I woke up to a buzzing alarm, shortly after sunrise. I groaned for a moment, my eyes refusing to open after a mere 6 hours of sleep. Forcing myself to action, I sat up and put my feet on the ground before I opened my eyes. I felt the blackout function of my wall of windows drop away and sunlight wash over me.
I’m not sure if it was Rin or one of my two new staff members, but someone was taking notes of my schedule and habits and programming the built-in automation features of the apartment to match them. The shower turned itself on as I padded across heated floors, and the smell of breakfast filled the hallway when I was dressed and ready for the day a few minutes later.
I sat down next to Tevin at the kitchen island, accepted the coffee Ali instantly set down in front of me, and eyed the perfectly spaced grid of enriched pancakes that were cooking on the flattop.
Dalls, my stuffy seneschal, stood at the end of the bar and presided over the scene while Ali cooked and Tevin and Rin lounged on tall stools. I got a glance from Rin, a “G’mornin'' with a clap on my shoulder from Tevin, and a quick bow from Ali as she delivered my caffeine fix.
Dalls cleared his throat and spoke up. “I’d like to discuss the plan as we move forward from the trials. I think it’s important that we have a comprehensive plan to tackle this vital mission assigned to us. Consul Spenser, have you considered what your strategy might be?”
Dalls had politely yet persistently been attempting to get me to decide on “policy choices” and outline my plan for winning the dwarves over. While I had countered by reminding him that we were dealing with a totally alien society, and that I was still considered a child in their eyes. I needed to know more about how their society worked before I could begin to understand how to succeed within it.
At that moment though, it was too early for this, so I kicked the can down the road.
“It’s still a work in progress. I’m open to suggestions.” I mumbled over the lip of my mug.
“Very well, sir.” Dalls tapped a button on his tablet and continued on. “I’ve sent you all a message with my attached proposal. I have studied up on the available information concerning Clan Theedrite and their five houses, and outlined a strategy that leverages all of our available resources to maximize our chances of a favorable outcome. If you would all open your documents and follow along, we can start with the first item…”
I’ll be honest, on some level I appreciated Dalls’ focused and methodical efforts even if I didn’t expect him to come up with anything all that useful. However, on all of my other levels, I was either half asleep or focused on my upcoming day with the dwarves.
As a compromise, I let him go on and mostly tuned him out, savoring the delicious coffee and only half listening to what he was saying. He droned on about the need for cultural exchange and understanding, and commended me on my growing beard as a means to engrain myself into dwarven society. Then he spent some time going over the need to outpace the other nations vying for the clan's attention and trade deals.
My attention was finally dragged away from breakfast and back to the conversation when Rin interjected, his eyes half lidded as he leaned forward on the counter and swiped at his tablet.
“Are we going to talk about the leak, the purists, or councilor Mookah’s proposed trade and work alliance with The Sequence?”
“I do not believe we should concern ourselves much with such matters. The council is still split on the decision of allegiance, and the Director is taking every step necessary to contain the increase in terrorist attacks. We need to focus on our assigned task and let the other departments handle their own areas.”
Rin shot me a look before he replied. “If you are unaware, The Sequence and the Zk’Aek, and by extension Clan Theedrite, have been rivals for centuries. The timing of the proposed deal cannot be a coincidence, and neither is the timing of attacks in the area. The stats show nearly a 50% decrease in purist activity in the surrounding districts, and we have received reports from both the West and Southern routes warning of large roaming convoys and missing patrols. All of which started when Nick’s dossier was leaked by someone high enough to have access to it.”
That last part really caught my attention, and I choked down my bite of pancakes and broke into the conversation.
“What? My info was leaked? Why didn’t this come up before?”
Everyone turned to look at me. Rin answered while Dalls stiffened and Tevin looked guilty. “It happened two days ago. We were ordered, as your security team, to monitor and handle it ourselves. To not bother you with the details. I, however, think you should be aware of the whole game board if you are going to have any chance of success.”
“Do we know who leaked it?”
There was a look exchanged between Dalls and Rin, before Dalls rushed to answer.
“Not yet, the ISL administration is working to contain the situation and track down the source. Sir, you should not concern yourself with this and focus on Clan Theedrite. The Director and CLE are working hard to ensure that our city runs smoothly and our work is not interrupted by the delusional designs of ideological terrorists, you should trust them to do their jobs.”
I looked between the two, and settled on Rin.
