by Michael Todd
“What?” Katie asked.
“Uh, excuse me but I hack, not install servers,” he told them. “I mean, I can whistle the tune, sweetie, but we need to get someone who slings metal in here. Who did all this to begin with? Sheesh!”
“Hey, watch it!” Katie stepped forward, but Calvin put his hand in front of her.
“Calm down.” Calvin sighed. “Our IT guy, who was a very good friend, was recently killed.”
“Oh.” Timothy put a hand on the back of his head, ruffling his hair as he looked around anywhere but at Katie. “Sorry. But yeah…we need to fix all this for me to work my magic. No fret—I know some people who would do it for a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a wink from Big Tits over there.”
He waved his hand at Katie and she narrowed her eyes, opening her mouth but shutting it again as Korbin stepped in front of her. He wrinkled his nose and looked at Calvin, who just shrugged. Korbin sighed and stepped toward Timothy, who immediately shrank down.
“You mean PBR as in the beer?”
“Yeah, that would be the one.”
“What kind of person would work for PBR? I mean, it’s like the trailer park of beers.” Korbin grimaced. “They could at least go for some—shit I don’t know—Sam Adams or Heineken, which are still shitty but not piss-water.”
“Hey, not all of us are snobbish high-and-mighties okay?” Timothy snapped, turning his back on Korbin and looking at the security screens.
“Whatever.” Korbin rolled his eyes. “That won’t work anyway, since you can’t connect with anyone who knew you before. Those are the rules when we become Damned. You are pretty much dead to everyone in the world except for us. It sucks, I know, but that’s how it is. It protects them too. We wouldn’t want them getting hurt on our behalf.”
“These people don’t know me.” He scoffed. “Hello, I’m a hacker! We don’t have friends. You know that whole public image of hackers sitting in their mom’s basement with three computers, a dozen bags of Doritos, and three cases of Mountain Dew? We’re usually hacking something on one screen and kicking ass in Halo on the other? Yeah, that’s pretty much spot-on for me.” He sighed. “I am the walking version of everyone’s expectation.”
“I thought you said you knew these people?” Korbin asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I know their handles. That’s what we hackers use,” he replied. “They have never met me, nor do they know my real name. It’s all very black-ops, and luckily I’m a good hacker so there is nothing out there that can trace me back to my real name.”
“Well, luckily for you I figured you might need someone to do some extra work to get you off the ground,” Korbin told him, pulling out a file. “I have contacts for that. I want to hire someone from Las Vegas. It’s too risky to pull people from all over the country. The more noise we make the more likely it is those demon teams will come barreling down here, taking you and your incubus with them.”
“That sounds a bit terrifying,” Timothy whimpered with wide eyes.
“Don’t worry, you are in charge of the security cameras.” Korbin smiled. “You’ll have a heads-up.”
“I need recommendations from your contacts then.” He sighed. “And seriously, they better not be shit.”
“Already on top of that, boss.” Korbin slapped the file down next to him.
“Well, aren’t you Mister On Top of Things.” Timothy snickered and flipped open the file.
He skimmed through the pages, nodding, groaning, and making every other noise he could emit. Korbin lifted an eyebrow and Katie rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. This guy was not only a pain in the ass but more of a diva than they had first assumed.
“Oh, great.” Timothy flipped to the last page. “Just my fucking luck—all females.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Katie asked angrily. “You think girls can’t match your superior intellect?”
“No,” he answered. “I have no problem at all with women setting up the servers, but I would have liked to get some eye candy in here. But nooo…I get the best Vegas has to offer: two bimbos with big boobs and bigger IQs. Seriously, I think you demon people are trying to make this hell on Earth. All I have is the old guy…”
Timothy motioned toward Korbin.
“And Big Scary Guy.” He nodded at Calvin.
“I’m not scary,” Calvin mumbled. He looked at Katie, who just shrugged.
“I’m sorry we aren’t running a dating service.” Korbin sighed and grabbed the file. “These people are the best we have to work with under the circumstances.”
“I’ll go get them,” Calvin volunteered, taking the file from Korbin. “I’ll have them finish up the server installs in the SUV so we don’t get blown up. Load up the SUV and I’ll be on my way. The sooner we get this shit done, the safer we will be.”
“Mmmhmm,” Katie eyed Calvin.
“What?” he asked.
“You just want to see what they look like,” she accused him. “You are picturing huge-boobed Vegas dancers. Watch…they’ll be goth chicks hissing at the daylight and scared to get near you.”
“I’m sorry.” Calvin smirked. “When did you mistake me for being gay?”
Katie shook her head and stepped to the side as the guys started carrying the equipment to the van.
After Calvin was gone Katie went out into the sunlight.
She closed her eyes for a moment, taking in the warmth and enjoying the breeze blowing across her skin.
There was suddenly beeping in the background, which sounded like a truck backing up. She opened her eyes and squinted toward Joshua’s building, where there was a huge truck with its own forklift dropping off enormous amounts of metal. She tilted her head to the side and headed to where Joshua and Travis were watching.
