Industry & Intrigue (27 page)

“
It’s Eric. H
e gave us the mother lode,” he
replied, still watching the church. “Barus and another lieutenant,
her name was…uh, hold on.” He pulled out his pocket book and opened
it up. Selim was one of her most detail oriented officers and had a
habit of writing everything down.

“
Inissa Renoch. Anyway, the two
of them are using this church as a distributio
n hub to their smaller
suppliers,” he said. “Both of them are going to be there tomorrow
morning at nine o’clock to oversee the distribution.”

“
Are you fucking serious?”
said Brenna, excited now.

“
Yes, this is
real
,” he
replied. “Eric’s never steered me wrong before. If he says it, then
I believe him.”

She could barely contain her
excitement. Th
ey would be able to catch Barus right in the act. “I need
to get back and tell the captain. We’re going to have to prep for a
raid. We’ll need to pull in other branches for help on this,” she
said.

“
Is that wise?” asked
Selim.
He
was right to be suspicious. Someone as powerful as Mikono could
have eyes and ears on the watch.

“
Relax
,” she said. “Captain Tolov will keep
it strictly need to know. He’s done this enough times. Are you good
with keeping watch here while I go and organize the
operation?”

Selim nodded,
“There goes my
night, I guess.”

He was only joking,
Selim enjoyed long
stake-outs. “I’ll send you back-up, so you can take shifts over the
night,” she said. “And so you can send someone back to the station
if anything changes.”

“
Let me guess.
T
he agorid?”
he asked.

“
He’s not that bad.
H
e was
raised in the city you know, and I want him to get more experience
at surveillance. He has better eyesight than any other officer.
Plus, he’s the best one to have at your side if anything goes
wrong.”

“
I can’t argue with that. I’m
more worried about what will happen if he gets impatient or
hungry,” replied Selim.

“
I don’t care what crazy stories
you’ve heard, Snar is an Alkon, not a savage and he’ll follow your
orders,” said Brenna. She left the building and hurried to return
to the station and plan the raid on the church.

***

The si
lence in the martial arts school was
odd to Mikono. She was not usually here this late at night. The
school served two important purposes for her. It gave her a
legitimate business to operate from and secondly whenever she
identified the right candidate amongst her students she would
recruit them into her larger organization.

The ones
that showed remarkable ability
in physical combat, extra aggressiveness, but did not come from a
well-off family. Those were the factors that were most important in
identifying someone as a good fit for her illegal
operations.

She
was here tonight was in an effort to
lay low after Inissa and Liam’s close call the other night. In
addition to that, the Stoneskins, an orc and human gang operating
out of the Delkirk district, had started a war with her
people.

There had been three firefights, with two
of her dealers being killed. The Stoneskins took their name after
their leader, Lorek Stoneskin. A vicious and nasty orc, they all
wore stone-styled armor to identify themselves. One rumor had it
that Lorek even employed his own blacksmith to make armor for the
gang.

They didn’t know about
her at the moment.
They assumed Barus Asulius was the power and right now he was holed
up in his warehouse, his soldiers well-armed with shotguns and
flameguns.

Once he had sorted out the
distribution tomorrow, the both of them would plan
h
ow to hit
back at the Stoneskins. They couldn’t be allowed to attack her
business. She controlled the drug trade in the southern half of
Alkos City and a lesson needed to be hammered into the Stoneskins
hard enough to break them.

She heard the sound of someone running
towards her office and looked out, it was Inissa.

“
Mikono!” said the woman;
she was panting from her exertions.

“
What is it?” asked
Mikono
. “Why
are you here? After the trouble we’ve been having with Lorek’s gang
and the watch, I said to stay away for a few days. It had better be
fucking important.”

Inissa
nodded
, “It
is, trust me. When I returned to the meeting house there was a
message in your drawer.”

The
kitsune felt the blood drain from her
face. “My watch informant has something for me. Hand it over.” If
her mole was contacting her at this hour, it was especially
urgent.

Inissa handed her a blank piece of paper
and Mikono picked up the reading glass from her desk. It looked
like a regular magnifying glass, except for the light red color of
the glass. The paper had words encoded on it with magic. Her watch
informant had another set of paper that was linked to a drawer in
her school. Whenever the mole had anything to report, the words
appeared on the linked paper. The words could only be read using
the correct decoding glass. She and her informant were the only
ones with a glass.

As Mikono read the words
her
face
took on a look of concern. She placed the paper down on her desk
and said in full seriousness. “The church is
compromised.”

“
But how?”
ask
ed
Inissa.

She could be dense at
times,
the
how didn’t matter right now. “I don’t know, what is important is
salvaging what we can. I cannot afford to lose that tarcaine and we
cannot move it right now. The watch will have someone keeping an
eye on the church if they know the drugs are there.”

“
So what do we
do?”

Mikono tapped her fingers on
her desk.
“Can you get in touch with the priest at this hour?” she
asked.

“
It’s
possible
,”
replied Inissa.

“
Then this is what we will do,”
she said and explained her plan to Inissa. Once she had finished,
she said, “After you arrange everything with the priest, go and
wake Liam up and gather everyone you can. I’ll see to the matter of
the Kartecs.”

Chapter 24

“
All of you know what the goal
is, we hit hard and fast so they don’t have a
cha
nce to
react,” said Niko. He was talking to the large group of detectives
and officers in the briefing room. They all wore armor and had
weapons ready in preparation for the raid they were about to carry
out. Brenna stood next to the captain, ready to explain the target
to everyone once he had finished.

