Daughter of Destiny (33 page)

She offered a smile. "I
believe General Westing is expecting me."

Just then, Naia shouted her
name and came charging past the soldiers. Naia threw her arms
around Katarina. She hugged Naia’s tiny frame to her. She returned
Naia's intense hug and took a moment to enjoy that moment of
normality.

"Stand down."

The soldiers backed off and
the intruder alarm shut off. Naia moved from Katarina and embraced
Zane in a fierce hug. Zane looked down at Naia’s head, and then
back at Katarina, surprised bewilderment written in his quirked
eyebrow and tilted smile. Naia then grabbed Zane's and her hand and
tugged them over to the man in charge.

Finn barely had a chance to
lean over her shoulder and whisper, "You take point. Kieran and I
should probably hang back."

Kieran…oops.
She
released him and glanced over her shoulder. She contemplated
apologizing, but her father had a hand on the nape of Kieran's neck
as he whispered into his ear. She left her brother to Finn's care
as Naia led her to a tall, thin man with a gray buzz
cut.

"General Westing, this is
Katarina O'Brian and Zane Gratig," Naia said.

General Westing stepped
away from the large holographic display. He exchanged handshakes
with Zane first and then Katarina. "Pleased to meet you. Do I want
to know how you got past security?"

Katarina smiled. "I'll fill
you in on that later and on how to keep other individuals from
exploiting the same opening."

He bobbed his head in a
curt nod. "Much appreciated. Time's short, so I'll get to the
point. Do you have an ETA on the IGC fleet?"

"I’m sorry, no" Katarina
replied. "I opted to leave before their leadership attempted to
make me a long-term guest on Yopmar."

"Are you saying they wished
to detain you against your will?"

"Possibly, but let's not
worry about that."

"Fine. I suppose we'll work
with what we have for defense. Our satellites detect a sizable
fleet in orbit."

"Were you able to use any
of the information I sent?"

"Yes. We’ve rigged a few
surprises, the first of which should detonate in a few moments." He
pointed to the holographic map. "I'm needed, so if you don't mind,
you civilians need to step over there." General Westing pointed to
a handful of brown folding metal chairs and a faux wood table.
"I'll debrief you later."

He turned his back and
rejoined the cluster of officers initiating last minute orders to
the troops represented on the map by little green
lights.

Katarina stared at his back
for a full minute and then shook her head as she headed for the
chairs. "At least Grian granted me more than three minutes of her
time."

Naia muttered under her
breath and all but stomped her way to the table. Katarina didn't
mind leaving battles to the soldiers, but after risking so much,
being relegated to the sidelines stung.

Zane, however, lingered
close enough to the holomap to follow the battle. Katarina could
sense the coiled energy within him, ready to act if need arose. His
posture and body language mirrored the generals and being ordered
to stand down grated on his nerves even more than hers.

Finn and Kieran joined them
at the table. Finn leaned against the table and leaned over toward
Katarina. "Want to take bets on how many green lights blink out
before he asks for Zane's help?"

Katarina folded her arms
over her belly. "That is not the least bit funny. Those green
lights represent people."

Finn shrugged. "So do the
red ones. I don't see anyone getting upset when they disappear.
Human morals are no less ambiguous than Fae,
iníon."

She eyed her father, trying
to figure out what he aimed to accomplish with this discussion.
"I'm not going to argue morality. Do I want anyone to die? No. They
started this, so I'm not going to feel bad that we have to use
violence in return. Not everything can be solved with a magic
band-aid."

Her father returned her
stare for a long minute. "Cool logic. Very good. You aren't
hot-headed. It took me a few thousand years to learn that
skill."

Katarina's mouth dropped
open, but Finn wandered off to go look at the station handling the
list of odd domestic issues.

"Don't mind father, he's
always probing and testing people. I think he enjoys finding ways
to make people lose their temper." Kieran straddled a metal chair
and rested his chin on the edge of the chair. "So are we just going
to sit around? I thought we were going to do something. This is
boring."

Katarina put a hand to her
temple.
Patience. He's your brother. Beating him upside the head
will not knock humanity into him… unfortunately.
At least she
sort of understood her father's commentary. No doubt, in her
dealings with the Fae, others would say or do things far worse and
as the emissary she couldn't fly off the handle or refuse to
consider their point of view. Finn didn't know her well, so it made
sense that he might test her a bit.

Curly hair in disarray and
his eyes circled with shadows, Robert stepped out of an elevator,
pausing when he saw her. "Hey, Naia texted me and told me you're
back. Good! I have to get back to my station in case we need some
last minute programming, but I can give you a quick
run-down."

"Thanks, Robert," Katarina
said as she tested the table's stability before perching on the
edge.

"No prob. Our first wave of
defense is the older fighter planes. They'll put up a realistic
defense, but are instructed to avoid taking risks. They're
basically a red herring. We've got tons of them, so basically we
are trying to draw out as many of the Goloth forces as possible. As
soon as they send a second wave, a massive EM pulse will go out in
about," Robert leaned over and peered around Zane. "--three
minutes. Our fighters are playing hide and go seek quite well, but
we have lost a sizeable percentage. We installed proto-type energy
shields to block the EM pulse. Long run, we can’t fight the Goloths
on their level of technology, so we’re bringing them down to a
level we can fight."

Zane turned and walked
over. "Good plan. That should even the odds a bit, but a standard
attack fleet has thousands of fighters." Zane gestured to the
holomap on which colored dots moved around to indicate friend and
foe locations. "They only sent a portion of their force. They have
at least two or three times that many docked and ready to go. That
map is only for this continent. Similar battles are happening all
over the globe."

