Benning departed the seacar without even looking back. He’d had incredible composure during our discussion—until the very end, that is.
“He cracked a little bit there,” Johnny said. “I’ve never heard of him being like that.”
“The attack on Norfolk really rattled him,” I said. As well it should have, I thought. It signaled a tremendous weakness to the land nations of the world. Seawalls could hold back rising waters, but not for long. Or not safely, at least. Eventually they could give way, due to a natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake.
Or a tsunami.
It was odd though. How did the warsub do it? Even though the vessel was large and fast, something still seemed off about it.
Benning had sent us away with one final request: wait for orders. He was going to investigate more, study the forensics of the sonar signatures that other ships had captured, and then contact us again. In the meantime, we were to continue researching to see what we could discover.
Lancombe, Ng, and Lazlow had returned from the engineering compartment, we’d sealed our airlocks, detached umbilicals, and continued to Trieste. The Swords were with us, and we all traveled with conventional drives now. No need to further attract Benning’s attention, I thought.
The others had heard the entire conversation. Lancombe said, “Do you think he could be lying? Could they know what really happened to Heller?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “They would have just arrested us on the spot.”
“Who’s operating the dreadnought?” Ng asked. “If it’s not American, is it Chinese?”
“It’s possible,” Johnny said with a shrug. “Although Mac and I saw the thing. It didn’t look like any Chinese design.”
A long silence stretched over us. Lazlow was deep in thought. He wanted to get back and start reviewing the tapes of my previous encounter, as well as the recordings of the invading force at The Ridge. If anyone could figure it out, he could. I had faith in him.
Whatever the case with Benning, one thing was certain—it was a stroke of luck that he hadn’t suspected us of destroying Heller and his fleet of a hundred warsubs. It was probably unthinkable, anyway, which is why it had never occurred to him. How could the mayor of a small undersea colony have destroyed so many USSF vessels?
We traveled slower toward Trieste, more anxious than ever to arrive.
—••—
In two more days of travel, Trieste finally appeared on our scopes. It was beautiful. With a central module for commerce and command, and others for living or for work radiating out along travel tubes with transparent ceilings, it was stunning. The central unit had a clear skylight as well, and an atrium that led right to the bottommost level. Natural light penetrated to the lowest deck as a result; it was the most beautiful module in all the undersea cities.
The other sectors of the city included docking, mining interests, aquaculture, storage, repair, and communications. There were some other smaller ones as well. The city was at a depth of thirty meters. Each ten meters of water was one atmosphere, and with one natural atmosphere above the waterline, that equaled four.
Each module had moonpools at seafloor level, for easy entrance and exit—one could dive right into open water and swim out into the ocean—and there were airlocks on each level in case of catastrophe.
I recalled the depressurization emergency a few weeks earlier. The French had caused it—somehow—to capture or kill me. I hadn’t been back since, and so didn’t know if my security chief Cliff Sim had been able to catch the culprits. I’d have to ask him.
I gave orders to the Swords to dock in the storage module, where we could lock the vessels away from prying eyes. I then swung SC-1 around to the west side of the city, and with Sea Traffic Control’s permission, entered the docking module. Grant Bell sounded thrilled at my arrival, was intensely curious about the twenty-eight other vessels, but kept the commands professional and directed us in.
Making the ballast positive so the seacar was lighter than the water we displaced, the vessel rose to the surface, I piloted her into our berth, and shut the thrusters down.
Home.
—••—
It was a bittersweet feeling. I hadn’t been prepared for it. After all, this was where I’d spent the last year as mayor with Katherine at my side.
And now she was gone.
I’d lost her, and I was going to have to get used to it.
Along with that, there was something else gnawing at me, but I was keeping it hidden just below the surface. But soon I’d have to deal with it.
There was a pit of dread in my gut.
I glanced at the others; they all had smiles on their faces. “Back to business, I guess,” I muttered.
Lazlow grinned even wider. Despite his expression, he didn’t look good. He’d lost a lot of weight and his face was skeletal. His beard was growing unkempt.
He said, “If you don’t mind, Mac, I’d like to get to work on those signals immediately.”
I plucked the chip from the console and held it up. “Here’s the sonar data. Cliff Sim has the other one for you to study.” I was referring to the one of the dreadnought, which Johnny and I had recorded weeks earlier.
He snatched it from my grasp and turned to ascend the ladder. His spidery fingers wrapped around the first rung, and I stopped him with a cough. “Uh, Lazlow.”
He looked at me. “Yes?”
“How do you feel?”
“Never better. I love this life.”
“You do?”
He chuckled. “Of course. I spent decades on land conducting acoustical experiments, just dreaming of coming here. To the undersea world.”
“I realize that. But—”
“But what?”
I sighed. “Nothing. Just take care of yourself.”
“I always do! That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” And with that he climbed the ladder and was on the hull in a flash. His agility for a man of eighty surprised me.
Lancombe and Ng had watched the entire exchange. “He’s looking like he’s lost weight,” Ng muttered.
I waved it away. “Let’s check on him later.”
She nodded. “We’re going to get to work now, Mac.”
