Mark scribbled madly as she spoke, and his wife peered over his shoulder.
She gave him a moment to catch up before she continued. “Try some charts and graphs and use a hologram cube if you have one available. Give him every reason to say yes. Now, let me try you with some questions he might ask.”
Ms. E launched into the questions—all generic but formidable coming from someone with confidence and a severe shortage of time in the day. Marc did well, kept the humor at a light level, and most importantly, told zero dad jokes.
When they were done, she gave him some things to work on but in reality, with his kind demeanor coupled with a killer suit, she wasn’t worried. If he went through the real interview like he’d done with her, he should knock it out of the park.
Once the training was concluded, Cindy sighed. “How is my girl?”
“She was doing much better when I last saw a video of her. Unfortunately, I’ve had no updates since. If you’d like to send her something, I’m happy to pay for it out of the company’s budget. Those messages are bank killers, but they’re invaluable for morale...and I know she misses you.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
With Lars’s help, Stephanie made it out of the Navy office and into the street without any difficulty. The guys formed up around her and cleared the path ahead by walking two abreast. The ambassador’s reply had worried her. “Uh oh, not more bad news.”
Jalek shrugged. “Not in the way you are thinking,” she replied, “but first, let me start off by asking how your meeting went.”
“It went okay, I guess. I suggested a round of pod testing so they could see our capabilities for themselves, but I think they’re only trying to kill time while they work out how to sucker me into signing up. That won’t happen, though. I already know it’s not what I want.”
She stopped and gave the Dreth the opening to continue with the real reason for the call. “So, that’s my news. How about you? What’s going on? Hit me with it.”
“I couldn’t possibly hit you,” she replied, completely serious. “but there is a small problem I have, and I think you could help me solve it.”
“Go ahead,” she told her and tried to guess what problem she could possibly help with.
The ambassador hesitated, then came out with it. “I still have Vishlog in detention for that little stunt at the reception. I know everyone thinks I am being hard on him, but Dreth understand miserable situations a lot better than an explanation and a request not to do it again.”
“That’s okay,” she said and teetered slightly as Lars steered her into the hangar where the royal shuttle waited to take them back to Meligorn. “I know a lot of humans like that, too. What’s the problem? Did he manage to find a bar or bottle of liquor while in the cell?”
That startled a short laugh from the Dreth. “No, not so much. My problem is that I need to have a Dreth on your team for Dreth respect, or they will consider the whole award and citizenship a ruse to give you access to places you would not otherwise be able to go.”
She sounded uncomfortable but continued despite this. “While you earned the award fairly, there are those who now call for you to have a Dreth member on your team. Since you have already confronted Vishlog, he will be more respectful than any other Dreth, to start with, if you would be willing to take him on and build on that.”
Stephanie raised her eyebrows and stared out the window as the shuttle descended quickly. “All I can do is try, I suppose.”
“Thank you, Stephanie. That is all we ask,” Jaleck replied. “I did not wish to insult you, but this had to be done quickly before there were any repercussions. I’ll complete his paperwork today and have him transferred to the team tonight.”
She didn’t wait for a reply but ended the call and left her staring at the tablet with an open mouth. “Well, that’s sudden,” she muttered and turned to discover Lars staring at her.
“I don’t believe you agreed to that,” he said.
“Yeah, me neither,” Frog added from where he hung over the back of her seat.
“Man, girl. You might be a witch, but I don’t think even you have the magic to fix this.”
The shuttle touched down and taxied into the hangar, and she held a hand up for silence. “Chill, guys. I should have seen this coming, and I didn’t.”
“But Vishlog?” The team leader wasn’t happy. “How am I supposed to even—”
She rounded on him, grasped a fistful of his tunic, and stared up into his face as her eyes turned momentarily black. “I don’t know, but he stays, and you will find a way.” Her eyes returned to normal. “As will I.”
“Wow, Morgana...” Frog breathed as she frowned and released the man’s tunic.
“Sorry. I’m not sure what that was about,” she said, patted his chest, and turned toward the door. “I need to speak to Ms. E and do some research on Dreth warrior customs.” She tapped Lars on the chest. “And you do, too. All of you. I’m not the only one who needs to win his respect.”
“He has to win ours, too,” Frog griped as the team disembarked and headed to their quarters. “Next thing you know, there’ll be a Meligornian wanting in.”
No one laughed. His words sounded prophetic in the wake of the news that a Dreth would join them.
The cats bounded over in welcome as soon as they entered the suite. They greeted them with happy rumbles and demanded pats from Stephanie and Lars. “Cats, Dreth,” Lars grumbled and scratched under Bumblebee’s chin. “What next?”
“Meligornian,” Marcus told him morosely and echoed Frog’s words. “You just watch.”
“Whatever,” Stephanie snapped and headed for the kitchenette. “We’ll deal with it. We always do...and wasn’t Frog bitching about being the new boy? Well, now you’ll have someone else to push the luggage cart.”
He stuck his head out of his room. “Yes!”
“You’ll have to win his respect, first,” the team leader reminded him, and he sniffed with disdain.
