All That We Are (The Commander Book 7)

by Randall Farmer

  Your Friend,

  Bill Concord

  Shitfuck. Hank came over and took the letter from my hands.

  “Hargrove received this?”

  “Huh.”

  “There have to be other traitors,” Hank said, and I nodded. “I’ve met Hargrove and her people. They don’t have what it takes.”

  “Oh, you are so right about that,” Keaton said.

  Then she smiled. “I’ve got something else for you, Commander,” she said. Hank went stony faced, but I could almost hear him grinning. I followed her through her reeking basement, thankfully not encountering Bass, then through a secret door into the huge bunker she kept hidden under her back yard.

  I still wasn’t used to Keaton’s new skill, or old skill she hadn’t had much call to use: picking the right people for a job. Both Haggerty and I had remarked on how good Keaton was at picking people – not that such a thing pleased Amy, as in her world there should be someone better than Keaton at everything. Haggerty despised Keaton with a passion.

  Inside the bunker Keaton had a huge table set up, with duplicates of the church and reception hotel, and the surrounding streets and buildings, and a preliminary battle order in place. She had moved her war room down here, and given it more space. “It’s time to figure out what we have to work with. What you’re going to give me to work with. What our battle strategy is going to be. Hank, sit back and watch.” Hank nodded and took a chair.

  Shit. Time to think on my feet. “Ma’am, in an ideal world, only Arms and Chimeras would be in the fight. We don’t have that option, with only three Arms and those three titled Nobles who partner with Occum.” Duke Jeremy Hoskins, whose combat form was an improbable land crab; Earl Robert Sellers, whose combat form was that of a speedy over-muscled dog; and Count Horace Knox, whose combat form was a vaguely humanoid super-strong demon with large red-plated armored scales on his body. I didn’t bother mentioning the trainees of either variety. “Necessity forces us to use Focuses, their normal and Transform household bodyguards, panic-resistant Crows and our controlled people in the fight.”

  The Dearborn Hyatt and its surroundings appeared to be nearly impossible to defend. I stared at the model, walked around it, frowning the entire time. The gargantuan monstrosity, built for big-four auto conventions, had two dozen-story towers, thirty conference rooms, including a grand ballroom where the reception would be held, and over two dozen official and unofficial entrances. The back of the complex was bordered by Michigan Avenue and the Rouge River; the hotel faced northwest, on a dedicated side street with a short and wide portico-shaded loop in front of the main entry – and a helipad. Couldn’t forget the helipad. Across the street was an old factory, currently divided into warehouses, an eyesore perhaps sixty years old. The main restaurant angled off to the north, the grand ballroom was on the second floor of an extension that angled to the south, with a sweeping bank of windows facing west. A second dining hall, ballroom and conference room complex continued the semi-circle, attached to the far end of the grand ballroom and facing southwest. A six level partly-underground parking garage nestled between the U of these buildings, to the northeast, separated by twenty feet of air, and connected by a maze of walkways. The Southfield Freeway and its attendant urban clutter bordered the hotel complex on the east. To the west was a huge parking lot, bounded by a four-lane road running north-south, and to the south, a smaller area of more parking. The obvious attack direction on foot was from the west northwest, paralleling the Rouge River, cutting around a nearby college campus and the old divided-up factory. The more I studied the place, the more vulnerabilities I found.

  “Don’t discount those Transforms,” Keaton said, after I finished my preliminary glaring at the Hyatt. “In my career, Transforms have been improving as fast as us Arms. Also, don’t forget about the tamed Monster women of the Nobles and Hunters. The improvement curve on their combat capabilities is similarly spectacular.”

  I nodded. The latter must be those ‘women’ with single names on Lori’s list that followed the Nobles. Inferno had been training some of them, my guess. I hauled out the master list and showed it to Keaton. The list covered the trained Transform and normal bodyguards we could borrow, their combat proficiencies, and how pliable their Focuses were. And the Nobles and their ‘household’.

