“What memo would that be?” the Empress asked.
Tabitha turned to Katsu. “Didn’t you send an all-Yollin dispatch that shared the new rules from Empress Bethany Anne?”
“God, let me go back to just being queen,” Bethany Anne grumped.
Tabitha winked at Bethany Anne as Katsu said, “Yes, I sent the memo as directed. We have confirmation receipts from over a month ago.”
Tabitha turned back to her bosses. “See, we sent the memo.”
Bethany Anne turned her head to look at Barnabas, who was staring at his number two Ranger. “Oh, do tell, Barnabas.”
Barnabas turned to Bethany Anne. “As much as it pains me to say this, she implemented a tactically sound plan.”
Tabitha shrugged. “Hey, ignorance of the law doesn’t excuse you. Plus, we warned them someday we would come calling, and God help them if they hadn’t read the memo.”
Bethany Anne wanted to either smile or put her head in her hands. She wondered what her Ranger had just done. “Oh shit,” she muttered. “I bet you just started a meme in this solar system.”
“Didn’t you get the Empress’s memo?” Barnabas asked.
“That is what I plan to ask right before I plant my size-eight boots up their asses.” Tabitha agreed.
Bethany Anne nodded. “Ok, Ranger Tabitha,” she said, “you are commissioned to go to the Eubos System and seek out the slave trade,” Bethany Anne got serious, “and stop it with all speed.” She pointed at the table and stabbed it with her finger. “I will not have slaves in my Empire. Slavers get one chance to listen. Second time they can explain their reasoning to their personal gods.” Her eyes started glowing. “Those who have used their slaves sexually or victimized them? They don’t even get one chance.”
Tabitha swallowed and nodded her understanding. This was the Queen Bitch speaking.
She was going to need a lot of ammo.
Bethany Anne stood up. “Barnabas has the files for you and your team, but I wanted to present you and your team with something.”
Bethany Anne walked around the table, heading out the door Tabitha and her team had just come in. This time, when the door opened Darryl was standing there.
Where the hell was he when she’d shown up?
As Tabitha walked past her guys she whispered, “We are going to need a lot of ammo.”
Ryu nodded in understanding.
Tabitha walked out the door and followed Bethany Anne and Darryl. She turned back in time to see Barnabas talking with Hirotoshi for a moment before he went the other direction and Hirotoshi started following them. Moments later, Darryl was in the lead, Bethany Anne and Tabitha were next, and the four Tontos brought up the rear.
As they headed down the hall, a sliding door opened and the seven of them swept through before the wall slid closed behind them. Seconds later, they left the hallway that headed back toward All Guns Blazing and Darryl led them across the bottom of the large shopping and eating area.
Bethany Anne seemed to ignore the looks and whispers and pointing fingers as she and the group walked across the floor.
“Hai!” Ryu hissed behind her.
Tabitha looked at the two aliens ahead, who were Ixtalis, based on the images Tabitha had studied. She thought they looked like standing spiders. The couple were a male and a female. They headed in their direction, perhaps thinking they would be able to intercept Bethany Anne.
That was when the fear hit.
Darryl had a hand out in the direction of the two Ixtali and spoke in their language. “Not now. Thank you for your interest.” He kept to his fast pace as Bethany Anne nodded to them, and the team reached to the entrance to the special docks beyond.
Tabitha noticed the look of shock on more than one alien—at least if she was reading their body language correctly.
And perhaps a new level of respect for their Empress from a few of her fellow humans who hadn’t been around Bethany Anne for a while.
Darryl stepped aside as Bethany Anne caught up and then passed him in the hallway once they got through the commercial areas. She nodded to the guards at each checkpoint.
Bethany Anne had told Meredith she was tired of going through security stations and the EI needed to warn each that she was on her way.
Apparently age hadn’t provided any extra doses of patience to Bethany Anne—at least quite yet.
At the last station, however, she slowed down. She had personally told these guards that everyone—including her—was to be checked before entering this work area.
