Jaleck’s lips twisted in distaste. “Unfortunately, the Dreth have been held up with our little human brothers. I can only hope more will arrive and that the meal is neither too large nor too small for us to enjoy.”
“How are things on your homeworld?” he asked and she sent Stephanie a mischievous look.
“Now that the Dreth have the Morgana as our new Spirit Totem, we are ready for the fight.”
“Their what?’ she demanded, and the admiral chuckled.
Frog hooted, and the rest of the team laughed. “Way to go, Steph,” Brenden told her. You’re a Spirit Totem, now.”
She flopped back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. “Great.”
“It’s not that bad, Stephanie,” Avery added. “Symbols are great.”
“Try dating one,” she snapped.
“I’m fairly sure the Toddster doesn’t mind dating one,” Frog snarked.
“I wouldn’t know,” she grumbled. “It’s not like we had much time to work that out.”
“Well, you were the one to put him on the shuttle and send him back.”
“It’s not like I had a choice. The Navy kinda thinks he’s theirs.”
“Why don’t you have him transferred?” Sartre asked. “It’s not like you don’t have Navy personnel serving on the Knight.”
Stephanie stared at him and shook her head. “Dating a symbol is bad enough, but how do you think he’d feel about dating someone who pulls those kinds of strings?”
“I don’t know, Steph. He might forgive you if it meant being near you more often.”
“You think?”
“I know I’d get over it if my girl wanted me around enough to pull a few strings,” Frog declared.
“You don’t have a girlfriend,” she retorted and he blushed.
“How would you know?” he demanded. “I’ll have you know there were a couple of female Marines volunteering to babysit me.”
“That’s not the same thing, Frog,” Avery teased, and Sartre pricked his ears as much as any human could.
“Which two?” he asked and the guard curled his lip.
“As if I’d tell you.”
“You never know. I could help set you up with them.”
“Really?” Frog sounded hopeful and Brenden and Avery burst out laughing.
“More like he’d warn them off.”
V’ritan cleared his throat and they looked around. Jaleck watched them, a look of bemusement written across her face. “As much as the courting habits of humans are entertaining…” she began as the Meligornian’s tablet chimed.
He glanced at it, then frowned at the screen. The admiral caught the look on his face and went quiet and everyone turned their attention to him. They watched as he read the incoming message and his face paled.
When he’d finished and looked up, his face was paler than Stephanie had ever seen it. “They’ve arrived. We have seventeen hours.”
He straightened and moved toward the door. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
As if he’d summoned them, the two aides returned. “We’ll escort you to your shuttle.”
He glanced briefly at Jaleck and surveyed the room. To Stephanie, it was as though he tried to memorize their faces. “It was good to see you all again.”
“Likewise,” the Dreth agreed. “I will join your fleet in another six hours. Your captain has reserved a place for me.”
“I will move the fleet to meet them. We must defeat them before they reach the planet, or we must die trying. We will meet you.” He glanced at Stephanie. “Send to Earth High Command. Tell them Meligorn accepts your offer of sanctuary for its people.”
“You will arrive before the message gets through,” she told him, and he gave her a feral grin.
“I know.” He turned to Jaleck. “We will speak again.”
“I look forward to it,” she told him, straightened, and placed her fist over her heart. “Until Battle’s End.”
He returned the gesture. “Battle’s End,” he replied. “Meligorn will bleed.”
“We will all bleed,” she reassured him. “Meligorn will stay free.”
V’ritan gave her a brief nod. He placed a hand on Stephanie’s shoulder as he passed. “The honor is mine,” he told her as he left.
“Sleep. Food. Rest. And readiness,” Jaleck told them from the screen.
“Agreed,” he said and stepped into the corridor.
Once he’d gone, the aides guided the team to the ship’s pinnace.
“Meligorn will bleed for her freedom,” they promised by way of farewell, and she placed her fist over her heart, borrowing a line from Jaleck.
“We will all bleed for Meligorn,” she returned, and they departed.
The flight to the Ebon Knight seemed to take forever, and she spent most of it speaking to Captain Pederson. The news was not good.
Scans were updating as swiftly as they could, but there was still lag between what they saw and when they returned. Seventeen hours was sixteen by the time the data arrived and the rest of the Teloran fleet had arrived in the interim.
“There are eight of those big ships the scouts faced and how many others?” she asked.
“Thirty-two,” the captain told her.
“And how many do we have?”
“If by we, you mean the Meligorn fleet and the Dreth, there’s us, the Dreth ship, and The King’s Warrior, four other largish ones and a couple of hundred smaller ones.”
“So we’re good, right?”
His lips narrowed into a thin, straight line. “It depends on how many attack ships they can field and how many guns they have. We could be in a great deal of trouble.”
“Oh.” Her heart sank and she sighed. “Well, they’re not Meligornian or Dreth—and they’re definitely not us.”
His lips twitched into a fleeting smile and he nodded.
“They don’t have a Witch, either.”
