Witch Of The Federation IV (Federal Histories Book 4), page 70
“I don’t see why I should, Steph. The man did come here uninvited.”
“Ooh, so you’ve been really busy for weeks and he comes over to make sure you’re still interested and you think the best way to make him see that is to…what? Keep him standing outside until he gives up and goes home?”
“Somehow I don’t think he’s the type to give up without a definitive answer,” she snapped in response. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“Seriously? I’m right here,” he said in her ear and her face paled.
“You stay out of this.”
“But—”
“Is he on the phone?” Stephanie must have gone to the security center and pulled up the footage herself—or had Frog or Johnny do it for her. “Are you talking to him right now?”
One of the team muttered in the background, “That’s cold, real cold. Even for her.”
Honestly, if she could work out which one of them it was, she’d go and kick their ass.
She snuck a glance at the screen and saw Matthias’s mouth hanging open as stared at the camera.
Her office door opened, and Amy stuck her head around. “I think you should go meet him,” her security guard told her. “Before Steph decides to come out and do it herself.”
“Are you listening in?”
Matthias made a choked sound and Elizabeth glanced hurriedly at the screen. It was both a relief and a worry to see that he was laughing and trying hard not to show it. The way his shoulders were shaking, though, was a dead giveaway.
She made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan and pushed her chair back.
“Fine. I’m going,” she snapped into the intercom and cut off the gleeful whoops mid-squeal.
On the screen, Matthias froze and glanced from the camera to the front door as though he didn’t dare believe it.
“Thank you, E,” he told her, his voice full of relief.
“Oh, don’t thank me, yet,” she informed him. “You have no idea what you’ve started.”
To give him credit, he looked more nervous than victorious, and she wasn’t sure if she liked that expression any more than the other. “I’ll be right out.”
“I look forward to it,” he answered, ended the call, and pushed his mobile into his pocket.
Elizabeth noticed that he performed a half-turn and scanned the One R&D front yard as he did so, his hand brushing over the space a holster would normally rest. It made her take a second glance at the camera feeds but she saw nothing there.
Amy held the door open as she reached it and she wondered if BURT had alerted her guard. She didn’t stop to ask him, though, but hurried through the reception and out across the foyer.
Furtive movement at the entry to the corridor leading to the team’s accommodations told her she wasn’t alone, but she refused to look toward it. If it were a threat, Amy and Elle would have dealt with it by now.
She wondered if she could convince them that a threat to her sanity should receive the same no-holds-barred defense a threat to her physical safety would. Given how bad-tempered she could be when the team drove her to distraction, she thought it had a running chance.
Matthias stood side-on to the door, his back facing a point where the building’s facade formed a natural corner. He’d made sure to remain in clear view of the cameras, but his attention was as much on the yard behind him as on her coming toward him.
It set her senses on full alert and she scanned past him as she set her hand on the access panel. Something about the way he stood also alerted Amy and Elle because the two women swept past her and around her visitor with their weapons out.
He wasted no time but came directly inside. Still, he didn’t look alarmed, merely tense and alert as if he’d walked through a war zone and waited in a known sniping ground. Amy and Elle entered behind him but remained facing out until the doors cycled closed behind him.
“Matthias, it’s wonderful to see you!” Elizabeth extended her hands toward him as he closed the distance between them.
He raised a skeptical eyebrow but took her hands in his and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.
“The office is through this way,” she told him and returned the kiss with the lightest brush of her lips. She retained her hold on one hand as she turned away to lead him across the atrium.
With a questioning glance at Amy as she did so, she asked, “Did you see anything?”
The woman shook her head. “Nothing I could put my finger on.” She looked over at Elle and received a quick shake of the head. “But it felt different.”
This time, a swift glance at her partner garnered a slight nod, and Matthias relaxed a fraction. “So I wasn’t imagining things.”
Amy studied his face. “Did you see anything?”
He shook his head. “No, only a feeling.”
The bodyguard scanned the yard beyond One R&D’s glass frontage. “I know what you mean,” she reassured him and frowned, “even if it looks clear.”
She and Elle ushered the two of them through the reception area to Elizabeth’s office and closed the door behind them.
“We’ll be back with coffee.”
