The Voyage of the Sable Keech

16

Janer peered through the sight of the laser carbine and observed the adolescent rhinoworms tearing at each other in the island shallows. After targeting one of them he was about to fire when another surge from the ship’s engines forced him to step quickly to one side to maintain his balance. Some of the Kladites on deck, who were making themselves useful by lasering worms out at sea, were experiencing the same problem. Hooper crew up in the rigging, as well as having to maintain balance, were also plagued by lung birds which, apparently sated on nectar from the sea lilies, found the rigging a convenient place to roost. And they stank. But still lots of rhinoworms had been hit at some distance from the ship, diverting the attention of many of their cannibalistic kin away from those the ship’s autolasers were currently massacring.

Janer stepped back to the rail and peered over.

It was a mess down there. The sea was a soup of chopped up bodies, and of thousands more come to feed in a struggling mass three-deep up the side of the ship. Smoke was billowing all along the waterline, the stink of charred flesh infected the air and, much as he had no love for the voracious denizens of this planet, Janer was saddened to see their destruction in such numbers. He turned round and glanced up beyond the Hoopers joyously popping away at distant rhinoworms. Up there Zephyr hung upside down, his head jerking back and forth as if tracking every shot. Janer glanced down again, considering switching to auto-sight—as the Hoopersdoubtless had—which allowed some correction for the movement of the deck beneath him. Then he shouldered his weapon and wandered over to the ladder up the side of the midship deckhouse.

‘There has to be a better way than this,’ he said to Wade, who was observing the mayhem from the roof and occasionally turning to check Zephyr’s reaction to it.

The Golem looked down at him. ‘There is, and it’s being dealt with now. Everyone but a small crew is being ordered to remain in their cabins, and all stairwells and hatches are to be closed. We’ll keep the decks clear meanwhile.’

Janer climbed up to join him. ‘So even Ron is getting a little tired of this slaughter?’

‘It’s not that.’ Wade glanced at him. ‘These creatures are only being attracted to the bodies of their own kind, and that’s why there are so many around the ship. Left to their own devices, only a few would manage to crawl up the side and get aboard.’

‘You got that in writing?’

‘We have to try it.’ Wade grinned. ‘According to Ron, if we can lose the bulk of those now clinging at the waterline, the ship would lift as much as half a metre.’

‘Have to try what, precisely?’

‘Shutting off the autolasers.’

‘Ah, that’s—’ Janer did not finish, for at that moment Wade grabbed him, hurling the both of them to one side and down onto the deck. As he sprawled, Janer heard yelling, saw a shape hurtling down, then felt the deck jounce underneath him as a Hooper slammed down on it a couple of metres away. Immediately after, what was left of a Batian weapon hit the nearby rail. The two struggled to their feet and moved over to the fallen man, who was lying on his side with his hands wrapped around his head.

‘Are you all right?’ Wade asked.

Janer at first thought that a silly question, until he remembered: Of course, a Hooper.

With a crunching sound the man unwrapped his arms from his head. His landing had been a hard one, for the Hooper found it necessary to push one of his eyeballs back into its socket.

Another crunching sound as he straightened out his leg. ‘Think… I’ll be needing a little help,’ he managed.

Wade removed a comlink from his pocket and spoke into it. This was just a courtesy to Janer and the crewman, as he was quite capable of transmitting the same words by his internal radio. ‘Erlin, we’ve got an injured Hooper on the midships deckhouse, just above you.’

Erlin replied from the link, ‘And?’

‘He fell about a hundred metres from the rigging. He might need a bit of work to straighten him out, before he heals up flat.’

‘Hoopers don’t fall off masts,’ Erlin replied succinctly.

The Golem peered down at the fallen man, who was now slapping the side of his head with his one good hand to straighten up his eyeballs. ‘He didn’t fall. He was pushed.’

Janer looked up to where the Golem sail was crawling down the mast like a huge iron vampire bat. It was swinging its head from side to side, and a turquoise glow kept advancing and retreating in its eyes.

‘Shit,’ muttered Janer. ‘What the hell is the matter with him?’

‘Ah,’ said Wade, ‘my other half seems to be experiencing a little internal dispute.’

