Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Read online

  “However,” he continued, “we stand united in our uncertainty regarding the Witch.”

  He raised a hand when she would have argued and she settled into silence.

  “To be precise,’ he clarified, “we are not so sure about what the Witch can do to help her people. Regardless of her citizenship, she has yet to visit this world and she will have her home planet to look to—as well as Meligorn. I fear she might not have time for Dreth and her people.”

  The ambassador remained silent until he added the phrase she was waiting for. “Do you have anything to add in your recommendation’s defense?”

  “Might I suggest we test the Witch to see if she is truly willing to be a part of our world and its defenses?” she asked quietly and more murmurs rippled around the council hall.

  After a glance at his screen, the high councilor made a brief motion with his hand. “Continue.”

  “The Fortress of Fire and Respect will reveal her worth.”

  Keyboards clattered and the Council rose. “Fire and Respect,” rose as a single chorus around her, and Jaleck bowed her head. While she was relieved, she was also appalled.

  She knew her people. They needed to have someone to follow and none on the current Council were capable of uniting the world. Their own families and clans, yes—and some could unite their regions—but the world? No. Not a one.

  If the Morgana could call to the Dreth’s blood, they would follow her into the very jaws of Tegortha and back.

  “You believe she can unite us.” It was not a question and the look on the high councilor’s face was solemn.

  Jaleck laid her hand over her heart. “I so believe, High Councilor.” She dropped to one knee. “From the blade to the brain, I believe it.” She sighed. “But you know us Dreth. We can all be a little stubborn and hard-headed. It will take the Fortress of Fire and Respect to win us, and even then, there will be some...”

  She allowed her words to trail off, knowing that everyone in the hall understood.

  He had another matter he wished to clarify. “I understand Vishlog of Family K’leth is with her?”

  “Yes, High Councilor.”

  The councilor beside the high councilor broke into a rasping laugh and all heads turned toward her. She had held the position for over fifty years and only handed it to the most recent incumbent when he could best her in combat—and she was a cunning fighter.

  The current high councilor had needed both strength and brains to defeat her, and she had smiled when she finally declared him the victor. He had kept her as his advisor on the grounds that it was better to have her at his side than at his back.

  Once she had the Council’s attention, she spoke. “If there is any Dreth with a harder head than that one, I do not know of them—and that is saying something.” She paused to give her words more impact. “Yet he follows her willingly?”

  “Very,” Jaleck told her, and the old councilor nodded.

  “Then we will have to make this trial one for all generations to remember.”

  The ambassador’s heart sank.

  Unaware of the effect her words had had, the woman continued. “Every family will have the chance to be represented. She will face every Dreth who doubts her, and she must convince each and every one of them of her worth.”

  She paused, looked at the high councilor, and clearly amended what was about to be an instruction. “I recommend, High Councilor, that the families vote by combat. If they believe she is worthy, they should field only a token force, but if they disagree—”

  “Agreed!” echoed from across the hall, and Jaleck was not surprised to see House Echgrech standing in their seats. “We will field the entire clan.”

  The ambassador gaped, then smoothed her face to calm as the family representatives rose and shouted their opinions across the room. At the end of it, they had been limited to selecting only their best if they strongly disagreed and were ordered to send no fewer than a single representative if they believed the Witch was worthy.

  “To send no-one is to lose your voice before the Council.”

  Once it was settled and the Council dismissed, Jaleck turned and headed to the door. “What have I done to you, Stephanie?” she murmured. “You give me respect and I drop a meteor on your head. I hope you can one day forgive me.”

  She pressed her lips firmly together and returned various greetings with a brief nod of the head. Hrageth knows silence is better. I open my mouth and put a friend in danger. What’s next? Ask them to eat a sword?

  And not a word of that escaped. By Tegortha’s tail, she was surrounded by many who would think seeing the Witch eat a sword was a good idea. She definitely wasn’t about to speak it into reality.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gareth had been raised in sales. He’d cut his teeth in the business taking used shuttles, refitting them, and selling them for twice what he’d acquired them for. Hell, if he’d found them, he’d sold them for as close to new as he could, but this was something new. For one thing, he didn’t have to sell it. He merely had to get the chief engineer to see how it fitted together and then make it happen—and he had to do it as quickly as humanly possible.

  Or faster.

  He led the engineer along the reinforced umbilical and into the ship proper. The man didn’t take his eyes off the tablet he had been handed. “Is this for real?”

  “It’s as real as you or me,” he reassured him.

  Cameron Hargreaves had come highly recommended, and his qualifications were impeccable. He was also in his late forties, pepper-haired and clean-shaven and solid but not fat, although he could go that way if he didn’t take care of himself.

  The engineer turned the tablet sideways as though that would change anything he was looking at. After a couple of minutes during which he simply stared at it while he walked, he stopped abruptly.

  “Holy shit! Is this a battleship?”

  The younger man suppressed a sigh. It had taken him long enough, and he was supposed to be one of the best in the business. He mentally ran through the list of those with similar qualifications and the guy still came out on top.

