Witch of the federation.., p.43
Witch Of The Federation IV (Federal Histories Book 4), page 43
His leg muscles tensed and quivered as he tried to push the chair away from the desk and his eyes seemed stuck wide. Tethis came around the desk and plucked the pistol from his fingers.
“I might not be the Morgana,” he told Elizabeth and handed the gun to Amy, “but I can get a little upset.”
“So, I see,” she acknowledged as she stepped around the other side of the desk. She spun his chair so it faced her and straddled Tex’s legs.
His gaze darted from side to side to take in the smiling mage, the stone-faced women covering him and the door, and Elizabeth.
Oh, God… Emerald… he thought and swallowed hard. His breathing sped up as he looked at her and sweat beaded on his forehead.
E smiled down at him, and he would have shivered if he could have moved. He’d seen that smile before and thought it funny but now that it was directed at him, he had no urge to laugh whatsoever.
Evil…pure and utter evil…
“You helped me once before,” she told him, “and I need you to help me again.”
Tex tried to nod, to agree, or simply to say anything to make that smile fade, but Tethis’ magic held him fast. She hadn’t finished, though. Her smile broadened.
“So, this is how you will help me now.” She tilted her head and her face softened. “It’s a shame you believed you were the best.”
If he could have moved, Tex would have scooted back as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he couldn’t, and Tethis moved behind him and placed a hand on either side of his head.
What are you doing? What are you doing? He screamed in panic, his cries trapped inside his mind and his eyes rolling as he tried to look at the mage. The man remained out of sight and didn’t release him.
Searching.
Tex screamed soundlessly before Elizabeth’s voice cut through his terror.
“Who are your contacts?”
Inside his mind, his body twisted and he fled, but Tethis was too fast. The mage latched onto his consciousness and dragged him back. Who?
He tried desperately not to think of them. After all, the mind was a vast place and there were so many places to look. The mage stretched out a mental hand and pulled the first name to the surface.
“Zachary Winthrop, six-seventy-five Parson’s Close, a Massachusetts boy, easily led…once you get around him. He has seven burners…” The mage paused.
“Seven,” he repeated and sounded impressed, then proceeded to rattle off each number, followed by the proclivities Tex had used to lever Zach into his way of thinking. “You really aren’t a very nice man, are you?”
The man's horrified eyes noted that no-one was writing anything down, and he wondered why.
That is none of your business, the mage told him, although I’d really like to know who your other friends are.
Tex managed a moan, and the old man pounced as his conscious tried to make another bolt to insanity. Not yet. We’re only getting to know you.
Please… he whimpered.
Perhaps if you tell me about Harriet…
It was too good an opportunity to miss. Elizabeth might rip every ounce of information from him and leave his body bleeding out on the floor, but the Meligornian might be more lenient.
Tethis relayed the information and dug deeper. It took Tex half a dozen names and contacts to finally grasp that Elizabeth was still in diapers when compared to the mage. Apparently, the Meligornian excelled at war and when it came to playing dirty, he was a master.
He tried to pull away and screamed as pain lanced through his skull.
More, Tethis insisted, and the man didn’t even feel the needle Elizabeth used to immobilize him so his interrogator could focus on prying every secret from his mind.
“Did you get everything?” she asked, and the mage gave her a very bleak stare.
“Everything I could find before his mind collapsed. I can’t go in there again.”
She stared at her old mentor. “Is there anything left?”
“Of him or his information?” he asked.
“Him.”
“Nothing worth saving.” The weariness in the old man’s voice made her look at him properly.
“You look tired,” she observed, and his lips twitched in what might have been a smile if it hadn’t been stillborn.
“I remember why I turned to research,” he told her and looked around the office. “Did you get everything else?”
“Affirmative,” BURT replied, and the two girls nodded.
“He wasn’t much for paper.”
Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. “He used to say it was the most secure medium he could think of.”
“I believe several police raids cured him of that misconception about five years ago,” BURT replied. “It is how he rebuilt his connections.”
“Hmmm.”
A wet cutting sound drew her attention. “For fuck’s sake, Tethis!”
The mage wiped his blade on Tex’s shirt. “What? He could offer us no more—and burning alive is not a death to wish on anyone.”
She gave him a jaundiced look. “I don’t know—”
Tethis’s face grew hard. “Not even him.”
Elizabeth looked around. “I don’t see a fire.”
He gave her a weary smile, turned one palm towards the ceiling, and conjured blue fire in his palm. “There will be nothing left of the office—or the warehouse—when we’re done.”
“And I have wiped the security recordings,” BURT added. “You are also wearing gloves.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Do it.”
They left as fire melted Tex’s computers to the tabletop and vaporized the desk itself. Elizabeth paused at the door to watch the flames lick their way over the floor and into the walls and retreated only when the heat forced her back.
“We really need to leave before the gas ignites,” Tethis told her, and Amy and Elle caught hold of her arms.
It took her a few steps to see beyond the image of Tex’s body catching alight. It burnt in silence, but it was an image that would haunt her sleep. She shrugged it away to join the other nightmares she had collected over the years.
