18

Turbul: a billion years ago this creature was little different from any Terran fish. It possessed a spine, the requisite internal organs, gills, fins, a tail and teeth. However, the evolutionary pressure of being fed upon by leeches for so long has wrought some strange changes. The turbul still possesses all of the above, but now in a configuration enabling it to survive leech attack. Its fins stem directly from the spine, the muscles moving them running inside its bones. Muscles also run down inside the spine to the tail, and the jaw muscles are similarly encased -just sufficient to keep it mobile and feeding. Its other internal organs, contained in a bag attached to the spine itself, can quickly regrow themselves. Outside all of this, with the fins protruding through it, the turbul grows a dense cylinder of nutritious flesh, which is nerveless and a prime target for leeches. A turbul can lose all of this flesh and still survive. It is as if, rather than evolve a thicker skin or a shell, the turbul has accepted the inevitability of leech attack, abandoned its defences, and retreated inside with its most vital parts. It thus sacrifices its outer layer to keep its inner self alive. There are many other fish forms to have done this, most notably the boxy —

Forlam understood the oblique order he had been given by his Captain, also that others might deliberately misinterpret it in the hope of avoiding danger. Danger was not something that frightened him—only his own fascination with it did that.

‘Go to your cabins; I’ll handle this,’ he said to the Hoopers accompanying him. ‘I doubt more of us will be any help.’

‘But that’s where we’re going anyhow,’ said Dorleb.

Forlam sighed. It sometimes seemed to him that the fibres in the brains of many Hoopers strangled their thought processes. ‘A laser won’t bring down a Polity drone,’ he explained. ‘Captain Ron wants to free our mates below. He ordered me to go ahead and rescue them.’

‘Huh?’ came Dorleb’s brilliant reply.

Now on the bridge stateroom deck, Forlam paused and looked around, then abruptly bellowed, ‘Thirteen!’ The others eyed him in a way he had become quite accustomed to. Let them think he was mad.

When they reached the door leading through to the crew cabins, one of the Hoopers stepped through immediately, while shaking her head and saying, ‘Orbus . . . the Vignette.’

Two more Hoopers followed her. The two remaining just stood watching Forlam.

‘You’ll be needing our help,’ said Dorleb.

‘No, I won’t,’ said Forlam. ‘More of us would just be easier to detect.’

Without further objection the last two headed off. Forlam soon reached the head of the ladder leading down into the bilge, but rather than descend he went into the nearby armoury. One crate remaining in the cage was still sealed. He tore it open and took out a laser carbine, then continued on down, finally reaching a walkway leading towards the submersible enclosure. He paused by the door, gave it a light push with the snout of his carbine, and watched it swing open. A floating shape was immediately visible, the moment he stepped inside. Thirteen was hovering in the middle of the enclosure.

‘You’ve been expecting me,’ Forlam suggested.

‘I have not,’ the seahorse drone replied.

Ahead of the submersible, the irised door abruptly opened in the hull to reveal a shimmer-shield and murky depths beyond. Movement to one side spun Forlam round, raising his weapon, then he relaxed on seeing Isis Wade emerging from the submersible.

‘What happened up in the bridge?’Wade asked.

‘Bloc sent away all those he didn’t consider a danger to whatever plans he has. The Captain sort of ordered me here on a rescue mission.’

Wade smiled and pointed. ‘Suits and breather gear are over in those cabinets.’

Just like that.

Forlam felt a surge of something unpleasant in his guts. He walked over to the glass-fronted cabinets and studied their contents. The suits were inset with chain-mesh. The breather gear consisted of full-faced masks from which pipes led to a haemolung that strapped on the wearer’s back. The cabinet locks were coded touch panels, so he reached up to the top of the door before him and wrenched it off.

‘I guess the designers of those cabinets didn’t take Hoopers into account,’ said Wade, stepping past Forlam. ‘Or Golem.’ He ripped off the next door and took out a suit.

‘Why do you need a suit?’ Forlam asked, as he began donning one.

‘I can’t be hurt by much out there,’ Wade replied, ‘but I could lose much of my syntheflesh.’

‘What’s the plan then?’ Forlam asked.

‘Thirteen can lead us to a place on the Prador ship’s hull where we can gain access. We find the Vignette’s crew. If they’ve been fully cored we leave them and get out fast. If they’re just controlled by spider thralls, we excise their thralls and lead them out.’

‘Nice and simple then.’ Forlam reached down and drew a ceramal diver’s knife from where it was sheathed at his calf. ‘What about the ship’s security systems?’

‘Where we are going, the security system is weak, and Thirteen can disable it undetected just so long as Vrell doesn’t run a diagnostic check.’

