“Don’t worry about it,” Bethany Anne told Jean. “We don’t advertise the fact because it would only freak people out. I try to push it down as it feels like I’m a peeping Bethany Anne. Sometimes, though, like when Ashur was talking to me, it was fun,” she looked over at Jean. “You do need to get your fun where you can, sometimes.”
Bethany Anne smiled when Jean’s cheeks colored. “Not like that, you nympho.” Jean’s cheeks colored more as the two guys laughed louder than the sound of Jean’s punch on John’s shoulder as it echoed down the hall.
—
Five minutes later, they entered the special legation room. This one was inside the base, as opposed to the one connected to the docks that was used for security reasons.
Bethany Anne nodded to Omar Kolan, previously in charge of the hotel operations for the Asteroid Belt, and elevated to help run the human operations side of the base station. Dr. April Keelson from medical and Dr. Michelle S. Brown-Williams in charge of food was on the side of the table with Mr. Kolan.
She greeted the tag team of Kevin McCoullagh and Yamauchi Stephanie. Lance had pulled them up from the Colorado Base, and they had helped oversee the beginning of the excavation and building of the Meredith Reynolds. They were on her right with Marcus, Bobcat, and William. The smelting area out in the belt had finally been disassembled, and the massive amount of raw materials from excavation were stored wherever the hell they could find room. The miners, accustomed to the difficulties of mining in space, appreciated mining out the inside of the asteroid with the new Yollin drilling machines.
It had been a tough, but good, three years.
“First up,” Bethany Anne said, “the artificial sun?”
Marcus grimaced, he preferred not to call anything artificial, but he had been ruled against with finality when Bethany Anne asked him his preferred name.
His official choice had been a long group of scientific words that made one want to use it for a drinking game.
Screw up saying the name, take a drink, people would get plastered in minutes.
He answered her question, “We’ve tested all three levels, and they’re working. We tested what might happen in seven different catastrophic scenarios including,” he looked over at his two friends, “if an idiot got drunk and ran a small pod into the main Etheric energy collector and overcharged the system.”
Bobcat shrugged. “Always assume alcohol can take your worst catastrophe and magnify it.”
“Preach it, Brother Bobcat,” William agreed.
“And?” Bethany Anne interrupted.
Marcus turned back to Bethany Anne. “It degraded effectively in all instances, and we did not have any unfortunate accidents.”
“What, pray tell, would have been the likelihood of an unfortunate accident, and what would it have been, again?”
“Ah,” Marcus scratched his cheek. “Less than dying in an airplane crash and instant annihilation for everyone inside the asteroid.”
“So,” Bethany Anne confirmed, “the only survivors would have been those outside in the dock area?”
“Yes,” Marcus admitted.
“Then always assume alcohol is available and sprinkle it everywhere like pixie dust when you conceive of problems with the system. My whole attempt to save that backstabbing blue ball back there would immediately cease being terribly effective if our whole damn base was vaporized.”
She paused a moment, then added, “By us.”
Bethany Anne looked at Marcus, tapping her nails on the table to get him to look up at her. “We’ve had these discussions before, Marcus. I understand you work in probabilities and the chances of a mistake after you, ADAM, ArchAngel, Meredith, the Defense E.I. and TOM all going through the design might be vanishingly small, but I can’t have a mistake if we can help it.” Marcus nodded his understanding.
“Okay, so when do you want to turn on the main system?” she finished.
Marcus’s eyebrows rose. “Ah, what?”
Bethany Anne smiled, “I believe you’ve tested the Arti-Sun effectively, when do you want to fire it up?”
Schwabenland Base, Antarctica
The American delegation had been speaking with Maria now for well over an hour and Barnabas only had one thing nagging at him.
He couldn’t read Dr. Abesemmins.
His mind was a blank. He was a cipher, a problem, a puzzle.
Barnabas enjoyed a puzzle because it promised new knowledge at the end when you finished putting it together. That he couldn’t read Abesemmins’ mind was curious, and extremely rare, but was just a hint something could be wrong, not proof, so far.
The Americans had pretty much promised Schwabenland their own small part of the country, similar to the way they had finally provided American Indians with their own land. Unfortunately for the Americans, Maria had read up on them, and the American Indians’ life hadn’t seemed to be going too well until they figured out that gambling was the ultimate equalizer. Now, reservations all across the country were pulling in the white man’s money legally.
