Free All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) by Randall Farmer Page B

opportunity against Rogue Crow is limited.  If we don’t do something now, Rogue Crow will become a permanent problem, and perhaps he’ll even succeed and remake Transform society in his image.  We can’t allow this to happen.”
    Lori and Tonya locked eyes and dueled, charisma style.
    “This proposed plan is unprecedented,” Tonya said, shifting to the pragmatic.  “Can you justify this precedent?  Once allowed, our enemies will use these actions against us .  Can you live with that?”
    “To me it boils down to one thing: we’re going to be defending a Focus wedding ,” Lori said.  “Yes, I can live with this precedent.”
    Yes, yes, Focus Rizzari, I agree, I agree, Gilgamesh thought.  He sighed and shook his head.  Charisma.  At least Lori and Tonya backed down their charisma battle after Lori hammered her point down like a nail.  “I would like to add in a little Crow paranoia, though, Housebound,” he said.  Sky winced when he used the ‘Housebound’ term.  Well, Gilgamesh thought he was being formal, just like everyone else had been.  “Inviting all the world’s Focuses to the wedding, and likely some number of clandestine Crows, given the defensive nature of this struggle, means we’re potentially inviting in enemies.”
    Lori nodded.  “Yes, of course.  We’re going to have to be careful and watch closely everyone not of the Cause who is invited into the wedding.  It won’t be easy, but I think we can at least pull that off.”  She turned to Carol.  “Now that we’re all agreed, I think I’ll turn this over to the Commander and we can start working on the details.”
     
    Carol Hancock: December 27, 1968
    I took a long shower and tried to relax.  We had plotted and argued for four hours, but in the end we managed to put together a coherent plan framework for defending the wedding, the caravan from the wedding to the reception, and the reception.  Only those of us there at the table were going to know the full details of the plan.  Taking a page from Focus politics, we would be waiting with our daggers out, ready to stab the backs of any of the wedding attendees, our putative allies, who stepped out of line.
    For the vast majority of the Transforms, things would be far simpler than they were for us.  Their wedding invitations would mention the death threats.  We would expect them to be able to defend themselves, nothing new for the Focuses and their households.
    A knock on the door reminded me I was inside a Focus household with limited resources.  Even Inferno had to ration their hot water, and I liked hot water.  I toweled off, musing at Tonya and Lori’s antics.  They were inseparable these days, despite the near war conditions between Tonya’s bodyguards and the Inferno household – but get the two of them around a bargaining table and out came five years of head-butting history, every comment filled with unimaginably complex Focus emotional and charismatic nuances.  I swore I would have needed to share Lori’s metasense to understand a tenth of them.
    Worse, Biggioni, that bitch, still stalked around Inferno, talking with Keaton.  Who, damn her, signaled me to come join the current discussion down in Lori’s morgue lab.  No Lori; just Tonya, Stacy and Hank, standing beside the autopsy table I remembered so well.
    “What’s going on?” I said, after I arrived.  My control was shot from the four hour meeting and a little of my predator showed through.  Keaton frowned at my slip and tossed a loose-leaf binder at me, which I caught and attempted to read.  Bah.  Medical gobbledygook, mostly way over my head.  I noticed a copy of Haggerty’s report under Tonya’s arm.  Ah.  A vaguely formal information trade in progress, Keaton-style.
    “I got a call from Dr. Wilson back on Christmas eve,” Tonya said.  Wilson was one of her pet illegal doctors, one I hoped to recruit.  “He reported an atypical Major Transform conversion out in Denver, likely a