Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3)

by Michael Anderle

  “And if you overcompensate,” the Knight added. “Please be considerate of my shell.”

  “Ebon Knight, the path is clear. Please clear the line of fire. I repeat, clear the line of fire.”

  “Holeeeeey Sheiiiiiiit!” Jonathan yelled and his hands blurred over the console.

  “I’ve got this,” Stephanie declared and sent a pulse of magic ahead of them. It struck the oncoming flotilla of fighter craft and they tumbled away.

  The Knight settled and the wild twist Jonathan had put on her faded as he demanded more power from the engines. The ship surged forward before the power dropped abruptly. It surged again and the pilot cursed.

  “Engineering!”

  “Deal with it,” Cameron snapped in response. “Someone dumped a boatload of nMU out where my engines could find it. The power will be a little dodgy.”

  “Get us clear!” the captain commanded when The King’s Warrior went ballistic and fired in every direction at once, the attack not limited to only missiles.

  Pulses of MU streaked in concentrated bursts from above the huge ship’s missile batteries, and a haze of purple shrouded the massive ship in a slowly expanding cloud. Stephanie watched it and her eyes widened.

  She unbuckled her harness and slipped out of her seat.

  “Where are you going?” Lars demanded as he and Vishlog hastened to follow.

  “Engineering,” Stephanie shouted and bolted to the door. “I’ll be back.”

  “You’ll be confined to quarters,” the captain threatened but she didn’t stop.

  Instead, she bolted down the corridors and half-ran, half-slid down the stairwells in the center of the ship.

  “Steph!” Lars shouted as he and Vishlog collided going through the door.

  “I can clear this,” she cried. “We need the engines.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Stephanie didn’t wait but raced pell-mell down the Knight’s corridors until she reached the engine room and skidded through the control room door.

  “Someone needs to tell that damned pilot he’s not flying starfighters,” Cameron bellowed. He stopped her slide and hauled her to her feet. “Can you fix this?”

  “I’m gonna try.” She took a deep breath as she drew both hands toward her chest.

  The engineer clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Wait.”

  She held her breath and raised an eyebrow as she exhaled.

  “Will this work?”

  His question remained unanswered. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply again as she drew in the gMU and MU around her. When she breathed out, she reached for the nMU she knew to be present. Her emotions surged and rolled from fury to despair, and she focused on pushing the negative emotions away.

  “Tell Wattlebird to pull back on the throttle,” she instructed. “He’s about to get all the power he could wish for.”

  “Steph…” Lars’s voice faded away quickly, and she heard him speak rapidly into the communicator.

  “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast!” The pilot’s voice sounded close to desperate and she fought the urge to scream at him.

  Instead, she pushed the urge away along with every negative emotion she was feeling. She’d felt this way before and she knew what it was from. When she focused on the negative energy that swirled through the engine room, she resisted the urge to pull it in.

  The last thing she wanted was to explode. That would really upset the team—and Cameron. He didn’t look like he’d take too kindly to cleaning Witch remains off the engine housings.

  Once she knew where the energy was, she pushed it away and thought only of keeping the engine room clear. Then, she thought of the battle that raged outside. The Meligornian ships would need their engines, too.

  With that in mind, she pushed the negative energy as far away as it would go.

  The engines surged around her and Jonathan’s whoop of sheer delight resounded over the comm link. Cameron surveyed the engine room and nodded.

  His thanks coincided with the captain’s roar. “Get your asses back to the command center.”

  Stephanie hesitated. What if the energy returns?

  It was as though Cameron could read her mind. When she hesitated, he spoke.

  “That’s probably the last time you’ll be able to do that.” He glanced at the engine room. “And maybe the last time you’ll need to for a while.”

  The floor tilted beneath their feet and Vishlog caught her.

