War parsed Nessa’s multi-voiced nonsense, weighed the agreement, and wove it into her Mission. The alliance felt right. The fact someone, anyone, agreed with her plans helped a lot.
Nessa made her brain hurt, but Nessa was right. She couldn’t stop now. She had no choice but to continue.
After she exited the Place of Time, War sent her mental focus to her projection with Worcester’s Supported guards. She had been training them in self-defense, off and on. Now she had a different task.
She found Annabelle meditating in a room designed for such activity, dimly lit and a floor covered with cushions. “Annabelle?”
“Yes, ma’am?” Worcester insisted on deference and the deference had transferred to the other God projections.
“I’ve learned enough to start training you in magic,” War said. Annabelle was a Natural Supported, a native magician devoted to all the 99 Gods, the same as Lydia. Worcester collected them. This showed foresight on Worcester’s part, almost enough to make War wonder if Worcester had access to the Place of Time. Unlikely, given the comments of the Host to War.
Of course, that didn’t mean the Host had necessarily been telling War the full truth of the matter.
“Hey, thanks,” Annabelle said. Worcester left her and the other Natural Supported mostly untrained, as Worcester believed in self-training or hiring others to do the training for her. Because of this fault her staff of Supported sucked, and so she tolerated War’s training. For the moment. “Is this just me, or can the others participate?”
“Just you, today,” War said. She wanted to make sure her training techniques, lifted from what she had picked up from Portland’s training of Lydia, would work on other Natural Supported. “I’ll include Ricky, Randall, Chandrea, and Antonio later.” The other Natural Supported.
War foresaw a time when the Natural Supported would be worth their weight in gold. At least if War’s touchstone temporal path worked, which meant she had work to do. Besides, War wanted to make fully sure that Worcester’s Natural Supported owed her, not Worcester. Unlike regular Supported, Natural Supported weren’t dependent on individual Gods. That made for interesting possibilities.
War divided her focus and pressed on with her plan’s first day business. Training Natural Supported didn’t take much of her mind, at least not after Annabelle had agreed. Next stop: Dana and Bob in their Immunogen lair.
War unlocked the broom closet her projection occupied, which sounded like Bob’s dimwizzle work to her, and searched the two out. On the way, she divided her projection into three parts.
Bob she found in front of three computer screens, typing away madly, earbuds stuck in his ears and four webcams pointing at him. Not yet three months old, the baby God had the body of a seven year old and the mind of, well, there was no comparison. War suspected, from Bob’s general orneriness, that he had the dead God Miami’s soul, but all else about him appeared unique. He had refused an appropriate God name and called himself Bob Personason. He had recently become an internet addict.
One screen held some on-line college course he ripped through. Another showed email and internet windows. The third showed webcam feeds and social media boxes all over it. Bob muttered something into a microphone, and in one of the chat windows typed that he had to deal with the bitch again.
He meant her, War.
War grabbed the baby God, shook the electronics off him, and tossed him across his oversized office cum playroom to smack into a wall.
“I see you want to die from the first God who decides to rid the world of you,” War said. “Haven’t I told you about keeping your defenses up?”
“Fucking whore,” Bob said, in his cute seven-year-old voice. He might have a seven-year-old’s body, but his personality was pure adolescent. “You started out inside half my defenses. Besides, I sensed this was you from the start.”
War changed her appearance and aura to be that of Ken Bolnick. “Sorry, you’re dead,” she said, and pasted him with a massive telekinetic hand. Bob flattened, but maintained enough integrity to detonate a golden fire attack, incinerating her projection and the Ken illusion.
Her other projection, nicely invisible, grabbed Bob and took over his willpower. “Missed this one, kid,” War said. This followed the pattern of their relationship: Bob either overthought everything or bulled straightforward, no tactics at all.
“Crap.”
“Which means you owe me some more training time…wait. What in the hell are you working on over there?” War pointed to a table laden down with some screwy enchantments.
Bob giggled. “I’ve made my smartphone into a Supported.”
Not to War’s senses. “That’s not what you did.”
“Okay, okay,” Bob said, walking over to the table where his smartphone rested, his body moving Gumby-style after her pancaking attack. “You see, since normal Supported are corrupted in some way, I’d rather not be forced into making any. So I’m looking for alternatives. This is one, or could be, if I ever got it fully fleshed out.”
Bob’s mind was just screwy, always wanting to look at everything sideways, damaged from the method of his birth, his time with the Indigo, and his other crazy experiences. She didn’t even bother arguing against his comment about Supported. That could wait. “This willpower connection looks backwards, like your smartphone’s acting on the willpower,” War said. This should be impossible.
“That’s why I call it a Supported smartphone. This trick isn’t much; all I’ve figured out so far is how to make an on-off switch. Here, let me show you.” Bob took the smartphone out of its case, and of all things an electronic signal from inside the smartphone turned on a dormant piece of willpower. The signal grew into a full-fledged information link between Bob and the smartphone. “Once it’s on, you can trigger all sorts of preset willpower…”
“Inventor’s had the preset willpower aspect of this trick since the beginning,” War said.
