Witch Of The Federation V (Federal Histories Book 5), page 51
They watched as Angus pushed Todd back from taking the lead through the hole Piet had cut through the wall.
“Uh…you might not want to watch the next part, sir,” Ka told him, and the admiral grimaced.
“Corporal, we watched the footage last night—and if you recall, I said this was a closed session. Not all your footage will make it to where the public can find it.”
“That’s what you said the last time,” she retorted and clapped her hands over her mouth.
He gave her a hard look, which she returned with wide eyes and a touch of defiance. Todd reminded himself that he’d been given his team for a reason, one which was very easy to see now.
Stifling a sigh, he watched as a loud metallic clang echoed through the corridor the team had recently vacated. Onscreen Ka’s face took on a far-away look and Todd remembered her hacking into the ship’s systems.
“Did you hack the surveillance cams?” he asked and she gave him a happy smile.
“Did you only just get that now, boss?”
He blushed. While he knew he should have seen it much sooner, Ka being what she was, he hadn’t. That small fact explained much of what she’d done during their run through the Teloran ship.
“You didn’t authorize that?” Admiral Seljack asked and pounced it like a hawk on a mouse.
“I told her to get the information we needed,” he reminded him.
“Actually, you did not,” the admiral reminded him mildly. “You asked her where you were.”
Reggie made a rude sound with his lips. “With all due respect, sir,” he interrupted, “it’s in her job description. The team has a hacker for a reason.”
“Two,” Seljack corrected, and the Australian gave an exasperated sigh.
“Fine, two. The point is she was doing her fucking job.”
The admirals stared at him eyebrows raised and blank expressions, and Todd groaned.
“You did give them permission to speak freely, sir.”
“Last time they debriefed,” Admiral Dailey managed in a choked voice. “Last time.”
“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, then added a belated, “sir.”
“I think we all operated under the assumption those rules applied here,” Admiral Amaratne observed. “I know I certainly was.”
Todd remembered to breathe.
Gary nudged him in the ribs. “Way to go, sir.”
Amaratne frowned. “Why do you call him that?”
Gary’s jaw dropped. “Because ‘Sarge’ gets boring after a while.”
“You also call him, ‘boss,’” the man reminded him.
“Well, it’s not like we can call him an asshole, sir. Not when the suits are recording.”
“I believe there may be evidence to the contrary.”
“Well, fuck me. Aren’t we being picky today?”
Todd elbowed him hard enough to rock the man in his seat.
“Bastard,” he said in a whisper that didn’t sound even vaguely contrite.
Onscreen Ka spun a silver disc through the doorway to the corridor.
“There’s not much you can do when someone forgets to close the door,” she snarked from her seat.
“And that is one of the more effective things,” Admiral Amaratne noted as the disc struck the wall opposite and split to release a cascade of silver balls.
“And we did authorize certain extra equipment,” Dailey reminded them.
The sparkling orbs bounced on the deck a few times as onscreen Ka held her hand out. “No one move,” she murmured and her voice came through the team’s comms and spilled into the screen.
In the corridor, the orbs stopped bouncing and when their outer shell uncurled, tightly furled legs emerged in a multitude of clatters. The team froze and Piet turned horrified eyes to her.
“Isn’t it a little early for that?” His whisper reached only the team onscreen and its future observers.
“It’s never too early for a little carnage,” her screen self retorted fiercely as the swarm of silver locked onto the vibrations of the running Telorans and flowed toward it.
The sound of their feet on the decking became a susurration of rapid clacking shortly followed by panicked fire and screaming. The team froze.
“Cover!” Piet’s cry broke the spell and the team moved as one. Angus and Henry beat Todd through the opening.
“Wasn’t it the scary girlfriend who was coming to the rescue and not the scariest girlfriend?” Todd grimaced. Those were not words he wanted to hear repeated.
Again, the Admiral paused the replay. “He has a point. Tell me, why is it you refer to her that way?”
“Because when she goes all Morgana—” Todd began and Admiral Seljack waved him to silence.
“I’d prefer it if someone from your team answers that,” he instructed.
Ka took a breath and opened her mouth to reply.
“Someone else,” the admiral added, then pointed at Henry. “You.”
The man rolled his eyes in a “why me” kind of way and followed it with the kind of look he’d use on an imbecile. “Because, sir, when she goes all Morgana, she goes from scary-girl-with-a-shit-ton-of-magic to really-scary-girl-with-a-temper-and-a-shit-ton-of-magic.”
“Are you saying she loses control?”
“No, sir, but she becomes very mission-oriented.”
“So it’s not like she has another personality, then?”
Todd began to wonder if the restaurant’s secure room was as secure as they thought. Or maybe Navy suits had some kind of built-in protection against jammers that Piet had missed.
On one side of him, Gary vibrated with tension while on the other, Ka sat abnormally still.
“No, sir, only that taking the magic to the next level seems to bring out the worst of her existing personality.”
Todd snapped his head to glare at him, and Henry spread his hands in apology.
