Cheryl Lynn considered her next question carefully. She felt like she was being measured for some reason. Cheryl Lynn felt that she got on the base because she was John’s cousin, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. All John said was that she was going to work for Bethany Anne in some capacity.
She considered what she had seen to date, Bethany Anne could joke, but she had always seemed like she was straight forward when joking.
Cheryl Lynn said, “I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I.”
It was a statement, not a question. Patricia laughed, “Honey, you left Kansas a long time ago.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Bethany Anne arrived, in what her team had started to call her landing rooms. She let go of Ashur’s neck and stepped over to the door and started unbolting the locks that ensured no one came in the room while she was absent. She had barely started opening the door when she heard the steps of Tabitha running down the hall.
Bethany Anne stepped back to let Ashur jump ahead. She winced at the ‘train wreck’ which happened when Ashur and Tabitha collided, Tabitha yelling out “Ashur!” and giggling while Ashur licked her face.
The two of them started rough housing in the middle of the hallway. While it was large, it was still a tangled mess with Ashur barking and Tabitha laughing. The young woman had come back from her trip with Gabrielle remarkably happier and with a lighter spirit. Bethany Anne had tried to get Gabrielle to give her some hints as to what went on, but Gabrielle had been pretty close lipped about it so far.
Bethany Anne switched to her vampiric speed and used it to get around the two wrestling combatants and then dropped back down to normal speed when she entered the main living room. “Michael?” She called out.
She heard an ‘up here’ so turned to walk up the stairs and continued up to the second floor. Michael had taken one of the ridiculously opulent rooms that Anton had favored and had it renovated into a library. During the many years of Michael’s life he had managed to amass a significant collection of books. A large number of them were leather bound first editions. His new library, with the soothing scents of leather and furniture wax was the place he went when he wanted to relax.
Sure enough, she found him ensconced in a chair. A tiffany lamp provided subdued lighting and shared space with a small cognac glass on the elegant end table beside him. She sat down in the chair across from him. All four walls except for the window were covered with a tasteful brown wood finish set of book cases filled with his impressive display of books.
She could feel the warmth in the seat, so Tabitha must have been up here when she arrived. She wondered if Michael had informed Tabitha that she was here, or if Tabitha had installed listening devices in the room to notify her when Bethany Anne arrived.
“Drink?” Michael asked, a small smile on his face. Damn that man, he was dressed casually and still looked scrumptious.
“Ah, no. I think I want all of my wits about me.”
“Oh? Are you about to engage in something that needs clear thinking?” Michael put his finger to hold his place in his book and closed it.
“Yes. I’m about to talk with you.” He said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow and waited. She didn’t even bother with trying to see if she could out-wait the man. He’d had a thousand years to learn patience. If you listened to her father, she was constitutionally incapable of patience.
Not true. She considered the game she had played to lure Michael into her arms had been well played.
All the way until the bastard had refused to make a move on her. Her ego was bruised that he was ‘taking too long’ and felt rejected, so she left. While she had talked with him since, it hadn’t had the same sense of urgency and anticipation that she had enjoyed before that. He was supposed to fall for her and lose his fucking mind in a physical cosmic boom.
There was no cosmic boom of them losing their damn minds. Whoever said that a slow burn was the best burn must not have had a Michael in their life. He was frustrating the hell out of her.
Constantly.
Like right…fucking…now.
She eyed the man. He was drinking a honey flavored drink. She could both smell it, and see the colors swirling in the glass from the reflections of the lamp illuminating them. She leaned forward and it wasn’t to let him have a chance to view her cleavage. Rather to put her hand out to see if he would share. He seemed to be happy to lean forward to hand her the glass.
She locked eyes with him as she took a sip of the drink. He raised an eyebrow when she swallowed.
It was good. She kept her eyes on his and then downed the remainder of the drink and put it to the side without looking away.
She said huskily, “You know the problem with men who are a thousand years old?”
He replied, a challenge in his eyes, “No, but I feel confident you are going to tell me.”
She leaned forward to stand up and in the process she grabbed her shirt at the bottom and by the time she was upright in front of him, her shirt was in her hand and it was confirmed.
She wasn’t wearing a bra.
She said, “Men who are a thousand years old have too many dating hang-ups.”
Downstairs, Tabitha was rubbing Ashur’s head which was resting on her lap. His ears perked up and his head lifted to look down the hallway. Tabitha turned in that direction and then heard a small ‘whoomp’. Then a light ‘crash’ and some other muffled sounds.
