They had examined the weapons and realized there were too many left over for it all to be meant for them when the marines arrived. She snickered as she gave them the heads up.
“It looks like you’re sharing your toys, boys.”
They didn’t let her down and made their disappointment a loud chorus. The marine captain stepped inside. “Sorry to spoil your fun.”
“Who says it’s spoiled?” she asked him. “The more the merrier.”
By the time they’d allocated the weapons, the pilots had closed the hatch and were warming the engines.
Avery watched as the marines showed them how to load the extra magazines into their harnesses, and then how to load even more. He shook his head. “I think there are more rounds here than was shot in all wars—ever.”
Lars looked at him. “Come on. You’re exaggerating. I…” He looked at bulging ammo pouches and well-stocked harnesses, then noticed the crates being secured in one corner by a pair of marines. “Okay, maybe not by much, but definitely a little.”
As the experimental ship left the Washington Revere, Wattlebird’s voice came over the intercom.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for choosing to fly Navy Experimental Airlines. This is your captain speaking.”
One of the marines snorted but Wattlebird either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him.
“You will be happy to know they have given us not one, but two buttons. One of these is large and red and the other is green and also large, proving that size really does matter. For the Dreth among you, this should come as good news.”
There was a round of good-natured chuckles and Vishlog grinned, but Wattlebird wasn’t done.
“Before we push either of these suckers, we would like to remind you that this is a strictly non-smoking flight and that your tray tables should be secured in the upright position.”
After a quick breath, he continued. “Also, make sure you’re sitting in your assigned seats and that the harness and webbing are secured. We would hate to lose any of you mid-transition.”
They exchanged nervous glances and doublechecked their harnesses.
Up front, Wattlebird cleared his throat. “Okay, we’re about to hit the red button. The button that says go—or is that the green button? Hell, one of these buttons that will take your inside and make it your outside. We suggest you sit in the webbed chairs, buckle in, and kiss your sweet butts goodbye. We hit the red button in ten…nine…eight… Oh, screw it!”
The sound of his palm smacking the button echoed and the craft hurtled into space.
Chapter Sixty-One
The pilot hadn’t joked about their insides becoming their outsides. Groans echoed through the cabin as the universe twisted around them before it stopped abruptly. Everyone jolted forward. Stephanie looked at her team. “Is everyone good?”
They all nodded. Frog flung his harness off and jumped up to pump his fists. “That. Was. Awesome.”
Marcus hauled him back into his seat as the ship accelerated again, albeit a little slower this time. The pilot spoke over the comms once more. “You guys might want to take a look-see.” He opened a viewscreen on the bulkhead behind the cockpit.
In the distance ahead, they saw three small corvette class ships attacking a large, deep-space freighter.
“We should help,” Brenden said.
Stephanie stared at the scene, then pointed. “Look over there. It’s a big ass momma pirate ship. Take us there. They want to play. We will play. Take us right into one of their landing bays.”
The pilot twisted and looked at her through the hatchway. His expression said she was crazy. “What if they don’t have any landing bays?”
She smirked. “Make one.”
“Gotcha.” Wattlebird turned back to the front. “Hold onto your hats, folks. We’ve seen the long-haul. Now, let’s see what this beauty can do in the short-and-fast department.
He left the viewscreen up and both teams stared, transfixed, as he opened the throttle and crossed the distance between them and the mothership in what felt like seconds.
The pilot swept the ship around under the leviathan’s belly and waited while his co-pilot ran a scan.
“Portside and up. Twenty degrees to your left,” she instructed in a soft contralto, and one of the marines gave a happy sigh.
The man next to him groaned. “Lesange is in love again.”
“It’s the voice,” another added. “Every damn time. Give him a voice like that and it goes straight to his balls.”
The co-pilot cleared her throat and they abruptly fell silent.
“Get ready to flip it in three...two...one... Now!” she ordered, and Wattlebird flipped the experimental and brought them squarely in line with a hangar door.
“She’s magic,” Lesange breathed.
No one answered him as the pilot opened fire on the hangar door and it vaporized.
“I want one,” Frog muttered, and the marine captain snapped him a fierce glare.
“Get in line.”
“Uh oh.” One of the marines snickered. “The captain is in lust.”
They fell silent as bodies floated past them. The hangar hadn’t been empty. While the ships docked there were locked in place, the crewmen refueling or repairing them were not.
When the doors vanished, the hangar vented, and they were lost to space with its atmosphere. Wattlebird cruised through the opening until he saw an open landing pad and brought the ship down.
His voice spoke through their HUDS loud and clear. “Lock and load, ladies and gentlemen. This is where we leave you. Keep your suits sealed until you make it into the ship proper and thank you for flying Naval Experimental Air.”
“Wait,” Frog protested. “You’re leaving us?”
He was unrepentant. “We can’t leave the ship here. We have to drop you off and get out.”
Stephanie shook her hands and small sparks cascaded off them. “Don’t worry. We will take that one home.” She pointed at the largest pirate ship attacking the freighter and smiled.
