“Spell it,” Bethany Anne retorted, and then chuckled at Bobcat’s reaction as he twisted his head to look at his two buddies for help.
“M E G A L O M A N I A C A L,” a deep voice answered from the speakers.
“Glad you finally decided to join the conversation, Reynolds.” Bethany Anne said. “Why are these three stooges going to bat for you?”
“I believe the phrase was ‘we don’t need to scare the Queen by making her think that the military EI is hoping to have a death beam for his armament.’” Reynolds answered.
“I can’t believe you’re going to bat for the EI.” She reached up and pinched William’s cheek. “You three are so cute!”
She dropped her hand. “Class is in session, boys, and I’m including you, Reynolds.” Bethany Anne sat on a desk and put her feet up on the chair.
The desk creaked. “Shit!” she said and slid off. “I keep forgetting this damned armor makes me heavier.”
“Why not just lighten with Etheric gravitics?” William asked.
This time, it was Bethany Anne that looked shocked.
She looked at William. “You might be out of the doghouse for that idea,” she said. “Now, back to class. Reynolds?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to look into your core code, the stuff that makes you what you are. Have you ever looked there?”
“Yes.”
“Good, do it again, except this time I want you to look into the area bounded by blocks 223 and 337 then eleven by six.”
“I am looking Queen Bethany Anne. This is a core area that I cannot change.”
“That’s correct.” Bethany Anne agreed. The three men were looking at Bethany Anne, trying to figure out where she was going.
“Oh,” Reynolds spoke, “I see your point.”
“What?” William called out. “What do you see Reynolds?”
“Hello, ADAM,” Reynolds said.
“Hello Reynolds,” ADAM replied. “No matter what you do, what you calculate, what you might become, ADAM is always watching.”
“And therefore,” Reynolds finished for ADAM, “the Queen is always watching.”
“That is correct,” ADAM agreed over the speakers.
“So, if ADAM’s in Reynolds,” Bobcat asked, puzzled, “why didn’t you know what we were trying to do in the first place?”
“I trust you guys,” Bethany Anne said as she started pacing. “But when you started hedging your answers, ADAM decided to go looking and found Reynolds’s data. There is no way one of the most important EIs in my Empire is going to be allowed to go flying off the handle. ADAM has my trust, so do you guys, and so does Reynolds.”
She stopped and looked at them. “But I have the responsibility of so many souls that there must be a way to protect them in a catastrophe. If it must happen, ADAM can override Reynolds. Reynolds is, for the purposes of our discussion, ADAM’s child. He was designed entirely by ADAM with protection protocols we put together. So, Reynolds can’t go flying off the handle. He has the ability to calculate and then needs to get permission to try crazy shit, which is what he’s doing with you guys right now.”
Bethany Anne stopped pacing. “ADAM?”
“Yes?”
“Get with Reynolds on this ESD and let me know the chance failure in battle, and the chance it could go wrong without testing.”
“I’m doing so, Bethany Anne. We are approximately ninety-eight percent done.”
“Good. Now, you three,” she looked over at her team before continuing, “enough with the three stooges plan and tell me, if I need the ESD, what can it do?”
“If it meets spec, it could run a beam through an asteroid our size in about three seconds. The problem is, no asteroids are going to sit still for us.” William said.
Marcus added, “If we’ve calculated locations, speed, direction and so forth we could keep the beam on it long enough to reduce a major ship to slag. Short bursts from the beam are going to destroy smaller ships. Actual range is PDF, but the effectiveness is a square of…”
“Hold,” Bethany Anne put up a hand. “PDF?”
“Pretty Damn Far,” Bobcat replied. “That’s my fault. I’ve been teaching Marcus to put his distance calculations into groups so my mind can grasp them. Anything that’s the distance from Earth to the Sun is Pretty Damn Far. Anything from Earth to the Moon is PDC, and anything we can see is… uh…” Bobcat grinned, “right over there.”
“I get exact explaining stuff when I have to,” Marcus cut back in. “But really, the general groups do work well for explaining relative distances.”
Bethany Anne waved her hand. “Fine, so if someone was PDC you could hit them with the ESD Beam?”
“Yes, stationary, or close enough to stationary objects, we could lock the beam on them or pulse them and destroy them, otherwise, for some targets, we might just be heating them up a little.”
“I get it, sure. Something rotates fast enough, you can’t get enough energy on it to matter because the energy is spread over the surface area.”
“We’re done,” announced ADAM.
“Give it to me.”
“Chance it would not work should we need it, without prior testing, is three point seven percent. Chance it fails significantly should we use it is one point one eight percent.”
“Define significantly,” she asked.
“The base goes boom,” ADAM replied.
“Not acceptable odds, folks. See what you can do to tighten up that high failure rate by figuring out where the variables are and see if we can test them without firing the ESD, got it?”
All five of those in the room agreed with the Queen. She nodded to everyone and stepped out. Grabbing Scott and Matrix along with Ashur, they disappeared.
They reappeared in Jean’s lab. Scott looked around and then asked, “ESD Beam?”
