Witch Of The Federation V (Federal Histories Book 5), page 1
Witch Of The Federation V
Federal Histories™ 05
Michael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 Michael Anderle
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
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A Michael Anderle Production
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LMBPN Publishing
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First US edition, March 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-819-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-820-1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Creator Notes - Michael Anderle
Books by Michael Anderle
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To Family, Friends and
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May We All Enjoy Grace
To Live The Life We Are
Called.
Chapter One
A starship’s sleek shadow hung against a night sky. The shuttle that moved toward it was merely another dot of silver in a sea of stars. The men inside it sat silently and continued to study one another carefully across the empty space between them.
The craft was spartanly equipped and built for speed. Large metallic crates occupied the center of the aisle. The passengers had watched as their equipment and gear were stowed in them on the tarmac to which they’d been ferried by private car.
Talking had been discouraged.
“Introductions can be made once we’re ex-atmospheric.” That curt reprimand had been given immediately when the first of them had opened his mouth to say hello.
They’d taken the hint and gone silent, but it hadn’t stopped them trying to get the measure of each other by sight alone.
Take-off had been smooth and fast, and not one of them believed they’d reached the minimum limit when the shuttle had twisted into the space between. Now that it had emerged and the viewscreen in front had gone live, they looked at each other and all of them clearly wondered who’d be the first to speak.
“So,” said the man who’d wanted to introduce himself on the tarmac, “I’m Ferdinand—and the first of you to make some bullshit crack about any kind of bovine has to buy the rest of us a drink of our choice when we get on board.”
That drew a few smiles from the men and women old enough to have kids and puzzled looks from those too young—except for one. Harper laughed.
“Sorry.” He chortled. “I have nieces. They love that old classic.”
Ferdinand smiled in response. “What’s your name and specialty, son?”
The younger man smiled and blushed. “Electrical engineering and a little weapons tech. You?”
He wagged his finger. “Uh-uh. Name.”
“Do you promise not to laugh?”
“Nope,” he responded and grinned.
The youngster rolled his eyes. “Fair enough. Harper.”
“Isn’t that a girl’s name?” blurted one of the women on the other side.
Harper blushed. “Let’s say my parents wanted me to be a singer.”
That brought gentle laughter and the boy took the opportunity to shift the attention. He looked at the girl opposite him. “You?”
“Imogen,” she replied, “and I love my weapons.”
That brought a round of cat calls and oohs that made her blush. She waved them away and zeroed in on the next person. “Weren’t you on the Knight?” She blushed even more the moment she’d said it. “Sorry. I shouldn—”
The woman waved her apology away. “I did, and I’m not the only one. I’m simply surprised Larkin hasn’t said hello yet. Are you too good to acknowledge an old crewmate?”
Larkin raised his head and the crow’s feet around his eyes wrinkled with amusement. “Nah, I’m too scared to intrude on her privacy,” he teased and the woman rolled her eyes.
“I never knew you to be one to stand on ceremony, Larks.”
He shrugged, his smile both open and shy. “You know me, Dee. I like my machines. I’m not so good with people.”
Dee laughed. “I don’t know, Lark. We both know you can—”
She stopped when the man blushed bright red and turned to the man next to him. “How about you, son? Did you ever work on the Knight?”
“Now that you mention it…”
What followed was an hour of conversation where the slowly approaching bulk of the starship was ignored while old acquaintances were renewed and new ones made. Harper leaned back and mainly watched and listened. He’d worked on the Knight, too, but he hadn’t met half of these old rogues.
It looked like One R&D had brought together some of the best in a variety of ship-building fields in a private, very advanced, and super-super-fast shuttle to get them somewhere in one hell of a hurry.
He glanced at the forward viewscreen and studied the slowly expanding outline.
“Well,” he murmured, “she’s no Knight.”
His quiet words brought a hush to the compartment and everyone glanced at the screen. “Holy mother of…pearl. That thing’s…” He couldn’t quite find the right words.
“Well, it’s something, all right,” Ferdinand finished. “I wonder what kind of systems they’ve packed into that?”
