Once he made it to the far side he turned around. “If I could get a little attention?” He called out and the other six quieted down. “I want to thank all of you for a job well done!” The cheers went up and then quieted down once again. “And a job ‘very fucking well’ done to Adarsh who made sure we kept half the world freaking out at the very end and then made the connection, thus saving the project, and was able to create instant Adarsh fans out of a million ladies!” The ‘woohoos’ and cat-calls caused the normally shy Adarsh to smile and blush.
He raised his cup. “So, to you, to us and to Bethany Anne, we are on the moon and the aliens can have it when they pry it from our cold, dead fingers!”
If sound carried in outer space, they would have heard the tiny group back on earth.
Costa Rica
“Sir, we have a problem.” The voice came over the line.
The person in charge of the black ops group went simply by Mr. Simmons. “Yes?”
“Terry DeLeon has been found wandering around Washington D.C., sir. He wasn’t in his right mind.”
“Oh? Wasn’t Terry on vacation?” Simmons was quickly trying to piece together why Terry would be in Washington unless he had a lead from the report that took him there. Their last communication had him over in Colorado.
“Yes sir, he was on vacation. However, the D.C. police picked him up when he was disturbing the peace. He didn’t have any I.D. on him and no way for us to tell how he ended up where he was picked up. That isn’t the most disturbing aspect of this story, sir.” The voice admitted.
“Lay it on me, I’m sitting down. What did Terry get into while on vacation?”
“He doesn’t remember. I’ve been in to talk with him. He doesn’t remember his vacation, or me, sir. At all.”
Simmons considered that answer. Terry absolutely should remember one of his best friends in the group.
“Sir, one more thing.” The voice continued, “He keeps mumbling one phrase over and over.”
“Ok, what is it?” Simmons asked.
“Sir, his eyes keep darting left and right, like he’s seen something. He keeps whispering, ‘the vampires are here, the vampires are here’!”
Shanghai, China
Ten hours after the world first heard about a set of containers going to the moon, Shanghai was astonished by two fast and bright shooting stars that lit up the night. Then a third followed sixty-five seconds behind it. The boom from the third passing through the atmosphere was felt for a hundred miles around the city.
As the first two asteroids passed through the atmosphere, three Pods were rocketing down from the heavens to stop a foot above the four story warehouse in the somewhat rundown and gritty district that Kamiko Kana was using as a base for now.
Darryl and Scott jumped out of the first Pod and moved quickly to place explosives on the roof above where they wanted to drop into the room below. They had hopes that Kamiko Kana used the top floor, but Gabrielle doubted it. She expected Kamiko to be on the third floor.
Vampires like her didn’t like to be up high and she wouldn’t be easily accessible on the first floor, either.
John and Eric were busy pulling extra weapons out of their pod. The third held extras none of them could hold for the moment.
Gabrielle was buckling on her sword belt and then pulled the sword out. Each of the four men had their special Bowie knives made for them for their first operation back in New York.
No one said a thing, the plans had already been laid. Now if the bitch would just hold still long enough.
There is one thing you don’t do with an immortal who is an evil, lying sociopath with a god complex and that is allow her to live. Michael had learned that the hard way.
Darryl and Scott were finished in record time and came back over to the Pods. Everyone watched the heavens and seven seconds later, the third meteorite lit up the skies.
It was go time.
Darryl hit the switch and the explosion was just a another loud noise drowned out by the hellacious ‘boom’ from the final meteorite.
They would be cleaning up glass around Shanghai for a week from that pass. They had to crash that meteorite at sea. To the best of ADAM’s ability, it was planned to land where the fallout wouldn’t affect ships or boats out in the deep. Most of the chunk of rock would have been burned up in the atmosphere, but they still crossed their fingers.
Before the fire had cleared from the explosion John was already running towards the new entrance. He put a hand up in front of his face to block any pieces and then jumped feet first to land in a training dojo. He rolled out of the way to allow the others to follow him.
Through the dust and smoke billowing in the air he found four men at the far window. They had cranked down heavy duty metal blinds to see what the commotion was outside and looked shocked as the big man appeared from the new hole above.
By the time Eric landed, they had started to react. Each had the sword they had been practicing with. They quickly raised them and started to race back towards the two.
Eric got his pistol up and scanned the area. There was only one person left to target, so Eric shot him in the belly first. Amongst the goodies Dan had sent there had been several Desert Eagle handguns chambered for .50 AE. The power of the 300 grain jacketed hollow point stopped the vampire cold and he crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Eric swung around to check their six while Scott, Darryl and Gabrielle dropped in from the roof.