“Sorry, boss, but you know it’s true. Your Stephanie has a terrible temper, but when she goes all Morgana it’s like…it’s like watching her channel all her rage against the enemy—and if there are innocents involved…”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he croaked, swallowing to get his voice working again. “Yeah, I hear you.”
The man hadn’t said anything the Navy wasn’t already aware of, and he had the suspicion he might owe his teammate a beer.
The admiral’s next words confirmed it. “You do have a point,” he said and his expression confirmed that he recalled other times Stephanie had gone “all Morgana.” The footage resumed.
Onscreen, the team moved through what looked like an empty barracks, blew a hole in what could only be an ablutions block, and finally tore their way into a data center.
“In the middle of a residential section?” one of the admirals asked.
“I guess even Telorans have to have onboard entertainment,” Gary quipped while onscreen Ka gave vent to her frustration.
“If you blow another fucking terminal, I’ll throw you out the nearest fucking airlock!”
All the admirals turned to stare at her.
“What?” she demanded. “It’s not like you haven’t heard the word ‘fuck’ before.”
Their eyes widened and Seljack’s lips compressed into a disapproving line.
In the footage, Piet rendered her speechless, called her his girl, and headed to the still intact computer bank on the other side of the room. The team laughed and Jimmy nudged Ka when her recorded self declared she would “break some shit” until the world fell into line with her ideals.
Gary moved to cover the hole they’d used, and Angus leapt through it with his rifle tucked and braced under one arm and his vibro-blade out and activated in his other hand.
“I don’t suppose the Navy has thought of the kind of rounds needed to pierce these motherfuckers’ armor?”
Admiral Seljack cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact…” he began, and the team looked at him expectantly, “we’re working on it.”
“And?” Ka pressed as Angus groaned with disappointment.
“We’re close,” he assured her. “Very close.”
Onscreen, she told Reggie she thought the Navy had “fucked up its intelligence again” and that they were “gonna have to find the real database all on our lonesome, like usual.”
Gary sputtered with laughter, the admirals looked mortified, and Jimmy stared at her, his mouth agape.
“You don’t truly think that, do you?” Admiral Amaratne asked in a disappointed voice.
Ka shrugged. “You know what they say, sir. If the boot fits…”
Reggie choked, Todd rested his forehead against his knuckles and shook his head, and Piet cleared his throat.
“With all due respect, sirs,” he announced, “the intelligence we’ve been given for the last couple of missions has had its deficiencies.”
The Australian found his voice. “And what there was of it was…I’m sorry, sirs, but it was bullshit. We’ve had to basically make shit up and find our own way every time.”
Admiral Amaratne looked from one of them to the other. “I trust you all feel that way?”
They nodded.
“Even though you were part of the intelligence-gathering process?”
The team nodded, and Darren spoke. “We merely collect it, sir. The intelligence guys are supposed to be the ones who can work it out.” He shrugged and looked at his teammates for support. “If you ask me, sir, they haven’t done that good a job for most of the missions we’ve run.”
The admirals looked at each other. Seljack pursed his lips and Dailey raised his eyebrows. Amaratne frowned. They were silent for a long moment before Amaratne shrugged.
“I don’t think we need to pass that little tidbit on, do you?” he asked his colleagues.
They were both silent for a moment, clearly thinking about what would happen if they did. In the end, they both shook their heads.
Seljack grunted. “No,” he agreed. “I think not.”
Todd remembered to breathe again and Ka gave a sigh of relief.
Jimmy leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I don’t think you’re off the hook yet,” he told her.
The footage focused on her fingers as she worked the tablet and the data scrolled across the screen too fast for them to read. Todd had no doubt it would come up as clear as day if they paused the recording, though.
Someone would construct another training course. He wondered if Ka’s career would survive long enough for her to teach it.
And then there were the tactics. He watched as Reggie used a static-charged gauntlet and a high-powered blaster to fell one Teloran soldier and moved to jam the same blaster under another’s jawline to fire through the top of its helmet.
One of the admirals paused the replay after the Australian had shouted, “Stop,” in the aliens’ language and caused a momentary pause in the Teloran’s defense. The man’s maniacal chuckle sent chills up and down Todd’s spine.
The footage rolled on to Gary’s attempt to formulate an insult using everyday words from the Teloran vocabulary. “Breakfast-eating toilet” startled Admiral Dailey into a chuckle and “bathroom-mouth gun” made Seljack smile.
Todd wondered where the admirals had found the time to learn the language, then realized both men glanced at their tablets every time one of his team used Teloran.
“There’s a translation tool, now?” he asked, and Seljack looked at him.
“There is, thanks to the data your team collected.” He looked at Gary. “Bathroom-mouth gun?”
The Englishman blushed. “It was the best I could do at the time, sir.”
“And can you do any better now?”
He smiled. “No, sir. That’s still basically it.”
His onscreen self asked for a Meligornian grenade and they all winced at Todd’s roared response.
The footage flowed to where he and Reggie went toe-to-toe with their Teloran adversaries, punctuating each blow by insulting each other.