‘Might be an idea to move away from here,’ suggested Janer, aware that the turquoise glow was the emission from a particle cannon being taken on- and off-line. At that moment the sail let out a long shriek which seemed to penetrate all the way down the length of Janer’s spine. It then launched itself from the mast, spreading mono-fabric wings with a snapping sound, and gliding away from the ship. It turned in mid-air and turquoise fire flashed down. There came an explosion from below and the sounds of hot metal skittering across the deck. Janer and Wade ran to the deckhouse rail, to again see that fire flash from Zephyr’s eyes, this time striking further along the ship.

‘He seems to have come to a decision,’ Wade observed.

More shots blasted from the sail as it winged around the ship. Janer tilted his head to listen to the sounds of destruction from the other side. ‘I don’t think you’ll need to shut down the autolasers—that’s what he’s doing for you.’

‘He’s probably decided they represent Death,’ said Wade, then spoke into the comlink: ‘Erlin, we’ll be bringing the injured party down to you. Ron, are you seeing this?’

‘What’s that bugger doing to my ship?’ came the Captain’s reply.

‘Destroying the autolasers.’

‘I bloody well know that. Why is it doing that?’

‘I don’t know, but you better get the hatches locked down and the stairwells closed, as per plan. Erlin, stay in the Tank Rooms and keep the doors closed. Are you armed?’

‘I am now.’

Wade indicated the Hooper. ‘I’ll carry him. You watch my back.’

They reached the nearest mainmast stairwell just as Janer saw, down on the main deck below, the first pink rhino head, sans horns, peering over the rail. He shot it through the mouth before it got a chance to progress any further, then himself followed the Golem into the stairwell, engaging the door lock behind them.

With the Hooper slung over his shoulder, Wade addressed his comlink again. ‘Can’t see what’s going on at the moment, Ron. What’s happening?’

‘We’ve got a few strays coming aboard, but the main mass at the waterline is dropping away. Gonna fire up the engines in about ten minutes. Ah… Huff and Puff just joined in. Nothing they like better than a bit of fresh rhinoworm—barring the odd Batian head, in Huff’s case.’

‘Okay, you lot up on the masts, concentrate your fire around any open hatches or stairwells. We can’t afford to let these bastards inside the ship.’

Janer wondered just when Wade had been appointed military commander of this ship, and whether that was such a good idea.

Meeting them in the upper Tank Room, Erlin led the way to one of the restraint tables, this one with its restraints removed and an autodoc folded down underneath on the end of a jointed arm. As soon as the Hooper was down on his back, she pulled the chrome autodoc out and up so it was poised just to one side of the man’s waist. ‘What age Hooper are you?’

‘Hundred twenty,’ he replied. He was staring at the autodoc as if wanting to get as far away from it as possible. Obviously he was a Hooper who had yet to stray into the territory occupied by the likes of Forlam or the crew of the Vignette. Janer understood his feelings, for despite having been operated upon by such autodocs himself, he was still wary of the things. Perhaps it was some primordial instinct impinging—the atavistic fear of insects. This particular doc looked something like a shiny metal horseshoe crab, only with longer legs which were possessed of more joints and terminated in a variety of surgical instruments.

‘I’ve got to straighten this leg and that arm.’ Erlin flipped up a lid in the doc’s back, revealing a small console with a port for a memory tab. ‘If they heal like that, you’ll be crippled for the next couple of years until they straighten out naturally.’ Out of her top pocket she took a cylindrical container and pulled from it thumbnail-sized crystal tabs. Selecting one, she placed it in the port, then tapped instructions into the console. The tab contained enough memory storage to encompass a human life—similar tabs formed the basis of memplants.

‘Is it gonna hurt?’ The man tried to pull himself further away as die doc wiggled its multitude of legs.

‘I can’t inject you with anything. Even if I could get the injection in, the analgesic wouldn’t spread quickly enough anyway. But I’ve been well-supplied here.’ She held up a simple grey cube between her forefinger and thumb. Before the man could say anything more, she pressed it against the side of his neck.

The Hooper lay there blinking for a moment, then said, ‘I can’t feel me body—it’s like when I broke me back.’

‘Do you really want to feel it right now?’

‘Guess not.’

Turning to Janer and Wade, Erlin said, ‘I had to make a few alterations to the nerve-blocker. It needs stronger nanofilaments to be able to penetrate Hooper flesh through to the spine.’

‘And the doc?’ Janer asked.

