“I am, therefore, altering our ‘deal’ as follows. First, you get no further weapons, at least for now. You will have to make do with what you have. Second, you fully and completely investigate the leak on your end which allowed the location of that cache to become known. If you can’t find it soon enough, I will. Third, you are to begin to actively -yes, I mean spend money- searching for information on The Column in your area. There is far too much of their activity where you are, and I want to know more. Fourth, you will personally draft a letter to me apologizing for your behavior on this call, and explaining what steps you will take to make sure that whatever future instructions you are given are carried out properly.” He saw the other man bristle and prepare to argue, but decided he’d had enough. “These terms are not negotiable. You can follow through with what you have been told, or pay the price. I expect to see reports in the next three weeks, and that apology in forty-eight hours.”
He moved his hand quickly to the disconnect button before Fendal could get a word in. He looked up at the Commandant, who smiled slightly, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth, occasionally looking up. He folded his hands and politely waited for the other man to come out of deep thought.
Sar rewarded Gabern’s patience when he grinned broadly, “This could prove very useful indeed.” His face then darkened a little and his chin dropped slightly as he continued, “I do not like the way that man was talking to you, however. I should not need to remind you that your…”
Gabern nodded, brought one corner of his mouth up in a cross between a half-smile and a grimace, raised his hand slightly in polite interruption, and nodded his agreement with the point about to be made, “My primary duty is to make sure that these gangster slobs do not start getting ideas above their station, and make sure that they conduct their wars in an organized, out of the way fashion. My position, and those like mine, was formed some few years after the policy of recruiting certain organized crime families began to show undesired consequences, like some of them demanding entrance into The Game. Making sure they remember their place is a very important part of my job, and allowing him to show me that kind of disrespect has the potential to be quite dangerous.”
It would have been easy to place the blame on his predecessor for this, but that would have sounded like an excuse regardless of its truth. Instead he pointed out that the man’s effrontery could be used to their advantage, “There is, however, something else to be considered in his attitude. I allowed him a certain amount of latitude in his tone and verbiage. However, every time he pushed at me not only did I push back, but I chopped him off at the knees. I also made it clear that I would only tolerate so much disrespect.
“It is unfortunate that he decided to take the tone and route he did, but I am far more concerned with the hints behind some of his words than his disrespectful attitude. The latter I can make a certain amount of allowance for given the position he is in and the service the Fendal’s have provided in the past. The veiled threats, however….”
He shrugged, “I’m afraid that they are not going to last much longer. The Senlan family has been eyeing the Kendal province for some time now. I may tell them they can go ahead and start moving in. They have the strength, if not by much.”
He caught Sar’s questioning look and explained, “It is true that the Senlan family is vast, with exclusive rights to nearly half a dozen provinces, but none of them are money-makers. Most of them are new mining or farming colonies, with little money in them for their gang to siphon out. Their main function is to keep the labor pool in those places preoccupied with distractions of various sorts, and make sure that anyone who gets out of hand can easily be put on trial for something or other. They should, however, have the resources to push the Fendal out by sheer numbers. Failing that, the struggle should reduce the power of the Fendal enough to take Lorcan down a few pegs.”
“Well, I had considered speaking to you soon about the Kendal province anyway. That place has been a hotbed of both Column and Mob activity for a bit too long. The fact that the Legion has not been able to bring order to fully settled island is starting to look bad. The ‘war’ between The Column and the Mob in that area has provided great fodder for both the news and the movies, but I suppose that this is as good a time as any to settle it down. We really would have had to start acting on it in no more than a couple of years anyway. How long do you think it will take the Senlan to do their job in the area?”
Gabern turned to his console, and pulled up his file on the Senlan family. “Close to a year unless we untie their hands, which would be a terribly bad idea from my current view of the situation. That is, of course, assuming that there is nothing pertinent I don’t know…” He shot a questioning look at the Commandant, who acknowledge the deference shown by the question, and motioned agreement with the assessment, “I’m not sure if they can actually push the Fendal out or not, Lorcan’s pretty tenacious. In a year’s time, however, the contest will pretty much be decided, and then we can choose how to deal with it based on who is going to win.”
Sar nodded his approval as he stroked his chin. “The one thing I will say to that is that either way we need to pacify the area, and make sure that they don’t go shooting things up too much. I am sure The Column is going to take advantage of the additional chaos in there, and we don’t really need them getting any stronger. That stash was fortified enough to be a difficult target. The fact that they are going after targets like that somewhat routinely is getting a bit worrisome.”
