Tridents forge, p.17
Trident's Forge, page 17
“Of course.”
“You think she stole it?”
Theresa shook her head. “No. Hallstead’s history means she knows we’re keeping a close eye on her, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. I think an anonymous donor chose tonight to mint themselves a loyal patriot. Probably more than one of them.”
“The person who hired on her services as a contractor?”
“That would make sense,” Theresa said.
“Why, though?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? C’mon, we both need to sleep.”
“You go on ahead, chief. I’m going to walk Maya home.”
Theresa cocked an eyebrow. “Are you now?”
“It’s not like that. She’s a little shook up from the protests and wants an escort back to her house is all.”
Theresa smiled and put a hand on his cheek. “Pavel, you’re adorable. A little thick, but adorable. Just make sure once you’re done ‘escorting’ her that you actually get some sleep tonight, OK?”
“OK…” Korolev said uncertainly. “Goodnight, chief.”
“Goodnight.” She watched him return to the back entrance, then turned and walked down the wide radial street toward the Beehive. There was end-of-shift paperwork to submit. Funny, she thought, the only paper she’d ever seen was in the museum, but the name still stuck. Even out here, trillions of miles from the world of their birth, humans were still creatures of habit.
She’d picked up a few of her own habits over the years. Theresa had been a constable for most of her adult life before taking over as chief so her husband could go play ball with kids of all ages. It was a pretty good arrangement, actually. Coaching suited his temperament better, since shouting at the top of one’s lungs wasn’t only tolerated, but expected. Bryan had many fine qualities, but Zen-like calm was not among them. Besides, she’d been angling for the job since before they’d started dating. It was one of the reasons they’d started dating, if she was going to be honest with herself.
After more than a decade in law enforcement, Theresa felt like she had good habits. First among them was knowing the only way to let out the pus was to keep picking at the scab. Tomorrow, once she’d had a chance to sober up, she was going to have a chat with dear Yvonne Hallstead and see if she could find out who her new benefactor was.
Second among her habits was knowing how to keep her inquiries quiet until she had enough evidence. But that required people who understood the need for discretion. On a whim, Theresa turned away from the path to the Beehive and headed down one of the concentric roads, to the high-rent housing district.
All of the homes and buildings in Shambhala had been preprogramed and printed in only the last three years and change, so everything had a certain uniformity that was difficult to shake off. Some occupants did their best to stand out with clever landscaping in their postage-stamp “lawns,” but the vegetation in this part of Gaia was about as varied and inspiring as the utilitarian, straight-angled homes themselves. The Ark’s geneticists were far too busy trying to get their grain crops to take root to worry about thawing out any Old Earth topiaries.
But not here on the “Golden Mile.” Here the custom homes of former crewmembers and business moguls sat. The families that had built the exclusive residential towers, restaurants, and luxury goods during the Ark’s long journey. And they weren’t about to live in the prefabbed hovels of the plebs. Architectural inspiration taken from Rome to Taipei adorned the homes with columns, tile roofs, bay windows, anything to announce the conspicuous consumption that everyone liked to pretend had been left behind on Earth centuries before. The largest of them belonged to the Alexander family. Which was only proper, as they had built the rest of them as well.
Theresa found the house she was looking for. It was the smallest and least adorned on the block, barely up to the standards of the neighborhood, but allowed in almost as a charity. She’d been here once a little over a year ago when, miraculously, she and her husband had been invited to the housewarming party. The walk home that evening had been… muddled. Confident she wasn’t about to wake a council member unexpectedly, she rang the doorbell and waited.
After that didn’t work, she rang it again, then respectfully pounded on the door.
“I know you’re in there,” she said into the com unit in the door frame. “I can see your locator on my plant.”
The door opened slowly, reproachfully. In the dim streetlight, former First Officer Chao Feng glared at her.
“Are you aware what time it is, constable?”
“Painfully aware,” Theresa said. “May I come in for a minute?”
