No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5)

by Randall Farmer

  “I’m still thinking magically,” I said. “I can talk, though. That’s an improvement.”

  “I ripped all the active juice patterns off of you,” Lori said. “I can’t do anything more, now, to help you.”

  I studied the battle with my metasense while Lori muttered about symbolic juice patterns and why she couldn’t affect them easily. My walkie-talkie was long gone. Lori handed me hers, figuring out what I was thinking. Right. “Let me read what you’re thinking. Please. I’ll explain later.”

  She figured out what I wanted. The world became clearer. “Gilgamesh? Anyone? What’s going on outside of where I can see?”

  “Focus Laswell and Focus Ackerman have taken the Clinic Focus’s surrender and separated them from their households,” Gilgamesh said over the static of the walkie-talkie. “Sky over-exerted himself and is out of action, in the Clinic. Fred has secured Rogue Focus’s household and is, um, looting it.” Fred Raindorf, God’s gift to thuggery, had his own twisted priorities. I doubted he would end up rich with the proceeds. “Eleven of your people are down, there, most from Rogue Focus’s defensive juice patterns. Several are engaging in mid-battle sex. I’ve moved the Crow observers so Hephaestus can visually watch Rogue Focus’s place and Sinclair can visually watch you. I have Newton on the Feds’ safe house for at least a few more moments, as both of the agents there are still asleep. No other surprises.”

  “Ten-four,” my instincts said. I had no idea why. The battle had devolved into a stalemate. I needed to do something to change this. Lori’s presence was a good omen, maybe enough to change that stalemate. “Lori? Piggyback ride time.”

  “Huh?”

  I pointed to my shoulders. “You’re thinking of rushing Rogue Focus?” she said as she climbed up.

  “Good idea,” I said. I hadn’t figured out why I had wanted Lori on my shoulders, until she spoke. “It would be a good omen if we surprised Rogue Focus.”

  “Oooh kaaaay. Let me blather at you, then,” Lori said, way ahead of me in the brains department right now. “Rogue Focus is gambling she can get to the Feds’ safe house and secure the large weapons dump there before we can stop her. Outside of her household she doesn’t have her household defensive juice patterns to fall back on. I think she’s panicked by the situation. You’re thinking I’m good enough to keep whatever symbolic juice patterns she tosses at us off of you while you do something to her. I hope you’re right. Remember, we want her alive.”

  I ran, burning juice. “It would be a better omen if she didn’t have her household around her.”

  “What? Holy moly!”

  I hit full Arm sprint speed; Lori weighed less than the weapons packs I often carried with me when I trained. I leapt over Rogue Focus’s ring of bodyguards as they attempted to make their way to the next house to the west, and landed two steps away from the bitch, not stopping. On the way by, I grabbed Rogue Focus’s arm and tossed the bitch toward the street. I still didn’t stop; instead I leapt, somehow ending up going a different direction than where I tossed Rogue Focus. I bounced against the house, skidded through a turn and closed on my Focus target, who had bounced off a light pole, a car hood and the pavement, twice. Her people’s handguns erupted then, for reasons I wasn’t fully sure about. I didn’t sense any new juice patterns affecting me. Good omen. My rush in had been a surprise.

  Lori was still on my back as I rushed over to Rogue Focus. Memories of a conversation with Lori fortuitously echoed through my mind.

  Ann Chiron: “Lori, how much damage can an Arm survive, anyway? More than a Focus?”

  Lori: “Fully trained Arms? God only knows. Zielinski told me about Carol’s last torture session with Arm Keaton. Trust me when I say that what Keaton did to her was much worse.”

