WE HAVE CONTACT (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 12) (6 page)

She grabbed the next card and read it aloud, “Do you understand the rule of law?” Bethany Anne slid off of the table and put her arms around her back and thought for a moment before speaking.
 

“Let’s understand the definition of, ‘rule of law’.
 
First, the rule of law is a legal principle that law should govern the nation, as opposed to being governed by arbitrary decisions of individual government officials.”
 
She pointed to the first row of leaders, “namely, you right here, but I digress. The term primarily refers to the influence and authority of law in society, particularly as a constraint upon behavior, yours and others, and can be traced back to 16th century Britain. The main argument at the time was against the divine right of kings. For those who have slept since their early history lessons, or frankly don’t care, those monarchs liked the idea of telling everyone what to do, were capricious and mostly self-serving atrocious bastards.”

She paused a moment and looked down the line, “My feeling is that those,” now she lifted up the card with the question on it, “who are wondering about this question would generally love to find out whether I’m going to follow some sort of international rule of law such that I will hold myself and my group to the whims, wishes and what-not of a bunch of lawyers, legalists and poor losers and the answer is not only no…”
 
she smiled to those in front of her, “But
hell
no!
 
There is no way that I see anything but a self serving, sycophantic, fuckwad of constraints, contracts and questions that would bedevil me with bullshit and generally irritate the hell out of me.”

She smiled to the group, “I am, believe it or not, generally an approachable person who believes in the rights of those born, and even the rights of the unborn.
 
I do not believe in holding someone hostage nor am I overly concerned with kissing anyone’s ass.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled, “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?
 
You would love my technology, which I am not going to divulge.
 
You can’t hurt me militarily, because if I wanted I could drop a big enough rock on your heads to give your country a fucking migraine.” She pointed to the screen behind her, “You have seen why I asked you up here.
 
I don’t give a shit whether you help me, or not. My belief is it would be against my pledge to protect the Earth if I left you in the dark.
 
Now, the reality is I’m giving you a heads up.
 
If you decide to fuck up the heads up, it just means that you are sticking your own head up your own ass.”

Spain leaned slightly to his right, “I see we get blunt, now.”
 
The American President nodded his agreement.

Bethany Anne continued, “I can be helpful, I can be harmful.
 
I’m here to be helpful so don’t push me.
 
While I intend to just ‘go away’ and take this fight somewhere else, I can’t do that right now because I don’t know where to go nor do I have enough knowledge of what is on the other side to feel particularly comfortable doing it without more intelligence.”

“Next option, try to hurt me financially.
 
I wouldn’t try that either.
 
China tried that, a few billion dollars of missing funds later they stopped that shit, too.
 
Between the twenty-eight of you here, I’m going to be candid.
 
I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect the Earth from what I know can be coming.
 
I don’t know if it,” She again pointed her thumb over her shoulder, “is part of the group I’m most concerned about or not.
 
Once I can find the son-of-a-bitch we will have a chat.”

“Who died and made you the decider of the Earth’s future?” France spit out.

Germany’s President heard one of the four men in her protection detail whisper, “Wrong fucking question, Frenchie.”

Bethany Anne’s head slowly turned to France’s Prime Minister, “Considering that you can’t keep your own house in order, and protected, let’s not be getting full of ourselves, shall we?”
 
She walked over and stood in front of him, “I feel for your countryman, and those that attack you are damned to hell.
 
Don’t assume because I harbor sympathy, I’m incapable of making a judicious decision that you are incapable of dealing with something outside your borders.”

Bethany Anne turned back around and walked to the table before looking back to those in front of them.
 
“People, you are on the QBS ArchAngel.
 
This is our Leviathan class Battleship.
 
The QB in QBS and in TQB stand for the same thing.
 
My group is a Monarchy.
 
It is complete, there is no house of commons, house of lords or anything else.
 
While I have advisors, my word is law.
 