“Well, fuck! I’d swear Inventor’s enchantments weren’t anywhere near this complicated.”
“They aren’t, normally. You need to know, however, that your on-off switch is something new and unexpected. You need to expand on this.” An actual innovation by the planet’s goofiest God. Save us, War thought. She made sure she understood everything Bob had done at both the electronics level and the willpower level. Just in case.
“Neato, only there’s a problem,” Bob said. “The equations I used to solve for the on-off switch are, uh, insolvable for anything more complicated. I can’t take this forward from here.”
“Have you ever thought about doing this by trial and error? Doing some experimentation?” She had the urge to smack Bob upside the head. Again.
“Waste my time?” Bob said. “That’s a warm bucket of puke.”
“Do it anyway. Mathematical theory isn’t everything,” War said, sighing. Certifiably crazy, definitely. Waaaay too much time with the Indigo. “Back to your training. We’ll start…”
Again, this training wouldn’t take much of War’s mind to run. Bob grumbled and acquiesced, and War began the tedious but necessary work. Bob must survive. Far too much depended on him surviving and prospering.
War switched to her third – well, now second – proje
ction in Dana’s headquarters. She found Dana in Dana’s office, jabbering with a half dozen Supported and, dammit, Satan and her magician flunky, Willie. No Indigo members – they had decamped after Jan’s sacrifice, just as War wanted. Dana needed to stand on her own.
The Supported fled when War appeared, their minds filled with the first round of her training combat with Bob. Satan chuckled at War’s appearance but didn’t say a thing.
“Why are you so hard on The Kid?” Dana said. She couldn’t call the young God ‘Bob’ either. Nor did she understand his reasoning for choosing the name.
“Because the situation’s deteriorating. He’s going to need to be able to protect you soon, despite your absurd combat capabilities. His will be better.” And a whole lot more than that, if War’s plan worked. “Which, also, won’t happen unless I can convince him that he shouldn’t disdain things like defensive shields just because it’s tech the other Gods use.”
Dana, sitting behind the immense desk that used to be Atlanta’s, frowned, unappreciative of War’s invective. “What deterioration? You’re talking about Dubuque’s Grade Zero Supported? They aren’t as much of a problem as I had feared.”
“In the right situation, you’re correct. You had more power in the Minnesota fight than you’ll normally have, though,” War said. She sat in a leather office guest chair and looked Dana over. Harassing Dana was unnerving. At first, she had tried to avoid Dana, hoping her ‘advisor to all the Helping Hands Gods and allies’ wouldn’t extend to Dana, but it had, because of the Seven Suits. On the Suits issue, though, she always had Freedom and Change to hide behind. Now she had no choice but to work directly with Dana. Disturbing. “We need help, Dana, and I’m here to find out how pissed you still are at Portland and me.”
Dana shrugged. “That’s done and past, and y’all have as much of a right to be mad at me as me with you. Besides, I would think the events afterwards showed I was on to something.” Her eyes flickered over to Satan, sitting on a different leather chair with her scooter beside her and a cup of tea in her gnarled hand.
As far as War could tell, Satan’s presence didn’t bother Dana at all. For a moment, a bit of worry crossed her mind, a worry that Satan had taken over Dana the same screwy way she had Willie controlled. No, War realized, after a quick examination of Dana, it’s just another of Dana’s impossible tricks. Besides, the crazy do-gooder probably liked Satan.
“You were,” War said. “Was this something more than an ethical quandary?”
“Meaning did I get a hint about what Dubuque was about to do?” Dana shook her head. “No. Sorry.”
“Okay,” War said. She would have appreciated Dana coming up with something new. “Back to my deterioration comment: Dubuque is going to escalate, soon. He’s going to go after you and try to grab Bob. You need to do something about protecting Bob, and fast.” War had figured this out without using the Place of Time and when she had looked, she found Dubuque trying to grab Bob in all the major event streams. One of War’s major responsibilities was to make sure Dubuque didn’t succeed.
“How fast? Do I need to go underground?”
“No. You do want to stay under protections, though,” War said. “What you need…”
“It won’t work,” Satan said.
War froze for an instant. “What won’t work?” she said, afraid Satan had figured out War’s dastardly plans.
“Stationary protections,” Satan said. “I spent long enough in Dubuque’s finest accommodations to learn his strengths and weaknesses. I’d suggest mobile protections and a lot of moving. Gathering information is not Dubuque’s strength. Wielding followers with sledgehammers? Definitely.”
War licked her lips and reigned in her temper. Barely. She hated people interrupting her, and something in Satan goaded her fighting instincts. “If I may ask,” War said, as falsely polite as she could be, “what brings you here, today? Your agreement with Portland was to go bedevil the Seven Suits.”
“Which I am,” Satan said.
War frowned.
“If you must know, I’m picking Dana’s mind about the Suits.” Satan turned her hunched body and smiled at Dana. “She’s far more accommodating about such things than you Gods are. She could teach you Gods a few things about politeness and decorum.”
