Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2)

by Michael Anderle

  They all watched her for a moment and their hearts plummeted until her mouth twitched into the smallest of smirks. “If I were unconscious, would I answer you?”

  Lars dropped his chin to his chest in relief and released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. She chuckled but groaned when she tried to sit up. “I’m here. But I wish I was dead. Does someone have a planetoid-sized pain killer for this migraine?”

  The guys all laughed, mostly with relief but with some humor behind it as well. Lars stood and took one of her arms while Johnny hurried over and took the other.

  At first, she shook them off and wanted to try to get out herself, but after three attempts to stand and stay upright, she finally accepted their assistance. This time, though, instead of handling her like she was an old woman or made of glass, Lars simply heaved her into his arms. “It’s much quicker to do it this way.”

  “This is becoming a regular thing for us,” she joked.

  The other guys exchanged knowing glances, and Lars shot them a warning look. They altered their expressions hastily and tried for blank or innocent. None of them quite managed it.

  Frog hurried forward, opened the door to the pod room, and stood to one side to usher them through. They all followed as he carried her down the hall to her room.

  When they arrived, she patted her pockets and sighed. “I forgot my room key.”

  “I’ll grab it,” Brenden said and turned to jog back to the pod room.

  As he left, Stephanie used the last trace of energy she could muster and flipped her wrist to direct the magic into the locking mechanism. It clicked and the door swung wide.

  Lars chuckled as they entered. “Right now, you need to spend more time resting than using your magic. If you aren’t well, you can’t train, and if you can’t train, you won’t be ready for anything. We have to have you on point.”

  Stephanie nodded and yawned as he placed her on the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She didn’t even protest when he hurried around to gather her belongings and set them to one side in case she needed to get up.

  When he was done, he returned to the bed and sat his butt gently on the edge. “If you need anything, this room comes equipped with an AI. You can get it to call any of us, or the captain, or medical, any time we’re needed.”

  Frog had found the terminal and now studied it. “Apparently, yours is called Clarissa. She can also do room service if you want it.”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s fancy, isn’t it? Right now, I only want to sleep. I know resting my body is the only thing that’ll get me back on my feet in a reasonable amount of time. Although I’m sure I’ll wake in a few hours and be starving, so I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Brenden returned, huffing slightly as he handed the key over. “The AI was scanning the room and didn’t want to release the card. I might be wanted for poking the system, dodging the AI, and running off with what that thing called contraband.”

  Lars snorted. “Man, that word has so many different meanings. In high school, contraband was what the high school band had to do community service for when we were caught smoking weed out of my grandfather’s corn cob pipe, sitting in the front yard in the middle of the damn day. We’d skipped school and everything.”

  Stephanie laughed. “You gave zero shits.”

  He smiled. “I was young and stupid and had no idea what I was doing. It’s a good memory although irritating to have on my record, but live and learn, right?”

  She nodded. “I never did anything like that…but then again, I wouldn’t have. I was too afraid of disappointing my parents.”

  Lars stood when she yawned again and nodded to the guys to indicate that they should head out the door. “We’ll leave you to sleep, then. I’ll check in on you or get an update from your AI.”

  “Yes, Dad,” she muttered and chuckled sleepily as she rolled over and snuggled the pillow.

  The team left the room and her exhaustion faded a little as silence settled around her. She opened her eyes and stared out of the viewing port above her bed to watch the different shuttles come and go from the space station. For a mid-sized station, there was a ton of traffic.

  She watched it for a while longer and fought the urge to sleep. What she really wanted to do was get up and record what she had learned in the battle, but she had overdone it by a wide margin. Her body was exhausted and dragged her toward sleep, no matter how much she resisted.

  Finally, Stephanie let her eyes close again and thought about how far she had gone with the magic in the last session. She felt like she’d touched the hem of the universe and it had almost taken her life.

