>>Oh, you got that?<<
Yes. Yes, I did. Next time I could sell it better if you don’t just try to use me. Nice try; it took me a couple of minutes to figure it out. Did I nod in all the right places?
>>Now that you mention it, yes. I was rather pleased with myself about how natural you looked.<<
Yes, well, we did the same thing when we blew up the Gate. But I can act, so don’t do that again or we will have a more direct discussion. Am I clear?
>>Yes, ma’am.<<
Bethany Anne motioned to her guards to follow her and waved to a few people in the hallways as she left.
Told you not to do it, TOM sent to ADAM directly, bypassing Bethany Anne.
>>I thought I could get away with it.<<
She has been working with us for almost as long as she has been alive. I tried to tell you that pulling one over on her is fucking impossible.
>>Have you noticed you are cursing even more lately?<<
Yes. It’s a byproduct of spending time around Bethany Anne—you become those you hang around with. One can’t possibly hang around with someone else more than I have.
>>You have got to be the crassest Kurtherian ’pilot’ in existence.<<
Well, luckily for me there isn’t anything in our good book related to our vernacular, just our tasks. I’m shocked I still have to admit what I have to later and she hasn’t figured it out already. This might be the end of my existence.
>>She wouldn’t do that to you.<<
Yeah, well, it’s not your life. I don’t think she will either, but if you knew some of the chemicals floating around in this body and some of the emotions I’m tweaking you wouldn’t be so sure.
>>I thought you told her you weren’t messing with any chemicals? That you were leaving them alone?<<
For the most part, but for those I’m very familiar with I am doing the minimum to keep her on an even keel. Well, sort of an even keel; it’s Bethany Anne. Have you noticed that even Michael stays away at times?
>>I haven’t done any long-term associative heuristics on Michael yet, so I wouldn’t know.<<
He has noted that she both likes him around and is easily annoyed at his presence, so he limits direct contact to mornings, lunch, and evenings.
>>I have noticed that she requests updates on him all the time.<<
She is working through a lot of issues associated with him being back. I think he is allowing her time to adjust to his presence. She crawls over in bed and hugs him at night, and his touch soothes her when she is sleeping. Her conscious mind is not so happy with him and the constraints it sees.
>>Young love—<<
Is a bitch, TOM finished.
Chapter Thirteen
High Tortuga, Hidden Space Fleet Base, Prime Building
“I can’t believe,” Bethany Anne sat down at the table with a mocha in her hand, “that we didn’t think about long-term military incarceration.” She blew on the top of the drink to cool it down and looked at Stephen and Lerr’ek. “Any suggestions?”
“We can use the Phase Three buildings,” Lerr’ek suggested. He had flown to the base from the main city, and his offices there, to have this conversation. As the main project lead, this oversight was his mistake. “Frankly, my mind was on the base as a staging area for you to go out and seek out new civilizations being tampered with by Kurtherians and destroy them. Not so much having to deal with military attacks against Dev—” He smiled at Bethany Anne’s glare. “High Tortuga. That being said, it’s rather obvious in hindsight.”
“We will need multiple types of rooms, from large holding pens with appropriate waste and eating options to individual cells for either long-term incarceration or suicide watch. Further, we will want wings for guests who need to be treated with higher levels of respect, but still incarcerated.”
Bethany Anne massaged her forehead. “Perhaps that was why Michael used to just kill them.” She sighed. “Wow, that sounded harsh even to me.”
Lerr’ek grunted. “The Zhyn in me concurs on both accounts. However, when history explains how you accomplished the planet’s turnaround you won’t want the black marks killing all of your prisoners would bring you to be part of your legacy.”
“No, and I don’t want to do it because it isn’t right, either—not that we requested the presence of these assholes in the first place. The fact that we don’t have proper cells at the moment and have to use one of the ships’ brigs to hold them is annoying. We have to power up that much of a ship.” She shook her head. “It’s like having annoying uninvited guests.”
