Morena and the Matriarch

Nefarious Schemes and Long-term Plans

Four weeks later, the Matriarch was still fuming.

The Festival had gone well, the people were happy and her position was once more secure. But she wanted that damned source of Triple-A Perfect and she wanted it NOW!

"Mistress, your Chief of Security is here," Madge announced from the doorway.

"Send her in," the Matriarch instructed.

"She's got two 'guests' with her," Madge added.

"Fine. Send them in, too," the Matriarch snapped.

Madge stepped out of the way and the Chief walked in, followed by two other women. When the three got to the Matriarch's desk, they stopped.

"What have we got, Chief?" she asked, then looked up.

"Mistress, I would like to introduce Mistress Tara, a Rancher, and Mistress Deanne, a Procurer. They have agreed to aid in our investigation, with the utmost secrecy, of course."

"Where is your ranch, Tara?" the Matriarch asked, surveying the woman. Mid-to-late forties, weathered, seemed familiar.

"Out near Bigglesby, Mistress," Tara told her. "Same as Morena's."

"And you?" she turned to Deanne. "Where are you from?"

"Vern's Dale, Mistress. On the edge of the Wilderlands."

"Where the best hunting is, apparently. Okay, so what have you been told?"

"Not much, Mistress," Tara spoke up. "Except that recently some Triple-A Perfect product has appeared and in quantity, and you want to know where the source is. You suspect it has something to do with Morena's ranch."

"That's a pretty good summation," the Matriarch agreed. "You missed the part about the research having nothing to do with me."

"Of course, Mistress," Tara agreed. "That would always be the case."

"Here is what I am offering. I will advance each of you 1,000 for expenses. I will pay an additional 5,000 for any solid information about Morena's source of Triple-A+ product. Solid means being able to give me a location, whether it is in her stables, cooperating with another Rancher, some new source of stock - and if so, who the Procurer is - and so forth. I will pay an additional 5,000 for detailed information, such as pictures, or the names of the donors, or delivery routes if she is getting it from someone else. That is a total of 11,000 for a very successful mission. Each."

"I want to know enough about her operation or supply to be able to seize the specific assets and charge her with the crime of treason, specifically interfering with the life, health and well-being of our citizens by manipulating government resources to do so. "

"Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am, you do," Tara answered.

"Yes, Mistress, quite clear," Deanne affirmed.

"Then my Chief here will get you your advance and this is the last you will contact me unless she determines I need to meet with you. This is completely off the books and everything goes through my Chief of Security. Is that understood, as well?"

"Yes, ma'am," they both agreed.

"Then be on your way," the Matriarch told them with finality and looked down at the report she had been reading.

The two women quietly followed the Chief out the door.

* * * * * * * * * *

"I take it you do not value your life..." the Matriarch commented, looking at the woman before her. They were alone in the Matriarch's private study. She did not trust this conversation to her office.

"I value my life highly, Mistress," the woman responded in a slightly surprised and fearful voice.

"Then how was Mistress Morena able to supply over 5,000 milliliters of high-grade semen for the Festival?" the Matriarch demanded.

"You are the head of the Micropathology Department at my University and you promised me that you could develop an immunogen which would render Morena's entire stock tainted to sterile inside of six months. My Bureau of Medical Practices has been salting her food supply with your creation for over a year now, and she is still capable of producing high-quality semen, in quantity. So either they're fucking up, or your immunogen doesn't work."

"Fucking with me will get you the death penalty," the Matriarch reminded the woman.

"Mistress, I assure you it works," the woman protested. "It has worked in every test we've run on it. And there have been reports of Mistress Morena having to turn large numbers of her stock out to Pasture. Those specimens we've managed to recover alive for testing have shown markedly decreased quality, some almost sterile. She is certainly not waiting for them to become sterile before getting rid of them."

"The bigger questions are, Mistress, how is she replacing them, and how are the replacements avoiding ingesting the immunogen?"

The Matriarch thought about this for several moments, then instructed the woman, "you may go. Outside the door, you will find a servant to show you the way out. Have her send in my Chamberlain."

"Yes, Mistress," the woman replied quietly, attempting a curtsey.

She left, to be replaced by Madge.

