A Darkling Sea

by James Cambias

  BROADTAIL is braced and ready to start jabbing his spear through the netting at the attackers when the world fills with noise. It is far louder than even Longpincer’s signal device. He can feel the sound with his entire body, and his head feels like it is shattering. After the painful pulse of sound there is silence. Is he deaf? He taps the front of his head and hears it very faintly, but that is all.

  Something is holding his spear. He tugs on it and jerks it free. Probing with it reveals something soft in front of him. The netting has collapsed!

  The attackers must be almost as deaf as he is, and Broadtail is getting used to fighting things he cannot hear. He turns his spear sideways and holds it forward, hoping one of them will brush against it. Slowly the world comes back into existence around him, although every sound is accompanied by a throb of pain.

  A large adult is two body-lengths away, ahead and to Broadtail’s right. She is moving slowly with her pincers extended, feeling around. Evidently she hears him at almost the same moment, for suddenly she rushes forward.

  Broadtail swings his spear, jabbing the butt end into the front of her head and stopping her charge long enough for him to reverse his weapon and brace himself.

  She tries to shove the spearpoint out of the way with her pincers and rush in, but Broadtail scuttles sideways, keeping the point between them. He prods at her head, hoping to force her back, but she holds her ground and the spear grates along her shell. She bursts forward before Broadtail can get his spear back into place, and now she’s almost in pincer-reach.

  The bandit raises her pincers and lunges at Broadtail, stabbing down onto his back, trying to find a weak spot in his shell. He folds his own pincers and pushes forward, getting his head underneath hers and then shoving. He feels a jolt of pain from near his tail flukes as one pincer strikes home, but it angers him more than it harms him. He slams against the bandit’s underside with all his strength and she loses her grip on the sea bottom.

  The two of them are now curled around each other in a ball, rolling about the bottom. Broadtail feels the bandit’s powerful pincers getting a grip on his tail. Is she trying to crack him? She is, and he can feel the stress in his shell.

  In desperation he probes her underside with his pincer tip, but her flailing legs keep him from finding a gap. The pressure on his back is almost unbearable Then the bandit gives a twitch and lets go. He feels her body settle to the bottom next to him. He tastes blood in the water.

  A small adult drops down in front of him and pulls a spear out of the bandit’s back. He recognizes Holdhard by flavor. “Thank you,” he says.

  ROB waited for his ears to stop ringing and risked a visual look around with his lamp. There were four big gaps in the netting where the volley of microtorps had hit the support poles. The ’tarans on both sides were staggering around looking disoriented. Hearing bangs that loud must have hit them like a flashbulb in the eyes. One of them was down and not moving; Rob couldn’t tell if it was one of Longpincer’s people or an attacker.

  Time to put a stop to that! He launched Drone Two, once again using the water column above the vent for concealment. While it was on its way he switched his link back to Drone One, keeping station above the Sholen position.

  Rob picked his target almost at random: one of the faint green glows among the line of Sholen soldiers. The third one from the left. He designated it, then sent the drone into a power-dive toward its target. The signal lag meant he was just an observer, watching a series of still images as the Sholen grew larger and more distinct. His intended victim must have heard the drone approach, because the final clear frame showed him turning, his face indistinct within his helmet, mouth open.

  Then there was a hash of visual static with fragments of blurry images. Then the link went dead. Had the drone even hit its target? Maybe Drone Two could tell him. Rob switched links and steered his last weapon on a long curving course around to the north. Since he’d dropped One on them from above, he kept Two hugging the sea bottom. As the drone got closer to the Sholen position, Rob adopted a scoot-and-freeze pattern of movement, staying under cover and out of sight as much as possible.

  Soon he was within a few tens of meters of the Sholen position. The drone camera could pick up several of their safety lights, and the passive sonar detected eight Sholen. The firing line of Sholen soldiers with microtorp guns were on the move, grouping into pairs with one facing toward Longpincer’s house and one guarding the firer’s back. Good; he’d accomplished something. He didn’t know if getting them moving was good or bad.

  Time for a different kind of mischief. Maybe he could mess with their supplies or something? Or find whoever was in charge of the whole attack?

