His people were scattered along a path about a hundred yards wide, perhaps twenty deep. He and Pack Mistress Elspeth crouched on the far left of their group, covered only by Frog and Horok, two Monster women. They had started and stopped the descent three times now, and their current position was only about thirty yards from a gaggle of about twenty-five Transforms and normals who had been forced under Hecate’s semis. Only they weren’t a gaggle with the Commander with them.
It meant that his troops wouldn’t be able to fight their way forward and get to Hecate.
Only a ditch by the side of the road lay between them, and the Commander’s group. A much larger group, the Inferno and Stone Point warriors and a decent fraction of Haggerty’s army, emerged from their invisibility and trenches on the north side of the nursing home rubble, fighting Colonel Loess’s troops to their left and Hecate’s troops to their right. A separate group came in behind Enkidu’s main force and slowly forced them onto the nursing home grounds, a group using wicked mobile tactics Caveworm recognized as Keaton’s. Not good. As Del predicted, the Commander had managed to dig up far too many reinforcements for Caveworm’s tastes, in this case, the remains of the Chicago combatants. How did she get them here, and get them effective? They had been reportedly no longer combat capable. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be enough, in his opinion, to alter the course of the fight.
Not with Enkidu’s hidden reserves sneaking up on the group Keaton commanded, sandwiching them against Enkidu’s main force.
How many of the Commander’s reserves remained, though? How many devious tricks remained in her back pocket? It looked like she would need quite a few more. She lacked the raw numbers needed to win this battle.
However, instead of the target Transforms being trapped and surrounded by Hunters, all the Hunters but his and Enkidu’s weak reserve force ended up trapped and surrounded. Well, he had always said that the Commander was one Transform he never wanted to fight. This was why.
Hecate’s group was half-buried in nursing home rubble, and entrenching. A Focus, her Transforms and a whole horde of normals unloaded at the edge of the nursing home driveway, blocking the road behind them and causing a large traffic jam. Using their vehicles for cover, they fired heavy weaponry into the fight, shooting at both sides. They caught the Commander’s group between them and the Hunters, making life dangerous for whomever the Commander decided to go after.
“Emperor,” Nabors said from his spot twenty feet farther down the line. “I sense something that shouldn’t be there.”
Now that was amazing. Nabors, a Sport, possessed a spotty metasense at best, and nothing like a dependable range. However, it wasn’t as if anyone knew to cover for his abilities.
“Where, friend Nabors?”
“Behind us, back up the ridge.”
Del turned and slithered back toward them. “Problems, sir?”
“Did some people get behind us?”
Del concentrated, and then grimaced. “Oops. We’re in trouble, sir. Remember all those Major Transforms you didn’t want to see in this fight? The young Arms patrolling the Memphis area and their surviving Noble allies? Well, a whole shitload of them are circling around behind us.”
“A whole shitload more of them, from the Chicago army, have split Enkidu’s army, on the far side of the ruined building, cutting off his retreat line,” Caveworm said, and Del winced. “Can we get back to those trenches and pits up the slope before these damned Arms do?”
“No. I could make it, and several fleet footed Hunters, but the rest – no.”
Well, Emperor Caveworm thought, I guess this proves I’m no military genius. I’m surrounded as well.
“Dig here,” he said. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to advance. The Commander and her people didn’t look like they would be moving any time soon, and advancing toward Hecate would mean they would need to deal with the Commander first.
Not on this earth.
At least his Monsters could dig quickly.
Gail Rickenbach
“You up for a little talk?” Gail said, rising from the side of the Madonna of Montreal. This was the recovery tent, for those sick and wounded for whom there was little more to be done. They would live, or not, on their own.
Van was half-asleep in his wheelchair, holding the hand of the Madonna. The Madonna had fallen into a healing trance, from overwork and other unknown stresses and issues. Gail didn’t want to know the details. It was bad enough that when she flicked her eyes at the Madonna and raised an eyebrow, Hank’s control slipped and revealed an internal horror of personal knowledge. Gail leant him emotional support through her tag, and made it last awhile with some juice music. Hank, the poor man, couldn’t believe she would do him the favor.
