Morena and the Matriarch

Spies, treachery and counter-espionage

"Why would she note getting a Venereal Disease?"

Deanne kept turning the question over in her head. The Matriarch had asked it when they were reviewing the information -- or lack of it -- that they'd gotten from Morena's ranch. And the question kept bugging her.

Why

would

the premier Rancher of all the Districts, record the fact that she'd gotten a venereal disease? No notes about treatment, or who she got it from... it just didn't make sense. Unless...

Unless it wasn't a venereal disease. VD could stand for some kind of exotic drug. Vitality Drug or something. Or some kind of process... something an associate, not living at the ranch, could come in and do for her, or for her stock, and then leave, without a trace. Or maybe VD was somebody's initials... "received VD" could mean "received" as in, met with.

As long as she was here in Capitol, Deanne could take advantage of the University library and some of the other facilities, to chase down some of her ideas. She decided that was a better use of her time than heading back to spy on Morena.

Once ensconced in the Research Department, she began pouring through their online records. They were nowhere near complete, but the University staff and students were adding recovered data daily and it had actually hit "critical mass", as they called it, where it was actually useful.

She poured through every drug she could think of, by proper name and street slang name, looking for anything that might be abbreviated "VD". She came up with half a dozen leads, only to find out they wouldn't work the miracle Morena had performed. She switched over to pathological procedures and to manufacturing processes with no luck. Her frustration was mounting.

A week later and she was looking up people whose initials were V. D., looking for specialists in chemistry or biology or even the damned priesthood... and having no luck. She was at the end of her rope and ready to give up when one of her searches happened to turn up an entry for Vern Dingle, the founder of Vern's Dale. And it hit her...

Sonofabitch!!

She mentally slapped herself upside the head.

"Received VD"

, she thought.

Received from Vern's Dale! Fucking Goddess! It has to be Alyssa. She would be the only Procurer who could get her hands on that kind of stock. And Morena was out to visit her. But when she and Steven had ridden off from Mossy Hill, they didn't have any men in tow. Just the two of them and the over-large saddlebags... which would have been large enough...

Okay, fuck Morena,

she decided.

I need to go see if I can figure out where Alyssa's getting the product she's delivering to Morena... time to head back home.

Contacting Tara and telling her about her suspicions, Deanne suggested Tara go ahead with surveillance on Morena's ranch while she headed back to Vern's Dale, to see if she could dig up anything on Alyssa and her sister. Tara agreed and Deanne was on the next train to Bigglesby.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Missy, I've got a place in the hills that would probably be perfect, but I'd like your opinion. Can you take a couple of days to go look?"

"A couple of days?"

"Yeah, it's a two-day ride out there, a little less if you push the horses."

Alyssa thought about it for a moment. "Sure," she agreed. "Dosay and the guys can take care of themselves while I'm gone. We've got a bug-out plan if we need it. Give me an hour or so to pack."

"It would be better if we left at night," Steven told her. "The fewer eyes that see where we're going, the better."

"Okay, then I'll just bring my horse over to yours for a new pair of shoes..." Alyssa smiled.

"You can pick her up tonight," Steven nodded, returning the smile.

Alyssa headed back to the house and told Dosay what was going on. She warned her to be careful, to keep the doors and windows locked, shutters closed and so forth. If the guys weren't upstairs, it would be hard to spy on them. Then she packed for five days on the trail.

That evening, after dark, she walked over to the smithy, backpack on and bow in hand. When she got there, she found her horse and Steven's saddled up, packed and ready to go. Steven handed her the carbine and revolver.

"I probably should just give these to you," he told her. "You're gonna use 'em more than I am."

"I'll consider them a wedding present, Steven," Alyssa smiled at him.

"You shouldn't oughta say things like that, Missy," he told her seriously. "It messes with a man's mind."

Alyssa looked at the big man and realized just how serious he was.

"Steven, that's a discussion for the future," she told him. "Right now, we need to ride."

"Amen, Sister," he told her and mounted up.

By morning, they were well out of town and into the broken mounds covered in heather, gorse and bracken which were the precursor to the steep hills and mountains beyond. Once the sun was up, Steven was constantly scanning the sky.

