It's Hell To Choose (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 9)

by Michael Anderle

  “I’m told they have no problems being able to let other boats know of their position.”

  “Yeah, I imagine telling someone you are here is easier than telling someone you aren’t.” he agreed. “Do you know what they are going to do with all of these injured people?” He looked around to make sure no one was close, “Some people are living on hope, here. I don’t want to have to be the reporter that tells the world that nothing could be done for some of them. It would break my heart” he admitted.

  Giannini looked into his eyes, “Mark, in this one thing always trust, those that are around Bethany Anne will never quit, and they will never forsake you. Trust, and have hope.” She turned to the sea, “I’m not sure what I’m going to witness this time, but I believe we are going to be very happy we are here to see it.”

  Mark followed her eyes to look out over to the coastline, hoping she was right.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Space Station One - L2 Point

  “Jeo” the feminine voice called out, “There is not enough room on two of these platforms to accomplish the new requirements you set for storage and manufacturing.”

  “What happens if we bring another platform online?” Jeo asked as he was writing notes on the whiteboard with William, who was back on the Polarus.

  “Then you would have extra available space, but the costs are significantly more, and the project will go over budget and extend beyond the days left.”

  “What kind of budget and time constraints?” He asked Samantha.

  Samantha replied, “A minimum of a month and several million. The cost for these craft used is not too much compared to the income provided.”

  Jeo’s mouth compresses into a line. He wrote on his board, “Can I have another $20 mill?”

  William wrote back, “Why?”

  Jeo rolled his eyes, “Samantha, open up a video module on q3-4 and call William.”

  In a moment, Williams' face was projected on his wall. “What’s up Jeo. Tired of writing already?”

  “Yes.” Jeo admitted, “My calculations came back. I need more room than two platforms, and there is one in Florida for a million I saw last night.”

  “Wait, why are you asking for twenty if the base is one?”

  “We have to get it prepped, and I don’t want to miss my deadline. Plus, if anything happens, I don’t want to go back asking for more money.”

  “So, a new platform and still hit the deadline?” William confirmed.

  “Yes” Jeo agreed.

  “Works for me, I’ll ask for twenty-five and let Jeffrey bitch me down to twenty.”

  “Does this mean we have to spend it?” Jeo asked, grinning.

  “What the hell would we do with the extra money?” William asked.

  “Well, it'd be good if we had a bar up here, man!”

  William thought about that for a few seconds, then turned to look off camera, “Hey, Rotor-head!” Jeo could hear Bobcat yell something back, “Yeah, you and propeller head - wherever the hell he is - need to come here…” Jeo saw William roll his eyes before answering again. “Yes, we are probably going to get in hot water for this.”

  William turned and winked to Jeo before turning back off camera.

  “We are going to build and open the first bar in outer space, and we need to name it!”

  Shipyard - France Coast

  “I’m telling you, this can’t be done!” Van Luong hissed over his beer. He was in a dive bar just four blocks from the shipyard. His cousin, Sang, was asking him how to steal one of the devices that was to be affixed later that night.

  “If we get this device, we never work again for the rest of our lives!” Sang hissed back. “Plus, they will wipe out my debt.”

  “They will wipe you out!” Van told his cousin. “These guys aren’t messing around. I guarantee you that trying to steal one of these is going to be the end of you.”

  Van eyed his cousin and shook his head, then looked around. “Look, you are stupid. If you happened to go to the North side, you might find the fence has been cut for people to get in and out when they need to bypass the main gate. But I’m telling you, this could be suicide.”

  Sang sat back, “What are you doing; how does it work?” He took the beer bottle and put it on his leg, twisting it back and forth making a wet circle on his pants.

  Van eyed him, “We set up the paint sprayers and use the largest bore because the paint is pretty viscous. Then, as we need the paint, it comes to us. They don’t let anything sit around. From start to finish it is three shifts. If something breaks down, there is a replacement and the broken part is taken away. We have some other junk they have us spray inside the ship. We pull as many access hatches as possible and spray the red liquid inside. Anything inside we spray, we go back over and spray with regular ship’s paint once it dries.”

  Van drank his beer, “That stuff is ‘everywhere’, I doubt anything can get through it, certainly not water. The ship feels even more airtight than before.” Van leaned forward. “They don’t leave anything ‘on premises’ for you to steal. Everything is provided when it is needed, and any of these special boxes are brought in at night. For the last preparation, it took thirty-two of them across the ship. As soon as we were done inside, they had teams back on the ship preparing for people to live on board. They had us weld on individual little rooms and a weird connection into the main bridge. Like they were going to add something later, you know?”

  Sang shrugged, “No, I haven't seen it.”

