To end all wars gwen far.., p.1
To End All Wars (Gwen Farris Book 7), page 1
Gwen Farris: Book Seven
To End All Wars
P.S. Power
Copyright 2017
Orange Cat Publishing
Chapter one
Gwen wasn’t sure which was worse. The throbbing in her head, or the one between her legs. It took work not to laugh at the slightly naughty sounding thought, as the man who had caused both of the discomforts looked at her questioningly, his youthful face oddly pleasant.
She explained after a bit, not going into everything, since it wouldn’t be considered proper in the world she was standing in.
“Fu-. God that was less than fun.” She looked up at the boy, Peter, who was totally untouched from their practice match.
He nodded, his face suddenly beaming.
“I know! It works even better if you can destroy their eyes. This is the second level. One down from what’s most effective in a fight. We did a demonstration half a year ago, full out. It took weeks for Tollen to grow his right eye back. Rhonda was so upset with me over that. Not that I had a choice. You get that though. The point is that it stopped him. A Westmorland with conditioning to continue fighting, no matter what happened to him. This just took you out, but without that kind of damage. I wasn’t sure if the kick to the groin would work that well on you. Being a girl and all that.”
It was incredibly dirty fighting that she’d just been shown. The big trick was that the boy moved away from her the entire time. That forced her to walk right into his fists if she wanted to even touch him. The single kick had come when he’d gotten cornered, trapped in place by a tree briefly. There hadn’t even been any psychic tricks used this time. She’d just been beaten. Fair and square. In seconds. Over and over, since she was in training at the moment.
In this case it was all about working out how to help increase the effectiveness of Peter’s improved combat technique. As it stood, she doubted that many people would be able to beat someone using the new tricks. If they stood back, the person defending just backed away, safely. If they moved in, they could barely touch the other person, and would be beaten savagely the whole time.
“Gah. Thanks? I like my eyes. I just got them the way I wanted a few years ago.” That part was literally true, of course. Before that she’d been horribly misshapen and warped, due to genetic damage that had been done to her by a mad scientist. Her own mother, naturally. No one could screw you up as much as family.
That was in a different world. Another thing that was simply the truth. The body that she was in belonged to a different person. Katherine Vernor. The girl, or woman, really, was still there. Inside of her own body. Which just made sense. The creep had killed Gwen, then stolen her mind from a different reality.
She’d had help, but that didn’t totally excuse the things that she’d done wrong. When the evil twerp had a chance to get her world back, she’d run off to Europa and given them the key to rifting. Which had pretty much started World War three. A nuclear war, more or less. One in the offing, anyway.
Gwen resisted the urge to rub either her face, which was swelling nicely on the right-hand side, or her crotch. That second one was just wrong. It had worked remarkably well, however, considering she didn’t have any manly dangly bits to hit. Taking a deep breath, she nodded, then pointed down so that Pete would get the idea of what she was talking about.
“Well, that part didn’t knock me to the ground or anything, but… yeah, it kind of hurts. Enough to distract me. It didn’t even occur to me to block that. It’s that whole thing where I lack the jimmies to rustle, you know?”
Before she could explain what that one meant, the boy, who was sixteen now so not really a little kid, nodded at her.
“True. But women have two nerves that run over the bottom of the pubic bone, which can hurt pretty well if they get hit hard enough. It isn’t the same, but I didn’t want to run up too many different techniques for the new system. People tend to fight with about six or seven moves. Teach them more than that and they start making mistakes. So… I simplified. It pretty much works against anything. At least as well as anything does. If you try to wrestle, you tend to stop when you get hit in the eyes. You can’t do takedowns and throws against a person moving away from you consistently. Kicking is the same. You can’t do it while chasing someone. Punches can work, but even then it’s hard to make happen. Stabbing is the same way.” There was something approaching humility in the words.
Which meant that there was a real flaw that Gwen hadn’t understood at all, in their first five rounds. Peter saw a weakness, or he wouldn’t have added the part about it working as well as anything else did. She’d gone for a tackle, but given that Peter was moving away at the time, that hadn’t worked. She’d missed the leg and been hit in the head at the same time. Given that was supposed to be a shot to the eyes, it would have pretty much taken anyone out of a fight if they made that mistake.
Kicks really were no better, so it wasn’t that. His ridiculous looking high guard had protected his head perfectly, so it wasn’t in that area. What she really needed, she decided, was a gun. Smiling, even if she were still in a lot of pain and tasting blood on her lips, she moved back away from him. Then she pointed her right finger. The deadly thing that she could do at will, to strike at a distance.
“You have to move backward?”
That got a nod.
“Yep. So, I need to learn to fight at a distance as well. Like you can. All I can do now is…” He took off, running with nearly perfect form, his blue uniform making him look like an over grown Cub Scout. Gwen had to admit that his secret plan worked pretty well. By the time she summoned the energy and the right concept of magic up, he was about fifty feet away. It would have been faster if she’d had a crin, or she supposed, a firearm. Even using a red dot, like a self-generated laser sight, she couldn’t get a good shot off at him, she didn’t think.
