Risk Be Damned: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Trials And Tribulations Book 1) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Legal

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Author Notes - NG

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Series List

  Social Links

  DEDICATION

  From Michael

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  RISK BE DAMNED

  Team Includes

  Beta Readers

  Dorene Johnson (US Navy (Ret) & DD)

  Diane Velasquez (Chinchilla Lady & DD)

  Editors

  Stephen Russell

  JIT Beta Readers - From both of us, our deepest gratitude!

  Keith Verret

  Maria Stanley

  Alex Wilson

  Micky Cocker

  John Findlay

  Kimberly Boyer

  Sherry Foster

  Maria Stanley

  If I missed anyone, please let us know!

  Risk Be Damned (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2017 Michael T. Anderle

  Cover by Andrew Dobell http://www.creativeedgestudios.co.uk - Painting and Typography by Jeff Brown www.jeffbrowngraphics.com

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, 2017

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2017 by Michael T. Anderle.

  Prologue

  The cage rocked as a low growl came from within, making Qing Tsai’s fingers tremble as he opened the tiny feeding slot.

  He was once Chief Researcher of Paranormal Phenomena, reporting to the President of the PLA Academy of Military Science in China. Now he occupied a dingy laboratory in Bulgaria. He jumped away when teeth snapped at the opening, and the plate of food clattered to the floor.

  Ying Hsu looked over from her work, “Be quicker.” The years had made him weak, she thought. She sighed, a party officer who was captured was supposed to become a weapon in captivity, and punish those who had dared to disrespect the glory of the People’s Republic.

  Instead, Tsai had become weak and defeated. He barely did his job researching the phenomenon he had been sent to find, and he did not plot to escape.

  Hsu went through her plan every day.

  She knew where their guards kept weapons, and where she could acquire rations quickly on the way out of the complex. She had even found a map, but she didn’t know yet where the complex was, so she could find her way to a city. She knew the mountains dropped away steeply to every side of the complex, but sometimes people arrived and they hadn’t used a helicopter.

  There had to be a way to get out. She dreamed about escape every night. During the days, she demanded expensive equipment she did not need and kept two sets of records. One set, her own, was correct. The one for their captors had key results omitted, so they would get nothing from the research they made her do.

  Tsai did nothing, and he wasn’t even good at his research.

  “Then you do it!” He snapped at her, clearly shaken and none too pleased with her comments.

  Hsu tried not to sigh again. There was no point in saying that her boss should be used to this by now. Neither of them was young anymore, as they had been when they were sent by Beijing. Those countries are in chaos, the party leaders claimed, so who will notice two tourists?

  The wrong people had noticed, that’s who.

  Hsu had given up being bitter about that long ago. Tsai had not. He told her that they had been forgotten—or left. She did not bother saying the Party trusted them to get out on their own, because she knew that wasn’t the case.

  No one was coming for them.

  She still intended to escape, whether because she was supposed to do it for the party, or just for herself.

  She picked up the plate from the floor and dusted the roll off. She went to the sink to wash off the piece of almost raw meat. Then she arranged them back on the plate and walked to the cage. The vegetables couldn’t be saved. They’d been canned, and now they sat on the floor in a puddle of liquid.

  At least the experiments got vegetables.

  The rest of them had only canned beans and cabbage, and sometimes canned meat. The cans were delivered by a helicopter that settled down on the roof of the building. Their captors usually pulled all the labels off, but once Hsu was in the kitchen, and she saw Russian on them.

  She looked inside the cage at the wolf crouched in the back corner. Its fur was so dark it was almost black, and it was bigger than any wolf most people ever saw. It lifted its lip at her and growled again.

  “That’s not going to help you,” she told it. The experiments had spent years trying to get out of the cages, she knew they couldn’t. “Change back, or you don’t get your food.”

  “Just shock it!” Tsai commanded.

  The wolf whined, and Hsu tried not to let herself feel any pity.

  It wasn’t human, she reminded herself. “If you don’t change, I have to do what he says.” The wolf turned back almost at once.

  “Good,” Hsu said. She opened the little slot for the food.

