Brenden elbowed Avery, who elbowed Frog, who elbowed Vishlog, who was finally done with the games and turned to Lars and pointed at Stephanie. Her energy now shimmered over her skin and her hair moved wildly around her, breaking free from her braid. Her eyes had turned black and luminescent, and her teeth were clenched tightly.
They’d been focused on eradicating the pirates who appeared from beyond the next vaporized wall and hadn’t watched her. Now, she had their full attention.
“Sonuva—” Lars muttered and ran forward. He ducked in front of her and tried to make eye contact. “Steph! Come on, Steph. You’re still in there, right? You know we’re on a ship, right?
She continued her advance, her face implacable under the HUD as she strode toward the command center. He jogged backward and hoped he didn’t fall on his ass and get trampled.
He tried again. “Come on, Steph. Remember, if you let loose on a ship, you will blow us all to the end of the universe. Steph—Morgana! Listen to me.”
Marcus came up and placed a hand on her skin. She snapped her head toward him, her face angry. “Horrible things happen if we bust a hole in the skin, Steph.”
The marines flanked them, fired at shadows that moved and fired in return, while the guys tried to get Morgana to see reason. The closer they got to the command center, the worse the incoming fire became. The shields she had thrown around them rippled and sparked under the impact of solid rounds and laser fire.
They crossed another room and she devastated another wall, this time taking the next one down with it.
“Horrible things, Steph,” Lars repeated and tried to think of something to add to get her to listen. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in control. Morgana was.
“Then horrible things might happen,” she replied, her voice eerily calm despite the promise of vengeance within.
They crossed the two rooms. The first was some kind of gymnasium, but the second...none of them could work out what it was. Large steel balls were arrayed in neat shelves along one wall, and Stephanie-Morgana lifted them and floated a dozen of them through the air.
The steel balls ranged in size from soccer balls to medicine balls, and she spun them in a swirl of steel as she pushed ahead. The shields bulldozed a path through the debris in front of them.
Pirates emerged from the corridors around them and the steel balls spun through the front row to cut them down. Morgana walked on and the whirling balls moved methodically in a macabre dance of death around her.
She appeared to be deep in thought.
Shouts came from behind them and everyone pivoted as a large group of Dreth advanced in a rush. The enemy bellowed battle cries and raised their weapons to fire.
This, she noticed. She swayed to the side and brought both arms to the right and up and over her head to the other side.
The balls rocketed in a deadly wave to shred through the front ranks and swirl into the center of the massed pirates.
Carnage ensued, but Stephanie didn’t stay to watch. She turned and continued toward the command center, wondering exactly what the Teachers of Meligorn would think now.
The magic she used was more than an illusion of power. It was power. She could feel it flowing in and around her and knew that without it, she and her teams would not have made it past the hangar bay.
She also knew that it was beyond magic to change the pirates. They believed they were fighting for a cause and for the benefit of all. If anything, that was an illusion. She dragged several pirates out from behind a broken wall and dropped them in the open.
Bumblebee and Zeekat raced forward and savaged two of them before they had even landed. Lars and Johnny killed another two. Stephanie-Morgana continued her progress and swept the balls through more pirates in a side corridor as she thought how beliefs could cause creatures to go against their natures but magic could not.
How exactly did that work? It was beyond her.
She vaporized the wall that concealed another dozen Dreth and let the team deal with them but dropped two more down for the cats. The bloodied mass of steel balls spun through a wall and into a Dreth who had pulled the pin on a grenade.
He fell and it exploded. The other pirates nearby died with him.
Stephanie resumed her musing as she drew closer to the dot on the map and seemed oblivious to her surroundings. Inside her mind, she journeyed much farther and contemplated the Mysteries as she pulled Dreth out from hiding for her teams and the cats to deal with or simply obliterated them with the balls.
Targa’s Wrath and Hrageth’s Ascension veered back toward the Ebon Knight. Resentful at being called back from the kill when their sister ship looked ready to dock, they didn’t watch their long-range scans as closely as they should have.
They were so focused on trying to establish how the Ebon Knight had been boarded that they missed the small flotilla of Navy ships that appeared in the system. By the time the scans had sounded the alert and drawn their attention to the enemy presence, the first salvo of missiles was on its way. Both the Targa and the Ascension tried to take evasive action and failed.
Their sister ship hid in the shadow of the freighter’s signal. When Targa and Ascension exploded, she ran.
On the Ebon Knight’s command deck, the captain lifted the protective cover from a non-descript black button on his console. He hesitated momentarily, licked his lips and swallowed hard, then pressed it.
“I apologize for having to bother you, but I believe we will need you to make an appearance. There is a witch on my ship.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
The Navy had sent its fastest ships—two corvettes and two frigates. In mass, they equaled the Targa and the Ascension, but in firepower, they were somewhat better. Their crews moved with quiet confidence in the control room as the small flotilla headed into battle.
“Missiles away.”
“Fire again.”
“I don’t think they’ve seen us.”
