World of Water (22 page)

There’s gratitude
, he said.
I rescue you from a mess that was largely of your own making, and this is how you repay me.

Shut up!
The kid chased up the comment with an insult likening a part of Dev’s anatomy to a string of excrement hanging from a fish’s anus.

Dev was about to close in on the kid with a view to disarming him once more, when Ethel sprang up behind the boy. Her shoulder was bleeding copiously, casting a pall in the water, but nonetheless she snaked an arm round the kid’s neck and clamped her other hand over his knife hand.

Holding the knife at bay, she proceeded to squeeze both sets of his gills flat. It was a perfect chokehold. The kid strained and twisted, but Ethel maintained pressure. He kicked at her in vain.

Soon he was juddering, dancing on the spot. Then his head rolled back.

Unconscious.

Dev waited for Ethel to let go.

She didn’t.

He’s out cold
, he said.
You can stop now.

Ethel answered with a look of steely-blue calm.

He’s not a threat anymore
, Dev said.
He’s neutralised. If you keep that up, you’re going to kill him.

He deserves it.

Maybe, but he’s still only a boy. Still without a name. Can you do that? Can you murder someone that young in cold blood? Whatever he’s done, whatever his beliefs, you can’t have his death on your conscience. You know you can’t
.

He then projected her name at her, her real name, with its connotations of resolve and justice, the former tempered by the latter. Her ‘emotional autograph,’ Handler had called it. Her true self. He used it imploringly, to remind her who she was, to bring her to her senses.

It worked. Ethel swept her arm away from the kid’s neck, her face suffused with dun-coloured disgust. The kid’s gills reopened, pulsing in autonomic reflex.

He was lying in wait
, she said.
He’d have found that knife in my cousin’s sleeping chamber. It was my cousin’s prize possession, a gift from his father. I’m angry that he caught me unawares. I’m even more angry that he dared to use something so cherished on me, dishonouring the man whose life he ended.

I understand. But you’ve done the right thing.

Have I?
said Ethel sullenly.

A spike of pain registered redly on her face. She pressed a hand to the wound in her shoulder.

At the same time, Dev experienced another of those stomach cramps, this one unusually savage.

Ethel, seeing this, said,
You are hurt too?

It’ll pass. I think. You look like you should do something to stem the bleeding.

It’ll pass, too. I think. Besides, there is still a fight going on out there
. She retrieved her shock lance.
It’s my job to end it.

Barely had that last statement faded from her face than an almighty explosion rocked the manta sub.

32

I
T WAS A
deep
whoomph
that reverberated through the water, accompanying a suddenly expanding sphere of brilliance that sprang into life not far above the other manta sub and the horde of Ice King worshipper vessels around it.

All the subs recoiled from the blast, shunted downward and apart by the pressure wave.

That’s not one of our weapons
, said Ethel to Dev.
Unless I’m mistaken, it’s one of your people’s.

She wasn’t mistaken. Even as the subs recovered from the shock, Dev saw a pair of barrel-shaped objects descend towards them, twirling lazily.

Depth charges.

The
Admiral Winterbrook
was joining the fray.

Brace yourself
, he warned Ethel.

Nearly simultaneously –
ba-bam!
– the depth charges detonated. The swordfish sub and the lamprey-like sub were both caught in the blast radius. Their bodies burst wide open, spilling out shredded internal organs and fragments of shattered bone.

The other Ice King subs were sent reeling, as was the second manta sub.

In Ethel’s manta sub, she and Dev were hurled against the back wall of the eye socket cockpit. Their limbs tangled with the kid’s and each other’s, and it took a few moments to extricate themselves.

During that time the scene outside changed drastically. The Ice King subs scattered, careering vertically down into the depths or horizontally off into the black water, out of sight. One of the cuttlefish sub’s pilots had recovered enough to take control of the vessel again and join the frantic exodus. The second manta, meanwhile, limped round towards Ethel’s craft.

Will they attack again?
Ethel asked Dev.
A third wave of those metal weapons?

I don’t know. If the aim was to drive the Ice King guys off, then no.

You aren’t certain.

The ungilled up there like to be thorough, and in this situation it’s not that easy telling friend from foe among your people.

The two manta subs waited side by side, their occupants peering anxiously upwards. Ethel was poised to execute a steep dive at the first sign of another depth charge. She had instructed her colleagues in the other manta to be ready to do the same.

Seems we’re okay
, said Dev at last.
They’ve worked out who’s who and they know the bad guys are gone. They’ve stood down from action stations.

You weren’t confident that would happen.

I’ve learned to take nothing for granted where combat is concerned. In the heat of battle, anything can go wrong and probably will.

You’re a fighter
.
It was more a statement than a question.
One whose business is defeating others in conflict.

She was trying to say soldier, but there was no direct analogue for the word in her vocabulary.

I used to be
, Dev said.

