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Luche was so ready for today to be over.
Tonight, really. It was half past two already, but he had another five hours on his shift, and likely another half an hour after that of forced socialization and check-ins with the day shift coming in, and the bullshit would not stop coming.
He was grateful, he was, that Drautos had trusted him enough to give him access to part of his intelligence network. It was more than the opportunity to get his hands directly on the information coming in, more than an extra duty on top of the normal night shift duties, it was a sign of trust, of security, a sign of the formal authority that the Glaive lacked but that Insomnia judged everyone by. If it was his name coming across the desks of the intelligence analysts in the Guard, if it was his reports going to the King, then maybe he would have enough trust and recognition when he went to bat for the other issues, would be trusted when he said the situation out on the front, the situation back home was not one that could be sustained. Maybe they could get what they needed if he just could get his foot in the door and get someone to listen—
His pager beeped obnoxiously, pulling him out of his train of thought. What fool had gotten themselves in trouble so late at night? Luche fumbled with the buttons for a moment, cursing the finicky thing and the endless menus before he finally got to the message. There was no callback number – typical, unfortunately – but the standard message said there had been suspicious activity near the East Door.
Luche groaned. The East door was the one that lead more directly into the second floor Officer’s area, so a disturbance there was either a drunk or insomniac Glaive who’d fumbled their attempt to get in or it was a serious problem because some punk on a dare was about to get access to important information. Either way, it was something that probably did require him to come help out, and since Sonitus had been the one on guard duty there, he’d not have much luck if he called down for more info directly.
As if to punctuate his thought, a second text came through, this one urging discretion.
Luche leveraged himself to his feet, and sent a perfunctory plea to the stars to keep the Captain’s contacts from trying to ring through in the time it would take for him to deal with this. He’d gotten Pelna to walk him through forwarding calls to his pager, and Minevra (never Minnie) had verified it worked for him with the kind of exaggerated patience that meant he was just a step away from a fiery explosion or cold revenge, but he still didn’t fully trust that it would work. He sent out a ping to the rest of the glaives on guard duty and locked his computer before slipping out the door as quickly and quietly as he could.
He made it down to Sonitus’s guard station in pretty good time, getting all-clears from the rest of the guards and late-workers as he went, and even remembering to switch the pager to silent after the first one came through. He grabbed Secundus when he stumbled across the man reviewing flashcards and wandering the hallways, and breathed a little easier knowing that he had a second fighter – and a medic-in-training, to boot, if not a full medic – to help wrangle idiots of the glaive or civilian varieties.
“What’s the situation?” Luche asked softly, trying to look casual as he stepped up next to Sonitus, who flicked his eyes up from the monitors to acknowledge him. Luche couldn’t see much over his shoulders, so he didn’t know what the man was worried about just yet, which was the kind of frustrating the whole night had been, but at least he had competent backup for this problem.
Sonitus shifted slightly so Luche could see, and he silently blessed the man as he scanned the different angles for what Sonitus had noticed. A helpful hand indicated the left-hand monitor, which showed the cobbled street outside the door but nothing more that Luche could see at the moment. He held his tongue, though, and waited to see what the problem was.
Fifteen long seconds later, one of the larger cobbles sprang up and pounced on something Luche couldn’t see, its long tail flicking as it wrestled with the air. Sonitus was grinning broadly, studying the cat with a sort of pride.
“Is that Blaster?” Luche asked flatly, still staring at the screen.
Sonitus nodded, still with that weirdly proud smile.
“Did you call me down here for Blaster?” Luche tried again, feeling the storm of emotions underneath the deceptive calm of his need to gather information.
Sonitus nodded again, leaning back casually into his chair while still staring at the monitor, where Blaster, the alley cat the glaives had unofficially adopted last year settled down and started grooming herself.
“Did you call me down here knowing that the ‘disturbance’ was Blaster?” Luche tried one last time, trying desperately to hold onto his cool professionalism.
Sonitus nodded one last time, still not even bothering to look at him, just staring at the screen.
Luche took a deep breath, ready to rip Sonitus’s head right off – and, really, he knew the man was fond of the cat, most of them were, but Luche had thought better of him, of his professionalism – when he was interrupted by something flying at his face.
He caught whatever it was automatically, and glanced down at it briefly while keeping most of his attention on Sonitus to try to figure out what in the frozen hells was going on and if there were any more surprises that were going to be flung at his face. It was…a granola bar?
Luche glanced down again, unable to make that make any sort of sense. Sure enough, it was a granola bar, one of the good kind that used little dried bits of orange. The taste of the oranges from Duscae wasn’t quite the same as drouxrusos from home, but it was close enough that it almost felt homey, and so these bars always went fastest as the Galahdan glaives snatched them up. He didn’t understand. Had Sonitus found this outside? What did this have to do with Blaster?
As Luche tried desperately to reboot his brain, Sonitus had pulled out his thermos and poured a capful of something that smelled sweet and was steaming hot. He pushed it Luche’s way and signed firmly, “Eat that, and drink this, and watch Buster,” stacking the signs in a way that meant Sonitus wanted him to do all three at once. “It’s time for your break.”
“What?” Luche said blankly, before his brain finally caught up to him. “No, I have to be at my desk. What if something actually comes in, what if one of the Captain’s contacts tries to call?” Luche had gotten a huge dose of understanding for the man when he’d started the night shifts this week and monitoring the Captain’s various contacts, waiting for reports. How had the man slept at all before he’d handed some of this off? Luche certainly hadn’t gotten much sleep this week.
Sonitus shook his head, but before he could say anything else, Sec cut in. “Then I’d say you would swallow and answer the phone. The building’s not that big. It won’t take you long to get where you need to go. And if you haven’t had a break tonight, you definitely need to take one if you want your brain to be working in any sort of capacity. Your brain needs sugar to survive, almost as much as it needs sleep,” he said sternly, the tone almost familiar in a way Luche couldn’t quite place at the moment. Maybe Sec was just growing into his medic voice.
Sec snatched the granola bar out of Luche’s slack grip, and before he could do more than snarl at the man the bar was back in Luche’s hands, now open. Sonitus scooted the cup of what Luche could now see was hot cocoa toward Luche as if it was a coordinated assault. On the screen in front of him, Buster had crouched down again. The video wasn’t good enough quality to know for sure, but he was pretty sure she was wiggling her butt, preparing to pounce.
It was too much. Even Luche knew when he was defeated. He sagged down into the chair next to Sonitus and took a bite out of the granola bar. Sonitus immediately started describing what the cat had been up to all night, and Sec pulled his flashcards back out, glancing over them in the kind of speculation that meant they would be looped into quizzing him soon. Luche’s pager sat like a brand on his belt, unable to be ignored or forgotten, but it remained silent, and so he followed his comrade’s orders and took a break.
When the first call came in an hour later, when Luche was back in his office, he braced himself with a drink of the hot cocoa that he’d snagged on his way back up and felt halfway back to his normal, composed self. Then he took a breath, and read carefully off the paper in front of him, “Ah, how is your mother surviving the cold?” in accented but understandable Nifltunga.
It felt a little dirty, using the enemy’s language, but if it gave them the information they needed to keep the Empire from advancing any further, he would take it. Luche would do anything for his home, his people. And the first thing he needed to keep them all safe was information. Then, they’d have a plan, or multiple ones, ideally, and then, in the end, freedom.
Everything, even these minor discomforts, would be worth it when they were free.