“Hey, guys! What’s going on?”
“Metal drop,” Joshua explained.
“I see that, but that’s quite a bit more than we usually get. Any reason?” Katie asked.
Travis turned to Joshua. “What do you think the best tack will be to figure out the right resonance?”
“That’s a good question.” Joshua thought for a moment. “At the proper frequency, the dielectric permittivity changes sign from negative to positive and the real part of the dielectric function drops to zero. We can use the formula I showed you.”
“Hmmm…” Travis rubbed his chin. “But we have to do it on a mass scale or we will be here for the rest of our lives.”
“Of course,” Joshua agreed.
“We definitely should separate the metals first,” Travis said. “That will make the calculations much easier.”
Katie stared back and forth between the two of them, trying not to show that she was completely and totally lost.
She had never realized until that moment just how smart Joshua was—or Travis for that matter, though it seemed more reasonable for him. She had no idea what they were talking about. They might as well have been speaking another language.
Katie had always thought of herself as reasonably intelligent. She’d had a 4.2 on graduating from high school and was on the honors list in college, but apparently she’d missed the class on metal resonance frequencies.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” Joshua turned to her. “Did you ask me something?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. I probably wouldn’t understand the answer.” She chuckled.
Katie had originally come out of the garage to come check on Joshua and Travis, but from the looks of it, they had everything under control.
They were getting their geek on while Katie tried to find out why the front of his building was starting to look like a scrap yard.
I think they had hard-ons, Pandora suggested.
Probably.
She figured Joshua had his reasons, and he did have full reign over acquiring what he needed to get the job done. They were basically creating a factory, which would naturally lead to needing more supplies.
She went into the shop and looked around at all the machines.
The place looked totally different than before the contractors had come and she kind of missed the homey feeling she’d gotten before. It was all for the best, though, and the clanging of metal in the back by Charles just added to the effect.
She wandered back to where he was and stared at the table.
“Hey.” He smiled. “Glad you stopped by. This is actually perfect timing. We have almost forty boxes of one hundred rounds each, so about four thousand rounds done already.”
Katie was a bit shocked. “Wow! I wasn’t sure if you guys had even started making them yet.”
“Oh, yeah.” Charles picked up a bullet. “As soon as we can get the metal figured out I’ll be able to get us up to around twenty-five thousand rounds per day easy.”
“That’s a lot of bullets,” Stephanie exclaimed from behind them.
“That’s nothing compared to some of the factories I’ve seen. Their production is insane,” Charles told them.
“Let me ask you this,” Stephanie began, tilting her head. “With that kind of production you will undoubtedly need help. What kind of manpower—or womanpower—will you need?”
“Honestly?” He rubbed the back of his head. “I’ll probably need seven people minimum to run the machines and quality-check the rounds as they come off the manufacturing floor, and that’s just looking at a normal five-day work week. If you count the extra two days I’ll need a couple more. Of course, I won’t be here forever, so I don’t really want to include myself in that number.”
“Okay.” Stephanie bit the inside of her cheek. “If you could excuse Katie and me for a moment, I need to discuss some business stuff with her.”
“Of course.” He smiled as the two walked to the other side of the room.
“That’s a lot of people,” Stephanie whispered to Katie. “We have the girls, but they already have important jobs. There’s no one else I can bring on who would be trustworthy enough in this kind of environment. There are far too many secrets floating around this place. You are going to need to call the general and ask him for some people.”
“I don’t know if he will be able to do any better than you,” Katie replied, shaking her head. “We can’t just let anyone onto the base. That would pose a serious security issue, and we don’t have enough people to run a security detail.”
“Well, we don’t have enough people to put them on bullet duty either. That would be the whole team,” Stephanie countered. “The general wants this operation, so he is going to have to do some serious digging and find reliable and safe people for us.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Hey, boss,” Katie leaned against the doorway to Korbin’s office.
“Hey.” He leaned back in his chair. “Come on in.”
“Did you see the mighty load of metal they dropped in front of Joshua’s building?”
“I didn’t, but Stephanie told me about it. I hope they don’t leave it there too long.”
“Well, from the sound of things—like them possibly producing upward of twenty-five-thousand rounds a day—they will roll right through that,” Katie replied.
“That’s damned amazing!” Korbin exclaimed. “That’s intense but good. Really good. I have a feeling we and the rest of the country are going to need them.”
“Agreed. There’s just one thing… In order to produce those numbers, Charles is going to need help. I wanted to find out if it was okay if I asked the general for people. Seven, to be exact, who can come here and help with manufacturing.”
“Of course. Bring in whatever you need, but make sure the general vets every single one of them,” Korbin agreed. “We need to have someone at the gate checking IDs and demon status.”
“My only question is where we’re going to house all of them?” Katie asked. “There are plenty of places in the tunnels, but I don’t think that is a good idea. I suppose we could clean up some of the barracks and put them there for the time being.”
