CONTENT WARNING // DISTURBING LANGUAGE, GORE
2019-11-07 // 1345-hr-23
1:17pm West Borea Standard Time (CIT+0)
The patrol boat was intended to carry supplies from Taren to the oil rigs. Food, medication, bog roll, whatever the workers would need in order to keep on drilling. On this bitterly cold November afternoon, the patrol boat was doing just that, only with an extra passenger, by the name of General Artun Sotarikos. Standard military procedure would suggest he ought to be wearing a beret, or some formal jacket adorned with an obnoxious number of medals. But not today. He didn’t particularly like getting blood on his suit.
“Uh, sir?” piped a sheepish voice from nearby.
The general replied, sharp and impatient. “What.”
“I’m getting reports there’s a Morstaybishlian destroyer in the area. A few dozen miles west.” The captain was clearly feeling nervous; the patrol boat wasn’t a vessel built to withstand fourteen-inch shells or torpedos, after all, it was just made for holding as many crates as physically possible.
“Barvata didn’t make any real objection to the annexation of Izria, just to us taking the oil rigs that are rightfully ours. He knows these are still our territorial waters. So whoever’s running that destroyer knows they’ve got no right to obstruct a Kyrlot vessel in Kyrlot waters.” He glanced over to the captain, who was still staring at the horizon, peering through the mist to see if he could make out any speck in the distance that might mean oncoming doom. He wasn’t looking particularly convinced, so Artun put a hand on his shoulder. Slowly, the captain turned his head around, his face full of fear. Sotarikos relished this, but he also knew messing with the captain would overall be disadvantageous to his plan of messing with some other people. He cracked open his best smile, a toothy grin that tended to leave people unsure whether he was about to bite their head off literally or just metaphorically. “We’ll be fine.”
If anything, the captain looked more scared than before.
The sea continued its merciless attack on the oil rig, sending spray several metres into the air at times. Down from the control tower to and below sea level, a staircase made from some kind of steel grating, and padded around the edges, so boats could dock without having the paintwork decimated by the slowly corroding metal. On that staircase, Lieutenant Kav Etsur was waiting to meet his guest.
The captain hadn’t even gotten the rope to tie up his vessel with before Artun leapt from the deck to the corrugated platform. “I heard you needed some information from some people who are unwilling to share it.”
Kav gulped. He didn’t particularly like being around the man, which might have had something to do with the general’s penchant for unsavoury methods of information extraction. But needs must. “It’s actually a lot more urgent now than we realised. The rig’s gone into complete shutdown, which means unless it’s turned back on in the next few hours, the pressure will build up so much that it’s just going to dzerat blow up.”
The general smiled. Nothing better than a deadline. Something to hone his focus. “I’m sure there’ll be no further problems, then. But tell me, Lieutenant. Why have you so far failed to get the information out of these civilians?”
“They’ve managed to get it into their heads that they’re some kind of band of revolutionaries,” he sighed. “Honour in death and all that laiksát*. *They’ve even got a slogan. ‘The Lion will not roar till justice reigns once more.’ They’d rather we didn’t have it than they have their lives. Said they were willing to take that information with them to their graves.”
Sotarikos’s eerie grin widened. “That can be arranged.”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Kav’s voice was stern and controlling, for the first time in a long while, as if he’d forgotten he was - with the exception of Tass’s orders - hopelessly outranked. “The Embies are looking for literally any dzerat excuse to come barreling down on us. A dzerat Kyrlot general killing an unarmed civilian prisoner, who they’re already keeping tabs on? You’d doom us all, Artun.”
Just as if it had never been at all, the general’s smile vanished. “I think you’re forgetting rank here,” he said icily.
“Tseura rank tsura wank! You’ll be the general of a small-to-medium-sized pile of ash, not a country, if we put a foot wrong here! Do you dzerat understand the stakes here?”
Sotarikos stared. He didn’t like that tone of voice. He very much did not enjoy being talked to like that. But at the same time, he knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere near his victims if the lieutenant wasn’t satisfied. “Of course I do, I’m not a ksát moron. But a little bit more respect wouldn’t go amiss next time.”
An armoured car arrived in the basement of Dar’kana Tower, the seat of power on Zlovskavaar Island. With a convoy of six more cars for backup and support, they would take him, ideally undetected, to the military airstrip on the north-western edge of the island. Government use only. Usually fighter jets or reconnaissance drones would be taking off from here, but today it was silent. Most of the machinery of war was elsewhere, of course; Tass was getting the most out of the Budget Order On Military Spending. All that remained was a small but comfortable and fast government jet - the Crow - that could seat twelve passengers and, crucially, get him to Osfjord within two hours.
