Chapter 21: The Slavians

~~ Delta - Nov/02 - (Earth - May/2095) ~~

Lee and the boys were waiting for the Slavians.

Kostya was pensive. He looked at Lee and wondered if she really realised the effect she had on Earth when she invited herself into the American President’s office. When the news stories hit the internet and the airwaves, there was a lot of fear and speculation of just what a real wizard could do.

Some people held on to the belief that they were charlatans, no matter what they saw with their own eyes. However, many more people now believed that they were very real, and it did increase their fear and created a lot of speculation and even some hysteria.

His own President had contacted him and ordered him home for an immediate meeting. He had put off going back until after he attended the school. Kostya was glad his family was in the compound on Harmony. No one had worked out how to get around Lee’s security on the portal on Earth, so he hoped they would remain safe.

Very reluctantly, Kostya had headed to his meeting in Russia three days before. He had only gotten back to Harmony an hour before he had to come meet his countrymen with Lee and Sean since he was their ambassador.

He was amused when he stepped onto the portal dais that he could travel twenty light-years in the blink of an eye, but it then took six hours to cover the 14,000km to get to Moscow in a shuttle from Australia.

A very jet lagged Kostya found that President Leonid Polzin was not a happy man. For one thing, he hated the sight of that little black, bloody dragon. They had to pull forty operatives from the field when they tried to stack the ship going to Harmony with Secret Service personal.

The operatives found their names were listed in an article that was in all the newsfeeds in the countries where they were located, asking, “Who were these people and what happened to their Russian passports?”

The team of scientists had not been happy with the number of proposed loafers either, as they called the agents. Their spaceship was re-designed to transport eighty staff with a flight crew of twelve. They were also packed in like sardines.

They had been told to cut the number of scientists to only forty members. The rest of the staff would be ten support staff and thirty loafers in the guise of protection and scientists if they had the credentials.

However, every time the list of personnel came across his desk, not one of the agents was on it. He found thirty other names instead. The dragon was always in the bottom corner of the document, and it winked at him when he looked at it.

Kostya warned Leonid that Lee wanted people who were interested in developing a new way of life and not perpetuating the mistakes of the past. She was happy for them to keep their culture as long as it didn’t impede free will. He had also warned the President and the armed forces not to put any weapons on the ship.

Now Kostya had to explain to Leonid how Lee had got past the Americans Secret Service Agents. He was amused but kept the smile off his face when he found ten heavily armed men standing around the walls in the office he was shown into.

Leonid had shifted out of his lofty office to the fallout bunker below, believing he was safe from Lee. He had even got his people to revamp several of the storerooms into a larger luxury apartment for him. He didn’t like the old rooms that were for his use.

Kostya didn’t mention to his illustrious leader that he was now a mage. Nor that Lee had personally taught him how to erect a shield like the one she had used. She had also taught him the immobilising spell and how to transport himself short distances. Like Robert, Pete and Antonio, he could now get up to 200km.

The last week at the School had been the most draining yet fun time he’d had in as long as he could remember. Lee had taught him how to tap into any power source to boost his jumps. Lee said with practice, she believed that they would all get further, but warned them not to plan on planet jumping, it required additional skills.

She would, as soon as she got a chance to, get a ring set up on each new nation on Harmony for them as she had recently recovered some rings that would do the job. She planned the big one to be used by Justin and Alec and the four smaller ones for the four nations that would settle first.

Kostya was amused when she taught him how to scramble cameras and sensors and create a glamour to change his features. He had asked her why she trusted him with these skills. She had effectively made him one of the most dangerous spies on Earth that a man could be.

In typical Lee fashion, as he was learning, she shrugged and said, “Kostya, you are now a mage. I’m supposed to teach you this stuff to keep you safe, so you can keep your people safe.”

He got the message. He was no longer just a citizen of Russia. He had new responsibilities, and Lee intended to provide him with the tools to meet them.

Kostya didn’t have a lot of love for President Leonid. He still loved being a Russian, but not their present leader. He considered him a pompous dictator who had little regard for his people. The man was a brutal bully. He had no compunction making dissenters to his rule disappear.

Kostya believed a lot of Russia’s recent problems were attributed to this man’s vicious leadership. He also believed the fighting in the Middle East had been aggravated by his president. He had a bad habit of stirring up trouble wherever he could.

“So how did she do it? How do we stop her?” Leonid threw at Kostya as he entered the room. The President was obviously agitated. He was even pacing in the space behind his desk.

