Vampires in Space

Council Meeting at Victoria's

My family owns different kinds of housing across the country. From apartments and home to ski condos to a lovely castle in France where we make wine. Dallas is not a place we have anything. Well: Not anything we live in as a family. Helen owns things all over the place, including hotel chains.

Denise and I checked into the presidential suite of one such place in Dallas and found Helen and Rachel already there.

Denise decided to stay in the suite and work on the Humanist problem some more, with both IE staff and, behind the scenes, Crew. Helen, Rachel, and I went to Victoria's house.

I briefed Helen and Rachel on the latest IE issue on the way over. After proper greetings, naturally.

Once we arrived at Victoria's place, we sat out on the back patio. The North American Vampire Council sat around a table. Drinks and snacks are laid out on it. We are having a meeting. Yea!

I am half listening. Mostly, I am running a hand up and down Helen's leg under the table. I had not seen her in a long time, and one quick greeting was not enough. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Vampirism keeps the body eternally young and primed. I can be serious when I need to be, but Council meetings are hard to take seriously sometimes.

Helen scooted as close to my chair as she could get and encouraged me. Legs apart. Short dress. No underthings. One hand guiding.

Victoria was perfectly aware of the under-the-table hijinks and said nothing. If she wants to fire me, I'm gone. It's not as if I love this job. I have been at it for well over a century at this point. It is not growing on me.

Victoria is the perfect politician. She keeps her fun and her business separate. Sure: she'd jump me at a Conclave or some other downtime, but during a meeting? Victoria is a straight arrow. I see no reason to emulate her.

When it came to my turn to report the status of my projects, Victoria gave me a very evil grin. "If you can quit playing with your wife long enough, I'd like to hear if there is anything new going on in your world. Other than you have not seen Helen in a long time."

I left my hand where it was happily ensconced and looked thoughtful. "Nothing much happening. I mean... Other than a new set of human supremacists giving IE heartburn. Trying to wreck the city of Dallas. All because they don't like things like recycling and CO2 reductions and being told they can't pollute the Earth. Oh, and maybe some stuff happening on Mars."

I was super offhand about the Humanist situation.

Victoria looked at me with exaggerated patience. "None of that matters. I might point out you have not seen me for a while and I also have legs." She made a dismissive gesture. Victoria can be business only on most council meeting days, but she has dealt with me for a while. She was going with the flow. "Oh well. I guess we might as well talk about all that boring and not at all serious human supremacist bullshit and Mars."

I reported the details of the Humanists, and what they plan on doing to attempt to disrupt the sewage shipments. Data I had up to leaving the hotel in any case. Denise probably has a little more information now.

I stirred in the Mars work for flavor. "Heather and Dad have a working prototype of N drive. They jumped to the edge of the solar system and back. I say 'jumped' because the terminology for N drive is not set yet. It's FTL. Sort of. It's not warping space or wormhole anything. It takes a metric fuckton of power. We used up a lot of our Antimatter on the test. The antimatter production facility in the Belt is going to have to be spun up big time to support N Drive. Fusion will not get it done, at least not at current efficiency levels. We need a solar system-sized cyclotron to make antimatter at scale. Dad and Heather are looking at bigger / better fusion plants too. The good news here is 'So far, so good'. N drive works, and we can get around this Localverse by using N drive and leaving it for a time. Dropping back in elsewhere. You already heard Nova's report about current happenings with Vampire historical studies and discovery. I have nothing new on that. Crew morale is high. Not only across NorthAm but in most of the Geos. Other than that, nothing happening."