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Chapter 45
🕑 Added 2018-09-29 20:49:43 +0000 UTC “How much longer do we have to wait?!” Wham! General Cloudburner-hono’s fist slammed angrily onto a table. “How much longer will you refuse to do what needs to be done?!”“And what exactly do you believe needs to be done?!” an incensed General Fernfeather-hono shot back. “What ludicrous, impossible idea do you have in mind?! You want to kill them all, like Stonefist-hono proposed last week? Or is it something equally stupid, like imprisoning more than a million people?”
“They betrayed us!” she shouted back. “Death is what they deserve!”
“They’re people! Our people! You can’t just condemn an entire swath of the country to death because they want a better life!”
“What about my people then, huh? It used to be that my subjugation team would come back with one or two casualties each migration. Now it's a third of every team! We’re losing some of the best and brightest warriors in the country because they have to demean themselves with the tasks of Shells out there when they should be saving their strength for the beast packs! And you want to throw them away for a bunch of trash?!”
“And how would exterminating a whole swath of our people help that?! That would just make the problem permanent!”
“For the record,” General Stonefist-hono chimed in, “I did not propose that we execute all the Shells. I’m not a fool. I said we should execute the leadership who planned this... movement. Find them, arrest them, drag out who their foreign contacts are, and execute them publicly.”
“And just who are the people leading them?” asked an annoyed General Nightclaw-hono. “I thought, as the man in charge of intelligence, that you’d have some names for us by now.”
“The people leading the Shells are likely the same people who lead the Hidden Fang,” Stonefist-hono replied. “That means the same problems that have made it so hard for us to track those bastards down all these years. The lower-level leaders that we can find all seem to have never actually met their superiors in person or seen their faces.”
“We know one leader,” Cloudburner-hono pointed out. “The outsider. He is their beacon. We should have strung him up before his adoring Shells days ago!”
“No.” Akhustal Palebane’s voice was stern and unyielding. “We do not touch him.”
“How can you say that, Chos?!” Cloudburner-hono cried, rising to her feet with a fiery fury in her eyes. “His presence is what started all of this!”
“He has made it clear to me that any action against him will result in his complete refusal to resurrect the Second Army or anybody else. I will not sacrifice the Second Army while there is still hope that we can get them back,” Akhustal stated, her voice hard and uncompromising.
“Then you will sacrifice the country in their stead,” Cloudburner-hono countered.
“I have doubts that removing him will accomplish much,” said Nightclaw-hono. “He couldn’t have convinced a million people to put themselves at risk like this in only the small amount of time he’s been here, especially when the people are cowards like the Shells. This has to have been something in the works for a long time. Years, maybe even decades.”
“I agree,” added Stonefist-hono. “This reeks of a foreign plot.”
“And yet you somehow didn’t catch wind of it before it was too late. What good are you as the head of intelligence if you can’t stop threats like this?” Akhustal rebuked.
“My position has been the same since the day you gave me this position. Without greater powers of surveillance and an increased budget, there is a limit to what I can do. It has always been the biggest reason the Hidden Fang have never been captured.”
Akhustal grunted. General Stonefist-hono was actually the third person to command the country’s intelligence force since she’d become the Chos. She’d become dissatisfied with both of his predecessors’ failures to apprehend the rogue Shell organization that had popped up not long after her ascension, but nobody seemed to be able to crack that particular nut.
The man had a point. He’d been beating that drum since the beginning, but Akhustal had been reluctant to break from tradition so readily, hoping that there was another solution that less able people had simply never thought of. That hesitancy had come home to roost, and now people bled on the street because of her poor judgment.
“Let us talk about such matters later tonight,” she told him. “For now, we need to focus on the migration. What is the status of the preparations?”
“Things are worse than we’d hoped,” conceded General Fernfeather-hono. “We knew that conscripting Flegs to fill the gap left by the mutinous Shells would be messy, but I didn’t think it would be this messy. We underestimated just how complex much of the disassembly would be.”
