She walked back to the medical room and checked the readout. Which is to say she looked at the readout and TOM told her it was working appropriately.
She sat back down, a bloody streak going down the wall where she rested.
Gabrielle reached into the back of her bag and pulled out a pouch of blood. Bethany Anne’s face scrunched up in distaste, but she did need to drink a pouch.
“Thanks”, she took it from Gabrielle. She opened the pouch and drank the contents. Ecaterina handed her baby wipes.
She raised an eyebrow to Ecaterina, “Bobcat suggested you might want to clean up a bit before you get a chance to take a shower.”
That Bobcat was a keeper.
She cleaned off her face, neck and hands. She stripped out of the over shirt and took off her protective vest. Ecaterina had pulled out a heavy duty plastic bag and pulled it open to take the bloody clothes.
Bethany Anne looked Ecaterina in the eye, “You know, I found Pepsi’s in my fridge.” Ecaterina hesitated, just a second, before acting as if she didn’t know what Bethany Anne was talking about.
“Really? Imagine that. I’m sure they infected the Cokes through all of that protective plastic.”
Bethany Anne dropped her stuff into the bag and grabbed a couple of baby wipes to wipe down her arms better. “I imagine they did, they probably will become mutant Pepsi’s that can move in the Etheric, right out of my fridge.”
Ecaterina was non-committal.
Gabrielle spoke, “So, you want to share want went on back there?”
Bethany Anne didn’t try to be smart, or cute, or dodge the question. What she had done in the fight wasn’t the tactically correct thing to do, but it had the been the right thing for her to do.
“Yeah, the Bitch is Back.”
“So? You were angry, that wasn’t a good reason to jump without the rest of us.”
Bethany Anne looked up confused, then remembered that neither of these women were from the States.
“Ok, let’s try this again. It’s shark week?”
Both women looked confused.
“The storm has made landfall?”
Gabrielle just shrugged, “No?”
“The uterus ninjas are here?”
“Nope, nothing.”
“My bloody buddy is here?”
Ecaterina caught on, since she was the only one presently ‘normal’. “You're having a period?”
Bethany Anne just nodded, Gabrielle put her hand to her mouth, “How is this possible?”
“Fuck all if I know.”
Ecaterina asked her, “So, your emotions went nuclear?”
Bethany Anne nodded again. “Pretty much, if I didn’t get off that helicopter I was going to start punching Shelly in frustration. I, literally, wanted to kill something. As it turned out, a lot of somethings.”
TOM, have you figured out what went on?
Yes, I’ve made the adjustments. Your rising use of the Etheric overcame the original settings and I’ve had to adjust. This means that eventually, Gabrielle will also run into this. I can adjust once I see what is going on otherwise I’m just guessing.
Bethany Anne looked over at Gabrielle, “Guess what?”
“What?” Gabrielle looked confused.
“You’re next. Well, eventually.”
Gabrielle’s mouth opened and she slid down next to the pod dock and sat on the floor. “I’m going to have a period again?”
“Yeah, if you want it. TOM says that he can adjust you after you have it happen, but until then he doesn’t want to mess with anything. So, you know, practice safe sex with Ivan.”
“Oh god, I’ve not dealt with this for centuries.”
“I thought I had already made this choice for my life and had been ok with the decision not to have kids. Now I have a choice again and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. Hell, I can’t keep a dog safe. I almost got him killed.”
Ecaterina asked, “Dog?”
Bethany Anne pointed to the pod, “Yeah. Right at the start of my ape-shit maneuvers, this German Shepherd comes in like a terror on four legs and rips the neck right out of a Nosferatu. He stayed with me through the whole fight and even found me when I translocated to where the two vampires were fighting. They tried to gang up on me and when the dog joined us, one of the pricks sliced up his side and kicked him hard. It probably broke some of his ribs. It pissed me off so I cut off his head and kicked it.”
Gabrielle snorted, “I was wondering why a flying head attacked me.”
Bethany Anne smiled at that, “I’ve got him in the Medical pod and TOM is running some genetic testing right now. Between Gabrielle helping him right away, and my blood later, he will survive. We are seeing what we can do for him.”
Ecaterina looked back at the pod, “Oh.”
Bethany Anne stood up, “So, nothing to be done right now and he won’t age in the pod. Want to see the space ship, Ecaterina?” She smiled and Ecaterina grinned.
“Of course!” Bethany Anne took her around and gave her the fifteen minute tour. When they ended back up in the medical pod she checked it. TOM gave her instructions to place into the pod, when she finished she looked up.
“Ok, the little warrior will be good for a few days. Time to go back out to the real world.”
While Bethany Anne was paying attention to the dog and the medical pod, Gabrielle had used the baby wipes on the wall.