He was moving away a bit too well for that to happen. Worse, it wasn’t even just that he was that fast, or using prescience to avoid her artful attempts to tap him. He just ran. On her eighth blast of concussive force, all of them greatly throttled back by controlling the flow of power into her finger, she just stopped and grinned.
“Okay. Fine. Be that way. All hard to kill and stuff.” It was a good point, actually.
The only thing that he’d done was run off. It had pretty much defeated her. She might have hit him, if she were a superior shot, but that had always been something of a weak point for her. So she nodded.
When he finally walked back, ready to take off again, if the exercise wasn’t over, she shrugged.
“So, two things to test with the new system? Force blasts for you and better targeting for me?” She grinned, but the boy didn’t.
“That… yes. We should do that. Both of them. That isn’t worth reward time…” He looked a bit upset for a moment, then schooled his face. More than that. Everything about him shifted back to being confident and powerful seeming. “I’ll get with Manly on it?”
That got a shrug from Gwen.
“We can get you ten minutes of reward for that, if you can set the first training sessions up for tomorrow? Tomas is ready to begin, I think.”
The boy took a deep breath. The new techniques weren’t nearly as fun as being addicted to pure pleasure was for him. It also wasn’t the old torture method used to push little kids and young adults into becoming more than was normally possible. Tomas Harrison and Gwen were going to be the first real test subjects for it. The real issue there was that Tom was a Baron.
So none of the other Westmorlands could stand to do anything to him that might hurt. Not even a little bit. If they tried, they’d end up on the ground, curled in a ball and crying. That conditioning had been trained into them. Tortured into them, if Gwen had it right. They were insanely devoted to the nobility, because of that. Peter Westmorland hadn’t had the full course of that particular training however. When he was a kid, some alien witch had gotten him hopelessly addicted to pure pleasure, instead. It was nearly as wicked and easily as immoral. Peter was, in a very real way, the slave of anyone who had the right kind of pleasure inducing magical device.
Gwen had, years before, been exposed to about ten seconds of the stuff herself. Being the second or third person to try it. Even after all that time, she kind of wanted to just grab one of the devices and hook into it. Just forgetting everything that had happened in her life. The pain. The suffering that she’d caused the entire world.
It was so tempting to her.
After one single hit, years before.
Peter had never had even half a chance to resist, being hooked on it first thing.
It worked so well that Katherine Vernor, the most evil person in the world, had been subdued inside her own skull using that same trick. Once a day, Kat got ten minutes of pleasure. As long as she didn’t cause any problems the rest of the time. So far it had worked perfectly.
Which could all be a scam. The girl had pulled something like that before, so Gwen was on watch for that kind of thing.
Still, Peter nodded again.
“I’m ready. We should try that with him as well? Learning to produce force blasts? It will stress the schedule a bit, but…” There was a head shake then. “Honestly, if it works, being the first subject for this kind of thing is pretty brave of him. No one will doubt that him not being shipped off to the front first thing is a sign of him being cowardly.” There was a bluntness to the words.
As if anyone would bother thinking that about a sitting Baron. He could have stayed out of the war totally and no one would even have blinked at the idea. He was single, young and didn’t have an heir yet. Normally, his job would have been about that part of things. Getting some girl knocked up, before he risked himself at all. The trouble was that a few of his peers thought that his graphic novels were a sign that he had a weak mind or something like that. Perhaps insanity.
So, they were going to rehab his image.
“If we can use that to our advantage, we should. Then, when we tuck him away in the Air Navy, or in administration in the Army, no one will think much of it. Though…” She went quiet, as Peter looked at her closely.
Waiting for her to say something brilliant.
Finally, she shrugged. Her shoulders were still way too thin to be healthy. Even for her. Katherine used to complain about all the running and exercise she did making them skinny, but at the moment, she still looked sick. That had been from when she was a prisoner. Of war, after a fashion. More to the point, Kat had been, after the Europans betrayed her.
Because of course they did that.
Honestly, it was as if the people of the world she was in didn’t know that the bad guys always turned on you in the end. Most of the time the good guys did, too. That had been her life experience. Now she had people though. So it was better than her old life had been.
She had friends. Like the Vernors, Beth… Peter even, after a fashion. About fifty other people, when it came down to it. Most of all, she had Tom now. Her fiancé.
For some reason he hadn’t even kicked her skinny alien butt to the curb yet.
That was probably a sign that he was really insane, but she was willing to work with him on that one.
The kid looked her in the eye, not saying anything at all for a long time.
So she did it. That was her part in things, or had been so far there, in her new world. Running her face at people and saying the obvious out loud.
“I was thinking… We might try him as a new trainer, if this kind of conditioning isn’t too painful? I wouldn’t want to force him to torture people, but…”
There was a sudden smile from the boy then. He was cute, in a slightly long faced way.