Hell, the white man was driving hours to drop their money in the American Indian coffers.
Should the Indian management and government manage it well, the Indian people were going to do well for a long while, perhaps generations to come. If they didn’t succumb to greed like almost every other human in existence.
Maria nodded towards Dr. Abesemmins who held up his hand. “I apologize, Ms. Orsitsch, but I have a couple of rather unique questions if I may?”
“Certainly, Dr. Abesemmins.”
“We understand you have spoken with aliens living in Alpha Centauri, and I am not questioning that in any way whatsoever. We are curious if you have perhaps had contact with another group of aliens, the Grays?”
All faces turned to Maria. “No,” she replied, “I’m aware of the aliens called Grays and do not believe I’ve spoken with any of them.” She smiled benevolently towards Dr. Abesemmins, who had been nothing but incredibly respectful when he had asked any questions so far.
“Thank you, the second question, is whether you have ever heard of aliens called Kurtherians?”
“SNEEZE!” Barnabas ordered into Maria’s mind, and she immediately held up a hand, turned her head away from those at the table and sneezed loudly.
“Please do not recognize the name Kurtherians, Maria,” Barnabas suggested, leaving the final decision in Maria’s lap.
Either way, this man was now suspect number one on his list of leads.
Maria fanned her face, closing her eyes and turning her head back away from the table again. This time in Barnabas’s direction and her eyes widened when she saw him sitting in the chair.
Then they narrowed as she looked at him before she sneezed once more and turned back towards the table.
She smiled at the table. “I’m terribly sorry, I’m usually not very allergic, but perhaps something came in with your clothes. I do apologize again.” She turned towards Abesemmins, “I’m sorry good Doctor, you asked about an alien species? A Kurthurans?”
“No, madam, Kurtherians,” he corrected.
“No, I have not. Are they important?” she asked. “I’ve heard of maybe a dozen different species but Kurtherians,” she stopped to make sure she was pronouncing the name correctly, “are not one of them.”
“I understand. They are,” he told those who had written the name down in their notes, “a rumored race and a passion of mine. My apologies for taking a gamble and asking during this limited availability of your time.”
At least three heads nodded in understanding. All researchers Barnabas knew, having read their surface thoughts.
They continued talking for another twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door. Hans and Horst opened it and walked in. Soon, the Americans had been herded out of the room with Maria following to see them to the exit. She turned and whispered towards the room before she closed the door behind her, “We will talk later, Barnabas.”
Private residence, outside Chicago
, IL, USA
The former President sighed as he hung up the phone. He leaned back in his chair and used his foot to move it so that he was looking out the large window into the beautiful winter landscape at the back of his house.
He knew he was going to get pulled back into this mess one last time.
He had left two envelopes for the new President three years before. The first was the traditional letter from the outgoing President to the incoming one. That was expected, and it held similar thoughts and recommendations as the President before him left at the start of his own term of office.
The second one was simply labeled, “Ignore At Your Own Peril.”
For the first year after he left office, the relationship between TQB and the USA had been cordial, and he had hoped the decent working relationship he had built up with Bethany Anne would continue with the new President.
It had not.
From the first they didn’t get along. Both had large responsibilities, but only one of them had the real ability to back it up. The USA had a large capacity to be tactical and some damned impressive weaponry and people.
Bethany Anne could drop a rock in the middle of Colorado. That she wouldn’t was an assumption the wags up in the government had finally decided was the gospel truth.
So, even though you could do something, if you wouldn’t, then where was the threat?
He continued looking out the window, knowing he was going to pick up his personal phone and make that call. He owed the world another try. Hell, he owed his family another try.
He breathed deeply and reached back with his left hand, moving it a couple of times left and right before he felt the cell phone and pulled it back around.
He grinned just a little as he called up the digital assistant. “SIRI, call Wonder Woman.”
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
The all-system warning lights and alarms screamed, and all non-essential people were told to get inside.
It might have been nice to have everyone see this new technology turn on, but Bethany Anne wasn’t willing to gamble on a small mistake vaporizing her people.
Watching it happen on video was going to have to be good enough.