No, you are. It’s your life. Your nature. I saw it when you took on the thalassoraptor, and also when you were first confronted by the cuttlefish sub. You aren’t just any ordinary ambassador. You’re half us, half ungilled, as with all the ambassadors, but you have talents they don’t. You’re more than they are. More dangerous. More determined. More of a doer than a talker.

That’s because I’m not actually an ambassador.

Briefly Dev outlined his status as an ISS field operative and his reasons for being on Triton. He didn’t go into the niceties of host forms and data ’porting, partly because he didn’t want to overload Ethel with extraneous detail but mostly because he wasn’t sure that Tritonese could be stretched to express such concepts.

The cramping in his stomach had eased a little. Either that or he was adjusting to it. Still, it wasn’t going away. He was keen to get back to the
Reckless Abandon
and dose up on painkillers at the first opportunity.

Before that, though, he would pick Ethel’s brains further.

I realise this probably isn’t the best moment
, he said.
You’re injured. You’ve just lost your cousin.

Say what you have to.

Like I told you, I’m here to stop the insurgency before it gets out of control. Anything you can tell me about the Ice King and the people who worship him, anything at all, would be handy.

Ethel cast a bitter glance at the still unconscious kid. Her hand was clasped to her shoulder, pinching shut the edges of the wound he had given her.

He would be able to enlighten you better than I can
, she said.
What I do know is they’re mad. The worst kind of mad, because they think they’re sane. There’s a legend that the Ice King made the world the way it is.

Yes, I’ve heard as much.

They say, too, that he sleeps in the ice at the heart of the world and will awaken when the time is right, in our direst hour of need. Some people claim he’s watching over us all the time, checking on us. The moons that shine down through the roof of the world are, it’s said, his eyes. They judge us constantly, and if we’re found lacking, sometimes the Ice King will conjure up a vast storm overhead, to remind us to behave. Like a parent warning a naughty child.

The syzygy storm.

But it’s only a story
, Ethel went on, with the Tritonese equivalent of a shrug.
The moons are just moons, and the storm is just a storm, if an unusually severe one.

So there’s no way any of this stuff could be true? There is no Ice King?

You have to ask?

I do.

If he does exist, I have seen no credible evidence.

His followers seem pretty convinced about him.

They’re deluded. They’ve taken a fiction and constructed a faith around it. It enables them to justify their actions against your kind.

Amid the indignation on her face he saw traces of sympathy, but it was not for humans.

You don’t completely disapprove of what they’re doing
, he said.

I don’t approve of their methods, the brutality they resort to. Nor do I approve of how their movement can lure in the young and corrupt them, as with this one. All the same I have no great love for you ungilled. I would prefer it if you’d never come to our world. I feel as much of a grievance against you as anyone else does. You don’t belong. You aren’t welcome.

That’s a shame.

Isn’t it just.

No, I meant because I was hoping you’d stick with us – me and my group. We could do with having you along. You know how things work around here and you’re good in a fight. Frankly, we need someone like you onside.

After what I just said?

About not loving the ungilled? Yes. Whatever your personal feelings, whatever your animosity towards us, you want a peaceful resolution to the situation, like I do.

Any kind of resolution would be good, but a peaceful one would be best.

Well, that puts you, for better or worse, on the same side as me.

Those blank, black eyes of hers scrutinised him.

I have followed you quite some distance already, I suppose,
she said.
And you’ve borne out my initial judgement of you, so far.

Is that a yes?

It is. Besides,
she added,
someone should keep an eye on you. You and the ones with you up there. To keep you from getting into too much trouble.

Or causing it.

33

D
EV RETURNED TO
the
Reckless Abandon
long enough to swallow a gulp of analgesic gel and brief Handler on the latest developments. Then he swam across to the
Admiral Winterbrook
and brought Sigursdottir up to speed too.

“Congrats, by the way,” he said. “You did absolutely the right thing, dropping depth charges. Targeted the aggressors and avoided any collateral damage.”

“A commendation from you brightens my day,” Sigursdottir replied drolly. “I can sleep easy, knowing Dev Harmer has complimented me on a job well done. Beats any medal.”

“Glad you appreciate it.”

“Wasn’t exactly rocket science, though. Not for trained Marines. We sonar-tagged every single vessel, both the incoming lot and the ones already here. When we saw the hostiles overwhelming the friendlies, I gave the order to step in. The person you really ought to be thanking is Gunnery Sergeant Jiang. She programmed the charges to go off with pinpoint precision.”

“I’ll give her one of my coveted commendations too,” Dev said, “but later. First things first. I’ve got a funeral to attend.”

He plunged into the sea again, where the debris from the battle was in the throes of being eaten. All sorts of marine life, from tiny fish to hulking great predators, were busily consuming the carrion from the destroyed subs. There were feeding frenzies here and there among the shoals of small fry that collected around free-floating chunks of flesh, while the larger creatures gnawed sedately and masterfully at the carcasses themselves, abandoning their meals only if a still larger creature came along and muscled in.