It's Hell to Choose Read online

  Stella saw the sharp nod come from Bethany Anne and looked over to the reporter. “Yes sir, L2 is one of the Lagrangian points, discovered by mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange. Lagrangian points are locations in space where gravitational forces and the orbital motion of a body balance each other. Therefore, they can be used by spacecraft to 'hover'. L2 is located 1.5 million kilometers directly 'behind' the Earth as viewed from the Sun. It is about four times further away from the Earth than the Moon ever gets and orbits the Sun at the same rate as the Earth.”

  “So, it’s on the other side of the moon?” Mark asked, to clarify.

  Stella nodded, “Yes. There are plans to place a significant amount of advanced space probes including the James Webb Space Telescope out at L2 in 2018.”

  Jin smiled as he watched Stella come out of her shell under the guidance and expectation of Bethany Anne. He watched the others standing around as they realized what was happening and what it meant.

  Jin was proud of this group. He had two degrees and had taken the classes for another two. His parents had passed along impressive genes, and he looked ten years younger than he actually was. His partner leaned over to him, “Did she just get Stella to answer questions on national television?”

  Jin turned towards Dillan and spoke softly, “I think it’s just local News 4, but yeah, she did.”

  “And did I understand her correctly? Are we going up into space.” Jin nodded to Dillan. “Dude, you're the best!” Jin smiled when Dillan punched him lightly on his arm.

  Jin straightened up. He had heard that if you wanted good things to come to you, that helping others was the way to sow the seeds so the Universe could pay you back. However, Jin never figured it would work that way for him.

  Until now.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mali, Africa

  Omar Kolan heard the knock at his door and considered ignoring it. His arm, still in a cast from the gunshot wound he suffered from the terrorist attack at his hotel last month, was throbbing.

  Omar had earned three awards for helping his people and his customers when his hotel in Mali was attacked. He had been carrying a pistol with him for two months. While he hadn’t been a good shot, he had reacted fast enough to slow down the terrorists and pull one of his customers back into safety so that the desk clerk could tie a tourniquet around her leg.

  When the police arrived, within minutes, the terrorists were still tied up in a gun battle with Omar. Soon, it was a fight with the police and the last gunman decided that Omar’s position was better. So, he came running towards Omar. Omar took two rounds to his left arm. Omar hadn’t missed his shots to the terrorist's chest. One of the terrorists' bullets shattered his ulna in his upper arm while the other tore through his muscle and was still crazy painful.

  Like right now.

  The knock happened again, and there was a female’s voice attached to it. “We apologize for calling on you so late, Mr. Kolin, but this visit is in response to your tweet yesterday.”

  Omar’s eyes grew round as he pulled himself out of his chair. He had received an email the day after the attack and had ignored it. Now, with all of the news about the organization which was going to the moon and beyond, he wanted to know more about helping build something bigger. Something that was beyond all of this internal bickering here in Mali.

  Omar went to his door and flicked on the porch light for his apartment. There was a very attractive black haired lady at the door and a giant man behind her. He had blond hair and was looking out from the second story balcony where Omar’s apartment was located.

  Omar didn’t live in a bad section of Mali, but if this lady was who he thought she was, he understood her need for protection.

  He opened the door, “Hello, I’m Omar Kolin, would you like to step inside?” She smiled at him and stepped through the opening.

  The man behind her simply said, “I’ll stay out here if you don’t mind turning off the light?” Omar nodded and turned the light switch back off. He wondered what his neighbors would say about the large man standing at his doorstep. Especially that busybody two doors down that always gave him the eye as he went past her door in the afternoon.

  Like he wanted to bust into her apartment or something, gossiping old bat.

  It took him a total of ten minutes to understand that she was offering him the opportunity to have his arm totally healed for free and following that, the chance to discuss operating a hotel in a brand new location. He wouldn’t have to worry about selling rooms, but he would have to worry about top notch service and thinking about keeping people healthy in an enclosed environment where they couldn’t leave for ‘something down the street’.

  She left him plane tickets to arrive in France to join a large group of people, like himself, that her group felt deserved something done for them, as they had sacrificed for others. Following that, if they felt they would like to continue pushing themselves in their chosen profession, then they had a position her company would like to speak to them about. This would be after the physical healing, so everyone understood they could walk out of the meeting and not lose out.

  He walked her to the door and in a moment, they were down the stairs, and he couldn’t hear them. He shut his door and made his way back to the table where the envelope with the tickets and itinerary laid.

  Opening the envelope, he found it had everything he needed including additional spending money if something happened outside of the plans. All he had to do was confirm his pickup time with the travel agency, pack and step outside.

  When she had stepped towards the door, she asked him how long his left eye had been having problems. He admitted since he was a teenager, and had been in a car wreck. She had smiled and told him, “We will fix that, too.”

