Trident's Forge by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Author:Patrick S. Tomlinson [Tomlinson, Patrick S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85766-488-4
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2016-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

It was closer to midday by the time the caravan pulled out of the village’s northern gate and pointed down the laser-straight road toward the horizon. Benson’s eyes actually had trouble looking down it. Maybe not his eyes so much as his sense of depth. He’d spent the first thirty-five years of his life inside an artificial habitat only two kilometers long and two kilometers in diameter. Avalon and its twin module Shangri-La were, without a doubt, the largest enclosed spaces ever built by mankind, but they were still miniscule compared to an actual planet. He’d had enough trouble upon landing dealing with an infinite sky, especially after his incident in the EVA pod, but somehow the straight line of the road reaching all the way out to the horizon helped define the distance, fixing it in his mind. The longest street back in Shambhala was less than three kilometers, and he’d watched it being built incrementally over the span of three years.

This Atlantian road, by contrast, was many dozens of kilometers long. Some part of his stunted visual cortex told him it was impossible. Benson actually felt a pang of vertigo when he looked down it for too long. Instead, he spent quite a bit of time looking at his shuffling feet.

Aside from Benson, Mei, Kexx, Kuul and zer two bodyguards, the caravan was made up of one surviving warrior from each of the other twenty-three villages for a total of twenty-nine. It took a little more than an hour to walk clear of the swaying crops and out into true wilderness. There was no defined border. The rows of yulka simply grew more disorganized until they couldn’t be differentiated from chaos. Undergrowth and stands of trees sprang up, although not into anything thick enough to be considered a forest. Birdsong, the buzzing of insects and the chirps of animals hiding in the underbrush filled the air.

A particularly nasty-looking customer with four dragonfly-like wings and a pair of pincers that could have been stolen from a fiddler crab landed on Benson’s forearm.

“Ah, hi,” Benson said to the chitinous interloper. He raised his arm and presented it to the Atlantians. “Is this thing venomous?”

“To us? No,” Kuul called out. “To you? Who knows?”

“Thanks for the help.” For a scary moment, Benson debated whether swatting or shooting it would be more prudent. He settled on gently brushing it off in the hope it would continue about its day elsewhere. It buzzed around his head once in protest, then moved on.

For the first couple of hours, almost no one spoke. No boasting of their accomplishments during the fight, no tales of past hunts. But then, why would they? Aside from Kuul and zer two companions, none of them knew one another. And it was among this group of strangers that they were all marching into danger.

No wonder everyone preferred the company of their own thoughts. Still, some team-building was in order. This wasn’t any different from a crop of fresh recruits.

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