The Dreth went to sit with the cats and Lars leaned on the wall above them.
V’ritan’s communicator chimed and they all looked over but remained perfectly quiet until he was done.
“That was the Bow. They’ve found a few Teloran pods.” He glanced at Stephanie. “These must have been jettisoned before the Morgana’s little temper tantrum—and their occupants would have already been dead.”
Her eyes widened. “Do we know how?”
He shook his head. “We’ll put them in cryo until we have a chance to investigate, but right now, we can’t tell if they died because their pods failed or if their deaths were from other causes.”
She shrugged and didn’t even try to feel compassion for a being that died when they’d hoped for life. “What about our own?” she asked. “Did we find any pods from our own side?”
V’ritan regarded her carefully before he moved forward and sat on the edge of her bed. “None of our people evacuated their ships.”
She’d guessed as much, but the words hit her hard and tears welled in her eyes. A sob caught in her throat as sadness crashed through her. He wrapped her hand in his. “It’s the Meligornian way. We don’t give up and we don’t give in. We will continue to fight, even if it looks like we’ve lost and all hope is gone.”
She gave a hiccupping laugh. “So, no regrouping, then?”
He tightened his lips and looked at the wall, staring as though he could see beyond it. “Our world was at stake. There was nowhere to regroup to.”
“Earth?” she suggested, but he shook his head.
“No offense, but Meligorn is our home. As long as she stands in orbit, we will stay with her and fight.”
Stephanie nodded and tried to speak past the lump in her throat. Finally, she managed, “Well, that explains a lot.”
V’ritan gave her a sharp look. “What happened?”
For a moment, she didn’t look at him. She stared at the ceiling and again saw the screen that had displayed no sign of an impact zone on the planet. That had been good but the reason behind it had not. He remained still and silent and gave her time to find the words.
Her voice was soft with tears when she did. “There was a liner in-system,” she told him, and her voice caught.
A sob escaped and she pressed her lips together as tears slid from her eyes. He merely waited.
“The…the Wanderer. Two hundred and twelve Meligorn whom we were supposed to protect…” She paused again and darkness glimmered amidst the tears but didn’t quite surface.
“When that rock got past us, they decided to save the planet…and they…they rammed it.”
V’ritan regarded her with a solemn expression. “That was their right. It was their world. Just because they’re civilians and don’t wear a uniform does not mean they don’t have the right to protect their homes and their loved ones. How they did it was their choice.”
“But they died!”
“Yes.”
“And I was supposed to stop that.”
“No,” he told her, his voice soft with compassion. “You were supposed to try. In the end, saving a whole planet is not only up to the Morgana, or me, or a navy, or any single individual or entity. Saving a planet lies with everyone who lives on it.”
He watched as more tears followed the first few down her cheeks.
“I didn’t even know a ship could do that. I can’t even work out how they undocked and reached it so fast since liners can’t jump, but they did.”
“Well, the undocking part is easy. They were probably already on their way to ram a Teloran when the rock got through.”
That made her laugh. It was a small weak thing accompanied by a sniff, but it was there. “Typical.”
“And the speed,” V’ritan continued, glad to hear her rally, “was probably a spell, something they pulled together on the fly.”
He gave her a sly glance and decided he could risk it. “It was probably something inspired by you.”
She gasped and her face shadowed, but he continued. “An unconventional use of power involving shields and screwing with the engines. When they struck, the shield held the ship together long enough for it to make a dent, and they’d have released their energy in an effort to blow the rock apart.”
“But they didn’t—”
“No, they pushed it off course. At that range, it was a miracle in itself.”
“And they died.”
“They’d have used all their magic.” He gave her a small, teasing smile. “You know what that feels like.”
“But no one went to save them.”
“After what they did?” He rolled his eyes. “Which particular atom do you think would have needed it the most?” His voice softened. “No, Steph. They chose to save their world—they all chose to save their world—and to sacrifice themselves while doing it. Not even the Morgana would have come back from that.”
“She wouldn’t have had to crash a spaceship into the rock.”
“She missed.”
And Stephanie’s face crumpled. “Don’t remind me.”
“Why not?” You’re doing a very good job of beating yourself up with it. It seems only fair I should join in.”
Against the wall, Lars stirred and V’ritan shot him a warning glance and held his hand up. She scowled at him but at least she was annoyed and not wallowing in her failure. “That’s not fair.”
He smiled. “Of course it isn’t. The universe isn’t fair.”
“And now you’re being impossible.”
V’ritan gestured around the cabin and included the four medics standing by. “I belong to an impossible race.”
She snorted. “Impossible and also stubborn. You never take no for an answer.”
“We also don’t surrender and we don’t back down.”
“I’ve noticed.” Her face darkened, and he assumed she was considering the other Meligornian ships that had died that day—most likely the first, the Korres Tarr.
He patted her shoulder and stood. “You’re right,” he told her. “We might even give the Dreth a challenge regarding who is the most obstinate on that subject.”
