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  Patricia made a face, “Well, he is responsible for killing so many people over a thousand years.”

  Lance tried to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Yes, but dey vere all bad!”

  Patricia looked back to Bethany Anne who shrugged, “I doubt they were all bad but he was very strict and did what he said he’d do. I’m sure you could argue the sins of the deaths should be laid at those up the chain of command.”

  Gabrielle’s smile grew wistful, as she had forgotten about that aspect of Michael’s past.

  Patricia nodded, “Yes but if it wasn’t for him, Lance wouldn’t have you right now. I don’t know the Michael from those times. The one that I’ve been even remotely around doesn’t seem to be some horrible guy. Who knows, maybe he’ll find a girl he will want to latch onto at the wedding?”

  Lance asked, “How are we going to get legal documents for back here in America?”

  Gabrielle waved her hand, “Stephen can provide those for you. He has plenty of people he can call to get you legitimate licenses for Romania and a couple of other countries in that area. I couldn’t tell you what it would take for a ceremony on the ship.”

  Ecaterina spoke up, “I don’t know how it’s done, but I will be happy to look into it. Maybe we will need to do the same thing for one or two other couples.”

  Bethany Anne looked over to Ecaterina, “Who else is getting busy?”

  Ecaterina shrugged, “No one specific yet, just rumors.”

  The rest of the evening was spent talking dresses and other items women have spoken about since time immemorial.

  Bethany Anne never provided an ‘out’ so that her dad could excuse himself. She wanted to see how long he would stick around. Damned if he didn’t make it all the way through the evening. He even served everyone refreshments about twenty minutes into their discussion.

  Bethany Anne squinted at her dad during some conversation about table center pieces. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she would swear he had something up his sleeve. He would occasionally mess with something on his phone and then put it away. He was being patient, too damned patient. But he stayed right there beside Patricia with his arm around her shoulders as the four ladies talked. She finally just gave up trying to figure out his secret.

  Lance kept his smiles to himself, noticing his daughter looking at him from time to time. He happened to be testing a new product from one of their companies. It was a special transceiver which was worn behind the ear, hidden from view. It would vibrate the bones in the ear allowing someone to ‘hear’ without using headphones. The sound couldn’t be picked up by sensitive microphones.

  Or … lady vampires.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  5th level, TQB Base, CO - USA

  Lance Reynolds frowned at the klaxon as it blared throughout the level, the accompanying light splashing red highlights around the area. The last time he had been here, his daughter had gone into this room and then disappeared. He had sworn he would not come back down here while he was the base commander.

  Good to know he was true to his word.

  Bethany Anne had called Michael to find out how to open the door. He explained it was just a phone number with 15 digits typed in once the call was answered with a tone. It was old technology, but it was effective. He playfully asked if she was going to find someone that she could change? She replied instantly, “Yes, I’ve decided I’m going to change Tabitha and leave her with you to train. You didn’t get the opportunity to train me, so I figured you could work it off.” She sweetly told him goodbye before he could sputter out a retort. Bethany Anne had been told … ‘but you didn’t hear it from me’ … that Michael was flustered trying to work with his first female tech support person. He had apparently used his ability to read her mind only to find her in the middle of a sexual fantasy with him as the star attraction. He had enough control to finish his conversation without giving anything away, but it had caught him by surprise and he wasn’t sure what next step to take with her. She was a first class hacker but she came with a few extra challenges for him.

  Later that week Nathan had come to Bethany Anne to discuss a strange conversation he’d had with Michael. Nathan thought Michael was trying to ask very discreetly, ‘was Ben an excellent person and if perhaps Tabitha might be a better choice to be on the ships’? Bethany Anne had broken out laughing and after she got herself under control she told Nathan that he should tell Michael, ‘Ben is gay, that’s not a problem is it?’ Nathan admitted since telling Michael this he hadn’t received any more such questions from Michael. Hopefully, Michael didn’t think to ask Tabitha if Ben was gay, or the ruse might fall apart.

  The ponderous vault door opened. Lance noticed the envelope taped to the door and reached up, “Don’t think we will need this anymore.” He pulled the envelope from the door, folding it and sticking it in one of his pockets. Frank had been dropped off by Bethany Anne, and asked him if that was the envelope he had written and Lance had nodded an affirmative.

  Both Tom Billings and Jeffrey Diamantz had just arrived the previous evening. They accompanied Kevin, Lance, Frank and Nathan into the room. Tom was here to stay but Jeffrey was just in for a short time before he returned to continue with Patriarch Research until everything was safely shut down and his children were finished with their current school year. Frank had brought along his special laptop, which would allow the group to communicate with ADAM and TOM.

  There had been some concern expressed, whether there would be enough air in the vault for six men to have a long conversation. ADAM had supplied a quick ‘yes’. A typical human used 388 cubic feet of air in 24 hours. With sixteen cubic feet used per person per hour, the six of them would use about one hundred cubic feet per hour. The room had approximately twelve hours of air for the men. They would be exiting before that because there was no climate control and they would become too uncomfortable.

