Covert Ops: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Federal Agents of Magic Book 5) Read online

  Covert Ops

  Federal Agents of Magic™ Book Five

  TR Cameron

  Martha Carr

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 TR Cameron, Martha Carr and Michael Anderle

  Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design

  http://jcalebdesign.com / [email protected]

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, July 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-367-1

  The Oriceran Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright © 2017-19 by Martha Carr and LMBPN Publishing.

  Covert Ops - Team

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Dave Hicks

  Misty Roa

  Diane L. Smith

  Micky Cocker

  Larry Omans

  Nicole Emens

  Dorothy Lloyd

  If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedications

  For Dylan

  — TR Cameron

  To everyone who still believes in magic

  and all the possibilities that holds.

  To all the readers who make this

  entire ride so much fun.

  And to my son, Louie and so many wonderful friends who remind me all the time of what

  really matters and how wonderful

  life can be in any given moment.

  — Martha

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Connect with TR Cameron

  Author Notes - TR Cameron

  Author Notes - Martha Carr

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Other series in the Oriceran Universe:

  Books by Michael Anderle

  Chapter One

  The matte black multifunction ARES watch on her left wrist emitted three soft pulses, and Kayleigh pushed herself away from the computer terminal. Three a.m. Damn. I’m working too much. Her basement apartment was dark and only the glow of monitors spilled faintly into the quiet nothingness around her. She stood and stretched, balanced on her toes, and raised her arms high above her head.

  One of the things that had appealed to her about this particular cellar was its extra height, which she concluded meant the habitable space was not an afterthought but part of the original design. They probably had a mother-in-law they wanted to stash down here or something.

  She laughed quietly as she moved toward the open center of the giant room that formed the center of her living quarters, surrounded by functional spaces and a bedroom. Her bare feet enjoyed the caress of the plush carpet beneath them, and the slight breeze of the house’s air conditioning raised bumps on her flesh where the loose shorts and Ramones T-shirt didn’t cover it. The back of her neck was protected from the draft by the scrunchie that gathered her long blonde hair. If tomorrow were an office day, she’d feel compelled to head to bed. But since it was the start of the weekend, she had plans that should prove to be far more entertaining.

  Kayleigh opened the metal cabinet that ran from floor to ceiling on one wall—identical to those the BAM Pittsburgh agents stored their gear in—and withdrew her gaming rig. The Virtual Reality goggles shared the basic code with the popular models on the consumer market, but she had done a great deal of modding. Nothing that would inappropriately tip the scales in multiplayer combat, of course, merely much-improved aesthetics to create a more engaging experience.

  She slipped the eyewear over her head, cursed as the strap pulled at her hair, then pressed the button to pair them with her comm earbuds. Once she’d attached the motion sensors to her ankles, she flicked her feet to seat them properly. The modified joysticks were the last things she withdrew from the cabinet. Her preparations complete, she turned to face the center of the room and spoke the activation phrase with an appropriate clipped British accent. “Engage.”

  The virtual representation of the space materialized in her display as the system detected the markers that set the action boundaries and created a pulsing circle in the middle to designate the home location and starting point.

  Kayleigh paced the square boundary around the room to remind herself of where it was. To warm her legs up, she threw gentle sidekicks and front kicks and bounced a little with each step. She stalked to the center and twisted her hips, rolled her neck, bent over to touch her toes, and straightened with a predator’s grin. “Launch Quake.”

  The snarling guitars and synthesizers of the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack coursed through her like electricity as the game searched for the private server run by one of her college friends. The arena appeared as her character spawned with a trusty Super Nail Gun in her hands. Most players preferred to get close and mix it up, so she chose the role of a distant sniper. The spikes didn’t do much damage individually, but the weapon held a large number of them and boasted an impressive rate of fire.

  The countdown appeared for the next round and she glanced down to admire her avatar, which was the result of some significant time investment. She’d contributed to the code that altered the original game to allow what she considered proper resolution on her friend’s server, and it showed in her character’s looks. Her electronic self wore knee-high boots, shiny black leather pants, and a matching corset with shining steel accents. A half-jacket with mid-length sleeves covered her shoulders and fingerless black leather gloves clasped the weapon’s grips.

