Liberation_Age of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Craig Martelle

  Terry never bothered to look at the document. He was amazed by the victorious look on her face.

  “I feel like there should be a fist pump or something.”

  Her smile evaporated. “You are an angry man.”

  A drunk patron pounded on the bar, demanding service. The bartender waved him off, refusing to serve him. The drunk man slid close to Rivka.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asked as he pushed Rivka and reached a dirty hand toward the pile of papers. Rivka caught him by the wrist.

  “Don’t touch the contract,” she told him, her voice low and steady.

  “Don’t touch me!” he replied and grabbed for her. She let go, caught his ears in each hand, and pulled his head downward. She drove her leg upward. His face met her knee and that was the end of the confrontation.

  “Assault, battery, and interference in a confidential attorney-client conversation.” He moaned and held his face. She kicked him in the ribs. “Justice is served.”

  “Holy crap!” Terry looked at her with newfound respect. “You can do that? Judge, jury, and executioner?”

  She looked at the man rolling around on the floor. “No one was executed, but yes, we are authorized to mete out justice when the cases are clear cut, like this one. There’s video. He’s guilty, so fuck that guy.”

  “If someone messes with our bar, are you going to fuck them up, too?” Terry asked with a big smile.

  “Not if you don’t sign those contracts,” she countered.

  TH turned to Char. “I love my lawyer.”

  “Of course you do. Now, keep signing.”

  The War Axe

  Ankh walked onto the bridge, face expressionless as always. He stood next to the captain’s chair. When he craned his neck to look upward, his big head off-balanced him and he almost fell over.

  Clifton snickered and turned around to look at nothing new. Micky climbed down and sat on the edge of the platform so he could be eye to eye with the Crenellian.

  “What do you need, Ankh?”

  “Breathable air, food, water, sleep, but not much of that last one. Why do you want to know that?”

  “I want to know what you are going to ask me,” Micky clarified.

  “Yes. I have conducted all the flight testing I can do with the combat drone in and around the ship. I want to know when I can conduct the final phase of testing.” Ankh remained emotionless.

  “You mean, live fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “On our way back to Keeg Station, we’ll stop by an uninhabited planet and you can bang away. Smedley?”

  “I have the coordinates already programmed with the gate engine. Once our fine helmsman gives the word, we’ll be ready to send the drop ship to the planet.”

  “When will we be going back?”

  “Whenever Terry and Char return and give the word.”

  “When will that be?”

  Micky massaged his temples. The hatch to the bridge opened and Wenceslaus strolled in. The captain pointed to the cat. “And we all work for him. If you can convince him that it’s time to leave, we’ll leave.”

  “Give the order, cat. The combat drone must be tested to validate its configuration before it can be mass produced and added to the arsenal. Ted has said this firepower is critical for the long-term survival of the Direct Action Branch and its warriors. Do it now, cat.”

  Micky felt bad for brushing off the small alien. He couldn’t take the War Axe away, but he didn’t have the whole story. Ted was worried about his family and friends and was doing what he could to keep them alive.

  “I think I understand,” Micky replied.

  Wenceslaus head-butted the Crenellian, then dragged his body along the humanoid’s leg. Micky caught the cat by the ears before getting head-butted. He vigorously scratched, and Wenceslaus started to purr.

  “Is that the order to go? I’m sorry. My comm chip isn’t programmed for the language of felines.”

  Micky looked at Ankh. “None of ours are, but what he’s saying is I should call Terry and Char and see how they’re doing. Smedley?”

  “Calling them now,” the AI replied.

  “What can I do you out of, Skipper?”

  “Ankh has the combat drone ready, but he wants to live-fire test it. We can’t do that here. Do you have any problem with me taking a skeleton crew to a place where we can send some rounds downrange, as you might say?”

  “Combat support drone. Half a million railgun projectiles and four independently targetable missiles. Nothing says the Bad Company has arrived better than massive explosions.”

  Micky waited. Terry hadn’t answered the question.

