“With all due respect, sir, I beg you to read the Naval version of events, rather than listen to the civilian reporting,” he began in an effort to reason with the man.
The admiral turned a virulent shade of red and began to sputter with indignation, but before he could find any words, the display flickered and everyone glanced uncertainly at their consoles.
“Did you do that?” Harrison demanded and glared at his opponent as if it was all his fault.
The commander stared at him as though he couldn’t believe what he’d actually said. As he opened his mouth to deny any culpability, a new voice cut through their conversation.
“Put a sock in it, Harrison. I did that.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “Fleet!” he managed to exclaim.
Matthias stiffened to attention and heard Borgesson’s boots scuffle the floor as the master sergeant snapped to mirror his stance. On the screens in front of him, every one of the recalcitrant admirals and vice-admirals stood from their chairs.
Including Harrison, who continued to protest while he stood to attention.
“Have you heard what this…this man wants to do next?” he demanded. “His latest hair-brained scheme is that we should grant the Witch a Badge of Inquisition. It’s ridiculous! We can’t allow it.”
“Oh, go jump in the lake, Admiral. We ask her to throw her body in harm’s way for the sake of the Federation. We demand she make decisions on ships breaking apart around her or bursting into flames out beyond Orion’s belt.”
He paused but before they could be sure he’d finished, he continued. “We give her nothing or a handful of Marines and no way to get any of them out alive and tell her to destroy a small fleet of pirates or a rebel stronghold—and off she goes and does it.”
Harrison stared out of the screen and his face shifted from shades of white to shades of red while his body trembled with outrage, but the fleet commander ignored him.
“I think she’d worthy of the right to hold the Badge of Inquisition, don’t you?”
The man gaped, his expression stating very clearly that no, he didn’t think the Witch was worthy, even if his voice did not. His superior officer didn’t wait for him to find the words. His tones hardened into declaration over the speakers.
“This Federation is at war, and it’s about time we damned well acted like it. Van Leeuwen!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” He made no effort to hide his grin as he pressed the button he’d set up prior to the meeting.
He hadn’t known if he’d receive the authorization to use it, but he’d made damned sure to have it ready. The fleet admiral’s intervention was unexpected but he was grateful for it. As the fabricator in the corner of the room hummed into life, the admirals exited the meeting slowly and their screens faded until none of them remained.
As the device beeped its completion of his order, he faced the blank screen anyway.
“Thank you, Fleet,” he told it, came to attention, and saluted.
The master sergeant came to attention behind him, then followed as he jogged to collect the Badges of Inquisition from the printer.
“You made enough for the entire team?”
“Yes, Arne. They’ll follow her orders and they’ll need the authorization.”
“Did you know the Fleet would—”
“No. I didn’t know he was even aware of the meeting. I tried to contact him but his secretary never got back to me.”
He glanced once more at the screen and threw it another salute for good measure. “Thank you, sir.”
Without waiting for a reply, he raced to the door and the Marine trotted after him.
As it clicked shut behind them, a soft chuckle echoed through the empty room.
“You’re very welcome, Commander. God speed.”
Van Leeuwen didn’t hear the response and would have been floored if he had. He would also have been floored to know the jet warming its engines on the tarmac wouldn’t have been there without a very high-level comms call to authorize it.
Instead, he reached the tarmac and found it waiting. It had already begun to taxi when he handed the navigator the coordinates.
“Get me there,” he ordered. “And don’t spare the fuel.”
The man studied the console for a moment and glanced at him. “God, I love it when the fuel can be wasted.”
His navigator groaned. “Buckle up, sir, Master Sergeant. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
“I honestly don’t care as long as it’s a fast one,” Van Leeuwen countered as the jet pivoted.
Arne grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to a seat.
“It’s my hide if yours is scratched,” he grumbled and pointed at the fist Matthias had closed around the badges “And besides that, you want to arrive in good enough condition to hand those over.”
He buckled up as the jet made a slow turn and the engines roared.
As the commander was pushed back into his seat, Todd lowered into another push-up and tried to ignore the catcalls and comments from his audience. He hadn’t asked for it, but it was still there.
He’d have sighed but that would have wrecked his form, and he really tried to improve that.
“Woohoo! Work those pecs, Toddy-boy.”
“Mmm-mmm-mmm. I bet the Witch loves a nice set of delts.”
“I don’t know about the Witch but I sure as shit do.”
“And?”
“Do you think she’d mind if I kept those warm for her?”
It was all he could do not to laugh. Ever since Steph had sent him home on that fast luxury cruiser, he’d had nothing but shit from his teammates. The comments from the girls were on a whole other level, though.
And relatively new.
Honestly, he didn’t quite know how he felt about it.
It was flattering, of course, but they weren’t Steph and he wasn’t interested. Well, most of him wasn’t interested—the parts of him that counted, which were his head and his heart. Witch or not, Steph was the only girl for him, and the rest of them simply didn’t compare.