‘And if he does?’

‘Then we’re in trouble, and we may need our weapons.’ Wade reached for his APW, which was resting against the door of the next cabinet.

Forlam eyed the footwear in the base of the cabinet, undecided on whether to wear flippers or the weighted boots. When he saw Wade choose boots he did the same. Soon they were ready and, hoisting a waterproof pack onto his shoulder, Wade led the way towards the shimmer-shield, where Thirteen was already pushing through into the ocean. On his turn, Forlam felt as if he was stepping through a wall of treacle. Once through, and dropping the few metres down to the Prador ship’s hull, he felt a sudden horrible excitement. Few Hoopers learnt to swim, since no Hooper went into the sea as amatter of choice, fear of it being inculcated from birth. Forlam looked around, almost disappointed by the dead waters surrounding him. Then, clutching his carbine, he followed Wade across the spaceship’s hull.

Thirteen led them out from the Sable Keech to the base of one of the weapons turrets. All about drifted the remains of juvenile rhinoworms, prill and glisters. This organic wreckage lay motionless, which for Spatterjay life forms was unusual because, even in pieces, they usually kept moving. This mess was, however, blurred around the edges and seemed to be dissolving. He realized that though the battle had killed most large animals in the area, the voracious plankton remained unaffected.

‘Here,’ came Thirteen’s voice from a com button in the corner of Forlam’s mask. He noticed that the hull nearby was very uneven where it curved down to the base of the weapons turret. Thirteen was poised over a metre-wide gap between the edge of the turret and the hull. Joining the other two, Forlam peered down into the dark cavity. The drone now descended, opening its seahorse mouth to emit a beam of light. Forlam immediately jumped after it, his boots dragging him down between narrow walls and landing him on a set of guide rollers for the turret. The light was now playing down by his feet. He stooped and peered into what might have been a crawl space for humans, so may well have been intended for human blanks. He ducked inside as Wade descended above him, more light spearing down from a torch the Golem held.

As he landed Wade said, ‘The light, on your carbine,’ and pointed with the torch he himself held. Unfamiliar with all of the controls but the trigger, Forlam groped about until Wade reached over and pressed a button on the stock. Now his weapon emitted laser light at the lowest setting and maximum diffusion.

‘Thanks,’ said Forlam, and wriggled after the drone.

Ten metres in, Thirteen tilted, manipulating something in the crawl-space ceiling with its forked tail. A hatch hinged down and the drone ascended. Forlam followed, standing up out of the water into a duct, then climbed up over the edge of it. As Wade clambered up behind him Forlam took off his mask. Somewhere he could hear fans operating, and a rank breeze blew in his face.

‘Ventilation duct,’ he decided.

‘Even Prador have to breathe,’ Wade observed, then turned to the hovering drone. ‘Thirteen, your AG?’

‘There are no gravitic detectors inside this ship,’ the drone replied, moving on.

Now, half-crouching, they made their way on through hundreds of metres of ducts. Forlam realized that if he got separated from Thirteen and Wade he might not find his way out again. Finally they came to a heavy metal grating set in the floor.

‘The holding area,’ Thirteen announced. ‘Do not shine a light in there as it will be detected.’

The drone descended tail first, turning slightly to fit through one of the diamond-shaped holes in the grating. Once Thirteen was out of sight there came a flickering of green light from below.

Lasers, Forlam realized.

Then, metallic clickings and scrapings ensued for a few minutes until Thirteen called, ‘I have disabled the three cameras. They will show a previously recorded scene until I instruct them otherwise.’

Wade now shone his torch down inside, revealing the scuttling of large lice. Directing his own light into the area below, Forlam discerned Hoopers sprawled on the floor. With a horrified thrill he realized that the lice were feeding on them.

‘Where did you learn that trick?’ Wade asked the drone.

‘From an old Polity war drone who knows more about Prador security systems than the Prador would be comfortable with,’ replied Thirteen.

Forlam grinned—he knew that old drone.

‘Your carbine,’ said Wade, holding out his hand.

Forlam handed it over, then shielded his eyes when the Golem knocked the weapon’s setting back up and used it to cut their way in. It took some time; the bars were thick even though out of the prisoners’ reach. When Wade had sliced along three sides, he used the beam only to heat the metal on the remaining side, before kicking the grating to bend it down.

‘How do we get them out of there?’ Forlam asked.

Wade opened his pack and took out an electric hoist and a webbing harness.

