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  Barnabas chuckled, “Yes, that is the scenario we saw happening. Those who run the psycho-analysis on Bethany Anne came up with trying to take over Schwabenland by force which would push Bethany Anne to act. If they had, she would retaliate at that point. But, with small groups, like the airplane you shot down, you were on your own.”

  This time, Maria thought for a few minutes on his words.

  She looked into his eyes, her blue iris’s beauty telling in the artificial light, “You don’t want us?”

  Barnabas shrugged, “I’ve not had personal discussions with the Queen on the subject. As far as I can guess, she would be happy if you joined, or ok if you stayed. She suspects that if someone in the world possesses your technology and doesn’t share, it will be the final match that lights the gunpowder of World War III.”

  “And where will she be?”

  “Across the line in the stars, Maria,” Barnabas’s voice softened, “We haven’t hidden any of that from you.”

  “You are leaving this mess as it is?”

  “Maria,” Barnabas paused, then sighed. “Maria, we are less than five hundred thousand souls out there, and we are going to fight a race that are the boogeyman for the entire Milky Way. I don’t think you need to try and add Parent the Earth to our list of things to accomplish.”

  “If you don’t, who will?” she replied, her voice resigned.

  “How about Earth itself?” Barnabas asked, “It isn’t outside the realm of possibility they will figure this out themselves. Bethany Anne’s taken on the responsibility to make sure Earth has the option to stay free. What they do with that freedom, is up to them. If we were to take the option away, then we are the subjugating Empire and it will be brother against brother, sister against sister at that point, is this what you are asking us to do?”

  Maria looked down at her lap, her fingers fidgeting, “That is what it will be for us, except in our case it will be us against our grand children and their children’s children.” She spoke softly then looked up to Barnabas, “Most of my people aren’t thinking this way, but I know it.” She patted her heart before she looked off to her left, as if she could look through the solid mountain and see Germany itself, “We do not have the strength to stay outside of a world that would beg us for help.”

  She sighed, the feeling of resignation and sadness closing in, “We are a people out of time, Barnabas. From a world where those who live in it have no idea what world war was really like and frankly,” she turned back to Barnabas, “Don’t know they are in the beginning again.”

  She shook her head, “No, I was pulled into a war and was forced to help a group of people I had no desire to support. Schwabenland was the negotiated price for our help. I will not go through that again…”

  She looked at Barnabas, “This is what I would ask of your Queen, Barnabas.”

  New York City, NY - USA

  Tabitha came out of her room in the suite she and the Tanto’s were staying in while in New York. There was a knock at the door, she raised an eyebrow when Hirotoshi walked over and opened it and spoke with Kouki outside for a second.

  Closing the door, he turned to Tabitha, “Kimosabe, why is the New York Police department coming up here?”

  Tabitha acted innocent and shook here head. “No idea. Anyone we know?”

  “Yes, it is Inspector Clouseau,” Hirotoshi’s heavily accented answer made a mashup of the detective’s name.

  She pointed at him, “You know that isn’t how his name is pronounced,” she walked past Hirotoshi who eyed her like a father watching his teenage daughter who might have gotten away with something and he wasn’t quite sure what, yet.

  There was a knock at the door, and Tabitha practiced her smile before opening the door and greeting the man on the other side.

  “Why, Detective Cleusah, what a surprise seeing you again!”

  “Is it?” he asked her. Detectivie Cleusah was five foot ten inches, dark haired and was probably fifteen pounds paste his prime weight but still had his muscle from his twenties. “I happen to be …”

  “Hold that thought one second,” Tabitha told the detective and shut the door on the rest of his sentence. She turned around to find Hirotoshi ten feet behind her, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll just take this outside,” she told him.

  She turned back around to the door and stepped out, causing the Detective to rapidly step out of her way. Kouki smirked when Tabitha looked at him. She rolled her eyes, grabbed the detective by his suit jacket and started towards the elevator.

  “Where are we going?” he asked the head strong woman.

  “ix nay alking tay, k?” she muttured as they walked up to the elevator on the second to the top floor. It dinged and she practically grabbed the detective and pulled him him as her finger was stabbing the door shut button over and over again.

  It finally closed for her.

  “Tabitha, what the hell is wrong with you?” He asked, exasperated. Since meeting her two years before when a lot of justice came calling in New York, by a woman vigilante no less, Detective Theodore ‘Ted’ Jameson had both looked forward to seeing Tabitha, and dreading it at the same time.

  He could never pin the situations over the last two years on her, but it seemed like every time she came to town, unexplained stuff happened to less savory individuals. The one time he had been able to absolutely pin her to a location, she had so many eye witnesses that it was a clear case of self protection.

