Trident's Forge, page 29
The usual group of rabble rousers that had been agitating in the wake of Valmassoi’s assassination had grown and been joined by other groups. People protesting for greater independence from the Ark and its crew saw the captain’s death as a perfect opportunity to apply pressure, while the Returners fighting to overturn Mahama’s policy preventing people from moving back up the beanstalk did the same. Naturally, all three groups were just as busy shouting at and shoving each other as they were in supporting their own causes. It was a powder keg just waiting for the right spark.
But at least they were too engaged in fighting among themselves to unify against Theresa and her constables.
“Bullshit!” someone shouted from the other side of her wall of clear acrylic shields. “We have the right to free assembly!”
Theresa scanned the rabble rouser. Trevor Cambias, twenty-six, machinist, no priors. She wasn’t sure which faction he was protesting with, but he seemed closest to the isolationists. She tagged him and threw his info into her growing database of protestors. “You have the right to peaceful assembly, Mr Cambias.” Theresa shot back with her own voice. “Which doesn’t include throwing rocks through my fucking window! Which is why it’s time to disperse.”
“Or what?” Cambias challenged.
Theresa brandished her stun-stick. “Or I start cutting strings and dragging people into cells.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” someone else shouted, not at all sounding like they believed it.
Oh, honey, you’d be shocked at what I’d dare, Theresa managed not to say. She had to walk a very fine line between showing resolve and authority and antagonizing the crowd into violence. The protest was much larger, and angrier, than before. Theresa guessed it was closing in on twenty-five hundred, maybe as much as three thousand people. If push came to shove, there was no way her few dozen constables could keep it contained. There could be fights, broken bones, maybe even bloodshed.
“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. Who knows? Personally, I’d rather not have to find out. Now c’mon folks, we’ve let you come out here for days already, but it’s getting out of hand. Vandalism is not acceptable. Violence is not acceptable. So we have to pack it in for the day. Come back tomorrow and we’ll try again. But for right now it’s bar time, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
The less committed parts of the crowd laughed and worked their way toward the edges, where they peeled away. Slowly, and with a little more coaxing, the ominous crowd evaporated until it reached a more manageable size. Soon enough, all that remained were the three cores of true believers who still hadn’t figured out how to put aside their differences long enough to present a united front against Theresa’s constables. She was only too happy to exploit the fracture lines as she ordered the arrest of half a dozen of the most vocal and troublesome protestors, two of which broke into fisticuffs and had to be stunned.
By the time it was all over, they were actually offering to testify against each other. Theresa shook her head as they were put on one of the electric carts and driven off toward the jail. The crowd well and truly dispersed, Theresa let out a long sigh she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. Humans, she thought. Even after all this, we’re still so busy fighting among ourselves, it’s a miracle we get anything done at all.
“That was dicey, chief,” Korolev said. “Well played.”
“It’ll get worse before it gets better.”
“We tagged the leaders. We should be able to come up with enough excuses to hold them for a couple of days. That should calm things down.”
“They aren’t the leaders, Pavel.” Theresa pointed to the cart receding down the road. “They’re the patsies someone’s spun up to create chaos and keep everyone distracted, including us. A crowd that big doesn’t assemble itself out of thin air. Someone leaked the captain’s death to people they knew would cause a ruckus. And if she really was murdered, you can bet they were in contact with the people who did it, if they weren’t one and the same. This whole thing is coordinated. I’ll bet my house on it.”
“So what do we do?”
“Everyone we arrested, comb their internet traffic, plant conversations, text messages, everything. See if we can spot the leaks.”
“You really think whoever this was will be that sloppy?”
Theresa shook her head. “Not really, but you never know. We might get lucky. And I think it’s time to tell Feng to break cover and go full throttle into an official investigation on the Ark.”
“I thought they denied him entry.”
“It wasn’t him specifically. The crew froze all traffic in and out when they found Mahama dead. They lifted the freeze a few hours later. So he’s in place.”
