Tridents forge, p.22
Trident's Forge, page 22
This Atlantian road, by contrast, was many dozens of kilometers long. Some part of his stunted visual cortex told him it was impossible. Benson actually felt a pang of vertigo when he looked down it for too long. Instead, he spent quite a bit of time looking at his shuffling feet.
Aside from Benson, Mei, Kexx, Kuul and zer two bodyguards, the caravan was made up of one surviving warrior from each of the other twenty-three villages for a total of twenty-nine. It took a little more than an hour to walk clear of the swaying crops and out into true wilderness. There was no defined border. The rows of yulka simply grew more disorganized until they couldn’t be differentiated from chaos. Undergrowth and stands of trees sprang up, although not into anything thick enough to be considered a forest. Birdsong, the buzzing of insects and the chirps of animals hiding in the underbrush filled the air.
A particularly nasty-looking customer with four dragonfly-like wings and a pair of pincers that could have been stolen from a fiddler crab landed on Benson’s forearm.
“Ah, hi,” Benson said to the chitinous interloper. He raised his arm and presented it to the Atlantians. “Is this thing venomous?”
“To us? No,” Kuul called out. “To you? Who knows?”
“Thanks for the help.” For a scary moment, Benson debated whether swatting or shooting it would be more prudent. He settled on gently brushing it off in the hope it would continue about its day elsewhere. It buzzed around his head once in protest, then moved on.
For the first couple of hours, almost no one spoke. No boasting of their accomplishments during the fight, no tales of past hunts. But then, why would they? Aside from Kuul and zer two companions, none of them knew one another. And it was among this group of strangers that they were all marching into danger.
No wonder everyone preferred the company of their own thoughts. Still, some team-building was in order. This wasn’t any different from a crop of fresh recruits. Maybe tonight around the fire he could get a chorus going or something. Something to get them all laughing.
Several times, Benson caught Kuul eying him, trying to get his measure. It made Benson’s skin crawl. There was another situation that justified planning ahead for. Benson slowed his pace a little and dropped back to where Kexx and Mei were chatting.
“Hey,” Benson said in a low voice, speaking English so as not to be overheard. “I don’t care for the way Kuul is looking at me.”
Kexx very deliberately did not look in the warrior’s direction. “Yes, I’ve noticed. Ze isn’t very subtle.”
“Are we going to have a problem with zer?”
“There will always be problems with Kuul,” Kexx whispered back. “The only questions are how big, and how soon?”
“What’s the problem, do you think?”
“Kuul is not happy with me. Ze thinks I tried to embarrass zer yesterday by continuing our investigation.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Not intentionally,” Kexx said. “But… it was a consequence.”
Benson smirked. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“It’s not you, Benson, it’s your gun. Kuul fears it, envies it. Ze knows that as long as you have it, ze cannot move against me.”
“Ze’s welcome to try and take it, but it won’t be any use to zer.”
Kexx scrunched zer face. “A weapon that powerful would be of great use to Kuul.”
“Sure, if Kuul could fire it. But it only works for me.”
“It knows you?” Kexx asked, glancing down at the rifle.
“I guess that’s the simplest way to explain it.”
“More human magic.” Ze paused, considering. “That is good, but still, if you are killed, Kuul and his spears will be the strongest group.”
“What should we do, then?”
“Make friends and keep our eyes open,” Kexx said simply.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Benson became aware of a growing number of Atlantian eyes glancing back at their conversation. “We should probably stop talking before everyone thinks we’re conspiring back here.”
“Aren’t we?” Kexx flashed a strange, lopsided attempt at a smile, showing zer beak-like teeth.
“Jeez, that’s creepy, Kexx.”
“I did it wrong?”
“Not… exactly. Anyway, I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”
“That sounds most unpleasant.”
“It just means I’ll keep them open.”
“I would hope so. How else will you see where you’re going?”
“Nevermind.”
They marched on through the afternoon along the long, flat, featureless road with only the occasional milestone to break up the monotony. The further from the village they walked, the more the environment encroached. Vine-like runners from wild plants reached out and tried to find purchase. The crisp edges of the cement blended with windblown sand, fallen leaves, and dirt. Here and there, cracks meandered across the pavement, giving small, ambitious plants a place to set up shop.
“How old is this road?” Benson asked in Atlantian, just a little bit louder than he needed to.
“Five years,” Kexx replied.
“Seems older.”
“It is our newest.”
“Really? Doesn’t seem to get a lot of care.”
“That’s because it doesn’t go anywhere.”
“OK,” Benson said. “Then why are we walking on it?”
Kexx chuckled. “It would be more accurate to say it goes halfway to somewhere. Whenever we add a new road, the villages on each end commit to building half of it, starting at their own gates and meeting in the middle.”
“Sounds sensible.”
Kexx snorted. “You would think. But even that led to arguments. The smaller villages would say the larger should build more because they had greater resources, while the larger villages would say the smaller ones would reap greater benefits from trade and demand the same. It seems we can always find something to fight about.”
Benson nodded along. “That’s politics for you. So, what happened to this road?”
