All That We Are (The Commander Book 7)

by Randall Farmer

  Lori nodded. She turned to Duke Hoskins. “We all know how Crows can help Focuses and Arms, by dross cleaning and reducing the bad juice problems,” she said. “You and the Nobles are new to us, Duke Hoskins. What can you tell us about what you can contribute to the Cause?”

  Duke Hoskins stood, bowed, and smiled. “Thank you very much, milady. In the long run, the largest service we Nobles can provide is to rehabilitate Monsters and Psychos.” Tonya’s eyebrows shot up. She had heard a rumor about Chimeras being able to incorporate Monsters into their households, but Psychos, male Transforms who had been through withdrawal? This was completely new. “Not all, mind you. Some. New Transforms who’ve gone Monster or Psycho appear to be the most difficult to rehabilitate, and we may never be able to figure out how to properly rehabilitate them. Older Transforms who have accidents and end up as Monsters or Psychos can be much more easily rehabilitated, but even so it’s a work in progress. The other thing we can offer is help as guards. We like to fight, even more than our sisters, the Arms. If we can get some help from the Crows, learning from Master Occum how to be Crow Masters of Nobles, we might even be able to offer our services outside of the Boston area.”

  Tonya smiled at the Duke’s innocence and his delight to be part of the proceedings, and thought about how her world had grown since she shucked the Patterson tag. The Transform community was starting to mature. Finally. Holding on to the progress they had made so far with the Cause, however, and keeping the inevitable frictions from splitting these new allies, would be difficult, most difficult.

  Their enemies, Rogue Crow and the first Focuses, would make sure of it.

  Gilgamesh: December 27, 1968

  “…thus proving the person who accosted me in Philadelphia upon my graduation, Officer Canon, was indeed Rogue Crow,” Carol said. Hearing Rogue Crow defined and interpreted from Tiamat’s perspective was chilling and terrifying. Sinclair appeared ready to flee, and had taken Gilgamesh’s hand, under the table, for support.

  “Our deadline is simple: there’s a Focus wedding in Detroit in May,” she continued. “We fear the wedding is too much of a target for the enemy to pass up, as at least all of the Detroit Focuses will be attending the wedding.”

  “What’s the proof behind the deadline?” Focus Ackerman said. “Or is this just a guess?”

  Carol turned to Lori. “Do we have anything to go on besides the fact we have a bad feeling about the wedding?”

  Lori turned to Tonya, who shrugged. “I can’t say anything about that,” Lori said.

  The information had come from the Dreaming, Gilgamesh knew.

  “So we know this just because of some Focus mystical hand-waving?” Carol said. “That’s a little weak for proof.”

  “It’s real enough,” Tonya said. “After you and I had our little conversation a while back, a person who once sent me many cryptic letters sent another, welcoming me back into the fold, and warning me about a cloud of danger surrounding the Rickenbach wedding. Lori has received similar mystical warnings. What we don’t know is why Rogue Crow and his minions are going to be attacking. That you and Arm Keaton worked out the wedding deadline by logic before you knew about what we Focuses knew I’d take as corroboration.”

  Carol glowered a Tiamat-like glower and shook her head.

  “Okay,” Lori said. “The deadline’s the problem. So what do we do about it? How do we fight a Major Transform with his power? We don’t know where he lives, how many Hunters he has, or how many others he’s recruited.”

  Carol stood. “I have a tentative plan I’m not personally committed to,” she said. She flexed her fingers and put up one of the charts she and Ila had spent a day working on back in Houston. “What we want to do is lure him into battle thinking he’ll win, and hit him with overwhelming reserves. We do this by taking on his three chief Hunters, one at a time, with forces big enough to take out a Hunter and his pack, but not big enough to take out a massed Hunter army.”

  Gilgamesh thought Carol’s plan would work. He and a Tiamat-acting Carol had thought it up after Focus Biggioni and Lori had left Houston, after the Tonya mind-scrape. Carol thought it too risky, but she didn’t have any better ideas, and Keaton had axed their other two provisional plans, just as they had expected.

  “The big problem we have is that we need a Crow of similar stature to fend off Rogue Crow’s upper end tricks, or at least be a plausible threat to do so,” Carol said.

