Might Makes Right (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 18)

by Michael Anderle

  Matrix stopped in the hallway, and the door in front of him slid open. He entered the large public area and padded through it, passing two restaurants and a small store before he found another unmarked door. After he waited in front of it for a second, it slid open and he jogged through it.

  And the armor?

  Matrix could feel the armor grow tighter as TOM mentioned it.

  I hate it. It keeps bunching up the fur on my back near my legs. Occasionally it pulls a hair.

  How often is occasionally? TOM asked, wondering if Jean had somehow missed a design flaw.

  Maybe once a week, Matrix admitted.

  I think you will survive, TOM replied. You are allowing your irritation with the armor in general to color your opinion about all the small annoyances right now.

  It’s just so damned constricting, Matrix shot back. The scent hit him as he was finishing his thought. You can’t… One second.

  Matrix sniffed again and recognized the odor as something he smelled when Darryl and Scott had been doing…

  Target practice!

  Two doors ahead of him opened and six aliens stepped out. He turned around and saw another two doors opening behind him. His eyes opened wide in alarm.

  One of the aliens aimed a weapon at him. TOM! he screamed mentally. WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!

  Matrix tried to run, but a bullet slammed into his body, throwing him down the hallway to crash into the wall. He lost consciousness as feet trooped by him. The last one in the group lashed out, kicking Matrix in the head.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There are assassins, Che’al thought, and then there is me.

  The Noel-ni glanced down at the timepiece she wore on her wrist. It provided a visual representation of the time until her strike, allotted time to accomplish her task, and finally her time to exit the vicinity, all according to plan.

  Che’al had been planning this hit since she was hired. It had taken her seven trips to bring all the parts she needed. None of them by themselves amounted to much, but once she took them out of their hiding places and reassembled them, she had one of the most powerful weapons a person might acquire for precise efforts such as hers.

  Death was her business, and business had unfortunately been rather sparse, which was why this job had been such a godsend. Her contact had provided a significant portion of precious metals to fund the beginning of the job without any arguments.

  It was always nice to work with other professionals.

  She had pegged the client as military, based on the precise directions and information provided. She figured the contact was much more familiar with Leath than the Empire, since their information about the Leath group was more complete. However, the dossier on the Etheric Empire primary had been decent.

  Her own resources had provided little more. The Etheric Empire’s effort to keep sensitive information under wraps had suffered when the Empress had visited the Noel-ni some time back. Some of the Empress’ abilities, or at least her armor’s capabilities, had leaked. It was universally presumed the armor she wore provided the ability to fire the balls of power.

  Che’al was stationed just inside a small air-handling box on the south side of the large room where the peace talks were being held. She had been listening to them arguing, and she was just shy of thinking she might end her own life if she had to listen to more of this.

  The Leath were being obstinate and illogical, and the humans were being protective and unyielding. It didn’t take a genius to understand these two would never achieve peace. This would be, Che’al decided, a mercy killing; these two factions wouldn’t have to work any longer on a lost cause.

  She was counting down the final few moments before she connected the power source to her rifle. She didn’t know if the security below did active searches for unexpected power, but she’d rather be careful. If the options were not getting her hit set up in time or being found out, she would choose to fail her shot.

  The other could get her captured, and capture would be the end of the line. Failure to make a hit was a black mark, but did not ensure a grisly death.

  Her timepiece started thumping on her wrist, letting her know it was time to power up. She reached for the battery and slowly pushed it into her laser carbine, the little snick when it seated was all the noise it made. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, looking into the room through the metal grate before placing her eye to the scope.

  The gentle thump, thump, thump of the countdown on her wrist let her know it was almost time.

  On the last thump, she squeezed the trigger.

  —

  Ch’lockteck looked very good in his uniform. His upthrust tusks weren’t very long, which was helpful for speaking but horrible for impressing the females of his species. He had been told to make these peace talks last for five days before he left in a righteous huff.

  For the first day and part of the second, he had almost convinced himself the gods had decreed he would die at the alien’s hand.

  He had an intelligence report on those across the table from him, and while Ch’lockteck was formidable, the guards around the woman knew their business when it came to killing. He didn’t doubt they would be deadly, even without their armor.

  He just had two more days of this mind-numbing bullshit to go through before he could slam his fist on the table, declare these talks useless, and get back to attacking the very people he was staring at.

  Perhaps he should study them further, get into their minds…

  His eyes narrowed as he considered what questions he should ask. He felt rather stupid, not having thought about this before now.

  Well, stupid or not, he would make up for lost time.

  —

  Bethany Anne watched the Leath across the table narrow his eyes in thought. For such a different species, they had similar mannerisms and physical tells she could—

  TOM! What the FUCK? she screamed mentally when her body was violently thrown to the side, her muscles controlled by the AI.

  Then, her mind amped to vampiric speed, she heard the sizzle of melting plastic and twisted her head as her right hand protected her from slamming to the ground.

  The back of her chair was melting and John was twisting and grabbing his leg, the smell of burning fabric reaching her nose from the burn hole in his clothes.

