Trident's Forge (8 page)

“
W
e're
all clear out here, administrator.”

Sergeant Atwood had been thorough. It took her detail fifteen minutes to clear a patch of land barely larger than the shuttle that had touched down on it. All things considered, however, her caution was probably warranted.

“Any sign of the Atlantians?” Valmassoi called down the stairwell.

“No. Nothing moving out here except these damned bugs.”

“Thank you, sergeant. We're coming out now.” The administrator turned to the rest of his flock while Benson leaned against the bulkhead with his arms crossed. “OK everyone, we're going to exit in a calm and orderly fashion. Once you're outside, stay inside the perimeter established by the security detail. No wandering off to look at a plant. No stepping away for a little privacy. And no ducking behind a tree when nature calls. Use the facilities on the shuttle or hold it. We move together as a single group. OK?”

There was a general murmur of agreement, enough to assure Valmassoi that his message had been heard, or enough to set up the I-told-you-so and shift culpability to the eventual offenders. Benson had done the same many times in his day and couldn't help but admire a fellow practitioner of the art.

The line of dignitaries walked down the single flight of stairs like a line of cattle being herded out of a barn. Cattle. Benson hadn't thought of the old epitaph for at least a year. With the crew of the Ark tens of thousands of miles up in the sky, and nearly everyone else busy building new lives down here in the dirt, the old labels had fallen out of use. Maybe they didn't really apply anymore.

Benson tucked into the end of the line and waited patiently for everyone to shuffle out into the light. Warm air from the outside blew up the stairwell and mingled with the stale, cool air of the cabin. The breeze was heavy with pollen from the fields outside. Someone further down the line sneezed once, then again, then finally hard enough to pop a lung. Allergies were new to everyone. The air on the Ark had been so thoroughly scrubbed of particulates, by the time it reached one's nose, there was nothing to sneeze out again. For a small but unfortunate percentage of the population, landing on Atlantis had been an unexpected adventure in mucus.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and set his right foot onto the ground. Benson fought a sudden urge to kiss the dirt. Everyone milled about underneath the shuttle to stay out of the noonday sun. They were a few hundred kilometers south of the planet's equator, but still well inside the tropics, and local summer was approaching its height. Atwood's team stood at the shuttle's three corners with weapons held at low ready while she busied herself assembling a small quadcopter drone.

Benson left her alone and walked over to the edge of the clearing. The crops grew tall in the sun. They were a bleached lavender and shaped like branching ferns. He ran a hand under the leafy stem and felt knobby growths. He flipped the plant over and saw three rows of what he assumed were seeds growing down the entire length of the stem. It didn't look like any of the native plants from their continent, but then corn didn't look a damned thing like its undomesticated ancestors either.

He pinched off a few seeds and walked back to the group under the shuttle. “Think these are safe to eat?” he asked Valmassoi.

“For Atlantians, or for you?”

“For me, obviously.”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Didn't we bring a botanist?”

Valmassoi looked at him like he'd grown a second head. “We didn't come here to hit the buffet line, Mr Benson. We're here to talk to these people.”

Benson's already tenuous opinion of the administrator took another hit. “And what are we going to talk to them about? We have crop failures back in Shambhala.”

“Because they were sabotaged.”

“Why does that matter? These fine folks are growing food by the square kilometer. If this stuff is any good to us, we can learn from each other. Swap ideas and methods. We've only been here for three years. They've been here for tens of thousands. Do you really think they don't have anything to teach us about living on this planet?”

To his credit, Valmassoi glanced down at the seeds in Benson's palm with a newfound appreciation for their potential. “Well, what do they taste like?”

Benson looked down at the seeds in his hand with suspicion, then looked around. “Hey, Korolev. I dare you to eat one of these–”

“Get bent, coach.”

Benson nodded. “Smart man. Well, painted myself into a corner, I suppose.” He jiggled the small kernels in his palm, then popped them into his mouth and chewed, ready to spit them back out at the first sign of bitterness.

“Well?” Valmassoi asked. “How are they?”

“Like… beans.”

“Beans?”

“Yeah, texture-wise. Except they taste like tofu and caramel.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, just weird.” Benson risked swallowing the seeds. For science.

“Was that wise?” Valmassoi asked.

Benson only shrugged. “Somebody had to eat the first apple.”

“That didn't turn out so well, as I recall.”

“I don't know. The Garden we left
is
at the bottom of a black hole.”

“And if you keel over dead in an hour?”

“Then you'll know that we don't need to bother asking for help growing it.”

Valmassoi smiled. “Sounds like a win-win when you say it like that.”

“What's our next move?”

The administrator nodded in Sergeant Atwood's direction. “As soon the good sergeant gives her thumbs up, we'll lock down the shuttle and start walking for the village.”

“And then what?”

“And then wait outside for someone to come out and greet us.”

“Which probably would have been on friendlier terms if we hadn't buzzed their village, you know,” Benson said.

Valmassoi squared his shoulders at the comment. “We're on a scouting mission just as much as a diplomatic one. It's nice to know what we're facing before we set down, don't you think?”

“The satellites already told us anything we could've learned from a flyover. This little display was a show of force.”

Valmassoi shrugged and patted the underside of the shuttle. “I must admit your disapproval confuses me. You never used a ‘show of force' during your career as Avalon's chief constable, Mr Benson?”

“Of course I did, when people needed a reminder.” He pointed a thumb out behind him. “But they haven't done anything to provoke us.”

Valmassoi's hands made a placating gesture. “And now they never will. No harm done.”

Benson had to fight back the urge to slap the smug little shit. “Did it ever occur to you that just maybe a stunt like that might
provoke
them? These people evolved on a planet where giant rocks from the sky have been trying to kill them for billions of years. So what do they do? Build their damned houses in the craters. Something tells me they don't stay scared for very long.”

