Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3) Page 15

  He shrugged. “The only thing we can do that they can’t is to get a telepath to check the minds of suspects. Since the difficulty of reading sea farm minds limits a telepath to checking a few people a day, flying suspects to the Hive won’t delay the investigation.”

  “Tactical Commander Lucas, your argument is theoretically sound,” said Melisande. “However, in this particular case, the members of Sea Farm Security have been staggeringly unsuccessful at identifying the perpetrator.”

  “They haven’t just been staggeringly unsuccessful, but suspiciously unsuccessful.” Lucas turned to face Admiral Tregereth. “Admiral, I’m currently considering the possibility that our target is a member of Sea Farm Security.”

  The Admiral inclined his head. “That would certainly explain why my Sea Farm Security people have been struggling to solve this case.”

  “I propose taking some special measures to make sure the Sea Farm Security people involved in the investigation are trustworthy,” said Lucas. “Juniper is an intelligent girl and has a personal interest in catching the target who caused her injury. I’ll get her to help me select a group of the most talented members of Sea Farm Security. Those people will then be flown here so Amber can read their minds to confirm their innocence.”

  Lucas shrugged. “That group will then return to the sea farm and take full control of the Sea Farm Security investigation.”

  “If you follow this approach, how long will it be before the murderer is caught?” asked the Admiral.

  “There are so many unknown factors that I can’t give a firm estimate of timescales,” said Lucas.

  The Admiral shook his head. “It’s not a viable option then. These attacks have been going on for several months. The level of fear among my people had already sent them fading in large numbers, and now the news of a second murder has terrified everyone. If the Hive doesn’t immediately respond to the request to send nosy squads, things will escalate out of control.”

  People were fading? I couldn’t work out what the Admiral meant by that. I was wondering whether to ask the question when Lucas did it for me.

  “Admiral, can you please explain what fading means?”

  “People at the sea farm often fade for a while in the summer, vanishing off into the countryside to stay at distant ancient dwellings built of stone. They normally come home to the comforts of the sea farm in autumn, and stay firmly based there for the winter, but …”

  The Admiral gave another angry shake of his head. “The weather is bitterly cold, and the old stone dwellings will be draughty and cramped, but whole families are still fading out of fear. Every day, more people have been failing to appear for work, and more houses are left empty with their windows boarded up against storms.”

  He paused before adding in a harsh voice. “We’re already down to less than eleven thousand adults, and we’re only three weeks away from the New Year. The situation is critical, so the Hive has to act now.”

  Melisande nodded. “I agree with the Admiral. Tactical Commander Lucas, you will take your unit to the sea farm.”

  Lucas stared at her in disbelief. “Perhaps I should have explained in more detail about the difficulties that telepaths have reading sea farm minds? Our standard methods of working involve Amber scanning areas of the Hive looking for our target, but she can’t do that at the sea farm.”

  “I appreciate that point,” said Melisande. “Once you are at the sea farm, I expect you to follow the plan you just outlined. Establish the innocence of some members of Sea Farm Security, and put them in control of selecting suspects to be checked by Amber.”

  “But we can do exactly the same thing from our unit.”

  “You may be able to do the same thing from your unit, Tactical Commander Lucas, but the people of the sea farm need to see you doing it. They have to be reassured the Hive considers their problem important and is taking action to deal with it.”

  “You want us to take Amber to the sea farm?” Lucas’s voice was harsh with alarm, drawing me into linking to his mind. “You want us to expose her to the risk of mass violence, just so people can be reassured by seeing the Hive is taking action?”

  Lucas’s thought levels were filled with the images of crowd violence that I’d seen before, but his mind was altering them, fuelling his fear by replacing a central figure in each image sequence with me. In one of them, I was screaming in panic. In a second, a man caught my arm and punched me in the stomach. In a third, I was knocked to the floor by a running mob of people and trampled underfoot. I recoiled into the safety of my own mind, feeling sick.

  Lucas stood up, slammed the palms of his hands on the table, and leaned forward aggressively towards Gold Commander Melisande. “The population of our Hive is over one hundred million people. Ideally, we need at least eight telepaths to maintain order. There was a ghastly period after Claire’s death when we only had four, and the Hive was descending into chaos. Too many areas with warning signs weren’t being checked before their wild bees progressed to life-threatening acts of harm. That meant the number of emergency runs was increasing. In turn, that meant even less time to check areas with warning signs.”

  Lucas’s voice was growing gradually louder. “We were heading towards the disaster point when the nosies would be revealed as fakes, and the Hive would go into full social meltdown. We were saved from that by Lottery discovering Amber. How can you command me to endanger her when you know her death would send the Hive spiralling back towards …?”

  He broke off his sentence and stood in silence. Gold Commander Melisande looked him calmly in the eyes and waited.

  “You are Gold Commander of this Hive.” Lucas’s voice had the quiet tones of utter despair now. “You were selected for your work because you have the mental strength to face devastating situations and make impossible decisions. If you are prepared to risk the life of one of our telepaths, then there’s a factor I don’t know. Something that’s a massive threat to our Hive.”