“No, no,” Korbin replied. “They won’t be staying here. They will come in the morning, work, and leave just like any other nine-to-five job. We will run it like a normal business. If we decide to run weekends, we will let Charles handle the scheduling. They will be military, so there aren’t any legal limits on the number of hours per week they can work. Just don’t overwork them.”
Katie slapped her forehead with the back of her hand and rolled her eyes. How could she have been so dense as to not figure out that solution sooner?
She had been Damned so long now she thought everyone lived like them.
The truth was, they were the minority. They lived even tighter than the military in most situations. They were always on duty, always nearby, and had to stay together. There was no off-base housing, leave, or anything else normal.
“I’ll give the general a call,” she told him and stood up. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said absently, already making notes about something else.
Katie saw herself out of the office and headed down the tunnel, slowing down and smiling when Calvin approached, followed by two women. Neither was more than okay in the looks department, and she giggled at Calvin’s disappointment.
He was disappointed to not get the Vegas dancers, Timothy was disappointed at not getting hot men, and the incubus was going to be disappointed too.
It was one of those moments where Katie was just really enjoying everyone’s misery. Served them right for objectifying those poor women.
Chapter Nineteen
Katie made her way to the kitchen, where she fixed herself some lunch. She sat down at the table to enjoy it.
She figured the general would be back from his lunch right about now so she ate quickly, knowing the situation had to be cemented soon. They were making such good progress with the company she could hardly keep up.
When she was done with her lunch, she headed over to the call room and closed the door. The regular feed had been routed to Korbin since Stephanie was busy at the shop, and the room had a landline. Her cellphone was spotty in the tunnels.
She dialed the general’s number and waited.
“General Brushwood’s office,” the secretary answered.
“Hi, this is Katie. I was hoping to catch the general in his office.”
“Katie who?”
“Just Katie,” she replied happily. “He will know who I am.”
“Please hold,” the secretary replied abruptly.
Pandora snickered. Someone needs to get laid.
Right?
“Katie!” the general exclaimed. “Good to hear from you. How is everything going?”
“It’s going really well,” Katie replied. “I just got word that as of right now we are capable of producing four thousand rounds a day.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“It is,” Katie agreed. “What’s even better is that very soon—and I mean days, not weeks—we will be up to twenty-five thousand a day.”
“That’s almost the only good news I’ve heard recently.” He covered the receiver and coughed to the side, then returned to the conversation. “So what can I do for you?”
“Well, with production on that scale Charles will need people to help.”
“How many do you need?”
“I was told that we will need seven people who can come in the morning, work, then leave in the evenings,” Katie answered.
“That isn’t a problem at all,” the general replied. “I will call Nellis right after we hang up and have seven of their most trustworthy armaments specialists briefed and sent over to you first thing tomorrow.”
“We need to make sure that they will keep what they see on this base a complete secret,” Katie reminded him. “I don’t have to tell you how fragile this whole situation is. We don’t have a crew of armed guards protecting our base twenty-four hours a day and we’re still a bit jumpy after the last attack.”
“Understandable,” the general agreed. “I can assure you that these men will be completely and totally d
iscreet. They will comprehend the importance of secrecy, and if they don’t I will handle it like I did Travis. How is he doing, by the way?”
“He seems to be doing very well.” Katie chuckled. “He has fallen right in line, and is really bringing some good stuff to the table.”
“Good. Maybe we scared him straight.”
“Oh, and I have another thirty boxes of rounds for you,” Katie said. “That’s three thousand bullets so I hope that will keep you at least for a little while.”
“Now that’s the best news I’ve had in the last few days,” the general exclaimed. “We needed more, but I figured it would be a while before we saw the next batch.”
“To be honest, so did I,” Katie replied. “I went over there today and Charles showed me what he had produced. I was blown away. I figured it would be weeks before we saw numbers like that. That’s why I called you right away about the help. They are moving at lightspeed over here and I can’t seem to keep up.”
“That’s a good thing, at least in your line of work. Luckily for you, you won’t be taking any angry customer service calls over delays.”
“I sure hope not.” Katie sighed. “Stephanie is the customer service department and I don’t know if she has that kind of patience.”
“We will take care of that when the time comes,” he replied. “I will get someone over there this afternoon to pick up the ammunition and deploy it to where it is needed most.”
“Excellent! I will let Korbin know we will have a visitor shortly.”
“Perfect,” the general replied. “You guys are doing a hell of a job over there, that’s for sure.”
“Calls haven’t come that often lately, so we’ve had that extra time to really get things under control,” Katie explained. “I know you probably see more than we do since you have the whole country to look at, but around here it’s been quiet. I think if we didn’t have this to focus on we all might go a little stir-crazy.”
“They’re coming, don’t you worry about that. It’s just a question of when,” the general assured her. “It looks like I have a call coming in from Tactics, so I am going to have to let you go.”