He drank a third of the first bottle before he got up, swept the three bottles up, and dumped them down the drain. Getting drunk wasn’t going to help his thinking at all.
And deciding to go against the Mistress would cause him to always be looking over his shoulder.
She would either come back to Devon or she would continue to operate as she had, sending instructions herself or through Stephen. His job for the next decade was to pay off his debt.
Then he could decide what to do. Until then, he was going to do everything he could to support the Mistress.
Including changing this damned world.
Nock’s four eyes always searched around them. He openly carried a large rifle, and was constantly vigilant. He had blocked two efforts on Lerr’ek’s life so far, and who knew how many he had stopped just by walking beside him?
I am here, a voice said in his mind.
“Shit!” He spun around and grabbed the rifle as Nock started to turn toward him. “NO!” he yelled, pushing the rifle down.
Nock stopped, but all four of his eyes were focused on someone now standing behind Lerr’ek.
“Who is that?” Nock asked, his guttural voice deep and slow. Some thought Krenlocks were slow, but the miracle was that they could speak at all.
Lerr’ek, hoping Nock wouldn’t push him out of the way and try to raise his rifle, took a quick look behind him. His shoulders relaxed.
It would have sucked to guess wrong and now have an enemy able to shoot him in the back. “That’s the Mistress.” Lerr’ek let go of the rifle. “Don’t shoot her. You will only piss her off.”
A flare of red shot through her eyes for a moment before receding. “I’m still dealing with the last asshole who tried. Who knows, I might need a shrink to deal with it.”
Lerr’ek turned toward his boss and bowed slightly. “Mistress.”
“Lerr’ek.” She nodded and turned her gaze toward the Krenlock. “Nock.”
Nock nodded, but she saw that his eyes were already looking around them. “What race is he?” she asked Lerr’ek.
“Do you wish to speak here?” he asked instead. When Baba Yaga shook her head he suggested, “Then perhaps in my office?”
“Sure,” she agreed, “but you will have to lead the way.”
Lerr’ek continued walking into a large pedestrian tunnel with shops lining either side of the forty-foot wide and thirty-foot tall passage. “He is a Krenlock,” Lerr’ek started as Nock walked behind them.
“Just watch the back,” she called over her shoulder, jerking a thumb behind her. “I’ll get the front.” She turned her face forward again.
Lerr’ek looked at her. “I smell blood.”
“Mine,” she admitted. “It was an object lesson that even an elephant can die due to a germ.”
“I’ve no idea what an elephant is,” Lerr’ek admitted, “but I’m assuming you mean something large?”
“Yes,” was all she said. “So…Krenlock?”
“They are a distant cousin to the Zhyn, genetically speaking. Smart at an instinctual level, and if they like you they are impossible to subvert. Once they decide they will take a contract they will do their best, period. I found Nock a couple weeks after our meeting.”
“Trouble?” she asked.
“Twice he has blocked attacks, no idea how often him just walking with me stopped others.”
“We show you have been attacked virtually a lot of times.”
“Twenty-seven,” he agreed.
“No, two hundred and seventy-six,” she corrected. “ADAM has been helping. He let through the ones which had zero chance of affecting your security setup.”
Lerr’ek reached up and stroked his chin. “My security is inadequate?”
“Very,” a voice said from his bone conduction speaker. “I will suggest a security strategy for your team to implement now that I understand the methods your competition has used to attack you. Plus, we have brought a computer connection to provide you off-planet computing resources which can’t be hacked from here.”
Lerr’ek spoke aloud. “What about being hacked where they reside?”
“Un-fucking-likely,” Baba Yaga replied having listened in on the conversation with ADAM. “That shit was hidden in rock inside one of the safest locations in the Empire and then forgotten.”
“Forgotten?” he asked.
Nock’s eyes continued to search each store they passed, the air vents above, and the people around them as the three walked through the tunnel.
“More later,” she replied. “Too busy out here.”
—
“Drink?” Lerr’ek asked as the two of them reclined in dark chairs around a small table in his personal office.
Nock had stayed outside and closed the door behind them.
“No, thank you,” she replied, and she nodded to the door. “He’s trustworthy?”
“One of the best you can buy, but they come with a caveat,” he admitted.
“Which is?”
“You have to explain why you need them, and worse, your purpose,” Lerr’ek admitted, “so I had to explain that this world was going to be run by another, and what your expectations were.”
“And he believed you?”
“Yes.” Lerr’ek poured himself a small drink of a local fruit juice. “It seems the concept was too farfetched for a Zhyn to make up, so it had to be true.” He raised his drink in her direction. “Ah-twa-zay,” he said before tossing it down.
“I have the information on the leaders who are shit.” She looked up at him. “Which is most of them, and also the ones who are good.”
“How many?” he asked.
“Two,” she admitted. “You will need to get them to come here this afternoon. They will need to know the plan for a new Devon. There will be openings in the political hierarchy, and we need decent people to fill them.”
“How many are going to be removed?” he asked.
“None of the worst can come back. Many of the really bad will be shipped off-planet to a location which has poor interplanetary transportation. If a few of the second batch piss me off, they will become members of the first crew.”
