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  “I never said Baba Yaga wasn’t an aspect of Bethany Anne. You are talking about the avatar of justice she is wearing. C’mon, it’s a life-sized warning of Shit-Just-Got-Real if you see her. You don’t think Baba Yaga would read minds?”

  Barnabas snorted. “Yes. Baba Yaga would in a moment or two, if she wasn’t being lazy.”

  Tabitha pointed at him. “Being lazy is a very Bethany Anne trait.”

  He put up two hands. “Okay, she isn’t showing near the rage I did when I went insane.”

  Lerr’ek’s eyes raised in surprise as he listened to the two of them talk.

  Barnabas continued, “When I worried I might do it again, she pointed out she would be there to bring me back down.”

  Tabitha’s voice softened. “You aren’t doing this to judge her?”

  Barnabas shook his head, his lips pressed together. “I’m here to get my friend back. She did it for me, but can I do it for her?” he asked, pausing a moment. “I’m not sure I can.”

  Tabitha laid a hand on his arm. “There isn’t one of us who can do it all by ourselves, Barnabas,” she said, patting it three times as he looked in her eyes.

  She finished. “It takes all of us.”

  QBS ArchAngel II, on Station above the Ixtali Home Planet

  The executive shuttle slowly moved through the field into the landing bay to settle down on the deck. The very unique pilot’s voice came over the speaker system.

  “This is your pilot Paul speaking. We have safely arrived on the ArchAngel II. If this wasn’t your final destination, you are probably fucked. The walk back is loooong and you will need to hold your breath for a considerable amount of time. We appreciate you flying Empire Shuttles. You should join us. We have milk and cookies waiting.”

  Lance shook his head and stood up, stretching his arms as he watched Darryl step out of the shuttle to make sure everything was ok.

  It was most likely a waste of time, but he had resigned himself to having to wait through these security measures.

  He grabbed his briefcase, which had been a custom-made gift from Patricia twelve years before when his last briefcase had worn out. This one was a dark blue leather of some sort with brilliant gold metal edges. He slid his tablet into a little slot on the side which allowed him to drop it into the briefcase without opening it.

  There was some sort of cool security on the little opening that would stop someone from using the narrow opening to breach the case’s contents. While he appreciated that the security was in place, he didn’t care to learn how the mechanics of it worked. Patricia said Jean had called it good, so good it was.

  “Good to go, Speaker,” Scott called, and Lance walked down the short aisle and stepped out of the ship. He continued across the deck toward the wall on the opposite side. The hanger was easily three stories tall, and larger than three old jet aircraft hangers on Earth.

  The walk gave him time to think, and to try and cool down.

  He used his internal connections to speak with the AI of the ship. ArchAngel?

  Yes, General?

  Please ask Stephen to join me. It’s time he gave up some of his wisdom for the cause.

  Yes, General. There was a momentary pause as Darryl led them down the long corridor as the occasional crew, work robot, or small vehicle passed them. General, Stephen said he will meet with you.

  Tell him to come to my personal office, please. Reynolds out.

  He continued walking, having spoken to Darryl already back on the shuttle, about where he wanted to end up. It took them fifteen minutes to make it to his office, so he was not surprised to see Stephen waiting outside his door.

  “ArchAngel didn’t let you in?” Lance asked as the hatch irised open and Darryl stepped in front of him to enter first. Lance ignored the timing and stepped in right behind him, then looked at Darryl, who had turned and given him the fisheye. “I couldn’t take the chance someone was in here to shoot me and put me out of my misery.” He tossed his briefcase on his desk. “Unfortunately, the crazy bastards aren’t allowed on this ship.”

  Stephen walked in behind Lance. “Someone have a bad set of meetings?”

  Lance was going through his desk drawers, opening one and then the next. He stopped for a moment and his eyes edged up to look at Stephen while his head was still facing down. “Someone is so pissed off he’s ready to nuke everyone.” He continued opening the drawers.