He finished the set and sighed.
She liked his pecs—or, at least, he thought she did. He didn’t know for sure, though. It wasn’t something that had really come up in conversation. He tried to imagine it.
Hey, Steph, do you like my pecs?
Yeah, no. That was definitely not something he could ask, not yet, anyway.
Todd sighed, stretched, and headed to the mats. A little sparring should take his mind off how much he missed her and maybe give his admirers someone else to tease.
“Does anyone want a match?” he called and moved to the edge of the mats.
One of the guys had been toweling off but now, he turned.
“Sure, Todd. I could do with another couple of rounds—and your ass looks like it needs a good kicking.”
He smirked, aware he hadn’t shed his entourage. Still, he tried to ignore them as they arrayed themselves along the edge of the practice area.
Someone whistled. “Go, get him, Todd.”
“Yeah, go the Toddster.”
“Great,” he muttered and rolled his eyes at his opponent. “Sorry about the audience, Daz.”
Darren Stieglitz shrugged. “All the more witnesses for when I take you down,” he quipped.
“In your dreams,” he retorted, shuffled in, and threw a couple of exploratory punches.
His opponent blocked them and returned a couple of jabs of his own, but it was his footwork that almost caught Todd by surprise
“What’s the matter, Toddy? Not used to dancing?” called one of the wags from the sidelines.
He shimmied over to Daz, slow dancing suggestively, and grinned when he responded in kind.
“This crew needs something to gossip about.” Darren chuckled and immediately attempted to drive his fist into his gut.
Todd laughed as he caught the guy’s wrist, forced it out, and lifted it over his teammate’s head.
“Do you wanta try that again?”
Daz obliged and he forced his arm back, stepped in to press his body close, and slid his arm around the other guy’s waist. “Let’s dance, pretty boy.”
“Ooh, pretty boy,” one of the wags mimicked.
“It’s gonna take you a while to shake that one.” He snickered and Darren twisted out of his arm and grip before he lashed out with his foot.
That one caught Todd in the gut, and he bounded back and rubbed his stomach with one hand as he closed in. For a moment, the two of them circled and each tried to find the advantage. He feinted a quick blow at Daz’s head and darted close when his opponent pulled his head back to avoid it.
Bringing his foot down on top of his opponent’s, he drove his fist into the man’s stomach, then smacked him on the cheek with his other fist. Darren doubled over and dropped to the mat on his knees.
He bounced back to give him room to stand.
“Dirty bastard,” the man muttered, scrambled to his feet, and lunged at him.
Todd sidestepped the charge.
“Aww! C’mon, Daz. You know it’s not personal.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
One look at his face told Todd the next round was for real, and he settled to watch his every move. He blocked the first strike and bounced back out of range of a kick. As he moved in to make an attack of his own, the lights went out.
“What the—”
Darren’s cry was enough to warn him, and he dropped to the mat, allowed the guy to come at him in the dark, and tackled him as they made contact. He scrambled to get away, but Todd flung himself on top of him and pinned him as the viewscreens around them came alive.
“This is Navy High Command,” announced Fleet Commander Smiley. “There has been an attack on Earth.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Despite what he’d said earlier, Jalel had made it to the island—and he really wished he hadn’t. Not to be outshone, he’d joined several tourists who bribed the captain to take his pinnace to shore. The cameraman remained on the ship and piloted the drone camera he was filming with.
“This way, I know one of us will get out with the footage,” the man explained from the safety of the deck, and Jalel had sat and hung on as a crewman started the engine.
The small party beached the boat a few yards down from the docks and leapt out onto the sand. They’d have immediately leapt back into the boat if the crewman hadn’t taken cover behind the low rock wall that edged the promenade.
The drone went high as though seeking the source of the gunfire and dipped low to focus on the anchor’s face. Jalel yanked his tablet from its pouch and looked at the footage the drone had taken.
“By the purple haze…” He groaned and remembered he was broadcasting live. With one more look at the tablet, he focused on the drone.
“Well, well, well, folks. It looks like we made it to San Jomar in the nick of time. Apparently, Stephanie Morgana knew someone in the business community intended to try to kill anyone who voted against them.”
Somewhere, in an office downloading the footage from the drones, a technician made the leap from the drone to the mansion’s security systems—or they thought they did. What they managed, instead, was to tap into the live feed from one of the businessmen’s’ tablets.
He’d made the recording in the hopes of taking a rival to court and so acquire his business but then he’d had the bright idea to send the footage directly to one of the news corporations. This would have worked better if he hadn’t been shot shortly afterward.
Now, rather than a handsome deal for his exclusive footage, he donated it to the world at large—or would have if the studio hadn’t captured it and sent the events directly to Jalel’s tablet. The anchor stopped long enough to absorb what he saw before he looked at the drone.
The cameraman had seen the signal to give the reporter some space and elevated the device to capture footage of the battle. Rather than lose the opportunity for more, he’d hastily snagged one of the tourists who competed for the thousand-credit prize.
