Don't Cross This Line (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 14) Read online

  “Wie Geht’s?” He asked her as the door closed behind him.

  “Gut und Dir?” she replied as she took a seat. Barnabas never tried to shake her hand or hug her in any way. He was always formal in their meetings. In a strange way, he was the most comfortable for her, of those who followed Bethany Anne.

  “I’m very well, thank you,” he finished in English and pulled out one of the chairs in the large room. “Are you ready for this last meeting?”

  “As ready as I hope to be. It seems, to me at least, that speaking with Aliens is a more straight forward exercise than talking with anyone from the future, or at least my future, in this world.”

  “Have you made contact then?” He followed up but then put up a hand, a small smile on his lips, “My apologies. My curiosity knows no bounds, as Frank Kurns will attest.”

  “Yes, another whose curiosity knows no bounds, you two should be brothers,” she replied.

  Barnabas nodded, “It was strange, our first meeting. When he and I first got to know one another, I had information he wanted, and he was a spring of information I needed.”

  “Really?” she looked down at her pad and realized it was the wrong one for her notes on Frank and looked back up to Barnabas. “I thought I remembered him saying you didn’t ask as many questions as he?”

  “If we must talk about Frank behind his back,” Barnabas started, then winked, “Then the truth is no one can ask as many questions as that man. Nor,” he nodded to Maria’s notepads, “does he fail to also make all sorts of notes, in his books, about the answers.”

  Her eyebrows drew together in concentration, “I don’t remember him writing much,” she replied.

  “Mmmm,” Barnabas put his hands on the table, “Then I would suggest that he was recording the meeting, to jot down notes later, so he could get more questions in during his time.” Barnabas could see Maria weighing that answer for accuracy, “Or he was so captivated with the answers, he dared not slow down, and he expected to write his notes down later.”

  “More likely the former, than the latter,” Maria admitted, “He did place his tablet on the table when we spoke.”

  “Mystery most likely solved. I doubt he would trust his memory, as good as it is, without a backup.”

  “Is it true he is from my time?” she asked.

  “Frank? Yes. He was in the second World War and has been through a medical procedure to reduce his age.”

  “That is fascinating. I wish my contact would have provided that information,” she admitted, “I can’t say I enjoy sitting with Bethany Anne considering how attractive she is.” She reached up to grab her hair, which was getting longer but not nearly as long as she had it in the stasis chamber.

  “Bethany Anne was attractive before she was healed, you were both attractive in your youth and still are I believe. However, that is not why I am here to speak with you.”

  “Yes, I know Barnabas,” Maria picked up a pencil and tapped it on the table. “But you are the only one I feel I can share some of my thoughts. You seem to be the only one who just tells me like it is, and isn’t trying to control the situation and my decision.”

  Barnabas raised an eyebrow, “You don’t suspect that I am a vicious plant by my Queen to influence your decision?”

  Maria laughed, “No! God no. If Bethany Anne wanted me to do something, I imagine she would have Captain Kael-ven tell me. I am a sucker for an alien, and she is the only one that seems to have plenty of aliens hanging around her.”

  “Yes, she does appear to acquire aliens without trying. It is a singularly unique trait,” Barnabas admitted dryly.

  She chuckled. “So, if you are not here to influence me, Barnabas, what do I owe the honor of your presence?” She smiled, wishing she was about fifty years younger. She would have had a chance to turn his head and make it go in a complete circle if she still had her youthful looks. There was a reason the Vrilerinnen were called the beautiful young ladies of the Vril Gesellschaft.

  “I’m here to ask your permission to sit out of the way, unnoticed, and watch the people.” He smiled, “I promise, I will be a ghost, no one will even notice me.”

  “There are inquisitive people among the Americans who come, Barnabas. I doubt they will ignore you.” He just shrugged, smiling enigmatically.

  Maria wasn’t without her own resources. She knew he was different, and old, ancient probably although she could never get anyone to admit just how old he was. She considered it a small victory she figured out how old Frank Kurns was. She nodded to herself, and asked, “No speaking?” When he shook his head, she continued, “And if they ask about you?”

  Barnabas pursed his lips, “I will step out, then.”

  Her eyes opened in surprise, “What would your Queen say if you fail to stay for the whole meeting?”

  “Nothing, she is not asking me to join this meeting. I am requesting it as the leader of the Queen’s Rangers.” He moved in his chair, “We have been chasing a group for three years, and I am of the opinion they will seek to be here.”

  “They are American?”

  “We have been able to track their spaceships into U.S. Airspace. However, we cannot go further without risking an altercation with the American’s.”

  “They can see your ships, now?” she asked. Barnabas stayed quiet and shrugged. “Ok, keep your secrets,” she continued, “I am but an old woman, what am I going to do?”

