This time, it was the Meligornian who spoke. “I can send you those. I was at the ceremony.”
“They should have been sent already.”
They all heard the man swallow, and none wanted to be in his seat when the Teloran added, “I trust you will make it up to me.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
They all waited for him to demand that the Meligornian tell him how, but the alien didn’t. Instead, he returned to the purpose of the meeting.
“You are all to make up the loss of my emissary. You should all have seen the danger this Morgana posed and dealt with it before it reached a level where it could harm my emissary and endanger our operations. You have all failed, and recompense is required.”
“Well, fuck me...” The murmur rippled through the meeting space and the Teloran scanned the blank feeds in an effort to identify which of the humans had spoken.
Silence followed the ill-timed comment, and everyone waited. The alien stared at the monitors for a long moment to let the silence stretch and the nerves grow taut. The relief was almost palpable when he moved on with his instructions.
“You will all work together to solve this problem. I want the Witch and her team removed from the universe. I want the company backing her efforts obliterated, but I also want everything it has on magic, its uses, and how humans wield it because that is an abomination we will not tolerate.”
Someone released a long breath and he frowned at the screens. “What is it?”
“Sir...” He recognized the voice as one of the Naval representatives. “When you say, ‘not tolerate,’ does this extend only to the Witch?”
“Oh, no,” the Teloran said, his voice silky smooth. “No, all humans capable of magic are to be eliminated, but not yet and not by you. What we need is for you all to gather the data identifying such anomalies and record them. We will decide their fate when we arrive. There will be no Morganas after this one.”
He paused and waited to let that sink in.
“Your mission,” he reiterated after a long moment, “is to remove the current Morgana threat. We will look to the future and secure it.”
If any of the representatives noticed that the alien said the future and not your future, they did not say so, but his words sent a chill through them all. Finally, one dared to speak.
“Do you have a preference on how we might do it?” the man asked, and the Teloran recognized the deep voice of the human male who had chaired the last meeting.
He uttered an impatient sound. “Use every means possible,” he said. “Try to keep yourselves separate from the deed and the links between you a secret, but attack with every means you have available.”
From the other side of the screens, he heard fingers move over keyboards and knew they were already planning their campaigns. He decided to leave them to it. “I trust, as the future leaders of your world, you can all handle one little girl and her guards.”
His voice suggested they’d better be able to handle her, and not one of them raised a protest. Murmurs of assent filled the feed, and the Teloran was satisfied. “I will leave you to your planning.”
Assent turned to farewell, then there was silence. The Teloran left seconds before someone asked, “Do you think it’s gone, yet?”
The former meeting chair replied, “You’d better hope so. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“I know,” the Meligornian answered morosely. “I didn’t dare point out that Temerl was supposed to have sent him the data. He might have thought I was trying to shift the blame.”
“And that would have been worse?”
They all heard the shudder in the Meligornian’s words when he responded. “I think so. Would any of you have risked it?” A moment later, when silence was the only reply, he added, “I didn’t think so.”
“We have precedence for discrediting witchcraft,” another of the attendees interjected. “While we can’t burn her at the stake as our ancestors would have done, we can certainly burn her reputation and cast doubts on her motives.”
“A social media campaign, perhaps?” another voice suggested. “We could augment it.”
“And from the pulpit. Ordering the message to go out would also help us pinpoint those of our people likely to resist instead of following our lead.”
“I like the way you think.” This member’s voice was thick with the heavy Dreth accent. “But I prefer more direct means.”
“Such as?” one of the humans challenged.
“You will know it when you see it.”
“I thought we were told to be subtle.”
“Do not worry yourselves. The cause will not be traced.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
They all heard the shrug in the Dreth’s reply. “What’s not to like? You want to cover her in dung. I wish to add her to the rest of the refuse discarded by history. It is not that much different.”
“But you think your way is better.” The human was clearly not impressed.
“Of course it is better,” he boasted. “We have had more time to perfect it.”
One of the Meligornians laughed. “I will work on the Meligornian media. There are some factions who are not happy with her citizenship and others who think there is no way a human could have passed the trials. We will build on that.”
“As well as working on her allies,” another added. “I have heard she does not cope well when others are hurt in an attempt to hurt her. I should imagine she is equally disturbed when others are targeted for the same reason.”
‘You’ve been told not to go after the king.”
“Who said we aim for any of the large fish? Her heart bleeds as badly for the insignificant as it does for anyone else.”
“That might actually be something I can use,” another human said. “They are already watching Epsilon Enterprises, but they can’t watch us all. I’ll ask Tom if he minds taking the fall.”
One of the other conspirators snorted. “Why ask?”
There was laughter all round at this, and the first human cleared his throat. “Well, I always did say Epsilon had taken too much of the market share.”
“That’s all this is for you, isn’t it?” The Meligornian was clearly not impressed. “A way to hold onto your wealth and power when they come.”