The ladies left the ship, it was time to face the music with the Guards.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Queen Bitch’s Ship Polarus near Costa Rica
Chris piloted the Sikorsky from the Ad Aeternitatem over to the Polarus. Dan had Bobcat flying Shelly as an overwatch for the next couple of hours. There had been a large amount of chatter on the military and police bands due to the significant battle in Costa Rica’s capital.
No keeping that fight under wraps.
She got off the helicopter and the rest of the guards were waiting for her. They tried to be stern, but soon their grins won out. Together, they had accomplished kicking some serious Forsaken ass and not one of her team had a serious wound. Many had cuts and scrapes and Darryl would have a black eye, but that was it. John was the last to crack trying to give her a stern look, but he finally just shook his head. “You know, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”
She reached up, way up, and ruffled his hair. “Well, seeing how you guys kicked ass tonight, that might be the only way you die early, Mr. Grimes.” She gave him a ten-thousand watt smile. “Where is our new visitor?”
John turned around, “Pete and Dan have him down in the hold. He is making a horrible racket.”
Together, they all walked off the helipad.
Bethany Anne asked, “He’s healed up?”
John snorted, “Well, he was. Dan told him to quiet down until you got there and he mouthed off. So, Dan shot him with a silver frangible. He isn’t healing so quick from that.”
“Yeah, I’m surprised he isn’t bellyaching about the poor treatment.”
“He yelled, and I quote, ‘Is shooting someone the only way you people know how to negotiate?’”
“Well, he should be happy to know I also rip off limbs and negotiate whether I give them back or not.”
Eric laughed and then commented from behind her, “I saw you rip an arm off one of the Nosferatu and beat another one with it.”
“Which time?” She asked.
“Right before you disappeared.”
“Ok, right, that time.” Honestly, Bethany Anne had lost track.
“How many times did you do that?”
“More than once, less than fifteen. The whole fight was a little blurry.”
They could hear the bitching and bellyaching coming from the prisoner from way down the corridor. Dan and Pete were talking as they arrived.
Bethany Anne looked at Dan, “How’s our guest?”
She heard him from inside the cell, “In fucking pain, you cunt!”
Bethany Anne’s
head tracked over to the door, her eyes were quickly glowing red and her fangs started protruding. “One second, Dan.” The voice Dan first heard in a crappy tent down in the Florida Everglades was speaking again. Dan just stepped back and smiled.
Dan had enjoyed shooting the prick earlier, but he suspected he was about to enjoy Bethany Anne’s discussion with him a bit more.
A look came over Dan’s face as he started patting down his pants.
Pete watched him for a second, “Watcha looking for?”
“Phone! I want to record this.” Dan was getting a little frantic, he didn’t want to miss recording this episode.
Pete lifted up his phone, with the audio recorder already setup, “Got you covered.”
Dan was relieved, and they both smiled. Bethany Anne wouldn’t allow video recordings, but some of the most fun the team had was listening to older audio recordings and Dan said this beat down looked like it was going to become an instant classic.
Bethany Anne looked into the room from the small slit. She suddenly stepped back when a hand and wrist appeared between the bars. The ass had tried to punch her in her skull! She grabbed his hand and yanked it down, breaking his wrist. The scream was immediate. He pulled his hand back in and backpedaled until his back hit the wall, screaming obscenities the whole time.
She calmly talked to the vampire as she pulled her weapons and handed them to Pete and Dan. She cracked her knuckles. “Really? Fucking cunt, fucking bitch, slit-faced whore? That’s the best you got? You douchy-scrotum-licking-shit-eating-nut-sack-cellist. Bite This.” She disappeared and reappeared in his cell and immediately beat the living shit out of him. By the time Pete turned off his phone, the vampire was on the floor begging Bethany Anne to forgive him for his disrespect. He got it right the third time. The other two times she merely said, ‘not good enough’ and tore into him again.
Gabrielle asked the guys at one point if anyone had a nail file, because it seemed this idiot was too stupid to get the message and she wanted something constructive to do.
That was when Bethany Anne started breaking bones. He got the message after she broke the first leg.
John looked over at Dan, “You’re right, that is an instant classic. I counted at least forty-seven cusswords and not one duplication in the bunch. Frank is going to love this.”
Dan just nodded agreement.
Bethany Anne had Dan join her inside the cell and stayed next to him for protection as he asked questions. Dan started with his name, which was Muerto. Bethany Anne busted out laughing at this and the vampire looked like he was going to say something and then stopped himself.
Dan was able to get two more high level vampire names who would be closer to Anton. Unfortunately, this guy had nothing directly about Anton himself. There was a rumor Anton was in Argentina, but that was all. It looked like that bastard was still too hard to fucking find.
