Paris, France

“If they don’t stop aiming cameras at me, I’m not going to be responsible for the damages.” Bethany Anne murmured to Michael under her breath.

The two of the were walking along Avenue de Champs-Elysees after taking a stroll through Bethany Anne’s Mecca – the Christian Louboutin St Honore’ store on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore’.

They had started in the line waiting to enter the store like everyone else when a couple of those waiting in line realized who she was.  A couple of covert camera pictures had occurred and then the social sphere got busy, and a couple of camera ‘journalists’ from the gossip magazines came in and started taking pictures.  Some annoyingly so.

Michael noticed that a few were taking shots from an incredibly long way using very long telephoto lenses.  He pulled up his phone and quickly typed a note to Tabitha and put it away.

He would have a report from her within the next few hours he suspected.  Certainly by tomorrow.  If there was something to hack and delete, he felt comfortable it would be gone.

If not, he would know more.

Within a few minutes, the manager of the store came around the corner and up to the two of them. He discreetly tried to ask Bethany Anne to step ahead of everyone and come inside.

She absolutely refused, which frustrated the management.  Finally, the security got involved and explained to Bethany Anne that she was causing a small security issue with the traffic and extra paparazzi taking pictures outside on the sidewalk.

She pursed her lips and waved the manager closer and spoke into his ear.  The manager nodded once and then walked back to disappear into the store for a minute.

Michael smiled to himself as he continued his scan.  Eric and John were each half a block away, also keeping their eyes out, but each knew that Michael would die before allowing anyone to get to Bethany Anne.

That was good enough for them.

A moment later, the manager stepped out of the store and started handing unique cards that were each signed by him to every one of the people in the line at that time.  He bypassed Bethany Anne and continued down the line.  When he came back up, he nodded to Bethany Anne and the two were taken inside.

Once this step was accomplished, he stepped back outside and explained to each of the customers these cards were good for a purchase of a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.  This was in appreciation for allowing Bethany Anne to step ahead of them, or they could surrender the cards for a $3,000 gift to three charities that focused on helping the families of those hurt or killed in terrorist attacks.

Michael didn’t need any special abilities to hear the raucous cheering going on when those lined up outside found out they held a special card for a pair of shoes in their hands.

He watched Bethany Anne, and the only reaction she had was a slight blushing and ducking of her head.

He knew at that moment that not only was she the right pick to help clean up the UnknownWorld, but she was also the right woman for him.

If he could just woo her.

Bethany Anne was smiling and Kevin noticed that Lance seemed in thought when he asked, “What are you thinking?”

She shrugged, “If we had enough for a night crew, they could easily handle any night-time incursions.  I doubt much would cross their sense of smell and we could easily send two out in a Pod anywhere on base property very quickly.  If something happens to them, then they have the best chance of surviving…”

“Other than Wechselbalg.”  Lance pointed out.

“True.” She stood up and walked a few feet to the left and turned.  Talking while she paced. “But the truth is that both Vamps and Weres are just two sides of the same technology.  I can get rid of the sun issue, but any Vamps that we recruit would need to be trusted before I offer that solution to them.”

“Why don’t you trust Vamps?” Kevin asked.  Lance turned to him and raised an eyebrow.  Kevin remembered Lance dressing him down for doing a full background check on a blind date and told him, “I’m just curious.”

Bethany Anne answered, “It’s actually a good question.  Ever since I’ve been turned, I’ve been introduced to ass-hats whether they are Vamps or Weres.  The truth is that ass-hats are everywhere.  When you give them superior skills it can make a tiny ass-hat that is bearable into a significant ass-hat.  With Michael, I have a good chance of making sure we get decent people.  I don’t have enough of a rep with the Wechselbalg yet to get them here on base with us.  Pete’s handling that side for me right now.”

“Are you sure you have Michael’s help?”

She turned to her dad, “I heard you the last time you got your ‘dad bat’ out and jumped into my personal life, I’ll go see him, ok?”

Lance put his hands together on his desk, looked above her head for a second then looked her in the eyes, “Yes, I think that will do.”

“Thank you.”

“So long as it’s soon.”

Bethany Anne opened her lips to let her dad see she had her tongue held firmly by her teeth.  His grin caused her to smile.  “Fine dad, I’ll go see him tonight if he has time.”

“Oh baby,” Patricia said from behind Bethany Anne.  “He’ll have time.”

“I think that’s his idea, sweetie.”  Patricia said.

Bethany Anne turned to her, “You too?”

“Me too what? I’m just pointing out the obvious.  I’m not sure what happened to cause you be so upset with him.”

Bethany Anne crossed her arms. “Nothing. Happened.”