“We only have two days left before we have to leave,” she remarked. “We’re not going to be ready, are we?”
The general let out a tired sigh. “No,” he admitted. He looked exhausted. Everyone in the room did. Weeks of trying to rescue Stragma from this crisis had worn them all down to shadows of their former selves.
“How much will we have to leave behind?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“Perhaps half. We are working throughout the day and night to save as much as we can but these people are novices. Everything takes longer than we want and they’re making mistakes. There’s already been accidents where we’ve lost valuable supplies. This is an incredibly complex process. It’s a testament to the Shells that they are able to accomplish it every time with so few problems.”
“Then by the sounds of it, we need to stop talking and get back to work,” she said, not missing the withering glare that General Cloudburner-hono sent General Fernfeather-hono’s way from across the room. “Dismissed.”
The others filed out of the room one by one until only she remained. Now alone, she slumped back against the nearby wall, her back complaining after hours of meetings. With a groan she stood up and stretched before heading out the door.
“I’m going for a stroll,” she said to Tepin, who had been waiting outside the whole time. Tepin nodded, her eyes not leaving the reports she was working on. Akhustal would have preferred that Tepin be present in the meetings—as a Shell, she would be able to provide perspectives that the others could not. But no, even though she trusted the Shell, some of the other generals did not. They were blind, unable to see that she was one of the good ones despite that fact that the small woman continued to work hard every day since the Shell strike.
The afternoon was winding down as she left the building. The meeting had gone on longer than intended, again. The Chos walked absentmindedly stepped onto the elevator platform, so caught up with her problems that she barely noticed when it started to slowly lower down. The tension between the factions of generals had grown to the point of imminent calamity. The two worst offenders were Cloudburner-hono and Fernfeather-hono. At several points the two had nearly come to blows; at some point soon, not even her presence might be able to keep them from going at it.
The two had been at loggerheads since the beginning of the crisis, each representing the ideological ends of the spectrum while the other generals fell into various places between them. Though the youngest general to report directly to Akhustal, Cloudburner-hono was a strict and fervent traditionalist who believed wholeheartedly in the power of the Stragman way. In a lot of ways she reminded Akhustal of the Chos’s husband. Were he here today, she had no doubt that he would be agreeing with most everything the young general said.
General Stonefist-hono was another hardliner, though he viewed the whole situation differently, seeing it as an attack on Stragma by another nation. That’s how it always was with him—everything was always some sort of foreign scheme from the Drayhadans to destabilize the country. Perhaps this time he was right. Either way, while he didn’t seem to harbor much hatred for the one and a half million Shells who refused to cooperate at this critical time, that anger was concentrated on the movement’s leadership, whom he viewed at traitors conspiring with outside forces.
Akhustal judged the hardline anti-Shell faction to comprise perhaps a third of her generals. While their individual outlooks varied slightly one way or the other, they all seemed to agree that harsh, drastic measures needed to be taken, and that not a single concession could be given. She worried constantly that one or more of them would decide to take matters into their own hands.
On the other side stood the pro-Shell faction, comprised of only a few very vocal people. These generals wanted to negotiate with the malcontents and argued in their favor. Leading that small group was General Fernfeather-hono, which continually puzzled Akhustal. She’d never taken him to be such a progressive before. He’d always presented himself as fairly middle-of-the-road on philosophical matters until now, but here he was, using his status as the second-highest-ranked general to add weight to his position at every turn.
Last, but most certainly not least, were the centrists who made up the large majority, best typified by General Nightclaw-hono. That faction made up almost all of the generals not in the hardline faction. They seemed to be most concerned with the direct effects of the Shells’ actions and just wanted the whole situation to be over with one way or another before the country suffered too much damage. Each of them seemed more troubled by how the strike affected them and their duties than what it meant on a more fundamental level. Case in point, Nightclaw-hono was deeply concerned about the state of his prisons, which grew more and more disgusting by the day.