  “Time to go,” he rumbled, and Lars concurred.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Farther down the battle line, Jaleck approached the two Teloran battleships closest to her vessel. Her own small escort had cleared the way and remained mostly intact. As the King’s Warrior opened fire and the Ebon Knight put on more power, the small flotilla spun beneath the ships and circled again.

  Hrageth’s Vengeance was the Dreth flagship and her homeworld would be appalled if she lost it, but her leaders had refused to listen. If they had, the Vengeance would not have been forced to fight without them.

  The captains would be furious they’d missed the fight. Her lips drew tight in a fierce battle smile. “Their misfortune,” she murmured and gave the order to fire.

  “Purple Haze and Selestine’s Bow, focus fire on the Teloran to our left. Clear the Ghargilum’s flank.”

  “Blood for Meligorn!”

  Their response broadened her smile. The Meligornian will to fight was something else her political counterparts had mistaken but she could remember when they’d fought each other. She was surprised the others had not.

  Perhaps she’d been the only one whose grandparents had returned alive from the Battle for Kormeth’s Leap.

  The Telorans had been gravely mistaken if they’d thought defeating the mages would be easy. To her dismay, the Hrageth’s Vengeance did not draw first blood. That honor went to the Haze, but it was an honor for which the Meligornian ship paid dearly.

  It did not reach the Teloran battleship before it died, but some of its debris found the hole it had made in the battleship’s hull. One of the corvettes took advantage of the breach, swept in, and targeted multiple missiles at the gaping hole while her guns raked the Teloran’s sides.

  What’s she trying to do? Jaleck wondered. The armor’s too thick there for her to penetrate.

  The armor might have been too thick for ordinary rounds to penetrate, but the energy that exploded along the hull painted a brief glowing line that the gunboats and missile ships targeted. Before long, there was a second yawning rent in the Teloran ship.

  “They’d better leave some for us,” she muttered as her first salvo struck home.

  The smaller boats scattered and wheeled around her to challenge the swarm of small fighters that emerged from the big Teloran vessel. One of her missile crews saw their chance and delivered a barrage into the enemy’s open hangar.

  The first wave seared into the wave of fighters and exploded without reaching the battleship. The second wave almost made it but one of the tiny Teloran ships flew into its path and it exploded prematurely.

  By then, the Vengeance’s escort had engaged the remaining fighters and the third barrage was successful. Some of that was stopped when the hangar doors slid closed, but several penetrated.

  “That’s the last time they’ll use that hangar,” Jaleck observed as another cavernous wound appeared in the Teloran’s skin. She didn’t have to tell her gunners where to aim and the missile crews concentrated on destroying as much of the big ship as they could.

  Unfortunately, the alien vessel attempted to do the same. As the corvette and the smaller ships faced the fighters, Selestine’s Bow and the missile destroyers worked to stop the Teloran’s return fire from reaching the Vengeance’s thick skin.

  Some got through but not many, and the Meligornian squadrons flew hard to keep it that way. The corvette painted another line and this time, the attacks were followed by a storm of missiles from the Vengeance’s teams.

  The massive Teloran cracked and f
inally shattered, and the smaller ships broke the pieces down to crumbs before they altered course toward the next enemy battleship. Jaleck left them to it and focused on the other one.

  “Fire!”

  As the Vengeance’s missiles hit home, the Teloran ship shimmered, and a wave of apprehension and despair flowed over Jaleck.

  “Brace! Brace! Brace!” she ordered and her crew gave her a startled look.

  She took a firm hold on the rail in front of her and planted her feet. “Do it!”

  Around her, the crew obeyed. Between her and the Teloran, one of the Meligornian ships blew apart for no apparent reason and several Teloran fighters exploded into nothing.

  “What the—” was as far as the scan team got before the wave struck.

  The Vengeance shuddered and its forward momentum faltered.

  “We’re hit!”

  “Now tell me something I don’t know!”

  “It was some kind of negative energy wave and our engines are crashing. We won’t be moving much longer.”

