Chapter 11

Naxos was a mess. Since nobody had died in the raid, they didn’t lock down the planet. Besides, Naxos was too fucking big to lock down. The revenue that would be lost even in a small lockdown wasn’t worth it. But the federal presence there was noticeable just the same. And Sol was willing to bet that the presence at the suburban station was sizeable.

Laura had promised that she and Nicola operated out of a different suburb altogether. You don’t shit and eat out of the same trough, she said.

“Why didn’t we just find another buyer for this shit?” Stefano asked. “Coming back here seems a little...”

“Say it,” Sol said.

“Ok, boss. It seems stupid,” he finished.

“Thanks for being honest,” Sol said. “We’re here to find out if there’s a mole, and to deal with it. If I make some money off of it, all the better. Does that change your opinion?”

“You still want me to be honest?” Stefano asked.

“Ayuh,” Sol answered him.

“No. It doesn’t,” he said, but he smirked.

Their first stop was Nicola. She could potentially fence the shipment, and she knew how to find Olympia. Thankfully for everyone involved, she was pretty bright.

“Nicola only talks with Olympia via an encrypted network. A fed could break the encryption, but unless they did it in real time, all they would find is a proxy somewhere in the city broadcasting the encrypted signal. I suppose they could work back from there. Nothing on the net is truly anonymous. But it would take time and resources; and Nicola never uses her own com for these transactions,” Laura explained, earlier that afternoon.

“Did she know Olympia was bad news?” Sol asked.

“No,” Laura responded. “We’re both a little paranoid is all.”

Paranoid or no, they had agreed to meet Nicola in yet another suburb (and here, Laura was not surprised to note that this suburb was also not one in which Nicola typically transacted business). It was far enough outside of the city, and not on any rail lines, that it boasted wide open spaces that were perfect for docking.

Sol set Sinaan Reis down as softly as he could manage. The Revenge landed at the same time. The group waited for close to an hour before he saw a host of large trucks approaching from Gia. When they arrived, a squat woman with a scowl approached.

“Nicola,” she said, putting her hand out to Sol, who had gone to greet her.

“Sol of Sinaan Reis,” Sol said to her.

“You have something of mine,” she told him.

“I have two boatloads of things that are yours as soon as I’m paid,” he told her.

“Not that. I’m talking about Magdalene,” she said.

“You mean Laura?” Sol asked her.

She regarded him for a moment then said, “I guess she was picked up good, wasn’t she.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Ayuh, and we got her out good,” Sol said.

She raised her eyebrows.

“We protect our own, ma’am,” Sol said.

“I was shocked when I saw her message, but she’s the only one who knows how to reach me on that com ... Mind if I talk with her? I s’pose she can’t stay here if she was arrested,” Nicola said.

“Yes ma’am. But I’d like to get the business out of the way first. The less time I’m here, the happier I am,” Sol said.

Unloading the two beasts takes time. And the work was slower going given that it was after nightfall. Laura and Nicola had plenty of time to talk during the interim. And within a few hours, both boats were empty.

“Last chance to stay here,” Sol told Laura.

“Thanks. I think I’d better go with you,” she said.

“I think you’re right,” Sol said. She and Nicola hugged, and the boats were off.

“You made a friend today,” Sophie told Sol. “If we survive, she’ll be a dependable source of business the next time we’re in town.”

“That’s if ... On to our next sortie,” Sol said.

–

Some people had jobs doing things. Others had jobs to know things. Olympia’s job was to know people. She made connections. She connected business leaders with owners of small businesses who could work symbiotically with them in niche or local markets. She connected small business leaders with their government, and greased the wheels to compliance. Sometimes, she connected litigants before Gia’s municipal court system with the judges hearing their cases. She could do that because she was friendly with the figures in government, and business.

She wasn’t close to the mayor of Gia, but she didn’t have to be. The people in the Zoning department knew her because she’d gotten quite a few of them their job. She was able to do that because she knew their bosses. And their bosses happily looked the other way when she came in to talk to their employees about a new client’s project. She knew regulators of small businesses for the same reasons. Through those contacts, she was able to hook restaurant owners up with compliance “experts” days before “random” inspections.

