World of Water (14 page)

21

H
ANDLER WHIMPERED.
D
EV
shoved him backwards, putting himself between the ISS liaison and the pair of locals.

“I’ve got this,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

But he wasn’t as confident as he sounded. This body was resilient, yes, with good reflexes and above-average strength, but he couldn’t rely on it. It might crap out on him at any moment.

Best just to get the fight over and done with as quickly as possible, then.

The man with the gutting knife shifted to the left. His friend with the gaff hook prowled to the right. Swiftly Dev sized them up, assessing which was the greater threat. Gutting Knife, he decided. He was the wirier of the two, and a wicked, jagged gash on his cheek suggested he was no stranger to violence. No stranger to pain and injury, at least.

The gash looked relatively fresh, too, no more than a week old. Still inflamed at the edges, and Dev could make out the faint ladder mark of subdermal smart-stitches, there to tighten and draw the wound shut before dissolving when their job was done. A work accident, Dev assumed, although he couldn’t rule out it being the result of a fight.

Dev feinted at Gaff Hook, causing him to take a step back, then rushed Gutting Knife. With a forearm block he batted aside the blade, accompanying the attack with a stiff-fingered strike to the throat.

Gutting Knife jerked his head back just enough to dull the impact. It paused him in his tracks but wasn’t the crippling one-and-done hit Dev had been after.

Gaff Hook came in from the side, weapon raised for a downward slash. Dev spun and rammed the heel of his palm into the man’s elbow as the hook descended. He heard and felt a
crack
, and Gaff Hook yelped. The elbow had been dislocated, that arm rendered useless.

A warning cry from Handler, and Dev swivelled just in time to see Gutting Knife lunging at him from behind. He twisted out of the path of the blade and gave its wielder a rabbit punch to the kidneys as he stumbled past.

Gutting Knife went down with a whooping, strangulated gasp, while Gaff Hook, having transferred the hook to his other hand, swiped at Dev sideways. Dev reared away from the weapon’s swing, butting up against the steel balustrade that bordered the esplanade’s waterside edge.

Over Gaff Hook’s shoulder he saw at a glance that the brawl at the restaurant was losing steam. Most of the locals involved now lay unconscious or incapacitated on the floor, and Sigursdottir was marshalling her troops, coaxing them into a withdrawal before word spread and more opponents arrived. Corporal Milgrom alone was still fighting, overcome by a sort of berserker rage. She had just smashed a plastic chair over someone’s head and was brandishing one of its snapped-off legs like a cudgel, inviting anyone within earshot to come and have a go if they thought they were hard enough.

That was all Dev had time to register before Gaff Hook renewed his assault. With one arm hanging limp and his weapon in his off hand, however, he was unbalanced and clumsy. Dev had only to pivot on the ball of one foot, and Gaff Hook lumbered headlong, helplessly, into the balustrade.

It was too tempting and too easy just to pitch him over the top rail of the balustrade, but that was no reason not to do it. Dev grabbed him by the seat of the trousers and flipped him heels over head, sending him somersaulting into the sea. Gaff Hook surfaced immediately, spluttering, and hauled himself one-handed through the water to grasp the balustrade for support. His hook was gone.

Dev debated whether to stamp on Gaff Hook’s fingers so that he was forced to let go and keep swimming, or pretend to help him out onto dry land only to dunk him back under. Some further humiliation was in order, he felt. He wasn’t going to let the bastard off that lightly.

“Dev?”

Handler’s tone was querulous and frightened. Gutting Knife had recovered from the kidney punch sooner than Dev expected and, while Dev was busy dealing with Gaff Hook, had got back to his feet and seized Handler by the scruff of the neck. His blade hovered at the ISS liaison’s throat, and he looked more than ready to use it.

“I’m sick of you people,” he growled. “I know you two aren’t sea monkeys, not exactly. Frankly I don’t know what the fuck you are. But you look enough like sea monkeys that it makes no difference in my mind. Those buggers are determined to screw things up for the rest of us, and I’ve had it up to here with that. Them. You.”

