Operational efficiency compromised. Processing speeds may be reduced.
The countdown timer resumed its deathwatch-beetle ticking:
43:04:41
Dev searched through the backed-up data and found his sketch of the design the terrorists had left on the Egersund, the symbol Handler had identified as representing the mythical Ice King. He switched on the cabin’s floatscreen unit and transferred the sketch to that. It hovered in midair, projected by helium-neon lasers.
Ethel’s reaction was immediate and fierce. She leapt to her feet, her face flushing with furious contempt. Jabbing her shock lance for emphasis, she seethed about the danger the Ice King posed, the threat to peace and stability, the rampant bloodshed that was being carried out in the name of the God Beneath the Sea.
So many statements tumbled out of her, and the lights on her face conveyed such an intensity of passion, that she veered close to becoming unintelligible. She ranted about the followers of the Ice King, who justified murder if it was committed in his name. She asserted that they were everything the Nautilus Movement stood against, beating the cicatrix on her chest to underscore her point.
“Religious extremist terrorists,” Dev said to Handler. “They’re the ones heading up the insurgency.”
“And the Nautilus Tritonians are their sworn enemies, or at least an opposing political faction.”
“Rationalists versus zealots. Remind you of any recent intergalactic conflict, by any chance?”
Ethel was still venting her spleen against the followers of the Ice King as Dev and Handler simultaneously received a call from Sigursdottir.
Sonar’s registering activity due east of us, near the surface. Five klicks and closing. Looks like a shoal of large fish, but the pings they’re sending back are all shapes and sizes and they’re moving more like something manmade.
More Tritonian vessels?
That’d be my guess, Harmer. Handler told me that the female you’ve got there is a friendly, and presumably so are the rest of them directly below us. Question is, are these other ones friendlies too? Speed they’re coming suggests not. Looks more like an attack.
Let me check.
Dev asked Ethel if she was expecting company. Other Nautilus types maybe? Have you arranged a rally?
Ethel said no and, picking up on the concern on Dev’s face, hurried out of the cabin. Dev raced after her, in time to see her perform a supple, parabolic dive over the rail. She hit the water with scarcely a splash.
Not looking promising, lieutenant, but I’d advise you to hold fire ’til we know more.
No can do. I’m not endangering my men’s lives on an unknown. We’re going to action stations.
The Admiral Winterbrook began turning, coming about to face east. At the same time, Dev saw a Marine – someone tall and bulky, had to be Milgrom – rush towards the point-defence gun that was rising through a hatch from below decks at the bows. She slotted herself into the bucket-seat and put the gun through its paces experimentally. First she rotated it through its full firing arc, to ensure that the platform bearings were in working order and ran smoothly. Then she elevated and lowered the four barrels. It was as though the gun were nodding, swaggering, confident in its power.
Somewhere on board the catamaran, an alarm klaxon was hooting.
How far away now, Sigursdottir?
Two klicks, and they’re not slowing. All the signs are it’s hostiles.
Dev scanned the seascape, looking for evidence of the approaching Tritonian craft. He saw distant streaks of luminescence in the black water, running in parallel, like a meteor shower scoring the night sky. They were the wakes of large objects underwater, zooming in fast. He estimated there were a dozen of them at least.
Handler appeared at his side. “If those are insurgent vessels, are they coming for us or the other Tritonians?”
“Beats me. Either way, they have the numerical advantage.”
“The Admiral Winterbrook should even up the odds. It’s armed to the teeth.”
“Even so, there’s a limit to what a surface boat can do against submarines.”
“You’re not contemplating going down there to help out. You are, aren’t you? You’re crazy. What difference can one man make?”
“I’m a disruptive influence,” Dev said. “You read my psych profile. I have a knack for causing chaos. So I’ll bring a bit of that to the party.”
“Well, I’m sure I can’t stop you. At least let me give you your next dose of nucleotides first. Hold you together a little longer.”
Handler deftly applied a fresh serum patch to Dev’s arm.