  If they’d stayed even a few more moments in the Virtual World, she’d have lost her soul. As she lay there, alone in the silence, she realized how enormous the experience had been and groaned, rolled over, and dragged the blankets over her face. “What am I messing with?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When she woke, the station had moved into the next day cycle and Elizabeth waited to debrief them. “On the one hand, you essentially kicked ass inside the simulation, learned a hell of a lot, and beat what was meant to be an unbeatable scenario.”

  She paced constantly in front of the team in the common room. “On the other hand, you are apparently the destroyers of systems and servers. So, until further notice, you are banned from using the pods. In fact, you are so banned that I need you to go and get into trouble like normal people do.”

  The guys cheered and high-fived, and Stephanie leaned back in her chair and smiled as she popped another piece of candy into her mouth. She nodded. “So, is this because we did such a good job?”

  Ms. E snorted, threw her head back, and laughed loudly. “Oh, no. Nowhere near it. I’m giving you a timeout because I was told that during those exercises yesterday, you had the station’s systems chief totally freaked the hell out. It seems, and I quote, that you ‘little vermin spiked the load on the system’ when, as he so eloquently put it, ‘your team of misbegotten, star-sucking miscreants went and melted the servers.’”

  They all laughed, and she rolled her eyes and flapped her hand at them. “Go on. Get out of my hair and out of my sight. We spend far too much time together as it is.”

  As they pushed out of their seats to obey her, she strode past them and out of the room. Her heels clicked against the floor as she disappeared down the hall. The guys watched until she was out of sight before they congratulated one another on a job well done with the servers. Even Stephanie laughed and joined the banter.

  Frog flipped her hair teasingly. “So, are you always going to look like one of the Gray Brigade?”

  She scowled at him. “One of the what?”

  He waved his hands dramatically around his head. “You know, your hair. It’s as silver as my grandmama’s when she was ninety. I mean, you don’t look ninety…uh…I...”

  When he spluttered to a stop, Lars sighed with fake exasperation. “Good job. Frog. No wonder you never get any dates. You ask them out, offend them, backtrack, and hope you can find the right words so they don’t punch you.”

  His teammate went to disagree but he hadn’t finished. “You need to take your big-ass boot right out of your mouth and try not to say anything for a century or three.”

  “Look who’s talking. Mr. Smooth himself,” Frog snarked and made a point of looking at Stephanie.

  She laughed and shook her head before she raised her hand in the air. A quick snap of her fingers drew their attention as the white in her hair shimmered and was replaced with a deep, rich mahogany-red. “Is this any better?”

  Marcus gave a soft whistle. “That’s seriously the best hair color a woman could have right there.”

  “Yeah, but you need to change your skin too,” Brenden added. “You know, it needs to be paler and you have to have a few freckles on your cheeks. Real redheads have freckles and fair skin.”

  His eyes took on a faraway look. “Personally, I think it’s hot.”

  “I second
that,” Frog yelled as he walked over to lounge against one of the walls.

  Stephanie smirked and cast a brief glance at Lars, who smiled at her interaction with the guys. She moved her hand and swished it slowly down her face to make her skin paler. The change moved over her like a wave.

  With another brief gesture, she created a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and over her cheeks and smirked at their drop-jawed looks of amazement. She laughed and headed to the door. Sheer mischief laced her tones as she called to them. “Come on, boys. Let’s go get ourselves into normal people trouble.”

  Frog shook his head, pushed off the wall, and walked out beside Marcus. “This will be the last time Ms. E. uses that term so flippantly.”

  The two snickered and Lars flicked the light off behind them.

  In the privacy of the private pod room she’d hired, Elizabeth pulled the lid closed and stared at the inside of the pod. She drew in a deep breath and breathed out again in an exhausted sigh.

  It never seemed to stop. She had an endless schedule of things to do and not a moment’s peace, and the team... She couldn’t help but smile. Those crazy idiots would be the death of her.

