“We do have a manual override, but honestly, there is something about getting hooked in this way that rocks doing it this way. I have to admit, it’s cool as shit.” Jeo sat down next to Bobcat and clicked his shoes into the system.
The screen came up with Samantha in the upper left-hand corner, “Hello, Jeo,” she said.
“Hello, Sam. Are there any pressing issues with my regular duties at this time?”
“None, Jeo.”
“Very good, how are we progressing on this ship?” Jeo asked.
“We are twelve hours and thirty-two minutes ahead of schedule. The next containers of ore have been distributed in our top three operational areas, and we had to skip India and move to Peru. Our last distribution to India has caused some government review,” she told him.
Bobcat watched as Jeo leaned towards the screen and he noticed little movements with his feet as he touched the screen, quickly compiling windows from different screens into one overview. “Oh, that stupid-ass Kina dropped half his load in three days. Mark that company and any subsidiaries as undependable,” Jeo told her.
“Understood. That means we are now beneath our minimum one-hundred companies to work with within India.” Samantha responded.
“That’s fine. Touch base with Frank and Barb and see if they can do the voodoo with ADAM to vet some more.” Jeo told her.
“I am sending that request now,” she responded.
Jeo turned to look at Bobcat, who was watching the two of them work, “So, any thoughts on the weaponry?” Jeo asked Bobcat.
“Yes, we have the Rail-Gun technology which we have super-sized as you know. The tests we’ve run against asteroids without and with protection both went well enough. Without protection, it was like shooting limestone with a nail gun except for the densest materials. William is working to deal with that right now. On the Asteroids with the gravitic shield, it can be a bitch at times. We have a team playing defense trying to save the asteroids and they are getting smarter and smarter.”
“That’s good, right?” Jeo asked, “I mean, if I’m inside the ship, I want someone really good tweaking the shields to protect me.”
“Yes, but that means that shooting the other guys can be difficult, as well. So, we are creating new projectiles, including organic and organic with chemical payloads.”
“Why, are you trying to eat into their ship?” Jeo asked, “Because that is going to take forever.”
“Normally, yes.” Bobcat responded, “But we noticed when some dipshit sent out some trash because,” Bobcat put up his fingers in air quotes, “‘try anything’, that something inside it sizzled the shield a little. Now, the theory is if we can hide the metal, that it might weaken the shield enough to allow the penetrators a little more kinetic energy as they slam home.”
“Death by a thousand cuts?” Jeo asked and then rolled his eyes as he saw Bobcats eyes light up and a huge smile play on his face.
“Well,” Bobcat smiled to him, “funny you should ask that.” He commented as he reached to put his hand on the screen in front of him, “Let me show you something.”
TQB Base - Australia
“This had better be damned important Barnabas,” Bethany Anne grouched as they walked together over the Australian landscape in the dark.
“Yes, it is Bethany Anne.” He agreed, “I think it might fulfill a couple of needs. One in me that Stephen so helpfully pointed out, and one for you,” he finished.
“What, do I get to kill everyone?” She looked over to him, a patently false look of glee on her face.
Barnabas looked at her face and just shook his head back and forth, “Nice try, but Stephen pointed out something to me. I am thinking your effort to ‘kill everyone’ is more of a ploy than a real desire.”
“I’m going to neuter that son-of-a-bitch.” Bethany Anne groused, “That was the only fun I was having when dealing with you.”
“He meant well, will that help?” Barnabas asked, watching her face for any tell that she wasn’t telling him the truth. He had tried previously to insinuate himself into her thoughts, and she not only slapped him mentally, but she also hit him physically and told him ‘never to try that shit again'!
The physical slap had shocked him more than the mental one because no one had so casually offered him bodily harm in the past.
He had finally realized it was rude. Once that realization was made and he decided that an apology was apt, one was offered and he had never tried to read her again.
Bethany Anne answered his question, “Well, it depends on why I’m out in the middle of the Australian Outback with a male vampire who is holding a cooler of blood in his hands. Is that supposed to be for me?” she asked him.
“No,” Barnabas said and stepped a few feet away to put the cooler on a boulder that was waist high, “I’m told that I’m going to need it,” he admitted.
“Oh?” Bethany Anne asked, realizing that this was going to be some sort of challenge, and her anger screamed to be let loose, to be allowed to be truly free.
And the main pain-in-the-ass in her life right then was going to allow himself to be her target. “Sure hope you have enough blood in there, because I can’t say I’m too willing to let you drink from me,” she said.
Barnabas smiled, “Well, I can understand that attitude.” He turned to lean against the rock with the cooler next to him. “I have a story I need to share, and then if you are willing, I have a favor to ask.”
Bethany Anne considered his request, his casual stance and how she trusted Stephen. Nodding, she indicated for him to continue.
