.”

  “We were always warm. It was the tropics.” Char leaned away from TH, but held out her hand. He took it and smiled. Her purple eyes sparkled through the darkness of t
he restaurant’s shadows. “It was a simpler time, too.”

  “Is this when you announce that Kae and Marcie are leaving us to do what they did back then?”

  Terry pursed his lips and whistled. “I hadn’t decided that they could go, not until this instant,” he told them.

  “Was there ever a doubt?” Felicity replied. Under the table, she put her hand on Ted’s leg. He took it and caressed her fingers as he stopped rocking. “You don’t keep people prisoner, TH. Just like Shonna and Merrit are going to lead the mineral extraction team. Between them and Sue and Timmons, we’ll have Spires Harbor expanding to become the biggest shipyard in the whole sector.”

  Terry looked amused. “Do you hear yourself, the pride in your voice?” Terry asked. He leaned forward, bracing his forearm on the table. “I remember a time when the Mayor of New Boulder worked tirelessly to get a car running so he could take you for a cruise because you didn’t like having to walk.”

  “I still don’t,” she answered, thinking back to the beater that smoked horrendously. But it was the best ride in town, a chariot that her husband provided solely for her. “And now, I’m excited about building a big shipyard in space. It’s not too different from the dirigible factory we had in San Francisco. This isn’t new, and make no mistake, Colonel Terry Henry Walton, this shipyard will build the nicest luxury passenger ship that will have ever been built so that Ted and I can travel the stars at our whim as we traveled Earth in our airships.”

  “Multiple Etheric power supplies for the Gate technology, the Instantaneous Interstellar Communication System, shields, cloaking, and everything else we will install on it,” Ted said, perking up as he thought about the way ahead.

  “You have Plato working on the design right now, don’t you?” Terry asked. “You sly dog!”

  Ted turned away to look for Dokken. Terry rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes.

  When Ted couldn’t find the dog, he continued. “The ship is already under construction, but on a not-to-interfere basis with primary contracts.”

  “You already have primary contracts?” Char wondered.

  “We do.” Felicity smiled broadly. The wine arrived just in time.

  The server passed out the oversized wineglasses filled a third of the way. She held the mug of beer away from herself, grimacing as the head ran over the side and dripped onto the tablecloth. Terry took the mug with both hands and plunged his face into the foam to keep from losing more.

  “Liquid gold,” he said beneath a foam mustache.

  “He isn’t right in the head,” Char told the young woman.

  The server put a comforting hand on Char’s shoulder, nodding in sympathy. The server didn’t make eye contact with Terry. She caught herself before walking away. “Are you ready to order?”

  Terry tipped the mug back and slowly drank while the others ordered. When it was his turn, he was still drinking. He threw back the remainder and placed the mug on the table. He used his napkin to dab at his mouth. “I’ll have the bistok steak please, medium rare, with the orange tubers and greens, with a second steak on the side, please, also medium rare. And another one of these.” He picked up his empty mug and handed it back.

  “I don’t know how you manage,” the server told Char before taking the mug and walking away without writing Terry’s order down.

  ***

  Aaron, Yanmei, and Cordelia sat on meditation pillows as they faced the center of a small triangle. Each had their eyes closed as they chanted together, tones meant to calm the inner soul, repetition to focus the mind on the simple task at hand. They slowed on Yanmei’s command until they finished.

  “Open your eyes,” she said.

  Aaron slowly opened his as if waking from a refreshing nap. Cory kept hers closed as if afraid of the light.

  “The world is out here,” Yanmei said softly.

  Cory blinked until she was looking at the weretigers. From Yanmei to Aaron and back again. “Thank you.”

  “We remember the past, but we have to look forward. It is the only direction in which our eyes point.”

  Cory nodded once without replying.

  “Next event. A ten-mile run!” Aaron declared.

  “Say what?” Cory blurted.

  Yanmei’s forehead wrinkled as she looked sideways at her mate.

  “You know that I hate running more than anything. We run, because we need to run from our pain as much as run through it. Our destination will be where we started, but when we finish, we’ll be different from the three who started the journey.”

  Yanmei looked at a picture on the wall of the workout room as she wondered where Aaron had come up with that bit of philosophy. It made sense to her, but she didn’t know why. She had ten miles to contemplate it. She did the math in her mind and came up with a million trips around the station. Must be off a decimal place or three, she thought.

  Terry had put the workout room off limits to everyone except Aaron, Yanmei, and Cory. They needed it without distraction and without well-wishers, people who were only trying to help but weren’t.