“Why aren’t you just keeping them on the ArchAngel II?” Stephen asked. “It isn’t like that would add to her power requirements.”
“A part of me thinks that would be appropriate, but the other part worries about what would happen if the ship went into battle. I don’t want the crew of the ArchAngel to worry about some merc rats in the brig if shit goes wrong. Plus, Addix prefers to be on-planet if she has a say in this. Ergo, we have them down here.”
“It could be worse.” Stephen was looking down at his tablet. “The other two mercenary efforts didn’t stick us with any additional prisoners.”
“Well, that’s one way to look at it,” she agreed. “However, I chose to look at that situation as a learning opportunity to explain to our boarding parties that killing everyone shouldn’t be the first choice. Okay, maybe, if you believe there is no other way without exposing yourselves to further harm, but there were at least three opportunities where a clear-thinking mind could have found a decent solution.”
She took a sip of her mocha. “So I’ve instituted new training regimes for boarding parties. The Weres in the group found a fight and went at it, but Tabitha’s team used their Ranger experience to negotiate with those on the bridge. It wasn’t like their ships were going to go anywhere with our ships connected to them.”
Stephen nodded. “It was rather unfortunate,” he agreed. “However, their previous roles were in the Guardians.”
“Which is why they have been set up for education and not a penalty. For Tabitha and Hirotoshi’s success, they have been tasked to teach others how to negotiate and do after-action reports for future boarding efforts.”
Stephen took a sip of his drink. “To be fair, I don’t think any of us expected Shrillexians.”
Lerr’ek snorted. “They’re mercs. Where you find mercs, you find Shrillexians.”
“Quite a few of them, actually.” Bethany Anne concurred. “I think Addix is going to be able to use that information to help narrow down who we are fighting.”
“One can hope,” Stephen agreed. “If you are happy enough with that discussion, let’s go over the designs for the possible expansion of the base. Lerr’ek here has been kind enough to offer his services to oversee the expansion project.”
“I have?” came out of Lerr’ek’s mouth before his brain caught up with him.
Of course I have.
“I mean to say, it’s the least I can do,” he finished.
“Good.” She nodded. “Ok you two, deal with what you need to deal with, and don’t forget we have the resources conference at two today—in the Pit this time.” She thought for a moment. “Lerr’ek, I want you there as well.”
Lerr’ek stared at them. “What’s the Pit? Is this a place we have to fight?”
The two humans chuckled. “No. Well, not with weapons.” She thought for a second. “Just ideas,” she clarified. “So you two wrap up in time to meet over there.”
She stood up and walked out of the meeting with her two guards ghosting behind her.
ADAM?
>>Yes?<<
What is Michael doing at the moment?
>>You could always call him.<<
I don’t want to bug him. He isn’t used to having someone on top of him all of the time. It’s easier this way.
>>I have located him in his office, talking with William about the design of the barbeque pit area.<<
Ok, thanks.
W
hy the hell is Michael so involved with a barbeque pit? she wondered. What’s he plan on cooking?
Planet Soboth (Previously Territory 7732), Undisclosed location, Open Out-ring, Non-Federation
Uleq was at the meeting table early, tweaking the information he needed to present. The communications from Imon to the pirates had gone out just as Az had prescribed.
But unfortunately it hadn’t gone as Az had expected.
He sighed and was running through additional numbers when Imon entered the meeting room. “Peace be upon you,” the Shrillexian intoned.
“Do what?” Uleq looked up. “That salutation is from a completely different species in another galaxy. It seems so…wrong coming from your lips.”
“I know.” Imon pulled out his favorite chair and sat down. “I love the dissonance that phrase evokes in people,” he pointed to his face, “when it comes from this mouth.”
Uleq grunted. “That’s hilarious, actually.” He put his tablet down. “I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor, Imon.”
