Only one team had ever gotten past four. Granted, they hadn’t achieved much past it, but it had been enough to make them legends amongst the sailors.
Rumor had it, though, that this team made it look easy. They had jumped, buzzed, kicked, and spelled their way through wave after wave of hell, and word had got around.
A couple of the electronic technicians studied their screens, their heads tilted to the side to emphasize their perplexed expressions. “They seem to believe a good offense is the best defense.”
Behind them, Captain Thorne folded his arms and shrugged. “We never run out of pirates, so let them be offended all they want. It’s a show and they think this is fun and games. Wait until they begin to tire. It’s never-ending.”
“Boost me!” Stephanie shouted and Vishlog turned in time to see her race toward him.
Boost her? As she sprang into the air, he understood and bent hastily on one knee, locked his hands together for her to step into, and hurled her upward. She laughed and put her hands out in front of her as she gained height.
The horde of Dreth ahead of them maintained their concerted onslaught and he suddenly remembered he was supposed to keep her safe. With a roar of worry-fueled anger, he pounded into the line of Dreth and tried to keep her in sight.
It wasn’t hard. As she soared above, she sprayed a sheet of magic over them. The warrior gawked as a fog of energy sizzled and hissed and covered them like magical Napalm. They screamed and bellowed as their skin and bones melted into puddles on the deck.
It wasn’t enough, though. She would land in an intersection and he could see more Dreth filling the corridor ahead, even as he heard the shouts of more from the side corridors.
By Hrageth’s hairy balls! How in all the hunted worlds am I supposed to keep her safe? He rushed forward in an attempt to catch Stephanie as she descended.
He almost slipped on the puddles of Dreth remains, but he made it in enough time to steady her landing. Without speaking a word, they turned their backs to one another and let their weapons do the talking. She stuck to magic and launched spiked orbs of magic from her hands. They were like tiny little gumballs of power.
When they struck the aliens, they adhered, exploded, and gouged a huge chunk of the victim with them. Vishlog focused and kept his blaster pulsing laser bolts in systematic spurts, while he used his automatic rifle in his left hand as efficiently as it could be used under the circumstances.
When the immediate area was cleared, she looked around and noticed a ladder leading up to a small platform outside a hatch into the wall. “Throw me up there, Vish.”
With a wary eye trained on the corridors, he nodded. He shouldered his weapons, grasped her tightly, and flung her as high as he could.
She flipped and landed gracefully on the platform’s edge as another wave of Dreth appeared at the end of each of the corridors.
The warrior plastered himself against the wall below her and braced his weapons so he could fire down the corridor on either side. It left nothing for the enemy that approached down the corridor behind him or the one ahead, but he’d deal with them when they reached him.
Above him, Stephanie pivoted on her toes and whipped her magic outward, looped it around the attackers, and hurled them across Vishlog’s line of fire. He turned right and left to deliver a steady fusillade while he ducked and maneuvered around the airborne bodies.
His rifle clicked and he glanced up at her. She smiled. “I got you, bro.”
She smacked her hands down to release an explosion of spiraling strands of magic. The energy twisted and turned to create hands of coruscating fire. They whipped forward, snatched the weapons out of Dreth hands, and piled them at her teammate’s feet.
When he had a heap to choose from, she whipped the magic back and added sharp edges before she lashed out at the oncoming horde. Dreth fell in two pieces, the shocked looks on their faces almost comical.
Stephanie stifled a giggle and wondered where it had come from, while below her, Vishlog picked up two weapons and settled them against his sides, aiming them outwards. The Dreth attackers flooded from both corridors. When they entered melee range, he dropped his blasters and drew the two huge blades from his belt.
“Stay!” she shouted and flung a wall of blue over him to freeze him in place and shield him from the first attacks that slashed at his armor.
Stay? Was the witch insane? He fought to get free, but it was futile. His irritation turned to thankfulness moments later when power misted around him, enveloped the horde, and melted them to sludge upon the deck.
When the aliens were obliterated and no more appeared, he realized the wave was over and wondered why he was still encased in purple light. Stephanie slid down beside him, tapped him on the chest, and it vanished.
“There,” she said and sounded far too satisfied, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
He opened his mouth to reply but she didn’t stop.
“I didn’t think so.” She headed down the corridor leading to the hangar. “I win, by the way. You’re several hundred behind.”
Vishlog stared after her, his mouth open in surprise.
Hundreds? It was more like thousands, but there was no way in Hrageth’s hairy ass he would actually tell her that.
When they walked into the hangar, they found the guys leaning against different vehicles, lost in their thoughts. Another pile of dead Dreth lay between them and the entrance and the cats cleaned their claws languidly in the middle.
She dusted her hands off and glanced at the Dreth. With a grin, she fixed Lars and the others with a firm look and leaned her elbow against a fighter’s hull. “So, you guys and the cats have level five.”