Patricia looked over to Lance who was watching his daughter and minutely nodded his head up and down.  “I see.  Well, if you want to have a proper relationship with such a powerful supporter you need to go down there and have a discussion about the ‘nothing’.”

She stared at her dad who stared right back.  Finally, she dropped her eyes, “I’ll take it under advisement.”

“No, you will go and do it.”  Lance said. Bethany Anne brought her head back up in a flash, but Lance kept going, “You can’t have such a significant opportunity become a potential misunderstanding between you and Michael. Left unresolved it has potential for an enemy to use against you.  That is bad leadership just because you’re having a spat about God only knows what, young lady.”

She jerked her head up and down.

Lance turned back to Kevin, “What is your concern about security?”

Kevin flipped a page over, “We are implementing a large amount of electronic surveillance devices and triggers across the property, the problem is both the size of the base and how easy small drones can get on the property.”

Bethany Anne asked, “Are we talking quad-copters or what?”

Kevin turned his page one more time, “Those, plus tiny insect devices, bugs on items brought in, long range laser devices against the windows in the R&D area plus the normal people, data transfers and other miscellaneous items.”

Bethany Anne pulled a leg up and put her elbow on her knee putting her chin in her hand.

Kevin looked over to Lance who shrugged his shoulders, out of the corner of his eye, Kevin caught Patricia putting up one finger.

“We need vampires.”

Patricia coughed suddenly and then laughed a little, Kevin going to pound on her back but she noticed and said, “No!  It’s nothing.  I just wasn’t expecting her to say we needed ‘more’ vampires!”

TQB Base, Colorado – USA

“Hi boss.”

Bethany Anne looked to her left as she was walking down the hallway.  “Hey Kevin, how did the security review go?”

Kevin McCoullagh stepped out of the room he was in and joined Bethany Anne as they walked towards Lance’s office.  “Well enough.  Almost all of the troublemakers left without causing us a problem.  Can’t say I’m terribly happy about letting Robert go without something to remember me by.”

Bethany Anne cocked an eyebrow at him, “My, someone’s in a bloodthirsty sort today aren’t they?”

Kevin shrugged, “It pisses me off that he would so easily sell out.  I have to question if he would have done that while he had on the uniform?  Anyway, I didn’t say anything.”

“Good, the team has a plan to monitor the software he installed and see what they were targeting and then feed false information upstream.”  The two of them arrived at Lance’s office.  Bethany Anne knocked a couple of times sharply, then opened the door.

“Bethany Anne!”  Patricia grinned at her from behind her desk and stood up. Lance and Patricia had decided they wanted one large office with the desks at both sides of the office facing each other.  If you placed a mirror in the middle of the room, it would look the same.  Except the mirror wouldn’t show Lance’s occasionally grumpy face on the other side.

“Hey Patricia.”  Bethany Anne accepted a hug from the woman.  She didn’t look much older than Bethany Anne now.  It solved the issue of calling her ‘mom’ when she looked more like her sister.

Bethany Anne turned to see her dad’s empty chair, “Dad around?”

Patricia sat back down, “Yes.  He went to find a couple of Ding-Dongs.  He can get grumpy in the middle of the afternoon if he didn’t sleep enough the previous night.  I found the sugar and chocolate cheers him up.”

Kevin asked, “No worries for his health?”  He turned to face the two young looking women who were staring at him. “My mistake, I wasn’t thinking.  No calorie worries.”

A voice spoke behind them, “Hey Kevin, hey baby!” Bethany Anne received a hug from her dad, Kevin a slap on his back. “Ready to talk base?”

Kevin closed the door, “Yup.”

Patricia grabbed her laptop and Kevin turned one of Patricia’s chairs around and pulled it over so everyone was facing Lance.

Lance spoke, “We can talk about the three company R & D groups a little later.” He then asked Kevin, “What did we learn from Michael?”

Kevin answered, “We have a defense industry probe already into our business.  It seems the fact that you are the big guy for TQB Industries and residing here on your former base has made everyone assume you have a huge military play going on.  That was the ‘core focus’ of three people that Michael read.  We haven’t fired any of them yet. We are waiting for additional people to help cover their roles before we let them go.”

Bethany Anne asked, “What kind of people do you need?”

Kevin replied, “Security, engineering, maintenance and operations.  Pretty much all of the core people.”

Patricia interrupted, “Is it going to be hard to find people here in the States that know military and are safe?”

“No, we proved when selecting crew for the two ships that it can be done.” Bethany Anne answered, “However, we need to be thinking about merging more countries into our mix.  I don’t want there to be an ‘all U.S.A. all the time’ answer to everything.”

“What about vetting them?  When you crewed your ships, I understand from Frank that he took care of that for you.”  Lance said as he unwrapped a cigar and bit on it.