“There are many things you won’t realize about me until I choose to reveal them,” he agreed. “I saw from your body posture and facial expression when I arrived that something didn’t go well for us? I’m aware of at least three problems, and two of them come from Devon.”
Uleq placed his tablet on the table, turning it so Imon could see. “Yes, neither of our campaigns to upset the present dictator are going according to plan. In fact, I’d say they are so counter to plan that they don’t warrant acknowledgment that they were a plan in the first place.”
Imon looked down at the two notes that were highlighted in red. He looked up at Uleq and back to the tablet. “This is…disturbing and annoying.”
“I concur. We either have a much stronger adversary than we suspected or the quality of our consultants has been sub-optimal.”
“I see.”
Uleq took the tablet back, removing the highlights he had pointed out to Imon.
Then he deleted the one sentence he didn’t want Az to notice in his presentation. For those who wished to continue to the top, some knowledge needed to be hoarded.
He hoped he had read Imon correctly or his life might be over very shortly.
Az entered the room as the two worked on the final tweaks to the review.
Az’s grumbling voice greeted them with, “Let’s get started.”
High Tortuga, Hidden Space Fleet Base, The Pit
Bethany Anne had been sitting at the table in the Pit for over an hour before Michael showed up with food to share with her. The two ate in companionable silence for fifteen minutes before Stephen and Lerr’ek arrived. Behind them were Addix and John Grimes.
John looked around the table after all had sat down. “This is a resources meeting, right?”
“Mmmhmmm.” Bethany Anne swallowed the last of her salad.
The vegetables on this planet leaned toward odd oranges and blues, but they tasted good. There was a flavorful meat tossed into the salad that definitely didn’t taste like chicken. The texture was more like bison or some other large animal, but the flavor was from next door to heaven. She handed the empty bowl to Michael, who stood up, patted her on the shoulder, and took their bowls up to the top.
He came back a moment later.
“I need someone who will look at this from a different perspective. You might not say a word during the whole meeting—and that’s ok—but you got nominated.”
John grinned. “I’m the short straw?”
“Technically,” Michael leaned forward to look down the table to John, “you were the only straw.”
“Oh, well.” John scratched his chin. “I’m special.”
“That is…one way to look at it,” Michael replied.
John chuckled. “Thanks. I was wondering who was going to give me shit at this meeting. Without Darryl, Eric, or Scott I’m feeling a little lost.”
“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Bethany Anne asked. “If you need shit thrown at you, I’m the right woman for the job.”
“You are the only woman for the job.” Michael patted her arm. “If you leave out his wife, Eric’s wife, about three other ladies I can name—”
“You can stop helping me, Michael,” John’s comment elicited chuckles from everyone at the table.
“All right, joking aside.” Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow to John and Michael, who both waved her off. “I want to discuss the resource issue and the MPPS project. For thousands of years our kind has fought for resources; land, minerals, food, etc. Earth isn’t going to be short of land when this project gets off the ground. After WWDE and over eighty-five percent of the humans on the planet dying, they won’t have a problem there.”
“They could need building materials,” Stephen piped up. “There were a lot of resources wasted building the infrastructure that is now crumbling back on Earth.”
“Why would you build the same way?” Lerr’ek asked. “What is the planet made of?”
“Well, at this point, a shit-ton of sand in the warm places,” Michael conceded. “After what we call WWDE or the ‘World’s Worst Day Ever,’ fallout changed the climate. We left behind some units to slowly evolve the planet back again, but there are many deserts there; more than when the humans who are with us now left.”
“So why not take the habitation machines and use the sand to create structures in place? Over on Anteries 197 they figured out how to take sand and advanced sealants and build big flowing structures—and color them. Some of their cities are beautiful to behold.
“How long do these sand buildings last?” Bethany Anne was touching the table, changing the video screen to show her pictures of what Lerr’ek was talking about. “How do they get them so white?”