“You! Is your drone still flying?”
The girl nodded, her face alight with glee. “I’m the only one.”
“How’d you like to take your first paid footage?”
“I’ll be your apprentice?” she asked, her eyes too bright, and the cameraman groaned. Trust him to find a smart one. The studio would kill him.
“Sure kid, you can be my apprentice.”
“Now?” she asked and glanced at her mom, who was filming their conversation on her phone.
The cameraman cursed inwardly and nodded.
“As of now, you can be my apprentice.”
“Until I get my ticket?”
He sighed.
“Yes, dammit. Until you get your own ticket. Okay? Can we get the footage, now?”
“Hell, yes!” she shouted. “Where are we going to film?”
“I want everything you can get of the firefight and anything on the Witch. And if you break my drone, it’s coming out of your pay, got it?”
“Got it, boss.”
He groaned again and glanced at his tablet as Jalel demanded he bring the drone down. Apparently, the reporting god was finally ready to get on with the job.
“What was the vote about, you ask?” the anchor asked when the drone descended. “This was the meeting where the rich and powerful decided if they would back the Federation in a war against the aliens, or if they would demand that the Federation sue for peace on our behalf.”
The anchor paused and switched to the feed coming in from the other drone—and where Travis had found a second cameraman he didn’t know. For a brief moment, he really hoped the man hadn’t done anything stupid. He wasn’t sure the network would forgive it.
Mind you, for this footage, the network might forgive anything, including a new hire.
He merely hoped the man had picked a good one. Reviewing what he saw from the businessman’s phone, he pieced enough of the story together to avoid being sued by the survivors—he hoped. Given that they were trespassing, they would have to rely on the public to get past any legal proceedings.
“It is clear that the Morgana put the issue to the vote and came prepared to deal with any dissent over the outcome. Whether or not she’d have dealt with dissenters on a peace vote win quite as forcefully as those dissenting the decision to back a war is something we’ll never know the answer for, but the vote was to fight for our freedom.”
Jalel spliced in the moment when she had challenged the supposed peace party to try to stab them in the back—and when the first of them drawn their hidden weaponry and opened fire.
After letting it run for a few seconds, he continued. “It seems those wanting to broker peace with the aliens were not as peaceful as they claimed.”
He let more footage play before he continued. “How these peace mongers intended to hide the massacre they planned—or if they would even try—will never be known, but the gunfire you can hear now is the result. Right now, not even I know if those who want to fight to protect us will survive.”
With his usual instinct for dramatic effect, he paused for breath and signaled Travis to take the drone up and film more footage from the battle. When he watched the resulting drama play out on his tablet, he soon called it back. Behind him, the gunfire died.
“It seems that the Morgana and her team have captured the ringleaders of the so-called peace movement and that those who fought against the vote’s outcome are now laying down their arms.”
A dropship thundered overhead, the Navy markings clearly visible on its hull.
“It also looks like the cavalry has arrived and it’s time to get the official view of the Witch’s actions. This is Jalel Trylfir, signing off to seek some answers.”
On millions of screens around the world, his image faded to the studio, where Amelia Howard stared, open-mouthed, at the view behind her. As soon as she realized she was live, she snapped her mouth shut and turned to the camera.
“Well, there you have it, folks, coming a
t you live from the Federation News team on San Jomar island. We’ll be back with more right after this message from our sponsors…”
On San Jomar island, Stephanie caught sight of the drone and then of Frog. She hoped Burt had one of his technicians on that or they would have a PR disaster.
“Frog! Leave him alone. He’s not going anywhere.”
“He shot me in the ass.” The guard hauled his boot back to kick the offending businessman again, but Lars caught him by the collar and hauled him away.
“You don’t know it was him.”
He gave the man a greasy stare. “I’m darned sure.”
“There were other men where he stood. It could have been any one of them.”
“Or not.” Frog’s glare didn’t diminish, so the team leader shoved him in the direction of another pile of bodies.
“Go see if we have any survivors over there and if the medics want your help to patch any of them up.”
“I won’t patch any asshole up. They shot me.”
“Not all of them shot you, Frog.”
“Most of them.”
“Not even most.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s what you say….” Despite his belligerence, Frog marched toward the bodies, limping noticeably.
Stephanie looked at the team leader. “Will he be all right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, sure. It looks like the shot creased his cheek rather than penetrated.”
“It still hurts like hell,” his teammate yelled and Lars smirked, but Frog hadn’t finished. “And there’s a hole in my trousers.”
One of the drones lowered as though it tried to take a better look. Lars drew his blaster and fired at it but with little effect. Whoever was on the controls of that thing was fast—kid-fast, if he had to guess, but there were no kids there.
He took another shot at the drone and it jinked out of harm’s way before it wagged its tail at him, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Fine,” he told it. “You get to live another day but come down on my battleground once more, and I’ll fill you so full of lead you’ll be too heavy to fly. You got that?”
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 41