  “You know what, Micky? I think we’re done with why we came to Onyx Station, so we’ll pack our trash and return to the War Axe. I’d love to see the CSD in action. We’ll have to return to Onyx before going home to Keeg Station. We have to pick up our galactic adventurers.”

  “Let us know when you’re aboard and we’ll get underway.” Micky nodded to the Crenellian.

  “Great job, Ankh. I’m sure that thing will make my eyes water and pulse race.”

  Ankh turned away from the captain and walked off the bridge.

  “What do you think, buddy?” the skipper asked Wenceslaus. The cat ran up his chest, used his shoulder as a springboard, and vaulted to the captain’s chair. He curled up in the seat and closed his eyes. “I guess that says it all. We wait.”

  “Gate engines are charging,” Clifton said over his shoulder.

  “On my command, helm.” Micky thought about moving the cat, but decided against it and took K’Thrall’s old position instead. “This is like sitting on a bench, a really uncomfortable bench.”

  Clifton tried not to look, biting his lip as he started going through the launch checklist.

  Pittsburgh, Earth

  “Where is she?” Cory asked as she hurried back onto the bridge.

  “Take us down,” Ted said, seemingly to himself as he continued his engagement with Plato. The screens showed the ground racing up to meet the ship. Ramses’ Chariot pulled up and hovered about thirty feet off the ground. The ship cast a great shadow over a house immediately below. Vertical obstructions like trees prevented them from going lower.

  “She’s in there,” Joseph said. Cory ran from the bridge, vaulted over Bundin, and raced for the hatch. She popped it open and launched through.

  “She jumped!” Bundin exclaimed as he wedged himself into the hatchway to look down. He twisted his stalk-head forward. “She’s okay!”

  Cory hit the ground, rolled, and came to her feet running. She reached the door and started yelling and beating on it.

  Dokken tried to gauge the height, but couldn’t. Cory was down there. He wasn’t with her. He stepped into the opening. With his heart in his throat, he jumped.

  Bundin’s tentacle arms lashed out and caught the dog before he’d traveled more than a few centimeters.

  “It’s too great a drop,” Bundin exclaimed. Dokken started to struggle.

  “Not for me it isn’t,” Kailin told them. He crawled over Bundin’s shell and hoisted the huge German Shepherd into his arms. “Wow, dog. You need to cut back on the treats.”

  Kailin held him tightly as he jumped through. The pair accelerated toward the ground. When they hit, Kailin threw Dokken sideways before he rolled through the impact. Dokken hit and stumbled, but his legs churned and he found himself running toward Cory as the door opened in front of her.

  A woman, the spitting image of her mother minus the glowing eyes, stood there, confused. “Mother?” she asked. Dokken slid into Cory, almost knocking her down. Sylvia caught her.

  Cory pulled her into a hug and started crying.

  Kailin stood back while Dokken leaned against Cory, trying to comfort her through his warmth and kind thoughts.

  When Cory was able to get it out, Sylvia didn’t change her expression.

  “I understand,” the young-looking woman said, frowning.

  Cory hardened up and br
ushed the tears away. She looked angry. Sylvia asked her to be calm.

  “I thought it was inevitable that someone would die. I didn’t expect it to be my father. I thought it would be my grandfather who died first. He places his body between the enemy and everyone else. Not because he thinks he’s invincible, but because he can’t stand someone else doing something that he thinks he’s supposed to do.”

  “But your father…” Cory blinked before a new flood of tears could start.

  “I’m sure he died saving the universe. Isn’t that how we were raised? In the service of others. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. Most people don’t respect that, but I do. Did Dad die for a cause worth dying for?”

  Cory held her daughter’s gaze. “He did, and you’re right. Mom and Dad took the hardest part of the mission, but when things went bad, we were trapped with too many Skrima when our nanocytes were disabled. There was nothing we could do.”

  “Why were your nanos disabled?”

  “Without disabling the nanos, we couldn’t kill the Skrima. Once they were disabled, the demon creatures were vulnerable.”

