Wings

by Fearadhach MecRaudri

  Lucas nodded his head, once again surprised by her ability to put words to the half-formed thoughts of his own mind. “I notice that the bottle of whiskey you have shared with us had a red-wax seal. I suggest we make that the centerpiece of our own private ritual. If the two of us come to you in private bearing a bottle of scotch sealed with red wax, then you know that we have a concern which must be addressed very deeply.”

  Lucas nodded to her again, and felt his lips rising, unbidden, into yet another smile. “Sharon, you have done it again. You have seen to the heart of the problem, wrapped words around it, and come up with a truly elegant solution. I have one thing to add to our new ritual, though. Any time we do this it’s going to be hard on us all. My convictions do not fall easily, nor do they go down without a fight, which is another good reason to make our ritual dependant on both of you being there. After we are through pushing and pulling on each other we will need to let off quite a bit of steam. Therefore, there is one thing to add: after we finish dealing with whatever prompted the ritual, we drain the bottle. And, it is required to be a fairly large bottle!” Both raised their glasses with him, and they sealed the pact with another drink.

  With the elusive words they had been trying to find out of the way, they got down to the business of completing their newfound ritual… getting so drunk that they could hardly stand.

  Chapter 11

  Lucas leaned back in his chair and looked around his empty 'war room'. He allowed himself a small smile at the name. He thought of it more as the 'war planning room'. What he considered the 'war room', the one from which he actually oversaw military engagements, everyone else in The Column called the 'situation room'.

  This room, however, had only two doors, the one behind him led to his office, the other into the depths of Farung Sanctuary. He rapped his fingers on the nearly obligatory oval-shaped table, with a holo-projector in the middle and individual consoles for each seat. He ran his eyes up one side and down the other of the oval-shaped room which seemed fitted to the table that filled it.

  The table itself had the requisite keyboard and basic controls at each seat, and his spot had over-ride controls. He tapped a couple of keys to lock the wall-screens to clear. Some members of his inner circle always tried to put some sort of pleasant pictures up, or even opaque the screens... anything to hide the rough-hewn walls behind them.

  He sighed heavily as the disagreement came to mind. They wanted the room to have a better aesthetic. He had told them flat-out that they could concern themselves with such things when the people of The Column could live free in the open air.

  The expense could not be justified, but that was only half the reason. He wanted this room to be hard, utilitarian. It kept people more focused, and less given to emotional outbursts. He used this room for military briefings, council meetings, or particularly difficult discussions. He could leave the screens off and make it quite Spartan, or could display anything he liked on them and make the room very inviting.

  Today was not a day for inviting. They were going to discuss the repercussions of the raid on the Mob depot in Kendal. They had been given a chance to see how the other sides had reacted, now they needed to decide what to do.

  General John Gencher, his commander for the ground troops, arrived first. A stout man, just shy of being short, with broad shoulders and a slightly broader waist, Gencher was often mistaken for being overweight. In truth, though, the man was practically a walking brick. A terribly aggressive brick, who believed in absolute discipline; for himself and all those around him. The two of them had found themselves at odds more than once over Gencher’s ideas about discipline in particular and leadership in general. He had been a member of The Column’s military command, such as it was, back when Lucas had first joined. The two of them had found themselves at odds repeatedly, as Gencher seemed to think that him too ‘soft’, both in the prosecution of their shadow war and in dealing with internal Column matters.

  The man had, obviously, remained angry from their discussion of the confrontation in the locker room before the raid. He had been forced to pull rank to back the man down, which always made him grumpy. Thankfully, however, the General had come to him first instead of confronting his friends. He already had enough trouble with people wanting the guy removed from the command staff; including Gencher himself from time to time.

  Those who believed Gencher should be removed claimed him to be a better field commander than a strategist, and some would even suggest that he should be in charge of training new recruits. While the idea of not having to butt heads with the man had a great deal of appeal, he knew better. Besides, the General’s strict adherence to the Chain of Command meant any argument could be ended by ordering him to stop. He just hated to do that.

  The man was truly brilliant, as both a tactician and a leader of men. Gencher’s brilliance was one reason for keeping him on executive council, another was that the two of them had formed a solid mutual respect. They would never be friends, but both recognized expertise and results when they saw them and both knew the other was truly dedicated to trying to do what was best. The fact that they usually disagreed about what was best was just something they had to cope with. Something Gencher had to cope with, anyway. Lucas considered it very important to have someone around whom he could count on to give a dissenting opinion. He just wished he could find someone less irritating to be that dissenting voice.

  Sharon came through the door next. She looked downright startled to find Gencher there, and allowed both her disappointment and the fact that she had hoped for a moment to speak to him alone show plain on her face. She looked a question at him, as she so often did, as to the necessity of Gencher’s presence. Lucas allowed his irritation at this to show. She and the General got on about like a cat and a dog in a sack, which in some ways is about what they were. They tolerated each other out of respect for him - although in Gencher’s case he wasn’t sure if it was respect for him or for the Chain of Command - and that was enough. He needed both their areas of expertise.