“But we sent him up there under cover so he wouldn’t spook anybody.”
“I know, but my gut tells me this is building to a crescendo, and quickly. We’re running out of time. Maybe Feng’s investigation will make someone panic and flush them out of hiding.”
“A lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ in there, chief.”
“Yeah, but the glorious thing about being us is our prey has to be perfect. We only need to get lucky once.”
“Some of us would like to get lucky more than once,” Korolev said, blushing at his own joke.
“Ugh, Pavel. I know a half-dozen girls who would let you cook them breakfast tomorrow if you would just ask them out.”
“Really?” Korolev’s eyes narrowed. “What’re their names?”
“Oh no, you little chicken shit. Want to be a detective, work it out for yourself.”
“Judas,” Korolev said. “Oh, there was one other thing, I was going to mention it earlier.”
“Yeah? What is it, Pavel?”
“Hallstead made bail.”
Theresa jerked away from the crowds to look at her constable. “What? How? Her account was empty.”
Krolev shrugged. “It filled back up today.”
“From who?” Theresa said. “Where did the money come from?”
“She’s just in for a domestic, chief,” he said apologetically. “Our warrant doesn’t extend to her financial records.”
Theresa grit her teeth. Korolev was right, of course. But that didn’t stop her from resenting the asinine restrictions placed on her investigative authority.
“Stall her.”
“Chief?”
“Drag your feet releasing her”
Korolev nodded. “Now that you mention it, I think I may have misfiled her paperwork. Could take another day to straighten out.”
“Good man… I mean, that was very careless of you, constable.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Korolev smirked.
“Have we gone through her house yet?”
“Only the initial sweep when we picked her up. Why?”
Theresa rubbed her neck. “Not sure, actually. I just want a peek.”
“We’ll need to expand our warrant to include a search of the home. Magistrate might not like that.”
“No we don’t. Just knock on the door and ask… what was her fucking girfriend’s name? Julia? Ask her for permission to serach.”
“Juanita,” Korolev corrected. “And that won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“She moved in with Raul as soon as Yvonne got locked up. The house is empty.”
Theresa laughed. “Smart girl.”
“Chief Benson,” Administrator Merick said from behind them. Theresa turned around to face him.
“Administrator.”
Merick surveyed the nearly empty steps and plaza. “That was good work handling the demonstrators, chief.” His tone was subdued, at odds with someone giving praise. Theresa was immediately suspicious.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I need to speak with you in private, if that’s all right.”
“Sure. Pavel, take over for a few minutes.”
“No problem, ma’am.”
“See you back at the station house. Lead the way, administrator.”
They walked together past the Beehive’s giant double doors, padded across the quarried marble, and into the small maze of hallways and office doors. The silence between them only heightened the tension.
Merick reached his office and held the door for her. “Please, chief, sit.”
Theresa placed herself into the offered chair, a sumptuous leather antique that nagged at her memory, though she couldn’t make the connection.
“Thank you for coming,” Merick said.
“Let’s just get down to it, administrator, please? What’s this about?”
Merick took a deep, centering breath. “This is… difficult. It’s about your husband.”
The bottom fell out of Theresa’s stomach. Her heart raced and her head started spinning.
“What’s happened?” she managed to ask.
“We’re not sure. We received a partial burst from his sat link. The connection was very short, only a few seconds. The stream never stabilized enough for video, but we can only assume he was under attack and calling for help.”
Theresa fixated on the tense of the verb. “Was?”
Merick folded his hands. “The only usable data we got from the transmission was a few seconds of audio and his plant’s medical feed. His heartrate became erratic and then… I’m so sorry, Chief Benson, but your husband was killed.”
Theresa sat in silence for an eternal moment, stunned beyond words for perhaps the first time in her life. The colors in the room seemed to drain from her vision. She felt like her feet were sinking into the floor.
