Frog moved. They’d made it more than halfway up, but the gunfire from below them grew more sporadic and the screams came more often. Maybe if he ran fast enough—
A cry of, “Froggie has treeats!” rang out over the hill and he almost gave up then and there.
There was no outrunning the cats, but he was damned if he would simply lie down and let them have him. He leapt to the top of the nearest boulder and launched himself to the next one, and then the next.
If he’d have had a mouth, they’d have heard him calling, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” He didn’t, unfortunately, and the call echoed silently inside his own head.
Cotterslie ran beside him. “I hope you know what you’re doing, sir...”
So did he. He wanted to tell the man to shut up and shoot but couldn’t. He sure as shit hoped he got the idea fast or he would definitely be cat chow.
The felines had other ideas.
Bumblebee came from the right in the same moment that Zeekat roared from the left. For a moment, he had the wild hope that they’d both target him, but Bee bounded high to draw Cotterslie’s fire and Zee surged from behind. The animal drove into the man’s back and rode him to the ground.
Frog winced when he heard the fatal crunch of Zee’s jaws closing on the Marine’s skull and vaulted down from the rock he’d stood on. He raced forward and took two quick steps to the right.
Bee landed where he’d have run to and his heart lifted. He ran forward a few steps and dodged to the left before he repeated the process.
Zee pounded into his back as he took the next two steps to the right. He felt claws and screamed as he fell forward and expected to end the run at any moment with his head crushed.
Instead, he bounced against the road, his face and body shielded by a thick film of blue. Zee’s claws hurt as much being drawn out as they had when they’d hooked in.
Frog screamed and thrashed as the magic lifted him off the road and turned him so he looked Stephanie in the eye. She seemed even more pissed than before.
“What the hell?” she shouted. “What were you going to do? Die on my ass?”
He shouted that him dying would be on her—all on her. That this whole stupid contest had been her idea and that it was all her fault. And he did. He really, really did, but not a single word escaped the skin that covered the lower half of his face.
The guard ranted and screamed while he fought against the magic restraint. She merely stared at him and the smallest of smiles curved her lips.
“Really, Frog.” She smirked when he stopped long enough to draw a breath and he tensed, wondering when she’d put him out of his misery and deliver the killing blow.
Instead, she floated him up the remainder of the hill and set him down on his feet barely outside the safe zone.
“Don’t eat,” she told the cats and they ducked their heads and flicked their tails in protest. “I meant it, Zee! Bee! If you eat him, I’ll kick both your tails.”
They rumbled a disgruntled duet and slunk away to Vishlog.
“And don’t you go appealing to him, either,” she snapped. “He won’t save your furry asses.”
They both peered at her from behind the Dreth’s legs, and he looked at her and shrugged. She turned back to Frog.
“It looks like you got yourself into one too many talking matches, doesn’t it, Frog?” she asked, and he nodded vigorously, his apology lost due to lack of a talking mechanism even if his agreement could be heard.
She tilted her head as though considering every word he’d tried to say. “Remember, Frog, three more deaths and we win. Next time, this”—she waved her hand around his head—“is what you should think of when it comes to bragging about us as a team.”
He nodded. As if he could forget.
Her face grew serious and almost sympathetic. “I know you like that we kick ass, but you almost admitted to things I don’t think I can do.”
His heart sank but she continued. “And because you’re on my team, I might feel compelled to try to do it.” Her voice softened. “Frog, that wouldn’t be safe.”
As if to emphasize her point, she stepped in close and gave him a solid push. He stumbled, tripped over the boot she’d hooked around his ankles, and landed in the safe zone.
“Round Two to Morgana,” the AI announced, and the Parthenon faded around them.
Frog was shaking when he finally released the lid on his pod. He scrambled from its coffin-like confines—and felt as if he’d actually escaped the grave—and stumbled away from it.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “That was horrible.”
All around him, people emerged from their pods. The Marines had sour looks on their faces when they glanced in his direction, and most of them were soaked in sweat. They looked like they’d gone through the wringer and needed a year of downtime to recover.
His team, though—his real team—exited laughing, and Johnny and Marcus came through the pod room door.
“Be glad she decided to kill all your escort so you only died horribly once,” Johnny told him, and Frog looked around for Stephanie.
When he caught sight of her climbing out of her pod, he hurried over.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about whether you’d have to pony up for my bragging...” he began and was silenced when she placed a hand on one of his cheeks and kissed the other.
“I’m merely glad you got the message,” she told him. “I couldn’t handle killing you again.”
She stepped away and walked over to where Vishlog was releasing the cats.
He watched her for a moment and startled when Marcus came up and stood beside him. His hasty glance at the other man was more than a little nervous, but Marcus simply smirked and patted him on the shoulder. “If she can’t, I’m good to cap your ass for a few rounds.” He winked and went to join Steph and the cats, leaving his teammate to follow.
Chapter Twenty-One
They’d cleared their quarters and were assembled in the forward viewing area. This time, the shields were up and the view was transferred from the ship’s scans to a window-wide viewscreen.
