by Neal Asher
‘What you doing?’ asked Twelve from above.
‘The silt trail is just about gone, but I’ve plotted its original location. I’ll follow it and see if I can get into our friend’s thinking.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Twelve, with more than a hint of boredom.
Propelled by his tractor drive, without the S-cav field engaged, Sniper followed the winding trail he had configured along the ocean’s bottom. After fifty kilometres of this and two dead leeches, he still could not plumb the Prador’s thinking. Apparently it was heading towards the Lamarck Trench, but then it would have needed to circle back round the Skinner’s Island to go anywhere else. Then Sniper picked up a sudden surge from his magnetometer as he detected something far off to one side. He turned to trace the source, travelling two kilometres away from his current course. Finding only a piece of Ebulan’s ship which, judging by its encrustations, must have fallen away prior to it crashing ten years ago, he cursed repeatedly as he returned. It was only as he motored back through his own silt trail that he realized the Prador had made a compromise between depth and silt disturbance along the most direct route leading to the trench. It had clearly never expected any of this trail to last long enough to be followed.
‘He’s definitely gone to ground in the trench,’ Sniper sent.
‘That’s good,’ sighed Twelve.
‘What are your intentions?’ the Warden interrupted.
‘Well, this trail will only show me where he entered the trench, not where he is positioned now. Reaching it, he could have turned either left or right, or even into one of the tributaries. My chances of finding him are the same from wherever I begin my search. What can you give me?’
‘The geosurvey drones would not be able to sustain the pressure, and Thirteen is presently otherwise occupied. You will have to make do with Eleven and Twelve.’
‘You don’t seem that anxious to find this bastard—and its bastard drone.’
‘This bastard probably just wants to leave the planet, and though the loss of the Vignette crew is lamentable, it does not warrant major intervention on my part. Anyway, this may soon no longer be our concern.’
‘What?’ Sniper asked, then grunted almost physically as he began to decode the information package the Warden sent. ‘I see,’ the drone muttered. ‘We just got shat on all the way from Earth.’
* * * *
Janer studied the still-shifting remains of the hooder and wondered who was now in charge of the Sable Keech. About ten Kladites were now little more than piles of bones and reification hardware. The Hoopers waiting all around him were now well armed.
‘Steady, boys,’ said Ron, standing up at the sound of marching across the deck above.
The thirty or so Hoopers down here looked steady enough to Janer.
The Kladites started descending the two nearby ladders. A group of about twenty gradually gathered at the base of each, then milled around confusedly when they saw what awaited them.
‘Shall we do ‘em?’ asked Forlam eagerly. It seemed he was anxious to try out his new toy.
‘No,’ said Ron, ‘we’ll just make sure our position is clear, then get on with the work we’re being paid for.’
Taylor Bloc, carefully checking his hand- and footholds, finally worked his way down the ladder.
‘Looks a little shaky,’ opined Wade.
The Kladites parted to allow their leader through, then fell into ranks behind him. A few metres from Ron, the reif halted. He turned to stare at the remains of the hooder.
‘How was it killed?’ Bloc asked.
‘Well,’ said Ron, ‘I reckon whoever originally hit it with the APW came and finished the job this time. Never saw what happened myself. I was waiting for Forlam to bring us these weapons.’
‘I see,’ said Bloc, eyeing the gathered Hoopers, only a few of whom did not carry some of the hardware Forlam and Styx had obtained from Aesop’s stateroom. ‘Does anyone know who owns this APW?’
A general shaking and scratching of heads was all the reply he received.
‘So it would seem the present crisis is over.’ Bloc glanced back at his own men, then around at the Hoopers. To Janer it seemed the reif was weighing the odds. Laser carbines against Hoopers armed with Batian weapons: it seemed that Bloc did not rate his chances very high. ‘I don’t want any further trouble. We have already had… sufficient.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ said Ron pleasantly. ‘We’ve got work to do now if this ship is not to founder,’ Ron looked beyond Bloc to his gathered Kladites, ‘and more trouble would just mean more mess for us to clean up.’
