World of Water (10 page)

“Do they regard these whales as sacred or something?” said Dev.

“Not particularly. In fact, they harvest them as well. Use them as a source of food and construction materials. Clothing too. They make their own version of leather from redback hide steeped in the redback’s own ambergris. Whalers like this are poaching their game and hence pissing them off.”

“There are less drastic ways of showing you’re upset,” Dev pointed out.

“The Tritonians aren’t really big on dialogue and diplomacy,” said Sigursdottir. “Ask your friend Handler. He’s the one who’s supposed to be the ambassador between us and them. Ask him how much success he’s had getting them to see things from our point of view or, for that matter, putting their point of view across to us.”

“Spoiler,” said Milgrom. “Not a lot.”

“The history of settler–indigene relations on Triton has never been a happy one,” Sigursdottir said. “Mostly it’s been a case of the two sides trying to ignore each other as much as possible. Handler and all the envoys before him, they’ve not been much more than window-dressing. Lip service to the idea of mediation. Something to show we’ve at least made an effort, we’ve tried to be reasonable, we’ve met the Tritonians halfway...”

“So don’t blame us if they haven’t reciprocated,” said Dev.

“Bingo.”

“If a single envoy is all we’ve offered, is it any surprise they’re getting militant now?”

“No, but we can all pretend it is.” Sigursdottir twisted her mouth in a cynical grimace. “This has been a while coming, but it was always inevitable. People had begun taking the Tritonians for granted, thinking they’d just go on passively accepting our presence.”

“No one reckoned that if humans kept pushing them, sooner or later they’d push back.”

“Quite. So along comes a whaler like this, and it’s just too much of a provocation, far as the Tritonians are concerned. Too intrusive to ignore. Big old ship pulling the planet’s largest mammals out of the sea and turning them into steaks – how can they let it be?”

“No excuse for getting quite so radical,” said Milgrom, tapping the corpse nearest to her with the barrel of her rifle. “At what point does legitimate grievance become a sanction for mass murder? There’s a line, surely.”

“Anyone mind if we carry on the conversation somewhere else?” said Francis. “I don’t know about you people but this place, these bodies, it’s giving me the willies.”

Blunt sniggered. “Never heard
you
complain about being given the willies before.”

“Skank.”

“Whore.”

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

“Stow it, ladies,” barked Sigursdottir. “We all know you love each other like sisters. But Francis is right. There’s nothing we can do for these poor bastards, and frankly I’d rather not have them hovering over me like the world’s ugliest piñatas. Let’s bail and regroup topside. Get some fresh air.”

16

T
HE AIR OUTSIDE
might have been fresher, and indeed warmer, but it didn’t do much to dispel the chilling memory of the massacre in the storage hold. The
Egersund
was a floating tomb, and Dev felt no great urge to remain aboard any longer than he had to.

Sigursdottir insisted that they perform a search of the ship’s forward deck section, the only part they hadn’t checked yet. There was the accommodation level underneath the bridge, and a forecastle beyond that. If by any chance a crewmember had managed to escape the Tritonians’ depredations, they might be hiding out in one of those places.

The forecastle was home to the
Egersund
’s harpoon cannon.

Or rather, to what was left of it.

The large, swivel-mounted device had been dismantled, vandalised, destroyed beyond repair. The shattered debris lay strewn. This cannon wouldn’t launch an explosive-tipped projectile at a redback ever again.

As Dev surveyed the wreckage, he noticed something odd. The distribution of the broken parts was not as random as it first looked. He took a step back to obtain a better view.

Yes, the bits of cannon hadn’t just been tossed about any old how.

They had been heaped up. Arranged.

The pattern they lay in was essentially symmetrical. There was a shallow arch over two small circles, and then a pair of lines projecting out at acute angles, each ending in a V-shape.

He studied the pattern from the other side. This way round it resembled a smiley face with strange, angry eyebrows. That didn’t seem right. The first view felt more apt, more meaningful. He wasn’t sure why, wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he was convinced it was the correct way of looking at the pattern. Arch on top, circles, outward-pointing lines at the bottom.

He summoned Sigursdottir over and showed her what he’d found.

“Make any sense to you?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I’m not deluded, though, am I? It’s something the Tritonians put there. They made it on purpose. Yes?”

“I can’t help but think so. A kind of symbol.”

“But what’s it for? What does it mean?”

“Beats me. Must have some significance for them. Maybe it’s a way of marking the ship. Celebrating what they did here.”

“Or like a gang sign. A graffiti tag.”

“Possibly. Why don’t we wake Handler up, get him over and ask him? He might know. He might have seen it before.”

“Good idea. He’s napped long enough anyway. ISS aren’t paying him to –”

A thunderous
boom
resounded the length of the
Egersund
. The ship lurched, throwing Dev and Sigursdottir off-balance.

“What the – ?” Sigursdottir ran to the port-side gunwale and peered aft. The explosion, or impact, or whatever it had been, had come from that direction.

Dev, looking over her shoulder, saw a mist of spray hanging in the air and, below it, the sea seething white, effervescing. The carcass of the redback bobbed wildly, rocked by the suddenly turbulent water.

“We’ve been hit,” he said.

“No shit,” said Sigursdottir.

“The Tritonians. They’ve come back for more.”

“Looks that way. We need to get off this ship before –”

A second
boom
shook the whaler, this time coming from its starboard flank.

“Before that,” Sigursdottir finished. “They’re not content with leaving the
Egersund
crippled. They want it sunk.”

Milgrom and Blunt arrived on the forecastle at a run.

“Sir!” Milgrom said. “I’ve spotted a Tritonian cuttlefish sub just beneath the surface. Looks like it’s going round systematically ramming holes.”