“What do you mean I will have to win his respect? He’s the one who’ll have to prove he’s good enough to stay—”
Stephanie and Lars stared at him.
“What?”
He looked slightly rebellious but made an effort to explain. “I said he’d have to win my respect. He’s the one who wants to join the team. I don’t see why any of us should have to try to impress him. It should be the other way around.”
“You’re brilliant,” Stephanie told him, and Lars groaned.
“Don’t say that. He has a big enough head as it is.”
“No,” she said, “but he’s made a good point. We don’t have to win Vishlog’s respect. He has to win ours. As long as we go in with that attitude, I think we’ll be all right.”
“But will he be right for the team?” the team leader asked. “I mean, the guy gets drunk on his downtime and picks fights.”
“And Frog doesn’t?”
“Hey!”
“She has a point,” Marcus interjected. He glanced at his teammate. “She really, really does.”
Frog slammed his door.
The other man shrugged, as though Frog had proven him right. “Well, he won’t be any more temperamental than that, will he?”
Stephanie chuckled, looked at Lars, and received a wry grin in return.
“No, I guess not,” he agreed. “We’ll treat him the same way we treated Frog when he joined the team.”
Marcus, Johnny, Avery, and Brenden exchanged glances. “This will definitely be fun.”
“Don’t break anyone,” she warned them. “I don’t want to have to heal you every ten seconds.”
“We won’t,” Lars promised and gave her a serious look, “but you have to trust us and follow our lead on this. No matter how unfair or mean you think we are. Okay?”
“Oh. Okay?” Stephanie agreed. “I’ll try, but if I don’t like it, you’ll hear about it.”
He smiled at her response. “Agreed. But try to make it in private, all right?”
&
nbsp; “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Please, Steph. It’s important.”
That was the first time she had ever heard him plead, and she didn’t like it. “Fine.”
It wasn’t exactly an agreement, but he left it at that and prepared to go to his room.
“He’ll be here early,” he told her. “It’s time to do research and get some rest. We’ll meet at lunch to share what we’ve discovered and how to make it work for us.”
They did their share, compared notes, and discussed strategies that would ease the Dreth into the team quickly. Frog spent most of it as red as a beet while they compared the results they’d had with him with how they might have to alter their tactics with the Dreth.
He rolled his eyes and finished his lunch. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
They spent the afternoon in the palace gym and returned to their quarters to clean up and get ready for dinner.
“Early night, guys,” Lars ordered, as they met in the common room dressed for dinner.
They were about to leave when someone knocked on the door. He looked at her. “Are we expecting...”
She shook her head. “No.”
Quickly, she called the cats, put them in her room, and closed the door to keep them there, despite their protests. Around her, everyone became quietly alert and everyone but Frog and Johnny returned quietly to their rooms to retrieve their weapons.
Stephanie only hoped they thought to grab their stunners rather than their blasters since it seemed a shame to make a mess of the room, but she needn’t have worried—or not about that, at least.
Lars waited at the door until they were ready and opened it. “Uh, Ambassador Jaleck...” He glanced at Stephanie and she moved forward. “Won’t you come in.”
“Thank you, Lars. Stephanie, I hope you don’t mind, but I completed Vishlog’s transfer early and thought it better that he joined the team tonight.”
For the first time, she noticed Vishlog’s large form behind the woman. He wore the Dreth dress uniform and seemed to try to be as inconspicuous as possible. His face was impassive as he watched his ambassador for cues.
His eyes also scanned the corridor as though there might be some danger lurking in the King’s corridors. It was the same thing the guys did, and it still drove her crazy.
She moved forward and gave Jaleck the Dreth greeting appropriate to her rank. “Please, come in, Ambassador. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
While she didn’t even glance at Vishlog as he moved to follow, she did prepare to refuse him entry if he did not perform the appropriate greeting. It seemed childish but it was necessary.
Either way, it was a relief when he bowed to her and gave her the same greeting he would a Dreth commander. She nodded and indicated that he could enter. He also bowed to Lars before he moved to stand beside Jaleck. It was a promising start for the time he would be there, no matter how long it was.
As she moved forward to join her guest, she was glad he’d acknowledged Lars. She knew it was important for the team to continue to work together, even when they added a new member.
The team leader was about to close the door when Sho knocked and poked his head in. “It’s a party in here.”
She chuckled. “Sho, Ambassador Jaleck brought the newest member of our team. Come and say hello.”
The Meligornian entered and greeted the ambassador with respect. Once they had exchanged pleasantries, Stephanie drew his attention to Vishlog. “Sho, this is Vishlog, and Vishlog, this is Sho, the new head of Royal Security.”
Sho bowed slightly to the Dreth warrior and he did the same to show respect. “Welcome to the team, it is an interesting one, or so I have discovered.”
The warrior nodded. “Everything is interesting when it comes to this crew.”
Lars stepped in. “Welcome, Vishlog. I am Lars, the team’s leader. Come and meet the others. Sho, I don’t believe I’ve ever introduced you properly.”
He led them to where the guys stood around the kitchen bench and nodded at Stephanie as he went. She and the ambassador drew a little aside to talk while he introduced the two men to the team and provided a brief explanation of their duties as he mentioned each one.