  I believed my memory meant that if I raped Rogue Focus with a foot long steel prick, ripped her left shoulder half off her body and sliced through her throat she would still survive. I had, when Enkidu did this to me. I didn’t have a foot long steel prick, thank you very much, but Rogue Focus had landed near a no parking sign. I pulled the sign out of the local black muddy dirt, concrete base and all, and loosed my pent-up anger at the territory-stealing bitch, using the sign’s pole and my knife to do the appropriate damage. Rogue Focus’s metapresence dimmed. Screams of terror and horror and I’m not sure what other emotions echoed around me, some from Lori, some from the fight. I wasn’t sure why, but Rogue Focus’s cadre of berserker male Transforms, the ones she kept normally down near withdrawal so she could support more male Transforms than normal, who had made this fight far worse than a fight against a normal sized household, well, they all went into peri-withdrawal. They mindlessly charged the mass of my own people, who had followed my charge. I found this a good omen, despite the distress of my troops at the enemy charge.

  “Carol! Carol! Stop!” Lori had been repeating her words since I started in on Rogue Focus. She did something to my metasense with one of her juice patterns, twisting my attention elsewhere. I dropped the no parking sign with it still pleasingly lodged a foot into the Focus’s nether region. I liked the symbology involved. “You’re not yourself.”

  Look! Juice! They weren’t tagged any more, these juicy peri-withdrawal male Transforms. I barely had time to settle into my stalk before I grabbed one.

  His juice came slowly. “Burn juice into your mind, heal your mind,” Lori said. She sounded like she was in horrible agony. I did as she asked, but this form of healing was hard. The male Transform’s juice came slowly, as if someone was in the way. He also seemed to have far more juice than he should have.

  The healing burn cleared out layer after layer of mental damage.

  “You’re feeding me juice!” I said, realization flooding in as I regained my mental capabilities. Lori remained on my back, and with the mental healing the wonderful metasense synch trick of hers finally kicked in and I could metasense what was going on. Oooh, juice from a Focus’s juice buffer. Only it came to me indirect, as she had temporarily tagged my kill and was feeding me the juice through him. Smart Lori, figuring out I wouldn’t conk out if I got juice slowly.

  “Focus Biggioni taught me how,” Lori said, wiggling around so her legs were suggestively tight around my waist and her mouth next to my left ear. “I’m also slowing down the transfer so you don’t fall over.” Pause. “Biggioni told me about the initial pain of this process, but she didn’t say a thing about how much of the juice draw pleasure would come through if I slowed down the procedure the frigid bitch she probably didn’t even get any pleasure from this because she’s so frigid she has her heart and soul and feelings of pleasure all locked away buried in a storage box in the shed next to her dead Monster kills and…”

  “Lori! Pay attention!” I was full up, I couldn’t sense anything in my brain or body worth healing, and Lori was about to start wasting juice. Right now, synched with Lori, the idea of ‘wasting juice’ was right up there with ‘eating babies’ as far as moral repugnance was concerned.

  “Sorry,” Lori said. She started to lick my ear, slow and sensuous. “Ooh, I’m so horny I could burst. Want to get a room?”

  “No, we have business to deal with.” I wasn’t horny at all. Lori had ended up with most of the pleasure this time. Heh. Teach her to mess with the natural order of the juice so cavalierly. I needed to know what was going on with the rest of the fight. “How about Sky or Gilgamesh?”

  “How about both?” Lori said. Her voice tailed off as she fell into a state I recognized from every juice kill I had ever taken, best described right now as ‘baggage’. I shifted the now unconscious Focus around into a fireman’s carry and looked around, to find myself surrounded by my own people. I started barking orders. Punched out three psycho juice zombies and slit the throat of a fourth. Gathered what remained of my people. I predatored Rogue Focus’s remaining conscious Transforms, all women, into submission, and got to metasense her remaining living-but-wounded male Transforms slip into withdrawal. We killed them to keep things from getting uglier,
exited the street at a jog, and slipped through a utility easement and away, as this much of a ruckus would be attracting cops soon.

  We had won, but oh holy fucking hell the science of multidisciplinary Major Transform fighting and fight preparation needed a lot of work.

  Part 4

  Alliance

  Though a swift stream is

  Divided by a boulder

  In its headlong flow,

  Though divided, on it rushes,

  And at last unites again.