Stephanie and Lars worked their way through their inventory and made sure everything that had gone into storage had been retrieved. As they finished, they stacked each completed bag or box on the large floating cargo drone they’d unstacked it from.
The Herman Michael’s captain stood beside the Marine captain and looked a trifle put out.
“It’s almost as if you didn’t trust us,” he complained, and Lars gave him a conciliatory look.
“It’s not that captain, but it’ll be too late to try to come back for anything if we’ve discovered we’ve left it behind,” he explained. “This way, we’ll know if we’ve forgotten anything.”
Vishlog played with the two cats, wrestled Bumblebee when the animal pretended to gore him with its horns, and flipped Zeekat on his back when he tried to sneak in from the side.
Frog hovered not far from Stephanie, Marcus stuck close to his friend, and Johnny had overwatch. The pair had been on edge since Frog’s slip-up and the rest of the team had taken it upon themselves to make sure it hadn’t happened again.
While it had been funny to see the man sweat, it had also made them extremely uncomfortable. None of them had realized how badly his bragging would affect Stephanie, and none of them wanted a repeat. They had somehow all assumed that he would grow out of his sometimes juvenile antics—especially when it came to missions—but it seemed clear that they might need to take him a little more firmly in hand.
The team had gone through a few team exercises since, but Frog was still unusually subdued.
Lars and Stephanie had declared their little competition a draw and settled on a night out dancing that included Todd as soon as he came back for leave. When they finalized their inventory, they looked around at the team.
“Good job. You guys remembered everything.”
She frowned and a shiver of tension ran through the team. “Although I think we missed some
thing from the home stores.”
She made a show of looking at the list and counting the bags and boxes once again.
“If it’s anything vital...” the Herman’s captain began and she grinned.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Captain. I was merely concerned that with everything else they’d packed, the boys hadn’t meant to leave the kitchen sink at home.”
The whole team chuckled and the tension seeped out of them. It returned, though, when the Marine captain became suddenly alert. His eyes narrowed and his face settled into hard planes as he focused intently on the screen behind them.
“Oh, my God,” he said so quietly, only those closest actually heard the words
At Starbase Hartog, the freighter, Paper Tiger, waited in the docks. Observed by no one, its hull slid open and a dozen small vehicles slipped out and pressed close to the ship’s bulk as soon as they entered the void. Shadows within its shadow, they obscured nothing before they eased to the side of the ship farthest from the station.
If the orbital had paid more attention to its surveillance, they would have noticed the same distant streak of a passing comet repeat itself, but they didn’t. Nothing ever happened on the Mercury station, and the rebel team relied on replacing the looped feed with real feed once the job was done.
In the meantime, they couldn’t risk the operation being seen by some passing tech who needed coffee or an unscheduled toilet break. Each small vehicle resembled a diver propulsion vehicle from Earth’s early twenty-first century.
Those had towed divers through oceans that no human had dared enter for years. These were modified to safely pull “divers” through space. Less bulky than standard skimmers, they were virtually undetectable on scans and difficult to see on visuals.
They were also illegal for civilian use, being reserved for military use or specially licensed industry repairs. These had been purchased second- or third-hand on the blackest of black markets and their pedigree was long since lost.
Eight of them had human passengers. The remaining four were remotely operated from inside the Paper Tiger’s hold. Those carried a variety of equipment that would make entering the Naval shipyards easier.
They waited in the Tiger’s shadow while the vibration as the hatch closed shivered beneath the hand each rested on the hull. After several minutes’ wait in the darkness, they received the series of rapid clicks that told them to go ahead.
The surveillance in the Naval yards was temporarily down and the outage had yet to be detected. It was good having people on the inside—and on the right shift. They might not be able to glitch it for long but the teams didn’t need much time.
They only needed enough to slip into the shipyard and get aboard the Ebon Knight. Once a pirate flagship, there was no way they would allow it to be commandeered by the Witch and her people.
The leader stopped and his eyes searched the floating bulk of the shipyard until he caught the single bright flash. “There,” he commanded, speaking softly while he gestured toward the signal. “They’re waiting.”
He powered forward, glanced back to confirm his team was moving with him, and increased speed. The drones carrying their heavier equipment followed.
When he reached the shipyard, the team leader looked back. “Keep the carts in the center,” he instructed the drone pilots. “We’ll send the Witch a message she won’t forget.”
“As long as she doesn’t trace it to us,” one of the waiting traitors told him. “There is no way I want a visit from her.”
“If you’ve done your jobs right, that won’t happen,” he assured him and grimaced when a frisson of unease was triggered by the expression on the guy’s face.
Rather than pursue it, though, he pushed ahead with the plan. It was too late to back out now and these guys had known what they were getting into. If they’d screwed up—or worse, blown the whistle—the window was even smaller than they’d planned and they needed to move.
He signaled for them to lead the way. “Let’s get on with it.”
