It's Hell To Choose (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 9)

by Michael Anderle

  Costa Rica

  “What we want, Mr. Simmons,” the female voice said from the speakerphone, “is for your experienced direction and a procured team to work with ours to infiltrate and deliver packages to the base in Colorado.”

  It wasn’t odd for Phillip Simmons to work with external contacts. Due to his long involvement in South American black operative efforts, he had made multiple weird relationships work in the past.

  Although this would be one of the oddest yet.

  He had spent a couple of days up in Washington with Terry, who was spending time in a military hospital. His brain had been fried and couldn’t recognize his own boss and one of his better friends.

  Well, at least Terry’s own boss.

  The look of fear on Terry DeLeon’s face when Phillip went to see him was telling. Phillip didn’t know what could have caused it, but he knew it wasn’t ‘right’ for Terry to be acting this way. Something was going on in that base, and Phillip wanted to know what it was. While he doubted it was good for America, at this point it had become an obsession for him to get back at that group.

  Phillip had lost the chance to grab the analyst in Washington DC, but he had found enough information to confirm his suspicions so far.

  This group had shot his men, stopped his efforts, and mind wiped Terry. Further, he was now able to associate the CEO’s partner with some substantial efforts down here in South America. It seemed that Michael, no last name that he could figure out, had been secretly working with groups to repatriate money or, in his estimation, probably using the money for bribes. Either way, he was attempting to affect three different countries here in South America.

  This group was too dominant in his estimation. They needed to be knocked down at least a couple of pegs, if not more, and he was personally going to be responsible for helping to accomplish that.

  Unfortunately, it would have to be completely off the books. There was no way he could be associated with anything going back to actions inside the United States.

  “Unfortunately Ms. Lee, I will not be able to provide any physical resources to accomplish any missions inside of the United States. Having said that, I am open to personally reviewing and helping plan efforts to both create a diversionary attack which would then allow a primary attack on the base to occur. My expectation is that we could insert devices for data acquisition as well as infrastructure destruction.”

  “And what would you require in exchange for the support?” Ms. Lee asked.

  “I want the data to be shared. Understand, I am aware that you will desire to renege on this agreement. I will have insurance in place should that occur.”

  “Of course, it is good that we understand each other.” She said “from our satellite pictures, it seems that the base is substantially defended at this time with what look like emplacements. Unfortunately, we cannot ascertain the type of defensive armament.”

  “We were trying to learn that ourselves when my asset was neutralized” Philip said. “We have tried using long-range telephoto lenses and have seen enough to believe they are barreled weapons of some sort. They are not manned, and if I didn’t know better, I would say they are a type of railgun technology.”

  “Why do you say ‘if you didn’t know better’?” she asked.

  “Because the minimum specifications for railgun efforts at that size would require dams near a hydroelectric facility the size of the Hoover Dam next to them. So, they have not dug up the countryside enough to power such devices, nor have they a suitable power generation unit” he supplied.

  “What about those two containers they have up on the hill?” she asked.

  Phillip considered his response to that question, “Honestly, we are not sure. It could be surveillance and sophisticated radar assets, or it could be a type of power unit that is superior to what we understand and is set off from the base for safety purposes.”

  “So, either way, we need to destroy that target?” she asked.

  “Not positive. It could very well be a ruse, one that was a pain to put in place…No, I guess it wasn’t a pain for them, was it.”

  “No, it would not have been. They seem to have been pretty circumspect so far with everything they have done. While I would not put it past the military brains in their outfit to put a deception up there, I also suspect it has value as well” she commented.

  “The best we will have available might be helicopter access. Planes are going to be too easy to defend against. Or, we could do some sort of backpack or RPG options. I suspect you are right about it having value. You have to make the cheese smell delicious, don’t you?” Phillip quipped.

  The lady’s voice came across the phone “Yes, yes you do.”

  TQB Base - Colorado, USA

  The Lear Jet was approaching from a mile out. Gabrielle was on this flight with fifteen vampires from Japan.

  Gabrielle had brought the Queen a new clan, sort of.

  When the team took out Kamiko Kana, it was acceptable for Kamiko’s followers to either die or switch allegiance.

  Three of the remaining vampires decided to ‘accept death by attacking humans’. It was an excellent demonstration that the four men in front were not merely human any longer.

  Their quick deaths provided Gabrielle a chance to explain the situation with Bethany Anne, the changes to the Queen's Own, and why they were here to implement the justice required by Bethany Anne. The next thing Gabrielle knew, she was accepting the oath of allegiance from fifteen vampires as Bethany Anne’s representative.

  She hesitated before making her first phone call to Bethany Anne. How does one go about calling your boss and telling her, “You know that request for more vampires? Got you covered.” Or, “Hey boss, I have fifteen vampires that are going to follow me home, can we keep them?”

