Zhu looked over at his friend. “That’s Korean,” he said.
Jian grinned. “Shut up, you like it, too.” Then Jian bumped Shun’s shoulder.
Seconds later, the two men started dancing. “HEYYYY SEXY LADY!” they sang.
Three of the Guardian Marines jumped up and started mimicking the moves from the two Chinese men. Soon, Zhu cursed and joined his team. “I really hate you guys,” he yelled at them as he faked riding a horse and twirling a lasso.
Up on the ship’s bridge, five crewmembers stared at the video feed. “Holy shit,” Max smiled. “Send that video to the engine room. Fuck it,” he said. “Revenge, send that video to the whole Gott Verdammt fleet!”
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Military Operations
One of the screens on the massive wall changed and Bethany Anne’s eyes flicked up to it, down, then back up as Captain Wagner’s text came across the bottom, “This is how we take it to the Yollins!”
Bethany Anne stared at the screen. “Are they dancing Gangnam Style?” she asked, before she burst out laughing and joined in singing, “Heeyyyy Sexy Lady!”
Yollin Ship 21
Captain G’yrlen received the reports on his screen that his fleet was now cloaked. His four legs grasped his couch as the fingers on his right hand clicked through different commands he sent to the rest of the fleet. As Over-Captain of this operation, as simple as it would be, his own status would be boosted.
“We will strike in…” he started to say when he was knocked violently sideways as his ship was hit from four directions, the cloak dropping as the energy was pulled into the shields.
“What hit us!” he demanded as people scrambled back into their seats, most of them clicking their belts to keep them in place. No one had expected to be in any danger and failed to belt in properly.
“Sir, we can see one ship, but calculate three more we cannot,” ship’s defense called out.
“WHERE is the G’laxix Sphaea?” G’yrlen shouted.
“Still where we show her, sir,” the response came back.
He slammed his fist on the seat’s arm. “These people have figured out cloaking,” he spit out before they were rocked a second time.
“Sir!” Defense turned around. “They are getting through our shields!”
Coach’s Revenge
“That’s right,” Captain Wagner said to himself. “Welcome to the species that learns new technology, deconstructs it, and figures how to fuck it up.”
“Sir,” Revenge interrupted Wagner’s thoughts. “We have attained a large enough disturbance in their shield, we can send the Marines at your command.”
Wagner hit the button. “All right you dancing sons-a-bitches, time to get our own back!”
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Military Operations
“Our first strikes are starting,” Admiral Thomas announced. “Everyone brace, it might get a little ugly from here.” He looked over to comms. “Tell Commander Jameson to release the Queen’s Ace’s, we got tiny ships coming! It’s time they earn their wings.”
“Yes sir!” comms replied and started subvocalizing the Admiral’s commands.
Admiral Thomas looked over at Bethany Anne, who was busy watching the three dimensional hologram of the fight. He could see her eyes flicking too fast for him to keep up, so she was probably studying the whole thing in real time.
He wished he could do that.
“Did Paul give you any grief at taking over the fighter squadrons?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “No,” she turned to look at the Admiral. “He was pretty damned excited to get back to fighters. Once Bobcat made sure he agreed with Paul on the safety stuff, he gave Paul the blessing and went back to some of their other challenges. Paul has been bugging Team BMW for upgrades. I imagine after this battle, Paul will have more information on how to upgrade the ships.”
Admiral Thomas nodded. There was only so much you could do in mocked up fights.
It was always the real fights that uncovered your deficiencies.
Coach’s Revenge
The Marines stopped dancing and dropped into position. Their front line became Werewolves and one Werecat. Behind them, the Queen’s Guardian Marines, armored in ship metal grey. Everyone started wrapping their Weres in armor to protect them, with a final specially fitted mask built for each form’s face.
A video popped up with both leaders of the Guardian Marines on screen. Todd had his helmet in his hand, Peter was staring at them, his yellow eyes piecing them as he growled, “Weee are thee Queeen’s Guarrrdians, We NEVERrrr SUBMITTttt, WEEeee NEEVERRrr SURRrennDeerr!”
