Trident's Forge (3 page)

Benson picked up a fork. “I'm hardly going to argue the point.”

He had just enough time to get the first bite on his tongue when the call came in through his plant.

“I know who you are, Merick. Your name comes up in the corner of my vision, remember?” Benson said out loud as well as into his plant interface. “What I don't know is why nobody down here knows how to ring first. I've just sat down to dinner.”

Benson stood up from his chair. “At least put yourself up on the screen in the living room.”

“The only other person here is the chief constable. Now please get out of my head.”

The link cut off, replaced by a gentle chime and an
Incoming Call
icon glowing on the far wall. Benson answered it.

“Ah, Deputy Administrator Merick. How are things in the Beehive?” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Busy, to say the least. I'm sorry to intrude, Mr Benson, but Administrator Valmassoi has called an emergency council meeting.”

“Ah, well then you're talking to the wrong Benson. Esa, phone for you.”

“No, I was asked to contact you, personally. Your presence has been requested for the meeting.”

Theresa walked into the living room holding two beers. “What's going on, Bryan?”

“Secret agent stuff, apparently.”

“Cool. I'll get my coat.”

“I'm sorry,” Merick's face tried and failed to hide his nervousness. “But the chief constable's presence is not necessary at this time.”

“Hold on,” Benson took the lager Theresa offered and sipped it. It was crisp, without the skunkiness of last month's batch. The brewmaster was getting the hang of things, finally. “Ah, that's nice. Now, what sort of ‘emergency council meeting' requires the Athletics director and not the chief constable?”

Theresa put a hand on Benson's shoulder. “Did you forget to pay the deposit on your equipment rental?”

“I could have sworn…”

“Mr and Mrs Benson, if you're finished, this is a serious matter that requires Mr Benson's immediate presence. The meeting is starting in ten minutes, as soon as Captain Mahama is able to join us from the Ark.”

That got Benson's attention. “Mahama's coming all the way down here?”

“No, but she will be joining us by holo link. Administrator Valmassoi will be most grateful if you can join him and the rest of the council in the capital building.”

“Can we finish dinner first?”

“If you can eat it while you're walking down here. Merick out.” The link went dark.

“This better be good.” Benson stood and chugged the rest of his beer. “I'm still starving.”

Theresa grabbed her jacket off a rack in the entryway. “It'll reheat.”

“Yeah, because algae reheats so well.”

T
heresa crossed
her arms close to her body against the brisk night air. With so little cloud cover, temperatures dropped quickly after the sun set. The capital was a short walk downtown from their duplex in Shambhala's suburbs. Less than a block from home, they passed the new museum. The curator, Devorah Feynman, now officially past mandatory retirement age, showed no signs of slowing, and even fewer signs of trusting anyone else with the task of transferring
her
exhibits from the Ark to the surface. Not even the crew dared to broach the subject of stepping down with her. No one wanted to risk it.

Theresa smiled at the thought of the diminutive tyrant riding roughshod over not only her subordinates, but her superiors as well. Few people in the history of the species had ever been so perfectly suited for the role life had provided them.

“Any guess what's gotten up Valmassoi's backside?” Theresa whispered as they approached the Capital's steps.

“You mean generally, or for this meeting in particular?”

“The late-night emergency meeting with the football coach. Isn't it a little early for a performance-enhancing drug scandal? You haven't even played the first games yet.”

“Honestly, I think my linemen could benefit from a few rounds of PEDs.”

Theresa answered him with an elbow to the ribs. “Be serious.”

“I don't know, Esa.” He paused to nod to the two door guards, who waved them both through without the customary search. “But we'll find out in a minute.”

The capital building's inner rotunda was enclosed by a six-sided dome. The floor tiles came from locally sourced marble that had been quarried about five kilometers up the New Amazon river, the mouth of which spilled out into the Bay of Landing. The tilework was also hexagonal, as were many of the rooms surrounding the rotunda. Officially, the capital was dedicated as the Westminster Building, but everyone had quickly taken to calling it the Beehive.

Theresa and Benson reached the cabinet chamber where Deputy Administrator Merick waited for them.

“I thought we'd agreed that the chief constable wasn't needed at this meeting,” he said tensely as they approached the door.

“You
thought
that, yes.” Theresa had little regard or time for the chairman's lapdog.

“I'm sorry, but I must insist that–”

Ever the peacemaker, her husband put an arm around the smaller man's shoulders. “Merick, c'mon. She's chief constable,
and
my wife.” He pointed at the door. “Anything I hear in there is just going to be pillow talk in a couple hours anyway. This way, she doesn't have to hear it secondhand.”

Theresa shrugged her shoulders. “He's right, you know.”

