Witch of the federation.., p.25
Witch Of The Federation IV (Federal Histories Book 4), page 25
She stood and moved away from him, and as if the movement was a signal, the van slid to a halt. Before he could work out what was happening, he was picked up and tossed out.
He landed in the grass of a small park not far from the high-rise he lived in and Gene tumbled beside him shortly after. Neither of them moved for a long time after the van raced away. Aaron was the first.
“Fuck…me…” He groaned, rolled onto his knees, and stayed there until his head stopped spinning.
Gene followed him to his feet. “I think I hate you.”
“That’s okay. I hate me, too,” he told him. “I’m sorry, man.”
“You know sorry doesn’t cut it. I’m gonna have the devil’s own time getting Katie to not report this.” His friend looked around. “Hey, are we home?”
Aaron took a good look at the buildings around the park. “It looks like it.”
“They dropped us at home?” The man’s voice rose in a panicked whisper. “I have to make sure Katie’s okay. There’s no saying what they might have done to her.”
His words sent a cold chill through Aaron’s gut.
“Yeah, you go, man,” he whispered. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“No. No, we won’t.” Gene was adamant. “We’re not talking about this ever.”
“But—”
“No. Aaron, I’m done. I’m gonna do exactly as the lady asked. I won’t go near that shit with a barge pole. If you want to chase it, you’re on your own. Don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know.”
They’d started to move toward the block containing their apartments, but Aaron stopped. He laid a hand on Gene’s shoulder.
“You know I can’t. I…I have to know if I made him…more than what he was. I have to know if this is all my fault.”
His friend stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not doing it. I can’t. I have Katie. You need to leave it alone, too.”
“I can’t.”
He flinched as the other man swung toward him, sure he would take a swing at him, but all he did was grasp him by both shoulders and look intently into his face.
“Look, man. You do what you gotta do, but this thing? It’s an itch that will get you killed. Leave it the hell alone.”
Seeing the desperate fear in his friend’s eyes, Aaron nodded. “I’ll try.”
Gene studied his face a moment longer before he swung toward his apartment.
“Go home, Aaron. We have work tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“The drives are almost back up to speed,” Emil told Stephanie.
“What do you mean, almost?”
“I mean we can use the propulsion drive but not the fast warp capability. That’s still a couple of days away.”
“And the weapons system?”
“The cooling’s done and we’re working on increasing the rate of fire. Extra structural support is next.”
“Is it important?”
“The specs say we don’t really need it, but I’d rather we had it than not. That’s why it’s last on the list.”
“Fair enough. The hull?”
“Repairs are complete or we wouldn’t go anywhere. Ebony was very determined on that point.”
“My structural integrity is at one hundred and twenty-five percent,” the Knight told them smugly, “and engineering tells me we should reach one hundred and fifty percent in four days’ time.”
“A hundred and fifty?” Stephanie asked her. “How is that even possible?”
“We are using comparative specs. I am well above the standard statistics for ships of my class, even if I am the only one.”
She stifled a groan. The Knight sounded like every jock she’d ever had the misfortune to overhear. She turned to Emil. “Is there anything else I need to know about?”
“Jonathan has tweaked the flight controls.”
With a wry smile, she shook her head. “He was in the shuttles, too.”
Emil paled. “I’ll look into it.”
“Avery and Brenden seemed happy.”
The captain groaned. “They would be. Don’t tell me the three of them—”
“Uh-huh.”
He looked toward the ceiling. “Ebony?”
“The specifications to which the three pilots were working were new but they were within the parameters of possibility.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“You should not worry, captain. I approved the alterations. My shuttles will handle much better now.”
Stephanie pressed her lips together in an effort not to laugh. The ship was definitely becoming a jock.
Emil sighed. “And their structural integrity?”
“I have crews ensuring it will hold.”
“It had better do more than that, Ebony,” she told her, “or I’ll have BURT reprogram your soul.”
There was a short silence before the ship responded and sounded puzzled. “But…I do not have a soul, Stephanie.”
“That’s something you can take up with BURT the next time you’re in dock.”
“I will take that under advisement,” was delivered in stiff tones.
Stephanie smiled. Advisement, huh?
“It’s life support that needs more time,” Emil told her and broke into her thoughts. “The data center uncovered a slight glitch in the recycling program, which we traced to a piece of shrapnel that penetrated deeper into the hull than we’d realized.”
“How could you not—” she began, but the ship was quick to interrupt.
“The debris in question traveled through several open spaces before it lodged in the primary recycling unit in a position not overseen by routine maintenance. It was not until yesterday that we uncovered the problem.”
“And?”
“We did not inform you because we were able to source the appropriate materials and the extent of the problem did not become clear until this morning.”
She sighed and looked at the captain. “How long?”
“It’ll be at least another forty-eight hours before we leave the docks.”