‘Right.’ Forlam snatched back his carbine and, jumping down into a mass of lice, began stamping on them. Wade landed lightly beside him, stepped over to the prostrate Hoopers, and began pulling off the lice still chewing on them. Soon the horrible creatures got the idea and began scuttling for cover. Forlam kicked one of the stragglers against the wall and leaned down to more closely inspect a woman lying at his feet just as Wade adjusted the setting on his torch so it became a lantern.

‘They’re gonna be trouble,’ Forlam observed.

The female’s clothing was ragged on her starveling dark-blue body; a leech tongue protruded over the unnatural jut of her lower jaw. The man next to her, he saw, had fingers twice as long as normal, had shed all his hair, and his nose had melded with his top lip.

‘Evidently.’ Wade placed his light on a stony slab jutting from the nearby wall. He then opened his pack and took out an injector—high dose Intertox.

Yeah, like that’s going to work, thought Forlam.

He remembered back to when he had approached this state, and some of the things he had done at the time. He also recollected days spent in a reinforced straitjacket, being similarly dosed until he ceased to be a danger ... to everyone. He hung his carbine from his shoulder by its strap, then reached down and turned the woman over onto her face. Drawing his ceramal knife he wondered where to cut . . . Then something lashed out beside him, snatching the knife from his hand.

‘We cannot do that,’ said Thirteen, now holding the knife in its forked tail.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Wade.

‘I’ve been scanning,’ said the drone. ‘They have been converted into an adjunct to the ship’s computer systems. If we remove their thralls now, Vrell will realize at once.’

‘How strong is the signal?’ asked Wade.

Thirteen turned in mid-air to face the Golem. ‘I picked it up earlier on the Sable Keech, but could not identify it then. Some sort of high-level mathematical program is being run.’

‘Then presumably,’ Wade replied, ‘their location won’t be an issue?’

‘This is so,’ the drone replied.

‘We move them, then,’ said Wade, and turned away. ‘Forlam,’ he pointed to a large mass of cable mesh hanging from the wall, ‘cut lengths of that. We’ll bind them and take them out, one at a time.’

Forlam held out his hand to the drone, which returned his knife. Reluctantly he resheathed it, then with a sigh unshouldered his carbine. He had been looking forward to digging out those thralls, but really it would be best if he did not derive his pleasures that way.

* * * *

As he worked, Vrell noticed the requirement for increased signal strength in order to stay in contact with his blanks. Checking all other internal security systems and encoded thrall channels, he immediately realized what was happening. Two of the six in the holding area had been removed from the spaceship and doubtless those who had done the removing were still aboard, taking the others out, since there were many dead or suspicious areas in the security camera network. But it did not matter all that much. The six were still thralled, so he could continue to use their minds as processing space whatever their location. Then he noticed that four who had earlier helped him rework the U-space engine were free of their thralls, though trapped in the engine room. But even that no longer mattered.

Obtaining the nanochanger had been easy. A simple instruction to Bloc, and the reif had been forced to toss one over the sailing ship’s side. Setting it working, however, had not been so simple. Vrell quickly realized that opening or scanning the device would destroy or corrupt its delicate internal components. In the end he instructed Bloc to next throw a reification cleansing unit over the side. Now the changer was plugged into the cleansing unit and working: injecting microscopic nanofactories into the fluid Vrell was passing through the cleanser. This fluid was then circulated through a vessel which took the place of a human body, and inside that the factories clung, just as they would attach inside human veins: little volcanic limpets pumping out masses of complex nanomachines. After hours of scanning these, Vrell selected one variety of machine particularly suited to his purposes.

Now, before Vrell, in the laboratory he had recently opened, antigravity containment suspended a mass of nanites cultured from his original selection, in a saturated solution of salts within a study pit. Vrell peered down at the watery lens-shaped mass. It was white but with a metallic hue, and shifted slightly as the nanite clumps inside it readjusted. While operating the pit through his control units, Vrell assessed a virtual representation of one of the nanites in his mind. The nanite came with its own toolkit, which could be programmed by radio. It was a supreme technological creation, and only by now using the system of ship’s computers and human minds, earlier put together for U-space calculations, could Vrell fully interpret it, and change it.

The original nanites, on activation, replicated a millionfold before searching for bone. This they bored through in search of marrowbone stem cells. Their purpose was then to deliver this base genetic template to the other nano-builders throughout the human body. Stripped down to its skeleton, one of these nanites formed a perfect framework to take other molecular tools. However, its present tools could serve the Prador’s purpose: the catalytic debonding molecule made to bore through bone could, with a small alteration, be changed to bore through Prador shell—merely a bonus, as Vrell expected them to gain access through the Prador lung. Those tools which enabled the nanite to recognize marrowbone stem cells could be adjusted to detect genetic sequences Vrell had obtained from the dead Prador in the drone cache.