She waved a hand in his direction, releasing him to return to the medical tent, where the real action took place. He nodded at her and left quickly, worried about whatever new disasters had appeared in his few minutes of escape to check on the Madonna.
“You’re the busy one,” Van said. “Don’t you need to be ready to charge in to help save the day?”
She shrugged. “I’ve done enough for the past several days,” she said, lying a bit. She didn’t appreciate ending up with Carol’s last reserves, essentially on evacuation detail. “No sleep, just a short cat-nap on the plane flight over. I can’t believe I’m still going.”
Van looked at her, about to offer some obvious helpful comment, and then he turned away, deciding against speaking. He looked over at Arm Webberly. “She saved my life,” Van said, off on a tangent. “An Arm who hadn’t even tagged me just went and saved my life, for no reason I can ascertain.”
“You’re tagged now,” Gail said. “The tag says ‘property of the Commander, preserved by Webberly, who apologizes to the Commander for having to borrow this normal to heal him’.”
Van looked at her, his eyes slitted, very cautious. “How serious are you being?”
“Quite. I’ve learned more about the three ‘T’s – training, tags and torture – from Stacy than you would ever believe.” Van’s lips tightened at the third topic. “She doesn’t do it for pleasure any more, but it’s her opinion that war isn’t for the squeamish, and if I need the information, in a wartime situation, I need to know how to dig it out.” She didn’t mention the obvious to her as a Focus, now, training uses of torture. For use if all other training methods failed. That had been a large part of Stacy’s teaching.
Van raised his eyebrows. “And you think you would really do that?”
Gail shrugged. “I don’t know. If it would save lives, then yeah, maybe I would.”
“It’s an interesting rationalization,” Van said. “Who did you practice on?”
“Her.” Van’s expression was priceless, but she did notice that there was something wrong with his eyes. “She taught me to do it as a Focus, not as an Arm. Using the juice. Keaton does a passably good imitation of a normal and a Transform, by the way. Keaton’s assumption for Major Transforms was that in a one on one situation, assume you can’t trust the information you dig out, and the best thing to do is get other Major Transforms to help you.” Gail paused. “It’s still not pretty, and I would rather not do it, ever, but we’re real close to the edge, here.” The second reason she fled to Van was Gilgamesh’s ongoing commentary about how bad the battle was going.
The first had been Mizar’s suggestion. Damn that sexy hunk of meat was difficult to refuse. She half smiled, thinking of how far she would make him crawl before giving in to his amorous persuasions.
Van nodded.
“What’s with the eyes?” Gail said.
“You noticed?” Van said, rhetorical and a little arch. “I’m going to need some new glasses. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but when I regained consciousness Webberly was working on the eye, and after the healing was done, my right eye is suddenly seeing perfectly. Why don’t we take a little walk?”
“Sure,” Gail said. The hospital area was a depressing place, and she could see
the two of them start to argue because of sympathetic tension instead of substance.
She walked, slowly, because Van’s injuries confined him to a wheelchair, as they meandered over to the reserve troop’s staging area in Dovehill Park. They weren’t completely private, as her day’s set of bodyguards trailed her, along with Viscount Nash, slithering along in his anaconda combat form. She didn’t know how she earned that sort of respect, but she would take it. A faint glow to the east hinted at dawn, and muffled sounds of battle crept through the fog to her Major Transform ears. Gunfire, screams, explosions. Too close. And too far. She wanted to be there to help.
“I want to apologize, Gail,” Van said. “I’ve been an utter twit about things ever since the Commander showed up in your life. The second time.”
Gail tensed and sharply inhaled at Van’s tone of voice. His ‘it’s all my fault goodbye’ voice. She never thought she would hear that tone of voice from Van – Van, the realist, who thought that sort of goodbye was reserved for pretentious types who spent their time lying to themselves.
“This was stressful for all of us,” Gail said, utterly neutral.
