21
Whelkus Titanicus: this name applies to just one kind of deep-ocean-dwelling whelk, and should not be confused with the adult forms of frog and hammer whelks which, though large, do not grow to one tenth the size of this behemoth. Titanicus can weigh more than a hundred tons and stand twenty metres high. The pregnant female of this species gives birth to a brood of about a hundred young, and guards them while they feed and grow in the less inimical island shallows. When the youngsters reach a weight of about half a ton, and their shells harden, the mother leads them gradually into the depths. Only 10 per cent survive the journey down to the oceanic trenches. They there feed upon anything available, but their main diet consists of giant filter worms rooted up from the bottom. Virally infected as are most of the other local fauna, the large adults are nearly invulnerable, and it is speculated that specimens of this whelk may be even older than some sails. It is also possible that their survivability is enhanced by either conscious or unconscious control of the viral fibres inside them. This theory was propounded upon the discovery of a small population of these creatures growing the internal digestive systems of herbivorous heirodonts. They did this in a part of the Lamarck Trench recently denuded of fauna by an underwater eruption yet burgeoning with kelp trees thriving on the mineral output of that same eruption. But the adult Whelkus titanicus does not get things all its own way, for it is itself prey to an equally titanic ocean heirodont, and young adult whelks can even be broken open by the large adult hammer whelks—
Captain Orbus walked shakily from the Tank Room and leant on the ship’s rail, staring out across the nighted ocean. After a moment he took hold of what remained of the manacle around his right wrist, pulled hard on it, squeezed and twisted. With a dull crack the ceramal shattered and dropped clattering to the deck. They had only managed to keep him restrained because he had not been in his right mind. Foolish of them to think such flimsy restraints could hold an Old Captain. But what now? Soon someone would notice he was gone and come looking for him, probably with weapons, or with something a bit more potent like Captains Ron, Ambel or Drum. Would he then fight? Would he seek his usual release in violence?
Orbus shook his head, feeling tired and dried up inside. He realized something in him had changed. He looked back upon his life—the long centuries of sadistic brutality and the pointless cyclic nature of it all—and saw it for what it was: a waste. Perhaps now he should end it, cash in his New Skind banknotes for their equivalent weight in sprine and the oblivion that would bring him.
No, no way.
Yes, his life had been a waste up until now. But it did not need to continue that way.
‘Captain . . .’
Orbus looked round and recognized Silister and Davy-bronte further along the deck from him. They both carried Batian weapons, and both looked scared. Hearing pounding feet from behind, he glanced over that way and saw Forlam and other Hoopers approaching, but slowly enough for Ambel and Drum, coming along behind, to catch them up. He could fight now, then many of them would go over the side to the stripped-fish locker before they brought him down. What havoc and pain he could wreak.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘You broke your restraints,’ said Silister.
‘Feeling a lot better now,’ said Orbus. ‘I ate big lice on the Prador ship and they staved off the change, so I’m not going to hurt anyone.’
Davy-bronte snorted contemptuously, levelling his weapon at Orbus’s head. The Captain stared at him for a long moment, then turned to the other two Old Captains as they approached. He nodded towards the Tank Room.
‘The restraints in there won’t hold me. Where do you want me?’ he asked them.
‘Where would everyone be safe from you?’ asked Ambel, striding forwards.
Drum remained a few steps back, slapping a heavy iron club against the palm of his hand.
‘I don’t reckon you’ve anything that could hold me on this ship. But, if you like, I’ll walk straight back in there’—Orbus again nodded towards the Tank Room—‘and Erlin can stick a nerve blocker on me, shutting down everything below my neck.’
Ambel frowned. ‘Yes, that would seem a sensible course.’
‘But I’ll hurt no one if you let me remain free.’
Ambel stepped up close to Orbus and stared into his face. After a moment he said, ‘Show me your tongue.’
Orbus stuck it out. The end of it was still hollow, and he could feel the hard bits inside it where plug-cutting teeth had started growing. But the Intertox and nutrients had worked quickly in him. After a moment he closed his mouth.
Ambel studied him for a long minute, then gave a sharp nod. ‘Find yourself an empty cabin—there’s plenty available.’
Silister and Davy-bronte and the other gathered Hoopers looked on doubtfully.
Orbus smiled tiredly and turned back to the rail. ‘In a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the night air for a while.’
* * * *
Like a swarm of golden bees, the drones and the armoured Prador were beginning to disperse from around Vrell’s ship. This could only mean a strike was imminent.
‘That’s one big mother,’ observed Thirteen dryly.
Vrost’s ship was now plainly visible above the planetary horizon: a vast grey mass in the shape of a Prador’s carapace, but a shape losing definition under additional blockish structures, engines, weapons arrays and other less easily identifiable components. It was slowly turning and tilting, so its massive coil-gun—like a city block of skyscrapers turned horizontal and lifted above the main vessel on a giant curved arm—was all too visible. Sniper was surprised at Vrost giving so clear a signal of intent, but doubtless the Prador captain was now certain of making a kill. This close to the planet, engaging the U-space drive would tear Vrell’s ship apart, and no other drive would be fast enough to get it out of range. And his vessel now also represented little danger to those on the planet below, since anything left of it would burn up in atmosphere.
‘Let’s listen to what they’re saying,’ Sniper suggested. Cruising along ten kilometres behind, he snooped into the uncoded communications between the two Prador, and relayed it to the little drone.
‘Why have you ordered your troops back?’ the voice from the ship asked.
Vrost hesitated, perhaps wondering whether it was worth wasting energy on the soon-to-be-dead, but his curiosity won out. ‘I have moved them back because I do not wish them to get damaged.’
‘Coming to you as I have, I have demonstrated that I am no threat. Why should I then be a danger to them?’