He didn’t want to go to Norgsveldet. Least of all because he didn’t particularly like the food. It was impossible to find a good egg crunch anywhere south of Sutenkas, and they were no exception. But if he went to that meeting with Franklin Barvata and Johanna Sverdrup, he might end up having to give away more than he was prepared to. He had more oil rigs than those that used to be Embask’s, but he still wanted to keep as much oil as possible, just to fuel any potential future plans he might end up coming up with. Ideally, Sotarikos would persuade the oil rig workers to hand over the information with minimal violence, they could all be returned to their home countries, and Barvata wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in demanding Embask’s rigs back, since he’d already made the big deal about the “illegal” detaining of its employees, not the status of the rigs themselves.
Unfortunately for Tass, and Kyrloth’s oil futures, Sotarikos wasn’t entirely the ideal person to go to when you were looking for “minimal violence”.
Two soldiers led one of the workers into a small back-room. Like everything else on the rig, it was sparsely decorated. There were two chairs, a small desk, and a room-full of stale air. A small CCTV camera sat unnoticed in the corner, connected to the battery-powered wireless network - you couldn’t count on an uninterrupted power supply in an area of the Arctic sea known for its intense weather. Were there much of anything on the rig to store, they would have used it for storage, but at the moment, the only thing being stored was Karl Jensson, the Norgsveltian chief engineer. Sotarikos let him stew in there for a few minutes, and then opened the door and sauntered in.
“Good afternoon,” he said simply, with an almost sinister calmness. “My name is General Artun Sotarikos. I’m here on behalf of the Kyrlot Armed Forces, and today you are going to tell me how to run the Ljón Eyja Nordhtaren III Embask Oil Platform.” He took the remaining empty chair and sat down, adjusting his cufflinks.
“Today I will do no such thing,” Karl spat back.
The general sighed. “One thing I always find annoying, Karl, are factual errors. Inaccuracies. Incorrectness. You get the picture. During a recent campaign, Karl, I was informed of an enemy fighter base in western Taren, and I was given information that said it would be empty apart from a few hostile soldiers. So I called in a bombing raid. And as it turned out, that information contained a factual error. It was inaccurate. It was incorrect.”
Karl’s eyes narrowed and he shifted uneasily in his chair. Where was he going with this?
“Thirty-eight civilian workers were there that day, running maintenance and cleaning.” Sotarikos’s voice was swelling with emotion. He was enjoying remembering this. “I visited the base shortly after our front line pushed past. Karl, at the base I saw body parts littering the ground. Muscle and sinew. And where their raw skin had been exposed, the bodies were covered in burns. The ground had turned a brilliant corundum red, soaked with the blood of civilians. The foxes had already picked some of the corpses clean to their bones. Many of the victims were beyond recognition or identification. Several of–”
The worker interrupted. “Don’t threaten me with your ghastly stories. Your lackeys couldn’t rip the secrets of the Lion from us and neither can you.”
Sotarikos was infuriated at this transgression, this civilian daring to interrupt him in the middle of such a nice tale. But as he processed Jensson’s words, his scowl slowly turned to a grin. After all, it was always nice when the prisoners inadvertently chose the method of their own execution.
Standing outside the room, but refusing to look inside, stood the lieutenant. All he could tell was that there was fighting going on. Judging by the screaming, Artun was winning. Also judging by the screaming, standing outside the room wasn’t somewhere he wanted to be at the moment. He turned to one of the rank and file, guarding the door. “I need some air. Make sure nobody enters without the general’s say-so. And if he wants to interrogate somebody else, you let him.”
The soldier stared at the ground. “But sir, he’s–”
“Aiiris, that is General Artun Sotarikos in that room. I hope I do not have to remind you that in the hierarchy of the Kyrlot Armed Forces, in which he is second only to Sinter Tass himself. If he wants to interrogate somebody else, you better damn well let him, or it’s both of our necks on the chopping block when this rig goes pop.” Etsur never enjoyed bringing rank into the equation, but these were desperate times. “Besides, if the worst that happens on this rig today is someone overreacts to a headlock, we can count ourselves lucky.”
