All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read online

  – The Buddha

  Carol Hancock

  The ceremony over, we all stood and watched as the newly married couple bounced happily down the aisle. I relaxed. An attack on us, during the wedding ceremony, would have been difficult to repulse, because of everyone’s attention on the wedding party.

  Biggioni chatted with me afterwards; my disguise hadn’t fooled her at all. I kept up the Focus Forbes exterior and chatted back and worried about the precautions for the trip from the church to the reception. The guests would be getting their maps after their trip through the reception line, and I hoped they weren’t too bothered by its circuitous nature. For security reasons, we had kept the route secret. The guards we arranged for the route should be in place by now.

  Tonya wasn’t happy with me being inside the congregation instead of safely outside doing predatory things. She was angling to get me alone and pump me for our battle strategy, but I dodged her line and lure. I didn’t trust her, not yet and perhaps never.

  I turned my eyes to the heavens, and prayed for humility. Waited for that bolt of lightning. It hadn’t happened yet. Wait a few minutes. The organist still played the recessional, and some of the congregation eased out, but we weren’t moving yet. I still felt uncomfortable in a church. God’s place in creation for monsters such as myself had only four letters, and despite the good works I always promised myself to start doing, tomorrow, I didn’t think they would ever outweigh my other deeds.

  Henry Zielinski

  Hank was a wreck. Here he was at a huge wedding reception, and he couldn’t talk to anyone he knew because of his disguise. He was pretending to be a bodyguard, a job for which he was manifestly unqualified. On top of everything, there was the endless waiting for an attack, due any minute now. Except it had been ‘any minute’ for three hours now, and still no attack. Carol was practically cracking her teeth in anxiety, unable to think of any reason for why the attackers were waiting so long, and worried that the Focus Frasier rescue had scared off the Hunters, blowing their attempt to lure them in and trap them.

  His fake tattoo itched. The food was, well, spotty. Faced with an issue of quantity and the bride’s arbitrary demand to move the reception, the bride’s father had opted to use the hotel’s own catering service. Hank had consumed too many of Carol’s gourmet meals, and the difference between what a team of normals could prepare for 500 plus guests and what an Arm interested in food preparation could prepare for an intimate dinner was not to be believed, especially if she used the Arm panoply of sense enhancements. Even with Carol’s rigorous exercise program, he still inexorably gained weight.

  Zielinski wondered what passed through Carol’s head right now. She was stuck in a five Focus confab headed by Focus Keistermann herself. Polly told old Focus tales, about the bad old days, to Focuses Hargrove, Mann, Silvey, one other with faint red and white streaks in her hair, and one disguised Arm. Not having a metasense himself, Zielinski guessed Keistermann took Carol in tow because Carol’s disguise wore thin. If anyone had the tricks capable of shoring up an Arm’s disguise, it was Focus Keistermann, a true juice pattern-slinging witch.

  “You are who I think you are, eh?” a soft voice said, from about a foot above ear level. Zielinski turned away from the punch bowl and found one of Keistermann’s bodyguards towering over him. Huge, muscular, someone who looked mean even for a bodyguard.

  “I’m not sure we’ve met,” Hank said. Something felt odd about this bodyguard, though once you put your bodyguards in catering uniforms, what wasn’t odd?

  “My new friend, here,” eyebrow twitch, muscle twitch beside the lower jaw, “has a bit of sensitive information to pass along to the people in charge.”

  Hank covered up one set of realizations with a different realization and waited for his subconscious to do a bit of cogitation and hopefully spit out some useful information. The bodyguard’s shy friend, standing right next to Mr. Muscles, wore another of Keistermann’s uniforms. A Crow, not one he had met.

  “Hello,” Hank said, to the shy Crow. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m glad to meet a personage of such grand a reputation,” he said, in an extremely soft voice. “Some call me Zero.”

  “And I’m happy to meet you as well,” Hank said. He had never even heard of this Crow before.

  “Polly asked me to pass this along: I’ve picked up a faint trace of a massive dross outflow gradient within Crow-sense range, within the last hour. To the west, approximately.”

