“How do we get far enough away in five minutes?” said Sigursdottir. “Maybe if we had a boat. But we don’t.”
“Same way we got away from the Ice King after it downed the Admiral Winterbrook,” Dev said. “Hitch a ride on the back of a Tritonian sub. I can arrange that. I just have to persuade Maddox to hold off from firing long enough.”
Five minutes would give the Ice King the chance to get away too, Harmer. I’m afraid I can’t allow that. Can’t take the risk.
This is crazy. You’re not only going to kill us, you’re going to kill about a hundred Tritonians as well.
Indigene casualties I can live with. Collateral damage. The rest... is a matter of regret, to be sure. But you were a soldier once, Harmer. You’ll know about sacrifice and the greater good.
That’s bullshit, Maddox. You’re signing a death warrant for a hundred-plus people. It’s too high a price to pay just to eliminate the Ice King. There’s another way. We both know that. There must be.
It’s the burden of rank to have to make tough calls. I want it to be known, Harmer, that you have done a sterling job. And you, Lieutenant Sigursdottir – Eydís – you and your team have served with distinction. I’m committing this conversation to commplant memory, for posterity’s sake. A transcript will go on your service records, and you will all gain posthumous citations for your actions here today, I promise you that.
Maddox, you fucking lunatic! Don’t do this!
Let’s not besmirch the moment with name-calling, Harmer. I’m signing off now. In a minute or so, the Sunbaker will be on its way. Kindly make your peace with that fact.
No!
But Dev was hurling the word into the void. Maddox had disconnected. He was gone.
Dev looked round at Sigursdottir.
“A shell travels at five hundred metres per second,” he said. “If the Astounding is ten minutes away, that’s, what, fifteen kilometres. Meaning thirty seconds from launch to impact. Add another thirty seconds, say, to deliver and confirm the go command, and approximately a minute for the artillery officer to input the firing solution and elevate and rotate the cannon.”
“Two minutes max,” said Sigursdottir. “Even on a Tritonian sub, we’d still be within blast radius. But,” she added, “you won’t.”
“Huh?”
“You and Handler. And the Tritonians. Anyone with gills. You can dive. Dive deep. The water will protect you, cushion you. It’ll absorb the force of the explosion better than air does. On the surface none of us stands a chance, but under, you just might.”
“Who’ll keep the Ice King on the spot, if the Tritonians all go? Who’s to say it won’t chase after us as we dive?”
“That’ll be our business,” said Milgrom. “Face it, we’re fucked whatever. You and Handler, get to the Tritonians and tell them to skedaddle. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“And Jiang? Blunt?”
“They’re lucky,” said Sigursdottir. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
Dev flicked his gaze from Sigursdottir to Cully, then to Milgrom.
Their minds were made up. They were resigned, stoical.
Good soldiers.
In that instant, he despised Captain Maddox. More than he had ever despised anyone.
“Guys...”
“Go!” Milgrom barked. “Get your bony backsides into the water! Now!”
64
DEV AND HANDLER dashed-stumbled-leapt down the stairs.
Reflexively, Dev reset his countdown timer yet again. Another rough estimate. Another lethal deadline.
00:01:30
Out from the foot of the staircase.
Diving into the water, into the thick of the battle between the Tritonians and the Ice King.
00:01:17
Spread the word, Dev told Handler. Make it clear to them that if they don’t get out of here this instant, they’re ashes.
Handler went one way, Dev the other. Over and over they beamed the message. To every Tritonian in every eye socket cockpit they saw, they delivered the warning and told them to pass it on.
Gradually, but picking up pace, the Tritonians spread the word, flickering from one to the next like signal fires.
00:01:02
Dev swam round the ring of subs, battling through turmoil of cross-currents and vortexes, thanks to the frantically gyrating bulk of the Ice King.
There!
00:00:59
Ethel’s manta. He kicked hard, digging deep, finding every last erg of energy he had.
Descend! he flared at her. Descend or die!
She picked up on the fear, the sheer burning urgency of the statement.
00:00:52
Dev crawled to the surface for one last look.
He was just in time to see Milgrom leap from the penthouse balcony onto the Ice King’s back, a thirty-metre drop.
The huge Marine broke her leg as she landed, but didn’t let it stop her. She staggered upright, pulled a gun and emptied it into the Ice King’s carapace. She was singing, howling, screaming, swearing, all at once, a barely coherent berserker caterwaul of defiance and hate.
More bullets rained down onto the Ice King from Sigursdottir and Cully on the balcony.
00:00:47
Dev took it all in at a glance. His last abiding image of Milgrom was her hobbling across the Ice King, dragging a leg with a shattered tibia, like a wounded Amazon warrior queen making her final, fatal stand against some mythical monster.
He ducked back under, to find Ethel’s manta waiting for him.
Don’t just float there, she said. Grab on!
Dev seized hold of the nearer of the manta’s cephalic lobes, and the sub flipped up its tail, and down they went.
00:00:39
Down, with a motley school of other subs beside them.
Down, like a storm, like hail.