Todd added from beside his taller friend in a voice any drill sergeant would be proud to own, “But we do bring the universe’s biggest can of whoop-ass! Now, do your job, kill that ship’s power. We will take the front, you got the rear. See you in the center, first group to get there gets their beer paid for.”
Peter looked into the video camera. “IIiii cannn driinnkk a loottt off beeerr inn thiss formmm, heh heh heh.”
One last violent slam rocked the ship as they connected to the Yollin target. Max grabbed the microphone. “This is the Captain speaking, I hope you enjoyed your flight. Now please get the fuck off my ship and do what we came to do.”
The Guardian Marines smiled. They were aliens, sure, but the group with Peter and Todd attacking the bridge were going to surprise the shit out of that captain over there.
Yollin Ship 21
“We’ve been breached!” defense yelled.
Captain G’yrlen clicked his mandibles in frustration. This was not going according to plan. He stabbed the alarm override so he could speak. “All ship, prepare to kill boarders, all ship, kill boarders!”
He had already properly cowed the troop commander, there wasn’t a need to threaten that low caste member one more time.
N-thahn slapped the last of the locks on his armor and grabbed his sword. The servos activated and he pointed to two of his team. There were two breaches in the ship, but the one closest to the bridge needed to be tackled first.
He doubted they would get to the breach to set up a proper defense before the outer hull was taken out. Thank god this species didn’t just ram and jam, or they would have been caught with their armored pants down. The two he pointed at followed him down the passageway and up the ladders to the upper deck and after turning the corner went towards the front of the ship. The three Yollin soldiers were almost to the passageway that cut across the ship when an explosion blasted through an intersection of the passageway.
The team pulled up their weapons. No one wanted to use weapons that could vent atmosphere to space.
Decompression could be a bitch.
The roar that greeted them caused the two with N-thahn to look at him. He saw their heads out of the corners of his helmet, but ignored them. So it yelled? Punch it where it breathed and the yelling would stop.
That was when he saw the first of the enemies come round the corner and N-thahn’s mandibles opened in surprise.
The enemies were Yollins.
“We need to go first!” Kiel argued with Peter. “Our people, our revolution,” he insisted.
Peter looked down at the little Yollin. Or, little in Peter’s present state. His Pricolici form wanted to be the first through, but enough times working with Stephen, or rather, being corrected by Stephen, allowed Peter to keep his control. “Then doonn’tt beee sloowww.”
Kiel nodded and called over Bo’cha’tien. She wore her mercenary armor and had her new weapon, a quarterstaff with energized ends.
She also had a new attitude. It was called ‘humbled’ and Kiel thought it worked much better for her than the last one—that one had gotten her arm blown off. She would tire quickly, but he allowed her this position up front, then she would step back and Peter would take her place.
Kiel chittered. This was going to be fun.
22
Shun waited, the calm, the eagerness, the awareness settling on his shoulders. Zhu t
o his left, Jian in front.
It was time. The teams heard the blast on the other side of the door. Moments later, their door opened and the two teams entered. The growls of their Weres were in the lead, ringing off the bulkheads, then Jian snarled and leapt forward. Zhu and Shun kept their defensive postures as they followed the first group, then took a left, while the first group went straight.
Two Yollins came around the corner, shocked at seeing a seven-foot long cat, eyes blazing green, roaring in front of them.
The shots from the Jean Dukes’ rifles pulped their heads, their bodies dropped to the ground. Jian jumped over the mess and got ahead of them. Three Yollins tore open a door and filled the hallway, large swords in their hands, facing Shun and Zhu who stopped.
Each Marine took three steps back.
The Yollins knew they were in trouble when the black cat pounced on the last member of the party, its neck sliced open from Jian’s claws as he jumped off the body. He stopped ten feet in front of them, turned around and stayed low to the ground.
