(poland)

Day broke on Olyokin somewhere above their base, mostly unnoticed by the crew inside. There were only a few windows in the high bay, and from both, Feliks was able to deduce that the weather was decent - well-lit and not blizzarding, skies like bluebells. A total lack of pathetic fallacy. It was entirely unlike the feeling he had about today - something murky, something waiting in the wings for them to act so that it could go horribly wrong. He just knew it.

Rather than wake up late, roll out of bed, find something that seemed clean enough to wear and grab a few pieces of bread to stuff in his mouth before beginning work (on the days he wasn't Agnieszka, he relished the freedom to be a slob), Feliks awoke uncharacteristically early without the help of sunlight or an alarm. Instead, he spent over an hour in the washroom feeling sick and sorry for himself before he shakily made his way to the eating area to boil water for weak tea.

He spent the morning in a daze, moving as though he were in a dream. Nobody joined him until quarter to nine, when a scruffy-looking Toris sleepily staggered in to start breakfast and make awkward small talk.

Super weird that it was him this time, Feliks thought, and not Toris. This time it was his worries and apprehension when usually it was the other way around - Toris not being able to rest until three am, waking up with nightmares an hour later and spending the rest of the night in the kitchen puttering, and Feliks sleeping like a baby and shrugging everything off. Maybe he was making up for lost time.

As the rest of the crew joined, lured into the eating area by the scent of the breakfast that turned Feliks' stomach, he steeled himself. Think of something nice, he thought. Think of ponies. Ponies are nice. Think of ponies.

.:.

"This operation," Zielska announced, when they had all convened at ten-thirty to recap the day's plans, "begins in two hours. No doubt every Duma employee will take the afternoon off to catch the auction on the radio, or they'll gather around the radios there. This goes for both the business side -" Zielska gave Feliks a pointed look - "and the residential side -" she gestured to Toris. "Most importantly, the three people we do not want in the Duma are now safely away on Hallar, where the mailships take a day to get to, bearing yesterday's news.

"Our goal is to penetrate the residential portion of the Duma at the exact time when the radio signals from Hallar reach Olyokin and captivate everybody's attention. In this effort we're guided by Raivis Galante, alias Anistas Kudrins, stationed as a servant in the residential portion of the Duma. He reports only one means of accessing the residential side when Yekaterina Bragina is away due to her security schemes. Access via the main entrance is monitored by heavy guard. All other outside doors are triple-locked - except the courtyard guard tower doors, which must remain open for the sake of courtyard security. The courtyard is used also by the agents on the business side, regardless of whether the Bragins are at home."

Here, Zielska pointed to the rough map pinned to the board behind her at the head of the table.

"The internal square courtyard separates the east-facing residential portions of the Duma from the west-facing official portions. When Bragina is away, all four defensive walls surrounding the courtyard are heavily patrolled with walking guards along the top path, plus the four guard towers at the corners. The two tenailles on either side of the north and south walls also house guards.

"Even if we had three hundred people and the element of surprise, to charge the Duma would be insane. Luckily we have a convenient route via the business side. Feliks -" here Zielska gestured to Feliks, "alias Agniezska Janowska, can easily enter the official side for anything, no matter how small and insignificant, such as a visit to a friend."

Feliks knew the rest of the team were looking at him in disbelief. Unlike Toris, who looked dapper in his black wool trousers, braces and a somewhat wrinkled white shirt, Feliks was grubby looking whenever he went around as Feliks. He didn't put much effort into his appearance, and he wore plain clothes without any colour scheme or intelligence in their selection, like he wanted to be overlooked. (He did, but more appropriately, why dress up for tinkering around with oil and grease? Why do one's nails when one worked with one's hands? That made like no sense!) Becoming Agnieszka would take him the better part of an hour, but he'd show them all how water-tight the legend was and give them something to really look at.

It wouldn't be hard to get them in. Feliks - rather, Agnieszka - had a marvellous ability to make people listen to her. All she had to do was say she wanted to talk to Pavel Rubetski - Olga's elder brother - about Olga's upcoming birthday party in a week. Plausible. It even fit her character. The others with her? Well, you can't plan a totally amazing super fantastic birthday party alone! If they gave her crap she'd whine and demand entrance with a 'do you know who I am' - because they certainly ought to. And Pavel conveniently worked in the same section as the vid-free office occupied by a fool who had entrusted his keys briefly to Raivis and who was attending the auction on Hallar.

