Page 60 of Dark Gambit: The Play

"It looks beautiful." Annani smiled. "Tomorrow night is the couples’ mixer, correct?"

Callie nodded.

"They will surely appreciate the intimate setting," Annani said. "When we are done tonight, the boys will return everything back to the way it was."

When the eighteen tables were set in one long row and they had all sat back down, the young servers brought out the appetizer course.

Anandur did the honors of uncorking the champagne bottles and pouring the bubbly into everyone's flutes. "Let's make a toast." He lifted his glass. "To Callie's place. May it succeed and prosper."

"To Callie's!" they all echoed, filling the room with clinking sounds.

As Callie and Brundar sat down, she unfurled the napkin and draped it over her knees. "The advantage of preparing everything in advance is that I can sit with you and enjoy my creations. I wish I had the staff to do everything, though, so I could offer a selection of items like a regular restaurant."

"I offered a solution for that," Turner said. "But Kian didn't like it."

"What's your solution?" Bhathian asked.

"You have a mighty workforce buried in the catacombs, and now that several strong compellers have joined the clan, we can resurrect them and compel them to behave. I think no one here has any objection to using them as a slave workforce. They owe the clan for their actions against it, and for not executing them but putting them in stasis instead. They should be grateful to be allowed to live again."

For a long moment no one said a thing, not even Annani, who Kian had no doubt loved Turner's crazy idea.

"I don't know about that," Anandur said. "The Doomers we captured and put in stasis were murderers and rapists. They weren't like Dalhu or like Kalugal's men." He looked at Kalugal. "What do you think?"

Kalugal put his fork down. "I wouldn't do that. I selected my men one by one, and it wasn't an easy task to find males who were not completely corrupted by my father and who retained a shred of decency. After I relieved them from his compulsion, I worked with them for months, sometimes years, to undo his indoctrination." He sighed. "Don't forget that the human males Navuh used to breed with the Dormants were ruthless, dumb lowlifes. He chose the strongest, the most brutal, and the most mentally limited. His goal was to produce powerful immortal warriors who would obey him blindly. Occasionally, the mothers' genetics triumphed and produced thinking, decent offspring, but since the mothers themselves were the daughters of lowlifes, most of them weren't nice people either." He cast a sidelong glance at Bridget. "Nature trumps nurture, and nurture in Navuh's war camps was even worse than the genetic makeup of those males. I doubt you would find even ten percent of them are worth saving."

"Ten percent is more than zero," Annani said. "Even if one of them is worth saving, we should not dismiss it. I wish we could design a test that could determine that. We talked about it before. We could resurrect a small number of Doomers at a time, test them, and put back in stasis those who failed."

Kian gave her an indulgent smile. "As soon as we have nothing better to do, and no new crisis comes up for a year or two, we can give it a test run."

Yamanu laughed. "That's like saying never. I can't remember any stretch of time that was longer than a few months without something happening that required us to mobilize some kind of defense or evasive tactics, and most of the time, it wasn't even the Doomers' fault."

"Now we have a new enemy to add to the mix," Onegus said. "Or a potential enemy. It still remains to be seen whether Igor of the Kra-ell is our enemy or just a general threat we should be aware of but not actively try to eliminate."

45

ANNANI

"That's another reason to use the Doomers," Turner said. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Kian chuckled. "It is true that the Kra-ell might pose a threat to the Doomers as well, but since the Doomers are a much bigger force, they have nothing to worry about from the Kra-ell."

"We don't know that," Turner said. "In pure numbers, you might be right, but we still don't know anything about them. Who knows, maybe they will become our allies against the Doomers."

The dinner was turning into a council meeting, and Callie was probably not happy about that, but since she had chosen to invite the leadership of the clan to her opening night, she should have expected it.

"What is being done in that regard?" Annani asked.

Kian pushed away his empty appetizer plate, which Cheryl rushed to collect. "Turner's contractor on the ground is procuring a miniature drone to fly over the compound, and Monday, we are sending a team of Guardians to Russia to scope the area. Their mission is just to observe. Sofia says that the purebloods and the hybrids go hunting in the area, but since they are all under strong compulsion not to attempt an escape and have location collars around their necks, we can't just grab them." He looked at Toven. "Given your experience with Sofia, do you think you can release them from the compulsion via video call?"

Toven pursed his lips. "Perhaps with Mia's help. Frankly, I didn't expect her enhancement to be so significant, but once she added her power to mine, it became much easier to override Igor's compulsion, and it was also easier on Sofia. When I used just my own power, she got a severe headache and needed to rest before we could continue."

"Go, Mia," Amanda said. "I know you will be a great asset to the clan."

Mia blushed. "I wish I knew what I was doing and how."

"Do you need someone to blow things up?" Cassandra asked. "I've gotten much better at that, both in accuracy and power." She smiled. "My type of explosives won't alert airport security."

Onegus wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "We can use conventional explosives if needed. It's not difficult to smuggle them in or even obtain them locally. In Russia, money talks louder than anything. We don't even need to use compulsion or thralling."