“Why are you not convinced, Rin?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes at Dalls. “Because, Dalls has too much trust and not enough foresight. We all remember what happened down in Tayhaus, right? Nubranagain has less than half of Oostin’s defense budget and personnel compared to when the uprising happened. All data points to the anti-link factions massing for something big, and we should have a contingency planned for whatever it might be. Plus, the dwarves might be pressured to put forward a counter offer if they hear their rivals are treating with us.”
He finished off the rest of his coffee while I absorbed that information, my mind finally clearing as caffeine entered my system and warred against weeks of almost enough sleep.
“Alright, I am now aware, go ahead and make the plans, Rin. Dalls is partially right, I don’t have the time to worry about anything other than the trials until they are over. I have less than a week left, and between Chane and Tev I’m already spread pretty thin.” I took a long drink of my cooling coffee and noticed Rin was still looking at me, now with his eyes narrowed.
“Then you should cease your range session with Tev until the trials are over.”
That caught Tevins attention and he choked briefly on a mouthful of hash, causing him to cough a few times before he could throw in his own opinion.
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“Woah, if we’re under imminent threat. Shouldn’t he be training even more? He still forgets to release the safety for half of our draw-and-fire drills, and we haven't even started on hostile extraction sims.”
Rin shook his head. “I do not think he should quit them entirely, but he should be well rested for the trials.”
I nodded along, liking this idea. Range time with Tevin was often fun and had its moments, but having zero downtime was starting to wear on me.
“Sorry, but I think he has a point, Tev. It's just for a week though. We can find a new routine when the trials are over and things level out.” I patted his slab of a shoulder, and pivoted the conversation away. “What was that about The Sequence though, you said something about a deal with them and the Council?”
Rin lazily swiped his tablet as he answered. “They’re offering technological assistance for rare resource extraction projects along the Blue Ridge Mountains, and a massive labor contract. It’s a pretty terrible deal, they will still own all the equipment and take most of the profits.”
I nodded, taking Rin’s word on the deal. “Makes sense to me. I know the clan has fought with those soft-skulls before. How much support does it have in the Council?”
I used the dwarven slang for The Sequence, an older and insular species who looked almost like humans, only with extra long heads and prominent bone-ridges on their foreheads. The ridges protected holes in their skulls that were tied into their moderate psychic abilities.
A fair few of the aliens within the game had various levels of psychic abilities, and the Factions layer had a whole system to translate them that I knew next to nothing about. The Sequence were known to be dismissive of species who were incapable of their elegant speechless communication though, which is what had led them to their rivalry with the upstart Zk’Aek faction.
“Only three so far; Manufacturing under Mookah is pushing the hardest, Extraction’s Stelldal is the second, and I think Herschel from Entertainment has been roped in for past favors owed.”
I ran my hand through my hair, wishing I knew more about my own damn government. I’d never bothered to pay much attention to the details, and while I knew the names of the eleven major guilds that ran the country, the general inner workings of the Council and their staff was entirely opaque. Most of my schooling on civics and history from before the Links arrived only went over the great historical figures and the founders, with very little attention paid to the modern workings and leadership of today.
Accepting the reality of my new position, I resigned to spend some time filling in the gaps of my knowledge about these influential and powerful people that I was now working almost directly underneath.
“Okay, okay. If you can get your hands on it, can you send me a copy of the deal? And once the trials are over, I’ma have you and Dalls go over the Council members with me in detail. I have to get going for the day though, I’m due in the Row in another few minutes.”
I stood from the bar and pushed my chair back in. “Thanks for breakfast, Ali. Someone send me a message if anything major happens while I’m Linked up.”
To a chorus of goodlucks, grunts, and formal parting platitudes, I broke away from the group and walked down the hall to my personal Link. A few moments after that, I was back in the hub and pushing through the crowd to the nearest Factions portal.
Chane’s daily drills started off with a problem. These sessions were mandatory for all of us, Chane included, and Korfook was nowhere to be found when the class was supposed to start.
After 10 minutes of waiting, we were sent off in pairs to go seek him out and drag him in. I was paired up with Lurbolg, the purple eyed and easy going dwarv I had come to know as the best kind of lazy, and we all scattered throughout the House’s slice of undermountain to look for the missing dwarv. We were ordered to carry our heavy shields as we looked, as a mark of shame for our whole Row. One of us was missing for muster, and the whole House would see it as we roamed the hive looking for him.