Feng scoffed theatrically. “If this is some sort of booty call, you’ll need to grow a cock pretty quick.” He pointed at her chest. “And ditch the tits.”
Theresa grabbed her breasts in mock affront. “What? Everyone loves boobs.”
“Not in this house, honey.” Feng paused. “Although my son is almost ten and is starting to ask some really awkward questions. Maybe you could–”
“Nope. Pass. That’s all on you.”
Defeated, Feng opened the door wider and invited her inside. “Can I get you anything? Tea?”
“I’m fine, thanks. So, Jian isn’t taking after his old man in the dating department?”
“If his database searches are any indication, it would appear not.”
Feng collapsed onto his antique couch sideways. A leather couch, Theresa couldn’t help but notice. Even in the dark, the interior of the house betrayed its opulence. It wasn’t quite as overt as the first officer’s quarters Theresa and Benson had raided for stolen art, but Feng wasn’t exactly suffering in exile either.
“Mrs Benson, I have to be to work in a few hours, and I expect it’s going to be a very hectic few days. So, without wanting to sound rude, but not really caring if I do, what the hell do you want?”
Theresa sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap. “Your help, if you can believe it.”
Feng’s relationship to the house of Benson had a strained history. During much of the Edmond Laraby investigation three years earlier, Feng had been a prime suspect. The suspect, actually, and her husband had hounded him tirelessly. Ultimately, Feng had been innocent of the murder, but he’d tried to use his power and influence to derail the investigation instead of coming clean about the intimate nature of his relationship with the late Mr Laraby. Feng and Theresa’s husband had badly misjudged one another, and it almost came at the price of the entire human race. It wasn’t an easy thing to forget.
Feng smoothed out a wrinkle on his velour, monogramed robe. “I can’t, but I’m listening all the same.”
“Bryan’s in trouble.”
Feng snorted. “You can say that again. If he had any sense, he’d have come home with the shuttle.”
“I think he wanted to, but he’s got his nose on a scent, and you know how singleminded he can be.”
“Better than most,” Feng said bitterly before motioning for her to continue.
“Bryan noticed some… fortuitous happenstances leading up to and during the attack.”
Feng sat up at this. “Fortuitous for whom?”
“For the people doing the attacking.”
“Such as?”
Theresa paused, considering just how much she wanted to share. At the moment, all she had were suspicious coincidences. If they were going to be more than that, she’d need information that important people would’ve taken great care to keep hidden from official channels. That meant cozying up to and ultimately trusting someone who sometimes worked outside of “official” channels. Feng was about as honest as that sort came.
Screw it, she thought. Gotta trust someone. “On their walk into the village, a flight of birds came out of nowhere and disabled Atwood’s recon drone, which let a group of the village’s warriors get the drop on them and almost started a shooting incident right then.”
“Maybe they were territorial birds.”
“Maybe, but we’ve been here for three years, and Pathfinder’s drones have been flying around for almost four. Have any of them been attacked before?”
Feng pursed his lips. “One of the crawlers was trampled in a broom-head stampede, but we haven’t lost any of the fliers to wildlife as far as I can remember. Still, it’s a mostly unexplored continent. Maybe we just haven’t run into this particular species before.”
“That’s possible,” Theresa admitted, “But it’s only the first example.”
“Continue,” Feng said, slipping into the tone he used to employ on the Ark’s bridge when listening to a report. That was probably good, it meant he was taking the conversation seriously enough to fall into old patterns. Creatures of habit.
“When the attack came three days later, it was perfectly timed with the local satellite coverage gap caused by those two platforms we lost last year.”
Feng sucked air through his teeth. “I hadn’t heard that part. That is pretty convenient.”
“It gets worse.” Theresa leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees. “The only other way to get a signal into orbit was the shuttle’s transmitter, and it picked that moment to shit the bed? Er, so to speak.”
