William nodded he did.
“We don’t want to mix them if we can help it, I understand,” Akio temporized.
“Probably not,” William agreed as he looked down the hallway at all of the dead or moaning bodies. “Fuck, it looks like a Cuisinart went through here.”
Akio looked down the corridor. “I should probably have the Vicereine come,” Akio grimaced thinking about her response to the blood. “She will need to be here to represent the Queen.”
William chuckled and turned to Akio. “I’ll give you ten to one odds she’ll throw up at least once.”
Akio smiled, looking back down the hallway. “I’ll take that, how about an ounce of gold?”
“Huh?” William responded, “Oh, yeah I guess humanity’s money is going away isn’t it?”
Akio nodded. “We are going to go to another system of credits I understand. But, you can always trade gold.”
William smiled. “Okay, ten to one and I bet an ounce of gold.”
—-
Yuko bit down hard as her guards Takeshi and Nario brought her through the first set of the wounded, dead, and dying. The stench of the dead mixed with the cries of the wounded as her eyes sought to hide from all of the police strobe lights flicking around in the night.
Her stomach was queasy and threatening to rebel. She did not wish to embarrass herself and therefore her Queen by vomiting in this place.
She saw Akio and walked over to him. “What happened?”
“We were hit by Yakuza. They understood we had some special technology here for a transfer to the government. Apparently, the information was planted by someone, and they struck earlier due to lack of complete information.”
“Is William okay?”
“He was shot twice.” When she put up her hand to her mouth, her eyes large, he quickly added, “He will heal and be healthy again. But he will also be tender for a couple of days, at a minimum.”
Yuko put a hand on Akio’s shoulder. “You have blood all over you. Are you and Eiji okay?”
“I am fine, Eiji is fine as well, but I had him change clothes so it looks like there was only one of us fighting. Many of these,” Akio waved over the bodies, “are known criminals, so they are already trying to figure out what to do. As the Queen’s Vicereine, you are the representative,” he looked at her, and she gave him a sharp nod.
She understood.
Turning around, she looked for the clot of important looking police. She paused a moment and covered her mouth.
“ADAM?”
>>Yes?<<
“Find out who is the top level officer at my location, please. Also, I need to have access to anything you can discover about what the police already know or suspect.”
>>Presently, we have local police, but there are two additional agencies on their way here. One is the special investigations team, and the other is the public security intelligence who are arriving without much fanfare. Further, there are others who are trying to limit the press who are also coming at this time. The Japanese press are usually the ones who report on police misdeeds.<<
Yuko turned and started into the building. “Akio, you and Eiji need to step inside. We must not be seen outside at this time.” She stepped boldly into the warehouse but wanted to gag at the smell and the stench inside the hallway. She stepped carefully over the gruesome parts.
Akio came up behind her. “Allow me to carry you over this… mess.” Yuko nodded, and Akio gently picked her up and moved through the hallway. He set her down on the other side, and William spoke, surprising Yuko.
“Dammit, Yuko.” She turned to him as he watched her from his chair. “Why can’t you be a normal female just once for me?”
She looked back at Akio who was smiling. “What is he upset about?”
Akio looked back at the hallway. “We had a bet, and I just won.”
She turned to William. “What was the bet?”
He shook his head. “I’ll tell you later, now would be unfair to you and Akio.”
She shrugged and looked around, seeing two more dead bodies down in the warehouse. “Are those the two that shot you?” she asked.
“No, that one has left, permanently. But we didn’t want him around so the answer we are giving is ‘yes.’” He grunted and added, “ADAM has already pulled the necessary video and stripped the shit we don’t want getting out. So we have that to give to the police.”
Yuko nodded, “I’ll work with ADAM myself while we wait.” She turned to Akio. “How many names do you want?”
“All of them,” he answered, his lips set in a firm line.
She nodded and walked to a small desk a few feet from William. “All that I can find, I will give you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
QBS ArchAngel
“So, you two had fun,” Scott said as he drank his coffee in the cafeteria. “And Nathan and Darryl had a good time, but Barnabas and I got to sit out in our car and drink coffee and shoot the shit.”
“Not my fault,” Eric sat down across from Scott as Gabrielle waved and then headed towards her room.
Scott nodded, “Yeah, we waited all night for someone to attack our location. But, we figured the other side losing two sets of team communications caused our hit to be a no-go. Our bait left after the video from Nathan and Darryl’s takedown, anyway.”
“Where are our new guests now?” Eric asked, blowing on his coffee.
“Second set of guest quarters, but I understand they are going to either be repatriated back to Earth if they want, or moved to quarters in the asteroid belt if they don’t. As you can imagine, the men are for it, the wives are completely undecided. Lots of family down there.”