The three factions had spent much of the time since the strike began arguing between themselves, hampering their overall ability to fix things. Akhustal knew that this was largely her fault. She needed to lead better, to steer her underlings towards more productive outcomes... but she found it hard to give guidance. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, the tug-of-war that happened every day before her eyes reflected the one going on behind those eyes.
On one hand, the solution was simple. All she had to do was agree to Rudra’s demands and the strike would cease to be. There were a number of appealing benefits to the idea. The nightmare that was their current situation would be largely resolved. The Shells would go back to work, meaning the migration would get mostly back on track. She wouldn’t need to worry about the new city decaying into a stinking, putrid mess like Pholis had. To top it off, she’d be able to send out a large force to aid the rest of Nocend in their battle against the Empire. Stragma was perhaps the one country that didn’t need to worry about a large-scale invasion. The forest made such an idea laughable; it was the primary reason why Drayhadal had never really tried to strike at Stragma’s cities in retaliation. But still, the idea that she could not fulfill her country’s commitments shamed her. A nation that could not honor its agreements was a weak one.
But was all that worth the cost? Social stratification had been a mainstay of Stragman life since as far back as their histories went. It maintained order in the chaotic wilds. Everybody knew their role, knew where they stood. The system had worked for the last few thousand years; if she were to weaken this fundamental structure that so many of the country’s systems and norms relied on for a short-term gain, what damage would she be inflicting on the nation five years down the road? Twenty years? What if, by acquiescing to their demands, she made the idea that Shells could reject the command of their betters into a new norm? Would Stragma even survive?
The thoughts spun around in her head, endlessly warring as she walked along the city floor. The city seemed in disarray, as if a strong storm has just passed through and blown much of it apart. Buildings and tents in various states of disassembly, men and women swarming about as they tried their best to prepare their lives and their property for the migration. She spotted the tattoos of a Fleg on many of those people, and even the expanded patterns of a Blou every so often, and frowned. These people had their own jobs and lives that they’d been forced to put to aside while they frantically tried to save everything they could before the city had to move. Those jobs were equally important, if not more so, and every day that they had to neglect their duties hurt Stragma in countless ways. Hunts went unbutchered. Weapons and armor went unrepaired. Goods spoiled, unsold.
A rank odor, the conglomeration of a thousand different repulsive smells, hung over the city now; like everything these days, it only grew worse by the day. There weren’t enough compliant Shells left to keep up with the cleaning work needed to keep the city from devolving into a disgusting mess, not unless she were to take them off of more important jobs like preparing for the migration. The Flegs, for their part, generally refused to debase themselves with such demeaning labor. It was a good thing that they would be leaving this place.
The smell was only a facet of the overall deterioration. As she turned down a nearby street, her eyes were drawn to the bloodstains splattered across the ground, left here from a riot that had occurred just two days after the strike began. Hundreds of incensed Flegs had set upon groups of Shells, caring little about if they were striking or not, killing and maiming with an aggrieved fury that had shocked her at the time. While she hated to admit it, the strike had revealed to her just how little she understood many of her own subjects and how disconnected she was from them.
When the strike had first started, she’d thought that the most anger would have come from the Hono and perhaps some from the Blou, as it was their rule that was being defied. She’d thought that the Flegs, more than any other group, would be the most supportive. They had the hardest lives, making due with the least wealth and privilege. She’d been wrong. No group was more resentful of the Shells’ actions than the Flegs.
Akhustal had not realized just how much it mattered to many Flegs that there were people worse off than them, people they could look down on. The idea that some lowlife Shells would dare to reach beyond their station and usurp the rights of their superiors was an affront to these Flegs’ sense of self-worth, and so they’d reacted with extreme violence. Hundred of Shells had died that day, and more were slain in other riots that followed. Only the introduction of squads of Hono and Blou to act as peacekeepers had stopped the massacres. Of course, having to remove those squads from their normal duties had only hurt Stragma more.
Ironically, the riots had not only failed to destroy the Shells’ resolve, it had strengthened it and driven more Shells to join the movement. What had begun as less than a third of all the Shells in Stragma was now up over half and growing larger every day. There was one single reason for this: Rudra. Once the violence had subsided, the striking Shells had quickly built a platform from the ground up to his hanging prison cell and he’d restored every one of the murdered Shells back to life.