“I’ve tried it. The pain portion of it? I can’t say it’s fun, but it isn’t like the Westmorland Protocols. The pleasure portion of it… Well, that’s fine. It isn’t… You know, it’s not the device, but it’s good enough, I think. That… It might work? I don’t know if he’ll go for it though. Still… I can work up a plan for that? For, say, an hour of reward time?”
Gwen nodded, even though she was pretty certain he was kidding for once.
“Deal. We have to figure out what works best first though. So, tomorrow?”
“In the morning. If he can attend, then? Call it… Ten? He’s in his Barony, isn’t he? That’s a bit of a distance away.”
There was nothing in his gaze that spoke of anything at all. No hinting or pushing even. It was a simple statement. The fact was, of course, that they had a few options to get him into place in time. The easiest was using a teletransport sphere. The man was a Baron after all, and going onto official enough duty for the kingdom. Technically you weren’t just allowed to use them for everything, as it turned out.
Gwen had thought that the things were just expensive to use. They had to be fully charged after all, and only a few thousand people in the world made them. The day before someone, her friend Beth, had let drop that they were actually held under strict governmental control. Not just by the Western Kingdom, but by every land in the world. It was just that she’d been so close to the upper levels of power that Gwen hadn’t realized that factor at all. The Westmorlands were allowed to use the things, if they wanted. For vacation or to do their jobs.
It rarely came up. They were conditioned to not be lazy as children. By the time they were in their twenties, it was nearly impossible for them to just let their hair down and relax. Another thing that she’d missed about them totally the whole time. After all, she worked all the time as well. Mainly because she just didn’t really believe that anyone would accept her if she wasn’t useful to them. Constantly.
So, she’d missed that part of her new friends lives. That they really didn’t, they couldn’t, go on something as simple as a vacation. Not without being made to do it as part of their orders.
Beth had pointed it out, since being pregnant meant that Gwen’s pal was stuck being waited on by everyone around her. Which was driving her beyond bugnuts.
So she snapped her fingers, pretending that she hadn’t been working to find a way for Beth to be involved in something or other for weeks.
“Oh! You should see if Beth can get in on this. The training portion of things. We’ll need more people and she’s healthy enough to walk around and push some buttons.” It could be more stressful than that, but she wasn’t doing poorly.
It was just that she was the very first Westmorland in history to have a baby. They were all sterilized as children. Or had been. Now that they weren’t the unofficial slaves of the Western Kingdom, that had been undone in some of them. If they wanted to try it. No one had really known if that part would work, but it had and Bethany was the very first to start growing a child.
That, naturally, had several thousand people acting like she was going to fall down at any moment. Fortunately, Pete wasn’t like that. He’d been in training to be a healer for years. Part of that training was learning not to treat people like they were made out of glass if they didn't need him to.
“All right. I’ll expect her in the morning. You can clear that with Adam?”
She nodded. After all, Peter was sixteen. Adam was the leader of the Westmorlands. It was a bit much to ask him to go and face the man over her idea. As much as she wanted to. They, Adam and herself, didn’t get along well. Which was mainly his fault. She treated him like a prince.
Then again, he wasn’t really rude to her most days. He saved the name calling for special occasions even.
“Got it. I’ll… See about that now.” That got a nod, as she limped away.
Gwen had been hit in the groin before, of course, but the kid hadn’t pulled his kick at all this time. Or worse, he had and she was just so skinny that the little bit of padding that she’d always had wasn’t there to protect her anymore. Since Pete didn’t hate her in particular, she kind of figured it was that second one. Which meant she needed to really start working on gaining some weight soon.
It took a bit to get to Adam’s office. Her legs rubbed together a few times, the loose fabric of her jumpsuit hitting the other side, rather than her meaty thighs doing the work for her. Then, that had never really been a factor in her life. She’d liked food well enough, growing up, but it had been pretty hard to eat it, since her mouth hadn’t always closed right. So she was fine with food, but it had been a trial for her.
Which was probably part of why her weight hadn’t come back instantly, once she had access to plenty, now. Even her new candy habit hadn’t really done anything for her. She worked too much for the few bites of sweets she’d been having every week or so to do anything helpful. That was all on her though. A thing that no one in that world had any duty, or right, to try and fix for her.
When she limped into the main office, Adam walked out to see her, without waiting for her to get there at all. That was different enough that she noticed him doing it.
“Prescience?”
The older man, who had a well wrinkled face and gray hair, squinted in her general direction.
“Yes. When I was a boy they hadn’t worked out how to properly condition us to go into working states on command. We had the idea, for rifting and a few other things, but we didn’t use it for prescience. Anyway, I noticed you coming.”
“Ah.” She grinned then and let her face screw up into a half smile. It wasn’t a thing she did well, lacking a lifetime of experience with that sort of thing. “Handy. You know, I never thought of you as having powers, really. You were always… you know…”
The man waited, his jaw clenching a bit, as if he expected her to say that he was a prick or something fun like that.
Going on, she smiled a bit more at him.
“In charge. Like that was your super ability, you know? Running things.”