The tools that then enabled the nanite to locate other builder nanites and home in on them Vrell altered to locate certain potassium compounds found in Prador nerve tissue, and other tissues in the Prador lung. Upon finding a nerve, it then travelled along it until it hit a synapse, then it returned to its replication stage digesting surrounding tissue to build copies of itself. Finding lung tissue, it did the same. While dying, the victim would be breathing more nanites into the air.

Once the virtual shape was performing to Vrell’s satisfaction, he loaded its parameters to the pit, before turning his attention to the delivery system. Some hours later he held a small wedge-shaped container that fitted perfectly between the faces of one claw. Gaseous dispersion. A few nanites settling on Prador shell or in the lung would be enough, for the right Prador.

With black amusement, Vrell well understood the King’s need to destroy any Prador, outside his own family, potentially infected by the Spatterjay virus. Such a creature would undoubtedly make a lethal enemy.

* * * *

Through omniscient senses from a commanding position Zephyr understood that Death—the enemy—took many forms and realized that he must defeat every one of them. The creatures that had died in the sea all around him were just the result of a concentration of Death’s forces in this area; elsewhere in the ocean that was going on all the time. But then creatures did not count as life, so did their passing count as dying?

‘What about hornets?’ asked his other half, Isis Wade, from somewhere down below.

Zephyr shook his head, but the question would not go away. He smacked his head against the mast a couple of times, but that did not help either, only dented the mast.

‘Individual hornets are insentient, yet the whole can be ourselves,’ Wade persisted. ‘You cannot make arbitrary distinctions like that.’

‘Then they died,’ Zephyr replied out loud, ‘and I must do what I must do.’

‘You can’t fight Death, nor kill it. Death is an absence of life not the presence of a tangible something.’

‘I have the means of striking a blow here.’ So saying, the Golem sail again cracked his head against the mast.

‘Assume that everything you say is correct,’ said Wade. ‘Surely you see that by killing you serve Death, even if it is Death itself you kill.’

Zephyr’s head felt strange now, and that had nothing to do with its recent impact with the mast. The Golem sail looked up as shadows occluded the morning sky and both Huff and Puff came in to land on nearby spars.

‘What’s that about striking blows?’ asked Puff.

‘I will strike a blow against Death, my enemy,’ Zephyr replied.

The two organic sails turned to look at each other. Huff shrugged, and Puff turned back to Zephyr. ‘We’ve been hearing bits of your conversation with that Wade fella when he climbs up here. Death is an enemy of us all, I suppose.’

‘Exactly,’ said Zephyr.

‘But it’s not a thing you can kill,’ Huff added. ‘Without it there would be no life.’ Huff pointed down to the roof of the midship deck cabin.

Zephyr peered down and observed a pile of meat—juvenile rhinoworms the two other sails had bitten into pieces.

Creatures . .. not alive . . . alive?

Zephyr felt a coil of angry buzzing inside himself. Hornets killed to find food for the hive. Was that wrong then? If hornets did not feed, the hive died, and so served Death. If hornets fed, then they killed, and again served Death. By living, all creatures served Death.

‘You know, somewhere in your heart,’ interjected Wade, ‘that your belief is paradoxical.’

‘But it is my belief!’ Zephyr bellowed.

‘You what?’ asked Huff.

‘And thus we get to the heart of the issue,’ said Wade. ‘I’ll have to leave you for a moment — the damned winch just jammed.’

Focusing on Huff, Zephyr shouted, ‘If I don’t believe I can kill Death, I will not be me! I will be only part of something!’

‘You’ve lost me there,’ replied Huff.

* * * *

Extruding his silvery eye from a metre down in gritty mud, Sniper observed the spaceship, now visible through the settling murk. It extended out of sight to his right and left, and the side of it rose like a steel cliff before him. Having got this close he wondered What next? If he could get inside, there was no problem: what he would then do involved every missile left in his weapons carousel. The problem was penetrating that armour.

Sniper listened to the sea-bottom sounds at the lower end of the aural spectrum. Somewhere below him, the seismic activity of packetworms; a kilometre back he heard the scuttling of prill and glisters returning to the area, attracted by the organic detritus; and somewhere far to his left the whooshing and snapping sounds of a turbul shoal already feeding. Also, from somewhere above, there came rhythmic crumps as if someone were walking on the spaceship’s upper hull. Now extruding one of his main spatula-ended tentacles, he activated the scanning devices it contained, modifying the emitted infrasound to mimic the other sounds around him. It took some minutes for him to clean up the return signals, in which time he also detected ultrasound and infrasound scans from the ship itself. In his mind he built up a fuller picture of what lay before him, and felt a sudden surge of excitement, though quickly curtailed.

