The surprises kept raining over Rigel, like ice stalactites. The General felt emotions, after all.
What would Marie have said if he told her about that?
First, she would have told him not to call her Marie again because that’s how her father used to call her; she would have demanded him to call her by her first name, Malin, and then she would have told him he was talking nonsense or that he must have heard wrong because the grumpy old man only appreciated the army, not his daughter.
“I’ll put an end to this situation,” Benetnash said.
The phone in the office rang. Beep, beep, beeeeep.
The General threw a grunt at the device, hoping it wouldn’t ring again.
Rigel held his breath.
Beep, beep, beeeeep.
Benetnash placed himself in front of the phone, and angrily, picked up the small tube-shaped communicator and pressed it against his ear. “What?” More than a question, it was a bark. “I ordered not to be disturbed.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the timid voice of an officer on the other side, “but I have an urgent message from General Alcor; he insisted I deliver it to you.”
Benetnash growled again. “Go ahead,” he said.
“We have restored communication with Bellatrix, sir,” the voice announced, “and the Imperial Council summons you to the command balcony of the Assembly Hall. General Alcor needs you to take care of a special task.”
“What is Bellatrix’s report?” the general asked.
“The attack ended with the use of the Auriga Mother,” the officer reported. “The barracks security cameras were interfered with, and those who entered the Kappa Point have not yet been identified, sir.”
“There’s no need for a camera to reveal who did it, soldier. It is obvious that the one who used the Auriga was the same one who assassinated our soldiers.”
Rigel swallowed. Although he didn’t quite know what was happening, from that last sentence, he knew that the General was lying. Was he protecting him? No. Benetnash was protecting his daughter, his little Malin Marie.
“No, sir,” the officer reported. “The Auriga Mother recorded two crossings, one at 0235 hours and the next at 0238.”
Benetnash’s eyes dropped to the holographic video projected on his desk, where Malin was facing the A60-R8, tearing through a kind of energy wall with her bare hands, and he verified the time that appeared there: 0233. He fast-forwarded the video sequence and saw in fast motion how that filthy Rowdy One she was with took her out of the android’s path, throwing themselves together into the Auriga’s portal. 0235 hours marked the video.
“After the first crossing,” the officer continued into the phone, “a virus caused the Auriga Mother’s central system to crash, and the quantum prism was put out of commission. However, according to the machine’s computer, the virus was erased almost immediately, and the prism got reactivated.”
While listening to the officer, Benetnash watched the video. There, the A60 extended some wires from its fingers and linked them to the Auriga’s terminal. The lights on the computer, which had gone out after the crossing of Malin and the Rowdy One, were coming back on.
“I suppose you already have the arrival coordinates of those who crossed the portal. Why does Alcor need me?”
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The young man’s voice faltered for a moment, as if hesitant to be the one to deliver the report. “Sir, my orders were...”
“Speak up, soldier!” the general insisted.
“Sir, what worries General Alcor is that the spectrometer revealed multiple bursts of quantum radiation in Bellatrix during this night. A brief Kappa flow, different from the one emitted by the Kappa Point located in the barracks, and the rest were Tau-type emissions.”
Benetnash’s heart shrank. That flash of Kappa radiation was odd, perhaps even a spectrometer error, but so many Tau emissions couldn’t just be coincidence; and where there was a Tau emission there was a powerful Eddanian, and that was always a sign of trouble.
Concern welled up from the General, like drops of water on a damp wall, and Rigel was infected with it. What the hell had they just said to the General to make him make that face? What was happening? His heart was pounding hard. He tried to piece together the conversation with the few words he heard, but it only served to make him even more anxious.
“It is believed that the responsible for these Tau emissions is an unidentified woman, sir. She was caught on video in the company of two escaped prisoners, entering the dome at 0237 hours, and reuniting on Level 5 with the unidentified A60-R8. The second crossing to the Kappa Point was the next minute.”
Benetnash tried to confirm what the officer was saying, but the sequence ahead of him cut off just as the A60 turned toward the Level 5 entrance, perhaps to see someone coming.
“How was that woman caught on video if the cameras were jammed?” he asked.
“The helmet cam of a downed Grenadier, sir. Visual testimonials from Bellatrix staff are…difficult to take into account in this situation. Forty percent of the officers show signs of epistaxis. Excuse me, sir, but I must insist. General Alcor, he…”
Benetnash cleared his throat. “Yes, yes,” he interrupted the officer. “Tell the Imperial Council I’ll be meeting with them shortly,” he said and hung up. He looked at Rigel. “You know something about what’s going on, am I right?”
Rigel nodded.
Without taking his eyes off of Rigel, the General opened his desk drawer and took something out. For a second, Rigel thought it was the gun the General would use to kill him.
“Your sentence will have to wait,” Benetnash said, tossing him what he had taken.
Rigel caught it in the air. It was a tiny crystalline phone. “This...?” he was intrigued.
“It’s a phone, Detective Colonel,” Benetnash said as if it were a self-evident truth.
Rigel’s small black eyes blazed with wonder. Was the General suggesting what he was thinking?
“My daughter Marie and the Rowdy One who goes with her—” Benetnash said, and the two ice floes that he had for eyes narrowed. “If they went through a Kappa Point, they must have a heavy-duty phone, adapted to operate on seven-frequency, right?”
Rigel nodded again; there was no point in denying it.
“If they are out of the territory,” said the General, “our firewall will give them signal problems; this thing will solve that. Inform her that this android is after her, along with two prisoners, and possibly guided by a Code Tau Eddanian woman.”
Rigel lost what little breath he still held. The A60 and others were after Malin and Juzo, accompanied by a highly dangerous Eddanian. He couldn’t imagine a worse scenario than that.
“What the hell are you waiting for?!” the old man barked.
In his thirty-seven years of life, Rigel Beta had never been speechless and without knowing what to do, except on that occasion. He watched the crystalline phone, not believing what he heard; then he looked at the man in front of him, at that mystery in uniform.
“I warn you, Colonel,” Benetnash pointed an accusing finger at him. “Only members of the Imperial Council have access to phones like these. If you get caught with it, I’ll deny having given it to you; I’ll plead you stole it from me, and I’ll execute you myself. Understood?”
Rigel saluted him. “Understood, sir!”
“And tell Marie to destroy her phone so they don’t track her down,” the General said and excused him with an angry gesture. “Now, go away!”
Rigel Beta left the office with his heart pounding and his hands shaking.
He walked down the corridors feeling stupid; a fool who had been busted, a fool who was lucky to be alive, even when he didn’t know what would become of him from here on. He activated the crystalline phone and thought about calling Juzo, but he called Malin’s number instead.
Rigel heard his old girlfriend answer the call. He told her that the Cyclops had crossed to the other side of the world and that he had gone with two fugitives and a possible Tau-coded Eddanian woman. He ignored her questions about how he had managed to contact them through the seven-frequency, not revealing who his source had been—Malin Marie would never have believed. Pleading with her to be careful, he asked her to convey her wishes for success to Juzo, reminding them that they should get rid of their phones as soon as the communication ended. Finally, with his voice on the verge of breaking, Rigel Beta told her that he loved her, that he always had and always would, and clicked off.