The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (56 page)

I gathered eyeballs and spoke.  “Bass said to me: It’s not about right or wrong.  It’s about power, who has it and who doesn’t.”  Hoskins hissed and backed away.  I guess I was coming on too strong, projecting more of Bass’s primal ideology than was wise.  “She walked out of the Eskimo Spear presentation, saying ‘these people, who are going to follow this path, are
our enemies
’ on her way out.  She’s actively working against the Cause,” I said.  “She wasn’t going after just me, she was going after all of us.”  Her games with United Toxicol had left room for a relationship between us in the future.  When I stayed committed to the Cause, she put me down in her little mental book as an enemy, and started her war.  There would be no nice reconciliation, enabled by clean Arm dominance fights and tagging ceremonies.  She philosophically and emotionally opposed everything I stood for.

“As with any Arm who’s survived Keaton’s training, she’s smart, devious, and cunning, and she won’t be making any dumbass mistakes,” I said.  Except perhaps by working with Echo, who wasn’t close to being the sharpest knife in the bandolier.  The others didn’t really understand the implications of a Keaton-trained Arm as an enemy, but I did.  Her merc anti-hand-to-hand combat tactics and the smoke grenade trick were just the beginning.  We were about to be subject to a level of devious, cold-blooded cruelty beyond any enemy the Transform community had ever faced.

Yes, Amy had been right.  We did face a new ultra-powerful enemy.  Only the enemy was a rogue Arm, one of our own, and her overwhelming power derived from Keaton’s training.  So, thankfully, did her many weaknesses, weaknesses we all knew well because we shared in them, too.

Hoskins nodded as he took in my words.  “You have to kill her,” he said.  “Not some cheesy Arm dominance thing. 
Kill her.
”

I nodded, knowing it wouldn’t be easy.  “Yes,” I said.

She knew my mind.  She knew how I would react when I eventually discovered her manipulations.  She would certainly have a plan to deal with my reaction.

“I’ll kill her,” I said.  “Absolutely as soon as I can arrange it.”

And how soon, I wondered, would I be able to arrange such a thing?  And what horrors would she generate in the meantime?

To be continued in

Love and Darkness

(Book 2 of
The Cause
)

Fiction By This Author

Transforms Universe:

The Commander Series Novels

Once We Were Human

Now We Are Monsters

All Beasts Together

A Method Truly Sublime

No Sorrow Like Separation

In This Night We Own

All That We Are

The supplementary Commander Series Stories:

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio One

All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Two)

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Three

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Four

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Five

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Six

No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Seven)

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Eight

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Nine

Focus

The Cause Series Novels

The Shadow of the Progenitors

Love and Darkness

The Forgefires of God

Beasts Ascendant (The First Chronicle of the Cause) (coming April/May 2016)

(more to come, later)

Indigo Universe:

Storybook Crazy

99 Gods Trilogy Novels

War

Betrayer

Odysseia

99 Gods Trilogy Supplementary Stories

Tales From The Anime Café (Part One)

Tales From The Anime Café (Part Two)

Author’s Afterword

Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Alex Farmer, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer.  Without their help this novel would have never been made.

The cover represents the Amy Haggerty (an Arm) and Gilgamesh (a Crow).

Cover credit goes to Joshua Strang via Wikimedia Commons for the aurora background, faintsmile28 for the chrysanthemum, and the Brooklyn Museum via Wikimedia Commons for the spear.

I hope you enjoy reading this novel.  More will be coming in this series.

If you enjoyed this novel, you can find out further information about the Cause series, the background mythos of the Transforms universe, and about other fiction, on http://majortransform.com.  Try the Author’s Facebook page for news and comments (www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212).  Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged.  Tell your friends.  Post reviews.

Provisional future publishing schedule:

Beasts Ascendant (The First Chronicle of the Cause) (coming April/May 2016)

No Small Dreams (coming later in 2016)

An Age Without a Name (coming later in 2016)

…and more to come, later

Randall Allen Farmer