  She hoped his armor had stopped it.

  She hit the ground, turn her falling into a roll and working to pop up.

  ALL MY PEOPLE! She sent out a mental shout. WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!

  ADAM! she yelled, glancing at the hole in her chair and John’s leg and following the line of sight to where she thought the sniper must be hiding.

  —

  Ch’lockteck’s eyes opened in surprise as the Empress dove off her chair. He saw the beam hole in her guard’s leg as Ch’lockteck twisted to the side and pushed away from the table, but was not able to do much more.

  A second beam hit Ch’lockteck in the back of the head, and his brain was instantly heated to well over a thousand degrees. As his brain cooked its moisture turned to steam, building up pressure in his skull until it exploded a mere few microseconds later. His body rolled forward as the chair continued rolling backward and his corpse hit the floor with a thud.

  —

  Che’al stroked the trigger of her rifle as she refined her aim, targeting the base of the Leath military leader’s neck. She ended up hitting him square in the back of his skull, since he reacted a bit faster than she had calculated.

  Not that it mattered; she had allowed for some movement. Her ears picked up the screams just starting in the room as she pulled her eye from her scope to see what she had done to her first target.

  That was when she realized she’d made the last mistake of her life.

  —

  >> I have reviewed the schematics. There is an air filtration system box large enough to hold an assassin twelve feet to the left and three up from where you are presently looking.<<

  Bethany Anne flung
her empty hand back like a pitcher at a baseball game. When her hand was all the way behind her, a red ball of Etheric energy popped into existence and she flung it toward the location ADAM had described. The energy streaked across the room to slam through the metal, causing something behind the grate to explode. Parts of a body were expelled, raining down on the crowd below.

  Bethany Anne realized she was hearing weapons fire. Her face crackled with energy, the red lines etching into it, eyes blazing and hair flying on a wind of her own as she sought the location of those attacking.

  While she might not have a weapon, they did.

  And soon her people would be armed as well, with weapons taken from the corpses of those stupid enough to fire on them.

  Especially since they had been warned by Nathan’s team months ago. “It’s about damned time!” Bethany Anne yelled, glancing quickly at John. He had a bad burn on his leg, and it looked like the beam had made it into muscle. She was sure it was healing, but it probably still hurt like a son of a bitch.

  Two attackers came through the main doors holding what looked like some kind of submachine guns. She focused on the guns and pushed energy to heat them. The mercenaries dropped their weapons, screaming in pain and frustration as a couple of their friends bumped into them from behind.

  One had bad trigger control, and ripped a few rounds off right into his buddy’s back.

  They must be newbs. She grabbed the swords that had lain on the table and yelled over her shoulder. “Scott!”

  The erstwhile New York policeman turned toward her, seeing the sheathed sword already halfway to him in the air. He reached up with his left hand, caught the sheath, and pulled out the katana with his right as he twisted. He continued his spin, swinging the sword to slice off the arm of a mercenary who had come through a side door.

  Scott kicked the screaming Noel-ni back through the door, shattering it as he bent down to grab the attacker’s pistol.

  “Behind you!” Darryl called.

  Scott flipped the sword and jabbed it backward while keeping his head low, and he felt the sword hit flesh. He turned to see a Leath, who had decided to jump into the fight. “Hold this a moment,” he told the Leath, who was staring in confusion at the sword through his body.

  Scott pulled the fingers and hand off the recovered pistol and dropped the severed arm, gripping the pistol in his right hand. With his left, he grabbed the hilt of the sword. “Thank you, I’ll take this back now,” he told the Leath, and lashed out with his boot, kicking the Leath off the sword.

  He smiled in glee. Now he was doubly armed!

  He looked around to make sure Bethany Anne was safe and found Darryl fighting to her right, blazing away with two pistols. “You greedy ass!” Scott shouted. “How did you get two?”

  Scott heard John to his left and turned to see what the commotion was, then ducked the body flying over him.

  “Don’t kick the Gott Verdammt leg!” John was yelling at the alien, who landed in a five-foot-diameter potted plant as he spoke. The vase cracked, and so did the alien’s skull. “It fucking hurts!” he finished.

  Scott raised the pistol and shot three times through the small side door, then turned and ran toward Bethany Anne.

  >>Bethany Anne, there have been a number of distress calls from the engine deck.<<

  “What the hell does a hotel need with an engine deck?” she asked, casually shooting two more mercenaries who poked their heads into the room. She looked at Darryl. “That’s fourteen and fifteen!”

  “Seventeen!” Darryl answered, grinning from ear to ear. “You failed to kill this one!”

  “What?” Bethany Anne asked.

  >>The hotel floats using the power from the engine room.<< ADAM reminded her.

  “Oh shit! These cock-juggling root-juice-loving fart-box tongue-punchers are trying to drop the hotel,” she bitched as she shot another enemy.

  She looked to her left. “Eric! Keep it safe here with John. I’m taking Scott and Darryl for a little R and R.”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, fuck a duck,” Scott kicked a pistol lying on the floor toward his team. “Reconnaissance and Retribution tasking, here we come.” While he was making his smart-ass comment, he and Darryl had hot-footed it over to Bethany Anne, who grabbed them both and disappeared.