  – from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu

  Chapter 13

  There is another basic point in this struggle: the media are not on our side and refuse to write anything that hurts the “Transform” movement. They are quite good at covering up negative news about Transforms. So you know something very “transformative” is up when you see Transform activists blasting the media for alleged anti-Transform bias. That would be sort of like accusing Marilyn Monroe of being a prude.

  “Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

  Henry Zielinski: July 21, 1968

  “Clean,” Keaton said. Static on the airport phone line made her sound old and male. “She’s pissed at some of the things that happened in the fight, but she did it clean. She’s packed Rogue Focus off to Focus Fingleman, along with her surviving women Transforms. Inferno did its thing and planted and forged enough evidence in Rogue Focus’s former place that anyone investigating her disappearance will think Rogue Focus defected to Cuba. They befuddled the local police into thinking the violence was associated with Rogue Focus disposing of her surplus male Transforms, who, nasty her, she drove into withdrawal as some sort of punishment. Hell, Hank, I got more shot up than Hancock did in this little fracas.”

  “You sound pleased,” Zielinski said.

  “Pleased doesn’t come close,” Keaton said. “When I finally put everything together, I’m looking at over ten million profit from my little crime spree. Even better, Hancock and I now are sitting on shitloads of data about multi-Major Transform combat operations. Next time we do one of these we’re going to know what the hell we’re doing and it’s going to be a lot more efficient.” Pause. “Did the Euro bitch cough up anything or did she just string you along?”

  “She coughed up a lot, but she keyed it just like last time.”

  “She slept with you, too, eh?” Keaton said. He blushed, half amazed that she had been able to read him over the phone. She hadn’t been able to do that before. “Make sure Hancock immediately re-tags you when you get back to Houston, and plan on coming with Hancock on her next visit. Hancock may own your mind and soul, but your body’s mine and I’m in a mood to celebrate!”

  Zielinski heard dial tone. He hung up the pay phone, wiped sweat from his forehead, and walked off toward the nearest ticket counter to catch the next open LaGuardia to Houston plane flight. Yes, he was back in the good ol’ USA.

  Perhaps he should have stayed longer in West Germany.

  Carol Hancock: July 23, 1968

  Keaton summoned me early, not wanting to take any chances with anyone intercepting Hank and his new information. Keaton’s subtext was more disturbing – she would be judging my competence as an Arm. Had I fully recovered from my CDC captivity? Was I fully fit to be an independent actor again, or would she clip my wings and start directing my every move?

  Nervy me, I had my own agenda, a never-to-be-stated reward for taking down Rogue Focus, which of course increased my own stress level. I had sent Gilgamesh and the crew off on my little mission immediately after the Rogue Focus fight. I hoped they didn’t run afoul of any big nasty Beasts or cranky old Crows on the way. The world seemed filled with them these days.

  I stared at the door to Keaton’s house, putting my mind in order. Zielinski stood beside me, fidgeting. Haggerty opened the door, a much less used Arm than I had ever seen her. She wore one of my old unused Catholic Schoolgirl uniforms, which on her fit like shit. “Ma’am,” she said. “Dr. Zielinski. Please come in and make yourself at home. Do you want anything to drink?”

  She was reading from a script in her mind. Keaton, of all the crazy things, had taught the damned baby Arm proper etiquette.

  I didn’t mind one bit and let Haggerty wait on us. Keaton stormed in a half hour later, covered in blood. “You’re all going to fucking die!” Roar! She hit us with at least two tenths of a point of burned predator effect and stalked over to me, radiating I’m not sure what. This wasn’t psycho Keaton – I sensed a rational mind, albeit well hidden behind some new Keatonic trick. I read her as high on juice.

  Nevertheless, my knees hit the pale wooden floor as fast as gravity did its thing. Haggerty swan dived onto the pure white carpet and pissed herself. Zielinski backed away ultra-slowly, hands up, his heart rate and adrenaline levels about the same as they were when I surprised him during his morning shower, before he left for Europe (the bastard had changed the password on one of our offshore accounts and hadn’t told me, and I had wanted the password now). Damn, but he had nerves of steel for a mere normal.