  “Good. I’m going to be the sergeant in this fight,” Keaton said. “You’re the general officer.” The Commander. This sort of arrangement would have driven a normal nuts, but Arms had the mental flexibility to cope. Besides, wasn’t it cliché to have an experienced NCO bossing around the raw Lieutenant in those stock war movies?

  “Yes, ma’am.” Keaton was the best of us in battle tactics, but Haggerty showed promise. She didn’t have the experience yet for anything real, though.

  “Your job is to set up the battle for us and make overall strategic decisions during the battle.” Keaton gave me one of her sly grins. Okay, she manipulated me, we both knew it, but I didn’t mind. She had run head games like this since the beginning.

  I studied the little markers set up around the church, a well-arranged defensive perimeter, and stopped. Keaton had a similar arrangement around the Hyatt, a quarter mile out, strongpoints with good sightlines, with the reserves on the grand ballroom roof. Not half bad if you weren’t facing Major Transforms and Monsters. “Ma’am, you didn’t come up with this, did you?”

  “No. A normal cobbled this together. It’s better than anything else I thought of, though.” It reminded me of the initial instinctive advice she had given to me regarding the fight in Dallas. Strategy at this level wasn’t one of Keaton’s strengths.

  “Too diffuse,” I said. “While we and the Hunters have relatively equal speed, their better pack women, the speedier Monsters, can match our Major Transform speed, giving them, in a defensive set up like this, the ability to overwhelm a single strongpoint and get too many of their forces to the church, or Hyatt, before the bulk of our people could react.”

  “Dammit,” she said, and shook her head.

  I first concentrated on the church. I pulled in the forces to the church proper, and in a ring around the church grounds.

  “What do you see?” Keaton said.

  I studied the map for a minute. “There are two basic ways our enemy can approach: on foot, and in vehicles. We know the Hunters use semi-trucks, for instance. If they attack in the daylight, when the wedding’s going on or immediately afterwards, I’ll bet they’ll attack from vehicles. If they do so, we don’t want a defensive perimeter they can get inside of quickly, or disable as I mentioned earlier. We need everyone in close. In addition, to make this a trap, we need to have a substantial number of our people hidden away, to make us appear vulnerable.”

  Keaton nodded, buying my analysis.

  Days of work lay ahead of us, as we needed to create dozens of contingency plans. Working at Arm speed, Keaton pounded battle scenarios into me until my eyes crossed in concentration, as I set up contingencies and strategies, and the best way to run the rehearsals with our people.

  Sleep was optional.

  Tonya Biggioni: May 8, 1969

  Tonya dialed the number her spies had found for her. It rang, she counted, thirty seven times before someone picked up. “Yah?”

  Perfect. “This is Focus Tonya Biggioni. We’ve met.”

  No answer.

  “I understand I’m not supposed to know how to get in contact with your group, but I think we can be of some use to each other. The person I need to talk to will remain unnamed. You know who I’m talking about. The favor I want from you is for you to go ask this person if he would be willing to talk to me.”

  She could practically follow the Chimera’s thoughts. “I’ll be back,” he said, in his deep voice, and ran off. He was heavy enough for Tonya to hear his footsteps as he ran, at least the first several.

  Tonya did Focus mentoring paperwork as time passed. Bored with the paperwork, she read Gail’s ‘Young Focus League’ newsletter, which included an i
nteresting article about Wini releasing a foolish Crow from captivity in return for protection, purchased from Stacy. The article was masterful for what it didn’t say. Tonya was impressed.

  “Ma’am, I have a question,” a gruff voice said, a half hour later. “What was the combination to your office safe as of the summer of ’68?”

  Checking veracity. She shook her head and gave the long-changed combination.

  “Good enough,” Mr. Gruff said. He sounded like a Greek immigrant from her generation or perhaps a little earlier.

  Another person picked up the phone. “Tonya? You’ve gone through a lot of work to talk to me.”

  “You have a problem,” Tonya said.

  “I have many problems, of which you are now one.”

  “I’m on your side. You’re speaking with your own voice, you see, and I can tell you grew up in Queens and have spent at least a decade in Manhattan. Also, when I was a young Transform, Focus Adkins told me everything about her early years in Quarantine.”

