World of Water (20 page)

Ethel, Dev realised, was not a woman to be trifled with. She and Sigursdottir should meet, he thought. They would get on like a house on fire. Or end up at each other’s throats. Either way, sparks would fly.

His commplant announced that it was working once more, with a proviso:

Operational efficiency compromised. Processing speeds may be reduced.

The countdown timer resumed its deathwatch-beetle ticking:

43:04:41

Dev searched through the backed-up data and found his sketch of the design the terrorists had left on the
Egersund
, the symbol Handler had identified as representing the mythical Ice King. He switched on the cabin’s floatscreen unit and transferred the sketch to that. It hovered in midair, projected by helium-neon lasers.

Ethel’s reaction was immediate and fierce. She leapt to her feet, her face flushing with furious contempt. Jabbing her shock lance for emphasis, she seethed about the danger the Ice King posed, the threat to peace and stability, the rampant bloodshed that was being carried out in the name of the God Beneath the Sea.

So many statements tumbled out of her, and the lights on her face conveyed such an intensity of passion, that she veered close to becoming unintelligible. She ranted about the followers of the Ice King, who justified murder if it was committed in his name. She asserted that they were everything the Nautilus Movement stood against, beating the cicatrix on her chest to underscore her point.

“Religious extremist terrorists,” Dev said to Handler. “They’re the ones heading up the insurgency.”

“And the Nautilus Tritonians are their sworn enemies, or at least an opposing political faction.”

“Rationalists versus zealots. Remind you of any recent intergalactic conflict, by any chance?”

Ethel was still venting her spleen against the followers of the Ice King as Dev and Handler simultaneously received a call from Sigursdottir.

Sonar’s registering activity due east of us, near the surface. Five klicks and closing. Looks like a shoal of large fish, but the pings they’re sending back are all shapes and sizes and they’re moving more like something manmade.

More Tritonian vessels?

That’d be my guess, Harmer. Handler told me that the female you’ve got there is a friendly, and presumably so are the rest of them directly below us. Question is, are these other ones friendlies too? Speed they’re coming suggests not. Looks more like an attack.

Let me check.

Dev asked Ethel if she was expecting company.
Other Nautilus types maybe? Have you arranged a rally?

Ethel said no and, picking up on the concern on Dev’s face, hurried out of the cabin. Dev raced after her, in time to see her perform a supple, parabolic dive over the rail. She hit the water with scarcely a splash.

Not looking promising, lieutenant, but I’d advise you to hold fire ’til we know more.

No can do. I’m not endangering my men’s lives on an unknown. We’re going to action stations.

The
Admiral Winterbrook
began turning, coming about to face east. At the same time, Dev saw a Marine – someone tall and bulky, had to be Milgrom – rush towards the point-defence gun that was rising through a hatch from below decks at the bows. She slotted herself into the bucket-seat and put the gun through its paces experimentally. First she rotated it through its full firing arc, to ensure that the platform bearings were in working order and ran smoothly. Then she elevated and lowered the four barrels. It was as though the gun were nodding, swaggering, confident in its power.

Somewhere on board the catamaran, an alarm klaxon was hooting.

How far away now, Sigursdottir?

Two klicks, and they’re not slowing. All the signs are it’s hostiles.

Dev scanned the seascape, looking for evidence of the approaching Tritonian craft. He saw distant streaks of luminescence in the black water, running in parallel, like a meteor shower scoring the night sky. They were the wakes of large objects underwater, zooming in fast. He estimated there were a dozen of them at least.

Handler appeared at his side. “If those are insurgent vessels, are they coming for us or the other Tritonians?”

“Beats me. Either way, they have the numerical advantage.”

“The
Admiral Winterbrook
should even up the odds. It’s armed to the teeth.”

“Even so, there’s a limit to what a surface boat can do against submarines.”

“You’re not contemplating going down there to help out. You
are
, aren’t you? You’re crazy. What difference can one man make?”

“I’m a disruptive influence,” Dev said. “You read my psych profile. I have a knack for causing chaos. So I’ll bring a bit of that to the party.”

“Well, I’m sure I can’t stop you. At least let me give you your next dose of nucleotides first. Hold you together a little longer.”

Handler deftly applied a fresh serum patch to Dev’s arm.

“Good luck,” he said. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

“The motto I live by.”

Dev dived.

30

T
HE
N
AUTILUS
T
RITONIANS
had circled the wagons. The four submarines were huddled together, braced for attack and ready to repel. If a fight was in the offing, they were meeting it head-on, not fleeing.

Dev was duly impressed.

He swam to Ethel’s manta sub, positioning himself in front so that she could see him through the cornea of its cockpit.

I’m on your side
, he said.
An extra pair of hands.

Leave
, she replied.
We don’t need you.

You might find you do.

Very well. If you insist on staying, don’t get in the way.

I’ll do my best.

The other group of Tritonians were almost there. They were travelling in an assortment of vessels, led by a cuttlefish sub. Dev was certain it was the same cuttlefish sub that had sunk the
Egersund
. Its mottled markings looked familiar.

