Prologue
We Live to Drill, We Drill to Live
Those who worked at the Oil Rig owned by Harry Stamper became a family, brothers and sisters, daughters and fathers—and a mother. Grace wasn't raised by her birth mother, only her father and the unruly men that he worked with. However, there was a mother figure that was always there for her; at least, most of the time. Adena "the General" King, working with Harry for most of her life since she was fifteen and had run away from home, became one of the most valuable assets of the team. A near genius since she was first placed in school, Adena's eidetic memory made her near perfect in any school program she had ever attended. Harry even paid for her way through university, giving her a chance to gain two doctorates and a bachelor before she was twenty three, paying him back when she later received a full-ride scholarship.
Now, running around the rig alongside the other workers, oil flying through the air and covering their world in slick black, she found she wouldn't give it up for the world. Her once white tank-top was permanently ruined with the black liquid along with her pale grey jumpsuit that had been wrapped around her waist when the excitement first began. Running along the catwalks, she rushed over to where Bear was working on closing off the valves, throwing herself onto one that had remained open and beginning to twist it. Having lived and worked on rigs, she was lean with muscle and had a deep tan on her upper body that wasn't covered by her tanks.
"King, get your ass out of there!" Harry was screaming from the level above her and Bear, he and A.J. working to close the valves on their end. Ignoring him and his fatherly nature, she continued to twist until she was sure that the valve was sealed before moving over to where the next one was located. Much larger than the last, it needed two people to turn and Bear was close behind her to offer a hand.
"We struck oil, Baby!" Bear was cheering with a shit eating grin spread across his face, making her laugh heartily while pulling on her side of the wheel, letting Bear lift his and enabling the valve to turn and began to close off.
Black oil was dripping off their hardhats and down their faces, nearly getting in their eyes and mouths. Fighting against the urge to lick her lips, Adena wiped her bare arm across one of her cheeks to remove the tickling feeling of the oil dripping down as she wiped her gloved hands on her ruined jumpsuit bottoms. This was her life and she would never trade it for anything.
"King, what did I tell you?" Harry demanded when they had stopped the overflow of oil, tossing her a rag to wipe her face clear.
"Just because you're all protective of Grace because you found out she was sleeping with A.J., doesn't mean I'm going to let you treat me differently," she retorted. "This is my job, why am I suddenly not allowed to do it?" she asked sarcastically a moment later, wiping around her eyes first before doing the same with her mouth. She wasn't petite; she actually could have passed as Grace's sister if someone saw them at a glance. Both were tall with long dark hair, but while Adena was tan the daughter of her boss was pale and instead of Grace's blue eyes she had sea green ones that could sometimes look blue in certain lights.
Looking at her now, Harry felt that she could have already been off with a husband and starting a family if he hadn't been so weak all of those years before when she was just a fifteen year old runaway that needed some income. She had told him she would do anything if he hired her, and he had piled all of the hard work on her that he could with the hopes of scaring her off and sending her home, but she adjusted herself to the physical labor just as easily as she adapted her mind to her school lessons.
"I'm sorry, Adena," Harry finally sighed as he moved to lean against the raining, watching as the woman wiped at her tongue with a clean part of the rag, making a face at the taste of the oil in her mouth. "What do I do, General?" he asked, playing on a nickname that he had given her when she was younger and had been sent to Bootcamp by Harry as a punishment for her getting into some trouble when she was seventeen. She had come back much more refined, but when Harry placed her in any sort of role that gave her some power she basically became a drill sergeant.
"Let it alone," she answered, leaning against the railing beside him and looking over to where A.J. was getting nursed better by Grace. "I know that you want to be a good father, and you are, Harry, I'm kind of jealous that Grace had you all to herself—but, you need to understand that you're only going to push her away if you try and control every decision she wants to make."
Harry made a face at the scene of his daughter coddling A.J. before he forced himself to look away. "He's not good enough for her. Bad enough I let you get stuck here with us, you could have moved on to a great man and a great life; I'm not about to let Gracie get mixed in with a….roughneck like A.J."
"They've done studies about what woman find attractive in a man," Adena started, making Harry roll his eyes when she went from 'close friend, oil rig worker' to 'university professor' in under a second. "It's been proven that woman look for qualities in a man that remind them of their father; their smell, their voice or maybe, in Grace's case, their profession and attitude."
"Shut up," Harry scolded teasingly, pushing at Adena as she laughed at him and nearly knocked her over in the process.