  Van raised his beer, “That’s because none of our electronics work when near the ship. So, I can’t take pictures. Even the old time camera film gets all exposed when nearby. A few guys have had their phones messed up, so now we don’t even try to get them close.”

  Sang asked, “Some sort of anti-spy stuff?”

  “I doubt it” Van said. “I don’t see anything else, I think maybe the stuff we are using is messing with it.” He shrugged, “Personally, I don’t care. I’m getting triple pay right now for every hour over forty and if we break the due date with quality work, we all share in a million-dollar prize.”

  Sang’s mouth dropped open, “A million dollars?” He turned thoughtful, “And triple time?” Van nodded, and Sang became even more thoughtful.

  “You guys need more help?”

  Van smiled. It was the third somewhat similar discussion he had fielded in the last two weeks. Every man in the group was working his ass off and if a few more people helped them make the due date, well it wouldn’t change the payout that much. So, the more hard working people they had, every person on the job was happier.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sang found himself standing next to his cousin, Van. He was proud of the work that he had accomplished in just a couple of weeks.

  Since that fateful conversation where working turned out a better option than theft, he had paid off his debts and his fiance had put most of the extra money away for the new family they were expecting.

  Sang watched as news helicopters flew overhead. Each ship they had worked on was painted in black covering supplied them and all had a ‘QBS’ designation.

  These three were named the QBS Hephaestus, QBS Ptah, and QBS Vulcan. He had researched the names and whoever named the ships must like the old gods of smithing and mining, he figured.

  —

  Jeo was standing on the bridge of the QBS Hephaestus staring out the windows with William. The two of them had arrived during the night. All of the ships engines were being controlled by just one of Tom’s computing platforms up in space.

  Tom had outsourced the original plan for each ICP (Independent Computing Platform), basically a shipping container running in space, to SIL-USA. Then, he had ADAM review the recommendations and was surprised to find ADAM agreed with the recommendations.

  Since power and cooling were not a problem, SIL recommended dense service blade farms that housed the ultra-thin blades running 5,120 processors each. These blades utilize thousands each of the new sev
en-nanometer silicon-germanium transistors.

  Tom would say ‘silicon-germanium transistors’ every time he got a chance in meetings. It drove Lance nuts.

  The upgrade from the Xeon Phi chip, moved the peak performance from a mere 3 teraflops to more than 15 teraflops, which made other high-performance graphics chips used to crunch complex math calculations look like poor 386’s fumbling in the dark.

  Tom damn near wanted to marry one of the computing platforms.

  Since the memory needed was a key factor, SIL had insisted that a combination of stacked memory based on Micronís Hybrid Memory Cube technology, which provides 15 times more bandwidth than DDR3 DRAM and five times more throughput than the emerging DDR4 memory, be included as the base memory type.

  With an interconnect architecture based on the TSV technology and Omni Scale Fabric, the base internals of the servers were blindingly fast.

  Tom tried to argue he needed a smaller ICP to be placed in his backyard. Bethany Anne agreed he could route one of his tablets through the Etheric and Remote Access a portion of one ICP for personal use but no way were these ICP’s staying on Earth. They needed the ability to offload massive amounts of computing power and backup functionality and absolutely couldn’t be shut down.

  SIL also recommended the implementation of the silicon photonics technology and MXC server connectivity to further push the bar up on the overall speed factor.

  While this is a major plus for the more normal computing requirements definitions provided SIL, the special needs for speed and consistent availability defined by ADAM made SIL suggest the closely-held technology of crystalline storage rings be put in as the main storage technology.

  This storage requires less power, less space, is more dependable and makes SSD look like the old Pony Express.

  Regardless of all of the computer power Tom provided the group, Bobcat, Jeffrey, and Marcus were on either the QBS Ptah or the QBS Vulcan watching the screens and ensuring that everything on their ships went according to plan.

  Jeo just an observer, with William running this show. He spoke to William while continuing to look up into the sky, “They have no idea, do they.”

  “Nope, not a clue.” William agreed as he continued to run checks on all of the gravity engines across the three ships. Marcus, TOM, and ADAM were all busy checking everything as well to make sure this wasn’t a ‘bad day’ for all of them. All five men had the special suits which allowed them to operate in space if the pressurization failed.

  “How long before they get a clue?” Jeo asked.

  William looked over to see Jeo was still staring outside and realized he was making conversation. He focused on his application for another minute before setting the filters to notify him if anything went outside of operational parameters. He hit a speaker that routed through the Etheric and over to the other two ships, “Hephaestus is green, repeat, Hephaestus is green. We are on review only.”