  “Here it is,” Lance muttered and pulled out a clear bottle with a clear liquid. “Drink?” he asked Stephen, who shrugged.

  “Sure?”

  “Oh, the good stuff,” Darryl commented dryly as he stepped out of the office. “I’ll be out here, Boss!”

  The door closed before Lance thought of a suitable reply. “Coward,” he finally murmured as he placed two drinking glasses on the table. “This is stuff from only-Patricia-knows-where.” He told him as he poured. “I leave it in the unlocked drawers. Serve them right if someone steals it.”

  “Why?” Stephen asked, taking a glass and sitting down in front of the desk.

  “Why what?” Lance replied, straightening and taking a sip. He closed his eyes and grimaced, then shook his head. “Damn!” He wiped a tear away.

  He looked at Stephen, who was in his own personal hell at the moment, bent forward in his chair and coughing. “What…” Stephen asked, wiping his own eyes, “is this?”

  “Hair of the dog,” Lance replied.

  Stephen eyed his glass, then set it on the desk and pushed it toward Lance. “Tell me there was no dog involved in the distilling of that?”

  “No,” Lance agreed, and pulled the glass toward him. “It’s something TOM says affects the nanocytes for a few moments. Each time you take a swig it causes a few more to send what feels like bad electrical charges through your body and the tongue receptors will feel pain.” He took another swallow and winced for a few seconds. “Reminds me,” his voice was hoarse, “of the good stuff on Earth.”

  “I thought ‘good’ meant ‘smooth,’” Stephen commented.

  Lance poured the rest of Stephen’s drink into his own glass and then pushed Stephen’s glass to the side. “Depends on what you need,” Lance told him. “Right now I need to remember that life can be worse.”

  “It went that badly on the planet?” Stephen asked.

  “Worse.” He lifted his glass.

  “How worse?”

  Lance eyed the half-full glass and looked at Stephen, then back at the glass. He sat down, then lifted it to his lips and downed the whole thing. “OHHHH SWEET BABY JEHOSEPHAT!” Lance coughed, his body spasming a bit in his chair. His left fist slammed the desk twice, paused, then slammed it once again. Taking his time, Lance put his glass down.

  “That worse.” Stephen answered his own question.

  “Okay,” Lance looked up through his tears, “I am now fully in command of my emotions.” Stephen said nothing as Lance put a sleeve up, clearing his eyes and face of the tears streaming down.

  “They want us,” Lance started. “to gut our military, fire our people, and either share our technology or gut it and hamstring our future abilities.”

  “How?” Stephen asked.

  “Destroy the ships in a sun, perfectly viewable by those who wish to watch. Provide them with a listing of our ships, so they can check them off. Enough of the other allies have ships names so we can’t cheat. Certainly the Leath have most of them.”

  “What about the Leath?” Stephen asked.

  For the first time since Stephen had seen Lance, a smile graced his face and he chuckled. “Oh, their Defense Minister had a real shit-fit. I was able to hold in my emotions, but the minister blew up like a volcano. It was a sight to behold. Ripped those pricks so many new assholes we needed to build a new solid-waste disposal unit for all the shit that was dribbling down their legs.”

  Stephen chuckled, the scene playing in his mind. “I like him already.”

  “Her,” Lance corrected. “Seems like the best choice at the moment for these mee
tings is a female Leath. One of their males would have already started a war.”

  “So that was a calm response?” Stephen asked.

  “As calm as they come,” Lance agreed. “I’ve met a few more Leath now and believe it or not, without the Kurtherian baggage they aren’t bad people.” He paused a moment, thinking, then added, “For the most part.”

  Stephen sighed. “What about your response?”

  Lance thought a moment. “I told them that if they kept this up the Empress would move the Meredith Reynolds close enough to shove the laser up their anal orifices.”

  “Anal orifices?”

  “‘Bungholes’ didn’t translate.” Lance shrugged. “Who knew?” He chuckled. “That got a few more to shit, and we all agreed we would have to do this over many, many years, starting with small things first.