  Keaton sat down on my back. “Hopefully we’ll all fucking die in the far distant future, save for the fact us Arms are stuck with a significantly reduced lifespan because of our high metabolism. Which a certain someone never told me before. Eh, Hank?”

  He took a deep breath and feigned relaxation. “Ma’am, I never found a politic moment to mention this distressing fact.”

  Keaton left my back. I turned my head as she picked up Zielinski in her arms, held him over her head, and danced underneath him, twisting and turning, until he got dizzy. “Okay, that’s just not fair, you bastard, getting Arm predator resistance training from an older Arm.”

  “It was only two hours worth!”

  Haggerty, I realized, remained oblivious to the goings on. She thought Keaton was going to kill Hank. This was a serious lack on her part, if she couldn’t read a situation this simple. This was Keaton at play.

  We had Hank in front of his chalkboard again, after he recovered from Keaton’s games, this time in the dining room of Keaton’s house of pain. He looked relieved when we didn’t head down to the basement. I suspected his worries were unwarranted – I didn’t hear moaning and I doubted whatever victim had supplied the blood on Keaton was still alive.

  Hank had put up a timeline, starting with Anne-Marie Sieurs’ Transformation and the dawn of the Focus era and ending with the Focus Julius Rebellion. He drew lines with colored chalk between the events and I immediately understood the connections.

  “The Purifier kills his first Crow in 1955, starting his mission to keep western Austria clear of non-Focus Major Transforms,” Zielinski said. “The American first Focuses escape from Quarantine in 1958, with bad blood between them and their older Crow peers. The Purifier notices this and begins to fear organized Major Transforms; he expands his killing mission to cover all of Europe in 1959. A group of American Crows notices what the Purifier is doing, and creates a survival-oriented secret society, also in 1959. The Purifier establishes control over the Western European Focuses, save those in Ireland, by 1961. The American Crows have a tussle over their secret society in 1961 because of the success of the Purifier. Distracted by American Crow politics the Purifier misses the transformation of the Arm Erica Eissler in 1961, and she survives with the help of Focus Anne-Marie Sieurs, although for obvious baby Arm reasons they couldn’t meet in person. Pissed because of a betrayal by someone he thought he controlled, the Purifier hunts down Sieurs and she vanishes. The American Crows’ conflict over their secret society ends in 1962 and they go underground, refusing to deal with any other Major Transforms. The Purifier expands his reach into Eastern Europe in 1963; fearing he would expand his reach to America, the ruling first Focuses start removing themselves from the public eye and start digging in to defend themselves. In 1964, first Focus Julius decides the Focuses should do to America what the Purifier did in Europe, and hunt down and kill all the other Major Transforms. Not too surprisingly, Keaton and I met and, well, a
llied in 1964, both fearing for our measly lives, caught up in games of those far too powerful for us to understand or withstand. Now, for the first time, I know why.”

  “You might as well add ‘Wandering Shade makes Grendel in 1965, dreaming of following in the Purifier’s footsteps’,” I said.

  Hank did so, with a question mark. “Erica thinks Wandering Shade’s experiments and murderous plan started the day the Crow tussle ended, three years earlier. Her proof is, well, um…”

  “In her dreams?” Keaton said. Hank nodded. “Dammit, I’d hoped for some nifty new tech, not this steaming pile of shit. Not that this isn’t deathly important to know.” She turned to Hank. “Go play with the crap I’ve collected for you in my library. I need some private time with my Arms.”

  Here it comes, I told myself.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and scurried off. I swore he looked a year older than he had earlier today. Keaton hadn’t grown easier to be around. Not in her home territory, at least.

  ---

  I tapped out for the third time in a row, on the hard concrete floor of Keaton’s barn. Keaton got off my back and threw herself on her own back, chest heaving. Whatever advantages I had by being fast were gone; she had learned to cover for her speed weaknesses and she was back to being flat out better than I was, overall, in our sparring. I looked over to her and caught her looking at me with a goofy out of place grin on her face. “Who’s the boss, eh? Who’s the boss?” she said.