“Chief? Did you hear me?” Merick asked. “I said that your husband has been killed in action.”
“Yes. I heard you, administrator,” a cold, dark part of her soul managed to reply.
“I’m sorry. I really am. Your husband was a hero to our people, he will be sorely missed. But rest assured, the people who killed him will–”
“Who?” Theresa snapped. “Who killed him?”
“We don’t know, but we’re going to find out, I promise you that. We have GPS data from your husband’s last known position. We’re already coordinating with surveillance assets on the Ark to get a good look at the area. I’m ordering our new reserve force mobilized and deployed. We can have them there inside six hours. Of course, we don’t expect you to–”
“No!” Theresa shouted loud enough to startle herself nearly as much as Merick. She took a moment to compose herself before continuing. “No. I’m going.”
“Are you sure?” Merick was incredulous. “Chief. I don’t mean any offense to your sense of duty, but given the circumstances, no one would blame you for taking a leave of absence to… recover from this.”
“Over my dead body,” she said. The tears came then, but she clamped down on them. There would be time for that later. “But I’ll need a lot more than six hours. We’ve only been drilling with the new recruits for a few days. They need more time.”
Merick held out his hands. “I do not mean to patronize you, chief, but you must understand that the longer we wait, the smaller the chance that we discover what happened.”
“I understand that. But if you send in a hundred men before they’re ready, there’ll be a lot more than one life lost.”
“I think a hundred people with guns can handle a rabble of primitives.”
“My husband had a gun.”
The seconds stretched out uncomfortably as Merick inspected her. There wasn’t a better word for it. He considered her expression, her posture, like he was trying to take the full measure of her. Theresa had been examined by men many times before, but there wasn’t anything sexual in the administrator’s gaze. She could almost feel his eyes trying to tap into her thoughts. Finally, he reached a conclusion.
“How much time do you need?”
“Two days to get them qualed on the range.” Theresa’s voice was clipped and flat as she forced her anguish and rising panic off to one side. “Then we hit them like a meteor shower.”
“Two days it is, then. Make sure you’re ready.”
“Oh, I will be,” Theresa said, no longer caring how much of her emotions leaked through. She excused herself and left the room, then walked singlemindedly back to the station house. She held her composure through the street, past curious onlookers who cleared her path, past the little shops and the pubs on the main street, even through the door of her station where a dozen sweaty, dusty constables were busy stripping out of their gear. They paused to look at her, and she could see in their faces her coworkers knew something was wrong.
Korolev stood up. “What’s the matter, chief? What did Merick say?”
“Pavel,” she grabbed his elbow and dragged him into her office. “Shut the door.”
He did so. “What’s wrong?”
“I want a list of people, coders, computer techs, anyone who might have the quals to program our heart attack machine, and I want it yesterday.”
“OK, we can do that. What else is wrong?”
“It’s…” Theresa’s knees finally gave out as her desperation, sorrow, and rage came pouring forth. Without thinking, she grabbed up her chair and threw it through her doorway to shatter against the wall of the hallway.
“Chief!” Korolev grabbed her shoulders, as much to comfort her as to contain her. “Theresa,” he said more softly once he’d gotten her under some measure of restraint. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Bryan,” she said through ragged, sobbing gasps. “The fucking bastards got Bryan!”
Twenty-Nine
Kexx looked back to the commotion and saw Benson lying on the ground in a pile. From the right, Mei jumped down off the back of the dux’ah ze’d been riding and ran to Benson’s side. Whatever had happened, one glance at Mei’s face told Kexx it was serious.
The caravan came to a stop as Kexx pushed past the semicircle of onlookers. “What’s wrong with zer?” ze asked as Mei knelt down and put an ear to Benson’s unmoving chest.
“No breath,” ze answered in a clipped voice. “Zer heart’s not beating.”
“Zer what?” Kexx asked.
“Heart!” Mei pounded a fist on zer chest in obvious consternation. “Moves blood!”