I won’t try and kill her, I won’t, War thought.
“Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your advice, War,” Satan said. “This is all so very interesting.” The ancient bitch certainly knew her sarcasm.
War calmed herself, cleared her throat and started over. She agreed with Satan’s commentary, which annoyed her. “Beside protections and being mobile, Dana, you also need more combat Supported. My suggestion is that you import as many Supported as you can get from the other Territorial Gods. For instance, Orlando has about a hundred extra.”
“A hundred extra?” Dana wiggled willpower and one of Orlando’s projections appeared, summoned from nearby storage. Slick. “Orlando, War just said…”
“…I have some extra Supported,” Orlando said. He blushed, then half-bowed to Satan. War noticed that Dana turned yet more formal the instant Orlando appeared. War looked at Orlando and noticed that he too was being extra careful.
Oh. This wasn’t just Satan’s presence, either.
“Why didn’t I know?” Dana said, stiff. “What are you doing with them?”
Orlando shrugged.
“Justifiable paranoia,” War said. “However, Orlando, since you’re an adult Territorial, you can go underground a lot easier than Dana and Bob. You can spare them.”
“Thanks for volunteering me. Hope my enemies aren’t as good at infiltrating my deepest secrets as you are,” Orlando said. War shrugged.
Dana blushed, and then made a head bow in Orlando’s direction before turning back to War. “War, won’t Dubuque be going after the other Territorials? Why the Kid God and me?”
“Because neither you, nor Bob, nor Orlando, can be brought into the City of God,” War said. “I hate to say this, but the other Territorials can be, if the proper pressure is applied. I’m sure Dubuque can figure this out as well, and I’m positive he has, and has started applying the pressure. The reason you can’t is because it’s part of your Mission to stay out of Dubuque’s orbit. Bob’s too different and Orlando? Well, I’ll let Orlando explain it for himself.”
Dana nodded. She understood, at least about herself and Bob. She flicked her eyes at Orlando.
Orlando shifted his weight, his turn to be embarrassed. “Uh, it starts with the fact I’ve always had a rough time dealing with minister and priest types. Uh, and the two of us had words. Strong words.”
Satan cackled. “It went something like this, Dana, my dear. ‘Keep your leading-edge futurist ideas out of my Territory or I’ll pave my patio with your gravestones,’” Satan said, nearly perfectly mimicking Dubuque’s voice. “‘I’ll see you in hell before I’ll do what you want, you god-damned snake oil peddler.’” Said in Orlando’s voice. “Their conversation went downhill from there.”
“Ah,” Dana said, after she recovered from a tension-breaking laugh. “Uh. Glad to have you on the team.” She turned to War and relaxed. “Instruct me on this strategy. If Dubuque suborns the other Territorials, why can’t he then use their resources and overwhelm me?”
“This has to do with how Dubuque would do the suborning. He won’t be enslaving them, but neutralizing them. If you stay within your territory and don’t press Dubuque, he won’t be able to call on their services to subdue you or Orlando. If he’s forced to do the dirty deed himself, you should be able to muster the strength to beat him off, at least to start with. The risk is that if you and Bob transfer too many Orlando Supported to your control you’ll…”
This conversation, now started, would run itself for hours. She was sure Dana and Orlando had over two dozen good questions, and Dana needed to understand.
War’s plans wouldn’t allow such instructions, later, when Dana would need her advanced lessons. Throwing Orlando
into the mix was gravy and a factor she would need to introduce into her Place of Time analyses. Especially the obvious personal aspects.
War shifted her focus to her projection in the Divine Compact headquarters, Portland’s underground former bomb-shelter lair. War found Portland in her low-ceilinged office, talking with two of her Supported.
“What do you make of this?” Portland said, anticipating War’s arrival and including her in the conversation before her trailing foot passed through the door. War walked over and looked at the computer screen Portland swiveled in War’s direction. The screen showed a story from a British newspaper website, nothing the parochial US media websites would carry, about ninety two passengers from an airliner who appeared out of nowhere in a Turkish coastal city. Apparently, someone had staged an attack on an airliner, and some unknown underground group had rescued the passengers. According to the article, after checking the manifests, eleven of the passengers hadn’t turned up after the rescue.
“Looks like the usual chaos to me,” War said.
“Alas, no. The Angelic Host is uncharacteristically upset over this,” Portland said. “This isn’t the only thing they’re upset about, but this is the only thing they’re willing to admit they’re upset over. Nor are they willing to say why they’re so upset over something so innocuous. I’ve never seen the Host so agitated.”
War shrugged. “They’ll talk when they’re good and ready.”
“Given the way they’ve been behaving recently, I can almost guarantee it will be too late for us.”
War snorted. “How did you find out about their agitation?” War asked. “I thought they weren’t talking to you.”
“The thing about not being in their Sight? Me?” Portland said, a half smile creeping over her face. “I’ve been pestering them unmercifully on the subject. They haven’t been able to come up with enough nerve to stop me from talking to them.”
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 49
