WE HAVE CONTACT (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 12) Read online

  This caused a furious amount of writing on notecards from everyone there.

  She nodded to Japan.

  “If your effort is focused on protecting the earth from aliens, how long have you known that aliens have existed?”

  “Years,” She replied and then nodded to France.

  “Is your technology advancement based on alien information?”

  “Yes.” Bethany Anne put up a hand, “I am not going into the background on how this occurred, so you can save a lot of writing on the notecards. Suffice to say, that I am completely convinced there is a group of inimical aliens who wish to overtake the earth and use it for their personal gain. This is something I am devoting my life to stopping. However, I have no desire to police the earth, or make it better for human kind. That is your responsibility, not mine. My job, and my teams job, is to make sure you don’t have to worry about invading aliens while you fix the shit on earth at the same time.”

  Spain leaned over to the president of the United States, “She is kind of blunt, isn’t she?”

  “Actually, she is being rather restrained I think,” he answered back.

  Spain leaned back and murmured to himself, “I’m not sure I want to hear what blunt is, then.”

  —

  Bethany Anne retrieved the notecards with all the questions and went back to the table to sit down. Making herself comfortable, she quickly reviewed most of them. A few of the men in the audience raised an eyebrow when they noticed how quickly she was able to flip through the list.

  Coming back to the first notecard she started talking, “Are you an alien?” Bethany Anne looked up to the group and smiled, “You know, this is not the first time I have been asked this question. In order to make all of this easier, I was, in fact, born on our own beautiful blue ball. Otherwise, why the hell would I care if aliens took over the world? Does it make much sense for me to care if I were an alien?”

  Looking down she put that card to the side, “Why are you telling us this now?” She tapped the card in her lap for second before answering, “Should this particular alien race be able to overpower what my group has built so far, and you would have to agree we have built what is effectively the most powerful space ships the world has ever seen. You need to understand and be aware of the risk and the danger to the world. My hope was to take this fight somewhere else, and allow the earth to figure out what the hell it wants to do on its own. Unfortunately, somebody came knocking a little too quickly for my plans.”

  She said that card aside, and grabbed the next one. “Can we see more of the ship?” She looked around the room as if she was looking through the walls, “Which part? If you are asking to see the engine room, or some of the more sophisticated areas, why would I believe you’re just assuaging your curiosity, instead of trying to spy? By the way, don’t even try leaving behind data acquisition devices I.E. commonly referred to as bugs. Not only are they going to fail, it’s going to piss me off and walking home is going to be a bitch for those that do it. So, if you would like a small and quick review of the ship we can do that. It will include a run through the bridge area so you can see that.” Bethany Anne said that card aside and grabbed the next.

  “This is kinda funny!” She grinned as she started to read, “Sorry, this is actually for the President of United States. What about Area 51 now?” Bethany Anne looked over to the President and raised an eyebrow, “Actually, if I had thought about it, I would’ve asked this question myself.”

  The President shook his head and smiled as he turned to view everyone who was looking back at him. “Would you believe they don’t tell me anything either? As far as I know, Area 51 is really for top-secret Air Force planes and other secret efforts. I did ask someone about efforts within the government to review alien technology and I was told that I wouldn’t be given access. Now, since I probably am going to be giving them the best evidence of alien technology, I believe I now have the opportunity to learn whatever the hell I want to. I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear, but as the President, I’m not usually told as much as you might think.”

  Bethany Anne grunted her displeasure and set the card aside, “Well, that was a major letdown.” There was chuckling around the room, “Next question, how are we supposed to help? That’s actually a very good question.” She looked up to everyone, “First, I am opening up the opportunity for one to two people from each of your countries to talk to our research team. We are also going to engage with your teams in relaying information we believe you might need to know. What you need to know, or more specifically your scientists need to know, will at the end of the day be my decision. Annoying pain in the ass scientists are just going to get booted out of here pretty quickly. So, I suggest if you want to know more information, you make sure whomever you choose to come here is not an arrogant asshole. We can decide whether to have the conversation up here on ArchAngel, or down on the pretty blue ball below us in Australia. Provided the Australian government is okay with it, the more practical solution would probably be within Australia, otherwise I figure the scientists will be doing everything they can to disassemble my ship.”

  There was significant chuckling and a little bit of laughter on the reality and the truthfulness of her last comment.

  She looked back down at the next card as she allowed the laughter to die down, “What is the status of the illuminati?” Bethany Anne looked up to the group and spoke, “Presently, there are two individuals we are tracking within the United States who have not accepted the opportunity to go to jail. My understanding is that they are close to making that decision. For most of the contacts around the world, they are already being punished via financial means. Mind you, these are legal financial methods. There is one outstanding individual who we are trying to locate. My sources tell me she has disappeared within the nation of China. Should we locate this individual, I am not going to ask permission from China whether or not she and I can have a conversation. Trust me when I say one of us will not leave the conversation.”

  She slipped the card to the side, “What happened in Russia? Well,” she said, “there is a splinter group of NVG who, supposedly, are operating in Siberia without the Kremlin’s approval and killed a large group of descendants of political dissidents from a hundred years ago. A large group, about ten thousand, decided they did not want to live in Siberia any longer and because I have connections with a few of them, the question was whether we would accept them. I agreed and provided the necessary transportation from right outside of Russia’s border. The refugees are primarily either sixteen and younger, the parents of those children or older adults. You can extrapolate how come the makeup of the refugees are split up that way, I’m sure. We did not go inside Russia, they had to pretty much get out on their own. Another example of trying to not mess up the apple cart too much when what I would have preferred would have been to descend right on top of their town and pick them up.”

  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 t
o 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.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  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!”