Bai tried to scream, but all he felt was the pain.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TQB Base, Australian Outback
There were twelve new people in ADAM’s war room. All of them, hackers from his efforts on the dark web, had been brought in by different individuals in the last forty-eight hours.
Yuko had been the first, and after being introduced to Frank and their rooms, such as they were, they were issued small watches that connected with headphones. Each person could speak with ADAM directly. It was a weird sensation to know that she was having a conversation with ADAM while simultaneously, he might be having a conversation with one of the tonic twins. She named them that because one was named Gin and the other Amber.
Yuko needed some sort of mental trigger to remember the names as best she could. Her life had not prepared her for the close connection of everyone here. Her Japanese upbringing was a little unique amongst the group. Seven of the twelve were Americans, three from Europe, one from Australia, plus herself, so far.
Yuko smiled at the rest as a few noticed her come in and waved. It was a fun group, and this morning was going to be the first conference they all had with ADAM as a team.
The room had four sets of pods, each having four desks. From the top, they resembled clovers. Each desk was circular, with a small opening for their chairs to fit in. It allowed them to have a cubby hole, something that each of them was comfortable with. Most of them had been fairly alone before coming here.
All working with ADAM, and Bethany Anne, Frank, Cheryl Lynn, and Patricia. She had met Bethany Anne’s father, Peter and a few others.
It had taken her over a day to come to accept Akio wasn’t going to suddenly decide he liked girls.
Sigh…
She smiled to herself as she pulled out her chair and stepped into her round cubicle. The room itself was three containers wide and one long, so about nine-hundred square feet of space. There were screens on all walls, and they had some cool projection equipment you could use for meetings, viewing stuff jointly, even using them as whiteboards by writing on the wall.
She sat down and unplugged her headphones from her wrist, and plugged them into her keyboard. She had two screens set up so that on the left she was in command line mode in Linux, and on the right, she had browsers to look up information she might need to support her hacking efforts. Often, with ADAM getting involved, what would have taken her a couple of hours, routinely took her just five minutes because he could find the information so much faster. If he had a body, she might have been wanting to get more serious with him.
As it was, she even felt comfortable enough one time to joke that she only wanted him for his mind.
He actually laughed. She wasn’t sure if ADAM understood the joke or he knew it was a joke and had figured out how to play human enough to simulate getting the joke. She had been too embarrassed after making the joke to ask him which it was.
“Welcome Yuko and good morning,” ADAM spoke in her ear.
“Good morning, ADAM,” she replied, reviewing the programs she had run last night. “Nothing new on these, huh?”
“No, I would have let you know this morning when you woke up.”
“Thank you, I don’t suppose you make coffee, do you?” She asked, typing on her queries.
“Why yes, I can have coffee brought to you,”
Surprised after re-running his answer in her mind she said, “Oh, no thank you! I meant that as a comment related to, well, uh never mind.”
“Is this where I am supposed to agree that I have no idea what you intended to say?”
Yuko sat back in her chair, “I suppose you do know, don’t you?”
“I have calculated to approximately a seventy-eight percent probability it had to do with figuring out if I was a perfect male.”
“How do you do that?”
“Calculate the percentages?”
“Yes.”
“I can tell from the vocal recording that you are embarrassed. From our previous conversations, you are emotionally inhibited during relationship discussions, and since we were discussing males, coffee and the morning, I have enough literature understanding to figure out you were probably thinking of a man that had slept over.”
By the end of his explanation, Yuko had her face covered by her hands, “Can I crawl back to Japan now?” she asked him.
“No, it would be impossible due to the Arafura Sea,” he answered.
Yuko smiled as she pulled her hands away from her face. With one small explanatory sentence, ADAM had placed her back on an even keel. It was the little things he would say, something that hinted at the massive amount of A.I. behind his avatar that allowed her to feel like he was a safe companion.
Much safer than a flesh and blood man.
“How much time before we start?” she asked as she reviewed the hacking jobs she had left running.
“We are starting now,” he replied. “One second.”
Yuko waited, not realizing that ADAM’s Arafura Sea comment was calculated to place her back into a normal emotional state. He didn’t want to hurt this woman. He tried not to run analysis on why he decided to make that a reality.