“I think I know where we can find him.” said Lurbolg as we left the Rowhouse and started down one of the major staircases.
I let him lead the way as we descended a few floors, traipsed through a storage room, and slid down a narrow chute for a few hundred feet that ejected us onto a crunchy pile of discarded packaging. From there, we crossed a dim warehouse-feeling area and got a few looks from a pair of dwarves who were busy operating power equipment and pushing around piles of scrap and trash, or relocating heavy pallets stacked with large crates.
Next to a long bank of stacked pallets, we found a normal sized metal door with a colorful warning sign embedded into it. Lurbolg pulled it open to reveal another downward staircase, this one thankfully quite short.
The last staircase twisted in a quick 180 and deposited us into a dark crawl space crammed with service walkways and clogged with the lower halves of the machinery and venting for whatever the floor above us was doing.
I was starting to get a little nervous. This felt like a place we were not supposed to be, and while I didn’t truly think Lurbolg was leading me into an ambush or anything sinister, the thought did cross my mind.
The sound of the machines filled the air, but after a few moments of walking the winding path I caught the noise of deep wracking coughing, followed by laughter and more coughing. Lurbolg grumbled something under his breath and when we turned the next corner we were met with something like a foggy plastic curtain that was stretched into a seal between the wall and a bulky machine. The translucent sheet was spiderwebbed with clear veins, sort of like a large leaf, and stuck in place all around the edges with a thick clear glue.
My companion dwarv ripped the sheet away to reveal a small smoke filled makeshift chamber made from the translucent material, centered on a dimly glowing volcanic vent about 6 inches wide. Korfook was lying next to the vent on his back, laughing and coughing while he made a crawling motion with his arms and legs in the air, rocking back and forth on his back like he was stuck, but having too good of a time to want to do anything about it.
Lurbolg cursed and grabbed one of Korfook’s hands to drag him away from the harsh smoke that rolled out of the makeshift chamber.
“Don’t breathe too much of this stuff in, Kaninak. Blasted fume-head.” The purple eyed dwarv pulled the dread-headed Fook out of the cloud towards me. “Pull ‘em back, I'll get the vent.”
He let go of the giggling dwarv who was still flailing his limbs around, I held my breath and struggled to get a hold of one of his hands to drag him further away, while Lurbolg returned to the smoking vent and kicked a matching pipe that hung from the ceiling back into place. He knelt and secured the piping back into place, and I finally managed to grab one of Korfooks feet and dragged him a few paces away from the smokey section of walkway.
“Heey, hahaha, what’s up? What’s down? The smoke has cleared and all revound.” Babbled Korfook as I strained to drag him across the metal grating.
He wasn't even looking at me as I dragged him and I was hesitant to be the one to try talking to him, especially in the state he seemed to be in. Korfook had remained distant since our first day of training, which I was okay with. He still seemed to be holding some grudge against me that I thought there was no real basis for. He pulled his weight on the team most of the time and had left me alone, other than an occasional mean look or overzealous shield-press drill.
I backed away and gave Lurbolg a worried look. “What's wrong with him?”
He grunted and stomped back to us, I’d never seen him with anything but a relaxed little smile on his face, and the scowl he currently wore highlighted his sharp features. “Fume dust. Something we’re not supposed to do until we pass the trials, Korfook, you idiot.”
He gave the still babbling and laughing dwarv a light kick to the ribs. “Many of us still play around with it, but we all know you have to time it so you’re sober in time for training!” He gave another little kick.
Korfook, for his part, twisted around and grabbed onto Lurbolg’s leg. “Lurbolg, my friend! We are ready, the seconds are thirds and grouting for words!”
I eyed the intoxicated dwarv skeptically. “You choose to be like that?”
He waved my comment away. “It can be fun while it lasts, and there’s no harm if you aren't a dumbass about it!” He directed the last part of his reply to Korfook, who was still babbling nonsense and reaching up to tug on Lurbolg’s shirt as he curled around his leg.
“Yezztizz is safe, we undergrand late.”
I looked to the messed up dwarv, then back to the scowling sober one. “So… We drag him back to the Row?”
Lurbolg nodded, “Yeah, Chane will sober ‘em up and decide what to do.”
So, that’s what we did. I helped Lurbolg pull Korfook into a modified fireman's carry, we picked our shields back up, and then we started back up through the maze of tunnels and stairs.