You need to understand it; you need to own it.
 
My people follow me of their own free will. There are two meanings for QB.
 
The First is Queen Bethany Anne.”
 
Her eyes turned hard, unyielding.
 

“The second, may you never meet her, is
Queen
Bitch
.”

Geneva, Switzerland

The lights were out in her little two-bedroom efficiency apartment. Anna Elizabeth stepped inside and put her purse down. It had taken her many months to locate a company that was willing to ignore the silent, but powerful, word in the higher circles that she should not be hired.

By the time she was at her twenty-second job interview, she had decided to tell the companies up front that powerful people were upset with her. Nine times it had only taken twenty-four hours or less for the word to come down that, “Sorry, we aren’t interested.”

This time, the tenth time, the lady on the other side of the desk nodded sagely and turned to her computer. She typed in a few characters, pointed on her screen to read as she swiped her finger down the screen and then grabbed her mouse and clicked a couple of times.

She filled out two more fields and clicked again before returning to face Anna Elizabeth. By then, Anna had been confident that she was about to be told that ‘all positions had been filled, so sorry’ or something similar. The lady, however, winked at her.
 

“I have access to the bulletin board you are talking about, and you are correct, your name is one of the entries. Did you know that over twenty-six companies have not hired you because your name was listed?”

“No,” Anna admitted, “I wasn’t sure how many, but I had figured that my skills would have been useful to most of them so I thought at least ten.” She sat back in her chair, defeated, “So, I’m basically unhireable here in my own country?”

“Oh, dear,” the older lady gave her a sad face, “perhaps for ninety-nine percent of the medium and larger companies that is true. Any company that wishes to play with the biggest companies, unless they are even bigger, can’t buck the system without losing millions of dollars in potential sales. Any professional company selling their services, such as ours, if we hired you ignorantly, will eventually receive a call that explains we need to let you go, or risk our projects which feed our own children.”

The lady smiled sadly to her, “Sweetie, you have been black-balled.”

Anna had nodded her head in understanding, “I understand. Thank you for telling me the truth.” The phone rang, and Anna started to get her stuff together.

The older lady looked at the name and opened her eyes, “Hold one second, sweetie. I wasn’t expecting to get this call, and if it were going to happen, not so quickly.” She picked up her phone, “Hello, this is Amanda.”
 

Anna watched the lady, confused. If she was blackballed, why did she ask her to stay?

“Yes ma’am, that is correct. Yes, I know who you are, and your position. Yes, I would be very proud to make that happen.” There was a pause for a few seconds before Amanda’s voice became surprised, “I’m sorry? Did you say twice, ma’am?”

Anna couldn’t understand why the lady’s face was so joyful, or why she was dabbing at her eye with a tissue she had snatched from a blue box sitting on her desk.

“Yes, I’ll let her know, and thank you. Yes, you have a nice day, as well.” Amanda slowly hung up the phone and sat staring at it for a moment.

“Excuse me?” Anna spoke quietly, then again when Amanda didn’t respond, “Excuse me?”
 

“Oh!” Amanda blushed as she turned back to face Anna, “My apologies. I was just rather shocked with who was on the phone call and what I was just told. But, that is bad manners on my side,” she put her hands together and sat them on her desk. “That was, interestingly enough, the bosses, bosses…boss,” Amanda looked up in the air as if she was looked at an org chart only she could see. “Maybe there is one more boss in there, somewhere.”

“But, I thought you were a privately held company?” Anna asked, trying to figure out where this conversation was going, and how it had gotten off track so badly.

“Oh, we are,” Amanda confirmed, “but, we are privately owned by another company, which is, in turn, owned by an international conglomerate.”

Anna’s stomach clenched up, “You are owned by an
international conglomerate
?” she whispered as Amanda beamed back.

“Oh yes! We are owned, eventually once you get up the chain, by TQB Enterprises. That,” she pointed to her phone, “was the CEO herself.”

