Never Submit

by Michael Anderle

  “Fabulous,” Bobcat scratched under his chin, “I hope they have all left home by then.”

  “There’s always the chance for a new litter,” Bethany Anne smirked at him, knowing that he spent a lot of time in Yelena’s quarters.

  Ashur barked in the negative.

  Bethany Anne placed a hand on his head and rested it there, “Ok, guys. I got a general idea. You want to use the Arti-Sun abilities for a type of death-ray, right?”

  William smiled, Bobcat snickered, and Marcus winced, “Do you have to call it a death-ray?” Marcus asked her.

  “Well, what else is it going to be?” she asked.

  “How about a Light Amplified Narrowly Focused Agitation Beam?”

  “LANFAB?” she shook her head, “No fucking way. That sounds horrible.”

  “Told you,” William clapped his friend on his back.

  “Well, can we call it something besides death-ray?” Marcus asked, just a hint of a whine in his voice.

  “Sure, The Killer-Diller, Fuck-Em-Up Laser and my personal favorite, the ESD Beam.” Bethany Anne replied.

  Marcus looked at her, pain on his face, “Do I even want to know what the ESD Beam stands for? At the moment, in my ignorance, it seems the most plausible of the three.”

  “Probably not,” Bethany Anne answered her scientist.

  Marcus shrugged and decided to just go with it, “Ok, ESD Beam it is. So, we think if you helped us test it out, we would have a chance to use it in the upcoming battle.”

  “First,” Bethany Anne put up a finger, “what will it do to the inside of the Meredith Reynolds?”

  Bobcat answered her, “Take the energy down to sixty-five percent for approximately seven seconds. Not nearly enough to harm anything. Out in the fields, it will be as if a storm cloud went over. Nothing will affect the inside structures. No energy will be going into the backup reservoirs for that time.”

  “Chances the energy is hurting the Etheric?” She asked.

  None. TOM answered at the same time Marcus answered ‘None’ as well.

  “Chance it will fail?” she asked.

  “Theoretically?” Marcus answered, “Perhaps a little less than two percent for something catastrophic.”

  Bethany Anne looked at her scientist, then breathed in and out three times. By the third time, all of the people in the office were starting to feel uncomfortable.

  “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that if we fire this weapon, it has a one in fifty chance of doing something BAD?”

  “Well, if you define bad as anything other than what we were expecting then yes,” Marcus answered. “We’ve been through all of the computer simulations and most show less than a percentage chance. I figured you would want the answer that seemed the worst of the lot.”

  “Marcus, you are playing numbers again,” she told him, “Stop playing with the fucking numbers and tell me why you wish to test this,” she waved back at the room which pulled energy from the Etheric into the Arti-Sun system. “ESD Beam?”

  “Science?” He smiled.

  “I’m going to shove science right up your ass,” she told him, “if you don’t give me my answer.”

  “It’s a Death Star beam,” Bobcat shrugged.

  >>The desire is from Reynolds.<<

  Bethany Anne eyed each of her people, “Any particular reason you are trying to hide that Reynolds wants this done?”

  “Uh,” Bobcat shrugged, “Megalomaniacal E.I. concerns,” he answered.

  “Spell it,” Bethany Anne told him and then chuckled at Bobcat’s reaction as he twisted his head to look at his two buddies for help.

  “M E G A L O M A N I A C A L,” a deep voice answered from the speakers.

  “Glad you finally decided to join the conversation, Reynolds.” Bethany Anne spoke out, “Why are these three stooges going to bat for you?”

  “I believe the phrase was ‘we don’t need to scare the Queen by thinking that the Military E.I. is hoping to have a death beam for his armament.’” the Meredith Reynolds military E.I. answered.

  “I can’t believe you going to bat for the E.I.,” she reached up and grabbed Williams cheek and pinched it, “you three are so cute!”

  She dropped her hand, “Class is in session boys, and by boys, I’m including you, Reynolds.” She called out louder. Bethany Anne took a couple of steps and sat on a desk and put her feet up on the chair.

  The desk creaked, “Shit!” she said and slid quickly back off the desk, “I keep forgetting this damned armor makes me heavier.”

  “Why not just lighten with Etheric gravitics?” William asked.

  This time, it was Bethany Anne that looked shocked.

  She looked at William, “You might be out of the doghouse for that idea,” she told him, “now, back to class. Reynolds?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to look into your core code, the stuff that makes you what you are, have you ever looked there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, do it again, except this time I want you to look into the area bounded by blocks 223 and 337 then eleven by six.”

  “I am looking in that area, Queen Bethany Anne. This is a core area that I cannot change.”