The Commandant broke off and looked thoughtful for a few moments, “Truth be told, we could use a major victory sometime soon, even more so if it can be a major victory in fact as well as publicity.” Gabern looked quizzically at Sar in a request for his senior to continue, “We have known for some time that they have a major base of operations in that province. If anyplace is going to have one of those supposed ‘Sanctuary’ base/cities of theirs, that is going to be it. Finding and capturing this base will provide us with two real accomplishments: finding out whether they actually have bases of ‘city’ size or not, and gaining us access to their encryption codes and technology. We know that they have non-radio means of sending messages between their bases, and we suspect that they are using cables tunneled through the rock. If we can find proof of this it will validate our theories…“
Gabern smiled at the realization of the importance of the base’s capture, “And, we can likely follow such cables to another base, giving us another target to wipe out at our leisure.”
”Two other bases, actually. We believe that they daisy-chain messages between bases, so that fewer total wires have to be run. This means that we have the added advantage of disrupting their communications for a while. There are indications that The Column has been getting far too strong again, and capturing the base in Kendal province should tell us whether it is time to start a major offensive against, and weaken, them for a while.
“There is another element of this whole thing which concerns me, though, and that is those meat vats. I assume that the reason you told Fendal to keep those separate from the weapons was that you were putting the information out for The Column to find, and wanted to see which target they would attack?”
Gabern smiled an acknowledgement, “I have been getting a bit worried about the size and organization of The Column as well, sir. I’ve been hearing about this Lucas fellow for far too long and from too many different places. Add to that the fact that we have been seeing a marked increase in the number of serious operations they have been launching, and I believe that they are carefully hiding their numbers while getting far larger than we believe.”
Sar leaned back in his chair and looked at him for a short while before speaking, “So you took it upon yourself to see which target they would go for, under the assumption that if they are growing too large, they would go for the food?” Gabern exercised all the body control he had to keep from sweating until Sar spoke again, “Not a bad idea, given the resources you had at your disposa
l. I can’t say that I am as concerned about the possibility as you appear to be, but I will grant that it is possible. We haven’t done anything to really check on them in some time. You keep looking into the matter, and let me know if you come up with more reason to believe we should be concerned.
“In the meantime, I would suggest is that you proceed as planned regarding the Fendal and the Senlan. Let the conflict go on long enough that we can use it as a boogeyman to scare the populace, then wait for the conflict to reach a pivotal point where it can go either way. At that point you freeze all confrontation between the two, and tell them that whoever can get you the information about the location and entrances to The Column base will be given sole rights to the Kendal province. Even if The Column finds out that one of them has the information, they shouldn’t evacuate the base, since the mobs aren’t known for providing us information like that.”
Gabern snorted, “That is the unfortunate truth. The myth that such information can be used to allow them in The Game is one that we can’t seem to quash. Those stupid bastards seem to believe the press we put out about The Column, even after seeing how off the mark the stuff regarding themselves is. Hell, come to think of it, they tend to believe most of the press that doesn’t directly involve them.”
”That is good to hear, it lets me know that I and the people under me are doing our jobs. This may make your job somewhat easier, then. It will finally put out there something that we *are* willing to pay in exchange for a piece of information like that, which may bring them back down to a reasonable starting bargaining position if they happen to gain such Intel.”
“I hope so. I’m sick of having to destroy perfectly good tools because they happen to find that one key piece of data.” The Commandant looked at him quizzically, so he elaborated. “Well, I don’t want to have to do it again, then. The Bertolia were a useful bunch, and caused little trouble. I still don’t understand why you have allowed the base they found to continue operation. I know we found the data when the Legion took that family down.”
”Well, for one thing, it turned out their information wasn’t as good as they claimed. Yes, they did have *an* entrance to the Sanctuary, but only the entrance’s location. Not how it operated nor where it led. By the time we actually tried to make use of the Intel The Column had sealed that entrance up tight, and there was no way of tracing it back to the base. Oh, don’t look so disappointed, it was worth the effort and cost to obtain. It did give us a better idea of where the base in that province is, and we learned another way in which they disguise their entrances. We will probably find the place soon enough. All truth told that one is probably a fairly minor base anyway, possibly even one they want us to find.
“You see, they never truly abandon a base. If an area gets too hot or too small, or something happens to make a base they have been using untenable, they will ‘leak’ the information about it to us. Sometimes the base is rigged to blow, sometimes it just contains a lot of counter information. Had one like that a few months ago. We hit and destroyed one of their mid-sized bases, probably housed about fifty combatants and another thirty support personnel. We knew it was a good-sized base, but came across the information a bit too easily, and there was nothing of note when we got there. I told them it was a waste of time to even hit the place, but Mendor insisted that HE was the Commander of the Legion. I think he wanted to prove me wrong in front of everyone.
“By the time they hit the place it was nothing more than a listening post. We still don’t know how, but those bastards can cover their tracks well when they want. We lost over sixty ground troops and half a dozen flyers, and only got twelve of theirs. We know another ten to twenty escaped, at least two of those flyers. We got in there and found nothing. They had fried or taken all their equipment, even pulled some of it out of the walls. They drive the spikes for their servers in deep.”