  His spymasters arrived together and quickly found their seats at a subtle hand signal from Aaron Stovall, The Column’s head spymaster. Lucas had to smile at their ability to read a situation. One of them sat down beside Gencher, the other two took positions near him. This left Sharon to take the position at the end of the table opposite the General, and placed both distance and another person between her and Gencher. He made a note to thank Aaron later. As everyone got situated, he felt the potential for an awkward silence looming ahead of him, and the sight of others in the doorway brought a feeling of relief. The rest of his usual inner council filtered in quickly enough, and a buzz of cautious conversation filled the room. Lucas finally stretched his wings slightly to get their attention.

  “Thank you all for coming, you all know most of the specifics of the raid on the Fendal depot, so I won’t waste a lot of time outlining the situation. The one thing I will say in that regard, however, is that the meat-vats we obtained are practically useless. We think they were prototypes for a new grade of vat, and were never intended to be used to create real food. Jared has told me that the genetic code he was able to glean from the vats will help toward the possibility of one day making our own, but that is all. We are still a long way off from making meat ourselves.

  “With that in mind, the first questions I want answered regarding the raid are these:” The points he made came up on the screens, and appeared on the terminals built into the table. He noticed several people making notes next to some of the points.

  1. What was the Fendal family doing with that grade of weaponry?

  2. Do we know if they have discovered the location of Chandu, our abandoned Sanctuary in that province, yet?

  3. What has been CentGov’s reaction to the raid?

  4. Will the Fendal’s lost equipment be replaced?

  5. Are the operational bases in that province safe?

  6. What are we doing to make sure we still have avenues to bring in food? Will
we lose some or all of our capacity to funnel food through that province?

  7. Do we believe this has anything to do with the loss of the potential to purchase meat vats?

  He gave everyone a moment to read before speaking, “On Chandu: I know that losing the remains of that Sanctuary is something we have had planned for a while, but I want reassurance that we won’t lose our foothold in that area. The populace there has no great love for CentGov, even if much of the reason for that is their failure to stop our clashes with the Fendal. I will grant that they feel almost as much enmity towards us as they do CentGov, but even that is a better situation than we must cope with elsewhere.

  “We also gain too much revenue from there, bring too much food across the line from Outside to Inside there, and it is too good a place for our people to transition from internal to external operations for me to be willing to write the area off. So, with all that in mind, who wishes to start, and with which item?”

  Aaron stood while clearing his thickly-muscled throat. Lucas had to suppress a grin, as often happened when thinking about the incongruity of a muscle-bound spymaster. Aaron was almost exactly what one wouldn’t expect in an Intelligence Chief. He was outgoing, boisterous, and a weightlifter. Lucas supposed it was the near-perfect cover. Intelligence operatives were supposed to be quiet, reserved individuals who kept to the shadows. Aaron probably couldn’t hide his 6‘ 5” frame if he tried. He had a personality which seemed to match everyone’s, and could put even those who knew him to be an enemy at ease so quickly it was almost alarming. Even Gencher appeared to like the guy.

  Lucas yielded the floor to Aaron, and sat down. Aaron started to stand, thought better of it, and leaned back in his chair while steepling his fingers. “I would like to start by addressing the state of our operational bases in the Kendal province. First thing first, we do not believe that anything has changed in relation to the abandoned Chandu Sanctuary. If the Fendal knew its location they would probably have sold it long ago.

  “That said, as soon as we learned of your planned raid in Kendal we began an audit of the security measures at the various outposts there, checked to see which supply lines were likely to be vulnerable to the Fendal retaliation, and launched a fairly extensive data gathering campaign. As far as we’ve been able to turn up, no one has caught on to our change of tactics. They are sure we have a single, large, fully operational base in the area, and that hitting it could kill our presence there.

  “We are unsure how the Fendal mob obtained the weapons which they did, but we believe they were obtained more-or-less directly from CentGov, or with their blessing. The Fendal have no weapons manufacturing capability of their own, this we are sure of, and no ties to any of the other large criminal organizations, especially not ones capable of obtaining advanced weapons.”

  One of the women at the table, a quartermaster, spoke up, “The weapons were turned out by an official factory originally, that much I can tell you for sure. I took the liberty of inspecting them, and they are top-notch. I have no doubt that, at their manufacture, they were destined for the Legion. The clandestine factories which some of the CentGov cabals and mob organizations run are capable of turning out good weapons, but not the masterwork machinery which we took. Furthermore, it was all almost new. Much of it had never been fired outside of initial testing. I would say that they had just received the entire shipment, and were storing it for distribution.”

  Lucas had a stray thought and interjected, “Could these weapons be reverse-engineered to help us with our own weapons production?”

  Someone from production spoke up, “We don’t think so, Sir, but we are going to try. Our problem with production at this point has more to do with building manufacturing facilities than understanding of what we are making. We have acquired samples from what was brought in and are doing are best, however.”