“What can I say? I’m a businessman and I want to stay in business.”
“You don’t care how many people will suffer if the Witch and her team resist or lead others into resistance, do you?”
“Only if it hurts my customer base.”
“You’re despicable.”
“I never pretended otherwise. You were glad enough to have my wealth and power working for you before. I don’t see why you’re offended by it now.”
“Humans!” the Meligornian spat. “They eat their own.”
“And yet you sleep with us for every advantage you can get.” The man’s tone was mild but his insult was not.
The Dreth chuckled. “You do make a good concubine.”
The human made kissing noises. “As long as you pay me, sweetheart.”
“Look,” said a new voice, “as entertaining as all this is, none of us will enjoy our wealth, or our power, or even get to see how many of our people we save if we don’t solve this little problem, so... Who can do what to eliminate the prey?”
“And who might you be?”
“That is none of your concern, but I have been a predator for long enough that I know when I have a hunter breathing down my neck and I do not like it.”
“Well,” said the businessman. “Why don’t you kick it off? What can you bring to the table.?”
“I bring the poison in the meal, the dart from the shadows, and the virus that crashes the machine but even my people are stretched when it comes to One R&D. I will work on the company funding the girl and her team, but I require partners in crime.”
There was a moment’s silence and a web site link appeared in the meeting room. “That site is accessible t
o you alone. If you want my help or have resources to offer, leave me a message.”
They heard a chair scrape. “And now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have some business to arrange.”
Around the galaxy, several screens blipped and each one showed the briefest image of a door opening and a dark figure momentarily silhouetted as it left. Once the door had closed, there was a rattle of keyboards as the other attendees tried to discover who had addressed them and left so peremptorily.
On the screen of every man who tried, a brief message appeared: I can see what you are doing. Can you see me?
“They brought the mafia in?” The businessman was outraged and the Meligornian laughed.
“Well, you did say we would sleep with anything that would bring us an advantage. How about you?”
The businessman did not answer immediately, but when he did, his reply was direct and to the point. “I’ll shag it to oblivion if I get to keep what I have earned.”
In the next moment, the predator returned. “I hoped you’d say that. I’ll send a car.”
“Seriously?” The man spoke to thin air and when no one replied, he turned his attention to his colleagues. “Very well. I will work with him to destroy the company. What will the rest of you do?”
“I will make matters complicated for her on Dreth,” spoke a second Dreth voice. “I cannot eliminate Jaleck, but I can work toward it—and the pirates and rebels are easily swayed.”
“I can assist you,” the first Dreth promised, “but there are other things I can do in human territory, too.”
“Do you care to share?” The Meligornian sounded bored, and the Dreth’s answer was short and to the point.
“No. You will know it when you see it, and I expect your people to assist mine should the need arise.”
“My clerics and pastors have already received their orders,” said the churchman, “and I am organizing other measures as we speak.”
“And I will see what I can extract from Navy records. I can’t sway the higher-ups to move against her, but I can whisper in the ear of...other agencies who might feel the need to keep a closer eye on her.”
The discussion moved on from there to raise the names of Stephanie’s acquaintances, the places she used to frequent, her favorite pastimes, and anything else that might be brought into play against her. By the end of another hour, they had the basis for a coordinated series of attacks, from a media smear campaign to a campaign to quite literally smear her once and for all.
“There! Do you see it? That move right there.” Host stood and thumped on the table in front of him. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
They all watched as Stephanie yelled, “Boost me!” and was flung upward by the Dreth who had recently joined her team. They stared as his face turned from puzzlement to worry and he raced after her.
“Now, he gets it.”
Chavez chuckled. “Yeah, the poor guy didn’t know what he was getting himself into, joining that lot.”
“It’s a darned shame we didn’t get to her first.” Conrad was morose as he watched Vishlog catch up to Stephanie. “What is that, wave three?”
“Yeah, and they don’t look like they’ve broken a sweat.” Chavez sounded envious.
They grimaced as the Dreth almost slipped on the sludge left behind by Stephanie’s magic.
“That was almost…what, twenty pirates?”
“Closer to thirty. You’da thought at least one of them would have survived. Man, would you look at that?”
On the screen, Steph fired bursts of magical balls and flung them forward so they stuck to the enemy.
“Oh...oh, that is gross.” Host groaned and screwed his face up as the balls exploded pieces of Dreth pirate all over the screen.
“Yeah, but look what she does next.”
Stephanie whipped strands of magic out to grasp Dreth and fling them into Vishlog’s line of fire.
“It’s nice to see her share the love,” Host muttered. “But it’s a pity she didn’t choose to share it with us. What we coulda done with some of that.”
“We try to teach it in recruiting,” Chavez protested, “but—”
“They don’t seem to get it,” the others chorused. “Yeah, we know.”