“Anyone would think you’d forgotten that you came from a single, unified Earth,” Admiral Seljack reminded them when Reggie called Gary a “bum-biting king of wankerology” and went to rescue Angus.
The Englishman covered him long enough for him to drag their teammate into the room.
“Some things you don’t forget, sir,” Reggie told him but didn’t clarify whether he referred to the fact they came from a unified Earth that wasn’t forgotten or the ancient rivalry between their countries.
Fortunately, the admiral didn’t pursue it.
Onscreen Todd asked Ka if she’d gotten everything, and she informed him they had a problem. The footage switched to what was taken from Todd’s cam as he duck-walked to where she and Piet worked on the system.
“I understand you’d almost finished the transmission at this point,” Admiral Dailey remarked, “and yet you decided to go to the bridge.”
“You have watched the footage, haven’t you, sir?” Reggie snarked and was rewarded by becoming the focus of all three admirals. He raised his hands in defense. “My apologies.”
His remarks coincided with onscreen Ka’s exclamation, “From the bridge? Are you fucking kidding me…sir?”
Admiral Amaratne gave her a look of mild amusement. “Why is it that every time he makes a decision none of you like, you all call him ‘sir?’”
“Because it is a decision we don’t like,” she snapped and didn’t elaborate.
Reggie snickered.
“Is it only me?” Admiral Dailey asked and ignored the exchange, “or do you guys seem to have a fetish for bridges?”
The team gaped at him, and Todd smiled at their reaction. Just because the man had rank didn’t mean he didn’t have a sense of humor. He wondered why the admiral had let it show now but didn’t ask. He chose to answer the question instead.
“As you heard from the footage, sir, we hoped there was more information on the bridge—a location or some other way to tell where the enemy fleet was.” He paused and bit his lip. “But the way things went down when we got there, we’re not sure we got anything.”
“Oh, you got something, all right,” Admiral Amaratne told him, and Seljack and Dailey nodded. “Your team has two months to prepare for God-knows-what, but I feel the Hooligans will be needed.”
As Admiral Amaratne delivered his verdict, one Teloran fleet waited for another to arrive. Their commander stared out at the merciless stars, anticipated the battle ahead, and chafed at the delay.
Soon, he’d been told, but the wait still seemed interminably long.
He ignored the quiet chatter from those around him. Their whispers relieved the monotony and did little to disturb his thoughts. Besides, while they were talking about other things, they were not plotting his demise.
“Tagabran gave the all-clear,” one of the communications officers said to his colleague.
The other Teloran laughed. “Baby-sitting duty in the Meligornian system,” he sneered. “That must be a boring operation.”
“Almost as dull as this one,” his partner quipped in response and scanned the control board for incoming communications. “When’s their next transmission due?”
“Not for…” The comms officer scanned the logs. “At least another day. Captain Kagarek must be chafing at the bit. He prefers the hunt.”
“He won’t have to wait much longer,” the other officer assured his partner. “He’ll have action soon.”
Neither of them could see the Meligornian fleet patiently combing their home system for the last pieces of debris from the dreadnought’s demise. Kagarek had been their sole means of surveillance in the Meligornian system, and he had been destroyed with his ship.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
On Earth, Marcus Rimmer slid into his new pod. He sighed happily as the memory foam wrapped around him and he closed his eyes. The transfer from the pod to the ready room in the Virtual World was seamless.
It felt like he’d merely blinked before he stepped into the construct and it was a no-brainer to choose a white lab coat from the racks of available outfits. The garment fit like he’d been born in it, and he looked at the ceiling with an air of confidence.
“Computer, take me to the lab.”
He’d been told that, apart from the connection to One R&D’s Chicago facility, the system he worked in was designed to be an entirely closed one. It didn’t make sense that it was connected anywhere, and as for being able to access the Virtual World from it, even that particular concept escaped him.
His talents lay elsewhere and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how the system worked. The simple truth was that it made no logical sense to him.
The surroundings swirled away, and it felt like he was propelled across time and space—but only for a moment. The world shifted and the White Room—or Ready Room, as he always thought of it—was replaced by the meeting room in the suite that had been assigned to him and the team.
Technically, it wasn’t the lab itself but it was where he needed to be.
Shortly after he’d arrived, his assistant Cynthia stepped out of nothing to join him. She looked around.
“That was one of the fastest transfers I’ve ever seen,” she told him as she lowered a stack of folders and clipboards onto the table.
“Is that all of it?”
“I had the program compress the files. Pick yours up and you’ll see.”
Casting her an uncertain look, Marcus did as she challenged, lifted his folder from its stack, and took a few steps back. As he did so, it grew to two inches thick and gained double its weight.
“Whoa!”
Cynthia smiled. “See?”
“Uh, yup. I got you.” He began to hand the folder back but stopped. “I still have documents to sign?” he asked in disbelief.
She chuckled. “Yes, but it’ll be easier to walk the others through it if you have yours in front of you…and it will be good for them to see you had to sign the same kind of thing. What’s good for the goose and all that.”
He grimaced and found himself a chair at the conference table in the center of the room. “You did this on purpose,” he muttered.