Darryl looked around in disgust, “Told you our fun was going to get cut short.”
Gabrielle went over to the four writhing on the ground. “Watashi wa gaburieru gozen, Kamiko kana wa doko ni aru no?” The first glared at Gabrielle and shook his head.
Gabrielle’s arm blurred and one head was separated from his body. She went to the second, “Watashi wa gaburieru gozen, Kamiko kana wa doko ni aru no?” She received the same response and she replied in kind. The third was the same.
On the fourth, the man spoke before she could start her question, “Who do you represent?”
“I am here for Queen Bethany Anne. Kamiko Kana has sealed her death. The Queen’s Own are here to implement justice.”
“I will tell you if you let those who would change allegiance below live, but then you must absolve me of my dishonor!” Gabrielle nodded her agreement. “She is below one floor. Her personal chamber is on that…” He moved his head and eyes back to behind him, “side of the floor.” The man closed his eyes and Gabrielle dispensed her end of the bargain.
She turned and cleaned her sword. “We need another hole.”
Darryl popped Scott on the back, “The lady wants a door, let’s make the lady a door!”
Gabrielle turned, one eyebrow lifted, pointing “Stairs?”
John smiled, “On it.” He and Eric started jogging over to the stairs, their weapons out and smiles on their faces.
“God, feels like old times.” Eric said.
“Except these fuckers aren’t so crazy.” John replied.
“You think? You see how they didn’t hesitate to die for this bitch?” Eric asked.
“And if that was you on the ground with someone asking you where Bethany Anne was?” John mentioned as they did a quick peek down the stairs to a door at the bottom.
“Well, they can have that information when they…”
The door opened cutting off Eric’s comment.
--
Kamiko Kana was looking out of the blinds at the mess she could see. She was to meet her Chinese cyber-intelligence contact for the third time in the early morning. He had explained that his group was attacked and a lot of their abilities constrained in their first meeting. Four days later, he admitted that they were having trouble communicating with the companies at all. She would explain to him that he would provide a solution by evening or he wouldn’t be alive to eat supper.
She was still looking out when faint ‘cracks’ were heard above her through the concrete between the floors. She had felt the
building rumble as the third meteor blew over the city, causing windows to break in the shockwave.
Fortunately, her metal blinds would stop any sunlight from entering in the morning.
She turned around and walked to her door and opened it. Four of her guards were at the other window looking out, two had turned around already as if they had heard something.
“See what is happening in the dojo,” She spoke to the two who had turned around. They nodded and started for the stair’s door. The first one opened it and stepped inside. The second started to enter the hallway when his head exploded and both guard’s bodies were thrown backward into the room.
--
Darryl yelled out, “Fire in the hole!” At the same time John and Eric started firing at the new targets entering the stairway.
“Good timing,” Eric mentioned.
--
Kamiko Kana turned to go back into her room when the ceiling above her bed exploded down in chunks of concrete, dust and dirt swirling around and making it impossible to see for more than a few feet.
This could not be happening again! She snarled in anger and set her mind to walk through the Etheric to her escape room underground and a block over.
She never made it, she was pulled into a misty realm instead of her protected escape room.
Kamiko Kana’s blood ran cold as a woman’s voice spoke to her, “Welcome to my realm ... bitch!”
--
Bethany Anne was getting bored. She wanted to just ‘peek’ out to see what was going on but constrained herself.
She was having another conversation with TOM about bad American cinema when she felt the Etheric twitch.
She immediately reached for the presence like she was grabbing ahold of a person and pulled.
A Japanese woman was immediately standing in the Etheric with her. Bethany Anne moved herself to be nearby.
A smile on her face she spoke to Kamiko Kana, “Welcome to my realm, bitch!”
Kamiko Kana tried to remove the fear from her face before speaking but she didn’t get a chance to talk.
“Thought you would get away from the Queen’s Own by running again? Is that how you intended to keep your royal crown?” Bethany Anne moved around Kamiko Kana in a circle, causing her to constantly look back and forth to keep her in view. “You thought you would sacrifice person after person because you have revenge issues? You thought you would try to hurt Michael because your mother was a backstabbing cunt?”
Bethany Anne stopped in front of Kamiko Kana who was trying desperately to overcome her sense of powerlessness. She had tried to move, tried to do anything but she couldn’t. There was a force keeping her right here in this realm between her room and her escape. She looked into the red eyes of the woman in front of her and knew fear.
Knew it deep down in her heart.
“I’ve got news for you. You ended your reign when you killed another vampire in cold blood. You ended your freedom and opportunity for a trial when you targeted my Own.”
