“Oh, seriously?” Eric asked, jerking his hand away from the cup.
Gabrielle took a couple of extra loud sniffs and nodded.
Twenty seconds later, Eric pulled into a stop-n-rob, and Gabrielle looked around, “Why are we stopping?”
Eric jumped out, ran inside and was back out before her voice finished echoing in the car. He slid something in a brown bag in the spot next to the styrofoam cup.
“And that is?” Gabrielle asked.
“Kissing Roto-Rooter,” Eric said. “Cinnamon schnapps.”
“What?” She looked over at him. “You’re covering the Posole with an e with alcohol?”
Eric smiled. “No, it’s mouthwash.”
Gabrielle’s shook her head and punched him in the shoulder. “Have your cake and eat it, too?
“No, I wouldn’t dream of that,” Eric replied, pulling into the Gants’ neighborhood. “I want my posole and your kisses, too.”
Gabrielle reached over and patted Eric on the arm where she had slugged him. “Well played, Mr. Escabar, well played.”
Nice muscles, Mr. Escabar, nice muscles indeed she thought.
—
“So, you haven’t driven in how long?” Scott asked Barnabas, the two of them driving to North Las Vegas.
“It wasn’t that long ago, in fact, I had to drive here in Las Vegas. Well, outside of it,” Barnabas answered.
“That’s right, you took care of the assassin, right?”
Barnabas snorted. “Not so much an assassin, as a gravedigger and trigger puller. He played on the stupidity of those sent to him, mostly. Once or twice he shot someone from a distance, I didn’t dig too deeply to understand the details.”
Scott shrugged. “Dead men tell no tales. Didn’t you use that last grave for him?”
“Karma,” Barnabas replied.
The two men settled into an easy quiet as Scott drove their car to a street one over from the McWhorters and slowed to a stop next to the curb. With ArchAngel watching the house, Scott decided they would run from one street over if anything looked amiss. That way, no one was going to see them casing the house.
And no one could possibly imagine how fast they could arrive.
CHAPTER EIGHT
QBS ArchAngel
“Did you say twenty-one fucking years?” Bethany Anne asked, her voice pitched an octave higher than normal. John and Peter, both stopped in their tracks, turning around when Bethany Anne had stopped walking.
Peter raised an eyebrow at John who shrugged in return. By the look on her face, it was obvious she had just been surprised by either ADAM or TOM. Peter gave John the sign language for ‘A’ and John shook his head, signed back the one for ‘T’.
The bet was on.
Bethany Anne’s eyes rolled. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Her shoulders dropped. “Yeah, I do remember that. Dammit.” She started walking and when she got even with the guys they kept pace. “When the fuck am I ever going to remember to stop being so impatient?”
This time, the comment seemed to be directed at herself, not one of her mental roomies.
“What happened, boss?” John asked.
She turned to look up at him. “You know how I demanded seven years of servitude from Captain Kael-ven T’chmon?”
“Yes,” John replied. “How did twenty-one years come into play?”
“How did you know it was twenty-one?” Bethany Anne’s eyes went distant for a fraction of a second. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?” Both men agreed she had. “Dammit.” She paused and sighed. “Seems that he agreed to seven solar years. My impatient little ass didn’t listen to TOM when he tried to explain that a solar year isn’t equivalent to our solar year. So, the translation stuff changed everything to the normal solar year which is…”
She got cut off as John jumped in. “Three of our years.” He snorted. “Leave your home, travel the galaxy, become the Earth’s first alien slave.” He chuckled. “Perhaps you should take a couple of lessons in negotiation.”
“Perhaps,” Bethany Anne agreed, “I should allow TOM to interrupt me and actually warn me next time.”
They reached the conference room doors, and before she walked in, Bethany Anne hissed, “Perhaps then I wouldn’t have alien tagalongs for the next twenty-one fucking years!”
—
The room was large and had two specially made seats, more like small couches without backs in which Captain Kael-ven T’chmon and Scientist Royleen were both sitting at the moment. Presently, Kiel was working with the Wechselbalg in another part of the ship. He got to learn about fighting Wechselbalg and how to take a beating for killing Coach.
Often.
Apparently, half the Yollin crew supported their captain and took his oath as their own. Now, she had half a damned ship’s worth of vassals she didn’t want.
Fuck my life, she thought.
On the other hand, Team BMW and most of those based in science and mechanical loved the new toys. Royleen, when he saw those who were waiting for repatriation were going to live, had decided to give his oath of obedience as well. It wasn’t a bad place, but it didn’t have much to do for a scientist that needed to continue learning, either.
The G’laxix Sphaea, or as she found out the translated name, the Dawn of a Golden Future, was being worked on right now by a large team. Some were going through and making sure they knew what was what. Others were seeing what technology they could acquire or use, and a third group was updating the ship for Bethany Anne.