  “It will be long enough.” She pointed at their enemy and let her command broadcast throughout the ship. “Force dock us with that dark-assed bastard. We’ll take the fight to them.”

  The pilot grinned, his expression reflected around the command center. “With pleasure, Admiral.”

  “Prepare to board,” she ordered. “We need a new ship.”

  She studied the enemy hull. “Gunnery. Make some holes. I want more than one way in. We’ll breach them from every direction we can.”

  Roars of approval met her order and the Dreth prepared to make the fight more personal. The gun and missile crews did their best and poured as much fire into the enemy ship as they could.

  Each team chose a point on the hull and focused their fire. To the admiral’s surprise, the Meligorns joined their efforts and they took up position to defend the Dreth as her crew took to their boats and sailed across the space between the two ships.

  The first had reached the Teloran battleship when the Vengeance’s proximity alarms turned to warnings of an imminent collision. Jaleck snapped the visor on her helmet closed. “Let’s show these bastards what happens when you attack an ally of Dreth.”

  Another roar answered her as the pilot brought the Vengeance hard up against the other battleship’s side. The impact shuddered through the ships, and she hoped her crew had the sense to not be caught between them.

  The worry was fleeting, both because she had more faith in her crew than that and because there wasn’t time for more. The pilot had brought the Vengeance cheek to cheek with the enemy, and the boarding team had already found an entrance.

  “This is faster than cutting our way through,” the chief engineer explained when he informed her of the route, and she had to agree. They surged through the gap and she was annoyed when her crew refused to let her take the lead.

  “The first ones through usually die, Admiral, and only you can advance our standing in the clans,” her shock troop captain said as his men formed a solid wall in front of her. “Besides,” he added when she scowled, “this is what we do. Why should you have all the fun?”

  She had no answer for him beyond a feral grin and the silent promise that she would face him in the combat halls and reaffirm her right to lead them. The Navy had not given her time and she was paying for it now, even if she had his loyalty.

  Silently, they made their way through the torn hull and into the empty space beyond. Bodies littered the floor, armorless and very, very dead. The shock captain nudged one with the toe of his boot.

  “They are the color of space,” he observed, “and their eyes…”

  “Like a cavern’s depths on midnight,” one of his troopers added. He nudged the corpse as well, harder than his captain had. “It’s hard to tell if they’re alive.”

  Jaleck stalked over and shot the dead Teloran in the head. “Now we know,” she declared and strode toward the door.

  She transferred her blaster to her off-hand and drew her war blade as she proceeded. “Let’s see how they respond to good Dreth tegralite.”

  The shock troopers hurried to catch up and the captain and his sergeant slid past her to take the lead. She didn’t protest but barely stopped herself from tripping the captain as he passed, and anger flashed through her. What in all Tegortha’s gut is wrong with me?

  “Get me to their Bridge!” she snapped and raced after them—and had to fight to resist the urge to shoot them both. There are more than enough other targets, she told herself and tried to find one.

  The captain and the sergeant helped. They stopped to kick in every door they passed, while their troopers leapfrogged forward to stay ahead of Jaleck. Finally, one of the men gave a cry of frustration and looked down the lines.

  “Horgenra! Get your lazy ass up here.”

  “Yes, Agrek.”

  Curious, the admiral watched as the trooper hurried past. She was followed by two more and each one lugged heavy gear bags. The agrek gave a savage smile and pointed down the corridor. “I want this place opened up in double-quick time.”

  The trooper’s face split into a broad grin. “Double-quick, Agrek?”

  “Make it so.”

  The trooper looked at her two colleagues. “You heard him, boys. We’re up.”

  The three chuckled as they opened their gear bags and hauled out shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. “This’ll flush the spiders from their holes.”

  Jaleck hoped it would. So far, they’d found nothing alive—and that included spiders. She wondered if the Telorans even had spiders or if they’d consumed those as wells. After all, they were looking for a world.