Next, Shun and Zhu opened up with their rifles, one more time.
“Nice to have you back,” Zhu said as he kicked open the door and swept inside, “Clear!”
“Nothing like having your team member outrun you.” Shun kicked open a door, “Clear!”
Jian just snarled.
“Yeah, don’t do it again.” Shun said.
There was a growl behind Shun and he put up a hand to tell the new group behind them to hold. While having a large wolf at his back didn’t appeal to him, he went all in when trusting the Queen, and therefore trusting the Queen’s leaders.
He’d seen Peter in his Pricolici form snag Jian out of the air and toss him, so he didn’t worry about someone overriding Peter.
It did, however, make Shun wonder what was going on at the front of the ship.
“What is that?” Captain G’yrlen grated out. His people were getting decimated. Worse, he had Yollins on his ship, fighting his people. That was against the rightness of the castes. Worse, they had better armor and weapons and his own mechanized team was losing people three to one. Often, their side might be out of the fight, but he wasn’t sure how many his people had actually killed.
Then that big monster started tossing his people left and right and headed straight for the bridge.
“Someone get my mechanized soldiers to act like the fighters they are supposed to be,” he hissed, “or we are going to lose our damned ship!”
Captain G’yrlen grimaced when the large creature made a horrible ‘he he heeeehhehh’ sound and his hand reached up, blocked a video camera, then the camera went black.
Peter was having a great time when he saw the guarded door to the bridge. His smile widened, his teeth reflecting the light.
His glee turned to a snarl when the power dropped, orange light flooding the passageways. He slammed his fist into the bulkhead, denting it. Three Yollins ran around the corner, then grabbed their heads in pain as the monster ran his claws across the metal, the screeching overwhelming them.
“Nowwww, youu have maaddde meee looose myy bettt,” Peter said, his voice deathly calm. “I guesss therrre isss notthinnggg forrr meee, but too dessstroyyy nowww.”
The Yollins grabbed for their pistols. One was able to shoot the Pricolici in the chest, knocking him over. He stood back up to the surprise of the Yollin who shot him, and ground out, “Punnny Weeaponsss!”
The fully armored Pricolici ran towards them, dodging as many of the shots as possible, still getting hit and tossed around, but never enough to knock him down again. The three Yollins had taken three steps back when Peter grabbed one of the hands with a pistol and twisted it, bones cracking as he used it to point to the Yollin next to him, shooting three holes into him.
Reaching forward, Peter grabbed the arm of the Yollin in back, yanking as hard as possible while he moved the Yollin on his right forward, meaning to smash them together.
Unfortunately for Peter, he successfully tossed the Yollin on his right into the left bulkhead, but was left holding a Yollin arm, with the bleeding and screeching Yollin in front of him trying to stem the flow of his own blood.
Peter kicked, catching the screeching Yollin in the chest, cracking his exoskeleton and sending him crashing back into the door that led to the bridge. Now unconscious, the Yollin slid to the ground and fell over.
“Who knew?” Shun looked around, his hand on the large knob, the lights switching over to orange. “Guess that worked just fine.”
“We got company!” Zhu pointed to five Yollins sticking their heads over the side of the walkway above them. Jian growled, jumped on a desk, leapt to a large cabinet-looking object and then finally out of Zhu’s sight onto the walkway.
Next, the two men heard snarls and mandibles clicking. Then Shun had to jump out of the way when a Yollin fell off the walkway above and slammed into the floor where Shun had been standing. Zhu shot the body in the head.
You could never tell what a Yollin could walk away from.
“COMING IN!” A voice shouted behind Shun and he turned. A large black wolf arrived with its Marines. All three looked up where Jian was snarling.
“Outran his support, huh?” one of the Marines asked. Another Yollin body screeched as it hit the floor. This time, Shun casually shot it in the head.
“We have a cat,” he shrugged. “It makes us lazy.”
