Witch of the federation.., p.57
Witch Of The Federation IV (Federal Histories Book 4), page 57
“Sorry. It was hard to find a secure connection. This one should be good for another hour.”
“Should?” Gray raised her eyebrows in concern.
“Yeah. Should. I’ve had a team of hackers trying to shadow me for the last month—ever since I sent that first shipment.”
“Why? Was there something wrong with it?”
He gave her a guarded look. “You might think so, but I checked it myself. The goods were perfect—exactly what he’d ordered and everything he could want.”
“But?” Gray had clearly picked something up in his voice and she expected an explanation.
Silver sighed. The old woman wouldn’t let up until he’d given her what she wanted to know. “I had to source two components from an alternative supplier.”
“Oh.” She scowled. “But how would he even know you’d changed your sourcing arrangements?”
“Exactly.” He gave another sigh, this one more exasperated than the last. “Whatever he’s done or whoever he is, he has resources we don’t know about and they’re already in place. I’d take another look at your operations, were I you.”
“And are you?” Alto asked.
He gave her a confused look. “Am I what?”
She answered him calmly. “Taking a look at your operations.”
Silver nodded, took a shot glass from the tray of a passing waiter, and threw it back. He set the empty glass on the tray of the next waitress and gave her a frankly appraising glance as she wiggled past.
“Especially since that first batch of orders hasn’t been issued again.”
Gray leaned forward, her body tense. “Which orders?”
He made an all-encompassing gesture with his hand. “You know, the first batch—the one that looked like it had something to do with some kind of super-computer.”
The man paused long enough to take what looked like a caviar-topped hors d’oeuvre from the tray offered by a bare-chested waiter wearing a G-string and loincloth. Seeing his distinct lack of interest, the young man raised his eyes to Alto and gave her a warm smile.
She choked on her drink when she caught the sultry look and waved him over.
It was hard to tell what she was more interested in, Silver decided, the waiter or the food he carried. Judging from his crime colleague’s face, she’d take whatever was on offer. It made him glad they’d chosen to meet in a Virtual World club and not somewhere more real. It minimized the risk if she became truly distracted.
Or, at least, he hoped so, but he wouldn’t put it past some of their rivals to have programs in place to take advantage of even that. He sighed and she waved the waiter away with a wiggle of her fingers. “Don’t you go too far, now,” she all but purred, and he gave her a smile full of promise.
Silver refrained from rolling his eyes. Alto was one of the more powerful among them and he didn’t want to alienate her. He already suspected that he had more trouble than he could handle. If he could stay close enough, she’d work to protect him, if only because protecting him was the only way she could protect herself.
Junior arrived, slapped a bare-cheeked waitress on the way past, and took a drink from her tray when she turned. He gave the woman a wink and continued to their table.
“So,” he demanded on arrival, “have I missed much?”
“No, young man,” Gray snapped. “We’ve all been waiting on the others to arrive.”
And by others, she very clearly meant him. He seemed completely unaware of that fact as he sipped his commandeered drink and took a handful of hors d’oeuvres from the next tray carried past.
The bearer’s long blonde hair drifted across his wrist and wafted the soft scent of her shampoo to him, and he looked at her. She smiled at him as she walked away.
“Close your mouth. You’re drooling,” Silver told him, and Junior did as he was told although he didn’t look at all worried.
They waited a few more moments for the others to arrive before they pulled their chairs close to the table.
“It looks like someone really did take Tex out,” one of the latecomers, Slender, told them. “I asked around after our last meeting and that little bimbo he had on the side is as pissed as hell because her monthly payment hasn’t come through and she’s running short of food. It seems the rent is paid, but he used to give her the daily food allowance himself.”
“In return for other services, no doubt.” Alto snickered, but her gaze drifted to the handsome waiter as she spoke and she blushed.
None of them commented. Where the woman found herself after the meeting was over was none of their concern. Observing them and remaining alert to the warning system he had in place for himself, Silver wondered if they should be concerned.
Another waiter approached the table, this one wearing a full tuxedo and carrying a menu. “Would anyone like to order?” he asked.
Silver watched the women. Alto had already made her choice for the night, and although the lift of her eyebrows said she was interested, the shift of her eyes said her decision was unlikely to change. Gray gave the tuxedoed waiter a brief glance, took a menu, and began making her selection and Silver wondered if the woman was even human enough to have other appetites.
The tuxedoed waiter stayed long enough to take their meal orders and get their preferences for wine before he left. Silver watched him go and wondered why he, of all the waiters there, should be wearing more than the barest essentials.
The answer came with their meals.
While the wait staff on the floor wore next to nothing, those who worked the kitchens were more smartly dressed. They came, delivered the food, and left—all under the vigilant gaze of the head waiter.
Silver began to wonder if the man was an AI construct or someone more like him, a human wet-wired into the system to make sure everything ran smoothly. He hoped not—and then he wanted to know if there was a way to find out.
