Almost as soon as I had fired off the phone call, true to his word, Thurgood had set to work getting this and that person to do his bidding, and soon he'd cobbled together a motley temporary defense force to look after the pack. It was a bandaid solution of the most bandaidy type but it would have to do. Our pack would be contributing to it, although the exact details were still in the works. So that was over and done with, at least for the time being. I could forget about it.

I was on the way to the "emergency meeting" that Adlai had set up. The Moon Goddess hummed and whirred and ticked contentedly to herself. Adlai had set the start time at half past eight in the morning. This was unprecedented, and I debated mentally about whether it was just a rookie error of judgement or he was genuinely weeding the more dedicated of us out for some nefarious purpose, but judging by the scene in the rear view mirror, almost everybody had made an effort. Which was almost similarly unprecedented.

One of the other requests that Adlai had made was that we were to not bring any other pack members. So today I was doing the kind of single-occupant commute that was the butt of Zirconian jokes.

We had never had any cause to travel this way, and neither did most of the other packs, even the ones that lived on the same side of river. There were old stories that it was haunted and the like, the kind of tales that parents told their children, who told their children in turn, and so on, not so much grounded in literal truth, but serving quite well as a general comment on the eerieness of the place.

And it really was eerie, today, at least. There was a fog settled over the forest, the closest thing to rain most of us were were likely to see in some time. The forest here was so thick that there was no way to see through it to gauge the lie of the land as one could in our home turf. The dry spell seemed to have had little effect here. And it was quiet. Even through the little road noise - the road well kept and smooth, far smoother than I had envisioned - and the sound of the convoy of other pack vehicles, you could hear the silence outside.

Like Granite Peak it was quite isolated, both geographically and in other ways. Located in a meander of the Arrowhead River gorge, which also formed the Zirconian border at this point, only a narrow isthmus of land connected it to the rest of the Independent Territories proper. As with the Granite Peak, there was only one road there. As the closest bridge over the Arrowhead was in the Special Industrial Zone, the only option was to cross there and circuitously double back, following the path of the river.

Not that I was particularly pressed for time, and it gave me a chance to take the Moon Goddess out for a spin. The old girl was getting a bit long in the tooth, but she still could do all the old tricks, and I had her all to myself for once, the subtle but tantalisingly sharp crease down the centre of the bonnet, the glint of the metallic-brown paint and the chrome, the sensation of floating above the road.

It seemed a bit counter-intuitive that I, as with many others, had travelled far and wide but never visited this part of my own stamping ground. I supposed it was true for many others as well. Did humans worry about these things? Did they try to visit all the nooks and crannies of their own country before setting off for greener pastures? I doubted this was even a thing that most people thought about seriously, but surely there were some cultures who had some kind of official policy on it.

The first sign that we were nearing the pack was a group of sentries in black fatigues standing by the side of the road, guarding an overgrown dirt path. they didn't look at us as we glid past. The fog was starting to lift as the sun came out. Looking up at the trees, I caught a momentary glimpse of a sentry post in a tree. There were bound to be many of them dotted around the border. You had no hope of getting in here.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that this would be the perfect ambush. All they had to do was wait till we'd all arrived, block the road, and we'd be fish in a barrel. Of course, he wasn't dumb or crazy enough to try that, surely.

The forest thinned suddenly, and white silhouettes of greenhouses, obscured by trees, came up on our left. There were rows and rows of them, identical, stretching out into the distance, no doubt irrigated by the river. There was an access road leading to them, unpaved, blocked off by a personnel carrier, with security standing around it.

I wondered what they'd found out, and what the conference would be about. Would they just tell us upfront or would they just release all the findings for us to pore over, somehow? If their (single) previous appearance was anything to go by, I suspected it would be the former. 

The greenhouses gave way to the pack proper. The buildings looked well-kept and tidy. I wasn't sure of the Thunder Falls population, but it couldn't be that many. Maybe they'd grown over the years.

The whole place was crawling with security. There were black fatigues and matt black armoured personnel carriers everywhere. I wondered how many of them actually served a purpose.

I suddenly realised that the streets were empty. There wasn't anyone out except for the security personnel. Not even a welcome ceremony, like the flowery elaborate stuff that some of the more flamboyant pack leaders liked. It was eerie. Maybe they were all working in the greenhouses, but that couldn't possibly be. I wondered if they'd been told to stay at home or something. I could see quite a lot of washing hanging out of some of the windows, so this was clearly not some kind of Potemkin village-type thing.

We pulled up at the Thunder Falls pack house, an imposing neoclassical structure of the type that the other alphas seemed to find irresistible, but sober and sensible compared to the one we had been in a week beforehand. Still imposing though, by anybody's standards.

The sound of the falls hit me as I got out of the car. It was not loud enough to drown out the sound of conversation, but it had a heaviness to it that hung shroud-like over everything. It was the usual parade of flashy cars, the suits, the house, but it was all business. The pomp had been replaced by a kind of quiet trepidation, as if we were waiting for some kind of a pronouncement on the situation. Or some kind of transfer of power. I noticed a few of the foreign packs from the Congress had stayed, for business or the Sunshine Beach casinos or whatever reason.