  John had made it easy and just dialed Bethany Anne and said, “Tell Dan we have fifteen members for the QB Elite team.”

  When he got off the phone, he winked at Gabrielle and told her, “You were overthinking it. Make it seem like a ‘win’ and send the problem to Dan. You’re golden.”

  She wanted to both smack him and also give him a hug because she wasn’t sure what Bethany Anne wanted to do with fifteen vampires that had just attacked her team.

  In the end, she should have just gone with her gut. Gabrielle's over analysis of the situation brought about ‘analysis paralysis’ and nothing got accomplished. She went to John and whispered “thanks.” He didn’t look over to where she was, he just replied, “We got your back.”

  The sudden overwhelming amount of emotions threatened to break her exterior facade. Gabrielle stepped over to a window to peek out and provide herself a few moments to compose her face. If she had to die in order to protect any one of these four men, it would be a payment she would be willing to make and consider it an honor at the same time.

  Fuck the back door exit, no Queen’s Own was ever going to be left behind when she was around.

  She turned around with a renewed sense of purpose and caught John watching her. That damnable man was too smart by half. He just nodded and continued to grab papers, asking one of the vampires to translate the content so he could decide which ones to take. They only had a few hours to gather intelligence, make plans, and schedule a date to pick them up.

  They all agreed to meet back in Japan for pickup. Now, Gabrielle was bringing them to the base.

  The schedule had been planned to coincide with the arrival of the first Wechselbalg group of one hundred volunteers accompanied by Nathan and Ecaterina.

  The goal was to get the two groups together, lay down the law and provide a demonstration why upsetting the apple cart would be a bad idea. Dan was coming in via Pod himself in an hour.

  The teams knew that all of the major superpowers had to be constantly tweaking their satellite and radar abilities to capture the comings and goings of the pods. That made their team, fronted by TOM, who found the idea of a ‘technology’ race against the humans to be a fun challenge. TOM w
ould work with ADAM to see what was happening and what chatter about the supposed radar returns could be intercepted.

  Occasionally, there was a significant amount of chatter that TOM knew wasn’t anything of theirs. On two occasions, TOM was so involved he was trying to figure out if radar signatures were other aliens. In one of the two instances, he butted into a meeting Bethany Anne was having to explain he wanted to chase a UFO in a Pod in case it was truly not of Earth.

  Bethany Anne excused herself from the meeting to jump in a Pod. Her present conversation wasn’t a subject that needed her input, and it was rare for TOM to ask for anything, so she felt ‘why not?’

  She was even excited to find out that the radar pings had been consistent until they came over the horizon on a straight shot towards the anomaly. The UFO had vacated the area suddenly twenty-two seconds before they came blistering through the upper atmosphere in a chase.

  She could see the planes below try to track the Pods entrance into the area by the visible streak they were making across the sky. Bethany Anne had TOM keep the Pod disturbing the upper atmosphere enough so they could be visually detected by the jets.

  Unfortunately, the UFO was gone and not even their existing technology focused down towards Earth was adequate in the area.

  Which caused the two of them to disappear back up into space and ponder the issue.

  She sent a note for Marcus to start working with TOM to increase the capabilities of their spying on Earth by an order of magnitude. They had been so focused on outer space, that Marcus’s wisdom about the best place to look for aliens would be on earth had been wasted.

  So, whenever the superpowers on Earth were able to successfully tweak their capabilities to better trace a Pod, TOM normally had an upgrade figured out within twenty-four hours. With ADAM and Marcus’s help, they had modifications to bring to the Pods within forty-eight hours to further minimize the radar signature.

  So far, most of the changes were to the composite paint-like substance that made them so damned hard for radar systems to detect in the first place. The updated composite was quickly used to repaint the Pods each time.

  Once, however, TOM had to request a slight tweak to the gravitic engines because the humans started looking for changes in the airstream. Now, depending on the flight plan for the Pod, the engine would start disrupting the air with a tiny pin-prick a hundred feet ahead of each pod. These modifications allowed the air cavitational protection to stream around them and recede gently back behind them.

  The tweaks to the engines for rapid maneuvers, however, wasn’t up to the same level of sophistication yet. If a Pod needed to do a lot of rapid directional changes, then their chance of being spotted on the upgraded radar feeds went up.

  So far, TOM had been working a week to overcome that issue.

  Dan descended straight down from above, with a detailed flight plan that allowed the Pod to minimize his air turbulence.

  The team was convinced they had eyes and ears on their base and the darkness, plus the new protection to hide the comings and goings of Pods, made it damned difficult for visual identification.

  He saw the plane with the vampires touching down as he came streaking in from above.

  Dan sighed. It had been so much easier to sneak around before the Moon-Base went in. Now, everyone and everything was ramping up. It felt like something momentous was just over the horizon, and he hoped it was good news.