“That will do it every time,” Eric agreed. “How’s it going with Cheryl Lynn?”
Scott snickered and looked behind Eric.
“She’s behind me, isn’t she?” Eric asked and then received a thump on his head. “Ouch!”
“Yes, she is!” Cheryl Lynn came into view and pulled a chair out next to Scott. “Cheryl Lynn is fine now that Scott is back and she is happy that nothing happened. I know this is what I get for signing up to care about one of you guys, but I can’t say I like it a lot,” she said and sat down in the chair. “I saw Gabrielle going down the hallway, she looked tired.”
“She is, she didn’t sleep during the operation, and while she drinks coffee just fine, she didn’t do much drinking on the trip. The damned nanocytes kinda take the caffeine buzz down a notch. I’ve worked on pulling Etheric energy to help keep me up, but she needs to do the same, now. She was pissed I was one up on her, ability-wise, and I’m sure she’ll figure it out soon enough,” Eric finished.
“After she sleeps,” Cheryl Lynn added to Eric’s nodding agreement.
“So, answering your question,” Scott said as he slipped an arm around Cheryl Lynn. “She’s fine. Just a little tweaked with worry when I go on an operation.”
“I’m right here,” Cheryl Lynn said, then laid her head on Scott’s shoulder and closed her eyes. “You guys go ahead and talk, I’m just going to take a nap.” She lifted her head and pushed on Scott’s muscles. “Couldn’t you be just a little flabby? It’s like sleeping on a rock.” She laid her head back down, “Never mind, I’ll just find me a small pillow, you keep those muscles hard, dear.”
Scott looked down at her hair and smiled, then looked up to Eric and winked.
Eric raised his cup. “I guess that means you’ll be at the workout at sixteen hundred?”
“If I’m not,” Scott said, moderating his voice. “I’ll lose these muscles and then where will I be?”
Cheryl Lynn reached across with one of her arms, her eyes still closed and snuggled in closer to him. “I’ll still care for you, even with muscles that are kinda flabby. You still have a cute butt.” She paused before adding, “Don’t lose the butt.”
The two men chuckled.
“What’s on tap for today?” Scott asked.
Eric answered, “Uh…I think it’s Thund
erous Thursday, so we go back to the classics.”
Then both men started singing, “I’ve got big balls, you’ve got big balls, but SHE’S got the biggest, balls of them all!”
“Seriously?” Cheryl Lynn complained, voice muffled from speaking into Scott’s chest as the two guys laughed. “You guys sing about Bethany Anne?”
Eagles Nest Rocking Country Bar, Virginia Beach, VA, USA
PO2 Harmon tossed his five bucks on the table and grabbed the waiting beer, taking a sip before wiping the suds off of his mouth. “Damn, that is what I needed.”
PO3 Neil moved the five-dollar bill to the end of the table so Melissa, their waitress, could grab it the next time she passed by.
Harmon raised an eyebrow. “She spotted us the beer, knowing you were running late,” Neil told him. “I told her I’d pay it if you failed to show up in,” he leaned forward to look behind Harmon. “Another ten minutes.”
“Got called back by Senior Chief Needledick to dot some I’s and cross some T’s on some paperwork. Can’t believe I missed that shit. Didn’t get too much of a talking to, I guess I looked pissed off enough at myself. Damned embarrassing.”
“What, no one told you that the Iranian navy has openings if you want to keep fucking up that bad?” PO2 Ronnie asked, grinning. “That’s what I was told by my chief.”
“Uh, no,” Harmon admitted. “No Iranian navy offer, but if the rumors are true about where we’re going, I think I might have taken them up on the offer.”
“The big ‘A’?” Ronnie asked, and Harmon nodded.
Neil turned to Ronnie. “Alaska?”
“No, dumbass, Antarctica,” Ronnie replied. “Alaska would be nice, at least they have people living there. Fucking Antarctica is nothing but ball-busting cold covered by freezing sleet and winds they say will throw your ass off of the ship.”
“Make those pansies from Wild Catch squeeze their sphincters tight enough to drop ball bearings out after eating raw metal,” Harmon added.
“What’s the group going to be?” Neil asked.
“Frigate, Cruiser, LHD I’m hearing,” Harmon answered. “Go in, let the Marines land and check out a couple of interesting satellite locations and if we find anything, dig in a little and get more backup. If not, we sneak back out. Everyone is going bat-shit crazy wanting to do Indiana Jones stuff all over the damned world. I’m hearing some really high placed people have been up on the QBS ArchAngel and everyone knows that they have alien tech.”
“And they aren’t sharing,” Neil interjected.