  “Check, Ptah is green - repeat Ptah is green.” Bobcat’s voice came back. A short pause had occurred before they heard Marcus’ voice, “Vulcan is green, I repeat, Vulcan is green.” Then a couple of seconds later, “And who thought that putting me in the ship with the name that is the closest to ‘fire’ was the right choice?”

  Bobcat’s voice immediately came back, “I’m accusing Jeffrey, Marcus. Mainly because I know I had nothing to do with it, and he isn’t on the bridge at this moment.”

  William didn’t hear anything back from Marcus, so he stood up and walked over beside Jeo. “I imagine they will get a clue sometime about when they realize we aren’t drawing enough water for our weight. Once we get into International waters, it will probably get more interesting.”

  Jeo nodded, “It will at that. Do you think they will all follow us?” He looked around at the myriad news helicopters.

  “Some will, some won’t.” William shrugged, “Those that do are going to see some Marvel type shit, that’s for sure.”

  Jeo looked over to William, studying his face for a moment. “How do you handle all this?”

  William looked back and raised an eyebrow, “What? That circus?” he asked while pointing out the window. The three ships were now up to thirty-two knots. Significantly faster than any but the fastest container ships should be able to achieve. “Honestly, I don’t think about it much anymore Jeo. We are doing our job, having fun, and focused on the future. While it might seem like a circus right now, this shit is about to get real and the choice everyone made to join is going to be tested.”

  Jeo tried to parse everything William just said, “Wait, what do you mean tested?”

  William shrugged, “We’ve had to come out from the darkness, and now we are doing things all over the world. Governments have left us alone so far, but if you paid attention to the news you saw that companies are already manipulating the governments to see if they can use political pressure to force technology transfer. That shit isn’t going to fly with Bethany Anne.”

  “Why not?” Jeo asked. “I mean, I don’t mind that it doesn’t, but what is she going to do about it; tie it up in court?”

  William snorted, “One could only hope. No, some idiot or some idiots are out there thinking that she is beautiful and young, and probably stupid. Someone else is pulling the strings behind the scenes. They are ready to play hard ball when all they have is a beach ball and Bethany Anne plays with diamond balls. Then, some shit is going to happen, and she will move all of us upstairs.”

  William turned to Jeo, “Not that it will matter to you, the Earth will only be another speck in the celestial sky. You, my friend, are in charge of making me a ship!”

  Jeo shrugged, “With the gravity fields, we are in pretty good shape. We will use the Mosquitos to grab the rocks, move them into the Ptah, smelt them on the Vulcan and use the metal for the 3d printing on the Hephaestus.”

  William looked out over the container ship, “Seems kind of small.”

  Jeo nodded, “For anything long term, yes. However, these are temporary platforms to allow us to build the gigantic shipyards.” Jeo wondered why he was explaining the plan to the man who worked it out with him.

  The both stayed quiet for a minute, watched two helicopters turn back, leaving four. William looked down at his watch and moved over to the laptop. “Coming into International waters. Anyone not expecting to be heading into outer space, please tell the Captain of the ship who will reply very politely, you’re fucked.”

  William heard the snickers coming back to him. They could see all of the information racing across their screens. The computers were taking care of this ride, so ‘nobody’ was in command unless something had to be done. Frankly, they didn’t need to be here, and if Bethany Anne realized it, she might say something.

  Or not. She was odd that way. One time, you can’t be risked and then for some other reason, you are allowed to get yourself killed. William felt the ships slowing down.

  —

  News anchor woman Erika Lennisa was chatting with her helicopter pilot Stacia when she felt the helicopter slowing down, “What’s up?” Stacia pointed down to the ships.

  “They are slowing, this could be good, we just hit International waters,” she said.

  From the back, their camera operator Matias angled the camera that was on a gimbal underneath the helicopter to pan wide.

  Erika started her reporting, “This is Erika Lennisa reporting on the QBS ships, which recently left port. We had been accelerating quickly away from the docks. In fact, the only other container ships that might have stayed up with these three are those belonging to Wal-Mart for the China to United States run. Those, of course, are state-of-the-art ships. These down here are also state-of-the-art, we just don’t understand what TQB's definition of 'state-of-the-art' means yet.”

  “We do know that TQB Enterprises uses containers as a method to transfer people and components into outer space. We see that these ships have been coated with the same material as the …” Erika faltered for a second before resuming, �
�Um, these three container ships, each weighing tens of thousands of tons are beginning to slowly raise themselves out of the water!”

  She turned, “Are you getting this, Matias?” He nodded so she hit the record button again.

  “As you can see on our video footage, the three ships have just cleared the water which is streaming down the sides and falling back into the ocean. These ships don’t appear to have anyone on board, or none that we have seen walking around so far. The Ptah is moving up a little faster and will be at our altitude of five hundred feet in just a few seconds.”