“That sounds good,” Matthias told her.
“And food,” Amy added and frowned at her boss. “I’m fairly certain someone skipped dinner.”
He glanced at Elizabeth. “Again?” he teased and a small smile curved his lips.
The guard was not amused. “Again,” she confirmed and disapproval weighted the word.
As the woman left, he turned to E. “So, it’s not only me.”
She was horrified to feel her face heat, but he continued.
“Which is also why I’ve come,” he explained. “Since you keep telling me you want to see me, I’ve taken leave so I can help solve whatever issue is stopping you from giving me the time to date you.”
“You what?” She did a double-take.
“I’m on leave and here to help you solve whatever it is that’s eating all your time and stopping you from seeing me.”
“That’s really sweet,” Elizabeth began, “but—”
Matthias leaned back. “Unless it really is me you’re trying to avoid.”
“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that,” she insisted, and he leaned forward and took her hand again.
“Then what?” he asked. “Because, frankly, if I was any other guy, I’d have taken the hint and left you alone by now.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Elizabeth asked and tried to stifle the uncertainty in her voice.
He lifted her hand. “Because I happen to like you very much.”
“Like?” she asked, and he smiled.
“You know what I mean.”
Before she could respond to that, there was a brief knock at the door and Stephanie swept in bearing a tray loaded with coffee, sandwiches, and cake. From the speed with which it had arrived, the girl had been getting it ready from the moment Matthias had arrived.
“He looked hungry,” she protested when she caught her look, “and who knows how long the two of you will sit up talking…or doing…other…stuff.”
Elizabeth pointed to the door. “Get out!”
She tried to sound fierce about it, but her voice quivered with suppressed laughter and Stephanie giggled as she left.
“Well,” she commented as she poured the coffee, “that was embarrassing.”
He had relinquished her hand on Stephanie’s arrival and he wanted nothing more than to hold it now. “So the problem really is me?” he asked and gestured toward the door. “Because I can—”
“No!” she snapped. “The problem is me.”
His heart went into freefall.
Here it comes, he thought, another “it’s not you, it’s me” scenario.
He silently prepared himself to take his leave and find a late-night bar to get rolling drunk in, but her next words surprised him.
“I like you too, but this…” She set her coffee cup on the table and gestured wildly at nothing, at him, at herself, and at the now-closed door. “All this…”
She paused and his brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh! It’s you and Steph, and the whole damn team, and the way you’ve damned well made my heart feel…and who the fuck knew it could do that!”
Matthias felt more confused than ever but thankfully, she proceeded to explain.
“It’s like you and Steph have made my heart grow three sizes bigger—and that’s only today.” Her voice softened. “Frankly, it’s painful and not something that was on the agenda.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
In the amphitheater on the Notaro, Todd flinched when he heard the autocannons explode. The footage had rolled to where he was leading the team out of the command center.
They’d lost their battle with the techs aboard the Dreth dreadnought and had locked the big ship on a suicide course into the middle of the pirate fleet.
“This is why you want your personnel trained in hacking?” the admiral asked.
He nodded. “Yessir—and why I have asked for a second team member to have that proficiency.”
“In case you ever need to take control of a super-dreadnought.”
His grin was little more than bared teeth. “We don’t know where the Navy will send us next, sir—and it was you who asked us how we would do the impossible a second time.” He gestured at the screen. “This is it.”
Todd stiffened when the footage played Ka’s comment on the error of hiring the lowest-bidding contractor. The admiral’s eyes widened, but he lowered his chin in acknowledgment. “Point taken.”
He breathed a silent sigh of relief and waited for the next question. It was hard not to press a hand to his forehead when on-screen Ka offered to make his service record look like a shagfest.
More laughter rippled through the audience and Gary and Dru high-fived her.
“That is so evil!”
Their commentator snickered. “He does know he is stuck with them forever, doesn’t he?”
‘Oh, yes,” his colleague answered. “He does now.”
Todd decided they had a point. There was no way in the known universe that any Marine team leader would want his group of hooligans on their roster. None.
He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Good, he thought fiercely, because they’re mine.
The gathered brass laughed again as his on-screen self ordered Ka to find him a way off the ship, and Gary and Reggie swept her off her feet and ordered her to type. He’d have found it funny too if he hadn’t known what was coming next.
