3rd Quarter, Shirekeep
BDI said that this was the place. The White Ayes were storing their goods here and using it as their headquarters.
Absal's own men gave it a good scoping out and confirmed the report. With the signal given, dozens of Cudgellers sprang from their vehicles and surrounded the apartment building, with designated teams at the entrance ways. Cudgels at the ready. Absal gripped at his cudgel as well. Ever since he earned his flanged cudgel, Inspector Jensing yearned for a good swing.
"This is the City Guard. Come out now or we will remove you. This is your only warning. You have one minute."
The streets in every direction quickly cleared of people. Windows of adjacent buildings slammed shut. Screams inside the surrounded apartment building. Screams gave way to angry yelling, then a silent pause. Two light pops on the fourth floor, followed by renewed screaming.
30 seconds.
A louder bang on the third floor, and something large fell against the window. A window on the ground floor slid open and a young man, barely a teenager, made it halfway out before arms clawed around him to pull him back in. The Cudgellers, standing outside and forming a human perimeter, watched as the boy kicked back and pull himself by his fingertips. The boy was back up to his shoulders, almost disappeared back behind the curtains, then up to his waist, digging his fingers between the bricks.
A whistle blew. At each entrance, a team of Cudgellers rammed through the doors and swarmed in, cudgels raised to swing. They gathered in the main entrance hall, then divided up again, working their way into each room, up the stairs, down the stairs.
After a few quick swings, the arms holding the boy became limp and the boy tumbled out onto the street, where a cudgeller loomed over him, deciding whether or not the boy, who now shielded himself with his arms over his face, constituted a breaker of the peace.
Reaching the first, then the second floors, the teams of Cudgellers were greeted with screams and thanks and knives and bats.
At the third floor, the first Cudgeller through the door was knocked back by two loud pops, both to the chest. Both were prevented from making progress into his squishy innards by his anti-ballistic vest. A third pop, landing on his arm, however, made him less than accommodating. The user of that gun quickly learned to appreciate the long arm of the law.
Inspector Absel Jensing gave his flanged cudgel a few extra swings through the air as he entered the main entrance hall. Behind him lay an unfortunate soul who thought that jumping out of a window would guarantee his escape from justice. The downside of a flanged cudgel, Absel concluded, was that the blood had so many crevices to get caught in.
First Cudgel Ar-Ranan saluted and reported that the building housed a number of illegal activities, only some of which was directly related to the White Ayes' human trafficking. Absel shrugged and contemplated the annoyance of filing separate reports for each individual, non-gang-related illegal activity. So much paperwork. It would be so much easier to just pin it all in the White Ayes. Unfortunately, the Prefectica had assigned an auditing group to the City Guard's central office and they didn't seem to care how much paperwork it took to get it "accurate".
"So be it." Absel muttered, continuing to wander the main entrance hall. A line of three perpetrators were being led out, cuffed and a bag over their head. A fourth was dragged down the stairs, his ankles also cuffed.
Cudgeller's work was muscular work.
A man appeared at the landing in the stairwell down to the basement. It was not a Cudgeller, but a White Aye, his white scarf tied around at his shoulder. In his hands, he held a rather large weapon. Before the Cudgellers in the entrance hall could react, this White Aye stepped forward and demonstrated how much noise his weapon could make.
Absel swung his flanged cudgel and struck meat, interrupting the weapon's noise with a different, more guttural sound. Absel dislodged his cudgel and swung again. This White Aye, Absel thought afterwards, would no longer be able to operate his weapon.
Even so, he had made a few good shots, with a caliber of weapon that their anti-ballistic armor couldn't match. First Cudgel Ar-Ranan nursed a wound that made him curse like the sourest Octolune.
The hole leading from the basement into the sewer tunnel was a tight fit, but the SAS fireteam squeezed through rather effortlessly. From Absal's view behind them, he could see them spread left and right. One of them popped a single shot, followed by a splash of water. They signalled for the Cudgellers to move forward.
Several meters down, a rusted steel door broken off its hinges. A fresh body sat halfway down in the water to give the SAS and Cudgellers a stepping stone across the sewer water. Through the doorway was a small compartment with an uncovered manhole. Two Cudgellers were standing above it and called down.
"A group of them tried to break out here but we pushed them back down. Couldn't follow them further without SAS cover. Went down into that hole there."
He was pointing to a raw, jagged hole cut into the crumbling, deteriorating concrete in the floor of the compartment. A pair of brave Cudgellers squeezed through the hole without their gear, down until it levelled off and widened. It continued downward until it ended in the far corner of some subterranean storage room. The door was barred. Rammed through, the Cudgellers spotted the faded logo of SARTRE printed on it. An old, abandoned underground transit station, filth and cots everywhere.
