“The drain is only temporary, and our losses will soon be replaced manyfold, with the implementation of the ‘new protocols’ devised by the Chooser, General Esshk, and myself. As for the beings in the south? Her Majesty has asked me to go to them,” Kurokawa said smugly. “She believes since the ‘southern hunter’s’ form is similar to mine, they may be more likely to accept the Offer from me.” He shook his head. “I cannot go myself, of course. I have too much to occupy me here. I will send suitable representatives-who understand the price of failure.”
“The Offer!” Tsalka moaned. “That is scandalous enough! To make the Offer based on what might be instead of what has been, has never happened before!”
“Enough,” Esshk hissed at him. “ She has decided. Precedence constrains you and I, not the Celestial Mother. Do you doubt she may do as she pleases?”
Tsalka lowered his head and blew a gust of air through jagged teeth. “Of course not.”
“So,” Esshk continued, addressing the General of the Sea, “we have brought the Jaaph Hij you requested.”
“Hmm.” Kurokawa lowered his gaze to encompass the three humans accompanying Tsalka’s entourage. He motioned one forward. “Lieutenant Toru Miyata, I believe you are acquainted with the distinguished First General?”
Toru, who looked like a slighter, younger version of Niwa, controlled an impulse to gulp. “Yes, Captain-I mean, General of the Sea Kurokawa!”
“As a junior navigation officer, you’re not essential to the projects underway…”
I’m expendable, Miyata concluded with a sick feeling.
And I therefore proudly accept your enthusiastic offer to lead this important, glorious mission! Given that you are a navigation officer, I trust you of all people to succeed for our Emperor, our.. . allies, and for me.” Kurokawa’s face clouded. “Others may have failed the Emperor, but the navigation division never did, when it came to getting us where we needed to go. For that reason, I hold you almost utterly blameless for the loss of my ship!”
“Wha…” Miyata jerked a bow. “Thank you, sir. May-may I ask the General of the Sea… what I’ve volunteered to do?”
“That’s the spirit!” Kurokawa beamed genuinely. “General Esshk?”
Esshk produced a crude map from the folds of his cloak. “As you may have understood earlier, there’s a group of hunters in the south that we had been ‘saving’ for some time now. They inhabit lands we care nothing for, and cannot escape. They’re completely surrounded by a most hostile sea.” He paused. “But priorities… change.” He pointed. “Here. Their lands surround this place you call ‘Cape Town’ in a rough semicircle extending perhaps three or four hundreds of miles. Quite small, as I said, but they are fierce warriors. Good hunters. The Celestial Mother, in her benevolence, has decided to extend to them ‘the Offer’ to join the hunt. Do you understand what this means?”
Miyata nodded, and, clearing his throat, added a little shakily, “I do.”
“Very well. It will be a difficult journey. We cannot take you all the way by ship. Even if the hunters there did not destroy it, no ship can swim around this ‘Cape of Storms.’ It is hideously cold, and the currents and seas are most intense.” He coughed a Grik laugh. “To my view, the climate there is sufficient reason to leave them with it, but we would fight with them rather than against them just now.”
“In that case, where will I go ashore?” Miyata asked.
“Here.” Esshk pointed. Miyata vaguely recognized the area around the Moamba of his old world, about a hundred and fifty miles east of where Johannesburg should be. “From there, it is a trek of some three hundreds of miles across some of the worst country known. Open rocky plains, much of it, plagued by high winds. And it is cold, cold. There are also large, dangerous beasts”-he jerked his head in a shrug-“but they would never frighten you.” He raised his gaze to Miyata. “Cross that plain and make contact with these… beings. You look like them, so perhaps they will not kill you on sight as they have done our previous… emissaries.”
“What language do they speak? I understand your spoken language and I know a little English, but that’s all. What if I can’t communicate? They may not even be… true people.”
“If you cannot speak to them, you will be killed,” Esshk replied reasonably. “But make ‘the Offer’ if you can, and secure their assistance. Do that and you will be handsomely rewarded!”
“And… what do I tell them if they refuse?” Miyata asked.
“They will be exterminated,” Esshk answered simply. “We are preoccupied, true, but not so preoccupied that we cannot swarm them under even as things now stand. This is their one chance.”
“When do we leave… ah, First General?”
“Preparations are already underway. All should be in readiness within days at most. You know better what your species requires for survival in frigid lands, so prepare accordin. Requisition what you need under my authority.”
Miyata looked at Kurokawa, now ignoring him. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Consider yourselves dismissed, to begin preparations.” The three men bowed and were escorted away. Esshk glanced back at Kurokawa and gestured at the cell. “Have you observed the results you hoped to see?” he asked grudgingly, doing his best to conceal his revulsion. The “Traitor’s Death” was rarely used, and even this… approximation, particularly when undeserved, awakened a primal horror. Tsalka couldn’t bring himself to look inside the cell, and even the Chooser appeared uncomfortable. Only the “Jaaph” seemed unmoved. Esshk had long considered Kurokawa a barbarian, and at times an annoying pest, but he was valuable enough to overlook those things. This exhibition of utter, wanton, ruthlessness-even toward lesser beings-displayed a dispassionate side of the “man” Esshk hadn’t seen. Oddly, Kurokawa was demonstrating the exact sort of disassociation most prized by the Hij: the ability to completely separate one’s self from the consequences of one’s acts or orders, to remain beyond the call of earthly urges even in the heat of battle. Esshk often struggled with that, in particular. The capacity for that was viewed as a Hij ideal, but Esshk had never seen anyone fully capable of achieving it-until now. Or was it only that Kurokawa viewed the poor creature in the cell as nothing more significant than an insect, and he didn’t fully appreciate the trauma the female was enduring?
“Yes. The defensive hatchlings, the ones the Chooser once culled and you… ate as snacks, that we now groom for defensive combat, appear susceptible to nurturing contact, even at this early stage. They become… protective of the female that treats them gently, and defend it most vigorously from their ‘normal’ nest-mates that threaten her.” He shrugged. “If we can inculcate this sense of loyalty to a ‘mother figure’ at this stage of their development, imagine the fanatical loyalty they will carry later, for the greatest ‘Mother’ of all.” Kurokawa paused. “Loyalty is the most elusive quality a commander can desire of his followers,” he said broodingly.
Outside, in the clear air, Miyata coughed to expel the stench of the Grik “dungeon.” He looked at his companions. Both were young and from divisions not considered “essential” to current projects.
“Well,” he said at last, “what did you two do to deserve this?”
“You… think this mission is a punishment, sir?” one asked nervously.
Miyata considered. In his mind’s eye he saw the macabre East Africa “shipyard” he’d been recalled from; the seething mass of workers, the hot, swirling dust and perpetual stench of death and rot and feces, carried by the fitful, fickle wind. To him, even while the Grik constructed their new fleet, the scene more closely resembled a sea of maggots working among skeletal corpses. The stench did much to reinforce that impression. He blinked and found himself back with his companions on the steps of the “administrative” portion of the Celestial Palace. Below the slope it dominated, down in the harbor, scores of Grik “Indiamen” rode at anchor and multitudes of Grik trotted about like furry, reptilian ants, on errands or bearing burdens. He scowled. The smell out here wasn’t much better than in the dungeon below-or in the shipyards.