The young human was too dead to be repaired unless there was a doctor right now, but Annia had to fight the disease enemy, and Maycee was asleep, and Tora did not know where Cho'en was. The projectile had gone through the young human's chest.
Mr. Ventnor's jaw was very tight. "This is going to break his mother's heart."
Tora looked down at the young man and the hole through his heart. She didn't know how a heart could break, but she knew she wanted to kill something. She would start with the Cerise and then she would kill the Cerise's lieutenants and their lieutenants until she found the enemy who had told this human to charge down the middle of the street with a gun as if he could just run and fire and the black-uniforms would all be so afraid they would run away. Stupid, stupid enemies. Black-uniforms outnumbered them many, many to one, and had armor and shields.
Tora stood up slow and straight. This fighting had continued too long. She should have done something to make it stop already. Time to go and find the Cerise.
Mr. Ventnor stood, too, watching her with his head tilted as if he thought she might go right out into the street and start fighting.
Over Tora's head, a young human voice said, "Hey, somebody catch me." Then a lanky body dropped over the edge of the roof of the shack, and Mr. Bracxs caught the girl and put her feet on the ground. Tora knew the girl with the long rope of hair who was one of the runners who answered to Liam. If Liam had let the runners out, he must have found a safe post and mapped out the safest ways to get the young humans from place to place.
The girl said, "Ms. Stamos sent us a message you were looking for Solante's control post. Chief said to tell you it's in a potter's workshop on Walpole and Foothills. Their commander is Ms. Manning, and she has four men with her armed with projectile rifles. She has four more under cover on the street. She's far enough out of the fighting you can get to her without risking your own people. Ms. Stamos says she'll meet you there on Cutworth and Foothills."
Tora nodded her head to the girl to say she had done her job well. "Go back to Mr. Tanar. Tell him I will kill the Cerise and all her lieutenants."
The girl blinked. After a moment, she said, "Okay, Ms. Miraz. I'll tell him that."
Probably, Liam would know Tora would not really kill the Cerise if she did not have to.
Mr. Bracxs boosted the girl up to the roof of the shack where she could move through the enemy-occupied territory while keeping the roofs between her and the enemy's line of sight. Tora stood with the young dead man by her feet. "Ten people—fast runners, good fighters." Ten would be more than enough to deal with eight enemies with projectile rifles. Her soldiers would find the ones outside on the street, and Tora would deal with the four inside the control post with the Cerise.
Mr. Ventnor squeezed her elbow. "I'll have them waiting two blocks north and one west." He loped to the far end of the alley, checked for enemies, and disappeared.
Tora turned to Dess and Lize. "Keep soldiers back. Fall back if fighting advances. When blue-sashes stop fighting, begin leading black-uniforms to traps. Do not be shot with projectiles." Her lieutenants all made the try not to laugh face, but Tora made the don't fight me face to show she meant it. "Black uniforms have been fighting with projectiles. They are excited. Maybe they forget to not shoot humans."
Dess made a very serious face and said, "Your word, Colonel. If you can get Solante's bulls off the street, we'll put the plan back on its program."
Tora hesitated. "Enemy positions have changed. We have lost ground." She glanced over her shoulder toward the street where guns still roared and boomed. Maybe she should stay with her soldiers.
"No worries, Colonel," Dess said. "We can compensate."
Tora nodded. Command could not be everywhere at once. That was why the XX222 lieutenants, Tora's series, were built. They could be flexible and adapt when Command could not see what was happening. Tora was Command now; she had to trust her lieutenants to be flexible. "You are very good lieutenants," she told them. "I will come back here when the Cerise is dead."
They made the try not to laugh face again, but Tora saw by the way they kept their eyes on her that they would follow orders.
Tora knew streets now, and she knew how to get to the corner where the street named Walpole met the street named Foothills. She brought her nine soldiers to meet Ms. Stamos two streets from the Cerise's control post. Ms. Stamos had eight soldiers with her, which would be many more than Tora needed.