“Gentlemen.” She nodded to both black-clad guards, although she couldn’t see their faces since their helmets were in place. They should be confirming with both Meredith and Reynolds who the people in front of them were. If there were any doubt, they had additional tools as well as protocols to follow.
While Earth had thousands of stories of body snatchers, TOM had said it was unlikely anything would truly be able to fake being human.
Bethany Anne had breathed a sigh of relief.
They would be unable to fake being a human any time soon, TOM had finished.
She sucked back in the air she had just exhaled. You are lucky I can’t strangle your scrawny neck, she told him.
She could feel his amusement. She still didn’t know if he had been joking that it could happen, or was just pleased that his timing on delivering the warning had been so effective.
If she hadn’t planned before to find out how to provide TOM with his own body again, she was now—just so she could beat the shit out of him just once for old times’ sake.
The guards had finally confirmed everyone’s identity, and the doors unlocked. Darryl moved in first to verify it was safe for Bethany Anne. “Clear.”
“One of these times,” Bethany Anne grumped, “I’m going to have a practical joke waiting on the other side of these doors.” She walked into the hanger and turned to watch Ranger Tabitha and her team come in.
Tabitha walked through the door and her mouth dropped open. “Ohhh, my,” she whispered as she walked past Bethany Anne.
Bethany Anne continued to watch her reactions.
Tabitha completely ignored her.
Bethany Anne looked at Darryl, who was grinning. “I won’t give you the pleasure.”
Darryl chuckled at Bethany Anne’s words as he walked toward the other side of the ship.
Hirotoshi stopped next to Bethany Anne. “That is a Ranger’s ship?”
“Well,” Bethany Anne said, turning to take in the beautiful black ship, “it is this Ranger’s ship. Specially made to handle her and her team of six Tontos plus three passengers. Six, if those passengers are really close,” she admitted. The completely black human version of the G’laxix Sphaea-class ship gleamed under bright lights of the hangar.
Tabitha called over her shoulder as she ran a hand along the side of the ship, “What’s its name?”
“What would you expect?” a somewhat electronic voice said from underneath the ship.
Tabitha pulled her hand down as if stung. “Oh, God!”
Bethany Anne and Hirotoshi walked over to the Ranger. “Welcome to the Achronyx, Tabitha.”
Tabitha lowered her head into her right hand, her middle finger somehow the only one running up the side of her face and aimed in Bethany Anne’s direction. “OWWW!” Tabitha screamed as she yanked her hand down, shaking it to deal with the pain. When she looked at it, a thin line of blood showed where something sharp had cut it.
She looked at Bethany Anne, who raised her eyebrows.
“I deserved that,” Tabitha admitted. “I’ve been around a teenager too much.”
There was a commotion from the doors through which they had entered, and Barnabas walked in with the other two Tontos following him. They carried additional boxes labeled “Ammunition.”
Barnabas walked up to Bethany Anne and pursed his lips, staring at Tabitha’s hand.
“What happened?” he asked. Bethany Anne looked at Tabitha.
“Well, since there
aren’t any buildings to fall out of, this time I decided to let my hand do something stupid, and it got reprimanded,” Tabitha replied.
Hirotoshi nodded to his Ranger. “I will see to the new supplies and make sure the ship is ready, Kemosabe.”
Tabitha nodded to Hirotoshi and turned to Bethany Anne. “Are you sure Achronyx is up to handling this ship?”
Barnabas chuckled.
“Keep it up, boss.” She looked at him. “I swear he is the most obstinate EI anyone has ever heard about. He forces me to rephrase shit just because he knows it annoys the fuck out of me.”
Bethany Anne folded her arms and said, “Tabitha, are we going to have the same discussion about the inability of an EI to actively choose to be obstinate like that? As a programmer yourself—”
“I was a hacker. There is a difference,” Tabitha interrupted. “Programmers worked in corporations playing with their databases.”