Bloc did not turn or say anything out loud, but his people began heading back towards the ladders. After a moment he followed them. Forlam and many of the other Hoopers appeared slightly disappointed by this retreat.
‘I would dearly love to pull his head off,’ muttered Ron.
Stepping out of the shadows behind, John Styx said, ‘I understand your feelings, Captain Ron, but his attempt to prevent you obtaining weapons that would have proved ineffective against this creature hardly seems sufficient justification.’
‘Yes, I guess so.’
Styx held up a battered spray can and inspected it. ‘Patience—I think we will know soon enough,’ he said.
Ron sighed. ‘Okay, let’s go to work then.’
* * * *
Just two ships were in sight: one moored to a clump of sargassum, the other heeled over and heading away. Ambel recognized the moored ship as the Moby (which it was generally called rather than by its recorded name of Moby’s Dick) at just the same time as he recognized the figure on her bridge staring back at him through binoculars. After the loss of his ship Ahab the other Captains had pooled their resources to buy Captain Drum another vessel, for in sinking his own ship, which contained a Prador CTD, Drum had saved all their lives. Many said that Drum, who had been implanted with a spider thrall that he ejected from his body before sinking his vessel, was now slightly mad and dangerous to know. Ambel, who had lived through experiences more nightmarish even than that, thought this criticism unfair, for in reality it was a description that applied to all Hoopers. ‘Take her in. We’ll anchor just off the Moby and pay a visit,’ he told Boris.
Boris eyed him. ‘What about our friend?’ The helmsman still did not quite believe Ambel’s story about a Whelkus titanicus attacking a heirodont. But then a whelk managing to pursue a ship as far as it had was an unlikely story in itself.
‘We’ve seen no sign of it, and the turbul and boxies have been behaving normally. I reckon if it survived the heirodont, it probably lost our trail.’
‘You’d bet on that, Captain?’ Boris asked.
Ambel patted him on the shoulder. ‘We can’t live our lives expecting that thing to turn up all the time, lad.’
Boris nodded and spun the helm. The Treader heeled over and after a while Galegrabber furled himself along with fabric sails. Just ahead of them a mass of sargassum floated on the ocean: rotting woody stalks and wadded ribbons of weed. A couple of hammer whelks occupied it, but nothing else. Any prill there had no doubt been disposed of by Drum’s crew, for the Moby was moored to this mass. Ambel climbed down to the deck and walked over to the bows. There he took up a heavy iron grapnel attached to a long coil of thick greased rope. The ocean was too deep here for bottom anchors, and this was the only way. He spun the grapnel over his head and released it. It arced out, trailing rope, to thud into the weed just by the hammer whelks, sending those creatures lolloping into the sea. Then, drawing in the slack as the Treader nosed into the weed itself, he checked the grapnel’s hold and tied off the rope.
‘Hey up, Drum!’ Ambel bellowed. ‘Got anything cooking?’
‘Prill!’ Drum bellowed back. ‘I got prill on the menu today!’
Ambel turned to his gathering crew. ‘We won’t be staying here too long. You two,’ he pointed at Davy-bronte and Silister standing uncertainly in the background, ‘this may be your opportunity to catch a ride back to Chel. D
rum may have some more sailing to do, but he’ll certainly be going back that way before we do.’ He turned to the others. ‘Anne and Boris will also come across with me. Anne, find us a cask of seacane rum. The rest of you, get the ship’s boat lowered.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ replied Anne, moving away. Silister and Davy-bronte, with the help of Pillow and another junior, set about lowering the ship’s boat, while Ambel turned his attention to Peck.
‘You’re in charge, Peck. I know you’re feeling a tad nervous,’ Ambel eyed the shotgun Peck was clutching, ‘so it’s best you stay here and keep an eye on things.’
Peck did just that, watching with unnerving intensity as the five scrambled down into the boat and rowed across to the Moby.
Like most Old Captains, Drum was built like a tank, but unlike many he had retained his hair, which he tied back into a pony tail. He was a wide-faced individual who always had a welcoming grin for his friends. He wore it now, but there was something unnerving about it.