“It took me awhile to realize I wasn’t rejecting you, but Transforms, your transformed nature.” Van smiled a sick smile. Gail cringed. “It makes me sound like one of those anti-Transform militants, doesn’t it. The religious ones. Hate the sin, love the sinner. After I talked with a bunch of people, I realized I didn’t have a leg to stand on, at least theoretically.”
“You didn’t?” Gail said.
“By the time we married, my exposure level to juice and dross was within an order of magnitude of that of any of your Transforms,” Van said. “The physical science experts say that although juice and dross are poisons, even a normal body has ways of handling them. Non-Transforms can even use juice and dross, but only indirectly, as several juice and dross components mimic existing body hormones quite nicely. So when an Arm seduces me and uses her juice to make me horny, or when you suffered from low juice and used your charisma to reduce my interest, that was juice being used in me. Not just ‘on me’.” He flinched at the sound of a distant explosion rolling in from the remains of Oak Valley. “I’ve been in this in-between state for years.”
Gail felt the hurt inside Van. Many hurts, and more than just the blunt statement of fact that she rolled him to keep him off her back in the bad old days of low juice. Many times, in fact. Reading him, she saw that he wondered how he didn’t end up impotent after such classical conditioning.
“I see,” Gail said. Van had altered his perceived reality; he no longer saw himself as a normal, but some sort of ‘contact Transform’, partway between normal and Transform. What was she supposed to do, though? Apologize for marrying him? For being a Focus and using her capabilities?
Ah. This was Van, ever practical…
“In that case, what can I do to help you with the juice?” Gail said.
Van stopped and looked dumbfounded for a moment, then wheeled on, one handed. He was quiet for several minutes while he thought through what he was going to say. “I spent some time looking at the notes from Hilltop, and Patterson used the St. Judith élan creature to train normals in all sorts of things. Only when they finished, Patterson’s people cleaned the juice and dross off the trainees, so they could pass as normals. Standard wisdom in Inferno is that anything that the St. Judith élan creature did, a Focus or some combination of Major Transforms can do, likely slower if it’s just a Focus. I’d just never thought a Focus would be willing. You know, the hen is involved but the pig is committed?”
“Van, I’m not sure I appreciate your analysis,” Gail said, blood rising to her face. She never liked it when some idiot quoted her own words back at her. Even if ‘idiot’ was the last thing Van was, and how much his anger stemmed from the shock of Daisy’s death and his own near death experience.
“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, and smiled, of all things. “A wise Focus recently said that certain overly intelligent people use their wit and intellect as a bludgeon to get their own way, and challenged anyone to say that a Focus using her charisma is any different.”
Gail had been about to bite Van’s head off, despite her most fervent desires and pledges to herself, but stopped after she heard how he finished his comment. He excused her worst, her most shameful acts. She wanted to talk to a Focus that wise. “And…”
“You’re going to use the juice against me on occasion. I’m going to intellectually bludgeon on occasion.”
Shouldn’t that be ‘emotionally bludgeon’? Gail almost said, and then realized her mistake. The intellectual part was remembering the words and figuring out when to use them correctly. The problem with trying to label something an ‘emotional bludgeon’ was that everything was an emotional bludgeon. Only a fool would argue otherwise.
“I apologize for breaking my word and using my Focus capabilities on you,” Gail said. She bit her lip, and then took the plunge. “I can’t promise I’ll never use them again on you.”
“I understand. We were both young and foolish when you made the promise not to use the juice against me,” Van said. She nodded. Her charisma hadn’t even come in. “It would be nice if you didn’t use them as a crutch…”
“A crutch!” Gail said, her voice rising to that annoying high squeak she disliked so much. “I never use them as a crutch…” Kurt, doing bodyguard duty, coughed, loud. No, while on bodyguard duty, he would never comment on her personal conversations. Coughing fits, however… “Okay, after the Commander showed up to start teaching me, I did overuse them a bit.”
Van rolled on, silently.
“Overused them to the point where Sylvie needed to take the household away from me before I destroyed it,” Gail said. She didn’t realize it at the time, but Sylvie took the household from her for Gail’s own good. That still didn’t satisfy Van.