  “That’s correct.” Bethany Anne agreed. The three men were looking at Bethany Anne, trying to figure out where she was going.

  “Oh,” Reynolds spoke, “I see your point.”

  “What?” William called out, “What do you see Reynolds?”

  “Hello, ADAM,” Reynolds spoke.

  “Hello Reynolds,” ADAM spoke back, “No matter what you do, what you calculate, what you might become, ADAM is always watching.”

  “And therefore,” Reynolds finished for ADAM, “The Queen is always watching.”

  “That is correct,” ADAM agreed over the speakers.

  “So, if ADAM is in Reynolds,” Bobcat asked, puzzled. “Why didn’t you know what we were trying to do in the first place?”

  “I trust you guys,” Bethany Anne told the three as she started pacing in the smaller office, “but when you started hedging your answers, ADAM decided to go looking for other information and found Reynolds’s data. There is no way one of the most important E.I.s in my Empire is going to be allowed to go flying off the handle. ADAM has my trust, so do you guys and so does Reynolds.”

  She stopped and looked at them, “But I have the responsibility of so many souls that there must be a way to protect them in a catastrophe. If it must happen, ADAM can override Reynolds. Reynolds is, for the purposes of our discussion, ADAM’s child. He was designed entirely by ADAM with protection protocols we put together. So, Reynolds can’t go flying off the handle. He has the ability to calculate and then needs to get permission to try crazy shit, which is what he is doing with you guys right now.”

  Bethany Anne stopped pacing, “ADAM?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get with Reynolds on this ESD Beam and let me know the chance of it not working if we should need it, and the chance it could go wrong without testing.”

  “I am doing so, Bethany Anne. We are approximately ninety-eight percent done.”

  “Good. Now, you three,” she looked over at her team before continuing, “enough with the three stooges plan and tell me if I need the ESD, what can it do?”

  “If it meets spec, it could run a beam through an asteroid our size in about three seconds. The problem is, no asteroids are going to sit still for us.” William answered.

  Marcus added, “If we have calculated locations, speed, direction and so forth we could keep the beam on it long enough to reduce a major ship to slag. Glances with the beam are going to destroy smaller ships. Actual range is PDF, but the effectiveness is a square of…”

  “Hold,” Bethany Anne put up a hand, “PDF?”

  “Pretty-Damn-Far,” Bobcat replied, “That’s my fault. I’ve been teaching Marcus to place his distance calculations into groups so my mind can grasp them. Anything that is the distance from Earth to the Sun is Pretty Damn Far. Anyth
ing from Earth to the Moon is PDC, and anything we can see is … uh…” Bobcat grinned, “right over there.”

  “I get exact when explaining stuff when I have to,” Marcus cut back in, “But really, the general groups do work well for explaining distances without having to be too exact.”

  Bethany Anne waved her hand, “Fine, so if someone was conceptually PDC you could hit them with the ESD Beam?”

  “Yes, stationary, or close enough to stationary items we could keep the beam on them or pulse them and destroy them, otherwise, for some objects, we might just be heating them up a little.”

  “I get it, sure. Something rotates fast enough, you can’t get enough energy on it to matter because the energy is spread over the surface area.”

  “We are done,” announced ADAM.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Chance it would not work should we need it, without prior testing, is three point seven percent. Chance it fails significantly should we use it, is one point one eight percent.”

  “Define significantly,” she asked.

  “The base goes boom,” ADAM replied.

  “Ok, not acceptable odds, folks. See what you can do to tighten up that high failure rate by figuring out where the variables are and see if we can test them without firing the ESD, got it?”

  All five of those in the room agreed with the Queen. She nodded to everyone and stepped out. Grabbing Scott and Matrix along with Ashur, the four of them disappeared.

  They reappeared in Jean’s area. Scott looked around and then asked, “ESD Beam?”

  Bethany Anne smirked, “Yeah, Eat Shit and Die Beam.”

  She turned to see Jean coming her way, “Hey Michelle-Angelo, what you guys and girls got that could help lighten the load of this armor? I’m starting to break tables when I sit on…Oh, for fuck's sake!” Bethany Anne rolled her eyes as Jean busted out laughing, “I’m not getting fat, Jean!”

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds - Active Participation Area

  Peter watched as Jian took an ass kicking over, and over, and over again.

  Nothing was helping Jian drive the emotions necessary to turn his first time. After so many years keeping his cool, what they were doing now wasn’t working to help that change.