The sea breeze that ruffled Kav’s hair was relaxing, which meant that he was now merely very stressed, as opposed to extremely stressed. When he’d signed up to the army, back under Aerissa Stodge, he’d anticipated an office job, organising logistics and occasionally running drills. He wasn’t particularly expecting actual combat - after all, Borea was a relatively peaceful region of Urth, or at least until recently - and he certainly wasn’t expecting running a torture operation to prevent an oil rig blowing up with him on it. Already a significant part of him was telling him to just run for it - take the privates onto Sotarikos’s patrol boat and make a run for it, court-martial be damned. If the madman at least got him results then he supposed he might be able to live with it, but if he didn’t, well, at least he wouldn’t have to.
After staring at the crashing waves, deep in thought, for a good half an hour, he steeled his nerves and quickly walked back to the room.
“Any updates?” he asked. He wasn’t expecting much. If they hadn’t managed to get any information out of the workers in two weeks, there was little chance the general would have been able to improve on it, even with his… unorthodox methods.
Aiiris looked a bit pale. Speaking softly, she replied: “Sotarikos had four more taken inside. There was… there were screams. Of pain. But they’ve stopped now.”
He hoped for the best. “That better mean they’ve given in. I don’t know how much time this rig has left.” He went to open the door. He trusted Sotarikos knew what he was doing, but even so, he had Sinter Tass on speed-dial, just in case.
He pulled down on the handle, and slowly pushed open the door. It squeaked slightly, then stopped. Something was blocking the way. Through the few degrees the door had turned, he could see a small sliver of the room. It seemed a lot redder than before, and there was what looked like an arm lying on the floor. From where he was standing, he couldn’t tell whether it was still attached to its owner.
“Artun?” he said, shakily. “Did you get the information?”
“Funny you should ask,” came a raspy voice from the other side of the door, close enough that Kav could tell it was him blocking the door from moving any further. Slowly and silently, the lieutenant adjusted his grip on the door to be ready to slam it shut at the slightest hint of danger to his person. “I nearly did. But it’s… incomplete. I need the janitor and the second maintenance worker.”
There was a long silence. No sounds of machinery, no sounds of pained groaning. He hated that silence. “How’re the rest of you doing?” he called. That the silence remained uninterrupted told him all he needed to know. But for now, he needed to keep up appearances. “Not big talkers, are youse. But we already knew that. Artun, I’ll bring the janitor. And the maintenance guy.”
Gingerly, Kav closed the door.
Aiiris looked at him, grimacing. “Do we–”
Kav shook his head, and placed a finger over his lips. There was no telling whether or not Sotarikos would have been able to hear them. Just in case, he said, a little louder than normal, “Of course. I’ll get them myself.” He put a hand on her shoulder and led her away from the door. When they were an appreciable distance from the room, he whispered to her: “Sotarikos does not leave that room under any circumstances. Block the door if you want. Stall for time if you have to. Here’s the key - lock him in if it comes to it. This shouldn’t take longer than five minutes.”
Aboard the Crow, Tass stared at his third phone. Whatever was happening on the Lion of Taren would make or break his Arachnist ambitions. Also with him sat six bodyguards and five cabinet members. Each and every one of them was on edge. A few of them were in quiet conversation about the new cuts they were planning to impose on many of Kyrloth’s public services. Tass, however, was not particularly interested. He stared out the window at the grey sky and depressing drizzle, and waited. Sotarikos was a great asset, and had saved his bacon more times than he could count. But war was war, and liabilities were liabilities. Sooner or later, he’d need to get rid of him.
As if in answer, his third phone rang with six sharp beeps. The conversations stopped like a car hitting a brick wall. He flipped open the phone and answered. “Tass.”
The voice was hard to make out over the roaring ocean winds. “He… uh, Etsur here. The…”
He didn’t have time for this. If it was as bad as he thought, he needed to know now. “Compose yourself, man. And get inside so I can actually hear what you’re saying.” In response, some noise that could have been a “yes sir”, some footsteps, and the sound of a door closing. Immediately, the sound quality improved.
“Etsur here. The general… he did exactly what you feared he’d do.”
“Dzera,” he swore. He motioned at the pilot, who had leaned his head around the corner to see what was going on, to begin preparations for take-off. “How many?”
“F-five.” Tass couldn’t tell if Etsur was stuttering from cold or fear.
“And?”
“Dead, sir. All dead. I don’t know what else he did, I couldn’t get a good look through the gap in the door.”