“Put the knife down.” Dev darted another glance at Sigursdottir and the other Marines. They were all engaged in defusing Milgrom’s drunken battle frenzy, restraining her and trying to drag her away. They weren’t going to be any help to him in this situation right here. They had their hands full. Milgrom was bellowing and resisting, and not about to come quietly.

“I don’t think so,” said Gutting Knife. He nodded at the blade and at Handler. “This is how sea monkeys should be treated. We’ve tried being all sympathetic and understanding and reasonable with them, and where has that bleeding-heart bullshit got us? Nowhere. They’ve just taken it for weakness and stepped up their campaign against us. Know how I came by this cut on my face?”

“I didn’t think it was a shaving accident,” Dev said. He was playing for time. “Why not tell me about it?”

“I got it fending off one of the fuckers from my boat. He boarded while I was laying out my nets. Just popped up out of the briny onto the main deck, bold as you please, like this was his property and I was trespassing, and not the other way round. Had one of those ivory spears they like to carry. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for any of that crap, was I? Neither were my shipmates.”

“Of course you weren’t. Now please, let my guy there go.”

Gutting Knife pressed the cutting edge of the blade harder against Handler’s skin. Handler hissed in panic and shot Dev a frantic, pleading stare.

“So we laid into him,” Gutting Knife continued, “the three of us: me, my bosun, my first mate. He was an agile bastard, I’ll give him that. Hopped about the place like a flea. But he was young, inexperienced. Looked like he was a teenager, maybe, no older than that. Reckon he was trying to prove his manliness or something, the way kids do.”

“So it was three grown men versus a child. You must be proud of yourselves.”

Handler glowered, his eyes saying,
Antagonise him, why don’t you?

But Dev knew he was going to be able to end the standoff only through patience and needling. He wanted to lull Gutting Knife into a false sense of security and at the same time keep him rattled. That way, with Dev veering between guile and aggression, Gutting Knife wouldn’t be thinking straight; couldn’t be sure whether or not he was being played. His confusion would eventually give Dev an opening, an opportunity to leap in and neutralise him.

Or so Dev hoped. Nothing was guaranteed here except Gutting Knife’s unpredictability. There could be a successful outcome, or there could be Xavier Handler on the ground, windpipe slashed wide, aspirating his own blood.

“We did what we had to,” Gutting Knife said. “How were we to know he wasn’t an ambush? How were we to know there weren’t a dozen more of them about to jump out and surprise us? We took the sea monkey out; anyone would.”

“But not before he got you a good one to the face.”

“Yeah, and he paid for it. He’s still...” Gutting Knife blinked and twitched his head. “He paid for it all right. That’s all I have to say.”

All at once the man was looking guilty as sin and Dev was getting the same aura of defensiveness and furtiveness off him that he’d noticed earlier among the other townspeople. If anything, it was stronger with Gutting Knife, more overt.

There wasn’t time to cross-examine him, however. Out of the corner of his eye, Dev spied Gaff Hook clambering up the balustrade, shedding water. If Gaff Hook chose to go on the offensive again, Dev’s attention would be divided and he’d be in no position to save Handler. The ISS liaison’s fate would be entirely up to Gutting Knife.

Dev needed to wrap things up right now. No more pussyfooting around.

“Listen, this can go either of two ways,” he said. “You kill him, and I beat the shit out of you. Or I get to you before you kill him, and I still beat the shit out of you, only not so badly. You walk away.”

“You’re saying whatever happens, I lose. Are you trying to negotiate with me here? Because it doesn’t seem like you’ve got the hang of bargaining.”

Handler appeared to agree. His gills were flapping and flaring anxiously.

Dev signalled reassurance to him using his photophores. Their glow was less perceptible out of the water, in broad daylight, but Handler got the message nonetheless.