This ought to be interesting, she thought.
Meeting room, Washington D.C. - USA
The President nodded to his Secret Service detail as he stepped in, knowing that they had already confirmed the room’s security. “George,” he said as he sat down. The door clicked shut behind him.
“Mr. President,” General George Thourbourah replied.
“So, give me the scoop. What do we know and what are our options?”
“Well, sir, this time, we have ‘stepped in it’.” Gen Thourbourah admitted, making an unhappy face as he started to talk, “It seems that while we suspect that Bethany Anne is a United States citizen, she has a legitimate birth certificate, papers, and various details from Romania. Furthermore, the little background info we have can be verified, but anything deeper and people start clamming up. Something is fishy, and it will take our people longer to confirm the validity of our suspicions.”
“Well, if we are right, what does it buy us?” the President asked.
“It will explain why Lance Reynolds is working with the company. If his dead daughter came back to life,” the President snorted. “Ok, maybe resurfaced as this Bethany Anne, then we have something. But she is considerably changed, so she went through a lot of rework. Whatever was done, we can’t duplicate it, and she is certainly not the same physical woman.”
“I think I could tell that from the side-by-side pictures we have,” the President added.
“Ok, that’s fair,” George continued, “And I know the genetics don’t match, but the facial is at least a sixty-one percent match and her ability to get Lance Reynolds to quit…”
The President interrupted, “Which is your biggest hang-up I would say. You don’t like how he left and jumped to this group so quickly when no one knew who they were.”
“Well, not only that, but we have been able to track down the wife of Bethany Anne’s last boss. We were only able to pry a little information before she clammed up tight on us. We believe she admitted she met Bethany Anne at her husband's funeral site. Now, she lives close to the new Bethany Anne in Florida.”
“Happenstance?” The President asked, “Coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in too many of those, Mr. President,” George stated. “I try to leave that out of my equations.”
“I’m going to ask, George.” The President said, “We are talking about the head of a thousand plus companies and holdin
g technology that could seriously hurt us. No reason to make an enemy here, not with someone gunning for them. Enemy of my enemy and all that.” George nodded to him, “So, even if this is the same lady who has been miraculously healed and for some ungodly reason been put in place over all of these companies for reasons that we cannot fathom, so what?”
“Well, how did she get healed? Why is she so focused on outer space? Did she get healing from alien technology, did she…”
“Hold!” The President put up a hand. “Are you about to tell me something about alien technology that I can sink my teeth into?” he asked.
George paused and thought for a moment, “Sir, assume that I look at all legitimate avenues where I need to question suspicious possibilities, and only legitimate avenues.” The General looked carefully at the President as he stressed only. “So, that would answer a multitude of questions, but it opens a can full of worms or Pandora’s box, take your pick.”
“How so?”
“Assuming this hypothetical question about alien technology in use by TQB comes up, and assuming another hypothetical idea that a few governments around the world might have technology from off world squirreled away as well. How is it that TQB knows how to use it, and these governments don’t?”
The President’s eyes narrowed as he thought about the question, “Yes, that is a can full of worms, isn’t it? You aren’t supposed to make me feel worse when I talk to you, George.”
“Sir, you ask me for the truth; sometimes the truth is a bitch,” George replied.
TQB Base - Australia
Barnabas released a long breath, “The story goes back a long time ago, centuries in fact. At one time I loved a woman dearly, and she persuaded me to try and change her to a vampire over my objections. I thought I would have to slay her if she failed. Fortunately, she survived.” He paused, thinking back to his love, “Her name was Catherine. She had blue eyes and the darkest black hair you might have ever seen. I liked to say she was five-foot-nothing tall when I describe her now, but she was probably a little less. I found her fighting off two men who had happened upon her campfire way off the road. I could hear the little vixen fighting them a league away and more.”
He looked up to Bethany Anne, “I reached them when one tried to attack her from her right while another came around the fire from her other side and she dashed towards the fire and jumped it, coming straight at me. I slipped behind a tree to watch her dash past close enough to reach out and touch her. She smelled…” Barnabas lost focus for a moment as he inhaled in the night, reliving the memory, “Exquisite.”
He focused back to Bethany Anne, “I mean to say she smelled fresh, alive! Not horrid and depressed. Even then, I could easily tell a person’s mental state. The two men came after her, with lust in their minds and planning her death soon after.”
His face became angry, his eyes drawing down, his mouth tightening, “They followed her and would pass right next to me. I stepped out and grabbed the first with my right hand, stepping towards the second one and grabbed him with my left. I pulped the man's neck in my right hand with nails that had grown into daggers, and I pulled the second towards me to suck his life from his neck. He screamed for a few moments as loud as he could, piercing the night. Her horse was tied up, and I could hear it desperately trying to get away, pulling on the rope. It settled down as I finished the second man and silence spread throughout the forest night again.”