Bethany Anne wrinkled her nose, “Gah! Those things don’t smell good anymore, not like they did when I was young.”  She moved in her chair, trying to get more comfortable. “Dad, are you irritated with my comment about more Americans?”

“Honey,” Patricia said, “your dad knows we can’t stay so heavy U.S., but let him work through it his own way.”

Kevin hid a smile behind his hand which he quickly killed when Lance’s eye’s turned to him.

“Between Frank, Dan and ADAM I’m pretty sure we can accomplish the same as we did for the Polarus and the Ad Aeternitatem.  Plus, we have Michael to do a final.”

“About Michael.”  Kevin interrupted, “He says that the Pods are definitely a nice solution, but he would prefer a more personal experience and he requests a stewardess for his next flight.”  This time, Kevin didn’t hide his smile when Bethany Anne blushed.

“I’ll give him a ‘stewardess’…”

“I think that’s his idea, sweetie.”  Patricia said.

Robert walked into Hanger noticing that it was temporarily quartered into four distinct working areas with security around the perimeter.  He raised an eyebrow when he noticed Kevin standing over to the side with his arms crossed. Robert started walking towards him while watching all of the rest of the activity on the large floor.

“What’s up with the tables and everything Kevin?”

Kevin McCoullagh looked over to Robert McCarty, his senior member for the Corps of Engineers on the base and answered, “The company is doing a security check of everyone that came on board and wishes to stay since the main building is completed.”

Robert stood next to Kevin and watched for a couple of minutes, “I see them going into the two offices, but it doesn’t look like they are in there for more than a couple of minutes.”  He turned towards Kevin, “Do they have some sort of lie detector device?”

Kevin kept his face focused out towards the floor and lied through his teeth. “Don’t know.  I’m to understand that it is some of the new technology from one of the companies the General is over-seeing.  So, for all I know he brought it back with him.”

“You didn’t have to do this?”  Robert asked.

“In a way, mine was a lot longer and more thorough.  I’m sealed from disclosing anything about my experience, but I’m pretty sure they got all of the truth out of me they wanted.”

Robert turned back to the floor, “What happens if they don’t pass?”

“Released with four months’ pay. Or they’re given the option of working for another company, if a position they are qualified for is available. In that instance all moving costs for the employee and their family will be paid.  So far I’ve heard of six taking the package without even going through the security check.”

Robert asked, “Scared to take the test?”

Kevin laughed, “No!  They were just tired of the cold weather and found out the company has some operations in Southern California and Florida.”

“That sounds nice, my bones are starting to seize up mid-summer just thinking about some of the cold we get here.”

Kevin grunted, “Well, if you want warmer climes, I’m not going to hold you back, but you need to help me find a qualified candidate or two if you can.”

Robert watched the people entering the offices, “You say the company will pay the moving expenses?”

“Yes, for you and one household to go with you.  Although for you, I imagine the opportunities are pretty wide-ranging.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, they are building in other areas as well, plus in Europe.”

“No shit?”

“Nope.”

Robert seemed to be thinking for half a minute. “I’ll be back in a bit. I need to go call Tricia.  She keeps on my ass about living near the water and if I don’t tell to her about this moving option and she finds out …”  Robert left it hanging.

Kevin simply nodded his understanding as Robert started walking towards the door heading outside and pulled his cellphone out.

Kevin hoped Robert’s ‘wife’ chose to move, because it would really suck to have to fire the guy for taking money to pass along base secrets.

Or bury him, depending on who he had sold out to. Kevin understood that behind door number two over there, was Michael. And he was just passing time with most of these simple mind reviews waiting to see if Robert really wanted to try and become a mole in the organization.

Something that Kevin McCoullagh wasn’t going to allow.  Tom Billings had found evidence on three computers. Software had been installed to start passing information outbound in three weeks. Tom had deactivated the software and upgraded the firewalls, stopping information going outbound without authorization from the special data transfer rules now in place.

It would be good enough until ADAM brought AGILITY online, the refined version of himself capable of being run on the massive number of servers Tom had installed and fired up in the past three weeks.

Which was good, because when Kevin first learned that Robert was guilty of setting up all of the snooping software, he wanted to leave him a bloody wreck. It took everything he had to act as if he didn’t know of Robert’s duplicity.  Knowing they were mere days from AGILITY going active had stayed his hand.

Just barely.

Bobcat retorted, “Bullshit!  You said if I could make a donut in the moon’s one-sixth gravity that you would ask Gabrielle out on a date!”

Jeffrey set his reports down.  While he was holding some of the best information related to the moon’s surface known to mankind, he just had to hear what the base’s own version of reality-TV was up to today.

