Machinist of Mana

Ignus

I shifted through the city's offices, eyes peeled for whoever and whatever might be a threat. The city was always under threat of some kind, be it bandits, organized crime, corruption, or something like the monsters now growing in our underbelly. Though none of those compared to the fact that otherwise well known men had betrayed the city.

“Report,” I said as I entered a meeting room.

“The undercity is still quiet. We know they're down there somewhere, or at least we expect it, but we can't find hide nor hair of them,” one of my men answered first.

“Unacceptable, those beasts have done more than enough damage. I want them found, and I want them destroyed completely.”

“I don't know if that's the optimal path sir,” answered one of our investigators.

“Explain.”

“From what we've seen they're intelligent, and from the words of those boys they can at least be talked to. This 'Father' is decidedly a problem, but if we can remove him we might be able to negotiate with the rest,” she didn't seem bothered by my normally sharp tone, knowing that I valued her opinions.

“We'll consider if we can find them, but they need to be fixed, and now. As for our other issues?” I turned to the other side of the room.

“The traitors have all been confirmed to have been elves by the priests we brought in. We're having them quietly examine all of our people now, saying that we're worried about something from the underground problem. Seemed prudent since they don't look connected and we don't want to scare any more traitors. We found one the last night... but this morning he was found dead in his cell. It was... extreme.”

I'd seen the report of the capture on my desk this morning, but not the death.

“Extreme how?”

“The body, what's left of it at least, is still being examined. Someone went in there and tortured him, looked like they were skinning the man before he was killed.”

Wow, that was extreme. My people would sometimes torture, quietly, and well away from any priests, but none of ours would have done that in this situation, we needed answers, but the killing told me this was something personal. I'd have to see that too was investigated but one of my other officers on that side was looking alarmed too.

“Speak up,” I told him.

“One of the coroners was complaining this morning that someone messed around in the morgue, had files out, left bodies where they shouldn't have been. He thought it was one of his coworkers, but with that.”

“With that, we have another party involved, potentially more of these infiltrators found out about our captive and decided to remove him.”

“But why the torture? It doesn't make sense,” said the same girl from before, and this was why I valued her opinion, she would point out when I made such foolish mistakes.

“You're right, a third party? Maybe they thought he'd betrayed them? We just don't know, but we need to find out.”

Each of these people had been picked because they excelled at something. That was why I loved it when they disagreed with me, too many times had I gone through life with folks thinking that they needed to suck up, that was wrong. The thing I needed most was to win, it was the only thing that mattered in my line of work. There were people out there that thought they were the best, and everyone should sit down and do exactly as told without argument, and those people were fools. Everyone made mistakes, everyone missed obvious problems, it was only by surrounding ourselves with those whose skills exceeded our own in some field that we could overcome our failings.

The duke employed me for similar reasons, that was part of why I liked him so much. Sure, he had to maintain appearances, but when it came down to it, he needed things to get done. So he found me, a man who would get the job done, who would protect his city from enemies. He gave me what I needed and listened when I counseled him, basically an ideal boss.

“Have someone sent to the morgue, doubtful that we'll find anything of use, but we could. Other than that, make sure any more infiltrators who get caught don't mysteriously die. We'll be sending out word to other areas of the issue, so they can look for more once we're done here.” I'd already informed the royals so they could purge the capital, but nobody here needed to know that.

There were a few other minor details to cover, the results of the sewer searches (nothing), distribution of men, other possibly related crimes, but none of those were surprising in the least. We had one, perhaps two or more enemies in the city, so figuring out what went where and with whom was a chore.

After the meeting was done I moved off to one of the workshops nearby, to check on another project. Honestly it seemed like more and more of my day was being taken up by meetings, even though I much preferred working in the field. The cost of leadership I supposed.

“How do things go?” I asked the man there, a foreman of sorts.

“Not well.”

“Go into detail please.” Really he should have without me asking.

“These new weapons work, but resizing them into something usable isn't. Nobody other than a magic user could hope to wield one without breaking his wrist to shards. As for downsizing it, that's presented its own plethora of problems.”

“You can't just shrink the parts by a given amount?” I asked.

“Absolutely not, there's an explosion in there, and the mechanics of it aren't simple. Sure, we've got plenty of machines with tighter tolerances and comparable pressures, but this is a very different field. Getting it all right is taking time sir. We need men who both are experts in making guns and making small machines, something we just don't have on staff.”

“I'd like this done quickly.”

“Then could you put us into contact with the creator? Get a consult from him and maybe even have him run us through his design philosophy? I feel like there's a system to it, because these aren't something that you could just make so well out of nowhere.” Interesting, very interesting.

“I'll consider it, we want this project kept fairly quiet for now. What about the other thing I asked about?”

“That I can answer,” the foreman said with a slight smile. “That chemical he asked for in pellet form is done, and I know what he wanted it for.”

“Don't keep me in suspense then.”

“It's another form of gunpowder, and an amazingly good one too.”

The boy had asked for nitrocellulose, something I'd never heard of, but a chemist had managed to figure it out. He also wanted it in specific particle sizes, something doable, but odd. So I'd decided to hand the information over to our technical men, see what they made of it, at least after the chemist just gave me a shrug.

“Is that so? How interesting, see what you can learn from it, and how it works in these new firearms. If things go well we can arm all of our men with them by next year. That might be the edge we need against the lowlifes in this city.”