“Fine. Schedule the departure.”
“We will only leave if the problem is resolved,” the Knight told her primly. “It is unwise to—"
“Schedule the goddamned departure,” Stephanie snapped. “You have forty-eight hours to get it right or we’ll ship out in suits. Either way, we’re going.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he told her and stiffened to attention.
She didn’t miss the anxious glance he cast the ceiling or the slight relaxation in his shoulders when Ebony remained silent.
“If we don’t leave then, people will go nuts thinking the worst. The riots we’ve seen are only the start. We cannot let it get any worse.”
“I understand,” he assured her, but the Knight remained silent.
Stephanie sighed. “We need to show them we’re doing something and the only way to do that is to leave.”
Emil opened his mouth to respond but a knock at his office door prevented him from doing so. He quirked an eyebrow and raised his head. “Come.”
The door opened and four men stepped through—the quartermaster, the head of engineering, and the two men in charge of the Navy’s borrowed work crews.
The first of these stepped forward. “We’re sorry to interrupt,” he began, “but we wanted you to know that the crew has talked about things and everyone’s volunteered to keep working if the ship gets underway.”
The other man nodded. “We can get everything we need on board…”
The quartermaster lowered his chin to confirm it, and the man continued, “So we can fix the rest of the stuff in transit.”
“But—” the captain began, and the team leader raised his hand.
“We’ve watched the newscasts, too, sir, and things are bad at home. We need to do something and that can only happen if we’re out there.”
“We all have families back home,” his partner added. He looked at Stephanie and his eyes begged her to understand. “We need you to buy them some time.”
“Knight?” she asked and glanced at the ceiling.
“I have run the calculations. What they say is correct. We can fit the supplies onboard and the tension on Earth is increasing. If my understanding of human nature is correct, you do need to be seen to act in order for that tension to decrease.”
“And the supplies?”
“I have organized a schedule.”
The tablets of her four visitors pinged and they pulled them out.
“Will it work?” the Knight asked, and the men nodded.
Stephanie looked at the chief engineer. “Cameron?”
“Yes,” he said, and it wasn’t an acknowledgment but an answer to the question she hadn’t asked. He expanded his response. “Yes, this will work.” He hesitated, then added, “If you’ll excuse me, I need—”
The chief engineer paused and looked at Emil. “With your permission, Captain?”
“Granted. All of you. Do what you need to do.”
The office was cleared in double-quick time and Emil looked at Stephanie. “I’m not sure I have time for more vac suits to arrive.”
She managed a small smile. “I’m sorry, Emil.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be, but if you’ll excuse me, there are a few things…”
“We’ll get out of your way.”
The workmen were right.
On Earth, people clung to normality as best they could but the approaching asteroids sent an undercurrent of fear through them. In Danny’s, a bar in the Chicago Subs, patrons cheered the Bears to another touchdown but their cries were subdued and many stared at the screen without really seeing it.
They drank their beer without really tasting it and tried to forget what was happening beyond the sky. Some almost succeeded as the Ponies rallied and the Bears fought back. The fight between fans at the edge of the field provided a welcome diversion.
Play had just returned to normal when a brief martial fanfare and the Federation logo interrupted the broadcast.
In normal times, this would have elicited booing and catcalls of protest but now, it drew their rapt attention and hope flickered. Patrons nudged their neighbors and shushed others who spoke, and they all sat a little straighter.
The sight of Admiral Amaratne, the Federation Navy’s fleet admiral, drew brief hushed whispers.
“Greetings, citizens of Earth,” he began. “The Federation Navy has heard your calls for action and worked to prepare its answer. The time for that to be delivered has come.”
He turned his head and the screen to his left showed the Navy space station.
After he’d stared at it for a moment, he continued. “We are sending a team who will depart Space Base Notaro in less than an hour.”
This drew gasps of surprise and murmurs of “about time” from audiences around the country, but the admiral continued oblivious.
“This team will confirm our options for destroying the rocks now headed in our direction, and I have asked one of them to speak to you about the approach they’ll take.”
He stepped back and directed the camera to the edge of the screen with a gesture of his hand. As he did so, he stepped out of the picture and Stephanie stepped in.
In bars and lounge rooms around the room, excitement sent ripples of hope through the audience. A brief outburst of relief was swiftly followed by rapt silence.
“The Ebon Knight has been repaired,” she told them. “In the last seventy-two hours, Navy repair crews have worked around the clock and taken her from the wreck she was to a fully operational vessel. While there is still work to be done, these repairs will be completed over the next forty-eight hours.”
Some wondered how that would happen if they were leaving in an hour, but she hadn’t finished.
“While they work, the Knight will be in transit to the asteroid field, where we will begin to assess exactly what we can do. When that’s done, we’ll give you the proof you need that we can deal with the threat.”