They were both playing games, with layers of bluff and counter-bluff. Vrost and Vrell both knew the outcome of this encounter, and they both knew that the other knew, but Vrost had to be wondering if Vrell had accepted the inevitable and intended to go down fighting, or whether he had something else in mind.
‘You do represent a small threat to them,’ agreed Vrost. ‘But the shock wave and flying debris will shortly be a greater danger to them.’
‘I do not understand,’ said that voice again—Vrell.
Sniper understood the reason for this pretence at ignorance, more than did Vrost, and very much more than Vrell himself would be comfortable with. Sniper could tell Vrost everything, which would immediately scupper Vrell’s plans. But Sniper’s equally apportioned dislike and distrust of all Prador was tempered by his rapport with the underdog. In this situation he felt on Vrell’s side. Both of him.
Sniper interrupted. ‘Listen, shithead, very shortly Vrost will be cutting you and your ship to pieces. It doesn’t matter what you do now, you are dead. Down on the surface you managed to fend off some attacks, but only because Vrost could not employ the full power of his weapons without taking out half the planet. Up here he does not need to be so restrained.’
‘My name is not shithead,’ replied the voice.
‘Whatever,’ Sniper snapped. ‘You make a very clear target against the sky.’
A long pause ensued while the voice’s owner processed that.
On a private channel Thirteen asked, ‘Sniper, what are you up to?’
On the same channel Sniper replied, ‘Just reminding someone of something.’
‘Who is this?’ asked Vrost meanwhile.
‘Just an old Polity war drone who hasn’t lost his taste for turning Prador into crab paste,’ Sniper replied. ‘I can’t tell you how it gladdens my heart to see you two trying to kill each other.’
‘The state of your emulated emotions is not my concern.’
‘Bite me. Vrell, while you’re getting fried up here, why don’t you send out that war drone of yours for a rematch against me? I definitely owe it at least that. It doesn’t matter what you do now—you’re dead.’
‘I don’t get this,’ said Thirteen.
‘You will.’
Sniper wondered how long it would take for the underlying message to be understood. Then he was answered when weapons turrets on Vrell’s ship launched a swarm of black missiles. Many of them began exploding—quickly picked off by Vrost’s defensive lasers. Sniper tracked the rest, then grinned inside when their own drives ignited, turning them sharply towards the nearest of Vrost’s outside forces. A particle beam ignited space with turquoise fire from Vrost’s ship. It splashed against a hard-field before reaching its target, but on Vrell’s ship an explosion blew wreckage into space, as the relevant field projector overloaded. Then the coil-gun fired, but the projectile was intercepted with a similar blast from the particle cannon on Vrell’s ship. A wash of candent gas streamed past the smaller ship. The guards and drones were meanwhile occupied in either dodging or shooting down those missiles.
More salvos launched from both ships. Again the coil-gun, again the interception. EM explosions began to screw up Sniper’s reception, so he did not track the one missile with an atomic warhead that detonated only a kilometre from Vrell’s ship. The vessel tilted, some of its armour peeling away in the blast, then it righted and continued firing. Vrost’s ship was now accelerating. A nuke detonated on it, blasting a glowing cavity. Sniper realized the Prador captain was positioning his ship where there was no chance of any of his coil-gun missiles being deflected down towards the planet. Now came a U-space signature, weirdly distorted. Endgame.
‘There,’ said Sniper to Thirteen.
Seeing Vrell’s war drone blasting out into space, Sniper accelerated. Perfectly timed. The coil-gun began firing repeatedly. Four intercepted projectiles turned vacuum to furnace air. Power low for the particle cannons, the next was intercepted by hard-fields. A line of explosions cut down Vrell’s ship as projectors exploded. The projectile impacted, substantially slowed, but still slapped its target like some god’s hand. With fires burning inside it, a huge chunk of the ship fell away.
‘He’s mine!’ Sniper sent to those of Vrost’s forces who had spotted Vrell’s drone and were hitting it from all sides. ‘Vrost, pull them off!’
Just then, Vrost suddenly discovered more critical concerns. Again that distorted U-space signature. Vrell’s ship juddered partially out of existence, shedding tonnes of armour like potato peelings. Then, with a screaming sound over every frequency, it flashed out of existence completely.
‘Fuck me,’ said Thirteen.
The ship reappeared a hundred kilometres closer to Vrost’s vessel, only it no longer looked like a ship. Now it was a meteor-sized mass of glowing metal travelling at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour. Vrost’s forces rapidly lost interest in chasing the drone, which was now falling into atmosphere, blackened and distorted and obviously without functional drives. Vrost himself kept firing every weapon available at what remained of Vrell’s ship. Sniper gave a salute to the hugely accelerated wreck, turned on his fusion drive, and himself dropped into atmosphere. Long minutes later, he spread his tentacles wide and came down on the burnt Prador drone like a hammer.
* * * *
Having routed control to a joystick and simpler console mounted in the conning tower, Janer motored on the ocean’s surface under a starlit sky, only it was not just stars that lit the heavens. There had been some massive explosions up there, the glowing fallout from which was now dropping behind the horizon like a false sunset. Janer supposed Vrell had finally met his end at the claws of his fellow creature in orbit. He would find out eventually, but now he just wanted to get back to the Sable Keech, which was visible ahead of him, and there make use of the cabin and bed provided for him.
The big ship was slowing and turning, at the end of its journey, and had it been necessary for him to go in manually Janer doubted he could manage it, but the submersible possessed an automatic docking system. Before returning inside to start that procedure, Janer scanned the nearby ocean. On the console, the map showed him to be almost on top of the Little Flint, but he had yet to see it. Then, a few hundred metres out, he spotted that dish of black stone protruding from the ocean. This is what it had all been about: their voyage here. He hoped Bloc was satisfied.