  Who knew what they had done to their own and everything that had lived upon it.

  “Do what you must, but find me something to kill.”

  She snarled and started forward but whirled when the shock captain caught her elbow. He pulled her into the closest empty room and bent his head close to hers. “Do not let the rage take you,” he told her, and she stilled.

  “Explain,” she snapped.

  “The rage…” he started. “I’ve seen the signs before. A good commander, a good trooper, becomes…volatile in battle. They’re effective against the enemy—almost suicidal, in fact—but they’ll kill their own, too.”

  He paused. “I mean no disrespect, Admiral, but you are showing the signs.”

  Jaleck thought about denying it but decided there was no point. She was walking close to the edge and she couldn’t explain it. She was ready to attack her own and the rational part of her knew they’d done her no wrong.

  “I want to kill them all,” she admitted, and he didn’t ask who.

  He glanced at his men. “I know.”

  “Try to hold it.” He fixed her with a measured look. “I need my admiral when we reach the command deck. I need her to command. She cannot do that if the rage takes her, and I cannot command a fleet. Do not abandon us.”

  Thunder roared over them as the three troopers went to work to demolish the remainder of the corridor.

  “Advance!” the captain shouted and slapped her on the shoulder. “Stay with me, Admiral.”

  He did not have to ask her twice. She remembered Vishlog. He was one of the wildest and most unpredictable fighters the Dreth had. She’d read the reports.

  Vishlog had to be directed in battle—literally spun about and pointed at the enemy. The humans had laughed when they’d heard it.

  “Like a claymore,” one had chortled and told the Dreth commander to look it up.

  The Dreth had not appreciated the joke and the humans had been confined to quarters for the remainder of the trip. No one wanted Vishlog getting any more ideas than he already had.

  Now, Jaleck felt it and thought she understood.

  “A claymore,” she muttered because she’d looked it up, too.

  The shock captain sent her a startled look. “Where did you hear that term?”

  Gunfire erupted ahead and she did not need to answer as he turned an
d raced to the battle. Their comms lines crackled with alarm.

  “Hrageth’s balls!” a distant trooper shouted. “Why…don’t…you…die?”

  “They have no bodies,” another distant voice screamed.

  “They do,” the shock captain called. “They have bodies.”

  “They look like darkness.”

  “There is flesh beneath the darkness. Trust me.”

  “How do we get to it?”

  How indeed? Jaleck thought.

  “It’s like something’s screening them.”

  A forcefield…a…

  “It’s an energy field,” she yelled as five dark figures appeared at the other end of the corridor.

  “It’s about Tegorthan time!” Horgenra bellowed and leveled the rocket launcher.

  Before anyone could stop her, she’d fired

  Well, this will be interesting, Jaleck thought and stared as the ordnance screamed forward.

  Three of the dark figures dived out of the way. The rocket caught the fourth and flung it back down the corridor as it exploded.

  “Well, that works,” the shock captain muttered. He glared at the troopers. “Find another way to kill them. Not everyone has a rocket team.”

  “Solids don’t work,” someone muttered over the comms.

  It wasn’t helpful but it was good to know.

  The admiral’s mind raced.

  “We need to disrupt the power supply,” she murmured and tried to think of how they might achieve that.

  “Shockers!” the captain snapped and began to issue orders. “Form two ranks. Front row to use half-charge, then go to full if you need it. Second row to follow with blaster fire. Aim for their faces if their helmets are open.”

  Several affirmatives answered him and the Telorans that approached down the corridor snapped their faceplates closed.

  “Tegortha’s spawn!”

  “I’ve got this.” One of the troopers snickered and retrieved a grenade from her belt. Before anyone could stop her, she’d lobbed into the center of the approaching Telorans. “Cover!”

  They dived through adjacent doorways before it detonated, but the force of it vibrated against the walls. The trooper was back into the corridor as fast as she could go, her blaster firing on full automatic before the rest of them could follow.