It was a good question, especially as the shuttle began to slow. Ferdinand’s brow furrowed as he studied the craft on the viewscreen.
“She looks kinda too complete to need the likes of us, though,” he commented when he recognized the finish.
“Yeah,” Harper mused and inched forward, “and her weapons are already screwed in tight. Somehow, I don’t think this is what we’re being called to work on.”
“What gives you that idea, boy?”
The term made him frown, but he knew any kind of protest would only make the term stick so he left it ignored. Instead, he chose to answer the question. “Well, we all worked on the Knight, right? In one form or other.”
He might have looked like he’d tuned out of the conversation but he’d absorbed every single word spoken by those around him. Some had been in the Naval facility that had built the Knight’s engines. Others had been on board to tuck the engines into place or listened to the engineer working on the weapons cuss the pilot out for his hair-raising maneuvers.
As the others nodded in answer to his question, he waved a hand at the ship that now almost filled the screen. “Well, does that look anything like a Knight kind of project to you?”
They all swiveled in their seats and made another careful scrutiny of the ship. Harper waited and his gaze shifted from one face to the next as he watched them make their own assessment.
Finally, Dee shook her head. “The kid has a point.”
Harper stifled a groan. “Kid” was almost as bad as “boy” in his books, but it was also as likely to stick if he protested.
Ferdinand turned and gave him a long look and he hoped he made the grade. He was the first to admit he wasn’t much to look at, a young overachiever who’d had his own set of “keepers” until this last job, where One R&D had said they’d provide their own.
He hadn’t seen them yet and was kinda excited to be trusted to look after himself for a change. It was a source of pride to him that he did that, keepers or no, but he now actually felt like he was doing it—and he wanted to measure up. The older man with the salt-and-pepper running through his
“Do you think this is something like the Knight?”
Harper nodded but suppressed the urge to smile. He had to be dead-cold about this. “I think it’s a possibility. I mean”—he gestured at them—“you’re all from the Knight project and we all know who that was for, don’t we?”
They nodded.
“So why not this?” He gestured at the ship they were now closing in on. A landing hatch had opened in one side and the shuttle had made no effort to slow. “Think about it. Who flies like this?”
“Combat pilots,” one old hand suggested.
“Wattlebird,” another snapped and his lip curled, and Harper remembered he’d been on the weapons installation team. They’d been particularly upset with the Knight’s pilot for corkscrewing “their” baby through a battlefield.
He nodded enthusiastically but before he could add anything further, the shuttle slewed sideways through the hatch, cut its engines, and fired its retros to adjust its position before it settled onto the landing pad. Their stomachs lurched as they rocked in their harnesses.
Ferdinand grunted. “You have a point, kid. Very few fly like that!”
“For which we are all very grateful,” Larkin muttered and cast a dark look toward the cockpit.
They all followed his gaze while they waited for the pilot’s next instructions.
“So,” Harper whispered, when the door remained stubbornly shut. “D’you think it’s Them?”
As if his question was a signal, the door slid back to reveal their pilot. Harper’s jaw all but hit the floor, and Ferdinand nudged him.
“Yup, it is Them. That’s—” he stopped as Brenden raised a finger to his lips.
“Remember your NDA, folks. People take that shit seriously, especially during these times.” He regarded each of them with a serious expression and nodded. “I need you to follow me and not say a word. The shuttle won’t get us where we need to go, but the Jackson’s skipper will. He doesn’t want to see or hear you, so you’ll travel in pods for the jump and transfer to the shuttle again. I will be your pilot.”
A jump? Harper and Ferdinand exchanged glances and Larkin winked at Dee. This would be exactly like old times.
Their eyes widened as Avery followed him out of the cockpit.
“There are two of them,” Harper whispered and Avery looked at him and winked before he placed a finger over his lips and followed Brenden out of the shuttle.
They hurried after the pilots into the deserted hangar and out into the ship itself. As promised, several pods waited to take them safely and comfortably through the jump between systems and they didn’t meet a single soul.
When they emerged after what felt like seconds later, Brenden and Avery were waiting and escorted them into the shuttle for the final leg of their journey. Neither of the pilots said anything and simply shepherded them to their seats, locked the hatch behind them, and entered the cockpit.
