All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Page 37

Carol Hancock

  I looked up, woozy, having consumed Gail’s entire juice buffer. I had used it up healing Gail, plus about twenty points of my own juice. Inefficient, but I had worked too quickly for efficiency. My juice count was now down to around 95, but Gail would live. Right now, she rested in a healing trance even a crazy baby super-Focus should be able to handle. The screwy hold she put on me had expired when she fell into her healing trance. I still didn’t have a clue what she had done to me.

  I felt like I had gone twenty rounds with Keaton.

  The real fight hadn’t started yet; I heard the Terror roars and coughs of the Hunters as they approached the parking lot, taking their time, letting us shoot each other up in here and waste ammo on illusory attackers. Keaton signaled for me, flares in the air. I sent my metasense out and saw problems. Keaton, Sky, Haggerty, Duke Hoskins, Earl Sellers and Count Knox retreated toward the parking lot, four hundred feet out from the ballroom. They faced the entire enemy army, save for a single Hunter and his pack, who were in the hotel. The lone Hunter and his pack terrorized their way toward the ballroom, scattering terrified normals. They would be on the Focus bodyguards’ strongpoint, guarding the only way to the ballroom from the interior of the hotel, in seconds. The Hunters and their packs trotted forward, along with yet more partly controlled Monsters, juice zombies, and normal soldiers. They would be here, in the ballroom, in less than two minutes.

  I needed to be out there fighting, dammit, now that the traitor Focus and her people had fallen. Otherwise, we would lose.

  I also metasensed another Arm in the ballroom with me, over by the former windows. On Keaton’s territory! I had to defend it and fight this other Arm! Wait. What in the hell was I thinking? A substantial stack of Monster guns, rocket propelled grenades and appalling .707 caliber sniper rifles lay at her feet. She picked off targets on the enemy side, an accurate enough shot to take the wings off a fly across the damned parking lot. I couldn’t fight her now, she was on my side! Dammit, there were times when I could just spit over these stupid Arm instincts.

  I forced myself to stop staring at the other Arm. She would have to wait until later. Metasensing around, I found Lori down, in Gilgamesh’s arms. Something bad had happened to her. Lori’s injuries sent me into an instant of sheer panic, but I suppressed my panic, too. No time for emotionalism now, and Lori was more alive than Gail before I started healing her. Polly stood with Gilgamesh and Lori, guarded by Sinclair and two Transform bodyguards. My command had fallen apart.

  I practically passed out doing my scan. Not from low juice, not at 95. I suspected, though, I was drowning in a sea of dross too personal to metasense. I also had no idea how much juice I had burned while healing Gail. I had lost count when I passed eight Transforms worth of juice, and I had healed for a long time after that. What a time to find limits in my ability to use juice.

  I didn’t know the status of any of my people. Tom was out there somewhere, commanding my thuggish recruits and a bunch of Focus bodyguards. Lori said I should be able to teach myself to metasense my Arm tags at a distance, but damned if I was able to figure out how. Hank was in here, and I had no idea if he was dead or alive. If he lived, we would need him later, as a doctor. If I healed his broken leg. If we won.

  Shadow and Tonya stood at my side, Shadow still hidden, Tonya still holding on to him, on the bare edges of consciousness. Tonya leaked juice like frozen pipes leaked water. Must have been an unlucky ricochet, but my metasense didn’t give me any details about her wounds. When I thought her recovered, I had been sadly mistaken.

  My plan was going to fail with my number two Arm, me, so depleted. I could take out one stupid Hunter without burning, and far too many of the remaining attackers were non-stupid. If I burned juice, I might be able to take out one of the big ones, but I would be down, nearing withdrawal. No guarantee I would win, either, down this far on juice.

  “Tonya, I’m far enough down on juice that fighting is going to be a problem,” I said. “Any chance you metasensed what Gail did that allowed her to give me juice?”

  She wheezed and gazed at me through half-lidded eyes. “I’ve got a confession to make, Carol,” she said, her voice a Hollywood special effect. “I couldn’t even catch what sort of juice pattern she used. I’m half dead myself.”

  Unbelievable. “She’s a newbie! How’d she do it?”

  “Instincts? Stress? I doubt she would be able to duplicate it even if we found a way to rouse her.”