“Contact Gunnery Sergeant Jiang on the
Winterbrook
. Tell her to seek and engage.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Blunt, where’s Francis?”

“Last I saw, she was in the cabins.”

“Get her out here, if she isn’t on her way already. We are
leaving
.”

Milgrom and Blunt activated their commplants and relayed Sigursdottir’s orders. Francis appeared a moment later, and the five of them set off at a mad dash back to the stern ramp.

The
Egersund
was struck a third time, then a fourth, a fifth. The whaler was being pierced rapidly and repeatedly and taking on water fast, faster than the sealant injectors could cope with. Dev could feel the ship rolling, wallowing. He and the Marines were going as quickly as they could, given the circumstances. The deck kept heaving this way and that, however, making progress treacherous. You couldn’t be certain your foot would land where you wanted it to. It was like trying to run during an earthquake.

Yet another blow from the cuttlefish sub sent all five of them sprawling. The
Egersund
was now letting out a hideous groaning noise. There was a terrifying low rumble as well, coming from deep down inside the vessel – the sound of millions of gallons of seawater flooding in where no seawater belonged.

Sigursdottir dragged Dev back upright by the scruff of his neck, and the five of them continued running.

“What does Jiang think she’s playing at?” Francis said. “Why hasn’t the
Winterbrook
pinged that sub and blown the fucker in half?”

“Easier said than done,” Sigursdottir replied. “Cuttlefish subs can shift. Anyway, that’s not our concern right now. Getting our backsides off this thing before it goes down is what matters.”

The last hundred metres to the ramp was a rollercoaster of ups and downs and sideways twists. The
Egersund
didn’t seem to know what it wanted to do – pitch, yaw, sink – so it did all three at once. Dev felt as though he and the Marines were fleas on the back of an irate mule which wanted rid of them but instead of scratching them off was trying to dislodge them by bucking.

They threw themselves onto the ramp and slid down, spinning helplessly, flailing, until they hurtled off the end, into the sea.

The instant he hit the water, Dev felt his under-lids snap into place and his gills flare. He looked around and saw Milgrom striking for the surface with mighty sweeps of her arms and legs. She was toting at least fifty kilogrammes of equipment, but didn’t seem encumbered at all. The other three Marines were swimming upward too.

A large shape flitted at the periphery of his vision. Thalassoraptor? Not again, surely!

No, it was something else. Something that was both sea beast and more than that.

It looked like a huge cephalopod, perhaps thirty metres long, with a smooth conical body covered in mottled markings and a cluster of arms trailing behind its head. It used jet propulsion to move, sucking in and squirting out water through a ventral siphon. A fringe of fine lateral fins helped it steer.

Yet it was not wholly a living thing. The globes of its eyes were hollow and transparent, and inside each sat a Tritonian. The indigenes were clearly pilots, somehow controlling the cephalopod.

This, then, was a cuttlefish sub. And as Dev watched, it darted off, so fast it was almost lost from view in just a couple of seconds. A swift about-face, and it returned just as fast, if not faster, to slam into the stricken
Egersund
with impressive force.

Rivets popped. Seams split. Yet another fissure appeared in the whaler’s hull.

Dev, meanwhile, was reeling, semi-concussed by the cuttlefish sub’s impact with the ship. His eardrums felt as though someone had punched them with an awl.

The bizarre organic submarine wheeled away from the
Egersund
, preparing to deliver further attacks. Then it seemed to have a change of heart. It came about and coasted towards Dev, manoeuvring with delicate pulses of its fins until it was face to face with him.

Dev trod water blearily. His head had not yet cleared. He felt stunned and groggy.

The cuttlefish sub finned a little closer still so that the Tritonian pilots in their eye socket cockpits could get a better look at him. They exchanged glances across the few metres of cephalopod head between them. Photophores flashed, but Dev could not quite make out what was being expressed. Curiosity? Puzzlement? No, something a bit stronger, a bit more indignant than that.

He tried to ‘speak’ himself, reaching inside for feelings of surrender and goodwill. He had no wish to be rammed by the cuttlefish sub as the
Egersund
had been. A direct, head-on blow from it would mash him to pulp.

His face tingled but he wasn’t sure he was radiating the message he intended. The acquiescent sentiments he was striving to convey seemed muddled somehow. There was apprehension in there. Doubt. A hint of confusion.

It would have been better had he been less dazed. Clarity of mind would have brought purity of emotion.

As it was, the Tritonians’ own faces registered jade-green bafflement shot through with ruby-red ripples of contempt. They weren’t sure what Dev was saying but they knew they didn’t like it.

Or him.

The vast bulk of the
Egersund
continued to sink slowly in the background while the cuttlefish sub thrust past Dev, then swung round so that its arms were facing him.

A pair of tentacles unfurled towards him with a languid, python-like grace. They were lined with suckers and tipped with diamond-shaped pads with a soft, prehensile dexterity. They groped for Dev, and he understood, with a surge of panic, that the Tritonians were planning to take him prisoner. Either that or rend him limb from limb with the tentacles.

The panic was like a bolt of lightning in his brain, a sudden, sharp flash, dispelling confusion.

Dev’s hand went to the hypervelocity pistol at his hip. One of the features of the gun – a reason it was a favourite among Marines – was that it worked underwater.

The tips of the tentacles were around him, almost enfolding him, as he brought the HVP up to fire.

Just as his finger tightened on the trigger, however, the tentacles retracted. They re-joined the cuttlefish sub’s arm cluster, folding together neatly beneath.

Dev had time to wonder if the pilots were responding to the threat of the HVP. A sabot round could easily sever one of those tentacles.

Then he became aware of a second craft hovering nearby, just behind him. This one had the kite-like outline of a manta or a stingray, with gently undulating wingtips and a tail ridged with dorsal fins.