  “Let me guess,” Zielinski said, resisting the urge to rub his temples. “Dross outflow gradients are something only you have figured out how to metasense, and you can’t explain what you mean to another Crow, much less a normal like myself.”

  “You are indeed wise in the ways of Crows,” the enigmatic soft-spoken Crow said. “But I’m afraid, alas, that it does mean we’re likely to have an attack. It’s such a fine wedding reception to see ruined by conflict.”

  Hank turned to the towering bodyguard, who was definitely not a Crow. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance at last, as I only know of you by reputation. Although it’s some reputation.”

  The barest twitch to a fighting stance, overridden in an instant. “A mutual acquaintance in Montreal termed you the most dangerous normal on the planet,” the muscular bodyguard said, and twirled the fake moustache. “She was right. What will it cost to be the fifth of us to claim you as a friend?”

  Haggerty was his latest ‘catch’, despite the blood soaked episode in Houston. In his mind, the Houston episode was just a hazard of dealing with Arms. Hank won her undying gratitude by being the first person able to explain to her, in a logical fashion, what lay behind all of Stacy and Carol’s comments about her being socially inept. “You know full well who you’re going to have to take that up with.”

  “How do I contact her, though, without setting off a territorial display?”

  An idea came to him. “How much have you thought about territoriality in those like yourself?”

  “More than a certain psychotic pipsqueak we all know and can barely cope with.” Keaton, not Carol.

  “Assuming we don’t end up in any irrevocable battlefield confrontations, write me a letter showing interest in exchanging information on territoriality, and I’ll bet that will start a fruitful dialog of negotiations.” The tall bodyguard nodded, and backed away.

  Zielinski turned back to playing bodyguard. Arm territoriality. They were, what, only six feet away from each other, and likely neither sensed the presence of the other because each of them masked their metapresence to their utmost capabilities. He had the urge to throttle a certain Focus Council President for setting up this absurdity. This reception reeked enough already of the theater of the absurd without adding more, but the Council President likely saw this as a devious experiment in human behavior. He sighed and repressed the urge to throttle Keistermann. Again.

  Gail Rickenbach

  All these Focuses! Who invited them all? She never should have let Beth take over the invitation list. However, Beth had wanted to help, so much. Her father would shit petunias when he finally received the bill for this bash!

  With so many Focuses gathered around her, Gail discovered she saw extra things. For one, after about a half hour in the reception, she could tell how long they had been Focuses just by looking at them. She wandered over to where Focus Anderson (call me Katie) chatted with a Focus that Gail didn’t recognize, Van arm in arm with her.

  “Gail! Our bride!” Katie said. Normally the older Focus emanated friendliness, but today her good humor felt forced. It had to be the sheer number of Transforms attending the reception. Gail hadn’t realized Katie was about as old a Focus as Tonya. “Gail, this is Linda Cooley, all the way from Chicago, another of our young up and coming Focuses.”

  “Hey!” Gail said, giving Linda a quick hug. “Glad to finally meet you in person, Linda.” Focus Cooley wore a muted aqua full-length gown and an off-white shawl around her neck, held by a silver pin in the shape of
a leaf.

  “Glad to meet you, too!” Focus Cooley said, and turned to Van. “You too, Mr. Schuber.” Focus Cooley, a short and well-padded Focus, smiled perkily at Van, and examined him closely. Luckily, Linda wasn’t high, at least not yet, or at least not high enough for Gail to notice. “So, Mr. Schuber, what’s your secret for getting along with a Focus?”

  Van shrugged. “Well, I’m patient, and I’ve spent a bunch of time with my mind elsewhere, doing research,” he said. Gail’s mouth dropped open wide; Van almost never answered questions of that nature. “I’m also gathering materials for a book on the early Focuses. You just used Focus charisma on me, didn’t you?”

  Katie laughed and backed away. Of all things, Linda blushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My charisma just came in earlier this year and I have a tendency to let it slip.” Seeing Gail’s dumbstruck expression, Linda turned to her. “Don’t worry. When your charisma comes in, I’m sure you’ll have the same problem.”

  Van guided Gail away from Focus Cooley. “How about wandering this way,” he said.

  “Glad to meet you, bye!” Gail said, hanging on to Van’s arm.

