Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2)
Witch Of The Federation
Federal Histories™ 02
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 © 2019 Michael Anderle
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / jcalebdesign@gmail.com
A Michael Anderle Production
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LMBPN Publishing
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First US edition, June 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64202-322-0
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Creator Notes - Michael Anderle
Books by Michael Anderle
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May We All Enjoy Grace
To Live The Life We Are
Called.
Chapter One
“It’s like she’s a completely different person to the young girl described in the folder,” Corporal Host told the recruiting team. They had gathered to discuss their meeting with Stephanie, which hadn’t gone well.
The corporal tapped the end of his pen on the mahogany table as he scanned his notes from the meeting. “Seriously, during the interview, she was calm and quiet, reserved even. Like she had a handle on the whole goddamned world. We have forty-year officers who break a sweat easier than that. We need that kind of calmness in our ranks.”
“That and her knowledge,” Holland pointed out. “She is full of information about how to use magic, and I don’t even understand how she has it. She has never set foot on Meligorn.”
“She has a teacher from there,” Brown replied.
“So?” Holland sneered. “The shit she pulled at the Gala had nothing to do with any teacher she might have had. That’s the kind of thing you would only know from personal experience. From the notes you gave me, Corporal, it sounds like you talked to a sixty-year-old professor of magic, not some kid from the Gov-Subs.”
Petty Officers Grant, Taylor, and Chavez walked into the room and sat wearily. The team still looked half-dead from the last shift they’d pulled. Holland slid the report across the table to them. “This is Corporal Host. He’s here to give us a briefing on the meeting with Stephanie Morgana. We’re only waiting on the LT to arrive.”
“So what’s new? We’re always waiting on Conrad.” Chavez yawned.
“Unlike you slackers, I actually have responsibilities,” the man in question said as he stepped through the door, bright-eyed. Everyone stood while he shook Host’s hand and then claimed their seats.
Chavez offered Conrad the file, but the Lieutenant shook his head. “I’ve already read it, although I’m not sure why any of this came as a surprise to you. The girl has just had the fight of her life and is recovering. She is under Meligornian protection right now. We’re the last people she would want to see. Nonetheless, Corporal, let’s hear your breakdown.”
Host leaned forward and cleared his throat nervously. “When we arrived at the ambassador’s temporary residence, we met with some resistance from the security chief, Brilgus. He tried to fob us off, but we were able to insist on seeing her as a matter of national security, so we waited. It took about forty minutes before Stephanie arrived. She looked extremely weak, as was to be expected.”
Thompkins scoffed and pushed back an annoying strand of hair that had fallen from her near-perfect bun. “She’d just finished taking down more than a dozen would-be assassins and healing people with her hands. Tired is the least I would be.”
“True,” Host replied. “When we got through telling her about her career options—you know, the normal stuff—she thought about it for only a moment. Her response was adamant but didn’t seem rehearsed or coerced. She said she felt it wasn’t time for her to move from her ‘existing role.’ She didn’t want to be tied down by a three-year contract, or to study magic under military constraints.”
Conrad hadn’t been surprised in the least by the maturity of Stephanie’s response. “She has worked with powerful people. You saw how she was at the Gala. She is obviously not the immature little girl everyone wants to think she is.” He paused and looked around the room. “How did our normal tactics to counter the arguments about the contract time and military research restrictions work?”
Host shook his head and his fingers massaged the tender skin on his temples. “They didn’t. We were only alone with her for the first part of the conversation. We couldn’t refuse to allow anyone in the room if she wanted them there, so when she req
uested the ambassador’s attendance, we were essentially screwed.”
Thompkins clicked her tongue and shook her head as she leaned back with her arms folded. “That’s some bullshit right there. I’m sorry, but there was no reason for him to want to be there. He should have been minding his damn business elsewhere. She is not a minor anymore. She can make her own choices.”
Host waved his hand. “No, it’s not that she took his advice or felt threatened by the glare of his Meligornian eyes or anything. She had already stated very clearly that she was not interested. What the ambassador’s presence prevented us from doing was to attempt to manipulate her into enlisting or push half-truths about what a career with us would be like. You know, the typical bullshit we use to make the job sound glamorous and perfect.”
Conrad uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, and intertwined his fingers. “It’s not as if that would have worked on her anyway.”
Chavez shook his head. “I don’t understand, Conrad. Why do you want to enlist this girl so badly?”
Their commanding officer flipped the file open to a picture of the aftermath of the assassination attempt at the Gala. He pointed to the crack in the marble stairs where the ambassador and Stephanie had made their stand and stared at Chavez. “That’s why. Because this girl is not only incredibly intelligent but whatever magic she uses, she is far more adept at it than any witch I’ve seen. This is not normal Meligornian magic. There is something else twisted through the strands of energy she uses. This girl is unlike any magic user we have ever come across, and I am tired of us acting like she is merely some ordinary person. That is why our usual recruiting tactics didn’t work.”
Host nodded and wiped his forehead, even though there didn’t seem to be a glimmer of sweat on his brow. “She has a solid head on her shoulders, that’s for sure, and between that and her support system, I don’t see how we could even come close to convincing her to enlist. I even attempted to talk up boot camp and she simply smiled and listened but didn’t really pay any attention. When I was done, she pointed out how long someone spent in boot camp versus actual service in the military, the percentages and statistics tied to injury and death, and the amount of time she would actually have to fulfill her purpose there. It was almost like she had some damned AI whispering in her ear.”