  She had selected Scarlett Johansson’s face from the Ghost in the Shell film, mainly to taunt everyone she played with as general hatred
for that movie was almost universal. Worse, she’d topped it with live-action Harley Quinn’s multicolored coif, complete with ponytails. In short, the entire image was calculated to rub salt in the wound of anyone she defeated.

  The round began and she paced through the basement play space and turned when required to march toward the center. The setup was customized to her specifications. It had taken some getting used to, but she liked the actual movement that accompanied her gaming over simply pressing a button to walk her character forward. She crouched behind a set of boxes marked with the NIN logo and peeked around it.

  There, in the far distance, stood an enemy player. His avatar was modeled after one of the characters in Street Fighter, and she smiled in recognition. He was a tech she’d worked with at ARES DC. Everyone who had access to the private server was connected to her professionally or personally within a few degrees of separation, given that she knew the owner and had invited several of her former coworkers to join. She sighted carefully on his feet since the nail gun climbed with recoil and pressed the trigger to stitch him with metal spikes from his toes to the crown of his head. He fell back and out of sight—not dead, but definitely damaged.

  An amused voice broke through the music. “Nice shot, Kitana.” She had chosen her gamer tag in honor of yet another game she loved, Mortal Kombat. “Aiming for the crotch was a little vicious, though.”

  She grinned. The trash talking was always fairly tame at the beginning and pure filth by the end. No stories she’d ever heard from active agents could compare to the bravado of anonymous people with fake weapons in a virtual world. “It’s not like there was anything valuable there.”

  Whistles, “oohs,” and laughs followed, and her opponent joined the conversation. His voice sounded politely confrontational. “Rude. Just rude. Come a little closer so I can plant my ax in your forehead.”

  Kayleigh laughed. “No one uses handheld weapons, and that’s for a reason. It’s like asking to be gunned down from a distance.”

  He chuckled once. “Character concept.”

  Those magic words shattered any derision sent his way as everyone’s shared past in tabletop role-playing games gave character-related decisions a place of honor, even entirely impractical ones. She was also guilty of it and had once played as a mage prone to losing her voice, which had resulted in no end of hilarity for her and an equal level of frustration for her party.

  She ran forward in a crouch to cover farther ahead. Another head was barely visible over the top of a stack of boxes across the large cavern, and she put a trio of nails into it before her opponent realized he was under attack and ducked away. A figure she instantly recognized materialized beside her, carrying a rocket launcher. She grinned and opened a private channel. “Hey, Deke, how’s tricks?”

  He raised a hand and waggled it from side to side, then pointed ahead. Another enemy lurked at the edge of a half-wall that she no doubt thought was solid but which was vulnerable to piercing damage. As it so happens, I have an affinity for piercing damage. She nodded and hefted her SNG. They pulled their triggers together. The nail gun startled the woman out from behind the barrier so the rocket could catch her in the chest and obliterate her. Deacon’s laughter was as pure and joyful as always. “I love that shit.”

  “I know you do, boy toy.”

  He groaned, and she grinned. He’s so easy. Once upon a time, he had admitted to a deep passion for Madonna as well as many other questionable things from the eighties, so she’d developed a host of nicknames to remind him of that revelation. He hadn’t been around the game for a couple of months, and it lifted her spirits to see him again—right until the moment when another enemy’s rocket launcher killed them both because they’d lost focus on the competition.

  They respawned in the lobby, which featured virtual floating screens to show the viewpoints of the five remaining combatants. Deke sounded half apologetic and half flirty. “Sorry. I know what a distraction I am to you.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, that. Sure. So, where have you been, stranger?”

  He sighed and frustration replaced the other emotions in his voice. “I’m not thrilled with my position at Skyrift. It seemed like a great offer—top-flight and all that. The best tech, cutting-edge, industry leader in essentially everything they choose to dabble in, plus big money. Big big money. It turns out that it’s filled with assholes.”

