Don't Cross This Line (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 14) Read online

  The rubber floor was there to help soften the fall if someone had too much momentum when appearing, and it was easy to clean should blood be a problem.

  Ashur shot forward coming to a halt at the outside door and barked.

  “Welcome home, Ashur,” Merideth, the Operations E.I. for the base station said through the speakers. Ashur bolted out as soon as the E.I. opened the doors.

  “Don’t be getting into a fight with Bellatrix!” Bethany Anne called out. “And kiss the puppies for me!” she followed up. The four of them heard his chuff in response, and John and Jean snickered.

  “It’s a lot easier,” Jean admitted as the four of them headed towards the meeting room through the same set of doors, “to think you aren’t crazy when I can understand his communication.”

  “I don’t know,” Bethany Anne commented as the doors slid shut behind them. John took care of the security details as the small group went through the Guards’ area, “I kind of enjoyed it when no one but me knew he could communicate. You guys should have seen the look on your faces.”

  “Oh, uh, I always thought we hid it well,” Jean admitted.

  Bethany Anne chuckled.

  “You do realize besides reading minds, even if she isn’t trying, she gets a feeling for what you are thinking?” Darryl asked Jean.

  “Nooo,” Jean drew the answer out, “but that might be a little embarrassing to learn now!” She shot a dark look up at her man, who shrugged as he kept watching down the hall as they walked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bethany Anne told Jean, “we don’t advertise the fact because it would only freak people out. I try to push it down as it feels like I’m a peeping Bethany Anne. Sometimes, though, like when Ashur was talking to me, it was fun,” she looked over to Jean, “You do need to get your fun where you can, sometimes.”

  Bethany Anne chuckled when Jean’s cheeks colored, “Not like that, you nympho.” Now, Jean’s cheeks colored more as the two guys chuckled louder than the sound of Jean’s punch on John’s shoulder as it echoed down the hall.

  —

  Five minutes later, the four of them entered the Special Legation meeting room. This one was inside the base, as opposed to the one connected to the docks area which was used for security reasons.

  Bethany Anne nodded to Omar Kolan, previously in charge of the hotel operations for the Asteroid Belt, and elevated up to help run the human operations side of the base station. Dr. April Keelson from Medical and Dr. Michelle S. Brown-Williams in charge of Food was on the side of the table with Mr. Kolan.

  She greeted the tag team of Kevin McCoullagh and Yamauchi Stephanie. Lance had pulled them up from the Colorado Base, and they had helped oversee the beginning of the excavation and building of the Merideth Reynolds. They were on her right with Marcus, Bobcat, and William down that side. The smelting area out in the belt had finally been disassembled, and the massive amount of raw materials from excavation were stored wherever the hell they could find room. The miners, accustomed to the difficulties mining in space, appreciated mining out the inside of the Asteroid with the new Yollin Drilling Machines.

  It had been a tough, but good, three years.

  “First up,” Bethany Anne asked, “the artificial sun?”

  Marcus grimaced, he preferred not to call anything artificial, but he had been ruled against with finality when Bethany Anne asked him his preferred name.

  His official choice had been a long group of scientific words which made one want to use it for a drinking game.

  Screw up saying the name, take a drink People would get plastered in minutes.

  He answered her question, “We have tested all three levels, and they are working. We tested what might happen in seven different catastrophic scenarios including,” he looked over at his two friends, “If an idiot got drunk and ran a small pod into the main Etheric Energy collector and overcharged the system.”

  Bobcat shrugged, “Always assume alcohol can take your worst catastrophe and magnify it.”

  “Preach it, Brother Bobcat,” William agreed.

  “And?” Bethany Anne interrupted the trio.

  Marcus turned back to Bethany Anne, “It degraded effectively in all instances, and we did not have any unfortunate accidents.”

  “What, pray tell, would have been the likelihood of an unfortunate accident, and what would it have been, again?”

  “Ah,” Marcus scratched his cheek, “less than dying in an airplane crash and instant annihilation for everyone inside the asteroid.”

  “So,” Bethany Anne confirmed, “the only survivors would have been those outside in the docks area?”

  “Yes,” Marcus admitted.

  “Then always assume alcohol is available and sprinkle it everywhere like pixie dust when you conceive of problems with the system. My whole effort to save that backstabbing blue ball back there would immediately ceased being terribly effective if our whole damned base was vaporized.”

  She paused a moment, then added, “By us.”

  Bethany Anne looked at Marcus, tapping her nails on the table to get him to look up at her, “We have had these discussions before, Marcus. I understand you work in probabilities and the chances of a mistake after you, ADAM, ArchAngel, Merideth, the Defense E.I. Reynolds and TOM all going through the design might be vanishingly small, but I can’t have a mistake if we can help it.” Marcus nodded his understanding.