  He sat down. “Are you able to explain that threat to us?”

  “I can give a partial explanation,” said Melisande. “All the one hundred and seven Hive cities in the world are signatories to Joint Hive Treaty. One of the conditions of that treaty is that each Hive must maintain a sea farm with a residential population of at least ten thousand adults and two thousand children.”

  Lucas frowned. “Hive Treaty was set up to prevent things like territory violations and kidnappings leading to wars. Why does it require Hives to have sea farms?”

  “Tactical Commander Lucas,” said Melisande. “I regret that knowledge is restricted by our Hive.”

  She turned to look directly at me. “Amber, I cannot stop myself from thinking about the answer to Tactical Commander Lucas’s question. I can only ask you not to read my mind to discover what that answer is. The knowledge would be an irrelevant distraction to this investigation and is intensely troubling. Our Hive only burdens people with it when absolutely necessary.”

  Morton had told me I should curb my curiosity because it was a dangerous trait in a telepath. I couldn’t help wondering why telepaths shouldn’t meet because that rule had huge personal consequences for me. It kept me isolated from the only four people in the Hive who faced the same problems as me, and forced me to lie to Lucas to maintain a way to contact them in emergencies.

  I wasn’t interested in the reasons behind Hive Treaty’s rules though. I’d already discovered some of those rules were reasonable, while others seemed positively barbaric. The brutal truth was that the reasons for Hive Treaty’s rules didn’t matter, because my Hive had no choice about obeying them. Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement had the power to punish any Hive that breached the rules with anything up to an attack by the combined forces of all the other Hives.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter whether I was curious or not. The important issue here was about respecting personal privacy.

  I met Melisande’s gaze. “Gold Commander, you understand that using my telepathy is as automatic to me as brea
thing. I sometimes find myself linking to the thoughts of others without any conscious decision on my part, but I will not deliberately invade your mind to steal restricted information against your expressed wishes.”

  “I appreciate your restraint, Amber.” Melisande faced Lucas again. “I am permitted to tell you that Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement sends inspectors to each sea farm annually to confirm all the criteria are met. Our sea farm population is already dangerously low, so we must act to reassure people before more fade into the countryside. If the New Year census shows the population has dropped below the required minimum, then our Hive will be in breach of Hive Treaty and subject to severe sanctions.”

  “Would it be possible to send some of the Hive’s Outside workers to make up the numbers?” asked Megan.

  Melisande gave her a pitying look. “Joint Hive Treaty Census Inspectors are not fools. Genetic details of all sea farm citizens are recorded in the census. New adults can and do join the population of the sea farm, but they are not counted in the census figures until they’ve been resident there for five years.”

  “What sort of sanctions are we facing, Gold Commander?” asked Lucas.

  “We would be unable to trade either goods or people with other Hives. Those sanctions would remain in force until a future census establishes the sea farm meets its criteria.”

  Adika pulled a face. “Would it really be so bad if we can’t trade for a year? I thought our Hive didn’t import many goods.”

  “Being suspended from trading would have many negative consequences,” said Melisande. “There would be minor inconveniences due to shortages of some raw materials. Our Hive would miss the next post-Lottery personnel trading period, and be unable to fill some key posts that require unusual skills. Worst of all, we would be unable to buy help from Hives that specialize in advanced medical treatments.”

  “I was recently trapped in a fire, and had serious lung damage,” said Rothan. “I’m only alive now because our Hive sent my tissue samples to a specialist medical Hive that created a genetically tailored treatment for me.”

  Melisande nodded at him. “Precisely. I appreciate the risks involved in sending Amber to the sea farm, but I have to balance them against the consequences of our Hive being sanctioned. As someone who needed multiple operations and specialized treatment from another Hive to survive my childhood, I am naturally concerned about everyone who would die due to our inability to buy medical treatment. There is, however, one person of particular concern to our Hive.”

  She paused. “Morton is terminally ill.”

  There were gasps from around the table, my own among them.

  “There is a complex operation involving major organ transplantation that has a higher than 95 per cent chance of saving Morton’s life,” Melisande continued. “This operation would normally be carried out at a specialist medical Hive, but Morton refuses to go to another Hive for treatment. His counsellor and other consultant psychologists feel that forcing Morton to go to another Hive against his wishes would subject him to so much stress that his chances of survival would be greatly reduced.”

  Melisande sighed. “For the last year, our Hive has been preparing for Morton to have his operation here. The necessary medical knowledge was bought, and several of our best candidates for surgeon were imprinted with it during the last Lottery. Morton chose his preferred surgeon, and the plan was that the man would spend a year getting practical experience of challenging operations and working with Telepath Units.”

  I blinked. “That’s why Atticus knows all about telepaths and is on a Gold Assignment. He’s Morton’s surgeon!”

  “Yes,” said Melisande. “Atticus was supposed to carry out Morton’s operation soon after the next Lottery. Unfortunately, Morton’s condition is now deteriorating rapidly. Doctors estimate he has less than six months to live, so his operation has been rescheduled for two months from now.”