For all the times Feliks as Agnieszka had envied the right to be anonymous in a crowd, he had to admit this was convenient, but it would almost certainly mark the last time he could use Agnieszka as a persona. After this, she would have to disappear, and so he had prepared a letter to hand deliver to Pavel to give to his little sister, saying I'm sorry for everything, don't come and find me. If the operation didn't go totally belly-up, and it were never found that Agnieszka and a crew of 'party planners' were poking around where they shouldn't have been, Agnieszka would simply ask for the letter back and sweet darling Pasha would oblige.

He had sent a similar but more detailed letter to the base at Kroksvellir. Just in case.

"From there on in, we can get to where we need with relative ease. Feliks, your team will remain in the business side to scout out Ivan's public office." Yeah, Ivan's public office, which he like never used. He found Zielska's obvious lack of trust in him super insulting. "If you find anything, let us know, remove it, and get out. If you find nothing, let us know, remove yourselves and get out, as quickly and as silently as possible.

"I cannot stress this enough. Do not attempt acts of heroism. Simply get out. If you are captured..."

Feliks looked at Toris for a better explanation when Zielska trailed off, but he merely lowered his eyes in an effort not to meet Feliks'. Toris, he thought angrily, you are so not inspiring a lot of faith over here.

"The rest of us head to the courtyard, where we will meet Raivis near the south-west tower. Any single side of the courtyard takes about two minutes to dash across; keep under the guardrail to avoid being seen by the tenailles. One can see over the guardrail from the towers, which are typically well-monitored, but Raivis has managed to get rid of some of the guards. The watch sentries on the south side are out sick with food poisoning. With the auction, and Bragina not around to boss people about, the staff are unlikely to bother finding last-minute replacements.

"The patrol along the path at the top of the south wall still continues. Of the four guards that remain on that route, three of them are close friends and coordinate patrols. The loner is therefore easier to pick off first, with the remaining three to be assaulted and eliminated when they reach the tower and we have the advantage of surprise, enclosure, and also number. This leaves the south wall free for our passage as the guards keep to their own walls during shifts. The north wall guards won't leave their post, even if they notice that the south wall is unmanned, which they are unlikely to do unless they examine it. They are unlikely to notice anything, in fact, until the changing of the guard at 3pm.

"Keys for the residential entrance via the guard towers come courtesy of Raivis, who after accompanying us across the wall will then return to his supposed duties. He's already equipped with one of these," Zielska said, holding up one of Eduard's two-way Eavesdroppers.

"Meanwhile, Toris' team and my team infiltrate the Duma residential side - mostly empty aside from servants that we must avoid or risk eliminating - to Bragin's office. We take this path here." Zielska traced her finger on the map. "Bragin is more likely to have used the one in his chambers. He's ill, he wants to stay away from everybody, keep distractions out, and minimise the risk of harm to other people."

"If he snapped and killed someone, it'd be the last straw for the House of Bragin," remarked one of Zielska's agents - one of the group that gave Feliks funny looks anytime Agnieszka was mentioned.

Feliks restrained himself from saying anything. Less chance of Ivan snapping and killing someone? Sequestering himself in his quarters meant he spent all his time with Eduard! And they knew that, the agents had all been told about Eduard's whereabouts! The guy who provided them with the technology they would be using! What, did he not count 'cause he was a bondsman? Maybe Lukas - Eirik - whatever his real name - had a point.

But Eduard was perfectly fine, Raivis had seen him just a few days ago ... still. The sooner they extracted him, the better! Maybe Eduard had considered Toris' offer. Feliks hoped he had.