“Good luck,” he said. “Try not to get yourself killed.”
“The motto I live by.”
Dev dived.
30
THE NAUTILUS TRITONIANS had circled the wagons. The four submarines were huddled together, braced for attack and ready to repel. If a fight was in the offing, they were meeting it head-on, not fleeing.
Dev was duly impressed.
He swam to Ethel’s manta sub, positioning himself in front so that she could see him through the cornea of its cockpit.
I’m on your side, he said. An extra pair of hands.
Leave, she replied. We don’t need you.
You might find you do.
Very well. If you insist on staying, don’t get in the way.
I’ll do my best.
The other group of Tritonians were almost there. They were travelling in an assortment of vessels, led by a cuttlefish sub. Dev was certain it was the same cuttlefish sub that had sunk the Egersund. Its mottled markings looked familiar.
With it were a pufferfish sub, a swordfish sub, a sub not unlike a moray eel, and others that defied categorisation, comparable to no Terran marine creatures Dev knew of. One resembled a bone disc, with sharp points protruding from its circumference. Another was what might result if a salamander and an umbrella somehow mated and spawned.
Ethel and her co-pilot cousin eased the manta sub forward to meet the cuttlefish sub face to face. The cuttlefish sub and its entourage halted, and Ethel attempted to parley. She advised the new arrivals to turn around.
One of the cuttlefish sub pilots, serving as spokesman for the group, responded with disdain.
You have no authority over us, he said. We answer to a higher power. We do the Ice King’s bidding.
There is no Ice King, Ethel said. He’s a figment. A fantasy.
That’s where you’re wrong. He is real, and he is awakening. He is stirring in the deeps, soon to lead us in liberating our world.
So you say.
So we know. His hour has come. We’re on a pilgrimage to find him, and when we do, we will follow him wherever he leads and do whatever he asks of us.
You worship nothing but an empty dream.
We worship might and freedom and a future no longer blemished by the stain of the ungilled. That’s what the Ice King promises us.
You’re using faith to legitimise slaughter, said Ethel. I don’t like these gill-less interlopers any more than you do, but there are ways we can live alongside them.
Peaceful coexistence? Now that is an empty dream!
They’re not all bad. They can be reasoned with, if we only try.
Easier just to kill them.
Your acts of sabotage and murder don’t do anything except make them angry and incite retaliation. I’ll show you.
Ethel beckoned behind her, and she was joined in the eye socket by the kid who had been held captive on Llyr.
This boy is one of yours, she said. Like you he fights against the ungilled, but unlike you he’s suffered the consequences.
I know him, said the cuttlefish sub pilot. He put himself forward to join us, but we turned him down. Too young. He has not grown into a name yet. When someone’s old enough to know his own name, then we’ll embrace him, but only then.
You have standards. You’re noble.
Sarcasm, it seemed, was burnt-orange in colour.
We ca
n’t be responsible for the lives of children, said the cuttlefish sub pilot.
I tried to prove my worth, the kid said. I hate the ungilled. I hate them even more after the things they did to me.
He was taken prisoner, said Ethel. Abused horribly. You see the marks on his body. This is what happens when you resort to violence. You get violence in return.
It’s to be expected, the cuttlefish sub pilot said without regret. All who are hurt or who perish in our cause are sacred martyrs. They will be avenged. The Ice King will bring a reckoning against the ungilled who steal the creatures that are our property and pollute the water with the filth of their machines, who’ve invaded our world and violated its sanctity, who’ve claimed our seas as their own and squat above us in their shadow-casting settlements as though they are our lords.
I believe that too! the boy declared.
You’re a brave one. If you were just a little older, you’d deserve a place in our ranks.
Why not now? I belong with you. I’m prepared to do anything in the name of the Ice King.
So saying, the kid hauled back and struck Ethel a vicious blow across the side of the head. She hadn’t seen it coming. She reeled away, stunned.
Seeing this, her cousin darted from his station, plunging into a sort of access duct that ran from one side of the manta sub’s head to the other, a link between the eye socket cockpits.