  Aaron waited to see if anyone wished to add anything else, then continued on his original track, “Our suspicion is that the Fendal were allowed to purchase the weapons to fight us. We have been doing a brisk trade in the black market there, since most recreational drugs are outlawed in that province. This has been a source of income for us, and the contacts made through the distribution of the drugs have made smuggling food and material to us much easier.

  “There are a number of events in and near the Kendal province which appear to be ripples from the splash caused by our raid. The most interesting is the fact that the Legion bases in the area are being weakened, with winged men, ground troops, and security personnel being transferred elsewhere. Then there is the fact that the Fendal seem to be moving to a more conflict-oriented posture. We believe they have contacted at least one other criminal organization requesting weapons, and that several of their front organizations are quietly buying them.

  “They also appear to be trying to ingratiate themselves with the public. A number of recreational substances are being sold at a loss, many debts have been excused, and some lines of credit which they had been resisting have been granted… although it is important to note that such credit is being extended only to people who have assets to back up the loans. In short, the organization shows all the signals of preparation for a siege, possibly one they expect to be prolonged.

  “This fits with the first impression of the Legion’s activities, as they tend to reduce their presence when hostilities between criminal organizations have been sanctioned, allowing CentGov to claim a shortage of manpower when the populace starts wondering why the Legion isn’t dealing with the problem.

  “There is a bit of a break in the normal pattern which is worrying, however. More flyers are being left in place than anyone else. This could be explained by the fact that, while the principle city of Kendal does have a large surface-level sprawl, most of the cities in the province have very few large, open caverns for flyers to operate in. Our preliminary conclusion is that those flyers are meant for us, however. It is our belief that someone has been sanctioned to move in on their territory, and that CentGov plans to use that conflict to gather information with which to attack us.”

  Andrew Belenchamp, Aaron’s second in command, stood. Andrew fit Lucas's idea of what to expect in a spy master. Average height, average build, no distinguishing characteristics, no noticeable mannerisms, nothing to set him apart from the crowd. Nothing to make him memorable. Even his clothes played to this effect: a subdued business suit of a sort of light grey color. His voice came out soft, but somehow penetrating so it required no effort to hear, “We have detected a substantial increase of activity coming out of the Senlan criminal organization. It has been apparent for some time now that the Senlan desired to expand their territory, but there hasn’t been any place to expand to. They have been experimenting with smuggling to newly founded, outlying areas, but they have had a lot of difficulty with other organizations who are closer to those areas being able to maintain better control, better supply lines, and better bribes. Their preparations show all the characteristics of one organization preparing to encroach on another’s territory, and we believe that they will begin to move within the next couple of months.

  “Also of note, is the reason we discovered their preparations. They were the ones who canceled the sale of the meat-vats. We had been in negotiations with them for some time, as they were the only criminal organization willing to do something so likely to bring the wrath of CentGov. We were, of course, going to be paying an exorbitant sum for the vats. Our best approximation is that the Senlan don’t wish CentGov to find out they were planning on selling such things to us and risk the opportunity to move in on Fendal turf.”

  Gencher snorted in disgust and waved his hand, “Pardon me for saying so, folks, but So What? Two Mobs are about to beat the heck out of each other. Granted, the chaos in the area could provide us with an opportunity to move some supplies and money around, but that is hardly cause for a war council. I am starting to wonder why I am at this table. I’m a military man, a fighter, and from what I’ve heard so far the guys you should h
ave in here are the money-washing accountants.”

  Andrew did not bat an eye at the interruption, and gave every appearance of listening politely to the outburst. Lucas felt almost unnerved by the man’s calm, and how smoothly he picked the conversation up…almost like he had expected an outburst at that point - which wouldn’t have surprised Lucas at all. “Indeed, General Gencher, what appears - at first glance - to be going on is not something which would, necessarily, be cause for convening this war council. But there are other events which, on the surface, seem unrelated that, taken together, brought us to call this meeting.

  “The first of these we have already mentioned, the Legion has changed the composition of its troop levels in the area substantially. We can’t stress enough the concern that we feel by the numbers and types of troops we are seeing.” Gencher rolled his eyes dramatically, and Belenchamp acknowledge the gesture with a nod. “Of important note is the fact that the bases in the nearest provinces have received all the staff moved from Kendal, and more besides. To put it bluntly, the troop levels and composition we are seeing in nearby provinces indicate that they expect open warfare between the two Families, open rebellion of the populace, or to engage us…or, possibly, some combination of the three.

  “Now you see the beginnings of our concern. A mob territory war is an opportunity for us, but it is a dangerous one, especially with the nature of the game we play in that province. They could very easily flush out locations we don’t want them to find, and the avenues for food we have run through the province will not be stable. The chaos which is coming there will wreak havoc with the supply lines we have built, but will also give us opportunity to create new ones. It is too soon to tell whether this will be better or worse in the long run.