She turned back to Ashur who had placed his head back down in her lap and told him, “It’s about time, he’s been a sour-puss lately.”
Then Tabitha’s head snapped up and she started wiggling on the floor while trying to get into her pocket. Ashur pulled his head back up and looked at her. She yanked out her cell phone.
“Sorry Ashur, I almost forgot to text Gabrielle. That, my furry friend, would be called a ‘career limiting move’.” She smiled and put the phone away wondering how she was going to spend her betting pool winnings.
---
“Perhaps,” Michael said, his hands playing with her hair “we should move to a bedroom now?”
“Hmm?” Bethany Anne was enjoying the feel of her hair being played with. “I don’t want to move.”
“Mmmm.” Michael leaned back and could just reach the door to the room to finish closing it the last inch. He was sure that Tabitha would give him grief about it later, but frankly he couldn’t be bothered by that right now. “Bethany Anne, risking the wondrous feel of your body right now - so please don’t move - did you have something you needed besides making sure we understood each other properly?”
Bethany Anne replied, “If you promise not to stop playing with my hair, I promise not to pull my nails across your back again.”
Michael thought back to that event, “I’m sorry, when did I request you not to do that?”
She smiled, “Oh. My bad, I figured the blood was a large enough clue.”
“A small price, I assure you.” He replied.
She turned slightly so she could rest on her side, her head laid on his stomach. She opened an eye and noticed that his pants were hanging off the top shelf of the bookcase some ten feet up. “I don’t remember that happening.”
He followed her gaze to the pair of pants and considered what had happened. “You know, I don’t either.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, “Ok, ask me your question but don’t stop with the hair, please.”
“I’m just trying to figure out if you had anything but dating rituals of the twenty-first century on your itinerary when you arrived.”
“Yeah. I need vampires.” She mumbled.
Michael lifted his head to stare at her face, which was calmly composed with her eyes closed. “Vampires?”
“Mmmhmmm. I need to hire vampires as security for the base. I thought you might know a few we could contact.”
Michael laid his head back down. “Well, Gabrielle would probably know more than I. Plus, there isn’t one here in South Ameri
ca that would want to answer a phone call from me, much less come see me.” He paused for a second, then continued, “You do know your reputation is a little dark as well, right?”
“No, why is that?” She asked, her voice a pleasant contralto at the moment.
“Well, consider everything you’ve done since Florida. You’ve taken out Adrian, Clarita then Anton and you were a part of killing David. And that’s without mentioning you dissolving the American Pack Council. I’m sure the European Pack Council is waiting for you to show up.”
“Don’t need to yet,” She said into his chest, “Stephen’s got their number. If they fuck-up, he will deal with them.”
Michael chuckled, “At least they have a clue about how to work with Stephen, but I understand what you’re saying.”
“So, you suggest I ask Gabrielle to find me some people?”
“That’s my advice, yes.” He told her.
“Good.” She lifted her head up, both eyes opening and he could see the red beginning to show in her pupils. “Because I’m hungry again.”
He leaned forward to kiss her. “Not this time, my little bunny. This time I hunt.”
Two hours later Tabitha’s phone buzzed and she pulled it out. She had moved to her room and Ashur had jumped up on her bed. Her text from Gabrielle was ‘Still!??’
She texted back, “YES! I’m going to sleep, I’ve no idea how long they can go, but I’m happy they finally moved to his bedroom. You might have to send blood bags or a few people in the neighborhood might become a late night snack!”
She almost had the phone on her night stand when she saw the reply, ‘You might want to have some garlic handy ;-)’
She stuck her tongue out at the phone and then placed an arm over Ashur, “Good night, Ash.”
He chuffed at her in reply.
TQB Base, Colorado - USA
Jeffrey walked into the ‘Sanctum of Sanctums’, commonly referred to as the Team BMW lair.
Well, at least that is what the Crayola sign taped on the outside of the door said. It wasn’t a poor drawing, so Jeffrey assumed Cheryl Lynn’s son Todd had tried his best since Shelly figured prominently on the picture.
He took off his jacket and put it up on the coat rack that had a sign next to it that read – “NO SUITS”.
The ‘team’ took their casual dress seriously. According to Bobcat, Jeffrey’s preference for wearing a suit jacket ‘messed up the groove’ for the guys whenever Jeffrey was involved. The next time he came in, the coat rack was there with the sign.