“So, that is why Mendor is talking about resigning. Would it be presumptuous for me to assume that you allowed him six weeks out of courtesy?”
Cohen harrumphed, “Courtesy has nothing to do with it. He is actually a capable man, and I would just as soon not remove him. But he has begun to let the rivalry between our two houses interfere a bit too much with his decision making. I am giving him that much time so that he can make an orderly transition to whomever is selected as his replacement. That, and so that he can transition for regular politics. He holds enough personal power to cause a lot of irritation if backed into a corner.”
Cohen then shook his head and laughed, “Audacity seems to be the order of the day, ‘eh Gabern? First this hyped-up mob boy thinks he can tell you what to do, then we end up discussing Mendor and his attempts to clash with me. I really like the way you made that Fendal guy’s face change colors, by the way. There is an art to that, and you did it rather well.” They shared a laugh at Fendal’s expense, and parodied him for a few moments.
Gabern realized it he needed to wrap up the meeting as Cohen glanced at his watch, “So, sir, it appears we have a plan of action.” Sar returned his statement with a tilted head and a look of slight curiosity. He realized that the make-or-break moment for closing the deal and gaining himself a patron had come. He chose his words carefully. “As you know, Commandant, I have fairly broad authority when it comes to dealing with these criminal organizations. The families tend to give those of us who take this task on a lot of latitude, and just figure that they will fry us if things go wrong. Removing a major organization and letting a war be carried out is the sort of thing that it is better to get approval for from the Families, however. So, do I have authorization to proceed with this plan in full, or should I seek approval first?”
Gabern’s stomach clenched as he saw the Commandant begin to process the nuances of his request. He had just asked him to go to the Families and gather approval for their plan, instead of doing it himself. This left him open to Cohen taking all the credit, but also placed him firmly under his protection. He felt the tension ease from his middle as the Commandant’s eyes stopped their rapid side-to-side movement and he turned a knowing smile on him, “You go ahead and set the initial stages. Contact that other group and tell them they can move in, and let them fight it out for a while. I will take care of approval for our plan.”
Gabern couldn’t help himself from smiling knowingly at the word ‘our’ as Sar continued: “It may take a little convincing in a few quarters, but my backing should put it over easily enough. We probably should go ahead and raise another hot spot once this one has cooled down, but you and I can come up with something to present on that score later.” The Commandant stared off into space thoughtfully for a few moments, returning with a rapid blinking of his eyes, “Yes, I think that will do nicely. I appreciate the extra mile you have gone to here, Gabern. I think that you have the potential to be a rather capable ally and a useful student. We’ll talk again soon. For now, I have some other business to attend to. Keep in touch.”
The Commandant’s use of his first name surprised Gabern so much that the man had made it halfway to the door before he recovered himself enough to respond, “Yes, Sir, Commandant Cohen. I will also keep you fully apprised of the situation.”
”I have no doubt you will, Gabern, that much is sure.” He stopped and turned with one hand on the door to look Gabern in the eye, “Oh, and I expect that you and I are going to be working together a good deal in the future. You can call me Sar.”
He barely kept his composure and level voice as he responded, “Thank you Sar. I look forward to it.” The Commandant left the room with a backwards wave before the sentence finished.
Gabern sat at his desk as he poured himself a glass of his favorite wine, in a toast to his good fortune. Not only had he gained a patron, but he had gained The Commandant himself! And, to be allowed to address him on a first name basis… He needed to make some calls. Some of his cousins would have plans in the works that their new patron would find annoying, and there would be a thousand other details to deal with inside his family. But
he would. Then there would be the matter of arranging matters in the Kendal province. Those islands were going to be a rather chaotic place for a while.
***
The bureaucrat’s hand shot to the comm’s cutoff switch and cut Lorcan Fendal off in mid curse. He pulled out his pistol and put half a dozen slugs into the unit, then fried it with a plasma gun for good measure. He then grabbed his chair and nearly went after it with that before he finally got a hold of himself. That blasted, bloody, insolent child!! If one of his men of that age talked to *anyone* his age in that sort of manner without express permission, he’d have the boy beaten black and blue. That namby-pamby silver-spoon fed cretin had probably never had to do anything more difficult in his life than half of the things he did on an average day before breakfast and yet that man…that boy… had the gall to take that tone with him. He’d built this family from nothing, spent decades bringing them to the position they were in, and now that damnable child planned to take it away. And all because of the bloody, Cloud-damned Column! Their encroachment on his black market sales had caused him to ask for the weapons in the first place, then they somehow found out he had them.
Well, that security hole would be found soon enough. He had more pressing concerns now. He sat down at his desk to calm himself, and reached into the desk’s secret compartment to touch the crystal he kept there, for reassurance. It contained the location of The Column base in the province. He had been hoping to use it as a bargaining chip to bring greater influence to the family, possibly even make them one of the Families of the world, but now it would likely have to serve a different purpose. It might end up being their last hope for survival.
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