Once inside the room, he sighed. The tablet beeped again and reminded him that the message was on hold and waiting. He growled and entered his credentials to see it, set the tablet on the table, and activated it to display the hologram.
The picture flickered and revealed the inside of the ambassador’s office. The door opened and she walked in, paused, and took a deep breath. “Hello, Vishlog. I have heard from a third party that the Dreth have attached one of their best to support the witch Morgana and that this soldier has given exemplary service and is a credit to his people.”
She allowed herself a brief smile—a compliment in and of itself—and then continued. “Because of this, I have been given permission to offer you the opportunity to move to Stephanie’s employ. I was honored to receive this suggestion and am honored to grant you my permission, but also to deliver you my personal appreciation for delivering service above and beyond the normal expectations of any Dreth warrior.”
His jaw dropped as she explained the attachments she’d forwarded, that she was not dismissing him, and that he had the right to refuse the honor if he so chose.
Finally, she clapped and smiled. “We are so very proud of you and all that you have achieved in our name. We are proud to name you Dreth.”
With that, the ambassador took a step back and sketched a rainbow with her hands. “Your life gives us hope and honor,” she intoned.
Jaleck then did something that Vishlog had never expected to see. She bowed, put her foot back, and lowered her head and held this for a full thirty heartbeats. It was a Bow of Great Respect, rarely given and not something he’d ever expected to receive.
When she straightened, she fixed the screen with a serious stare. “Anytime you wish to talk and I can move my schedule, the time is yours, Vishlog. It is good to see you have found someone you can respect.”
She signed off and he sat there and stared at the screen for a very long moment. When he finally stood, he took a long deep breath in, his back a little straighter than before.
He couldn’t believe it. After all the years, he had found a home with the witch of the Federation and her protection team—as crazy as they were. He had found someone he could believe in and follow. He had the honor and respect of working for Stephanie Morgana.
In that moment, he knew he would never question his purpose again.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Stephanie sat across from Elizabeth with Burt coming through on audio. “First of all, it’s really nice to be back.”
“It’s nice to have all your shenanigans back,” her mentor replied with a smile.
“We definitely missed you,” Burt added.
She stretched her arms out in front of her, her fingers interlocked. “So, while we were working out in the great beyond, I learned so much about what we need to work on as a team. The scenarios changed from pirate capture, to bombs, and battling pirates on ships. It was chaotic and we definitely need to practice so that we can move through fights like that with almost cat-like reflexes.”
Both of the felines looked at her and almost immediately put their heads back down. Ms. E gave them a cautious glance, still not sure about them. They snored lightly and she relaxed a little. “Don’t forget the whole lava thing and creating volcanoes.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “That was…interesting, to say the least. I would also like to have an understanding of basic operations, both in the Federation Navy and outside it. And we probably need to know more about how marines work because I think we’ll see more of those guys in the future, too.”
She took a breath, obviously ticking things off in her head. “I almost forgot. We need training on flight simulators for different ships. I really need to get with either the programmer or the AI so they can implement that into the team training.”
“Right,” BURT replied, not ready to explain to her that he was essentially both. “We can arrange that, or I can handle it for you. Start putting notes in the system with specifics so that I can compile them. I’ll need specific examples for the programmer, too, if you can manage that.”
“I can do that,” she replied. “Now that I am home, though, I really want to dive back into my ideas on helping to fix the environment.”
She paused and half-expected either of them to steer her back to more operational topics. When they didn’t, she went on. “From the simulations, we know it’s possible, but not within a lifetime or even ten lifetimes. I played with the idea of creating a kind of spray or gas created from the energy to pump or dump on places. But I feel like it would simply return to the core. There’s no guarantee it would stop and clean things up. It needs direction.”
“That it does,” BURT replied, glad she had realized that. “What else?”
“A water treatment facility,” she said slowly. “Something that uses the energy to cleanse. And then, my last idea was to create some kind of machine that ran off magical energy.”
They both paused. Elizabeth put her hand on Stephanie’s arm. “You believe you can create technology here on Earth to run off eMU to clean the environment?”
Stephanie shrugged and scratched Bumblebee when he rubbed his horned head along her thigh. He rested his chin on her knee. “I’m not totally sure on any of it. I suppose we would need to patent it to ONE R&D and research and develop it. But yes, I do think I could create that.”
Her mentor liked the sound of that. “What about things like air quality and recycling?”
She snorted. “Recycling, that’s great. In the 80s to the 2060s, recycling was all the rage, but the trash was collected and never sent anywhere for processing, so the whole thing broke down.”
“But you should be able to handle what’s here with magic? Right?” Ms. E. asked.
“Actually, now that you mention it, I think I might.” She tapped her pen against her lips. “And if not, my magic would do one hell of a job sorting that stuff out. I could actually reuse things, even if I couldn’t recycle them.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “The edge of the universe is your limit, kid. But, as a word to the wise, I would not share those ideas with anyone, especially not the Navy right now. Not unless you want to be leashed inside a lab until you die.”
“Yeah, that is not really on top of any of my lists, except maybe the one of Things to Avoid at All Costs.”
She laughed. “I’d like to know why, though. Imagine a way to run magical effects without a wizard? That’s like creating guns again when knights had all of that armor and then poof, instant equalization. The Navy would want it and so would everyone else. Until we know the R&D, I don’t want to let this idea out of here.”