  “I can’t just want a moment of your time, Ted?” She asked him in a breathy voice.

  “No!” He put put up a hand, “Been there…well, sort of, and no thanks. Sorry but the concept is a lady on the street, a freak in bed. Not a freak on the street and God knows what in bed.”

  Tabitha chewed on her lip, “Damn, I hadn’t considered that a problem. I thought freak in bed forgave all sins.”

  “I have plenty of freak in my normal existence, I don’t need more at home.” Ted answered as the elevator dinged.

  The doors opened and Tabitha looked to her right and winked at Ryu who had lobby guard duty at the moment. This was going to piss him off because he wouldn’t be able to follow her this evening.

  “Why can’t we stay in this warm hotel?” Ted asked as she dragged him by the hand outside into the chilly night.

  “Because the hotel has a lot of ears,” she told him as she took a left. She let go of his hand and put hers into her pockets. “Ok, since you aren’t here to ask me on a date, what can I help you with?”

  Ted grimaced. With her accent Tabitha could make just about anything indecipherable to a normal English speaking person. Then, when she ratcheted up her sexy kitten accent, no normal English speaking male understood her much anyway.

  Except Ted.

  He had worked hard to nail her for a long, long time and therefore had dealt with her sexual attraction defense a lot. He, mostly, wasn’t bothered by it anymore. “I have a pack of guys found not too far away from here inside of a trash dumpster. “

  “Strange place to go for food, isn’t that where you Americans throw it away?” Tabitha asked him.

  “Tabitha, you know America as well as Jenny from the Block, so don’t play ignorant South American for me.”

  “I don’t know these pack of guys, so how do I know if they understand where to go to eat? Plus,” Tabitha continued. She enjoyed these talks with Ted, “you New Yorkers do everything different here in the big city. It is a miracle anything normal is done at all.”

  Ted dodged some trash as they walked, “Perhaps we might bend the law of normalcy upon occasion. But five guys in a dumpster, all beat up is a little rare. Especially since a hobo saw a woman matching your description run into the alley, yelling at the five guys. Then, he claims he hears a bumch of fighting and the woman comes walking back out a minute later and heads in this direction.”

  “Ted, you are making this up,” Tabitha told him.

  “Why do you say this?” Ted asked as he dodged a guy in a trenchcoat who wa
s paying more attention to his texting than who might be in his way on the side walk.

  “Because you are, and you are a pitiful liar,” she told him.

  “Well, imagine my surprise when I find out you are in town,” Ted continued, “near the altercation with the five punks, one of which is admitting they got their ass kicked by a woman, a hispanic woman.”

  “Wow, you New Yorkers grow them up tough,” Tabitha told him.

  “Uh huh,” Ted replied.

  “Why are you on this, Ted? I thought Detectives worked murders and money cleaning.”

  “If you mean counterfeiting, that’s the Feds. If you mean money laundering, then perhaps. However, stop trying to sidestep the question. Was that you beating up the guys this evening, Tabitha.”

  She stopped and looked at him, “Why do you ask questions you know I am not going to answer?”

  Ted looked up the street at all of the lights, car lights and hearing the honking horns. “Because Tabitha, I tracked you down enough to know you work for TQB. You work in their law group, right?”

  Tabitha pursed her lips, then gave him a slight nod.

  He looked down the other way, back the way they walked and sighed. “Here, come have coffee with me. I know a small diner around the corner.”

  “You are asking me out on a date, Ted?” Tabitha asked, smiling at him.

  He shook his head, “Hell no. This is cop to … cop.” He admitted, “And if my girl friend sees me with you, you had better back my ass up on that.” Ted started walking towards the next intersection leaving Tabitha alone for a second watching him walk away, her mouth open.

  “What girlfriend?” she called after him, jogging to catch up to the detective.

  Schwabenland, Antarctica

  “Maria,” Barnabas rubbed his eyes, “I’m not an envoy for Bethany Anne. I’m the head of her Rangers.” When he looked back at her, she was still sitting here as determined as ever to give him a headache.

  “Yes, you have told me this before, Barnabas and I have looked up the background. You are a self-reliant law unto yourselves, within reason, to track down and apply the Queen’s justice,” she told him.

  “Exactly. So why are you asking me to get involved in a discussion like this?” he asked. When it came to Maria, for a reason he still didn’t quite understand, he refused to read her mind. It did make life more interesting working with her, but the frustration level was considerably higher, as well.

  “Because as a man of justice, you are one of the few I trust, implicitly to do this for me,” she leaned back in her chair.

  Barnabas looked at the woman, considering her request. “I don’t have a reason to be involved, Maria.”