"I know. You
are?"

Zane held out his hand to
Robert. "Zane Gratig."

Robert accepted the hand
and gave it a shake. "Robert Sheffield, Naia's husband." He shook
his head. "The brass isn't planning to win this on our own, at
least not from what I've heard."

"They aren't taking into
account the threat of the capital ships."

"They are hoping they won't
engage until IGC arrives. We don't have anything that can take them
on. No even out newest fighters could handle them. However, when we
break them out, they should do some serious damage to the disabled
Goloth fighters. Based on the schematics Katarina sent us, we
modified two squadrons of prototypes, adding focused EM emitters to
their missiles and fine tuning their targeting computers. They are
remote operated, so even if they go down, we won't lose any men,
which is the biggest plus in my book."

"Won’t the EM pulse
deactivate the missile’s guidance system?" Katarina
asked.

"It won’t matter at that
point. The pulse will trigger the detonator. Even if it isn’t a
direct hit, the missile should cause enough damage to incapacitate
the enemy ship, and possibly some of its buddies in the vicinity."
A cheer went up and Robert took a look at the holomap. "Looks like
the first surprise deployed as planned. I gotta split." Robert
waved, and jogged over to the elevator where a stationed soldier
keyed in an access code to let him in.

The lights flickered and a
deep rumble followed moments later.

"Shit," General Westing
cursed. Alarms blared and the voices grew curt and
strained.

A wave of nausea hit
Katarina as more explosions rocked the installation. Something hit
buildings on the surface and despite her blocks, the pain of the
wounded and the darkness of death clawed at her. The tension in the
room didn't help her block out the draining emotions. Zane placed a
hand on the back of her neck and rubbed. "Breathe,
rahmali o
mi."
He abandoned monitoring the general and his attention to
bolstering her shields and siphoning the negative
energy.

Zane leaned over toward
Naia so she could hear him over the noise, "See if you can find out
what's going on."

Naia marched over to
General Westing and held a short terse discussion before returning.
"Those capital ships you mentioned are the problem. The Goloths
located our command centers and are targeting the largest ones from
orbit. We’re safe enough here. He ordered the upper levels to
evacuate. Unfortunately, not all of the command posts are built to
serve as bunkers."

Katarina closed her eyes
and clasped Zane's other hand.

"My ship could handle
them,"
Zane whispered in her mind.

Damn it, she didn't want to
be brave and selfless. She wanted Zane at her side—needed him at
her side, but she felt every death, every injury beyond the walls
and floors above them. She was incapable of ignoring that much
horror.

"Go. I've got your back,"
she whispered, but Zane didn't need to hear her to know what she
said. His psyche surrounded hers, trying to protect her from the
onslaught of anguish. "I'll be fine." She took a deep breath and
mustered every ounce of control she could to hide the pain that
stabbed into her brain when he let his mind recede from
hers.

He caressed her face before
turning and looking for Finn. "Danua!"

Finn paused his
conversation with the young woman keying in information at a
terminal. He scowled and flashed over to their side. More than one
person did a double take at his sudden appearance.

"I need my
ship."

"The name is Finn, not
Danua, and what is it humans say? Oh yes, what's the magic
word?"

"Please," Katarina bit out
to keep Zane from wasting time arguing with her father.

"Your ship is on the
tarmac. Keep in mind that my daughter will not be pleased if you do
something stupid and end up dead."

She and Zane exchanged a
look that made her heart thump hard in her chest. He turned and
strode toward the cluster of people around the holomap. "General
Westing."

"What?" Westing asked in a
clipped voice.

"I have a ship with stealth
capabilities. Even though my weapons aren’t as powerful as those
Goloth
Trapqerts a
nd
Kekkes t
hey’re using, mine is
faster, more maneuverable. They’ll never see me coming, and I know
something they don’t know."

"What’s that?" General
Westing asked.

"I know precisely where to
aim to destroy their power core. My unit discovered a weakness in
their shields the last time them we took on one of the larger
terrorist cells."

"What if they’ve fixed the
problem?"

"No one lived to tell about
it."

"Then let's get this done,"
General Westing said. He pointed to a guard standing at attention
beside the reflective doors of an elevator. "Escort Gratig to the
surface. Tag his ship with a GPS emitter so we can track him as one
of ours."

Zane returned to Katarina,
wrapping her in his arms. For a moment, with him so close, the
world blocked out and it was just the two of them. She pasted a
confident smile on her face, even if he knew how frightened she was
inside. "Go get ‘em, flyboy."

His face lit with a grin
that never failed to make her heart pound. Then he turned on his
heel and strode to the elevator where his escort waited inside
holding the door open.

Naia hopped up on the table
beside her, tapped her arm and then jerked a thumb at Finn and
Kieran. "Uhm, Kat, who are they?"

Katarina couldn't answer.
In order to concentrate on his mission, Zane pulled far away from
their link. Without his added support, her control reached the edge
of her limits. Blackness edged her vision. She breathed in and out
while gripping the table, but couldn't win this fight.

***

Judging by the creepy
glowing eyes of the two men, her sister's new friends were faeries.
She waited for Katarina to make introductions, but after a moment
she noticed the grip on the table and the rapid, shallow breathing.
Naia frowned and brushed back the curtain of hair hiding Katarina's
face.

"Uh-oh."

The tall blond faerie
glanced over. "Oh, shit!"

In less than a blink of her
eyes, he was in front of her. He placed his hands on either side of
Katarina's head and spoke softly in a foreign tongue.