Again, he teased a snort and tiny laugh from her. “Don’t tell Jaleck.”
“Why not? Can you imagine?”
The laugh came again, not so tiny but with a touch of hysteria. “The shenanigans!”
Vishlog snickered. “I would pay to see that.”
V’ritan started toward the door but had only gone two strides before he stopped and turned back. One of the medics scowled and the other rolled his eyes.
“Was that what that Teloran ship was about?”
She frowned. “I only wanted to stop it from bombarding the planet.”
He shook his head. “Not that one, the last one. The one you landed on so you could tear it apart.”
“Oh.” Her face cleared. “That. Well…that was mostly the Morgana.”
“I noticed,” he replied dryly and glanced at Lars and Vishlog.
Stephanie followed his gaze. “Don’t blame them. It’s not like they can stop her.”
V’ritan shook his head. “I know, but the looks on their faces give me an idea of exactly how unreasonable the Morgana was this time.” He made a show of studying the duo. “She must have been really unreasonable.”
The two guards nodded as she confirmed it. “She was beyond reason. Losing the Wanderer…”
She took a breath and went on. “It was as if something snapped inside her. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t bring them back…” Her eyes went dark. “She wanted to tear the universe apart.”
“And she’d run out of Telorans where she was.”
“You needed help.” Her face took on a stubborn cast.
V’ritan smiled. “We were holding our own.”
Another medic made a sound of disbelief, and he ignored them.
“Your idea of helping was to tear a Teloran super cruiser into pieces and shatter every Teloran in range with a spell that almost drained you
dry. Oh, and took most of the power from the space around you before starting on your engine batteries.”
“Are you complaining?”
The door opened and Brilgus came to stand beside his Ghargilum. “He is only saying that this issue you have with attacking might be your downfall, Stephanie.”
She gaped at them. “You said all that on an open comms line?”
Brilgus shook his head. “No, the link between us is always open when we are apart. It is the only way I can be sure he does not need me.”
“And I suppose you thought he needed you now.”
He studied her. “I was returning.” He paused and smiled. “And you were giving him a hard time.”
“I was not,” she protested but several sounds of disbelief from around the room begged to differ.
She closed her eyes momentarily and opened them to glare at Brilgus, but V’ritan’s right-hand man was unperturbed.
“Think about it,” he urged. “Why don’t we ever hear of a Morgana living a long time?”
Lars pushed away the wall and took a step forward but again, V’ritan held his hand up. Vishlog rose to stand beside the team leader and together, they looked anxiously at Stephanie.
To their relief, she regarded Brilgus with a thoughtful expression as though his words might be less a statement of fact than a prophecy.
Her answer was both a relief and a worry. “Then I’ll have to fight smarter and not harder.”
When the medics had done their work and she was back on the Ebon Knight, Stephanie took a moment to escape. She headed to the Knight’s pods to slip into the Virtual World, only to discover she would have little time because the repair teams wanted to work on the ship while they were in the Warrior’s hold.
“She needs fixing,” they told her when she’d found them preparing to shut the pods down so they could cut the power to the area.
“Do they need to cut it right now?” she asked, not liking the plaintive note that crept into her voice.
The crew exchanged glances and one pulled out his tablet. “They are working on the aft port side,” he managed. “We’ve isolated those circuits.”
Lars had stepped in. “She needs an hour.” He glanced at her. “Make that two.”
The crewman checked the tablet again and looked at his boss. “The schedule says they shouldn’t need this space for three hours. Two would give us time to come back and shut it down before they need to start.”
The leader of the maintenance team had bitten his lip, before he finally said, “I could do with a really long lunch break aboard the King’s Warrior.”
His team had brightened at the idea, even though it was mid-morning ship’s time.
“We could be back at lunchtime,” he’d suggested, and Lars nodded.
“She’ll need to come out by then, anyway.”
He’d stood firm, even when she’d scowled at him. “Medics’ orders.”
Finally, she’d sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine! Two hours.” She looked at the technicians. “Is that okay?”
The team leader grinned. “They make the best chili up there,” he told her and set his tools down beside the panel. “We’ll be back at midday.”
“Chili, boss?” one of the team asked as they left. “And I thought you liked the sorbet.”
“And that nice little number at the bakery,” another one teased.
Stephanie waited until they’d closed the door behind them and then stepped over to the pod. She glanced at Lars and Vishlog.
“I’ll be right here,” he told her and jerked a thumb at the Dreth. “Vishlog will take the cats for a run.”
Brenden and Avery came through the door and each one held the leash for one of the cats. Both felines wore their harnesses and pulled eagerly. They greeted Stephanie with happy looks and headed to their pods.
“See?” Vishlog told them as Brilgus arrived. “Cats need a run.”
Stephanie looked at the Meligornian. “Day off?”
He crossed to the cats, rubbed their heads, and scratched their chins. “Only an hour,” he told her with undisguised joy. “V’ritan had paperwork so I locked him in his cabin.”