“And what were you doing?” Bethany Anne asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I was on the outside, busting in and retrieving the data they were putting into the databases.” The ex-hacker Ranger thought about it for half a second. “They were filling the data vault while I was making withdrawals.”
Bethany Ann tapped her lips before asking, “So, a common thief?”
There was a snort from the other side of the ship.
“My Empress,” Tabitha answered, a gleam in her eye as she waved a hand up and down her body, “there was never anything common about this.”
Bethany Anne smiled. “Good, we have the old Tabitha back.”
Tabitha’s smile turned melancholy as she considered the past couple of months. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Leaving Earth, and no boyfriend—it kinda walloped me.”
Bethany Anne’s voice was soft. “You aren’t the only one to suffer from leaving Earth behind,” she told her Ranger, “but you came out of it. It only took a spunky teenager to help you.”
This time Tabitha made a face not unlike one Barnabas might have made when thinking about Tabitha. “Not the method I would have suggested, but you’re right, she helped,” she admitted.
“Well, we finally recognized the problem with Anne’s mom when she was taking it out on Anne. Then Jinx chose the girl, and we had the Pod-doc episode. You helped her through it and did very well, but it is time to get back on the horse.”
Tabitha smiled, a glint in her eye. “I think it is, at that.” Tabitha looked down, stomped her right foot once and grimaced, then stomped it a second time.
Chink.
Then she did her left.
Chink.
Tabitha lifted her head and smiled. “Round them up, Tontos!” she called as she walked toward the entrance ramp on the side of the ship, “We have a party to crash!”
There was a slight chink, chink, chink as Tabitha walked away.
Barnabas stared down at her boots in horror. “Is she wearing spurs?”
Bethany Anne just shook her head and patted Barnabas on the shoulder. “I’m sure it was a gag gift from her team.”
Barnabas watched his Ranger walk up the ramp and disappear into the spaceship before saying to Bethany Anne over his shoulder as he pointed to where Tabitha had just disappeared, “You realize that young Hispanic Ranger could be the first representative of your Empire. She is wearing a black leather coat, leads four Japanese vampires who all respond to ‘Tonto,’ and her boots have spurs.”
Bethany Anne started walking toward the exit, so Barnabas followed. “There isn’t a cow for a hundred light-years around here, Bethany Anne.”
Darryl was waiting at the door to lead the Empress out.
Barnabas kept talking. “And I don’t think there’s a horse on this whole space station!” he complained.
The two remaining Tontos followed Barnabas through the doors.
The guards chuckled as the team went down the hall and around the corner. Barnabas’s voice floated back to them, “Oh, for God’s sake! She had better not come back saying ‘y’all’ in her Latino accent!”
12
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Open Court, Outer Docks
Aerolyn was struggling to figure out what options—if any—he had to hide here on the Etheric Empire’s space station when the buzz of conversation on the floor increased.
There was a group of humans threading through the center of the large area.
“No, that’s her!” he heard someone whispering in Yollin. He wanted to turn around and see who was talking, but kept his focus on the procession. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a couple figures heading toward the parade.
They were Ixtalis.
Aerolyn grimaced. Those aliens would screw you over and make you smile while they did it. Every chance the Ixtalis got, they hooked you on either their rare gems or the information they traded.
Usually both.
The big dark man in front of the Empress put his arm out, and then a sense of fear hit. It wasn’t only him—most of the people on the floor felt something. Those nearest the male seemed to be affected the worst. One of the humans off to the side turned way and threw up.
The Ixtalis backed off, and the Empress and her people disappeared in the direction of the ship berths.
“What was that?” Aerolyn looked around in shock. Most of the humans seemed to know what was going on, and a few were casting irritated glances at the two Ixtalis. They had sat down, obviously shaken.
Aerolyn got up and left his table. If this Empress was willing to upset an Ixtali, maybe he had a chance. He needed to find out who he could talk to about his problem—and if the Etheric Empire was willing to help him.
Ixtelina found the nearest table and sat down.