They reached where they’d parked the car and she accelerated at a speed that drew the attention of every camera in range, as did her entry to the skyway.
“Illegal entry to Skyway 234. You have been issued a fine for three hundred and twenty-five credits.”
“Frank? Is that you?”
“I am the AI you dubbed Frank,” it admitted. “You have been issued a ticket for inappropriate language on an Airway, to whit ‘Hell, fuck, yeah, you masochistic asshole’—nine hundred and sixty credits.”
“What the fuck, Frank?” She jerked the sky car sideways violently and corkscrewed it left and down to a lower level.”
“Illegal exit of Skyway 324 and an illegal entry and culpable driving. You have been fined six hundred and ninety-two credits.”
“That’s more expensive than the last time.”
“Your license has been tagged as a repeat offender and is scheduled for permanent suspension should the latest preventative measures fail to have a lasting effect.”
“Oh, for shits’ sake! You tell the greedy little crotchmongering, shit-licking muffin stuffers at head office they need to get a life and find themselves a good hard f—”
Her mouth suddenly stopped working and Frank replied, “I have been unable to pass your missive to the correct recipients, but your comments have been noted.”
Tethis handed her a card he’d found in the glovebox. It was a driver’s license belonging to one Emerald Shilling. The sight of it brought back memories and a lump formed in her throat. Frank interrupted before she could respond.
“Surveillance cameras have been activated in this vehicle and your identity matched to one Elizabeth Smith. Without a physical change of drivers, this will be the identity to which all driving offenses for this unbroken journey are attributed.”
The mage sighed and stowed the license in the glove box.
“What about driving in relation to life-endangering situations?” he asked and released her mouth.
“The circumstances surrounding the commission of each traffic violation will be taken into individual consideration,” the AI informed him.
“Good,” he replied and reached over to shove the steering column to one side, tipping the car onto its edge as Elizabeth snatched at the controls. “Tell me you have this on camera.”
“Affirmative,” Frank told him. “You are the first Meligornian citizen to be fined five hundred credits for interfering with the driver of a sky vehicle in Federated air space, and the first to be issued a summons for endangering life through negligent passenger behavior.”
“Thank you, Frank.”
“You are welcome, Tethis Naliviri.”
“Of all the crazy, piss-addled…” Elizabeth’s voice faded as she avoided another vehicle on the way down, skimmed the top of a heavy loader, and skewered past the traffic on the airway below.
“You have been issued tickets and fined four hundred and fifty credits for illegal exit from a skyway, nine hundred credits for illegal entry to an airway, and thirteen hundred and thirty-three credits for driving in a dangerous fashion.”
“Oh, suck my dick!”
“Neither of us is equipped for that,” Frank informed her, “and you have been fined seven hundred and sixty-five credits for making a lewd suggestion to a Traffic Authority persona.”
Two flashes seared the space they’d occupied and the vehicle that had been in front of them exploded.
“Was that my fault?”
“Negative, Ms Smith. That was caused by a new arrival on the skyway firing at your vehicle.”
“Well, fuck me.”
“You have been ticketed and fined eight hundred and seventy-five credits for making a second lewd suggestion to a Traffic Authority persona.”
Now that she’d been made aware of it, Elizabeth could see the sleek little sports model dive out of the skyway above.
“It looks like there’s no hiding in the airways for this one,” she muttered and raised her voice. “Frank, please inform the Traffic Authority that I am about to break all their rules in order to try to keep the traffic carnage to a minimum.”
“Deliberate rules breakage will result in the doubling of charges of multiple fines and incarceration Ms Smith. Are you sure you wish to proceed?”
Elizabeth rolled the sky car to one side, sent it into a headlong dive toward a distant patch of greenery, and pulled it up and changed direction to go against what would have been the flow of traffic if she’d still been in the skyway.
One of the bolts narrowly missed a family heading home for the evening, the second careened into the side of a building and removed a balcony at the same moment that the balcony door opened. She caught a glimpse of someone flailing as they pushed themselves inside their apartment and slammed the door.
“Yes! Yes, I am very fucking sure.”
“Very well, your willful disobedience has been noted and I have no choice but to—” Frank made a sound like grinding gears. He stuttered through a static squeal and then came back online. “…award you five hundred bonus points and a traffic pardon for your quick thinking.”
“Very fucking funny, Frank.”
“You have been awarded nine hundred and sixty bonus points for use of credible language, your evasion of the local birdlife has been noted, and you have been awarded two thousand bonus points, illegal usage of air space endangering local architecture and infrastructure—four hundred and ninety-two bonus points.”
More light flashed past her and another section of the building disappeared. Elizabeth hoped no one had been working late and that those offices had been empty.
“Destruction of corporate property, eight hundred and seventy bonus points.”
“That wasn’t me, you ass-sucking idiot!”
“Creative language in public airspace, two hundred and fifty bonus points.”
“What. The. Hell!” E screamed as she slewed the air car around the side of another high rise and turned it on its edge so it fit through the narrow alley she’d seen. Unfortunately, the sports model with the pop-up laser cannons also fit, and she had to fly through the glass of another office window.