“They don’t say much, do they?” Harper observed as the cockpit door closed and a seatbelts sign displayed in the forward view screen.
“Nope.” Ferdinand sank into his seat and buckled his harness. He looked around at his fellow workers and sighed. “I don’t suppose any of you has an idea of where we are or what’s going on?”
The group exchanged glances as they shook their heads, and silence descended.
It was interrupted by the faint ding of the viewscreen when the seatbelt sign fractured and was replaced by the impressive bulk of a ship. The gathered engineers and tech specialists leaned forward.
“What is that?” Dee asked and Ferdinand shook his head.
“It’s not any class I know,” he told her and was startled when Harper started to laugh. “What?”
The youngster looked at him. “You mean you don’t know?”
The man exchanged glances with some of the other older hands and they all shook their heads and shrugged. With a sigh, he turned to the boy again. “Why?”
“It’s the Titanic.” He chuckled and stared at him, waiting for a response.
Ferdinand merely returned the stare and Harper’s laughter died.
“You don’t know what the Titanic was?”
“Well,” Larkin drawled, “we’re all fairly sure you don’t mean the ship that sank while crossing the Atlantic hundreds of years ago, but—”
His eyes widened in surprise. “So that’s where it came from,” he murmured. “I always wondered what the significance of it sinking a company had to do with its name.”
“Wait!” Larkin looked at the screen and studied the huge outline that hung before them with closer attention.
The shuttle continued its journey undeterred, its pilots amused by the close scrutiny of Elizabeth’s new ship. Avery held his hand out, the palm up.
“I win.”
Brendan groaned. “The boy?” he asked. “How does a kid know what it is when the more experienced guys don’t?”
“Because the kid was in engineering school long after everyone else left and this made a splash in the educational circles when it went down but died a quieter ‘told-you-so’ kinda death out in the professional world.”
“And you know this how?”
Avery smirked. “My sister.”
His teammate stared at him, open-mouthed. “But she’s not an engineer.”
“She dated a fair number of guys before she settled on the one she’s with now,” he replied. “Picky girl, my sister.”
“Hmmph!” Brenden wasn’t impressed. The picky girl had cost him two weeks’ pay.
The other man snickered. “I’ll buy the kids something nice to go to the movies in and my sister something nice in general.”
“You spoil them, you know that, right?”
Avery’s smile faded and his face took on a more serious look. “While I can, man. While I still can.”
They both concentrated on flying, having already left the Jackson to reverse its jump into the space between dimensions. Their passengers’ voices drifted to them over the intercom.
“They shoulda called it the Iceberg,” Larkin grumbled. “It was an iceberg that did the sinking, not the damn ship.”
One of the other men whistled. “That has to be the biggest damned super-dreadnought I ever did see.”
“It’s the first and last of the Titans,” Harper told him. “It was so expensive to build that no one could afford to finish it, so they put it in the dry dock until they could decide what they wanted to do with it.”
“And One R&D bought it,” Ferdinand concluded while his gaze roamed over the behemoth’s hull.
“The Knight was merely a dinghy compared to this,” one of the others exclaimed, and the weapons engineer slapped him in the chest.
“I won’t have you talking about the Knight like that,” he snapped.
The man shrugged his hand away. “Well, fuck me,” he retorted. “I didn’t mean to dis your girlfriend but take a fucking look at that. The Knight would fucking fit inside it.”
Ferdinand regarded the fellow with distaste. “You’re Australian, aren’t you?”
The way he said it, the phrase wasn’t a question so much as an explanation and the man stared at him. “What of it, mate?”
He raised his hands in a placatory gesture. “Not a thing except that I’m not your mate and that thing is fucking huge.”
The Australian grinned and reached across the silver crate between them to offer Ferdinand his hand. “Deakin. Fuel and energy transfer. I guess we’d better get along.”
Ferdinand stifled a groan. Now that he thought about it, he did recognize the Australian’s nasal tones. The man was brilliant for maximizing the efficiency of the ship’s energy flow but he could be royal pain in the ass if he was bored.