“You don’t. Queen Lee is a very powerful wizard, even for her kind. She was powerful as a Lord Wizard, but now she is the Queen of the wizards, she is doubly so. She is not a lady you wish to upset as the Americans found out.”

“I don’t wish to upset her, I want her and that bloody dragon dead,” Leonid screamed.

Kostya stepped back at the violence in the man. “Do you know what the bitch did? Do you?” he shrieked as he thumped his desk. His face was almost puce in his agitation.

“I received a message just an hour ago,” Leonid spat. “My agents are still on the moon. They had been kept in solitary confinement for the last five weeks, without us being told. Apparently, they refused to give up their weapons and were held for conspiracy to violate the bloody charter.”

Kostya winced as Leonid slammed his huge fist onto the table again. Leonid was at least 187cm tall, a good 20cm taller than himself and he weighed in at 150kg. He made Kostya think he was a wrestler gone to fat.

Leonid always stank of Polish salami, garlic and rank sweat. He had piggish eyes and thick red lips, a huge bulbous nose and thinning pale hair. He wasn’t a handsome man and hadn’t aged well in the seven years he had been president. He looked a good dozen years older than his sixty-eight years.

“Did the ship leave with just the fifty staff aboard?” Kostya asked.

“No!” screamed Leonid. “Somehow, the thirty people who kept appearing on the lists had been transported to the moon from our highest security jail cells, and they left with the fucking ship.”

“What was so special about this group?” Kostya had to ask. He had a sneaky feeling Lee had been back to Earth more than once since the Ring portal had been activated.

“What! Who fucking cares? They were in my cells, and now they are gone,” Leonid spat out aggressively. Kostya could see he was very agitated; the veins on his forehead and neck were pulsing.

Gervasi Sokolov, the Senior Aide who was with the president, looked at Kostya with speculation. He walked over to a computer, and he pulled up a file and scanned through it.

“Ten were reputable scientists, and the others twenty were of all manner of occupations from architects, engineers, archaeologists and teachers?” he looked at Kostya questioning.

“Did they happen to be male or female?” Kostya couldn’t help asking.

Gervasi looked at the screen again, “Female, they were all female,” he said with surprise. “Thirty of the original fifty were female as well,” Gervasi grinned at Kostya.

“Damn, thirty guys and sixty-two females all under thirty years of age to choose from. Wow, there are some real sexy women on this list. We didn’t send any married couples.”

“Who, fucking cares?” Leonid exploded.

‘Lee cares,’ thought Kostya. He had a feeling Lee would make sure the extra thirty females would be finding jobs on Utopia or the southern continent of Harmony with the Grandteli. She had a lot of lonely Grandteli and Genteli to find wives for.

Kostya had a hard time suppressing his grin. He suspected that she had hand-picked them from her database as well. He looked at Leonid but didn’t comment. He instead said, “Did you load bombs and other weapons on that ship?”

“That is none of your fucking business,” Leonid answered belligerently.

“Well, If you get a visit from Queen Lee, don’t blame me,” Kostya answered in disgust.

Leonid stomped around the room and looked sideways at Kostya several times. Then he flung at him, “What do you know about the server crash?”

Kostya looked at Leonid with complete surprise. “What crash?” he asked. He’d been out of the loop while doing his training and hadn’t heard anything about a major server crash on Earth.

Gervasi answered, “Bloody Drako, crashed our super server farms. One in China, one in South America and one in Israel. They are all dead and have to be totally rebuilt. When they try to replace the hard drives, they are fried. If they pull the memory and replace it too fries.”

“What the hell did you people do to piss Lee off?” Kostya asked aghast.

Gervasi answered grimly, “That fucking database of hers is reporting every know agent and criminal to the authorities of the country they are in. A group of hackers tried mounting a simultaneous attack on it. In retaliation, Drako wiped the servers where the attracts were coming from.”

Kostya looked at them horrified. He didn’t have to fake it. “What about the data stored on them?” he had to ask.

Gervasi flicked his eyes at Leonid and said. “Apparently, a new farm was built, but no one knows where it is, and they can’t trace it. All the stored data is now on it. All of the royalties that had gone to the old servers is now being routed to the new owners a company called Physic in Ink.”

“We can’t prosecute them because we can’t find them and for all intent, they are not registered in any one country. We can’t follow the money because it no sooner appears in an account and it is moved. Just about every legitimate Aide Organisation in the world is suddenly flush with cash.”