“Years ago, we reached out to the Dwellers, tried to mend our troubled history. After a long time, we reached an agreement to build a road and connect with them, bring our trade with them out from the shadows. We built our road, expecting to meet them in the middle as we’d always done.”
“But they never showed up,” Benson said.
“No. At first, we thought their inexperience building roads had caused their half to stall. We sent envoys and mud-stoners to offer assistance and training.”
“And they didn’t come home again,” Benson said, anticipating the rest of the story.
“Their heads did. As for the rest of them, I couldn’t say.”
“Charming.” Benson pulled his rifle in just a little closer and wondered not for the last time just what the hell he’d been thinking when he agreed to this crazy-ass mission. It wasn’t like he had anything to prove at this point. But then, his mind inexplicably drifted back to a conversation he’d had just over three years ago as he lay on a bed in Avalon’s sickbay, half deaf and a quarter burned from his final confrontation with David Kimura, the fanatic who’d killed twenty thousand people and came a hair’s breadth from killing the rest.
Kimura’s accomplice among the crew, Avelina da Silva, had asked him as she was taken into custody, “And who will stand up for the Atlantians?”
The words still echoed in his mind. At the time, he’d said he would stand for them, and he’d meant it. Benson had given his word, even if it was to a genocidal maniac. He’d come out here to look after Mei and her people, to see that they were all right, for the chance to meet genuine aliens, and if he was being honest, to be present at a moment that had few equals in human history.
But, after the attack on the village, he’d decided to stay because an all-too-familiar feeling in the pit of his stomach told him something was wrong. This wasn’t just inter-tribal conflict. The timing of the satellite gap and the attack, the downing of the drone, the shuttle transmitter going dark, it was too convenient. And now he could add another point to the timeline. It was a six-day march from the village to the Dwellers’ territory. The attack happened only four days after the first contact expedition had touched down. Even if they traveled fast overland, they would’ve barely made it in time. But to move over a hundred armed troops across open country unseen by anyone, that wasn’t something one could do fast.
More likely, they knew of the expedition and had begun to head for Kexx’s village even before the shuttle touched down. Maybe as soon as planning for the expedition began several days before. That meant someone, either in Shambhala or on the Ark, was in contact with the Dwellers and interfering in Atlantian affairs.
And that Benson wasn’t going to stand for.
The caravan came to a small bridge crossing over a shallow washout, no more than a couple of meters at its deepest point. Only a tiny trickle of water flowed down the center of the dried-out riverbed toward the ocean several kilometers to the east. Rounded stones and sun-bleached branches hinted that the trickle turned into a raging current during the wet season.
One stone in particular caught Benson’s eye. Not for its size or shape, both of which were utterly unremarkable, but for its color and the way it caught the light. Benson stepped off the road and tottered down into the small gully, upsetting a small burrowing creature in the process which was only too eager to express its displeasure through chirps and kicking sand.
“What do you see?” Mei called down to him.
“Just a second,” Benson said as he reached down to grab the rock. It was round and pitted, worn smooth by water, then sand. It was heavy for a small rock.
And it was yellow.
“Oh, shit,” Benson said under his breath.
Mei appeared at his side and leaned in to get a better look at the precious nugget sitting in his palm.
“Oh,” Mei said. “Shit.”
“Kexx!” they called up to the road in unison.
Kexx walked gracefully down the steep riverbank and joined the growing huddle.
“What is it, Benson?”
Benson held the nugget of gold up to the truth-digger and handed it to zer. “Do you recognize this?”
Kexx hefted it in zer hand once, then ran the tips of zer fingers over it. “Of course. It’s jie.”
“And it’s just lying around?” Benson said incredulously.
Kexx shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be? There’s no reason to collect it. It doesn’t take an edge and it’s too soft to hold its shape.”
Benson and Mei looked at each other with disbelief. Gaia orbited an older, metal-poor star. The system wasn’t supposed to have much in the way of heavy metals, especially not nuggets of gold just lying around in dry riverbeds.
“I seem to be missing something,” Kexx said. “Is this rock important to your people?”
Benson cleared his throat. “That’s an understatement.”
“How important?”
“Important enough to kill for,” Mei answered.
“Oh.” Kexx looked down at the nugget in zer palm. “Shit.”
Twenty-Two
Theresa forced herself to blink. Her eyes were dry, tired, and probably bloodshot. It felt like she’d been staring at the tablet for her entire adult life, filling out and updating arrest reports. Flying in the face of Acting Administrator Merick’s predictions, the protests had not abated. Indeed, they’d grown and morphed from peaceful picketing into acts of civil disobedience, vandalism, and even a pair of assaults during the night.
Shambhala, it seemed, was spoiling for a fight. Or at least an angry, vocal minority of it was. One of her third-shift constables had been called in on a domestic and caught Yvonne Hallstead roughing up her girlfriend for not showing enough enthusiasm for violent reprisals against the Atlantians. Whether or not that was the ultimate outcome, Hallstead would be sitting out the final round in the town jail.