Vishlog’s eyes grew wide and he leaned forward to peer out at the ship.
He glanced dubiously at Lars. “Is she serious?”
The team leader didn’t answer. He and Stephanie were already waiting at the rear doors, the cats beside them.
On the command deck above them, the Dreth captain watched as his crew coordinated the three attacking ships. It was like watching a dance being choreographed on the fly—a beautiful and deadly dance.
The freighter was armed, but she hadn’t brought an escort and they were close to one of the smaller ships being able to hard-dock with her. Once his men were inside, it would only be a short time before the ship fell.
“Tell me when you find it,” he ordered as his smallest ship moved into position for docking.
The deep space scans had picked up a small blip. It might have been a ship, except it moved too fast and initial analysis couldn’t identify it. As he spoke, his comms crackled and shrieked and one of the techs ripped his headset away from his ears.
The crackling was followed by a squeal before the viewscreen went fuzzy. He scowled and pressed a couple of keys on his console while the technician tried frantically to clear the image.
Before the man could resolve the picture, the screen went black and a deep female laugh rippled through the speakers. “My name is Morgana. You are in my way. Prepare to be destroyed.”
“What in Hrageth’s holy balls was that?” the captain demanded and whirled to face his 2IC. “And where is that ship?”
A very feminine chuckle rolled out of the speakers and sent chills down his spine. “And why is this woman on my comms?” he demanded.
As he spoke, alarms squawked throughout the carrier and the lights flickered wildly overhead. One of the men working the system looked at him. “Uh…Landing Bay Twelve, sir. The ship is in Landing Bay Twelve.”
What had started out as a lucrative day rapidly descended into chaos. When he hooked into t
he security feed for Bay Twelve, there was only silence and the darkness on the screen remained. They were about to flick to the corridor outside when a loud scream echoed across the room.
It was followed by voices shouting a warning. “We have cats! There are cats eating crewmen in Landing Bay Twelve. Does anybody read—Ahhhh!”
Everyone winced at the crunch that ended the scream. The growl that followed made their hair stand on end. The viewscreen fritzed and displayed pictures from over thirty cameras.
Landing Bay Twelve was empty save for the bodies of the dead, and those were floating into space. The airlock had cycled sometime during the glitch and now stood empty and closed. The corridor outside was littered with bodies.
The command crew searched the screen, looking for any sign of their invaders.
In one, they saw the figure of a goddess dressed in battle armor and bathed in light, a cape draped over her shoulders. She flung small glowing balls over a makeshift barricade of tables.
Everything they touched exploded—tables, chairs, heads...the wall leading to the next compartment...
Suddenly, one of the human pirates ran to a camera, his face contorted with terror “Please help us…they’re not natural. They’re demons—vicious—and there’s no way to stop them!”
A growl interrupted him, and he was dragged from sight.
“Who turned the lights out?” a voice demanded from another screen. “It’s so cold.”
The moan that followed scraped through them and ignited a terror they could not name. The sound of blaster fire from another feed was almost welcome. It sounded so...normal.
Metal shrieked and their attention was caught as a large armored cat bounded across the screen. Solid rounds ricocheted off it as it cannoned into a team of pirates who tried to hold the corridor. Its forepaws wrapped around one of the adjacent pirates as its hind paws raked downwards.
Two pirates fell screaming and the third ran.
He didn’t get very far.
On another screen, a trio of marines leap-frogged past each other as grenades decimated an internal corridor ahead of them. A third screen showed more marines and a civilian taking the armory apart.
A fourth screen showed a lone civilian, shorter than the rest and surrounded by a cloud of drones. He walked toward one of the auxiliary hubs and the drones eliminated the few crewmen who appeared to oppose him.
“Someone, stop him!” the captain shouted. A shudder ran through the ship, followed by the sound of an explosion. He looked at a technician.
“Landing Bay Four just vented to space, sir. There appears to be an angry Dreth screwing with the controls.” He highlighted the appropriate visual feed, and Vishlog’s black-clad form appeared, taking the relevant control room apart.
“Somebody stop him! For Hrageth’s sake, don’t let him—” Another convulsive shudder was followed by a dull boom.
“Landing Bays Eight through Ten just vented, sir.”
“I know. I can see that. Will someone with some kind of competence kill these boarders?”
He stabbed at the control panel in front of him. “Damnation! I need to speak to Targa’s Wrath. I want them back here to deal with this problem. Why. Won’t. This. System. Work?”
One of the technicians worked his keyboard in a series of rapid-fire commands and the sweat beaded on his thick skin. “They’re in our system too, sir.”
“Well, get them the hell out of it.”
The comms crackled again, and a female pirate’s voice cried, “But I just got here. Stop it. Damn cats. I knew you were fucking evil. Captain, you better tell my family I died protecting them, not being devoured by a huge pussy!”
That broadcast ended in a shrill scream and another sickening crunch, and blaster fire issued from four other monitors. In a fifth, a swarm of drones hovered between a half-dozen pirates and a small man with a keyboard plugged into a mainframe.