  “I understand,” Sylvia said, barely above a whisper. “Did you kill them, the Skrima?”

  “Yes.” Cory wouldn’t meet her gaze. “We killed all of them, and Dad closed the rift so no more could come through.”

  “I understand,” Sylvia repeated.

  “We have a device that you can use to talk with us, instantly, anywhere in the universe.”

  “We don’t have much technology here,” Sylvia said, heading into the house and waving for the others to follow. “If it breaks, we won’t be able to fix it.”

  “It won’t break. Ted assures us that the IICS will outlast us all.”

  “Ted built it?” Sylvia’s lip twitched upward into a half-smile, before it settled back into a tired frown. “Sarah’s not here.”

  “Where is she?” Cory asked. Dokken was big enough that standing, he could rest his chin on the table. He stood between Cory and Sylvia. Both women petted him as they sat, not looking at each other.

  “To be alone. She split from her husband, had to go find herself. The nanos were changing within her. That’s what she said, anyway. She went away, saying that I wasn’t to look for her. She’d find me when the time was right.”

  Cory chewed on her lip, her expression turning dark.

  “No, Mom! I know what you’re thinking, and it’s the opposite of that. The last thing she said was that she needed to work harder to be the person that you deserved her to be. A kind soul, leading the world to a better place, but she has the fire of her grandfather within her. She needed to balance the two. She still limps, by the way.” Sylvia stood and exaggerated the limp, mock-fainting.

  Cory didn’t know how to take that. Neither did Dokken. Kailin, watching from the doorway, burst out laughing.

  “He gets it.” Sylvia pointed at her cousin. “Great to see you again, Kailin. It’s been awhile.” The two hugged.

  “Are you going to come with us?” he asked. Before she could answer, there was a crash outside, the sound of something big ripping down a tree. Kailin took a few steps and stopped. “It’s Bundin. He jumped.”

  “How’s he going to get back on board?” Cory blurted.

  “I don’t know. He’s down here now. How are we going to get back on board?”

  Cory waved her nephew away.

  “Bundin?”

  “You have to see,” Kailin interjected. Cory wanted to talk with her daughter alone, but she gave up trying to make that happen. Dokken furiously wagged his tail as he received constant attention from Cory and Sylvia.

  Sylvia stopped when she saw the Podder ambling toward her home. “What is that?”

  “He’s Bundin, from Poddern. He’s a member of the Bad Company and he wanted to help us find you, more than anything else,” Kai explained.

  Sylvia nodded as the alien stopped outside the door. “What’s with human doorways? They are always so small. Cordelia? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Cory replied. She stood and went outside. “Thank you for coming to check on me. You are a good friend.” She could see him favoring one leg. She kneeled down to examine it. A huge gash was torn through the scales that protected the Podder’s stout legs.

  She put her hands on the injury to help him heal. He didn’t resist. The pain was significant, but not overwhelming.

  And he had no idea how he was going to get back to the ship. He trusted the humans and their ingenuity to figure it out.

  “You must be Sylvia,” Bundin said in the deep voice that the comm device gave him.

  “I am,” she said with a warm smile.

  “You are truly blessed to know such people as these,” Bundin told her.

  “I know,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’m not coming with you. I need to be here when Sarah returns from the wilderness. It took Grandfather twenty years to find himself. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but I’ll be here when she returns and if you give me that comm device, I’ll have that waiting for her. So you make sure you survive Colonel Terry Henry Walton’s adventures so you’re there to answer whenever we make the call.”

  Cory smiled at her daughter.

  “Mind if we stay the night? There’s no hurry to get from one place to the next. Our spaceship is state-of-the-art.”

  Sylvia pointed to the front door. “If he’s going to sleep in the front yard, the neighbors are going to talk.”

  Bundin’s stalk-head waved around as he took in his surroundings. “Maybe there’s a nice cave nearby.”

  The War Axe

  Terry and Char’s shuttle pod flew through the open hangar door and oriented itself for insertion into the launch tube. When that was settled, the rear deck dropped and they walked out carrying armloads of packages. The hangar door was already shut and sealed.