“Overused them to the point where you needed to leave.”
Van nodded. He said so at the time, with different words, but Gail hadn’t understood.
“How do I not?” Gail asked, her voice a whisper.
“How does an Arm avoid draining Transforms? How does a Noble avoid chasing every moving bicycle or car that passes by? How do Focuses like Pitre and Biggioni avoid such overuse?”
“How the hell…” Gail said, suddenly over-the-top angry. Holding up Tonya in comparison was fucking dirty pool, just the sort of thing that Hank would do when he started playing dirty pool…
Gail stopped and bent over, in sudden laughter. Her bubble of anger popped with the realization that her husband had been getting arrogant asshole lessons from Hank! Likely Focus charisma resistance lessons as well.
“…sorry about the outburst,” Gail said, barely in control of herself.
Heroism lessons, too. Hank was, well, far too appallingly heroic, and he never leaned on anyone to be equivalently heroic save for the predators. He taught by example. Now Van participated in a major battle, following Hank’s example, when as a normal, well, hen, and uncommitted, he should be far away. Not only that, what the hell had he and Daisy been doing with Webberly and Dowling, anyway? How did he get involved with them? That was Stone Point business, not Inferno business.
Save that Stone Point and Inferno were one now. No indication that they would keep the link permanent, though.
Pitre? Pitre was part of Inferno, with her household, these days. That wasn’t permanent, either. Pitre was a nothing Focus, right? Save, hell, save the fact she lived through the Quarantine, escaped sane, escaped Patterson at least a little bit, and took all the world’s Arms to break. Did Pitre get the rep as a nothing Focus on purpose? Holding back on the use of juice and charisma?
So who did that remind Gail of?
From her metapresence feel, she would rate Focus Pitre at about the fortieth percentile in charisma strength, sixtieth percentile in juice manipulation skills, and probably about seventy-fifth percentile in metasense. And, quite possibly, all were lies, deliberate feigned weakness. Denise�
�s skills in the Dreaming came from somewhere. Nope, not a nothing Focus.
Tonya? Gail had seen Tonya’s charisma unleashed once or twice, always a surprise. No blast furnace like Lori – no, Tonya was much more of an eyeball magnet – when she went on a rampage, you paid attention to her and thought about nothing else but her, until she finished.
“I can almost read your thoughts,” Van said. “Focus Pitre’s much like you, or like you would have been if Patterson made you her apprentice. She’s even a whiz at household structure dynamics, the same as you are; it’s she, not Corrigan, who should have led the Focus mentoring program. She would have, if the first Focuses’ inner circle didn’t decide that screwing the younger Focuses was more important than helping them.”
“You’ve been doing some new research, haven’t you?” Gail asked.
“Uh huh. Did you know that Patterson ordered Focus Adkins to mess you up?” Gail shivered and shook her head. “Somehow, Patterson picked up in the Dreaming how big a threat you might be to the inner circle the day you transformed.” He paused and lowered his voice to a whisper. “One more thumbs down vote among the inner circle and you would have been assassinated.”
“Shit,” Gail said. “Who voted to kill me?”
“Schrum and Fingleman. Teas and Adkins voted to keep you alive, and Patterson abstained.”
Gail turned away, disgusted, angry and a little scared. She spotted the arrival of the first two news helicopters. This battle was going to become a media circus soon, very soon. News choppers in the Bay Area already. Chicago only got its first ones last year. A few feet away, two pairs of Darla Nicosia’s people came racing by, each pair carrying a stretcher with a bloodily wounded Transform to the medical tent.
“Thanks, but I really don’t want to think about the old days right now,” Gail said. Perhaps she could learn to leash the beast, at least a little. With Mizar’s help. The arrogant furball ought to be good for something within the family.
“I understand,” Van said. He paused for a moment before he continued. “Many of the younger Focuses aren’t as crippled as you might think. Some have crippled households, but others, to use a Narbanorism, hide their candles under their bushel-baskets. For years, too afraid to show how their talents, else they get grabbed and played with by the BFBs.”
An Age Without A Name Page 35