Barnabas relaxed his face, “I pulled their two bodies towards the campsite and found a place off to the left to throw them, away from the horse. I pulled her stuff together and was packing her horse when I could sense her watching me through the trees. I turned over my shoulder to tell her I would pull the horse about fifty yards away and stake it so that she could retrieve her stuff. It would be available in a few moments for her to pick up and continue on her way.”
Barnabas turned to capture Bethany Anne’s eyes in his own gaze, “She came to me out of the forest, walking brazenly and told me ‘that wouldn’t be necessary’. If she would trust me not to be hiding in the bushes once I finished with her horse, well she could damn well trust me right then.”
Barnabas paused for a few moments, lost in thought.
“What happened then?” Bethany Anne asked caught up in his story.
“She became my world.” Barnabas admitted, “She walked right up to me, pulled my face to the left and then to the right as she looked at me in the firelight and straight up asked me what kind of man I was. I was shocked that she would see all of the blood and not flinch,” he shrugged, “I wasn’t too gentle with the second man's neck. I might have had bad table manners.”
Despite herself and the solemnity of the story, Bethany Anne snorted and then covered her mouth, “Sorry.”
Barnabas grinned, “I was going for something besides doom and gloom, so I’m glad I was able to accomplish my task.” He shifted his stance crossing his arms, getting more comfortable leaning against the rock, “I told her I was the death in the night, and she might do well to saddle up and leave. She looked over to the area I had tossed her attackers and told me, ‘not my death, but death to those who attack me’, then turned back to me and pulled my head down to kiss me. She was like that, very irrational. Today, they would say that she wasn’t all there mentally. For me, that was the first time someone had accepted me so completely since I had been turned. We were together for six seasons, a year and a half, when she came down with a sickness. She begged me to change her so that we might stay together and I did.”
Barnabas’s voice was quiet now, reliving the life that he had tried so unsuccessfully to hide. “I knew that her chance of a successful turning was low, but I did it anyhow. She made it past Nosferatu, but only just past plus a little more. She didn’t have much strength, and her mental disabilities became more pronounced after the change. She was like a young child at times, trusting anything I would say without question. Three months later, I was out foraging for sustenance when she left our cave and was caught and killed. I found her right before the sun would break through the mountains and took her body home with me. I remember bringing her to the safety of the cave and finding out there was nothing to do for her but give her to the sun. Nothing else do I remember for six months and six days until I awoke on a river bank. I was tangled in a large tree limb that had gone down the river, the sun about to hit me soon, my skin felt on fire.”
Barnabas paused, then turned to Bethany Anne, “I found out some time later I had taken over three thousand souls and obliterated fifty-two families during my Time of Disgrace. The sun saved more people I'm sure. I chose to change to a life of seeking knowledge, and moved closer to Asia.” He stood up, and clapped his hands together, knocking off any dust, “So, that is my history. Death and destruction is what I did, so it is what I expected you to do.” He stepped away from the rock towards Bethany Anne, “I know that it could be your love was not as deep…” he started to say before he blacked out.
Barnabas awoke, his head droning for a moment or two before the buzzing slowed down and he could focus. Barnabas could see the stars in the Australian outback above him. He painfully turned his neck to see Bethany Anne standing near him, looking down at him in disgust.
He got up slowly, and then took off his monk's robe leaving him with a pair of pants and a wide sash where a belt might be on a typical guy. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what happened,” he admitted, a little groggy. “I was standing here, telling you my story and my worry that you were going to go into a rage. Then,” He looked up to Bethany Anne, standing four feet away, “I thought perhaps the reason that you didn’t have the rage was that you did not love Mich…”
Twenty-two minutes later, Barnabas’s eyes cracked open. His mouth was dry, his head on fire. He reached up and could feel an indentation slowing healing itself in his forehead.
“Here, you need this,” a female's voice said. Barnabas turned to look towards the sound while the stars above him swam in an ocean of darkness. A pouch lan
ded on his stomach and bounced off. He weakly grabbed for it and then more quickly searched for it when he smelled the blood.
He devoured the nourishment and laid his head back on the sand, waiting for the energy to flow and the healing to follow as he put his memories back together, “Bethany Anne?” he croaked.
“Yes?” the female answered.
“Did you hit me?” Barnabas asked, trying to piece together what was happening to him.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How?” he asked, slowly turning his head to regard the woman sitting on the rock next to the cooler of blood, now open.
“Hard,” she admitted, “you probably need another,” then tossed Barnabas another pouch. This one he caught and then struggled to sit up before slicing it open and drinking the contents.
“I understand that,” Barnabas said, touching his forehead, “But how?”
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