Thurgood had mentioned something about running late. Maybe it would be better if I went in first.

Nobody was in the mood to speak as we filed into the main hall, which had been set up with chairs. Inside here, the noise of the falls was muted.

There was no sign of any other pack members, unless you counted the security personnel. Maybe they were the pack members.

The podium was subtly lit. Stevenson was already standing there, waiting to begin, perhaps. He did look like he belonged here, ghoul-like. There was also Wethermore in an armchair, which was surprising. How had they managed to convince him over?

The presentation wasn't much to write home about, at least the start of it wasn't. Stevenson, and then Adlai, kept on repeating the same mumbo-jumbo on reconciliation and outreach and all these other terms that Zirconian diplomats would have probably loved, but just flew over our heads.

A lot in the audience looked thoroughly bored. Perhaps that had been their intention, because by the time they got to the meat of the matter the vast majority of the audience was positively catatonic. Even Wethermore up on the stage, looked like he was going to doze off, possibly forever.

Behind him, a projection screen showed a map of the Special Industrial Zone. He pointed towards a relatively blank area next to the Arrowhead river.

"The East Side. The roughest settlement in the entire Zone. Home to 10,000 rogues in two square kilometres, which makes it one of the most densely populated informal settlements. Through our investigations, we have conclusively traced several of the deceased attackers to this settlement.

"I must reiterate once again that we still believe strongly in the process of reconciliation. My people have had great experience with outreach in the rogue communities, and we have tried our best to provide them with our supplies, but so far their attempts at forming a working relationship have met with violent resistance. We have thus concluded that this is not a viable course of action for this incident. The only option is liquidation."

Adlai flicked through what looked like diagrams of battle tactics, but he flicked through them so fast that I wasn't able to parse any meaning out of any of them. "We propose we form a strategic alliance of our forces to unite against this common foe. We have not locked in a date yet, but sometime in the next few weeks it its our intention to coordinate a night raid of the entire East Side. Please do understand that these diagrams are just rough drafts at this point, but I hope this gives you all an idea of what we're proposing."

There was silence. Well, it certainly did give us an idea of how crazy this whole plan was. Nobody had ever even dreamt of anything as audacious as this. There had been minor incursions into rogue territory in the past, but nothing on this scale. We did have somewhat of an obligation to keep the rogues on our side, after all. They worked in our factories and shopping malls and car dealerships. Not to mention the more bleeding-hearted of the Zirconians would go ape on us.

One person stood up and clapped. And that was all it took. I simply nodded as cheers rose up around me. I doubted if half of the others could even point the East Side out on a map if prompted. But Adlai was promising bloodshed, and we liked that. The anger from the last attack was still there, and the thought of retribution was immensely alluring.

Yes, we were hurting and we were angry. But did that really warrant the kind of thing that Adlai was laying out? This was madness. I wouldn't have questioned it so much had it come out of any of the other leaders present, but it seemed completely out of line with his other beliefs and the stuff his companies were doing. But pointing that out was something the Zirconians would do, and we didn't like that on this side of the border.

But he had Wethermore on his side, and that was a big credibility boost. The others seemed quite happy to lap up whatever he was giving out; maybe they were secretly thinking that he had finally joined their club.

"And now I invite Tobias Wethermore, chairman of the Organisation for Pan-Lycan Unity  onto the stage. He has a message for you."

There was a hush in the audience. He walked up unsteadily.

"I am honoured to have been invited here by the honourable Alpha Adlai Betancourt. I think you can all learn from his example on how to lead a pack."

He was growing old, but he was still a skilled orator.

"I think we can all agree that these have been difficult times for all of us. But in these difficult times, sometimes we will drift apart and become lost from each other. But now is not the time for that. We must come together. We must unite. For when we unite, that is when we are the strongest. And by Monagh's name, we need that strength to get us through these times."

"Hear hear!" Someone in the audience called out.

"The East Side has been a menace to our society for a long time now. It will be a menace no more. They will pay for what they have done to the Granite Peak pack. They will pay for the fear they have struck into all of us."

"When you enter that festering cesspit, do not fear for what lies ahead. Take a moment to think of our people, and the way of life we have made for ourselves. Take a moment to think of what you are fighting for, the future of your pack and your mission. You are there to send a message, loud and clear. That we are not afraid. And we will rise triumphant."

Cheers sounded around me. I joined in, but mainly for the strength of Wethermore's speech rather than its contents. I did not feel particularly enthusiastic about this, despite the change in atmosphere; if anything, it had only served to intensify the feeling of unease within me. Something about this still felt wrong. But the look of determination on Wethermore's face put all of those thoughts away momentarily.

Wethermore was helped back into the armchair by Stevenson and several others. Adlai repositioned himself on the podium. "I know this a big decision you will have to make, and the final decision lies with you. I strongly encourage you to discuss it tonight with your packs. It should be very clear what the right path of action is. And I hope you will all take it."

We walked out of the hall and into our cars in silence. Although not a word was uttered, and nobody still seemed willing to talk at all, the dejected air that had been before was no longer there, replaced by a quiet sense of determination and resolve. We had this one in the bag, never mind my apprehensions about the whole thing.