  “That may be an impossible requirement, Commander,” Sky said. “This sort of adventure isn’t Crow-like at all.”

  “It isn’t an adventure, it’s a battle,” Carol said. “I have some ideas along those lines, about how to approach either Guru Shadow or Guru Thomas the Dreamer, using the argument of: ‘We either win now, or we all become members of the Hunter Empire’.”

  “It won’t fly,” Sky said. Carol glared at him, predator leaking out. Sky leaned back involuntarily. “Mademoiselle Arm, the psychology isn’t right.” Sky turned to Sinclair. “Sinclair, would you go in on this attack?”

  Sinclair’s eyes widened in an ‘oh my God!’ fashion. “Me? I don’t want to be within a thousand miles of such a thing.”

  “Fuck. I don’t understand this at all,” Kali said. “Why is this any different than the Rogue Focus fight in Houston?”

  “Because Houston was a defensive action, ma’am,” Sky said.

  “It looked offensive to me,” Carol said.

  Sky put his head into his hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to explain it any better.”

  “I think I understand,” Ann said. Although new to the councils of the powerful, she had the feel of someone comfortable in her place and knowledge. “In Houston, you were freeing the beleaguered Crows, Focuses and Transforms of Houston from Rogue Focus. There are no beleaguered Crows and Focuses in Chicago, save for the ones who are part of the Hunter households. Their captivity is an entirely different problem, and your planned attack would endanger the Chicago Transforms more than the Hunters currently are.”

  Kali exchanged glances with Carol, who shrugged. “That just means we’ll have to sell it better.”

  “Good luck with that, ma’am,” Sky said, a very low whisper.

  Carol fumed.

  Duke Hoskins cleared his throat. “Ma’am?”

  Lori turned to him. “Duke Hoskins? Feel free to jump right in.”

  He cleared his throat again. “Even if you solve your political problem, I don’t believe your plan will work.”

  “Why?” Lori said.

  “These Hunters, unless they’re radically different than we Nobles, will not think of Chicago as their territory. After you defeat the first Hunter and his pack, the others will go mobile.” That earned Duke Hoskins a Tiamat growl, which didn’t bother him one bit. He actually looked pleased, and he leaned forward and exuded Beastly predator. “Our territory isn’t Boston. We don’t even like Boston much – it stinks and is full of far too many normals. Our territory is all of New England. We like wide open spaces, places where you can run.”

  “Oh,” Carol said. “That makes sense. Thank you very much, sir.”

  “That’s what was eating you, Commander, wasn’t it?” Kali said. Carol nodded. She chewed her lip.

  “You have another idea, don’t you, Commander,” Tonya said.

  Carol’s face turned to stone. She did have another idea, one she had been unwilling to share.

  “Come on, out with it.”

  The room grew quiet.

  “I want it on the record that you asked for this,” Carol said. All eyes turned to Lori, who nodded. “Okay, then. Our deadline is simple: we must defeat Rogue Crow and the Hunters before the Rickenbach wedding. The idea I’ve been sitting on is to use the wedding as a trap, where we lure in the Hunters and Rogue Crow and fight them there. Sweeten the pot by having as many out-of-town Focuses attend as we can scare up. Make it appear to be guarded by the usual half-assed Focus bodyguards and us Arms, who the Hunters still discount as ‘the Monster form of Focu
ses’. Hide a large amount of our strength away from the wedding and reception, or inside, ready to show ourselves only after the battle starts. Pin the Hunters and their troops down from surprise and then take them apart.”

  “That’s horrible!” Flo said, wincing, angry, and white faced. “You can’t just do that to a wedding! We’d be endangering too many innocents!” Focus Ackerman turned to Lori, who was studying her hands. Not meeting anyone’s gaze. “Lori! You can’t! This is insane!”

  Silence.

  Gilgamesh thought the idea through. Tiamat’s plan was more than just rude. On the other hand, from his juice meditations he knew if Focus Rickenbach held her wedding in the Detroit area, the Hunters would attack it. Tiamat’s idea was crazy risky. It would be much safer to convince the young Focus to move her wedding to some justice of the peace’s office somewhere else in Michigan.