When Bethany Anne got a good look at the sleek craft, she said, “That ship is beautiful.” She paused about three seconds before adding, “Mine!”
It wasn’t long before the scientific and research teams started working on the new ship. So far, they didn’t have a clone of ArchAngel to install into the craft, but Marcus and others were working on that as well. The biggest challenge had been locating a viable place to work on the spacecraft. This time, Stephen had come to the rescue. He still owned a number of warehouses, and those who worked in them still understood Stephen’s requirement for secrecy.
So, Team BMW got working on it. Pod shuttles raced from the asteroid belt with the best workers for the new technology. They filled three huge warehouses with the new ship under cover of night and a meteor shower.
The team dropped some very small meteors, they had the idea from the Chinese operation, and lit up the Mediterranean sky. A little subterfuge with the satellites by ADAM and the Queen’s people and one alien spaceship was safely hidden inside a warehouse guarded by some very, very deadly people.
The first attachments to the space ship were temporary gravitic plates that could be controlled by TOM or ADAM in case they needed to get the ship out of there.
Once they accomplished this first step, the orders were changed to have everyone stop attackers long enough to load into the ship, and the anti-gravs would take most away.
The remaining Wechselbalg were stationed to harass attackers until the ship was away, then they would disappear into the surrounding area and be picked up later.
Once the plates were in place, plans for the gravitic shields and the gun emplacements were drawn for installation.
Then everyone got down to some serious work.
—
“Gentleman, ladies, and aliens,” Bethany Anne said. “We need to discuss what it is going to take to move forward with our plans so that people can go through that gate.” She sat down at the head of the table. “Okay, talk to me, Michelle,” Bethany Anne said to Dr. Brown-Williams, in charge of the food production while accepting a Coke over her shoulder from Peter and twisting the top off.
Dr. Brown-Williams nodded. “We have more than enough production for plant and protein with the new growth containers based on the fully nutrient-focused setup. We have the right fish in the tanks to create the fertilizer that goes through the system to provide the plants which in turn cleans the water fed back into the fish tanks. With the corrected light systems, the fish are breeding now a
s well. We’ve added the crustaceans some of the teams have asked for.”
“Oh God!” Bobcat blurted out. “I’m going to get crab in outer space?”
Dr. Brown-Williams smiled, “Yes, Bobcat, you’re going to get crab in outer space. Perhaps not a large variety as we are dealing more with farming of shrimp, but crab is in the plans.”
“What about wheat, corn and such?” Bethany Anne asked.
“If you can provide the space, I can grow them. With the light amplification systems, we can now generate the right wavelength to feed the growth systems, and the gravity plates help tremendously. I’ve talked with Marcus about water, and he confirms that we can change the water D to H ratio on the comets we can grab, and use the water available from them for personal use and foodstuffs.”
“How much space do you need?” Bethany Anne pressed.
“I’m modifying the needs now based on growing fungi and yeasts and using the new 3D printing to make them palatable. We’ve stocked up like crazy on some items, such as spices. They just aren’t something we can produce effectively. I’ve got enough of the nutrients to fill a small moon.”
“Yeah, funny you should mention ‘moon,’” Bobcat interjected. Bethany Anne put up a hand, and he stopped, allowing Dr. Brown-Williams to continue.
“So, for the massive number of people you have asked me to consider, and with the systems we can use based on the latest Kurtherian technology for energy and gravity, we can stack food production like crazy. We’re going to have more of a problem with protein, except for the 3D-printed stuff.
“But, we can use the droppings from the livestock as fertilizer for the plants. I’m going to need many square kilometers of land with a pretty substantial height, to create hydroponics for growing our food. One kilometer gives me a million square meters to play with. Not including walkways, the higher we go I get another million cubic meters to play with per one and a half meters of height. For animals, I need to grow twenty pounds of greens for each pound of beef we raise.”
“Good thing Nathan isn’t here, or he would be crowing how the Wechselbalg will have to start eating more vegetables,” Bethany Anne said, with a few chuckles going around those who knew he was the only Wechselbalg who truly enjoyed eating vegetables.
“We can easily get over a hundred thousand plants a week from the hundred and twenty Freight Farms growtainers we have. Plus, with the enhancements we’ve been adding on, we expect to triple that output,” Dr. Brown-Williams added before summing up her findings. “You find me enough space to easily get into the containers, or duplicate the technology outside of the boxes and I can feed a million people.”
“People are going to need to start porking each other to get us to a million,” William grinned, but Dr. Brown-Williams only caught some of the comment.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t plan on pork in the mix, should I?” she asked, oblivious to the chuckles from Bobcat, William, and Marcus who kept his face straight while his friends smiled.
“No, maybe, although some will miss bacon once our stores are depleted,” Bethany Anne replied.