With the team having reached and survived the fourth wave, the conference room was crowded beyond capacity with sailors. Captain Thorne knew he wouldn’t be able to prevent more trying to come in and ordered the playback extended to the other two conference rooms. That accomplished, he ordered the chief to clear the room.
While they were busy with all that, the waves continued and the team carried on without him.
“Sir,” one of the controllers said after a while. “They just crossed level nine.”
The captain looked at the screen and Stephanie broke momentarily from the battle to look into the camera. For a moment, it was as if she saw right into his soul.
Something in that stare reached inside him and his lip quivered with frustration. He pounded his fist down on the control panel and glared at the controller. “This is impossible. How can they do more than one of our Navy teams? Are we sure she is playing fair with her energy?”
“There’s no way the program would allow her not to,” the controller replied and scrutinized the numeric code in front of him to check. “Nothing seems off to me.”
He shook his head, folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes at the screen. “That’s impossible. Keep looking. Run a systems check. There isn’t a magical being out there who uses energy like that, let alone has this much energy. There has to be some kind of trick to it.”
“Okay,” Stephanie choked out after the tenth wave ended. She breathed hard and leaned forward to put her hands on her thighs. “I’m officially tired. This shit has to end sometime, right?”
The guys glanced at one another and back at her, clearly troubled. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “All right. What am I not getting?” She gave an exasperated sigh as they continued to hesitate. “Don’t worry, an unfavorable response will not release Morgana.”
Marcus swallowed and pursed his lips, then decided to give it to her straight. “It doesn’t end until you die.”
“What?”
Lars nodded to back him up. “That’s right. This kind of operation is to see how many waves you can last before you fall. If we lasted five days and another nine hundred waves, there would still be another wave coming. You literally cannot beat the system.”
“You mean we will eventually lose?” she asked, and the team all nodded. Even the cats seemed to r
egard her with knowing eyes. She shook her head. “That’s bullshit. This isn’t a testing, it’s a mind-warp. It’s their attempt to shame us, to make us feel as if we won’t ever be enough when for all intents and purposes, we have crushed their little game. I will not accept defeat in any form, not even if it’s in the code.”
She paused and a small smile played across her lips. “You can’t fight if you can’t keep things going, right?”
Lars narrowed his eyes at her. “Stephanie? What are you trying to say?”
She didn’t reply but looked around the room instead. They waited in nervous silence. “All right, boys, I need you to gather as much metal as you can carry while still being able to shoot. Trust me on this one. When you have it, line up at the door to the right and we’ll move out from there. Then, it’s a go—a really big fancy one.”
He tried again. “Steph, what are you doing?”
The look she turned on him was feral, but her eyes were still blue and they danced with mischief. “We,” she said and poked him in the chest as her expression hardened with determination, “are going to fix this.”
Frog’s “uh oh” had never seemed better placed.
The computer system tech in charge of possibilities ran all the different options that might explain what the team was doing. When the most likely one popped up, she looked at where the captain stared at the screen and watch the team collect metal with a disbelieving expression.
With a sigh, she rubbed her pregnant belly and shook her head.
“Captain, you might want to take a look at this,” she called.
Thorne glanced away from the screen and wondered why they’d waste their break time. What purpose could persuade them to pick up large sheets of twisted metal and stack them near one of the doors?
“They’re building a barricade,” he said as if he already knew what she was trying to show him.
The scenario started as the system tech shook her head, and she waved toward the screen. “Sir, they are moving toward the enemy generator.”
He sniffed and returned his attention to the screen. “So? Fire it up.”
The sound of clanking and scraping echoed through the corridors of the Dreth ship as the guys dragged, carried, and kicked as much metal as they could toward the generator. Johnny had liberated a trolley and loaded it to the hilt, while Vishlog had made himself a metal shoulder pack, the contents of which almost scraped the ceiling.
They had to pass through a large glass circle that marked the center of the ship and make it through several more corridors before they reached their destination. As they stepped through the circle, they were met with a barrage of gunfire and laser bolts. The team dropped their loads and went to work, determined to destroy this horde to give them more time before the next wave.
Johnny sliced his machete with brutal efficiency through a Dreth head before he thrust the body over with his foot. Marcus mirrored him, and Stephanie had no doubt there’d be a lively discussion on which style was better, the tanto or the bolo.
She delivered a quick volley of magic into the advancing mass and had adjusted her targets to cover Lars and Avery when Johnny spoke. “I think I have calculated the interval of Dreth waves,” he said as another alien lunged and hit him hard to fling him to the deck.
He grunted as they rolled, then flipped over on top of the pirate and lifted his tanto high over his head. With a two-handed thrust, he plunged it through the warrior’s chest armor.
“Good blade, that,” he muttered, stood, and looked around for the next threat. He was clear for the moment, so he continued. “The hordes inside each wave come exactly two minutes and thirty-three seconds after the last one is eliminated.”
Stephanie was impressed. “Nice work. I didn’t know you focused on those things.”