"Never know who's up there watching," he explained as they picked their way through the hills and gullies. "We don't want to be seen. Gonna need a more hidden route, I think."

"Amen to that," Alyssa told him, keeping her eyes peeled on the hills around them.

By nightfall, they were well into the hills which towered over them as they rode along paths carved by waterways in the distant past. There were streams trickling here and there, but mostly everything was dried up. Alyssa figured a deluge could create a bunch of flash flooding, but if you were prepared you wouldn't necessarily get hurt.

"We're going to need to rest the horses for several hours," Steven told her. "We'll need to cold camp and keep watches. The big push is tomorrow afternoon."

"That's fine by me," Alyssa told him. "My ass is sore from riding straight through."

"Then after we eat, I'll take first watch," Steven said. "Most predators are going to come out earlier in the night. You get about three hours sleep, then relieve me. I'll do the same. We're up and out of here before dawn."

"Deal," Alyssa agreed, pulling out sausage and cheese, dried fruits and water. "Help yourself."

The night passed quietly, and soon Alyssa and Steven were packed up and on their way. Just after sunrise, Steven pointed to a small stream off to the left.

"See that beck?" he asked. When Alyssa affirmed that she saw it, he added. "We follow that up through a ghyll up ahead. Gets deeper and narrower as we go in. Three choke points where we'll have to dismount and lead the horses up. After that, we follow it through an old lava tube with its own surprises. That leads to an old inactive caldera. There's vegetation all around the shore and fish in the lake. Cliffs go up several hundred feet around the crater."

"Sounds fantastic," she told him. "Let's do it."

They followed the stream as Steven had indicated and they reached the ravine carved out by the water's flow. The sides rose steadily over their heads as they rode deeper. Eventually they came to a steep wall whose only way up it was a narrow ledge along one side.

"This is the first one," Steven told her. "We'll have to lead the animals. Horses can do it. Mules would've been better." They led the horses up the walkway single file without mishap and continued to follow the stream.

Twice more they came upon steep walls with similar narrow ledges being the only access, and each time led the horses up with no problems. Not much farther, they entered the wide mouth of a smooth tunnel which sloped gently upward. It was tall enough to ride, but after the light failed and they had to switch to electric lanterns, Steven insisted they dismount and walk the horses, carefully.

"There's pits ahead and we don't want to stumble into 'em," he told Alyssa. She heartily concurred.

After about a mile of lava tube, Steven called a halt, handing Alyssa the reins to his horse.

"Wait here a minute," he told her, then took his torch and eased forward. Alyssa was startled to suddenly hear chains rattling and wood creaking. Her light wouldn't reach far enough to let her see what Steven was doing, but he was back moments later.

"Okay, follow me," he told her, taking back the reins of his horse.

She did and soon came across a bridge of heavy wooden planking spanning a huge pit that extended to both sides of the tunnel and was a good fifteen feet across. Steven pointed at the bridge before leading his horse across it.

"We started developing this as a hideaway," he told her, "but never finished it. With your help and Morena's, we can put up proper defensive works. Imagine an infantry charge coming down this tunnel and no bridge. I'd say pour oil in and light it, but we don't know how far down it goes."

Alyssa had to admit, it made for an impressive image.

When they were safely across, Steven went back to the bridge, pulled a couple of pins and went to a hidden crank in the wall, where he lowered the bridge into the pit, hinges towards them.

"That'll slow down anybody who might be following us," he told her, then turned to move on. Twice more he had to raise a bridge into place or hoist a large block of stone out of the way. These he left in place. Alyssa began to see a glow in front of them.

"The light at the end of the tunnel," she commented.

"Is an oncoming train," Steven added, kidding her.

"No, Sir, it is instead the Flames of Hell... the train ran us over some time back," she smiled.

Steven just chuckled and pushed on. They finally reached the tunnel mouth on the inside of the crater and Alyssa was impressed. It was a beautiful caldera, two -- maybe two-and-a-half -- miles across with a small island in the center of the crater's lake. And as Steven had said, vegetation all along the inside of the crater, down to the shoreline. There was even a gently sloping path down to the bottom, along the inside of the wall, to their left.