“Not necessarily true,” Dan interrupted. “I’ve spoken with those in charge of food for the Yollins, and they have a similar saying to our chicken.”
“What, everything tastes like chicken?” Bethany Anne asked.
Kael-ven T’chmon chuckled, the sound coming out more like a raspy clicking of mandibles inside his mouth. When he spoke, everyone with the new translation software and the embeds for communications could understand him. The rest had translation hardware and a single earpiece. Both of the Yollins had a similar setup for communication.
“I have had your chicken,” Kael-ven said. “It is rather plain, like a Talik, which is everywhere. I have had your pork, and it is pretty tasty, similar to our bistek-barook. There are plenty of the animals on the southern plains of many of our continents.”
“If it’s so tasty, why don’t you eat it?” Bethany Anne asked.
“We do eat them, just not very often as they are expensive. Bistek-barook are very aggressive animals, and have no herd mentality so are a very poor choice to use as a food animal. They are considered a sport kill within the third and fourth tier of our society. However, you have to be willing to take the limitations to actually claim a Bistek-barook kill, or you will be sent back out with a knife to kill one. Society will shun you forever for having tried to gain the prestige dishonorably otherwise.”
“What are you allowed to kill them with?” John asked.
“Anything you can hold in your hands, but you cannot have on any powered armor,” Kael-ven replied.
“Wait,” Bethany Anne spoke up, “How big is this animal?”
Kael-ven turned to the scientist. “Would you care to explain?”
The Yollin scientist nodded. Royleen had been lambasted substantially, and in a few areas bettered, by the human scientists that he had previously wanted to use as test subjects. The humans, meanwhile, had to try and realize that to him, humans were equivalent to monkeys which people had been using for test subjects for centuries and in some societies, still did.
“The Bistek-barook is a six-legged sinewy creature when young and can travel a great distance. They grow up to over three thousand of your kilos. They are omnivorous but prefer meat themselves. While most of them are what you consider dominant, they are not herd animals and simply recognize that they should not stick together for any amount of time, or fights occur. At least, outside of mating. As they get older, their ability to travel long distances wanes and they fatten up. Still incredibly quick for a shorter distance, say a…” here, the scientist faltered for a moment, seeking to come up with a calculation, “couple of your kilometers and of course able to stand their ground quite well. They have some protective carapace around their shoulders and heads, but most of the body is unprotected. They do have horns, usually around this long.” He held his two front arms out in front of him, separated by about two feet.
He continued, “In our society, it is considered too low an activity for a second tier member to make an effort to kill one.”
Here, Kael-van interrupted Royleen. “That is because someone in the past decided that it was stupid to do so, and made a tier-level decision it was beneath anyone in our tier to go on these hunts. Personally, I think they had an offspring who was going to try and therefore it was decreed to be beneath us. Most likely because it would show that we get ourselves killed by foolish means as often as the third tier, if we did this publicly.”
Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow and considered Kael-van’s declaration. He had mentioned on more than one occasion his criticisms of the tiered society of the Yollins and their desire to ‘do it this way because this is how we always did it’ belief in moving society forward.
“Okay, sounds like the Wechselbalg will have something to do to help fill up the larders with meat,” Dan announced. Everyone turned back to the conversation at hand, and Bethany Anne nodded her agreement.
“Thank you, Kael-van and Royleen.” She added, “Okay, food seems to still be on track. However, we need a base... no a fortress, to protect our people if our ships are in battle.”
“Well, about that,” Bobcat started before Marcus interrupted.
“What they want to build,” Marcus said pointing at his two friends. “Is a death star.” His look told Bethany Anne that this time, he thought the two guys were asking for something over the top.
“Complete with planet-destroying laser?” she asked.
“Well,” William smiled. “I wouldn’t turn that down but who the hell destroys a planet? Anyone realize how wasteful that is?”
Bobcat took up the conversation. “Yeah, I mean, the poor little Bistek-boorokies would be killed too.”
“And there goes our bacon,” William added.
“Can’t have that,” Bobcat replied.
“Word,” William agreed. Bethany Anne noticed Marcus’s eyes rolling up to the ceiling. She was going to have to get this conversation back o
n track.
“Guys?” she interrupted them. “Can we focus on what you want to create rather than the latest imagined Bistek-barook recipe?”
“Sorry, boss,” Bobcat said. “But I loves me some pork and the thought of laughing my ass off at a bunch of Wechselbalg who have to go kill the pork is funny. Okay, we want to grab a large nickel-iron asteroid and get inside the thing and drill it out. We’ll use the outside to store the massive number of shipping containers for a while, until we’ve drilled enough inside to move people and content in and then we’ll use the gravitic drives, in concert, to move the asteroid.”
“Excuse me for being dense, pun intended,” Bethany Anne asked, “but isn’t nickel-iron rather hard?”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 9