Feng smirked. “You don’t need to censor yourself here, Theresa. Unless I’m very mistaken, you didn’t intend this to be an official visit.”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Well then fuck it. However, your husband was still able to get a signal to the Ark, yes?”
Theresa nodded. “But only because he convinced the villagers to help him wreck the temple they’d built for our rover and use its transmitter instead. I don’t think whoever was planning this anticipated that possibility. The Ark crew used the rover to piggyback a signal to the shuttle and remote pilot it. If that hadn’t happened, everyone, and I do mean everyone, would’ve been dead by the time the coverage gap passed. Our first indication anything was wrong would’ve been orbital pictures of the village after it had been sacked.”
Feng was sitting upright by then, his fingers steepled as he contemplated what he’d heard. “That all sounds very suspicious. One issue I have. If the shuttle’s transmitter was sabotaged, it would’ve had to be one of the flight crew that did it. It’s buried pretty deep inside the avionics bay, not the sort of place you could explain how to find to a native who has only recently cracked the mystery of the wheel.”
“True enough,” Theresa said.
“But the whole flight crew was killed, yes? Why would one of the crew members agree to be in on the conspiracy if their reward was a spear point?”
Theresa shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe they weren’t told about the spear point. Or maybe the natives got overly enthusiastic. I don’t know, I don’t even have a working theory yet. I’m just at the point where I see a lot of weird shit that doesn’t add up and feel the need to shake it until it falls into place.”
“Sounds like a terrible compulsion to live with.”
“No doubt, but a useful one in my line of work.”
“Too true.” Feng seemed to switch gears. “Why me? Where do I ‘fall into place?’”
“I need a back-channel guy. Official channels have a habit of getting stonewalled as soon as uncomfortable questions start getting asked about important people. I’m sure you wouldn’t know anything about that–”
“Cheeky.”
“–but it’s true. I need a go-between that understands the dealings of both the front and back of house. That’s you, Feng. You’re the very definition of a go-between. You’ve been holding the unstable alliance of the Ark crew and Shambhala’s provisional government together almost singlehandedly for three years already.”
“I’m flattered you noticed.”
“It’s my job to notice.”
Feng put up a hand. “I understand. But, the thought occurs. Why trust me? Your husband is out in the bush with no backup. If I held a grudge over our previous… unpleasantness, now would be a wonderful opportunity to act on it.”
“A few reasons.” Theresa started counting off with her fingers. “One. You’ve had plenty of opportunities over the years. Two, you’ve been very good about keeping up appearances, inviting us to the housewarming, for example.”
“Thank you for the candelabras, by the way,” Feng said. “I don’t remember if I sent you a note.”
“You didn’t. Three, you didn’t act out of malice the last time. Don’t get me wrong, you acted stupidly, but you did so to protect your family. I understand that now, maybe better than I did back then.”
“Marriage will do that to you.”
Theresa held up a final finger. “Four, unless I’m very much mistaken, I think it would amuse you greatly to put my husband in the uncomfortable position of owing you a very big favor.”
Feng sank back into the white leather of the couch. “Oh dear girl, would it surprise you to hear that thought hadn’t occurred to me until just now?” He inhaled sharply through his nose and smiled. “Yes, I would find that very amusing. When do we start?”
“Tomorrow,” Theresa said. “Well, today, I suppose, considering the time. But after I’ve slept in either case.”
“Fair enough.” Feng stood up and walked her to the door. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start with the satellite gap. See if you can find a list of database queries for when the gap would fall over Atlantis.”
“A lot of people coordinating the expedition would have perfectly legitimate reasons for that kind of search.”
“True, but while you do that, I’m going to run a search on correspondence to and from the flight crew, then crossreference them manually.”
“Keeping your final list off the grid to avoid setting off any alarms.” Feng nodded approvingly. “Smart.”
“I’m not just a set of tits, Feng.”
“Perhaps more than just a set of tits would be more accurate. They are definitely among your assets.”
