Driven by bak’ri courage, a squirrely little Atlantian managed to squirt between the legs of two of the defenders on the line, causing one of them to turn their back on the rest of the crowd to try and tackle zer. It was a rookie mistake, a reflex Benson had to train out of his linemen as they learned to trust their linebackers and secondary to pick up anyone who gets by.
The crowd sensed the break in the line and pressed, shoving the turned man to his knees while five, then ten, then twenty rioters flowed over him like hydraulic fluid spraying from a hole in a hose. Nearby constables and deputies moved to contain the spill, but that left the line thin in other places, emboldening the crowd up and down the barriers to press their newfound advantage. Rioters broke through in two more places, and suddenly Theresa’s constables were being flanked.
Benson knew a breakdown in protection when he saw one. They were being blitzed, and there just weren’t enough linemen to hold back the flood.
Begrudgingly, Theresa agreed. She didn’t like giving ground in a fight. It ran counter to her nature. But she sent out the order to withdraw and regroup anyway, because she liked losing even less.
They retreated… tactically repositioned themselves halfway up the steps to the Museum’s main entrance. The higher ground meant the rioters had to climb up to meet them, and gave Theresa a much better field of view over the situation from which to direct her constables. Distinct advantages in a battle when your opponents didn’t possess firearms.
But as good as their position was, the mob’s advantage in sheer numbers rendered any small tactical advantage moot. Their backs were against the wall now, literally. By abandoning the avenue, they’d also allowed the riots to engulf them on three sides. The crush of Atlantian youths, chanting and hurling debris, closed in on the few dozen defenders like a rising tide. A defender went down. Linqvist, an absolute brute of a man who had played for the Mustangs as both a Zero goalie and later a football center. He’d been hit in the head, hard, but his plant data remained intact. He was conscious, but concussed, out of the fight. Kexx and Sakiko ran over to where he had slumped, dragged him up the steps to the rear by the handle on the back of his riot gear. Kexx ordered Sakiko to remain with him, then returned to zer position on the line.
As if her plea had been heard, a thundering voice from on high blanketed the plaza like a sonic boom.
“Play. Time’s. Over. Kids.”
Everyone froze in place, collectively caught with their hands in the cookie jar, afraid to turn around to face their parent’s wrath.
Behind their deteriorating defensive line, the double doors of the Museum’s main entrance cracked loudly, then swung inward on creaking, ominous hinges. Behind them, clad in resplendent crimson samurai armor, a black-lacquered katana scabbard tied around her waist, stood Devorah. A tiny, furious vision in red.
Everyone, from the knot of constables, to the very back row of rioters, looked up to see what the diminutive woman would do next. Once she felt she held the crowd’s attention, Devorah stepped out and strode slowly, but purposefully down the stairs, her knees creaking nearly as much as the doors she’d just exited.
“You lot want to fight? Fine, knock yourselves out,” her voice boomed. She’d tied her plant into the Museum’s outdoor speakers and cranked the dial to eleven. “Rip down lights, tear up trees. Break windows. Have fun. But this!” She lifted an arm, shaking in equal measure from fresh rage and the weight of years, and pointed back at the entrance to the Museum. “This is the history of MY people. It is the collected work of a thousand generations of MY elders. And it’s the history of YOUR people, too. We have artifacts from Atlantis in there that go back to before the Shrinking. And it’s the history of what our Trident has already built together, here and across the sea.”
Devorah pushed her way through the line of constables, down to the foot of the steps of the Museum, her true home. Incredibly, the mob moved back, hollowing out a hemisphere of space around her.
“So have your little temper-tantrum out here, but before any one of you steps a wiggly toe inside my house…” She put a hand on the katana’s leather wrapped handle, and the sound of ringing metal echoed through the scene. “…you’ll have to fight me, personally.”
Devorah held the glimmering katana high in the air in a ready position as the last amber light of the day glinted off its centuries-old polished steel. “C’mon. I’m basically mummified already. Even the weakest among you could finish me off easily. Who wants to have a go?”
Devorah pointed the tip of her naked blade at one of the tallest Atlantians at the front of the column, who looked suspiciously like the one Theresa had to tase to keep zer from turning Benson into reddish pudding. “You, Hul’gik. I remember you from our summer program six years ago. You always had some smart comment for me. How about it?” Hul’gik was a full meter taller than Devorah, but under her sudden withering glare, ze seemed to shrink down to half zer size. “No? How about you, Jimale?” She pointed at another face she recognized a few rows back. “You were one of my fall interns two years ago. Did I cheat you out of lunch breaks or something?”
“Elder, I, um…” Jimale answered weakly.
“Nobody? You mean I got all dressed up for nothing? I had to have this armor fitted. Look, I’ve got another archeological expedition with G’tel to organize. So if you’re not going to have a proper riot, stop embarrassing yourselves and go the hell home!”
Cowed and humiliated, the crowd mulled about and shuffled their feet, but it was obvious Devorah’s chastisement had broken the spell of their bloodlust. Benson shook his head in disbelief.