“And most of them don’t live long enough to learn,” Conrad added, a sour look on his face.
“Well, we can always show them this,” Chavez suggested. “It might perk them up a little and get them thinking of how to score as a team.”
“As long as it’s not an own goal.”
They all stared at Conrad. “What’s crawled up your britches, today?”
He indicated the screen where Stephanie had frozen Vishlog inside a shield of blue power and dropped another sheet of magical mist over the horde surrounding him.
“That!” he spat. “We don’t get that.”
Host shrugged. “The brass has made it clear that we won’t get it—and that we shouldn’t try,” he said.
“Cop a load of this.” Chavez chortled as Stephanie tapped Vishlog on the chest and told him he was several hundred kills behind her. “I really wish we had someone who could do this kind of shit.”
“They’d be an utter bitch to train,” Conrad grouched. “Can you imagine trying to calibrate the AI to handle this kind of thing?”
They continued to watch while the team made their way from wave three to wave nine. Occasionally, one or the other of them would point out a tactic they could actually incorporate into their training but mostly, they merely watched and their jaws dropped each time they identified a move they’d missed the last time.
“And this, boys and girls, is what caused Captain Thorne to have an absolute meltdown on the command deck,” Chavez announced and laughed as Steph and her team headed to the enemy generator.
“Yup. That’s a look I hate seeing on my kids’ faces,” Host commented, rewound the footage, and highlighted Stephanie’s expression immediately before she’d told her team they would fix the scenario.
They fast-forwarded to the point where she disappeared momentarily offscreen.
“This is where she talked to the AI, but we’re reasonably certain she had the solution before she did that. From the way they moved, they were already on the way to blowing the generator up when she stopped.”
Even Conrad nodded at that. “She is one clued-up cookie,” he murmured. “How did we miss this girl coming through?”
Host shrugged. “She never applied. Not like her boyfriend, Todd. Take a look at this.”
Stephanie dragged the metal she’d had her guys collect into a coruscating ball of glowing shards. Magic moved from the ball into her and back out again, and the metal began to spin.
“I heard Thorne nearly had a stroke,” Host told them as she shunted the moving stream of power and metal into the generator, while almost simultaneously encasing herself and her team in airtight balls of magic.
Chavez snickered. “Not quite, but they had to ship over a few new interior panels, and someone else had to do his typing for the next month until his hands had recovered.”
Host stared at him. “Seriously? I didn’t think the old boy had that much of a temper.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Conrad commented, and the picture on the screen switched from Stephanie and her team floating peacefully away from the enemy generator to Captain Thorne using his bare fists to hammer the wall behind his desk until the metal began to bend.
“Well, damn,” Host murmured. “Remind me never to piss that man off.”
They listened as the AI explained how the team had already reached level fifteen and that all future waves of Dreth would die the minute they were spawned. It was a fact demonstrated seconds later as the AI intoned, “Level sixteen.”
They turned the screen off and stared at each other in silence while each one considered what they’d seen.
The run Stephanie’s team had made through the unbeatable scenario was legendary, and so far, they weren’t even remotely bored with watching
it in an attempt to discover new tactics. Anything, they’d been told, that could help them in their fight against the pirates would be appreciated.
And it hadn’t been wasted time, either.
On their recommendation, the Navy was on the hunt for recruits with magical capability.
“We have to get our hands on them before anyone else does.”
“One R&D you mean?”
“Them, too.”
Their discussion turned to the level the team had reached.
“Has anyone else reached that level?” Host asked.
Chavez shook his head. “There’s been only one team to beat the scenario,” he replied, “but they didn’t reach the sixteenth wave.”
“Nowhere near close,” Conrad agreed. “It was a group of Marines, wasn’t it?”
Again, Chavez shook his head. “I heard it was a Ranger team that took it out.”
“Nah, it was a mixed team—Rangers and Seals—that tried to put one over the Marines. They eliminated the spawn point at wave three.”
“That’s a whole lot sooner than the witch’s team.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t have to figure out how. They only had to make the solution work for them. It’s kinda like copying the answers into a crossword.”
“Except that this crossword will eat the pencil with your arm still attached.”
Chavez shrugged. “True, but the point is, they knew what the solution was going in and could plan for it. The witch’s team didn’t.”
Chapter Three
Todd slouched in the lounge chair and watched the news. He called it “keeping up to date” but in reality, he only looked for news on one person—Stephanie.
His tablet rested on the coffee table beside him, and he stretched over to retrieve it. Tapping the screen, he brought it out of its dormant state and stared at the message he’d tried to type. So far, he’d made it to only one line.
Hey, Steph.
He sighed, stared at it and tried to decide what to say next. While he really wanted to see her, he also didn’t want to come across as being needy. Hell, he didn’t even know if she was still interested in him, it had been so long.
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 3