She didn’t place bribes. She just knew the people who did, and hooked them up with the right people. She was the grease that made the great machinery of democracy work efficiently for many.

And recently, she’d learned of another possible connection she had. Through some food collectives she’d helped with pulling business permits, she learned that bands of smugglers regularly came to Gia in order to sell goods at a marked down price. They, too, needed a connection to iron out the details for a transfer of the product. The food collectives were skittish about dealing with pirates directly. Hence, it was Olympia’s job to get to know them.

Up until recently, that job was pretty low risk. Local brass couldn’t have cared less about unlicensed food; and even if they made token arrests, she knew enough people in local law enforcement that she wasn’t overly concerned. Gia’s denizens ranged from law-and-order types to folks who were so involved in their religion that they didn’t care about secular law. Mixed in there were a healthy number of old revolutionaries who hated the Inland government and its newly forced federalism. That sentiment existed in Gia, but it was far from a hotbed of anti-federal radicalism.

Somehow, though, that fact had been lost on some of the new federal overseers who had come in to make life difficult for Gia’s inhabitants.

News of that had come through one of Olympia’s contacts in Gia’s City Council. Alderman Sarah Greystone had asked to meet her at a bar they both frequented. The Alderman was a short but attractive woman from one of the northern wards of the city. “We’re getting pressure from the feds to give up some of the food traders,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Olympia told the Alderman.

“Cut the bullshit,” the Alderman said, in response. “We all know what you’re doing. Hell, most of us support it. But it has to stop. You’re too connected to each of us to be involved in illegal smuggling under our noses.”

“Fine. Rob me blind,” Olympia told her. The feds were a factor beyond either of their control. But Olympia would be damned if an Alderman was going to shut her down like that. “We’ll see who supports your reelection bid.” That was a threat that Olympia was just connected enough to make. She wouldn’t be able to unseat the alderman alone. But if the race was close...

“It isn’t just that, Olympia,” she said. “They’re asking for our police departments to step up enforcement. They want to see results.”

Now Olympia was starting to see the problem. In order to avoid a federal crackdown, the council had to offer up some bodies. If the feds got involved, Olympia would be caught for sure. She had done very little to cover her tracks because of how low risk all of this had been, and she’d ignored the changing winds in Gia. That mistake would cost her, she realized.

“You need me to set up a sting, don’t you,” she asked the Alderman.

“Not with me!” she responded. “In fact, if you’re going to do it at all, do it out in the burbs. They’re still so fucking backwards out there that they probably won’t even log the tip. It’ll be easier to stay anonymous. I know you have some deliveries coming up. If one of them could, perhaps, go wrong...”

“I’ll see to it,” she said.

“Thank you,” the Alderman said. She finished her drink and left.

That had been a few weeks ago. Now the mess had gotten bigger; and more importantly, the feds were definitely going to be involved.

Olympia looked at herself in the mirror. Her meeting with Alderman Samson Royce was ostensibly for the purpose of discussing licensing requirements for a strip mall in the northern neighborhood of Altoona Park. That the meeting was being held in a bar suggested that the discussion might veer towards unofficial business; and that the meeting was held in a bar in the lobby of a hotel suggested that more than 90% of this communication might not be verbal. Olympia sometimes detested this aspect of her erstwhile job. But she was attractive, and a lot was sometimes expected of attractive women.

Royce was a younger Alderman who had received the backing of Alderman Jared Bilanti. Bilanti was sometimes called the “little mayor.” He’d been an Alderman for as long as anyone remembered, and held the real power in Gia. A popular mayor, with the support of enough Aldermen, could take on Bilanti in a good year. But, more likely, a mayor found himself on Bilanti’s good side, or a mayor found himself ineffectual. Alderman Greystone, who had been tasked with approaching Olympia several weeks ago to set up the sting, was not part of the inner circle. In fact, she frequently found herself part of a growing bloc of reformers who were able to oppose Bilanti and Co. on select matters, but mostly used their reformer credentials to get reelected. That she was meeting with Alderman Royce told her that the situation had gotten quite a bit more serious. Her connections didn’t give her much sway over Royce. She’d have to sway him using other methods.