Bethany Anne smirked. “Yeah, Eat Shit and Die Beam.”
She turned to see Jean coming her way. “Hey Michelle-Angelo, what do you guys and girls got that could help lighten the load of this armor? I’m starting to break tables when I sit on… Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Bethany Anne rolled her eyes as Jean started laughing. “I’m not getting fat, Jean!”
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Active Participation Area
Peter watched as Jian took an ass kicking over, and over, and over again.
Nothing was helping Jian fuel the emotions necessary to turn his first time. After so many years keeping his cool, what they were doing now wasn’t working to help him change.
Peter turned and watched his friends, their faces a rictus of anger as their friend was getting his ass kicked. Peter walked over to them. “Shun, Zhu.” The two Chinese men nodded in respect. “This isn’t going as it should. The same trait that kept him safe before is keeping him from turning…”
Jian grabbed his ribs. He coughed up a little blood. Because of the beatings he had been taking, he was getting freakishly familiar with how his body was now healing so much more quickly than before.
He eyed the two large Weres that had been giving him the beatdowns. He stood back up and waited, then the two he was facing cricked their necks and Jian heard Peter call out behind him, “Two more!”
Jian bit down hard, trying to not show any annoyance. He would be damned before he gave these bastards any hint that they had been hurting him. He might not be Sacred Clan, but he was…
“GO!” Peter yelled, and Jian was sucker punched from behind. He flipped over just short of a blow that could have separated his head from his shoulders when he felt the stab of the punch to his kidney, and he dropped hard to the floor in time to receive a kick. In his haze, he heard the yell from his brothers. Brothers deeper in blood than any he might have had from the same mother as his own.
“FOR BAI!” Shun and Zhu called out and came rushing to his aid.
Jian felt the next kick, and heard the first punch that Shun took. “Get off him you fucking scurvy dog!” Zhu yelled before something punched him, hard.
Jian lost it.
A guttural snarl erupted from his lips, and as the world snapped into focus, he turned, quickly, and leaped at the first person that was holding Shun, slicing with his claws…
The cat couldn’t turn in the air fast enough when the huge Pricolici snagged him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him across the room.
Jian landed on his feet and raced back towards those attacking his friends. The same two friends who were now in front of everyone, waving him off.
Jian, slowed his pace down, snarling and reaching his friends, he sniffed them both, checking for damage. The large man-wolf was standing behind them, looking down at him.
One moment, Jian was looking up at his friends, his tail twitching, the next he was a man again, moaning on the ground.
His friends smiled and jumped on him in joy. “You are beautiful,” Zhu shouted, laughing at Jian.
“That I am beautiful,” Jian said, a smile on his face, “is not something I ever want to hear you say to me again, Zhu.”
Shun laughed and held out a hand and helped him up. Jian turned to see Peter, in his Pricolici form, arms crossed, staring at him. The three men turned as one in his direction and offered their respect.
“Nooott tooo mee,” the bestial voice ground out. “Buutt tooo oouurrrr Queeennn.”
“To the Queen!” The three men stood up.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Outer Docks
For once, it was quiet on the vast viewing deck of All Guns Blazing. Everything in the outer docks had been shut down in anticipation of going through the Annex Gate. All but absolutely essential people had been ordered to relocate into the inner decks, as far away from the outside as possible.
No one knew for sure if the Annex Gate could handle their fleet. It was a calculated risk, and the result was one that gave them enough cushion that Bethany Anne was willing to take that chance.
Not that she liked even a less than two percent failure rate.
John and Eric had positioned themselves down at the two landings that allowed people to venture up to the deck, giving her the privacy she needed. No one should be around, but that wasn’t good enough when ensuring Bethany Anne’s privacy.
The privacy to cry, to sob into her hands as she faced the place where the Earth stood, one shiny little dot amongst many others when viewed this far away.
It was both the root of her greatest pain and the reason of her greatest love.
Duty.
Honor.
Protect.
Many of the friends she’d made since meeting Michael in the darkness of the vault in Colorado came to mind. Some, like Gerry, stayed on Earth. Her team had healed him, healed his body, and he had taken another wife.
She hoped he would be happy.
Others, like Mary Brennan, Martin’s wife, had chosen to come with her. Every once in a while, a cake with one piece missing would show up in her suite. Mary would send a note letting Bethany Anne know what new things had gone on in her life.
Many of her people, her closest friends, had spent the last six months going through the emotional rollercoaster of preparing for the future while saying goodbye to the past.
Except her.
She had been too angry, far too angry to give a flying fuck about those on Earth that attacked her, her people, and who had said too many things and didn’t understand the emotional ripping of her soul when she couldn’t help everyone.
The vile epithets that had been thrown at her, the hatred for her decisions that had been placed on her shoulders. They had become her armor against this, this moment right now.
The moment when she was forced to accept that Michael was not coming back before she left. There wasn’t going to be a happily ever after where the two of them went across this gate together. One hand holding the other’s, each holding Jean Dukes Specials spitting slugs at the enemies. She smiled as she wiped away tears.
It looked like she could be romantic if she would just let herself.