‘Programmed for removing reification hardware initially, but I reprogrammed it to Hooper physiology.’ She closed the lid over the console in which she had inserted the crystal tab. ‘I’ve been studying Hoopers for quite a while now, and have operated on many of them. What I just put in here contains everything at variance to standard human biology from Hooper babies right up to Old Captains. He’—she stabbed a thumb at the prostrate Hooper—‘won’t need anything to seal severed blood vessels, only arteries, and the doc won’t touch any of them. But it will need to clamp open its incisions, and work fast to ensure the job is done before those incisions start healing while still open.’

‘That’s fascinating,’ said Janer, turning to watch the autodoc swing down the length of the Hooper’s body, abruptly slice open the man’s trousers, and then the calf muscle of his mangled leg, right down to the bone. ‘You won’t be needing any help?’

Erlin shook her head.

The doc was now cutting between fragments of shattered greyish bone that were already knitting together.

‘Then perhaps we should go back outside and help the others.’ He looked questioningly at Wade.

The Golem bore a curiously twisted expression Janer could not fathom. Internal communication? After a moment, Wade nodded and turned away.

‘Best lock the door behind us,’ he suggested.

Vrell eased his ship higher in the ocean until its weapons turrets were completely clear of the surface, meanwhile recharging the massive capacitors feeding the two particle cannons. He kept his weapons aligned with the location of Vrost’s ship, ready to again vaporize anything fired by the coil-gun. Other weapons he laser-ranged on numerous objects dropping through the atmosphere.

Things were turning nasty here.

Through the senses of his alternate self, Vrell observed its battle with the Polity drone. Overhearing the latest communication between the Warden and Vrost, Vrell guessed who that other drone must be, even though it now inhabited a different shell. Its subsequent familiar tactics confirmed this suspicion, but the danger it represented was minimal. He was aware of how its previous attack on this ship had only succeeded by a narrow margin and, should it try again, Vrell would burn it from the sky. Its previous success had only been due to Father’s thrall codes being subverted, so that Ebulan, being attacked by his own blanks, was distracted at the critical moment. Vrell, however, would not be distracted, and his only vulnerable code transmissions, to those aboard the ocean-going vessel now only a few hundred kilometres from him, he could break instantly. Ebulan’s mistake had been in thinking those codes unbreakable. But Vrell, having ventured into the realm of higher mathematics, knew no code was unbreakable. No, the greatest danger to him was still Vrost. He sent a summons to his own drone, and levelled one weapons array to cover it. He would need all of his resources if he was to survive this.

The calculations necessary to enable him to make repairs to the U-space engine were halfway completed. Vrell considered abandoning that pursuit, because to use the engine he must first get off this planet and well clear of its gravity well. It did not strike him as probable that Vrost would allow that. However, Vrell lost nothing by allowing those calculations to continue running, and some future opportunity might present itself. For the present he would take measures to protect himself, and those were predicated on the threat to Vrost of non-existent grav-tech weapons controlled by the Warden and Vrost’s resultant reluctance to destroy a ship-load of mobile corpses.

Vrell was not optimistic.

Stalemate. Sniper pulled away from the Prador war drone, and it pulled away from him. Assessing the damage done to him, Sniper was quite impressed. His internal systems were down to 70 per cent, his internal power sources were half depleted and only a few missiles remained in his carousels. Externally, his once bright armour was now battered and black, and he was even missing two tentacles. However, the Prador drone was not in the best of condition either: it was missing one of its claws, radioactive gas was leaking from a crack in its armour, and its shape was no longer entirely spherical.

‘You know, shithead,’ Sniper sent, ‘I’m saving a small imploder missile for that crack in your hide.’ With any luck this would make the Prador drone more protective of that area, perhaps thus leaving it vulnerable elsewhere.

‘My name is not shithead, old drone,’ it replied. ‘And such cheap ploys will not work with me.’

‘Right, gotcha. What’s your name, then?’

‘I am Vrell.’

Interesting.

‘Now that’s an odd coincidence.’

‘There is no coincidence—I am a copy.’

‘I see… I’m Sniper, by the way.’

‘Then know, Sniper, that we are evenly matched, except in one respect: my armour is thicker. Should we have finally depleted our respective armouries, I would have knocked you down onto one of these islands and pounded you into the ground.’

It sure was a lot more talkative than others of its kind that Sniper had met, and destroyed. ‘Would have?’