Her outfit was almost conservative: a loose-fitting top with exposed shoulders and tiny straps that glistened beige, and a grey pantsuit. The pants of the pantsuit were a little tight, but not inappropriately so. She knew that when she leaned over, the top dipped just enough to tease any man she was talking to, without actually letting them see something they shouldn’t. Of course, the Alderman might get a peek anyhow, in time. Underneath that, she had on a pair of minimalist shiny black lingerie. Her breasts were not large. For that matter, neither was her ass. She looked like someone who spent way too long, on a way too regular basis, at the gym. And that wasn’t just an illusion. She’d crafted her image carefully.

Her wavy light brown hair framed her brown face. She practiced her smile. It was almost cute. She looked like someone ten or even twenty years younger than she was – a fact that she used to her advantage. It was easy enough, in this age of interconnectivity, to determine a person’s birthdate simply by looking them up. But by using a nomme de plume (Olympia was her middle name), she hoped to preserve the allure of mystery that sometimes followed her. Her mailing address was an office that she rarely visited. There was no apartment registered in her name. She looked over her shoulder on the way to her home quite frequently. Once, she thought she was being followed, so she drove to a hotel for the night. She didn’t bring men to her apartment anymore. Ever.

That had been her policy since the last romantic fling she’d been involved in, a handful of years before. It had gone spectacularly wrong. He fell in love with her, and she was – in her own mind – incapable of love. She enjoyed his company and the way he made her feel – both when he was inside of her, and when he wasn’t. But love? That was not for people like her. And so when his obsession became too much, she tried to cut him off. In the ensuing mess, she learned to keep her distance from potential entanglements by, among other things, never letting any such potential entanglements into her home.

She turned around and tried to get a look at her backside in the mirror. Perfect, she thought. In no time, she’d have the Alderman wrapped around her finger and they could clear up the matter of this federal investigation. It should be focused on the real culprit anyhow: the pirate who had attacked a Suburban Gian police station and kidnapped its inmates. Not her. Not the savvy and politically connected woman whose only crime had been to connect two people for the purpose of conducting business together.

The bar was upscale, and expensive. Olympia was quietly thankful that she wouldn’t be paying. The Committee to Reelect Alderman Samson Royce would be paying, as it tended to do in these circumstances. And there was the committee’s primary beneficiary, the Alderman himself, alone in a small booth towards the back of the bar.

“Alderman,” she said, as she approached.

“Sam is fine,” he said, getting up and shaking her hand awkwardly.

“Olympia is fine, in that case,” she said. She sat down and grabbed a drink menu, though she hardly needed it. A light baijiu and a splash of gentleberry was what she’d get; and every upscale bar in Gia carried her baijiu of choice. It gave her something to do with her hands, though, and allowed her to look somewhere other than at the Alderman.

“Would you like anything?” Royce asked her.

Olympia took a few moments pretending to consider, and then told him what she wanted. They sat awkwardly for a few more moments before a waitress took their order, and brought them their drinks. The waitress came back quickly with the drinks and asked the couple if they’d be getting anything to eat. The Alderman shook his head, and the waitress left them alone. Olympia’s drink burned going down. She stifled a grimace.

“Your food buy turned into a massive fuckup,” he said. She appreciated that they weren’t going to pretend to be cordial forever before arriving at the real point of their conversation.

“The suburban police fucked up. The food buy went off without a hitch. Everyone was where I said they’d be,” she said. She polished off the baijiu and indicated to a waitress that she wanted another.

“The buyer was not,” the Alderman countered.

“And who knows why that was, but the seller was just as shocked as the rest of us. My intel was fine,” she concluded.

The Alderman didn’t respond to that for a moment. “You could beat me in this game of words here and the effect would be the same, you know,” he finally offered. “The feds want someone offered up as a sacrificial lamb. You’d work just fine for that purpose,” he said.

“I fenced a handful of illegal food buys. We had a smuggler in the lockup who was sprung by a pirate. A pirate. Attacked. The federal police. Do you really think that the feds will be interested in me?” she asked.