The boy, meanwhile, snatched up Ethel’s shock lance, which was resting in a purpose-built niche beside her seat. He moved towards her with the weapon held out menacingly. Ethel, still dazed, floated helplessly, vulnerable.
Dev didn’t think Ethel’s cousin was going to reach her in time. He himself, outside the sub, wasn’t much better placed to help.
Unless...
He drew the HVP and fired straight into the manta’s gaping maw.
The sabot round punched a hole in the mouth’s interior, hitting one of the spongy filter plates the manta used to sieve its food source – microscopic organisms – from the water. The wound was relatively small, to a beast that big, but deep and piercing nonetheless.
Dev’s gamble paid off; the living submarine flinched and recoiled in pain.
The sudden lurch threw the kid off-balance. He blundered against the outer membrane of the eye, and the next instant Ethel’s cousin reappeared at the other end of the access duct. The eye now had three Tritonians crowded in it.
The cousin lunged at the kid, who twisted round to face him, thrusting the shock lance forward. The two of them grappled with weapon between them, their faces ablaze with antagonism.
The boy’s hand closed on a lever on the lance’s handle.
There was a brilliant blue flash.
Ethel’s cousin juddered, then went limp.
The boy looked aghast, startled, horrified... but also triumphant.
The cousin drifted away from him, slowly spinning. No question, he was dead. His arms began to rise in a kind of crucifixion pose. His head lolled.
Ethel emerged from her stupor, took in the situation at a glance, and launched herself at the kid with lightning streaks of pure naked fury forking across her face. She seized the lance off him and aimed.
Whether or not she actually intended to use the lance against him, she never got the opportunity.
The Tritonians in the cuttlefish sub saw that the boy was in danger. He was their ideological kin. They could not simply leave him at Ethel’s mercy.
The cuttlefish sub jetted forward with a powerful squirt of its siphon. The other subs alongside it followed suit.
The vessels of one Tritonian faction joined battle with the vessels of another, and what ensued was one of the bizarrest battles Dev had ever known.
31
SUPERSIZED SEA CREATURES clashed in a tumult of lashing tentacles, threshing tails and snapping jaws. Dev almost forgot that these were submarines, steered by pilots. The giant beasts seemed simply to be doing what came naturally, instinctively: competing with rival species, employing the arsenal of weapons and defensive measures which evolution, that great quartermaster, had equipped them with.
The moray eel sub lunged at the seahorse sub, mouth open wide to reveal rows of backward-hooking teeth. The seahorse danced agilely aside, avoiding the eel’s rippling serpentine rush. With its prehensile tail it caught hold of its assailant just behind the gills. The eel arced its head round but couldn’t reach its target. It began turning in circles, but as long as the seahorse kept its grip and hung on, the eel could not sink its teeth in.
The swordfish sub went for the anglerfish sub, slashing at it with its long, sharp-edged bill. The anglerfish tried to bite back, but the bony blade was moving too fast. Its fierce sweeps drove the anglerfish back and opened up cuts in its flanks and belly. The anglerfish couldn’t get close enough to bring its fangs to bear.
The other manta sub, the one not piloted by Ethel, engaged with the pufferfish sub. Although the manta dwarfed the pufferfish, it had trouble utilising that advantage. Whenever it swooped in, the pufferfish inflated like a balloon, projecting an array of stiff spines that could pierce the thickest hide. The manta veered away each time, aborting the attack to avoid injury.
As for Ethel’s manta sub, it was enmeshed in the cuttlefish sub’s arms and struggling to break free. Dev could see Ethel and the body of her cousin in its left eye socket cockpit. There was no sign of the kid. Presumably he had fled once the battle started. Ethel herself was preoccupied with manipulating the controls, which consisted of a waist-high column festooned with knobbly protrusions.
Under her ministrations the manta thrashed its wings and flexed its body, but the cuttlefish had it tightly clasped. No amount of writhing was going to detach those arms with their lining of finely serrated suckers.
