All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (41 page)

“Council quality?” Delia made a face.  “What a hell of a thing to curse some young Focus with.  Couldn’t you steer her toward something less destructive, like Focus Rizzari’s Cause?”

“You think it might be better to let her grow into her power and not be forced into it out of necessity?” Tonya said.  Delia nodded.  “That might be for the best.  If we can afford it.”

Delia smiled. Tonya took another sip of punch and picked at the wedding cake on her plate. Over at the bandstand, the band, all Transforms, segued into ‘Octopus’s Garden’ at a volume that shook the rafters.  Tonya appreciated the jazz they had started with, but the young folks wanted to dance.  Gail’s father went charging up and the notes faded off as he hollered at them to play something more suitable for a first dance. Tonya smiled and shook her head. The band must be either new at weddings, or flustered by their audience.

“Time to circulate,” she said to her people.

“Oh, Tonya, I’m so glad you could come!” Gail said, giddy and laughing, and then gave her a huge hug. Tonya hugged her back, a little more restrained, and ignored the way Danny’s jaw clenched. Gail’s best man, following after, didn’t look any too happy either.

“Congratulations! I’m so happy for you,” Tonya said, and smiled. Gail was a beautiful Focus whose transformation did well by her. Her best feature was her gorgeous chestnut hair, just beginning to grow out. Tonya hoped Gail would let it grow long. It would be magnificent.

“Hello again, Focus Biggioni,” Van said.  He was a tall gangly man with a ponytail and observant eyes, and he wasn’t the sort of person Tonya thought appealing.  He was, as he had showed in their one earlier meeting, as nervy as Gail, and likely more intelligent.  He had gotten along better with Stacy, who appreciated the big-ego brainy types.

“Congratulations to you also,” Tonya said.

“Thank you, Focus,” Van said, looking both happily overwhelmed and awkward. A social butterfly he wasn’t.

“And this is Kurt,” Gail said, pulling the best man forward. “I’ve told you about him.”

Oh, Gail, Tonya thought, your drug dealer is your best man and a household leader. When you give Wini a handle on you, you don’t think small.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. “I hear good things about how well you’ve been taking care of your Focus.”

“Thanks,” he said, startled.

“I wanted to tell you,” Gail said, “thank you so much for the silverware. Eighty place settings! That’s enough for everyone in the household.”

“My pleasure. So will you have some sort of honeymoon?”

“Yes, Van’s parents gave it to us. We’re not really going anywhere, but we’ve got three nights in the honeymoon suite upstairs.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“And Tonya,” Gail said, coming closer and speaking more quietly. Van came with her but Kurt pulled politely back. Tonya raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve decided I’m tired of sitting around. It’s time for me to do something more useful than the YFL newsletter,” Gail said, her voice dropping a half octave.

“Useful? What sort of useful did you have in mind?”

“Transform rights,” Gail said. “It’s a crime how Transforms are treated. Somebody needs to do something about it. I was thinking Transform rights would make a much better use for the Young Focus League than being the whining and complaining chorus.”  Gail flickered her eyes at Linda Cooley, the young and often drug-addled Focus who headed the League.  Tonya had caught Gail bending Linda’s ear several times already this evening.  Tonya suspected Gail’s leaning was the only reason Linda wasn’t completely wasted and making a scene.  “I also know a bunch of people that would help, from college, from the anti-war movement, and I think we can make some noise on the subject.”

Tonya nodded thoughtfully, flickering her eyes at Van to make sure this wasn’t wedding-induced babble of Gail’s.  It wasn’t.

Transform rights would be an excellent place for this young Focus, and the currently useless Young Focus League was well within Gail’s abilities to steer, given the job she already did with Linda Cooley.

“I can help you with this, if you’re willing to lend me a hand with one of my projects,” Tonya said.  To Gail’s sudden frown at the obvious Focus bargaining, Tonya said “I’m half surprised you haven’t suggested this yourself, given your success locally.”

Gail blinked in confusion, her mind exhausted by the events of the day.  Van gently put his right hand on her left arm.  “Mentoring and household model tuning,” he said.

“Oh, right,” Gail said.  They had obviously talked about this beforehand.  Tonya nodded, and made a mental note to tell Gail, later, to keep the politically tricky ‘household model tuning’ aspects of the mentoring job quiet.  “What’s involved in this?  If you can tell me.”

“I’d start you off slowly, but I do need someone local I can trust to help with the mentoring,” Tonya said.

“I’ll do it,” Gail said, relaxing into Van’s arms.  “So, about Transform rights?”