Shops and houses and warehouses mixed together on the streets in this part of the town. The houses were built out of permocrete or wood and not patched together out of scraps of things the way they were made in other parts of the town. Shutters and curtains moved in some of the windows as humans looked out. Tora approved. Humans should stay inside and let clones...and let soldiers do the work. She saw the muzzles of projectile weapons sticking out of some windows. She did not approve of that. Humans sometimes got excited and shot things that weren't enemies. Humans could be silly like that. That was why there were clones.
Guns from the fighting on the perimeter did not sound so loud here. Tora felt uneasy that she could not be there to stop the fighting, but she had to be here. The Cerise was here. She could stop the fighting better by killing the Cerise. She sighed. She would probably not kill the Cerise very dead.
Four of the runners with the green headbands had met the soldiers here. One of them, the tall girl who had come to the alley to give her report, said, "Colonel Miraz, we've been watching their control post since they got here. Nothing's changed. Still four men on the street, armed. Four inside with their captain. I'll lead you to one of the outside guards. These..." She waved her hand at the other runners, a small boy with no fat on his body who looked like he could run like a whip, and an older boy and girl. The girl looked nervous. That was good. That meant she would be careful. The boy looked very confident. That was less good.
"You go with Ms. Stamos," Tora told that one. Ms. Stamos would keep him from being too bold.
She assigned each of the runners to a team of her own soldiers. The perimeter guards would be captured very quickly. Tora took Mr. Ventnor and two more soldiers with her. The shops here all had paint on the outsides and big vitrine or plastine windows. The houses had fences around little gardens and were too far apart to make good cover, but the runner girl had said there were no enemies, either black-uniforms or blue-sashes, in this part of the town, so Tora led her team of soldiers straight toward Walpole and Foothills. She would not stop to wait for her soldiers to capture the outer sentries. There was no good cover for waiting, and the sentries would be too far away to interfere when Tora attacked the enemy Command and control.
She didn't stop to reconnoiter. Either the runners had told her right about the enemy strength and disposition, or they had not. Tora would adapt, and she had Mr. Ventnor with her, and the other two soldiers would be enough to guard her back if they found something they did not expect. Tora went from a trot to a run half a street away from the pottery shop where the Cerise had her headquarters. At the corner, she broke into a charge, holding herself back to human speed with an effort so Mr. Ventnor and the two soldiers could keep up.
The shop had windows that would not break, so Tora aimed for the door. She and Mr. Ventnor hit the door together, and their combined weight bent the plastine and pulled the locks free of their mountings, but the door did not break. Tora was not worried. It would break with another hit, or another one after that. The Cerise and her soldiers would know Tora was there, but it would not matter much.
"Move," one of the soldiers behind her grunted, and Tora stepped out of the way just in time for the soldier and his partner to throw their weight against the door. This time, the door sagged, and the man and his partner pushed through into the shop.
Guns fired. The two soldier-humans were inside unprotected. Mr. Ventnor swung out of the doorway and back against the plastine window where the bullets could not reach him. Now Tora moved, moved faster than humans. She jumped over the bodies
of her two soldiers and pulled the gun out of the first enemy's hands. She slammed his forehead with the stock, kicked the enemy behind her who was slowly bringing his gun to bear on her.
Then one of the two fallen soldiers grabbed the first enemy's arms and pinned him in a hold Tora had learned from General Baldwin. That soldier, the woman, twisted until the enemy screamed and fell on the floor trying to get away from the pain. The other soldier had gotten up and secured the enemy Tora had kicked. That soldier moved like he would need Annia or Cho'en to repair his shoulder and ribs where had hit the door, but he did not seem injured otherwise.
The Cerise was not in the clean bright front of the shop where the owner displayed plates and pots and cups on shelves near the windows. Mr. Ventnor came from behind Tora. "Ms. Talleen has a workshop in the back." He had his stunner in his hand and ran past her to the door in the back of the shop.