The first fragment of an idea began to form in the prime minister’s mind. “Door? If he’s in a room, on his own–”
“Yes, sir. I’ve already given orders that under no circumstances will he leave that room. If worst comes to worst, one of the privates has a key - and Sotarikos doesn’t.”
“Alright. Hopefully this won’t get out then. Will have to explain why there’s only two hundred and sixteen workers returning home, but I should be able to figure something out. Maybe they had existing warrants in Kyrloth. Try and turn it on Embask. We’ll see.”
“And the rig?”
“If Sotarikos - even at his most persuasive, couldn’t drag the information out of the workers, there’s no point wasting any more time. Get your team and the survivors off that rig and over to the others at that processing facility at Grimsfjord. Tell them whatever lies they need to be told to keep them happy.”
“And the general?”
“No, Lieutenant Etsur. He isn’t. At least, not anymore. You have my orders to dispose of him. Quietly, if possible. And loudly if not.” Relieved from service, Sotarikos could only be a hindrance, potentially a danger to Tass’s regime. Better to get rid of him while there was nobody around to see, than let him off that oil rig and risk all manner of things happening. “Update me if anything happens. Tass out.”
There was no time to lose. Every minute more spent on the oil rig was a minute in which Sotarikos might figure out something was up, and a minute in which the Lion of Taren might finally blow its top, neither of which seemed particularly good outcomes to Etsur. Walking quickly, he slipped into the room where the rest of the workers were being held. As the door slammed shut with the power of the sea wind behind it, all heads turned to look at him. He did his best to look annoyed, rather than broken - couldn’t let the workers know how well their little scheme had actually worked, after all - and turned to Pvt. Kestara.
“Orders from Tass. Load yourselves and the workers onto the patrol boat at the east docking port, and head for the Grimsfjord facility. We are now officially Wasting Valuable K.A.F. Time here.”
“And the rest, sir?” It took awhile for Etsur to remember that nobody outside of himself, Aiiris, and Tass knew about what Sotarikos had done in that room. As far as his soldiers and the workers knew, they were still alive.
“The general’s already got them talking,” he lied. “A helicopter will arrive here with some technicians in about two hours or so, and take the six of them back. Now chop chop! I want us to be leaving on that boat in five minutes. If we’re late for the kitchen - again - due to tardiness on your part - again - then I’ll be furious.”
Kestara remembered all too well the verbal humiliation he’d gotten about a third of the way through the Izrian campaign, where his sub-par skills with the map had led their contingent to arrive just ten minutes too late to enjoy the legendary KAFeteria Pork Noodles. “Sir!” he said, saluting, before walking over and gesturing to the rest of the crew.
Etsur walked quickly out of the main hall, but as soon as he got to the corridors, he broke out into a sprint.
As he arrived, he saw Aiiris, staring at the door with a hand on her gun, ready to draw and shoot at a moment’s notice. She didn’t want to kill the general - there would probably be severe consequences for her career if she did - but if push came to shove, she would be prepared to shove. He walked over to her and gestured for the key, which she gave without comment.
“That you, Kav?” came a voice from inside the room, sounding less raspy now, more composed. It didn’t sound like he’d moved in the last few minutes; most likely he was still pressed up against the door.
“Yes, Artun.” As slowly and silently as he could, he slid the key into the lock, hoping he wouldn’t notice. He didn’t know how much sound could get through.
“Lieutenant,” he began, with a new tone to his voice that sent chills down his spine. “Why did I only hear one set of footsteps?”
The game was up. Etsur turned the key.
As he did so, Sotarikos attempted to open the door. The handle dropped and he pulled on the door as hard as he could, but the locking lug had caught on the latch just in time, stopping any further progress.
“Dzaikuszrát!” he roared. It was the strongest racial slur against dark elves in the Vaaran language, translating roughly as “bastard child of the Devil and a pile of feces”, and would have been grounds for severe disciplinary action from his superiors under normal circumstances. “You let me out right this dzerat second, or I’ll have your dzerat head!”
Kav didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. He turned to a shocked Aiiris, and said: “Run.” The door had seemed pretty sturdy when he’d surveyed the room a few hours before Sotarikos’s arrival, but he didn’t particularly want to find out how long it would hold up against an enraged psychopath.
As they ran, his furious rantings slowly faded into the distance. Through countless sickly-green hallways, and through the now-empty mess hall, and then down the slowly-rusting stairwell. It was only when the pair were nearly at the docking point did the lieutenant remember he was supposed to have killed Sotarikos. No matter, he figured - the Lion of Taren would do it for him, soon enough. Only fitting that the oil rig itself would be the one taking revenge for its workers’ murders.