It had to be a trap, he decided; there could be no other explanation. A major triangular port lay open in the hull—the kind that Prador disembarked from, or one for deploying large weapons. Sniper retracted his tentacle and eye, and began burrowing towards that port.

The mud here was increasingly laden with rubble and large shell fragments, so Sniper’s progress slowed. In two hours he finally reached the ship’s edge, below the port, and again extruded his eye up through the mud. It was much lighter than earlier, the sun well above the horizon and its light penetrating into the depths. For a long moment he studied a strange life form nearby. This segmented thing was long and wormish, and writhing slowly. One of its segments had detached and was inching away, and even as he watched another broke free. No record of this creature in his memory . . . but it was irrelevant. He again probed his tentacle into the sea, and listened. Eventually he realized he was detecting only echoes—signals of scans from the ship, bounced from ten metres behind him, probably emitted from some device above him. That meant he rested in a blind spot.

Has to be a trap, he told himself.

Sniper started his chameleonware generator, then slowly and carefully burrowed to the surface. Halfway out from the sea bottom—no reaction. Fully out—still nothing. Extending his tentacles ten metres up the ship’s side, he grabbed the port’s lower rim and hauled himself up.

Drone cache.

He scanned inside with a strong ultrasound analogue of glisters and prill fighting each other. No drones were evident, but he detected ten simple optic cameras, nailed them with ten indigo lasers and projected into them the image of what he had been seeing for the last few hours: mud. Still keeping the cameras targeted, he eased inside the cache, not yet daring to use any drives or AG. Now the complicated bit. Keeping the lasers on target, he groped around on the floor, spooning up silt with the end of one of his major tentacles. Closing its spatulate end around the mud, he injected the microscopic tubes he had used to sample the Vignette wreck’s burnt timbers, but instead of sampling, used them to draw off the water. The silt, strained to the consistency of damp earth, he then injected with a slow-setting crash-foam mix. He then moved around the cache jamming the mixture into nine camera recesses. The tenth camera, still targeted by one laser beam, he decided he must try to subvert, as he could not go around sticking mud on every lens inside the ship.

It took him only minutes to remove this last camera from its recess and tap into the optic feed behind it. Using techniques learnt longer ago than he cared to remember and a programming worm stored from the same distant period, he accessed an optic amplifier and recording module behind the wall. In the module he found a clock and set it forward, then he linked recorded images into the real-time feed. The camera would now show this cache as it had been just before Sniper entered it.

Curious, the old drone copied to himself all the stored footage and, as he reinserted the camera in the wall and moved back, began studying it. What he saw was both fascinating and worrying. The life form outside had been in here, but that was not the most fascinating thing he registered. Sniper turned and gazed at a mound of remains lying to one side of the cache. He moved over and scraped away some of the silt, picking up a large piece of charred Prador carapace, then the remains of a claw. After delving for a little longer he uncovered half of a distinct visual turret, a head—something no Prador he had ever encountered had possessed. Abruptly his plans and intentions changed. He might be somewhat irascible, but he still worked for the Polity, and that organization might be served better by something other than the demolition job he intended. Turning towards the inner lock, he began sorting through his store of both physical tools and software for the right lock-picks.

* * * *

The entity within the submerged vessel opened communication with the other Prador ship far above and asked, ‘Why do you want to kill me?’

On the bank of hexagonal screens beside it, the entity observed all the safety programs come on as they restricted the communication to voice only, for Vrost had just tried to send a worm burrowing into the spaceship’s systems. This probing continued for a few minutes, until the Prador captain admitted defeat and spoke.

‘Because you are an enemy of our King,’ Vrost replied.

‘Under my father, Ebulan, I have always been a loyal subject of Oboron. Now my father is dead, why am I considered a threat?’

A long delay followed. This communication was open channel so that the Warden could listen in. The entity knew Vrost could not openly say why Vrell might be considered a threat without revealing what he himself was. The entity, itself called Vrell, had therefore decided to have at least a little fun before dying.

‘All Prador adults are a threat, and only a greater threat keeps them in check,’ Vrost replied.

‘You mean Oboron, and his family, like yourself and the rest of the King’s Guard?’

This was perhaps edging into dangerous territory, but this Vrell could not resist.

‘It is by the rule of force and selection by power that the Kingdom survives. No Prador can remain unaligned.’

Vrell reflected on how Prador families that grew too powerful or made too many alliances were mercilessly crushed. In the Kingdom murder was a political tool. He now understood certain events that had meant nothing to him in the past: how many Prador families or individuals involved in biological research had been exterminated. Obviously they too had stumbled upon what he now knew.

