My Ride is a Bitch (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 13) (11 page)

“Good thing Nathan isn’t here, or he would be crowing how the Wechselbalg will have to start eating more vegetables,” Bethany Anne said, with a few chuckles going around those who knew he was the only Wechselbalg who truly enjoyed eating vegetables.

“We can easily get up over a hundred thousand plants a week from the hundred and twenty Freight Farms growtainers we have. Plus, with the enhancements we have been adding on, we expect to triple that output,” Dr. Brown-Williams added before summing up her findings, “You find me enough space to easily get into the containers, or duplicate the technology outside of the boxes and I can feed a million people.”

“People are going to need to start porking each other to get us to a million,” William grinned while talking softly, but Dr. Brown-Williams only caught some of the comment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t plan on pork in the mix, should I?” she asked, oblivious to the chuckles near Bobcat, William, and Marcus who kept his face straight while his friends smiled.

“No, maybe, although some will miss bacon once our stores are depleted,” Bethany Anne replied.

“Not necessarily true,” Dan interrupted, “I’ve spoken with those in charge of food for the Yollins, and they have a similar saying to our chicken.”

“What, everything tastes like chicken?” Bethany Anne asked.

Kael-ven T’chmon chuckled, the sound coming out more like a raspy clicking of mandibles inside his mouth. When he spoke, everyone with the new translation software and the embeds for communications could understand him. The rest had translation hardware and a single ear piece in their ear. Both of the Yollins had a similar setup for communication.

“I have had your chicken,” Kael-ven spoke, “It is rather plain like a Talik which is everywhere. I have had your pork, and it is pretty tasty, similar to our bistek-barook. There are plenty of the animals on the southern plains of many of our continents.”

“If it is so tasty, why don’t you eat it?” Bethany Anne asked.

“We do eat them, just not very often as they are expensive. Bistek-barook are very aggressive animals, and have no herd mentality so are a very poor choice to use as a feed animal. They are considered a sport kill within the third and fourth tier of our society. However, you have to be willing to take the limitations to actually claim a Bistek-barook kill, or you will be sent back out with a knife to kill one. Society will shun you forever for having tried to gain the prestige dishonorably otherwise.”

“What are you allowed to kill them with?” John asked.

“Anything you can hold in your hands, but you cannot have on any powered armor,” Kael-ven replied.

“Wait,” Bethany Anne spoke up, “How big is this animal?”

Kael-ven turned to the scientist, “Would you care to explain?”

The Yollin scientist nodded. Royleen had substantially been lambasted, and in a few areas bettered, by the human scientists that he had previously been wanting to use as test subjects. The humans, meanwhile, had to try and realize that to him, humans were equivalent to monkeys which people had been using for test subjects for centuries and in some societies, still did.

“The Bistek-barook is a six-legged sinewy creature when young and can travel a great distance. They grow up to over three-thousand of your kilo’s. They are omnivorous but prefer meat themselves. While most of them are what you consider dominant, they are not herd animals and simply recognize that they should not stick together for any amount of time, or fights occur. At least, outside of mating. As they get older, their ability to move long distances shortens and they fatten up. Still incredibly quick for a shorter distance, say a…” here, the scientist faltered for a moment, seeking to come up with a calculation, “couple of your kilometers and of course able to stand their ground quite well. They have some protective carapace around their shoulders and heads, but most of the body is still very unprotected. They do have horns, usually around this long,” he held his two front arms out in front of him, separated by about two feet.

He continued, “In our society, it is considered too low an activity for a second tier member to make an effort to kill one.”

Here, Kael-van interrupted Royleen, “That is because someone in the past decided that it was stupid to do so, and made a tier-level decision it was beneath anyone in our tier to go on these hunts. Personally, I think they had an offspring who was going to try and therefore it was decreed to be beneath us. Most likely because it would show that we get ourselves killed by foolish means as often as the third tier, if we did this publicly.”

Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow and considered Kael-van’s declaration. He had mentioned on more than one occasion his criticisms with the tiered society of the Yollins and their desire to ‘do it this way because this is how we always did it’ belief in moving society forward.

“Ok, sounds like the Wechselbalg will have something to do to help fill up the larders with meat,” Dan announced. Everyone turned back to the conversation at hand, and Bethany Anne nodded her agreement.

“Thank you, Kael-van and Royleen,” she added, “Ok, food seems to still be on track. However, we need a base ... no a fortress, to protect our people if our ships are in battle.”

“Well, about that,” Bobcat started before Marcus interrupted.

“What they want to build,” Marcus said pointing to his two friends, “is a death star.” His glance told Bethany Anne that this time, he thought the two guys were asking for something over the top.

“Complete with destructive planet laser?” she asked.

“Well,” William smiled, “I wouldn’t turn that away but who the hell destroys a planet? Anyone realize how wasteful that is?”

Bobcat took up the conversation. “Yeah, I mean, the poor little Bistek-boorokies would be killed too.”

“And there goes our bacon,” William added.

“Can’t have that,” Bobcat replied.

“Word,” William agreed. Bethany Anne noticed Marcus’s eyes rolling up to the ceiling. She was going to have to get this conversation back on track.

“Guys?” she interrupted the two, “Can we focus on what you want to create rather than the latest imagined Bistek-barook recipe?”