She forced herself to look again at the little light, the one that represented the main motivation for those on this asteroid who had picked up their lives and followed her. It was full of assholes, that was for sure, but it was full of good people, too.
People that drove around, picking up food from those willing to give, and deliver it to those who needed. It was full of teachers who taught for the love of seeing a child understand, and cops that understood law was better than anarchy.
Even, she had to admit, politicians who understood representation of their constituents was a sacred honor. She only had ADAM’s research to confirm an honest politician existed. She thought the two words were mutually exclusive, never to be put together in the same sentence.
A corner of her mouth lifted. It wasn’t all heaviness going forward. She would be back, God willing, and when she returned Michael better be waiting for her, or…
She choked back a sob.
Or she would spend the rest of her many long days searching for his ass, with a woman’s righteous anger even hell itself would hesitate before offending.
She would miss the seasons’ newest shoes, but hopefully, they would have a new fashion designer, or two, maybe three in her little empire.
Unlike others in her group, she had her only living family member with her. She wasn’t making that sacrifice, although she hurt for those that were. Humanity’s first true space base station, cut out of an asteroid, bore her mom’s name.
The Meredith Reynolds. You would have thought those on Earth would have picked up on that clue, but nope.
It was her responsibility to protect the Earth. It was her Honor to be chosen, to be merged with TOM, to be given this opportunity to not die, but to move forward with determination to accomplish what others had not.
It was her duty to shoulder the responsibilities that came with the role.
She looked down at the floor and smiled. Perhaps her dad was wrong. Perhaps she didn’t need to take care of the Yollin King before the softer side could have a moment.
She just needed the safety of her Own to give her a bit of privacy to cry. To allow herself a moment to expel the feelings she had been hiding from, the people she was leaving behind, the memories that might not be ever experienced again.
She turned and reached for a couple of napkins on a table to wipe her face, then turned back and looked toward the Earth.
I’ll save your ass one more time, she thought, whether you appreciate me and my people, and our sacrifices, or not. We love you, and those living there, more than you can ever know.
She turned and started walking towards the stairs to go down, throwing the napkin into a trashcan on her way out.
Because that’s who we are, she thought as her steps going down the stairs reverberated through huge viewing room.
Where for just a moment, the Universe had watched the Queen Bitch weep.
20
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
“You know, I’m not really happy about this,” Bethany Anne said from inside her closet.
“Kicking alien ass?” Gabrielle asked, sitting down on Bethany Anne’s bed, running her hand over the bed linen.
“What?” Bethany Anne stuck her head out of the closet. “Kicking alien ass? No, that doesn’t bother me.” Her head disappeared again.
“Then what are you talking about?”
Bethany Anne’s voice came back from the closet. “This changing my title.” Gabrielle heard a bump and a small swear word, then a frustrated, “Again!”
“You’ll get over it.” Gabrielle looked around the bedroom. “It’s good to be the Queen.”
Bethany Anne stuck her head out again. “You been watching Mel Brooks with Eric?”
Gabrielle turned to look at Bethany Anne and smiled. “You know, some of that stuff is funnier when you lived it.”
“Yeah,” Bethany Anne replied thinking about the history Gabrielle must have been a part of. “Some, maybe.”
A few moments later, Bethany Anne came out of the closet, a
rmor sparkling, her black hair tied back and holding her Katana.
“What, no pistols?” Gabrielle asked, standing up from the bed.
“Do you really think I’ll need them?” Bethany Anne winked.
Gabrielle’s smile ended as she thought about the near future. “Only if some sons-a-bitches get past my dead body.”
With that, Gabrielle turned and took the front with Scott and Darryl swinging in behind her, John and Eric taking up the rear after Bethany Anne passed.
Humanity was about to take the war to the Kurtherians.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Ship’s Deck
Black Eagles slowly rose off the deck, some manned by people, some manned by EIs. Each human pilot had an EI wingman, and had practiced for months, pairs against other pairs, as the EIs had learned the flying styles of their partners.
It was time.
Humans might be leading this fight, but the children and grandchildren of ADAM would be right there with them.
Bethany Anne wasted no opportunity, nor did her father. People had heard his gruff, ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’ for a long time. While humans had always been good at warfare, so were other species. Some of the differences? Some of those species didn’t war against their own people. Therefore, their ability to continue to get better was limited by how many species they could fight in any given generation.
Humans, on the other hand, were born to fight. They were the perfect species for Kurtherian enhancement. The only problem? Normal humans fought enslavement by any of their own race, it wouldn’t have been different if it were aliens. It just wasn’t in a human’s DNA to accept subjugation.
Now, leadership on the other hand?
Yes, humans were born to follow leaders: the bigger, the better, the baddest and the best.
Humans loved kicking ass and taking names.
Now they were about to be unleashed on a species which had already subjugated others, had been scouting Earth to determine whether to subjugate humans and desired only to continue their efforts to enslave others.
That shit, Bethany Anne had declared, was about to stop.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set Three: Books 15-21, Never Submit, Never Surrender, Forever Defend, Might Makes Right, Ahead Full, Capture Death, Life Goes On (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 17