"Come on," he told her. "Let's get out of sight. It's the one weakness of this place -- anything airborne." He mounted up and rode down into the trees with Alyssa following. He stopped when he reached an area that had been cleared for tents, had a small cistern and well, and a fire scar. Alyssa noticed that there was camouflage netting strewn over the place so that you couldn't see the encampment unless you knew it was there.

"We started this place as a refuge for one of the Outland tribes, but they found a better place before we got this up and running," Steven told her. "We dug that well into the volcanic rock, then drilled over to the lake. It's clean, clear and cold. We lift the water to that cistern and to that trough for the animals. We stopped working on this one when we realized we were going to have a problem with the Navy's dirigibles."

"When the Matriarch kept sending troops out to try and conquer the Outlanders, the people would just retreat up into the mountains and dig in, and eventually they'd kill off the invading soldiers. Then she sent dirigibles out to bomb us. They stopped using hydrogen -- easy to make from water -- when we started using ballista to launch flares into 'em. Now they use helium -- harder to make, harder to shoot down. We can defend the tunnel. The only two ways to invade are climb the outer walls -- like climbing a castle wall except a lot higher -- or airlift them over the top. That's the tough one."

"Otherwise, we can set up a community down here that's self-sustaining... crops and fishing, dug-in workshops and residences. This is what I want you guys to help us build. We could probably sustain five or six hundred people, maybe a thousand, once everything is good to go."

Alyssa looked around, very impressed. "Can you get to the island?" she asked.

"We can after dark," Steven told her. "I've got a dugout stashed over there," he pointed.

"Awesome," Alyssa breathed. "Steven, I'd like to take a walk around the perimeter before it gets dark, then make a quick trip to the island. After that, we can leave under cover of darkness to get as far from here as practical before sunup. If we hide out and rest during the day, and travel at night, that's okay with me. I need to get back and start dealing some people in."

"Whatever you want, Missy," he smiled. "You're the boss."

* * * * * * * * * *

It took Deanne four days to get to Bigglesby Station. It took another day to walk to Tara's ranch where she'd left her horse. And it was another two days to Vern's Dale and home. She was in a rather foul mood when she got there.

She didn't live in town, like Alyssa and Dosay. She had a cabin in the woods outside of town where she kept her captures until she sold them. Right now, her place was empty, which was probably pretty fortunate for the males in the area, since she wasn't particularly nice about how she kept them locked up in the pens.

She'd had a week to think about what Alyssa was doing and how she was doing it. She knew the Procurer had a holding pen in the basement. She knew that some of the time, Alyssa would take her stock to Mossy Hill to meet buyers, and some of the time the buyers would come to Vern's Dale. She also took her stock to a third place Deanne wasn't familiar with.

Any time the stock was to be moved, Alyssa was the one to do it, not Dosay. If the buyers came to the house, Alyssa didn't need to be there because Dosay could handle the transactions. So if she wanted to find out what was happening, she was going to have to follow Alyssa -- which on its face was a very bad idea.

She and Alyssa had been competitors for years, and she'd come to know a number of things about the woman. And the first was, she didn't like to be followed. By anybody. And she had gotten very good at not being followed. Sometimes it was simple evasion -- she was extraordinarily woodcrafty and could lose a tail in the woods very quickly. Sometimes it was by confrontation -- she could be lethal and in your face before you even knew you'd been made. And sometimes it was by treachery -- activating a preset trap on the way by and letting the tail walk into it.

None of the above methods worked out well for the tail.

So it was with mixed emotions that Deanne found herself, the following evening, lurking around Alyssa's home while pretending to be shopping for new knives at the smithy. She kept dawdling, waiting for it to get darker. She figured she'd use the excuse of heading over to the tavern for a drink to swing close enough to Alyssa's to get a peek in the windows.

Or she'd go have that drink, to calm her down, and slip out under cover of darkness to go get a good look at whatever she could see. Then Fate handed her an opening, with disaster written all over it. Alyssa came out of the house and headed straight for the smithy. Feigning the end of her browsing, Deanne made sure to comment loudly to Steven that she was heading to the tavern for a drink and that she'd come back some other time to decide which knives she wanted. She wanted to be sure Alyssa heard her. Then, with an acknowledging nod to Alyssa, she headed on out and towards the tavern.

