Chapter Text
Tanis was, frankly, slightly panicked. The Brotherhood does not tolerate failure well, particular when the stakes got this high. She nearly pulled her gun on fucking Saïd, though fortunately she stopped herself before she made herself look more helpless than she already was.
The fucking phone rang again. Berihun riding her ass again, but leaving it would be worse.
"Tanis here. I'm working on it."
"I'm not Berihun, sister."
"Then who... wait, Admiral Ashur?"
Ashur was one of the best-known admirals in the fleet. He was the best in the armada at surveillance and spycraft, and so everyone called on him, regularly, for intel. Tanis had personally made one of those calls, once or twice.
"Got it in one. I hear Berihun's tearing you a new one with that idiotic Atenist scheme of his."
"Is he trashing me behind my back?"
"No, I just have good internal intel. The tricks I stole from Manhattan have been going well for me."
"Well. I assume you're going to offer to help me deal with this for a price either incredibly high or left as unspecified debt which will ultimately be even higher."
"Somewhat. I'm recruiting for my chunk of the fleet. Have you considered jumping ship?"
"...yes, but I didn't think anyone would take me. And Berihun is vindictive."
"I need more captains. Your snakes are useful, and you're resourceful."
"You're offering to solve my problems, protect me from Berihun, and promote me? There's one hell of a catch hiding there, and I'm not desperate enough to take it blind. What?"
"Question for a question: you're an obvious idealist. So why are you a Phoenician?"
"Who the fuck else would I join? The Templars, who have only recently shaken up from being people who think they run the world because of who their daddies were and we just live in it, and now "just" say that they're the kings by right of being morally superior? The Illuminati, blatant bastards who don't think the world even deserves the courtesy of knowing who pulls their strings? The Dragon, who hide the puppet's strings entirely and manage more total control than the Blue Boys' wildest dreams? The Brotherhood, and money, at least are equalizers."
"Orochi? Venice?"
"Don't make me laugh. Orochi are idiots, kids playing with the grown-up's toys and blowing their fingers off. And the Council - well, if they start blowing their fingers off it will be an improvement, because they'd have to be at least a little effectual to manage it. I considered taking my knowledge to Orochi but they wouldn't believe me, and probably Berihun could execute me right in their HQ if I tried."
"So the almighty dollar is better?"
"Better. Money is the unit of power, and it doesn't care who you are. Bee, lord, muggle, peasant: money's an equalizer. That was my theory; Berihun seems more interested in playing with fire than profiting off it."
"I think he's compromised. But that's for later. To answer your question: I'm angling to impose Chasse-Partie on the Brotherhood. A Tyrian-dyed democrat with valuable skills is exactly who I want in my corner."
"...at face value, I'd be in. But where's your percentage? What's underneath the underneath? You have the power already."
"Berihun isn't an aberration. We're killing ourselves feeding the end of the world, and the hierarchy's too strong for the sailors to call out the captains and admirals. I want there still be a world to deal in in a few centuries, because I think I'll still be near the top if it lasts that long."
"You think he's compromised. Does it go higher?"
"Not going to speculate over a channel that's imperfectly secure. Glomarization, you know. And there's one other goal: legitimacy. I think with a break from our old principles, we can get a seat on the Council again. We sit in Venice and do business as the brokers, and the sky's the limit. The Kingdom gets a leveraged buyout, natch."
"Heh. I'm not opposed; princes or not, the Kingdom are refreshingly egalitarian and honest."
"Blame Silicon Valley, the Nineties shook them up bad. Those who managed e-commerce best are the ones driving their org now, and Cairo rules changed to suit them."
"Your intel isn't just internal, is it?"
"Oh, mostly it is. But the Kingdom like me these days. Saïd's extending me some credit to help you out. So is Agent Osorio - she remembers your tenure as aide in Venice and approves of you getting out from under Berihun's thumb. They'll keep him busy while you and one of my Bees go after the goods."
