Trident's Forge (16 page)

B
enson watched
from the roof of Chief Tuko's house as the shuttle lifted into the air. Soon, its engines transitioned from hover to level flight and it accelerated toward the horizon and the approaching night.

The chief, severely injured and unconscious, lay inside while the village healers attended to him. He'd lost an arm during the battle, which was of surprisingly little concern to anyone else. Apparently, the Atlantians could regenerate them in a few months. Tough bastards. The wounds to Tuko's head were far more serious. No one knew when, or even if, he would wake again. Rumors of a succession fight were already swirling. The expedition's medic had taken a look and done what she could, but the alien's unfamiliar anatomy and physiology meant she didn't dare administer any but the most rudimentary treatment. Better to leave him in the care of his own people's medicine, no matter how primitive it might be.

Benson's thoughts returned to the shuttle. All of the expedition's members were aboard, as well as several of the Unbound who had been seriously wounded during the battle. There had been some dissent about accepting help, but Mei straightened them out. Korolev had fought with him to stay, loyal to a fault, but Benson had managed to convince him that it was Theresa who would really need his help with what was coming. It had the advantage of being true, especially if Benson's suspicions were right. He did allow Korolev to leave one thing behind: a rifle and all of their spare magazines, almost five hundred rounds' worth. Benson ran a hand over the sleek polymer casing of the rifle scope. “If you're going to insist on going it alone, you should at least be the baddest motherfucker on the continent,” Korolev had said.

In addition to the rifle and a set of riot armor, Benson kept his duffle with a few changes of clothes and basic toiletries, a couple of weeks of MREs, and a med kit. His only other equipment was an emergency mobile satellite link and a solar recharger so that his plant connection to the Ark wasn't lost as soon as the shuttle left. Still, it would only afford an hour or two of contact between recharges. He was going to be roughing it for the duration of the investigation.

On the east side of the village, the signal tower was busy using what little sunlight they still had to send frantic updates further down the loose network of villages that made up the Atlantians' civilization.

“You're quiet,” Mei said, quietly.

“Sorry.”

“You're never quiet. What's wrong?”

Benson took a deep breath as even the shuttle's red-orange jet exhaust became too faint to track against the mottled twilight. “You mean other than watching a bunch of people get killed and uncovering evidence of a conspiracy?”

“Other than that, yes.”

“Or the fact I'm now thousands of kilometers from home, isolated and alone, and expected to go out into the wilderness to find the people who tried to kill us and ask them very politely what the big deal is?”

Mei bobbed her head as she considered his answer. “Yeah, that would do it.”

“How's Sakiko?” Benson asked.

“Fine. Sleeping at a friend's house.”

“An Atlantian friend?”

Mei nodded. She pointed to one of the single-story dwellings near the southern edge of the village. “Pu's family. They're good babysitters.”

“And she doesn't mind being looked after by aliens?”

Mei shrugged. “Why should she?”

Benson smiled and shook his head. “Kids. It's amazing what they can do before adults teach them to ‘know better.'”

“She's fearless,” she said with a trace of worry.

“So was I, once.”

“Not now?”

“Not even close.”

“What changed?”

“You were there,” Benson said. “I watched a lot of people get hurt and die.”

“Like today.”

Benson nodded.

“But you stayed anyway.”

“Because I'm the only one who could help.”

Mei snorted. “Not fearless, still arrogant.”

Benson shrugged. “Nobody's perfect.”

The sound of footsteps called their attention to the stairwell behind them. An Atlantian head popped up. Even after four days among them, Benson had trouble picking out individuals, but he was pretty sure it was Kexx. The alien started speaking English and removed all doubt.

“Trouble,” he said simply.

“What's wrong?” Mei asked.

“One of our bearers hurt during the fight returns.”

“Oh, well that's good, right?” Benson said.

Kexx looked startled, while Mei elbowed him in the ribs.

“Kexx means the bearer returns to Xis.”

