Keaton sat in her chair with her arms crossed and didn’t say anything. The knife had disappeared. I continued on.
“Third, and very carefully, we try and figure out where Rogue Crow’s base is located, and what he’s doing, using the Crows as our information source. This isn’t going to be easy or direct. Until recently, for instance, Gilgamesh could always find us simply by asking around and finding out which cities the Crows had recently vacated. We’re going to tread lightly with this form of information gathering, because by doing so we’re dipping our toes into Crow politics. Rogue Crow’s a senior Crow and probably has several junior Crows who listen to him and follow his suggestions.”
Keaton snorted. “What if Shadow is Rogue Crow?”
“Then I’d say we don’t know what Rogue Crow’s goals are. Ma’am, Gilgamesh has visited Shadow’s home in New York City. If Shadow betrays him, Gilgamesh would give us Shadow’s address in a heartbeat. Crows are slow to anger, but they don’t like being betrayed. Wait until you meet Sinclair. He’s still mad about what Rogue Crow’s Chimeras did to the Philadelphia Crows.” If the meeting went well, Newton would volunteer to be Keaton’s Crow. At a distance. Letters, phone calls and walkie-talkies. I couldn’t mention this ahead of time, because Newton’s offer depended on how Keaton’s meeting with Shadow’s Crows went.
I looked up at her, hopeful for a reaction, some sign of what she was thinking. She sat silently and didn’t say a word. Haggerty looked convinced, but that didn’t help me with Keaton.
“Ma’am,” I said, “the world is a dangerous place. That’s one of the most important things you taught me. If we’re not smart, the odds are going to catch up with us, and the odds are real bad for Transform Sickness. We need to be patient and smart and careful.”
I did my best to look humble, but I kept my head up because I wanted to see her face. She didn’t say anything for a long time. I tried to think of more to say to convince her, but I couldn’t think of anything that would help beyond what I had said already. My actions started to nag at me. I wished I had been more subtle about the wishful thinking attack, but more subtle wouldn’t have worked. On the other hand, what I tried probably hadn’t worked either, except to piss her off. I wondered what she was going to do to me, how long it would last and how bad it would be. Fear twisted my insides into knots. Still she sat and didn’t say a word.
But then, finally, she shrugged her shoulders and threw the now-visible-again knife at me. I snagged the knife out of the air.
“Huh. Let’s go talk to some Crows,” she said.
Deep in my heart, I smiled. I had won. Keaton hadn’t clipped my wings. I was free to take Houston as my territory, push ahead with my and Hank’s Transform research project, and continue my close association with Gilgamesh. I was a real Arm again.
Most importantly, we Arms were going to ally with the Crows.
“…and either my information is bad or something real is going on here. Either way, the Chicago Clinics reported a staggering 75% reduction in the number of Transformations in the first 8 months of 1968, a number that does not jibe with any other Transform Clinics in the United States.”
“Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”
Part 2 of “Compilations of the Early Hunter Empire” by Duke Frederick Dowling, Stone Point Barony, 1975.
Books by this Author
The Commander Series:
Once We Were Human
Now We Are Monsters
All Beasts Together
A Method Truly Sublime
No Sorrow Like Separation
In This Night We Own
All That We Are
The supplementary Commander Series books:
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio One
All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Two)
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Three
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Four
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Five
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Six
No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Seven)
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Eight
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Nine
Focus
The Cause Series Novels
The Shadow of the Progenitors
Love and Darkness
The Forgefires of God
Beasts Ascendant (The First Chronicle of the Cause) (coming April/May 2016)
(more to come, later)
99 Gods Trilogy Novels
War
Betrayer
Odysseia
99 Gods Trilogy Supplementary Stories
Tales From The Anime Café (Part One)
Tales From The Anime Café (Part Two)
Author’s Afterword
Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, Alex Farmer, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this novel would have never been made.
Photo attributions: Greenway plaza area of Houston by Bill Jacobus.
After I collected many helpful but non-monetary responses from various other publishing venues regarding this novel, I decided the best way to introduce the Commander series to a wider audience was via the ebook market. I have two traditionally published short stories, one in Analog and the other in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.
I hope you enjoyed reading this novel.
If you enjoyed this novel, you can find out further information about the Commander series, the background mythos of the Commander series, and about other fiction, on http://majortransform.com. You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212. Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged. Tell your friends. Post reviews.
The Commander series continues with “In This Night We Own”.
Randall Allen Farmer
No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Page 38