"I need Gordon, from the BMP. Bring him here under the strictest confidentiality and security."

"Yes, Mistress," Madge acknowledged and left to do exactly that.

Somehow, Morena is getting around my sabotage,

she thought.

I've got to figure out how she's doing it, and adjust. That woman needs to fail before next year's Festival. She has become way too popular. Hell, some reports have her more popular than me! And that, I will not stand for...

* * * * * * * * * *

"We're going to need a plan to distract her, so I can snoop," Deanne was telling Tara. "I've been in her stables and know what to look for. And I can avoid Rodriguez - unless we can get him out of the stables as well. Her stock won't dare mention seeing me, if they do, because they'd be afraid of ending up dead."

"Also, I'll have to figure out a way into her basement. Rumor is, she keeps long term product storage and records down there. I'll need something I can scan documents and such with... and that doesn't come cheap."

"We have a portable document scanner at our ranch," Tara told the Procurer. "You can borrow it. Break it and you've bought it. I can probably drum up some pretense to visit Morena and get her engaged in a conversation that will draw Stella in, too. Not sure about Rodriguez, unless I can figure out a way to get her to have him bring me one of her herd for inspection. This will be tricky. Morena won't be easy to fool."

"Maybe some lucrative business deal?" Deanne suggested. "Combine resources? Tell her you were really impressed by her product this year and you'd like to partner with her, maybe improve your own stock. You'd seem like a greedy bitch, but then she'd be expecting that. You're probably the only one that hasn't overtly stabbed her in the back."

"That's why she won't be easy to fool," Tara pointed out. "She'll be wondering where I'm hiding the knife."

"You don't have to agree," Deanne pointed out. "Just propose. Long enough for me to get in and out and find out where she's stashing the good stuff."

* * * * * * * * * *

"I can't think of anything you can offer that I need, Tara," Morena told the woman sitting across from her.

The Rancher had requested a meeting and had come to Morena's ranch, ostensibly to pitch some form of cooperation. So now Morena, Stella and Tara were sitting in Morena's parlor, sipping on iced tea and talking.

"Morena, I know you've got the best operation going," Tara told her. "But it has to be straining your resources to keep up that kind of production. I could partner with you, you could show me how you get such high quality product from your herd, and we could at least double your output, maybe triple. And we could split the profits 60/40 in your favor. Or even 65/35."

"Okay, I know what's in it for you," Morena acknowledged. "Your quality goes up, your volume goes up, your sales go up. I just don't see what's in it for me."

"Volume, Morena, volume," Tara told her. "The Festival is one thing, and yes, it's the largest single order that gets placed every year. But in the off-season, we're still producing. In your case, you're probably preserving the cream of the crop. But you have to live off something, so you're selling what you don't preserve. I don't know which clinics you have contracts with. We Ranchers are a very secretive lot. But if we partnered, we could fill a lot more contracts, maybe even take some away from the other Ranchers. Basically, you get to dominate the marketplace."

Morena sipped on her iced tea. She wasn't about to let on to Tara that she already had a lucrative off-season business with clinics across all the Districts. And with Alyssa's contribution, it was just going to get better and better.

"Look," Tara went on, "I'll trust you and give you some numbers. I've currently got about 200 head that I'm milking. Some of them are A+, maybe 10%. Those I can sell to the clinics in no time. Half my herd is B+ or better. Those I can sell to the outlying districts who are desperate for clean product. The rest of my herd is below-B and I have to throw it out or sell it on the black market to unscrupulous resellers that cater to desperate people who don't care about possible birth defects."

"If I could run my operation without the income from the black market, I'd dump my low end out to Pasture in a heartbeat. But I can't, without raising my quality. That's why I want to partner with you. My sales improve, I get out of the black market business and you get the Lioness' share of the rewards."

To Morena, Tara sounded desperate.

"So what's in it for me, again?" Morena asked.

"An expanded market and an increased return for little additional investment," Tara told her. "Between us, we could sell to

all

the Districts, maybe capitalize on some that aren't getting decent service. I would just need your help improving my production quality. I mean, you have to have

some

way of getting such consistently high grade product."