‘Let me align myself now. Let me swear loyalty to the King. You will then have no reason to kill me.’

‘That seems reasonable,’ interjected the Warden on the same frequency.

Vrost rebuked the AI: ‘This is an internal Prador matter.’

‘Yes, but one that has spilled over into the Polity domain,’ the Warden countered.

Vrost had to be foaming at the mandibles by now. On a nearby screen Vrell observed an insistent signal from Vrost that they switch to a private channel. Doubtless the Prador captain wanted a one-to-one chat, and also to actually see Vrell—not because the bandwidth of a visual signal would allow a worm to be sent, but to confirm the truth of its suppositions one way or the other. That was not going to happen. And anyway Vrost would learn nothing by seeing this Vrell—who decided to play this game for a little longer before making the concession he had to make.

‘There would have been no problem, Warden, if Vrost had not arrived here intent on causing an incident with the Polity, and an ecological disaster down here.’

‘This is true,’ the Warden replied. ‘You too could have avoided an incident had you declared yourself to me. Under Polity law you are not culpable for anything you did whilst under the control of Ebulan’s pheromones. Now, unfortunately, you have kidnapped some of the people of this planet, and killed one of them, and also endangered the lives of Polity citizens.’

Vrell felt a moment’s chagrin at that. It had not even occurred to him that the Polity would not automatically want to hunt him down and kill one of Ebulan’s kin.

‘I admit to endangering Polity citizens, but only so I could survive. Those citizens would have been in no danger were it not for Vrost’s intemperate actions. I also admit to kidnapping citizens of this planet. The unfortunate death of one of them was due to a radiological accident aboard this ship. I will, however, release the others unharmed, should I be given the opportunity.’

Vrell knew that the blanks could recover from the changes they had undergone, but that to call them ‘unharmed’ was rather stretching the terminology. The lie about a radiological accident could be proven neither one way nor the other, but none of that really mattered. All that was needed was Vrost’s belief in what was to follow.

‘What then will be your actions?’ asked Vrost.

‘Obviously this situation cannot continue. Should you destroy me down here, that will result in diplomatic repercussions with the Polity, but I cannot remain down here forever.’

‘This is so.’

‘As I see it, I must prove my loyalty to the King. Allow me to leave this world and I will surrender myself to you. I will place this ship in a parking orbit, and come over to you in a suit only.’

More long minutes passed, then Vrost replied, ‘That is acceptable.’

Vrell accessed the ship’s systems and began to follow instructions.

Prador never showed mercy and never backed down. This Vrell knew that Vrost would allow him no closer than a hundred kilometres. He was going to die, and he was seriously annoyed about that.

* * * *

Water, carried through the shimmer-shield in the folds of Forlam’s suit, splashed onto the floor. He pulled off his mask, walked over to the submersible and shed his other load at the foot of it. Over many years he had incidentally met most of the Vignette’s permanent crew, and in latter years, before he went offworld with Ron, engineered encounters with them because he felt they well knew something he was only just beginning to learn. He did not recognize this crewman’s features, but then they were no longer quite human. This one was a man and, judging by his clothing and the facial jewellery that seemed to be getting gradually sucked into his face, he was one of two Forlam had met earlier. The other might be one of the other two lying here. He turned round as a splashing sound alerted him to Wade stepping in through the shimmer-shield.

Wade trudged over and dumped the fourth crewman on the floor. He paused then tilted his head as if listening to something.

‘Two more and we’re out of there,’ said the Golem, now focusing on his companion.

They could easily have carried more than two each—Wade being a Golem and Forlam being a middling old Hooper—but the difficulty lay in getting them through the ventilation ducts.

‘There’s still Orbus and the other three,’ Forlam reminded him.

‘I know, but Thirteen is having enough trouble with the security systems we have encountered. He says our chances of getting them out of the engine room are remote.’

Forlam contemplated that as they headed back towards die shield. He owed Orbus nothing, just as he owed these here nothing, and to endanger himself attempting to rescue the remaining four was near insane in its foolishness. If Wade was not up to it, he wondered if he could rely on Thirteen’s continued help.

Again donning his mask, Forlam followed Wade back out into the ocean. Wade was just ahead of him, but rather than move on to the entrance beside the weapons turret, he turned to press a hand against Forlam’s chest.

‘Be still,’ he instructed over com.

Forlam froze and watched a turbul shoal pass overhead. The urge to pull away from Wade and start jumping up and down was almost unbearable, but he managed to repress it. Abruptly he realized that the changes wrought in him over the years—which had been exacerbated by his problems on the Skinner’s Island, when he had ended up looking something like those back inside—were going to kill him. But that was just an intellectual assessment: the prospect of danger and of death aroused in him a weird excitement.