“
Follow the orders of your team
leaders. I want t
his to go as smooth as possible. We jump in, cuff them and
separate them all. I don’t want to see any frontier heroics. This
is Alkos City not Fort Naikos. You do your jobs right and everyone
comes back in one piece. Brenna if you will.” He stepped back to
let Brenna address the assembled officers.

“
Thank you
, captain,” she said. “Our
target is the First Light Church of Varos on Silver Avenue in
Galmouth.” Several officers looked disturbed at this, while others
looked gleeful. The church of Varos was both loved and hated in
Alkos. They started to murmur, but Brenna cut them off.

“
Calm down.
I don’t like it much either,
but that’s where the drugs are,” she said, speaking louder and with
more authority. “As far as we know, neither the priest nor the
church patrons are aware of the drugs. We are only going there to
arrest these two, and anyone that is working for them.” She pointed
at the pictures of Barus and Inissa pinned to the board behind
her.

Brenna pulled out her pocket
watch and checked the time. “The targets are due to meet in twenty
minutes, so we all need to get into our carriages and into
position
now.” The officers all moved. Brenna walked outside and
stepped inside the back of a carriage.

The carriage made its way through the
streets and stopped only when they were one street away from their
destination. The officers alighted and Brenna gave direction to
them to set up. They moved off to get into position. Brenna and the
remaining two team leaders were about to get into position
themselves, when Snar appeared and walked over to
Brenna.

“
Snar? What is it?” she
asked.
He
scratched the fur on his jaw, one of his nervous habits she had
picked up on since working with him.

“
There appears to a
problem that may affect our ability to carry out a raid,
sergeant.”

Brenna rubbed a
hand through her
hair in frustration and remembered the old military saying. No plan
survives contact with the enemy.

“
A large group of individuals
ha
ve
assembled outside the church. Kartecs from the looks of it. The
Varonites have also come out to the front of the church and they
are engaged in a heated debate.”

Brenna groaned. She did not need a
religious confrontation in the middle of the raid. “Ok here’s what
we’ll do. Snar, you come with me. The two of us will see if we can
resolve this. As far as they’ll know we’re a pair of watch officers
on patrol. The rest of you stay back until they disperse and we can
carry out the raid safely.” The other team leaders nodded and ran
off to join their teams.

“
Let’s go
,” she said to Snar. She looked
at his back. He was still carrying his massive battle-axe.
“Whatever happens, don’t use lethal force. We don’t want this going
out of control.” She glanced at him again and noticed the axe was
still his only weapon. “You’re good a fighter Snar and you have
incredible battle instincts. But you may want to consider getting a
firearm,” she said.

Snar held his large clawed hands up.
“While I am able to use the larger shotguns, I fear that to rely on
a gun would be more of a hindrance. Most of them are not designed
with agorid hands in mind.”

He has
a point
thought Brenna.
I could see about getting a
custom gun made for him.

“
Point taken. For today stick to
using those strong paws of yours.”

As Brenna turned the corner
she
saw the
confrontation in front of the church. The situation was worse than
she had anticipated. There were around forty Kartecs gathered in
the street, with their green headwear and gaudy, white clothing
that left plenty of skin bare. The outfits were modeled after the
elven prophet who founded the religion.

Two of them
were shouting at the
brown-robed Varonites, a few of whom had come out onto the street.
The rest were dispersed on the front steps of the church. She could
see that several of the Kartecs were also brandishing handheld
weapons. Planks of wood and metal poles, nothing the watch couldn’t
deal with, but if it turned chaotic there could be nasty
injuries.

As they both neared the two
groups, the Varonite cleric who had been trying to calm down his
congregatio
n
saw them. He waved them over.

“
Officers, please you must help
me
,” he
said. He was too worried to even look twice at Snar. “These Kartecs
refuse to leave. We have done nothing to them, I have asked them to
leave peacefully, but they refuse to go. Can you please talk to
them?” he asked.

Brenna nodded and turned to the
crowd
. “All
of you listen to me. As a watch officer of the Justice Branch of
Alkos City, I am ordering you to disperse and leave
immediately.”

The two Kartecs that had been
shouting and egging o
n the others, both of them elves, looked at her.
One of them sneered. “Why should we? We have every right to be on
this street. Is it not public property?”

“
That doesn’t give you the right
to interfere with other organizations
. You will stand down or I’ll have all of
you arrested for disturbing the peace.” She shouted over the crowd
so they could all hear her. “Is that clear?”

The elf that had sneered at her
turned back to his fellow Kartecs. “Did you hear the watch
officer
? She
wants us to leave. To let these stuck-up heathens continue with
their pathetic rituals to their false Creator God. What do you say
to that?”

A lot of them
chanted
,
“No!”

A sing
le lone voice said, “Fuck
that!”

A stone flew through the air
and hit the cleric in the head, knocking him down.
Then all hell broke
loose. The Varonites, seeing their cleric fall, charged at the
Kartecs, who responded in kind. They let loose with more thrown
stones and started swinging the crude weapons they had.

Brenna ducked as a stone went
flailing past her hea
d. She grabbed the downed cleric and pulled him
away from the brawl. Snar shoved several of the Kartecs aside to
make a path for them. She pulled the cleric up the stairs and set
him down gently.