  That ought to be enough, if her estimates on his smarts were correct.

  “So, you’re not buying the story.”

  “No, I’m not. Not that I have any evidence that could convince anyone else.” She paused. “I’m also thinking that you have a personal stake in this.”

  “I do.”

  She could hear it in his voice.

  “Join me, then. As a bodyguard.”

  “I’ve made other arrangements.”

  “I can guess what they are, involving disguises and illusions. But your protection will not be where I am, and where I will be is where you need to be.”

  “It’s true that my arrangements will lead me either into pointlessness or into danger I’m not able to cope with easily.” He paused. “Why are you offering to help me?”

  “Because if you come with me, you can help all of us. Despite all appearances, we’re on the same side here. Unfortunately, none of your peers agree.”

  “Too true,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  They made arrangements, and then he hung up.

  Tonya composed herself and made another phone call.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, it’s you,” Lori said. “It’s two in the morning, yah know.”

  “I need a favor.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “I need to keep a secret. I want your permission to keep it.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I can’t. If I’m wrong, you won’t want to know.”

  “You’re trying to pull something on the Arms, aren’t you?”

  “In a way,” Tonya said. “If it works, it will be to our advantage next week.” The wedding fight. “If not, well, I’ll pay the price.”

  “Things aren’t what they seem, eh? Or so I figure, at night.”

  In her Dreams. “That’s right.”

  “Go for it. We inhuman Focuses need to keep the courage of our convictions.” Lori hung up. It sounded to Tonya like Inferno still gave Lori grief about her recovery from the assassination attempt.

  Good for them.

  Enkidu: May 11, 1969

  Enkidu cracked his knuckles and paced around the ratty garbage-dump table in the ‘new’ Hunter headquarters, a recently abandoned farm – abandoned due to a Monster attack Joshua had craftily set up. The place was farther from Chicago than any of their personal headquarters, but large enough and secluded enough to hold their entire army, and allow them to train.

  He had begged and pleaded and eventually got, from all of the leading combatants, the specifics of what their assets would be in the fight. Some of the Master of Master’s assets were amazing. He hadn’t expected they would be seeing Thunder in this fight, given that he had moved half way across the country, but Wandering Shade said he would be showing up later today.

  “Our greatest vulnerability is on the trip to Detroit,” he said to the Masters of his army. Odin, Joshua. The Master of Masters Wandering Shade. They gathered around the table piled with battle preparations, planning for war. “The enemy knows we prefer the big rigs. We’ve used that trick too many times.”

  “How else can we get there?” Odin said.

  “Smaller vehicles, a back road caravan to about twenty miles out.” He nodded to Wandering Shade, who had provided him the intel on the upper-end Crow tricks. Learning about metasense repeaters answered many of his old questions about how senior Crows managed to avoid the Hunters. If the enemy had a senior Crow on call in Detroit, they would need to mask from him, which meant the attackers needed to be on foot, in a compact group. “We’re also going to go in a bit later than the original plan – I’ve seen things in the clouds that make me think going later will provide much better cover.”

  “Ugh,” Odin said. “We’ll need the time, if we’re going to come in on foot. I’d rather go in during daylight.”

  “The wedding is a death trap I’d rather avoid,” Enkidu said. “The narrow streets around the church would turn into shooting galleries, with us as the targets. We keep that part of the original plan.” That being to hit the reception, at night, not the wedding.

  “Why do we need to hit them with everything we’ve got?” Joshua asked. “And why are you separating us into different teams?”

  “Huh,” Enkidu said. “I fear a trick on their part. Two of the damned Focuses haunt my dreams, the White Witch of Pittsburgh and the Madonna of Montreal. Based on our intel, they’re not invited, but both of them hate us enough to crash the party. Our Master of Masters,” Enkidu nodded to Wandering Shade, who nodded back “says that either one is more powerful than any five of the Focuses we know might be attending.”