Theresa quite liked finally having a purpose-built jail for the town’s drunks and hotheads to cool their heels in. It was handy for those middle-ground situations where the extremes of community service or execution weren’t entirely appropriate punishments. It only had eight cells, which for a population of twenty-five thousand and growing struck Theresa as optimistic bordering on naive, but it was still a big step up from just throwing them in an emptied-out equipment locker as they’d done back home on the Ark.
Home. Theresa put down her tablet and mulled the word over in her mind as she looked around the house she and her husband had built. Well, the house a multi-axis concrete extruder and finishing crew had built, but they’d picked the layout and furnishings. It felt like a home in a way the Ark never had.
And now it was all in danger. The city was simmering just below a boil while her stupid, glory-seeking husband was gallivanting around the Atlantian outback, one misstep away from death by tooth or spear. Theresa swore, if something big and nasty didn’t kill him out there, she would be waiting by his return shuttle with a baseball bat. Nothing lethal, maybe just a shattered femur to keep him from wandering off like a rebellious teenager for a few months. He could still coach his football team on crutches. She’d even help nurse the idiot back to health to show him how much she loved him.
The incoming call icon blinked at the edge of Theresa’s vision. An avatar of her husband’s face materialized.
“Speak of the devil and he will appear,” she said, parroting her sanctimonious aunt, one of a very few Roman Catholics left who managed to believe Revelations hadn’t already played out back on Earth two centuries ago, and that she wasn’t living some cursed existence outside of God’s protection. Theresa envied Buddhists; their faith made room for existence after Armageddon without the need for complicated theological gymnastics. She connected the call and projected it onto the nearest wall.
“You’re late,” Theresa said in an even tone, conveying her frustration more effectively than yelling ever could.
“I’m sorry, Esa. We’ve been a little busy out here.”
“And I’ve been getting my nails done?” Theresa held up her tablet and shook it. “While you’re out enjoying the scenery, this whole place is trying to fly apart. The Returners are threatening riots, the isolationists are running around screaming ‘I told you so,’ and everyone else is itching for revenge.”
“I’m sorry, Esa. I was debriefing with the council for the last hour already. I don’t know how much charge I’ve got left.”
“Well I’m flattered you got around to me, eventually.”
Her husband adjusted his grip on the handheld and brought his face closer to the camera. “Look, I didn’t want to talk to those assholes any longer than I needed to, OK? But I’m here now, and I want to make the most of it.”
Theresa recognized the sultry undercurrent in Benson’s voice. She’d heard it enough times after a couple of bottles of sake or apple wine back when they’d been dating in secret, sneaking off between shifts for a taboo interlude.
“Seriously?” was all she could muster today.
“C’mon, honey,” he purred. “It’s sooo lonely out here.”
“You’re surrounded by Atlantians.”
“Yeah, whose sex organs I don’t understand or even recognize. I might be getting fluids on me whenever I shake hands.” Benson shuddered.
Theresa sighed. “That’s really setting the mood, baby.”
“Please? It’s important,” he pleaded. There was something about his expression. In all the years they’d been together, Bryan Benson had never been one to beg for sex. It wasn’t necessary and he knew it. Partly because Theresa wasn’t the withholding kind, and partly because his ego had been fed by years of female Zero fans catering to his every carnal whim. It was irritating, to say the least.
But now his face had an earnestness to it totally out of proportion to the situation. Maybe he was just really desperate, but Theresa knew her husband. If he said it was important, it was. She decided to play along.
“OK, you want a show big boy?” She ran her thumbs under the shoulder straps of her top.
“Yes please,” he said eagerly.
“I hope none of your new friends are watching.”
“I doubt they would know what they were seeing if they were.”
“Honey?” Theresa said.
“Yes?”
“We really have to work on your sexy time talk.” Theresa stood up and threw her top at the camera mounted to the wall.
* * *
“Um, why exactly are we watching this?” Korolev’s baby-smooth cheeks started to flush crimson.
“What you’re looking for is at the very end,” Theresa said, advancing the video quickly enough to go through the more private bits in a blur. The projection on the wall shifted back to Benson’s face.
“That was wonderful, baby,” Benson’s recording said. “When I get back, I’m going to give you those new gold earrings you’ve been talking about.”
Theresa paused the video with a swipe of her hand.
“Notice anything?”
“Are you saying there’s some sort of hidden message here?” Feng asked.
Theresa nodded. “Bryan knows these messages are probably being monitored. So he hid it where only I would see it.”
“OK, what are we looking for, then?” Korolev asked.
“Do you see anything missing from my face?”
Korolev studied her for a moment. “A mouth. A nose. Two nostrils. Two eyes. Two ears.” He shrugged. “Looks intact to me.”
Theresa signed. “You’re bucking for detective, Pavel. Anything else? Anything about my ears?” She stuck two fingers behind them and wiggled her lobes. “Anything missing?”
Korolev leaned forward, taking in her ears in detail. Theresa was about to give up when she saw the dawning realization across her constable’s face. “You don’t have any piercing holes!”
“Correct.”
“So what earrings was he talking about?”