  The girl crouched in the back of the cage did not say anything. She was thin and bruised. Her black hair was greasy; she had been in the cage for weeks. Or … Hsu thought she had. A new cut ran all along her side, bleeding a little, and Hsu was sure that some of the bruises hadn’t been there this morning.

  “What happened to her?” Hsu demanded, “I was only gone for an hour. What happened to her?”

  “The guards….” Tsai licked his lips nervously, his eyes darting around the room, “They wanted to have some fun.”

  Human or not, this was no way to treat the girl inside, “You let them do that?” She hissed in anger, she didn’t even want to know what they had done.

  Something jingled, but she hardly heard it.

  “They have guns!” Tsai protested.

  Weak!

  He was damned weak.

  “You shouldn’t have let them do that!” Hsu told him. She dropped the plate, reached over and grabbed his coat. “Doesn’t the research mean anything to you?” He didn’t say anything. His mouth was gaping open silently. “Say somethi
ng!” Hsu shook him—hard.

  He only pointed.

  Hsu looked just in time to see the door of the cage explode open. The experiment had changed back into a wolf. She leapt easily over Hsu’s head, long claws reaching for Tsai. The two of them tumbled over in a mass of fur, flesh, and cloth ... blood spurted. The wolf raked at Tsai and ran him through the chest with its claws.

  Tsai didn’t even have time to scream before he was dead.

  Hsu pressed a hand over her mouth as the wolf ripped Tsai’s body to pieces. It was not eating him, it just wanted to destroy him. She sank down, hoping the wolf would forget her.

  Sometimes they did.

  There was the pounding of feet on the stairs, and yelling in Bulgarian. Hsu could hear the heavy movement of armed and armored bodies. Then, so terrifying that she half-fell, the sound of the wolf… laughing?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sofia, Bulgaria

  Stephen had asked for the nicest room in the hotel. He hoped this would make Jennifer happy. Despite being a warrior in the truest sense of the word, he had learned that she liked soft sheets—and bubble baths.

  She made him promise not to tell Peter about the bubble baths, on pain of death.

  She probably wouldn’t really try to kill him, but he didn’t want to test that theory.

  He checked the hotel room carefully before he unpacked his things. This was the nicest hotel in Sofia, and any diplomats or intelligence officers would stay here, so there were certainly electronic surveillance devices. His enhanced hearing picked up the mechanical whine of two cameras in the corners of the room.

  In his pocket, unseen, Stephen pressed a button to turn on the control set ADAM had helped William make for him. Once he activated it, it would create a loop in the video feed that played for his spies. Stephen decided that they would watch him reading for many hours. He picked up a book, Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian, he was enjoying the story of Jack Aubrey.

  He enjoyed the new world his queen had healed him to serve, with its technology, but he sometimes wished for a simpler time, when warfare had been more elegant, and morality had been less flexible.

  When honorable men had explored the world. Stephen thought he would have liked to sail on a ship like the Sophie. He had loved The Count of Monte Cristo, reading it had been like being transported back in time.

  But he had never spent time in any of the navies, and had been curious to have a window into that piece of the world he remembered.

  He understood that his queen needed him for other purposes. She required him to rule Europe. He had failed Michael in this, but he would not fail his queen. He would fix the problems he had allowed to take root in his domain. When he heard of a disturbance in Bulgaria, he had asked Bethany Anne’s permission to deal with it himself.

  He sat on the bed to read. After he’d been reading for a while, he clicked the button on the device. Now, for several hours, the feed would show nothing, but him sitting on the bed and turning the pages of the book. He checked for listening devices as well. There were three, one in the closet, a second in the bathroom, and the third behind the headboard, and he disabled them temporarily by waving another device over them.

  He would know if the room was being actively watched if someone came to fix the bugs.

  He suspected it was.

  The girl at the front desk, a blond woman with a curvy figure that strained the buttons of her uniform, was clearly intended to distract guests, but Stephen had seen the way her eyes took in every detail. He suspected his false name—James Dillon, after the first lieutenant in Master and Commander—had been passed along to those who paid her. They would listen just to see if they would find out anything interesting.

  Or at least they would try to listen.

  Stephen unpacked his bags quickly, concealing some items carefully, and hiding certain items of clothing inside others. When the cleaning crew came to look through the room, as he was sure they were paid to do, he did not want them to find anything suspicious, like his body armor or ammunition. That invited scrutiny, and he needed to be anonymous for a few days while he tracked down the source of the disturbance.

