Death Defied: Age of Expansion - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Valerie’s Elites Book 2) Read online

  CONTENTS

  LMBPN Publishing

  Dedication

  Legal

  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

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Author Notes - Justin Sloan

  Author Notes - PT Hylton

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Other Books by Justin Sloan

  Other Books by PT Hylton

  Other Books by Michael Anderle

  Michael Anderle Social

  DEATH DEFIED

  Valerie’s Elites Book Two

  By Justin Sloan, PT Hylton and Michael Anderle

  A part of

  The Kurtherian Gambit Universe

  Written and Created

  by Michael Anderle

  DEDICATION

  To Ugulay, Verona and Brendan Sloan

  -Justin

  To Kim

  -P.T.

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  - Michael

  DEATH DEFIED

  Team Includes

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

  Keith Verret

  John Ashmore

  Larry Omans

  Joshua Ahles

  Paul Westman

  Erik Cushman

  Joshua Ahles

  Mike Pendergrass

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Peter Manis

  If we missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  Lynne Stiegler

  DEATH DEFIED (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 Justin Sloan, PT Hylton, Michael T. Anderle and Craig Martelle

  Cover by Andrew Dobell, www.creativeedgestudios.co.uk

  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, December 2017

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2015 - 2017 by Michael T. Anderle.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Planet Tol

  Days spent on Tol were nothing like back on Earth, and it wasn’t only because Valerie had just helped institute a successful coup. While on Earth she had hidden in the shadows, forced to try and keep too many humans from knowing about Weres and vampires—of which she was the latter.

  Up here though? The Skulla and Norrul treated her like some big hero. She tried to push the credit to Kalan, where much of it was due, but she was still the liberator in their eyes. She would have much preferred to kick the bad guy’s ass and let someone else stick around to take the glory.

  It wasn’t only a matter of them not listening to her. There was the issue that, until Valerie had come along, the Norrul had been slaves to the Skulla. Now this whole system was being reworked. Sslake had been set up as the new leader, and it was up to him to put together the pieces of this metaphorical vase she’d broken.

  Of course, in the process of breaking it, she’d made it ten times better than it had been. No more slaves, no more people having to fight for their right to live here or to rise in society.

  Valerie wasn’t trying to influence the new system. If Sslake needed them, he would commission the job through the Etheric Federation and the Bad Company. More specifically, Colonel Terry Henry Walton.

  At the moment, all she wanted was to find something to eat that wasn’t the local variation of flowers or rantu, their version of panther. It was their specialty, but after having been friends with a werepuma for the year or so before leaving Earth she couldn’t see herself eating any animal that even remotely resembled a cat.

  “Maybe the Norrul have a better diet?” Garcia offered, as he and Robin walked with Valerie through the bazaar. They made their way toward the Norrul tables, not happy to see that, even though they weren’t slaves any more, their sales tables were set up in the back and with very little room.

  Too bad Kalan and Bob had to take off so soon. She had a feeling Kalan’s tastes were much more in line with her own, and he probably knew where to look.

  A shot was fired and everyone ducked—everyone except Valerie, who turned and scanned the crowd looking for the shooter. She didn’t have to look hard, because there was one Pallicon who stood at least a head above all of the Skulla who had dived for cover. His pistol was aimed right at Valerie, though he’d clearly missed.

  “Wandrei scum!” he shouted, about to shoot again, when an enhanced Skulla tackled him, two more joining a moment later.

  “Looks like our friends haven’t abandoned us,” Robin said with a raised eyebrow. She nudged Valerie and nodded to the far curtain of the bazaar, where Warlord Palnik stood watching, arms crossed. Several more of those large-armed Skulla stood by as his bodyguard.

  Despite everything that had changed there were still classes here, and Palnik was still one of those at the top. If not for Sslake, in fact, he might be at the top. Before it had been Warlord Charbon, who Valerie had taken out as part of her mission, and the top warlord who had called himself the Bandian, after a race of aliens who, it turned out, Kalan actually belonged to.

  “What’s he doing here?” Valerie wondered aloud.

  “Looking for trouble,” Garcia replied. “Maybe I’ll bring him some.”

  Valerie held out a hand, then used it to wave to the warlord. In response, all she received was a scowl.

  “To be fair, you changing the system essentially stripped him of any real power,” Robin pointed out. “You can see why he would be annoyed.”