There had been a point, back in the beginning, where she might have been able to move him someplace else, somewhere further from public view where he wouldn’t have been able to affect things more than he already had. Some, like General Cloudburner-hono in the last meeting, still pushed to remove him from the conversation. But Akhustal felt like their chance for that had disappeared once Rudra had revived all those Shells. The public act had easily pushed him from a respected icon into a legend. If she were to try something now, she had a bad feeling that the response would not go as General Cloudburner-hono believed. And that didn’t even take into consideration what Rudra himself might do. For all she knew, that would be enough to make him refuse to bring her husband back to her. She couldn’t afford to poke that sleeping beast as long as other safer options still existed.
Akhustal found herself before a massive tent. It seemed that while her mind was busy with her thoughts, her body had taken her down a now-familiar path and she’d ended up here. The scent of death wafted out from beneath the heavy flaps, but she didn’t mind. She was used to it by now, having been here so many times. Walking past the guards posted to either side, she entered the makeshift enclosure and paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.
Bodies filled the huge tent’s insides, thousands of mummified corpses piled atop one another from end to end. Ten or so water Observers sat around the outside of the pile, constantly drawing the water from the humid rainforest air to keep the bodies from moistening and beginning to rot. All in all, it was a grotesque sight, one to unsettle the stomach of most anybody, but instead it gave Akhustal hope. There was still a chance that all these people would draw breath once more in the future.
One body was separate from the others, resting on a cot of sorts off in the corner—her husband. His mummified body would be unrecognizable to most anyone else, but she could still see the man she loved. The Chos stared down at it and fought the urge to touch him, to stroke his face fondly. Physical contact would only speed up his decomposition, she knew.
“I’m about to do something you’d never forgive, my love,” she said softly to the corpse. “I hope you can forgive me anyway.”
He didn’t respond. After another moment of fond inspection, she turned and left the tent.
* * *
Thousands of Shells covered the area around Rudra’s hanging cell even as the day neared its end, most of them mimicking the prisoner’s strange cross-legged pose. Akhustal thought that pose looked dumb. Somebody sitting that way appeared passive and weak, completely open to attack, without any way to immediately react. Still, each of them reacted as best they could when they saw her coming, scrambling out of her path like a vallut beneath a mertek’s hungry gaze as murmurs rippled out through the mass of people. She snorted at the sight. They might have found a little courage, but these people were still Shells.
Though not a single striking Shell received any pay since the strike began, none of the people she passed by looked to be starving or in poor health. General Stonefist-hono reported that they were feeding themselves through a combination of rations stored away and a system of plant-specialized Observers, who had grown a series of fruit-bearing vines and were coaxing them to produce fruit constantly—a familiar process known as “fruit milking” that the nation as a whole relied on during certain times of the year to bolster their food stocks. The Shells’ organization left Akhustal impressed. There was surprisingly little waste and the people cooperated efficiently to make the most of their limited resources. Looking at how smoothly everything ran, the fact that the Hidden Fang had never been caught by her forces suddenly seemed far more understandable. Only extremely competent people could run an operation this well.
She stopped before the rickety elevator platform that reached up to Rudra’s dangling cell. The structure had been destroyed several times already by Flegs or her own forces, but the Shells rebuilt it time and time again, scrounging up whatever materials they could to do so. A small group of Shells stood beside the platform, ropes in their hands, ready to raise her up. It seemed like her arrival was expected. She stepped onto the platform without a word and the others went to work. Slowly she rose to the sound of pulleys squeaking and rattling.
Finally the elevator approached its destination and Akhustal spied the man she’d come to see. Rudra Kapadia sat on the edge of his cell, a relaxed expression on his face as if he were just enjoying a refreshing moment of quiet contemplation. Akhustal hadn’t seen Rudra in about nine days, and deep down it annoyed her to see how completely unbothered he looked by everything. Even his body looked to be in tip-top shape.