The sound of another helicopter approaching caused them both to look up, confused. Adena kept a close eye on the books, helping Grace to keep them in check, and they were not supposed to get any more visitors for the day after those who had come earlier before number two broke oil.
"General?" Harry asked a moment later, still watching the approaching machine.
"Military," Adena asked as she leaned back to get a better look. "Wow, Black Hawk, someone means business."
Making their way down toward the landing pad, Adena stopped next to Rockhound, who gave her a look of confusion that was simply answered with a shoulder shrug. She didn't know anything more than the rest of them, but she began to slowly gain more as she watched the uniformed men emerge from the helicopter while Harry moved to greet them. Trying to read their lips was difficult, as they were yelling over the continued run of the helicopter's engine and the spin of the blades. Clearly, they were planning on cutting back out quick if they weren't shutting down completely. The yelling exaggerated their lip movement and made it hard to try and understand what they were saying, but the facial expressions varied from monotone to grim with knowledge.
Harry didn't give much instruction as he was moving toward the helicopter, aside from one very serious order to Chick—remove A.J. from the rig immediately. Grace was taken with Harry, more than likely from Harry's own order. Letting out a sigh, she glanced over to the young man in pity. She had tried her best, but there was no changing Harry's mind until he decided to do so himself. If she tried again it would be as good as speaking to a brick wall.
"Well, this has been eventful," Oscar said dryly as he watched their boss fly away with the United States military. "So, what are you gunna do when we get back on land?" he asked instead, seeing that she was still focused on why they could have been there in the first place.
"Bathe," she answered, looking down at her disgusting clothes and oil drenched skin. "Gunna go back to your Ranch?" she asked in return, getting an excited grin from the blonde that answered her question for her. Patting him on his oil covered chest with a faint smile, Adena pulled her hardhat off as she was walking toward her small room that she was usually shared with Grace, when the woman wasn't with A.J. or course.
Across the world, Harry was standing in a hanger staring up at the fading sunlight in the sky, Truman standing next to him with Grace a couple of feet away. His thoughts were on his team of drillers that were sure to have left the rig already, heading their own separate ways from the rig that was sitting in the China Sea. Thinking back to the men standing in the hanger behind him, he really didn't think that they were going to be able to do shit on that Asteroid. His team, the people that he put his faith and trust in every day, were the only ones he felt could actually do the job that Truman was attempting.
Harry had a rag-tag family of geniuses in their fields, people who would have been refused by anyone else and it was those people that he felt were the ones that he would put the world's hope in. Letting out a sigh, he ducked his head down as he came to his decision. He would let them make the final choice, but if they were willing then he would need them at his side.
"The guys get off this rig, they scatter," Harry explained to Truman as Grace placed their maroon folders on the table, each with a label on the front that had a name printed in black ink. "J. Otis Curlene Bear, probably the only black man on a big dog in Kadoka, South Dakoda."
"Max."
"You got a weight limit on the shuttle?" Harry asked Truman as he accepted the file, realizing that Max would be one of the optimum choices.
"You know I want Rockhound."
"We call him Rockhound because…well, he's horny," Grace explained, looking up from where his file was sitting on the table in front of them. "You might want to start with every Bar in New Orleans."
"Oscar Choice, spacy but absolutely brilliant geologist. He owns a house ranch outside of El Paso."
"Mr. Chick Chapel, at the craps table. Ceasar's Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada."
"Who's gunna run the other rig?" Grace asked after she took a moment to rest her eyes, turning her back on the files littering the table. "How about Benny, he's good."
"The only one who knows how to run it as well as I do is A.J."
Harry paused when he came to one of the thicker files, staring down at the name. Adena King. Glancing over at Grace and flashing her the name on the file, the other woman nodded her agreement before they looked over to Truman and his small band of men that had been taking down the names that were in the final decisions category.
"Women allowed?"
"One of our pilots is a woman," Truman assured.
Tossing the file down on the table so that it slid across to Truman, Harry began to explain. "Adena King. We call her the General. Holds a record for being the third smartest person in the world with an IQ of 228 and has two doctorates in engineering and a bachelors in physics. I've seen this woman read a French-English dictionary and fluently speak the language in under an hour."
"You'll probably find her at her friend's gym in New York, called Knuckle. She likes to stay in shape for when she gets back on the rig," Grace finished, remembering how Adena had gone through a phase of wanting to be a UFC fighter before she actually punched Rockhound and realized how much it hurt her knuckles to punch a person instead of a heavy bag.
