Eiji stamped the arrival sheet at the reception desk of the High Command Headquarters. The receptionist looked him over, lifted the sheet to read his seal, and then stood and led him by the sleeve through the hallway and stopped at one of the office doors – all without a word. He opened the door and gestured Eiji through. It was a small office, bisected by a desk with a high-backed floor chair on one side and two floor cushions on the other.
“Please wait here,” the receptionist said idly, scratching the side of his nose. “Tea? Coffee?”
“Yes, tea,” Eiji said as he stepped inside, “thanks.” The receptionist slid the door shut with a click behind him. To be sure, he never came back with tea or coffee or anything else. Eiji took a seat cross-legged on the further floor cushion. Just as naturally as when his leave had begun, his mentality reconfigured itself. He was back on duty; he was a soldier again. It happened automatically, almost without his conscious awareness. He resolved to keep thoughts of Minsuk sealed away in a protected and isolated compartment for now.
After a few minutes, Forward General Saitou stepped hurriedly into the room, a thick file under his arm. He rushed behind the desk and sat.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said.
Eiji started to shift into the formal kneeling posture, but Saitou waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t bother,” he said hurriedly. “Stay comfortable. There’s too much happening right now, too much to do and discuss to slow it all down with formalities.”
“Sir,” Eiji nodded, shifting back to a cross-legged position.
Saitou opened a drawer in his desk and withdrew a long pipe and a bag of loose leaf. “So Daitokai,” he said as he packed the bowl of the pipe. Eiji noticed that his hands were trembling as he did it. “This situation with Kurotou has created a good deal of confusion around here. What exactly to do about it in regards to the planned restructuring is still under debate, so you’ll have to excuse me for being a little less organized than would be liked right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right,” Saitou laughed. He resealed the bag of leaf and put it back into his desk, pulling a box of long wooden matches from the same place. “Getting ahead of myself,” he shook his head. The general had a brand new air of fatigue about him. He looked like he’d aged years in the two weeks since Eiji had last seen him. “You still haven’t even been briefed on what the original plans were, so here I am heaping one ambiguous equivocation on top of another. Forgive me.” He paused and rubbed his chin, “But where to begin.” He offered Eiji the pipe.
“No, thank you,” Eiji shook his head. “Did something happen to Yuuhei?”
Saitou struck a match and held its burning tip to the bowl, puffing deeply on the slender metal pipe. His eyes widened when he registered Eiji’s question.
“You mean you haven’t even heard about that, either?” he turned to blow smoke aside, waving it away with his hand. Eiji shook his head. Saitou grunted and took another small puff on the pipe. He nodded. Now he took a deep breath and finally seemed to relax.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s bring you into the loop, Daitokai.” His shoulders dropped and his rapid speech slowed a bit. “Three days after I spoke to you and Kurotou in Ajanum, reports came in from the Sekaigiwa front that he’d been taken prisoner by Koslivite forces in Roppukyu.”
Eiji straightened up with a start. Saitou lifted his hand to cut him off.
“How and why exactly that happened, when he was on leave and in any case not assigned to that theatre, is still under investigation. He was held in Ethana until last night, when a special ops force infiltrated the city to free him on the orders of a local commander. Why this commander took it upon himself to authorize a rescue mission behind the walls of a fortified enemy city for the sake of one captured soldier, without consulting his superiors, is also still under investigation. This retrieval team was somehow able to slip undetected into the city and conduct a successful infiltration mission into the detention facility where Kurotou was being held, but they were eventually forced to engage and ended up surrounded by Kolsivite troops. They were all but wiped out before even finding him. However, Kurotou was able, in the confusion of the battle, to escape on his own. He rescued two of his own rescuers and sprang another two Meihonese prisoners free. Just outside the scene of the battle, he hijacked a civilian auto-carriage and drove the five of them out of the city. They showed up at the east gate of the city of Roppukyu a little before dawn this morning and have been in debrief under medical care since.”
“My God.”
“At this point, as far as we can tell, Yuuhei was alone and acting on his own imperative when he was captured. It seems he snuck into Roppukyu during the series of days when the Kolsivites had broken through the walls and nobody had control of the city. He slipped deep behind Kolsivite lines and attacked their main base in the city all by himself. If this is true, what he did was suicidal, and it’s a miracle of fate that he survived long enough to be taken prisoner.”
Eiji sat dumbly, staring at Saitou. His mind was reeling in its efforts to process the information.
“The big problem on our side of things now is that the two of you were going to be commissioned here as commanders of your own respective units. Now High Command is considering punitive measures for Kurotou’s actions; both for the unauthorized field offensive itself and for the lives lost in his rescue. There are some in the brass who are calling for a full decommissioning and a term in military prison, and at the very least no one considers it wise to put him in command of an entire unit after the recklessness he displayed.”
Eiji nodded.
“So that is where we’re at now. It’s created a huge delay in the reorganization here.” Saitou puffed on his pipe. “Personally I think that Yuuhei Kurotou has been a very good soldier and we should investigate deeply into what happened and why before we met out too severe a punishment upon him. And between you and me, the truth is that he caused tremendous damage to the Kolsivite line and killed several important officers in all the mayhem. It may be that we were able to retake Roppukyu at all only as a result of what he did. Anyway. There’s still a lot to tell you, but I have quite a bit to do here. We’ll get you set up in your quarters in the city first of all. Later in the afternoon there will be an official briefing, and you’ll hear it all there.”
Eiji leaned forward and started to speak, hesitated, and then leaned back, silent. Saitou pulled at his pipe a bit. Eiji leaned forward again.
“I was going to be endowed with a commandership?”
“Still are,” Saitou said, turning the pipe over and tapping the contents of the bowl out into his ashtray with three metallic clinks. “Nothing’s changed there.” He took a rag from his drawer and swabbed the bowl clean before putting the pipe back into his desk. “There was something else I wanted to tell you…” He stared off for a moment, lost in thought. “But I can’t remember just now. Anyway, I’m sorry to rush you out now, but meet Hayakawa back at the reception desk and he’ll explain to you about your quarters for your time here.”
“I’m going to be in Shijima?”
“For the next couple of months, yes,” Saitou grunted, getting to his feet.
Eiji followed suit. He bowed. “Thank you for your time, sir.”
“Yes, yes. I will see you this evening.”
They stepped out of the room and pounded back down the corridor to the reception area, Saitou leading.
