//------------------------------// // Ten // Story: Maelstrom // by QQwrites //------------------------------// The Disaster Response Patrol arrived in Applewood about a week later, ostensibly for a training exercise. Maelstrom had selected the staging area away from Las Pegasus to avoid drawing High Roller’s attention, though she had sent me in her stead. They were amazing fliers, having flown direct from Baltimare with enough stamina to handle whatever might be thrown at them. Raine was among them and approached me after the initial briefing: “Good to see you again, Mister Quill!” she beamed. It hadn’t been a moon, but it was like night and day. “I just wanted to say, sir, I’m sorry for the restaurant...and the café…and any other time I caused you grief.” She held out a hopeful hoof. I wasn’t about to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. I remembered something my father used to say: “Magnanimous in victory, humble in defeat.” He spent most of his life humble. I shook her hoof. “Don’t sweat it, Raine,” I said trying to show some sincerity. I didn’t have anything against her, even if Raine was responsible for my being in the South West and not, as I would prefer, literally anywhere cooler. “So, what’s this training exercise about?” There was a conspiratorial undertone to her voice. “Does it have anything to do with the Director’s meeting High Roller the other day?” she added in a quiet voice. I was nonplussed: “Just how in Celestia's name do you know about that?” “I didn’t until now,” she grinned. I added her my mental list of potential hat eaters. “But, it makes sense why she’s out here when nothing is going on. I guess that means she decided to act on my report?” I put on my best Maelstrom face: “I couldn’t answer that even if I wanted to.” “That’s okay! Whenever the Director wants, she can count on me. Tell her that, please. I really like the DRP and I owe Maelstrom for putting me there.” And she really seemed happy. Maybe it was just a honeymoon phase: she liked the job now, but would hate it later. Then again, maybe we’re all puzzle pieces looking for a place to fit, contorting into uncomfortable positions just to make a life, only to pop out when the strain becomes too much. I promised I would pass her message along and made a hasty retreat. Maelstrom would want to know Raine knew more about the exercise than the other DRP members. I was worried how she would take this news. Maelstrom had become unpredictable on this trip: I’d seen more emotion from her in a week than the last year. It wasn’t always obvious, nor was it always negative. There were times when she seemed almost manic: she smiled at dinner and laughed while reading the paper. I overheard her humming in the shower: a pleasant little dirge which reminded me of a child chanting blood blood blood. I started to question whether the Director was actually sane. Her plan to get High Roller’s water bordered on criminal. For that reason, it was vitally important nopony else knew what was really going on, especially if that somepony was going to document it. The EWS was a Public Trust agency: nothing was hidden, everything was available upon request. On the other hoof, if it wasn’t written, it didn’t happen. She was sitting in her bed, surrounded by papers. There was a bottle of something expensive looking on her nightstand and a number of discarded envelopes littered the floor. Her hair was unusually messy and I could see bags under her eyes. I started calling this version of Maelstrom “Mal”, which was an old word for “Bad”. She looked up with a smile as I closed the door. I set my hat on the coatrack and handed her the latest correspondence from Applewood: “The Regional Director is on board: he’s grounding all Las Pegasus operations until further notice and has redeployed all his WPs to distribute water for drought mitigation.” “Did you have to tell him anything?” She started tearing through the envelopes savagely. “No, just what we agreed on: the DRP is conducting training exercises and can’t have WPs in the area fouling it up.” The best part of this story was that it was true: Maelstrom had ordered the DRP here under the guise of a research/training exercise. The issue was the planned length of the deployment: indefinite. “Excellent!” she cried, tossing a letter at me. “The press dutifully picked up the story about High Roller’s generous support of the DRP study.” “Did he actually say he supported it?” I asked while reading the article. “Never mind that: I see it says ‘a source at the EWS said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.’” I looked over the paper at Mal, who smiled. “A leak in the EWS establishing a paper trail of support and cooperation with High Roller?” she asked, feigning innocence. “We’ll have to issue a memo about speaking to the press out of turn, Quill.” “I’ll get right on it,” I said absently. This was becoming too much. I was starting to feel like a spy. Not the dashing, super-spy who always gets the girl. No, I felt like the back alley, treasonous kind who winds up in prison. “You look ill, Quill. Are you feeling alright?” she paused and lowered her voice: “I’m going to need you to see this through.” My throat was a vice, my tongue a desert, and my chest heavy as if a whole ocean was pushing against my ribs. “Of course, Mal,” I said in equally low tones. “I’m yours.” Raine joined us in the hotel room that evening, at Maelstrom’s request. Without ceremony, she was put to task making calculations to determine how long Las Pegasus could remain operational, assuming current consumption, without renewing water from the Applewood reservoir. While they worked, I kept busy organizing and preparing papers for the ongoing research operation. These ops are carefully planned and it was necessary to forge the bureaucracy, so that it appeared the research had been initiated moons ago. If Raine knew what I was up to, she didn’t say. This kind of retroactive documentation is not completely uncommon in government work: sometimes, a project starts by mistake and someone must go through the arduous task of putting everything right. The only difference between innocent bureaucratic mix-ups and what I was doing was the date I was putting on the paper. More to the point: I was becoming concerned that Raine was beginning to idolize Maelstrom. After all, it was the latter who rescued the former from career death: Raine was grateful bordering on genuflection. I would have approved of Maelstrom as a role model before, but now…now I worried Raine’s loyalty was blind. And that made me question my own. By the time Raine left, the sun was cresting the horizon. I wasn’t sure Las Pegasus ever slept, but in this way, it reminded me of my old my home in Manhattan. Maelstrom was reading the new figures. She seemed pleased: “The good news is this won’t be a protracted siege.” She was like a general on a battlefield. “The city won’t last to the next moon without more water.” “How far are we going to take this?” I was looking to be reassured. She didn’t answer. Maybe she was scared of how far she’d need to go or maybe she didn’t want me to know what she was willing to do to her own country in service of it.