Because going down that analysis path might lie madness.
—
ADAM’s voice was heard in all of their headphones, “Thank you all for joining me here in Australia. From Bethany Anne and me, you are all personnel we need. A larger group that can work together on our cyber-response efforts, and help me learn in the process.”
The twelve in his group were all listening through their headphones. Some wore headphones that plugged into their ears, others had over their head designs. ADAM’s group had a budget, and ADAM had produced the industrial psychology reports necessary to demonstrate how providing the best tools suited for each individual would provide TQB with the most effective solutions and highest effectiveness levels.
Plus, ADAM was being tested with a significantly more variable and constant amount of human interactions and he found it a data input rich environment. Bethany Anne told him that he was having fun. Once he understood the concept as it applied to him, he had to agree.
TQB Base, Australian Outback
“We have launch!” E.I. Ares informed the group.
Lance spoke up, “Team Alpha, get your asses in gear. We just registered two missiles inbound!” He switched off his mic, “Ares, get those Pods out of there as fast as possible, ETA?”
“Four seconds…”
“Two seconds…”
The wait, Peter would recall later, felt like an hour as time seemed to stop.
Then, the ground shook perceptibly, but nothing happened inside. To Peter’s ears, it sounded like they heard an explosion from the inside of the fireball itself, he covered his ears quickly.
“No more missiles, all Pods safely away,” Ares told them.
“Somebody open the damned door.” Lance said aloud, “Before my daughter comes here and rips it off.”
Todd hot-footed it over to the bunkers door and turned the crank and started pushing it open when it was yanked from his hand, and he stared at his Queen. He swallowed as she stared back at him. He could see there was intelligence behind the red eyes, but the face practically radiated violence. He stepped to the side as she nodded to him, but didn’t speak to him.
“Tell me!” she said to her father, her voice sounding like a command from a mythological god, heavy with age and saturated with the promise of untold pain and death to come.
“The base is fine,” Lance said, keeping his hands in his pockets, “Two missiles.”
“Those two you told me the team went to get?” The red eyes never blinking, the voice still causing Todd’s blood to run cold.
“On Pods and knocked out. Arriving back here as soon as it is clear, probably five minutes,”
“I’ll see them outside,” she said and turned, glancing at Peter, who nodded his head in understanding to a mental command sent his way.
“I’d hate to be
those two fucks,” Todd commented after Bethany Anne was gone.
“No, I’d hate to be whoever sent them,” Lance replied. “I suspect we will find out it is China, and that is going to be bad. Ares, keep all armament and defenses online. Why did you not try to shoot those missiles down?”
“There was a point two percent chance of variance that a Pod could be hit.” the E.I. replied.
“Well, remind me tomorrow to speak to Adam about the parameters regarding defensive armament,” Lance said and then turned towards the door himself, “I’m heading up top.”
“Are you concerned about her?” Peter asked as he stepped up to walk with Lance.
Lance turned to look at the Guardian leader as they walked out of the Ops Center. “Her? Hell no, I want to see what happens and if she is thinking of letting them live, I’ll vote for the death penalty. I’ve had about as much of this bullshit as I ever care to take,” he said, and stepped through the hatch opening.
Peter nodded his head in agreement and called over his shoulder, “Todd, tell the Guardians to prepare, the Queen has just told us we are going to war.”
Lance looked back at the younger man in surprise and Peter tapped his head, “Got it direct, I don’t think she wanted to trust speaking.
Lance’s lips went tight as the two of them continued walking towards the exit, “Well, now they're fucked for sure,”
QBS Battleship - Manufacturing Facility 01 - Asteroid Fields
PO2 Robin Thomas reviewed the most recent Etheric power module he had to work with in the backup power room. They had a hundred and two in this room alone when the alarms started shrieking.
“This is not a drill, this is not a drill. This ship is hereby commanded to finish all final preparations and move towards earth. The Australian base has been attacked. Repeat, The Australian base has been attacked. This ship is commanded by Bethany Anne to head towards Earth as soon as safely possible, The Australian base has been attacked.”