“Sorry boss,” Bobcat admitted, “but I loves me some pork and the thought of laughing my ass off at a bunch of Wechselbalg who have to go kill the pork is funny. Ok, we want to grab a large nickel-iron asteroid and get inside that thing and drill it out. We will use the outside to store the massive amount of shipping containers for a while, until we have drilled enough inside to move people and content internally and then we will use the gravitic drives, in concert, to move the asteroid.”

“Excuse me for being dense, pun intended,” Bethany Anne asked, “but isn’t nickel-iron rather hard?”

“I can answer that,” Royleen spoke. He was getting used to the ability to interrupt outside of the caste system. These humans seemed to have one based on roles, but when it came to conversations it was appropriate to add and interject as necessary without being rude. Rude, Royleen found out, was a type of hierarchy filter in conversations. “Nickel-Iron is hard. However the Yollins have been working in outer space for many of your centuries and have created methods to drill into the asteroid and produce valuable products at the same time as we hollow out the inside.”

“It isn’t quite like slicing through butter like a hot-knife,” Marcus admitted, ”but it is very fast. It is approximately like us drilling through coal. The difference is that their mechanicals will eat into the asteroid, and then send it through a processing core that will separate a lot of the metals for us. It helps to move the production forward. We can, of course, turn that piece of the machine off and it will create stackable bricks of the asteroid for speed.”

“So,” Bethany Anne said, “It drills and separates the metals into the constituent ores, and prepares them for final smelting, do I understand this correctly?”

“Yes,” Marcus agreed.

“And you have one of these?” she asked.

“Oh no,” Royleen said, “we do not. However, we do have the schematics for three different sizes of the machines in our databases and how to build them.”

“Ok, how fast can this machine be built and tested?” She asked.

“Probably about six months, boss,” William answered her. “I’ve gone shopping on the best machining and fabrication machines the Japanese have, and if we get the right stuff, we can start by getting some of the components created on Earth in different countries. However, some of the stuff is advanced tech we need to do ourselves out in the belt.”

Bethany Anne thought about it for a second, “How many of these machines are you looking to build?”

“At least four,” Bobcat answered, “Always running two, one for immediate backup and a third for separate operations outside of the inside core. Then, we will create self-replicating machines to start the second stages of the building of parts. Using an M-Class asteroid, we would have a lot of the basic material, but needing to add in the more complicated items as required. They, in turn, continue mining as we expand.”

“Separate operations?”

“Sure,” Bobcat answered, “We will want dock areas. Somewhere ships can connect with us and have interactions, but easily separated from our inside area and safe. Probably two areas, actually. One for our own ships to dock if we want to keep it separate and far apart. No need for anyone to easily attack our own ships as well and try to gain entrance inside.”

“Ok,” Bethany Anne agreed, “What about light?”

“We are good there,” Marcus answered, “We have enough power through the Etheric to power what is effectively a large incandescent using a version of a Yollin heat source. The light it usually produces is in the red spectrum, but we can tune it to something closer to our yellow and tweak for heat output. We will have about four different breaks to make sure it doesn’t super-nova inside the base…”

“A bad result for everyone inside, I’m sure,” Bethany Anne interrupted.

“Yes, it would be,” Marcus admitted. “If they didn’t fry immediately, the cold might get them soon after.

“So, how safe is this going to be?” She pressed, “I don’t want to be worried about a fake sun going super-nova inside my people’s base.”

Marcus hummed a bit before answering, “Honestly, I think we wouldn’t need but one cut-out. However, I’ve worked four various safety breaks to continue the heat and light, each one progressively separating the power into smaller and smaller sources. That way, at the end we have twenty-seven small heat sources and if any of them malfunction, they just go dead. The chance of a catastrophic failure after level four is less than our own sun dying soon.”

Bethany Anne thought about it, “Ok, but triple check those numbers please.” Marcus nodded his understanding. Bethany Anne pursed her lips, “Ok, we have food, shelter, power and water covered at the moment. I have seen the plans to have different areas inside the asteroid and the rails and regions broken out like a city. Confirm we have protection capabilities and how we are going to deal with attacks from the outside. I have reviewed the idea of making it large enough for ships to pass into, but I’m not sure about that idea, yet. Let’s discuss the ships, the warriors, and the new toys Jean Dukes wants to play with…”

Las Vegas, Nevada - USA

Nathan nudged Darryl. They had moved the car to an area outside of the neighborhood because they had been passed during a patrol sweep by the local police. They decided that not getting asked questions was better than sticking closer. With ArchAngel overhead, they hoped to get some advanced warning, and it looked like they had it.

There was a black van pulling into the subdivision and Darryl nodded his head and started the car. In seconds, he had pulled into the main street and was quickly catching up to the van, which was keeping to a sedate pace inside the neighborhood. As the vehicle made its third turn traveling deeper into the community, it was evident this wasn’t a false alarm.
 

The two of them passed the main entrance to the subdivision and turned down a side street that paralleled the neighborhood itself. Down at the end, the guys pulled off the road. They jumped out and ran, easily vaulting the six-foot fence, to dodge through the children’s toys strewn about the back yard and vaulted the fence one more time. This brought them out on the street across from the Switzers’ house. Nathan and Darryl quickly backtracked into the bushes beside the neighbor’s house and watched as the headlights from the dark van pulled onto the final street.

“Looks like we get to play tonight, after all,” Nathan murmured.
 

Darryl looked over at his friend, “You sound like a man that’s been cooped up inside too long.”

“That’s because I am a man who has been cooped up inside too long. I know Ecaterina tries her best to understand, but even with the workouts with the other guys, it isn’t the same as going against someone who really doesn’t mean you well.”