‘How you doing, man?’ Ambel said, shaking Drum’s hand and looking round.
Drum’s crew was a relatively new one, as his previous crew had all been murdered by Batian mercenaries and the adolescent Prador, Vrell. Some of them, Ambel noticed, were from Ron’s old ship. There stood the appropriately named Roach, a raggedy weasel of a man who was honest because no one gave him any other choice, because he looked more untrustworthy than he actually was. Others were gathered around a couple of braziers on which prill roasted. Some of them were already eating: holding prill upside down on their laps with belly plates hinged open, scooping out the fragrant contents with spoons. Many of them, Ambel also noted, bore healing prill wounds.
‘They can be a bugger to catch intact,’ Ambel observed.
‘All you need is a little perseverance,’ said Drum, rubbing his hands together. ‘What’s that there, then?’ He nodded to the cask Anne was carrying on her shoulder.
‘A little gift,’ said Ron.
‘Then best we get it open! I’d guess you don’t want to hang around too long.’
Ambel raised an eyebrow. ‘Captain Sprage?’
‘Oh yes, we all know about your rescue mission.’
‘Do you know these two lads?’ Ambel gestured to the two Vignette crewmen.
Drum eyed the two men while scratching contemplatively at the back of his neck—a habit he seemed unable to break ever since digging a spider thrall out of there. ‘I know their faces…’ Then his attention wandered to where Anne and one of his own crewmen were driving a tap into the rum barrel. Suddenly realizing what he was doing with his hand, he snatched it away to rest on a nearby rail.
‘These are all that’s left of the Vignette crew.’ Ambel kept a close eye on the other Captain as he explained the next bit. ‘Seems the rest of the crew was grabbed by a Prador war drone before it sank their ship.’
‘Really?’ Drum turned back to look at Ambel. His apparently calm demeanour was belied by a loud crack as his hand splintered the rail. Most Old Captains’ horror of what Prador had done to their human captives, and their resulting hatred of the aliens, was a pale reflection of Drum’s views on them.
‘Seems,’ said Ambel, ‘that Prador you were hunting on the Skinner’s Island might have survived. The Warden didn’t say so, but no others have come here.’
Drum released the rail, now reduced to half its original thickness. ‘I think I’ll be needing a drink.’
So they drank, and Ambel related recent events. Whether Drum believed what he was told about the whelk and the heirodont (a name for a fable if ever there was one), Ambel couldn’t tell. Drum obviously had other things on his mind, murder probably being one of them. Later, Silister and Davy-bronte together approached Ambel.
‘We’d like to stay with the Treader, if we may,’ said Silister.
‘Why’s that, lad?’ asked Ambel.
Davy-bronte answered. ‘He’s not there yet, nowhere near, but he could turn too, like Orbus. We don’t want to be here for that.’
‘You think so?’ Ambel asked, and they both nodded vigorously. ‘All right, let’s get ourselves back, then.’
As Ambel and his fellows made their farewells, Drum said, ‘Looks like a storm’s about due,’ and Ambel knew he was not referring to the weather.
Drum was so very right, in more ways than he knew.
* * * *
The movable deck section hinged up on hydraulic rams, and the crane ran on high-powered electric step motors, but it took Hooper muscle to heave the still-squirming remains of the hooder into the cargo net. Hovering ten metres above the deck beside the central mainmast, Thirteen watched as the crane hoisted into the sunshine what was left of the creature—writhing like some great black maggot—and swung out over the sea to drop it. The drone watched a sudden activity in the water, spotting leeches and the long writhe of a rhinoworm closing in, and wondered if the life forms of Spatterjay would be able to digest this tough alien flesh. Then, turning its attention to Taylor Bloc and the watching Kladites, Thirteen assessed the situation there.
The Hoopers could probably wipe out these Kladites very quickly, and many of them were eager to do so. However, Ron kept them on a tight rein, reminding them that they had yet to be paid, which seemed to do the trick. The Captain was biding his time, and had quietly opined to Thirteen that something stank about recent events. The particular group of reifications the hooder had attacked had been those who had been giving Bloc a hard time—also some of them had been incinerated by laser carbine. Bloc’s explanation that this had happened accidentally while the Kladites fired on the hooder was weak at best. The present situation seemed precarious to the drone, who felt sure it would not last. Thirteen moved out from the mast and headed for the open deck as Bloc and his followers returned to their bridge staterooms. From down below came the sounds of industry.