  “Ok, so when do you want to turn on the main system?” she followed up.

  Marcus’s eyebrows rose, “Ah, what?”

  Bethany Anne smiled, “I believe you have tested the Arti-Sun effectively, when do you want to fire it up?”

  Inside Schwabenland Base, Antarctica

  The American group had been speaking with Maria now for well over an hour and Barnabas only had one issue nagging at him.

  He couldn’t read Dr. Abesimmons.

  His mind was a blank to him. He was a cipher, a problem, a puzzle.

  Barnabas enjoyed a puzzle because it promised new knowledge at the end when you finished putting the puzzle together. That he couldn’t read his mind was curious, and extremely rare, but was just a hint something could be wrong, not proof so far.

  The Americans had pretty much promised Schwabenland their own small area of the country, similar to how they had finally provided American Indians with their own land. Unfortunately for the Americans, Maria had read up on them, and the American Indian’s life hadn’t seemed to be going too well until they figured out that gambling was the ultimate equalizer. Now, reservations all across the country were pulling in the white man’s money legally.

  Hell, the white man was driving hours to drop their money in the American Indian coffers.

  Should the Indian management and government manage it well, the Indian people were going to do well for a long while, perhaps generations to come. If they didn’t succumb to greed just like almost every other human group in existence.

  Maria nodded towards Dr. Abesimmons who held up his hand, “I apologize, Ms. Orsitsch, but I have a couple of rather unique questions if I may?”

  “Certainly, Dr. Abesimmons.”

  “We understand you have spoken with aliens living in Alpha Centauri, and I am not questioning that in any way whatsoever. However, we are curious if you have perhaps had contact with another group of aliens, the Grays?”

  All faces turned to Maria, “No,” she replied, “I’m aware of the aliens called Grays and do not believe I’ve spoken with any of them.” She smiled benevolently towards Dr. Abesimmons, who had been nothing but incredibly respectful the whole discussion when he had asked any questions so far.

  “Thank you, the second question, is whether you have every heard of a group of aliens called Kurtherians?”

  “SNEEZE!” Barnabas ordered into Maria’s mind, and she immediately held up a hand, turned her head away from those at the table and sneezed loudly.

  “Please do not recognize the name Kurtherians, Maria,” Barnabas suggested, leaving the final decis
ion in Maria’s lap.

  Either way, this man was now suspect number one on his list of leads.

  Maria fanned her face, closing her eyes and turning her head back away from the table again. This time in Barnabas’s direction and her eyes opened when she saw him sitting in the chair.

  Then they narrowed as she looked at him before she sneezed once more and turned back towards the table.

  She smiled to the table, “I’m terribly sorry, I’m usually not very allergic, but perhaps something came in with your clothes. I do apologize again.” She turned towards Abesimmons, “I’m sorry good Doctor, you asked about an alien species? A Kurthurans?”

  “No, madam, Kurtherians,” he corrected.

  “No, I have not. Are they important?” She asked him, “I’ve heard of maybe a dozen different species but Kurtherians,” she stopped to make sure she was pronouncing the name correctly, “Is not one of them.”

  “I understand. They are,” he told those in the group who had written the name down in their notes, “a rumored group and a passion of mine. My apologies for taking a gamble and asking during this limited availability of your time.”

  At least three heads nodded in understanding. All researchers Barnabas knew, having read their surface thoughts.

  The group continued talking for another twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door, before Hans and Horst opened it and walked in. Soon, the American group had been herded out of the room with Maria walking out at the end of the group to see them to the exit. She turned and whispered towards the room before she closed the door behind her.

  “We will talk later, Barnabas.”

  Private residence, outside Chicago, Illinois - USA

  The former President sighed as he hung up the phone. He leaned back in his chair and used his foot to move it in a circle so that he was looking out the large window into the beautiful winter landscape at the back of his house.

  He knew he was going to get pulled back into this mess one last time.

  He had left two envelopes for the new President three years before. The first was the traditional letter from the outgoing President to the new incoming one. That was expected, and it held similar thoughts and recommendations as the President before he provided at the start of his term of office.

  The second one was simply labeled, “Ignore At Your Own Peril.”

  For the first year after he left office, the relationship between TQB and the USA had been cordial, and he had hoped the decent working relationship he had built up with Bethany Anne would continue with the new President.

  It had not.

  First, they didn’t get along. Both had large enough responsibilities, but only one of them had the real ability to back it up. The USA had a large capacity to be tactical and some damned impressive weaponry and people.

  Bethany Anne could drop a rock in the middle of Colorado. That she wouldn’t was an assumption the wags up in the Government had finally decided was the Gospel Truth.