The Prador drone abruptly turned and opened up with its fusion engines, immediately accelerating away from Sniper.

What now?

Sniper set off in pursuit but, as he did so, he immediately picked up objects hurtling down from the sky above. Suddenly their fight was no longer an even match, for Vrost’s forces were coming to intercede. Sniper suddenly felt a kinship with the fleeing drone.

‘Looks like your relatives have come to finish what we started,’ he sent after his erstwhile opponent.

‘They make clear targets against the sky. I suspect they will not survive beyond another twelve point three kilometres,’ the Vrell drone replied.

Sniper abruptly cut his acceleration. Twelve point three kilometres was a precise figure, and certainly a strange product of bravado. At this elevation, he calculated, as drones and armoured Prador sped past him, that figure would bring them over the horizon and in direct line to the present location, within a permissible error, of Vrell’s spaceship. Using attitude jets, Sniper spun round, and re-engaged his engines to send him in the opposite direction. At three kilometres he observed one of the armoured Prador turning in mid-air as it sped past. It looked something like a gigantic dust mite cast in gold.

‘We will attend to the matter you have left undone,’ it sent contemptuously.

Sniper considered giving these new Prador the courtesy his opponent had just given him, but rejected the idea. Obviously the Vrell drone had felt the same kinship as he had felt for it, though given the opportunity it would still have pounded him into the ground just as he would have gladly given it a missile suppository. But he felt no such kinship with these others. As far as he was concerned, Prador killing Prador could only be a good thing, despite any treaties. Low over the ocean, he turned to observe, right on cue, the flash of particle-cannon impacts, and molten pieces of drone and golden armour raining on the sea.

Ambel gazed astern through his binoculars, and frowned. The sea was choppy so it was difficult to tell, but he was sure he had just spotted something in the waves. Not that this was unusual: since all the life forms on Spatterjay were long-lived and difficult to kill, it was inevitable that they swarmed everywhere. And, tacking like this, the Treader was sure to pick up the odd inquisitive monster—perhaps a rhinoworm then, or a big leech.

‘Something up, Captain?’ asked Boris from the helm.

‘I think we might have an unwelcome guest,’ Ambel replied.

‘Not that bloody whelk?’

Ambel shook his head. ‘Unlikely—I reckon that one’s long gone.’ He headed for the ladder, clambered down it to enter his cabin, snatched up the holographic conferencing device, and walked back out on deck. After spending a moment resetting it to voice only, and then connecting to one other such device, he asked, ‘Drum. Drum, are you there, man?’

Drum’s reply was immediate. ‘I wondered when you’d be getting in contact. I’ve been shouting into this thing on and off for a couple of hours.’

‘You’ve seen it then?’

‘Yup, something in our wake. Might be an idea to run with the wind for a while to lose it,’ Drum replied. ‘This blow is starting to shift the way we want to go, anyway.’

‘How long ago did you spot it?’

‘Roach spotted something this morning. No one believed him until our sail confirmed it a few hours ago.’

‘Any idea what it might be?’

‘I dunno—something dangerous by the way Cloudskimmer’s behaving.’

Ambel looked up. ‘Galegrabber! What’s following us?’

The sail lowered its head until it was level with Ambel’s. The creature now wore its new aug, and since donning it had been very silent and introspective. ‘A big swimming whelk. Its tentacle nearly snagged the rudder on that last tack.’

‘Why didn’t you buggering well tell us?’

The sail blinked. ‘The search program I ran revealed that no one has yet been attacked by a swimming whelk.’

‘Erm, and how about your memory?’

The sail looked astern, licking its black tongue around its teeth. ‘My memory is clear. Yes, I do recollect this individual attacking us.’

Ambel sighed. ‘Galegrabber, this is the real world, right here.’ He stabbed a finger at the deck. ‘I know what you see in the AI nets can be astounding, and that the programs you run can reveal all sorts of fascinating facts, but none of that stuff will help you if something tries to eat you here and now.’

‘Aug trance?’ asked Drum over the link.

‘In a big way,’ Ambel replied. ‘I reckon we should do what you said. Boris, turn us into the wind!’ He addressed the sail again. ‘And you.’

Galegrabber stared for a long moment, then abruptly jerked up his head and began to turn both himself and the fabric sails. Boris spun the helm and the Treader heeled over. Across the link, Ambel heard Drum bellowing similar orders, and saw that the Moby was coming about as well.