  “That gives us time,” Stephen said aloud, his eyes unfocused.

  Lance waited for a moment for him to say more, considered pouring another drink, and made a face. He grabbed the two glasses and turned around, and deposited them on the credenza behind him before turning back to Stephen. “Time for what?”

  “You know we aren’t going to destroy the ships,” said Stephen, pursing his lips. “Some of them know we won’t destroy the ships, so what do we do with them, and how do you make a warship disappear in front of everyone?”

  “That is the trick, isn’t it?” Lance agreed. “While you are pondering this question, ponder how we are going to get Bethany Anne on board with this plan.”

  “Logic,” Stephen replied.

  Lance eyed his friend warily. “That presumes she is willing to listen to logic.”

  “Think about it.” Stephen stood up, placed his hands behind his back, and started pacing around Lance’s office. “We will have to pull off the greatest con this galaxy or any other has ever seen. That is what we will lead with when we tell her.”

  “The ships can’t all be local,” said Lance, thinking about it a moment, “and where the hell are we going to put the people we have to fire?”

  “Some of them, unfortunately, will not be told. They will have to be fired.”

  “Yes, we all have some of those people,” Lance agreed.

  “No, good ones too,” Stephen corrected.

  “Bethany Anne won’t go for that.” Lance shook his head. “No way, no how.”

  “Logic, Lance.” Stephen stopped pacing for a moment, nodded his head, and continued his circular path in the office. “Remember, we are doing this to keep the peace. If we go to war, we kill thousands more. What is worse, a few broken hearts or a thousand deaths?”

  “They will flame her name for generations,” Lance shot back.

  “Only a few, and they will eventually be brought back into the fold. It will just take a few years.” Stephen released his hands to pop his knuckles before placing them behind his back again.

  “Some could die in that time,” Lance pointed out.

  Stephen stopped and looked at Lance, his face somber. “Also, Lance, Bethany Anne will have to be exiled.”

  Lance’s eyes narrowed in anger once more, then they slowly cleared as his thinking caught up to Stephen’s, and finally a small glint of humor flickered in the corners. “Stephen, I take everything back I ever said that suggested Barnabas was the more devious of you two.”

  Stephen waggled his eyebrows. “Lance, if you didn’t believe that, what good was I at hiding my expertise?”

  Lance opened his mouth to argue the point, then shut it. Lance wondered just how many times Stephen had manipulated him into actions and he never saw it coming.

  Sonofabitch!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  QBS Shinigami, Outside of Space Station NN-J453, Noel-ni Protectorate

  “I feel like I’m in DC, waiting on traffic to clear up to go home,” Baba Yaga groused. “What’s taking for-fucking-ever here?”

  Shinigami replied, “Believe it or not, we have to get into a queue.”

  She thought about this for a moment, her tongue running over her teeth, although it slid just above them. Twice in the last two days she’d cut herself.

  TOM had informed her that sucking her own blood didn’t help her. She’d told TOM to go screw himself, which had caused her to pause for a moment and ask him if that was even physically possible.

  He had ignored her question.

  ADAM said, “If you are bored, we still have messages from Stephen, John, and others to give you.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t need that right now. What I need,” she pointed to the video screen, “is a way onto that space station instead of waiting here.”

  You could always walk over to it, TOM suggested.

  “That just feels so damned chancy.” She rubbed her arms. “I mean, what happens if I stick my head out in space?”

  It gets sucked off? Your eyeballs explode? Nothing, since you can pull it back quicker than it would harm you?

  “One of these answers isn’t like the others,” she sing-songed. “Are you telling me it is safe?”

  There is always risk.

  She sat back in her chair, pondering the risks of trying to walk over to the space station. “What kind of security do they have there?”

  “Atypical Noel-ni,” Shinigami supplied. “This is an outpost, so there are only a small group of Noel-ni who run the place. It is considered a punishment to be stationed here, according to what I have uncovered so far.”