Alyssa looked around the smithy to be sure they were alone before she spoke to Steven.

"I have the first of the cash -- 200,000. Anytime you want your people to come get however much they need, we can use my 'back door' and keep the transaction out of sight. They'll have to buy the raw materials -- hopefully from all over the Districts -- and get it transported under cover out to the site."

"Can do," Steven told her. "I have people from my network standing by. By the way... how good friends are you with the Matriarch?" He asked it with a completely straight face.

Alyssa stared at him. "Are you

nuts

???" she asked. "

Friends???

Why?..."

"Because I could sure use one of her antiaircraft batteries to set up on the island," he told her seriously.

"You have

got

to be fucking kidding me, right?" Alyssa asked in astonishment. "You don't really think I could ask her for an AA-gun? Do you?"

Steven couldn't hold it. He broke into a big grin. "No... I just wanted to see your reaction," he confessed. "Besides, we know how to use the black market as well as any Citizen."

"We already have a covert team at the site, finishing some of the improvements. The three caves I showed you are being finished off as living quarters. A second well, an extension off the first, is being built in one of the caves. And observation posts are being set up along the crater's rim, in case a land force were to attack."

"The bigger problem for now is a fast exit. We don't yet have a 'back door', as you put it. But we will, given time."

"So Deanne was in here looking at knives," Alyssa changed the subject, walking over to the cutlery. "What've you got that's so special?"

"I don't think it was the knives she was interested in," Steven told her.

"Really? Then what did she want?"

"She seemed to be obsessing on you," Steven told her.

"Me?"

"Yes. She appeared to be running scenarios through her head about different ways to stalk you without getting killed. I think she intends to follow you to the source of your product."

"Then she'd have to start with the house," Alyssa pointed out to Steven -- and the lamp lit.

"Shit!" she exclaimed. "She didn't go for a drink!"

Alyssa turned and sprinted to her home. Quickly looking around, she didn't see anyone. But she heard the back door screen bang shut.

Fuck!

she thought, running to the back door. Deanne was nowhere to be seen, but she could sense that she had just missed her.

Turning back into the house, she hurried to the door to the basement. She could hear the sounds of Dosay getting a royal fucking and suddenly, Alyssa was worried. Easing down the stairs as Deanne might have, she tried to determine what the ballsy bitch had seen.

Peeking around the corner, there in front of her in plain sight, was Dosay up on the table with Gann and Roe fucking her. Hecht was preparing vegetables in one corner, Heath and Sawgrass were playing a card game and Lott was just turning towards the stairs to fetch something from the kitchen for Hecht. None of them was in manacles or locked in the pen.

Alyssa quickly and quietly backed up the stairs and hid behind the couch as Lott emerged, walked to the kitchen, rummaged through the cabinets for something, then headed back towards the basement.

"Were you upstairs a few minutes ago?"

She startled the living hell out of Lott, who froze at the sound of her voice and meekly replied, "Yes, Mistress?"

"Were you in the kitchen?"

"Briefly, Mistress," he told her.

"Where else were you?"

"Upstairs," he answered, now really starting to get scared.

"Why?"

"Because I'd left a box of spices up there that Hecht wanted," Lott told her. "I didn't stay up there long."

"Did you remember to turn off the lights?" Alyssa already knew the answer. She'd seen them on from outside.

"No..." Lott said slowly, then hurried to apologize. "I'm sorry, Mistress, I was in a hurry. I just forgot. I'll go get them now..."

"No, you won't. You'll go back downstairs and wait. When my sister comes up for air, you will tell her and Gann that we have a problem. I will be back in a minute."

Alyssa bounded up the stairs and killed the lights, then came back down, easing out the backdoor, senses on full alert for Deanne's presence. She didn't sense her, so she eased in the direction of the smithy, slipping in the back way.

"What's the problem?" Steven's no-nonsense voice came out of the darkness.

"I think Deanne saw my 'free range' guys, and probably saw one in particular go upstairs and into the kitchen with no restraints or escort. I'm betting she went upstairs to look and saw the dormitory. A light had been left on. I'm going over to the tavern. If Deanne isn't there, I'm going to presume she's off trying to figure out some way to contact the Matriarch. If she is there, she's either playing it cool or someone else was in my house."