  Barnabas surprised her by barking out a short laugh, “Old woman?” His eyes, she noticed, looked beautiful when a grin lit up his face, “I think you need to perhaps get another set of mirrors in this land, Maria.” He stood up and moved a chair from the end, near her, and put it in a corner out of the way of everyone, “With your permission, I’ll just sit here?”

  Maria nodded her agreement and wondered how she was to accomplish more work with him just sitting behind her in the corner.

  “Maria,” his voice, clear in her mind though she didn’t notice his mouth moving. “I’m not here … I’ve stepped out. It would be good for you to continue what you were doing before I interrupted you.”

  Maria looked down at her notes and turned the page, looking over at a clock on the wall. The Americans should be here in twenty minutes. She sure hoped Barnabas made it back to her room before they arrived. He had a way of making her feel peace in this turbulent time for her people.

  New York City, NY - USA

  Johnnie pulled out a knife, “You have two choices, give it to me freely, or give it to me painfully. Either way, chica, you are giving me some ass.”

  Tabitha laughed, “Sorry, this ass,” she pointed behind her, “has a ‘no small dicks allowed’ tattoo,” she replied, putting up her fingers. “Looks like this with a circle and slash over it,” her thumb and index finger made the universal symbol for very, very small.

  “Then, I guess you choose painful,” Johnnie said as he came forward and laughing to himself. The woman was talking big, but she didn’t even get prepared to fight properly. She didn’t move to a fighting position, her two feet side by side and a shoulder’s width apart.

  Worked for him.

  He stutter-stepped to catch her attention and then twisted the knife so that the blade was away from her face and threw a punch.

  He might cut her later, but he didn’t want to worry about scarring such a beautiful woman yet. Especially if a punch was all that it was going to…

  “The fuck!” he grunted when the woman grabbed his hand mid punch with her left and stopped it cold. His fist paused briefly in between the two of them, before she yanked it further in a slightly different direction pulling him off balance. She used her right hand to punch him in the forehead. He collapsed straight down into an unconscious heap.

  With one out of the fight, three others jumped at her. The fifth man kept back, his eyes looking left and right into the shadows.

  “Woohoo!” Tabitha squealed and slightly turned up the speed. Where they punched, she slid away, the blows missing by just a hair's bread
th. So close, yet too far away. She slammed her elbow into the side of the second jerk’s head.

  Two down.

  Tabitha swung a round kick and caught the fifth guy in the stomach. He collapsed, grabbing his stomach, trying in vain to stop the sudden pain.

  “Sorry,” she called out as she dodged a kick from guy number four, “Can’t have someone at my back like that, Hirotoshi would make me do a thousand pushups and I…” She blocked the next punch from jerk number three with her palm and then quickly double punched the guy in his stomach. Grabbing his head as he folded, she slammed it down onto her rising knee. As he collapsed she finished, “absolutely hate push-ups.”

  The last guy was definitely more brawn than brains as he came to grab her in a bear hug. Her superior speed offered a few options, and she decided to have more fun and allowed him to catch her. He laughed as he picked her up off of her feet and squeezed her hard.

  “Watch the ta-ta’s, asshole,” she fumed, “they aren’t fucking balloons here, Ricky Bobby!” She slammed her forehead into his chin, staggering him and then she opened her arms and dropped back to the street. She punched him hard in the stomach and then casually knocked the shit out of the side of his skull.

  “And another one bites the dust,” she finished as his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed to the ground. She looked around. Four guys lights-out, one still coughing, clutching his stomach. She reached down and seized the blue denim jacket collar of the first dick and started towards the dumpster. “You get the bottom, maybe the worst is in there.” She grabbed his arm, belt loop, and a some of the jean fabric in the vicinity, before casually tossing him into the dumpster. A crunching noise happened along with the the noise of his body landing inside the dumpster. An aroma that made Tabitha’s nose twitch rose out from the trash.

  “Damn, that’s some nasty shit,” she commented as she grabbed two more and pulled them over and tossed them in. She grabbed the final two, one of them still holding his stomach as she pulled them both by the legs over to the dumpster.

  Tossing the comatose one in, she bent beside the last guy, “Sorry number five. I appreciate you trying, but the best reduction to your sentence is I won’t toss you,” she nodded to the dumpster, “in there.” She stood up and kicked him in the side of the head, “but you still have to be punished,” she finished to the now comatose guy.

  A moment later, she was back out on the street returning to her previously interrupted walk back to the hotel.

  Her steps a little lighter than before.

  UN Headquarters - New York City - USA

  “What we have,” the Chinese Ambassador spoke, in the closed room, to the eleven other United Nations members, “is a company, or entity, or group of humans who have partaken of what the world provides and is not giving anything in return. Selfishness in action.” Zhou looked around and was pleased.

  Everyone was nodding their heads in the right direction, that is to say in agreement with him.