‘Everyone up on deck, and armed!’ Ambel now called out, then returned to his cabin to inspect a chart spread on the table. If Drum was right, and the wind did shift to take them back on their original course, then in a few days they would be reaching an island which was only a number on this chart. He again considered his earlier thoughts on how to deal with this persistent pursuer. They required a landfall for that, as they stood no chance against such a monster on the open ocean. He just hoped the wind did not die, meanwhile.

Back out on deck he observed such crew as were not moving about assigned tasks all standing armed at the rail, looking astern. He joined them in time to see a huge iridescent shell break the surface, tentacles whipping the waves ahead of it, and two huge eyes extruded on stalks to observe them.

‘How ever did it survive that heirodont?’ Anne asked. ‘And how the hell did it find us again?’

Ambel shrugged. ‘Luck, coincidence, fate?’

As she raised her laser carbine to take a shot at the creature, Ambel stepped over to push the barrel aside with his hand.

‘You’ll only annoy it further,’ he said.

‘Well, it doesn’t seem that likely to calm down and leave us alone.’

‘Save your shots then for when they’ll really count. In the meantime I want you and Peck sharpening all our harpoons and checking their ropes.’

‘You want to catch the damned thing?’

Ambel ignored this and held up his conferencing link. ‘Are you listening, Drum?’

‘I’m riveted,’ the other Captain replied.

Ambel then outlined his plan, and observed the looks of dismay from the crewmen surrounding him.

‘Has anyone got any better ideas?’ he asked them.

None was forthcoming.

The Golem sail had destroyed all of the autolasers, and was now back up on Mainmast Two, scrambling about as if searching for something while occasionally letting out more of those piercing shrieks. Janer watched it for a moment, then focused on what had just slid over the rail and onto the deck ahead of him. The young rhino-worm resembled a two-metre-long pink newt with a hornless rhinoceros head. It opened its beaklike mouth and hissed, before charging him eagerly. Rather than use his Batian weapon, which would also have smashed the surrounding woodwork, Janer drew his handgun and, with it set only to standard pulse, opened fire. Drawing white lines through the air between himself and the creature, two of his shots burned holes through its head, jerking it up and back. His third shot hit it underneath its head, bursting some organ there. The creature reared up as if electrocuted, then crashed down, thrashing about as it sprayed a sticky yellow mess over the deck and a nearby cabin wall. Before it had even finished its death throes, a shadow loomed as Huff leaned down over the deckhouse side, clamped the rhinoworm in his jaws, then flung the creature out over the rail with a snap of his long neck.

‘Got enough now?’ Janer enquired.

Earlier, he had noticed Huff making a mound of still slowly moving bodies up on the deckhouse roof—those he did not eat, at least. Janer guessed the sail was laying in food stores for himself, but even in that there had to be a limit.

The sail eyed him. ‘I grow sick of the taste.’

‘Understandable.’ Huff’s body was now bloated from his gorging, and Janer suspected he would not be taking wing for some time. Puff, over on the stern deckhouse, had not been quite so greedy for, after feeding only a little while, she had concentrated on picking up the encroaching worms in her jaws and flipping them over the side of the ship.

‘Doesn’t it worry you how Zephyr might react?’ Janer asked.

Huff turned and looked up at the aforementioned sail. ‘Zephyr… is not right. Death is an absence, not a presence.’

So the living sails understood something of their Golem companion’s motivations.

‘He still might take a shot at you, to stop you killing those rhinoworms,’ Janer suggested.

‘He does not kill. He cannot kill.’

Janer did not even bother to dispute that. Instead, he turned and shot a rhinoworm that was sneaking over the rail behind him. By destroying the defensive lasers Zephyr had endangered them all for, had these creatures been less intent on devouring their kin, they could have swamped the ship. He moved up to the rail and peered over, noticing how now there were fewer of the creatures clinging at the waterline. Clumps of them were even drifting away, fighting with each other over the remains of those hit earlier by the now disabled autolasers.

‘Do you know where Isis Wade is?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘I lost track of him a couple of hours ago.’

‘He is on deck over on the starboard side of the bridge,’ Huff replied, before heaving himself up and back out of sight.

