World of Water (18 page)

He could only hope he had got his message out to Reyes and Cully in time. There’d been barely a second between the reboot completing and McCabe zapping him. It was possible the distress call had not been transmitted at all. Help was not coming. The cavalry was not on its way.

McCabe strolled in a circle around the Tritonian, who eyed him dully, halfway between hatred and despair.

Dev made one last attempt to plead with him. “I know you don’t really want to do this, McCabe. You have a hard-man reputation to keep up; I get it. You’re eager to impress your friends. But can’t you see how wrong this is? That boy over there is guilty of nothing except hot-headedness.”

“He attacked Dietrich on his boat.”

“Alone. With nothing but a spear. Against three full-grown men. Only today, I’ve seen what Tritonians can do when they’re properly being terrorists. It’s not pretty. A lone kid waving a handweapon around isn’t nearly on the same scale. We’ve all been that age. Who of us hasn’t done something just as stupid when we were young, thinking we’re being ballsy and grown-up?”

He seemed to be getting through to McCabe’s cronies at least. Some of them were shuffling their feet and making discontented noises. Others had the good grace to look ashamed. They had consciences, buried deep somewhere within.

Too deep, however, to overcome their fear of their ringleader, who remained defiant and unrepentant.

“How are they ever going to learn,” McCabe said, “if someone won’t teach them a lesson?”

He levelled the fish stunner in front of the Tritonian’s face.

“This is going to leave a mark,” he said.

The Tritonian cringed. He had seen what the device could do. He had been watching McCabe use it on Dev.

Dev tried to send him a message of reassurance and solidarity, his face aglow, but the Tritonian wasn’t looking. His gaze was fixed on the stunner’s electrodes, which were inching closer and closer to him. McCabe was prolonging the awful anticipation, relishing the indigene’s naked dread.

There was the sound of glass breaking, followed an instant later by the thud of something landing on the floor and rolling.

A metallic ovoid, tossed in through the shattered windowpane.

No one apart from Dev recognised what it was. The townspeople stared in incomprehension as the object trundled to a halt close to McCabe’s feet. They were even more dumbfounded when tiny pores popped open all across its surface.

Clearly none of them had encountered a subsonic incapacitator before.

Dev groaned inwardly.

This was not going to be pleasant.

27

T
HE SUBSONIC INCAPACITATOR
didn’t detonate as such. It simply emitted a ten-second pulse of infrasound too low to be heard but powerful enough to be felt.

The effect was instantaneous. Everyone within a five-metre radius who wasn’t bound in chains, which meant everyone in the repair shop except for Dev and the Tritonian, staggered where they stood. Some collapsed. Others grabbed whatever they could for support. It was as though a miniature, localised earthquake had just hit.

For that reason a subsonic incapacitator was popularly known as a ‘knee trembler.’

A subsidiary effect, which also applied to nearly all of those present, was spontaneous and uncontrollable projectile vomiting.

For that reason a subsonic incapacitator was even more popularly known as a ‘vom bomb.’

The townspeople succumbed, bending double and puking out the contents of their stomachs. The Tritonian was sick too, coughing a pale yellowish fluid down his front.

Dev alone managed to resist, although only just. The initial infrasound burst sent a wave of queasiness surging through him, and the acrid reek of vomit that swiftly permeated the air afterwards triggered a sympathetic gag reflex. He swallowed down the gorge rising in his throat, refusing to give in.

McCabe, he was delighted to see, was on all fours, arching his back like a dog, copious amounts of partly digested food and beer gushing out of his mouth.

A booted foot smashed the door open, and in came Reyes and Cully, mouths and noses masked, coilgun rifles sweeping.

The two Marines took in the room at a glance and saw it was fully pacified. Anyone not still disorientated by the subsonic incapacitator and emptying their guts out had their hands in the air, cowering meekly at the sight of the rifles.

“Harmer!” Reyes barked. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be better once someone undoes these chains. And that Tritonian’s too.”

Cully released him, while Reyes saw to the Tritonian. The indigene crumpled as the chains came loose, and Reyes took his weight on her shoulder.

“Are we good to go?” Cully asked, stepping carefully around a quivering, quailing local and the puddle of vomit he had created.

“Almost,” said Dev.

He retrieved the HVP holster belt from the tool rack and fastened it on. Then he went over to McCabe, who was still retching and spitting out ribbons of bile. He picked up the fish stunner and waved the tip in front of McCabe’s nose.

“I should shove this where the sun doesn’t shine and hold the button down ’til the power cell runs dry,” he said. “But I’m not that petty.”

McCabe looked up at him, whey-faced, pathetic, bedraggled.

“Well, not quite,” Dev amended, and clobbered McCabe over the head with the stunner. He pounded until McCabe was left lying face down in his own vomit, bleeding from one ear, unconscious.

“How are you ever going to learn,” he said, “if someone won’t teach you a lesson?”

Dev and the Marines exited the repair shop, Reyes and Cully supporting the Tritonian between them. The URIB lay moored in the boatyard, tethered to a pier. The Marines clambered into the boat, laying the indigene flat on the footboards at the stern. Dev stepped aboard just as Cully was casting off.

Reyes started the motor and threw the URIB into a tight, banking one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Within moments Llyr was falling away behind them.

“Touch-and-go,” Cully said to Dev, “but it seems we got there in the nick of time.”

“Yeah. You cut it fine, but it beats not at all. Thanks.”