“I think the feds will eventually find their pirate. But right now they want quick answers,” the Alderman said.

“I can give them the food collective. Its director.” she offered.

“A rogue food collective, endangering the public with unauthorized food, and causing the price of food to go up due to his illegal activity. I suppose that can work, though it’s a tad mundane,” he said.

“Her,” Olympia corrected.

“What?” the Alderman asked.

“Her. You said his illegal activity. The woman’s name is Nicola. And the only thing you could offer that wouldn’t be mundane is the specter of public corruption. I’ve met with Alderman Greystone. But I don’t particularly feel like being tied up in any of this. And if anyone points out that I’ve been meeting with Greystone, I’ll let them know who else I’ve been meeting with. Speaking of which, you didn’t invite me out here to discuss food smuggling, did you?” She asked.

The Alderman looked taken aback for a moment before shifting in his seat and changing topics. “The strip mall you’re proposing in Altoona Hills ... I can’t possibly back it with the cloud hanging over your head. If the public finds out you’re behind it, at the same time as they find out that you were involved in illegal smuggling, it will be an embarrassment to me,” he said.

“Then I suppose I’ll get you Nicola’s information so that you don’t have to feel embarrassed by my proximity,” she said, appearing surprised and annoyed all of the sudden.

“I suppose I could be convinced,” he intoned. He indicated to the waitress that he wanted to pay. He synced his com with her, and filled out the receipt on her handheld, before getting up to go. “My room is 5043,” he told Olympia. “Come up in ten minutes.”

This was the part she really detested. She waited the requisite amount of time, then took one of the elevator banks to the fiftieth floor of the hotel. When she arrived, she made her way down the corridor and found 5043. She knocked twice, and a voice inside said “come in.”

Inside, the Alderman was wearing a bath robe. She stepped in and closed the door. She grabbed the bathrobe and opened it without being asked to. He was already almost hard. Olympia had no time to be coy. She dropped to her knees and took his penis into her mouth. By the time her lips touched the base, it was hard enough to press against the back of her throat. She dragged her tongue against its length and paused at the tip for a moment to let the Alderman collect himself before taking it back into her mouth. She rubbed his testicles with one hand. With the other, she reached around his legs and pulled him into her.

Royce grunted and grabbed her behind the head. Olympia hated that. Some women liked to be manhandled, but she wasn’t one of them. She swatted his hands off, and sucked harder on his cock, hoping that would hold his attention. When he tried again, she grabbed his hands and moved them off of her.

“Cut that out, you bitch,” he said. The directness of it caught her by surprise, and she glanced up, his dick half hanging out of her mouth. She must have looked ridiculous. He reached his hands around her head and once again pulled himself into her lips. This time, he hit the back of her throat harder than before. She felt queasy but refused to get sick. Royce’s precum lingered in her mouth for a moment after he pulled out of her.

“Stand up,” he said. She did. For a moment, she was apprehensive about what he might do. Her apprehension showed on her face, she knew. She hated being vulnerable, and especially hated looking it. He took her suit jacket off, and then took off her shirt, leaving her in a minimalist bra. “Sit on the bed,” he said. She did what she was told. “Now suck it,” he said to her, and put his dick back into her mouth.

As she sucked, he reached down, under her bra, and played with her nipples. He grunted as she sucked and squeezed a nipple, causing Olympia to cry out. But with the penis in her mouth, it came out as a muffled mumble. Royce grunted at her and smiled. He pulled himself out of her and said “open your mouth.” She did as she was told. He stroked himself for the next minute or so until hot semen came dribbling out. Some of it got on her face. Most of it coated the tops of her breasts, and her bra.

“Get me the info on that food collective. I look forward to working with you in the future,” he said. Then he put his clothing on and walked out. As he opened the door to the room, he turned to her and said “wait ten minutes or so before you leave.”

At five minutes, the door to the room opened. Still stunned by the encounter, Olympia didn’t move when the door opened. She still had the Alderman’s semen on her face and her bra. That’s how Sol and the others found her.