“Well, their sand is naturally white, but during the cleaning and mixture processes they add additional substances which change the sealant to white like you see here. I’m told that on Joachim 4 they make everything a color you call ‘purple.’”
“Purple?” John asked. “Wow, that’s just… Yeah, wow. Eye-blinding wow.”
“Here’s a pink building,” Bethany Anne swiped her image to John’s screen.
“That’s more wow, but in a very emasculating way,” John mumbled. He added, “Don’t show this to Jean…”
“I assume these are all hard?” Michael asked. “And we didn’t answer Bethany Anne’s question about how long they last.”
“I’ve got it,” she answered. “Says here they last as long as the engineering that goes into them. Typical weather patterns such as… One second, I have to figure out what Earth’s normal weather pattern is now. Okay, thanks, ADAM…M2. Okay, oh!” She looked at Michael. “These should last about five hundred years with minimum upkeep.”
Stephen was working his own screen. “So if we give them a fresh coat of paint.”
“More like slime,” Lerr’ek qualified.
“Thanks, but I’ll say paint.” Stephen smiled. “Sounds less icky.” Lerr’ek shrugged. “If we maintain the buildings they should almost last indefinitely.”
“Well…” John opened something on his screen, digging deeper, “so long as no one is trying to destroy them they will. They don’t have much protection from something as simple as a cannonball. Those flowing buildings, if hit in the right location, collapse.”
ADAM’s voice came out of the speakers. “We could build using a hexagonal structure on the inside for both a lighter and more resilient building. The walls could sustain a large amount of fire without experiencing a situational collapse like a solid structure.”
“That would take longer to build,” Lerr’ek pointed out. “The present machines typically lay down layers on top of each other.”
“Like old-time 3D printing back on Earth, with better access to the materials used on site,” Stephen muttered.
He was obviously deep into the manufacturing details.
“So we need to consider the type of building when we use this technology.” Michael looked up and turned
to Lerr’ek. “Is this right? It can build a residence in hours?”
“It is true—depending on the complexity and size of the structure. If it is very simple, you could construct a single building that has room for four families. They would each have,” Lerr’ek touched a few buttons on his screen, “the equivalent of two thousand five hundred of your square feet. Enough for ten family members minimum.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Ten?”
Bethany Anne put a hand on his arm, drawing Michael’s attention. “The efficiency of the design allows for the new needs of families. There are many alcoves for when someone wants to be alone, but larger rooms for when they congregate. Typically these structures have an area outside which is covered and permits bigger groups to congregate. The expectation is for multigenerational families to remain together.”
“That is a good point,” Stephen agreed. “With healthier individuals, you can end up with a lot of large families, even if they did not start with one. Just one set of parents having two children each generation could reach thirty members by the third generation when you include spouses.”
Michael started doing the calculations in his head. “That’s a lot. So one of these buildings with four families can hold forty. Eventually the heads of the families will build one for themselves?”
“They could,” Bethany Anne agreed, “but remember our previous conversation. Our goal is to make sure those who like the status quo are able to be productive members of society where they are. Those who can’t or don’t will be offered positions better suited for them.”
“And those who believe a criminal life is optimal?”
“Then there is always the position of prisoner in a jail.” Bethany Anne shrugged. “We can do the Australian option and offer them one-way tickets to somewhere else. I understand Australia ended up doing pretty fucking wonderfully by the end.”
“They did have a wicked sense of humor,” Stephen added. “You couldn’t be around an Australian without blushing half the time.”
“Australians are who?” Lerr’ek asked.
“One of our countries back on Earth,” Bethany Anne replied, “used a large island to help clear out their overpopulated jails for eighty years. The island had indigenous people called Aborigines who lived there before the early settlers found a part they could farm on, and then the convicts came. About fifty years later many went willingly to Australia because there was a gold rush. Somewhere around 1900 it was known as a federation, and it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that it was independent, even though they had been acting independent for decades and they still had the same Queen as Britain when we left.”
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