“Let me give you some names,” Tonya said, smiling inside at Gail’s inexpert but forceful bargaining style. “The Council sponsors Transform rights in a pretty big way.  There’s some Focuses you’ll want to talk to, starting with Cathy Elspeth, one of the at-large reps who sits on the Council.”

Tonya continued to circulate.  Every Focus there had something to say to her.  They couldn’t pass up the chance.  She was too politically important.

“Danny, let’s dance,” Tonya said.  She enjoyed politics, but she did need a break.

“Ma’am,” he said, startled.

“Just one song’s worth of break, that’s all. Let’s dance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and smiled.

They danced.

Then the lights went out and the glass shattered in the plate glass windows overlooking the parking lot.  In the distance, Tonya heard screams, gunfire, and a helicopter coming in low.  Danny grabbed her and forced her head down to make her less of a target.  He hustled her off the dance floor, back to Pete and Delia.  Hancock arrived when Tonya did, hopefully to help defend her.

Chapter 11

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”

– The Buddha

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh had no interest in dancing, and was for once glad to be a bodyguard.  As luck would have it, he was watching Sinclair when, for no discernible reason, Focus Keistermann’s largest bodyguard picked up Sinclair, Zero and the Focus and sprinted back toward the far wall, opposite the bank of glass windows.  Errr.  Focus Keistermann’s large bodyguard was a Major Transform, either an Arm or a Beast Man.  Talented, too, because the unknown and the two Crows still masked themselves, hiding in Focus Keistermann’s “I’m the biggest toughest Focus on the planet” glow.

With one hand, Gilgamesh batted the back of Carol’s head, one of the physical signals they had worked out ahead of time.  Incoming.  His other hand reached for his rotten eggs, and he spread his metasense over the crowd and out into the night as he edged away from Tiamat.  She sped off, leaving a flummoxed Zielinski stuck guarding nothing.  The Good Doctor tried to follow Tiamat, but got tangled up with the entirety of Focus Hargrove’s household.

Just as Focus Keistermann’s bodyguard flipped a table and dropped Sinclair, Zero and the Focus behind it, the lights went out and the windows blew with a metallic clang, followed by the sound of glass shattering on asphalt thirty feet below.  Carol had arranged both events ahead of time, Tom’s demolitions crew assuring everyone they could blow the windows out without dropping anything larger than dust into the ballroom.  They had argued over blowing the windows.  Occum finally decided the issue, stating that it would be no problem at all for the enemy Beast Men to bash in the windows in such a way as to turn the shards into deadly shrapnel.

Even knowing the blast was coming didn’t keep Gilgamesh from flattening to the ground.  Too much noise.

In the distance, Gilgamesh heard a loud whap-whapping sound he couldn’t place.  Something approached, coming in fast.  He ignored it for now, and concentrated on his job of keeping safe and metasensing the ballroom.  The rain picked up, outside, from a mist to a downpour.

Focuses and their bodyguards leapt to flip tables.  Standard defensive procedures, instructions from the flyer about death threats the wedding organizers had distributed.  A few civilians ran toward the exits leading back into the hotel, the safest place for the civilians to be.  For the rest of them, though, fleeing was not an option, but an invitation for Rogue Crow’s crew to pick off lone Transforms.  Safety in numbers was their only choice.  Gilgamesh pushed up to a crouch to avoid being stepped on and kept his metasense moving.

Outside, a large mass of Transforms and normals sprinted across the parking lot toward the ballroom, no longer covered by Rogue Crow’s antisense defenses.  To Gilgamesh’s surprise, a group of Law-controlled but non-pack Monsters and juice-addled normals led the charge.  Cannon fodder, although someone on the other side had improved the juice-addling techniques; these normals looked far more functional than the ones Gilgamesh metasensed last year.  They carried weapons.

Twelve Hunter packs approached, slowly, at a walk, well behind the charge.  The packs contained the normal motley crew of barely-Monster to full-Monster pack women Transforms, berserker pack male Transforms and Hunters.  No Law-enslaved Crows or Focuses, though.

With the crack! of the first gunfire from the Focus bodyguards, Gilgamesh lost himself in momentary panic.  He stopped his flight after a half dozen steps and looked around until he spotted some place of relative safety.  He ran over to it and ducked down behind a table held by three lone bodyguards without their Focus.  Hargrove?  Yes, only Hargrove’s people were this careless.  This would be a good place to cower, as Hargrove’s bodyguards probably wouldn’t notice he wasn’t one of theirs.  He could also use this position to warn anyone if Hargrove and her crew turned traitor.