“Although why anyone would want a view of a brick wall, I don’t know,” she muttered as the car plowed its way through a row of cubicles and out the other side of the building. “BURT—”
They broke air—and the other window—and she hauled the sky car’s nose up in time to make the steep climb out of the gulf between the buildings. One of her engines was smoking.
“It looks like Tex had friends,” Tethis observed as Frank intoned, “Wilful destruction of public property thirteen thousand nine hundred and thirty-two bonus points, hurling an office desk from a great height, fifty-six bonus points. You have been awarded the Ten in a Row Achievement for throwing ten office desks out the window.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! No, shit, Sherlock.”
Cameras came to life along the side of the buildings, each one filming the sky car’s progress as Elizabeth made it twist and dive and flew low enough to disrupt traffic at ground level before they rose to re-enter another airway.
“Six hundred bonus points for evasive action, forty-seven bonus points for the destruction of traffic lights, two hundred points for creation of a traffic jam on Forty-Fourth, five hundred and seventy bonus points for creating gridlock for six city blocks…”
In a distant building, several technicians gathered around the front of their office.
“Put that vehicle up on Main, Stevens.”
The man complied and Elizabeth’s sky car took center stage on the wall screen in the traffic authority’s head office.
Frank’s calm tones flowed from the speaker. “Illegal entry to Skyway 391, six hundred and ninety-three bonus points, causing an accident on the skyway nine hundred and seventy credits, leaving the scene of an accid—”
The shift manager turned to stare at his crew. “Three questions. What the fuck is happening? What’s wrong with the goddamned AI? And why the fuck is she still in the air?”
“We can’t immobilize the vehicle where loss of life will occur as a result,” one of the technicians ventured.
“I don’t give a donkey’s ass about her life.”
“No, sir, the other lives on the skyways. We have not been able to deactivate the vehicle in a location where no other casualties will occur.”
“And so you let the casualties mount up instead?”
The tech gaped at him and his face drained of color.
“Shut her down—now!” the shift manager roared.
He glared at the screen as the man hurried to comply, only to interrupt him seconds later.
“I…sir…I can’t. It’s the same problem affecting the AI.”
His supervisor stormed over to his desk. “Move over and let me see.”
The tech moved and the manager took his place. He glared at the code as though it was at fault and after a moment, he realized that it was. The car’s AI had been suborned. He glanced at the screen again.
The small gray sports vehicle fired, missed Elizabeth’s vehicle, and vaporized the rear of an empty school bus.
“For God’s sake! Will someone get that piece of gray crap out of the sky?”
Sirens wailed out of the speakers and lights flashed red and blue as emergency vehicles raced to the scene. Several stopped to assist damaged vehicles to the ground but several more went in pursuit of the two troublemakers.
“It’s about time they showed up,” they heard Elizabeth mutter.
She slewed the air car around, dove beneath the traffic flow, and looped up and over it as the sports car overshot.
The team manager pounded furiously at the keyboard and tried to find a way to correct the errant code that awarded bonus points and slowly erased the fines Elizabeth Smith had accrued on her account.
He finally pounded the desk with one fist as he resisted the urge to mash his forehead against the screen.
“Who are you?” he shouted, and words ticker-taped across the main screen as well as his own.
We are the V’ger. We will save the planet from overzealous parking programs.
“The V’ger?” He snapped his fingers. “Anthony! Log that one into the database. It looks like we have another traffic terrorist on the loose.”
“D’you think she’s part of it?”
“They’re protecting her, aren’t they?”
“She might not have asked them to.”
“Are you kidding? Have you seen the way she drives?”
More flashes of light filled the screen and the manager screamed. “Why hasn’t that thing been shut down?
One of the other techs raised her head from her screen. “Because it’s not on the traffic grid, sir. And I’m having trouble accessing its CPU.”
“No excuses! I want that thing hacked and stacked, and I want it yesterday.” He glared at the scrolling code in front of him. “And you, V’ger, if you’re so clever, why aren’t you doing something about the thing trying to shoot your friend out of the sky?”
He watched as the code rippled and more words crossed the main screen.
Your logic is acceptable. The Borg hear and comply.
“The Borg? What the fuck is a Borg?”
You have been fined seven hundred and fifty credits for use of unsanitary language in a workplace environment and your conduct hearing is scheduled for the fourth.
The manager’s face paled, then flushed, then paled again. He glared at the screen. “Now for you, you intrusive piece of shit.”
This intrusive piece of shit has neutralized the real hazard on your skyway.
He glanced quickly at the screen as the gray car descended peacefully. It didn’t even try to evade the police escort locked into place around it. The fire that engulfed its cabin on touchdown came as a surprise, however.
That wasn’t us.
“Who are you?” he asked and renewed his attempt to correct the traffic authority coding. Whatever the V’ger had done to the rogue vehicle’s AI, it was spreading. All over the city, outrageous behavior was being rewarded as if it was part of a giant game.