With the hooder now out of the way, the Hoopers could all continue with the task of repairing the rudder. The drone descended a couple of levels, then hovered to observe the maintenance section. Several reifications were shifting movable floor panels from where they had been stacked to one side, and slotting them back in place. Two Hoopers had disassembled a large ram, earlier disconnected from the rudder and carried up here by Captain Ron. Hydraulic fluid ran out of the ram’s incinerated seals, trickling off the bench on which it rested. Another Hooper was returning from the stores carrying a box of new seals, and yet more Hoopers were coming up from the bilge with various other components of the rudder control system which were in need of repair or replacement.
Thirteen now dropped down further, into the bilge, and headed back towards the rudder. On the way the drone halted where a reif and a Hooper were busy scooping up the rest of the hooder’s remains.
‘Why would Janer Cord Anders be carrying such a weapon?’ the drone sent his inquiry to a far-away listener.
‘I would guess that the hive mind he consorts with supplied it to him,’ the Warden replied. ‘This is a situation that bears close watching, and it seems evident that the Golem, Isis Wade, may be the hive-mind agent I am seeking.’
‘And if that proves to be the case,’ said Thirteen, ‘what action should be taken?’
‘None at the moment. Our actions are dependent on what the Golem actually does. If he ever attempts to take any sprine off-planet, he must be stopped, which I suspect were Janer’s instructions, too. It is, however, doubtful that this is truly Wade’s aim.’
‘And what might be his aim, then?’
After a long pause the Warden replied, ‘I have no idea.’
Thirteen moved on, finally entering the meeting hall at the stern. Here again floor panels had been pulled up, but to expose the tangled and incinerated wreckage around the rudder’s rear tang. The Golem, Isis Wade, was unbolting the electrical control of a hydraulic pump, while Janer detached various servo-switches and their charred loom of optics. Others were replacing melted pipes and heat-seized valves. The work was nearly done, but the rudder remained jammed over at the full
extent of one ram, the ram on the other side having been removed.
This was where Captain Ron came in. While Thirteen watched, the Old Captain heaved against the rear tang of the rudder, as if against the bar of a lock gate. Slowly the rudder began to move round, fluid jetting from melted pipes and valve holes as the remaining ram closed up. Dragging behind two large iron wedges, and with a sledgehammer resting over his shoulder, Forlam followed the Captain.
‘Now,’ said Ron, once the rudder lay straight relative to the ship.
Forlam dragged the wedges into position underneath the tang and hammered them into place while the Captain continued to prevent the rudder from swinging back.
‘That’ll do it,’ Ron opined.
Thirteen just filed this further example of how physically strong Old Captains were. It observed the dents made in the bubble-metal floor by the Captain’s feet, then swung away to scan, by ultrasound imaging, Janer Cord Anders. Within a second the drone ascertained that the man still carried his singularity gun—the drone receiving strange feedback from its vicinity. Abruptly Isis Wade looked up and located Thirteen.
By radio, Thirteen sent, ‘Are you a hive-mind agent?’
‘Yes,’ replied Wade, without opening his mouth.
‘Why are you here?’
‘To repair this rudder control system.’
‘No, I mean why are you here.’
‘I was never much good at metaphysics.’
Wade returned his attention to his work, no longer responding to Thirteen’s questions. The drone swung away, floated out into the bilge, and once again ascended up to the deck. It observed Erlin contemplatively studying formulae on a screen while, nearby, five reifs floated in tanks of sea water and tried to live. It saw a Hooper inspecting the hull where it had impacted against an atoll, only to find no discernible damage. Other Hoopers tossed sacks of human bones and wrecked reification hardware over the side, and one of the living sails departed its mast to snatch up a rhinoworm this commotion attracted. The drone transmitted a signal to Zephyr, and as ever received no response.