Dave yanked his arm back, his mind on fire with more hunches than he could keep track of. “You people are here to ally with us if you can, aren’t you?” he said, mouth going before his thoughts fully engaged.
The Montreal Supported, the old man in the seat right behind Dave, stuck a gun in Dave’s face. Elorie directed Ken’s teek around him for protection.
“Whoh! Whoh! Calm. Calm!” Abe said, raising his hands. “Kara? What’s going on?”
Kara, the woman in the seat next to him, took a deep breath. “He’s a Psychic, not a Telepath, and he’s radiating something able to mess up inseer. One of us, I’m guessing Zumbrennen, taught him some of our tricks, probably initiation prep, if I know Zumbrennen’s mind. In addition someone’s also been experimenting on him, this time I’m guessing Binglehauser the younger, successfully enough to allow him to raise and lower some of his mental barriers, which is a hell of a trick for a Psychic to learn. He’s not an offensive threat, though. On the other hand, don’t piss Elorie off. She’s his wife and she’s somehow max-wielding borrowed telepathy and teek.”
“You can’t borrow telepathy. That doesn’t make any sense,” the Supported man said, speaking with a noticeable Midwestern twang. He took his gun out of Dave’s face.
“Desperation is the mother of invention,” Dave said, harsh. “If you’re going to be wedded to your preconceptions about the way the world works, you’ve come to the wrong place for allies.” He didn’t like people sticking guns in his face, nope, not at all.
Abe cleared his throat. “Kara?”
She studied Dave. “You have a name?”
“Dave Estrada.”
“Oh holy shit!” Kara said, an actual shout. “Abe! This is our Diana’s Dave.”
Elorie froze behind him.
“You knew… Of course you did,” Dave said, remembering his one confusing encounter with Diana aka Madame Xenia, the Boise palm-reader contact who had flat-out promised him the life he now led. “I’m very sorry about her death. Did you ever figure out who killed her?”
His comment confused everything. Everyone but Dave started talking at once, riotous in the small space of the van. Abe finally waved his arms long enough to calm everyone down, about a minute later.
“Diana was right about you and how dangerous you might be if you got swept up by the Telepaths,” Abe said. “Your subconscious is extremely powerful, and you’ve got a Telepath’s fey attitudes about information and free will. What you’re talking about was an unsuccessful attempt on her life. Diana’s also a Boise Supported, or at least she was before Santa Fe kidnapped her.”
“Knew that.” Pause. Realization. Joy. “She’s alive?”
“We’re much harder to kill than most people realize, and Boise was there in person during the earlier assassination attempt to whisk her off and let her come back from the dead,” Abe said.
Dave’s eyes bugged open. “Placard man! The guy who herded me into Diana’s fortune-telling shop when I got cold feet.” Pause. “Kidnapped?”
“Diana was helping us hide from Santa Fe,” Kara said. “She got us out of a trap we’d fallen into at the cost of her own freedom. Abe, even though Dave here’s only minimally able to raise and lower his mind shields he can still borrow Binglehauser the Younger’s telepathy. As Diana said, he’s top end.”
Elorie looked at Dave, then at Kara, then over to Abe. Elorie blinked. “Kara?”
Kara turned to Elorie and backed off. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“You must,” Elorie said, wearing an anticipatory grin. “You’re another Immune, the same as I am. But nobody’s taken the time to train you properly. I can.” Dave chortled under his breath at Elorie’s discovery.
Kara shook her head. “Impossible. My immunities work against Hell magic and Lorenzi-style magic, but they don’t stop hardly any of the 99’s tricks.”
“Who trained you?” Abe said, his eyes never leaving Elorie. He had fallen for Elorie’s Persona-enhanced beauty, not the first and certainly not the last to do so.
“Persona, John Lorenzi and Bais,” Elorie said to Kara, not letting go of her eyes. “Nobody you want to go near.”