“None will be staying on-planet?” Lerr’ek asked.
Her eyes flared once. “Oh, the first group will be staying on planet. Their bodies will fertilize the ground to support a future generation of Devons who will know what a decent political support structure should look like,” she answered. “Mind you, those who are currently in Group One have already perpetrated actions worthy of the death penalty, so I’m not acting without reason. They have been classified as incorrigible.”
“Do you need support?” he asked. “I can strap my weapons on again.”
“No.” Her voice grew soft. “I’ve got support, I just need to listen to them more often,” she admitted. “Once we have this political issue solved, you will receive new designs for my base. I will be moving additional people here in the future so the base is going to be huge, with additional room for expansion.”
“Why?” Lerr’ek asked. “Are you expecting to go out and attack others?”
“No, I’m expecting others to want to attack here. And the best way to say ‘no’ is with guns the size of asteroids and a willingness to pull the trigger.” She pursed her lips. “I suppose it goes without saying that one without the other is useless.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “I will be finished with this operation by tomorrow morning when the light breaks.” She tapped her finger on the table. “You have the names of the two people in your message queue. Send me a message if you are unable to get them to come here.”
She started for the door and Lerr’ek stood up. “Do you have an operation name?” he asked as she passed him.
She turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow.
“Military.” He shrugged. “We often named our operations.”
“Yes…” She thought a moment. “Let’s call it ‘Night of the Long Knives.’”
CHAPTER TEN
Lance nodded to the two guards outside the small meeting room. One opened the door for him, allowing Lance to sip his coffee as he stepped through.
Thank God they had brought all the seeds they needed for the required delights from Earth, or he might have wished for a much shorter life.
“Bartholomew.” Lance nodded to his compatriot. Barnabas and Stephen were already sitting at the table discussing something.
“You doing all right?” Admiral Thomas asked, handing Lance a breakfast pastry. “This one was made out of a fruit from Yoll.”
Lance took a bite. “Shit!” he mumbled as the pastry made a mess all over his shirt. “Dammit!” He looked down and handed his coffee cup to Admiral Thomas, who chuckled, then grabbed a napkin and started wiping the shirt. “Wow,” he mused as the fruit came off, “this fruit doesn’t stick to it.” He turned to toss the napkin away. “Thank the Lord. Patricia would have strung me up for messing up my new shirt.”
The Admiral handed the coffee back to Lance. “I think your wife just knows you.” The two walked over to the table. “That fruit is a serious stain-monster on normal clothing, so,” he nodded to the shirt, “she must have had that shirt made out of some sort of special cloth.”
Lance looked down to where the fruit had formerly resided on his shirt and grunted. “Good stuff.”
The two men took a seat. “Barnabas, Stephen.” Lance nodded and took another sip of his coffee. “How are things?”
“Ready to go out with Tabitha and Peter in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” Stephen replied.
“Any ideas where?” Lance asked.
“Sure. We will swing by a couple of Nathan’s suggestions, one of Tabitha’s, and then the planet Devon.”
“Devon?” Admiral Thomas pursed his lips. “Where is that, and why would you look there?”
“It’s out of our boundaries, and I know of a contact she might speak to over there. I’ve tried calling him, but his answers are just a touch vague—which seems fishy to me.”
Lance put his coffee down and picked up his tablet, turning to the notes for this meeting before asking, “Why not go sooner?”
“I’m not sure if there really is a problem or if I’m butting up against an HR issue.”
“HR?” Barnabas asked.
“Something Baba Yaga told him a while back. Essentially her whole HR book is condensed into one rule.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is it?” Lance asked.
“Don’t piss her off,” Stephen replied. “I can’t tell you more than that, but it is a fine example of simplicity.”
“How about those gray areas when you don’t know if what you are doing is going to piss her off?” Admiral Thomas asked.
“Then they call me,” Stephen admitted, to the chuckles of those at the table.
Admiral Thomas leaned forward. “So even though you call the main contact, your questions related to her whereabouts—if she is sharing that at all—are going to be deflected because she knows you might call?”
“Yes,” Stephen answered.
Admiral Thomas’s eyes sparkled. “Fucking brilliant. One rule to worry about, and she offloaded the annoying questions to you.”
Stephen shrugged. “I think maybe she should have offloaded more to me in the last hundred years.”
“I thought she had,” Barnabas said, looking around the table. “I don’t know what else we should have taken from her shoulders, but I really did think we had the load.”
“I’m not sure,” Lance replied, “that we knew what to look for. It’s obvious in hindsight, but most situations like this are.”
“The Yaree,” Admiral Thomas offered. “Her getting into the middle of the battle was a big-ass sign that she wasn’t doing what she wanted to be doing.”
“Baba Yaga,” Stephen put out for the group. “That was just a modification of Karillia so she could continue to get out and mix it up.”
“Her people dying all the time, and she had to stay out of the action.” Lance sighed. “It hits every leader at some point. He nodded to Admiral Thomas. “Some of us, at least, have the training to know what to watch for in ourselves. When I feel too much stress I reach out to Bartholomew here to vent some, or Patricia.”