I blinked. She was referring to the improvements to city defense we’d been planning. “Already? Don’t you want to rest?”
“We’ve been resting for thirty years! Time to start!”
—••—
Once in the modules and travel tubes of Trieste, I looked around and took several deep breaths. I felt more comfortable there than anywhere. It was a feeling of familiarity for me. I’d lived there since the early 2090s, when dad had brought the family during the escalating environmental crisis on the surface. He’d had the foresight to look ahead and predict what would happen. Once in Trieste, he had entered city politics and Triestrians soon elected him mayor. His warnings and fears about the USSF taking over had clearly appealed to the citizens. He had been very open about his desires. And then—
The shit hit the fan, to be blunt.
He got involved in the move for independence from the States, and they killed him to stop it.
I’d spent thirty years believing that he’d been naïve and ignorant of the reality of the situation. About what the States would do if they felt he was going to take Trieste away from them. My worries had been borne out, but all was not as it had seemed, for I had just found out that he’d known the assassination was going to happen. He’d let it happen so people would resent our colonizers even more. To delay the independence movement until we had more power, better technology, and until we could fight back and win. The simmering desire for freedom had burned for years, just under the surface.
Until his son was in charge, that is, and Trieste had weapons powerful enough to fight.
The city’s travel tubes were three meters high with transparent, curved ceilings that showed an incredible array of life surrounding the city. The sun was high in the sky far above, and its rays cut downward toward us, shimmering and shining over the modules of Trieste. There were also divers and vessels out there, and no matter the direction I looked, it was like a scene from a storybook.
Some of the travel tubes were so long that conveyers were needed to move people quickly to and from work shifts. Triestrians wanted to work, wanted to succeed. Even though we only required them to do one eight-hour shift and then have two off, people routinely did a shift at their regular job, then a half shift at a volunteer job.
I took another breath.
It had been a tough couple of weeks, but we had persevered. The city was still there, her citizens were happy, and we had scored a tremendous victory.
From the docking module, I moved into the central commerce and economic module, the largest in the city. People I passed smiled and waved. They were thrilled to be underwater, excited to be pushing the frontier outward.
At the uppermost level, I stood at the balcony and looked down nine stories to the lowermost deck. Trees and vines ringed the rails. The ceiling was transparent and natural light illuminated the entire facility. We’d dug five stories down through the sediment into bedrock, and four stories up—we could go no higher for fear of large surface vessels scraping the top of the module—and the atrium was fifty meters across. It was a large open area, sunlit and shimmering, with stores and businesses and administrative offices fronting the balconies, along with cafes and restaurants and pubs. Triestrians marched around the perimeter, on their way to work, many carrying scuba gear and dripping water onto the deck—there were drains everywhere for just such a thing—and some were sitting in chairs and taking a moment to relax, drinking kelp tea and eating lunch from resources we’d farmed just outside.
Yes, I thought. Without exception, the people were happy.
Then something else occurred to me, something odd indeed: There were no USSF troops. They’d all boarded Impaler days earlier and had left for the battle.
An uncomfortable blanket settled over me, nearly suffocating. I stared down at the levels surrounding the atrium, at the people who moved about.
My heart pounded.
It took me a moment to catch my breath.
—••—
Within a few minutes, the episode had ended. Dizziness had almost overwhelmed me. If it had occurred the year before, I would have wondered what had caused it.
But now, after all that had happened, I knew.
Admiral Taurus T. Benning was also on my mind. The man had assassinated my father, I had just come face to face with him, and I hadn’t killed him.
I knew I would have to deal with it when the opportunity presented itself. When I next saw him, perhaps. But there was a massive dilemma confronting me: Would I sacrifice all that I had created for Trieste, and throw away the independence movement and the struggle for the new nation of Oceania for something as basic as revenge?
He’d also spoken about the militaristic and colonial demands of the USSF. It had pissed me off. He’d been quite open about extending US control over the oceans of the world and using Trieste to achieve it.
We would not let them use us.
We were not his tools.
The evidence of their inability to extend their reach into the oceans safely was all around. Industrialization on the land had scorched the Earth, had turned arable land to dust, had changed the atmosphere and melted ice caps. Whole countries had disappeared and refugees flooded the interiors as fast as water flooded the coast. It was a global disaster.
But despite that, he’d been right about one thing: The dreadnought was the priority. We had to figure out who operated it and decipher their motives.
And hope they didn’t strike again.
—••—
The Triestrians who had been working at The Ridge constructing Swords were now back home. They had docked in the storage module and I assumed they were in the process of finding their families and explaining where they had been. I had given them strict instructions: They were not to discuss independence, not to mention the battle in the rift, and were not to mention what they had been doing for the past year. They were to say only that they were away working for the city, had been out of communications reach, and they were sorry but could say no more.
I knew it wouldn’t satisfy the families who had been grieving for their missing people for the past year, but it was the best we could do.
Thinking about The Ridge brought Jackson Train to my mind. He was still there. Trapped behind the collapsed tunnel and a watertight hatch. He’d been there now for three days.
There was also another mission I had to launch soon, and I would combine the two when I could.