  Damnation! I was Galahad on the quest for the Holy Grail, and all I had been given was a vision of it, to prove its existence and to entice me on. “Any brilliant ideas?”

  Tonya didn’t answer. I lost her attention for the moment, and she stroked Gail’s unconscious head and muttered comments about how much she owed Gail and how difficult it would be to pay her back. Twisty bitch.

  An older male Transform got my attention. “Ma’am. How assured are you that we’re going to die?”

  “Die or be taken captive. Very assured. There are too many of the floss-with-a-chainsaw crowd out there.” Without my help and my leadership, I gave the defenders no chance for success. Even with my help and leadership, things didn’t look good.

  “We’ve only lost one of us, thanks to you and your friends,” he said. I followed his gaze to see a dead normal man cradled in the arms of one of Gail’s woman Transforms, a Vera Bracken, if my memory was correct. “You saved my Focus’s life, ma’am. Sure would be a bad thing to waste.”

  “Scatter,” Shadow said, still invisible, startling the Transform. No, not just any Transform. He was the minister who officiated at Gail’s wedding earlier today. “We must scatter. Arm Hancock, can you clear us a way out of here?”

  I took a close look at Shadow’s worry. The Hunter who slowly slogged his way through the hotel had just busted through the Focus bodyguard strong point and stomped his way toward the ballroom entrance. Four of his pack-Monsters still survived, and he was relatively unharmed. I recognized him now as my old sparring partner Odin, from Chicago. Would I be able to fight him and win in a close confined space? Probably.

  “Won’t work,” Tonya said, responding to Shadow. His suggestion pulled her back to effectiveness, but her speech remained slurred. “As soon as we start scattering, the Hunters will take us individually.”

  She was right. The threat outside was far greater than one Hunter in here. That’s why Keaton stayed out there in the parking lot, shooting off flares. The only way out of this mess was for me to get out there and attack.

  I shook my head at the minister and Tonya. “I’ve got to go and do whatever I can do in the parking lot.” Even if it meant my own death. “Tonya, you set up an ambush for the Hunter and his pack coming in here through the hotel. Shadow? Use your senior Crow tricks and stop that Hunter.”

  “Wait!” the older male Transform said. “Take my juice.”

  What? This was different. “You’ll die.”

  He grabbed my arm. “I know that. Others may live.”

  “She can’t. She’ll fall over,” Tonya said, voice reduced to a whisper.

  “Not a problem. I’ve learned to take juice slowly.” Hope lit the minister’s eyes. I hadn’t actually lied. I did do it once, but not very well. “It’s still fatal.”

  “Do it!” he said, pleading. “You saved Gail’s life. Her household owes you.”

  “Not a life.” Not on my conscience. He wasn’t prey and my nightmares were already bad enough, thank you very much.

  “A life for all our lives. I’m volunteering.”

  “Quit being squeamish, Carol,” Tonya said, sounding like Keaton. No slurred words this time, no Hollywood special effects voice. “Take the juice, get out there and save us.”

  Yes, boss. Damn her charisma. I took a deep breath and turned to her. “Cut him loose from Gail. The stress of an Arm taking one of her Transforms might kill her in the state she’s in.”

  The Transform fell into my arms, moaning. “Done,” Tonya said. No hesitation. Perhaps a
hint of a smile for the pain she just caused. Perhaps not.

  “That hurts,” the older male Transform said.

  “Name.”

  “My name is Reverend Matthew Robert Narbanor. Do it.”

  “Reverend, if we get out of this alive, they’re going to write songs about you.”

  I took him and took away his pain. I drew as slowly as possible, over about thirty seconds, as painless as ever for my volunteer. I picked him up and walked toward the window as I took his juice, not wanting to get caught in the ambush Tonya started to set up for Odin, doing juice tricks beyond my ability to metasense. Damn that bitch was tough, and I was damned glad she was on our side.

  This would be hard on my conscience; this man was someone Gail and her household loved. Hell, he had married Gail to her husband earlier today. Hurting her household hurt me, at least right now. Another inadvertent link. My instincts said I wasn’t anywhere close to being done with Gail.

  If we survived the fight.

  On my way to the opening, Polly pointed at me, slapping a juice pattern on me more complex and more potent than Gail’s instinctive trick. Tonya called Polly a real live witch, so what the hell, I decided to believe there were Focuses able to do such things. Her trick made me feel ten feet tall and full of piss and vinegar. She had also used Reverend Narbanor as a juice conduit, and I was now full up on juice.