“Agreed,” the other woman replied with a grin. “You also need to know that I negotiated the consulting fees for you and your team’s efforts. I also got the acquisition order for the ship you captured, as well as 2.2 billion credits.”
Her grin turned serious. “The Navy thought I might balk and walk away if they simply denied it, so I explained that I had more than enough money to use for the new mercenary company—Morgana, Incorporated.”
She watched Stephanie’s expression range from surprise to horror to disbelief but didn’t let her interrupt. “I said I’d give you a week to get a crew there…and they decided to negotiate in good faith.”
Stephanie shook her head. “I’m sorry, did you just say 2.2 billion?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth smirked. “The ship is worth close to ten billion credits, so it was a steal for them. We only need about half a billion to outfit a ship you need, maybe seven hundred and fifty million or so. Each of your team members will receive a cool twenty million credits deposited directly into their account and you will be stupid rich.”
She laughed at the look on the girl’s face. “So, you have a choice. You can continue to risk your life to save the Federation, or you can retire and hire shirtless men to wave palm fronds in your general direction.”
When she started to laugh, Ms. E. had to wait for her to calm down before she could cont
inue with the discussion. “Have you any idea which way you want to go? If it’s the rugged good-looking males with no shirts, we don’t have to purchase the ship.”
Stephanie smirked. “Not that half-naked men waving large leaves doesn’t have a certain allure, but I think my help is needed in this war. It’s what Morganas do.”
“Good,” Burt said. “Because the ship was ordered last week and you have a lot of training to do.”
Death Becomes Her, the book that started it all for Michael Anderle.
Available now at Amazon
What you thought you knew about Vampires and Werewolves is wrong...so very, very, wrong.
A thousand years of effort to keep the UnknownWorld hidden is unraveling and the Patriarch is tired. He needs to find someone to take over.
He finds Bethany Anne.
Unknown, untested and untried she sets out to accomplish the impossible while forging a new future. One that no one knew was in danger.
And she does it with an attitude that will make you stand up and cheer!
They say a dress can make a woman, but in this case, the dress is Death, and Death Becomes Her very well indeed.
Order now at Amazon
Creator Notes - Michael Anderle
June 25, 2019
THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.
(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)
RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?
The fans have spoken, and the second set of books are here! In fact, book 03 is (barely) in production. But, you know, if you want to toss a review up there to help the production team out, I wouldn’t be upset ;-).
(These are actually books 04-06, and we will split them up later this year with new covers and everything.)
I have to say a HUGE thank you to everyone for your kind words about Stephanie and the team.
When I went to the drawing board for a new character, I thought about my time with Bethany Anne of The Kurtherian Gambit (Death Becomes Her is book 01), and what it was that resonated so much with the readers and me.
Some of those emotions I have worked hard to recreate here (as some have commented) and other stuff I did not. For one, Stephanie doesn’t have quite the mouth Bethany Anne has, nor is she as old as Bethany Anne when the story starts out.
I have to admit that I was a bit MORTIFIED when Witch of the Federation (Federal Histories Book 01) came out.
You see, my company (LMBPN Publishing) had invested a lot of time, money, and effort into putting together the first book, and it wasn’t until about two days before release when I realized something…
There weren’t that many Fantasy/Space Opera series doing really well.
Not the kind of ‘WOW it’s selling well!’ sales that meant the investment in time and money would come back very fast.
The first day the story made $70.00…then started climbing until it peaked sixteen days later.
At two weeks into sales, I was seeing all of the positive reviews and the climbing sales and realized I had BADLY misjudged how well the book would be received. Fortunately, the sales were in the right direction.
Unfortunately, we weren’t in place to be working on the follow up right away, and the group of us had to start scrambling to get this set of stories together. I was up late at Five-50 (a pizza place at the Aria Hotel) typing my little fingers off
Then, the book progressively did better for sixteen days until it peaked in sales at an amazing amount (for me) and slowly started coming down. At this time, it was obvious I had totally misjudged how the readers would enjoy the first Federal Histories and Stephanie Morgana.
By a lot.
So, I immediately pulled the team together, and we started on book 02 (ok, that was two weeks later, it wasn’t immediate.)
If there was something that could go wrong on the project? It did.
We were aiming for the book to come out mid-May… Then early June…mid-June… Okay, early July…
I put a stake in the ground, and we all worked to pull together the stories that I hoped resonated with where I see Stephanie going—her, her team, her friend Todd, and BURT.
Plus the Wonderful Ms. E.
Now, we are working towards book 03 of Federal Histories, may life not interrupt too much!
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.
La Puente, CA, USA
I’m hanging by myself, making chili (which my wife can’t stand the smell of, so I do it when she is out of town), and I’ve eaten too much.
I’m like a beached whale that doesn’t know when to quit munching on the seaweed.
I’m off to go to sleep now, wishing I hadn’t had that last bowl.
I hate myself at the moment, but tomorrow I will be working on that pot again before my wife gets back home.
Because chili is life.
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Review them so others have your thoughts, and tell friends and the dogs of your enemies (because who wants to talk to enemies?)… Enough said ;-)
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Books by Michael Anderle
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Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 72