World of Water (41 page)

From the waist down, however, she was gone. The Ice King had sliced her in two while she had been dangling there. Cully imagined Reyes holding herself as still as possible, hoping against hope that the Ice King would not spot her.

Already, fish were collecting around Reyes’s entrails and wriggling up into her stomach cavity.

Cully scrambled back out onto the footbridge and vomited copiously. Then she announced the news of Reyes’s death over the commplant link and described the grisly circumstances involved.

Sigursdottir had only cold comfort for everyone.

Ice King’s getting wilier. Sneakier. We need to be even more vigilant than before. Can’t let our guard down for a second.

She instructed Cully to continue laying the charges but not take any unnecessary risks while doing so. Cully assented, and Dev could only admire her bravery. Agreeing to carry on the work that had just cost her colleague her life...

With over an hour left before the
Astounding
’s scheduled arrival, Blunt became the Ice King’s next victim.

She was struggling to keep control of her hoverdrone, concentrating on her commplant rather than on her surroundings.

That was how the Ice King was able to catch her unawares.

The gargantuan crab rose up under the esplanade she was standing on. The impact fractured sheet steel and sent Blunt hurtling several metres into the air. She landed in the water, and as soon as she surfaced and orientated herself, she started swimming.

The Ice King reached for her with the very tip of one pincer and managed to snare her leg just above the knee. The act had a kind of delicacy, like taking hold of a single strand of hair with a pair of tweezers.

Blunt felt herself being pulled back, reeled in. She swung round and emptied an entire clip from her sidearm into the pincer.

When that had no appreciable effect – not that she had thought it would – she unclipped a Ninety-Nine Point Nine from her belt, just as Francis had done. She resolved to sell herself dearly to the Ice King, copying the example of her comrade and very close friend.

Perhaps the Ice King saw this coming. Perhaps it remembered all too clearly the pain Francis had inflicted on it.

Its solution was to release Blunt – by snipping clean through her leg.

Blunt clambered out of the water, shivering with shock, numbed. That was how Dev and Milgrom found her a minute later, after she had sent out a distress call.

Den tourniqueted the stump of Blunt’s leg with a strip of fabric torn from his tunic, while Milgrom administered a shot of fentanyl citrate to anaesthetise her. They carried her to the plaza of the central dome, where Handler draped a polyimide thermal blanket over her which he had requisitioned from a nearby hardware store. She lay beside Jiang, who remained unconscious.

Sigursdottir removed her helmet to scrub a hand back and forth over her hair, which was plastered to her scalp by sweat and rain. She delivered a sour assessment of the situation.

“Four down, an hour to go, and the Ice King’s messing with us. Bastard’s figured out how to get to us. It’s picking us off one by one, and it knows there’s not a thing we can do to stop it.”

“Putting a positive spin on that,” said Dev, “the Holy Crabbiness isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. It’s having too much fun now. It’s got into the game.”

“In other words, we’ve succeeded.”

“A bit too well. Hooray for us.”

“You said your Tritonian pals are fetching reinforcements.”

“I said they said they’d try.”

“No sign of them so far.”

Dev raised his hands and let them drop. “It wasn’t a definite. Maybe they can’t find anyone, or maybe Tritonians are a great deal smarter than us and can’t see the attraction in making themselves bait for a vast murderous crustacean.”

“The novelty’s sure as shit wearing off for me,” said Milgrom, with a sombre glance at the space where Blunt’s leg ought to have been.

Sigursdottir was about to reply when the entire dome reverberated like a gong. Something had struck it from below.

“No prizes for guessing who that was,” she said.

The dome resounded again, the plaza floor shuddering. A geodesic panel fell from the roof and shattered nearby into a thousand fragments of polycarbonate.

“Right. The Ice King’s located us. We fall back to the redoubt.”

Cully, those charges set yet?

Cully confirmed that she had just finished placing the final one.

We’re on our way.

Milgrom scooped up Blunt, cradling her in her arms as though she were a child. Dev hoisted Jiang onto his back in a piggyback. She lay against him, head lolling on his shoulder, dead weight. Light enough to carry, though, even for someone without Milgrom’s modified musculature.

The dome shook a third time, and the plaza floor erupted upwards. The tip of a pincer smashed through from below, accompanied by a liberal spray of seawater.

Sigursdottir took point, followed by Handler, then Dev and Milgrom with their respective loads.

“That exit ahead,” she said. “Then the second dome along.”

The Ice King widened the hole it had created, working its claw round, crumbling the edges. Water sluiced across the floor like combers rolling in over a beach. The humans found themselves suddenly wading shin-deep in ocean. They slogged on towards the exit, while the dome screeched around them as if in protest, objecting to the indignities being perpetrated on it by the Ice King.

The pincer enlarged the hole to the point where it could fit through unimpeded. The Ice King reached inside the dome, probing. Its claw crashed against street furniture, lampposts, a shopfront, café tables, as it groped blindly around.

When it failed to find any prey to latch onto, the Ice King withdrew its arm, then punched more holes in the base of the dome.

All at once the plaza was flooded from end to end. Water boiled up, engulfing the shattered remnants of what had been, until a couple of minutes ago, a tidy, well-ordered communal space.

The dome tipped at a sharp angle just as Dev, Handler and the Marines arrived at the doors that led outside. They began sliding backwards, downhill. They scrabbled for purchase, battling to stay upright.

Milgrom stuck out a leg to catch Sigursdottir as she went slithering past. She booted her commanding officer unceremoniously back up to the door. Sigursdottir clutched on to the handle and swung the door open.