His lips pursed, Conrad flipped through the file before he retrieved a flash drive from his pocket. He stood and walked over to the screen to insert the drive into a slot before he clicked it on. The images flickered out to form a 3D effect.
He swiped his hand across the device a few times until he came to a frame taken from the media footage of the battle at the Gala.
“Watch this clip of the fight,” he instructed and pressed play.
The others focused on the screen as Stephanie hurled magic in controlled attacks to eliminate one would-be assassin after another. Her magic brought chunks of marble down onto one attacker and blasted through others before the scene skipped to her healing the other defenders. Conrad paused it and pointed at one aspect. “There! Do you see that?”
He transferred the image from the screen to the small mounted box in the center of the table, enlarged it, and walked around the table so the others could have a better view. Chavez leaned in and narrowed his eyes. “Her magic is different there than it was during the fight.” He cocked his head for a moment and allowed his brain to catch up to what he saw. “Actually, it seems purer there, while the fight contains a mixture.”
“Exactly,” Host said and chuckled. “Impressive. It took our guys several days to even notice that—and this is why we’re trying to recruit her. When we realized she wasn’t interested in hearing the positives and negatives of a military career, we switched gears. We wanted to find out what information we could get from her. It soon became obvious she had absolutely no intention to help us by spilling everything she knew.”
Conrad glanced quickly at him. “What did you get from her?” he asked, his interest piqued.
Host flipped through his notes, licked his thumb, and turned the pages until he found what he was looking for. “She admitted to the use of something called Earth MU, which she called eMU or ‘light’ magic. Also, she said she used Meligornian magic from normal MU batteries. She wouldn’t confirm or deny knowing of, or using, any other types.”
Petty Officer Taylor put his hands up in the air. “Hold up. Wait a second. Are you telling me that she was able to pull enough of this mythical Earth Energy—the shit we thought only existed in stories—and use it for real? Like she pumped it through her veins?”
Conrad smirked. “Interesting, huh? She is definitely doing something new, something more than merely being sensitive to MU.”
“Yeah, and we think there is a substantial amount of research behind it, too, but how much, we don’t know,” Host stated. “The problem is, if it does exist, the information probably belongs to ONE R&D because that’s who she works for. Obviously, we’ll put in a request with them to learn more. However, they are clearly a major player, even though it’s the first time I’ve heard of them. I’m sure politics will have to play a role in this one—especially with the Meligornians involved.”
Conrad stared off into the distance as he rocked back on his chair and rubbed his chin. He grinned slightly. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully, not for too long.”
Across the city, in the security of her room at the Meligornian ambassador’s residence, Stephanie stared out the window. Her thoughts wandered and she thought about how lucky she was.
For as long as she could remember, she’d dreamt of Meligorn—of the purple haze surrounding the planet, the clouds, the moons, and most of all, the magic.
She’d dreamt of a richness of enchantment so thick that she could stand still in the spiraling, rocketing universe and watch the magic billow out around her.
As a child, her imagination had run wild and she daydreamed of the way the warm Meligornian air mixed with the MU native to the world to create a powerful well of witchery deep inside her.
When she’d been growing up, with every day that had passed leading up to her testing, Stephanie had thought of Earth as dull and lackluster. The dense smoke undulating into the grey sky overshadowed the already gloomy Gov-Subs and colored the perceptions of those who lived there.
The people who trudged to and from work or simply counted down the hours and minutes of life as they rocked meaninglessly on their porches dragged at her. The heaviness was fueled by the paint peeling from the buildings and fences, and the babies’ cries that echoed through the silence of the poor and destitute areas of the country.
Beneath that smog and despair, however, was something Stephanie had never paid any attention to.
Instead of looking up toward Meligorn, she realized she should have kept a steady eye on her very own home. Radiating from the torched and empty landscapes around her was a magic all their own. Faint or invisible to the unknowing but strong for her, Earth’s light magic, or eMU, was worth trying to channel.
Stephanie sat quietly, as she had since the battle at the Arts Gala. She continued to stare at the cityscape beyond her room at the ambassador’s residence. She’d had him remove the outside enchantment that masked the city from view but retained those that protected everyone inside the residence.
She wanted to see her home planet but still clung to the childish whimsy of a castle bedroom—the perfect existence of a princess, even one locked in a tower. When she looked outside, though, her eyes quickly adjusted, and she saw everything she had ignored for years.
It surprised her that she could watch three different types of energy moving and swaying as though the Earth breathed and it had to keep time. She saw the purple energy of Meligorn, even though it was rare and only visible as trails from Meligornian visitors or the odd human who carried a battery as they moved about the streets.
The blue energy, though, was prominent. It was Earth’s very own MU field, a radiance of bright rays and swirls of color like ink in water
. The eMU seemed equally as strong as the MU she felt when she visited Meligorn inside the virtual world, even though she knew that couldn’t be true. eMU, in essence, was never that strong.
Beyond the blues and purples, beyond the wavering winds, was a third energy. She had decided to call it gMU because she’d seen it mixed with MU from Meligorn, and she could see it mixed with eMU, so it had to be galaxy-wide, a kind of Galaxy MU.
She liked that.
This gMU glowed faintly silver, almost invisible in nature and very, very weak. She guessed that if you weren’t trained to look for it—or weren’t really, really sensitive to MU like she was—you could go your whole life and never know it was there.
But she could see it creeping through the other energy and dancing the Earth’s sweet dance. It was almost entrancing.