The audience settled as he and the team raced through the Dreth ship. He was surprised when his correction on parsecs was met with a muted ‘hear, hear’ and not so surprised when someone muttered, “We should have ordered popcorn.”
The admiral’s head snapped up and he scanned the room for whoever had made that remark. He wondered what had upset him, and then assumed the man probably objected to someone treating the life and death situation he and the team had faced as entertainment.
Either way, he was glad he wasn’t in that person’s shoes when the superior office discovered who it was.
He watched as he and the team made their way into the hold where the luxury cruiser had been mothballed.
“Talk about lucky,” the commentator noted. “I don’t know how they’d have gotten off without it.”
Todd turned and looked in the direction of the voice.
“Dropships,” he snapped, and one of the captains returned his look with round eyes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You asked how we’d have gotten off the dreadnought if we hadn’t found the yacht. We’d have gotten into one of the shuttle bays and commandeered a dropship.”
“To launch into the middle of a naval battle?” The captain’s tone told him exactly what he thought of that.
“Yes,” he replied.
“But that’s crazy!” The man next to the captain spoke, and he recognized the voice of their commentator’s friend.
Todd gave him a feral grin. “Yes.”
He didn’t add that it was no crazier than staying on board a ship he’d set on a collision course. Instead, he turned to the screen to find the admiral had paused the playback.
“And how, exactly, would you have reached the shuttle bays?” Admiral Dailey wanted to know.
“The same way we defeated the simulation, sir. With coordinated teamwork, quick thinking, improvisation, and sheer talent.”
The team chuckled at that and looked pleased with themselves—and he decided they deserved to. They’d worked extremely hard to earn that praise, and it was the first time they’d heard it. He sighed again.
Now, he’d have to put them through another scenario simply to knock them back down to size.
Seeing he had the audience’s attention, once more, the admiral signaled for the footage to continue, although neither he nor Seljack commented on the team’s boarding technique.
Instead, both men watched events unfold until they reached the point where Ka told Gary she could do everything he’d suggested from where she was. Dailey made a small gesture with his hand, and the footage paused.
Uh-oh, he thought. Here it comes.
“Do you know why Kahu Tuikaa is so very good at getting into computer systems despite her official lack of training?” he asked mildly.
Todd heard movement from where the team sat and turned his head. Ka was half out of her seat with Dru and Gary hanging onto her arms. She looked terrified.
“Stay there, Ka. Let me handle it,” he assured her.
She frowned but let her comrades pull her back into her seat. He turned his attention to the admiral.
“No, sir, but—”
Dailey raised his hand and he stopped.
“She came to the Navy and enlisted. We noticed then that she had some talent with computing, but she didn’t want to be an analyst or join our white hat team, so Recruiting convinced her to work with other on-board systems.”
“Like the gas suppression systems?” he asked, although that much was evident.
The man nodded. “Like those.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “What we didn’t discover until much later was that she’d started a career in corporate IT and had come to us when the company she was working for thought she’d uncovered some…unorthodoxy…in their systems.”
“And she didn’t go to the authorities?” Todd asked and slid a glance in Ka’s direction.
She was seated with her arms folded and her shoulders hunched and didn’t look at anyone. Gary and Dru sat tensely beside her and gave the impression that they’d take on all comers, and the rest of the team were on edge.
He hoped they’d keep it together. His assumption was that if Ka’s past was old news to the Navy, nothing was about to happen to her.
The admiral’s reply confirmed it. “No, so the unorthodoxy was not uncovered until much later, by which stage she was already creating trouble in the ranks of the Marine Corps and we decided her past could stay exactly where it was.”
Todd was relieved to see his team relax and Ka straighten slowly. He realized there was more to the story than that, but he could take it up with her later.
The superior officer continued as though oblivious. “It is also why we will approve your request for her to undertake the training along with Piet.”
Both Marines groaned, but the footage had started rolling again and there was no room for protest. Everyone watched as Gary and Reggie departed to check the engine room.
“Captain?” Admiral Seljack noted when Ka addressed Todd that way.
“It was a figure of speech,” he told him. “Nothing more.”
Ka snickered but the admiral followed it up.