  So, even though you could do something, if you wouldn’t then where was the threat?

  He continued looking out the window, knowing he was going to pick up his personal phone and make that call. He owed the world another try. Hell, he owed his family another try.

  He breathed deeply and reached back with his left hand landing on his desktop, moving it a couple of times left and right before he felt his hand grab the cell phone and pulled it back around.

  He grinned just a little as he called up the Digital Assistant, “SIRI, call Wonder Woman.”

  QBBS Merideth Reynolds

  The all-system warning lights and alarms screamed throughout the inner area, and all non-essential people were told to get inside.

  It might have been nice to have everyone see this new technology turn on, but Bethany Anne wasn’t willing to gamble on a small mistake vaporizing her people.

  Watching it happen on video was going to have to be good enough.

  Those working to bring up the new Artificial Sun were working inside the main Engineering rooms. One with controls, another for the main machinery with glass between them. “When you close the loop between the two systems from the Etheric side, come back here and hit the button to complete the links,” Marcus told Bethany Anne. He was licking his lips as he watched the two screens showing the Etheric Energy Pull for their systems.

  He touched the commands, and the lights in the middle of the massive cavern dimmed, leaving everything in the inky blackness that the absence of light always produced.

  The smaller Etheric taps were busy being re-routed to the Arti-Sun.

  “See you guys in a second,” Bethany Anne said as she stepped into the room with the Etheric tap machinery and closed the glass door behind her. One second they could all see her, the next she took a step and was gone.

  Marcus watched all of the readings and reached up to wipe off his forehead. Then, there was a slight uptick in Etheric Energy coming into the system. “Four, three, two…one!” Marcus called out and slammed his hand, and the desktop when the Energy Input spiked a thousand fold and the slight humming from the room next to them became a roar.

  “YES!” Marcus screamed triumphantly, “We have connectivity and the capacitor is not being slammed! The Arti-Sun is acquiring energy per stated calculations. Merideth?”

  “Yes?” the E.I. responded.

  “Are you seeing anything outside of normal parameters?”

  “No Marcus, I am running the agreed testing parameters, pulling the energy through the Etheric Iris using different diameters. So far, it is running…One moment.”

  Marcus’s mouth opened, “One moment?” He asked as he turned to review the systems.

  Bobcat and William stepped up. They had worked to stay in the background on this project.

  “What the hell?” William asked and started using the far left monitor and checking additional screens.

  Bobcat worked with Marcus, “That doesn’t look right,” he said as he pointed to a chart on Marcus’s screen.

  “Tell me something new, Bobcat.” Marcus grumped as he worked to see what Merideth was doing.

  “Uhhh new. Ok, here’s one. I think I found a girl?” Bobcat told his friend.

  “That’s nice, what does it taste like?” Marcus asked as he touched areas on his screen to show two additional input charts simultaneously.

  Bobcat snorted, “Jackass, I said girl, not another beer.”

  “You have no other love but beer, Bobcat,” Marcus answered.

  “Folks?” William interrupted the two.

  “Yeah?” Bobcat answered and leaned over to look at Williams screen where he was pointing.

  “Oh, fuck us again.” Bobcat blew out, “Markie Mark, take a look over here.”

  Marcus looked quickly over to William’s screen and then returned to his for a second before he turned back to Williams and leaned towards William’s screen, “What the hell?”

  “It’s Morse Code,” William answered, “Bethany Anne is testing our system.”

  “How the…,” Marcus shrugged, “Merideth, translate the Morse Code and use it to figure out the next fluctuation and adjust appropriately.”

  “Done,” Merideth replied moments later.

  Thirty seconds later Bethany Anne appeared in the glassed room, the hum of the machines behind her receded to a solid middle-level bass, one you could feel in your chest.

  She opened the glass door, the sound loud and then closed it, blocking most of the noise from reaching them once more.

  “How was that Final Exam, guys?” she asked as her phone went off in John’s hand. He took the call.

  “Fine boss, did you have to scare us so bad?” Bobcat asked.

  “How did you handle it?” she replied.

  “Swimmingly, I assure you,” Marcus answered. She went up and patted him on the shoulder, “I’m sure you did. However, how confident are you that the system will work now if we get unexpected Etheric fluctuations?”

  “UEF’s?” Marcus looked at her
, confused, “TOM never said there were any UEF’s, and before you say anything, I did ask.”

  “I love TOM to death, which might be foreshadowing if he keeps up his talking to me in my head at the moment, but I have asked him if he is an Etheric know-it-all and he admitted he wasn’t. Who's to say there isn’t a normal, hundred solar year Etheric flash which occurs?”