Her shield flared as several shots pounded into it and she looked for their source. Her eyes pulsed with dark energy as she found the culprits who already scrambled to change their positions. The team caught up with her, moved to cover her, and formed a barrier on either side as she strode purposefully away from the square and down the broad main street.
A large house stood at the end and she walked unerringly toward it. The team kept pace with her as she went and systematically eliminated any who raised a weapon toward her.
Someone threw a grenade, but she deflected it casually with a wave of her hand. She didn’t even look toward it. Her gaze remained fixed on the house. They were halfway to it when three people thrust through between Lars and Marcus.
They wielded machetes and machine pistols and their bullets drummed into her shields. She ignored them, even as they ran toward her. The team leader was observing a small group of colonists crouched behind a low stone wall and couldn’t turn away.
Even so, he was about to risk it when Bumblebee and Zeekat launched into action. The big yellow-striped cat pounced. His momentum powered him into one man and hurled the revolutionary into another. Zeekat focused on the one who avoided the collision.
He surged into the attack and sank his claws in the man’s back as he seized his victim’s head between his jaws and raked his hind legs down the man’s thighs. With a horrendous shriek, the man fell face-down, and Zeekat turned to assist Bumblebee.
The other feline was already the victor. He left his victims lying in the street after he’d sprayed them with urine to mark the kills as his own. Zeekat lifted his lips in a snarl and marked his own before he trotted after Stephanie, his tail high in the air.
Those colonists who’d hidden watched in awe as she stalked up to the front door of the oldest house in town while her team intercepted and neutralized everyone who tried to stop her. At one point, a sniper fired from his rooftop perch, only to have it blown out from under him by the Dreth.
Vishlog’s mouth curled into a toothy grin as he cradled the grenade launcher he’d acquired and surveyed the destroyed rooftop in search of more movement before he continued after Morgana. A small man carrying a Gestak 900 shadowed him and eliminated another man who thought a machete was a good thing to bring to a gunfight.
For those watching, it seemed as though each team member knew what the other was doing. Stephanie remained in the lead, stood back from the door, and formed a fist of magic to knock on it.
It proved to be a wise decision when the door blew out, shredded by a myriad of rounds as those beyond attempted to destroy her. She looked at the empty doorway. “You will surrender, or I will come and take what I want.”
Vishlog shook his head. “There isn’t any dealing with her like this.”
Frog laughed. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Nope,” Marcus added. “We only get involved if Stephanie needs to come back. Otherwise, Morgana is out to play and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”
The team came to a slow stop in front of the tall building that was part of a larger, rundown complex. Stephanie looked at them, nodded, and pointed at the third floor. “There are quite a few men in there, but we’ve got this.”
Her voice was low and echoed through the streets around them. Behind them, people remained in the buildings and under cover, watching but staying well away.
The team moved into the building, tense and alert as they searched the first floor. She pressed on, one step at a time, her face completely focused on the objective.
Marcus leaned toward Lars. “What is she looking for?”
“The Navy says they picked up a rebel transmission to the planet and traced it back through the colony’s sky link to here,” Lars replied. “They want us to capture as many as we can and take them back for questioning.”
The other man cocked his head toward Stephanie. “Uh, has anyone told her that?”
“She knows the mission parameters.”
“Yeah,” Frog grumbled, “but will she remember them?”
The team leader followed her into a stairwell and up the stairs. “It’s for the greater good. She understands that,” he told them and sounded more confident than he felt.
The warrior snorted softly.
They were about to step onto the second floor and search it when Stephanie held her hand up. The team froze, and she conjured several small, clear orbs. They sparkled briefly and faded to invisibility when she dispatched them.
A short while later, they returned and she caught each one in the palm of her hand and pressed it against her forehead, letting it melt into her skull. Lars swallowed.
“That’s a new trick,” Marcus murmured, and Frog agreed.
Johnny and Brendan nodded silently, their expressions tense as they observed this new aspect of her magic.
“This floor’s clear,” she told them after the last orb had disappeared. “We go up.”
None of them argued but followed her up to the third floor, where she raised a hand to stop them before they reached the landing. She dispatched another few clear orbs and they waited in silence for the magic spies to return. Once again, the team watched in fascination as she assimilated the orbs before she looked at them with a broad grin.
“There are three traps at the head of the stairs,” she explained in a whisper, “and a large group of guards a little farther ahead.”
Stephanie stood on the final step, drew a breath, and gestured to the side. The air shimmered briefly, too quick to really be seen unless anyone was actually looking for it, and she closed her eyes and gestured with her hands.
“It’s a mirror shield,” she said quietly when she saw their confused expressions. “I’ve pushed it beyond the traps and anything they throw at us will rebound on them. But first, I’ll bait them to bring them within range.”
She flicked her fingers. Three sharp explosions as the traps detonated were immediately followed by the sound of pounding boots and the team stepped up and into the hallway behind the mirror shield. The defenders immediately opened fire. They cursed and tried to retreat when they saw their fusillade rebound off the invisible wall and boomerang toward them. Three men managed to fling themselves into a room, but the others were decimated by the return of the own fire.