“That’s the truth,” Abe said. He sighed and leaned back against the van’s steering wheel. “Okay, some ground rules, though, if you’re going to deal with us. Both of you. One of the things we do is hunt rogue Telepaths, because they’re a grave danger to us. You, ma’am, are proving this right here in our van. Drop the eye contact with Kara and let go of her mind, or things are going to get ugly.” Dave’s instincts said Kara had a weakness for Telepaths and the like, and this wasn’t the first time she had fallen under a Telepath’s sway. “Joe here is a trained Skeptic, our name for Immunes, and he’s trained in stopping Telepaths.” Dave followed Abe’s eyes, indicating the older man, the Supported.
“But…” Elorie said, eyes turning safely to Dave. “I wasn’t doing anything. I can’t do anything.” Elorie was far more adept at using borrowed teek.
“You weren’t doing anything consciously,” Abe said. “But even Binglehauser the Younger’s borrowed telepathy is enough to hook one of us…or normal people, though I have a gut feeling you don’t give a shit about that sort of thing anymore, having fallen into the inhuman Telepath mindset.”
“Hook?” Dave said.
“Unconsciously control,” Abe said. “It’s an attack. Or we see it that way.” Thus the weaponry.
Some allies these were going to be. Well, Uffie had warned him about the Indigo’s paranoia.
“I don’t understand how this alliance is going to work,” Elorie said, picking up on Dave’s unconscious thoughts. “You’re too hostile.”
“We don’t understand, either,” Abe said. “But we don’t have any choice. We’d rather be your slaves than short-lived playthings of the evil Gods.” Dave shook his head.
“The man, ah, Dave, thinks we can rescue Diana,” the Sibyl who turned round to face them from the front passenger’s seat said. She, a tall round faced woman with long black hair and sad eyes, had held back so far. “Despite the fact that Santa Fe’s a hidden God and nobody knows where he is.”
Abe stopped short. “We as in us five, or we as in the Telepaths?”
“We as in all of us together,” the woman said. Abe winced and closed his eyes, likely feeling doom settling on his shoulders.
So much for my mind shields keeping people out of my head, Dave groused to himself. Par for this bunker-filled course. “Trust me, we’re good at finding the unfindable,” Dave said. “However, Nessa and Ken have gotten all paranoid, and justifiably so – Nessa’s twins are only seven weeks old. They’re not going to want to leave.”
“Convincing them will fall on you and your wife’s shoulders,” the woman Sibyl said. “For the rest, I’m willing to take nearly any risk imaginable to rescue my daughter.”
Dave’s eyes widened, now seeing the resemblance. Only…only the Sibyl claiming to be Diana’s mother appeared to be no older than thirty. He shivered and backed away, remembering one of Uffie’s comments about the inner circle Indigo members, who all appeared younger than their real ages, and were far harder to kill than the normal run-of-the-mill human. Unless Uffie had been exaggerating, the inner circle types were Nessa and Ken dangerous.
Boom boom boom. Abe motioned with his hand to the Montreal Supported, who reached over Elorie to open the van’s side door. Ken stood there with his arms crossed. “I just wanted to find out if you phantoms were real,” Ken said. He smiled at the older man. “Hello, Joe. Long time no see.” Joe nodded, discommoded, his nod answering Dave’s unasked question about who had trained Joe’s immunity to Telepaths. “Getting everything second hand through Nessa does have its disadvantages.” Ken smiled and held out his hand. “Welcome to Eklutna and our eclectic group of crazies. You want to come up and meet the rest of us? We’ve got some unused trailers you can use.” Ken gave Dave a pointed glance, making Dave’s arms tingle. Something was up, something important.
Ken didn’t respond.
Great, Dave thought. Just great.
7. (Betrayer)
Betrayer dropped her projection down into Chattanooga like the bomb, no stealth, and brilliant enough for Dubuque to sense her power signature from Oklahoma City. Even powered up by her necessary and still functional willpower tap on Orlando, she couldn’t guarantee a win. Hell, she looked forward to this about as much as she would look forward to a severance fuck. Seven Dubuque Supported resided here, including two Grade Ones. She knew a defeat here would maul her Mission, but she needed to take the risk.
