Riotfish, Inc.: In Debt: Chapter 33

Ma Daugereaux was up preparing coffee and breakfast before any of the Riotfish woke, so they were gently brought to consciousness by the homey rattle of kitchenware and crockery.

D’khara blearily opened his eyes. The temperature hadn’t dropped much overnight. He’d managed to avoid putting any of the blankets on top of himself by building a kind of dam with them around his body. The heat had been relentless. He was more accustomed to the cool dampness of the mine, or the dry coolness of the Riotfish HQ. This angry, sticky air was a new phenomenon to him. He felt as though he’d not really been able to fall fully asleep all night.

He sat up, trying to blink some clarity into his eyes. His hair poked out every which way. The right side of his mustache was folded up, and the left side looked as though it had exploded. The smell of coffee drew him upright, only barely conscious, but fully on board with the idea of caffeine consumption. He stumbled over to the table and took a seat. Ma Daugereaux already had a cup poured as he sat down and set it in front of him.

“Y’all want some biscuits and gravy?” she asked.

“Oh, yes ma’am,” D’khara replied.

She smiled.

“Just ‘Ma’ is fine. I’ll set you up.”

A minute later, she slid a huge plate in front of him, covered with dense, steaming homemade biscuits and thick, spicy sausage gravy.

He barely managed a “thank you” out before he started wolfing down the food. Ma Daugereaux watched him for a moment, smiling quietly.

Fleer slid in next to D’khara, looking more put-together than D’khara, if not any better rested. Dark bags pulled at his eyes.

“Good morning, Mrs. Daugereaux. Did you have a pleasant evening?”

“Oh, I did all right. How about yourself?”

“I, uh, slept quite well, thank you.”

She put a plate in front of Fleer.

The rest of the Riotfish trickled in, their brief chatting extinguished by the presence of food. Everybody ate with gusto except for Oliver, who took two small polite bites and smiled uncomfortably while the rest of them ate.

After breakfast, the Riotfish began scouting Daugereaux’ land in earnest.

“This looks like a decent spot for us to set up base camp,” Fleer said, casting about the clearing they’d been looking at. “What do you think, Oliver?

Oliver smiled awkwardly with his lips pressed together. He theatrically furrowed his brow and turned, pretending to consider the area. He gulped while nodding, surreptitiously crumpling the wrapper of a protein ration in his massive fist.

“Defensible, with water on two sides,” he said, “with heavy cover everywhere else. Not much in the way of topological advantage, but I imagine everything around here is pretty flat. I’d say it’s as good as we’re likely to find.”

“You sure y’all don’ want to set up closer to de house? We don’t mind feedin’ y’all,” Daugereaux said, wandering back up.

“I appreciate the offer, Mr. Daugereaux, but we’ll want some distance between us. Just in case we’re attacked, we don’t want them getting too close to you and your wife. We can post a guard for you two just in case, and we’ll be close enough to reach you quickly, if something goes wrong.”

Daugereaux nodded appreciatively.

“Well dat makes good sense,” he said slowly, as the Riotfish began setting up camp. “But don’t you worry none about guardin’ us. Me and Ma can take care of ourselfs fine. You just worry about dem awlmen. And you let us know if dere’s anything we can help wit’.”

Fleer nodded.

“We’ve been having a lot of trouble getting a connection out here,” Fleer said. “It would be helpful if we could splice into your network connection. I know it’s a long way back to the cabin, but communication and research could be important.”

Daugereaux scratched his head.

“I s’pose dat would be awright,” he said. “I don’ know much about dem holonet, though.”

“No worries,” Fleer said. “We’ve got a spool of cable and a box of repeaters. I’m sure Oliver can run that out for us.”

Oliver smiled awkwardly, with his lips pressed together, and nodded.

“Now, Mr. Daugereaux, after some investigation, I believe Oliver’s initial assessment was correct. These men on your land are not here for you or your oil rights, they’re planning a heist from a nearby facility, and using your land as a staging ground. We’d like to do some scouting to verify the enemy locations and numbers. While we can’t directly face off against such a large force, we can employ some guerrilla tactics to hamper their operation, perhaps enough to convince them to move their operation elsewhere.”

“Mr. Fleer, I respec’ dat you got to make de decisions for you and your men, but I don’t want dem couyons to move dey operation. I want dem to be sorry dey ever thought to do it on my land in de first place.”

Fleer nodded, trying not to smile.

“Understood. I had Oliver prepare a contingency plan just in case you felt that way. First, we’ll need to get our eyes out, then we can develop some tactics to soften them up some.”

“Oh I got a start on dat, me. I already started messing wit’ dey catches.”

“How so?”

“Stealin’ dey guns, or bendin’ de barrels, pulling out de firin’ pins, givin’ ’em a quick dunk in de swamp. Dat kind of thing. I got a list of de catches I found so far and where dey at.”

“That’s a great start, and will save us a lot of time. We can definitely limit them that way. Problem is, if they’re well-funded, they’ll just ship in replacements.”

D’khara was unrolling the massive tent that would house the Riotfish for the duration of the operation, but perked up as the conversation drifted to firearms.

“Can I make a suggestion?” he said. Fleer nodded for him to continue. “Don’t make the sabotage so obvious. What if we just tweaked their guns a little? Put the sights out of true so their aim will be off, clip the springs in their mags so they jam, little things that won’t stand out, so they don’t bring in replacements. That way we can make them a lot less effective without them realizing.”

“Now dis, I like de way dis young fella thinks,” said Daugereaux. “Dat sounds like a plan to me.”

“Agreed,” said Fleer. “D’khara, you and Roger work with Daugereaux to get a list of these caches, and put together a route to go around to as many of them as you can. Oliver, once we’re done setting up camp, take Little Timmy and scout everything between here and the Cryocorp land. We need to know where these guys are, how many there are, and how they’re moving around.”

“Whizzle me a new Bacon!” Roger replied.

“Dat boy’s goin’ to blend right in wit’ de gators,” Daugereaux observed.

“Oliver, let’s go over our contingency plans with Mr. Daugereaux, shall we? Do you have your datapad handy?”

Oliver set down the spool of cable he’d been carrying.

“Certainly.” He pulled out his datapad and walked over, pulling up maps, elevations, and statistics. “As we’ve discovered, the operation here is to burgle a large quantity of gold from the Cryocorp facility on the northern border of your land, and then escape through the path they’ve been clearing. Our idea is to allow these soldiers to carry out their scheme without interference beforehand– it’s unlikely we’d be able to stop them in any case. The plan is to ambush them once they’ve gotten the gold and are making their way out. They’ll be lulled by their success, possibly weakened by a confrontation with Cryocorp forces, and in no wise will they be expecting an attack. The woods should provide sufficient cover for this part of the operation.”

“The particulars will depend on what we find after some scouting. Provisionally, we’ll mine the escape route, and perform a surprise attack from the rear. The shock of the attack and the disabling of their vehicles will hopefully start a rout. If not, we’ll fall back and use guerrilla tactics to break them up. With any luck we can prevent an extended fight. In any case, they won’t be able to get their vehicles out.”

Daugereaux looked shrewdly at Fleer.

“So now I am suppose to axe what is goin’ to happen to dat gold. But I think I can make a pretty good guess.”

Fleer broke in.

“It would be yours, of course,” Fleer said. “Minus a small fee. But you have to admit, it would make them sorry they used your land for their plan.”

“Dat is a truth,” Daugereaux said. “Well den, I think dat is a fine plan.”

Fleer couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

“Excellent. Let’s get cracking.”