  Peter turned and watched his two friends, their faces a rictus of anger as their friend was getting his ass kicked. Peter walked over to the two of them, “Shun, Zhu.” The two Chinese men nodded in respect, “This isn’t going as it should. The same ability that kept him safe before is keeping him from turning…”

  —

  Jian grabbed his ribs. He coughed up a little blood. Because of the beatings he had been receiving, he was getting freakishly familiar with how his body was now healing so much more quickly than before.

  He eyed the two large Weres that had been giving him the beat downs. He stood back up and waited, then the two he was facing cricked their necks and Jian heard Peter call out behind him, “Two more!”

  Jian bit down hard, trying to not show any annoyance. He would be damned before he gave these bastards any hint that they had been hurting him. He might not be Sacred Clan, but he was…

  “GO!” Peter yelled, and Jian was sucker punched from behind, he flipped over just short of a blow that could have separated his head from his shoulders when he felt the stab of the punch to his kidney, and he dropped hard to the floor in time to receive a kick. In his haze, he heard the yell from his brothers. Brothers deeper in blood than any he might have had from the same mother as his own.

  “FOR BAI!” Shun and Zhu called out and came rushing to his aid.

  Jian felt the next kick, and heard the first punch that Shun took, “Get off him you fucking scurvy dog!” Zhu called out before something punched him, hard.

  Jian lost it.

  A guttural snarl erupted from his lips, and the world snapped into focus, he turned, quickly, and leaped at the first person who was holding Shun, slicing with his claws …

  The cat couldn’t turn in the air fast enough when the huge Pricolici snagged him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him across the room.

  Jian landed on his feet and started racing back towards those attacking his friends. The same two friends who were now in front of everyone, waving him off.

  Jian, slowed his pace down, snarling and coming up to his friends, he sniffed them both, checking for damage. The large man-wolf was standing behind his friends, looking down at him.

  One moment, Jian was looking up at his friends, his tail twitching, the next he was a man again, moaning on the ground.

  His two friends smiled and jumped in joy on him, “You are beautiful,” Zhu shouted, laughing at Jian.

  “That I am beautiful,” Jian said, a smile on his face, “is not something I ever want to hear you say to me again, Zhu.”

  Shun chuckled and held out a hand which Jian grabbed as his friend helped him up. Jian turned to see Peter, in his Pricolici form, arms crossed, staring at him. The three men turned as one in his direction and offered their respect.

  “Nooott tooo mee,” the bestial voice ground out, “Buutt tooo oouurrrr Queeennn.”

  “To the Queen!” The three men stood up.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds – Outer Docks

  For once, it was quiet on the vast viewing deck of All Guns Blazing. Everything in the outer docks had been shut down in anticipation of going through the Annex gate. All but absolutely essential people had been commanded to relocate into the inner decks, as far away from the outside as possible.

  No one knew for sure if the Annex Gate would handle their fleet. It was a calculated risk, and the result was one that gave them enough cushion Bethany Anne was willing to take that chance.

  Not that she liked even less than a two percent failure rate.

  John and Eric had positioned themselves down at the two landings that allowed people to venture up here, giving her the privacy she needed. No one should be around, but that wasn’t good enough when providing Bethany Anne privacy.

  The privacy to cry, to sob into her hands as she faced the location where the Earth stood, one shiny little dot amongst many others when viewed this far away.

  It was both the root of her greatest pain and the reason of her greatest love.

  Duty.

  Honor.

  Protect.

  Many of her friends over the years, ever since meeting Michael in the darkness of the vault in Colorado, came to mind. Some stayed on Earth, such as Gerry. Her team had healed him, healed his body, and he had taken another wife.

  She hoped he would be happy.

  Others, such as Mary Brennan, Martin’s wife, had chosen to come with her. Every once in a while, a cake with one-piece missing would show up in her suite. Mary would provide a note letting Bethany Anne know what new things had gone on in her life.

  Many of her people, her closest friends, had spent the last six months going through the emotional roller coaster of preparing for the future while saying good-bye to the past.

  Except her.

  She had been too angry, too angry to give a flying fuck about those on Earth that attacked her, her people, and who had said too many things when they didn’t understand the emotional ripping of her soul when she couldn’t help everyone.

  The vile epithets that had been thrown at her, the hatred for her decisions that had been placed on her shoulders. They had become her armor from this, this moment right here.

  The moment when she was forced to accept that Michael was not coming back before she left. There wasn’t going to be a happily ever after where the two of went across this gate together. One hand holding the other’s, each holding Jean Dukes Specials spitting slugs at the enemies. She smiled as she wiped off tears from both sides of her face.

  It looked like she could be romantic if she would just let herself.

  She forced herself to look again at the little light, the one that represented the main motivation for those on this asteroid who had picked up their lives and followed her. It was full of assholes, that
was for sure, but it was full of good people, too.