Theresa rolled her eyes. “Men. There’s a repressed little boy hiding inside all of you.”
“I’ve had more than one repressed little boy inside of me,” Feng countered.
Theresa slapped him on the arm. “Too much information, Feng.” She let her tone become quieter, more serious. “Can I ask you something personal?” He nodded acquiescence. “I’ve never seen you out with anyone. It’s been a while now since… Since your wife passed on, and you seem so lonely.”
Feng shrugged. “I still scratch the itch when needed, but to be honest…” Feng glanced over his shoulder and up the stairs to where Jian slept in his own little bedroom. “My standards are quite a bit higher than they used to be.”
“I understand.”
“No,” Feng shook his head. “You won’t until you have your own family. I may have some personal history preventing me from liking Bryan very much, but even I can see you’ve got a good man in him. Take advantage of it while there’s time.”
Theresa found herself holding back sudden tears. She’d tried to take advantage. They both had. After a year of trying, Bryan had finally gone to Dr Russell and learned the awful truth; that his fight with Kimura had cost more than either of them could’ve imagined.
The revelation had hit her pretty hard, but if she was honest, it appeared to have been even more devastating for Bryan. He’d never said as much openly, but Theresa suspected that Bryan felt like something less than a whole man since learning he couldn’t give her a child. She wondered idly how much those feelings of guilt and emasculation had weighed on his decision to stay behind in Atlantis.
Always something to prove, her man.
“Believe me, I’d love to. Goodnight, Mr Feng.”
“Ciao,” he said, and closed the door.
As she walked away, Theresa realized she wasn’t sure if he’d meant the salutation, or his name.
Seventeen
As ze did every morning, Kexx rose before the light of dawn. It was a habit passed down from master to apprentice and a point of pride among truth-diggers. Most of the rest of the village was still asleep, waiting for the light of morning to warm their stiff limbs before venturing out in the day.
Waking so early had not come naturally to Kexx in zer youth. In the end, it took five days of zer mentor, Fullo, waking zer with a bucket of cold water so ze knew what “real cold feels like” to finally drive the point home.
There were still days that Kexx awoke bolt upright, clutching zer chest, expecting to be soaking wet. Today was not one of them, somewhat surprisingly. Ze stood and performed zer waking prayers to Cuut and Xis, anointed zerself with the prescribed oils (which also conveniently protected the skin against sunburn) and then donned zer few bits of jewelry and cloth. Zer thoughts flickered to Mei and the other humans, who insisted on covering their bodies with cloth to an absurd degree. Except when they swam in the lake, where a whole different set of rules seemed to apply.
Kexx laughed. They were a strange people, with a lot of strange ideas, but ze had grown fond of them in the short time since Mei’s refugees had landed on their shores. And now ze was tasked with working with one to solve a mystery and hopefully avert a war.
At first light, messages from the other villages would flood the signal tower, all of them demanding answers for the attack and satisfaction for their dead. A wave started to build as soon as the announcement went out last night. It would build higher the longer it took Kexx and Benson to find out who was responsible. And if they couldn’t, Kexx had no illusions about where that wave would come crashing down instead.
It was a short walk from Kexx’s home to the humans’ shelter, but ze jogged anyway, partly to loosen up stiff muscles, partly to warm up in the cool air of predawn. The stab wound in Kexx’s thigh burned as ze ran, but considering what so many others had suffered, Cuut had shown zer considerable favor.
Kexx walked into the humans’ shelter, although “shelter” probably didn’t apply anymore. They’d been busy expanding the modest structure for months, adding awnings and lean-tos as the need arose. There were even a couple of outbuildings they used for storage and strange racks they used to farm some of their own small crops they’d brought over on their boat to supplement their rations from the village’s supplies. They were very fond of one fungus in particular, something Mei called shitake. They used it in nearly everything and had at least a fullhand of different ways to prepare it, exactly none of which had been to Kexx’s liking so far.