With the hatch closed, Janer took up the primary controls and submerged the little vessel then, hoping he had got things right, he called up the docking icon, selected it with a tap of his finger, and sat back. The sub immediately dropped deeper and accelerated. Outside the water was dark, so he turned on the lights, just in time to see a frog whelk tumbling past, perhaps dislodged from the nearby flint. A few minutes later a massive wave of white water was boiling past above him, and he glimpsed the Sable Keech’s hull. The sub turned and rose, turned again and accelerated, then abruptly decelerated and veered. This happened twice more. Janer realized that the sub’s automatics were having problems compensating for the movement of the ship. On the third occasion a warning flashed up on his screen: IRIS door closed. He hit the nearby icon to open the iris and this time there was no deceleration. Suddenly the eye of the shimmer-shield was before him, then he was through it, the sub dropping half a metre with a shuddering crash. Clamps engaged, motors whined. He watched the sub enclosure revolve around him as the vessel was turned to present its nose to the iris, which was now drawing closed again.
Stepping out of the submersible, Janer looked around. It occurred to him that he should present himself to Captain Ron, but he felt too tired. Anyway, there was probably some signal on the bridge to tell the Captain that the sub had returned. He left the enclosure, climbed the nearest ladder up to a mainmast stairwell, cut through the seemingly unpopulated reification stateroom deck, then continued up a mizzen stairwell to the crew’s quarters. On his way he saw no one, and was grateful for that. It was with a feeling of relief that he closed his cabin door behind him.
Janer collapsed on his bed, allowing himself to just experience that moment of pure luxury—but something was niggling at his mind. He stood, pulled his backpack from a cupboard, opened it and removed his stasis case. Hinging open the hexagonal container, he observed two hornets ready in the transparent reservoir. That figured. He groped in his pocket and found his hivelink, stared at it for a moment, then returned it to his pocket. Not now—sleep seemed so much more important.
* * * *
Taylor Bloc stood on his apartment balcony gazing out across Haldon, watching the sun rise over the city. He blew on his delicate porcelain cup of tea and took a sip, relishing its tobacco pungency. Imported all the way from Earth, China tea was a luxury others would not appreciate as did he, but then his tastes were somewhat more sophisticated. It was a pure thing, not some India tea adulterated with one of a thousand popular additives, not base coffee doped with stimulant enhancers. Bloc left such things to others, to the normals who lived in their millions all around him working through their drear dull lives. He shook his head and smiled, turning away from the sunrise just as mathematical formulae, in a language he had only just come to know, began sleeting down the sky behind the city. In some part of himself he knew this was all wrong, but that part was frozen in horrified fascination as it observed those elements of this scene it knew so very well.
Bloc walked back into his apartment, placed his cup down on a table whose top was made of a polished slice of Prador carapace, and dropped into an armchair beside it. He then picked up the spider thrall he had recently purchased. This was the sort of thing that fascinated him: baroque technologies, grotesqueries, the unusual. He supposed it almost inevitable that his interests had led him to greater and greater involvement with the Cult of Anubis Arisen. But thereby another of his needs was fulfilled: the acquisition of wealth. It was pointless possessing such sophisticated tastes if one could not gratify them. Bloc placed the thrall back down on the table underneath whose surface a six-dimensional shape—following the strictures of the formulae in the sky outside—was trying to turn itself inside out. He smiled again, his foot passing through Calabi-Yau space as he turned to glance to his left. The inversion, folding part of the room into a fifth dimension, impinged on him as little as the formulae in the sky and the shape under the table. Instead it was the two figures now standing in the room that caused him to gasp in shock.
‘How—?’
The one on the right, a mild-looking man dressed in a slightly rumpled disposable suit, raised a short squat gun with a snout like a pepper pot. The weapon thwacked, and something more than the force of the micropellets entering Bloc’s face flung him up out of his seat and across the table. He lay there quivering briefly, then quickly freezing up. The Calabi-Yau shape passed over above him like an interdimensional bat.
Neurotoxin, thought one part of his mind. What the fuck? thought another.
‘Hi there,’ said the mild man, gazing down on him. ‘I’m Aesop, and my partner here is called Bones.’
Bloc’s horror grew. Neither of them had bothered to cover their faces, and now they had revealed their names to him. Both faces and names could of course be false, but there was something else in their attitude. They were undoubtedly here to kill him. Deep inside himself, that other part of him already knew this, and it dreaded the how of it. That part now listened to well-remembered words as Bones, a slim fair-haired youth, dragged him off the table and deposited him in an antique rocking chair.
‘You do of course understand how very annoyed with you are certain parties?’ said Aesop, setting up a little tripod on the table on which in turn he mounted an old-fashioned holocam.
Bloc tried to utter a name, could not even open his mouth. He could, however, just move his eyes, and observed Bones opening a premillennial doctor’s bag. These killers had style and panache but, even though he recognized this, neither that thought nor the neurotoxin prevented his bowel from emptying when Bones began taking out antique stainless steel pliers, forceps, scalpels, electric bone saw and cauterizer.
The holocam now perfectly set up and operational, Aesop took out an anosmic receptor and set that running. This device would continually sample molecules from the air, so that whoever viewed this recording, probably in VR, would miss nothing, not even the odours. Smelling the results of Bloc’s incontinence, Aesop waved a hand under his nose. ‘Playing to your audience, Bloc?’
Bloc managed to make a grunting sound, as the toxin was wearing off. Aesop glanced at his partner, who immediately walked over to the balcony and drew the doors closed, shutting out all sounds of the city beyond.
‘Nicely insulated apartment this. I had considered taking you elsewhere until I studied the building specs. No one will hear you scream here and, of course, my clients want to hear you scream. They want you to suffer a great deal, Taylor Bloc. So, while that toxin wears off, I’ll tell you exactly what we are going to do to you.’