Stephanie wasn’t sure how much comfort that should be. What she’d seen of their magic had shown it was powerful—and they would face a fleet of such wielders. She shivered and hoped the Meligornians would even the scale.
“I take it V’ritan has sent the plan out?”
“Yes. We blow them up before they get near Meligorn.”
Chapter Fifty-One
The fleet broke orbit an hour after Stephanie had returned, and the approach left her with numerous challenges to think about. The Ebon Knight was not the biggest ship in the fleet or even anywhere near the second largest.
While she was big for a mercenary craft, she simply didn’t compete with the battleships and cruisers for sheer size and mass. She wasn’t the smallest ship in the fleet, either, and out-massed the scout ships and corvettes.
She felt tiny flying between The King’s Warrior and Selestine’s Hammer, but she wasn’t alone. V’ritan and Jaleck had decided it was better if they used the bigger ships to mask the actual size of the fleet by flying several smaller ships between them.
The Ebon Knight cruised alongside two destroyers, three gunboats, and three corvettes. It was a tight formation, but the AIs talked constantly to each other and ensured that no-one got too close, even at a distance human pilots could not have maintained with safety.
The fleet made one orbit of Meligorn. V’ritan gave the crews a reminder of what they were fighting for and showed those below whom they were protecting. What good it would do them if any of the Teloran ships got through, Stephanie didn’t know.
She supposed it was better than nothing.
It also had the added advantage of bringing the fleet out on a better trajectory for meeting the Dreth and incorporating their warship into the fleet. She was present when the admiral’s ship merged with the others and took station on The King’s Warrior’s right.
In the Teloran fleet, the commanders watched the Dreth join the Meligornian’s ranks.
“There are more than we expected,” one noted.
Another tilted his head, his attitude unconcerned. “It would ha
ve been worse if the Federation contingent had been able to join them. We arrived with very little time to spare.”
A third studied the massed ships as if to assess their strength. “Can we take them?”
The first rolled its shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Does it matter? As long as we pull them away from the planet, our responsibilities are accomplished.”
On the deck of The King’s Warrior, V’ritan studied the enemy ships in return.
“I thought there would be more,” he mused.
“Let us hope not,” Jaleck answered from the communications screen.
In other command centers, Meligornian captains scrutinized the oncoming Teloran vessels with calculation, and a meeting was called.
“Tell V’ritan it’s time,” one said as their screens signaled an incoming call. He gave a rueful smile and put the King’s Warrior through.
“It is time,” he told them. “Send them out.”
As much as it pained him to send the smaller ships ahead, he knew it had to be done. The enemy fleet had already sent its skirmishers to meet them and the cruisers and corvettes were better equipped to deal with them.
The smaller ships were more maneuverable and better able to challenge their counterparts, while the bigger ships battled from a distance and used massed gun batteries to swat anything that came close.
Stephanie, Lars, and Vishlog had been given places on the command deck, but the captain had drawn the line at the rest of the team. “With all due respect, ma’am, this is a naval engagement and neither the Marines nor your men will be of any use to me.”
“And me?”
“You’re with me, ma’am, because you might be able to find a use for your magic that will benefit my ship—but only if you can see what’s going on.”
She’d smiled at that. “Point taken, Captain.”
“And your escort is tolerated because they can’t do the job they were hired for if they’re locked in their cabin—but that doesn’t mean I’ll allow more than two of them to get underfoot at any one time. Understood?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Our job is to clear the trash so The King’s Warrior can get close enough to target the large vessels. Once he’s in there, we need to get the hell out of his way and try not to let anything crawl up his ass.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “And?”
The captain bared his teeth. “And we’ll try to do a touch of ass-crawling ourselves. If we get in close enough, we might sneak a missile through to somewhere vulnerable.”
He gazed out to where the Teloran ships stalked closer.
“I’d really like a piece of that one.” He pointed, and Stephanie followed the direction of his finger.
“That one?”
“Yup. I don’t like the way it’s lookin’ at me.”
“Nor I,” the Ebon Knight added. “I do not like it at all.”
The captain’s brow furrowed. “Now, Ebony, I’m sure it’s nothing personal.”
“It’s bigger than me and it’ll harm a world my friend holds dear. Of course it is personal,” the ship replied.
Emil’s frown grew deeper. “Please follow the mission parameters.”
“I know the mission parameters,” the Knight huffed. “We are to protect The King’s Warrior and Selestine’s Hammer from incoming attacks while looking for an opportunity to make a decisive strike against the Teloran battleship.” She paused. “I shall inform you if I notice such an opportunity and act upon it.”
The captain looked toward the ceiling and cleared his throat. After a moment, he lowered his gaze and glanced at Stephanie. “I’m going to ban you from associating with my ship.”
She snickered. “I’d say I was sorry but I don’t think it will make a difference.”
“Captain…” Wattlebird’s voice carried a note of warning, but his eyes remained fixed on his console and his hands moved over it like lightning.
He didn’t add any more but he didn’t need to. The captain took the command chair and waved Stephanie back to her place in the auxiliary seat behind him. “I don’t need to worry about your safety.”