  When he was unpacked, he settled back into one of the chairs.

  My Queen?

  Yes, Stephen?

  We have arrived. I will try to conclude this within a few days. I apologize again for allowing things to—

  Don’t apologize. It is not you who is to blame for this. Her famous temper was never far from the surface. He could feel her anger at the disturbance. Earth has to learn to stand on its own, but clearly, it hasn’t yet.

  Yes, my Queen.

  They have made their own choices, she reminded him. Her voice softened slightly. Say hello to Jennifer for me.

  I will, my Queen.

  And one more thing.

  Yes?

  Peter wants to know if she’s in a bubble bath?

  Stephen froze. How had Peter found out about that? How, he supposed, didn’t matter.

  He was dead.

  QBS ArchAngel

  Bethany Anne collapsed into tears of laughter the second she felt the connection sever between her and Stephen. The wave of pure panic she’d felt from him was just too funny. Stephen was going to spend all day worried that Jennifer would take a chunk out of him the next time she transformed.

  “That was priceless!” She wiped at her eyes, trying to keep the tears from going down her face.

  >>I’m not sure I understand the joke.<<<br />
  She used her telepathic powers to spy on Stephen, and she has made him think that Peter knows about Jennifer’s love of bubble baths, TOM informed ADAM.

  >>That is a joke?<<<br />
  Guys, shut up. Bethany Anne wiped at her eyes again and calmed down. When you explain it, it’s not so funny.

  Are you sure it was funny to start with?

  TOM, you’re getting dangerously close to the dog house again. Bethany Anne got off of her bed and walked into her closet to change into a close-fitting black shirt, leather pants, and a red bolero-style jacket. The bottoms of her Louboutins exactly matched the color of the jacket.

  TOM informed her, John is looking for you.

  Why?

  I don’t know. He just asked ArchAngel where you were.

  Where is he?

  In the corridor, approaching the room. If you want to avoid more Imelda Marcos jokes, I suggest closing the closet door before he arrives.

  >>That’s a joke because one would not normally want to be compared to Imelda Marcos?<<<br />
  Shut up, Wesley.

  Bethany Anne snorted with laughter at the thought of TOM as the Captain of the Enterprise.

  >>My name isn’t—<<<br />
  ADAM, watch Star Trek, The Next Generation. You might as well see it.

  Bethany Anne closed the closet door and stepped into the Etheric, blinking out into the corridor in front of John. “I heard you were looking for me?” she asked.

  John had gotten used to her appearing out of the Etheric. He didn’t even stop walking as she appeared, “New shoes?”

  “You noticed?” Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow at him.

  “No, but with you, it’s a good guess.” He grinned at her, “Also, I saw the order for … how many full shipping containers was it?”

  “Don’t concern yourself with details,” Bethany Anne said loftily.

  “And how are you planning to keep tracking devices out of there? You do know your shoe fetish -” John smirked at her.

  “It is not a fetish!” Bethany Anne replied, narrowing her eyes.

  “ - is common knowledge now.” John didn’t even pause for the interruption. “Seven governments have bugs in the system of every couture house to find out when you buy shoes.”

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow, “Seven? I thought it was six.” She queried him.

  John said. “Apparently, Luxembourg thinks they’re a big player now. I don’t know what they think they’re going to do. I’m pretty sure their army is two policemen
and a border agent. But … there are the other six, and they all know about the shoes now.”

  She chewed her lip. “I’ll figure that issue out at some point. Maybe Bobcat will have some ideas.”

  “You’d drag him away from his beer? Good luck.” John snickered.

  “You make a good point.” She answered. “Anyway, I needed some retail therapy after the incident in Spain.”

  Two minor government officials had stirred up anti-TQB sentiment and had induced a mob to attack one of the businesses Bethany Anne owned. The building had been burned to the ground, and someone had spray painted “TAKE DOWN THE BITCH” on the street in front of it. ADAM had sent out a warning in time for the building to be evacuated. It was cleared before the mob arrived, but it had been close. Spain’s government had made noises about punishing the officials but was facing pressure from the UN to let them go.