‘Come on,’ said Wade, once the turbul were out of sight.

This time Forlam easily remembered the route through the ship. They dropped into the holding area where Thirteen, his AG shut off, clung to a wall ledge, then they stepped over to the last two of these crewmen.

‘We have to hurry,’ Wade said. ‘I need to get back.’

‘Why?’ asked Forlam, dragging one of the two Hoopers over to the winch hook.

‘It’s complicated,’ said Wade.

‘What isn’t?’

‘Okay, I am presently in constant communication with someone above, trying to persuade that individual not to leave the Sable Keech. He’s chewing on a spar at the moment, and I don’t think the threat of the weapons on this ship’—Wade waved a hand about himself—‘will restrain him much longer.’

‘You’re talking about Zephyr.’

Wade looked at him oddly, then started the winch running with the remote control he held. Forlam grabbed the hook, over which he had slipped the cables binding the Vignette crewman’s wrists, and rode the winch up with him. Up above he unhooked the man and dragged him to one side, then rode the winch down.

‘What makes you say that?’ the Golem asked.

‘Oh come on, we’ve all seen you climbing up that mast for your daily chat. I don’t see why you do that though, if you can communicate with Zephyr from anywhere.’

They hooked up the second man, and this time Wade rode up with him, and stayed up there to lower the hook back down for Forlam.

‘Talking to him face to face, he cannot shut down communication, except by shoving me off a spar,’ Wade explained.

‘What’s it all about?’ Forlam asked, reluctant to reach up and grip the hook.

‘Come on, we have to—’

Suddenly the Prador ship was vibrating. Thirteen shot away from the ledge to hover in the middle of the room, turning slowly, his tail lashing like an angry cat’s.

‘What is that?’ Forlam asked.

‘Turbines,’ said the drone briefly.

‘Come on!’ shouted Wade.

Forlam addressed the drone. ‘Can you open that door into here?’

‘I can, but the ship’s sensors would pick up anyone who moved beyond it.’

‘Forlam, don’t do this,’ said the Golem.

From an earlier exchange, Forlam had learnt the location of the engine room: a hundred metres back down the main corridor then off to the left. If he was quick, he might be able to get it done before Vrell had time to react.

‘Can you get those two out by yourself?’ he asked Wade.

‘I can’t help you,’ the Golem warned. ‘What I have to do is too important.’

‘Thirteen, open the door, would you.’ As the drone drifted across the holding area, Forlam picked up his laser carbine and drew his ceramal knife from his boot.

* * * *

The juvenile rhinoworms who had been sporting in the shallows, and occasionally venturing ashore until Ambel kicked them back, disappeared like fog in a gale. The giant whelk arose out of deeper water, and Ambel realized that seeing it out at sea, or attached to a leaping heirodont, gave no true impression of its scale. The creature was truly gigantic, and he began to feel some reservations about his plan. But there was nothing he could do about that now. He pulled back the twin hammers of his blunderbuss, brought the weapon up to his shoulder, and aimed at its eyes.

Coming athwart the Treader, it paused, one eye on the ship and one eye swinging towards him. It then snatched one of its huge white tentacles up out of the ocean and swept it across, tearing away the rear mast as easily as brushing cobwebs, then flicked the tangle of mast spar and rigging into the sea.

‘Oh you bugger!’ said Ambel, and pulled the trigger.

His gun boomed, kicking out a cloud of smoke, and its load of stones pocked the creature’s lower body around one eye. It blinked, reached back with a smaller tentacle to rub at the base of that eye-stalk, then abruptly surged towards Ambel. The Captain turned and ran back into the forest of peartrunk trees. Behind him the whelk ploughed up the sand. He heard a sound as of some massive cork pulling out of a bottle, and glanced back to see a whole tree uprooted, then crashing down by the tideline. This did not bode well for the plan either. Finally he reached the spot he had designated and turned to face the monster.

The whelk’s shell stood as high as the highest branches and, while scraping by, knocked showers of leeches down from them. He noticed how its stalked eyes now extended out sideways from its main mass as if triangulating on him. Its flesh skirt spread for many metres ahead of it, and extending from that its main two tentacles were nearly in reach of Ambel. Yet it hesitated.

‘Come on! What are you waiting for!’ the Captain bellowed.

The monster began to ease forward again, and Ambel began to move back. Then Drum stepped into view from the right, hefting a leech harpoon. He let out a growling shout and hurled the weapon, hard. The point of it struck the whelk’s main body, but only penetrated deep enough for the barbs to engage. Behind Drum, Roach took up the rope and hauled it taut, while behind him two juniors wrapped the end of it twice around a peartrunk tree. The creature slapped its tentacle down, aiming for Drum, but clipped the rope instead. With a wrenching sound the tree tilted, and one of the juniors still clutching the rope was jerked hard against the trunk. He bounced once and landed limply on the ground.