Kav and Aiiris stepped aboard the patrol boat. Packed like sardines in a crushed tin box, they set sail for Grimsfjord. It would be a long six hours.
Tass didn’t expect a particularly warm welcome in Osfjord, and he didn’t particularly get one, not from the airport staff or from the weather. The Norgsveltian Armed Forces had arranged for a motorcade to deliver them through the bustling city and to the royal palace - a grand affair with three floors, dozens of pillars, and a meticulously kept garden with a frankly unnecessary amount of statues. It took them the best part of half an hour to arrive; a city of nine million people was going to take a while to cross.
The motorcade arrived, and the Kyrlot delegation was hurried in by the guards. There had only been a few hours’ notice to get everything put together, so his welcome outside of the palace consisted of a few TV cameras, which he dutifully smiled and waved for, and a small contingent of protestors with hastily-made cardboard signs, which he ignored. Most likely, they weren’t even Kyrlot citizens, so they wouldn’t even be able to vote him out, not that he would have allowed that to happen in the first place.
The interior of the palace was as extravagantly decorated as you would expect. If there were any pieces of furniture around that didn’t have some gold or silver plating, he hadn’t seen it. The guards led them through what seemed like miles of twisting corridors, past countless paintings and chandeliers, the best that Norgsveltian artisans had to offer. Eventually, they reached a panelled wooden door, with an embossed sign above it that said simply: “The Study”.
One of the guards knocked three times on the door, and announced in a thick accent: “The Kyrloth delegation”.
“Enter,” replied a voice from inside the Study that he recognised as Barvata’s. The Morstaybishlians had already arrived. Or perhaps the hadn’t left since the meeting they’d had with Sverdrup the week prior.
Prime Minister Sinter Tass adjusted his tie, slightly nervously, as the guard opened the door and beckoned them in. It was time.
Admiral Vorkas sat at the helm of the Morstaybishlian destroyer HMS Dovia. Contrary to what he had expected from a military as jumpy and aggressive as Kyrloth’s, there had been no response from their navy to his raising of the stakes other than a somewhat bored “alright, but don’t cause trouble” from an unidentified naval operator. He had expected a great many things to be happening today, but what he hadn’t expected was being completely bored. Not that he wanted war, of course. Of course he didn’t. He was always of the opinion that war was a thing to generally be avoided. Or at least, that’s the opinion he’d talk about. But he couldn’t help but feel like he’d come all this way for nothing. They’d been forced to let a patrol boat come and go, by the rules around the game of international diplomacy - you weren’t allowed to simply take a vessel that belonged to another country’s military force, especially when you were already in their territorial waters. And somehow, that was the most exciting thing that had happened all day.
Vorkas sighed, and looked out the window. They were just within the Arctic circle, and given it was early November, that meant the sun had fully set about an hour ago. There was nothing to see, except for a small twinkling yellow light. He sighed again. The drone crew weren’t supposed to be operating at this time, not after a whole day’s worth of use. After a few moments of watching that yellow light hovering in the distance, he decided to give them a call.
“Sir?” came the response from one of their technicians, after a few short moments of ringing.
“Why do you have the drone out now? Don’t it need to recharge?” The drone was specialised and fast, making it particularly expensive. The Morstaybishlian military budget wasn’t anything to sniff at, but all the same, he didn’t want to risk it running out of battery in the middle of the sea and crashing into the waves, never to be seen again.
“Uh, we don’t, sir. It’s right here.” There was a faint clanging noise as he knocked on its aluminium casing.
“Then what the hell’s out there?”
They had parked themselves right next to the Lion of Taren; their intelligence network had identified workers from all the other ten rigs being held at the Grimsfjord “Immigration Facility”. Simple geopolitics told him that Tass would be wanting to hand them over as soon as he could, to avoid angering Norgsveldet and Morstaybishlia any further. So that meant something was happening at Lion of Taren that was causing a hold-up. Did it have anything to do with that flickering yellow light that, now that he was looking at it again, seemed a bit bigger than before?
Ljón Eyja Nordhtaren III Embask Oil Platform had been built in the 1960s, on a relatively tight budget, by a private corporation who sub-contracted out a lot of the construction work to other private corporations on even tighter budgets. As a result, corners were routinely cut, with a rather gung-ho attitude of “if it turns out to be a problem, we’ll fix it later”. One such corner that had been cut was the quality of the casing on the pipes. It was strong enough to keep the oil inside, and route it to where it needed to go, but not strong enough to withstand the pressure that would result if, for example, production was stopped due to an invasion, and the valves hadn’t been properly closed because the workers who knew which valves had to be turned refused to say how to do it.