  I kissed the Reverend’s head when I finished with him and leapt out the window.

  Outside of the Transform-crowded ballroom my metasense opened up and I got a better sense of the battle. The illusory army stood in tatters, fading to invisibility, a hundred feet away. Behind the illusion, the real Hunters and their packs came at us in a loose line: Monsters first, then the Hunters, followed by the pack Transforms able to hold and shoot weapons, and backed up by more juice zombies and allied normals, all with weapons. As they passed around cars, light poles, and larger obstacles I realized the smaller group, consisting of Enkidu, Joshua, two other mature Hunters and their packs, were angling toward the smaller ballroom and institutional kitchen anchoring the left end of the hotel’s conference center, right next to the larger ballroom I defended. Fewer than ten Focus bodyguards manned the smaller ballroom. They would never be able to stop four mature Hunters and their packs.

  A full split-up of their attacking forces would leave the center group without any of their heavyweights in it, just the seven remaining lesser Hunters, those sane and talented enough to be out on their own but who possessed just the Hunter basics. The enemy would only be doing that…why?

  Oh. Rogue Crow was in the center group. He was the heavyweight. He commanded the juice zombies. The center group looked the most dangerous to the untrained eye, with roughly three times the numbers of the group peeling off to the left. ‘Attack here’, it said.

  Right. Sure. In a melee like this, Rogue Crow’s tricks might be limited to Focus-range, but I bet they would be fatal. I didn’t want anyone I considered irreplaceable to go hand to hand with that group.

  I started to signal, ordering Keaton, Haggerty, and Sky to join me, and if the Nobles obeyed, all three of them as well, to take on the group peeling off to the left. By ourselves. The entire weight of the rest of the defenders, including everyone on the ballroom roof, my Transform bodyguard and the Target Security sortie group hidden to my right, the Focus bodyguard cadre hidden in the bushes to my left, and my reserve army of thugs, I ordered to go after the center group. Behind me, the Arm holding the windows shouted “Got it”, stopped doing targeted assassinations of the leaders of the oncoming horde, and switched over to spraying the front line of the center group.

  Love those Arm instincts.

  All the Crows, led by Occum, began to relay my signals. My first group of thugs exited their stolen van and opened fire less than five seconds later. The other five groups of backup thugs took longer, but by the time I reached Keaton’s side they were all engaged, shooting into the rear of the center group. I left no easy way out for those seven Hunters, their packs, and Rogue Crow.

  As I ran, the mature lizard-like Hunter on the far right boomed out the most impressive Terror roar I had ever heard, a window-rattling peal of thunder. Ahh, Thunder. I had heard of him by rumor, supposedly the most terrifying of the more recently trained Hunters. Everyone on our side flinched but me, immune thanks to Polly’s witchery.

  Keaton gave off signals of her own, battle signals for what she wanted me to do. I followed, darting in and out, going where she wanted. This was her strength, and our group power grew as not only I, but also the three Nobles, began to follow Keaton’s lead. She didn’t take on the Hunters and their packs head on, but in a slashing fashion, turning them away from their target and back toward the blown windows of the ballroom. Dart in. Slash. Fire weapons. Dart out. Dodge the damned pack Monsters and part-Monsters.

  As I ripped the head off the dragon-Monster, dodged Joshua’s claws, and flinched from a point-blank-range Terror roar, I got to see the center group fall in waves. Few, if any, would reach the windows. They were in my trap, and they would not succeed.

  Now all the rest of us had to do was stop four mature Hunters and their packs. I soon lost myself in the thrill and wonder of battle, my mind and body now Keaton’s to direct.

  Earl Robert Sellers

  Sellers bit and tore at Joshua, spun and leapt on Enkidu’s back – distracting him away from a charge by Keaton – and then bounded into four pack part-Monsters, sending their firearms flying. He ended up with the throat of a pig-woman in his teeth, which he ripped out. Two bullets hit him, one in the guts and one in his lower left hind leg, and he spun away, limping and concentrating on healing. He barked Terror at four pack Monsters as they charged him, claws and teeth ready to shred; in their flinch he sprinted out, following Keaton’s signal.