With it were a pufferfish sub, a swordfish sub, a sub not unlike a moray eel, and others that defied categorisation, comparable to no Terran marine creatures Dev knew of. One resembled a bone disc, with sharp points protruding from its circumference. Another was what might result if a salamander and an umbrella somehow mated and spawned.

Ethel and her co-pilot cousin eased the manta sub forward to meet the cuttlefish sub face to face. The cuttlefish sub and its entourage halted, and Ethel attempted to parley. She advised the new arrivals to turn around.

One of the cuttlefish sub pilots, serving as spokesman for the group, responded with disdain.

You have no authority over us
, he said.
We answer to a higher power. We do the Ice King’s bidding.

There is no Ice King
, Ethel said.
He’s a figment. A fantasy.

That’s where you’re wrong. He is real, and he is awakening. He is stirring in the deeps, soon to lead us in liberating our world.

So you say.

So we know. His hour has come. We’re on a pilgrimage to find him, and when we do, we will follow him wherever he leads and do whatever he asks of us.

You worship nothing but an empty dream.

We worship might and freedom and a future no longer blemished by the stain of the ungilled. That’s what the Ice King promises us.

You’re using faith to legitimise slaughter
, said Ethel.
I don’t like these gill-less interlopers any more than you do, but there are ways we can live alongside them.

Peaceful coexistence? Now that is an empty dream!

They’re not all bad. They can be reasoned with, if we only try.

Easier just to kill them.

Your acts of sabotage and murder don’t do anything except make them angry and incite retaliation. I’ll show you.

Ethel beckoned behind her, and she was joined in the eye socket by the kid who had been held captive on Llyr.

This boy is one of yours
, she said.
Like you he fights against the ungilled, but unlike you he’s suffered the consequences.

I know him
, said the cuttlefish sub pilot.
He put himself forward to join us, but we turned him down. Too young. He has not grown into a name yet. When someone’s old enough to know his own name, then we’ll embrace him, but only then.

You have standards. You’re noble.

Sarcasm, it seemed, was burnt-orange in colour.

We can’t be responsible for the lives of children
, said the cuttlefish sub pilot.

I tried to prove my worth
, the kid said.
I hate the ungilled. I hate them even more after the things they did to me.

He was taken prisoner
, said Ethel.
Abused horribly. You see the marks on his body. This is what happens when you resort to violence. You get violence in return.

It’s to be expected
, the cuttlefish sub pilot said without regret.
All who are hurt or who perish in our cause are sacred martyrs. They will be avenged. The Ice King will bring a reckoning against the ungilled who steal the creatures that are our property and pollute the water with the filth of their machines, who’ve invaded our world and violated its sanctity, who’ve claimed our seas as their own and squat above us in their shadow-casting settlements as though they are our lords.

I believe that too!
the boy declared.

You’re a brave one. If you were just a little older, you’d deserve a place in our ranks.

Why not now? I belong with you. I’m prepared to do anything in the name of the Ice King.

So saying, the kid hauled back and struck Ethel a vicious blow across the side of the head. She hadn’t seen it coming. She reeled away, stunned.

Seeing this, her cousin darted from his station, plunging into a sort of access duct that ran from one side of the manta sub’s head to the other, a link between the eye socket cockpits.

The boy, meanwhile, snatched up Ethel’s shock lance, which was resting in a purpose-built niche beside her seat. He moved towards her with the weapon held out menacingly. Ethel, still dazed, floated helplessly, vulnerable.

Dev didn’t think Ethel’s cousin was going to reach her in time. He himself, outside the sub, wasn’t much better placed to help.

Unless...

He drew the HVP and fired straight into the manta’s gaping maw.

The sabot round punched a hole in the mouth’s interior, hitting one of the spongy filter plates the manta used to sieve its food source – microscopic organisms – from the water. The wound was relatively small, to a beast that big, but deep and piercing nonetheless.

Dev’s gamble paid off; the living submarine flinched and recoiled in pain.

The sudden lurch threw the kid off-balance. He blundered against the outer membrane of the eye, and the next instant Ethel’s cousin reappeared at the other end of the access duct. The eye now had three Tritonians crowded in it.

The cousin lunged at the kid, who twisted round to face him, thrusting the shock lance forward. The two of them grappled with weapon between them, their faces ablaze with antagonism.

The boy’s hand closed on a lever on the lance’s handle.

There was a brilliant blue flash.

Ethel’s cousin juddered, then went limp.

The boy looked aghast, startled, horrified... but also triumphant.

The cousin drifted away from him, slowly spinning. No question, he was dead. His arms began to rise in a kind of crucifixion pose. His head lolled.

Ethel emerged from her stupor, took in the situation at a glance, and launched herself at the kid with lightning streaks of pure naked fury forking across her face. She seized the lance off him and aimed.

Whether or not she actually intended to use the lance against him, she never got the opportunity.

The Tritonians in the cuttlefish sub saw that the boy was in danger. He was their ideological kin. They could not simply leave him at Ethel’s mercy.

The cuttlefish sub jetted forward with a powerful squirt of its siphon. The other subs alongside it followed suit.

The vessels of one Tritonian faction joined battle with the vessels of another, and what ensued was one of the bizarrest battles Dev had ever known.