  Kayleigh broke into a laugh. “And you expected corporate culture to be different? Tell me they don’t make you wear a suit.”

  The sound of his rocket launcher reloading in a threatening manner carried across their channel and drew another snort from her. “No, no suits, although I would look damn fine in one. But…ties.” He said the word with derision.

  “Seriously?”

  He clucked his tongue as if to confirm that he couldn’t believe it either. “Seriously. I guess it’s because we have government people and industry bigwigs through all the time. Hell, the other day, there was an elf at my building. In a suit, no less.”

  “Tie?”

  “Of course. He also had one of those pins that showed Earth and Oriceran overlapping, but with more of his home planet.” Her avatar nodded along with her own motion. The icons were becoming more and more common. Humans wore ones that displayed more of Earth and Oricerans did the opposite. Anik had called them testicle tags, which had immediately caught on with Tony and earned him a slap from Cara. Kayleigh had only groaned but inside, she found it secretly amusing. It would be better for everyone if Cara and Anik would quit dancing around each other and just do it. She pushed the stray thought away and forced her mind to rejoin the current moment. “What are you working on?”

  There was a hint of reluctance before he spoke that she put down to a momentary desire to keep secrets on behalf of his company. Fortunately, he abandoned his restraint quickly. “A few different projects, actually. My background task, when I’m not engaged with anything else, is magical surveillance of and improving defenses in our computer system.”

  She nodded. He was one of the few tech mages she’d ever met who was as good at the coding side as he was the magic side. She couldn’t imagine what putting those together would be like, and when he’d attempted to explain, it had sounded too similar to The Matrix or Neuromancer and she’d made him stop trying. On that particular occasion, she recalled with a smile, the distraction had been accomplished by redirecting the girl he had a crush on over to talk to him. Kayleigh Dornan, uber wing woman. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  His avatar grinned. It was modeled after Jet Li, one of his favorite actors, and looked entirely incongruous with the formal black Chinese shirt, the Buddhist prayer beads wound around one wrist, and the huge rocket launcher resting on a shoulder. The face was an amalgam of the actor and the man she knew, which struck her as odd each time she noticed it. “The rest of the time, I’m on two other projects. The first is trying to reverse the flow of anti-magic emitters.”

  She realized instantly what he was getting at. “To make more magic available at a particular place on Earth, right?”

  He nodded. “Exactly. There are many people who would pay to be able to access that kind of thing, apparently.”

  Criminals, especially. I’d better mention that one to Diana and Bryant. Outwardly, she didn’t react. “And the other?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Exoskeletons, armed almost entirely with electric and kinetic stun weapons.”

  She scowled. “Urban pacification?”

  Deacon shrugged, and the frown seemed foreign on his virtual features. “I can’t see another reason for that particular tech unless we’re moving to a gentler, kinder type of war.”

  When they’d been in college together, they had bonded over shared concerns about government overreach, which very much included actions against citizens. That philosophy lay at the core of her reluctance to deploy weaponized drones for fear they might be hacked and used against innocents. Or that they might be directed by untrustworthy people, which amo
unts to the same thing in the end.

  Their characters respawned as the round ended and they marched forward together, falling back into team tactics as if he hadn’t been away for months. They took turns being the bait, always carefully covered by the other, and their enemies fell one after the other. As the competition reached the final six, Kayleigh turned to him and shot the rocket launcher with her nail gun. It exploded and kicked them both out of the game. As their avatars returned to existence in the lobby, he whined, “Hey. I was doing good there.”

  “Quit mewling, baby. Such a baby. Baaaaby.” That was another long-standing joke and drew a smidgeon of a smile from the odd-looking avatar face. “Listen, here’s the thing. The people I work for are interested in adding someone who can do both magic and tech. I’m sure they were thinking more on the tinkering side rather than the computer side since I’m basically awesome.”

  He barked a laugh. “And humble. Same as always.”

  She gave him a one-finger salute. “Anyway, it’s a good gig with great people. Of course, it won’t pay anything near what you make now but you’ll never have to worry that you’re doing something that might help the bad guys again.”