“Same,” Admiral Thomas admitted, “except not Patricia.” He smiled. “I have another confidant.”
Barnabas raised an eyebrow and Admiral Thomas pointed a finger at him. “Stay out of my secrets, old man.”
Barnabas smiled as the door opened behind Lance. “I have so far, but now I have an itch. I won’t read your mind, but you have provided me with a puzzle.”
“What’s a puzzle?” Frank asked, as the door shut behind him. “I love a good puzzle.”
“Admiral Thomas has a significant other he isn’t sharing,” Lance told Frank as the man walked behind him to take a chair between him and Stephen.
“Oh, that.” Frank sat down. “Old news.”
Both Admiral Thomas and Barnabas narrowed their eyes as Frank smiled. “What? I’m not giving away my sources.”
“And that is why you are the Info-master.” Admiral Thomas pursed his lips. “Can I ask how you know?”
“Sure,” Frank agreed. “But I’ll have to ask you to keep it to yourself.”
Admiral Thomas thought about it for a moment. “Okay.”
“Barb is a hopeless romantic, and has schemes upon schemes to hook people up. She sent the lady your way.”
“Well.” He stopped talking for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and finished, “Sometime I’ll have to thank her, and you, for keeping that to yourselves.”
“Barb likes the hunt. She doesn’t share the knowledge just because she can.”
“Good woman,” the Admiral replied. “Rare, but really good.”
“No comment,” Stephen threw in. “I’m still dealing with mine.”
Lance looked at Stephen. “Does Jennifer have any suggestions about finding Bethany Anne?”
“Only that a woman will only be found when she wants to be, or at least that’s true for Bethany Anne. The challenge is, are we looking for Bethany Anne or Baba Yaga?”
“It does all tend to come back to that,” Frank agreed.
“What do we need to do now, and what do we need to do for the potential new Federation, Lance?” Admiral Thomas asked.
Lance played with his coffee cup, twirling it around with his fingers. “Well, when we get Bethany Anne back we need to ask her to go on vacation.”
Stephen coughed into his hand. “Not really sure that will be a problem.”
“The ‘getting her back without causing an interstellar situation’ part would be nice,” Barnabas said aloud. “Remember, as Baba Yaga she is a representative of the Empress, who isn’t here right now to help with anyone who might be pissed off by the Witch running all over their civil rights to track down and kill the Kurtherians.”
“They need a heavy dose of killing,” Stephen replied, “so from that perspective I completely agree with her efforts.”
Lance said, “Yes, and those efforts are part of what keeps the Federation talks so exciting.”
“Which is a euphemism for?” Frank asked.
“A royal pain in the ass, with a side of ‘a kick to the nuts,’” Lance replied.
“They don’t want her in the Federation, and she doesn’t want to be Empress.” Frank shrugged. “I’m not seeing the problem.”
“There isn’t a problem with that,” Lance said. “And they will pay a very pretty penny for giving Bethany Anne exactly what she wants. The big issue is what they want from the Etheric Empire to help create the Etheric Federation.”
Frank looked to his friend. “Which is?”
“They want us reduced significantly—our technological advantage minimized and our military neutered enough to be fair to the rest.”
Barnabas blew out a breath. “Some will want us to be weaker than that if they can get it.”
“Of cou
rse, and that is where I hit them over the head with the Empress Bethany Anne stick. There is no fucking way they would ask this of her, so they don’t want her at the sessions at all.”
“Why? Do they think you are weak?” Stephen asked.
“They see me as Bethany Anne’s yes-man, or at least as one who won’t just randomly kill someone for disrespecting her during negotiations. Hell,” he grumped, “Addix told me in no uncertain terms that compared to Bethany Anne, they consider me a baby at the table.”
“Seems like you should have Bethany Anne show up at least once,” Frank commented. “What are the plans?”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Lance admitted. “If she comes back to us in a decent enough mindset, I’ll see if she would be willing to show up at least once.”
Planet Devon, QBS Shinigami
Baba Yaga walked toward the armory from the laundry area on the ship. “Who knew that stuff was so expensive?” she grumbled.
ADAM’s voice came through the speakers as she walked the ship. “We were trying to protect your head.”
She reached up to the back of her skull, which had healed, but the sympathetic pain was still there. “I can’t believe I did that. What a flaming rookie mistake.” She took a couple more steps before adding, “No, a rookie wouldn’t have made that mistake. I’m an arrogant…”
She stopped in the middle of the hallway.
“What is it?” ADAM asked.
“Nothing.” She resumed walking. “I’ve got to armor up.”
“It won’t be a fair fight.” ADAM commented.
“Who said I wanted fair?” she retorted, then turned a corner toward the doors on the right, which swished open for her. “I just want it done.”
“Then why not just hire it out?” ADAM asked.
“That would be impersonal,” she replied, looking over the weapons on display and wondering which setup would be best. “I don’t want to just be a judge. We have proof of their law-breaking, and they have committed crimes heinous enough to deserve capital punishment.” She tapped a finger on her lips as she looked around. “And I have to be the executioner on my planet, as well.”
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