****
Ed fell to the floor next to Driscal, who had obviously thrown himself in front of him to intercept a bullet intended for him. Ed pushed the bleeding and limp detective aside and saw that above them Mary 11,123 towered and faced the charging Egborg, who had decided to forgo bullets and instead struck down at Ed's head with a clenched right fist. Mary caught the blow with her extended leg, and his titanium-boned fist with ceramic and diamond armor glanced off her thick diamond encrusted knee harmlessly.
Egborg sprung upward impossibly fast and with his other hand delivered a solid blow towards Mary's face that first struck her upraised arm, immediately breaking it off near the shoulder with a loud cracking sound. The arm itself, over fifteen pounds of crystal and metal, might have fallen down onto Ed and Driscal, but it was still attached to Mary's shoulder by tough strands of Nano tube material that formed her nerve and circulatory systems. Though slowed by Mary's arm Egborg's weakened blow still solidly struck its target, and Mary's nose, left cheek and jaw were shattered and cracked like an eggshell.
What Egborg would do next became less of a concern to Ed when the attacking robot was abruptly grabbed and pulled away by another fighter. Ed recognized it to be one of Jerry's black suited body guards that with impossible strength literally picked up Egborg like a toy and slammed him down atop and twenty feet across the stage and away from Ed, Mary, and the fallen detective. The bodyguard quickly followed Egborg by casually leaping atop and across the stage himself: an impossibly athletic move by human standards. Ed suddenly realized that Jerry's bodyguard was much too strong and quick to be anything but another robot!
Egborg and the bodyguard were soon locked together and tumbling across the stage in a desperate life/death struggle, with each clutching and striking the other with mighty blows that sent broken bits of robot metal and ceramics flying about.
Surveying the rest of the room, Ed found that several other struggles were ongoing amid the panicked fleeing crowd of screaming human students and faculty. Near Jerry what looked like a Stone-Coat was fighting Jerry's second burly bodyguard. Much larger than its foe, the Stone-Coat disguised robot was clearly getting the best of the bodyguard robot, who had lost an arm and was close to total defeat when two real Stone-Coats attacked the robot from behind, quickly breaking one of its legs and rendering it nearly immobile and defenseless. The bodyguard immediately and mercilessly drove a diamond-hardened fist through the fake Stone-Coat's head, causing a cascade of sparks and smoke that slowly subsided along with the spasmodic flailing of robot limbs and body.
A second Stone-Coat disguised robot stood on the stage facing Martha Aldo, smoking and motionless. A thousand dead and still smoking jant bodies were scattered on the stage around it, while thousands more live jants swarmed over the robot, looking for more things to bite and short-out. Martha herself stood calmly watching the scene, her entire human body covered in the countess brown jants that had rushed onto the stage to protect her. No, messing with a Consortium zombie wasn't a healthy thing to do, even for robots!
"SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH DRISCAL," said Mary, who still stood protectively over Ed. "HE IS UNCONSCIOUS." The arm she had sacrificed to protect Ed hung limply from her shoulder, attached only by a web of nearly invisible Nano-tubing. Her face looked far worse: dozens of pieces of what looked like shattered skin-colored glass was held together only by Nano tube webbing. Beneath that, big gemstone crystals of various colors and textures showed through, many of them cracked or chipped.
"We were both shot!" Ed pointed out.
"You're only bruised, you big baby," said Mary. "Your carbon graphene Nano tube clothing stopped the bullet."
"Well it still hurts like hell," said Ed. "Driscal was shot too, but he was already technically dead. So why isn't he moving? His med-tick is OK and should have gotten him through almost any trauma, but hey, I don't detect any messaging from his jants!"
"Why not?" asked Mary.
"I can't sense his Humvee jant colony at all!" Ed exclaimed. "They could be dead or hibernating; I can't tell which, but they definitely aren't keeping Driscal alive anymore! He isn't breathing and his heart isn't beating! Even for a zombie that's fatal!"
"You do it!" said Mary.
"What?"
"You've been listening to jants keep zombies alive for decades," said Mary. "No reason you can't do that sort of jant chatter yourself. Hey, aren't you still the Tribe Jant Clan Leader?"
"That's mostly an honorarium!" protested Ed.
"Shut up and get to work!"
