The last thing he wanted to think about was Axinite wearily working towards an end to that problem, in his sixties, having spent all his life trying to rectify it. And Eion didn't know how long he would last, whether another week or another two hundred years, with his youma physiology being so foreign, but he didn't want to see his superior meet a slow end like that. Better that the problem was rectified sooner than later; Eion thought a culling of the less useful ranks was a simple matter, and easily orchestrated into a battle they couldn't win. Then the rest would rise up to seek vengeance for their fallen comrades or whatever, and they could have better soldiers. Likely Axinite would go about it a kinder way.
"Not actually an oven," he pointed out in a gestured shrug. "But, I'll think about it if you take your own advice." Would be strange, he thought, to know his superior as anyone other than Axinite. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. It was something Schörl thought prudent for her subordinates to know, but Axinite had a vastly different MO for his subordinates.
Though, he wondered — with this one being worked to the bone all the time, did he really have the standing to tell Faustite to stop working so much?
He stood, collected the lunch box and the thermos of tea, crunched over the dead gravel in their fallen space to return them to his superior. A nod was his thanks.
"Certain Jet has more to say. Maybe his own report." Results from this mission would take a long time to digest.
the space cauldron