  He moved the drone to a point about twenty meters behind the firing line. Sonar detected a pair of the big grazers Broadtail called “towfins” tethered by some rocks, with a single Ilmataran minding them. He didn’t dare bring the drone too close to any Ilmataran—they’d hear it coming long before even a computer- enhanced Sholen hydrophone would notice.

  The camera detected a faint light just ahead of the two animals. Slowly and quietly, Rob guided the drone toward it. A long- exposure still image resolved a pair of big cylinders sitting on the sea bottom. The light was coming from an indicator panel on the side of one. Some kind of self-propelled cargo pods, Rob guessed. Which meant the Sholen had enough supplies to fight all day if they wanted to. There was no way he could damage something like that with a knife blade mounted on a camera drone. He moved on, looking for something he could hurt.

  ANOTHER series of deafening blasts makes Broadtail want to curl into a ball. He clutches the rock he stands on, hoping his sense returns before a barbarian plunges a pincer into him.

  Someone taps numbers on his tail. “Move back to the house.” It is Holdhard. She leads him by one feeler. Broadtail tastes the water and starts working his way up the gradient of warmth and minerals toward the main vent until he runs into one of the guidelines, then follows that.

  He stumbles over a body that has a familiar flavor. It is Strongpincer, the bandit. Broadtail cannot imagine the bandit charging this far, so he suspects the blast of tossing the body past the front line.

  Out of curiosity, he feels the dead bandit’s harness and finds the stone box. He tucks it into his own carrying pouch. “I remember refusing to pay you, and now it is free. You are a very bad trader,” he tells the corpse.

  His hearing is starting to return and he listens. The netting is gone, and half a dozen bandits are swimming over the tangled wreckage. Time to get into a house. With solid stone at their back even a small group of scholars and apprentices can hold off any number of bandits. Broadtail wonders how they can withstand the exploding swimmer weapons.

  ROB’S ears were still ringing from the second volley of microtorps when an Ilmataran tapped him on the helmet. Since it wasn’t trying to gut him with its pincers, he figured it must be one of the good guys. His lexicon translated the message as “Builder swim structure,” which sounded like an order to retreat. He banged an okay on his chestplate.

  Inside the house he wouldn’t be able to maintain the link. Time for Drone Two to go out in glory.

  He checked the drone’s sonar and noticed a big noise source nearby. It sounded like something splashing, or trying to swim very clumsily. On the camera he could make out a very streaky image of a Sholen thrashing about on the sea bottom. Huh? Rob moved the drone closer.

  It was a Sholen, all right. Lying on the bottom, with its limbs held in a very weird position. The front two limb pairs were held against its back, and the rear pair were parallel to the tail. The Sholen was hog-tied. It was a prisoner.

  Why the hell were the Sholen tying each other up in the middle of a battle? Was this part of their constant sex thing?

  It would be really easy for the drone to stab this Sholen in the throat, just below the helmet ring, and let it drown on blood and seawater. Rob thought about that, then maneuvered the drone to a position behind the Sholen. If wh
oever was in command of this attack felt it necessary to tie someone up, it seemed obvious to Rob that cutting the cables binding him would be a good thing.

  TIZHOS felt something prodding at her hands. Some kind of native organism? She stopped wriggling. Maybe it would crawl around to where she could get a look at it. She felt the cable binding her upper arms snap. The creature had freed her? She reached for her multipurpose tool and cut the cables on her midlimbs and legs, then turned to look at her rescuer.

  It was a drone. Human-built, with a crude blade affixed to its nose. Why had it freed her?

  No time. Her speaker was broken, so she shouted as loudly as she could, hoping the sound would carry through her hood and the water, “Get everyone away from the house! Irona wishes to kill you all! He has torpedoes! Very large! Get away!”

  Tizhos didn’t wait for an answer, even if the human controlling the drone had understood her at all. She scrambled across the sea bottom toward the two torpedoes. Her arm and midlimb joints were stiff and painful, and her suit’s medical system was completely out of painkillers. She called for a big dose of stimulants and some confidence-building pheromones to help her tough it out.

