A rusted metal on metal grind pierced the silence. The noise came from overhead. Martin saw pinpoints of light within a square of blackness. A shape blocked the stars, and the muffled click of rubber on metal told Martin someone was descending a ladder or stairway. “Everyone! If you speak a single word or make any noise, you’re dead.” It never crossed Martin’s mind to say anything; he had no idea what was happening, and darkness obscured everything. “Someone will place night-vision glasses in your hand. Put them on.”
Martin heard the rustling of clothing and muffled jangles he couldn’t identify. Someone took his wrist and placed an object in his hands. With his wrists bound, he had trouble orienting the glasses, but he managed to put them on. His eyes adjusted to the soft green glow. He counted six bodies on the floor with two men standing over them; Martin was the seventh captive. The two men were the silent guests at Reason’s home. One of them carried an automatic rifle, and the other was handing out the glasses. Another man supervised, holding a handgun. Martin recognized him.
“Reason, what’s happening?”
“Shut up or I’ll put a hole in your neck.” His voice was restrained but threatening.
What now, dear Lord? What have I done?
Reason pointed his gun at a woman, who flinched. “You. Get up the ladder. Quick!” The woman wobbled toward Reason, unsure of her footing in the unfamiliar room and artificially enhanced light. Reason grabbed her by her torn jacket and pushed her at the ladder. “Get up on deck, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
The woman climbed, and as she reached the opening, ghost-like hands pulled her out of the hold. The other captives followed the first one up the ladder, until one man, tall and heavy, halted next to Reason, his head down. He raised his head, peering at the sky in his goggles, and then spat in Reason’s face.
The captor exploded with rage, and he pistol-whipped the captive, who sprawled on the deck, goggles flying. Reason grabbed the guard’s automatic rifle and beat the defiant captive until blood poured from his nose and mouth in a black stream. The captive’s blood spattered Reason’s trousers with black stains.
“You.” Reason pointed first at a petite woman, and then to Martin. “Take this piece of shit above.”
Martin was frozen in place. Hours before, he had shared a meal with this man.
“Move, or you’ll get worse.”
“Our hands...” The petite woman showed her bound hands in an odd gesture of supplication, made all the weirder by the goggles resting on the bridge of her nose.
Reason growled and reached for a knife. He cut her bindings and then Martin’s. “If you so much as think about running, I’ll cut out your eyes.”
“You take him by the shoulders,” the woman said to Martin, who obeyed for lack of any other excuse to act. He was emotionally paralyzed, though his body carried out the commands of others. The unconscious rebel was slick with blood, and Martin struggled to pull him up the steep stairway. The petite woman held the victim by the knees and followed Martin. As Martin reached the opening, other hands reached down to haul up the unconscious captive. More hands took Martin aside and pushed him into the group of captives that had already climbed out. They huddled together, green and unsubstantial. He was joined by the petite woman and the beating victim, who was thrown at their feet.
A bank of low clouds had crept in, obscuring the stars. The night was moonless. The boat was tied against a narrow black object in the water that stretched away into a bank of fog. A short walkway connected the boat to the object, and Reason ordered the captives across. Martin noticed an opening in the floor of the object.
“Get down there, through the hatch.” Reason ordered. “Keep silent.” A rubber-like coating muffled Martin’s steps on the deck. The bound captives climbed down the ladder through the hatch. Martin and the petite woman carried the injured captive, still unconscious, down the ladder. Reason pointed to another opening. Martin removed his goggles, and the light swapped from green to red, emanating from fixtures in the ceiling and walls.
“Down.” Reason poked the barrel of his gun into Martin’s arm. He descended another ladder, and then a third. The air temperature rose, along with the humidity. Martin lost his orientation, but he was surrounded by pipes, valves, switches, panels, and warning labels, some of which displayed the universal symbol of a radiation hazard. The group reached a filthy room with bunks that stank of sweat and urine. Martin saw a half-dozen other people in the room, and he guessed they were also captives. With the petite woman’s help, he laid the moaning rebel in a bunk.