Bethany Anne was impatient and she was getting worse. She hoped Frank would be able to track down something based on the phone information he had found.
Maybe she had killed Clarita a little too soon.
Las Vegas, Nevada - USA
Jeffrey and Tom had met and been driven around Las Vegas and the nearby desert towns for the last two days. They finally found three well insulated, very thick concrete buildings that fit the specifications for what they needed.
These buildings had been used by Nellis Air Force Base in the past. Now, they sat on the outside of the base's security fence and were in an area that could be wired for a gob-smacking large amount of Internet throughput for less than a hundred grand.
They called Nathan and went through the details. Nathan confirmed they had figured out a way to protect everything outside of the buildings in case they had to detonate a small EMP inside the main AI building. He agreed with their assessment on the purchase and closed the call.
Jeffrey was able to purchase the buildings for a quarter million dollars. They didn’t argue, they didn’t try to negotiate at all. They were on a deadline and the price was half what they had guessed they might have to spend. It was a good thing, because the additional cooling buildout to keep the computers cold enough was going to eat into the left over budget pretty significantly.
They needed the 3 P’s of computer server complexes. These are power, ping and pipe. There was plenty of power as the last use of the buildings for the Air Force had been as a machine shop whose large industrial lathes and drilling machines took a huge amount of power. The ping and pipe was going to cost a hundred grand and then they just needed to have an electrician make sure the power lines were still good to go to pull the power without a melt down.
Tom thought about it, they weren’t going to provide ping outside of these buildings, so the 3P statement was a little off, but he didn’t correct Jeffrey.
The guys had a large argument over max CPU Cores vs. max memory needs. They agreed to go Intel CPU’s over AMD and while they liked IBM, they didn’t want to chance Lenovo and had concerns over possible spying software and other shenanigans Lenovo had been accused of in the last couple of years. After a while, they realized most of the brands had a constraint on network connectivity input, so they chose to go with Cisco blade servers for Adam Ver 1.0.
Their call to the Cisco corporate office started pretty slow until Jeffrey mentioned they had a P.O. that would exceed a million dollars and the computers needed to be available fast. There would be a premium payment if the computers could be at their location within eight days.
The two boxes of one terabyte SSD hard drives were going to cost more than a Tesla, but they agreed the speed the SSD’s provided more than made up for the high cost. For long term storage they would use the larger and cheaper platter hard drives. The two men acted like little boys in a candy store as they spent the budget on their computer setups.
Once they had spec’d out the primary server setup and the secondary internet download system for the second building they called Nathan. After a two hour discussion going through every possible angle of CPU, short and long term storage, maximum memory and type of memory and bus speed Nathan approved the expenditures.
During the second hour, Tom mentioned they might be wasting their time. When Nathan asked why, Tom mentioned that if ADAM came online, it would probably design the next computer for itself.
That cooled the excitement of all of the men a little when they realized they would have a computer designing itself.
“Good point,” said Nathan. “So, go with the picks we’ve agreed to so far. We are just nit-picking and I’m doing it because I’m a geek at heart. So, we’ll let ADAM 1.0 figure out ADAM 2.0. I’m going to put the second five million in the company's account by tomorrow at noon. I don’t want you waiting on anything. Make it happen guys!” They agreed they would and signed off.
They called CISCO and ordered ADAM’s brains.
They called it an early day in order to rest and let Jeffrey spend a little time with his family. Nothing was going to happen that evening and getting a good night's sleep would help as they got started on the next phase of their project in the morning.
They raised a toast with their soft drinks, shook hands and left for their homes. Both suffered a niggling concern about whether they had thought of everything as they went through the day's events in their heads.
Miami Florida, USA
Lance and Frank decided to eat at a favorite steak house on the way to Key Biscayne from the airport. While flying first class was nice, the food is still a pale imitation of a real restaurant meal.
As they sat down, Frank pulled out his laptop. He had been running some programs to try and capture phone conversations and on his third recording, he hit pay dirt. He listened for a minute on headphones and Lance could tell something was going well by Frank’s smile.
He pulled the headphones off and set them aside. “I think I can confirm that Anton is in Argentina.”
Lance smiled at the news, “Why is that?”
“Because I just heard wh
o I think is Anton on a short call with Congressman Pepper. Anton uses throw away cell phones, so that makes my tracking him extremely difficult unless I know one side of the conversation. However, I was able to capture a comment about the SNAFU in Costa Rica and that he had another one to deal with in Argentina. The Argentinian government just changed hands and he was going to have to meet with a few politicians he hadn’t had conversations with so far. Apparently, he had expected the female incumbent to win.”
Bite This (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 4) Page 22