  “Prepare to gate,” Micky announced over the ship-wide broadcast. Terry tried to pull his hood up, but the packages got in his way. He twisted to escape, but the handles seemed to wrap themselves around his arms. Char set her packages down and pulled on her hood. It inflated, and she slapped at Terry’s arms until he stopped flailing. He pulled his hood on. Once it clicked into place, they could feel the ship accelerate forward and the strange shift when they passed through the gate.

  “I guess Ankh was in a hurry,” Char suggested.

  “Just a lot. We need to ditch this stuff so we can see the combat drone in action.”

  “Ditch this stuff? We’ll put it away in our quarters. You can watch the drone shoot at the ground.”

  Before they took two more steps, one of the drop ships rocketed out the launch tube.

  “What was that all about?” Terry wondered. Smedley, a drop ship just launched. What’s going on?

  The shuttle pod is carrying the atmospheric combat support drone. Once inside the atmosphere, the drone will detach and conduct a series of live-fire tests. I will inform you via your chip, if that is okay.

  I look forward to it. Bridge or the combat information center to watch the show? Terry asked

  Definitely the CIC, Smedley replied.

  Terry hurried ahead. Char followed, knowing that TH wanted to watch the test to determine how best to employ the weapon system. She wanted to watch it too, but would watch it remotely. She had clothes to try on.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Pittsburgh, Earth

  They stayed up late into the night, talking. Dokken never left Cory’s side. Bundin worked his way into the bushes so the never-present neighbors wouldn’t see him. Kailin slept on the couch. Ted called often to see when they were returning to the ship so they could go home to Keeg Station.

  Morning came too soon.

  Sylvia made a simple breakfast of vegetables and unleavened bread.

  Dokken asked if she had any beef jerky. Cory relayed his request. Sylvia’s laugh was musical and took the sting away from her proclamation that she was a vegetarian. Dokken’s ears drooped, but Kailin yelled up to the ship for J
oseph to throw down a portion of smoked bistok.

  Kailin caught it, despite Joseph’s errant throw. Despite the vampire’s long life, he’d never partaken of sports. He wasn’t good at throwing things. Not knives. Not balls. And as it turned out, not packets of meat.

  The omnivores enjoyed the bistok, while Sylvia tried not to look at it.

  Kailin ate and returned beneath the ship. Joseph held an IICS. Kailin asked that Petricia throw it. Joseph shrugged. He wasn’t too proud. She delivered it on target by dropping it straight down instead of trying to steer it.

  They cleaned up after breakfast, and Cory showed Sylvia how the device worked. They called the War Axe. Terry and Char’s quarters appeared.

  “Dad?” Cory wondered.

  Terry’s face popped out from behind a stack of bags and packages that he held in his arms. “Cory! Char, come quick. Cory’s on the blower.”

  “They haven’t had blowers for two hundred years,” Char said as she helped remove the packages from her husband’s arms. They kissed lightly before turning to the screen.

  “Mom’s been shopping? Are you still at Onyx Station?”

  “We’re at a firing range testing the combat support drone that Ted and Ankh designed. Tell him it works great but can’t fire the railgun in a hover. It needs to have forward movement to offset the release of power.”

  “You tell him yourself. He’s on the ship. In the meantime, look who we have here!” Sylvia and Kai both leaned into the picture.

  “Sylvia! Kailin! You guys look great,” Char said.

  Terry hugged her to him as he watched the screen, seeing everything that was there, along with who wasn’t. He didn’t ask the question that was foremost in his thoughts. Where is everyone else?

  As if reading his mind, Cory continued. “We found Terrence, Charlita, and Billy. They are settled in Chicago. They have an IICS and have talked with Felicity at least once.” Cory’s face dropped. Without moving her head, she looked to Sylvia and back to the screen. “Sarah isn’t here, and no one knows where she is.” Cory paused, again looking to Sylvia and back to the screen. “She’s on a classic TH hide from humanity adventure.”