Lords of the Sea (28 page)

She returned her attention to the man at the console.

“Claudius is searching for the images. It will take a moment.”

Cassie nodded. “That sounds Roman,” she said thoughtfully, glancing up at Raen. “Is it?”

His lips tightened. “Possibly. I do not know the origins. You may ask him if you like.”

She was a little surprised at the annoyance in his voice, but then it dawned on her that he was probably tense because of what they’d come to watch. Under the circumstances, her curiosity about the origins of the man’s name probably didn’t seem appropriate to him.

In retrospect, it didn’t to her either. It was far too somber a situation for idle curiosity.

She wasn’t prepared for just how somber it actually was, she discovered.

She had expected the sort of grainy stills typical of surveillance footage that would make it hard to see details, she supposed. She hadn’t expected the crispness of the images, and she certainly hadn’t expected it to be a video. The images that flashed onto the displays in front and on either side of her were as clear as if she were looking through a window. Like a window, there were blind spots where the people moving about disappeared for several moments before they came into view again, caught by another monitor.

Men, women, and children were going about their business—the setting perfectly ordinary except for the back drop of the city, which seemed oddly quaint and antiquated and at the same time almost futuristic, like an artist’s rendition of what a future city might look like—nothing like any city she’d ever seen. The buildings were beautiful, seemed very Mediterranean in influence, particularly in the artistic details of elaborate columns and friezes on many of the buildings, but multi-storied, some of them as much as ten or perhaps fifteen stories high—not something one would find in an ancient city.

Cassie had hardly had time to take in the scene and note those things about it, however, when a ball of rock and fire that looked to be the size of a house appeared in the blink of an eye and smashed into the center of the city. She sucked in her breath as the thing abruptly filled the center view, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

In the space of seconds, the image was transformed from peaceful tranquility to utter chaos. Despite the lack of sound, she almost felt like she could hear the screams as people began to run in every direction, trying to escape the fire and explosion of debris from the buildings that shattered around them. Perhaps a half a dozen more fire balls of varying sizes rained down on the city as people ran in first one direction and then another. Bodies littered the streets. Crying children looked around in bewilderment for parents that had suddenly disappeared. Broken, bleeding men, women, and children staggered around in shock—looking for help, or someone they’d lost, or just too stunned to know what they were doing.

“They didn’t have any warning,” Cassie said in a hoarse, horrified whisper, feeling the urge to cry well up inside of her.

“No, we did not,” Raen responded harshly. “Do you think this will satisfy them?”

168

Cassie whipped her head around to look up at him. She didn’t know if it was just pain she saw in his face, or condemnation of her for wanting to see the images—
asking
to see them. She hadn’t wanted to see this. She hadn’t begun to imagine how horrific it had been.

“More?” he asked harshly. “It took several hours for the Atlantis to sink.”

Cassie felt her chin wobble with imminent tears and looked away from him.

“Most of these people died. This was the center of the strike. Those not crushed by the falling buildings or the fireball, or burned to death, suffocated from the smoke and dust or bled to death from their wounds before we could give them any sort of medical attention. They were too far from the access ports to reach the stasis units, or cut off by the fires and the rubble.

“There would have been roughly ten thousand people in this area of the city at that time of day—which was at the peak of the work day.

“Those working in the fields on the outer ring also did not have time to reach safety within the ship—there would have been anywhere from two to five thousand working the fields in the middle and outer rings. It was harvest time and more people were in the fields than there would have been ordinarily. There were native crafts in the area, however, and some almost certainly made it to those ships. Others may have tried to swim to safety—and may have succeeded. We have no way of knowing.

“There would not have been enough stasis units to accommodate all—our population had grown considerably and no one thought of a need for them after we had settled here—but they were not filled to capacity, regardless. We estimated that nearly half of the population either perished on impact or abandoned the Atlantis and fled to safety elsewhere.”

She was relieved when Claudius stopped the play of images and Raen ceased to pelt her with the grim statistics. Apparently, however, Claudius stopped because Raen had signaled for him to. The screens only darkened briefly as Raen crossed the room.

He signaled the other man again and spoke to him in their language. This time, the images played slowly, froze for several moments when Raen lifted his hand, and then advanced slowly again.

Sniffing back the tears and wiping her eyes, Cassie watched him as he paced back and forth, staring hard at the screens. She’d begun to think he was looking for someone when he abruptly moved away.

“Volcano. We’d thought we were hit by a meteor shower. The rocks are volcanic,” he said as he reached her and paused in front of her. “These images will serve our purpose?”

Cassie nodded and cleared her throat. “We’ll need others showing what the city looks like now.”

Nodding, he turned and spoke to the other man again. Cassie got to her feet shakily and moved to the door.

“I will escort you to our quarters,” Raen said as he joined her.

Cassie didn’t argue. She felt wrung out from watching the videos. It made her feel even worse that Raen and Claudius had had to watch them, because she knew that as horrific as she’d found them, it had to have been far more difficult for them to watch. It wasn’t just their city, and their homes they’d watched being destroyed. It was their people they’d seen dying, perhaps even people they’d known.

169

She hoped they hadn’t seen close friends or family members.

Raen paused when they reached an intersection, seemed to consider for a moment, and then turned toward the exit instead of continuing to his quarters. Cassie glanced at him curiously, but she didn’t object.