He didn’t understand Rogue Crow’s thinking.  Even without knowing whatever tricks Kali had up her sleeve, this wasn’t a dangerous attack.  Why split his forces?  He should have had his Beast Men charge with the mob.  Surely Rogue Crow didn’t think they would scatter from a minor attack such as this.  Perhaps Rogue Crow sensed some bad vibes and just probed.  Still, it struck Gilgamesh as bad tactics, too big a gamble for any sane Crow to take.

He wished either Tiamat or Kali had been more forthcoming about the battle preparations and prearranged tactics.  No longer among the trusted, he only knew about his orders, and no one else’s.

Desultory gunfire from the roof picked off attackers, and Gilgamesh shivered.  He had never been in a fight like this before.  Too much gunplay.  Focus bodyguards and Carol’s thugs held the roof, and gunplay was their strength.  Suddenly, Gilgamesh picked up Kali’s glow hundreds of feet in the air, moving at about a hundred miles an hour.  He turned and cursed the normal human tendency to focus one’s senses on the ground, and hoped the enemy made the same mistake.  Kali flew in, in a helicopter.  He hadn’t recognized the sound because Kali flew, or rode in, some sort of military chopper.  He had no idea where she got such a thing.  Trust Kali to go over the top.  Weapons erupted from the helicopter, a quick-firing machine gun, and dozens of Monsters and juice zombies went down.  As Kali swung around for another pass, glass continued to tinkle from the cars the Arm riddled with bullets.

Several of the Monsters made the leap up to the blasted open windows.  Each of them in turn caught dozens of bullets from Focus bodyguards.  Gilgamesh ignored their futile leaping and scanned the ballroom.  His job was to watch their putative defenders and allies, to see if Rogue Crow had turned any of them.

He found what he needed to find, but he found it too late.

Gail Rickenbach

Gail shrieked as the lights went out and the windows exploded.  She had been about to go back to the dance floor and dance with Roger Grimm.  The bride got to dance with everyone.  Kurt grabbed her, and both of them fell to the floor.  In the sudden dark, all Gail could think about were her parents and Van, as she watched and metasensed people tipping over tables.  She had no idea where her parents or Van were, and she looked around, futilely.

Chaos rippled through the former reception now.  Bodyguards clutching Focuses.  Juice moving like rays of light, everywhere, along tag links.  In her near panic Gail’s metasense overwhelmed her sight, even though her night vision had gotten good in the last year.  She heard gunfire outside of the no longer existing windows.  People screamed about Monsters.

Ten feet from her, someone moved away who wasn’t there.  Gail saw a juice outline of a person, a Major Transform, an
invisible
person!  How did that work!  The person had a Crow’s fuzzy metapresence, but she never dreamed any of the Major Transforms had tricks this potent.

Was this Rogue Crow himself?

“Let me up!  There’s an enemy among us!” she said, bellowing into Kurt’s left ear, which at least let her wiggle to her knees. “Where’s Van?”

“I don’t know.  Stay down.”  Her senses and awareness of all around her, honed by her year plus as a Focus, threatened to overwhelm her.  Over by the former windows: gunshots and screaming.  Around her: falling chairs and silverware.  To her left: a few plates that hadn’t been picked up by the waiters scattered in pieces across the floor.  Rolling over the top of her: the stench of gunsmoke, the smells of the fourth of July, the raw smell of blood and the electrical fire smell of juice in use.

The invisible Crow headed away.  Despite the panicky Transforms running for cover making a hash of her metasense, Gail realized the invisible Crow’s target: Focus Biggioni!

Gail grabbed Kurt’s collar and yanked, dragging him forward like a heavy bag of sand.  She duck waddled, swinging her head and metasense back and forth.  She didn’t metasense any Chimera-style metapresences outside, just a lot of people with faint juice smears on them, like they had been doused in juice but weren’t Transforms themselves.  And Monsters.  Gail had never metasensed one before, but she found something instinctively obvious about their metapresence.  A helicopter, of all things, came in low through the now heavy rain, firing weapons into the parking lot area, taking down enemies by the dozen.  Her parents’ car was out there!  They would be so angry if it got trashed.

Around a table, Gail caught sight of Tonya as the invisible Crow slowly and carefully made his final approach.  Tonya had some bodyguards with her, as well as that goofy Focus Forbes non-entity.  Wait.  Gail hadn’t metasensed it before, but now with the lights out, it hit her: this was no Focus!  Focus Forbes was an Arm, an Arm with a love at first sight metapresence!  She talked to Tonya, so she had to be on the side of the good guys.  Right?  Yes, she was one of the important ones the Madonna-figure had showed her in her dreams.  The one with the absurd title.