  Her face hardened. “A specialist medical Hive was supplied with Morton’s tissue samples, and is currently growing replacement organs to be used in his operation. I needn’t repeat Tactical Commander Lucas’s impassioned statement of the situation our Hive will face if we return to only having four telepaths to maintain order. If our Hive is sanctioned, we won’t have access to the replacement organs needed to save Morton’s life, and we will be in that situation within the next six months.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Melisande’s announcement was followed by a moment of stunned silence. Admiral Tregereth looked as devastated as the rest of us. He’d clearly known about the risk of the Hive being sanctioned, but not that being unable to trade with specialist medical Hives would lead to Morton’s death.

  I’d only had one brief conversation with Morton. I hadn’t found him likeable, and the mystery of what had happened to his wife troubled me, but his death would be disastrous for our Hive. There was no doubt about what we had to do, and we had to do it as quickly as possible.

  “We need to go to the sea farm and catch this murderer then,” I said briskly. “Megan, do you still have a list of the supplies we took on the trip to Hive Futura?”

  “What?” Megan gave me a dazed look. “Yes, of course.”

  “We’ll need to take the same supplies to the sea farm. Lucas, will we need our mobile operations centre as well?”

  “Yes. We can’t count on the sea farm having a suitable operations centre so we’ll take ours with us. Do we still have all the equipment, Nicole?”

  Nicole picked up her dataview, shook her head, and put it down again. “Yes. I remember we decided it wouldn’t be any use to anyone else, so it’s all still packed up in crates in a store room.”

  “Good.” Lucas’s decisive voice showed he’d moved on from being shocked to planning tactics now. “Gold Commander, I’ll need to explain the full situation to everyone in our unit. At least, to everyone going to the sea farm, which will probably be all those on our Liaison, Tactical, and Strike teams. It’s vital they understand the critical nature of this operation, because we may need our Strike team to take higher risks than usual to secure our target.”

  “Tactical Commander Lucas, I obviously didn’t make myself clear,” said Melisande. “When I said you should take your unit to the sea farm, I meant you should take your entire unit, including your support, maintenance, and medical staff.”

  “It isn’t necessary to take our entire unit,” said Lucas. “We can manage without …”

  “You will need medical support,” Melisande interrupted him. “You will need electrical experts to set up your mobile operations centre. You will need support staff to arrange adequate living accommodation, so you can focus on your operational tasks.”

  Melisande made an impatient noise. “You took your whole unit to Hive Futura, and that operation succeeded. It is essential that this operation succeeds too, so you will take your whole unit with you again.”

  Lucas groaned. “Very well, but we can only take people with us who freely volunteer. It would be counterproductive to force terrified people to go with us against their will.”

  “Accepted,” said Melisande. “Everyone in your unit volunteered to go to Hive Futura. When they learn Morton’s life is at stake, they should volunteer to go to the sea farm as well.”

  “As you suggested, we’ll protect Amber by using the same basic approach at the sea farm as we did with Juniper,” said Lucas. “We’ll emphasize the importance of my position, and dress one of the Strike team as a nosy to be the target of all the hostility. Amber will lurk inconspicuously in the background, pretending to be a mere interpreter.”

  Nicole looked thoughtful. “If this plan is going to work, everyone in our unit will need to act their parts very convincingly. It would only take one person showing more deference to Amber than Lucas to make people suspicious.”

  “That’s why I’ll want everyone to treat me with exaggerated respect,” said Lucas. “If anyone makes the mistake of treating Amber normally, it won’t seem significant in comparison to the way th
ey treat me.”

  “I approve of Lucas behaving with the dignity that his position deserves,” said Adika. “I agree with the tactic of treating Amber as if she’s unimportant to draw attention away from her as well. We’ll still need an adequate number of bodyguards around Amber though.”

  “Yes,” said Lucas. “When we go out in public, Amber must either stay with me or the nosy. The men who are allegedly bodyguarding us will then be able to guard her too.”

  His tone of voice was firmly practical now. “We’ll need somewhere in the Haven to use as a base. Somewhere without windows. Somewhere we can isolate ourselves from the people of the sea farm, and that’s free of surveillance cameras and drones, so we aren’t constantly acting a part to an audience.”

  “Somewhere easily defensible,” added Adika.

  “There’s plenty of unused space in the Haven,” said the Admiral. “I’ll send you the contact information for my wife, Tressa, and she’ll help organize your accommodation.”

  I was surprised to see the Admiral take out a dataview with a familiar wavy pattern on its case. That was the same dataview model I’d had when I lived on Teen Level.

  “Admiral, I know your imprint will include the importance of maintaining the nosy myth,” said Lucas, “but I understand rules are … applied differently at the sea farm. Have you told your wife the real facts about telepaths?”

  “I haven’t told my wife anything about telepaths. When will you be ready to go to the sea farm?”

  Lucas looked enquiringly at Megan, and she seemed to do some mental calculations before speaking. “We should be able to complete the preparations today.”