  “And we saved lives when we did so.” Valerie started walking toward him, motioning the others to follow and simply ignoring the shooter. “I’d say he should either start living in the system or get out of it. Pretty black and white, if you ask me.”

  Palnik waved his guards off at Valerie’s approach and walked over to meet her half way.

  “I trust you’re finding a way to entertain yourself?” Valerie asked, referring to the fact that the fighting arena was closed now.<
br />
  He sneered, then turned that into a frown. “Sslake’s looking for you, asked me to find you. Looks like I get to be his personal errand boy.”

  “You must love that,” Garcia said with a chuckle.

  “Maybe I break your legs and we see who’s laughing?”

  Garcia took a step toward Palnik, and to the warlord’s surprise his guards didn’t step in to do a damn thing. It hit Valerie that it was likely because of the legends surrounding her and her team. Nobody wanted to mess with them, not after what had happened in the fighting arena and how they had taken down the false Bandian at his strange base in the jungle.

  “You were saying?” Garcia asked, towering over the warlord.

  Behind them, the other Skulla had taken care of the shooter and were now dragging him out of the tent, unconscious and with a line of blood dripping from his nose.

  Palnik shook his head and turned to lead the way.

  “He’s not at his headquarters?” Robin asked.

  “Actually, he’s had a team going over the Bandian’s base since you took it out, and thinks he found something quite intriguing. He asked for you all specifically, said it might be a job for you and your team.”

  Suddenly the lights went out completely and an explosion went off, followed by a loud and carrying female voice that said, “It has come to our attention that new leadership has taken over on Tor, and you have yet to pay tribute to your gods. We require blood. We are taking hostages. If you haven’t fulfilled our demand by the fourth hour, one will die every hour after that until we have the Bandian. Send him, and be quick.”

  With that, the lights returned to normal and only far-off screams could be heard.

  Valerie took a split-second to process this, then ran outside, leaping over tables and shoving locals aside until she was past the tents and could see that the threat was real.

  Hovering over the city was a massive space ship with drones pulling back into it—and the drones were carrying screaming hostages.

  Half a dozen fighters rose from the city, but as they moved for the ship above their engines seemed to die and they went careening back down, creating new explosions and subsequent fires.

  “Well, we’re off to a great start,” Robin said, running a hand through her hair.

  Valerie turned to the nearest Skulla. “Who are they?”

  He shook his head, eyes never leaving the sky.

  “Looks like that might be a question for Sslake,” Garcia stated.

  “Hell, at least they only want the Bandian.” Robin shrugged. “No-brainer—give him up.”

  “We can’t go around handing out prisoners to whatever alien group comes along making demands like this.” Valerie stared at the fires, almost wishing she didn’t always have to be in these situations, but knowing she was the most qualified for it.

  “Don’t forget,” Garcia cut in, “it’s not exactly we, is it? Not like back home. Here we’re the mercenaries, not the government.”

  He had a point.

  “Looks like we better pay our friend Sslake a little visit then,” Valerie said. “But first, let’s make sure nobody’s hurt over there.”

  They all took off, running for the fires and anyone who needed their assistance. It bothered her that she wasn’t going to have the final say here, but if she was going to play her role in Bad Company she had to do it by the book. Although, the way she figured it, since there wasn’t technically a book yet she had some wiggle room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Planet Coybon

  Kalan had been on the planet Coybon for three days before he found the damn temple.

  And once he did, he didn’t much like the looks of it. To think he’d gone through all that trouble for this old stone building!

  Bob had spent most of the three days at local drinking establishments, supposedly trying to gather Intel. He came back to the ship every night smelling strongly of alcohol and the strange leaves they smoked on this planet.

  Wearl had disappeared for up to a day at a time. She was secretive about it, refusing to reveal even to Bob what she was up to.

  On the third day, Bob surprised Kalan by coming through with a lead. A male claimed to have seen a Grayhewn near the Skulla temple south of the city. It had been many years ago, but he said he remembered it vividly, and just as importantly, he agreed to lead them there.

  Kalan was following up on the fourth record from his father’s files. Each record contained the suspected location of a Grayhewn, as the Pallicon called them, or a Bandian, as they called themselves. Most of the records were nothing more than vague rumors, and they’d already spent nearly a month chasing down three dead-end leads.

  This one was different in that Kalan’s father had actually had an eyewitness, although as they learned when they got to Coybon, that eyewitness happened to be dead. Still, they took it as another bump in the road.

  But Bob’s lead had come through for them.