The light switched from red to full-spectrum LED, and all the captives squinted or lifted their hands to block the brightness. “Out of the way.” Reason shoved Martin aside and brandished his knife. A guard waited at the door. Reason cut the bindings of the other new arrivals.
“Reason.” Martin shaded his eyes in the harsh light. “What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I thought you were going to help me find a job.”
Reason smirked. “I kept my promise.” He departed, and an idea came to Martin. It explained why Reason was disidentified.
Before he called out again, another person entered the room. Each captive, including Martin, stepped back, and some gaped. A creature unlike anything Martin had ever seen stood before them. He had the height and build of a man, but he was a chimera, not a man. His face and neck were covered with yellow and black hair, arranged in stripes. His hands were also furred. Narrows slits of irises surrounded by golden borders studied each captive. When his gaze landed on Martin, a shiver of terror crawled up the monk’s spine.
The creature smiled, and showed the teeth of a carnivore, with tearing canines and slicing incisors. When he spoke, it came out as a low growl, but with a soft edge. “I am Kapitan Gore. Welcome to Extinction.” He stepped forward, taking in the faces of each captive. “Listen carefully. Work hard, and you’ll be treated as my loyal crew.” Martin puzzled at Gore’s odd accent as he continued. “Slack off, and you’ll be treated worse than the damned.” He turned, and at the door, he stopped. “Mutiny, and I’ll kill you myself. With this.” He raised his hand and showed razor-sharp claws.
“Mr. Nelson?”
A voice came from the corridor. “Aye, sir?”
“Take her down. Set your course for the Arctic Ocean.”
CHAPTER 20
♦ ♦ ♦
KILEL TOUCHED THE STYLUS TO her tablet, closing the classified report from the informant at Pole Station. Rain from a rare summer shower streaked the window of her Eugene office. The report confirmed what she had suspected: Bill Penn was aboard the Aganippe. Kilel had circulated an image of the suspect to all the BES agents and environmental police agencies across the Arctic. The informant spotted Penn when the ship stopped for a minor repair and he went aboard the station with another crew member to collect a part. By rights, she could send a patrol craft to arrest Penn and bring him back to Eugene for interrogation, but Kilel hesitated. He was a thread, that, if pulled, might unravel something bigger and perhaps more important than a species extinction. Carbon smuggling was rampant, especially petroleum, because it was so easy to hide. The end of a species was a devastating event for life on earth, but the Carbon Age had devastated a entire biosphere. We have to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere at all costs. Burning even a thimble-full of oil is suicidal.
Still, the investigator needed information. Where was Aganippe going? Intelligence gave her a few ideas, but the shore of the Arctic Ocean was teeming with new settlements, some not yet mapped. Kilel had only one viable connection to Bill Penn and Aganippe: Anne. It was time to speak to her again.
Kilel prepared herself with a few notes. She pinged Anne, then remembered that the young woman could not afford video conferencing capability via her minds-eye. Damned com companies. Everyone hates them. The call would have to be voice only.
“Hello? Who’s this?” Anne’s voice was as clear as if they were in the same room.
“Janine Kilel.”
; “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I’ve heard from your father.” Kilel dressed her tone in sympathy.
“You’re lying.”
“He’s aboard a cargo ship. He’s healthy, as near as I can tell.”
“Why should I believe you?”
I can hear her wanting it to be true. “You’d know it if I was lying. I keep telling you we have a common interest in seeing him home with you.”
An indicator in Kilel’s minds-eye told her Anne had muted the audio. “Anne?”
A few seconds later, the audio un-muted. “Well, thank you for letting me know. Goodbye.”
Kilel added a note of command. “Don’t hang up.”
“I don’t know anything more. What more do you want?”
The audio was muted again. Someone’s with her. Mike Schmidt? Kilel gambled. “Mike is welcome to listen in if you want, Anne.” Kilel’s minds-eye showed Mike’s avatar conferencing in. Maybe I can play him against her. “Welcome, Mr. Schmidt.”