  Seven Major Transforms against four, should be a win, save for the damned fighting harem women of the Hunters, and the fact that one of theirs, Sky, was a Crow and hanging back, dropping Crow dross tricks on the combatants instead of physically fighting. The Noble equivalent of the Hunters’ pack women, their Commoners, were much better as shooters, and they remained on the grand ballroom rooftop.

  Count Knox didn’t obey Keaton’s order to fall back and ready another charge, locked in combat with Joshua. Sellers couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think they had told either of the three Arms that any fight between Knox and Joshua would be a personal grudge match, and likely to the death.

  Four of Joshua’s harem women darted in close and fired, nearly point blank, into Knox. At least the Hunter army’s arsenal wasn’t as good as the defenders’; few carried high-caliber Monster-stopper rounds. Of the four who shot at Knox, only one shot a Monster-stopper round, and that from a pistol.

  Knox staggered, though, shot just above the knee with the Monster-stopper. He crushed open the skull of the harem woman as he fell and rolled, but he couldn’t roll out fast enough to avoid Joshua’s gorilla-leap. Sellers lost sight of the Knox-Joshua fight for a moment as he obeyed Keaton’s orders and charged with Keaton, Hancock and Haggerty into the milling throng of harem women arrayed between Enkidu and Thunder. Enkidu leapt at Sellers as he passed, knocking him off balance and skidding him to the feet of a Horsie and a Sweater. They bit at him, he bit back and leapt up and over the Monsters; as he did, Joshua lifted Count Knox above his head and tossed him into a burning station wagon. Knox’s impact crushed the side of the wagon, spraying gasoline, which exploded.

  Sky’s metapresence dimmed, and Sellers turned to help, only to find Sky skidding across the wet parking lot, having been hit just below the waist by a car’s bumper, tossed at him and practically through him by a chimp Monster. He charged the chimp to keep her from finishing off Sky, caught one, two, three and four rounds on the way, and ripped off her lower left arm. He howled as Knox’s metapresence vanished in a dross explosion of death.

  His world turned red, and he almost lost himself in battle fury, as Occum’s Noble household churned with the effects of
Knox’s death. The fury raged through Sellers, an instinctive urge to kill everything and everyone nearby who wasn’t part of the Noble household. They all deserved to die! Count Knox’s death demanded it.

  He turned back to the fight, barely hanging on to what little remained of his humanity. He expected a signal from Keaton, but didn’t get one. The Arm had been jumped by four harem part-Monsters, and then Enkidu. Sellers lost them as the chimp Monster leapt on his back and clawed at his eyes. Blinded by blood, he ran the chimp Monster into a Chevy pickup truck, which scraped her off his back.

  Enkidu roared and stood, Keaton’s leg in his wolf-jaws. Behind him, Duke Hoskins faced Thunder and Joshua and the remains of their packs, alone. As another group of pack Monsters jumped him, he saw Enkidu charge Hoskins, from behind. Haggerty and Hancock left their fights and charged Enkidu.

  Buried by pack Monsters tearing at his throat and abdomen, Sellers fell, overwhelmed. The world dimmed at they tore him apart.

  They were losing, and losing badly.

  Gilgamesh

  “Save your grief until later, Gilgamesh.” Gilgamesh looked up, hearing Shadow’s voice. He wasn’t here. Tonya was, and she held on to something invisible. Neat. Invisible in the dark. Sounded like a good name for a rock band or jazz ensemble.

  “Shadow? Good.” Gilgamesh’s panic threatened to consume him from all the screams, Terror roars, blood and the incredible amount of gunfire. Some of the blood was his. He couldn’t remember when, but he had caught something in his left leg, and it hurt. He could barely walk.

  “You command.”

  “What?”

  “You command here, Gilgamesh,” Shadow said. “The Commander has left the ballroom, Lori is down, Tonya is working on stopping the armored bear Hunter who got in through the hotel, and I’m clueless about any form of combat. You’re what’s left. So command!”

  To his right, a withering hail of gunfire enveloped two pack-Monsters who tried to enter the ballroom from the hotel. He caught a glimpse of Odin, just outside the ballroom entrance, as he flinched back from some juice tricks from Tonya and Polly. Gilgamesh metasensed Shadow arcing complex dross constructs that way, without having to look or interrupt his conversation with Gilgamesh.