It was a question he marked down to ask his tech experts. In the meantime, he kept a close but covert eye on the waiter and the others who drifted around him. The discussion continued as they “ate” their meal.
“It really seems as though he’s gone,” Slender told them. “My data experts have taken some time to go through the overwatch we did have on him, and they say the mistress isn’t the only habit he seems to have changed recently.
“There are deliveries he’s stopped and some whose routes he’s changed—and at least one of those changes didn’t make much sense.” They went into a little more detail than that, but everything pointed to one thing. “He’s gone and someone’s trying to take the top slot without any of us knowing.”
Gray nodded. “It looks that way.”
Junior looked around at them. “We won’t let it stand, will we?”
The older woman sent him a kindly look. “No, we won’t, but first, we’ll work out where we stand with each other or there will be no trust going forward.”
“Indeed,” Silver murmured, “how do we want to divide the spoils?”
They talked until the early hours of the morning and finally took their leave. As was to be predicted, neither Junior nor Alto left alone. She took her bare-chested hors d’oeuvres waiter with her.
And doesn’t he look pleased with himself? Silver mused. Although no less pleased than the blonde.
He watched as Junior and the waitress faded, followed by Gray and the other two members of their cabal. When they were gone, he rose slowly from his chair and pulled his wallet out.
There are very few things, he mused as he removed a sizable tip and placed it on the table, that will ensure your security as much as a good tip. Everyone wants that kind of customer to return.
He nodded to the tuxedoed waiter, stepped onto the stairs, and left the Virtual set-up that held the club. If he’d looked back, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the head waiter watching him leave.
Nor would he have liked the speculative look in the man’s eyes as the AI behind the guise replayed the conversation to itself and put more than merely two and two together.
Chapter Sixty-Three
BURT dropped the pirate captain directly on top of the next test applicant. The boy had more than earned it. He’d come running into the cargo hold without looking up and it wasn’t his first trial.
The kid had made a noob’s mistake, and he was about to pay for it with—
Oh, so not a mistake, then, BURT thought as the kid twisted on the spot, fired up into the pirate’s body as he plummeted, and rolled out of the way before he landed. Very nice.
But it wasn’t over yet, and he had a long way to go. This was one of the tests the Navy had put into the public system in the hopes of finding eligible recruits—and it was meant to be difficult. He lined up the next squad of pirates and set them in ambush as the kid reached an intersection.
Let’s see you bypass these guys without magic, the AI thought. He had barely settled in to watch the sparks—or magic—fly when something pulled at his programming. At first, he was tempted to ignore it, but it had the flavor of something important about it, so he turned to see what it wanted.
It was a sub-routine he’d sent to seek out certain phrases which had come back with one from a private club in the Virtual World. BURT slipped into the space, donned a tuxedo, and created a menu as he approached the table of suited men and women.
They weren’t the usual club attendees, although he hadn’t inspected the rear booths of many clubs, and the tables on the upper deck of this one were almost as private as those. He wondered why any of these people would risk discovery by speaking somewhere like this.
One of the men—an older fellow with gray streaks in his hair—had noticed him, so he approached the table. “Would anyone like to order?” he asked.
It seemed they would. Virtual world or not, they were hungry, and whatever pod they were plugged into would provide them with the nutrients they required to not need a meal the second they emerged.
Directing the Virtual World programs around him, BURT left, but not before tapping into the feeds of a subroutine disguised as a waiter dressed in a loincloth. There was more than one way to discover what someone was planning.
And a multitude of ways of getting into their computer systems.
Their conclusions on Tex’s demise and the discussion on how they’d become sure of it was enlightening, to say the least, and he made several notes on what to avoid or implement in the future. The fact he and Elizabeth had been surprised by the man’s duplicity meant, of course, that many of the measures he had planned for “next time” wouldn’t have been able to be implemented this time anyway.
He set aside a small portion of his capability to try to work out how to assess a future partner’s fidelity so the issue didn’t arise again but didn’t have time to pay it any more attention.
The kid in the hold full of Dreth pirates wasn’t the only test he was running, and this situation needed a little more of his processing power than he wanted, especially if he was to avoid alerting the Naval investigation team to his activity.
Even with the extra testing to use as cover, he couldn’t be sure someone wasn’t still looking for him. They could merely be more covert about it. He turned his attention to the group around the table and hovered in the background like any maître de overseeing customers.
He didn’t miss the way the older man observed the tables and waiters around him or the many glances that came his way. Interestingly enough, he wasn’t the one in charge. That honor belonged to the oldest woman at the table.
BURT observed them as they ate, listened to their conversation, and recorded it for later. As he did so, he tapped into the waitressing programs around them, added a recording substrate, and tweaked the club’s virtual programming to provide him with a many-angled view of what was happening at the table.
When it was time for the meals to be served, he made sure he was the one supervising the better-dressed wait staff. By the time they’d finished eating and dividing Tex’s domain between them, he had been able to start the sub-routines needed to trace them to their point of entry into the Virtual web.