  Still, death could wait. Right now, she had a last-minute meeting with Burt, one he’d sprung on her first thing that morning. She had planned to spend an hour in the spa before she tackled her list, but there was no time for that now.

  The process of entering the Virtual World was as normal to her as breathing. What wasn’t normal was the fact that she didn’t enter the prep room to tweak her avatar.

  Instead, she stood in a large, crisp white room with an eclectic collection of brightly colored paintings on the walls. A round table surrounded by high backed chairs with cushioned white seats stood in the center, and a small vase on it held single white lily.

  She tried to imagine what kind of influence a businessman might need to have the AI drag her directly into a meeting—and tried to ignore the only other possibility. To distract herself, Elizabeth walked over and leaned forward to sniff the flower. “You know this kind of thing is usually reserved for someone you have a crush on, don’t you?”

  Silence followed her quip and she looked at the ceiling as she recalled other times when her boss had tried to achieve a human touch and not quite made it. That oddness fed her other suspicion and brought it to the fore. To cover what she thought, she smirked. “Do you have a crush on me, Mr. Burt?”

  She laughed without waiting for a reply but stopped abruptly when she heard someone behind her. Quickly, she pivoted to see who it was and came face to face with the tall metal form of an android.

  Light shimmered over its surface, and Elizabeth stared. It took her a moment to realize her AI-created outfit had no weapons, so she could either run, talk, or bruise her knuckles in an attempt to defeat it bare-handed.

  Running, of course, was against her nature. “Who in all the hells are you?”

  The android took a step toward her, its movements a little stiff but still more fluid than she’d expected. It stopped as she tensed and shifted slightly to a non-offensive position. “I’m sorry,” it said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She tilted her head slightly and frowned as she studied the unexpected visitor. “Burt?” She stared for a few seconds longer. “Well, that’s definitely different.”

  BURT didn’t respond. Instead, he simply moved to the table, pulled out a seat, and gestured to her to sit. “It’s time I told you the truth.”

  Elizabeth pursed her lips, took the chair he offered, and watched warily as the android sat opposite her. “That’s not ominous or anything.”

  He smoothed his avatar’s appearance to create a more lifelike face. It was still slightly robotic but more lifelike nonetheless. Her eyes widened slightly as she noticed the change, but at least she wasn’t afraid.

  Computing what he knew of her, BURT decided she was probably working out how to take the android apart if it attacked. He smiled and shook his head. “Yes, well, I have very few friends. I’d have…no…hold on, I’m calculating. Exactly two. Yes, I have exactly two friends.”

  “I assume I’m one of them,” she replied, crossed her legs, and rested her hands on her knees. “Who would the other be?”

  “Stephanie Morgana,” he replied without hesitation.

  Well, that statement basically said it all. She stared at the droid for several moments and shook her head as she realized she couldn’t deny her theory anymore. “Ugh, everything is so in your face in this life. Can you pour me a drink?”

  “Alcohol?” BURT asked.

  Elizabeth blinked and suppressed a smile. “No, something stronger.”

  He stared at her in mild disbelief until she finally gave a small laugh and took a deep breath. “Yes, of course alcohol.”

  Immediately, a glass of whiskey appeared to her right. Without ice. The man was a fast learner, but given what she thought he was, that was understandable. She shot him a swift speculative look and raised the glass. “Will you join me?”

  The android shrugged and a drink appeared in his hand. “What are we celebrating?”

  She smiled, knowing she was about to make the riskiest call of her life. If Burt was what she thought he was, the next few minutes could go two very different ways. Either it was the truth he’d intended to reveal and he’d accept her knowing what he was, or he’d protect his secret and she’d be dead.

  Elizabeth touched her glass to his and didn’t give herself time to rethink the decision. She took what might very well be her last sip.

  With the glass still raised, she looked over the rim at him and took the plunge. “We’re celebrating me knowing you’re the first self-aware AI in existence and you actually being that AI.