“Don’t you think you make a good captain?” he asked and he shook his head hastily.
“I’m not ready, sir, and I’m not sure I want to be an officer. No offense.”
Seljack smiled. “I’m not sure that’s a call you get to make,” he commented, and Todd paled.
He bit back the retort that it was his career and he’d decide, hoping no-one thought to jump him up to lieutenant anytime in the near future.
“I still have too much to learn, sir,” he replied.
“Granted, but the Navy has the right to decide where and at what rank you will serve it best.”
He gulped and bowed his head. “Yes, sir.” He’d murder Ka later, he decided, or load her with so many tasks she didn’t have time to scratch herself, let alone make his life any more challenging than it already was.
On-screen, the yacht launched and several gasps greeted its arrival in the battle zone. More followed as the dreadnought bulldozed into the first pirate vessel that couldn’t get out of its way fast enough. The explosion that followed was nothing short of spectacular.
Surprised comments rippled through the audience as the dreadnought, missing much of the lower part of its bow and underbelly, continued relentlessly.
Todd didn’t blame them. He’d hoped one good collision would sink the vessel and wasn’t happy to see that didn’t happen. Despite this, he couldn’t help but admire the way Jimmy brought the yacht under control.
His spirits lifted as the man steered the craft clear of the debris and took it across the edge of the pirate fleet and into what looked like clear space. Sighs of relief rose from the men behind him and ended in hisses of sharply indrawn breath as the pirate ship that had avoided the dreadnought’s approach targeted the tiny boat.
Shock turned to amusement as The King’s Warrior dropped into view and Todd claimed responsibility for the ‘flying copyright infringement’ before the Meligorns obliterated the attacking pirates.
“Do you often refer to important officials by their first name?” Admiral Dailey asked, and his face went crimson.
“No, sir.”
“So, why this one?”
“He’s a…um… He’s a friend, sir, and it had been a very long day and I forgot the protocols…” He stopped barely short of pointing out that V’ritan hadn’t objected and that if the admiral didn’t like it he could shove it.
He could be politically astute when he needed to…sometimes.
“Hmmm, well try to remember them in future,” Dailey admonished and ended the playback.
“Ooh, so you’ve been really busy for weeks and he comes over to make sure you’re still interested and you think the best way to make him see that is to…what? Keep him standing outside until he gives up and goes home?”
“Somehow I don’t think he’s the type to give up without a definitive answer,” she snapped in response. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“Seriously? I’m right here,” he said in her ear and her face paled.
“You stay out of this.”
“But—”
“Is he on the phone?” Stephanie must have gone to the security center and pulled up the footage herself—or had Frog or Johnny do it for her. “Are you talking to him right now?”
One of the team muttered in the background, “That’s cold, real cold. Even for her.”
Honestly, if she could work out which one of them it was, she’d go and kick their ass.
She snuck a glance at the screen and saw Matthias’s mouth hanging open as stared at the camera.
Her office door opened, and Amy stuck her head around. “I think you should go meet him,” her security guard told her. “Before Steph decides to come out and do it herself.”
“Are you listening in?”
Matthias made a choked sound and Elizabeth glanced hurriedly at the screen. It was both a relief and a worry to see that he was laughing and trying hard not to show it. The way his shoulders were shaking, though, was a dead giveaway.
She made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan and pushed her chair back.
“Fine. I’m going,” she snapped into the intercom and cut off the gleeful whoops mid-squeal.
On the screen, Matthias froze and glanced from the camera to the front door as though he didn’t dare believe it.
“Thank you, E,” he told her, his voice full of relief.
“Oh, don’t thank me, yet,” she informed him. “You have no idea what you’ve started.”
To give him credit, he looked more nervous than victorious, and she wasn’t sure if she liked that expression any more than the other. “I’ll be right out.”
“I look forward to it,” he answered, ended the call, and pushed his mobile into his pocket.
Elizabeth noticed that he performed a half-turn and scanned the One R&D front yard as he did so, his hand brushing over the space a holster would normally rest. It made her take a second glance at the camera feeds but she saw nothing there.
Amy held the door open as she reached it and she wondered if BURT had alerted her guard. She didn’t stop to ask him, though, but hurried through the reception and out across the foyer.