There had been only two guards here in the front of the shop. There would be two more, and the Cerise, in the back armed with projectiles. Tora beat Mr. Ventnor to the door. This one had no locks, and Tora's weight threw it open hard enough to bounce it against the wall. She spotted the placement of all the guns as soon as the door opened. She dropped and rolled to her right, ducked behind a storage rack weighted with blocks of something that slowed the bullets but did not stop them. It did not matter. She could not move faster than projectiles, but she could move faster than the enemies could shift their aim to follow her.
A stunner buzzed, and one of the projectile guns fell silent. That meant Mr. Ventnor had stunned one enemy while that one was distracted trying to shoot Tora. The other one turned to shoot Mr. Ventnor, and Tora rolled up and over the rack of blocks and hit the enemy from behind, kicking his knees and grabbing the gun when he crumpled so the bullets hit the ceiling instead of Mr. Ventnor. Tora hardly felt the jolt when Mr. Ventnor stunned the soldier in Tora's arms.
Then a projectile gun boomed. Mr. Ventnor jerked to one side, and everything became very slow. Blood bloomed on his shirt low down on the belly where all the internal organs were, and he was only a human and could not survive a wound like that unless a doctor got to him very fast, but there was no doctor here, and Tora did not know how to fix damaged soldiers.
Mr. Ventnor fell against a table with a rotating plate mounted on the top. He tried to catch himself on the table and stay on his feet, but his legs sagged. His hand closed for a moment on the rotating plate, but it turned so he couldn't hold onto it. He slipped to the floor and lay still.
The Cerise stood with her back to the wall and a small projectile thrower pointed at Tora. Tora's vision went red, and she could hardly breathe for rage. Another lieutenant had shot Tora's own special soldier. Her own. That was never, ever done.
You could kill a lieutenant to get her soldiers—even if Command said that wasn't allowed—but you never killed the soldiers. Everything went away except for the Cerise thing at the end of a long red tunnel. This was not just a defective lieutenant. This was not just an enemy. Tora did not know what this was except that she would destroy it and kill it and stamp her feet in its blood.
The Cerise saw the face Tora made, and her eyes became very wide. Her mouth twisted down with fear. She started to turn the gun toward Tora, very fast for a human because the Cerise was afraid. She might even move fast enough to fire the gun at Tora before Tora reached her and killed and killed and killed, but Tora could survive anything except a direct hit to her heart or her head.
The gun moved, oh so slow, and Tora charged so fast she did not even know she had moved, and the gun barked once and twice, but it was not yet aimed at Tora, and the projectiles didn't come close to her and even if they did, they would never do enough damage to stop Tora before she got to the Cerise thing.
The Cerise stood behind a long table with her back to rows of shelves covered with pots and plates that hadn't come out quite right. She thought having her back to a wall made her safe, but it only made her trapped with no way to run even if there had been time to run away, and the Cerise thing dropped the gun and tried to turn her back to Tora, but it was too late, and Tora got over the table in one jump and got her hands on the Cerise thing to tear it apart.
"Tora, stop."
Maybe Tora would not have heard anybody else, but that was Gillermo—Mr. Ventnor—and she would hear his voice no matter where or when or how, but he had been shot by the Cerise thing, and he was only human, so he couldn't talk to her.
"Tora, no," he said.
She turned to look. He had one elbow on the table, and one hand on the floor, and he couldn't stand, but he looked at her with the calm face that meant soldiers safe in the barracks.
She stopped killing the Cerise and looked down. She had one hand on the back of the Cerise's neck and she held the Cerise's left arm twisted behind her back so far the shoulder must be torn and the ball out of its socket. If she pulled a little harder, maybe she would pull the arm off all the way. She dropped the arm, and it fell at a wrong angle.
Tora had put her foot on the Cerise's leg to pin it town while she tore the arm, and the Cerise's shin bent in the middle, and bones stuck through the bloody trousers. Some of the Cerise's ribs were broken, and Tora had hardly even begun to kill her.
Mr. Ventnor said, "I'm all right. Just a little hole. Mostly through muscle, I think. She's still human, Colonel."
No, the Cerise wasn't human, but Maycee wouldn't want Tora to kill her, and Annia would stop fighting the disease enemy to fix the Cerise, and Tora could not allow that. She dropped the Cerise, still mostly alive, and went to Gillermo to inspect his injuries.