“Palebane-chos, it’s been a while,” the man said, his serene tone somehow making her even more aggravated. “Did you come to agree to our terms?”
Akhustal took a deep breath through her nostrils, forcing her anger down. “No.”
He sat back and closed his eyes again. “Then I don’t see what there is to discuss.”
“Do you care about the people of Stragma?” she asked, genuinely curious. “Or do you just want chaos and anarchy? How far are you willing to go? If the price of the Shells’ freedom is that they have no country left once they get it, would you pay that price?”
“Those are unfair questions. I don’t believe that it’s such a drastic choice at all.”
“We have held back on the migration as long as we can. In two days, we will be forced to leave, and with it we will lose half of our city. Half of our wealth, our goods, everything that lets us live a decently comfortable life in the middle of this place will be gone. For good. We won’t be able to retrieve it until a year from now, and almost everything will have been destroyed by then. This will cripple us. Millions will suffer. Every man, woman, and child will face hardships unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before. This is what you have wrought, and if you continue, then it will all just get worse from there. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not. But this is on you as much as it is on us, if not more. Do you understand why we Shells decided to strike?”
“Because you don’t have the courage to fight us in the open, so you abuse the fact that it would be dishonorable for us to kill our own harmless citizens.”
The infuriating man just shook his head and let out an exasperated groan. “No, no, no! You don’t get it at all! This is about respect. That’s all it’s ever been about.”
“What?”
“This is not a threat, this not an attack. This is a demonstration to show what would happen to Stragma if Shells didn’t exist, to show just how important to this city Shells are. This is a statement. Shells make this city run just as much as anybody else, and they deserve the same level of respect and rights as everybody else. That’s all.”
“A statement?! You call destroying society a statement?!”
“We haven’t destroyed anything. That failure falls on you.”
“Did you not listen to what I just told you? Half!”
“You know the price. Quadruple Shell pay and do away with how Shells need to get permission to leave and they will go back to work. I’ll bring back your soldiers, too. All you have to do is say the words.”
“You think I don’t know that?!” Akhustal hissed. “It’s not that simple! Even if I agreed with you about Shells—and I don’t—the people won’t allow it! They won’t accept what you’re saying! Some of my own generals would attempt a coup! You’re asking the impossible!”
“I can’t be held responsible for your people’s prejudices. I’m sorry, but we have gone too far to back down now.”
A tense silence hung between them for a few moments before Akhustal spoke again.
“What about a compromise?” she asked.
“Hmmmm,” the man hummed as he tilted his head in thought before going quiet for a moment. “What do you have in mind?”
“A temporary truce, until the migration is over.”
Rudra shook his head. “I can’t break the strike for free. If you want them to work, you have to give me something.”
“I’ll bump the pay up to one and a half what it is now if you will get them all to help with the migration.”
“Double or no deal.”
“...fine. Double the pay.”
“For good.”
“For good.”
“And the strike will likely begin again once the migration is over.”
“...I understand.”
“I have to discuss it, of course. This isn’t my call to make.”
“Be fast. There’s no time left.”
“You’ll know by the morning,” Rudra said. He stood up and stretched. “If you don’t mind, it’s time I retired for the night. All this sitting really wears you out.”
As Akhustal left the area and headed back to her quarters high above the city, she couldn’t help but feel conflicted. The meeting with Rudra had gone about as well as she had hoped. With the help of the rest of the Shells, they would be able to salvage much of what would otherwise be lost to them. Not all of it—there was just too little time left—but enough that the people wouldn’t have to suffer crippling shortages that would hamper the country for seasons, if not years to come.
But it had come with a cost. She’d bent. Not by much, but enough. Enough to open the possibility for more concessions. Enough to enrage the hardliners. The old precedent was now broken and a new one now stood in its place, one that could have dramatically more impactful consequences in the future. Still, she didn’t see any other way. What was the point of worrying about the state of Stragma ten years from now if the alternative was that it wouldn’t survive the year?