The mirror shield shivered visibly and fell, and the team pushed forward. The three surviving guards darted out of the room and released a barrage of fire.
Solid rounds battered her shield and the team took cover behind her. She raised her hands, palms out, in front of her and drew them slightly apart to broaden the shield to protect them all.
When they realized their shots couldn’t penetrate, the rebels ceased their fire. Two backed away, their weapons trained on the team. The third bolted away along the landing.
Stephanie flicked her wrist and a small, sticky ball of magic rocketed forward to adhere to the back of his jacket. “Surrender or die,” she commanded.
He ignored and continued to run, and she shrugged. “Your choice.”
The magic exploded with a sharp crack to blow a hole through him in an end so sudden and quick that he didn’t have time to scream. She looked at the two men before her and raised her hands.
“Surrender or die.”
They dropped their weapons and raised their hands.
“Secure them,” she commanded, and Lars and Marcus hurried to comply before she changed her mind.
She ignored them, strode forward in the direction the dead man had taken, and stepped past his remains without giving them a second glance. The cats paced beside her, their heads up and ears erect, alert for the first sign of danger. The team moved swiftly in their wake.
“Here,” she told them and stopped in front of a single door. She studied it for a moment before she punched her hand forward with her palm upraised to propel a burst of magic into it.
The door catapulted off its hinges and semi-automatic fire chattered out of the room. This time, solid ammunition was punctuated by the hi
ss of laser fire, none of which penetrated the translucent shield in front of her.
Once more, she spoke, and her voice echoed around them as if she stood in the middle of a hollow chamber. Its calm tones were all the more eerie for the anger and implacability woven into it. “Surrender or die.”
Chaos erupted from the room. More rounds and laser bursts spoke in reply, but the clatter of weapons thrown down and the sound of fleeing footsteps were audible despite the fusillade.
She stepped forward, far enough through the ruptured doorway that the felines could slip past. Frog, Avery, and Brendan raced after them, their minds on the mission. They sure as shit hoped Morgana wouldn’t kill all the rebels to exact vengeance for Todd.
She swept forward.
“Secure that,” she ordered and pointed at a communications array set up at the back of the room. “Frog!”
“On it!” he shouted as he changed direction and headed to the consoles.
A single shot rang out, and Morgana shouted in fury. She froze and Lars, who came in behind her after he’d secured the prisoners shouted, “Get down!”
The team sprawled instinctively as energy lashed over their heads. Walls vanished, as did the rebel who’d hidden behind some curtains. Other revolutionaries also fell, and their bodies convulsed as power surged through them.
The team leader, on one knee behind her, bowed his head. “We will never get any information.”
The power storm lasted only a few seconds and ended in complete silence until a scream burst from the other room. She turned toward it and Lars bolted around her to find the source. In the adjoining room, now open for all to see, Zeekat looked at them and red smeared his black-and-white jaws.
“Never,” Lars muttered and tried to find the next rebel before the cats did. “Never, never, never.”
She stepped behind him. “Find them all.”
“Find them first,” Lars muttered into his comms, reminding the team of the mission, “and neutralize them for questioning.”
What Morgana did with them after that was up to her, but he hoped some would survive if they weren’t a threat. Across the room, Bumblebee vaulted high in the air, knocked a monitor off a table, and destroyed a chair as he lunged for something in the corner.
A shrill squeal spurred the team leader into action, and he raced toward the cat, but Vishlog was already moving. “I’ve got this.”
Lars left him to it.
“Secure them,” Stephanie ordered, and he looked back to see her pointing at the rebels who’d fallen to the power surge. She caught his eye and gave him a humorless smile. “I did not forget.”
When he continued to stare, momentarily frozen in place, she frowned. “Find the others. Their leader isn’t here.”
As she spoke, she summoned several more glittering orbs and sent them out, then stalked across the room to join him. “We’ll search together.”
“Avery!” he snapped and pointed to where Frog sat, his fingers racing as he hacked through the rebels’ system. “Keep him safe. Brendan, Marcus, you’re with me.”
Frog paused. “Don’t destroy the transmitter. I’m sending everything to the shuttle.”
“Find it all,” she ordered, and the command was directed at the entire team.
For the next thirty minutes, they went from room to room and searched every corner they could find. They overturned furniture, scanned walls for hidden passages, and raced after fleeing footsteps.
Zeekat bounded past them and apprehended any rebel in his path with a powerful leap into the center of their back to ride them to the floor, or he simply ambushed them from the side.
After Lars prevented him from killing the first one, the big cat worked faster, attacked low from under their guns or in from a blind spot, and left them broken for the team to secure. Morgana was less forgiving.
If they fired at any of them, she left their charred corpses behind her. “We have enough for questioning,” she told Lars when he groaned. “If they fire on us, their lives are forfeit.”
Two-thirds of the way through the floor, they found a narrow set of stairs leading down. This time, the team leader was fast enough to take the lead, relieved that Morgana kept Zeekat behind her shield. He decided his body armor could take most of what had been thrown at them and refused to think about the rest.