“Tonya!  There’s an invisible Crow coming toward you!” Gail said.  No response to her scream, so she continued to scuttle forward.  Tonya, one of her bodyguards, and ‘Focus Forbes’ looked over at her.  The Arm motioned for her to stay down.  They must not have heard her.  Kurt tried to hold her back and force her down, but Gail motored forward anyway, dragging Kurt.  The invisible Crow ducked down on the other side of the flipped over table to Gail’s left, out of sight from her, but not hidden from her metasense.  He must have heard her scream.  Dammit!

A flash of lightning outside illuminated the window area, and she caught sight of Van, inexpertly reloading the Glock Kurt had made him carry today.  Next to him was the screwy Dr. Madison researcher she had met once at Beth’s copy shop, his disguise as a Focus Forbes bodyguard no longer fooling her.  He had a rifle in his hands, firing at a nearby bird-headed pack Monster.  Beth crouched with them, along with a gaggle of her people, mostly non-bodyguards save for Bob Hilton.  Dammit, why did this have to happen while Van was bending Beth’s ear!  He was too close to the action!  Her stomach soured as the afterimage of the flash vanished, and she lost sight of him again.

Gail made it to Tonya, though now held by both Kurt and one of Tonya’s bodyguards.  “Tonya!” she screamed, trying to lean forward so that she could scream in Tonya’s ear.  “There’s an invisible Crow after you!”

“Where?” the Arm said.  Gail pointed, following the moving invisible Crow as he circled to the side.  She continued to point, and the Arm moved like lightning to pounce on the invisible Crow.  Trying to follow the motion of the invisible Crow and the Arm rolling and fighting on the floor with her eyes and metasense, Gail overshot and saw the strangest thing.  Behind one of the tables, farther back and away from the fight, Focus Anderson and her bodyguards stood up.  Weapons drawn.

Gail paused in shock as two of them aimed their weapons at Focus Biggioni.  Gail moved back toward Tonya.  She was the only one looking in that direction, as Tonya’s bodyguard and Kurt had both joined the writhing fight on the floor.  She was the only one between Tonya and Focus Anderson’s bodyguards when they opened fire on Tonya.

“Bodyguards are people who will take a bullet for you,” Beth had said to Gail when they first met.  Beth’s comment sounded so strange at the time, but over the past months, Gail grew to understand the idea.  The concept did hurt her egalitarian instincts, but, logically, some people were worth more than others.  To a household, a Focus was such a person.  Being a bodyguard was an impressively selfless and important job.  Gail greatly admired anyone willing to be that noble.

Tonya was a Focus who was worth more than other Focuses, a teacher of Focuses, and a member of the Focus Council.  She had done so much for Gail and asked so little in return.  Gail’s gut reaction was instinctive, more than just hero worship.  Gail would take a bullet for Tonya.  She grabbed Tonya and tried to wrestle her to the ground.  Blood flew – from Tonya.  Gail felt one, two, then far far too many hammer blows to her own body.  She and Tonya went down amid dozens of screams, and roars, and gunshots, and a fiery explosion somewhere in the distance.

Gail’s mind detached from her body, something of the juice she had never expected.  She saw all the bullet holes in her, metasensed her life ebb away and her body change over from its normal functioning to using the juice itself to keep her alive, unexpected and impossible.  Gail felt her body, distantly, but could no longer move it.  Her heart stopped.  Her breathing stopped.  She met Tonya’s eyes, and saw her own horror echoed in them.

Gail faded, dying, and she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

Earl Robert Sellers

Earl Sellers calmed his sudden nerves and studied the battle in front of him.  Following the Commander’s deployment seven orders, the Noble attack squad had exited the roof at the first visible sign of the enemy, and had hid themselves to the far left of the reception hall, ready to block any flanking attacks.  Although the orders hurt to obey, they weren’t to engage the first enemy group.

“Dammit,” Earl Sellers said, still discommoded by the junk-level troops who had been part of the first charge of the enemy: normals, juice-zombies and barely controlled Monsters.  “I see the main force, but I’m metasensing them as solid.  Something’s wrong, here.”  To his eyes, Enkidu and the leading Hunters led an impressively large group of pack women and younger Hunters across the far end of the parking lot.  The rain picked up, and the wind changed, carrying with it an overwhelming stench of Hunter and Monster to them.

Sky, still with them, nodded.  “Illusions.  Dammit, nothing but…”