“Inspector.” Schmidt’s tone was confident, if wary. If she and Anne aren’t a couple, I’m a dog catcher.
The inspector turned up the pressure. “Anne, your father’s in the Arctic on a ship called Aganippe. Its last known course was toward any of several Russian ports. Where would he go in Russia?”
“I have no idea.”
Kilel decided another shock to Anne might jog the truth out of her. “Your father may be involved in carbon smuggling, specifically crude oil, aboard Aganippe. Do you know anything about that?”
Anne sounded distressed. “No, that can’t be true. You’re making that up. He wouldn’t break the law. He’s a good man.”
“I beg to differ. He’s destroyed an entire species. A man like that is capable of smuggling illegal fuels and precursors.”
Mike spoke up. “You can’t just go around accusing people—”
“I believe Mr. Penn’s ship is carrying illegal oil to a port in Russia. I want to know which one. Do you want to be an accessory to carbon racketeers, Mike?”
“How... No, of course not, but—“
Anne cried, “I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. He would never—”
“He is, and I will find him, and he will be punished.” Frustrated by Anne’s intransigence, Kilel paused to reign in her fury. A thought occurred to her. She called up an image in her minds-eye.
“Inspector? It’s Anne. Are you there?”
Kilel studied the holo-pic. The image was familiar, but it was faded and grainy. “Who is this?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t see—“
Dammit! “I’m sending you an image file. I’ll put it in your public folder. Take a look at it.”
Kilel transferred the file, and she saw the indication that Anne opened it.
Anne cooled down. “My mother. Colonel Penn asked about her. Remember?”
Kilel absently tapped the tablet stylus on her desk. She had no interest in the conversation between the colonel and Anne in the detention center, imagining it to be unimportant family business, and she’d left Anne’s holding cell to let them talk. That was a mistake. The woman in the image may be the key to finding Bill Penn, and I’ve seen her before. “What’s her name?”
“Molly. She and my dad divorced when I was little.”
Kilel heard pain in Anne’s voice, but Molly elicited something... “What was her name?”
“Molly Penn.” Anne said the name as if Kilel were dense as stone.
“No, her maiden name.”
“ Bain.”
The answer hit Kilel like a punch. She called up the BES database in her minds-eye, and the answer came back almost before she finished composing the query. The photo in the database wasn’t the same as the holo-pic, but it was an image of the same person taken a few years later at the trial. “Your mother is Molly Bain.”
“That’s what I said. What are you getting at?”
“Molly Bain is an environmental criminal. She was convicted of crimes related to the Spike. She escaped disidentification by turning state’s evidence against Martin Scribb.”
“You’re wrong!”
Again, Kilel felt she had Anne where she wanted her. She drilled the next words home. “Molly Bain, formerly Mrs. William Penn, with one child, Anne Penn, was an AI researcher who programmed the drilling robots that failed on all the Algid Project methyl hydrate sites, causing a massive release of methane. The release started a cascading failure of the entire methyl hydrate bed in the Barents Sea, releasing millions of metric tons into the atmosphere, doubling its capacity to retain atmospheric heat for a decade. Your mother killed twenty percent of the wild species on the planet. Your mother caused the worst mass extinction in sixty-five million years.”
“Stop it,” Mike interrupted. “You have no right to talk to Anne like that.”
The inspector shook with anger. A primal part of her wanted to arrest Anne merely for the traits of Molly Bain in the young woman. She wanted to visit punishment on Anne for the sins of the mother for her environmental genocide.
“Anne was a baby.” Mike picked the tone Kilel guessed his father used at a traffic stop. “She had nothing to do with the Spike or what her mother did.”