Handler hauled himself through. Dev went next, bent forward, knock-kneed, back flat in order to maintain his balance and stop Jiang tumbling off him.

The group scurried around the dome’s perimeter walkway, leaning to compensate for the acute angle it now lay at. They veered off onto the first available footbridge, which was raised out of the water at one end. They slip-skidded down to the other side.

Behind them, the main dome sank ponderously thunderously under the waves. The footbridge they had just crossed snapped in two, as did all the other footbridges radiating off the dome.

Now Mazu had lost its core, its epicentre, its nucleus, and the township became an agglomeration of loosely connected components. These began to detach and drift apart, driven away from one another by the bludgeoning force of the storm.

Cully, get ready. Soon as we reach you, blow all the charges.

Even as Sigursdottir gave the order, the group came within sight of the redoubt. They crossed an outdoor recreation area, a section of town that was flat as a lilypad, holding multiple-purpose games courts, a children’s playground and a climbing wall. They didn’t know whether the Ice King was chasing them. It didn’t really matter. Mazu was succumbing, the entire structure in its death throes. They weren’t running
from
anything, they were running towards the only place left to run to.

The instant they were across the footbridge to the nearer of the two apartment domes, Cully transmitted the detonation command. As one, the charges blew, disconnecting the two domes from everything around them.

Now this barbell-shaped remnant of Mazu was all they had left. It was where they would, if necessary, make their final stand against the Ice King.

61

S
IGURSDOTTIR DIDN’T LET
them rest even for a moment.

“We commandeer one of the higher apartments. Use that as our base.”

An outside staircase provided access to the dome’s narrowing tiers of residential accommodation. On the topmost level, they arrived at a locked door.

“I’ve got a size seven key,” said Sigursdottir, kicking it down.

They piled into a two-bedroom penthouse apartment with a curved balcony.

Cully took up lookout position on the balcony. Dev dumped Jiang onto a bed. Milgrom did likewise with Blunt.

Outside, everything was cacophony. The howl of the storm was interspersed with ear-splitting wails and shrieks as Mazu was torn asunder by the driving wind and waves. Inside, crockery and glassware rattled on shelves, furniture legs drummed on the floor, windows shook in their frames.

Sigursdottir cast a solemn, appraising eye over the two injured Marines.

“Jiang’s probably got a cerebral oedema,” she said. “Only reason anyone’d be out for so long. Blunt looks stable but the blood loss will have been severe. These two need proper medical attention, not whatever we can rustle up from our first aid kits. If the
Astounding
doesn’t get here soon...”

“If the
Astounding
doesn’t get here soon,” Handler said, “we’re all dead anyway, so it won’t make a difference.”

“It’ll come. Captain Maddox won’t let us down.”

“I’m not one for speeches –” Dev began.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Milgrom butted in. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone who finds it as hard to keep their trap shut as you do.”

“Conceded. I just want to say, though, that you’ve done everything you can, all of you, and you’ve done it well. I’ve been part of teams before. I served with some of the best and brightest during the war. Some real dunderheads as well, but that’s another story. You guys have been outstanding. If we die today –”

“Seriously, give it a rest, Harmer. Save the schmaltz for some other time. We’re not going to die today.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Handler muttered.

“I’m with Milgrom,” said Sigursdottir. “If you want a group hug moment, you’re shit out of luck. We’ve still got a job to do, and it isn’t over until it’s over.”

Dev shrugged. “Well, that’s me shot down in flames. All I was trying to do was boost morale. From now on I’ll keep my
proud-to-have-known-you
sentiments to myself.”

“When you’re around Marines, that would be advisable. Milgrom? Hoverdrone up, please.”

“On it, lieutenant. Juice is running low, though. Flying in the storm.”

“I don’t suppose I’m included in that ‘well done, all of you,’ am I?” said Handler as the two Marine officers departed from the room.

“Don’t suppose you are, Mishandler.”

Handler’s lip curled. “A new nickname.”

“I give them to people I dislike sometimes, as well as people I like.”

“For the umpteenth time, I haven’t done anything wrong. I was only following ISS protocol. I contacted central office for instructions as soon as the growth vat flagged up problems with your host form. They pointed me in the direction of the nucleotide serum.”

“And you applied the first dose before I was even was installed?”

“Yes. I’ll admit to that. But again, it was protocol. Maddox was quite clear that the serum needed to be put to work as soon as possible. The cellular breakdown had already begun while the host form was still in the vat. The sooner we started retarding it, the better.”

“Wait, what did you just say?”

“I said, the sooner we started retarding it...”

“No. Before that. Did you say
Maddox
was quite clear?”

Handler looked flustered, but realised he couldn’t deny it. He’d uttered the name loud and clear. “Yes.”

“Captain Arkady Maddox?”

“Who else?”

“What was he doing giving you advice about the serum?”

“Well,” said Handler, “he’s the one I got it from.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Dev. “It wasn’t supplied by ISS? It wasn’t something you had handy at the outpost?”

“No. Nothing of the sort. Central office told me the outpost wasn’t equipped to deal with the problem with your host form, but they knew through back channels that there was a potential solution locally. The serum. It just so happened Maddox had some.”

“It just so happened,” Dev echoed.

“Yes. It’s... It’s something the military have been trialling, apparently. A battlefield remedy for fatigue and injury. A way of repairing troops and keeping them going longer, extending their usefulness in combat situations.”

“So they can fight on even when riddled with bullet holes.”

“Something like that. Central office instructed me to approach Maddox about it. He had a batch of the serum at Station Ares, and he shipped it over by delivery drone within an hour of my requesting it, pretty much.”