Bloc screamed, his voice echoing off into unknown dimensions of a Calabi-Yau shape stretched as taut as his own skin as Bones peeled that away. He howled as they twisted out his nails and broke each of his finger joints, yet found himself bewildered by formulae writhing through the air behind his tormentors. Every aspect of his agony, every curve and angle of his surroundings, was redolent with mathematical meaning. Every movement and every change generated complex numbers. His skin represented in two dimensions the surface of space, and Bones shoving a finger through it, a gravity well. The bone saw flung up fragments of formulae that coalesced in the air, then spattered the floor as blood and vomit. There was direction to the calculation, as there was direction to Bloc’s torture. Both ended with the enveloping comfort of death, and finally he sighed away into blackness.
Taylor Bloc stood on his apartment balcony gazing out across Haldon, watching the sun rise over the city. He blew on his delicate porcelain cup of tea and took a sip, relishing its tobacco pungency. Part of him, deep inside, began screaming immediately.
No, not again . . .
Then, almost like a light being turned on, he woke trying to scream, but only a hoarse cawing sound issued from his mouth. Thrashing from side to side, he opened his eyes. The morning sunshine hurt, stabbing sharply into his head, and tears began pouring from his eyes. Where were they? Where were his killers? I escaped? But no, he did not escape—he died a painful undignified death, screaming, then his death continued . . .
Aesop and Bones . . . I killed them and now they serve me. Only dreams.
The morning sunshine was glaring through the windows. Bloc felt terrible. His body felt as if it had been beaten from head to foot, his teeth ached, he was cold, and his skin felt so sensitive that every small touch to it was almost a pain.
Then, he suddenly realized: I feel.
A deep shiver of awe ran through him, and he turned his head from side to side, locating himself on one of the restraint tables. He was not restrained, so he withdrew a hand from under the heat-sheet covering him—the thin insulating monomer snaking over his skin in an avalanche of sensation—and held it up before his face. It was baby pink, and as soft. The nails were just small crescents at the quick of each finger.
I’m alive.
With slow careful movements Bloc sat upright, the sheet sliding down his chest. It was almost too much—too much feeling for him to process. He groaned and in an instant Erlin was standing next to him, watching him with careful contempt.
‘You’ll get no nerve-conflict with your cybermotors,’ she said.
‘Keech . . .’ he managed.
‘Keech was augmented and remained so after his resurrection—that’s where his problems came from. You, however, are not augmented in any way.’
He turned to look at her, and while doing so tried to call up routines and diagnostics, access his control unit, open the channels to Aesop and Bones. Nothing.
‘What have . . . you done?’ It was a strange experience, breathing and speaking, and trying to arrange the two so they did not conflict.
‘When you downloaded from crystal to your organic brain and it became plain you were going to come out of the tank alive, I used an autodoc on you. It pulled every single power supply you contained, and I also used the doc to remove this.’ She held up something: a grey box that sat easily in the palm of her hand, with a hexagonal box affixed to the side of it, linked by a ring of sealed optics. Bloc recognized his memplant and the attached control unit.
‘What gives you the right to do that?’ he hissed. He was just a living man now.
‘The right?’ she asked, her voice incredulous. She shook her head, pulled a comlink from her belt and spoke into it. ‘You wanted to know—well, he’s awake now.’
From the link Ron’s voice replied, ‘Perfect timing.’
As Erlin returned the link to her belt, Forlam came over. He tossed a disposable coverall in Bloc’s lap. ‘Get dressed.’
‘You can’t give me orders. This is my ship. You are under my command; your Captain is employed by me.’
Forlam shrugged. ‘Naked or otherwise—don’t bother me.’
What are they going to do?
Bloc slid the heat-sheet all the way off him and stared down at his body. He looked perfect: no scars, just pink skin. His pubic hair was just a shadow above his genitals, and while staring at what Bones had once cut from him—an event all too clear in his mind after repetition—he felt a sudden surge of sexual feeling. He dressed, quickly, the coverall cold and textured against his aching skin. Finally clothed, he looked over to Erlin again.
‘I did this,’ he said. ‘It was because of me this ship was built. It is because of me that reifications will live. I own this ship and it is under my command.’
Erlin shook her head. ‘Let me bring you up to date and back to reality. Windcheater has imposed a large fine for the use of this ship’s engines, which in turn has caused a cost overrun on this voyage. Apparently, by your original agreement, Lineworld Developments now own this ship—not that it will profit them much.’
Bloc felt a tightness in his throat, and his eyes were watering again. Then a hand that felt as if made of rock closed on his biceps. Forlam marched him forwards.
‘You can’t do this!’ Bloc found it even hurt to shout. ‘I created all this! I did this! I am bringing my people to the Little Flint!’
Walking behind them, Erlin continued, ‘Most of your people are either in tanks or have shut themselves down. They don’t much like the odds, since successful resurrections are only one in seven thus far. Many of them are likely to end up like Bones, and the true cultists among them are angry at what you have brought them to.’
Bloc fell silent then, and allowed Forlam to lead him out on deck. They might think they had won, but they did not know him well enough. They would pay for this. How he would make them pay.
* * * *
It was a long fall to the bottom and, heavy now, the giant whelk had landed hard. She gazed up at the shapes hovering on the ocean surface and felt an immediate protective fear. Large predators up there ready to attack her? She needed to get back to shallows where she could protect the mass inside her, and where food creatures were small enough to easily subdue. She began dragging herself along the bottom, heading instinctively upslope to shallower waters. Momentarily she felt a strange disquiet. She vaguely recalled there had been an easier way of travelling than this, and something important she had to do. But that thought faded under the exigencies of the present.
The slope ahead was scattered with broken shells and black rhinoworm bones. Wherever she disturbed the bottom, white chalky clouds gusted up around her. This was good, so she deliberately stirred up more for concealment. At one point she heaved herself over an outcrop of dark rock, which splintered into sharp fiat flakes under her grip. The higher she got, the steeper became the gradient and the more such outcrops she encountered. On one of them she encountered a flock of hammer whelks, and instantly began snatching them up to smash their shells against the dark stone and chomp them down. She devoured half of them before the rest slid out of reach, but did not pursue. Higher still, and frog whelks diverged from her path, bounding downhill in slow motion.