Bethany Anne paused and leaned forward, “But you sealed your death by wanting to take Michael from me!” Bethany Anne stripped what Etheric power she could rip out of Kamiko Kana and pushed her violently back to the location she had come from.
Bethany Anne spoke to the mists, “Try leaving your people now, you fucking coward.”
--
Gabrielle waited for the dust to settle a bit and spied a place to land. She jumped down and quickly looked around. She spotted Kamiko Kana dazed against the door leading out to another other room. It looked like she had hit her head against it and slid down.
Maybe she had been blown back from the blast?
Didn’t matter, Gabrielle walked towards her, “Kamiko Kana, The Queen has decreed your death and the Queen’s Own are oath bound to fulfill the Queen’s decree.” Gabrielle barely paused as Kamiko Kana looked up at her with only half comprehension. Gabrielle spit out, “I’d say this doesn’t give me any pleasure…”
Gabrielle swung her sword, cutting through Kamiko Kana’s neck and embedding it into the door behind her. The decapitated head fell off and down to the floor rolling over two times before stopping. The blood pulsing from her neck went halfway up the door.
“But then I’d just be lying my ass off!” Gabrielle finished.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TQB Base, Colorado – USA
“What I’m thinking,” Lance told Kevin and Stephanie during a review of the base planning, “is that we need a bolt hole and a second location.”
“Bolt hole?” Stephanie asked.
“Yeah,” Kevin provided as he studied the map, “It means a way to exit out the back if it looks like your position becomes untenable.”
Lance looked over at Kevin who was oblivious to Lance’s stare. He turned to Stephanie, “Untenable is...”
She smiled, “I’m sorry, not to be disrespectful, but I know the word ‘untenable’.”
“Oh.” Was all Lance had to say. Kevin kept his mirth to himself. He had already had ‘the talk’ from Stephanie about her English. While she might occasionally get caught up by a few American phrases, she knew the language very well.
Kevin had decided to not make that mistake again.
Lance looked back down at the map. Next time, he thought, I’ll let her ask for a definition before I assume. “What I’m thinking is something obvious, say a few large items that have a little dirt on them so they are camouflaged and they run West as a decoy. We will need something that allows us to move underground for a short way, then out towards the east.
“Why East?” She queried.
“Yeah, why East?” Kevin asked, looking up from the map.
“The Pods are too fast to really see. We head across Denver then South before we hit Colorado Springs and then up into the atmosphere. I’m going to assume that they have a cover above us in case we bolt straight up.”
“Unlikely they would hit us,” Kevin said.
“True, but that ordinance would eventually come down somewhere. They aren’t going to be stupid enough to shoot over a city and they won’t have the ability to cover all the way southeast almost to Colorado Springs.” He snorted, “Don’t need to go right over the Air Force Academy.”
“Ok, I need to build a tunnel out and camouflage the entry / exit. What next?”
“Then,” Lance continued, “we need to make sure we have room for all of the base personnel and ways to get them under cover. They would be considered non-combatants, but we can’t leave them unprotected. Nathan is bringing us a group of Wechselbalg that are going to become base militia. I understand that we have a group of vampires that just joined our team as well. Make sure we have one of Bethany Anne’s landing rooms connected to this protected area.”
Kevin interrupted, “She isn’t thinking of translocating all of them, is she?”
Lance turned his glance to Kevin, “I know my daughter. She doesn’t have to tell me to put the room there. We either do it early or she will do something more drastic than try to pull them in groups out of there. I’m not saying she will do it or that we will even need any of these preparations at all.”
Lance turned his head one way, then another while studying the map. “I’m thinking we need a way for the group to get out, so make sure the area that protects them has a way to the bolt hole. Finally, we need to consider a second base.”
“Where?” Stephanie asked.
“Yeah, where?” Kevin spoke. “I don’t think we are going to find another base here in America if they decide they want the lease revoked.”
“I’m thinking Australia.” Lance answered.
Stephanie looked over to him, “Really?”
Lance nodded, “Yes. I’m thinking there are a lot of land parcels out in the outback we can use. The guys doing the Moon Base One effort down in Paraguay got me thinking. We have a lot of companies in Australia right now. We buy some large patches of land and then move a shit-ton of base components in containers there at night. Cover them with soil and
done.”
Kevin didn’t know what to say to that.
“You are thinking a testing area for outer space?” Stephanie asked. Kevin looked at her surprised and then back to Lance with a question on his face.
Lance nodded, “I am. I’m thinking we all need to think, and work, like we are already out there. We need to plan this all as if we don’t have it, and we can’t get it from earth. So, I need you two to work with Jeffrey and Michelle for food and water needs, Team BMW for the electricity etc.”
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