[Lauchenoiria]

Watchdogs of Our Earth HQ (aka a squat in an abandoned warehouse), Usera, Lauchenoiria

Reyes Calvo impatiently tapped his fingers against a crate that had been co-opted and turned into a desk as he waited for Lupe Casales to check in. His impatience was in part due to fear that something had happened to their people in Milintica, in part due to the early hour of the morning thanks to the time difference, and in part due to the shortage of testosterone thanks to the state of the economy.

“Pick up…” he muttered under his breath as he eyed the cheap tablet he was using to repeatedly attempt to video call Casales. When yet another call went unanswered, he hissed in frustration and threw a tennis ball at the wall. It bounced off and rolled away under the makeshift planks of wood that divided their HQ into what passed for rooms. Then he redialled.

“H… not good… interference,” came Lupe’s voice as she finally answered.

“Sorry? I can barely hear you,” Reyes responded.

“… some kind of block… fine, for now but… Shuell.”

“Shuell? What about Shuell?” he perked up, a sense of urgency in his voice. Any mention of Shuell from someone presently in a warzone was never good.

“… might not happen, but you never… lie low for now… hello?”

“I’m here, Lupe, what’s happening? Are you safe?”

“Hello? I can’t… hello?”

“Lupe, stay away from Shuellians, you hear me? You’ve done good work in Milintica, please come home safe at the end of it all.”

Lupe’s voice dipped in volume as she turned away from her screen and said something in Xiomeran to another person nearby. A Milintican appeared briefly, fiddling with something, and then the screen went dark, the call disconnected.

“Fuck!” Reyes yelled, cracking the tablet screen as he slammed it against the crate. “Of all the goddamned…”

“You ok?” a voice said, as someone he vaguely recognised pulled back the curtain that acted as a door to the small ‘room’ he was in.

“No, can you tell everyone in the Milintica working group to meet in the loft in fifteen? Just had a kinda concerning call with Lupe,” he asked them.

“Is that the political pressure Milintica group or the war one?” they asked, revealing their lack of knowledge on Lupe’s identity.

“The war one,” he replied. “Could probably do with the general coordinators being there as well, this is kind of important.”

“Oh, Luca resigned as a coordinator because he wants to get involved with the arts group and nobody else wants to do it so we’re splitting up the media role with the admin role into two new working groups, if you want to join I can…”

“I don’t have time for this,” Reyes snapped irritably, then pushed past the figure at the curtain to enter the main warehouse.

“There’s a workshop on Non-Violent Communication at 8pm in the city if you’re interested!” the person called after him, a hint of sarcasm in their voice. Reyes resisted the urge to give them the finger.

“Milintica Armed Action group meeting in fifteen minutes in the loft! Tell everyone!” he shouted so that his words echoed around the warehouse. Several people waved in acknowledgement as he walked over to the kitchen area and poured himself a glass of water. They’d managed to connect to the mains water supply a week earlier, it was a relief not to have to cart containers of water from the city.

Reyes pushed out one of the slightly broken doors and walked out into the early morning Yervian sun, sighing. The person who’d poked their head into his little ‘office’ was clearly one of the new members, who didn’t know the protocol and who thought that violence was never the answer. He’d entertained that idea once, but the Chaher regime had stamped any last vestige of it out of him.

“Come on, Lupe, please be alright…” he whispered to the sun as he drank his water.

*

Pierre Residence, Kerlile

Councillor Pauline Pierre sat in a room in her basement that had once been a bedroom for a guard when her family used to store prisoners down there. She was hiding from her youngest three daughters, staring at the wall on which she’d stuck a hundred photographs of her eldest, the missing Olivia. Pauline had never gotten along with Olivia, and an outside observer would’ve sworn that Pauline hated her eldest daughter, but that wasn’t quite true.

Pauline did not hate Olivia, Pauline loved Olivia. But Pauline also viewed Olivia as a political rival, as a threat, and Pauline had always put logic and pragmatism above her emotions. It was in fact true that she’d once (twice) hired assassins to end the life of her eldest daughter, but it was only when Olivia vanished that she realised this had been a grave mistake. Despite what she thought, Pauline was not a robot, and her emotions were now out and rather clear.

“Okay, so she met up with Xia first in Shuell, then Xia seems to have joined their reformist group, and then she and Xia go to Lauchenoiria… they’re taken by some Chaherian group, Aurora Renee attempts a rescue but someone else takes Olivia… what am I missing?”

Pauline bit her lip and reviewed the photos; a mix of grainy CCTV stills and high-quality professional photography from Council-funded parties. There was nothing of Olivia after she and Xia were taken by the rogue Lauchenoirian intelligence agents, and after much thought and digging, Pauline was quite sure Olivia was no longer in the custody of any Lauchenoirian faction. It didn’t make sense.

“Whoever took her timed it so that Renee did half the work for them,” she mused aloud, calling Veronica Penners by her training-name. “So, either it was a hell of a coincidence, or they knew.”

Pauline frowned then, thinking of who would’ve known of the Aurora’s mission. The remnants of the Aurora unit in Kerlile, Alvarez’s inner circle… the Kerlian Aurora remnant was too small and too well-vetted for it to have come from there, Pauline had checked all the members herself. But Lauchenoirian security left a lot to be desired.

She picked up her phone and dialled. “Yes, can you schedule me a telephone appointment with Prime Minister Alvarez? I think she has a mole working for her, tell her I want to help.”