Furtive movement at the entry to the corridor leading to the team’s accommodations told her she wasn’t alone, but she refused to look toward it. If it were a threat, Amy and Elle would have dealt with it by now.
She wondered if she could convince them that a threat to her sanity should receive the same no-holds-barred defense a threat to her physical safety would. Given how bad-tempered she could be when the team drove her to distraction, she thought it had a running chance.
Matthias stood side-on to the door, his back facing a point where the building’s facade formed a natural corner. He’d made sure to remain in clear view of the cameras, but his attention was as much on the yard behind him as on her coming toward him.
It set her senses on full alert and she scanned past him as she set her hand on the access panel. Something about the way he stood also alerted Amy and Elle because the two women swept past her and around her visitor with their weapons out.
He wasted no time but came directly inside. Still, he didn’t look alarmed, merely tense and alert as if he’d walked through a war zone and waited in a known sniping ground. Amy and Elle entered behind him but remained facing out until the doors cycled closed behind him.
“Matthias, it’s wonderful to see you!” Elizabeth extended her hands toward him as he closed the distance between them.
He raised a skeptical eyebrow but took her hands in his and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.
“The office is through this way,” she told him and returned the kiss with the lightest brush of her lips. She retained her hold on one hand as she turned away to lead him across the atrium.
With a questioning glance at Amy as she did so, she asked, “Did you see anything?”
The woman shook her head. “Nothing I could put my finger on.” She looked over at Elle and received a quick shake of the head. “But it felt different.”
This time, a swift glance at her partner garnered a slight nod, and Matthias relaxed a fraction. “So I wasn’t imagining things.”
Amy studied his face. “Did you see anything?”
He shook his head. “No, only a feeling.”
The bodyguard scanned the yard beyond One R&D’s glass frontage. “I know what you mean,” she reassured him and frowned, “even if it looks clear.”
She and Elle ushered the two of them through the reception area to Elizabeth’s office and closed the door behind them.
“We’ll be back with coffee.”
“That sounds good,” Matthias told her.
“And food,” Amy added and frowned at her boss. “I’m fairly certain someone skipped dinner.”
He glanced at Elizabeth. “Again?” he teased and a small smile curved his lips.
The guard was not amused. “Again,” she confirmed and disapproval weighted the word.
As the woman left, he turned to E. “So, it’s not only me.”
She was horrified to feel her face heat, but he continued.
“Which is also why I’ve come,” he explained. “Since you keep telling me you want to see me, I’ve taken leave so I can help solve whatever issue is stopping you from giving me the time to date you.”
“You what?” She did a double-take.
“I’m on leave and here to help you solve whatever it is that’s eating all your time and stopping you from seeing me.”
“That’s really sweet,” Elizabeth began, “but—”
Matthias leaned back. “Unless it really is me you’re trying to avoid.”
“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that,” she insisted, and he leaned forward and took her hand again.
“Then what?” he asked. “Because, frankly, if I was any other guy, I’d have taken the hint and left you alone by now.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Elizabeth asked and tried to stifle the uncertainty in her voice.
He lifted her hand. “Because I happen to like you very much.”
“Like?” she asked, and he smiled.
“You know what I mean.”
Before she could respond to that, there was a brief knock at the door and Stephanie swept in bearing a tray loaded with coffee, sandwiches, and cake. From the speed with which it had arrived, the girl had been getting it ready from the moment Matthias had arrived.
“He looked hungry,” she protested when she caught her look, “and who knows how long the two of you will sit up talking…or doing…other…stuff.”
Elizabeth pointed to the door. “Get out!”
She tried to sound fierce about it, but her voice quivered with suppressed laughter and Stephanie giggled as she left.
“Well,” she commented as she poured the coffee, “that was embarrassing.”
He had relinquished her hand on Stephanie’s arrival and he wanted nothing more than to hold it now. “So the problem really is me?” he asked and gestured toward the door. “Because I can—”
“No!” she snapped. “The problem is me.”
His heart went into freefall.
Here it comes, he thought, another “it’s not you, it’s me” scenario.
He silently prepared himself to take his leave and find a late-night bar to get rolling drunk in, but her next words surprised him.