“Who's Xis?”

Mei rolled her eyes. “One of their gods. The bearer is dying.”

“Oh, OK, that's not good…” Benson said carefully. “What's a bearer?”

“Ugh. Just follow us.” Mei grabbed his forearm and pulled him to the stairs. “Forgive zer,” she said as they passed Kexx on the way down.

With Kexx following close behind, Mei strode purposefully to the center of the village.

“Where are we going?” Benson half asked, half protested.

“Say nothing,” Mei snapped. “Stand by the wall and watch.”

“What wall?”

She shot Benson a withering look that he was sure had been deployed at her own child to great effect over the last couple of years, so he let it drop. Frankly, he was running low on energy anyway. The last few days had been a neverending sprint from one crisis to the next. A good night's sleep was soon going to move from a luxury to a biological imperative.

Mei stopped in front of a building in the innermost ring, directly opposite the temple on the other side of the pond. Unlike the temple, it was squat and unadorned, little more than a mound with a hole in one side. He'd passed by it several times over the last few days without a second glance, but now he was ushered through the door and down a steep staircase that curved to the left. The steps, built for Atlantian legs, were about ten centimeters too tall. As the scant light from outside faded, Benson misjudged them and nearly sent himself flying several times.

They'd gone down at least two floors before the stairs ended on a floor made of bedrock. Torches on the walls cast a warm light over the rough-hewn rock, the tool marks worn smooth by the feet of generations. Gently nudged from behind, Benson stepped through the high door into a huge, almost perfect hemisphere reaching back up to ground level. Benson realized with no small amount of awe that it wasn't a mound he'd entered, but the very top of the dome. The walls were coated in the same concrete that made up the Atlantians' roads and buildings. At first glance, it was identical to the interior of the temple, except instead of built up into the sky, it was carved out of the ground.

“Wow,” he whispered to Mei. “What is this place?”

“Xis's temple.”

“But I thought they worshiped Cuut?”

Kexx stepped in. “What Cuut destroys above, Xis creates below.” The truth-digger pointed at the collection of figures hunched over a low table at the center of the dome. Still more Atlantians huddled against the far wall, eying him suspiciously. They were smaller than the other aliens he'd seen, less adorned. What were they doing down here in the dark?

“We must hurry,” Kexx said.

One of the figures looked up from the table. The Atlantian's gently glowing skin flickered hesitantly before waving them over. A body lay face down on the low table. Atlantian blood trickled out of deep gashes in the poor soul's flesh and down the sides of the slab to pool at their feet. Even more unsettling than the blood was the huge, disfiguring lump on the body's back. Something had stretched the skin taught, like a balloon ready to burst.

“What's that?” Benson whispered to Mei. “A tumor, hematoma?”

Mei elbowed him in the ribs again.

“That's not actually an answer, you know.”

“Quiet!” she whispered as loudly as she could.

Something stirred inside the mound of flesh and set Benson's skin crawling like an ant hill. He barely suppressed the reflex to recoil in horror. Before he'd even started to work out what he was seeing, one of the elders began chanting a low, pulsing melody that reached Benson's ears and the soles of his feet simultaneously. The rest of them joined in the chant, even Mei, while the writhing lump of flesh on the injured Atlantian's back churned in reply.

Benson looked on in growing alarm at the horror movie scene playing itself out in front of him. The leader of the chant produced an obsidian dagger and held it high. It was highly refined, sharing more with the ceremonial spears Benson had seen during the sacrifices than the simple tools of the other villagers. The glimmering black blade seemed to drink in what meager light fell on it.

Benson realized his hand had fallen down onto the grip of his rifle. He had a very bad feeling about what was coming next.

The chanting reached a crescendo as the elder lowered the knife onto the prostrate figure. But where Benson had expected a stabby, plunging affair that would bury it to the hilt, the elder instead took great care to gently slice through a layer of skin, then another. There was no sign the patient was aware of the cuts, or even alive. The glass blade was incredibly sharp, cutting cleanly and easily through the flesh until a great eruption of water surged from the incision like a wellspring.