  Since their discussion needed the most secure location on the base the vault was it. With over one hundred feet of rock horizontally and several hundred vertically, no signals were going to make it through that much rock.

  That’s why Tom Billings pointed to Frank’s laptop when he saw him connected, “How the hell are you getting a signal in here?”

  Frank smiled over at Tom, “That, my dear boy is one of the secrets we’re about to share with you.” Tom wasn’t sure what to make of being called ‘boy’. The man across the table from him didn’t look any more than ten years older than he was.

  Lance sat at the head of the table, the end furthest away from the door. He rapped on the table and called the meeting to order once the door had finally shut.

  The abrasive noise of the klaxon finally stopped and allowed quiet to return.

  “Thank God,” Lance grumped. “If I don’t have to hear that noise ever again it will be too soon.”

  Tom looked around the table. Since he already knew Jeffrey, Lance and Nathan, he reached across the table to the guy who called him ‘boy’. “Hi, I’m Tom Billings.”

  Frank reached for Tom’s hand, “Frank Kurns, pleased to meet you.”

  Lance spoke up, “We will go around the table quickly introducing ourselves. I’ll start, my name is Lance Reynolds and I am CEO of TQB Enterprises. I’m also the person responsible for the acquisition of this base and I was the former general in charge of running it. What we talk about in this room, gentlemen, is of the highest secrecy. I know this will sound cliché but speaking about it could mean your death and I’m not exaggerating. Tom, Jeffrey you guys are going to be fully involved with our future. Therefore, you are about to find out secrets you would never have guessed at before. For now, you will just have to believe me until I can show physical proof outside of this room.”

  Jeffrey looked around at the others. With a statement like that from the CEO he was certainly interested. The conversation he had with Bethany Anne to get himself and Tom moved to Colorado was incredibly intriguing. Now he was going to learn more secrets?

  Lance cont
inued, “The purpose of this conversation is to create the infrastructure for a Command and Control center. The expectation is that all of us, including the two individuals who are with us via chat, are going to be focused on the design of a multiple redundancy support system. It will be run out of this base but it should be able to be immediately transferred to other locations. Whether those locations are here on earth, or out in space.”

  Jeffrey interrupted, “Does this have to do with the space ship that Bethany Anne spoke about?”

  Lance paused for a second, letting the silence speak for him. Finally he answered the query, “Yes and then some. The team you will be working with is located in another part of the base. I will get you involved with them soon, however right now I believe you need to be aware of what we are going to divulge. Let me start with the basics. Aliens exist, they are real and they have been here for at least 1,000 years. There are vampires and werewolves, and they are not what folklore makes them out to be. Rather they are modifications of humans via alien technology. We are working towards ensuring that earth has adequate defenses should aggressive alien groups come against us.”

  Tom spoke up, “Are you guys connected with the US government on this? I know that there have been studies related to firing nuclear rockets into outer space from way back in the 50s.”

  Lance shook his head, “No, the technologies that we have available are so far in advance of anything any government has that it would upset the balance of power on earth as it currently exists. The fear is that if we shared our tech with a superpower there would probably be no reason for aliens to invade since it would fire off world war three. I am ex-Army, Kevin next to me is ex-Army, Nathan is …” Lance looked over to Nathan for him to introduce himself.

  Nathan grinned, “Punting are we?” Nathan turned to the three men who didn't know him. “I was in the military a long time ago. If you’re on Bethany Anne’s team, then she trusts you implicitly so I won’t hide too much. Until recently, I had my own internet security firm and ran through the dark web under a few different aliases.”

  Tom jumped in, “Would you share a couple of those identifiers?”

  Frank spoke, “If he doesn't, come see me afterwards.” Nathan glared at the unrepentant man. Frank just shrugged, “You said you weren't going to hide much.”

  Nathan sighed, "Ok, old habits and all of that." Nathan turned to Tom, “This stays here, understand?”

  Tom wasn't sure why Nathan was so adamant since he looked like he wasn't involved in hacking anymore. “Sure.”

  “That goes for any of you, this hasn't even been shared with my mate yet.” Nathan looked over to Lance, “Just hasn't come up.” Lance shrugged. “Two of my more well-known aliases included tom.e.gunn and Canonical.”

  Tom’s face held a look of awe, “No way!” Tom jumped up and reached over the table. “Oh my god, I have to shake your hand!”

  Jeffrey popped his friend in the side, “Hey, why don't you clue the rest of us in on why you’re going all fan-girl now?”