  So it was they found themselves standing in the middle of a forest gazing down at a few stone spires jutting skyward above a thickly wooded valley.

  Bob scratched his head. “Are we sure this is the place?”

  Kalan gave him a look. “Are you serious? We got this intel from your lead.”

  “Yeah, I know, but the guy seems shady. I have a weird feeling we’re maybe, I don’t know, grasping at straws.” He paused for a moment, listening. “What’s straw? Seriously, Wearl, you don’t know what straw is? It’s like hay. Dried long grass. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a saying.”

  They marched through the thick trees, their rust-orange trunks twisting upward at impossible angles, and were halfway down the steep trail when they spotted the temple below. It was a large squat building whose stone walls were the same color as the trunks of the strange trees.

  Before long they found a narrow stone path that quickly broadened as it approached the temple. It widened enough that ten men could’ve walked side-by-side.

  Bob glanced nervously toward Kalan. “Are we sure this is a good idea? The Skulla religion is all about fighting, right?”

  “Not all about fighting,” Kalan said with a smile. “Like seventy percent maybe. Honestly, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

  They reached the bottom of a long staircase leading up to the door of the temple. Each step was only a few inches high, which made the staircase much longer than it needed to be. A staircase for a shorter species, Kalan mused.

  When they reached the top, he put his hands on his hips and stared at the stone wall in front of them. “Huh.”

  The stonewall was thirty feet high, ran the entire length of the building, and appeared to be seamless. Impossibly, it looked as if it had been made from one solid piece of stone.

  “Not big fans of doors, are they?” Bob muttered.

  “Shut up, I’m thinking.” Kalan slowly walked forward, his hand outstretched toward the stone wall in front of him. “Stick close behind me, you two. If I step into some sort of deathtrap, grab my shirt or something before I fall.”

  Bob sighed. “Wearl says she’d never let that happen to someone as handsome, kindhearted, and muscular as you.”

  At first Bob had refused to pass along Wearl’s flirty messages. She’d coerced him into doing it with threats of bodily harm, and now, after three weeks together as a team, he’d pretty much resigned himself to playing weird messenger boy.

  Kalan didn’t know what to think of the messages. For all he knew it could be the strange Shimmer sense of humor coming through, or she could actually have the hots for him. One thing he did know was that he wasn’t interested. His standards weren't sky-high, but he did prefer his girlfriends to be visible and able to communicate to him without Bob whispering in his ear. That would make for a truly awkward date.

  Kalan extended his index finger until it was only an inch or so from the stone wall and leaned a bit closer, his finger almost brushing the orange stone. Suddenly the wall was gone, and he saw a long corridor leading away from the empty spot where th
e wall had been up until a moment ago.

  Whether the wall had been some sort of hologram or if it’d actually moved that quickly, Kalan had no idea. He didn’t have long to think about it before he noticed an especially short Skulla in a flowing orange robe standing at the end of the dim hallway.

  “Come! All are welcome.”

  Kalan and Bob exchanged a surprised glance. They been ready for hostility, aggressive questioning, or even a fight, but the one thing they had never expected was hospitality.

  “Thank you,” he said simply. “I am Kalan Grayhewn, and my colleagues and I are here to seek your help.”

  “Fine, fine. That’ll do. We’re happy to help.”

  Kalan took a deep breath and figured he had nothing to lose. This was why they’d come into this strange valley forest, after all. They’d found the temple, and he was one step closer to either another dead-end or to finding one of his kinfolk.

  He walked forward with long but slow strides, scanning the walls and the floors as casually as he could for any sort of traps.

  The Skulla priest waited, his hands pressed together, the arms of the robe drooping nearly to his knees. “As I said, all are welcome…all who are willing to pay the price of entry.”

  Kalan stopped walking. “Did you say ‘price?’ I think you might have the wrong idea here. I have a couple questions. I don’t want to—"

  The Skulla priest waved his hand as if dismissing a foolish notion. “It makes no difference. You are here, and that means we will get our payment. As will you.”’

  Even though the words were menacing, the priest spoke them in such a friendly and welcoming tone that Kalan began second-guessing himself. Was he reading too much into this?

  “Kalan?” Bob called in a soft but insistent voice.

  Kalan glanced back and did a double-take. The stone wall was back, and now they were trapped inside. He was more than a little tempted to take a run at the thing and find out once and for all if it was a hologram, but instead he turned towards the priest.