The rest of the attendants rushed in and started grabbing strange lumps of flesh from inside the body. Miraculously, curiosity won out over disgust as Benson leaned in to get a better look at what they were pulling free of the body. More than a dozen had been pulled out already, with no signs of stopping, and they were moving.

In a moment of blinding revelation, Benson saw the ugly, twisted, translucent lumps for what they really were.

“Babies!” he shouted. “You're saving her babies!” Benson's knees felt like they would give out as the thrill of it hit him. He'd never seen a birth. Few humans had, actually. Until very recently, everyone born on the Ark had come out of a vat. Everyone except for the Unbound like Mei, who was staring at him like he'd grown a second head which was busy reciting Shakespeare in German.

“Sorry,” he said, his hands held up. The procedure continued until almost three dozen tiny wriggling infants had been pulled free of what Benson could only assume was their deceased mother. The attendants took great care removing each one from a thin, transparent sack trapping them, then lined them up in front of the same elder that had made the incision.

Benson looked on with a new reverence for what he had been permitted to witness. The elder arranged the infants into two groups on the table. By gender? The chanting continued at a slower pace. If there were lyrics being sung, the translation software wasn't picking them up.

One group of infants was growing quite a bit larger than the other. Benson eyed the piles suspiciously as the elder gathered up the smaller group of four and handed them to a pair of Atlantians who embraced them tightly and stepped away, turning their backs on the others as they cooed over the infants in their arms.

“Mei.” He let his hand rest on her shoulder as he whispered. “What's going on?”

Before she could turn to answer, the elder positioned one of the remaining infants and decapitated it with one deft stroke of his dagger. For a moment, Benson was paralyzed between disbelief and white hot rage. Most of his conscious mind simply refused to believe what his eyes reported. But then the elder grabbed another and positioned the tiny squirming infant for the killing stroke.

Without thinking about it, Benson's rifle shot up to his shoulder as he sighted through the holographic sight at the elder's forehead and clicked off the safety.

“Drop the knife, NOW!” he screamed in untranslated English. The Atlantian equivalent popped up in his vision a moment later and he repeated the command in their language with no less force. The shellshocked aliens froze in place, unsure what to do, but utterly certain of what the unhinged human with the assault rifle could do to them if they didn't obey.

It was Mei who moved first… by putting herself directly between the elder and the muzzle of Benson's gun.

“Mei, get out of the way.”

“No.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Benson half shouted, half pleaded.

“This is their way,” she said firmly.

“But they're killing babies!”

“Go wait outside,” Mei said in a voice that was not accustomed to being ignored.

“You can't tell me you're OK with this,” Benson protested.

She ignored him and pointed for the stairs. “Go!”

Benson realized his hands were shaking. He felt faint. Whatever wave of adrenaline he'd been riding for the last few hours was about to come crashing down. The rifle suddenly felt very heavy.

“I ah… don't feel very well.” He lowered the gun and fumbled to sling it back over his shoulder as he staggered back up the steps. He burst out of Xis's temple into the cooling night air, skin clammy and head spinning. His knees buckled, and Benson fell onto all fours and retched, again. He'd thrown up more in the last four days than he had since the week after the two-eighteen Zero championship title, but for entirely different reasons.

By the time he sat up again, Mei had sat down next to him.

“Eat strange seeds again?” she asked.

Benson wiped his mouth. “Talk to me. Make me OK with what I just saw.”

Mei took a deep, centering breath. “I can't, because I'm not. But maybe I can make you understand.”

“They're killing the rest of them down there right now, aren't they?”

Mei nodded gravely. “They don't have a choice.”

“They don't have a choice not to lop the heads off their own children?” he snapped. “Seems like a pretty easy choice to me. It never even occurred to me as an option before.”