  If this man wasn’t up to the job, no one was.

  On the way to the bridge, they stopped at the computer center. Columns of computing power blinked at the engineer as he raised his head from the tablet to compare what he saw on the screen with the reality.

  “They already fitted it, huh?”

  He kept the retort behind his teeth and made an all-encompassing gesture with one hand. The man followed the movement and gave a soft whistle. “What are they trying to do? Create their own Virtual World?”

  That answer came when he opened the door to the first pod room. There were two of them, each housing thirty pods apiece, and yet another set aside for the team itself. That one had one special pod, six top-enders for humans, another for a Dreth, and two more were being designed...

  “For big cats?” The engineer sounded bewildered. “Like lions and tigers?”

  “Similar,” he told him. “Very similar.”

  “Oh...” He knew the man was making a mental note to look them up. Maybe he would do, after all.

  The tour continued and his companion uttered another soft whistle when they reached the kitchens. “How many fucking chefs do they think they need?”

  Gareth stopped to give the man time to get over it. After all, he’d have to do the hiring for maintenance and make sure the life support systems were up to scratch. He might as well get an idea of what kind of thing was going on.

  “Let’s see…we’re supposed to have an executive chef, a sous chef, two chefs de parties, two commis chefs—nice to see them thinking of training— and a half-dozen kitchen hands— What are they doing? Running a floating restaurant here? I woulda thought a battleship had more practical requirements.” An expression of bemusement seemed to have taken root on the engineer’s face.

  “Be that as it may, you’ll deal with the kitchens for maintenance and the executive chef for set up. W
e thought it best that you had an idea of what would be in here.”

  “Yes...well. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  They moved on, Hargreaves with a furrowed brow as he tapped the tablet and spoke softly into a throat mic as he took notes and gave himself suggestions and reminders of what to have checked in the space.

  “You do have a head technician?” he asked when they reached the Bridge. He walked through the area and noted the consoles in various stages of installation. “I would imagine you need at least two pilots here, a navigator, someone on the comms and scans, three for arms, and at least a half-dozen in engineering and life support.”

  He paused and gazed past the bulkhead he was facing. “And you’re gonna need a full crew on rotation for all areas. Planetside, a business shuts and folk go home. That’s not really an option here—and the stars never sleep.”

  Gareth took him through the decks still under construction and he compared the schematics on the tablet. “So, crew quarters here...”

  They moved on. “And fighting crew here. They want thirty dual-occupancy cabins with an option for sixty hot bunking. I think I can do better than that...”

  He continued to mutter while his guide listened and decided he’d made the right choice after all.

  They moved down a deck and back toward the bow. “Special closets? Are you kidding me?” Hargreaves shifted the tablet sideways. “These aren’t the specs for closets. What sort of an idiot do you think I am?”

  Gareth looked at him and the man grinned. “Don’t answer that and, yes, I’ll take the job. I was looking for a challenge. Now, this,” the engineer continued. “This isn’t a closet. I know a brig when I see one, although not from the inside. I’ve usually been the one retrieving my men before we lift.”

  He tapped the tablet again. “See, this closet would hold about twelve, and that’s even if half of its occupants were Dreth. There’s only one reason you’d use that kind of reinforcing in a wall.”

  “And this closet”—he slid the screen sideways—“while a little smaller, has the same kind of reinforcement, but I’d assume it’s some kind of isolation cell. Yeah...we can do this. I’ll make sure the suppression measures are hard to get to and harder to avoid when we do the install.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this before,” Gareth told him, and his grin faded.

  He held the tablet up. “Does the Navy know about this?”

  The younger man had wondered when it would come to that. He pulled his own tablet out and slid the relevant documentation across to the engineer’s. “It’s all yours.”

  Hargreaves glanced at the screen, then froze and stared. “Just who the hell are these people?”

  Gareth smirked. “That’s Classified and Top Secret. Are you still interested?”

  “Well, hells yes! A challenge and a mystery. Exactly how bored did you think I was to lay in an enticement like that?”

  Very bored, he thought, given the man had been classified as on the edge of doing something suicidal, or dangerous, or maybe even suicidally dangerous—like actually boarding the ship he’d stared at through the observation port.

  Its destination had been listed as the “Outer Edges,” meaning it would go to the edge of known space and beyond it. Fortunately, its departure had been delayed due to several of its crew changing their minds and he had delayed it even further by snagging Hargreaves.

  They moved down to the landing bays.

  “So, this is the VIP hangar,” Hargreaves said and compared the specs of the space. He moved along to the next area. “And this is where the first shuttle is stabled.”

  He crossed to the opposite side of the ship. “And this is the space for its sister.” He paused. “You do realize these beauties are closer to the dropships Marines use for hostile landings?”

  Gareth shrugged. “That’s way above my pay grade. In fact, that’s more in line with yours.”