“Sorry about using the Thunder that Brings the Chunder, but we couldn’t have done anything else. Lethal force against unarmed civilians is prohibited.”

“It was perfect, Cully. Really.”

“Was it worth it?” She nodded at the Tritonian. “He doesn’t look too healthy.”

“Nor would you if you’d just spent several days being beaten and half suffocated. Speaking of which...”

Dev removed Ty’s hooded top and thrust it into the sea until the fabric was sodden. Then he swaddled it around the Tritonian’s throat to help keep his gills moist.

“Think he’s going to make it?” Cully asked.

“He’d better, after all this. You won’t believe what I just had to go through.”

“If that scorch mark on your neck is anything to go by, I can hazard a guess.” Cully nodded in sympathy. “You know, the lieutenant has her doubts about you. Thinks you’re headstrong and undisciplined. A loose cannon. But I think you’re okay, Harmer.”

“High praise indeed.”

“Milgrom’s not your biggest fan, though.”

“Not yet. Now
there’s
a loose cannon.”

“But also a good woman to have at your back in a firefight.”

The URIB scudded onward, and Dev continued tending to the Tritonian, repeatedly re-soaking and reapplying the hooded top. The kid’s face radiated random colours, running through the entire visible spectrum. Dev found it indecipherable. It was, he presumed, equivalent to a human mumbling feverishly, talking gibberish.

At one point the kid’s eyes snapped open and he was briefly lucid. His face flashed a mellow green glow of gratitude before he lapsed back into semiconscious incoherence.

“You’re welcome,” Dev said. “Now just hang in there. Won’t be long.”

Within half an hour they rendezvoused with the
Admiral Winterbrook
and the
Reckless Abandon
.

As the URIB sidled up alongside the catamaran like a duckling re-joining its mother, Dev wrapped his arms around the Tritonian and rolled overboard with him.

He stayed submerged, supporting the youngster, waiting for him to revive. Minutes passed, and the Tritonian started to stir. Cautiously Dev released him, leaving him to float unaided but remaining within arm’s reach. He wasn’t going to let him make a break for it, not without pumping him for intel first. The kid might be only an amateur insurgent, but that didn’t mean he knew nothing about the real insurgents.

A loud splash heralded the arrival of Handler in the water. He shone curiosity and exasperation at Dev. Dev figured that he had been sent down by Sigursdottir to check on the rescued Tritonian and find out Dev’s intentions.

Dev signalled that the Tritonian was coming round and they would soon be able to ask him questions. He still hadn’t quite got the hang of the visual mode of speech, judging by the frown and the amber-and-magenta puzzlement on Handler’s face, so he repeated what he had ‘said’ using supplemental hand gestures to get his meaning across.

Handler registered comprehension, and joined Dev in treading water, while the Tritonian continued to show signs of emerging from his stupor. Dev was glad Handler was with him, since the ISS liaison spoke the indigenes’ lingo fluently while he himself had yet to master it. He stood to get more out of the kid with Handler there to translate.

All at once the Tritonian was awake and alert, but no sooner did this happen than Dev became aware of a commotion in the water. Something sizeable was coming towards them, creating a powerful disturbance, a vibration he could feel viscerally.

No, not just something.

Several somethings.

Silhouettes loomed in the darkness. Any fish in the vicinity scattered. Dev counted three – no, four – large shapes. They homed in on him, Handler and the Tritonian. They were sea creatures of some sort, but they moved with a weird purposefulness and precision, in a converging formation. Almost as if...

Tritonian vessels. Among them was a manta sub, very like the one Dev had encountered at the
Egersund
, and which had intervened when he was being menaced by the cuttlefish sub. The one that appeared to be piloted by the couple he had first run into at Tangaroa.

Seated in the hollow globes of its eyes were the female and the male from before. He recognised them mainly by the nautilus-pattern cicatrix tattoos on their chests.

The other subs surrounded the two humans and the young Tritonian: a second, slightly smaller manta sub, a sub with the skeletal fins and lantern-jaw underbite of an anglerfish, and a tall, stately one which somewhat resembled a seahorse.

Dev could see how the situation might look to the Tritonians. He and Handler were in close proximity to one of their kind who bore injuries consistent with torture. He wouldn’t blame them for jumping to the wrong conclusion: that the two hybrid humans had been responsible for the abuse.

Worse, the Tritonians would be well aware of the Marine boat floating overhead, just as the Marines were doubtless aware of the arrival of the Tritonian submarines. Sigursdottir might perceive the subs as a clear and present danger and respond with a pre-emptive strike.

Things were liable to turn nasty at any moment.

28

T
HE FEMALE
T
RITONIAN
ducked out of her piloting station in the manta sub’s left eye. A few seconds later she emerged from the lipless rectangular slit of a mouth and swam forward, shock lance in hand.

Dev’s own hand drifted towards the HVP, hovering over the grip like a gunslinger’s, ready to draw. Just a precaution. Just in case.

As the Tritonian neared, Handler’s face emanated a greeting, albeit one that was shot through with pale yellow streaks of anxiety. Dev settled for polite amiability and what he hoped was innocence.

Ignoring them, the Tritonian went straight to the youngster and examined him all over, inventorying the lacerations, the bruises and the peeling scales. Then came a rapid exchange of dialogue, colours on both their faces shifting too fast for Dev to follow the conversation easily.