The three men spread around the table, taking their usual spots.  William to Jeffrey’s left, Bobcat at the other end of the table and Marcus on his right.

Marcus grumped, “I was talking about a real donut!  Not just marks on the Moon’s regolith.  You know, with yeast?”

Bobcat’s head shook back and forth, “C’mon doc.  You know better than that.  If you don’t specify, I get to choose my definition.  And I chose that a donut was done by wheels on the dirt!”

“Regolith.”  Marcus replied.

“Whatever.  So, how hard is it to ask Gabrielle out on a date?  C’mon man, grow a pair.  It isn’t like she hasn’t turned down a thousand men in her lifetime.  All that would mean is… is…”  Bobcat turned to William, “Help me out here.”

William smiled, “Hell no.  I’m not about to admit I might, or might not, be aware that Gabrielle is as old or perhaps even older than two centuries.  If a woman can be peeved when she hits forty, I damn sure am not going to say she is older than four-hundred.  So, hell-to-the-no, you’re on your own.”

Bobcat’s response was, “Fuck you, my no-spinal-cord friend! And I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

William nodded, “Apology accepted.”

Bobcat turned back to Marcus, “My point is, I’m sure she has learned not to rip apart the shallow and delicate ego some men have.  So, what’s your problem?”

Marcus looked between his two teammates and squeaked out, “What if she says yes?”

Bobcat slammed his hand down on the table making a loud ‘crack’ sound and then using the same hand to point at Marcus, “Perfect!  Then you … you…”  He looked back over at William again.  “Shit, what would you say to a woman who has literally been around the block hundreds of times?”

William just smiled and used the widely accepted motion for zipping his mouth shut.

Bobcat gave him a look of disgust and turned back to Marcus, “I don’t imagine she has been out with a rocket scientist.  Hell, you guys have only been around since what, the 1940’s?”

Marcus started to consider what Bobcat was saying when Jeffrey cut in, “Gentleman, as entertaining as this is, we need to move forward with our meeting.”  He pulled out his folder containing their recent tasks and then spoke to no one in particular, “And guys? Just a footnote to end your discussion.”

They all looked over from their own papers.

He looked up and smiled, “Remember that she was in Europe and could very well have dated the original rocket scientists from Germany.  Imagine if she had an evening with Wernher von Braun?”

Instead of causing Marcus to be more concerned, he turned thoughtful.

Jeffrey shrugged, sometimes he couldn’t figure out everyone’s motivation on the first pass.

TQB Base, Colorado – USA

Jeffrey Diamantz still felt it a little surreal to be working inside a mountain.  He was walking into what his team called ‘the pit’.  It was a room that looked like an auditorium. There were four levels, ending at the bottom with a large table full of monitors built into the table itself.  All of them were touch sensitive with large high-definition screens across the wall at the front.

Basically this was the most up-to-date version of a space focused command center you might want.

There were three sets of work areas on each side of the main aisle as you went down the three levels.  The top level was for supplies along with food and drinks.  Almost like someone expected there to be situations when no one would leave the room for any length of time.

At this particular moment, nothing was operational. Tom Billings, who headed the I.T. department, hadn’t wired up the eighteen individual computer connections yet.  That was scheduled for this afternoon.

Still the large meeting table was good to be used and allowed them to view some of the data they were receiving from their observation satellites and other home-built devices they had stationed between earth and the moon.

Like moon-droid-one.

Jeffrey laid his coffee down on the table and opened his folders to review the latest information.

He pulled out the report on moon-droid-one and reviewed what it had done in the last twelve hours.  The device was actually a twenty-four-volt adult sized dune-buggy with gear installed all over it.  Shipped up on their first cargo container and using one of Team BMW’s power units they had it driving all over the dark side of the moon.  Not that it was dark, but it was the side not seen from earth.

Fortunately, the team was able to find and override the detection units that the U.S. had on the moon and on that side facing out towards space.

Not too many people knew that some of the earlier rockets with nuclear warheads were designed to go into space.  You can’t hit what you don’t know about, so the U.S. had orbiting detection satellites as well.

Kind of makes it hard to build a moon base if you’re under the watchful gaze of Uncle Sam.

The dune-buggy had worked its way around a couple of larger craters and had been taking samples.  Jeffrey looked over at the top-down pictures their own satellite had taken and then back at the report.  He looked down to see that Bobcat had been in control of the dune-buggy for an hour.

Well, that explained the donuts Jeffrey could see on the Moon’s surface.

He needed to tell Bobcat to take Shelly up for a few hours to burn some energy out of his system.

He heard a few more people coming down the hallway, and then William’s booming laugh, it seemed that Team BMW was arriving.

Sure enough, seconds later the three guys entered with Marcus protesting. “That isn’t what I said!”