"Most of it is in the breeding, Tara," Morena told her. "No magical process. Over time I've paid good money to get the best stock I could, sometimes more than I should. And yes, I do skim the cream of the crop for the Festival. But otherwise, it's all in the donor herd."

"Morena, Triple-A+ Perfect hasn't been seen in decades. Maybe centuries. And all of a sudden, you've got it. You have to have

some

way of getting that kind of quality out of your herd."

"Tara, you aren't going to believe me when I tell you it's just dumb luck," Morena told her. "But really, there's no magical process or special diet or anything other than very healthy men."

"I'll think on what you've said. There may be something there, there may not. I'll have to let you know. I'm sorry you rode all the way over here to get a

'sorry, I'm not interested right now'

, but that's what I'm going to have to tell you."

Tara looked at Morena, trying to judge if Deanne had been given enough time to gather her intel. She decided she had, and it was time to leave.

"I'm sorry to get a 'not now', too," she told Morena. "And please, if you ever even consider changing your mind, please let me know. We're nearby each other, relatively, and I think we could make a solid partnership. Can I water my horse and fill my canteen before I go?"

"Sure," Morena smiled, rising. "I'll walk over with you." She wasn't about to let Tara loose to wander around her stables unsupervised.

* * * * * * * * * *

"What do you mean, NOTHING???" The Matriarch was having blood pressure problems again.

"I mean literally nothing, Mistress," Deanne iterated. "I have copies of her breeding records going back ten years. I have copies of her current production tests. I have pictures of her herd... all 132 of them. I have disposal records for the ones she put out to Pasture. There is absolutely nothing in her records, or obvious from the men in her herd, to indicate where she got the Triple-A from."

"She has to be hiding it, off the books somewhere."

"There has to be some record, somewhere, of her paying someone for that product!" the Matriarch stormed. "She wouldn't conduct business completely off the books... too easy to get screwed."

"Unless she knew she had a gold mine and was protecting it," Tara put in. "She's all 'best of breed' on the surface, but she's hiding something. I just can't figure what. Maybe it's some special drug she gives the men, or something. There's only one entry in her books that I can't account for, and I've gone over them with a fine-toothed comb."

"What entry?" the Matriarch demanded.

"There's an entry dated just before she came to Capitol last month. All it says is 'Received VD' and a check mark. Nothing else. No number, quantity, price paid, anything."

"Why would she note getting a Venereal Disease?" the Matriarch asked, completely confused.

"I have no idea," Tara told her. "She documents everything else... and I mean everything, right down to the food she buys from the Co-op for her herd. She's meticulous."

"Well, I want you to dig some more, check into her movements, see if she's buying drugs on the black market, whatever... I want to know where the Hell that Triple-A came from!" the Matriarch fumed. "Figure it out, with proof, and I'll double the reward."

Tara and Deanne nodded their understanding and withdrew, to be met by Madge, who escorted them out.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Stella, were you working down here in the archives?" Morena asked.

"No, Mistress, why?" Stella answered, coming over to join Morena in the basement.

"Because there's a number of things out of place, here," Morena told her. "I keep records exactly where I want them, sorted in the exact order I want them, and indexed exactly the way I want them and a lot of these records are misfiled. Who else would have been down here except you?"

As the two women looked at each other, thinking, the lamp began to light.

"Tara!" Morena said.

"She must have had an accomplice, someone to raid our records while she was talking to us!" Stella exclaimed.

"What's missing?" Morena asked, feeling panic setting in and turning to her piles of records.

She and Stella searched through the entire set of archival records and found absolutely nothing missing... just misplaced. Morena finally gave up and looked at Stella.

"Whoever it was, they must have gotten copies," she said. "And it seems they only went back ten years, so they must have been in a hurry. But they were thorough. Based on the mess, I'd say they now have a complete record of my ranching notes and records for the last decade."

"Maybe Tara was hoping to find the secret to the Triple-A down here," Stella suggested.

Morena thought about it for a long moment.

"It isn't here," she finally said. "I didn't keep a record of it. Safer that way. And now I know I was right to hide it. Gods, what would the Matriarch do, if she thought she could just raid my records and figure out my secret?"

"Who says she didn't," Stella asked. "Maybe she put Tara up to it. Blackmail or something."

