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Red Moon: Revolution Chapter 12

No one ever said war was easy. It required massive amounts of effort, not just to fight, but to coordinate. Supplies needed to be moved, lines of communications established, resources coordinated and allocated and when the war was on a global scale while still being underground, it became a logistical nightmare fast.

Director Brennan, the defacto leader of the New Inquisition after breaking away from the old, knew that it was going to be a challenge, but never like this. She had her hard days when she was in charge of the German quadrant of the Inquisition, paperwork needed to be filled here and there, but this was getting testing her limits. Everyday, she came in early from her bunk room just down the hall from her command center when everyone else was asleep and she read the reports that had filtered in from dozens of operatives from all around the world. She put them to memory and addressed them based on a scale of urgency that she had created in her mind.

Any news about the few remaining Inquisition Directors was always top priorities. These people were clever and dangerous, they had to be to get to their positions. The recently deceased Director Xing, was an old supporter of Mao Zedong and as a result, he had a massive support base in the Chinese government. He could easily get anything he wanted, nearly anywhere he wanted in moments because he could call upon so many people in all parts of the government.

Director Caughey, who had gone into hiding after the death of Xing, was the leader of several Mexican drug cartels. He had set up most of the cartels that operated in America and Central America to create a steady cash flow that the Inquisition could call upon. He was also a legitimate business owner. He had his fingers in most shipping companies on the west coast which he used in perfect synergy with his cartels. While he wasn't very dangerous in the way Xing could get a tank whenever he felt like it, he could hire hitmen, use his wealth to bring in high class lawyers to cripple his enemies. Each director was dangerous in their own way.

Brennan liked to think that she was dangerous like Xing, Caughey or the other directors, but she knew that she was an exception. She owed her position to her father, the previous Director who operated during the Cold War. Friedrich Brennan was a man not to underestimate. He was an expert player. He had people in both the KGB and their Stasi, as well as the CIA. He had a constant flow of information from extremely reliable sources that allowed him to do whatever he wanted. The Inquisition had used this to ensure that their own operations were never detected by either the Soviet Union or the United States and their allies.

Now those days were gone. Her father had convinced enough people to allow her to take over his position when he had retired, just days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had argued that since many of the contacts knew her, being close friends of her father, she could use them just as effectively as he had. This had been enough for her to get the position with little experience. She had just been a shadow under him, picking up the wisdom that he had passed down, and some of that wisdom had stuck.

Years of knowing everything that had gone on during the Cold War had left Friederich weary and tired of the toils of men. He knew of every execution, torture and 'accidental' demise of everyone on both sides of the wall. He knew who gave the orders and who knew of the orders and on many occasions, he had tried to intervene, but the Inquisition always stopped him. They told him that these were necessary for the cause, a cause the he no longer believed that the Inquisition knew anymore. The Inquisition was born out of a need to control a terrifying power, the werewolves. Now it was no more than a power struggle, for Friedrich knew that many orders originated from higher Inquisition members who wanted to get rid of rivals. It had boiled down to a corrupt power struggle and before Friedrich let loose his leash to his daughter, he made sure she knew everything and she took it to heart.

While Brennan wasn't sure if her father originally intended for her to be working alongside the werewolves or not, she was sure that he would have approved. The werewolves were no longer the menace that they had been made out to be centuries ago, back during the Crusades. In many cases, she saw them to be more civilized than most people. They had a working hierarchy that was obeyed and did their best to control themselves when in public. Now they were all together in the fight to bring down the Inquisition and rebuild it as something better.

"Long night?" The Alpha, her werewolf counterpart in this whole scheme came walking into the command center that was starting to get light traffic. By noon, the room of charts, maps, phones and computers would be packed as the effort woke up.

Brennan was seated at a desk in the back where all of the reports had been filed. It wasn't her desk, a dozen different people would sit in that chair by the end of the day. She had several files in front of her, opened to various pages as she read them over.

"Every day." She said and sipped from a mug of coffee that she had brought in. She had her own coffee maker in her room ever since she made the mistake of letting random people prepare the coffee each morning. The quality fluctuated on an hourly basis so she made her own instead.

Compared to her, who had bags under her eyes and had long since ditched her custom tailored suit for a more comfortable pair of faded slacks and a shirt, the Alpha looked like he was ready to take on the world. He wore a mid-length fur coat that she was sure was made from a deer that he had killed himself. His hair, thinning from age, however old that may be, was combed and sleek and he looked energetic. She envied the near endless pools of energy that the werewolves that she worked with had. They never stopped moving, always doing something and she could rely on them to do the jobs that ordinary people were either unwilling or incapable of doing.

