Displaced

Chapter 45

"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 a whole portion of the population 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 doubt 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."