He pushed himself up and leaned on the table to keep upright.
"No standing," Tora snapped.
Gillermo's face had turned pale. "Your word, Colonel," he said as his knees turned weak again, and he slid toward the floor. Tora caught him and laid him down so he would not be injured by falling.
Tora stuck her fingers in the hole in his shirt and tore it to expose the wound. The fear and anger didn't go away, but they got smaller. The projectile had gone through his side high up but not as high as his ribs, so his lung had not been damaged. Maybe something inside had been nicked, but the blood didn't come out in pulses, and it was not too much for him to live.
The two soldiers came in, running, and stopped when they saw the enemies and Mr. Ventnor on the floor.
"Med-kit," Tora snapped.
The woman soldier jerked her head. "Your word, Colonel." She went back out again. Running. That was good. She would find a doctor to fix Mr. Ventnor.
The other soldier said, "I'll get these restrained and out of your way, Colonel. The others are already secure."
Mr. Ventnor breathed fast and thin, but Tora thought that was from pain not shock. A real soldier wouldn't go into shock from such a small wound, but humans were more fragile. He said, "She had to be in contact with the bulls and Solante both. There's a com setup here somewhere. We need to contact Sunjung and tell him to stand down."
Tora would not leave him. Fighting could wait.
The woman soldier came back with two of the runners, the lanky girl and the too-bold boy who had helped them find the outer sentries while Tora came to kill the Cerise. The girl carried a red bundle with the white and black medical symbol. The woman soldier pointed her toward Mr. Ventnor and said, "The rest are just unconscious, Colonel. I'll go check Ms. Manning."
The runner girl squatted by Mr. Ventnor and opened the medical pack without looking at the wound. "The Chief's making us run first-aid packs and learn how to do the easy parts," she told Tora. She peeled open a bandage and waited for the foam to start before she stuck it over the entry wound on Mr. Ventnor's side. He grunted from the pressure on the wound, then the pain-blocks in the foam started to work, and he took a deep breath. He winced and made a protesting sound.
"Exit wound," Tora said.
The girl nodded. "Roll him over."
Tora tried to not make Mr. Ventnor gasp when she pulled and pushed him onto his s
ide to expose his back, but even little movements hurt him.
Projectiles made bigger wounds coming out than going in. Blood came out in a thick stream that pulsed a little—not enough to be a bad wound, just a small artery, but he had bled more than Tora thought.
The runner girl, still not looking at the second wound, pressed another bandage over it and held it while the foam cut off the bleeding. "He still needs a proper med-tech," the girl said. "He might need real surgery."
Mr. Ventnor raised himself up on his elbow and felt the bandage over the entry wound. He twisted to see the one in back and grunted. "Feels all right. I've had worse."
The girl got a blood pack out of the kit and stuck it between Mr. Ventnor's shoulders. Now all the wounds had stopped bleeding, the girl could look at Mr. Ventnor's face. "I'm supposed to give you a stim patch for shock unless you are going to try to move around. Then I'm supposed to give you a slow-down."
He grinned. "I'll take the stim."
The girl scowled at him. Tora was pleased with her; the girl would make a good lieutenant someday. She said, "You have done very well. You can have good feelings now. Give Mr. Ventnor a speed-up."
The girl looked at Tora like she had said something strange, but she pulled a small patch out of the pack and peeled the back off. Tora checked the marks on the patch to make sure it was really a stim and not a slow-down. Sometimes doctors did not do what clones told them.
Mr. Ventnor sat up now, and Tora allowed it because now the bandages would stop the bleeding, and the blood-pack would replace the lost blood, and the speed-up would make him strong enough to help Tora even though she would not let him fight until he had rested twice as long as a clone soldier with the same injuries.
"I'm all right now, Colonel. Better get on the com and call down the bulls."
"I've got the com," the woman soldier said. She put a com-box on the floor beside Mr. Ventnor. "It works like this." She touched the blue square on the top. "Say what you want, Colonel."
Farenough: Strangers Book 2 Page 18