  “Okay. Who was that?” Van said.

  “Hold it. I thought they were your relatives. They weren’t Focuses.”

  “I thought they were your relatives. You okay?” Van said. “Your mind has been off in the ozone for the last half hour. ‘Lovely flowers you have there, Mrs. Orchid’.”

  “I said that to Mrs. Flowers? Ohmygod. Ohmygod.” Gail thought for a moment. “It’s the juice. All these Focuses and Transforms being together at once, each with their own universe of links to their own Transforms, well, it’s kaleidoscopic.”

  “I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry,” Van said, holding her tight. Gail nestled comfortably under Van’s arm.

  I need someone safe to talk to, someone who won’t get offended by my behavior, Gail thought to herself. She looked around the room for a likely target. There, next to a Focus she didn’t recognize, Gilgamesh stood alone, disguised and metasensing as a male Transform. She would have missed him if she didn’t already know what he looked like. She decided messing up Gilgamesh’s disguise wouldn’t be a good thing, so she looked for another suitable target.

  It didn’t take her long to find one, a four eleven athletic little Focus with hard-case written all over her face and no fashion sense at all. About seven years as a Focus, old enough that she would likely look down her nose at Gail no matter what Gail did, and talented enough as a Focus to hide her emotions from Gail. She and her bodyguard were playing tourist or something, looking out the huge windows that formed one side of the Hyatt ballroom.

  “Hello?” Gail said to the Focus, who didn’t even twitch an acknowledgement. “I’m Gail Rickenbach-Schuber.” Nothing. “The Focus getting married…?”

  The tiny Focus finally turned with preternatural grace and looked at the two of them. “Lori Rizzari,” she said, and held out her hand. Gail took it, suddenly ice cold. Focus Rizzari was the most flat out daunting Focus she had ever talked to over the phone, an honest-to-God professor and the only Focus known to have gotten pregnant and given birth. In person, Lori was porcelain china doll pretty and a bundle of frigid power. About three months pregnant again, as well.

  “Hi!”

  “What the?” Lori said, and practically yanked the arm off her bodyguard. “Sky! Look at her. Just look! They were right!”

  “Huh?” Sky said. Oh, crap, Sky was another Crow disguised as a male Transform. She had never metasensed a Crow like Sky before, though. Under his disguise, his metapresence twisted and turned, nearly Focus complicated.

  “What am I supposed to be looking for, my most gracious Lady?” Oh, what a wonderful Canadian French accent. “Oooh, I get it,” he said, with a loin-tightening purr.

  “You’re a Crow, sir, yes?” Van said. “I hadn’t expected any of the Crows attending to be out in the open. Sir.”

  “Observant little cuss, aren’t you?” Lori said to Van, who stood a foot and a half taller than Lori. “You’re the historian, if I remember correctly.”

  Van nodded. “I try, ma’am.” Van had talked to a few Focuses about the history of Focuses, but the only one who willing to grant him an actual interview on the subject was Focus Adkins, and just to evaluate Van, not to talk history.

  “There are some things that are not yet public knowledge, and that’s one of them.”

  “So what were you two looking at with your metasenses, anyway?” Gail said. Lori did the old Focus stone face routine. “When you were looking at me, that is.” Lori relaxed.

  Ah hah. Lori was one of Keaton’s friends, the hidden guards. She and Sky had been scanning outside with combined metasenses, just like the games Keaton played with her. Scattered facts arranged themselves into stories inside Gail’s mind.

  Like pregnancies.

  “You know,” she said to Lori, “if you’re going to end up pregnant once a year, the little manuals they give out to new Focuses, the ones that say that Focuses are infertile, need to be changed a bit.”

  Glares all around at her, even from Van. “Hey? I’m sorry. What’d I say?”

  Lori grabbed her by the shoulder with a grip of steel, nearly as rough as Keaton, and dragged her off to beside the bandstand. “You, you…”

  “Ma’am? I apologize for anything I’ve might, uh, done or said, Professor Focus Rizzari,” Gail said, her words dissolving into word salad. “Stac… a friend says I’m like a bull in a china shop when I’m around powerful Major Transforms. This sort of thing has happened before, unfortunately.”