"Keep in mind," Zielska stressed, "we are here to get only one thing: information. In particular, incriminating information. If you see something expensive and priceless - no doubt you will - you must ignore it. In order to expose the information about Zapreschniy state as a mysterious leak to the press we must endeavour for it to have come from nowhere. Perhaps a servant snuck it out. Perhaps the missing guards took them and vanished to live off the pot of cash that selling that information would have awarded them. Perhaps Ivan Bragin carelessly left it behind in a tavern. If there is any possible suspicion on Kilnus, the protection afforded from the Interplanetary Press Secrets Act will be voided, and stealing anything of material worth - though immediately gratifying - could allow the Bragins to uncover this operation's having taken place."

"Once we're in, we need as few interactions with the servants as possible," Toris began. "Luckily, it's a simple path to Ivan's chambers."

"And also Yekaterina's," Zielska noted.

"Ah... right," Toris replied. "We did talk about that ... while there may be fewer guards internally - since the entrance security is so stiff - Bragina's doors are a problem. One lock in particular triggers an Eavesdropper alarm if tampered with - those of you on the Commander's team will need to be briefed about them all. But if you've got the technology -"

"Bragina must keep the most important files somewhere," Zielska reasoned, "and my guess is the place where she spends most of her time. Toris, I'm confident you can handle Ivan's on your own. I'll see what there is to see in Bragina's personal offices. If there's anything good, we take it; if not, we get out the same way we got in. Once back, across the courtyard, exiting the Duma is much simpler and nobody is likely to raise a fuss."

"Nobody will even be around," pointed out Toris. "As long as it's before 5pm, everybody we'll be glued to the radio."

"And Raivis?" Feliks asked. You know, the guy you keep totally forgetting about?

"As I said," Zielska explained slowly - like Feliks was five - "he stays in the kitchens out of the way."

Feliks narrowed his eyes. "But what's Raivis' exit strategy, if like every single exit on the residential side of the Duma is locked in triplicate? We're instructed to get the hell out the second we're done," he explained, referring to himself and the team of two agents that had been assigned to his operation poking about in Ivan's business office. "What about Raivis?"

There was more silence. "Toris, he is being extracted, isn't he?"

"Raivis volunteered to remain in the kitchens and cause enough distraction to keep most people there for at least an hour," Toris said. "A spilled bucket of milk will do the trick."

"Okay, so like, what if that doesn't work?"

"He's plotted us other ways out. They all involve, uh ... the sewers... but we'll take showers later, don't worry."

"This is a messy job," Zielska said simply, and a few of her agents cracked grins.

How amusing, the dainty aristocrat coming out with shit on her ballgown! Patronising witch with her little warts, he wanted to punch them all; Feliks wasn't afraid of getting dirty! He hated this regime as much as any of them - maybe more! Wasn't he the one up-close and personal with the elite all the time? "I didn't mean that," he snapped. "I meant, we're taking Raivis with us, right?"

There was silence.

"Toris!" he admonished. Toris had the grace to look decently ashamed of himself.

"It was my idea," Zielska stated. "We may require that he stays in the employ of the Duma if we can't find enough evidence of the Darinys cover-up, or if something goes wrong. It would be convenient to have a way back in." Feliks wasn't sure how they'd manage getting back into the Duma's official side - or any side - if Agnieszka were retired.

"They'll suspect any new hires!" Feliks protested.

"At any rate, I don't think that'll be necessary," Toris remarked. "Raivis has the assistance of the Bragins' airship driver."

"But he's like not even gonna be here for all of this," Feliks reminded him.

"Yes," Toris nodded, "he's off driving the airship."

"Uh-huh, that's kinda my point exactly. The only guy who can help Raivis is also on another planet two days away by like the fastest airship there is in the system!"

"But so are all three Bragins," Toris protested. "Raivis is fine! Remember, he's a better spy than you give him credit for."

And that much was true, so why was Feliks worrying so irrationally?

He chalked it up to his sinking feeling about today's imminent failures and blushed. "Sorry," he muttered uncomfortably - mostly to Toris, but also to the rest of the table, which had fallen silent and was staring directly at him. He shifted and slouched in his chair.

Zielska cleared her throat. "If we're through with debating the resourcefulness of our intelligence officers, perhaps we could get back to business?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer continued with the meeting.

Amazing. Now he felt totally stupid for having spoken up at all.

.:.

a/n: again, I'm sorry for such a long update after such a long hiatus! See you guys in a few days : D (no, for reals. I mean it!)