  Tom finished shaking Nathan’s hand, who seemed a little embarrassed at Tom’s outburst. “Ten years ago there was a big crackdown on some hackers that had been trying to show the government that their security sucked. But instead of working with the group, I think there was ten of them, the government arrested them all. Then, Canonical came along and threatened that if the government didn't let them go he would take some totally black documents he had that were super serious and post them on the Internet. The Feds went ape-shit, but no one could figure out what he had. So he dropped fifteen file names and the first sentence from each one and the ten hackers were released. Canonical said that he wouldn’t release the documents if the government left the hackers alone. He also had an open statement that told the hackers if they attacked the government he would rescind his protection. Four of the hackers got caught for other crimes and Canonical agreed with the government’s actions. The other six have stayed out of jail.”

  Frank peered over at his friend, “That was you?” Nathan gave a sudden and sharp nod. “Good work on that. I tried tracking you myself just to see how you did it and I lost you on the fourth …” Frank paused for a moment thinking back, “or maybe it was the fifth bounce off the Russian satellites.”

  Lance interrupted the geek-idol-worshipping. “Ok, you guys can trade hacker war stories later. Nathan has extensive experience with computers and he has significant experience with HUMINT.”

  Jeffrey asked, “Excuse me, ‘HUMINT’?”

  Lance answered, “Human Intelligence. Basically it’s any intelligence that you gather from human sources as opposed to, for example, digital sources.”

  Jeffrey continued, “So, spy stuff?”

  Nathan replied, “That would be more in the clandestine HUMINT, but yes I have those abilities as well.”

  Jeffrey looked at him sharply, “When did you start training for this, age four?”

  Nathan looked over at Lance who shrugged his shoulders and answered Nathan’s unasked question, “You can if you want. Now is the time to find out if Bethany Anne’s judgement is sound.”

  Nathan turned to Frank, “You want to give a background on this?”

  Everyone turned to look at Frank, “I might as well since I’m actually the oldest one here, you young pup.” Frank shared a smile with Nathan. “Let me get out my journal just in case I need to jot down any notes.” He looked over to Nathan, “You’re the only UnknownWorlder here, you mind giving a demo?”

  Nathan shrugged, “Which form?”

  Frank smiled like a kid receiving candy, “Oh, if I get to choose I want to see your Procilici form!”

  Nathan sighed, “Of course you do. Alright, but no pictures!”

  By now, everyone’s eyes were bouncing back and forth between the two men.

  Frank nodded his agreement but displayed his fingers a quarter inch apart, “That close!” He had been asking either Pete or Nathan for pictures of what they turned into but both had refused him to date. His tone of voice changed a little to one more resembling someone giving a lecture. “Kevin, I understand Bethany Anne gave you a short peek into the UnknownWorld?” Kevin’s face turned a little red as he nodded yes in response to Frank’s question. “Ok. Tom and Jeffrey I could give you the long history, but we don’t have enough air in here as it goes back over a thousand years. The short story is that we have been visited by aliens in the past. One of those aliens had a task to find a world which had intelligent life forms, that it could modify through genetic manipulation. The results of those efforts were to become supporters against others in a war.

  That alien crash landed a little over a thousand years ago. His craft was damaged and had landed in an out of the way valley in the Carpathian Mountains of present day Romania. A human happened upon his craft and the alien was able to inject the human with their technology to change him. Since this was the alien’s first attempt and since the human wasn’t a willing participant, the change was incomplete.

  The problem, at least from the aliens’ point of view, is that the human left the craft during this mutation. This meant there was a human with alien technology, changing his body, out in the world and clueless as to what was going on.

  Fast forward a thousand years and you have a small but powerful group of modified humans living in the shadows because most of them can’t go into the sunlight due to mutations in the alien modified DNA over the years. There’s more to this, but this is the actual story of what our folklore has termed ‘vampires’.”

  Tom interrupted Frank, “No shit?”

  Kevin turned to Tom, “Trust me, no shit!”

  Tom spoke to Kevin, “You’ve seen one?”

  Kevin nodded, “As close as you are from me.”

  “Scary?”

  Kevin answered without thinking of his audience, “Scary hot! She is a knock-out.”

  Tom nodded his head, “I’m so going to geek out when I meet her.”

  Lance interrupted, “I understand you already have.�
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  Jeffrey caught on quickly and put the clues together, “Bethany Anne, right?”

  Kevin rolled his eyes, realizing he just spoke about Bethany Anne right in front of Lance … again. Nathan could hear him mumble under his breath, “Fuck me and my traitorous dumb-ass mouth!”

  Nathan tried to hide his smile. If he hadn’t known Bethany Anne was a vampire, he might have been attracted to her as well. Knowing what he did, her attractiveness had been overshadowed by his knowledge she could be a heartless cold-blooded killer. Fortunately for everyone, it turned out she did have a heart.

  Frank answered Jeffrey’s question, “Yes, Bethany Anne is what would be called a ‘vampire’ by folklore but the reality is, she’s a highly advanced and modified human.”

  Tom looked over at Frank, “So, scary beautiful advanced human? Does she have a boyfriend?”