“That bitch stole my money,” Leonid screamed and smashed his fists down on the desk several times. Kostya wasn’t the only person in the room who winced. They waited quietly as the echoing booms reverberated around the room and until Leonid worked out his rage on the inanimate object.

Patting, Leonid said to Kostya with menace, “You will be escorted back to Australia. You are to make sure the six men with you get transported to Harmony.”

Kostya said quietly, “Just remember that they cannot, and I repeat cannot enter that facility with any sort of conventional weapons. It has been tried, and no one has even got inside, let alone on the property.”

“I know that,” spat Leonid in a fury. “I want that communicator off your wrist. You will not be contacting them before you leave.”

Kostya took off the Mad and handed it to Gervasi who placed it on the desk. He was then escorted out. He found he was under heavy security and not left alone to even pee. It wasn’t a pleasant trip back to Australia. The agents were not a talkative lot.

He didn’t tell them his Mad had appeared in his luggage. He loved Lee’s return spell. He had a feeling some poor sod was getting reamed about its disappearance, but they couldn’t blame him with the guards he had.

When he arrived in Australia, three of the agents were held up in customs. Their claims of diplomatic immunity fell on deaf ears. A security team from the Australian Federal Police turned up.

Kostya soon found all three were wanted for charges in countries Australia had extradition agreements with. The Fed’s didn’t mention the anonymous emails from their good buddy Drako. Lee’s program was obviously still working.

As he was no longer the Australian Ambassador, he dropped it all in the new Ambassador’s lap. He and the other three men were able to go to the Watson Compound. The group had no trouble being transported, and the men were amazed at the compound they found themselves in on Harmony.

One of the men swore. “My video and audio recordings stopped working when we entered the compound on Earth. It’s only just started again,” he told the others.

They all looked at Kostya with suspicion. “I could have told you not to bother, but you wouldn’t have believed me,” he said.

His Mad beeped, and he answered. He had put it back on just before they left. It was Lee informing him that the Slavians ship was here and they were waiting for him at the transporter station.

He let his guests put their baggage in their rooms as he dumped his and then escorted his guests to meet their people. One of the agents handed him a thin red disc 30mm in diameter, with a small black dragon on it and a plain white business card that had ‘Strike One’ printed on it in red ink.

“What is this?” the agent asked Kostya.

“Where did you find it, Pavel?” Kostya asked in return, guessing it was something new Lee had dreamed up.

“In my luggage, certain other items were missing,” Pavel told him. He had thought their new weapons went undetected by the protections that they were told were in place on the Rings. He was now suspected that this might not be true. He wasn’t sure why the other item had been left.

Kostya shrugged, “Three strikes and you are out.” He didn’t elaborate further as they would learn not to mess with Lee. Some people had to learn the hard way he was learning.

The transporter was landing as they entered the terminal. They watched the first eighteen members of the team enter what they believed was a simple metal detector.

The first ten passed through unscathed, but number eleven ran afoul of Lee’s detector. Kostya groaned as he knew there would be trouble. He watched as the man patted down his pockets and removed a small metal case.

“Sorry, forgot about my cigarettes,” he said.

Lee looked at him with raised eyebrows, “I would have thought after five weeks, you would have quit?”

He shook his head, “We have a special smoker’s room.”

Lee looked around at the others, and several nodded. Lee stepped up to the man and placed a finger on the side of the man’s head.

“It’s a shame you didn’t enjoy using it,” she told him, and the case disappeared. “I bet you worried a lot about accidentally pressing the hidden button on it,” she said as she stepped away.

A white card and red disc appeared in the man’s hand. He looked at them in shock. The agent with Kostya blanched as he recognised them as being identical to the ones in his pocket.

“What does it say?” a woman asked.

The man looked at Lee and then the card and readout, “Strike One.”

“You get three strikes, and then you are out,” Lee told him. “If you don’t have anything that is banned, walk back through please.” She indicated the detector.

He hesitated but then complied and walked back through the detector. It beeped again. He turned on the other side and looked at Lee apprehensively as she shook her head. A second card and disc appeared in his hand.

“Not really smart are you,” Lee commented. She waved her hand at him, and he went ramrod straight. Three plastic parts and four bullets in another ceramic and lead-lined shielded case wiggled out of his pockets and flew to Lee.

She closed her hand over the parts and then opened it. They were all melted together. She grinned at the man. “Want to try it one more time?”