To keep from laughing with contempt, Kilel breathed in and closed her eyes. “You’re correct, Mr. Schmidt. Anne had nothing to do with the Spike or her mother’s crimes. Unlike her father, she’s not responsible for the fire that wiped out a species. She is, however, her mother’s daughter, and her father’s daughter.” Kilel recalled the snag with the magpie nest. “That much is clear.”
Anne voice dripped contempt. Why hide it from me? “I’m going to close the connection, Inspector.” Now her voice quivered. “I love my father. I’ll never help you again. You and your kind can go to hell.”
“Is it true?” Anne sat next to Mike on a bench her father had made from scrap wood. The confrontation with Kilel had exhausted her, and she rested her head on his powerful shoulder. “Is it true my mother caused the Spike?”
Mike was uncomfortable, but Anne did not want to move. “I was in preschool when the Spike hit. All I remember is that my parents were worried. I’m sure Kilel was just trying to scare you so you would tell her where your dad is.”
“I’m afraid. Maybe I said something I shouldn’t have.”
“You’re afraid? It’s a good thing it was a audio call. If Kilel were here, you would’ve slugged her.” Mike rested his forearms on his knees. Light from a camping lamp illuminated his face. “Don’t listen to her. She’s a bully, and it’s the bullies who are afraid.”
Anne’s constant anxiety since her father’s escape broke into panic. She’d never been so fearful for Bill’s safety or her own. The longer he was gone, the more she worried he’d never come back. Would he be like her mother? If Mike weren’t here... “I don’t know where Dad is. I don’t have any idea. Kilel knows more than me.”
“Try to relax, Anne.” Mike held out his hand. In his palm was another camera. “The stores always sell these in packs.”
Encouraged, Anne managed a thin smile.
“Come on.”
Mike led the way to the snag. His strong shoulders tapered to a sturdy waist she hadn’t noticed before. Since their lunch in town, he had visited her at the ranch every day, bringing supplies and news. He had volunteered to stand watch with her over the magpie eggs. On the path, she stopped, aware of something unconscious and intangible, until Mike halted.
“Something wrong?” he said.
“No.” Anne reached out her hand to Mike, not really sure what she wanted. He took the fingers of her hand, intertwining his, and pulled ever so gently, returning to the path. The angle of his arm was awkward, and after a few steps he let go, an act that caused Anne a different kind of pain, and she almost reached for his hand again to soothe it away.
They reached the snag, and Mike climbed the ladder. He reinstalled the camera, and the video feed returned to their priv- chan. Back at camp, Anne lit the stove, and they ate a s
upper of baked beans, bread that Mike had brought from the Feed and Seed, and a surviving jar of Anne’s blackberry preserves from the previous season.
Anne watched Mike pump fresh water for Maxie. “There’s something else, something that happened in Eugene that I don’t think Kilel knows about.”
“While you were in detention?”
The dog slurped his water.
“Remember I told you that an old BES guy there said he was my uncle? He gave me a video.”
“What kind of video?”
“I’ll share it with you.” Anne sent the commands to her minds-eye to share the holo-vid in Mike’s public folder, but “permission denied” errors popped up. “That’s weird. It won’t let me share it out.”
“Have you looked at it?”
“It’s from a few days after I was born. It has Dad, me, and my mother in it.”
“Maybe he wants you to keep the video private.”
“It’s so odd.” Anne stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. “Why would he give me a video he doesn’t want me to share? He doesn’t know me.”
Mike looked puzzled as well. “You’re family.”
“Barely. It’s crazy. I can’t get it out of my head that he’s my uncle, my dad’s brother. How can one word like ‘uncle’ stir me up so much?”
“He’s probably got more than one reason for giving you that file.” Mike wiped a plate with a dish towel. “Cops playact to get what they want, usually information.”
The thought disappointed Anne. “You think it’s a trick?”
“ Bessies are all the same.”
As darkness fell, Anne rearranged the items she had salvaged from the fire. The holo-vid from Colonel Penn seemed salvaged as well. Anne played it two or three times, and it had missing frames and a few glitches, like it had been corrupted and recovered.
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