Trident Force by Michael Howe Page B

woman whose essential cheerfulness had seemed, for a time, to be the perfect counterbalance for his own gloom. A child had resulted, a little girl whom they named Annie. And Annie had captured Jake’s soul. In time, however, the adults’ relationship was destroyed both by Jake’s incessant gloom as well as by the constant absences demanded by his profession.
    During the first few years after the split, until Annie’s eighth or ninth birthday, Jake had managed to keep in touch with her and her mother. As the time passed, a portion of the mother’s cheer had become barbed, at least with respect to Jake, but Annie’s joy had remained pure, her enthusiasm undiminished. Then the mother had found what turned out to be the right man, for a change, and married. Every effort was made by both sides for Jake to spend time with his daughter, but it simply wasn’t the same. He came to feel he was shut out, unwanted. He was driven back to sea—to voyage from here to there, purposelessly and forever.
    And yet, his love for, his obsession with, his daughter had grown with every night he spent lying in his bunk, alone in the dark, emotionally lost and going nowhere.
    He’d planned to see her again. Time and time again. But, somehow, something had always interfered, so, instead of knowing the real Annie, he dreamed of the little girl who once was, many, many years before.
    Then it was too late. She was gone. According to the news she’d joined some half-assed demonstration about something nobody would remember two days later. The weather had been hot, as was the political situation; the cops were cranky, and somebody had given an order that may or may not have been misunderstood. Depending on whom you believed. The fact was that Annie was dead. The system had taken from Jake the one thing, the one person, about whom he cared in the slightest. And with respect to Annie, he had cared with every ounce of his soul.
    Trembling, Third Engineer Jacob Rounding forced himself back to the junction box to try to determine why the electricity was off in two of the most expensive suites. He decided he was going to have to send one of the electricians.
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    â€œHow’s it going, Cagayan?” asked Jake Rounding an hour later as he tried to peer into the tiny space behind the backup generator.
    â€œGood, Mr. Rounding,” stuttered Marcello as he returned to wiping up the diesel oil that had spilled from a leak, now repaired, in the generator’s supply line.
    â€œFind any other problems?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œGood.”
    Cagayan listened as Rounding turned and continued on his way. He then reached into his right pants pocket and rubbed the cell phone. It’d become for him a fetish, the ultimate symbol of power. Of strength.
    Although he had not appreciated it at the time, Marcello had experienced power from even his youngest years. His father, as stern and demanding as any man with too many children, no money and no wife might well be, had required his near total obedience. He had rewarded performance with food, and failure with starvation and beatings.
    The boy recognized power and authority, but he had not begun to understand its totality until the day his father, his existing icon of power, had been forced to his knees. There, in the eyes of the soldier, he had seen the pleasure that comes from the exercise of power. And from that day on he had been compelled by the world around him to learn more and more about power, strength and weakness.
    The runty, malnourished boy’s path to the sea was a long, painful one. It started with unending hours of walking down muddy roads and across fields and through the hot, damp forest, sleeping where he could. Along the way he stole food from farmers just as impoverished as his father. Then one night, one of those impoverished farmers named Pablo caught him stealing a banana and beat him severely. Instead of driving him off into the forest,