Backup generators are a great thing. When power delivered by other means becomes unavailable, the simple combustion of a fuel, in this case diesel, can keep a limited power supply going until normal operation can be restored. However, in order to function properly, the environmental conditions need to be right. There needs to be sufficient oxygen and fuel to keep the reaction going, and the generator needs to not be submerged in half a foot of the crude oil that was slowly filling the generator room from the rupture where the pipe, under enormous internal pressure, had finally failed.
Ironically, this resulted in the sticker that read “improper use may result in fire” being one of the first things to catch fire when the inevitable happened.
The fire built and built, soon exceeding the flash point. The door to the hallway, in order to ensure correct airflow (and therefore enough oxygen for the generator), was always left open, allowing it to spread through the corridors and into the rest of the rig, including one large storage area where a lot of pre-refined oil was just sitting.
Admiral Vorkas did not have enough time to react when the Lion of Taren exploded. The destroyer was sitting only a hundred or so metres away from the derricks, and by sheer bad luck, they were on the same side of the rig as the oil storage. The pressure underneath the oil rig had been building up for two weeks, ever since normal operation had stopped with the conquest of the city of Taren, and Embask suddenly didn’t have a storage facility in the area anymore. There was a lot of hydrocarbon to burn. The destroyer would probably have survived had it only been a fire. However, the power of the oil pressure, coupled with the power of the explosion itself, and the fact that the Lion of Taren was not particularly sturdily constructed, meant that it briefly turned into the world’s largest shrapnel grenade. Chunks of oil rig pelted the ship, punching massive holes into the port side. Glass shattered from the shockwave, which pushed at the vessel, tipping it over onto its side with the help of the high-speed debris. Water rushed in through the holes, filling the destroyer. Within a few minutes, the HMS Dovia had sunk completely.
In Osfjord, things were going rather well.
A list of goals was already being written by Tass on some of the palace’s watermarked stationery, with a novelty ballpoint pen in the shape of Dar’kana Tower, which threw Barvata off a bit. Tass had given assurances that everything that had happened on the oil rigs was above board and purely in accordance with Kyrlot law. The oil rigs, he reasoned, had been handed over (along with the rest of Izria) to the Kyrlot government in the peace treaty, and were therefore rightfully their property, although he understood if Morstaybishlia might have a slightly different opinion, and was willing to come to an agreement in the name of goodwill between their respective nations. Barvata was not particularly impressed with this, but he kept things civil for the time being. No good came from a rushed treaty, after all.
Sverdrup, on the other hand, was concerned with what exactly had happened to the Nordrun dynasty. The King, Tegura IV, had famously committed suicide rather than sign unconditional surrender over to Tass, although that mattered little since the prime minister had been more than happy to do so on his behalf, and a great deal of the rest of the Izrian royal family had been in various parts of Taren at the times in which they had been “tactically” carpet bombed, or in Nordrun Palace during the final assault on Taren and had been caught in the cross-fire, or had died of the tragic illness of “mysterious circumstances” in the days following. The only apparent survivor was some minor prince by the name of Mastirei (it translated roughly as soothsayer), who had been visiting his friends and surfboards in Blueacia when war was declared, and had subsequently “accidentally” missed his flight back. Sverdrup demanded a guarantee of his safety, and that he would be allowed to stay permanently in Norgsveldet, which Tass was all too happy to oblige with. After all, Mastirei would only be one well-placed scandal away from complete irrelevancy anyway.
Around half an hour into the negotiations, they were interrupted by a shrill beeping noise coming from the Morstaybishlian prime minister’s front pocket. It was his work phone. Although the government of MBE didn’t have the strict and codified rules of the Three Phones that Kyrloth had - first was personal, second was work, and the third was for emergencies only, and answering it would supersede any other responsibilities - it was still clear to all in the room that whatever was going on was both extremely important and extremely urgent. With a simple “Excuse me”, Barvata answered the call.
Out of habit, he spoke quietly to try and avoid being overheard, but the room had fallen to a deathly silence. “Frankie here. What is it?” Tass couldn’t make out what he was being told, but from the look on his face, it was probably bad news. “What?” he said in disbelief. “The Dovia?”