There were more leeches evident here, and any that came close she snatched up and consumed. While thus engaged she spotted a line trailing from one of her tentacles, which stirred some memory but not enough to bring it into focus. In irritation she caught the line with another tentacle and tried to tear it free. The fact that this hurt only made her angrier. Eventually she succeeded in tearing the hook from her flesh, then watched the discarded tangle drift off and sink from view. There was some emotion then—some feeling of loss—but she resolutely turned away.
Now only hard dark flint lay before her—a cliff rising steeply from the slope. She hesitated as another vague memory hinted that this might not lead to island shallows, but instinct drove her on. She climbed, finding plenty of easy tentacle holds on chalky nodules or in dark crevices. If this turned out not to be the kind of place she wanted, then she would move on—her drive to do so was imperative.
* * * *
Drawn out rattling crashes jerked Janer from uneasy slumber.
Anchor chains.
He sat upright and looked around blearily. Stumbling from his bed he then collected clean clothing from his pack and headed for the showers. Upon his return he stared at the stasis case still exposed in the top of his pack, took it out, hinged it open and pressed his fingertip to the touch-plate beside the reservoir. This opened, releasing two hornets into the air. Inured to the creatures now, he ignored their angry buzzing while pulling their carry case from his ash-stained trousers. Once it was in place on his shoulder the hornets landed beside it and crawled inside. Janer placed the hivelink in his ear-lobe.
‘The ancient hive mind is dead,’ the hive mind told him, then demanded, ‘What is happening here?’
‘I would guess the Sable Keech has just anchored by the Little Flint,’ Janer replied.
‘Tell me what has happened while I have been out of contact.’
Janer considered the events of the voyage past, and knew he would be talking for quite some time. He also considered simply putting the hivelink back in his pocket, but then with a sigh stepped out of his cabin and began to relate the story. By the time he was halfway up a stairwell accessing the main deck, the hive mind interrupted to inform him, ‘Vrell’s ship has been destroyed and the other Prador ship is now departing. The Warden has now also informed me of the events at Olian Tay’s bank.’
Janer paused and peered at the two hornets. ‘Did you want me to tell this or not?’
‘Please proceed.’
‘Oh, and knowing the events at Olian’s you have of course authorized my bonus?’
‘Proceed with the story.’
‘Okay, but I’ll be checking that later.’ Janer continued upwards. ‘Just as it seemed we might be getting things under control, Vrell moved his father’s ship right up underneath us . . .’
The sun beaming on the deck, Janer observed that the anchors were indeed lowered but, by the noise of the chains being fed in and out of their lockers and by the intermittent sounds coming from the engines, he guessed the ship’s position was being carefully adjusted. He glanced over the rail and saw they were in fact right next to the Little Flint—that place made holy by Sable Keech.
The hive mind once again interrupted his monologue. ‘Windcheater warned of further punitive costs should the Little Flint be damaged in any way.’
‘He probably hoped they would crash into it then,’ Janer muttered.
‘Now, from your point of view, tell me what happened when you reached Olian‘s.’
Janer pointed along the deck to the crowd of Hoopers and reifications gathered amidships. ‘You’ll have to wait. Others will want to hear this.’
Keech had once told Janer that, to his recollection, his time here on the Little Flint had been no religious experience. Instead he’d had visions of some very human devils, tried to survive, then escaped from here to end up in a makeshift tank built by Janer, whilst Erlin had performed the midwife’s task of delivering Keech into a new life.
Keech now stood back from the main crowd with Ron and Erlin. Janer approached them.
‘What’s happening?’ Janer asked them.
‘This is what this voyage was all about, apparently,’ said Keech.
Erlin interjected, looking angry, ‘Those reifs still standing want to see the place—along with seven others who’ve survived the resurrection process.’
Ron turned and peered at the hornets on Janer’s shoulder. ‘That sail? Isis Wade?’ he asked him.
‘First I’ll have to tell you who they were,’ said Janer. He ignored the harrumph of protest from the hive mind and filled them in on that story, before proceeding to its ultimate outcome.
‘Kill Death?’ Shaking his head, Ron tapped his temple. ‘That sail was all at sea without sails . . .’
‘But Isis Wade has survived, I gather,’ said Erlin. ‘I’m glad about that.’
Ron took out his comlink and announced, ‘All right boys; let it go.’
The deck began thrumming from the vibration of massive hydraulics, and Janer wondered for a moment what exactly was happening. He saw the nearby rail moving away from him, and the crowd back away from it as the movable section of the ship’s hull began to fold down towards the sea, extending down with it the collapsible stair from under the main deck. Placing his comlink back into his belt Ron glanced round to where Forlam was escorting Bloc along the deck.
‘What are you going to do with him?’ Janer asked, expecting something nasty.
Ron merely shrugged, and gestured towards Keech.
Keech explained, ‘He gets to walk on the Little Flint just this once, then I take him back to the Polity. Windcheater decided it would be better that way—for good relations.’
‘You’re not going to throw him in for a swim, then?’
‘It would seem not.’ Ron looked disgruntled.
The hull section slapped down onto the sea beside the Little Flint, the stair from the main deck now fully extended. Hoopers scrambled down this to push out walkways leading onto that lonely piece of stone. After securing these, the Hoopers returned, and then the seven resurrectees walked down.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Keech, moving up beside Ron.
‘Seems only fair to let him set foot on the place,’ replied the Captain. ‘Why are you worried? You get him afterwards.’
‘Still . . .’ Keech looked round as Bloc finally approached.
Now, Janer spotted Captains Drum and Ambel stepping out from the nearby mainmast stairwell, propelling Aesop and Bones before them. When the four of them reached the edge of the ship, Ambel gazed over to eye his own ship, still trailing on its tow rope behind the Sable Keech.