Ixgalan dropped into a chair beside her. “What just happened?”
Ixtelina looked over at him. “Do you have a guess? Because I do, and I do not like the idea much at all.”
Ixgalan reached up and scratched his face. “We were hit by some kind of emotional weapon?”
“Did you see a weapon pointed at us?”
“Sure. His hand.”
Ixtelina was quiet for a moment. “Do you believe there was a weapon in his hand?”
It was Ixgalan’s turn to pause. “My mind says he had to have a weapon.” He made a gesture with his arm to show he didn’t believe it.
“That is my point, Ixgalan,” Ixtelina admitted. “If he could push out a wave that messed with our emotions at such a basic level, and it isn’t a technical ability but rather an organic one…” She left the statement open.
“How would they know how to affect our physiology?”
“I’m trying to work on that right now,” Ixtelina admitted. “It’s scary as well as interesting.”
Ixgalan leaned toward his lead and put a hand on her arm. “Are you ok?”
Ixtelina looked around, leaving Ixgalan’s hand where it was for the moment. “No.” She turned to her team member. “I’ll be straightforward. The implications of this are far-reaching. We can sit and ponder it all we want, but there are very few species that can do what they just did. We are the first Ixtalis on their space station, but perhaps they recorded our genetics when they took our pictures earlier. If they did, what is their technology? We were only in front of the camera for seconds.”
“Maybe while on the transfer ship?”
“That Executive Pod?” Ixtelina thought about that a moment. “If so, that was the most luxurious medical scanner I’ve ever been on.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either, but I had to ask,” Ixgalan lamented. “Then again, why aren’t my tiny spies working?” Ixtelina shook her head, and Ixgalan grimaced. “Sorry, that was inappropriate.”
“We are both out of sorts at the moment. If we had been able to connect the ship to the station, we would have been able to employ a significant amount of attacks.”
“Which,” Ixgalan finished, “was why they didn’t allow us to dock.”
“Exactly.” Ixtelina leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “
They know who we are, and they know what we sell.”
Ixgalan thought about it for a moment. “And they don’t care.”
“Ignorance, lack of need, or pride?” Ixtelina whispered.
“Well, we could just ask them,” Ixgalan suggested.
Ixtelina looked at him to register her opinion of that idea. He was looking at the entrances to the ship’s berths, where the Empress was coming back through. This time, however, she had a new male beside her and was obviously in a heated (and one-sided) conversation. The two males that followed them looked similar to the ones who had guarded her going the other direction, but she was sure they were different.
Ixtelina pushed herself up from the chair. While she didn’t relish the thought of feeling the fear again, she had a job to do.
Darryl turned his head just a small amount. “Incoming at two o’clock.”
Bethany Anne’s eyes flitted that way as Darryl called, “Those are Ixtalis, right?”
>>Affirmative.<<
“Ok, we will see what she has to say this time. This could be fun.” Bethany Anne slowed as Darryl halted their procession.
Darryl went forward to meet the two aliens and Barnabas took his place, calmly waiting and looking around. He made it obvious that he was keeping others from the Empress. Jun and Kouki spread out behind Bethany Anne, scanning as well.
It wasn’t lost on Ixtelina how quickly the team around the Empress spread out to protect her as she approached the Ixtalis. The lead security person was headed in her direction, and she worked not to shake in fear—even a little—as he approached.
“Hello, Special Trade Legate Ixtelina. What do you wish to speak with Empress Bethany Anne about?”
Not surprised he knew who she was, Ixtelina forged ahead. “There seems to be strife concerning my mission here to set up trade between our people and yours. I would like to see what could be done to reduce the friction.”
Darryl caught Bethany Anne’s barely whispered, “Let her pass” and waved the Trade Legate through. “Just you.”
She nodded her understanding.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set Three: Books 15-21, Never Submit, Never Surrender, Forever Defend, Might Makes Right, Ahead Full, Capture Death, Life Goes On (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 33