The captain was almost beside himself. “Hrageth be damned. Get my fighters back here.”
Stephanie’s team and the marines raced through the ship and cleared the corridors, side corridors, and rooms as rapidly as they could. They broke off into small teams and left any room the cats chose strictly to the animals.
The felines showed no mercy, but they were never far from their mistress’s side and constantly returned to check on her after they had cleared the enemy from the caves around her.
Stephanie kept her shields up and allowed her team to focus on killing pirates while she tried to determine the quickest route to the command deck. “My kingdom for a damned map,” she yelled. “Where is the ‘You are Here’ arrow?”
None of them noticed when Frog took his flock of drones and made a few educated guesses. Stephanie wanted a map? Well, he could find her one.
He left them to clear what they could and prayed he didn’t find too many pirates in the corridors ahead. By the time the cats had cleared the crew quarters, he knelt beside one of the ship’s auxiliary mainframes while the drones blocked the door.
The first thing he did was upload a worm to keep their security programs busy, and the next was to run several sub-routines at once. He left the docking bays alone. Vishlog had muttered something about creating confetti and fireworks before rumbling off along the flight line with Avery, Brenden, and Docherty in tow.
“Someone has to keep you boys out of trouble.”
“Yeah. Good luck with that,” Marcus had snorted as they’d left. It had been easy to slip away.
When he’d found the data Stephanie needed, he sent it to their HUDS. “I believe someone owes me a kingdom,” he told them and gave himself remote access to the system before he started heading back.
The drones had created carnage outside, but he could now see where the team was and jogged along a path to intercept them. “I hope those assholes don’t shoot me before they work out who I am,” he muttered.
Ahead of him, Stephanie stopped to study the schematics he had sent. “And thank you, Froggie,” she murmured as she identified where they needed to go.
“There,” she snapped and marked the command center. “Find me and follow me in.”
Muttered affirmatives issued over the comms and she took the lead through the maze of corridors and decks. At one point, she came to an abrupt halt and peered carefully around the corner. “Dammit, Frog, you couldn’t have hooked me into the security feeds?” she grumbled.
He laughed. “Your wish is my command,” he said, and she stared at the display of the corridor beyond.
There were at least fifteen fully armed and armored Dreth pirates formed up across the hallway ahead. Their leader gave orders in Dreth.
Marcus whispered over the team’s comms. “What are we waiting for?”
Stephanie raised a hand for silence and sent almost transparent pearls of magic up and out along the ceiling. “Work smarter, not harder.”
Using the security feed for reference, she guided the tiny orbs until they were above the Dreth pirates, then directed a pearl onto each one. The moment it touched, it lit up like a beacon.
It also melted into a puddle that coated the surface it was on and then ignited. The Dreth screamed and fired blindly to shoot each other, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. When the barrage stopped, she led them forward. They had only gone a few paces when a voice spoke over the intercom “I don’t know what your tiny little squad has it in their mind to do, but you will not succeed and it would be a shame to kill you. You are all alone. Even your pilots have left you behind.”
There was a pause before the voice continued, calm and reasonable despite the tension that trickled through it. “Don’t make this hard on yourselves. We can use a team like you.”
“Uh huh,” Stephanie muttered, but the captain continued.
“We’re trying to build a better universe.”
The image of the burning ship flashed into her mind.
“A better world?” she snapped. “How? You’re murdering—”
“No, no, no. We’re ac
quiring what we need.”
“What...bodies? Dead families? Other people’s wealth? How is that what you need?”
“We don’t kill families,” he argued. “Never. They’re too valuable in the world to come.”
“Rubbish. I was there. You not only kill families, but you kill your own.”
“We target only our enemies.”
“You were going to blow up an entire passenger liner. I don’t call that targeting. Your people were there to rob and steal.”
“We need resources. We’re working toward peace, something everyone needs. We need to be ready.”
“We are ready!” she snarled as the energy flared around her body. Her voice dropped in pitch and those closest her took two steps away.
“Uh oh,” Marcus muttered, and Lars summed it up in a single word. “Shit.”
The marines with them snapped their blasters up and scanned the walls and the corridor for the enemy but saw no one. Stephanie picked up the pace, walking yet moving so fast they had to trot to keep up.
She pulled more energy as she went, dragged it from the walls of the ship, from the floors, and from space beyond. Finally, she stopped following the corridors and moved directly toward her target location, her magic blazing a path for them to follow.
In the command center, the captain glared at the screen as Stephanie’s dark figure moved directly toward him. After a moment’s hesitation, he contacted his fleet.
“Targa’s Wrath and Hrageth’s Ascension. Targa’s Wrath and Hrageth’s Ascension. Return home. Urgent assistance required. Targa’s Wrath. Hrageth’s Ascension. Your assistance is required. Return home.”
He waited but neither of the other two ships acknowledged him.
“Targa’s Wrath and Hrageth’s Ascension. Ebon Knight has been boarded. You are recalled. Urgent assistance required.”
This time, although neither responded, he saw the ships increase power and slowly alter their course toward him.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 69