All that Tommy had learned from “Olive Branch” herself was that her human name was Olivia. No last name. No clue to why a teenage girl had been walking the streets as a prostitute last month and was now acting like a drill sergeant to a herd of juvenile elves. Nothing about her made sense. While tall and curvy with beautiful long flame-colored hair, she was modestly dressed in a sundress and sensible shoes. Her hips and ample bust said she could be as old as sixteen but, now and then, her face could be as doe-eyed innocent as a twelve-year old’s. Her baby bump said that she was close to three months pregnant by someone other than Forest Moss, who had arrived in Pittsburgh a month ago. Given that Mokoto hadn’t seen Olivia on Liberty Avenue prior to a month ago, the pregnancy might be why she was on Elfhome, running from whoever preyed on innocent children.
Tommy could understand running from something like that.
It was becoming obvious that Olivia was clever and cautious but in over her head. She was smart enough to know that they needed to recon the shipyard before using the strength that the royal marines gave them, but she wasn’t sure how to do that. She didn’t have Tinker’s knowledge and control of magic nor her knowledge of the Pittsburgh area and its people. She didn’t know about Tommy’s powers. Sooner or later she would probably turn to the EIA, which would mean that all the Undefended would probably be detained and deported once Tinker did get her gate up and running.
There was no one on the planet that Tommy trusted more than Mokoto. His little cousin might not be a brute force like Bingo, but he was fearless, clever, and ruthless. More importantly, Mokoto could pass as human. At any point, he could have walked away and left it all to Tommy and Bingo to protect the family. He could have even escaped to Earth and vanished completely. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed, backing Tommy at every step, always putting family first, always taking whatever shit life threw at them.
Knickknack was an off-worlder stranger but Mokoto loved him. Tommy knew how shitty it was to fall in love with the wrong person. Annoying as it was to have to sneak around to be with Jewel Tear, at least he had the comfort of knowing that she was safe and sound.
Olivia waved as he and Gaddy roared up to the cargo truck.
“The kids were taken to the shipyard,” Tommy said. “We still don’t know if they’re actually alive or not. The place is heavily guarded.”
“From what I overheard, a machine that isn’t supposed to be running got turned on and no one seems to know how to turn it off,” Gaddy said. “They’re not even sure if they should attempt it. They’re distracted. Now would be a good time to move.”
“How many guards?” Olivia asked.
“I saw at least two dozen different men,” Gaddy said. “Not all of them were armed. It seemed to be a mix of workers and guards. Technically we outnumber them.”
“Barely,” Olivia murmured, still studying the distant building. “Violence will beget violence. It could escalate out of our control quickly. They have the home advantage and solid cover. We would need to breach first the wall and then the buildings. There could be booby traps. They could kill the hostages before we found them. This is like hide-and-seek but in reverse. You can’t pull the trigger until you’re sure you have the person hiding trapped or you have to race every player to home.”
It was an odd way of putting it, but she was right. If the kidnappers wanted Knickknack to build a gate and he was cooperating to keep the girls safe, then it was unlikely that the boy was being held with the others. While Tommy’s focus was Knickknack, Olivia had made it clear that saving Peanut Butter Pie was her priority.
Tommy didn’t want to walk alone into the armed camp. He didn’t like having the women — young, inexperienced, and complete strangers to him — as backup. He considered calling Bingo or Babe but they looked too much like their oni fathers. He couldn’t be sure that the royal marines wouldn’t kill them. Most of his cousins who could pass as human were still teenagers or younger. Much as he didn’t want to go in alone, he couldn’t see another way to save Knickknack where the boy wasn’t immediately locked up by the EIA. “I noticed a ramp down that dirt side road. I can use it to get over the fence behind the building. If you create a distraction at the front, I can go over the fence and scout for the kids.”
Olivia considered and then nodded in agreement.
“I’ll move out first,” Olivia said as she waved to the marines to get into the back of the truck. “Gaddy, keep pace with him until he slows down to stop, then keep going around the track. Anyone not paying attention to me will probably keep an eye on the moving bike over the one that has stopped.”
“Sounds good,” Gaddy said.
“Godspeed.” Olivia said it like a blessing.
They moved out with the truck in the lead.
This wasn’t as insane as taking on a pack of oni warriors by himself in the middle of the forest. It was his experience that humans normally didn’t react instantly or fight to the death. They didn’t come from a kill-or-be-killed culture. Among the more beast-like lesser oni, the winner often ate the loser. It meant that humans at the shipyard probably wouldn’t shoot to kill if they saw him. Probably. He never liked the word “probably.” Too often it really meant “you thought wrong.”
The big truck trundled the mile to the shipyard, occasionally jumping the curb and riding on the sidewalk. Olivia wasn’t the best of drivers although she hadn’t stalled the big truck once. The shipyard had two driveways. The first was a dirt road that led back to the small jump Tommy had spotted earlier. Rusty signs stated NO PARKING OR TURNING AROUND. Judging by the weeds, it was last used when Neville Island was still on Earth. Three hundred feet farther on, the shipyard’s gate stood guard on a wide paved driveway.
Tommy veered onto the dirt road. Gaddy roared on, passing the big cargo truck as it put on its turn-right signal and slowed to awkwardly make the turn into the driveway. Olivia either misjudged the stopping distance or intentionally didn’t stop in time, bending the front gate with her reinforced front bumper. She beeped once, quickly, perhaps hitting the horn by mistake.
By mistake or on purpose, she got what she wanted: everyone in the compound focused on Olivia as she leaned out of the truck’s window. Aiofe wasn’t in the front cab with her; the translator must have gotten in the back with the marines.
“Sorry!” Olivia called and waved at the guards. “Hello? I’m sorry about your gate! I’m not used to driving something this big through a city.”
Olivia was going with a hapless female ploy. With her modest sundress and often childlike face, she was going to throw the men for a loop. She didn’t look like someone who had shot a man just minutes ago.
Tommy popped up and over the fence. He slid across the compound where tarps covered pallets loaded with spools of structured fiber filament and five-gallon buckets of gloss white marine paint. He tucked his hoverbike between pallets of paint and pulled the tarp over it. No one seemed to notice his arrival but it could be because Olivia had just put the truck the rest of way through the front gate — slowly — while claiming that she was attempting to back up. She was doing a great job of grinding gears, making it seem like she had no idea what she was doing. Certainly Tommy would buy it if he hadn’t just followed her around the city for over an hour. Her steering had been rough but her shifting was fine.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” a man was shouting in a tone that was annoyed but not furious.
A squawk of a radio warned Tommy that someone was coming around the far corner of the building. He reached out with his mind and erased himself from the compound. A man carrying a rifle rounded the corner and walked past Tommy without checking his stride. The man swore softly as he saw the truck parked on the remains of the gate with Olivia picking her way down out of the cab going, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”