Let me Shun That

Somewhere in the heart of transient station Ember...

“Madam Consul, unless you veto the de-” a voice with a subtle German accent from a conference phone was cut off by a stultifying voice.

“That Tribune Waerhild will be recalled from her position? I’m aware. I’m not sticking my neck out for her anymore. She cost us a very rare enchanted item, failed to secure the child, and put us in a position of owing an apology and possibly a few concessions to Lord Lucero for her ‘rogue actions.’ So vetoing the decision is not consistent with that story now is it?”

The voice from the phone paused for a moment. Sounding quite a bit more glower, “than at least rescind the arrest warrant...”

“No. She does face punishment if she comes back here. However, I’ve arranged a small mercy, there will be no extradition back to a transient station. Even if Lord Lucero might be expecting a petition for one soon.”

The voice on the other end, now exasperated and dismayed, “But then what?! She’s under permanent house arrest with the Luceros! Is that what you want?!”

“My dear Duke. Need I remind you, I am still Consul. I’ll caution against raising your voice at me but once. The Watch, Ember station, and Under Ember, are beholden to you in no way whatsoever. That I accept your call at all is a courtesy. I’ll remind you that for your niece’s transgression she would face the extraction process. Few survive the extraction. Fewer survive it without debilitating injuries. So yes, I can assure you house arrest with the Luceros IS a mercy. If you’re feeling particularly brave you could always try to contact Lord Lucero directly, however failure to follow protocol and go through authorized channels may be considered a breach of the Accord for security purposes, if that were to happen, your holdings would be seized, the lives of yourself, direct family, and those you employee could be forfeit. It’s been some time since we’ve had such a complete purge on the surface, but you know I will not hesitate to order another.”

The voice of the man on the other end sounded defeated, “you really are heartless, you know that, right?”

Consul Atria Tullis sighed, “I think we’re done here. Goodbye, Duke Waerhild.” A tall grim woman with gray to silver hair in fatigues and a plate carrier leaned over her desk to end the call. Sitting down at her desk she paged her secretary, “Sam. Come here.”

Very shortly afterward the door to her office opened, in stepped a short brunette with thick-rimmed glasses wearing a blue pantsuit and black shirt unbuttoned low enough to show some cleavage without being indecent. She had slightly angular facial features and tilted eyes. Her ears were pointed. She shut the door behind her and came right up next to her boss and knelt. “What can this worthless elf-slut do for you, mistress?”

Atria smirked and turned in her office chair. Under Ember was a place you could buy anything, and Sam made for such a cute little sub-human toy. There were some disagreements about slavery initially, but after a few protests, the town below came to an agreement it would be allowed so long as human slaves were limited to those with known criminal histories. Under Ember didn’t exactly have a judiciary system, it had a firing squad. But you had to go pretty far to wind up there.

Sam here was bought from the **** market. Of course, she had some bullshit elf name no one could say, the first order of business was renaming her. Other than that she had been very well trained, even spoke fluent English, sounded a bit like she had a Brit for a teacher, but Artra appreciated the little accent. She reached down and pet the elf, which leaned in and rested its head on her knee. Atria found it amusing they really, really liked the attention given to their ears. No, not like a dog or cat likes scritches. Her little elf whimpered in enjoyment. The ears were an erogenous zone.

While stroking the elf’s ear she reached down and began to use one of its tits as a stress ball. It helped her relax a little, and the elf seemed to like it. After a minute or two of this, she pat Sam on the head, “good girl. I need you to send a message to the Lorraine and, just in case, Moscow branches. Tell them to increase surveillance on Duke Waerhild for two weeks or so. But also for each of them to have a purge team on stand-by for the next 48 hours.” She didn't think the old man would try anything and certainly hoped not. His niece was safe even if he didn’t like the conditions. But she had misjudged people before. She pat the elf’s head once more and swiveled the chair back to face her desk.

Sam had taken this to mean her mistress was done with her for now, “right away, mistress.” She rose to head for the door, only to let out a small squeak as the strong woman grabbed a handful of her ass and squeezed. She blushed and went back to her job.

In Under Ember

“Bozhe moy...” Stepan was not having a good week. He was looking at two dead Lemurian elves, tall fair-skinned people. Sometimes jokingly called ‘high’ elves due to how they tower over their smaller cousins. These weren’t run-away slaves that got in the bad end of a fight in a dark alley, these two were merchants. Husband and wife. The wife had her throat slit. Probably died faster than the husband. Looks like he tried to fight back, got shanked in the gut for his efforts. He figured whoever did this had to have been moving real quiet-like. Probably killed the wife first, she looks like she dropped where she stood, no sign of a struggle. The reason that’s noticeable is you had to be quieter than a ninja in socks walking on carpet to actually sneak up on a Lemurian. Or it was someone who betrayed them. Seems like the dad fighting back bought a little bit of time for their daughter to escape though.

The only problem with the daughter, their only witness, was Lemurian elves were rare as fuckall and had their own language. The kid hadn’t learned any other language yet either. Plus the poor girl was traumatized. A seer or a Keeper could help but fat chance of getting one down here to help his bunch. The Watch was a militant organization. Not law enforcement or detectives. No one here wanted to speak to them.

Understandably so. See this is the second **** scene this week. In a string of them over the past month or so. All of the victims, non-humans. All of them seemed to be killed with a different weapon, in a different area of the city. The only pattern was the victims. All non-humans with more or less middle-class jobs. Well to do but not enough to have their own private security who’d shoot you if so much as looked at their boss wrong. Merchants, shopkeepers, brokers. The kinda folk people noticed missing right away. Probably worth mentioning the Watch consists entirely of humans. Order traditions, of the dark, blah, blah, abyssal corruption.

The difficulty trying to stop these murders is compounded by the Watch itself. Try to post more checkpoints or patrols, people act like you’re cracking down on them... when the murders continue and there’s this pattern, well some people are starting to think the Watch is complicit. If it was any of his boys doing this, he’d kill them himself at this point.

This didn’t seem like your average purist ‘Earth is for humans’ asshole though. Typically they’d be sloppy, wouldn’t much care who their victims were as long as they weren’t human. But all these victims seemed to be chosen to draw as much attention as possible. He had a sinking feeling in his gut this was going to get worse. Water was already boiling and it wouldn’t be much longer before it spilled over. Humans could start getting hurt or killed next, with frustrated people looking for someone to blame. Then if his bosses order the Watch in to protect the humans. Uhg. Mother was right, he should’ve been an electrician like pa.

Looks like he’d have **** but to make his case to higher-ups for some qualified people, or outside help again. The first time he tried, he got laughed out of the room. The second time, he got his ass chewed out. But third time’s a charm, right?