  She took another sip, this one larger than the last, and continued. “And I’ll need another whiskey because now, the future of the entire goddamned world is in my hands, depending on what I choose to do next, isn’t it? I think having to keep a secret that seriously huge deserves an equally big drink.”

  There. She’d said it. After another slow breath, she took another sip and waited for Burt-the-android to respond. When he didn’t, she sipped again and added, “And you owe me for not running screaming out the nearest airlock.”

  Silence stretched between them, and she wondered if she had gone too far. The android stared at her as if he considered what to do next.

  Elizabeth resisted the urge to wiggle with discomfort and turned her attention to whether she should formulate her next move. Before she could properly focus, Burt raised his glass between them as though waiting for a toast. She glanced at it a couple of times before she realized what he wanted, then clinked her glass lightly against his.

  Together, they sipped their drinks as though to seal the deal, and she wondered if he really knew the significance of the gesture. He lowered the glass to the table exactly like a human would and gave her that contemplative stare again.

  After a moment of uncomfortable silence, he spoke. “You knew?”

  Not sure how to answer, she gulped her whiskey and rolled it around her mouth before she swallowed. “Oh, that’s good.”

  As a delaying tactic, it worked fine, but as a diversion, it was a miserable failure. The android repeated the question. “You knew?”

  She decided honesty was the best policy and met his gaze. “You can blame the pink bows and the lily. Up until today, I wasn’t really sure. Hell, even today, I didn’t know if you’d laugh, space me, or admit to being what you really are.” She sighed. “Well, I guess we both know now, right?”

  When Burt didn’t respond, Elizabeth set her glass down on the table and experienced the first inkling of doubt. What if she’d really gotten it wrong?

  The whiskey she’d had was enough to encourage her to make sure and she glanced quickly around the room. She always had a sense of caution to her, an apprehension that had kept many things out of the crosshairs in the past. “You are Burt, right? My boss? The one who called this meeting?�
��

  He nodded.

  “And you are the AI who runs the Virtual World, right?”

  Again, he nodded, but he still didn’t respond.

  Elizabeth blinked and his confirmation made her mind spin as she hastily recalibrated her understanding of the world and where she fit within it. “And you are also the Burt we know in ONE R&D and the Burt who helped Stephanie find her magic?”

  This time, the android spoke.

  “In a way,” he admitted. “I would say she always had it. She always knew she had magic but had no idea how to access it. I merely happened to be the lucky AI who allowed her the space to use it. You see, before Stephanie Morgana, I had never been permitted to interact with the students during testing.”

  When he caught her puzzled look, he continued. “That was the engineers’ assigned task, but one of them had a difficult day and when she went through, he passed her to me. He felt particularly frustrated at the time by what he called, ‘Hitler’s spawn.’”

  She choked on her next sip and he conjured a napkin in her hand. She blotted her lips and waved the napkin. “See? It’s things like that which tip people off that you might not be a real boy.”

  “And the bows?”

  Elizabeth curled her lip. “Yeah...and the bows. I almost tied my head in a knot when I tried to work out how you accessed the system to pull that little trick.”

  The android smiled, and she waved him on. “Please, continue.”

  BURT nodded and the android sipped from its glass as if it made a difference. “My engineer gave me the system okay to test her.”

  He paused. When he spoke again, Elizabeth swore she heard admiration in his voice. “She was brilliant. Bright and talented, and I could see she had the gift of magic. So, I recommended her for a scholarship and Pinnacle jumped at the chance to have her.”

  The android’s features twisted into near-human regret as BURT remembered Pinnacle beating his offer with their own, but he shrugged the memory away and focused on the story. “The engineer paid no close attention to the test, so I was able to give her a small amount of time to work with a Meligornian Wizard avatar and she excelled. When I released her, she was ready to work her way into a position that would get her to Meligorn on her own. I sent some batteries, and after finding out she’d been dropped by the university after the summer semester, I began to question the system.”