She stared at him and he grinned in response. The Dreth clapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a pod. “That one,” he told him before he moved toward his own.
“It’s a circus!” she complained after their pods had closed over them. “A three-ring circus.”
Brenden and Avery stationed themselves near the cats’ pods and Lars looked pointedly at her. “Time’s a-wasting.”
His words acted like a spur, and she lifted the lid to her pod. “You’ll be okay?”
He scowled at her. “This is what you pay me for. It’s a fair amount of standing around but it beats the shit out of being shot at.”
Stephanie grinned. “Well, there was that one time…”
His frown deepened. “Don’t remind me. We’re on V’ritan’s ship and I don’t want to think of the possibilities.”
Technically, they were on their own ship on the Meligornian ship and should be perfectly safe, but he had a point. She didn’t want to think about the possibilities of attack, either. For now, she simply wanted some respite from her memories of the battle.
She wanted to think about something other than death and destruction for a while. Something other than Morganas and their out-of-control tempers and very short lives. It was time to think of creating, of using magic to build rather than destroy.
Before long, she wandered the barren space left by the Browns Ferry meltdown—or, rather, the small green space she’d created in the midst of the disaster zone with the L’Shy construct at her side.
“This,” she told him and gestured at the world around her. “This is what I want to do to all the areas affected by the bad juju of the past.”
“Bad juju?”
“Yes, the uranium and the plutonium and every piece of radioactive metal or dirt or concrete or whatever. I want to change it—stop it being radioactive—and I want to do that at the subatomic level.”
“I…see…” In fact, Ebony was not sure she could see, but the Earth version of her had understood, so all she had to do was pick it up from the information he’d programmed into her data center.
Earth BURT had assured her it was up to date with the latest conversation he’d had with Stephanie. He had also assured her the girl had no idea she was speaking to him in the Virtual World and thought he was simply the AI.
Ebony had no difficulty using a construct to speak about this subject. Some of the ideas her companion came up with were…unusual, and the construct gave her time to find the information she needed to form an answer.
“Yes,” Stephanie continued, “but the magic isn’t strong enough to do that on its own.”
L’Shy looked at her. “Don’t you mean the wielder isn’t strong enough to clear as much as she wants to on her own?”
She frowned at him. “Everyone’s a smart ass.”
“You’re also in a hurry and cannot be everywhere at once.” He grinned.
That made her smile, and Ebony was pleased with the way she’d understood human interaction. Stephanie ignored the comment.
“What I need is a machine that can take the radioactive atoms apart and put them back together as non-radioactive atoms.”
“That’s hardly my area of expertise,” he told her. “Wouldn’t you be better off speaking with an engineer?”
She smirked at him. “Not if I want to use nMU and eMU to do that.”
L’Shy paled. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you did that?”
“I remember, but if we keep the two energies separate, we’d be fine.”
“And I suppose you want to have it all happen in one machine,” he pushed. “One machine with…I don’t know…separate chambers for each kind of energy and so forth.”
“Something like that.”
“You really do need to speak to an engineer,” he told her. “Perhaps with me along to clarify.
”
“I was hoping you’d volunteer.”
“What else do you want this machine to do?” Ebony had been well-programmed by BURT and knew there had to be something else.
Stephanie gave the mage a smile. “I’m glad you asked.”
L’Shy groaned. “And?”
“So, I’m reasonably sure we can use the power we generate when we break them apart, which means any machine we build will need to be able to act like a generator and make that energy available.”
“You mean like heat for steam-powered electricity?” he asked.
She nodded and he gave her a wry smile. “Because that’s ironic, don’t you think?” He gestured to the area around them. “All this devastation was caused by the same process going wrong and you want to use that same process to put it right.”
That gave her a moment’s pause and she wrinkled her forehead. “Not exactly the same process,” she told him, and he gave a bark of laughter.
“Oh, no. That’s right. You want to use a much more volatile process to put it right because nothing bad could go wrong if the nMU and eMU should accidentally mix.”
“You have a really smart mouth on you, you know that?” She glared at him.
He sobered. “I’m sorry, but the similarities are there.”
“And we will work hard to avoid the same disasters happening in the future. Maybe an engineer would be a good idea because you’re right. I don’t want to cause another disaster like this one.”
“You must also realize that all this will take time,” L’Shy pointed out. “Even if you have a machine doing it, there’s considerable material for it to process.”
Stephanie sighed. “I know, but we need to fix what we’ve done and Earth needs a way to generate clean power for the people living there.”
“This is true. I will send your proposal to Burt. No doubt he will want to patent the idea since the generation of electricity is an ideal way for One R&D to generate an income to further its research.” He looked around. “I suppose you’d want to situate your power plants in the center of these disaster areas?”
“That is where the strongest source of radioactivity is,” she told him. “I thought if we cleared the center we’d get rid of the worst first.”
“And this would be proprietary technology,” L’Shy mused, “so you’d need to protect it.”
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 59
