When the reports came in, I had to travel out of my way, all the way to the northern section of the outer wall just to see if it was true. And to my dismay, it was.
A Fire Nation fleet of around 20 warships, parallel to our walls, artillery armed, spanning our docks, blocking whatever naval capabilities we had including trade and war. And just like that, our saving grace that we found in the Water Tribe was gone. Our only supply cut off. We were officially blockaded.
Of course, we had all known it was only a matter of time. After we destroyed the 5th, we had access to trade again and we made the most of what we could with that, as little as it was. As defended and navally competent the Northern Water Tribe was, there was only so much they could do. They had no agriculture, hardly any other sources of food, save fish, and even they weren't willing to trade it all away to us. What little we took in, we gave enough to the citizenry to calm them down and avoid riots, the rest, only a measly 5% of what we took in, was put into storehouses. We had that trade going for us for barely a month. Whatever food we did have stored now, combined with what little agriculture we had in the outer ring, it wouldn't last long. I would have to talk to the district governors, but my estimate was a month. That was by no means a god number.
"I'm done here." I said to the Dai Li by my side. They nodded in a unison that both comforted me but started me whenever I saw it in action. It was difficult to believe them still human after everything. Their lack of emotions and pure discipline put them above the rest of this city's security, which, of course, was vital in these trying times, but disconcerting all the same. I wondered sometimes if this was what Kyoshi had had in mind when she founded her secret police all those centuries ago.
The men guided me to the platform at the rear of the wall and I took my stand on mind, locking my feet and digging them ever so slightly into the ground in preparation for the rapid descent, and all at once, felt the air around me shoot upwards as we were lowered to the ground, over 300 feet, in the span of 5 seconds.
I stepped off as two soldiers brought the platform back up and I was guided back to the main Palace by the streets. We took back alleys only in this part of town. The layout always angered me somewhat. There were two rings. The inner and the outer, with the outer being primarily greenspace, parks, and agriculture. Inside the inner ring, however, there were 3 districts. One for the poor, the middle class, and the nobility. An entire part of the city was being wasted on people who couldn't find jobs for themselves, brought disease and crime into the city, and relied solely on social welfare. Tens if no hundreds of thousands were in this city illegally as well, refugees, having no form of identification of Earth Kingdom citizenship. They came into this city, with their problems, preferring to turns to illicit forms of making money rather than actually getting jobs which were by no means in short demand. They could find work as craftsmen, factory workers, police, soldiers, but no, I thought with disdain, they preferred to make life a pain for people who had a right to be here, forming gangs, participating in crime, and running to us for help whenever they were in trouble, letting us waste our dwindling resources on the likes of them. I would have to rewrite some legislature once I was back in my office.
And soon enough, I was, but the paperwork Joo Dee had already placed on my desk put aside any thoughts of a calm evening dedicated to working on something simple, like the refugee crisis.
On top was a pile of letters from the separate governors of the inner ring's districts. Joo Dee always knew exactly what I needed. I was starting to think a simple raise wouldn't be good enough for her. I unsealed the first letter, and of course, was proved right, as Joo Dee had already gone ahead upon seeing my anger at the news of the blockade and had received reports from the governors of the separate districts. And as much as I appreciated her initiative, the news was not nearly as heart-warming.
I opened the letters individually, reading their reports, logging them, placing them aside, opening a new one, reading it, and doing the same, organizing the letters in piles of district numerical order, logging their numbers accordingly on a single sheet of paper, putting the numbers together and came out with a figure that seemed to reach out with invisible arms and slap me across the face.
It turns out I had been overestimating how much food we had inside the city. We didn't have a month like I hoped. No. We had a week.
We had a week of food left to feed this city of hundreds of thousands. There was a clear path I could see, a clear order of events that would play out. With no food, the people rebel, the refugees particularly as they believe themselves entitled to the food they don't work for. People rebel, people die. They riot, storm the inner districts, and there's chaos. In the chaos, Ba Sing Se falls. The Fire Nation comes in, everyone dies, including me, and the nation falls.
"Ju Dee?" I asked into the speaker system of pipes running through my office area in the grand palace.
"Yes, Grand Secretariat?"
"Do you have any numbers for the current military personnel of Ba Sing Se?"
"I left them on your desk, sir."
"Of course you did." I said, smiling as I found the file in the pile she had placed before me. I looked at the numbers, reading the figure to come down to 11, 451. A grave number.
"is that all, sir?" she asked, following the silence I had failed to fill upon reading the report.
"Not quite. Can you please summon General How to come to my office? After you do so, you'll be free to retire for the evening and night, I'll have no further need of you."
"Are you certain?"
"Positive. See your family. Get some sleep. Goodnight, Joo Dee."
"Goodnight, sir."
So as I left her to her task of arranging one final meeting of the day for me, I took out my map of the city. Only 11 thousand men to defend a city of hundreds of thousands, and, when it did come down to it, defend against those hundreds of thousands. I placed my hands against my head and sighed. How did it come down to this? How did it only take a full-scale siege to evaluate our military capacity?
I put the thoughts aside and paid every inch of my attention to that map of our city. We knew where the attack would come from. The Fire Nation couldn't spread their forces too thin to attack from multiple angles. So we had an advantage in numbers and defense for their attack, but that wasn't the real threat at this moment.
I knew where to expect an attack even before the would-be attackers did. I looked through my desk and brought out a map of the inner ring, paying close attention to the wall dividing the middle class and poor. For a brief moment, I considered drawing in the defensive barrier, but the majority of military bases and police stations were in the middle district and I couldn't risk those falling. There were only limited amounts of weaponry in the lower district in small scale police stations in jails, but in the wrong hands, they could amount to far more than we'd give them credit for.
I knew what had to be done, and I'd make How see things my way. If he really loved his King and his Nation, he'd have no choice. The end was coming, and we'd have to be ready.