“We'll see.” Valmassoi waved him off dismissively. Their conversation was interrupted by a mosquito-like buzzing as Atwood's quadcopter drifted by.

“We're all set, administrator,” she said. “Ready to move out on your word.”

“No time like the present.”

The shuttle's hatch closed and locked behind them. Everyone formed a double-file line with Atwood and Korolev at the front and the other two security officers at the rear. The quadcopter shot up out of sight as they moved further away from the shuttle.

The expedition got its first surprise when the simple worn cart path quickly joined up with the main road. It had been assumed that the road network between the different villages was nothing more complicated than packed dirt periodically cleared of vegetation. But one foot on the hard surface told another story.

“It's concrete,” Atwood said. “Or something very much like it.”

“How industrious,” Benson said. “I bet their huts aren't just sticks and mud either, then.”

The group walked along chattering among themselves for the next kilometer until a distressed shout brought everyone to heel.

“Aaaah…” Atwood's free hand shot up to her temple and began rubbing frantically. Benson had seen it before; Atwood's plant was getting corrupted data that her brain couldn't make sense of. He'd never had it happen, but Theresa had. She described it almost like having a seizure.

Benson put a hand on her shoulder. “What's wrong?”

“The drone. It's–”

The quadcopter crashed into the road not far from Korolev. One of its rotors kept spinning, then sparked once and ground to a halt. Korolev kicked the smoldering wreck. “Ah, chief?”

The other two guards shouldered their rifles and started hunting for targets before Atwood could put up her arm. “No! Stand down. It's OK. It was just some damned birds. They knocked it down.”

Benson bent over the smoking wreckage of the drone and out of one of the ducted fan assemblies he picked an iridescent scale the local bird analogues used for feathers. “They must have been attracted by the sound. Mistook it for a bug.”

“Pretty big fucking bug,” Korolev said.

“Maybe they're hungry.” Benson looked up and scanned the sky for the birds, blocking the noon sun with his hand. He spotted them, a lazy circle of three. Their altitude was hard to guess, but they were large animals with a wingspan at least as wide as Benson's arms. Carrion eaters? After a couple more slow rotations, they all peeled off and headed almost due north in a “V” formation. “That's weird.”

Valmassoi stepped in. “Do you have a replacement?”

Atwood shook her head. “Not onboard the shuttle. I didn't think it would be necessary.”

“Can we proceed without it?”

Atwood took on the distant stare that signaled she was consulting her plant. “I can link up with our satellite feeds. There'll be about a second of delay, and we'll have gaps every hour or so.”

“Why the gaps?”

“Because the birds aren't dedicated surveillance platforms, they're GPS sats. Their telescopes don't have wide enough aperture for total, full-time coverage of the surface. And even if they were, we're down a few from malfunctions.”

Benson stepped in. “It's that or we go back to the shuttle and scrap the expedition.”

The administrator sighed as he weighed the options. “It'll have to do. Let's get going. Contact the Ark and see if they can retask some of the sats and shrink those gaps.”

Atwood saluted. “Yes, sir.”

“And someone remind me to tell Captain Mahama that a full-coverage surveillance net is getting bumped up in the manufacturing queue.”

Benson opened a private link to Atwood's plant.

Atwood glanced down at the remains of her drone.

Benson nodded and started down the road again. The group continued on the next two kilometers in alert silence only occasionally punctuated by a wry joke and nervous laughter, or a command from one of Atwood's detail. Benson passed the time talking to Theresa through a plant link, updating her on their progress and reassuring her of his safety in equal measure.

Along the way, they passed three stone markers placed within view of the road. Each had a slightly different glyph of a simple, curving design. It was a good bet the glyphs represented Atlantian numerals and that the stones themselves were mile markers. Benson tagged the GPS coordinates of the second one, then compared them against the third. Lo and behold, the Atlantian distance measure tagged in at roughly 735 meters. Benson uploaded the finding and images of the glyphs to a research database for linguists and exobiologists and flagged the files for further review.

“There it is.” Korolev pointed down the road as they crested a small hill. The circle of tree tops that marked the outer edges of the impact crater the village had been built into were plainly visible.

Atwood scrutinized the view with a small pair of binoculars. “The road seems to lead into a set of gates built into the trees.”

“Is that necessary?” Valmassoi asked. “The forest can't be
that
dense.”

Atwood let the binoculars hang around her neck. “It looks pretty overgrown to me. You could probably get through it with a machete, but it's definitely enough to slow you down. What now?”

“We go knock on the front door, of course.” Valmassoi turned to address the rest of the group. “OK, everyone enable your translators, but leave the talking to me for the moment. Stay together, and don't make any moves that could be seen as threatening.”

“What do aliens find threatening?” someone asked.

“Oh, pointing spears at people, for example,” Benson said in a quiet but strained voice as he stood near the edge of the crop field with his back turned to the rest of the party. Directly in front of him, a tall, slender figure stood hunched over so as to stay concealed in the crops and use Benson's own body for cover. In its hands was a spear almost two meters long tipped with a black, napped-stone spearhead, probably made of obsidian and therefore sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. It wouldn't do much against the armor the security team wore, but for Benson's light shirt and unprotected abdomen, it would do the job all too effectively. Even with his eyes focused like a laser on the alien in front of him, Benson could see several more figures moving silently through the crops, flanking the entire party.

Carefully, slowly, he put up his hands. Korolev looked in his direction and gasped, then brought his rifle up to his shoulder, but Benson waved at him to stand down. By then, the rest of the expedition realized what was going on and started screaming at each other in alarm.