  On the other hand, such a defensive action would attract Crows by the boatload, at least in the shadows.

  “The Commander is right,” Lori said, voice low and controlled, formal. Eyes still watching her hands. Patently not using her charisma. The room would be difficult to convince. Only he, Lori, Tiamat and a now happy Kali thought this was a good idea. “This plan is the only way this can work.”

  “This is insane,” Flo said, standing. “I won’t be any part of anything so ridiculous. I’ve stood by for the rest of your risky endeavors, but this goes too far and goes against everything I believe in. There’s no need for us to do anything of the sort! I’ve never…”

  “Sit. Back. Down,” Focus Biggioni said, to Flo. Flo sat, battered down by a wave of charisma stronger than Gilgamesh had ever felt before. Sinclair’s hand clenched his, tight, fighting panic, and Gilgamesh reached to his left across Carol’s empty spot for the nearest available hand, which turned out to be Kali’s. She gave him a knowing glance and didn’t shake her hand free. Hera’s charismatic outburst had unsettled the Arm, as well. “Being a Focus is all about hard choices, and I refuse to let you embarrass the Focus community by stalking out of this meeting.” Tonya turned to Lori, now more polite but no less charismatic. “I’d like to hear your explanation, Lori.”

  Lori leaned back minutely, and then nodded. “As you all know, the Focus Council still refuses to even admit that male Major Transforms exist.” And there went Lori’s charisma, focused on Hera. “If you, Tonya, can get this recognition through the next Council meeting, and I think that’s a big if, I predict months, if not years, between when the Council admits there’s a problem and when the first Focuses are going to be willing to expend any effort to solve the problem. At the earliest, they might get something put together by the summer meeting of 1969. More likely, summer of 1970. This assumes no other pressing problems will arise, and, well, I have my doubts about that, too. Since we won’t be able to get official sanction to fight Rogue Crow, we have to take matters into our own hands. Based on the previous discussion, the Commander’s new plan is the only one we have to work with. I think it’ll work.”

  Lori raised her eyes and loosed her charisma on the rest of the room. “Two other issues are on a collision course that might forever put off any agreement on action against Rogue Crow. First, the incoming Nixon administration is going to be far less friendly toward Transforms than the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. Second, there’s the demographic problem. By the end of 1970, we’re predicting a rate of twenty one thousand cases of Transform Sickness a year, 50% more Focuses than we have now, and up to a half dozen active Arms, depending on Arm mortality. We’re past the point in time where Transforms and Transform politics will be occurring under the radar. If events turn ugly, as they easily could, we might be facing internment camps or worse. Our window of opportunity against Rogue Crow is limited. If we don’t do something now, Rogue Crow will become a permanent problem, and perhaps he’ll even succeed and remake Transform society in his image. We can’t allow this to happen.”

  Lori and Tonya locked eyes and dueled, charisma style.

  “This proposed plan is unprecedented,” Tonya said, shifting to the pragmatic. “Can you justify this precedent? Once allowed, our enemies will use these actions against us. Can you live with that?”

  “To me it boils down to one thing: we’re going to be defending a Focus wedding,” Lori said. “Yes, I can live with this precedent.”

  Yes, yes, Focus Rizzari, I agree, I agree, Gilgamesh thought. He sighed and shook his head. Charisma. At least Lori and Tonya backed down their charisma battle after Lori hammered her point down like a nail. “I would like to add in a little Crow paranoia, though, Housebound,” he said. Sky winced when he used the ‘Housebound’ term. Well, Gilgamesh thought he was being formal, just like everyone else had been. “Inviting all the world’s Focuses to the wedding, and likely some number of clandestine Crows, given the defensive nature of this struggle, means we’re potentially inviting in enemies.”

  Lori nodded. “Yes, of course. We’re going to have to be careful and watch closely everyone not of the Cause who is invited into the wedding. It won’t be easy, but I think we can at least pull that off.” She turned to Carol. “Now that we’re all agreed, I think I’ll turn this over to the Commander and we can start working on the details.”