The Alpha nodded his understanding and walked over to the desk with his hands buried deep in his pockets to take a look at files. "Cairo?" He leaned down and rested an elbow on the table to get a closer look at the file on top.

"Yeah." She rubbed the tiredness out of her eyes. "Director Shaab is trying to establish a foothold in Egypt." She flipped through several pages that outlines exactly what was going on.

Shaab, a man of new money, a son of an oil baron in Saudi Arabia, had landed his forces in Cairo and was very obviously trying to get settled. It seemed like the beginnings of a staging point to get into Europe.

"He's got people infiltrating the government." She looked at an array of photos that one of her agents had taken. It was of a group of people departing a cruise ship. Several of the people were confirmed men of Shaab. "Trying to make it easier to import weapons."

"We'll have to stop him before he digs in." The Alpha knew too well of the dangers of a rooted enemy. Stalingrad had survived not only because of the will of the Russian people to hold onto the city that held the namesake of their leader, but also because the defenders were able to dig their claws into it deeply. Having werewolves secretly helping didn't hurt either. The same could be said about Berlin during the final siege. The city could have fallen a lot faster, but the last few remaining Nazis had forced their people to take up arms under penalty of death and hold the city. "I can get some of my pack their in a week."

"That would be good." Brennan agreed. "I'll begin on getting the travel papers." It was odd to think that there was a war and yet people needed visas and the correct papers to get to the front since this wasn't a war of nations where borders ceased to exist.

Brennan got onto the computer and logged in with her personal username and password. The bunker that her operations were taking place in had its own network, separate to the internet. She put in the request that would be pushed to the front of a long list of requests and she could expect to have the request fulfilled by the next day.

With that order of business over, there was time to just chat. The rest of the reports were minor, just reporting on Inquisition movements. Today was going to be easier compared to the nightmare that was yesterday. She nearly had an aneurysm when she heard about Seattle, but it had settled down quickly. Who ever had attacked the Inquisition so publicly had disappeared along with any evidence of the parties involved. She had her people on working trying to figure out what was going on there and if there was a danger to her people and she was sure the Inquisition was doing the same.

She and the Alpha had been worried about Dmitri who had gone off against orders. He was at the airport at the time, but they got word from Rommel that they were all ok and heading to San Francisco to board a boat there. From there, they would sail to the Panama Canal to Rio where the plan was to board a plane. It would take three weeks, but it was a safe way that avoided much of the Inquisition's known bases. It was imperative that Trevor was brought to them. While Brennan didn't know this man from Seattle, she had heard that he had the potential of being a trump card in the coming days and she needed as many trump cards as possible.

"Let's take the day off." The Alpha said suddenly, looking up from the papers with a slight grin on his face.

It caught Brennan off guard. Day off, it seemed like an alien thing to her. She had never taken any days off, she was a woman who worked endlessly, she knew nothing else.

"We can't." She replied bluntly and closed up the Cairo folder and pulled out another one.

"Sure you can." He pulled up a nearby chair and took a seat in it. "You work yourself too hard. Even a woman in your position needs time to rest once in awhile, no?" His accent was thick and insistent.

"I.." She sighed and rubbed at her temples. "I'm needed here." The New Inquisition was her creation, there were many who helped, but she knew that without her, it never would have come to fruition and she felt like that if she left for even a short amount of time, it would fall apart.

"Do you not trust your pack to take care?"

She had absolute trust in her people. Most of them had been with her from day one, they had left their old lives, one with families, open and freedom, for one of hiding and always looking behind their backs. It was in a way, very much like the Cold War that her father had taken part in. She didn't say anything, the answer known to both of them.

"C'mon." He got up and waited for her. "I have yet to really see this city of yours." He was talking of Berlin. "I was not here all those years ago and I imagine that it is better now than then. Would you show me your city?"

She gave a weak smile that quickly grew larger. A walk around Berlin was exactly what she needed and she hadn't seen it for some time now. She had only left her old bunker a handful of time in the past two years. A bit of sun would do her good. "I would be glad to." She got up and took an extended hand. She let the people who had come into the command center know where she was going and the two went down the long grey halls that had once been built to survive a hydrogen bomb on the surface to a guarded elevator that led to the surface.

"I know of a small restaurant." She said as the two stood in the small metal box. "It serves the best sausages that I know."

The Alpha nodded. He was glad to have gotten the woman out of the bunker. He hated seeing anyone cooped up like that, so focused on their jobs. He very much considered her and her people a part of the pack now. They had been working together for the better part of two years now, it was hard not to think of her as family and as the leader of his pack, he needed to care for the wellbeing of all members which led to another reason for going to the surface. There was another member that he had neglected to care for in the past and he didn't want to go see Sergei alone.