Janer began walking in that direction, his carbine slung from his left shoulder and his handgun in his right hand. Just then the ship lurched as Ron once again started the engines. A grinding vibration shivered up through Janer’s feet, and he felt the ship move this time, if only a little way. Walking on, Janer observed red flashes of carbine fire from a group of Kladites gathered around the bridge on the roof of the staterooms just below it, and smelt wafts of acrid smoke drifting across the ship. They were probably huddling there to protect Bloc. All the hatches were locked down now, all the stairwells bolted shut. Crossing, behind the bridge, over to the starboard side, he spotted a rhinoworm scuttling down the further gangway, and was about to take a shot at it when a pursuing Hooper dived onto the creature and brought it down. It tried to turn on the man, but he grabbed it by the neck and smacked its head against the planking until it desisted, then tossed it over the side.

‘Wade?’ Janer asked him.

The man gestured behind himself with a thumb, then went to retrieve a machete embedded in a nearby wall.

Wade, leaning against the rail, was gazing down. Janer joined him there and also peered over. A number of the worms were still working their way up the hull, but none were yet within easy reach of the rail.

‘Do you note their toes?’ the Golem asked.

Janer saw only that the mentioned items were as flat and round as always. ‘What about them?’

Wade pointed. ‘The hull paint has a very low coefficient of friction—enough to prevent any whelks or leeches climbing it—yet these things still manage to get aboard. Look.’ He reached down and picked up something to show Janer. It was a rhinoworm leg, ripped off at the shoulder. ‘See,’ Wade poked at one of the toes, ‘the structure of these is very like that of an Earth lizard called a gecko.’

‘Your point being?’ Janer asked. Even though he himself had recently been shooting these unwelcome boarders, he could not quite accept the callousness of ripping a leg off one so as to study the toes. That seemed inhuman, which of course it was.

‘Why would sea-going animals develop toes like that? What use do they have for them?’

‘You might well ask the same question about the legs themselves. But don’t you think we’ve got more important concerns?’ Janer gestured up towards Zephyr. ‘Your other half is still rather agitated, and to my mind looks ready to go.’

‘His agitation is a good sign,’ Wade replied. ‘His time as a distinct being is now conflicting with his madness.’

‘So he won’t fly?’

‘I did not say that.’

Janer wondered how he should best assess this Golem before him. Underneath that human exterior and emulation, he was not even a normal AI (if there was such a thing).

‘Are you afraid to make that final decision?’ he asked. ‘I reckon Zephyr is a danger to the entire ecosphere of this planet, not to forget its financial system.’

Another rhinoworm poked its head over the rail, and Wade casually smacked it from view with the leg he still held. Almost as if that one worm had been holding down the entire weight of the Sable Keech, the roar of its engines changed, the grinding sound recommenced and continued, as the ship’s propellers began dragging it back out to sea. They both turned to watch as clumps of battling worms slid past them towards the bows, bobbing up and down in the first waves generated by the shifting hull.

Parting his feet to maintain his balance, Janer said, ‘Perhaps I should make the decision for you?’

‘That will not be necessary.’

‘How can you be so sure? You’re too close to the problem.’

Wade glanced at him. ‘Zephyr will not use the virus… not yet.’

A cheer arose, and Ron beamed round at his crew gathered on the bridge.

He slapped Forlam on the shoulder. ‘Keep us on this heading until we’re well clear—a couple of kilometres at least—then take us round and back on course. On the other side of the island we’ll put on sail and shut down the engines.’

‘What do you reckon Windcheater’ll do about this? We have broken his law.’

Ron tapped a finger against the comlink in his belt. ‘I asked him before we started those engines. He won’t do anything drastic—just work out how big a fine the owners of this ship will have to pay. I must go and give Bloc that good news sometime.’

‘Captain Ron, I think we have a problem,’ said John Styx, who was working at a nearby corns console.

Captain Ron turned to him. ‘What is it, a leak?’

‘No, a message from the Warden. I would have found it earlier but I was using this console to break into the ship’s computer system.’ Styx pointed towards the forward bridge windows. ‘Yes, you can see it now.’ He then pressed a touch-plate on the console, and the Warden’s voice issued forth:

‘Ebulan’s spaceship, controlled by his now-adult first-child Vrell, is heading directly towards you. It is just submerged, and presently being attacked by drones and armoured Prador descending from the upper atmosphere. I do not know Vrell’s intentions, but him being Prador I suspect they are not amicable.’