  The torpedoes hadn’t moved. She tried to establish a link, but Irona had prudently locked her out of the command web. Well, if high-tech methods wouldn’t work, perhaps primitive methods would. Tizhos made her tool narrow and sharp, and began jabbing at the control panel of the torpedo. She smashed sensors, indicators—anything that looked vulnerable. The tough plastic resisted her blows, but she got the blade into a seam and pried with all her strength until she heard a satisfying snap. Behind the panel was a block of circuitry sealed in plastic. Tizhos began stabbing it, holding the tool in both midlimb hands and using her whole body to drive it. Her suit reeked of aggression, and she found it oddly pleasant.

  She ripped out the fragments of circuitry and groped inside for anything else she could ruin. She slashed what seemed like a hydraulic line and saw a cloud of fluid leak into the ocean like blood.

  Enough damage. Time to move on. She clambered over to the second torpedo and made ready to stab its controls. Suddenly it began making a loud hum, and rose up off the bottom.

  Tizhos got on top of it, trying to weigh it down, but it surged forward, then rolled, slamming her into the silt. When she looked up again it was ten meters away, rising and accelerating. She struggled after it, but the machine moved smoothly away.

  Half a minute later there was a flash and a concussion that tumbled Tizhos head over tail along the sea bottom for a dozen meters.

  She steadied herself, waited for her suit’s sonar and inertial navigation systems to recover, and wondered what to do next. Irona had won the battle; that much seemed obvious. Even if any of the humans and their native allies had survived, the Guardians would be able to round them up without any difficulty.

  Tizhos realized, rather vaguely, that she herself might not survive very long. Would Irona even bother to take her back to Shalina for treatment of her behavior? Or would they just stuff her body into the plasma furnace along with the dead humans and let her ashes discolor Ilmatar’s surface for a few centuries?

  When a Guardian found her, Tizhos followed her to the shattered settlement where Irona and the others were searching through the rubble. The water was still full of sediment, so it was like walking in heavy fog.

  The elevator capsule lay on its side, caved in and flooded. The front of the native house had collapsed. Tizhos saw at least four Ilmataran bodies left scattered by the blast. She couldn’t tell if they were some of Irona’s native allies or the ones helping the humans.

  “You failed,” said Irona when he noticed Tizhos. “We need only gather up the human artifacts and any native rec ords here, then we return to the base and finish dismantling it.”

  “I intend to bear witness to this crime,” said Tizhos. “I shall inform the Consensus what you have done here. Tell me if you will order your Guardians to murder me also; I desire to know.”

  “I see no more need for violence here,” said Irona, and even without smelling him Tizhos could tell he was afraid. “This world seems safe now. After we take you back home for treatment, I plan to lead expeditions against all the other human bases and colonies. I hope we do not need to kill any others.”

  Tizhos made no reply. She sat amid the rubble as the others continued their search. After a long swim from the base and a battle, the Guardians looked exhausted. Finally even Irona noticed and called a rest. “Two hours for rest and food, then we resume work.”

  The Guardians gathered at the torpedo impact point, where the force of the blast had cleared away rubbish and left a nice open area. They dropped to the sea bottom and lay as limp as sleeping humans.

  Irona came over to Tizhos and sat. “I want you to promise me you do not intend to run away. Otherwise I must tie your limbs again.”

  “I have no place to run to,” she said. “I suggest you return to the base and allow the Guardians to rest and recover. You can bring a work party to clear away all the human artifacts later.”

  “Scavengers may come before we can remove everything. I believe it best to get everything now.”

  “Tell me what you plan to do with it all.”

  “The incinerator on the surface can dispose of everything. After it reduces everything to ash, we will dismantle it and take away the pieces. No trace of any alien presence will remain on this world.”

  “You could save the native rec ords. They have little mass, and would improve our knowledge of this civilization.”

  “No,” said Irona. “They would only tempt you and others who think the same way. You would wish to learn more. Only probes at first, but then would come crewed missions. Where the explorers go, conquerors and exploiters always follow. We can only avoid moral fault by remaining at home, on our own world in our own communities.”

  Tizhos couldn’t answer that; she could smell her own sadness and depression. The idea of returning to Shalina and living in a Consensus that thought the way Irona did made her want to die.