One of the Grade Two Supported, one Shawn Kazmirski, had recently been part of Dubuque’s inner circle of Supported. Her plant in Orlando’s spy network figured this out for her, earning him a keg of Divine Ambrosia-laced Coos Bay Beer (made by Inventor and heisted from Portland’s entertainment supply – everything did fit together oh so nicely…nyah hah hah). Poor Shawn was lured into carnal temptation by a nineteen year old hottie who turned out to be the daughter of one of Dubuque’s Supported ministers. In expiation of this supposed sin Dubuque had exiled the schlub to a scrub post in sector two of Dubuque’s political control team, the one currently running eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northeast Alabama and northwest Georgia.
Bad for him, good for Betrayer.
Betrayer wanted the information in his mind. Acing any Dubuque Supported in the process would be gravy, and something Betrayer couldn’t afford to do often. Anything more frequent or more organized than her hit and run attacks on Dubuque’s Supported and she herself would trigger the Bad War.
Her targets of the moment retreated into the bowels of their stronghold, putting rock and concrete between themselves and her, which meant they had never fought her before and didn’t know her tricks. She landed on the roof of their stronghold, a recently abandoned Toyota factory, and examined their disreputable business.
Betrayer shook her head. Dubuque’s Supported had converted the factory into production of some sort of SciFi-ish flying battle vehicles, utilizing willpower-sourced devices for the flying part. Flying tanks. However, despite the inventive planning, these never appeared in the Place of Time, to no surprise. She learned far more about the physical nature of the future from her attacks and spy missions than from the less than trustworthy Place of Time, a trick tuned more to events and people than the physical.
The factory workers noticed her projection’s appearance, and after a bit of her loud cackling, over-wrought hand rubbing and the 500 watt glow, they got over their shocked surprise and fled. Good. The irony of finding herself on the side of the mortals, given her original ‘I am a God, a divine dictatorship is a good idea’ philosophy, humbled. The fewer mortals she killed the better her Mission, these days. Well, not counting Supported; in this equation, they lived and died on the other side of the equals sign.
Besides, any opportunity to play the evil villain brought glee to her heart, even if she had to play a seemingly addled chaotic evil villain. Anyone following her activities, save perhaps those few genius-level Gods, the better Indigo inseers, and the better hunch-driven Telepaths, would conclude she had gone insane, stark raving mad.
Ignoring the defensive posture of the Supported and quite mindful of the time limit (an army of Supported just now lifting off from Oklahoma City and due to arrive in twenty-one minutes), she descended into the factory offices and began to grab all the documentation, hard disks, and flash memory devices she could find. She analyzed as she grabbed, optimizing her search pattern and no longer chortling, the audience of mortals long since departed.
She didn’t like what she learned. The flying tanks were built for an invasion of the Kid God’s and Orlando’s territories to prove their usefulness in the never-ending elbow-jostling contest between Dubuque and Verona for City of God leadership. The Practical God Engineer had designed these flying tanks. If they proved useful, the City of God would mass-produce them for use in the Armageddon War, the all-out fight between the City of God and the Tradition faction. Flying tanks or not, Betrayer still needed to maneuver the situation close to the Armageddon War and the near extinction of humanity for any chance at her plans’ success.
Nervous making, that.
From what she deduced from these records, the factory couldn’t keep up with demand and was way behind schedule, meaning Dubuque wouldn’t be able to use them as he wanted. Betrayer also noted that Dubuque’s crew of Supported, bored, had taken to free-lancing, replacing the organized criminals in their allotted territory, raking in the cash, lining their pockets and furnishing their lives with massive bling.
Crap. Her attack would expose their free-lancing, which would do Dubuque a favor. Well, it was too late to avoid causing the exposure; her Mission wouldn’t take a hit because a certain segment of the populace would be quite happy to get out from under the thumbs of these Supported.
She packaged up the information and stuck it on the roof, transported her projection down into the supposedly impregnable basement so she could grab Shawn and flee.
Instead, she got a fight.
A spray of blue and red helix projection-killer attacks almost vaporized her projection the second she popped in; she transported away from Shawn and returned energy-fire, delaying enough to give her the chance to identify her enemies. Yes, in addition to the expected Supported she also detected Dubuque and Santa Fe projections, as well as thirty projections of Grade One Supported from Oklahoma City. Oh, and a lethal-feeling Dubuque-powered projection of Blind Tom.