"Good point," Morena agreed. "Time for damage control."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to complain to the Council about getting raided by a person, or persons, unknown," Morena told Stella. "But first, I'm going to send a warning to our partners. Just in case someone has them under surveillance as well. We do have the frequency for the Vern's Dale Post Office, don't we?"

"Yes, we do," Stella confirmed. "What do you want to tell her?"

"Tell her, 'just got it without lube - watch yours - see you at the Inn asap - confirm'. That should get her attention without giving it away. When she gives us a date, we'll ride out to Mossy Hill and meet her."

"On its way," Stella smiled and headed out to send the message.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Missy, you got a call at the Post Office," Steven told Alyssa, standing in her doorway.

"Thanks, Steven," she smiled. "I'll go pick it up in a minute." She turned back into the room.

"Incoming, Dosay," she called. "I'll be back in a few!" Then she headed out to the Post Office.

A few minutes later she was back, holding a piece of paper in her hands and looking confused.

"Dosay!" she called out, and her sister appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Yes? What's the matter, 'Lyssie?" she asked.

"Team meeting in the Dungeon, now."

Dosay didn't hesitate. She turned back into the second floor, calling out to the others. Within three minutes, Alyssa and Dosay were holding a meeting in the basement with Gann, Roe, Hecht, Heath, Sawgrass and Lott.

"There seems to be a problem," Alyssa told them, and shared the contents of the message.

"If Mistress Morena thinks she just got raped and we need to watch ourselves, then we need to take her seriously. So for now, move living necessities down here, don't be seen upstairs and I'll get my butt to Mossy Hill. I confirmed I'd meet her tomorrow."

"You may want to deal Steven in on this, Mistress," Gann told her.

"And if we need to leave unobserved, Mistress, there's the way you got the other men in here," Lott suggested. "Of course, we'd need somewhere to go."

"Okay, two good points. I'll talk to Steven. Gann, you pick someone to help you and you get food for several days, clothing and shelter stored at the end of the tunnel, in case you need to bug out. Dosay will show you the way. The burnt out farmhouse can actually be used as a temporary shelter if we need to hide you for awhile."

"Yes, Mistress," Gann nodded.

"And if something happens to me and Dosay, I'm going to turn your health and welfare over to Steven. Maybe he can smuggle you out of here and to someplace safe in the Wilderlands," she added, trying to think ahead.

"As far as I'm concerned, you're free men. But you haven't got papers, so staying in town isn't an option. I expect you to take care of each other as best you can."

"Yes, Mistress," they all echoed.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alyssa caught up with Steven at his forge. She waited until he'd finished with his last customer, then showed him the message.

"I'm meeting her tomorrow in Mossy Hill," she explained. "Steven, if things go belly up, can you get my men to safety? They'll be ready to bug out if they need to, but if Dosay and I go down, I'd like them to at least have a chance."

"Sure, Missy," he told her. "In fact, I been meanin' to talk to you about that..."

"Really..."

"Yeah, actually," he smiled. "What would you think of creating an Asylum for men who are being hunted, to keep them safe and free, in exchange for pure product?"

"An Asylum?" Alyssa iterated.

"Yeah, it's like this..." Steven settled back. "There's a whole network of us free men out there, tribes and solos, that are tired of runnin'. And not just here. All the other Districts, too. And a lot of them are Triple-A Perfect. That's one of the reasons they're hunted. Somebody found out about 'em, their names went up on the Wanted boards, and now they haven't anywhere to go, except into captivity."

"Free range Triple-A's???" Alyssa echoed, shocked. "Did I hear you right? How many?"

"Well, there's maybe a hundred that I know about," Steven told her. "Maybe more."

Alyssa sat down on the smithy floor, hard.

"You're kidding me," she whispered.

"No, I'm not. I haven't got the money to buy the materials to build a truly safe haven. But between you and Mistress Morena, maybe you could swing it. It'd have to be way off the books and hidden. Very, very hidden. Maybe out in the hills. There's some places I know about."

"A hundred Triple-A's???" Alyssa almost whimpered.

"Now, don't go getting greedy on me, Missy," Steven warned. "I'm talking to you because I've seen how you treat your men. We can make this work if it's complete cooperation and complete secrecy."