Looking back, Ambel saw Cloudskimmer taking wing from the Moby, which was canted to one side with its stern low in the water. A long white tentacle rose high out of the sea, reaching higher than the masts, then smashed down straight through the ship. Deck planking shot into the air and one mast began to topple.
‘Fucking thing.’ Drum faced forward and hurled his grenade into the shallows just before the beach. The Treader then began to shudder as its keel started to bite into the bottom. Another crash from behind, and the two halves of the Moby were sinking. A great fan of tentacles rose over it, a glittering mountainous shell visible behind.
‘Get the boats in!’ bellowed Ambel.
Rope hissed through the davit pulleys, the two ship’s boats dropping to the sea. Crew not standing with Ambel and Drum began scrambling over the side and into them. From ahead there came a dull boom, followed by an explosion of spume and fire and snakish corpses. The force of the blast rode the ship up from the bottom for a moment, then it came down hard, shuddering to a halt and flinging some of the remaining crew into the sea. Ambel had no time to watch who might rescue those unfortunates.
‘Get your heads down!’ he bellowed, and, once his warning was heeded, began swinging the heavy anchor round and round above him on a length of its chain. He released it towards the beach and, towing out its chain with a rattling roar, it splashed down only metres from the shoreline. Drum jumped over the prow ahead of Ambel, who followed, submerging to his neck in the water, his feet just touching the bottom. Up again, and he swam after the other Captain, as pulse-gun and laser fire began hissing into the sea around him. On either side the boats came in, their crews also firing at writhing shapes in the water. When the water was only up to Ambel’s waist, a rhinoworm—nearly out of adolescence, for it had dropped its forelegs—reared up beside him. He backhanded it up out of the sea and sent it flying back five metres through the air. Soon he joined Drum, who had lifted the anchor from the bottom. They took firm hold of one tine each.
‘Well, here we go then,’ said Ambel.
He knew that Polity citizens witnessing this sort of strength might be shocked, but for himself and Drum it was just something they accepted, as it increased over the centuries. At one time even he and Drum would have struggled to raise this anchor together, but now hauling on it to straighten out a tonne of chain behind was no big deal to them—it had taken the best part of a thousand years for them to become capable of this.
‘Let’s get her in, then,’ growled Drum.
They began trudging ashore, pulling the Treader in behind them. Once they reached dry land, because of the combined weight being carried and the force they were exerting, they waded up to their knees in the sand. Reaching the head of the beach, they found an outcrop of volcanic stone, upon which they took a stand to continue pulling the chain, hand-over-hand, until the ship’s prow was out of the water.
‘Let’s move it!’ Ambel yelled, dropping the chain and gunshot-clapping his hands.
The crew were swiftly unloading the boats, hauling harpoons and other supplies up the beach. Nothing remained of the Moby but floating shards, and beyond the Treader a mobile hill was rapidly heading shorewards.
18
Turbul:
a billion years ago this creature was little different from any Terran fish. It possessed a spine, the requisite internal organs, gills, fins, a tail and teeth. However, the evolutionary pressure of being fed upon by leeches for so long has wrought some strange changes. The turbul still possesses all of the above, but now in a configuration enabling it to survive leech attack. Its fins stem directly from the spine, the muscles moving them running inside its bones. Muscles also run down inside the spine to the tail, and the jaw muscles are similarly encased — just sufficient to keep it mobile and feeding. Its other internal organs, contained in a bag attached to the spine itself, can quickly regrow themselves. Outside all of this, with the fins protruding through it, the turbul grows a dense cylinder of nutritious flesh, which is nerveless and a prime target for leeches. A turbul can lose all of this flesh and still survive. It is as if, rather than evolve a thicker skin or a shell, the turbul has accepted the inevitability of leech attack, abandoned its defences, and retreated inside with its most vital parts. It thus sacrifices its outer layer to keep its inner self alive. There are many other fish forms to have done this, most notably the boxy —
Forlam understood the oblique order he had been given by his Captain, also that others might deliberately misinterpret it in the hope of avoiding danger. Danger was not something that frightened him—only his own fascination with it did that.
‘Go to your cabins; I’ll handle this,’ he said to the Hoopers accompanying him. ‘I doubt more of us will be any help.’
‘But that’s where we’re going anyhow,’ said Dorleb.
Forlam sighed. It sometimes seemed to him that the fibres in the brains of many Hoopers strangled their thought processes. ‘A laser won’t bring down a Polity drone,’ he explained. ‘Captain Ron wants to free our mates below. He ordered me to go ahead and rescue them.’
‘Huh?’ came Dorleb’s brilliant reply.
Now on the bridge stateroom deck, Forlam paused and looked around, then abruptly bellowed, ‘Thirteen!’ The others eyed him in a way he had become quite accustomed to. Let them think he was mad.
When they reached the door leading through to the crew cabins, one of the Hoopers stepped through immediately, while shaking her head and saying, ‘Orbus… the Vignette.’
Two more Hoopers followed her. The two remaining just stood watching Forlam.
‘You’ll be needing our help,’ said Dorleb.
‘No, I won’t,’ said Forlam. ‘More of us would just be easier to detect.’
Without further objection the last two headed off. Forlam soon reached the head of the ladder leading down into the bilge, but rather than descend he went into the nearby armoury. One crate remaining in the cage was still sealed. He tore it open and took out a laser carbine, then continued on down, finally reaching a walkway leading towards the submersible enclosure. He paused by the door, gave it a light push with the snout of his carbine, and watched it swing open. A floating shape was immediately visible, the moment he stepped inside. Thirteen was hovering in the middle of the enclosure.
‘You’ve been expecting me,’ Forlam suggested.
‘I have not,’ the seahorse drone replied.
Ahead of the submersible, the irised door abruptly opened in the hull to reveal a shimmer-shield and murky depths beyond. Movement to one side spun Forlam round, raising his weapon, then he relaxed on seeing Isis Wade emerging from the submersible.
‘What happened up in the bridge?’Wade asked.
‘Bloc sent away all those he didn’t consider a danger to whatever plans he has. The Captain sort of ordered me here on a rescue mission.’
Wade smiled and pointed. ‘Suits and breather gear are over in those cabinets.’
Just like that.
Forlam felt a surge of something unpleasant in his guts. He walked over to the glass-fronted cabinets and studied their contents. The suits were inset with chain-mesh. The breather gear consisted of full-faced masks from which pipes led to a haemolung that strapped on the wearer’s back. The cabinet locks were coded touch panels, so he reached up to the top of the door before him and wrenched it off.
‘I guess the designers of those cabinets didn’t take Hoopers into account,’ said Wade, stepping past Forlam. ‘Or Golem.’ He ripped off the next door and took out a suit.