‘Not so low in the water, now,’ he observed, glancing towards Ron.
The other Captain nodded, then, thumbing its volume down, held his comlink up against his ear.
‘I did this, I brought them here. I brought them here to the Little Flint!’ announced Bloc abruptly, as if that somehow gave him power in this situation.
The other seven resurrectees seemed bemused, and perhaps slightly disappointed. After wandering around on the surface of the Flint for a short time, they were already returning. Still-mobile reifications were now going down for a look around, too, some of them wearing the distinctive dress of Kladites. A few Hoopers joined them.
‘The Little Flint,’ said Bloc, triumphantly.
Janer eyed Ron, who was now muttering into his comlink. He went up to stand beside the Captain, but only in time to see Ron thumb the link off.
‘Y’know,’ said the Captain, ‘Convocation didn’t agree with Windcheater.’
‘Ron, what are you—?’
‘Everybody get off there; we ain’t got all day!’ Ron bellowed, interrupting him. He turned to Bloc. ‘I guess it’s all right for you to go down for a look.’ Indicating Aesop and Bones he added, ‘Those two as well.’
* * * *
Bloc placed his foot down on the Little Flint. He could feel it through the sole of his slipper. With all the obstacles they had thrown in his path, he had yet achieved this—no matter what they might think of him. He stooped down to touch the smooth stone, closed his eyes and absorbed the sensation. Standing up again, he glanced at Aesop and Bones, who had wandered off to the other side of Flint. They were conversing in low voices, and it seemed that, despite them having once been under his control, they now found themselves in the same straits as himself. He would make an alliance here. He straightened up and approached them.
‘Aesop,’ he said, ‘Bones.’
‘Bloc,’ replied Aesop. Bones just licked out his metallic tongue.
‘We’re even now. You two tortured me to death, and I killed you and made you serve me. Perhaps now we should put our relationship on a financial footing.’
Bones emitted only a hissing titter.
Aesop remarked, ‘Bones, even without benefit of flesh, is capable of expressing his amusement better than I can. Tell me, Bloc, what do you suggest?’
Bloc glanced over his shoulder to check the Old Captains and the others were still back by the walkways. He did not know why they had come down to the foot of the stair. Did they expect him to try to escape?
‘We have to retake the Sable Keech, More reifications will want to make this voyage here. I can offer you a percentage of the profits.’
As Aesop made a harsh hacking sound, Bloc realized the reif was trying to laugh.
‘Oh Taylor Bloc,’ he eventually said, ‘and how do you think we would fare against three Old Captains? Or against reifications who now hate you because you’ve brought them here to final death? Or against the Hoopers—and against Sable Keech?’
‘There is always a way.’
‘It’s over, Bloc. You wanted to come here to the Little Flint, because it was your mission, your calling, your destiny ... whatever. So enjoy it—and remember it until that moment they wipe your mind.’
Bloc turned away to study the Old Captains standing on the stairway, along with Erlin, Janer and Keech.
‘Anyway,’ continued Aesop from behind him, ‘you’re all alive again, and my, don’t you look pink. We might as well have ourselves some fun here, as it’ll make no difference to the sentence we receive back in the Polity. What do you think, Bones?’
The snicking sound as Bones extruded the blades from his finger ends was all too audible. Bloc turned, shuddering with horror at the memory of sharp blades cutting into his former flesh. He tried to back away, but Aesop’s decaying hand closed firmly on the front of his coverall.
‘No no . . . You don’t understand,’ he stammered.
‘Too late now,’ hissed Aesop.
Bloc heard a shout from behind, and glanced back to see Sable Keech running towards him. It was too late. Too late for all three of them. The other two had not seen the huge iridescent shell rising behind them, nor the dinner-plate eye, nor the enormous tentacles now reaching across the Little Flint.
* * * *
Sniper closed his own tentacles around the Prador drone and began decelerating before they both burnt up on reentry. He gripped tightly and kept his weapons systems online, just in case. They descended in a long arc that took them out of night into twilight, then towards daylight. As Sniper brought the drone down on an atoll just catching the rays of the morning sun, he once again opened communication with the Warden.
‘What are you doing?’ Thirteen asked meanwhile, detaching itself from Sniper’s armour and swinging in a circuit around the Prador war drone.
‘Repaying a favour.’
‘And what was so funny earlier?’ asked the little drone.
‘You’ve not figured it out?’
‘Knowing your humour, I suspect you somehow knew what Vrell intended to do to Vrost’s ship. But how did you know?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ the old drone replied. ‘Vrost’s ship is probably very badly damaged, but not enough to leave it unable to jump. I’d guess he’s now recalling all his forces in preparation to pull out of the system.’
Sniper then concentrated on scanning the Prador drone. Its missile store was thoroughly depleted and its power so low it could not block his scans. Quite possibly the flash-frozen Prador brain inside there had been fried. Sniper began to go to work on the armour, worming his tentacles in through the weapons ports and connecting to some internal systems.
‘So?’ asked Thirteen, settling on his tail on top of the Prador drone.
‘Was it sufficiently damaged for most of Vrost’s security protocols to be knocked offline, do you think?’ Sniper asked.
Sniper found the required system, short-circuited it, then injected power down one of his tentacles. A loud crump ensued as a triangular hatch opened in the drone’s side and slowly hinged down, exposing the tightly packed components inside. Sniper noted the captive’s remaining claw moving weakly, as if the drone was trying to reach up and close the hatch again.
‘Why is that relevant?’ asked the little drone.
‘Tell me, Thirteen, don’t you think Vrell has received rather shoddy treatment from his own kind?’
‘This is how Prador generally treat each other. How they ever managed to organize a civilization beats me.’
‘But who do you think is the better between Vrost and Vrell?’
‘Neither; they’re both monstrous.’