Adena threw her fists at the swaying heavy bag in front of her as ACDC blasted through the gym's speakers. Sweat was covering her entire body from head to toe and her hands were starting to get sore from pounding the leather bag filled with sand, even though her hands were carefully wrapped and encased in padded gloves. The tight braid she had pulled her hair into swung around her smacked against her neck before falling back onto her sweaty back, her sports top leaving most of it exposed.
The music cut out suddenly and broke her concentration as she stilled before she landed her next punch and instead caught the swaying punching bag, the creaking of its chain the only sound in the room for a moment.
"Adena King," an authoritative voice called from behind her, at the entrance to the gym. Turning around, the tanned woman raised an eyebrow as she blinked against the sweat that was running down her face. Three men in FBI jackets stood together, wearing the same grave expression as the men that had picked up Harry and Grace from the rig.
"We'll need you to come with us."
Looking between the three of them, Adena pulled off her gloves and plastered on a large, fake grin as she put her fists on her hips, trying to regulate her breathing.
"Well shit, I just got off work."
Sitting in the back of a large black SUV, Adena mostly watched out the window as they were driving. Sitting in a truck for four hours with three FBI agents staring at her like there was a million dollar prize for the first one to guess her deepest secret, the rig worker was getting ready to deck one of them if they didn't stop it. During the third hour she had begun to doze, but was woken again throughout the fourth hour until they arrived outside of the large glass building behind a lineup of black vehicles.
Unable to stop herself, her jaw dropped in amazement when the sign NASA became visible. Leaning over the man to her right, she strained to see who else was in the cars and fought against an excited grin at the sight of Rockhound and Bear closest to her, each getting out of their own black trucks. Pulling up at the back of the line, Adena was helped form the car by the agent she had been invading the personal space of and herded up toward the others.
Below the large white lettering that told what building they were before, Harry and Grace were standing with a team of men she did not recognize. The two Stampers looked amused as the crew greeted one another but the man who appeared to be in charge was biting his lip in a nervous manner.
"Salute for the General!" Bear bellowed when he saw Adena making her way toward them, still dressed in her sweaty gym attire with a jogging jacket thrown over her sports bra. Breaking into a grin, Adena opened her arms with the expectation of getting a hug. Bear enveloped her in his thick arms, lifting her clean off of her feet with a happy scream as she wrapped her arms around his neck the best that she could.
"Reporting for duty, General King," Oscar joined in, throwing an arm over her shoulder as soon as Adena was free from Bear's choking hug. "You stink, they pick you up from the gym?"
"Coming from the one who smells like a blend of hay and horse shit?" she retorted reaching down to pinch his ass teasingly before she moved over to where Harry was waiting for them, giving him a much gentler hug than the one she had received from Bear. "Good to see you haven't been arrested or something. You know, with all of those protestors, I was half expecting you to tell us you'd been sued by Green Peace."
"What's up, Harry!" Bear called from behind her. "Did NASA find oil on Uranus, man?"
Pulling away from the professional driller with a grin on her face, Adena found herself glad to be back with her weird-ass family. "Where's my hug?" Rockhound asked as he approached Adena, pouting at his lack of greeting similar to what the others had received.
"You sold it for a swift kick to the balls after the last time you grabbed my ass," Adena retorted, crossing her arms to remind him that she had muscle and could punch him again even if it hurt. Rockhound whistled at her biceps before he raised his hands in surrender and stepped away.
Grace fell in step next to Adena as they made their way into the building, following after the man that Harry had introduced as Truman. "Thank you for trying to talk to Harry," she began, smiling to the slightly taller of the two. Only an inch above her, Adena took on the role of the older very seriously.
"Might help convince him if you called him dad once in a while; butter him up or whatever," she replied as she tucked her hands into the small pockets on her workout pants.
"Things are about to get very serious, Dee," Grace warned as her smile disappeared. Adena's frown fell back into place, the feeling in her gut already having told her so without Grace reminding her of the fact. The second those men had arrived to take Harry off the rig, her heart had clenched in her chest and it had felt as though her stomach had bottomed out and hit the floor. There was no way anything good could come of them being called to NASA, especially if it was at Harry's final decision. Things were about to get more than just serious. It was about to become their personal, living nightmare.
I've been watching Armageddon a lot lately, so I wanted to start a story
Let me know what you think, I hope I don't ruin the beauty of the story when writing this.