One of the Dreth made it past Lars and Avery, and she delivered a fireball into his head. Johnny took on a second one, swept his leg low, and drove the alien’s legs out from under him. The pirate landed with a guttural curse, and he fired a single shot to dispatch him neatly.
“I used to be a crypto in the Navy a long time ago. It was basically a dead field until the first intergalactic contact. Ever since then, the field’s boomed but I got out ages ago.”
He shrugged. “I can still see patterns and decipher them really well. That part never goes away.”
She nodded in approval. “Well, that’s not one of the things I want you to keep from me. Everyone, make sure to let me know if you have any weird special skills that don’t have to do with food, girls, and circus acts.”
The team all looked at her, a little taken aback, and she laughed. “I’m kidding, but don’t tell me the freaky shit.”
“Incoming,” Vishlog yelled.
Stephanie whirled to see one of the pirates lob a grenade that sailed toward the team. She flung a hand out, caught it in an orb of energy, and shoved it along the ceiling until it was above the Dreth who’d thrown it. It exploded in the middle of the mob and obliterated all those in range.
When the last Dreth had fallen and no more appeared, she called to Burt. “Hey AI, I need to ask a question. Important.”
BURT let the scenario continue and walked into the action as another five adversaries appeared farther up the corridor and fired as they approached. The shots didn’t bother the AI, who appeared impervious to any gunfire that passed through him. “What can I do for you?”
She tapped her fingers together. “This area of the map generates the Dreth, doesn’t it?”
BURT was silent for a moment, not sure that was a question he was allowed to answer. A quick check revealed that there were no rules against it, but he took the precaution of blurring them out of the visual and muting their voices from the outside feed. “Yes. This the generator.”
“And there is enough logic playing here that we should be able to kill each future combatant by destroying this area of the ship, right?”
Again, he was silent as he checked the permissions. She stamped her foot.
“I want a straight answer,” she demanded.
He triple checked his calculations but there was nothing that prevented him from giving her that information. “You are correct. Yes.”
She nodded. “That’s all I needed to know. Thank you, Burt.”
The AI faded out of the scenario and she dropped to one knee and raised her hands to continue the fight. The team burned through the attackers and blazed their way through the eleventh level.
It was a new record and one unlikely to be broken. When the last alien of the wave had fallen, she marched over to the pile of metal the guys had brought and used her magic to move it down the remaining length of the corridor and into the generator room.
Once there, she began to heat it and circulated her energy in and out of her body to create a fast circle of connection between her and the shards.
The rest of the team watched her, until Johnny said, “Uh oh,” and followed it with, “Run!” They wasted no time, left the generator room at a sprint, and bolted through the circular door and down the corridors leading to the bay.
Stephanie smirked. Her eyes glowed brightly as she hurled the cycling ribbon of energy and shards outward. It erupted to explode and destroy everything within the map.
The simulation ended then and there to leave only an echo of the battle and small streams of energy rippling through it as she surrounded herself and her team in air-tight fields of light.
“No!” the Captain yelled and slammed his fists on the desk in front of him. “No!” he bellowed again and stood so fast he overturned his chair.
“No! No! No! No! No!” he roared and hammered the wall behind his desk until the metal began to bend. “That isn’t supposed to be possible. Where is the goddamned programmer and where is the AI that controls this region? If we’ve been cherry-picked again, so help me, I will knock it into overdrive.”
As if in answer, the AI stepped out of the screen at the front of the room and surprised several sailors in the process. It
was shaped like a man made up of translucent fire. Energy swirled inside him and revealed glimpses of the entire universe. “Kindly explain your malfunction.”
Captain Thorne’s face turned brick-red and the veins stood out on his forehead. “My malfunction, you cheeky piece of shit, is that the scenario should not have ended.”
He ignored the blood seeping from his scraped knuckles as he faced the construct. The AI remained infuriatingly unruffled.
“If you would like, I can continue to provide new waves, but since they have already made it to Level Fifteen…” The new BURT felt his older counterpart’s satisfaction as the captain huffed and puffed.
“What?” the captain yelled.
“I assume you beg my pardon,” the new BURT answered. “Let me explain.”
He turned to the large screen, his hands behind his back, and blinked at it. The picture changed and it showed the outside of the space station in the scenario. The Dreth ships were gone and the bodies of hundreds, if not thousands, of dead pirates floated in space. It was a mystical if somewhat macabre graveyard.
Stephanie’s team floated untouched inside glowing bubbles of energy that converged slowly on the space station. The captain sputtered in disbelief as behind them, another wave of Dreth appeared and promptly died in the vacuum of space.
“Level Sixteen,” BURT intoned and left the officer sputtering with incoherent rage.
Only his chief was able to find words. “Thank you, AI. Shut it down.”
The Navy left the team alone as they exited the pods. As they left the pod room, they walked through corridors lined with sailors who waited anxiously to catch a glimpse of them.
When Captain Thorne stepped out of the conference room and saw his men idle, he chewed them a new asshole. “Do you think this is the Today Show? Do you think you can stand in my hallways and waste time like this?”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 61