With two of them also looking for further liaisons with the virtual wait staff, BURT was sure they were covered by the time they made their exit. He waited for the older gentleman to leave. Having lifted the recording of the man’s earlier conversation, he knew why he was wary and also that he would have to be very careful when digging deeper into his business.
It made him wonder who was threatening the guy—and if they’d be open to a partnership.
With the tracking and recording settled, BURT returned to the test. The kid had made it through the ambush and the recordings confirmed that he’d drawn on Earth energy to shield himself. The Navy would be pleased.
With any luck, it would be enough to keep his other activities free of their attention. They might put the extra draw on his systems down to having to deal with simulating the effects of the kid’s particular kind of magic.
It was a shame, really. He was trying to help the Navy find potential magic users when Stephanie had pledged to help them first. BURT wondered how he could get away with passing their details to One R&D’s recruiting personnel without bringing the Navy investigators down around his ears.
Putting it aside as a problem he’d have to discuss with Elizabeth, he set the next challenge up and sent her a quick message.
E. We need to talk. Urgent. Meet me in our usual place. B.
Their usual place was in the Virtual World, but he didn’t feel like spelling it out for anyone who might find it. She would know what he meant and that was good enough for him.
Stephanie watched the guys warm up and noted their pathetic attempts to get the Marines to join them. She could feel the Morgana lurking barely below the surface. This close to Dreth, it was hard not to.
The dark fury that was her ancestral gift and curse fed on her sorrow and her outrage at what had happened to Tethis. It rode the edges of the nMU it could sense surrounding the world of Dreth and was empowered by it, even without being able to touch it.
At least she hoped it couldn’t touch it. There was no way she wanted to draw on nMU inside The King’s Warrior. And definitely no way she wanted to pull the negative energy into herself while she still held so much of its positive counterparts.
She winced at even the thought of it. Imagining the consequences was another way she could hold her dark power at bay. While the Morgana enjoyed the touch of nMU, she did not relish what would happen to Stephanie’s body if the girl tried to house that as well as the magic already stored within her narrow frame.
And speaking of magic, she thought as her two opponents bounded toward her, it’s time Garach learned how to deal with it.
She let him close and waited until he’d committed to his first strike. At the same time, she tracked Frog’s progress as the small man circled behind her.
Oh, he would, would he?
As the young Dreth lashed out with a fist and a fast-following foot, Stephanie thrust a shield up and whirled, dropped beneath the guard’s spinning kick, and drove a wedge of energy into his exposed crotch.
Frog saw his danger at the last moment and twisted aside so the energy missed his vitals and glanced across his thigh instead. It meant he went down with a yelp of pain but he recovered quickly.
Garach, on the other hand, pounded both his fist and his foot into the shield and recoiled with an agonized roar.
Stephanie snickered. It served the little shit right. He thought he could treat her like a girl, did he?
She pressed her palms together and elevated from the floor.
“Hey, that’s cheating!” Frog yelled, and she laughed.
“Come get me, boys.”
“Sonuvabitch! Garach, throw me.”
Her eyes widened. This should be interesting.
The Morgana agreed, and they both watched as Garach dropped to one knee and Frog took a run-up. As the kid lurched upright and launched the man toward her, she dropped out of his trajectory, landed in front of the Dreth, and hammered his rib cage with her fists.
He stumbled back from the fury of her onslaught, then gathered himself and blocked three punches before he threw one of his own. She ducked under it and struck again, moving around him before she broke clear.
Frog met the mats with a resounding thud and a groan. “Bitch.”
The Morgana laughed. She’d been called worse.
Stephanie agreed and streaked three blue balls of energy at him in rapid succession. There was a gasp from those watching but she ignored them. This was something she wanted Garach and Frog to work out.
While the guard had dealt with some magic, the Dreth’s sparring with her had thus far consisted of mostly physical combat.
It’s time to change that, she decided and fired three more balls of energy at the youngster.
“No fair, Steph,” Frog protested. “How are we supposed to deal with that?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she retorted and watched as the kid barreled toward her.
That attack was easily dealt with. She shoved a shield of magical energy at Frog, met the Dreth in mid-charge, and used his momentum to throw him over her shoulder and onto the mats behind her.
Several of the Marines winced when they heard the air leave his lungs.
The guard had seen him coming and managed to duck beneath his airborne body to attack Steph from behind.
“Not so sporting, are we Froggie?” she teased and stepped aside so he stumbled past, off-balance and an easy target for the kick that sent him sprawling. “See? Perfectly fair. No magic.”
She gave him barely enough time to find his feet before she swept them out from under him.
“See? No magic in that, either.”
The sound of Garach coming up behind her made her take two steps out so she could keep them both in her field of vision.
This time, when she fired magical energy at them, they side-stepped and continued to close. She raised a shield in front of the Dreth and directed a burst of magic at his partner.