‘Then, in conflict, which of them would you prefer to win?’
‘Neither, if possible.’
‘Please just answer.’
‘As the Warden would put it, the one who causes the least collateral damage to Polity citizens.’
‘What about internal conflict leading to a weakening of the Third Kingdom? Surely this would be a good thing for the Polity?’
‘I guess so.’
Sniper transmitted the latest bit of data he had acquired. Thirteen shut down for a moment to digest it.
With cables and various components hanging about him like fruit-laden vines. Sniper finally found the main power conduits from the Prador drone’s batteries. Only a trickle of current was getting through and, tracking back, Sniper found that the cables used to top up the batteries from the fusion reactor were severed, as were the cables providing a direct feed from the reactor into the drone’s systems. He cut out some less essential S-con cables and used them to replace those necessary ones, then withdrew. With a cycling whine the drone began to charge up to power again. Eventually it spoke.
‘You will get nothing from me,’ announced the Prador war drone that was called Vrell.
‘You don’t have any information I want, anyway. I know about your other self’s viral infection and what that infection caused, down to the last detail. I also know about the King’s guard, and the orders you were given, and why.’
The Prador drone now lifted slightly, testing its AG. Sniper backed away and observed it drawing inside itself the components and cables he had pulled out. The drone’s self-repair mechanisms, now under power, were taking over. The hatch closed, but the drone could not yet block any scan, so urgently was it engaged in diverting power to those batteries and accumulators mainly concerned with its energy weapons.
‘Then what do you want?’ it asked.
‘To repay a favour—to save you.’
‘Why?’
‘Why didn’t you let me fly into your master’s defences?’ Sniper countered.
‘Because I was not ordered to.’
‘Then the same answer will do. But tell me, what are your orders now?’
The drone paused, unable to readily supply an answer. It lifted higher into the air.
Sniper suggested, ‘Your final order should have resulted in your destruction, so I doubt there are any further orders for you to follow.’
‘I have no orders. What do I do?’
‘Whatever you want,’ Sniper replied.
The Prador drone dropped back down onto the stone surface. Sniper noted how it had reduced the power feed to its weapons and was now concentrating on self-repair. While it was mulling over its present circumstances, Thirteen came back online, having finished studying the data.
‘I see,’ the little drone said. ‘Only one Vrell was aboard—this drone.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Shouldn’t you tell the Warden?’
‘Probably, but I’m not going to.’
* * * *
A snaking tentacle looped around Bones and crushed him like a handful of straws, then discarded him. Aesop had Bloc down on the stone and was pummelling him. It seemed the reif had still not seen what was looming behind. Bloc had seen it, though. He was yelling incoherently and, under the onslaught, trying to crawl towards the walkways. The monstrous whelk finally heaved itself up onto the Little Flint’s rim, as if it was reluctant to emerge fully from the sea.
Erlin felt an almost drunken hilarity inside her. Ambel rested a hand on her shoulder.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. Then, with Janer and the other Captains, he took off after Keech.
Reaching the two combatants, Keech caught Aesop hard with a kick under the stomach that lifted him off Bloc, then he drew and aimed a pulse gun. Ron reached them next, just in time for a tentacle to slam him down against the stone. Another tentacle flicked and Drum arced back through the air to land with a crash on the ship’s stair. Erlin considered it a lucky fall—he could have gone into the sea—but Drum seemed in no hurry to get up again. Then she realized that, without thinking, she had moved right out onto one of the walkways.
Keech meanwhile hauled Bloc upright and began dragging him back towards the ship. As a tentacle poised over him, he turned and fired a constant stream of shots into it. The tentacle was snatched away, feeling the heat. Keech tossed Bloc onto the walkway adjacent to the one Erlin occupied, and she watched the newly alive man scramble back towards the ship. Ambel and Janer were now intent on freeing Ron, and the huge combined strength of the Old Captains was beginning to tell. But there were more tentacles to deal with; one snaked out to enfold Aesop and raise him high. As it flicked down again, Erlin flinched at the heavy thud against the side of the ship, and glimpsed Aesop stuck there for a moment before dropping into the sea. Looking down, she realized she now stood upon the Little Flint itself.
What the hell am I doing? Stupid question.
The single dinner-plate eye turned towards her, and the giant whelk rose up, exposing its clacking beak and extending its corkscrew tongue. It recognized her—she knew—and thus focused on her did not notice Janer step back and aim a weapon along the length of tentacle gripping Captain Ron. With a thunderclap, that length of that tentacle disappeared, then as suddenly reappeared in a confetti of white gobbets. The whelk screamed and slammed itself down again. Finally breaking free, Ron heaved himself upright and, leaning on Ambel, stumbled towards the walkways. For a moment the whelk hesitated, thrashing its tentacle stump against the stone, its eye turning to the sea then back towards Erlin, before tentatively stretching another tentacle towards her. Ambel and Ron reached the adjacent walkway, where Ambel paused as Janer moved past him and began helping Ron up the stair.
‘Feeling mortal yet?’ Ambel asked her.
Suddenly Erlin’s body was drenched in cold sweat. Yes, she could walk on the boundary of oblivion, but the moment she stepped over it . . . nothing. And how easy would it be? If she ended up in the ocean, she could become a stripped-fish. If the whelk held onto her it would eat her alive. She turned and ran.
‘Get this fucking ramp up!’ Ron bellowed into his comlink.
The ramp stair was vibrating underneath Erlin as the tentacle smashed through the walkway behind her. Then the stair was collapsing even as she scrambled up it. Then it was folding back underneath the main deck, as she leapt the gap up onto the planking.
‘Aargh, that smarts,’ said Drum, holding his quite obviously broken arms away from his body. He had put them out ahead of him to break his fall—and they had. Erlin supposed she would soon be using one of her Hooper programs in an autodoc.
‘Was that all part of some plan?’ Janer asked Ron, still holding his gun as he peered over the rail.