“I like you too, but this…” She set her coffee cup on the table and gestured wildly at nothing, at him, at herself, and at the now-closed door. “All this…”
She paused and his brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh! It’s you and Steph, and the whole damn team, and the way you’ve damned well made my heart feel…and who the fuck knew it could do that!”
Matthias felt more confused than ever but thankfully, she proceeded to explain.
“It’s like you and Steph have made my heart grow three sizes bigger—and that’s only today.” Her voice softened. “Frankly, it’s painful and not something that was on the agenda.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
In the amphitheater on the Notaro, Todd flinched when he heard the autocannons explode. The footage had rolled to where he was leading the team out of the command center.
They’d lost their battle with the techs aboard the Dreth dreadnought and had locked the big ship on a suicide course into the middle of the pirate fleet.
“This is why you want your personnel trained in hacking?” the admiral asked.
He nodded. “Yessir—and why I have asked for a second team member to have that proficiency.”
“In case you ever need to take control of a super-dreadnought.”
His grin was little more than bared teeth. “We don’t know where the Navy will send us next, sir—and it was you who asked us how we would do the impossible a second time.” He gestured at the screen. “This is it.”
Todd stiffened when the footage played Ka’s comment on the error of hiring the lowest-bidding contractor. The admiral’s eyes widened, but he lowered his chin in acknowledgment. “Point taken.”
He breathed a silent sigh of relief and waited for the next question. It was hard not to press a hand to his forehead when on-screen Ka offered to make his service record look like a shagfest.
More laughter rippled through the audience and Gary and Dru high-fived her.
“That is so evil!”
Their commentator snickered. “He does know he is stuck with them forever, doesn’t he?”
‘Oh, yes,” his colleague answered. “He does now.”
Todd decided they had a point. There was no way in the known universe that any Marine team leader would want his group of hooligans on their roster. None.
He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Good, he thought fiercely, because they’re mine.
The gathered brass laughed again as his on-screen self ordered Ka to find him a way off the ship, and Gary and Reggie swept her off her feet and ordered her to type. He’d have found it funny too if he hadn’t known what was coming next.
The audience settled as he and the team raced through the Dreth ship. He was surprised when his correction on parsecs was met with a muted ‘hear, hear’ and not so surprised when someone muttered, “We should have ordered popcorn.”
The admiral’s head snapped up and he scanned the room for whoever had made that remark. He wondered what had upset him, and then assumed the man probably objected to someone treating the life and death situation he and the team had faced as entertainment.
Either way, he was glad he wasn’t in that person’s shoes when the superior office discovered who it was.
He watched as he and the team made their way into the hold where the luxury cruiser had been mothballed.
“Talk about lucky,” the commentator noted. “I don’t know how they’d have gotten off without it.”
Todd turned and looked in the direction of the voice.
“Dropships,” he snapped, and one of the captains returned his look with round eyes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You asked how we’d have gotten off the dreadnought if we hadn’t found the yacht. We’d have gotten into one of the shuttle bays and commandeered a dropship.”
“To launch into the middle of a naval battle?” The captain’s tone told him exactly what he thought of that.
“Yes,” he replied.
“But that’s crazy!” The man next to the captain spoke, and he recognized the voice of their commentator’s friend.
Todd gave him a feral grin. “Yes.”
He didn’t add that it was no crazier than staying on board a ship he’d set on a collision course. Instead, he turned to the screen to find the admiral had paused the playback.
“And how, exactly, would you have reached the shuttle bays?” Admiral Dailey wanted to know.
“The same way we defeated the simulation, sir. With coordinated teamwork, quick thinking, improvisation, and sheer talent.”
The team chuckled at that and looked pleased with themselves—and he decided they deserved to. They’d worked extremely hard to earn that praise, and it was the first time they’d heard it. He sighed again.
Now, he’d have to put them through another scenario simply to knock them back down to size.
Seeing he had the audience’s attention, once more, the admiral signaled for the footage to continue, although neither he nor Seljack commented on the team’s boarding technique.
Instead, both men watched events unfold until they reached the point where Ka told Gary she could do everything he’d suggested from where she was. Dailey made a small gesture with his hand, and the footage paused.
Uh-oh, he thought. Here it comes.