  Perhaps she could accompany the human prisoners back to Earth. Assuming, of course, that Irona really intended to send them home.

  “Tell me what will happen to the prisoners,” said Tizhos.

  Irona didn’t reply. Tizhos looked at him and saw that Irona was staring at a swirl of dark material in the water. After a moment Tizhos realized that the dark stuff was coming from a hole in Irona’s suit, just below the helmet. There was some kind of pointed object studded with little barbs sticking out of the hole. As Tizhos watched, the tapered object slid back into the hole and then Irona fell over sideways in a cloud of blood and bubbles.

  An Ilmataran was standing behind Irona, cleaning blood off one pincer with its feeding tendrils. Then it advanced on Tizhos.

  “I surrender! I will not fight!” She bowed her head and held her front arms straight out from her body in the traditional pose of surrender, then realized that looked an awful lot like the Ilmataran threat posture. So she tucked in her arms and tried to curl into a ball.

  The Ilmataran placed one sharp pincer-tip at the back of Tizhos’s neck and rattled off a loud series of clicks and pops. A moment later Tizhos heard someone banging tools together, and then a human was rolling her onto her back and peering into her helmet.

  “Tizhos!” said Robert Freeman. “Are you okay?”

  Tizhos indicated her broken speaker, then shouted inside her helmet. “I feel no injury!”

  “Good. I was afraid Longpincer might have stabbed you. He’s pretty pissed off about his house.”

  “The Ilmatarans escaped?”

  “Most of them—about a dozen. Some of Longpincer’s apprentices and a couple of the scientists were still up on the battle line when the torpedo hit. The rest of us were swimming like hell in the other direction.”

  “I apologize for not disabling both weapons.”

  “What?”

  “I apologize!”

  “There’s no nee
d. You saved our lives.”

  “I could not permit Irona to kill you all.”

  An Ilmataran came over to Robert Freeman carrying two microtorp guns. Robert Freeman took them, then tapped a reply on the Ilmataran’s shell. He examined the guns, clipped one to his utility harness, and held the other one ready to shoot. “Cool guns,” he said.

  Tizhos looked over at the Guardians. Most of them were standing with arms extended while Ilmatarans and another human with a microtorp gun watched over them. Two of the Guardians lay on the sea bottom, with blood clouding the water around them.

  “Tell me what you plan to do now,” said Tizhos.

  “Now? Now we’re all going back to Hitode Station. I’m going to eat something that isn’t an emergency bar, and take a fucking shower. Broadtail’s coming with us. Longpincer and his people have to rebuild here.”

  “I must join the other Sholen,” said Tizhos, getting up off the sea bottom.

  “It’s okay. You’ve always been a pretty decent person; I trust you. Heck, you saved our lives when the rest of them were trying to kill us all.”

  “That does not alter the fact that I belong with them. I disagreed with Irona and he treated me wrongly, but I will not join with you.”

  “I guess I understand. Can you tell them we won’t hurt anyone as long as they cooperate? It’s a long way back to Hitode and if we start fighting nobody’s going to make it alive.”

  “I will tell them. I do not desire any more killing.”

  TWENTY days later, Commander Jorge Hernandez floated in the command pod of the expedition support vehicle Marco Polo, looking over the shoulder of the sensor specialist at a display of the gas giant Ukko and its moons. “Anything?”

  “Not that I can see. Optical’s clear, radio’s quiet, and there’s nothing on infrared. If there were Sholen here, I think they must be gone.”

  Commander Hernandez didn’t want to admit it, but he was tremendously relieved. The Polo had deployed a whole constellation of sensor platforms, missiles, and laser mirrors, but everyone aboard knew that in an actual fight none of them would accomplish much more than using up some of the enemy’s munitions. It was precisely because the Marco Polo was not a military vehicle that UNIDA had agreed to send it to Ilmatar. All of Earth’s real combat- effective, purpose-built warcraft were scattered around Earth and Mars, waiting to meet a Sholen attack. The peacetime UNICA had changed hats and become the UN Interstellar Defense Agency, and explorers like Hernandez suddenly found themselves military officers.