The other Marine looked at their wolf partner. “Hey Jefe! Why you not do that for us?” They all ducked as a third Yollin fell behind Shun, landing with a thump near Zhu. He shot the comatose body, which had already suffered critical slashes through its neck.
They could hear two sets of clicking feet leaving the area. Jian wasn’t fooling around up there.
Moments later, the big cat came down and paced around his two friends before lying down, tail flicking.
“Guess we won the bet, huh?” Zhu asked.
Moments later, Kiel came over the ship’s speakers.
Defense HQ, Yoll
E’Kolorn was watching the reports and beginning to worry. He could tell that the ships had lost fleet cloaking, and were now engaged in ship-to-ship action. While some vessels could cloak and seek a new tactical advantage, once they fired their weapons, they would be uncovered.
Those ships that could be seen were ripped apart by weapons that seemed to overcome their shields. If it wasn’t their damned weapons, or their fighters that were dogging his own, it was attacks by kinetics. Now, something was attacking his ships from the rear, and the only indication of what it might be were tiny, almost infinitesimally small returns from their radar.
That were hideously fast.
Something had followed his fleet and were just now overtaking his ships. When they slammed into a ship, shields up or not, the massive amount of kinetic power they carried were overwhelming their shields. The overbearing brute force was distasteful. No Yollin would stoop so low as to effectively be throwing rocks across space at each other.
It was uncouth.
Communications sent an incoming message. “Attention Yollin Command, this is the Etheric Empire, General Lance Reynolds speaking. Seeing how you gave us permission to cross your space, and then you treacherously attacked us, it is with great delight I would like to know what would you like us to do with the remains of your fleet?”
Minister of Defense E’Kolorn snapped his mandibles together in agitation. “You won’t need concern yourself when our ships crush that pitiful excuse for an armada within the next few turns of the sun.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. Our calculations show this will be over in the next two turns. You’re already in trouble, why bring on more? Especially when we announce our intention to challenge your King to a battle for leadership of the High Yollin Caste,” the voice replied.
E’Kolorn thought furiously before saying, “Such is not possible, alien. To challenge the King one must be a Yollin.”
“That is not true,” a third voice came on line. “My name is Capt
ain Kael-ven T’chmon, most recently Captain of the G’laxix Sphaea, Member of the Chloret Caste, Friend of the Mont and Shuk Castes and one-time acolyte of the Learnings Of Yollin.”
On the QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Bethany Anne looked over at her father who shrugged back at her.
ADAM?
>>Yes, Bethany Anne?<<
How are you doing getting into the Yollin ship-to-ship communications network?
>>Successful as of two minutes and twenty-seven seconds ago. This whole conversation is going out live. Since the teams attacking Yollin 21 were successful, I didn’t have to hack anything in their system. We’re piggybacking on that ship’s network.<<
Well, I hope it’s enough.
Bethany Anne got her dad’s attention and mouthed ‘fleetwide.’ He smiled as they listened to Kael-ven.
Down on Yoll, the Defense Minister’s mandibles were snapping together. “And what,” he replied, “do you believe the texts say?”
“Anyone who studies the Holy Texts understands the right to challenge the King is not limited to any caste, to any people. It is only through manipulation of the caste system, which holds down the lower caste Yollins, that our existing leadership supported. You think those of us in the lower castes do not have the same eyes to see, and ears to hear, and minds to understand those at the top are no smarter than those of us in the lower castes? No, those in the upper castes are just given more prestigious jobs than those in a lower. This perpetuates the perception of intelligence and changes the belief amongst the lower castes.”
Lance looked at Bethany Anne and Admiral Thomas and made a surprised face at the strength of Kael-ven’s argument. Those on the bridge all had translation devices and could follow along as the two Yollins argued.
“The King doesn’t bow down to the whims of an alien puppet!” E’Kolorn spat. “Any more than I accept that our fleet is being destroyed!”
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set Three: Books 15-21, Never Submit, Never Surrender, Forever Defend, Might Makes Right, Ahead Full, Capture Death, Life Goes On (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 19