“Shit, would you?” Ronnie replied. “Fuck, if I had their tech I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
The men could see Melissa heading their direction and Ronnie grabbed his mug and finished the last couple of swallows. His mug hit the table just seconds before Harmon’s banged down empty as well.
She smiled as she dropped off three freshly filled mugs. “I’ll take that as yes, you’d like these?” In seconds, she had their empties on her tray and had turned to move back to the bar.
“God, I’d…” Neil started.
Harmon put up a hand. “Don’t say it,” he told his friend. “We all think it, but just don’t say it. She’s had a tough life, and whether we think we wouldn’t do anything ugly to her or not, we all know Uncle S. calls the shots for now. She won’t date Navy, and it has everything to do with her father leaving and never coming back.”
“He was Navy?” Neil asked.
“No,” Ronnie replied, “He was just a loser who couldn’t handle the responsibility. She likes us, but won’t date us... them’s the breaks sometimes.” Ronnie answered and then stopped watching her and turned back to his table. “So, we leaving soon?”
“That’s the call I expect to come down, but we need to get a few things loaded, at least on our ship,” Harmon answered.
“Damn, I’d hate to be the Marines on the LHD, that is going to suck mosquito balls out in the cold like that.”
“I’m sure they’ll have some sort of wonderful stuff that keeps them all toasty and warm,” Harmon snickered. “Right before it breaks down on their asses and they have to walk the rest of the way.”
Ronnie said, “They do have a way of getting shit for equipment at times, it makes you wonder if the brass is taking it in the ass on the budget, or they just can’t find a supplier that can make stuff that doesn’t break.”
“Or, someone is pocketing the money,” Neil added. “Although I kinda doubt that. Every one of their guys started with a rifle in their hands.”
Ronnie looked at his watch. “Okay gents. It seems like it’s time to accelerate our lives and go be a global force for good.”
“And freeze our nuts off doing it,” Neil added.
“Just make sure you look fantastic with icicles hanging off your eyebrows,” Harmon told him as he held up his mug. “Keep them nuts warm guys, let’s do our jobs and get home safely. One of these days, there will be a Ms. Melissa waiting for us.”
The three guys clinked their mugs together and downed their beers. Each dropped a ten on the table and waved to Melissa on their way out.
Tokyo, Japan
William sat in his chair, slightly wincing but otherwise fine.
“Does it still hurt?” Yuko asked him.
“No, this time, it’s the small chair assaulting my rather rotund ass,” he grinned. “Sorry, I should probably think about my language around the Vicereine.”
Behind her, William noticed Akio nod in agreement.
“Don’t worry about it for my sake in private company, you should see what I sometimes read on the boards when the guys don’t know I’m female.”
“Does it get better when they know you’re female?” William asked.
“Depends on the group. Occasionally it will, but usually there is a jerk troll who decides that I represent all the females who have mistreated him in life. Like somehow I am to blame that as hackers, we are usually introverts who rarely eat well and don’t take care of ourselves much and therefore don’t look too attractive.”
“You look good,” William said.
“I’m Japanese, I have very good genes,” she replied. “Plus, I’ve been working out since I was in Australia. Akio and the guards are pushing me hard. I’ve never been in better shape, or in more pain.”
“It is good for you to handle all of the challenges, it allows you to grow,” Akio told her. William noticed she didn’t roll her eyes like he would have expected.
“How can I help the negotiations?” he asked.
“The delegation is expressing that they want the ability to protect themselves much better in the future from a belligerent China, and they believe that Puck technology is the way to go.”
“Well,” William started, then stopped. He wiped his face with his hand and started again. “I think the better technology would be the rail gun stuff we have with a second layer of larger Pucks that can strike at a distance. The problem with the Pucks is anytime they’re planning to hit something large enough, the Puck will be destroyed in the process. I know for a fact we aren’t going to give them the knowledge to make their own Pucks, so that’s a no-go.”
“Will they be able to reverse engineer their own Pucks?”
“Not possible, the Pucks will explode if tampered with, and you need to make that very, very clear to them,” William warned. “I have some videos showing what happens when you try to open a Puck case. If they pay attention, they won’t do it anywhere near a populated place.”
“You still expect them to try?” Yuko asked.
“Of course. I would. They’ll put it in a bunker somewhere, with a sacrificial robot and a bunch of sensors and high-speed cameras. Not that it will gain them much, as the explosion is so fast they will get a very small amount of data before anything near enough to record will be consumed. So, I’m providing the video to prove my point, but they won’t believe it until they test it themselves.” He shrugged. “It’s how scientists are.”
“What else can we offer?” Yu
ko asked, “If the Pucks are going to be off limits?”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 12