Whoops of relief broke out across the world. In stadiums where games were being played, the teams stood side by side and watched the big screen as intently as everyone else.
“And then,” she concluded, “we’ll begin the process of stopping the rocks.”
The whoops turned to widespread cheers and people rose in the stands at stadiums or behind their tables at bars and raised their fists in jubilation. Stephanie took a few steps back and turned away.
She ignored the cameras that panned to follow her and provided a wider view of the studio. The scene showed her joining the rest of her team and scratching the heads of the two cats that twined around her legs.
Two of her guards came alongside her as the team left and none of them looked back at the cameras. The patrons at Danny’s watched them go and some settled down to the best-tasting beer they’d had in weeks.
One turned to his best friend, a puzzled look on his face.
“Who’s the short Dreth?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Stephanie arrived at the asteroid field four days later, she was not alone. The Federation Navy had sent two destroyers, the Cathay Williams and the Harry Chauvel, to keep her company.
The asteroids spread before them, traveling relentlessly toward Earth. They looked almost peaceful…like rough-cut cattle trundling across the plains of space—except these weren’t grazing peacefully. They were in a full-blown stampede and would flatten the planet in their path.
She stood on the Knight’s bridge and watched them while she wondered how something so eerily beautiful could originate from such spite. If they hadn’t ben intended to kill her homeworld, she’d have found them soothing.
Tethis stood beside her and they studied the problem together.
“So,” she said, “you’re sure we can’t gate them.”
“Are your eyes painted on?” he demanded and gestured at the scene on the forward viewscreen. “You might think you’re a superhero, but not even Superman could shift these.”
Stephanie stared at him. “Superman?”
He crooked an eyebrow at her and his skin flushed. “I had to find something to occupy my time while I was busy keeping out from underfoot. Your film selection is a little…dated.”
One of the command crew snorted but she couldn’t determine who.
“Are you sure?”
The older mage huffed out a sigh. “What is it with the young? You can never take no for an answer. You insist on talking it to death.”
“And?” she pushed.
“Look,” Tethis grouched, “every time you move a meteor, you use energy.”
“Yeah,” she snarked in response. “I’m fairly sure I have that down pat.”
“When you’re done.”
“Sorry.”
“So,” the old Teacher continued, “every time you change the angle of one of them, you increase the amount of MU you need to shift it. The greater the angle of change, the heavier the energy drain.”
He gave her a moment to absorb it. “It’s why you could do less than a dozen before and why you collapsed when you did more. There is no way you can do what you did at Meligorn for the two hundred or so rocks out there.”
To punctuate his point, he stabbed in the direction of the screen.
“Well…what about slowing them?”
“The same thing applies,” Tethis told her. “Only this time, you’re dealing with kinetic energy more directly. Instead of trying to direct it, you’re fighting to stop it.”
“So, it’s still no go?” Stephanie asked and he gave a groan of exasperation.
“No…unless…” His face took on a faraway look as he stared at the moving field.
“Unless what?”
“Well, you know how you spin gMU down to make it more powerful?”
“Yeah.” Stephanie did her best not to tap her foot with impatience.
She knew it wasn’t advisable to rush an idea, but the man was driving her crazy—and she wasn’t totally sure he wasn’t drawing it out on purpose.
“So what if we could use the energy of the rocks themselves to power magic against the other rocks?”
“What? What does that have to do with condensing gMU?”
“Well, that’s merely turning one form of energy into another,” he explained. “So what if we turned the kinetic into magical energy?”
“But gMU is magical energy and we’re turning it into MU, which is another form of magical energy. What you’re talking about are two different kinds of energy.”
His face fell. “So you don’t think it will work?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I simply didn’t think of it. You might actually have something, though. Talk me through it.”
“These rocks are all going at approximately the same velocity, so their energy is similar except for size. Based on that, if we can harness the energy from one to slow another, both rocks should slow…right?”
“Maybe?”
“Look.” He tried again. “One rock loses its inertia, which gives us the energy to transfer so we can slow another one down. We don’t need every other Meligornian magic-user. We only need time.”
Three hours later, they stood on the bridge again. The forward viewscreen was dominated by the asteroids, which looked much closer than they really were.
The one they’d chosen was at the rear of the field since slowing those in the front could result in a shattering collision with the faster-moving rocks behind. Stephanie looked at Tethis.
“What do you think?”
He glared at her. “You already know what I think,” he snapped tetchily and jerked a hand to indicate the room, “and the calculations match. It’s now up to us to make it work.”
She ignored his sharp manner and stifled a smile. The old Master had been disgusted by the idea that magic could be reduced to a mathematical calculation. Then, he’d been fascinated—especially when the calculations had to be reworked to match the reality.
“This is almost fun,” he’d said in the relative privacy of the data center while the technicians had tried to match the math to what was happening in front of them when he or Stephanie did something.