  Carol Hancock: December 27, 1968

  I took a long shower and tried to relax. We had plotted and argued for four hours, but in the end we managed to put together a coherent plan framework for defending the wedding, the caravan from the wedding to the reception, and the reception. Only those of us there at the table were going to know the full details of the plan. Taking a page from Focus politics, we would be waiting with our daggers out, ready to stab the backs of any of the wedding attendees, our putative allies, who stepped out of line.

  For the vast majority of the Transforms, things would be far simpler than they were for us. Their wedding invitations would mention the death threats. We would expect them to be able to defend themselves, nothing new for the Focuses and their households.

  A knock on the door reminded me I was inside a Focus household with limited resources. Even Inferno had to ration their hot water, and I liked hot water. I toweled off, musing at Tonya and Lori’s antics. They were inseparable these days, despite the near war conditions between Tonya’s bodyguards and the Inferno household – but get the two of them around a bargaining table and out came five years of head-butting history, every comment filled with unimaginably complex Focus emotional and charismatic nuances. I swore I would have needed to share Lori’s metasense to understand a tenth of them.

  Worse, Biggioni, that bitch, still stalked around Inferno, talking with Keaton. Who, damn her, signaled me to come join the current discussion down in Lori’s morgue lab. No Lori; just Tonya, Stacy and Hank, standing beside the autopsy table I remembered so well.

  “What’s going on?” I said, after I arrived. My control was shot from the four hour meeting and a little of my predator showed through. Keaton frowned at my slip and tossed a loose-leaf binder at me, which I caught and attempted to read. Bah. Medical gobbledygook, mostly way over my head. I noticed a copy of Haggerty’s report under Tonya’s arm. Ah. A vaguely formal information trade in progress, Keaton-style.

  “I got a call from Dr. Wilson back on Christmas eve,” Tonya said. Wilson was one of her pet illegal doctors, one I hoped to recruit. “He reported an atypical Major Transform conversion out in Denver, likely a Sport conversion, a middle aged woman named Sylvia Bass. I told him to expedite the information to me, and he did. Yesterday, before I left Pittsburgh, I found out that Bass killed a Network doctor, Dr. Harvey Littleside, while they moved her out of the hospital, to the Denver Transform Clinic.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Hank said. Littleside was one of Hank’s doctor friends I had forbidden him to contact. I could almost feel him edging toward one of his depression episodes. “Can I see the report, ma’am?”

  “Absolutely,” Tonya said. I handed him the loose-leaf binder. “I think the Denver people and Dr. Wilson are both mistaken. I wa
nt to know if you agree with my assessment.” She turned back to Keaton and me and crossed her arms. “Bass was sentenced to die, but the authorities are using a novel method of execution. She was sold, alive, to United Toxicol” a recently formed multinational drug conglomerate I knew of, because they had their business headquarters in Dallas “and moved to their Kansas City laboratory to be experimented upon.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes. In addition, you need to know that United Toxicol has Focus Fingleman on retainer.”

  “And Kansas City is the place where Rogue Crow’s Patriarch branch of his Chimera experimentation is located,” Keaton said. “I’m hoping this is all a coincidence.”

  It never was. Keaton and I exchanged knowing glances.

  “Bass isn’t a Sport, she’s an Arm,” Hank said, looking up from the documentation. “Her juice and toxicity numbers indicate she had only one attendant, which is why the Ambulance crew found her in peri-withdrawal. Somewhere out there is a dead Arm attendant who’s been missed.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Tonya said. She turned to Keaton.

  Keaton held up her hand. “Yes, I’ll owe you one, but only if we can get this baby Arm out of whatever hellhole she’s stuck in, in usable condition.”

  Baby Arm retrieval was my job. This sounded difficult. “Why is she still alive?”

  “They fed her surplus Transforms, in large numbers,” Hank said. “Something that wouldn’t present issues in Denver.”

  I nodded. Denver was an anomaly. Keaton, the Crows, and I thought it gave off bad vibes; people there seemed harsher for no apparent reason. The worst excesses and most callous experiments on Transforms had happened there. Were still happening there.

  “Change of plans,” Keaton said. “Hancock, would you have any problem presenting your ahem dissertation to me early?”