Defeated, Merick opened the door with a theatrical sigh and announced their arrival to the council room at large. Administrator Valmassoi already sat at the nominal head of the hexagonal, twelve-seat table, flanked by the other council members, who doubled as his ministers of finance, health, agriculture, labor, and civil engineering. As far as Theresa could see, the ministers of education and the interior either hadn't arrived yet or hadn't been invited.

Standing off to one side, Theresa locked eyes with Chao Feng, formerly First Officer Commander Chao Feng. Certain improprieties had led to his being relieved of that title shortly after the Ark arrived at Gaia. Mainly his ham-handed attempt to protect himself from suspicion in a murder investigation by concealing his romantic relationship with the victim, leading Theresa's husband on a wild goose chase while the real killer's plot very nearly succeeded in causing the extinction of the entire human race. Instead, they only managed to slaughter two fifths of it.

In spite of his short-sighted and selfish behavior, Feng was far too capable and well-connected to discard entirely. He'd settled into the role of coordinator and liaison between the colony's civilian government and the crew still running the Ark high above.

Feng nodded to her. Theresa nodded back. He didn't make eye contact with her husband, however. There was still an awful lot of baggage between the two of them. Enough to ground a shuttle.

“Ah, Detective Benson…” Administrator Valmassoi said. “And our chief constable…”

“Is there a problem, administrator?” Theresa asked sweetly.

“No, of course not. I just hadn't been expecting your presence for this meeting.”

“Neither had I,” Merick said from the doorway.

Theresa was about to snap at him, but Valmassoi waved him off. “It's fine, Preston. We'd be honored to include our chief law enforcement officer's insights in our deliberations. That will be all for now.”

Merick bowed. “I'll be just outside if you need anything.” The door clicked shut behind him.

“Now then.” Valmassoi held a hand out to two unoccupied chairs. “Detective, chief, please have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Benson said as he sat down. “But it's actually just coach, or if you really must be formal, director of athletic preparedness and recreation. My wife is the detective now.” Benson reached over and squeezed Theresa's hand.

“Of course you're right, coach. Your reputation precedes you.”

“What's this all about?” Theresa said.

Valmassoi held up a hand. “We're about to start. We're waiting on one more guest.” As he said it, a flickering, translucent image of Captain Mahama filled the seat next to the administrator. Her dark complexion stood in stark contrast to the drab gray and brown of her command uniform. Even from thousands of kilometers away and looking like a ghost, the woman effortlessly commanded attention.

“Can we clean that up at all?” Valmassoi leaned back to ask a holo tech hidden in the shadows.

“Sorry sir, there's some high-altitude particulates interfering with the com laser. Probably from that wildfire on the other side of the continent.”

Valmassoi nodded curtly. “Can you hear me, Captain?”

After an almost imperceptible delay, Mahama's ghostly figure turned to face roughly where the administrator sat and nodded. “Indeed I can. How do I look?”

“Like something haunting Scrooge's house,” Valmassoi said.

Mahama smirked. “I'm afraid I neglected to bring any chains. Is the room secure on your end?”

“Yes.”

“Good, is everyone present?”

Valmassoi nodded in Theresa's direction. “And then some.”

Mahama's holo glanced over and smiled. “Ah, I'm sorry we didn't think to include you on the list, Chief Benson. It was an oversight, I assure you.”

“Thank you, captain.” Theresa appreciated the courtesy, even if she doubted its veracity.

“All right.” Mahama laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles theatrically. “It's essential that everyone understands that this discussion is of the utmost sensitivity. Anything said here stays here for the time being.”

Benson adjusted himself in his chair. “I thought we were done keeping secrets. Sir.”

Mahama looked squarely at him. “It's good to see you again too, detective.”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that?”

“Apologies, Mr Benson. Force of habit. I'm not making everyone swear an oath of secrecy. However, I am asking for a certain level of… discretion while we decide how best to respond to today's events.”

“And what are these
events
, madam captain?” The question came from another familiar face, Dr Russell, who'd been named health minister just in the past year. She'd been the one to treat Bryan's extensive burns and other injuries he'd received in the final showdown with Kimura three years earlier. Her plastic surgery work in particular was excellent. Few people knew his face well enough to spot the subtle scars left over from the skin grafts. Theresa could, but she never let him know it. If anything, the fresh skin had taken a few years off his face. She didn't mind.

“I was just coming to that. Administrator, the video if you please.”

Valmassoi pointed at the holo tech and made a “get rolling” gesture with his index finger. A moment later, the lights in the room darkened as one of the walls lit up, displaying a scene that everyone in the room, indeed everyone in the city, had already spent hours watching over the last three years.