  The three left the room with Aaron in the lead. He stretched for four seconds and then started to run with a shuffling gait so he didn’t smash his face into the overhead. Aaron was too tall for space stations, but he made do without complaint.

  He was in the most foreign place he’d ever been but was more at home. He was doing what he was meant to do—teaching, mentoring, guiding a lost soul to help her find her way back to the world of the living. Yanmei watched his lanky form, adoring him the whole time. He looked back with love in his eyes. A match made in the caverns of Kentucky, where too many others died.

  Even Akio almost died there, one of the most powerful of all vampires. From the ashes of evil bloomed the flower of life. Those who walked from the gaping maw of Mammoth Cave, including Terry Henry Walton and Cory, came away stronger. It was time for more of that.

  Cory watched the weretigers as they looked at each other, an inseparable couple. She stifled the desire to cry yet again. They had shown her how to embrace Ramses’s memory without seeing only his loss. She was alone but would never again feel alone. Cory rushed ahead, working her way in front of Aaron when the corridor widened. She sped up, running as only the enhanced could run.

  Aaron changed mid-stride into a sleek weretiger. Yanmei changed too, shrugging out of her clothes to turn her fur free. Their yellowish-green eyes glowed as they loped alongside Cordelia. She reached down to bury her hands in their neck fur, feeling the warmth and softness that mirrored the souls within. Yanmei snapped at a passerby to give the trio more room as they ran along the curving corridor.

  They continued running that way until Aaron thought he would wear the pads off his paws. Five miles sufficed, not ten, and they ended up where they started, with a lifetime of difference in between.

  Aaron and Yanmei changed back into human form in the workout room, covering themselves with towels while Cory stretched.

  “I think I’ll go back to my room. I have to write a letter.”

  Yanmei’s look asked the question without her having to say anything.

  “To my future self, saying that each day will get better. Although I’ll never forget, I know Ramses would be angry if I wallowed in misery. He lived his life to make me happy and I’ll say that I never took that for granted. We had a great time. We have two incredible daughters. My next step is to go to Earth and find them. Maybe they’ll decide to come back with me, but if they don’t, that’s their choice. Free will and all that. I’ll support their decision and love them no more and no less than I always have.” Cory cupped the weretigers’ faces in her hands, her blue eyes sparkling at them. She held their gaze for a moment, then turned and walked away, head held high as she disappeared through the door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The War Axe

  Captain Micky San Marino scowled at his four department heads. Each of them looked at their laps, none volunteering to be the first to invoke the captain’s ire, although it
was a little late for that.

  “What do you have to say for yourselves?” Micky demanded. Suresha held her hands up in surrender.

  “There’s nothing to say. It wasn’t my department.” The others glared at her and she resumed staring at her lap.

  “Fine!” Mac declared. He was in charge of the environmental systems, but Micky was holding them all responsible because no one had stepped up to help. “We’re still purging the system. The water supplies got into the ventilation, fouling the temperature sensors, so the auto-coolers kicked in and all of a sudden, it was snowing.”

  “It wasn’t just snowing, Mac. It was snowing throughout the whole ship! My bed is under an inch of snow, as are the rest of my quarters and everyone else’s quarters. What happens to snow when it melts?”

  “I know, that’s why we haven’t raised the temperature, yet.”

  “And what are your teams doing to help?” Micky focused like a laser beam on Oscar Wirth, in charge of ship’s stores.

  “We, um… We…” he stammered.

  “You built a ramp on the mess deck and were using trays as sleds.”

  Oscar rubbed his elbow where it was bruised. His ad hoc sled had gone sideways off the table, and he had slammed into the door frame. He acted as though his fingers in his lap were the most interesting things he’d ever laid eyes on.

  “And you.” Micky looked at Suresha.

  His engineering department head looked around, finally pointing to herself in wonder. “Me?”

  “Did I see a snowman down there?”

  “Clodagh did a great job, don’t you think? He even had a flower bonnet.” Suresha smiled proudly until she met the captain’s gaze. Suresha looked back to her lap for answers that remained elusive.

  “Blagun?” the captain asked.

  “I was outside working on the hull when it all happened. When I came back in, I immediately hit the shower. Thank goodness for the space heater in there.”

  Micky hammered his fist onto the table. The commanders shot upright and looked wide-eyed at their captain. “Is anyone doing anything about the snow?” he asked in a hard, measured tone.