‘No…’
Fire and smoke blasted up before his face, and Ellanc slid into blackness.
Janer gazed down at the weapon he was holding. It seemed he would be getting just about all the excitement he could stand. As he holstered it, he noted that Wade had now tilted his head as if listening.
Emulation.
‘Do you hear it?’ Wade asked.
Janer listened intently. He could hear nothing but the usual sounds of the ship and the sea, but then he did not have a Golem’s hearing.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘A distinctive sound, something like a tank rolling across wooden boards, then a Batian weapon… and now laser carbines,’ Wade told him. ‘Down in the stern.’
In a fraction of a second, with a kind of snapping sound, Wade was on his feet, holding his carbine across his stomach. Could he have got me before I pulled the trigger? Janer wondered, and answered himself: Probably. He reached round and opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and turned to head for the nearest foremast stair. Reaching it, he made to go down towards the bilge.
Wade caught his shoulder. ‘Not that way. We’d have to go through most of the bilge itself to get there. We go along the main deck and down.’
They climbed the stair and stepped out onto the nighted deck. There Janer witnessed something that almost physically jerked him to a halt. He felt a further rush of adrenalin, immediately followed by confusion, asmemories surfaced in his mind’s sea. Before him, a few metres above the deck and regarding him with topaz eyes, hovered an iron-coloured seahorse drone. Thirteen—the Warden’s drone that had been present during those events on the Skinner’s Island ten years ago.
‘You’re armed. Good. We need people armed. Can’t find any of Bloc’s merry crew. I reckon they’re down there after it.’
It took Janer a moment to realize Captain Ron was speaking to him from a few paces beyond the drone, and that behind him stood a crowd of Hoopers and two reifications.
‘What?’ Janer asked stupidly.
Ron stepped forward, the drone shifting aside for him. ‘Thirteen here tells me that nasty bugger is aboard.’
Janer nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ He gestured to his companion. ‘Wade just told me.’
Ron eyed the Golem. ‘How might you know that?’
Wade stepped forwards, pulled a knife out of his belt and handed it across to the Old Captain.
Peering over Ron’s shoulder, Forlam said, ‘Sturmbul. I wondered where he got to.’
Wade said, ‘What’s left of him is lying under a walkway down in the bilge. The hooder is down in the stern of this ship, and I heard weapons firing down there.’
‘Heard?’ Janer asked.
‘It has ceased,’ said Wade, glancing at him.
Ron peered at the APW that Wade held. ‘Mmm, well, best we go see what’s happened.’
Ron was armed with a heavy machete and a QC laser pistol. The others carried weapons which, in their variety, seemed to cover human history. They ranged from clubs and blades to muzzle-loaders, cartridge-fed weapons to various designs of pulse gun and laser. One of them even carried a machine gun. It was a pathetic collection of arms with which to go up against a hooder.
‘Have you been able to contact Bloc?’ Wade asked.
‘Can’t find the bugger,’ said Ron. ‘Didn’t try too hard.’
‘Maybe he’s down in the stern with his Kladites?’ Janer suggested.
Ron snorted. ‘Maybe leeches will fly. Best we get down there and lend a hand before anyone else gets ‘emselves killed.’
‘People die,’ said Wade, a strange expression on his face.
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Ron.
Wade looked up into the rigging, smiled, then said, ‘But surely you are risking your own life and the lives of others by becoming involved in this?’
Janer understood that the Golem was playing to an audience of one, for Zephyr’s hearing was just as good as Wade’s.
‘Nobody wants to die,’ growled Ron. ‘But life without risk ain’t living.’
‘Could it be,’ said Wade, ‘that life without the possibility of death is not life at all?’
Ron stared at him hard. ‘I don’t know what your agenda is, Golem, but we ain’t got time for it right now.’
Wade shrugged. ‘Well, we do have weapons…’
‘Come on!’ Ron turned and led the way back towards the stern.
12
Ocean Heirodont:
like the whales, these creatures long ago abandoned the land to return to the sea. Only forty-seven species have been catalogued, for they have obviously not well survived competition with the vast oceanic leech population. They are cast in the same mould as Terran fishes and cetaceans: on the whole, those with horizontally presented cetacean tails are herbivorous, whilst those with sharkish tail fins are predators. They grip their food in mandibles, be that kelp stalks or a struggling turbul, and feed it into the grinding bony plates in their throats. The largest kind can grow half again the size of a blue whale and is a carnivore. Its favoured prey is giant whelks, if it can drag them from the bottom. But even something so large is subject to the predation of giant leeches, sometimes losing a ton or more of flesh to one in a single strike. The only relief these creatures can find from leech attack is to drop below the depth leeches are able to reach, but they must perforce return regularly to the surface for they are air breathers. But even when they go deep enough to avoid leeches, they might still be attacked by giant prill—
From high up, Sniper observed the Skinner’s Island, checked his position by internal tracking, then dropped out of the sky like a brick. He hit the sea in a foamy explosion, and two smaller splashes followed him. Not waiting for the other two drones, he engaged his supercavitating field, opened his tractor drive to full power, and arrowed down into the depths in one sonic explosion. Collapsing the field over the required coordinates, water friction knocked his speed down by half, then he used his drive to decelerate further before putting all his detectors at maximum range. Immediately he picked up wreckage: pieces of exotic metal, the remains of a thruster nacelle—detritus from the Prador ship. He checked the coordinates again, but they were correct. Down below was a cavity in the sea bottom, cut through with the slowly filling burrows of giant packetworms. Despite his earlier discussion he had expected, in his metal heart, to find the Prador ship still here, and some other explanation for recent events. The ship was gone.
‘I see,’ said the Warden, once Sniper had updated the AI over a U-space link.
‘There’s a fading silt trail,’ Sniper continued. ‘I might be able to follow it.’
‘Yes, I noticed that, but I wonder about the underwater shock waves you are currently generating.’
Sniper observed Eleven and Twelve slowly approaching. ‘I should think,’ he said acidly, ‘that a Prador light destroyer might be more of a danger to the environment than my shock waves.’
‘Very well, Sniper, continue your pursuit, but keep me continuously apprised of your location. I will inform Earth Central of the situation.’
‘What?’
‘One must consider recent events in the Third Kingdom.’
‘Oh, so coring human beings is okay now?’
‘Keep me informed, Sniper.’
The link cut and Sniper hung in the depths mulling over the exchange. Things had changed. The Prador, supposedly, no longer used human blanks in their Kingdom. In recent years hundreds of thousands of them had been returned to the Polity, and consequently hundreds of thousands of records of the war’s missing had been closed. There were now Polity embassies on Prador worlds and vice versa. There was trade, a very great deal of trade, for though the Prador had never developed AI and much of their cybernetics was quaint, their metals technology was superior in many respects to the Polity’s. It was also an open secret that the Prador wanted runcible technology, but were baulking at the fact that AI was needed to control it. They were perhaps aware, upon observing the Polity itself, that once they made that step there would be no going back. Drastic changes always ensued.