  “They are also taking the cream of our people!” Ambassador Jackson Emeka broke in, right on cue. Almost as if it had been planned hours ago in a private meeting. One of many meetings Ambassador Zhou held in the last couple of days.

  For three years, the Chinese government had tracked the clans which had alien technology in their own country. A few people had died on both sides, but no technology had ever been recovered. They had captured two of the clan’s members alive and research was going to start on those two, but they had killed themselves, and the blood samples were almost useless.

  The researchers, he was told, had hope but the secrets of the blood weren’t forthcoming, and some of the upper-level politicians had run out of patience. It was time to get nasty.

  It was time for Ambassador Zhou to use the carefully cultivated alliances and debts China had procured over the years.

  “They did not take everyone,” Ambassador Jamil Franklin responded. Ambassador Zhou did love a well-scripted debate.

  “Yes, and why is that?” Ambassador Emeka responded, “Is that because they have the ability to know who has our secrets? Perhaps they only look for those who can bring a little bit extra, so to speak, to their hidden goals? I know they claim they are going out to the stars to fight other aliens. But, why is it they are building a giant space station?”

  “A what?” Ambassador Billony asked, her eyebrows going up in surprise.

  “Their space station,” Ambassador Zhou said, taking command of the conversation once again. “TQB has secretly been building a space station out in the Asteroid Belt these past three years. We have images from some of our space assets.”

  “What do they need with a space station?” she pressed, turning from Ambassador Emeka to Ambassador Zhou.

  “That is a good question,” Zhou replied. “The unofficial official explanation we hear from backdoor conversations is they are using it for the hundreds of thousands of people they have stolen from our respective countries. The,” he nodded to Ambassador Emeka, “cream of the crop they have taken from our countries, perhaps stifling our own ability to get ahead?”

  Ambassador Billony’s lips pressed together. She was new to the group as her country in Europe had recently gone through elections, and the old guard was tossed out. The new President and cabinet were certainly more bellicose in their speeches against TQB.

  It had cost China considerable effort to support the new President during the elections, without getting caught. The race was close within a month of the vote. Then, an unnamed source or sources dropped a significant amount of email and other documents that changed the election. With so much content to wade through, no one questioned who could have shot the two small video clips showing the President with questionable people that swayed the remaining holdouts and pushed the victory from close to a landslide.

  “So how do we stop them?” she asked, “They abide by the rules not to land in our countries, but our people go to other countries.”

  “They just used that rule to filter out those who weren’t serious,” Emeka retorted, “the U.S., so far, allows them to take people from their country. They purchased land and use it for a space terminal. The US hasn’t shut them down so far.”

  “The decision to change that could be close, I understand,” Zhou interrupted. All heads turned to him, “The present President is not as much a fan as the previous one was. Right now, the most that has been done against TQB is to require them to fill out flight plans which allows the U.S. to test their radar and other defensive location and target acquisition capabilities.”

  “A lot of good that does us,” Billony added.

  Zhou shrugged, “It isn’t like our people couldn’t leave and go to the U.S. anyway so they would have to admit they are stopping their whole ‘land of the free’ nonsense if they do otherwise. I know they are stinging from some significant drops in military, science, and advanced technology resources themselves.”

  “Now they know how it feels,” Billony replied, “to have your people go to another country and stay there, not coming back to help your own country do better with their new skills.”

  Many around the table nodded sympathetically. The U.S. was now receiving the rewards for having done the same to all of them, and many other countries around the world for the last hundred years. No one here was going to shed a tear for the Americans who lost some of their own people to TQB.

  Mind you, none wanted to admit they might have a country or a government people didn’t want to come back to or support, either.

  “How many are they taking, now?” Ambassador Franklin asked.

  Ambassador Emeka flipped through a couple of pages in front of him, “It is slowing down. They have added approximately five thousand to the list of those immigrating for each of the last three months.”

  Franklin pointed to the paper from across the table, “If you believe they place all of the names on the list, it could be fifty thousand, and we wouldn’t know.”

  Zhou spoke, “We don’t know it isn’t fi
fteen thousand people leaving Earth for her group. We don’t know they aren't forthright with us in this one area, so perhaps we give them the benefit of the doubt? If the number is two-hundred and fifty thousand to date, and each person would live to be fifty years old on average, that is many, many years of advancement and resources the world is going to do without.”

  There was an epitaph from the end of the table. When everyone turned, Ambassador Jameson’s face grew red, “Sorry, just did that math. That’s twelve and a half million years of support they are stealing.”

  Zhou, noting the perfect opportunity to stab when it looked like he was nice answered, “Well, we can assume they would not be that useful before twenty, so we are probably looking at maybe seven and half million years’ worth of help.” Ambassador Jameson’s face looked at Zhou and raised an eyebrow. Zhou smiled and put up his hands, “Sorry, you are right. Seven and a half is still too much time to allow TQB to steal away.”