“Nor I,” the Knight added as if she needed anyone else’s opinion.
Of course, Lars and Vishlog had to join in.
“Me neither.”
“Or me.”
She glared at them and received mock-innocent stares in return.
“Fine!” She threw her hands up, dropped into her seat, and pulled the harness over her shoulders.
Every seat in the command center would fold up over its occupant to form an emergency escape pod in case the bridge was compromised. Three auxiliaries were all it had, and Vishlog would find his a tight squeeze if he ever needed it, but it fit. Besides that, he insisted his place was with her.
It wasn’t like she could argue, not with Lars to back him up.
“Hang on!” Wattlebird shouted and the ship banked abruptly.
The forward viewscreen showed them tilting as they sailed headlong toward a Teloran cruiser.
“Shields!”
Missiles exploded ahead of them and Stephanie raised her hands to conjure a wall of magic. Lars wrapped his hand around her wrist. “Save it for later in the battle.” He glanced at the captain. “Or if the shields fail.”
She regarded him with a long, steady look and he removed his hand. Very carefully, she lowered her hands into her lap and twisted her fingers together to keep them there when more missiles flew toward them.
In the weapons section, one of the crew looked at another. “I’m glad they added extra reinforcing.”
“Yeah.” His colleague gave him a shit-eating grin. “Isn’t this great?”
“You always were a little abnormal, Terry.”
“Remind me to speak to you about that, later,” Terry replied, focused on the controls, and swept the gun around.
“I love the way you think there’s gonna be a later.”
“What? Do you think we’re gonna miss the victory party?”
“More like our wake.”
“Yeah? Well, we won’t miss that. We can’t be late to our own funerals.”
He turned to target another missile and his crewmate did the same. Neither of them said much after that. They were too busy eliminating enemy ships or incoming fire.
On the command deck, Stephanie’s hands twitched but the shields held.
“Help the Korres Tarr!” the captain called, and the screen shifted to show one of the corvettes on fire.
“Her shields have gone,” Lars murmured.
Stephanie pushed magic toward the stricken ship, not sure she’d be fast enough to stop the next missile. “We need a way to rescue the crew,” she grumbled as a haze of blue surrounded the corvette.
“Get your asses out of there,” the Captain instructed and went suddenly still. He turned a pale face toward Stephanie and swallowed hard. “Captain Astofyl requests you hold the shields for another twenty seconds and then release them.”
She frowned, puzzled at the request, but she nodded.
“He also asks that you not interfere. This is the Korres Tarr’s choice—and he thanks you for the opportunity to take it.”
The blue wavered and Lars laid his hand on her shoulder. “Close your eyes if it helps.”
Her expression grim, she shook her head and raised it so she could see the corvette as its engines flared and it increased power. That was good. It was what she’d wanted it to do. What she hadn’t wanted was to see it propel itself directly at the closest battleship—or to see the two gunboats follow it in.
They held nothing back. Using the corvette as the tip of their spear, they rocketed forward while every gun fired and missile batteries launched at the shortest possible intervals.
“That can’t be safe,” she muttered.
Vishlog shook his head, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“They will not survive,” he told her. “There is no longer a requirement for safe.”
With a twist of her wrist, sh
e extended the Tarr’s protection to cover the patrol boats’ flanks.
“Hartuitus baskilor!” came from three different crews.
“Baskilor nye myerda…no thanks needed,” she replied and an unbidden sob caught in her voice. “Myata baskilor sheven. You are owed my gratitude. Meligorn bleeds.”
“For her freedom!” the crews roared and the Korres Tarr pounded into the side of the battleship and the two patrol boats followed.
Stephanie stared at the coruscating fireball, her skin cold with shock.
“Drop the shield, Steph,” Lars told her and gave her a gentle nudge. “Now. Or you’ll screw it up.”
She complied and channeled the energy into the expanding ball of purple fire that engulfed the Korres Tarr’s hull.
“The heavens help us all,” Captain Pederson breathed. “Selestine’s blessing upon them.”
When she glanced around the command center, Stephanie saw each crew member lay their right palms briefly over their hearts. Many swiped at their eyes as they returned to their consoles and the task of keeping their own ship alive.
V’ritan’s order came as a surprise.
“Clear us a path to the second rank. Leave the lead battleships for us.” His voice was rough. “Their sacrifice will not be wasted.”
“Follow my lead!” Wattlebird shouted. “Those little bastards have trouble getting a lock if we do…this…”
The maneuver sent the Ebon Knight into a slow spin and brought a torrent of curses from several sections.
“And now with the spinning…” The captain groaned.
“This maneuver threatens to breach structural safety parameters,” the Knight’s voice informed him crisply. “And The King’s Warrior informs me that acrobatics are for smaller ships.”
“The King’s Warrior can suck it,” Jonathan shouted back.
“And there’s the disrespect…” the captain muttered.
“The King’s Warrior informs me that you will all be sucking vacuum if my rotational velocity increases.”
“Dammit.”
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 55