Hell, just yesterday he had failed to wear a tie and decided he liked it.
He walked towards the middle of the room between a couple of larger 3D printing machines which were busy printing… something. It looked like some sort of brace or bracket to him. He continued into the room and saw the notorious threesome in their large work area.
They had a third rolling board with mathematical scribbling all over it. He saw ‘lbs’ a lot of times, so obviously Marcus was calculating weight.
He got close enough to hear their conversation after getting away from the noise of the machines. William was speaking.
“All I’m saying, is that trying to put water into these som’bitches is going to be a pain in the ass, Marcus! I thought the third engine tweaked would give us the protection for the contents?”
All three men nodded, acknowledging Jeffrey’s arrival, but continued their conversation. Marcus stood up from his chair and went back to the third board picking up a white board marker. “Look, the calculations show if we tweak that third engine, we will have more than enough lift to pull that much water weight and get it to the moon. Not only will the water help provide a small amount of the radiation shielding, but we now have opportunity for oxygen and water on the moon. We need both of these up there.”
William opened his mouth, then shut it. He turned to Bobcat, “I don’t know about that. I sure would feel comfortable knowing we had a shitload of oxygen.”
Bobcat was leaning back in his chair with one hand steadying him on the table, “So, how would even get it in the container in the first place?”
William turned and put a hand out to Marcus who handed him his marker. “The biggest issue is going to be sealing the insides around the doors. Some sort of seal will be needed there. I’d build skids along the bottom and we need to have internal shipping crates at the right size. Then I’d weld braces on the remaining three sides and at the end so we could use a forklift to push the crates inside and keep them mostly centered and in the middle.”
Jeffrey asked, “What about loading the water?”
William finished his little isometric design of a shipping container and drew three circles on the top, “So, these represent our gravity drives. We need to put a spigot with pressure release on the top. Once we have the crates inside and the container sealed, we need to fill it with water.”
Marcus said, “Don’t forget that ice expands.”
Bobcat asked, “I thought ice took up less volume?”
Jeffrey corrected, “No, it expands first, then contracts. It’s why it breaks up rocks on mountains so effectively. The rain comes down and gets into the cracks, freezes and opens the cracks and then recedes.”
William looked at his picture, “Well, the pressure release wouldn’t help with ice. We need to figure out how much water we need and measure it. Plus, the inside crates are going to need to be water proof.” He considered how the water would flow into the container, around the inside crates and fill up equally around them. He turned to Marcus, “How long for the water to freeze?”
Marcus looked at the drawing, “I’d need to figure out the insulation value for the reduced signature thermal coating we spray on the outside and then we would need to think about rotating the containers due to the sun.”
“Hell,” Bobcat said, “I thought that would be something that you could do off the top of your head. It isn’t like we are asking you to design ablative armor or something.”
Marcus looked at him, his mouth open.
William shook his head in disgust, “You did it again, you ‘pucking frick’.”
Jeffrey looked at the three of them, “What did he do?”
Marcus held out his hand and William returned the marker allowing Marcus to start jotting down notes on his board.
Bobcat turned to face Jeffrey, “I’m trying to read as much science fiction as possible right now. A lot of what we need is already posited in those books. I read about ablative armor in a couple of books so I thought about using the term here. I just tripped an idea in our esteemed rocket scientist’s brain and sent him down some path, God only knows where.” Bobcat turned to smile at William, “Point for me.”
William nodded his agreement.
Jeffrey thought about how this weird group worked so well together. Now, he was going to add to the mix.
“Ok guys, I’ve been tasked with ramping up the capabilities. I know you have the flying Bobcat,” he turned to William, “the manufacturing and assembly,’ and then to Marcus who continued writing but did nod his head that he heard, “and the rocket science-y stuff, Marcus. However, I think we are light in other areas including a lady that is focused on regenerative plant growth systems if she will join us.”
“Why would she join us, or why might she not?” William asked.
“Well, she’s ex-Nasa,” Jeffrey heard Marcus snort, as he continued writing. “But she left NASA due to politics and took what she knew about growing food and is in Africa at the moment. So, she may or may not care to deal with growing food in space again. I think that about sums up both questions.” William nodded, “Also, we are going to need some people who are willing to chance outer space. I’ve talked with Bethany Anne and she has agreed to my assessment that you guys can’t be in the first group out of here.”
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