Dev then, using the same medium, warned him to brace himself.

“What are you doing?” Gutting Knife demanded. “That fucking light-show stuff. Stop it! It isn’t natural.”

“Last chance,” Dev said. Gaff Hook was on this side of the balustrade now, lowering himself awkwardly, hampered by his bum arm. “Give up, and I’ll go easy on you.”

Gutting Knife sneered.

Dev flashed an alert to Handler, urging him to shunt himself backwards.

Handler, to his credit, did as requested, with scarcely any hesitation. He pushed his shoulder hard into Gutting Knife’s chest, with almost his whole weight behind it.

Briefly, Gutting Knife was taken aback.

Dev sprang. He grasped Gutting Knife’s blade hand in both of his before the man could recover his equilibrium. He twisted it round sharply and savagely enough to separate the carpal bones from the radius and ulna.

Gutting Knife could only scream at the sudden, searing pain. The blade fell. Dev pressed home the advantage, bringing his adversary to his knees with a stamp to his instep, then stoving in a few ribs with a vicious toecap kick.

After that there was little Gutting Knife could do except writhe on the ground in agony, clutching his side.

There was little Gaff Hook could do either except make a run for it. His friend had been disarmed and reduced to a pitiful, howling wreck. He had no desire to end up the same way, and he could tell he wouldn’t stand a chance, injured as he already was, against the weird half-human, half-Tritonian hybrid. Cradling his limp arm, he scuttled away as fast as his legs would carry him.

“Well done,” Dev said, patting Handler on the biceps. “You did good.”

The ISS liaison looked relieved but still shaken. “He could have... He nearly...”

“But he didn’t, did he? That’s the main thing. And you were a part of it. You acted. Give yourself a pat on the back.”

The Marines had finally got Milgrom under control and were hustling her towards the food court exit. Sigursdottir beckoned commandingly to Dev and Handler.

“We are out of here,” she said. “Now. Most ricky-tick.”

As they made their way towards the boats, Dev remarked to her, “That could have gone better.”

“Don’t gloat, Harmer. Don’t you dare. I’m pissed off enough as it is. This is on me. I let it get out of hand. I should have nipped it in the bud while I could. Maddox will tear me a new one when he finds out.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Of course I’m going to tell. I’ll have to give him a full report. You can’t just cover an incident like this up. Even if I personally don’t let him know, he’ll hear about it some other way. Someone from Llyr will blab, or even lodge a formal complaint. It’s inevitable. And then I’ll be even deeper in the brown.”

“Okay,” Dev said. “Well, let’s deal with that when it happens. But when you do file your report, don’t overlook the fact that the locals were behaving in a squirrelly fashion before things kicked off. There’s something not right here, and they don’t want us knowing what, and that might be why they were as ready to have a scrap as you people were to start one.”

“You know this?”

“Normally I’d call it a gut feeling and that’d be as far as it goes, but the guy I just put in intensive care back there blurted out something that makes me almost certain this town has something to hide. A guilty secret.”

“And you think we should find out what it is.”

“I think it would be a gross dereliction of duty, lieutenant, if we didn’t.”

22

T
HE TWO BOATS
sailed away from Llyr into the gathering dusk at speed, putting as much distance as possible between them and the township. So long and good riddance.

Once Llyr had disappeared over the horizon, however, the
Reckless Abandon
and the
Admiral Winterbrook
both came to a dead stop.

Half an hour later, as night fell, the Marine catamaran launched a URIB, an ultralight rigid-hulled inflatable boat, seven metres long and powered by a near-silent electric inboard motor. Manning the central helm console was Private Reyes, with Private Cully at the bow, crouching by the forward-mounted 12.7mm machine gun. The only other occupant was Dev.

Sigursdottir had needed some persuading – but not a lot – to grant Dev permission to return to Llyr. Once he had explained to her just what he thought the townspeople were hiding and how it could be advantageous to the mission, she had given him the go-ahead.