Dark Choices - I. T. Lucas Page 0,10

would be the same. They would fall out of the sky over the village.” He took off his glasses and wiped them with the corner of his shirt. “I could enlarge the perimeter so that their systems would malfunction before they got into our airspace, but that would endanger other aircraft flying in the area.”

“We can’t do that.” Kian sighed. “Quite a few helicopters pass through these mountains daily.”

For several long moments, the three of them sat in silence, each trying to come up with a solution.

William sighed. “I need more time to think about it.”

“Earplugs are the only things that come to my mind,” Turner said. “If everyone carries them around, they can stick them in as soon as the noise starts.”

“I might have another solution.” William took off his glasses again. “But I need to do some research on acoustics, which I admit I don’t know much about. Perhaps there is a way to deploy a countermeasure. Sound is a wave, so theoretically, all we need is a counter cannon that generates a sound that is 180 degrees phase-inverted to the cannon’s. If I can design a device that will capture the noise, invert the signal to create an anti-noise, and blast it back, that could be the solution. The problem is that capturing sounds accurately isn’t easy. Microphones have imperfect frequency responses, so the cancelation wave might not align perfectly with the phase of the noise. But even a small reduction would mean the difference between just unpleasant sound and an incapacitating one.”

Kian let out a breath. “Good. So, we have a solution.”

He didn’t understand half of what William had said, but it seemed like the guy was onto something.

William shook his head. “I didn’t say that we had a solution. I said that we might.”

“Good enough for me. I trust you’ll figure it out.”

Turner clapped William on his back. “Take your time. I don’t think an acoustic attack on the village is likely to happen anytime soon if at all.” He lifted his beer and took another swig. “By the way, I saw stacks of building materials in the parking garage. I don’t know much about construction, but I was under the impression that the fence is going to be made from chain link. We are not building an actual wall between the two parts of the village, right?”

Kian shook his head. “I couldn’t bring in the Chinese crew just to put up a fence and build a few room additions to the existing houses. I had to give them more work, so I decided to start on phase three of the village.”

Turner arched a brow. “Do we have enough land?”

“We have plenty, but we need to do extensive grading work. I want to prepare fifty more plots.”

“What for? Most of phase two is still unoccupied.”

Turner was right, and Kian had been asking himself the same question, but he had a gut feeling that those homes would be needed soon. Not that he was going to admit to the most logic-driven person he knew that he was spending the clan’s money because of a damn gut feeling.

“I expect many more mated couples in the near future, and with Merlin’s fertility treatments, we also might get more children, which means that we need more family homes. Perhaps not right now, but in a few years.”

7

Kalugal

“You look absolutely radiant!” Carol pulled Jacki into a fierce hug. “I’m so happy that your transition was uneventful.”

Jacki chuckled. “After what happened at our wedding, that was a pleasant surprise.”

“Congratulations.” Lokan clapped Kalugal on the back. “I’m glad that’s behind you. I can’t imagine how worried you were.”

“It was difficult to watch the woman I love slip into unconsciousness. You’re lucky that your mate was already immortal when you met her.”

Lokan shook his head. “I’ve had my share of worry with Carol.”

“I can imagine,” Jacki said. “You must have been terrified for her when she infiltrated the harem.”

“The terror of that wasn’t as bad as what I went through before the mission even started. The original idea to get Carol off the island was for her to fake her own death. Bridget rigged her fake insulin pump with a toxin that would have made her seem dead to the human staff. Naturally, she wanted to test it in a controlled environment before sending Carol on the mission, so she administered the toxin in the clinic.”

Imagining the horror his brother must have felt, Kalugal’s gut twisted. “I’m surprised that you agreed to that.”

Lokan