As the back layers of the crowd began to peel away like an onion, Devorah turned around and walked back up the stairs, but paused on the third step. “And you’re all coming back here in the morning to help clean up the mess you left on my lawn!”
No one objected. No one said much of anything. Devorah turned around and started back up the steps again.
Benson jogged over and knelt down to hug the old woman. “Devorah, that was amazing. You really pulled us out of the fire with that bluff.”
“What? Them? They’re good kids, they just need a firm hand sometimes. Here, hold this.” Devorah handed the katana over to Benson. “It’s getting heavy and I need a damn nap.” The gathered officers watched as she returned to the Museum and the doors creaked shut behind her.
Benson just chuckled. “Crazy old bat. I’d hate to play her in poker.” He ran a thumb over the edge of the curved blade, and immediately regretted it.
“Ow!” Benson yelped as blood surged out from the slice on his thumb pad.
“What?” Theresa said.
“I cut myself on this damned sword.”
“Why the hell did you touch the edge?”
“I thought it was a prop!”
“That’s the Honjo Masamune katana. You really think Devorah would tolerate a prop in her collection?”
A chill gripped Benson’s heart as he regarded the still impossibly sharp weapon. “She wasn’t bluffing.”
“No.” Theresa said.
“She was really ready to fight them all by h
erself.”
“Yeah, if it came to that.”
“… She’s nuts.”
“Duh, we all knew that, Bryan.”
Benson pinched his thumb against his forefinger to stop the bleeding and held the katana away from himself at a more respectful distance. “Then why’d she give it to me?”
“Probably because she knew you’d hurt yourself,” Korolev added.
Benson was about to respond when a plant connection request popped up in his field of vision. A ‘weak signal’ alert hovered next to the tag for–
“Jian Feng?” Benson said aloud.
“What was that, dear?” Theresa asked.
“I’m getting a call request from Jian Feng.”
“That little idiot? His stunt is what caused all this!”
“Yes, I remember,” Benson said.
“What could he possibly want?”
Benson shrugged. “One way to find out.” He accepted the call. The image was grainy, about as compressed and low-def as he’d ever seen. The feed dragged and halted frequently, and was occasionally overwhelmed with static.
Three and a half seconds later.
Another feed broke in from Captain Chao Feng. He hadn’t bothered with a connection request.
Jian’s face blanched.
Some… thing crawled up Jian’s arm and glared back at the camera with a triangle of green glowing eyes. It looked like something pulled up in a dredge net from the coldest depth of the blackest ocean.
Jian rolled his eyes clear back to the base of his skull.
Chao’s face contorted, his expressions of consternation and sympathy exaggerated by the microgravity.
Chao sighed and rubbed at the furrows in his forehead.
Jian squared himself up in his seat.
It wasn’t much, Benson had to admit, but it was something, and it was something he could move on immediately.
Jian uploaded his best guess numbers and whatever other intel he’d gathered about the area. The moment Benson finished saving the file, Jian’s screen went dark, replaced by a “Loss of Signal” alert.
Chao dropped the call, leaving Benson alone in his own head once more. A heartbeat later, he snapped out of it and returned to the world around him and the interrogative glare of his wife.
“Well?” Theresa demanded.
“Chao’s boy has a lead on the terrorist’s camp. We’re going there.”
&nb
sp; “Now?”
“Now,” Benson said, then turned back to scan through the sea of former rioters as they tried to get out of each other’s way and return to their homes in the Native Quarter. “Hey!” Benson shouted at the familiar-looking brute. “Hey, you, Hul’gik isn’t it?”
“What do you want, ruleman?”
“You still feel like picking a fight?”
Theresa grabbed his arm. “Bryan, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Networking.”
The enormous Atlantian rumbled to a stop at Benson’s feet, zer toes almost touching his. Benson had to crane his head up almost as far back as it would go just to stop seeing chest.
“Yes, I still want to fight,” ze grumbled.
“Excellent. Follow me. We’re going on a field trip.”
Thirty-One
For the second time in as many weeks, Benexx had been caught in an explosion. Granted, ze’d detonated the second one, but it still had to be well outside the typical rate of incident for an average person.
Even more improbable, ze was still alive to consider the absurdity of the situation.
Benexx’s ears rang like church bells, zer chest felt like Dorothy had parked her house on top of zer, and zer head felt like it had been split open with a stone ax. Ze hacked a long, wet, violent cough and came up with a mix of phlegm and blood. Just the act of breathing was painful. So, ze had internal damage to zer air sacks from the overpressure. Wonderful.
But, ze was alive, and that counted for something. The detonator was still clutched in zer hand, but it was dead. Either its batteries had drained, or it had been even more sensitive to the blast wave than ze had been. Regardless, Benexx was back to not knowing what time it was or how long ze’d been unconscious. Ze tossed the detonator aside contemptuously and brought zer skinglow up a little to get a better sense of just how fubared zer situation was. Turns out, it could have been worse.
The chamber around zer had been redecorated with grizzly bits of shredded flesh and frayed cartilage. To zer left, an Atlantian’s arm, severed midway down from the elbow, twitched, its fingers still moving, mindlessly following the echo of the last instructions they received.
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