  He stared down at the envelope thinking about the offer to fix his eye, tears dripping down his face.

  Port of Hamburg, Germany

  “That makes twenty-two of these weird containers that have to be put up top.” The foreman spoke to the captain, “It says here you know about this?”

  Captain Josef Diementz responded to the foreman who was busy loading his container ship. His ship had arrived here at the port of Hamburg yesterday, and it was usually a clean trip in and back out. With three hundred berths along forty-three kilometers, the Germans knew how to get the eleven hundred weekly freight trains of product in and out of this location efficiently.

  What they didn’t like, apparently, is being told exactly where to put twenty-two containers.

  Captain Diementz had spoken with the CEO of TQB Enterprises when she surprised him by showing up in the middle of a thirteen day run from Belgium to New York last month. She politely requested a meeting via email and when he looked up the information she provided, he had to agree that he did work for the lady. The shipping line he worked for was owned by a company that was itself owned by a company that belonged to TQB.

  So, what was a Captain to do when the highest CEO requests a meeting? You say ‘yes’ if you want to continue working.

  She had asked him what food he liked in all of the world and he admitted it was deep-dish pizza from Chicago. She told him that she would deliver if he could clear time at 7:00 PM that evening and keep the meeting quiet?

  Four hours later, Josef was walking onto the bridge when his radio operator called to him, “Sir?”

  He looked at him, “Yes?”

  “Sir,” The radio operator looked back down to make sure his equipment was operating properly, then back to the Captain. “Sir, we have a request from TQB to approach and board? They say they do not need us to do anything except approve the request?” His eyes grew a little. A berth on a container ship wasn’t supposed to have much in the way of weirdness.

  “Send our greetings and please provide approval from our ship that they may approach and board.” Josef agreed.

  The radio operator turned slightly towards the equipment, then back to the Captain to see if his leg was being pulled. Satisfied it was not, he
finished the approval over his headphones.

  The three men on the bridge all went to the glass to look out into the last rays from the sun dipping over the horizon to see what was arriving. They were still looking when a knock on the door to the bridge caught them by surprise. Josef was closest, so he stepped back and opened the door, allowing the aroma of fresh pizza to invade their noses.

  Standing there was a black haired woman in dark pants and a red half-jacket holding two “My Pie” boxes. “Did someone ask for Chicago Deep Dish?” she asked him, smiling.

  Josef just looked for a moment until he realized that there was a guy behind her. He had huge arms holding another five boxes, and he spoke when Josef looked over to him, “If your guys have the time, I have another five boxes to share with the crew? If we hurry, they are still hot.”

  “Yeah,” the lady added, “They wouldn’t let me leave without using two of their delivery carrying bags. Cheryl Lynn is going to have to ship those back.”

  “After you autograph them.” The man nudged her gently from behind.

  The dinner was fantastic, and that was when Josef was told exactly why in a month twenty-two containers would need to be exactly where the plan she would provide him would specify.

  He addressed the foreman, “Yes, I do know about the request and they are going to be the first off of the vessel. Please place them according to the specifications and I’ve been informed they will not negatively affect the weight plan. That is correct, yes?”

  The weight plan was important. If you didn’t adjust the weight across a container ship correctly, all kinds of hell could go wrong. Further, it was important in what order the containers were removed, as well.

  Especially if it was going to happen at sea.

  The foreman grumped, “No, they fit the weight plan perfectly. So much that there were only two rotations we might have done, but the program agreed it was within parameters. We have four other containers not weighing like they should, that threw off a few calculations. Ok, then with your permission and our confirmation these last twenty-two containers are loading now. You will be ready to leave soon, Captain.”

  Josef disconnected and looked forward to another deep-dish Chicago Pizza dinner delivery for him and his crew. While they would be eating, they would all watch the twenty-two containers lift off from his ship simultaneously in the middle of his voyage.

  Out in the middle of the ocean, what was anyone going to do to stop it?

  Shipyards in St. Nazaire-Penhot, France

  “This is Mark Billingsly. I’m in St. Nazaire-Penhot, France and behind me is the new QBS Consanesco. It looks strange because it is painted in all black, like a military ship, even though it is obviously a mid-size ocean liner.”

  Mark turned so Sia had him in profile as he glanced at the ship, “We understand that the ship’s name means ‘Be Healed’ or ‘Recover’.” He turned back to the camera, “There have been a lot of people who have been boarding the ship in the last two days as it gets ready to leave shore. Right now, I’m told the ship is not fully staffed, but there is very palatial recovery facility for those arriving. However, this ship is not the actual location where those who are aboard might have operations themselves, but rather where they wait until it is their turn for surgery.”