  He could see the bright lights of the large jet that carried the Wechselbalg. Dan’s Pod slipped behind huge curtains surrounding the landing area that allowed Pods some distance to slow down without anything registering his arrival.

  Tonight was going to be a party; that was for sure.

  —

  Nathan wasn’t concerned with the group he had on the plane with him. They had all been through an introduction video that he had requested from Dan. It included the original film the Queen’s Bitches had used to introduce the Navy personnel so long ago and then to the Wechselbalg who became the core of the Queen’s Guardians.

  Both groups were damned near considered the elite now. Nathan made sure that John, Eric, Darryl and Scott’s faces were recognized. Once he got that out of the way, he brought up Gabrielle’s photo and mentioned she was the Captain. He allowed the wolf-whistles and comments to continue for about four seconds before he played a video that showed her in action against the Wechselbalg Guardians.

  The display of her martial prowess put a damper on their jubilation. When Peter switched to his Pricolici form and tried to get inside her defenses, the respect for her fighting prowess increased significantly.

  “I show you these videos,” he cautioned them, “because as Weres, you will have a problem with submission to someone whom you haven’t fought, or who hasn’t beaten someone who has beaten you. You are programmed this way, and it takes an effort to think past that programming.”

  He walked down the aisle as they came within ten minutes of landing. “Once we exit this plane, our first stop will be a demonstration match where you can consider who the top dogs are in this organization in one of two ways.” He turned to walk back towards the front, knowing that every person on the plane could hear him just fine. “The first option is by using your intelligence. I tell you right now don’t fuck with the Queen's Own; they will kick your ass.”

  He stopped to look around before walking forward again, “The second is to raise your hand at the level you want to try and take a chance beating one of them. I told you earlier we have a group of vampires from Asia joining us.” Nathan was surprised to hear a feminine ‘cool’ come from three rows behind him.

  He turned and raised an eyebrow at the young dark haired and blue-eyed female. “Jennifer is it?” She nodded, “you approve?”

  She shrugged, “I’ve liked vampires since Twilight.” That got her some cat-calls from a few guys around her, and she blushed. “I know it isn’t the same, but from what you have said we are all modified humans, right?” He nodded, “So, it isn’t like this is the Montagues vs. the Capulets?”

  “Who?” came from four rows back. Nathan looked back to raise both eyebrows now, “Jason, is it?” He nodded, “Shakespeare, you should have paid more attention in English.” He got a few chuckles from that. “She has a point though. This meeting isn’t some sort of us versus them match. These particular vampires are now considered the Queen’s Elite. They owe their honor to Bethany Anne…”

  Nathan got an interruption from halfway to the front. Once he allowed one interruption, it allowed a few others to work up the courage to ask questions, “Why? Did she save them or something?”

  He turned back towards the front. “Well, in a way,” he supplied, “The Queen’s Own allowed them the option of changing allegiance or not.” He put up a hand, “Before you ask, they would have had the option of leaving peacefully, but the only way they could leave with honor would be to fight for it, and three died unsuccessfully fighting. Leave it at that, ok?”

  He resumed walking, “So, you are signing up. The only difference between the Queen’s Elite and everyone on this plane is commitment.” He arrived at the front and turned around. “You have committed to four years of service with the Queen doing whatever the hell we need you to do. You have committed to doing your best or you will answer to me why any Wechselbalg I accepted as a member isn’t putting forth the effort. Trust me when I say that will not go well.”

  He looked around, “The Queen’s Elite have already committed their Honor, their Best, their Life. So if you want to challenge them? Find out how badly you want to commit, understand?”

  The Wechselbalg had all seen a video which highlighted both the Polarus and the Ad Aeternitatem. One viewer asked what the name of the ship ‘Ad Aeternitatem’ meant when the phrase was mentioned in the video, and Nathan had explained that the men and women on that ship had committed their efforts ‘To Eternity’.

  Between Nathan’s comments about the new vampires and the earlier evidence of the commitment of the pe
ople on the ships, it caused many to ask themselves what they had ever felt strongly enough about to give their all.

  And what would it take to want to commit everything they had?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Akio stood silently with the rest of his group. The fifteen of them were all that was left after fighting for Kamiko Kana not that many weeks ago.

  He had spoken with Gabrielle and learned that it was his own brother who had both dishonored himself and then covered his shame with blood to procure the opportunity for the rest of the clan to switch their allegiance from the false queen to Bethany Anne.

  The men in the group were quiet. Not only because nothing was requested from them, but because it was the wiser choice. To stand and observe was the proper choice at this time.

  The men spoke to each other when Gabrielle sent them back to their homes to dissolve any ties. She explained each would be allowed two suitcases of whatever they felt they wanted to bring. The rest, including all weaponry, would be provided by her Queen.