“Do you know why Kahu Tuikaa is so very good at getting into computer systems despite her official lack of training?” he asked mildly.
Todd heard movement from where the team sat and turned his head. Ka was half out of her seat with Dru and Gary hanging onto her arms. She looked terrified.
“Stay there, Ka. Let me handle it,” he assured her.
She frowned but let her comrades pull her back into her seat. He turned his attention to the admiral.
“No, sir, but—”
Dailey raised his hand and he stopped.
“She came to the Navy and enlisted. We noticed then that she had some talent with computing, but she didn’t want to be an analyst or join our white hat team, so Recruiting convinced her to work with other on-board systems.”
“Like the gas suppression systems?” he asked, although that much was evident.
The man nodded. “Like those.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “What we didn’t discover until much later was that she’d started a career in corporate IT and had come to us when the company she was working for thought she’d uncovered some…unorthodoxy…in their systems.”
“And she didn’t go to the authorities?” Todd asked and slid a glance in Ka’s direction.
She was seated with her arms folded and her shoulders hunched and didn’t look at anyone. Gary and Dru sat tensely beside her and gave the impression that they’d take on all comers, and the rest of the team were on edge.
He hoped they’d keep it together. His assumption was that if Ka’s past was old news to the Navy, nothing was about to happen to her.
The admiral’s reply confirmed it. “No, so the unorthodoxy was not uncovered until much later, by which stage she was already creating trouble in the ranks of the Marine Corps and we decided her past could stay exactly where it was.”
Todd was relieved to see his team relax and Ka straighten slowly. He realized there was more to the story than that, but he could take it up with her later.
The superior officer continued as though oblivious. “It is also why we will approve your request for her to undertake the training along with Piet.”
Both Marines groaned, but the footage had started rolling again and there was no room for protest. Everyone watched as Gary and Reggie departed to check the engine room.
“Captain?” Admiral Seljack noted when Ka addressed Todd that way.
“It was a figure of speech,” he told him. “Nothing more.”
Ka snickered but the admiral followed it up.
“Don’t you think you make a good captain?” he asked and he shook his head hastily.
“I’m not ready, sir, and I’m not sure I want to be an officer. No offense.”
Seljack smiled. “I’m not sure that’s a call you get to make,” he commented, and Todd paled.
He bit back the retort that it was his career and he’d decide, hoping no-one thought to jump him up to lieutenant anytime in the near future.
“I still have too much to learn, sir,” he replied.
“Granted, but the Navy has the right to decide where and at what rank you will serve it best.”
He gulped and bowed his head. “Yes, sir.” He’d murder Ka later, he decided, or load her with so many tasks she didn’t have time to scratch herself, let alone make his life any more challenging than it already was.
On-screen, the yacht launched and several gasps greeted its arrival in the battle zone. More followed as the dreadnought bulldozed into the first pirate vessel that couldn’t get out of its way fast enough. The explosion that followed was nothing short of spectacular.
Surprised comments rippled through the audience as the dreadnought, missing much of the lower part of its bow and underbelly, continued relentlessly.
Todd didn’t blame them. He’d hoped one good collision would sink the vessel and wasn’t happy to see that didn’t happen. Despite this, he couldn’t help but admire the way Jimmy brought the yacht under control.
His spirits lifted as the man steered the craft clear of the debris and took it across the edge of the pirate fleet and into what looked like clear space. Sighs of relief rose from the men behind him and ended in hisses of sharply indrawn breath as the pirate ship that had avoided the dreadnought’s approach targeted the tiny boat.
Shock turned to amusement as The King’s Warrior dropped into view and Todd claimed responsibility for the ‘flying copyright infringement’ before the Meligorns obliterated the attacking pirates.
“Do you often refer to important officials by their first name?” Admiral Dailey asked, and his face went crimson.
“No, sir.”
“So, why this one?”
“He’s a…um… He’s a friend, sir, and it had been a very long day and I forgot the protocols…” He stopped barely short of pointing out that V’ritan hadn’t objected and that if the admiral didn’t like it he could shove it.
He could be politically astute when he needed to…sometimes.
“Hmmm, well try to remember them in future,” Dailey admonished and ended the playback.
