Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(29)

Personality-wise, he couldn’t have been much more different from the captive former chairman of the Grand Alliance and the Union that grew within it. While Adar became more open and tolerant as the world around him changed, embracing the monumental transformations required to face their enemies and combine the diverse cultures within the alliance into a national union, Meksnaak seemed to grow even more dour, suspicious, and (inwardly at least) isolationist. And though his hatred for the war in general didn’t necessarily set him apart, the intensity of his antipathy toward everything associated with it was more unusual. Above all, he hated what it had done to his people, society, and beloved city of Maa-ni-la. It seemed that all anyone talked about, worked for, or prayed to the Maker to help them with was the war. And so many had been lost! Not only in combat, but also industrial accidents, killed or maimed by things that never should’ve touched them. And they were different now. An innocence, a . . . sweetness he’d always treasured had been swept away.

They still played, but they’d grown utterly absorbed by an invasive game called baseball that, though he had to admit was entertaining, practically encouraged participants to deceive one another to gain advantages! That disturbed him on a visceral level. He wouldn’t come out against baseball, but often preached against its subversive, corrosive effects on morality. And when he officiated at games around the city as an “um-pire”—something else he grudgingly enjoyed—he leveled many dark looks upon anyone who “stole” a base. The rules might allow it, but that didn’t make it right. There were five large ballparks around the city now, and countless little ones wherever space could be found to cram one, and they were constantly in use by younglings or off-duty workers.

And that was another thing! Maa-ni-la had been destroyed by the war! Maybe it hadn’t been attacked or damaged by their enemies, as had Aryaal, B’mbaado, Chill-Chaap, B’taava, even Baalkpan itself, but it had been just as surely ruined by the unimaginable scale of industrialization. The bay was always full of ships, many belching dark smoke that choked his lungs or burned his eyes. Factories were everywhere, spewing just as much bitter smoke or the foul stench of disagreeable chemicals. The new glues reeked horribly, and even the fresh-wood smell in the aircraft, boat, and gunstock factories disturbed his sensibilities because so many trees had fallen to make the things. Metal shops were the worst, he thought; foundries, mills, and hearths that spewed frightful chick-ashish sparks and gouts of smoky flame night and day. Machine shops stank of hot metal and oil, and were so dreadfully loud! The people (foreigners, most of them, and many not even Mi-Anakka) worked too hard, drank too much, debauched, and used foul language. Worse, they were so rude to one another!

And the Chiss-chins! Most humans from the Empire, and the few survivors of Mizuki Maru still in the city, openly espoused heretical doctrines similar to that misguided, if not otherwise wholly offensive, Sister Audry, who’d gone to the war in the East. Adar had battled that himself, Meksnaak knew, but had decided that the middle of a war wasn’t the time to push divisive restrictions. Meksnaak reluctantly bowed to that wisdom. It took time for faith to find the truth, particularly if it came later in life and competed with set beliefs. But it was bewildering and disturbing that so many people—Mi-Anakka—had veered from their own enlightened faith to embrace the new doctrines! It was difficult to bear, on top of everything else, and he hated how intensely that affected him personally, how . . . betrayed he felt.

Because of all this, by extension, he didn’t particularly like the Alliance his people had joined, and more especially the new Union. He even disliked the original Amer-i-caan destroyermen to a degree, who’d forced so much change upon them. Their arrogance grated and they were always in such a dreadful hurry. Not to mention, they—and all humans, to his sensibilities—were so very . . . unsightly. They had no tails, which he simply couldn’t approve of, and their practically furless, naked bodies revolted him, as did their stunted, malformed ears and tiny, beady eyes. He knew they considered his people unexpressive—utterly ridiculous—and their bizarre face moving meant almost nothing to him. Many had learned to interpret it, just as some humans could observe deeper meaning in Mi-Anakka faces now. Meksnaak had forced himself to try. His suspicious nature left him no alternative but to learn the language called English extraordinarily well. But the face moving . . . The only straightforward things about it were that a grin was a grin and a frown was a frown. That was all he could tell with certainty. Sometimes he guessed right, but a guess was all it was.

And of their various allies, he disliked the Empire of the New Britain Isles the most because they constantly wanted things! Their prewar industry had been impressive; broader based in many ways than all the Mi-Anakka combined. But they’d been late to gear up to make all the disturbingly modern things like lex-tricksy, and even flying machines, for the Maker’s sake, that this war required. They were finally starting to carry their weight, but the Filpin Lands had borne a disproportionate burden for them, and still did in Meksnaak’s view. And the vast majority of Filpin Lands’ troops and ships were still in the impossibly distant East, fighting Doms instead of Grik—which even Meksnaak recognized required opposition. And that was what he hated most of all: that his High Chief, Saan-Kakja—to whom he was utterly devoted—had chosen to fight her war against the Dominion, alongside Governor-Empress Rebecca Anne McDonald of the Empire of the New Britain Isles.