AWACS - An American With A Chinese System
Copyright© 2025 by PT Brainum
Chapter 26
With frictionless, forget me, and guidance skills all running, I shot into the sky at around mach four. I dropped to free fall for just an instant, and began to take a pinball like course through the sky towards the ocean. Eventually I was doing hundreds of miles at a time between course corrections, before I started pinballing again to avoid radar, visual observation, or cameras.
I had to actually circle south of Catalina Island, then go north, come inland, head south, and come over the Cleveland National Forest to get to Pete’s house in Lakeside. All to avoid the significant radar installations found around the Naval Station in San Diego.
Just under three thousand km, in 35 minutes, for less than a million points after discounts. I’m awesome.
The San Diego area has lots of storage units, and Pete owns and manages a rather big one. He started with a big garage that stored peoples RV’s. That’s where my 5th wheel had been stored for the last three years.
I dropped down inside the fence, and knocked on the door to the office. It was almost 10pm, but I knew he’d be up. I realized I was inside the fence after closing, and turned on my bulletproof frictionless skill, just as the door swung open and a long haired skinny guy with arms as big as my thighs in a wheelchair stuck a shotgun in my face.
“Hi Pete, did you miss me?”
He put the gun down, pointing right at my crotch, and squinted up at me, “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”
“I’m lucky you’re not shooting me now,” I replied, glancing at where the gun was pointed.
He gave me a buck toothed grin, and shouldered the gun, setting the stock between his skinny bare legs he wheeled backwards to make room, “Come in, come in before the drones see you.”
I sighed and followed him in, kicking the door shut behind me. I looked around, and it wasn’t too bad. He obviously had someone coming in to help him clean, no way that Pete could handle it on his own. But he was fiercely independent, undeniably brilliant, and certifiably crazy about some things. Like government drones, and the Chula Vista crop circles.
If you know anything about Chula Vista, you’ll think I’m crazy too. But he’s convinced the reason the city got so big was because the government needed to pave over all the crop circles, to hide them from the general population. I’m pretty sure that there were never any lemon orchard crop circles, but I’m not going to argue with Pete. I’ll walk away, I’ll ignore him, I’ll roll my eyes, but I won’t argue. There’s just no point in wasting breath, or time.
“Hey, want a peach?” I asked, handing it to him.
He took it, and looked it over for blemishes, “Where did you get it?”
“Picked it myself from an organic tree.”
He bit into it, almost moaning, “That is so juicy, and sweet.”
I sat down at the couch, and he wheeled around setting the gun by the door, and parking himself at a table where he had been working.
“What are you working on today?”
“Trying to break a biometric locking system. So far it has been pretty resistant to spoofing of the fingerprint reader. I’m trying to see if it has any other vulnerabilities.”
“Planning on using it, or just a job?” I asked, curious.
“If it’s really good I might consider using it for secure access to the vault, but this is for hire. Guy on the dark web is paying me fifty bitcoins to find a way to hack the lock.”
“He give you a deposit, or is it on spec?”
“On spec.”
I sighed, no use trying to explain it to him. Even if he figured out a hack to unlock it, there was a good chance he’d never get paid.
“That was a good peach, did you get anymore?”
“I’ll give you another one tomorrow.”
“Ok, so how did you get inside the fence?”
“I flew.”
He turned and looked at me, “Ok, that was the truth,” then went back to his project.
Pete has a gift. He can tell when I’m telling the truth or not. He can’t seem to do it with anybody else, but for me, he’s my own personal lie detector. I think that’s why we’ve been friends for so long. Everybody else he believes unconditionally. I’m also pretty sure that’s why he’s in the wheelchair, even though he won’t talk about the accident.
I checked my stats:
0/12,000,000 (92) Level
3,018,800/120,000,000 positive points
11,572,455 neutral points
2,208,600/120,000,000 negative points
22 Active Skills
23 Passive Skills
47,605 Bonus Neutral Points
Pete tuned me out, so I just relaxed. It was almost like being home. It wasn’t worth the hastle to get his attention when he was deep into a project. I fell asleep on the couch, as Pete worked away.
The next morning I groggily stirred, finding he had covered me with a blanket on the couch, but now Pete was poking me, hard.
“Hey, man, I’m awake,” I told him.
He was standing over me, in his underwear, still poking me.
“Dude!” I said sitting up, then realized what I was seeing.
“What was in that peach?” he asked, his tone level but very firm. At least the poking had stopped.
“Magic peaches. I fell asleep before I could explain.”
“I’m standing here, waiting for the explanation.”
“I see that, congratulations.”
“I’m going to have to buy more comfortable chairs,” he said, and sat down on the couch next to me, staring at his very white and rather thin legs.
“So, I died in the airplane as it was delayed for hours in Beijing.”
“But, you got better. Came back with magic powers. That peach, the Chinese medicine you told me about?”
“Kind of, I got a slew of different powers and abilities. Flight is just one of them. I can heal super fast, and I have a pocket space that has a big peach tree in it that apparently grows magic peaches.”
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