PO2 Robin Thomas, sent home from the sandpit a quadriplegic when an IED hit his protection detail, started moving fast, sure and in a rhythm. He thought he was done as a man until one fateful night when there was a knock on his door, and an angel was standing there when he finally opened it.
He had found out her name was Gabrielle and the man with her was Lance Reynolds. Together, they offered him a chance to fight again, this time for the world.
He listened, he understood his options, and he agreed. It didn’t matter what he did, but he was willing. Then, he spent a week on the QBS Consanesco and walked off of it a whole man. Up top, walking on two legs again. He had been informed that he left the ship a free man, owing the company nothing for healing him due to previous services rendered.
His future was his own.
The hell with that, he told them. He would have crawled to help these people with no working arms and legs, however possible. Now that he had them? Well, he would do whatever he could for them with arms and legs.
Right now, his duty was preparing this ship to go to war, and he slammed the last Etheric Module in place and tightened it down, making sure the connections were solid.
He was usually capable of getting ten checked out in an hour. He looked at the twenty-four he had to accomplish.
He would just have to do better than that.
—
“Bobcat, there is an urgent command from Bethany Anne,” Samantha told him.
“Play it,” he looked up from the table where he was working on the details for the final outfitting.
He could see she was walking through the Australian Base, her eyes were fiery red, probably the most he had ever noticed.
She was beyond pissed.
Her voice was different, angry, determined and full of fury, “Bobcat, button the ship up and bring it to me. The Australian base has been attacked. As soon as safely possible, but I don’t want a second wasted beyond that, Bethany Anne out.”
Her visage faded.
He considered what needed to happen, “Samantha, send this out to ship, Alarm level three, this is what I want you to say.”
—
Bandile Annane, the lead of the slag manufacturing received an urgent message from Bobcat. He put a hand out to Jeo who was speaking to him who also looked down to his own tablet when it beeped to read Bobcat’s message to him.
The two men’s eyes met, and their faces were grim.
“I’ve got some men to update,” Bandile told Jeo.
Jeo replied, “You get me the materials, I’ll make sure they have the armament.”
Bandile put his fist out, “Jeo, you run the machines, we will keep them supplied.”
Jeo bumped Bandile’s fist, and they both walked out of the meeting room, heading in separate directions.
—
Where there had been about twenty Pod landings an hour, now the Pod Deck was doing over seventy-five, as more and more of those who had been lodging at the hotel grabbed their go bags and got on the next ride out to the big ship.
William and Marcus arrived at Bobcat’s office and walked in at the same time.
“Time to kick the tires and light the fires?” William asked as the two of them sat down at the table with Bobcat.
“Yes.” Bobcat said, “Samantha, play Bethany Anne’s message.”
The two men watched it as Bobcat made another note on his tablet to confirm an order.
“She seems a little pissed,” Marcus said.
“I don’t recall seeing her so…” William tried to find the right word.
“Red?” Marcus supplied.
“Uh, kinda,” William agreed, “That voice is new, isn’t it?”
Bobcat shook his head, “Not so much, John mentions that when she is infuriated about something that she feels strongly about in her core, it tends to show up in her voice and face.”
“I’d say someone hit a pretty raw nerve.” William agreed.
“They went after the base with some sort of bunker buster missiles or some such,” Bobcat said, “One of the teams caught two merc’s employed by person’s unknown to set up the rockets, make sure nothing seemed amiss and fire them off. Apparently, since the team didn’t respond with a cancel, the missiles got fired off without a call in.”
“What happened to the merc’s?” Marcus asked.
Bobcat looked to him, “Do you really want to know? Cause I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty.”
“No, I guess not,” Marcus admitted.
“You know that question I had about Bethany Anne going soft?” William asked.
“Yeah?” Bobcat admitted after thinking a second, “I remember.”
“I take that shit back,” William told him. There was a pause before William asked, “How do you think Dan knew before?”
“He’s been fighting for thirty years, hell he has ADAM and Lance down there. I’m sure it was only a matter of time, myself, but my guess is that they haven’t told us everything they are dealing with, just like we don’t update them with every challenge we have.”
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