00:00:27
Down from light to thickening darkness, and Dev had no idea how far they would have to go to escape the Sunbaker’s blistering, multimillion-degree incandescence, how much water they needed to put behind them so as not to get flash-fried...
00:00:15
The manta beat its wings. Dev felt pressure mounting in his ears.
00:00:08
From photic zone to aphotic. From bathyal realm to abyssal.
00:00:03
He pictured the fusion warhead shell in flight, and Sigursdottir, Cully and Milgrom now able to hear it coming, the projectile hurtling through the air with a noise like reality being ripped in two. Inside, the seed of a miniature star, waiting to be born.
00:00:02
He pictured the three Marines looking up, knowing their lives were measured in a handful of seconds, and all the while Jiang and Blunt lay indoors, unconscious, cocooned in blissful ignorance.
00:00:01
Everything was black around him now, apart from the lights of Tritonian faces, near and far, photophores ablaze with unrestrained panic.
00:00:00
Nothing.
No explosion.
No glare of brilliance from above.
Maybe he had underestimated the length of time it would take to launch the Sunbaker.
Maybe Maddox had thought better of it, rescinded the order.
Maybe –
Then it came.
The undersea world turned magnesium white.
Every sub was limned with silver, given a glowing halo. Every detail of every one of the giant sea creatures’ bodies was picked out in sharp, pristine relief. The sucker on a tentacle, the fluted ribbing on a fin, the join between shell plates.
It was as though Dev was seeing it all in freeze frame, a snapshot of a terrified downward stampede.
Then came the pressure wave.
Appalling.
Deafening.
Cataclysmic.
65
LATER – DAZED BUT recovering – they felt able to speak again.
Is it dead? said Ethel.
Has to be, said Dev. Nothing could have sur
vived that.
They were cruising along at a subdued, fragile pace, the manta rising through the ocean at a shallow incline. Other subs accompanied them. They had no particular destination. They were heading just anywhere, anywhere that took them away from ground zero and the spreading cloud of lightly irradiated seawater left behind by the Sunbaker.
Good riddance, said the kid. Fuck the Ice King and fuck everything it stood for.
I think there are plenty of Ice King worshippers who’d agree with that, said Ethel. Some of them are out there right now, beside us.
She indicated the flotilla of subs.
You brought insurgents to help you fight it? said Dev. You managed to turn them against their own god? Wonders will never cease.
It wasn’t hard, said the kid. Dozens of them were there when the Ice King attacked the drift cluster. It was a turning point for them, as it was for me. They felt baffled and betrayed, and that feeling transformed into anger quickly enough.
The Ice King’s error of judgement had cost it dearly, Dev thought. A single act of random divine cruelty had made apostates out of acolytes. Veneration had become vengeance. Disgruntled, disillusioned, the insurgents had realised they’d been following a false idol, and had all too happily agreed to tear it down.
I’m just amazed you found so many willing bodies in so little time, he said.
We were fortunate, said Ethel. Another drift cluster passed nearby the spot where the Ice King had struck. Refugees from the ruined drift cluster were taken in by the inhabitants of the other one. The insurgents who’d witnessed the event were there too.
They were only too eager to tell everyone how the Ice King had gone mad, the kid said. They were already trying to distance themselves from it. They had no way of justifying what it had done.
The god they’d been waiting for so long, Dev said, the god whose return was supposed to usher in an age of freedom for your people... is actually a bit of a dick.
Dark blue laughter from both Ethel and the kid.
And now that it’s an ex-god, Dev said, what next? What happens to the insurgency?
I don’t know, said Ethel. The same issues remain, the same complaints and grudges. You ungilled are still here and you don’t look like you’re leaving any time soon. It could all boil up again.
Don’t forget we fought side by side with you against the Ice King, Dev said. Seven good people – ungilled – died up there to make sure that monster got what it deserved.
Ethel shone lilac-white sympathy at him. So, too, did the kid.
That will count in your favour, she said. Definitely.
As will the fact that it was ungilled who provided the means to kill the Ice King, the kid said.
We’ll make sure all of that becomes public knowledge, said Ethel. We’ll broadcast it far and wide. Everyone in the Nautilus Movement will know and will tell others.
Everyone in the insurgency too, said the kid.
No guarantees, but we’ll do what we can on our side to smooth relations out.
I’ll do what I can as well on our side, Dev said. So will our ambassador – assuming he was able to get away from the explosion unscathed.
You did.
Yes, but I have previous form with this sort of thing. I’m more used to life-and-death situations than he is. Also, I had help from you.
Perhaps he, like you, managed to get taken aboard a sub at the last minute.
I hope so.
You don’t dislike him anymore, I see.
I made a mistake. He was keeping secrets from me, but he was cowed into doing it. It’d be wrong to hold that against him. There are other people who’ve got a lot more to answer for. One person in particular.
Who?
Someone you’ve no wish to meet, Dev said. But someone I myself would very much like to see again. Soon.
The manta swam on, upward into lightening, life-filled waters.
Dev turned to the kid.
Tell me something, he said. How’s that name of yours coming along?
I think I have it.
The kid sent out a display of colours. As before, it was a blend of frustration, regret, and guilt, but the optimism in it was stronger and the mixture as a whole was different, richer, more resonant. More fitting. It was a name that had been hard-won, a lesson learned through bitter experience.