She had a trick saved up for this situation, a portable version of a Phoenix trick used during the defense of his lair, back before he became Santa Fe. For an instant she weighed the pros and cons – she didn’t want this trick in the hands of her enemies, which meant after she used the trick everyone else must die. On the other hand, if she didn’t use the trick, she would need to leave and lose her one chance at Shawn’s mind.
The decision would have been a lot easier when she had been War or Atlanta. As Atlanta, she wouldn’t choose the carnage. As War, she wouldn’t choose to retreat. As Betrayer, the decision was iffy, as the carnage would reveal far too much of her strategy.
On the other hand…
“Bwah hah hah hah,” Betrayer said. “You’re nearly impossible to get to talk to these days, Dubuque. I want to propose a truce.”
The nascent battle stopped on a dime. Being Betrayer often gave her a third option.
“What sort of truce?” Dubuque’s projection said.
Suckah.
“I want…” she thought quickly. “Dallas.”
“What?”
“I want you to cede the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to me, official and everything, Divine Compact style.”
“You’re out of your darned toot’n mind,” Dubuque said.
“I’ll sign on to your team,” Betrayer said. “Well, not exactly on your team, as I’ll expect payment for any further services, but I’ll agree to be unavailable for hire save by your team. I’ll become your personal merk and never betray your cause.”
Her offer got Dubuque to actually pause and think. She had no idea whether her gambit would work or not; if by some chance he followed her into ‘bwah hah hah’ craziness and agreed to the proposal, she would betray him anyway within a week by grabbing Shawn or, even better, a current active member of Dubuque’s inner circle.
If not…well, this would serve as excellent cover for the carnage to follow. Botched plans leading to carnage fit her Rapture far better than carnage-as-the-plan.
“Dallas is too much,” Dubuque said. He crossed his arms and glared at her, likely worried about the number of worshippers he would be putting at risk. “How about El Paso and Juarez?”
Perfect. The bastard offered her a worthless piece of Santa Fe’s territory. Santa Fe’s projection glowered. Betrayer clenched her fists and grimaced, illusory rage on her brown face. “It’s Dallas or nothing! I want Dallas, dammit! I have plans for Dallas, gooood plans. Quit fucking around
with me, you perv!”
“The Metroplex holds too many souls devoted to the City of God, and is too close to my headquarters,” Dubuque said, confirming her guess. “Why don’t you surrender and join my team voluntarily? I’m sure we can come up with something to satisfy you.” He looked a bit ill at Betrayer’s display and he amped up his personal charisma to nearly unstoppable proportions.
“Dallas – or die!” She rained spittle down on the audience, fighting off his charisma with raw emotion.
“As you wish,” Dubuque said. He sent out a willpower signal. The fight resumed, her projection targeted by forty blue helix attacks and a telepathic projection-killer attack from Blind Tom.
Not being stupid, she transported out of the fortified basement long before the attacks intersected at her location. On the way out she triggered her too-revealing area-filling projection-killer attack. After the projection-killer did its work, a half second later, she transported back down.
Dubuque and the other projections were gone.
Now she must kill the remainder. Anyone with eyes still functioning would be able to tell a real Territory backed her projection-killing attack, an attack done in her Territory; if she left people alive to scan later even a dumbass like Dubuque would be able to figure everything out, and that would be the end of any of her hopes of her long-shot victory.
The original seven real, non-projection Supported remained. In the half second, all seven had 411ed her identity and boogied, flown by the two Grade One Supported. They didn’t get more than a few feet before she knocked them out of the fly and sent them back to the ground. For her efforts she collected two worshipper-backed blue helixes and five worshipper-backed green lightnings, the best the Grade Two Supported could muster. Her projection’s shields failed and her projection lost its integrity, reduced to a floating head.
She rebuilt the projection, hurting, and charged. She stopped when three of the Grade Twos pulled out sword hilts and activated them. Willpower swords, the blades made up of ultra-sharp physically expressed willpower. 99 God style lightsabers, dammit.
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