Those working to bring up the new artificial sun were working inside the main engineering rooms. One with controls, another for the machinery with glass between them. “When you close the loop between the two systems from the Etheric side, come back here and hit the button to complete the links,” Marcus told Bethany Anne. He was licking his lips as he watched the two screens showing the Etheric energy pull for the systems.
He touched the commands, and the lights in the middle of the massive cavern dimmed, leaving everything in the inky blackness that the absence of light always produced.
The smaller Etheric taps were busy being re-routed to the Arti-Sun.
“See you guys in a second,” Bethany Anne said as she stepped into the room with the Etheric tap machinery and closed the glass door behind her. One second they could all see her, the next she took a step and was gone.
Marcus watched the readings and reached up to wipe his forehead. Then, there was a slight uptick in Etheric energy coming into the system. “Four, three, two… one!” Marcus called out and slammed his hand and the desktop when the energy input spiked a thousandfold and the slight humming from the room next to them became a roar.
“YES!” Marcus screamed triumphantly. “We have connectivity and the capacitor is not being slammed! The Arti-Sun is acquiring energy per stated calculations. Meredith?”
“Yes?” the E.I. responded.
“Are you seeing anything outside of normal parameters?”
“No Marcus, I am running the agreed testing parameters, pulling the energy through the Etheric iris using different diameters. So far, it is running… one moment.”
Marcus’s mouth opened. “One moment?” he asked as he turned to review the systems.
Bobcat and William stepped up. They had worked to stay in the background on this project.
“What the hell?” William asked and started using the far left monitor and checking additional screens.
Bobcat worked with Marcus. “That doesn’t look right,” he said as he pointed to a chart on Marcus’s screen.
“Tell me something new, Bobcat.” Marcus snapped as he worked to see what Meredith was doing.
“Uhhh new. Okay, here’s one. I think I found a girl?” Bobcat told his friend.
“That’s nice, what does it taste like?” Marcus asked as he touched areas on his screen to show two additional input charts simultaneously.
Bobcat snorted. “Jackass, I said girl, not another beer.”
“You have no other love but beer, Bobcat,” Marcus answered.
“Folks?” William interrupted them.
“Yeah?” Bobcat answered and leaned over to look at William’s screen where he was pointing.
“Oh, fuck us again.” Bobcat blew out. “Marky Mark, take a look over here.”
Marcus looked quickly over to William’s screen and then returned to his for a second before he turned back to William’s and leaning in. “What the hell?”
“It’s Morse code,” William answered. “Bethany Anne is testing our system.”
“How the…” Marcus shrugged. “Meredith, translate the Morse code and use it to figure out the next fluctuation and adjust appropriately.”
“Done,” Meredith replied moments later.
Thirty seconds later Bethany Anne appeared in the glassed-in room, the hum of the machines behind her receded to a solid midlevel bass, one you could feel in your chest.
She opened the glass door, the sound increased, and then closed it, blocking most of the noise from reaching them once more.
“How was that final exam, guys?” she asked as her phone went off in John’s hand. He took the call.
“Fine boss, did you have to scare us so bad?” Bobcat asked.
“How did you handle it?” she said.
“Swimmingly, I assure you,” Marcus answered. She went up and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you did. But how confident are you that the system will work now if we get unexpected Etheric fluctuations?”
“UEF’s?” Marcus looked at her, confused. “TOM never said there were any UEF’s, and before you say anything, I did ask.”
“I love TOM to death, which might be foreshadowing if he keeps up his talking to me in my head at the moment, but I’ve asked him if he is an Etheric know-it-all and he admitted he wasn’t. Who’s to say there isn’t a normal, hundred solar year Etheric flash?”
“We passed, right boss?” William interrupted and gently kicked the back of Marcus’s ankle.
“Yes, you passed” she agreed.
“Bethany Anne?” John called out.
She turned and raised an eyebrow. He wiggled her phone. “Call from the President.” She made a disgusted face before he explained, “Sorry, ex-President, not the PITA.”
“Oh, then okay, toss it here.” John flipped the phone to her, and she snagged it out of the air and put it up to her ear. “Hey, ready to leave Illinois?” she asked with a smile.
The voice laughed on the other side of the line, “PITA?”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 31