"We have Bees now?"
"We have for a while, though not many. I have less than a dozen in my fleet, I think less than fifty work for anyone in New Carthage. This one took the name Hannahanna. You can call her 'Han', though."
"She usually work Solo?"
"No, but she's not sick of that joke yet. We'll be in touch."
"Yeah. And just to be clear? Offer accepted. My word on it."
"And mine. Glad to have you aboard."
"Tanis, right?"
"That's me. I need passage to Alderaan."
"Heh. But first things first: new phone. Strip the battery out of the old one, STAT."
"Uh, okay... Done. Why?"
"The morons on New Carthage - and all of the Big damn Three - are using closed-source encryption software. Written by an Orochi cut-out. With a backdoor."
"And no one's noticed?"
"Orochi are only incompetent at magic, OpSec they're good at. They haven't let on that they've pwned everyone's comms, they just give off the impression of having some atypically good seers. This's the 'tricks from Manhattan' Ashur says he stole, one of his people found a record of the backdoor. The only tricks we've stolen from the Illuminati are ones they trusted over their cellphone comms, but it's a good cover story."
"Who else can open everyone's mail?"
"We're pretty sure one of the Talking Heads has figured it out - that's the Illuminati head office. A security team from the Council of Venice has figured it out but it'll probably be a couple years before they manage to convince their higher-ups to take it seriously - it helps them, for once, that they're sticklers for procedure, they're using an open standard so their official comms aren't vulnerable. But their team-internal comms are somewhat vulnerable, so Orochi knows they know and is stonewalling the bureaucracy."
"Ah. Years for a critical security hole did sound slow even for them."
"Yeah, they make the same mistakes every day but this time they had help making them. But to the crisis: you had what, five sophisticated Third Age military artefacts of unclear purpose, and two Second Age, right?"
"Seven Third Age, two Second. And at least one of the Second was a weapon. I do have tracking devices on them, but the Atenists can use them at reduced capacity so I don't have the firepower to make use of them."
"Congratulations, you now have the firepower. Immortal firepower. 'We Are Bees. We Help You.'"
"...sorry?"
"Stupid joke, never mind. Ashur's plan is that we stage a convincing accident that destroys most of them. Grab three or four of the Third Age, detonate one of them in a way that looks like we tried to take them and failed. Leave some Atenist corpses like it's an incompetent frame job. We give one of the Thirds to Saïd as his cut for the distraction, leave the defenses down by the Second Age weapon and tip off the Council team to it, and the other we abscond with and make it look like it was destroyed. Ashur thinks he knows what it is."
"So, Berihun's distracted now and he'll be left with the idea that our rivals scooped me?"
"Yes. Ashur has an internal rep as an informal intelligence agency, so if the Atenists have nothing but you still look to have screwed up, it won't be suspicious that we want to take you on and he is unlikely to try to punish you further."
"Wow. He put a lot of thought into this?"
"He's old. Several centuries. I think he just has a lot of practice."
"Huh. Is he a Bee?"
"Don't think so, but whatever made him immortal he plays close to his vest, even from me."
"You're close?"
"Yeah. I'm a simple woman, he knows I won't betray him."
"What do you get out of it?"
"Good fights, and a boss who points me effectively so I don't need to bother with guilt about indulging my fondness for gore and destruction."
"So, I shouldn't piss you off?"
"You won't unless you try. No, it's Ashur you should worry about. He doesn't get his hands dirty, I do it for him."
"...Frankly? I'm more terrified now than I was before he called me."
"It passes. He's a really good boss if you play straight with him. And a genuinely good person."
"How would you know?"
"Even sociopaths can recognize good people when they see them. And I'm not that bad."
"...I guess. How did he join the Phoenicians?"
"Family. Born onboard New Carthage, he told me once. If he'd been born on another island he'd be trying to reform the Templars instead of us. You can ask him, he'll be more forthcoming now that you have secure comms. But let's get to work."