When they reached the end of the passage at the bottom of the stairs, they found a garage, its doors barely open as a shuttle lifted from the floor.
“Not happening!” Morgana growled and fired tendrils of power to envelop the shuttle’s shell.
Lars sighed and she smirked as the tendrils glowed with sudden brightness and energy arced through the vehicle. Screams came from inside, the engine died, and the shuttle dropped to the garage floor.
Stephanie recalled the tendrils and took three steps forward, but Marcus and Brendan managed to get ahead of her. Zeekat raced past them and reached the craft seconds before they did. As the cat arrived, the pilot’s hatch slid open and a stocky man with graying hair stumbled out.
“Zee! Leave!” Stephanie shouted as the feline leapt. The cat twisted in the air and aborted his attack.
Brenden tackled the man and the maneuver culminated in a scream of pain and a crunch punctuated by a whimper and an unconscious rebel. Marcus and Zee rounded the end of the shuttle and Lars dived inside. The team leader had his hands full.
The two rebels in the back of the shuttle—one Dreth and one Meligornian—spoke in hurried tones and tried to raise someone on the other end of their call.
“Frog’s gonna kill me,” he muttered, raised his blaster, and delivered two quick shots into the console.
As he did so, there was a small explosion and the building shook. The shuttle rocked, then settled back onto its belly, and the Dreth attacked. Lars shot him without thinking, hitting him in the gut, and raised his blaster to cover the other.
“Don’t move,” he ordered as Marcus opened the rear hatch, but the Meligornian rebel didn’t listen. Marcus sidestepped his attack but Zeekat slammed into him from the side.
Lars braced for the crunch, but it didn’t come. Instead, the big cat settled onto the rebel’s back and only extended his talons when his captive moved. The man tried to get away, rolled under the cat, and screamed, “Get him off! Get him off me!”
Zeekat hissed at him, bounced into the air, and landed on his chest to swat him with one paw. Marcus shoved the feline off him and flipped him onto his face to secure him, while Lars saw the med kit strapped beside the transmitter and patched the Dreth moaning at his feet.
“It’s a good thing you’re a Dreth,” he muttered. He looked at the wound and decided it would have been fatal on a human.
Bootsteps heralded the arrival of the rest of the team, and Zeekat yowled a greeting to Bumblebee as his hunting partner slid through the door. Together, the two cats stalked around the garage and then, with a suddenness that triggered alarm in every member of the team, they stopped.
Everyone went on high alert as Bumblebee tensed and pivoted toward a distant corner of the garage. Zeekat froze, then bounded in pursuit. Before Morgana could command them, Avery and Brenden hurried forward, their rifles raised and ready to defend their four-legged teammates.
“Now what?” Lars muttered when they stopped short of one corner and slunk, belly-low, toward it.
Paper rustled, and Bumble leapt high in the air. Zeekat cocked his head, then skittered forward at a slight angle. Marcus snapped his blaster up and moved cautiously in after them. When Lars went to do the same, Vishlog reached out and pushed his blaster down.
“Watch,” the Dreth instructed. “The cats have found more squeekies.”
“More what?” Frog asked and watched as Avery, Marcus, and Brenden fanned out around the two felines and prepared to fire.
The warrior used his hand to make small movements across the space in front of him. “You know, the squeekies?”
Lars laughed. “Ohhhh. Mice!”
A shrill squeak sounded
across the room and Marcus shouted in disgust, brushed madly at his uniform, and hopped away from Bumblebee. “I don’t want it!”
Avery laughed as another tiny body missiled to land at Brenden’s feet. He stopped laughing as a section of wall turned into a door and a small round object bounced out.
“Grenade!” Lars roared and dived for Stephanie.
He rebounded from her shields as a ball of energy encapsulated the grenade and lifted it from the floor. When he looked up, Morgana was in full control and gestured sharply out the front of the garage to hurl the energy ball and its deadly cargo through the aperture.
His instinct was to calm her, but she strode past him. Lightning crackled up and down her body and the shield pushed him aside. “Dammit.”
Vishlog hauled himself to his feet and they followed her. The cats paused their hunt long enough to watch them pass.
“Keep them here,” Lars ordered as he hurried past Avery.
“Wave one!” Marcus shouted as the first scream erupted from the room beyond, but the team leader kept moving.
The Dreth stayed with him as they followed Stephanie through the door. This time, there was no mercy. The rebels inside the room fired on her as she entered, and Morgana let loose.
Magic blazed from her hands and arced from her body. Volatile balls stuck to targets and exploded while tendrils struck like snakes and burned whatever they touched. The all-terrain vehicle they were loading was enveloped and melted to slag.
Lars shot the man who rose from behind a line of crates to shoot her in the back, and Vishlog eliminated a sniper positioned behind some shelving. Morgana annihilated everyone else.
Avery, Frog, and Brenden watched the carnage from the doorway, their faces grim.
“They really shouldn’t have messed with her friend.”
“More like boyfriend.” Frog scoffed. “No woman would get that mad for a friend-zoned person. She liked him.”
There was movement at the garage door and Avery pivoted and fired as he moved. “Well, to hell with them, then.”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 64