  The engineer gave him a quizzical look and nodded. “Fair enough, then.” He moved toward the stern. “Your ex-atmospherics go here. Good choice, by the way. Those can do ship-to-ship boarding as well as planetary—”

  He caught his companion’s look and stopped. “Right. Pay grade. They’re good little boats, is all, and bring back memories.”

  From the way he said that, it seemed that not all those memories were good. The man moved on, however, and took them up a few decks. “Life support.”

  From there, they trundled back toward the stern. “Drives.”

  And finally, they arrived amidships. “They really need to make up their minds. This is more something you’d find on an R&D ship—and an advanced one at that.”

  Gareth was glad the man knew what he was looking at because he would have to be able to coordinate it all—and it would get one very demanding Elizabeth Smith off his back. Finally!

  “Red Button or Green Button?” Hargreaves murmured, clearly in his element.

  “Pyizdyets!” Semyon thrust the keyboard away and brought his hands down on the desk in frustration. With a growl, he yanked it back and glared at the screen. “This time, guvnosos. You and me...”

  Erik looked at him. “English! And don’t tell me it happened again.”

  He responded with an inelegant snort. “Okay. I will not tell you, but whoever this guvnosos is, he is very, very good.”

  “Do you ever think you’re getting beaten by a girl?”

  “That never happens to me. That kind of shit is all yours to take.”

  His colleague glared at him. “Don’t forget who got you the job.”

  “And a pyizdyets of a job it is, too. Look at this shit!” He gestured abruptly at the screen and went to work, coding as fast as his fingers could move.

  Erik sighed and focused on his own screen. “Paritsa...it will be okay. Crap!” he muttered seconds later and typed rapid-fire code into the system. “Yob tvoy mat, guv.”

  “English,” Semyon reminded him and Alex, one of the other hackers, laughed.

  “You two are very entertaining—fuck!”

  “At least we are more creative than you are.”

  “Nah. You’re merely reverting to Russian. I, at least, can swear in fluent English.”

  “English is your native language.”

  “And your point? Agh! Double the fucks! Who the fuck is the fucking arsehole working security for these guys?”

  “Yelda,” Semyon muttered and he flipped him the bird.

  “At least I am a big one and not a tiny wiener like you. Getting beat by a girl—”

  “How about I make you my bitch?”

  “How about you don’t make promises you’re not equipped to keep?”

  “Children. We have a job to do.” The new voice was female and they all flinched.

  Yana had a temper and broke all the rules about women in their male-dominated world. Worse, she was their boss and she tolerated mistakes even less than any man they’d ever worked for.

  All chatter ceased. and they returned to work. Not one of them wanted to be singled out for her idea of discipline. She watched as they focused on their screens and their fingers danced over their boards like their lives depended on it.

  That, she thought, is a possibility, and returned her attention to her own monitor.

  They worked madly for several minutes before Semyon broke the silence. “Ah! Poshyel k chyertu. Motherfuck.”

  She was about to lift her head to reprimand him when her screen flashed. “Yob tvoy...” she murmured and hurried to fight back. This was not how it was supposed to go.

  They were the predators. Her team were the ones supposed to be wreaking havoc. This? This was not in the script.

  Semyon had one thing right. Whoever was doing the white-hat work for One R&D, they were very good. She fended off a counter-attack that wasn’t even remotely defensive and tried to find another way around the firewall.

  Whoever had programmed their static defenses had done a very thorough job. It was like they could think like a computer—or a hacker.
Or maybe a cross between both. If she’d had to lay money on it, she’d have said it was an AI but there weren’t any of those running loose for hire.

  She hijacked an inward-bound packet and slid a worm into the stream, only to watch it explode when it reached the gate. Well, govna.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Around the room, the hackers swore, some threw their hands up, and others typed as they tried desperately to counter something the system they were attacking was throwing at them.

  No, this definitely wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. She reminded herself of that for the second time and suddenly, it got worse.

  “You really are in a bad place for this kind of work,” a strange voice told them and all movement stilled. Yana looked around at the cameras and saw one of them turn to “look” at her. “I take it you’re in charge.”

  “Yob tvoy mat,” she told him, and the person on the other side of the camera chuckled.

  “Some have called me motherless,” he replied, “but my parentage is hardly your concern. No, your concern should be in the very unsafe working space you have been assigned.”

  She looked at the others. Some exchanged nervous glances. Others stared at the cameras.

  The voice came over the intercom into the abandoned office space and made them all jump. “For example, one can shut the water off.”

  Alex jerked his head and looked at her, and she nodded. The man stood reluctantly and walked to the small kitchenette set along one wall. Hesitantly, he turned the taps and no water came out.

  He licked his lips and glanced nervously at her as he shook his head. “It’s gone.”

  Before she could respond to that, the voice resumed.

  “And, of course, there is the need for power if you want to leave quickly—unless you want to have to run down all those stairs...”

  The hackers looked at each other, at the stairwell in the corner, and then at Yana. She opened her mouth and the lights went out.

  They came back on again a moment later and their observer laughed. His chuckle assumed sinister tones.

  “Power... It’s such an unpredictable thing.”