“They can’t be watching their scans.” Lieutenant Bailey monitored the missiles’ flight and the targets’ behavior. He saw when the two pirate vessels realized they were under fire. “They’ve noticed us now.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Give them another dose to be sure.”
“Gunnery will be upset.”
“Good. It’s time they did some buying.”
They watched as their missiles converged on Targa’s Wrath and she vanished from their screens. A second wave of missiles reached Hrageth’s Ascension and it followed the other into oblivion. Bailey straightened and the crew chief looked at him.
“What about the mother ship, sir?”
“Leave it. The Witch has boarded it and we are under strict instructions not to blow her up.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
On the Ebon Knight, Stephanie had almost reached the command center. She dropped the steel balls and hurled several balls of fire at the Dreth instead. One after another, they fell victim to a magical firestorm.
Something pulled at the energy around her as if someone had walked across the web-like strands that connected her to the universe. She paused and blocked incoming fire with the shields as she closed her eyes and listened with every part of her body.
It took her a couple of heartbeats to understand what her magical self heard and where it came from but when she did, she pivoted toward it.
“Get behind me,” she commanded. “Stay behind me,” she added when they obeyed.
Bumblebee noticed a Dreth creep closer and started forward, only to have her bop him lightly on top of his armored head. It brought him up short.
“Listen!”
Both cats looked at her, then at the pirates moving on their flanks. She glared at them.
“Listen!”
They caught the growl in her voice and lowered their heads to slink behind her with rumbles of protest. Agitated, they kept glancing toward the approaching Dreth, but Brenden laid his hand on Bumblebee’s shoulder and leaned on the cat to let him know he was ther
e, and Marcus did the same for Zee.
In front of them, Stephanie began drawing more energy to herself in much the same way she had in the rebels’ mountain base. Sheets of it hazed around her, vanished in waves inside her, and passed through her armor as though it was no barrier at all.
The small strands of hair that had escaped during their fight through the ship drifted up to form a halo around her head. Bumblebee looked at her and hissed, then took a step away from her.
Marcus glanced at Zeekat and saw the feline staring fixedly past her. Before he could say anything, the marines snapped their blasters to their shoulders and aimed them unerringly in the same direction.
The marine captain’s voice rumbled low through their comms. “Hold fire. Wait for the witch’s signal.”
“What the hell is that?” Brendan asked and kept one hand on Bumblebee as he raised his blaster with the other.
Lars reached toward Steph but thought better of it, although he remained ready to grab her and drag her to safety. Marcus wanted to ask him where he thought that was but couldn’t say a word.
The being that approached them was at least as big as Vishlog and just as well-built. He wore armor unlike anything they’d ever seen—seamless and gleaming but moving with him as he walked.
His helmet, however, was another matter. It looked nothing like a modern helmet but rather like it had been taken from the pages of Earth history and blended seamlessly with the space armor he wore. It had a smooth, rounded top and a slender piece of metal reached down over where the bridge of a human’s nose would be.
Two eye holes were carved out of it and two large pieces of metal curved to cover nonexistent cheeks. Marcus thought he should be able to see the bottom of the creature’s nose and some of its lips and chin.
Hell. He should have been able to see its eyes, too, but he couldn’t.
There was nothing but darkness beneath the helmet, a featureless well of black.
The helmet turned until it seemed the entity beneath looked directly at Stephanie. She returned its gaze without flinching, even when it raised one long, dark arm and pointed at her.
“Interesting. I think I will keep you as a prize, young one.”
Every blaster readied and every trigger finger started to squeeze, but she snapped her fingers and their muscles froze so not a single shot was fired.
“You…” she said, and her mind raced as she tried to understand what she saw. A creature of nothing. Something magical enough for her own magic to alert her to his presence when her other senses hadn’t seen him coming.
She studied him, trying to sense his power and noting a complete absence of any kind of energy she knew. Pure darkness and a sense of nothing? She knew this.
Stephanie pointed at him. “You are Nihilism. The opposite of Energy. You are the vacuum.”
The entity cocked his head. “You have some knowledge. Not enough, but more than you should. My people will consume as we always do. We will reduce the casualties of the coming war. Join us. Save those you love from the horrors. Your honor and wisdom will be rewarded.”
Instinctively, she shivered. Inside, she spun the gMU she had gathered tighter and tighter to make it as concentrated as she could. She only had one opportunity, and she couldn’t let him know what she was doing.
Sweat dripped down her forehead and Nihilism laughed, his deep tones mocking. “I can feel you. Your energy cannot beat mine, and mine—”
A small explosion detonated beside him and shields of midnight appeared around him as he took a hasty step away from it. The team glanced toward the sound but saw only wall.
The alien did, too. “That was unwise.”
As he spoke, a curling tendril of magic lashed out. Stephanie made a slashing movement with her hand and cut through the black. The tendril fell to the deck and vanished into hissing vapor.
His next attack used her idea of fireballs but took it to the next level.
He threw orbs of blackness, the aura of cold that emanated from them so intense it burned the air around it. She dodged those but between each orb, he added darts of black lightning and several of these penetrated her defenses.