Yeah, Dev said. That’s you.
Ethel, likewise, felt the kid had earned it. We each get the name we deserve, she said. The name that life gives us. I wish I knew what yours was, ungilled.
It’s impossible to translate, Dev said. Ungilled names don’t tend to have any meaning. They only say who you are, not what. They’re just convenient labels.
Because I don’t have anything to call you, you feel slightly empty to me.
Perhaps that’s what I am. A hollow space. An absence. It seems like that sometimes.
Self-pity? From you?
If you only knew what my life was like...
A perpetual traveller. A wisp of binary data dancing from one host form to the next. Never resting, never alighting anywhere for long. Swept from world to world with no say over the where or the why. Lured along by the dim, distant promise of one day being fully himself again, master of his own existence.
But no, you’re right, he said. Self-pity. Doesn’t suit me.
It shouldn’t, Ethel said. You make a difference. Know that.
The kid agreed. I don’t understand everything about you. I don’t understand why you do what you do. I do understand, though, that you do it with conviction, with your heart.
The sea teemed around them. The manta was up near the surface, and the sky above the waves was no longer a single expanse of tormented grey. Shafts of sunlight were poking through.
Where can we take you? Ethel asked. The least we can do is drop you off at one of your ungilled settlements.
We.
He looked from her to the kid and back again.
He saw, in them, the hope for an undivided future for Triton. Animosities would have to be buried, and that wouldn’t be easy.
But here – here was proof that it was possible.
You, he said, can take me to...
66
STATION ARES. NIGHT.
Dev glided out of the oil-black water, close to the axis of the snowflake-shaped Marine base. He loitered on a walkway, shivering slightly in the breeze. Someone was bound to wander by soon.
Someone did. A lone private, plodding along on watch detail.
The instant he caught sight of Dev, he whipped his rifle from patrol ready to on guard.
“Who’s that? State your name!”
“Relax,” Dev said. “I’m an unarmed civilian.” He put his hands up and rotated through a full turn on the spot. The expended HVP and its holster belt had long since been consigned to the ocean. “See?”
“Don’t move. I asked you your name.”
“I’m here to see Captain Maddox. I would have told him I was coming, but he might not have agreed to make time for me if I had. This way’s better.”
“The captain is very busy right now.”
“I’ll bet he is. I’d be obliged if you’d message him anyway. Tell him it’s Dev Harmer. Tell him I can wait all night if I have to. Tell him we have things to discuss and we might as well do it now, man to man. Clear the air, as it were.”
The private wavered.
“Go on,” Dev said. “What do you think your senior CO would say if you failed to report an intruder on the base requesting audience with him? Do you think the fearsome Captain Arkady Maddox would be pleased about that?”
“No. No, I suppose not.”
“Just a quick commplant call. Don’t forget the name: Dev Harmer.”
The private’s face blanked for a few seconds. Then he said, “Captain Maddox has asked me to escort you to his quarters. It’s this way.”
“I know.”
A couple of minutes later, Dev was in Maddox’s office, across the desk from him.
“You should have called first, Harmer,” Maddox said genially. He dismissed the private with a cursory flap of the hand. “Not that I mind you showing up unannounced. I’m concerned, that’s all. You could have got yourself shot.”
“Lovely that you care. I just thought I’d surprise you. A formal visit might have been harder to arrange. You might have said no.”
“Now why would I do that?”
Dev shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
“I must say, I am surprised, though. I assumed you were...”
“Dead?”
“Well, yes. It did seem likely. Why didn’t you report in immediately afterward? Let me know as soon as you could that you were okay?”
“Felt it was a good idea to wait,” Dev said. “To break the news in person.”
“Not that I’m not pleased. Relieved, too.”
“But you’d probably have preferred it if the Sunbaker had got me, like it did your seven Marines.”
Maddox’s brow creased. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m an inconvenience. A loose end. Or rather, I could be.”
“What are you talking about?” The Marine captain shut off the floatscreen in front of him and rose from his chair. “Let me fix you a drink. I’m sure you could do with one. The past few days have been pretty stressful, eh? They certainly have for me. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork I’m having to wade through.”
“Poor you.”
“Damn straight, poor me. Reports. Letters of condolence. There are about twenty forms I have to fill in, accounting for the use of a Sunbaker. You can’t chuck one of those things about and not have to explain in excruciating, mind-numbing detail why. Bureaucracy is the bane of the peacetime warrior. If we were at war, no none would even ask twice whether it had been necessary. Mind you...”
Maddox uncorked the bottle of local rotgut that had knocked Dev sideways the last time he’d been here.
“Military high command back on Earth is fairly excited about the Ice King and all that it implies,” he said. “Word is, the top brass and TerCon are treating this as the most serious Border Wall incident since, well, since the Border Wall was drawn up on the map at the Tezuma Conference. The most overt piece of Polis+ aggression yet. Using a bogus incarnation of the indigenes’ god in order to foment a rebellion... Sneaky, yet at the same time blatant. As if they thought we wouldn’t cotton on.”
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