‘Oh.’ In the distance Ron could see objects silhouetted against the sky, like birds or bees, and amidst them flashes like distant lightning. ‘Forlam, take us to port—quickly now.’

As the Sable Keech turned, Ron noticed dark objects in the sea immediately below the swarm of activity: blockish columns of metal and rounded turrets, all generating wakes as they came towards the island and the ship. Having watched Ebulan’s ship crash, he instantly recognized the upper weapons turrets of the Prador light destroyer. Ron picked up a nearby monocular, held it to an eye and kept knocking up the magnification. What he saw confirmed everything the Warden had told him, but gave him no explanation as to the why of it.

‘Keep us turning. Have we got full power to those engines?’

‘We have, Captain,’ replied the Hooper who was operating the controls.

‘Bugger.’ Ron was still peering at the Prador ship, now very much closer. It was turning as they turned, remaining right on target. He lowered the monocular, no longer needing it. Launched from one of the round turrets, missiles sped up into the sky and detonated high above. EM blast—had to be. He looked around and noted Styx stepping back from the coms console, whose lights and screen had just blinked out. Squinting back at the location of the recent blasts, he saw three objects dropping from the sky: two war drones and one armoured Prador, which he recognized even at this distance. With a bitter taste in his mouth he recollected sights very like this from the first century of his life.

Then, as if in no time at all, weapons turrets were passing on either side of the Sable Keech before slowing, and it was as if a thunderstorm had enveloped the ship. With a screaming crash, turquoise fire slashed up into the sky. Launchers spun on one of the turrets, releasing such a fusillade of missiles that they cut for the horizon in a seemingly solid black line. Something detonated nearby, scattering shrapnel across the ocean, and one large fragment skimmed over the water and into the ship’s side, with a low crump that shuddered through the deck. Then came a detonation above, and a wave of fire rolling across the sky. The ship dipped under the blast, throwing people off their feet. As a brief interval of quiet followed, Ron watched the turrets rising higher out of the sea, and heard that familiar grinding on the hull.

‘Shut off the engines,’ he calmly instructed. ‘We’ll only be going where this bastard wants to take us.’

He still called himself Vrell, no matter that his body was now made of metal and his brain was the flash-frozen tissue of a sibling. As he motored back underwater, towards his other self, his internal systems worked ceaselessly to repair the damage caused by the old Polity drone, and he refined deuterium oxide fuel from sea water for his fusion reactor, which in turn was charging up the depleted capacitors and laminar batteries powering his energy weapons. He was puzzled by his earlier actions, unable to fathom why he had not led his opponent within range of those weapons now devastating Vrost’s forces in the air above him. His action had been allowed because the order for him to return to the spaceship took precedence over the one for him to destroy the old drone, but that did not wholly account for his own decision. Perhaps the bitterness of knowing his own chances of surviving this were little above zero lay behind his decision to let the old drone live?

Black shapes again streaked past him through the water. Some of the other drones and members of the King’s guard had followed him into the sea, but they were no less at the mercy of the ship’s weapons than those above. Reddish explosions detonated behind him and, over com frequencies, he could hear the sound of something dying. Then came contact from the real Vrell:

‘Two drones and one King’s guard have fallen into the sea here.’ Vrell sent coordinates. ‘All have been disabled by electromagnetic pulse. The guard’s fusion device has not detonated. Destroy the two drones and retrieve the guard.’

‘As you will.’

The Vrell drone obeyed—he could not do otherwise. However, he was still a copy of the original Vrell, and therefore not something loaded into a drone shell and programmed to military service from the moment he had hatched, so was capable of thinking about the reasoning behind that order.

The guard’s armour having been disabled by EM and still containing a living occupant, the Prador drone’s initial conjecture was that Vrell wanted a prisoner to interrogate, yet that did not really gel. There would not be enough time to break the guard’s conditioning sufficiently to learn anything useful about Vrost’s plans. The true Vrell might have sought to access systems in the armour so as to break into Vrost’s com frequencies had it not been that the Prador above made little attempt to encode them. It seemed it did not matter what Vrell knew: from an utterly superior position, Vrost intended to obliterate them. Perhaps curiosity then, just that—Vrell wanting to know, or rather confirm, what that armour contained? Of course, such speculation was based on what the drone’s own aims would have been. The real Vrell, however, had moved far beyond him. The drone could not, for example, see any possibility of repairing a surge-damaged U-space engine, yet his creator was obviously making plans to do so.