“Like your chief?”
“Yes. Watch zer,” Mei commanded as ze ran back to the dux’ah and ripped Benson’s pack off the harness. Ze ran back over to where Kexx stood over Benson’s body, fumbling with the flap until ze gave up and slashed it open with zer knife, spilling the contents onto the dirt. Ze reached for a smaller bag with a white circle surrounding two crossed red lines and opened it.
“Take off zer shirt,” Mei barked. Kexx didn’t argue, but the shirt did. Ze tried to tug, pull, even tear at it in an effort to get it off Benson’s chest, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Nor would Benson’s elbow and shoulder joints, which had such little range of motion it seemed a miracle the humans could use them at all.
Mei grunted and just sliced the shirt from stomach to neck with a knife, then threw it open to expose the uniformly colored flesh beneath. There was a single patch of dark color on one corner of zer chest in an unmoving pattern. Kexx reached out to touch the dark image, but Mei swatted zer hand away.
“Stay back!” It wasn’t a request. Ze produced two patches of what looked like plastic leather, tore off a perfectly transparent layer of skin from the bottom of each, then slapped them onto each side of Benson’s chest.
“What are you doing?” Kexx asked.
“Shocking zer heart. Don’t touch zer.” Mei looked up at the rest of the caravan. “None of you touch zer!” Everyone took a respectful step back, even Kuul, who had appeared at the edge of the circle. Mei grabbed a small box and ran a pair of curled threads to each of the patches, then pressed a large red circle at the center of the box.
A strange, lifeless voice sprang from the box, making several members of the crowd jump back. One of the warriors drew a spear on it, but Kexx shoved it out of the way and smacked the offender.
–Diagnosing,– the box said in flat, emotionless human. Kexx didn’t recognize the word. –No Heartbeat Detected. Shock Recommended. Push Button To Charge.– Mei pushed the button again. A pure whine high-pitched enough to make Kexx wince leapt from the box, climbing in tone until it disappeared entirely.
–Delivering Shock. Stand Clear.–
Benson’s motionless body jumped to life, arching zer back in a way that didn’t look natural even for a human before falling back to the ground.
–No Heartbeat Detected. Shock Recom– Mei jammed zer finger into the button before the box could finish. The cycle repeated itself again, and again Benson’s body fell back to the ground, inert.
Tears began to roll down Mei’s cheeks as ze pushed the button for a third time. “Wake up!” ze shouted, but ze did not respond. Mei sobbed openly as the cycle repeated without change. “Don’t leave me here alone!” Ze screamed, rage and fear mixing and fighting for control of zer voice. Kexx moved to put a comforting hand on zer shoulder, but Mei shrugged zer off angrily, then slapped Benson’s face, hard. “You’re strong! Fight, Zero Hero!”
Mei stabbed zer finger like a dagger into the button again as if ze meant to run it through. The whine built again, then fired. Benson’s back arched once more, then fell. Mei screamed without words.
–Heartbeat Detected,– said the box. Mei threw it down and grabbed Benson’s neck. Kexx wasn’t sure why, but whatever ze found, a manic smile bloomed across the human’s face.
“That’s it,” Mei said. “Come back, Benson-san. Follow my voice.”
Benson lifted an arm weakly. Zer eyes fluttered. Then, as if waking up from a nightmare, Benson sat bolt upright and screamed, ripped the plastic patches off of zer chest, scrambled to zer feet, then ran out of the circle shouting human obscenities at the top of zer airsacks.
Kexx leaned over to Mei. “Is this normal?”
Mei shrugged. “No idea.”
“What the fuck just happened?” Benson demanded, eyes wild, fists balled, and looking for trouble. The rest of the caravan gave zer a wide berth.
“I don’t know,” Mei said. “Your heart stopped. I shocked you.” Ze pointed at the small white box lying discarded on the ground. Benson stole a glance at it and lowered zer guard a fraction.