As the battle intensified, her magic released her protectors and they moved clear. Brendan and Marcus dragged the cats aside and the two teams, contractors and marines, crouched low. They pressed against the walls, unwilling to leave but not able to intervene.
The lightning made her muscles convulse and her teeth chattered violently every time a bolt struck home. As the onslaught continued, she found each one more difficult to avoid than the last and each counterattack harder to make.
Her shields pulsed and weakened under the relentless barrage of dark magic. She felt her power waning and fatigue dragged at her spirit and mind.
Nihilism’s power was heavy, and it cut deep inside her mind and soul. The alien laughed, and she raised her head and gasped with pain.
Still, she faced him squarely and spoke. “You see, the problem isn’t me trying to overcome your magic. The problem is me rearranging this ship’s interior without being able to see what I’m doing.”
Her hand began to pulse with a blend of purple energy streaked with silver and blue streaks. She took a deep breath and whispered, “I sure hope this works.”
She curled her hand into a fist, flung her arm toward the wall beside him, and launched energy to spiral into it. It drilled into the center of the wall and spread, sending traceries of magic across the entire surface.
Nihilism’s helmet turned as though the alien watched the effect. He seemed to study what she’d done before he turned to face her again. “Pathetic.”
Stephanie held one hand up and her lips curled into a satisfied smirk. “Wait for it.”
Bumblebee made an uncertain mew, and she snapped a glance toward him. “I’ve got you, kitty.”
She clapped and flattened twin shields of magic over the teams and the cat to pin them against the walls and hold them there. A loud pop was rapidly followed by the sound of tearing metal.
The wall blasted open and Nihilism was dragged clear of the deck and ripped through the gap. His body careened out of the ship and into the depths of space.
Anchored to the deck by tendrils of magic, she whipped her hand up and directed a long pulse of energy toward the hole to cover it with a shield of magic as she drew more power to help her drag the ship’s hull back into place.
It was hard since she still couldn’t see what she was doing. This time, though, she could almost remember what it had been like before she’d undone it. That helped. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.
It took her a little time, but when she was done, she rubbed her hands together and turned to the others. “Did anyone notice where he went? I’m not really sure whether he can live out in space or not.”
Releasing the shields that held her teams, she told them, “There is one last place we need to take before we can head home.”
The marker for the command center pulsed in their HUDs, and they raced toward it. Most of the pirates had fled during her battle with Nihilism.
Some had been lost when she’d rearranged the outer hull and others when she’d put it back together again. The cats and teams dispatched any who’d been foolish enough to remain.
They attacked the bridge fast and hard. Stephanie vaporized the Bridge entrance to allow the marines and her team through.
Neither gave the pirates any quarter. The instant they had one in their sights, they fired and cleared the command center with brutal efficiency, but left the captain for her.
Her fists blazed with energy as she stared at the captain, who stood with his hand poised over the self-destruct button. He raised his gun to his temple and smiled at them. “You will get nothing from me. You will go up with the ship, as will I.”
He pounded his hand on the switch as he pulled the trigger and his brains erupted all over wall behind him.
The team tensed and waited for the explosion, but nothing happened. As the captain drop
ped lifeless to the floor, his hand slid off the button and revealed the magical shield that had protected it.
He’d caught the shield fair and square, but the button had not been pressed. She gave them a looked laced with tiredness and battle fatigue. “We’ve lost too many people. We need that information.”
Frog rejoined them. He’d slipped from the hiding place he’d found while he’d waited and now hurried up to the communications console. “Let’s make this simple.”
After a few quick adjustments, he pointed to Stephanie and Lars. “You two need to do this. I have to answer a transmission from a Navy corvette going by the name Coyote Stallone.”
“Say what?” Marcus began, but the marine captain approached. “I can help you there. I’ve transited on the Coyote a few times.”
He looked at the two exhausted teams and glanced at Stephanie. “If I could suggest something...”
She waved for him to continue.
“If the Coyote is on its way in, they could do the mop-up here.”
She followed the path of his gaze and saw how tired the two teams were from hours of fighting. “Done.”
Her decision made, she stood beside Lars as he put the call out to the pirates left on the Ebon Knight. “Your captain is dead and your ally has deserted you. You will stand down or the cats will start to hunt.”
Stephanie glanced to where the two cats lay stretched on the floor and thought it was a good idea they’d stayed out of camera pick-up range. Ending the transmission, Lars followed her gaze and managed a tired smile.
“They’ll never know.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
The broadcasters on Earth were ecstatic.
“This is Amelia Howard and welcome to tonight’s Federation News Broadcast,” the anchor said and smiled at the camera. “Heading the list tonight is the news of a successful fight against the Dreth pirates. This has been the Navy’s third win since the Ebon Knight’s capture three weeks ago.”
She glanced at her notes and refocused on the camera. “At this time, it is not known if the special tactics team and advanced Naval ship involved in the Knight’s capture were also used in this foray as well.”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 70