  “No, not one that is part of your Ranger’s group, that is true,” she told him, “However, would you do it as a friend, for me, Barnabas?” She asked him, her eyes opened enough to draw Barnabas into reading her top most thoughts.

  He closed his eyes and nodded, “Yes, I will make the request,” he opened his eyes again, “But the decision is Bethany Anne’s.” His eyes pierced her soul. The absolute and granite assurance that she couldn’t press him another inch was resolute.

  Why, she wondered to herself, Weren’t you in Germany a hundred years ago?

  CHAPTER SIX

  New York City, NY - USA

  The waitress brought two cups of coffee and set them down, “Sugar or Splenda?”

  “Black, thank you,” Ted replied.

  “I’ll take them both,” Tabitha replied, and the lady opened her hand over the table, dropping five packages of each on the table.

  The waitress looked over and nodded to a couple that sat down two booths away, “Be right there, sweetie.”

  Once the waitress left, Ted asked, “Are you in town for personal, or business reasons?”

  “What, exactly, are you going to do with this knowledge, Ted?” Tabitha asked him. She grabbed the five sugars and cleanly ripped the tops off and dumped them into her coffee.

  Normally, Ted would have expected Tabitha to make some cute comment such as, “my coffee is sweet like me” or something. This Tabitha across from him was someone different.

  This one was all business.

  Ted looked around and then back to Tabitha, who was still staring him directly in the eyes, “Uh, why so serious?”

  “Because you are asking to be involved in stuff that is above your pay grade, Ted,” she answered. “Before, when it was Ted and ... maybe, maybe not, vigilante Tabitha, it was one thing. If you are looking into my background and you really want to find out? Well, that trust comes with a price.”

  “Expensive?” Ted asked.

  “Deadly,” she answered.

  Ted’s eyes opened wider and leaned towards her, “What the hell, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha put up a finger and listened around, there were no tell-tale signs of anyone listening. She unzipped her coat a few inches, reached in and pulled out a small tablet and set her thumb on the bottom button. She hit a couple of areas on her screen, and Ted’s eyes opened in surprise when all of the diner’s noise diminished and what he could hear was garbled.

  “What the…”

  “Technology, Ted,” she told him. “Look, I can be daffy if I want to be, and perhaps I’m reacting a little here, knowing you are a man with a job and a girlfriend … and a life. But, trust me when I say that you would have never put me behind bars.”

  “No? Why is that?” Ted asked.

  “Because my Queen never forsakes her own ... EVER. I would have been released either by the system, or I would have been retrieved without the government’s permission. It wouldn’t have mattered which one. Perhaps my boss would have come to get me, perhaps I would have told them I’d just get out myself.” Tabitha told him, “I’m a Queen’s Ranger, and as such, my responsibility is to find injustice. I take cases and solve them. Punishment, if there is no obvious other way, is my responsibility. Those five toughs? Yeah. That was me.”

  Ted’s eyes opened wider. Not only because she finally admitted to an altercation, but his head was swimming. Those cases he had from a couple of years ago with the vigilante support and now this evening.

  “Not all of them are me, obviously,” she told him.

  “Can you read minds?” he asked.

  “Have you been studying us, detective?” Tabitha asked him.

  He nodded, “A little. Stuff I can find out without raising too many suspicions,” he admitted.

  “Then, you need to realize that there are things that go bump in the night. The Queen’s Rangers bump back.”

  “What if they are too big to bump?” Ted asked.

  Tabitha started laughing and put up a hand. “Sorry,” she covered her mouth and got herself under control, “Ted, if one Ranger can’t take care of the problem, then that Ranger will suffer a lot of shit, mostly harassment. I have my own team, and we are a hell of a plan A, trust me. But, there is always a plan B.”

  “And what’s B?” Ted asked.

  Tabitha put up her closed hand, then opened one finger for each name she called out, “John, Eric, Darryl, Scott, Akio.” She told him, “B is for Bitches and trust me, you wouldn’t want to piss them off.”

  “Why is that, are they super tough?” Ted asked, his testosterone fueling a desire to prove himself capable to Tabitha.

  Tabitha shook her head, “Ted, don’t go there. A Queen’s Ranger,” she pointed to herself, “Me, Barnabas and whoever else is in our group has a constraint, and that is Law. We are bound by it, by Bethany Anne. It is part of our creed. The Bitches have a different creed they live by.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Results,” she told him, “I try to keep the pain down.” Ted snorted in disbelief as she continued, “Look asshat, I did keep it down for those five twerps. They were just something to take my annoyance out on, and they accosted me first. I didn’t tell them to attack me.”