She saw once they were outside that there were far more people working among the ruins than before. The piles of rubble had been diminished significantly and a couple of the buildings were already beginning to look more like new construction than derelicts.

The narrow road they’d traversed before through the heart of the city was mostly cleared now, and she could see that it had been paved in stones—or whatever material it was that they used that appeared to be stones. The tantalizing scents of cooking food drifted on the air, mixed with the less appealing smells of dust and dying sea vegetation. The sounds of work was more pronounced, as well, and as they walked she spotted compact motorized pieces of equipment moving in and out and around the buildings that seemed to be the main focus of the workers’ labors.

There were food venders on the streets, she discovered with surprise.

Raen led her to one and purchased food for both of them—some sort of crusty looking rolls that appeared to be filled with meat and vegetables. After glancing around, he led her to a spot where they could perch to eat and watch the activity—or rather she perched. Raen stood beside her, scanning the progress through narrowed eyes.

It dawned on Cassie as she watched them that there didn’t seem to be any doubt in their minds what the outcome of the stand off would be—unless they simply didn’t know what was going on outside the barrier, which she very much doubted. It was too small a community for them
not
to know.

It was oddly soothing to watch the Atlanteans going about the business of putting their lives in order. It diminished her own sense of anxiety despite the fact that she was as certain as she could be that the threat was a long way from being resolved.

She glanced at Raen several times, trying to gauge his mood and finally yielded to her curiosity. “I don’t really know much about y’all,” she began tentatively.

He glanced at her, his gaze flickering over her face speculatively. “No,” he agreed finally.

That didn’t sound promising. She wrestled with her questions for a moment and finally decided to take the plunge. If he didn’t want to tell her, he wouldn’t, but she wasn’t going to learn anything if she didn’t ask. “Why was it necessary for everyone to go into stasis?”

He frowned, but he didn’t look at her.

“I mean, y’all can live in the sea, right?”

He finished his meat pie and brushed the crumbs from his hands. Propping one shoulder against the wall behind him, he studied her upturned face for several moments, as if he was trying to decide whether to appease her curiosity or not. “The answer to that would be ‘no’.”

Cassie frowned when he didn’t elaborate. “But … you breathe water. You …

change at will from … uh … into merpeople.”

He eyed her with a mixture of amusement and obvious irritation. “We breathe air

… just like you do. And we don’t change at will—not exactly.”

170

She waited. When he said nothing else, her own irritation surfaced. “And you’re not the least bit friendly,” she muttered. “The only reason you were interested in us—any of us—was because you needed to know how to deal with us.”

“We needed to know how much you had changed,” he corrected, his voice harsh now. “We already knew enough about your species to know we did not want to ‘get to know’ you any better. Pound for pound, no other species on this planet can begin to compare to the human in sheer savagery.”

That stung. Actually, it was more than a sting. The emotionalism that had threatened to overwhelm her completely while she’d watched the destruction of Atlantis had been calmed and soothed by the ‘business as usual’ attitude of the people surrounding them. She discovered to her dismay, though, that it was still so close to the surface it took no more than that one comment to have her fighting tears all over again.

Sniffing against the sting in her nose, she got up, looked around for a place to dispose of the remains of her meal and finally returned to the vender.

The cups he’d given them to drink from weren’t disposable. She handed hers back and watched as the vendor dropped it into a churning vat of sudsy water. He gave her a disapproving look when she tossed her half eaten meat pie in the refuse bin nearby.

She sent him a sulky glare in return and headed back the way she’d come.

“You were not very hungry,” Raen observed as he fell into step beside her. “Or did you just not care for the
mierster
?”

Cassie glared at the pavement in front of her. “I’m dieting,” she gritted out.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him scan her form speculatively, but thankfully, for him, he apparently decided to keep his opinion to himself.

She didn’t speak to him again until he’d escorted her to his quarters. She wouldn’t have then except that her need to know overwhelmed her need to snub him.

“Will you tell me what happens with the media?”

“It is unlikely they will be prepared to broadcast before tomorrow,” he responded.

“I will tell you what I know when I return this evening.”

Cassie nodded and turned away, entering the room.

“I will be late,” he added after a moment.

As

if
she cared!

“I will make certain you are served your evening meal at the usual time.”

She curbed the urge to thank him, pretending an interest in the wall.

“We will be studying the images in an effort to account for those who are missing since it is unlikely that their remains will be recovered now.”

She whirled to look at him then, but he’d already closed the door.

She should’ve thought of that, she realized. Someone would have to. The survivors would want to know what had happened to their loved ones.

No wonder he’d looked so grim and been so prickly. He was going to have to watch that horror show over and over—not just watch it, study it, study the faces of the dead and dying trying to identify them.

Feeling about as low and cold blooded as a snake, she looked around the room vacantly for several moments and finally settled in the easy chair, staring at nothing in particular and wishing for the boredom of the life she’d had before. She hadn’t properly appreciated her own private little rut. There’d been times when she’d felt as if life was just passing her by while she was stuck in same boring routine, day after day.

171

And maybe it had been, but there was something to be said for the peace of mind that came with it, a
lot
to be said for the comfort of knowing what was going to happen next—nothing earth shattering, nothing that was going to tie her in knots, nothing that was going to make her feel like crying her eyes out at least once a day.