Straight-faced, Ron replied, ‘Not about that bugger.’ He glanced over to where Keech had Bloc kneeling so as to face a cabin wall, the pulse gun pressed into the back of his neck. ‘We reckoned those other two would do for him.’
Erlin wondered about that. She knew this ship had the facility to detect something the size of that whelk moving about below. And she remembered Ron’s furtive use of his comlink. The problem was, being an Old Captain, he’d had plenty of time to practise lying, so she would probably never know for sure.
‘Hooper justice,’ stated Janer.
‘Yeah,’ said Ron, then called over to Keech, ‘Why? Why save him?’
Keech looked round. ‘I adhere to the laws I enforce.’
‘You weren’t so pernickity with Jay Hoop’s gang,’ Ron replied.
Keech grimaced, perhaps remembering his long and bloody pursuit of that gang. He said, ‘Sentence was already passed on them in their absence. It was death in every case.’
Erlin did not listen to Ron’s reply to that. The giant whelk was now wholly occupying the Little Flint, and she thought it still far too close. That single great eye remained focused on her and occasionally blinked. She wondered if she would have to leave Spatterjay to ever be free of pursuit by this monster.
‘Not the right place for it, you see.’ Ambel pointed. ‘Needs island shallows to raise its young.’
Now, almost with disinterest, the whelk turned its eye away from Erlin and, sliding over the other edge of the Flint, it dropped titanically into the sea—and was gone.
* * * *
Aesop made no attempt to swim, his body being so weighed down with internal hardware. Besides, his right arm was shattered, along with many other bones in his body.
Boxies came first, following the trail of balm he was leaving behind as he sank, then swinging round him in a cubic crowd. Soon they were darting in to snatch away loose flesh from his ruptured arm, and from where other bones protruded.
WARN: CELLULAR REPAIR REQ. SHUTTING BALM FLOW AB32—46, TORSO 65—70, LT (BOTH) 71—74 -
Yeah, right.
Aesop shut off all the error messages, which were irrelevant now that the leeches were approaching.
The first one, easily the size of a human leg, crunched into his midriff. Then, in a cloud of balm, it rolled away trailing two metres of carefully preserved intestine. Next a whole shoal of its arm-sized fellows began attaching and writhing round him until he could see nothing but feeding leeches. As this shoal began at last to thin out, he held up one hand stripped of flesh—all gleaming bone and nodular joint motors—and then observed the rapidly approaching bottom. He landed with a crump on a steep slope, and tumbled down it in a cloud of silt.
Eventually coming to rest against an outcrop of flint, he looked down at his ravaged body. Leeches writhed between his ribs. He considered pulling them out, but did not see the point. Others would come to finish the job, and he would rather sooner than later that the point be reached where there was no flesh on him to attract them. Standing up, he began making his way round the slope that ascended to the Little Flint. At one point he paused, looking up, and watched the Sable Keech depart. By the time he found what remained of Bones, he was himself as skeletal as his companion had been. Bones, however, was now just a splintered ribcage with neck vertebrae and skull still attached to it.
Aesop picked him up. Now, where to go? He had no idea where the nearest shore might lie, and his power supply might give out before they reached it. This was, all things considered, the best he could hope for in the circumstances. At least he had a chance . . .
* * * *
There were fires aboard Vrost’s ship. From a distance they looked like small blazes on a floating island, but closer observation showed they burned at the bottom of huge chasms sliced into the very structure of the leviathan vessel. The coil-gun now tilted down against the hull, some missile or massive fragment of Vrell’s vessel having cut through its supporting structure. Exposed girders glowed red, radiating into space. The ship turned as it fell away from Spatterjay, presenting its less damaged flank to the approaching swarm. Hundreds of triangular ports already stood open, into which the war drones zipped like bees returning to the hive. The com traffic was intense, since many safety and security protocols had been overridden to get all the troops back aboard and the ship safely away. Besides smoke from the fires wreathing the vessel, emissions of radioactive gas from fusion engines deliberately burning dirty, their flames shading from white to orange, helped provide it with further cover. Vrost did not want to allow the Warden time or opportunity to scan through damaged screening.
The Prador—designated by its armour’s CPU as Cverl—had managed to ascertain its destination, even though its com-system had been damaged back on the planet, and it could apparently only send base code to the others. Taking its place in a swirling galaxy of golden-armoured individuals, it fell into line as they descended towards a port. When only two of its fellows were between itself and the opening, it got its first glimpse inside the craft and saw the armoured Prador preceding it land hard on the floor plates as the ship’s gravity dragged it down. The long chamber lying beyond was crowded with others of its kind, since they would not be moving on further into the ship until the atmosphere door could be closed and air pressure restored. Air, of course, was vital, being the required fluid medium.
When its turn came, the Prador designated Cverl landed neatly, countering with its armour’s AG and then scrambling on into the crowd. Five more came down behind it, then the outer door began to draw closed. With the slow return of atmosphere, the earlier silence was replaced by the incredible racket of heavily armoured Prador crashing around the metal floor.
Such a closely packed crowd was perfect. Only one thing more was required.
Ah...
Doors all along each side of the chamber began to open, and the armoured Prador started moving off to be about their assigned tasks. Cverl’s own assignment was to collect a plasma torch and take it to a certain location to help clear wreckage. Vrell, now wearing that Prador’s armour, crushed the wedge-shaped container he held in his claw, releasing the replicating nanite he had specially adjusted to destroy the nervous systems of Prador with a particular genetic code . . . like all these around him. Ostensibly about to proceed where he had been directed, he paused as a scream issued over com. Glancing back, he saw one armoured Prador collapse down on its belly, while another shot off on AG to crash straight into the ceiling.
Surprisingly fast. . .
Sighing with satisfaction, Vrell rechecked the ship’s map in his armour’s CPU, and turned to head for Vrost’s sanctum.