  “I also fear that the Flying Monkey, the Focus who serves as Council President, may be showing up,” Wandering Shade said. “She’s plenty powerful for a Focus. So the point of Master Odin and his pack’s, um, demonstration is to attract their attention?”

  “Yes,” Enkidu said. “This looks like overkill, and I hope it is. If any or all of these leading Focuses attend, we don’t want them helping the Arms and whatever thugs they drag into the slaughter. The last thing I want is this turning into a fair fight.”

  They all laughed, except Master Odin.

  “Why don’t you do the demonstration, General?” Master Odin said. Neither he or Wandering Shade had given Enkidu anywhere as much grief as he had feared they would. Odin was lost, understanding little of Enkidu’s military analysis.

  “Me?” Enkidu laughed. “Face facts – I can take a lot of punishment, but in a stand-up fight, I’m the fifth best fighter among the Hunters. Something you know far too well, dammit,” he said, growling at Odin. “It won’t do us any good if the demonstration fails so badly our potential enemies can ignore it.”

  “It’s good you finally realize your place, twerp,” Odin said. “Okay, I’ll do it, if you” he pointed a bear-ish finger at Wandering Shade “douse me and my stalwart Gals with various protections against senior Crow and Focus tricks. Going in that way’s going to invite Major Transform tricks instead of heavy weapons fire.”

  “I would be happy to do so, Master Odin,” Wandering Shade said. He shook his head, looking at Enkidu’s loose-leaf binder of contingency plans and the various maps and photographs he and his spies had assembled. “General, I am both shocked and amazed. Almost terrified. Nobody’s ever faced a true Major Transform military leader before, as you have become, and I like what I see.”

  Enkidu smiled at the praise. He had sold his plan, and if he could keep his innermost thoughts hidden until the fight, he would end up with both his Masters, Odin and Wandering Shade, leading their respective attack groups, allowing Enkidu to hang back with Joshua, Thunder and Jaws (another barely-established senior Hunter) in the best attack group of all.

  The attack group with ‘Arms, attack here’ written all over it.

  Enkidu ever so badly wanted to taste Arm again. And for his Masters to fall.

  Carol Hancock: May 10, 1969 – May 11, 1969

  “Hancoc
k.”

  “You remember how I’d wanted you to wait until just before the wedding for the Focus Frasier rescue?” Keaton. She almost never called me. Not my home line. Not in the few hours of sleep common to all Arms.

  Gah. I shook the sleep out of my eyes and glanced at the clock. 4:30.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Wake up or I’m going to come down there with my dental picks and wake you up!”

  Her Keatonic rage spoke to my soul. I woke up completely. “Yes, ma’am!”

  “That’s better. A certain someone we both know tried to convince me in my dreams that we need to do the rescue now. Do you have any opinions on the subject?”

  So this wasn’t exactly an order, but more along the lines of a suggestion. Keaton was being careful; last time her orders, about Echo, cost me far too much healing time, time we didn’t have now. The wedding was only eight days away.

  I tried to remember my dreams. I had been juggling daggers while someone tried to pull the bed covers out from underneath me. Or something along those lines. “Someone was trying to get me to pay attention to them in my dreams tonight, but beyond that, no useful information. I can make rational real world arguments either way on the subject of when to do the rescue.” If we went now, we risked Shadow taking this slap in the face as a legitimate warning not to do the wedding attack. If we went later, we risked stumbling into the Hunters as they moved into position for the Detroit fight. “I’d say that the night-time warning is a big red sign saying the Hunters are going to start moving sooner than our predictions.”

  “That’s foolish of them,” Keaton said. “Giving up on the shock and surprise of a sudden approach in semi-trucks is a big mistake. This is going to increase our odds immensely.”

  “I can see it from their point of view,” I said. “They’ve shown that trick to us too many times. If they came in trucks, and we were trying to defend by driving them off instead of suckering them in, being ready to take out their trucks piecemeal would be a good tactic.” Separate them. Defeat them in detail. “Don’t forget they’re being led by a Crow. Bold he is not. They’re going to come in on foot from a close-by staging area. Stealthy and slow.”