  The three mercenaries who had seen the three humans disappear gawked. One immediately died from a slug through the skull. It blew out the back of his head, which splattered one of the female hotel staff who had been standing frozen near the wall with the others.

  She fainted, slumping to the floor.

  John noted that some of the Leath who had realized the humans weren’t the cause of the commotion were busy killing mercenaries. Like Bethany Anne, he appreciated that the mercenaries had finally attacked so they could be done with the charade.

  He hadn’t appreciated the assassin. That person had done well, hiding herself. As long as the effort to drop the hotel didn’t work, they would be ok. Bad Company had provided good information, but it seemed they had been short on a few important details.

  The beam had been ablated by the armor he had wrapped around his legs, but it hadn’t been enough to reflect or stop it.

  His leg got cooked, and frankly he didn’t have time to deal with the mess healing was going to make of the armor right now. Getting that shit out of his skin was going to require a trip to the Pod-doc.

  Better than no leg, he mused as he shot another mercenary. That’s when Peter decided to join the party with four of his Guardians, and the Leath realized they weren’t the only aliens who could roar.

  —

  Peter got the message regarding the assault in time to palm two knives and notify his team, who had been tasked with stopping any attacking force from coming into the hotel.

  The first two mercenaries with unveiled weapons were gifted with diamond-tipped throwing blades to their skulls.

  They had barely hit the ground when Todd, who had refused to be left behind even though he couldn’t use guns, went to their bodies and grabbed both weapons. “God,” he said as he cycled one of the weapons and made sure he understood how it worked, “now I don’t feel so—”

  “Downnn!” Peter yelled, and Todd ducked, another blade flying over him to hit an alien disguised as a waiter in the gut. The mercenary dropped his weapon to grab the hilt of the knife, but his head snapped back when Todd drilled him through the skull.

  “Wow, aims high,” Todd commented as he swept the area, one knee on the ground, looking for those not screaming their heads off. Tourists and guests were escaping outside. Todd pointed the loud weapon into the air. “Get down!” he screamed and squeezed the trigger twice to emphasize his command.

  He wasn’t sure what the aliens heard when he screamed in English, but a substantial number hit the deck and the humans were able to fire at those wielding weapons.

  Something slammed Todd’s chest, throwing him off his balance and causing him to roll as he cursed up a storm.

  Peter was next to him in a moment, one hand checking his friend, the other grabbing the extra pistol. “Stop laying down on the job!” Peter grunted, and lifted his friend.

  “Takes a punch and keeps on ticking,” Todd gasped.

  “Timex?” Peter asked, firing two shots, not sure where the round that had hit Todd came from.

  “No, my heart,” Todd answered. “That shit packs a wallop!”

  “I don’t see any more. Let’s join the crew inside,” Peter directed, and Todd shouted for the team to pull back while he sent the command over their comms as well.

  —

  Once they knew the mercenary group had been hired, Bethany Anne’s team had requested a VIP tour of the facilities. They had purchased rooms dispersed around the hotel’s various structures so that if Bethany Anne needed a rapid reaction force she could grab someone and leave.

  And she had.

  They hadn’t really expected the mercenaries to go after the engines, but they had developed a plan
for that eventuality.

  It involved Bethany Anne, a couple Bitches, and a massive amount of mayhem, especially since the team had secreted weapons in a room near the engines. There wasn’t going to be any opportunity to get past them. And, as her father liked to say…

  If you weren’t cheating, you weren’t trying.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Noel-ni Planet Sertjal, XerpresciechCoth Hotel

  Kraaz and the team slipped through the back hallways, which were used for monitoring and supporting the infrastructure of the massive hotel away from the eyes of the customers.

  Reaching their third crossing, he stopped and looked around the corner, then pulled his head back. He held up a hand and put up two fingers.

  Behind him, P’kert flicked his weapon to stun, took two steps around Kraaz, and shot both of the hotel support staff. Their general goal was still to kill everyone, but they were stunning the staff down here in case they happened upon someone from Engineering and needed them alive for knowledge or passwords.

  They would kill them later.

  —

  Bethany Anne, Scott, and Darryl appeared in the middle of the cheapest room in the hotel. Cheap because it was on the lower decks near all the equipment and noisy. Perfect for her people.

  All three went to the weapons cases, popping the locks and opening them. They slipped on the armored jackets and donned the HUD helmets, locking them down to the jackets. They pulled out the Jean Dukes pistols and holsters, sliding their arms through the straps and seating the equipment, and lastly reached for Jean Dukes’ version of submachine guns. These still used standard gravitic power, but their slugs were bigger and made of a softer material, so they had punch but wouldn’t go through too many pipes or walls. They didn’t want to bring the hotel down unnecessarily in a random firefight by destroying the very equipment they were trying to save.

  All three lids slammed shut at the same time. Darryl flicked his eyes to the display that provided him access to the camera they had placed outside the door.