  He continued talking as images from the last couple of days appeared over him on the feed, “As you can tell, many of those that are boarding the Consanesco seem to be military. We have been able to confirm at least seven different countries at this time have military personnel on board. Further, we were able to capture an image of the Mali hotel manager, Mr. Omar Kolan, who was also dropped off by limousine just a few minutes ago. So, it is evident that this is not just military personnel who have been invited for this inaugural cruise. No one is sure what is going to happen, but as you can imagine, there is a lot of hype and rumor surrounding what this company can possibly do.”

  Sia noticed a small, black helicopter looking craft appear above the ship. She turned slightly and zoomed in and pointed with her finger to get Mark to look. He broke from his pre-scripted speech and went into his ‘reporter on the scene’ voice. “We are seeing something new happening. Sia, the best camera operator in the world in my opinion, is capturing one of the black ‘Pods’ that TQB uses to travel so often. It is the same style Pod we watched Bethany Anne, the CEO of TQB Enterprises, use when arriving at their headquarters in Colorado when we spoke with her last week.”

  A female figure stepped out of the pod and was approached by two crew members who seemed to point her to the side of the ship.

  “I can’t tell from this distance,” Mark continued, “whether that is Bethany Anne or not. While sightings of the CEO are rare, it would fit her personality to be here to see the ship off.” Then, the female figure was caught walking down the boarding tube and coming towards them.

  Sia focused on the figure and shook her head minutely to Mark. “Ok, we can tell this is not Bethany Anne, so it looks like we are going to be introduced to a new person from…” Mark paused for a moment. “Wait, I know this lady. This is our fellow reporter Giannini Oviedo from Costa Rica, who broke the news about TQB in the beginning. It looks like she has been pulled into another news event!”

  Giannini Oviedo came up to Mark smiling and held out her hand, “Ola Senor Billingsly!” Sia thought Giannini’s smile was damned photogenic as Mark greeted her.

  “Greetings, Ms. Oviedo!” Mark responded. “I see that TQB has brought you from Costa Rica for the maiden voyage of the QBS Consanesco.”

  “Yes, they were gracious enough to make the offer. However, they have also provided me the chance to work with another professional, but imagine my surprise when he and his camera person were not in Denver when I checked, but rather his superiors informed me they were already in France?” Her smile radiated as Mark caught on to what she was telling him.

  Mark turned to the camera a little, “Are you asking Sia and myself to join you on the maiden voyage?” He inquired.

  “Si!” she beamed. “I have permission from your bosses, although how they give permission in America is very strange.” Her face looked questioning to Mark, who could just imagine how his bosses might say, ‘he would be pleased to join you.’

  Probably something like, ‘that idiot better be on that ship!’ Well, he hoped they used ‘idiot’ and not something even worse.

  Mark turned towards the camera, but viewers could tell he was looking slightly beside the lens, “What about it Sia?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively, “Care to go on a cruise with me?” As he finished his question, he turned to the camera and winked for the viewers.” Sia smiled and moved the camera slightly up and down.

  Giannini looked to the camera and waved them towards herself, “Come on folks, let’s go be part of history!”

  —

  Mark and Sia had spent the better part of the morning and afternoon meeting and interviewing those that were invited to the ship. Generally, most of the military men and women were already ‘ex’ military. Their physical problems stopped them from continuing their service. There were another ten non-military people who had all suffered substantial wounds from helping in situations where anyone in their right mind would say they were a ‘hero.'

  The next morning, the ship was pushed out by four tugboats.

  Mark found Giannini watching the shore slip out behind them and approached her. “Thank you” he told her as she turned to see who was behind her.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For seeking us out. I understand from my bosses that it was your choice. When you approached us on the wharf, I thought TQB told you who they wanted to work with you. We aren’t anyone special, Sia and I…”

  “Are a good team!” Giannini interrupted him. “I watched your interview, Mr. Billingsly.”

  “Mark, please” he interrupted.

  She nodded, “Mark it will be. I watched your interview, and it was well handled. You seemed to follow the story, and that is all we c
an ask. Just follow the story. Your follow-up to track that man back to Washington was admirable. Plus, it cost your small local channel a lot of money to do that.”

  Mark shrugged, “The licensing of my interview helped pay for it, so it worked out.” He put his arms against the railing and looked down the dark hull, “It’s so weird to see this black shell on a ship like this.” He kneeled down to reach over the side, “It’s kind of like a gritty sandpaper, not smooth at all.” He stood back up, “Do you know what it is?”

  “No,” she answered, “I don't know what it is made of, but I can tell you the Pod I flew over here in was coated with the same stuff.”

  “Hmm,” Mark thought out loud, “So, it's the same thing that reduces radar signature. You would think that they would want a ship to have a large radar signature.”