Vishlog greeted them and felt somewhat embarrassed. He wasn’t sure why he had been chosen for this honor, not after the way he’d been told he’d behaved at the reception.
The only problem was, he didn’t remember much of what had happened. He’d barely had anything to drink and wondered if he had been given a drug in his drink It was the only reason he could think of for his lapse...and it sounded like he was making excuses.
Resolute, he pushed the thought aside and turned to the Meligornian, determined to right his wrong. “I apologize for my actions at the reception. I can be rowdy but not usually to that extent. I have been embarrassed since then.”
Sho shrugged and patted him on the shoulder. “If I had a Meligornian crinket for every time I’d done something stupid when I was drunk, I’d be living it up in a mansion somewhere out in the south of the planet. We all have our moments. People are merely sensitive about her. She is important and we try to keep that in mind.”
He nodded. “I understand.” Vishlog looked around, relieved that the Meligornian had been so understanding but mindful that he had ignored the team to make his apology.
As he looked to see what they were doing, one of Stephanie’s guards turned and bowed to the security chief, giving him the proper respect.
Once Sho had returned his greeting, Lars said, “I’m glad you’ve spoken with Sho, Vishlog. I’m sorry we haven’t a spare room for you. I’ll organize your quarters in the morning. In the meantime, you’ll share a room with Frog.”
The man appeared as if merely speaking his name was a spell to summon him, and Vishlog couldn’t help noticing that he was the smallest member of the team. Sho stepped back, only to find himself talking to one of the team’s demolition experts—Brenden, he thought the man’s name was. He wanted to watch Lars settle the Dreth into the team but couldn’t and turned to answer the other man’s question instead.
“Coffee? Of course, I would. That is not only an Earth custom, you know.”
Behind him, Vishlog tried to understand the welcome he received from the team. He’d expected sincere annoyance or even anger, not the respect they’d accord another human coming into the group.
Laughter interrupted his thoughts, and he glanced at the ambassador and Stephanie, as did several members of the team. That, too, was something he wasn’t used to—hearing the ambassador express amusement. Finally, his curiosity got the best of him.
“I would like to ask a question,” he said to Lars.
The team leader nodded, and his gaze tracked every person in the room—as a proper warrior’s should. “Ask away.”
“Stephanie—the human—she knows magic and has great power,” he began tentatively, “so I understand why the Meligornians do her honor. What I do not understand is why she was chosen for such a high award by my people. Can you tell me?”
The other man smiled and realized that for all he’d attended the ceremony, the Dreth knew very little about his charge. “We were on the Meligorn Dreamer when it was attacked by pirates. They demanded that Ambassador V’ritan surrender himself, but he wasn’t on the ship, so she made herself look like him, went to the Bridge, and killed their leader in single combat. Then, she removed the bomb they had set and would have lost her life recharging the ship’s engines and transitioning the ship early if there hadn’t been Meligornians with enough power to start the healing process. She saved thousands of lives.”
“I see,” the warrior replied. “There were Dreth aboard the Dreamer. It explains why she has been made a Talon. I am grateful she was aboard.”
He leaned closer to Vishlog, turned his back to the two women, and lowered his voice. “Because she is so powerful and fights for the protection of all, there are many people—especially among the humans—who want a piece of her. She has
to not only deal with that but find her own place in the universe while protecting it from the danger that is coming.”
He paused and his companion filled in the blanks. “And so you watch her, help her, and protect her.”
“Yes,” Lars replied. “We protect her but at the same time, we must allow her to grow up. She has fought gangs on the streets of DC, protected people from pirates, and she saved the lives of both the king of Meligorn and his ambassador to Earth. She is incredibly protective of those she cares for.”
Frog walked past and whispered, “The Morgana.”
“Morgana?” The Dreth was confused. “This person—this Morgana—is also Stephanie? What is she?”
The team leader shook his head. “It is not a person, it’s Stephanie. When she gets too emotional in a fight, her eyes go black and all hell usually breaks loose.”
“Ohhhh,” Vishlog replied and nodded his head. “So, like a—what do you humans call it?—a berserker?”
Marcus joined the conversation, having overheard the whole thing. “Something like that. Except berserkers too often lose themselves and could hurt their own people. Stephanie is about protecting her people—or her cats, of course.”
Vishlog frowned. “Cats? I thought I smelled cats but could not understand why.”
Lars rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you’ll meet them soon enough.”
As her team leader introduced the new member to the rest of the team, Stephanie and Jaleck talked. She finished telling the Dreth ambassador the outcome of the meeting.
“The chief was livid by the end,” she explained. “But that’s his own fault. He should have known I had little interest in what he wanted from me.”
Jaleck laughed. “Very true. You tell it as it is, and we respect that.”
She nodded at the ambassador and glanced to where Vishlog was talking to the guys. “I hope he isn’t still angry with me, even though I’m honored you have added a Dreth to the mix.”
Her companion smiled and folded her arms. “We will always protect those who protect us. And he will protect you, but all Dreth must make up their own mind on whether you are worthy. That goes beyond protection.”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 59