“Oh… I see,” Anna Elizabeth answered, and she did. That was the ultimate person that her previous employer had attacked. She had tried to warn them as best she could and had left the meeting to come back to her country. So far, her biggest concern was that she would be killed for divulging a secret held in her country for a millennium. Then, after so many failed job interviews, her fear had changed.

A few minutes ago, she had thought she would starve to death, now it might be her preferred way to die.

“Oh yes!” Amanda went on, not realizing Anna Elizabeth’s thinking was down a separate path, “She told me to ignore the, well, let us just admit she can be a little blunt with her talking, and she told me anytime I find someone on that list to feel free to bump it up to her attention. Either way, you’re hired!”

“Ok, I’ll just grab my stuff and…wait, did you say
I’m hired
?” Anna asked, confused even more, “The bosses’ bosses…well, the CEO just told you to hire me?” Her emotions and her thinking were not coherent at the moment at all. Why would Bethany Anne want her hired?

“Oh yes! In fact, if I can negotiate a proper salary and position for your actual skills, I will get a bonus worth twice my salary on my next paycheck. So, please, sit your little butt back down and let me find out everything you can do!” Amanda told her.

Two hours later, Anna Elizabeth was employed again.

—

Now, Anna was reveling in the freedom for her toes as she pulled each foot out of her pumps. The shoes had been a little high, but she was trying to use any asset she had.

And damned if these assets didn’t hurt her feet each time she wore them.

She reached over and clicked on the light in her little place and turned around, “Oh!” Her hand reached up to cover her mouth as her eyes darted between the two people waiting for her in her apartment. She didn’t recognize the man, but she absolutely knew the woman.

The black haired lady smiled to her, “Don’t be afraid, Anna Elisabeth Hauser, you are working for me now.”

TQB Base, Australia

Marcus ran through the hallway in the Australian base, “Excuse me! Pardon, need to slide between you two!” He was working his way to the front of the cafeteria, but it was quite congested. There were a lot of people annoyed as he got closer to the front. Finally, he heard Bobcat yell out over the crowd, “Hey!”

Everyone stopped their chatting and looked to see Bobcat standing on the table in front of the meeting room pointing to the group where Marcus was standing. He said, “Would you PLEASE allow my friend, and the only damned gravitic engines expert on this planet, up to the front so he can possibly answer your fucking questions?” glaring at everyone impatiently.

Marcus noticed a few of those who had looked irritated with him realize they had been pissed at the man they had probably wanted to try and be nice toward.

Marcus shrugged mentally as they gave him enough room to slide out of the crowd and then walk to the table as Bobcat stepped off of it and used his chair to step to the ground.

“Thanks!” He mumbled. Marcus was on one side of Bobcat, William the other as the three sat.

“Gott Verdammt scientists, thank God Bethany Anne didn’t have us do this on the ArchAngel.” he replied softly.

What should have been maybe twenty to twenty-eight or so attendees quickly ballooned up to sixty-four. The countries wanted someone from the military, infrastructure, science and government represented to help make plans. Team BMW had decided that everyone was coming in wearing the same stuff, losing all of their electronics gear, and all would receive a video of the presentation afterward.

Bobcat had been walking by the table where the guests were dropping off their electronic gear when a female government representative asked a Guardian who was taking their electronics what would stop them from just sharing the video TQB provided them?

Todd had smiled and replied, “Nothing at all. I’m sure Bethany Anne would love you to do such a thing. She’s not a huge proponent of keeping everybody in the dark, anyway.”

“But, the masses would riot,” the government representative argued.

“You know this, or did you guess this?” Todd asked while he boxed up the communications equipment and placed an ID tag on it, “Or you just don’t want to deal with it if you can kick the problem down the road?”

“Not everyone has the option of just flying out of here if the world goes down the tube!” She tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. Bobcat grinned and spoke low enough that only the werewolves or vampires in the group would hear him.