And now another vessel was jockeying above the manta, looking for an opportunity. This sub had elements of turtle in its makeup, and elements of jellyfish. A thick keratin shell protected all of its body except for the underside, from which hung a curtain of transparent, coiling tendrils.
It was attempting to drape these tendrils onto the manta sub’s back. The manoeuvre was delicate and required precision. The turtle-jellyfish’s pilot was trying to keep the tendrils from accidentally making contact with the cuttlefish sub’s arms. Dev could only assume there were venom cysts embedded in those dangling gelatinous tubules.
Sure enough, when the turtle-jellyfish sub finally managed to touch the manta sub’s cartilaginous skin, the manta immediately arched and convulsed. It was clearly in terrific pain, and as Dev watched, its efforts to break free of the cuttlefish sub’s clutches grew feebler and more uncoordinated. Ethel wrenched and hammered urgently at the controls, but her vessel had become unresponsive.
The turtle-jellyfish sub was poised to attack again. The venom in its tendrils must be some kind of paralytic neurotoxin. Another dose would bring the manta sub to a complete standstill, possibly even kill it. Already the cuttlefish sub was exploiting its weakened state, probing the cornea of its left eye with its tentacles. They could undoubtedly pop the eye open and drag Ethel out, Dev thought. Once the manta sub was rendered entirely helpless, there’d be nothing to prevent it.
Dev made a beeline for the turtle-jellyfish sub. It had only one point of vulnerability that he could see. Its pilot sat suspended beneath its shell in a blister-like pod, just ahead of the tendrils.
Dev swam close enough to bring the pod within the range of the HVP. With the battle raging around him in a surge of bubbles and swirls of bioluminescence, he took aim.
Then it hit him – a clench in his gut, a wallop of pure agony. He doubled up, almost losing his grip on the pistol. It was like the worst stomach cramp imaginable, the kind you got with severe food poisoning or some awful gastric infection.
He glimpsed the turtle-jellyfish descending towards the manta again, that mat of dangling tendrils ready to stroke a bare patch of the other sub’s wing.
Even as his innards twisted inside him, seeming to tie themselves in knots, D
ev raised the HVP. His host form might be rebelling, it might be doing its utmost to undermine him, but he would not let it get the better of him. Fuck the pain. Fuck it. Fuck it and fuck ISS and fuck exponential cellular breakdown and fuck absolutely everything.
He lined up the shot again, eyeing down the barrel of the HVP and centring the pilot blister in the fluorescent triangle formed by the front sight’s inverted V and the rear sight’s matching topless trapezoid.
The sabot round burst the blister, and also the head of the Tritonian inside.
The turtle-jellyfish sub drifted away, caught by some current, and Ethel’s manta sub was spared a second stinging.
Ethel was far from out of trouble, though. The cuttlefish sub’s tentacles were squeezing the cockpit eye, making its membranous cornea bulge alarmingly.
Stomach still cramping, Dev pawed his way down through the water to the two entangled subs.
Elsewhere, the worshippers of the Ice King appeared to have the upper hand. The seahorse had been torn free from the eel by a third sub, and now the two enemy subs had joined together and were ripping it asunder between them.
The anglerfish sub was reeling from the swordfish sub’s onslaught, blood billowing from a score of gashes in its body.
The second manta sub was faring somewhat better. It had abandoned the pufferfish sub and moved on to a sinuous, cylindrical craft gifted with a round mouth full of concentric rings of teeth. The manta was clobbering the parasitical, lamprey-like nightmare with its wings, pounding relentlessly so that the pilot of the other sub was unable to do anything except retreat.
Dev swam under Ethel’s manta sub and navigated through the thicket of the cuttlefish sub’s clinging arms. Buffeted by the forces of the contest between the two vessels and stricken by waves of pain from within, he nevertheless made it to the manta’s mouth.
He ducked into the opening and straightaway spied a sphincter set in the roof of the mouth, directly above him. It was tight shut, but would, if open, admit a person, or so he reckoned.
World of Water Page 14