The water here was still murky from the first kinetic missile strike, and other clouds of silt and detritus were spreading out from the more recent explosions. The drone occasionally observed, deep down, turbul and smaller whelks snapping up animals damaged by an earlier blast. When he saw a molly carp cruising by in the distance, he felt an instant of fear caused by an emotional residue of his earlier self. Then anger took over and made him want to go after the creature to deliver some payback, but the real Vrell’s orders did not allow for that. The drone watched the molly carp lashing out a tentacle to bludgeon a passing turbul, cutting it nearly in half before beginning to chomp it down. Boxies shoaled around the carp, like silver bubbles from its mouth, as like ship lice they scavenged scraps. But soon the molly carp was out of sight, and the drone approaching the coordinates Vrell had sent.

The drone immediately detected three metallic objects on the bottom, underneath a cloud of silt. Using his magnetometer, he identified one of the other drones, descended to it, then, from only metres away, extruded a thermic lance and began to bore a hole through its armour. Nothing came over com because the EM pulse had knocked out most of its systems, but doubtless its diagnostic and repair systems, being more hardened to such attacks, were still working, so it knew precisely what was happening to it.

The lance cut in slowly, for this exotic metal contained superconductive layers and had to be eroded away rather than burnt or melted. Finally the lance broke through. The drone switched it off, retracted it, then lined up his missile port to the hole and fired a torp inside his victim. A jet of fire and molten debris spewed from the cavity. The Vrell drone disposed of the next drone in exactly the same manner, then approached the King’s guard.

The armoured Prador’s internal repair systems were more advanced than those of a drone. It responded over com, threatening, promising, but never begging. It had seen what had happened to Vrost’s two drones, and assumed itself in for the same treatment. When the Vrell drone noted the guard attempting to move some of its limbs, internally he checked the charge of some of his laminar batteries, then brought an emitter to bear and fired pulses of electromagnetic radiation at the areas containing the motor controls for the guard’s armour. When the guard ceased moving, the Vrell drone clamped his own claw around the limp claw of the other and, blasting up clouds of silt with his turbines, hauled his captive off the bottom and continued back to the ship.

There were now two sailing ships for her to hunt. At first they moved slowly, and she could easily have caught one of them and pulled it down, but how they managed to sail against the wind puzzled her, so, after only a exploratory touch against one of the rudders, she held back. Slowly she began to understand the interaction of forces involved. The wind was blowing in one direction, the sails angled to catch it. Logic dictated that the wind should push the ship backwards. However, the hull was angled partially into the wind, which was trying to force it sideways through the water. The two forces—wind and water pressure — squeezed the ship between them, like a slippery stone between the opposing faces of a claw, so it shot out sideways, and thus the ship was actually travelling into the wind. This fascinated the giant whelk and, applying this new knowledge to the deep memories of her own life, her understanding of the way forces operated was increased greatly. But the fascination did not last long.

The giant whelk realized that, there now being two prey, she could catch one of them straight away and still have another to pursue, thus her quest could both succeed and continue. She was debating with herself which of them to take down when abruptly both vessels turned. Clearly she had been spotted. Surfacing for a moment, she observed the two ships speeding away, then she submerged again, deciding she would go for the second ship, not the primary target.

This pursuit lasted throughout the day and into the night. The moon gave the water a mercury sheen above her, and her happiness only increased upon encountering a turbul missing its tail and thus unable to escape. Forgetting the ships for a moment, she enjoyed a leisurely pursuit of the fish, before using her line to dice it into pieces which she easily gobbled down. Again moving after her original prey, she noticed a repetitive thumping from the sea bottom. It was a sound recalling unclear memories that elicited unexpected primal reactions in her body. The taste she then picked up in the water caused organs inside her to actually begin moving, rearranging themselves. But no, she was determined not to be distracted—that was all just instinct which would return her to the bottom and to a life abandoned. But then, for a moment, her instinct did override intellect, and she found herself banging a tentacle against her shell and releasing something into the water from glands located below her eyes. In reply, the sea-bottom thumping from the male whelk increased in frequency. She shuddered, took firmer control of herself, closed up the glands, and moved on.