Video feed streamed from inside the temple on the continent of Atlantis the natives had built around the first of Pathfinder's rovers they'd discovered. The rover itself was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator with a half-life measured in decades, which was why it was still operating three years after being captured.

Aside from a couple of scientific instruments that had glitched or fallen victim to the natives' curiosity, it was still fully functional and had been gathering information on their new neighbors the entire time. Much had already been learned about their physiology, culture, and even language thanks to the happy accident of the rover's capture.

It appeared they were watching another of the Atlantians' frequent offering ceremonies, where the village elders tried to earn favor from the rover with bribes of tubers, fungus, piles of seeds, and the occasional animal. The rover would show its gratitude by taking measurements, collecting and analyzing samples, and even dissecting certain specimens, all under the control of an exuberant exobiologist sitting in a lab aboard the Ark. They could only guess at what the natives made of its odd behavior.

Theresa watched intently as the rover's binocular camera mast panned through the collection of aliens, their bioluminescent skin glowing in rhythmic patterns synchronized with the haunting melodies of their prayer songs. The scene was utterly foreign, yet compellingly beautiful. The sheer number of individuals jumped out at her. There had to be three hundred of them crammed into the circular room, well above normal. Attendance at these ceremonies had slacked off over the years, falling into a pattern resembling the spikes for Christmas and Easter Mass at the Catholic cathedral, and relative calm the rest of the year. But today didn't fall into that pattern of holy days for the Atlantians.

Something had happened to bring a lot of faithful back into the fold. It was only then that Theresa pulled back from the video enough to look at the time/date stamp in the bottom right corner of the image.

“This isn't a live stream?” she said.

“No,” Mahama answered. “This was recorded this morning, just after midnight local time for their village.”

“It's certainly a big turnout. But what are we looking for, specifically?” Benson asked.

“The answer is coming right about… now.”

A wave of activity spread through the crowd, starting at the temple entrance. The natives parted to either side, allowing two figures to pass into the center of the room. It took a moment for the rover's cameras to adjust on the pair of dark faces, but once the faces resolved–

“Mei Nakama,” Theresa said breathlessly as the rest of the room erupted in shouting.

“Order,” Valmassoi said sternly. “Quiet down, please.”

“She's supposed to be dead!” This came from Gregory Alexander, latest heir to a very long line of bigwigs stretching all the way back to the construction of the Ark itself. His family name still graced the tallest residential building in Avalon module, and now he was the owner of the only custom construction company in the city. Since landing, his wealth and sense of entitlement had both grown at roughly similar rates.

Everyone was entitled to a home. But if you had the money and wanted something more than the standard, cookie-cutter layout, Alexander Custom Builders was where you went. And although his power and influence were substantial, he wasn't a council member per se, even if it was rumored that several of them were deeply indebted to him in the form of exceedingly generous upgrades to their home designs, provided free of charge with a wink and a nod. Theresa found his inclusion at a “secret” meeting troubling, but pressed on.

“We were obviously mistaken, Mr Alexander,” Valmassoi said. “And I'd remind you that you've been included in this meeting as a courtesy, so please try to contain yourself.”

Alexander glowered, but returned to silence for the moment.

Theresa leaned back in her chair and smirked. The Unbound, or what remained of them after the trials of David Kimura's coconspirators had thinned their ranks, had struck out for themselves and established a small fishing village twenty kilometers north of Shambhala. Close enough to trade with the rest of humanity when necessary, but far enough away to maintain privacy and independence, which had been the hallmarks of their hermit society even while they had eked out a living hiding in the sublevels of the Ark.

A sudden and powerful hurricane had leveled their village a year earlier and swept the bodies out to sea. Or so everyone had been led to believe.

“Well,” Benson put his arms behind his head. “That explains why we never found their bodies. There weren't any bodies to find.”

“Then how the hell did they get across the ocean?” Alexander barked.

“Isn't it obvious?” Theresa said. “They've been living as fishermen for two years.”

“Are you saying they crossed several thousand kilometers of open ocean in fishing canoes at the height of hurricane season? That's preposterous!”

“It's either that or the breaststroke,” Theresa replied.

“Actually, it's neither.” Benson circled something on his tablet. “Can you give my pad access to the big screen, please?”

The tech in the corner glanced over at Valmassoi, who nodded his acceptance. Two keystrokes later and a satellite image appeared of the Unbound's village from a day before the hurricane hit with a big red circle around one of the buildings by the shore.

“Everybody see that ‘barn' right on the shore? Does it look suspiciously like an upside down boat to anyone else?” He zoomed in on a pair of large triangular tents. “And those are sails, if I'm any judge.”