‘Over here!’ shouted Anne from the other side and, firing her carbine, began to cut smoking lines across the monster’s flesh. It swung towards her, further loosening the tree. Another crewman ran forward eagerly, swinging his machete at a nearby tentacle. The blade just bounced off it, and while the man stared with puzzlement at his weapon, the same tentacle shot up and hit him with a sound like a sledgehammer hitting a peach. He left the ground and disappeared into foliage, five metres up.

‘Ready, lads,’ said Ambel, taking up the harpoon at his feet. Pacing forwards, he threw this second weapon with all his might. It struck a soft spot just below shell, and penetrated deep. Behind the Captain, Silister and Davy-bronte took up the harpoon rope and wrapped it around a rocky outcrop. Ambel began running to the left, spying Drum heading to the right. The other Captain snatched up another harpoon.

‘We need to get in closer!’ Ambel shouted to him. ‘We can’t afford to have any of these come loose!’

On the other side of the creature from Drum, Boris carted his dismounted deck cannon out of cover. As he fired it, the recoil flung him over onto his back. Striking the whelk’s shell, its projectiles exploded glittering shards all over Drum, who was now charging in with his harpoon held level. Peck, pumping cartridge after cartridge into his shotgun, covered Boris as he struggled to his feet and recovered the cannon. Drum struck, driving the harpoon half a metre in below the whelk’s eye, then with a bellow and another massive shove, thrust it in a full metre. The whelk’s bubbling squeal was painful to hear.

Another harpoon from Ambel, this time straight through the end of a major tentacle. A group of five hauling on the rope, trying to draw the limb down and immobilize it. Someone screaming on the other side, the ragged remains of a human thumping down onto the earth. Yet another harpoon from Drum, but snapped off before its rope could be secured. A peartrunk tree, ripped out of the ground, slammed down on two fleeing Hoopers. More harpoons. More ropes. Someone suspended high, crunched up like paper, discarded. Another Hooper dragged in to disappear underneath the fleshy skirt. Now came Ambel’s tenth harpoon. He ran in while crew opposite him fired on the creature, again distracting it. He swore when one badly aimed shot thumped into his stomach, then drove the harpoon down hard into the base of a large tentacle, rested his full weight on it, and shoved again. The weapon went right through into the ground.

Ambel looked up to see one dinner-plate eye observing him from only a metre away, just as the tentacle twisted, smacking the harpoon haft hard against his shoulder. He felt his collarbone break, staggered back, then turned to run. He caught sight of Crewman Pillow struggling to tie off this latest rope, then a tentacle wrapped around Ambel’s waist, jerked him to a halt, and lifted him off the ground.

The whelk now reared, exposing its serrated beak and, on the ground below, what was left of a crewman it had grabbed earlier. The Hoopers kept firing on it from all sides as it drew Ambel in, champing that beak in anticipation. Some shots penetrated, most just bounced off. Black lines crisscrossed the tentacle holding Ambel, along with the glowing pockmarks of pulse-gun fire. Drum charged forwards with another harpoon, aiming for the same limb. He hurled it just as another tentacle swept his feet from under him, missed his target, but the harpoon struck and penetrated shell. Ambel heard a hissing, and smelt something rank.

‘Fire at the shell!’ he shouted. ‘Fire at the shell!’

Anne was the first to transfer her aim, perhaps realizing Ambel’s intent. And that was all it took, as her shots ignited the methane now hissing from the shell. There came a drawn-out roaring explosion, the shell splitting to spew out a sheet of flame that ignited the surrounding foliage. As the whelk screamed, Ambel found himself hurtling through the air above.

‘Oh shit and buggeration,’ he managed, before coiling himself into a ball as he crashed back down.

It was some hours later that Silister and Davy-bronte found him, and helped him back to join the others. He stood and observed the whelk, its shell still smoking, pinned tight by thirty harpoons securely roped down. One of its eyes was missing. The other blinked at him.

‘Gulliver,’ he muttered, pointing a shaky finger, but later found that his fellow Lilliputians had not done too well. Two of them were dead—sprine was administered to them because their head injuries were so bad that little remained inside their skulls. Seven others would be severely immobilized until their backbones healed; one was missing his legs, which were somewhere inside the whelk; and not one of them had come through this without broken bones.

‘It could have been worse,’ he said, finally.

He understood why Drum nearly ruptured himself with laughter.