  Baba Yaga didn’t bother asking if that was legal research. Shinigami made early ADAM seem like a babe in the woods when it came to acquisition of information by any means possible. She approved of this methodology and ADAM had stopped asking her why she was indifferent at best to Shinigami’s machinations.

  She was about to head to the armory when Shinigami came back on. “We have approval to dock on Ring Three, Section Seven, Berth Twenty-One.”

  “Which means?” Baba Yaga asked.

  “Approximately fifteen minutes until we are locked in,” the ship replied.

  Baba Yaga stood up and stretched. “Time until full data acquisition?” she asked. “Tell me we didn’t choose this out-of-the-way place for its decreased security but they don’t have anything worth looking at?”

  “All official Noel-ni stations have a full data packet. Only their home system is more up to date.”

  “Not going there.” She shook her head. “Time?”

  “Approximately five hours, give or take three.”

  She whistled. “Leaving yourself some wiggle room.”

  “Too many unknown variables.”

  “Okay, I could use a break,” she admitted. “Take up all of these screens. No sooner had she made the request than the video monitors around the bridge chairs started disappearing.

  Break from what? TOM asked. This is our third station and you didn’t even get off the ship at the last two.

  Monotony, she sent back. I need to stretch my legs or I’m going to start figuring out ways to pick on you.

  By all means, TOM replied. Please get off the ship. Stretch your legs, be seen and recognized. Have a few fights while you are at it.

  Nice to know I have your permission. Your cynicism is duly noted, she told him as she walked to her cabin.

  You aren’t getting into your armor? TOM asked.

  She shook her head. “Using the light armor. Easy to slap on and then yell when you rip it off. Each time you use it, you appreciate the locks and shit on the other armor until you are ecstatic to go back to it. Or you rip your tits off in one mega-painful effort to get the damn stuff off.” She thought about what that would look like, staring down at the armor piece with her boob wiggling on the sticky side. “I wonder if that shit would heal?” she asked no one in particular.

  She didn’t believe there was much risk on the space station for now, so the lighter armor was sufficient for the risk. The back was easy enough to get on, just position the piece on the bed and lie down on it.

  The front didn’t have any goop t
hat supported her breasts. She had outlawed that shit after her screams the first time she had to peel it off. Jean still occasionally asked her to relate that story.

  “My nipple,” Bethany Anne had eyed the R&D lead, “damn near came off! If that should ever happen due to me taking this armor off in the future, I’ll rip the next five off your chest and we’ll see how much you like it!”

  She was happy to find her armor did not have the sticky shit near her nipples the next time she tried it. John had told her Jean had tried it herself and complained, rubbing her chest, the whole night after that.

  “Black, black, black, black…” She went through her clothes. “I need a new color.” She went into her closet. “YES!”

  She pulled out a brown coat. “Momma’s got options,” she hissed. She put it up to her chest and looked into the mirror. “It goes with my hair.”

  ADAM spoke through her speaker system. “Practically everything goes with white.”

  “Stop raining on my fashion parade,” she told him. “Do I have the right credits for this station?”

  “Yes, take the green card in the second drawer.”

  Baba Yaga went to her dresser and opened the correct drawer. Inside there were well over fifty different cards, most of them tiny computers with communication capabilities which tied into a system-wide banking network. Such a small place as this would only update once a day, so she probably had at least sixteen hours before any use of the card could be traced back here, and by then she would be gone.

  After pocketing her money she finished dressing, donning the brown coat. “I need some brown shoes,” she murmured, walking to the external hatch. “Shinigami, am I free to go?”

  “Yes, it is clear outside,” the ship answered. The hatch irised open and Baba Yaga stepped out, her arms inside her brown jacket.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds

  With a thump, Lance sat down at his home office’s desk. He had worked on the plans for the Federation with Stephen and Admiral Thomas the whole trip back from Ixtali space.

  The operation was tentatively named “Cup and Balls” after the old Earth game where you had to guess which cup the ball was under. The challenge was, if you had a cheater they would pocket the ball when they were moving the cups around.