From across the railway track, White Ayes shot at the Guardsmen behind makeshift barracade.
A flash grenade bounced over their barrier and exploded in the hand of the gang member who had hoped to throw it back. While his comrades were blinded and struggled to take cover, he yelped as his wrist stump quickly bled him out. The others found themselves overwhelmed with cudgels. Behind the barricade, another door barred shut, this one more resistant to the ram.
A single railway ran through this station during its heyday. The tunnel feeding left, to the north, was exposed and endless darkness lay beyond the range of the Guardsmen's flashlight. The tunnel feeding right, to the south, however, was blocked off with a makeshift wall of salved wood and metal. It rattled in place, loose enough to move around but not enough to dislodge.
"Heave!"
The makeshift wall came apart like two large doors, splitting in half at the point where they had secured the rope. The SAS fireteam moved through the crack to clear the area beyond. With luck, there would be a side door and they wouldn't need to rig explosives to get into that last compartment, where the White Ayes must have been holed up with their captives. Absal's men had counted several dozen gang members and their captives feeding into this building, accelerating in the days before the raid, and none coming out. Not enough people were apprehended in the apartment building above to account for all of those people.
There was a crackle of gunfire, then a dull explosion.
Through the dust of concrete and wool splinters, two SAS members ran back through the crack in the wall, one offering another burst before attempting to leap out of the railway trench and back up to the platform level. A third SAS member limped out, then had his legs pulled out from under him by a large, moist, fleshy tentacle. It pulled him back through the crack in the makeshift wall.
The mass of Cudgellers stood silent.
A deep rumble filled the station. The makeshift wall tore apart. The creature came out.
Despite its large size, it moved with unexpected grace, floating up and filling the center of the station. Its semi-transparent skin allowed the Cudgellers to watch as their SAS comrade was consumed and pumped deeper into the creature before coming to rest in a large chamber littered with a mass of human-looking limbs. The creature glowed a faint, eerie yellow. One of its tentacles lifted up. On its end was a ragdoll of a man, whom Absal recognized as the leader of the White Ayes. The tentacles wrapped around and sunk into the flesh of the man, its tip forcibly inserted into the back of the man's head. Like the creature, his body also glowed a faint yellow through holes in his tattered clothes and skin.
The man's head spoke.
"BRING FOOD ... BE FOOD"
The Cudgellers on the western side of the station, back in the direction of the sewer line, were lucky. The Cudgellers on the eastern side of the station, however, were cut off. A cluster of them attempted to tear a hole through the wall with their ram. The rest scattered where they could.
The man-tentacle lowered back down, and the creature moved forward.
The sound of a large explosion filled the Third Quarter and could be heard clear across the Elwynn.
Case No. 16521410-13B
Reporting Officer Absal Jensing, Inspector of Cudgels
Prepared By Pia Bastev, Chief Inspector of Cudgels, 3rd Quarter
Incident/Issue Raid on headquarters of the gang calling itself The White Ayes. Evidence of illegal drug trafficking. Evidence of illegal human trafficking.
Preliminary intelligence suggested approximately thirty gang members and eighty captives within the structure.
Actions Taken Raid executed by Cudgellers Guild, Third Quarter. Absal Jensing, Inspector of Cudgels as ranking member. Supplemented by two teams of SAS.
Eleven gang members, fourteen captives, forty-one bystanders apprehended in apartment building. Four gang members, three captives in the basement of apartment building -- gang members had firearms and resisted, dead. Seven gang member apprehended in undocumented tunnel dug from the basement through sewer tunnel into abandoned SARTRE station -- gang members had firearms and resisted, dead.
Losses: Seven Cudgellers injured, Three Cudgellers deceased.
Hostile creature encountered in SARTRE station. Additional SAS firepower called in. Hostile creature subdued at the cost of nine Cudgellers, two SAS.
Recommendations
Case No. 16521410-13C
Reporting Officer Seth Aioon, Auxilliary Ordinate, Corps of Auxiliaries
Prepared By Pia Bastev, Chief Inspector of Cudgels
Incident/Issue Detached from Palatini Corps Labor Division for cleanup of botched raid on organized crime headquarters, especially the removal of a large creature of unknown origin.
Actions Taken Creature sliced open to access digesting organ and remove contents. 56 separate humans in varying stages of digestion, 1.2 tonnes partially-digested remains of rats, approximately four tonnes of fully-digested jelly. Four members of the City Guard were still alive, as well as twelve other persons. Evacuated to hospital.
Creature appears to have been infected by a parasite, also unknown origin. Much of the digested contents were covered with these worms. Clean up crew had not been equipped to contain these parasites.
Recommendations Issue public statement regarding possible water contamination.
Better mission parameters when asked by the City Guard to clean up their mess.