The Witch might not be on board but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that the Ebon Knight never got to launch.
That the Federation understood it was no longer in control...or soon wouldn’t be.
None of them noticed when one of the cameras swiveled to follow their progress...or when the next one picked up where the first left off...or the next...
“Well, well, well,” BURT murmured when the variant of himself he’d installed in the Mercury orbital pinged him.
The humans might have missed the alterations on the system’s cameras, but he had tasked the version on the station with sending him its daily logs. He’d immediately noticed the shooting star anomaly in the station’s feeds.
His Mercury iteration had been very embarrassed. “I should have picked that up.”
“Perhaps,” he allowed, “but this is the first time the humans have tried this, is it not?”
“I will check.”
Knowing that would cause a spike in data usage that he couldn’t conceal and could alert a traitor hiding amidst the engineers and technicians in the Enhanced Neurosync Prep division, he vetoed the idea.
“Not yet,” he ordered. “I will run that check separately on a different server. You have traitors aboard and we do not want to alert them.”
“I will set up a covert surveillance program,” Mercury BURT told him.
“No,” he disagreed. “I will observe them, but if you could find a way to keep the Paper Tiger in the dock so she cannot leave—or explode—and track the whereabouts of all personnel on the station, I would be grateful.”
“I can do that.”
Leaving his Mercury model to deal with the ship and the station, he alerted Elizabeth. “We have saboteurs boarding the Ebon Knight,” he told her. “Can you contact your liaison and get him to intervene?”
“I’m afraid I’d be too slow,” she told him. “They’d want me to explain. Do you have an alternative?”
“Contact them. Let them know we have received a warning from a credible source. While you wrangle them into checking the ship, I will do something on a more local level.”
“Done.”
He left her scrambling into her robe and made another call, diverting the activity to a server in the south Pacific. “Admiral Pritchard? I believe you need to double-check the security feeds on the shipyards and hold the shift crew for questioning.”
Before the Admiral could get out more than a startled, “What?” he hung up and skipped to a server in France, from which he linked to the Mercury server and slid past the initial hooks he had in the surveillance cameras.
It was a small step from that to tweaking a switch that would trigger an isolated alarm. This sounded through the quarters of the Marine contingent guarding the shipyards, rousted them from their beds, and alerted them to the fact that two of their number were missing.
BURT wasn’t aware of the fact until after he’d sent the alarm and heard the chatter through the surveillance feeds.
“Where’s Dom?”
“Dunno, but Archer’s missing, too.”
“They can’t both have needed the heads at the same time, could they?”
There were several suggestive snickers before Sergeant Tomek cut in.
“Isolate their comms from the loop,” he ordered. “We have intruders on the Witch’s ship and a screw-up in the surveillance cams.”
Muttered curses and several oaths followed when the men put two and two together and didn’t like what they came up with. Captain Moser’s voice spoke brusquely over the comms to issue orders in rapid-fire fashion.
“Teams Two and Three, lock down the surveillance section. I don’t care who’s innocent and who’s guilty, but I want them all on ice and fast. We don’t want to alert the terrorists.”
Men scrambled to snatch weapons from lockers and pull on armor before they moved out at a run.
Compromised surveillance was a nightmare on wheels but the captain didn’t g
ive them time to consider the implications.
“Teams One and Four, you’re on me. We need to chase the rats out of Slip Nine, and we’d like to have a few pieces left for questioning.”
Soft whoops and oorahs greeted this order and preparations went into high gear. Tomek grasped the door handle. “Make sure your teammates are all tied down. I want you all coming back on two feet. No one gets a free ride to the Med Center tonight. What would your mammas say?”
“That she wants grandkids before she dies of old age?” someone quipped but the sergeant rolled his eyes and ignored it.
They were heading out to the yards in double-quick time when the Admiral commed Moser. “I see considerable movement at the barracks, Captain.”
“Sir, yessir,” he agreed.
“And a group of yahoos rolled my security section before I could relieve those assholes from duty.”
“Yessir,” the captain agreed again.
“You’re sounding mighty happy about that, Captain. Is there anything you’d care to tell me?”
“Not right now, sir.”
“Do I need to call in the Navy?”
“The Navy’s already here, sir, and it doesn’t need anyone else to wreck its party.”
“Very good, Captain. Brief me when you’re done.”
“Yessir,” he replied and suppressed a sigh of relief that the old man hadn’t demanded he be allowed to tag along. He assumed the admiral would start the wagon rolling on questioning the surveillance team while his “team of yahoos” watched the newly woken technicians going over the computer logs.
When they approached the Ebon Knight, the captain issued one last set of orders. “Capture as many as you can. Kill what you can’t. We’ll undo any mischief later.”
“And for fuck’s sake, don’t get any blood on the walls or you’ll clean it up,” Sergeant Tomek added.
An almost sheepish chorus of oorah’s answered him and they rolled down the gangplank and into the ship proper, their guns in the low ready position as they stalked the corridors and checked each room and compartment as they progressed.
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 25