Ed closed his eyes and focused on Driscal and his med-tick. Without jant control the med-tick was mostly dormant. It was still sucking blood from Driscal but very soon there would be no more suitable blood. At that point the jant-free tick would follow its primitive instincts and withdraw from Driscal completely to look for a viable host, and Ed was the closest blood source available.
But Ed couldn't allow himself to think of such things, he had to focus: focus on jant chatter. Mary had a good point; he had been listening to jant chatter and using it to communicate with jants directly for decades. Speaking jant chatter telepathically was almost as easy for him as speaking directly with Stone-Coats using his Stone-Coat brain implant or speaking with gifted Mohawks telepathically.
However he had mostly kept away from the messaging that related to the jant/tick control of bodily functions, in fear that he might unintentionally cause a zombie heart attack or stroke or whatever. Years earlier he had intentionally disrupted jant chatter to defeat some nasty zombies. But merely disrupting life-giving jant chatter was far easier than replicating it.
But as usual Mary was right, whenever he communicated directly with zombie jants, medical messaging was always there in the background: a cascade of commands designed to control med-ticks that in turn controlled human bodies. It was always rhythmic like music, he realized, designed to trigger zombie heartbeats and breathing. And each zombie song was a little different, Ed knew. What had Driscal's been like, these last couple of days? It had always been there for him to 'hear' whenever he was near the detective!
Fortunately Ed had a good memory for catchy tunes. Tentatively at first, Ed began to 'sing' it silently to himself: Driscal's heart song, with an added patch of 'notes' every forth beat, which had to be the command to breathe! Ed sang it louder. Again and again he sang it: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH!"
"It's working!" said Mary. "Keep it up and don't stop until I come back and tell you to. I'll go get help."
Though Ed's eyes were closed and he was blocking his awareness of everything except his Driscal heart song, he could still dimly sense Mary step away from him. But he kept singing: the same song over and over and over: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH; TA. TA, TA, TAH-AH!"
"What the hell is going on?" Ed heard Driscal mutter in a voice that sounded weak and far away, but he kept right on singing. Sometimes he heard words and sensed movement around him, but he maintained his focus and still kept singing silent jant chatter: "TA, TA, TA, TAH-AH."
Other thoughts kept intruding, especially thoughts of poor Tracy and Mouse, but he kept singing the song for what was only minutes but seemed to him like hours.
"Ed, you can stop now!" he at long-last heard Mary say.
He opened his eyes. Above him Mary stood. She still looked smashed and terrible but he was very glad to see her. Beside her on her wheelchair sat an enormous metal box, half crushed but swarming with jants. Driscal jants, he was glad to confirm, chattering away with the man's life-sustaining heart-song. Driscal himself was being loaded onto a wheeled stretcher, as were dozens of other people nearby. The fighting had completely stopped.
They had won, right? He, Mary, and Driscal survived. But no, he and his family and Tribe had lost big time: Tracy and little Mouse were gone! Blown to bits! Ed himself felt utterly exhausted and drained of life. He wished that he could drink himself unconscious, but he knew that thanks to his unique body chemistry alcohol had little effect on him. Besides,
before he rested he had to get back to Ann and the Tribe, and share with them the terrible news.
"I don't need a damn hospital," Driscal complained. "It's only my liver and a few other internal organs! I'll be perfectly fine and hanging out in my favorite zombie bar again with friendly mobsters and stuck-up Consortium zombies in maybe a couple of days!"
"Shut up, Frank," said his ex-wife Lieutenant Louise Haskins, who stood next to the wheelchair. "You've been shot and we're saving your damned useless life! And your damned little bugs need time to recover too! I'll buy them their favorite sugar and chocolate candy if I have to! I'll be damned if I'm letting you die again on me! You can't get away from me that easy!" With a mighty heave she lifted and shifted the heavy metal jant-box from the wheelchair to a waiting stretcher. A few stray jants ended up on her, and were running up and down her arms, but she didn't seem to mind much.
"Damn, what a woman!" Driscal muttered, before loudly renewing his complaints, as he and his jant colony were wheeled away, with Haskins shouting out sharp orders at anyone that dared to obstruct their path.
"THANKS FOR THE ASSIST, CLAN LEADER," Driscal's jants told Ed, as they were being wheeled away. "YOU KEPT MY HUMAN PARTS ALIVE."
"NO PROBLEM," Ed replied. as he at last stood up. "YOU KEPT MY HUMAN