  “Keaton said that to you?”

  “You know Stacy?”

  “I’ve given her enough gray hairs,” Lori said, her voice a little less strident and a bit more respectful.

  “Well, she’s returned the favor to me.” Gulp. “I do apologize for making…”

  “I forgive you. You have a quality that is ubiquitous among the best of the Major Transforms: you have an exceptional metasense. Along with the most beautiful juice structure I’ve ever seen. You may have Crows asking you to pose for their artwork. Charge them.”

  Gail didn’t even bother to try to understand what the diminutive Focus meant. Certainly neither Gilgamesh nor Whisper had said any such thing to her, or shown any interest in art.

  “Ma’am?” hell, I can’t make it any worse, Gail thought, save that whenever I say that to myself I always make it worse, “Best? Ma’am, I know I’m what Focus Biggioni calls a top quartile Focus, but…” Her voice trailed off. Focus Rizzari took Gail’s putative talents way too serious.

  The imposing Focus went into some scholarly analogy involving vectors and axes Gail didn’t understand.

  “I’m sorry, Focus Rizzari, but…”

  “Lori. Focus Rizzari is my mother…”

  That had to be a joke. Right? How can you tell if someone is telling a joke if they can hide their emotions?

  “Okay. I’ll say it a different way,” Lori said. “You know you have potential. But potential means nothing unless you get it trained, and the training you need can’t start until a year or two after your charisma comes in. Someday, we’re going to have to have a long talk together about getting you the advanced training. Don’t talk to anyone about it but me, Tonya, and… well, let’s just leave it at that for now. In the meantime don’t go blurting out everything you figure out to everyone who can hear it.” Gail bit her lip. Tonya had taught her more than she wanted to know about Transform Doublethink, but she had lost control of her own stony face hours ago, because of the wedding. “For instance, Sky is in disguise as a male Transform, he’s the father of my first child, we’re trying to patch things up between us, I haven’t told him I’m pregnant again, and he’s not the father. Capish?” Looking into Lori’s face was like looking into a blast furnace.

  “Gilgamesh, then?” Gail said, her voice reduced to a short squeak. Gilgamesh said he was involved intimately with a Focus in an embarrassing two Crow one Focus love trian
gle. The Focus had to be Rizzari.

  Glare. Worse than any of Keaton’s.

  Just when I don’t think I can make it any worse… Gail nodded. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Carol Hancock

  I had a headache. I didn’t think it was possible for an Arm to get a tension headache, but this reception gave me one. So. They were out there, circling and revising their plans. Sinclair and Zero, masquerading as Polly’s bodyguards, caught hints. So did Gilgamesh and Sky, but only exceptionally tiny hints.

  No attack, yet.

  I smelled a rainstorm moving in, a cold front, not much in the way of thunderstorms, but several hours of rain behind it. If I could smell it, so could the enemy. Could they be waiting for the storm? Did they know something about metasense and heavy weather I had missed? I hated being in the dark. Now, literally as well as figuratively. The onset of the rain was only a few minutes away.

  Shit.

  I whispered to Tom, grabbed him, and did a quick run outside, running through scenarios in my mind, trying to find one of our pre-set deployments to match what I now knew was coming. We had a signaling area set up, for emergencies, and I signaled for Keaton and Sky. I ordered Tom to get his ass up on the roof above the reception and get all the roof guards ready.

  My putative underling and real world Arm boss dropped in with a bang. Off the third floor of the hotel, where the pool was.

  “Make it quick. Could be any moment now,” Keaton said.

  “Ma’am, they’re going to come with the rain. I can think of only one reason for that: to cover numbers.” Thunderstorms didn’t mess up my metasense, but they messed up juice traces and my Arm-enhanced sense of smell. “I think they may be coming in with even more than I metasensed in Chicago. We need to switch to deployment seven, and…”

  Keaton vanished, burning juice as she sprinted off to the north. Sky vanished as well, as deployment seven had him outside the reception hall, not inside.

  Keaton had said she had something set up for the low probability event that Rogue Crow had more soldiers than I had found. One of her military toys, I guessed.