World of Water Read online

  Headshakes all round.

  “See? What I think, fish-face, is that you’re alone. The Marines left, and you stayed behind to save this guy.” McCabe jerked a thumb at the Tritonian. “I don’t know how you found out we had him. I’d guess maybe there’s some kind of sea monkey grapevine that you’re plugged into. It doesn’t matter. Here you are, on this little solo rescue mission of yours. Not going so well, is it?”

  Dev shrugged as much as the chains would allow him to. “Now that you mention it, no. At least put the kid back in the water. Can you do that much for me? He’s going to die if you leave him exposed to the air much longer.”

  The Tritonian’s head had sagged and his gills were twitching fitfully, barely moving.

  McCabe assessed the indigene’s condition, then gestured to one of his cronies. “Okay. Stick him back in the tank. He’s no use to us dead.”

  As the hoist whirred into life, he said to Dev, “We can get a few more days’ entertainment out of him if we’re careful.”

  “Keep him just alive, you mean?”

  “Exactly. That’s the trick. Mess with him as much as he can bear but no further. Let him rest in between. Feed him. Pump air through the water in the tank to re-oxygenate it. We can make him last.”

  “You’re a sadistic motherfucker, you know that?”

  McCabe just laughed. “I’m not the one who started all this. Us settlers, we were prepared to get along. Live and let live. There aren’t even that many of us, relatively speaking, and the planet’s big enough, right? Got more than enough resources for everybody. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

  He jabbed a finger in the direction of the tank. The Tritonian was submerged again and his breathing appeared to be normalising, the beat of his gills becoming regular.

  “It’s them. His kind. Their fault. They wouldn’t play ball, would they? Wouldn’t share. They had to get uppity. Turn terrorist. And even then, after the troubles started, we gave them the benefit of the doubt. We tried to be decent about it.”

  He leaned close to Dev.

  “Well, no more Mr Nice Guy. That stops here. It’s time to teach the natives a lesson. Show them we’re not to be fucked with. If the powers-that-be aren’t going to fight back – if the Marines who should be protecting us won’t do their job – then people are going to take matters into their own hands.”

  “Is torturing one Tritonian to death really going to make that much difference?” The progress bar on Dev’s commplant had reached 63%. Come on, he urged it. Hurry up. What’s taking you so long?

  “Who said anything about ‘to death’?” said McCabe. “We’ll stick him back in the sea eventually, when we feel we’ve made our point. He can return to his people and explain what happened to him. He’ll be an object lesson. A message.”

  “Oh, that’ll work. The Tritonians will back right off then. I can just see it. They won’t – y’know – regard it as a provocation and come and attack Llyr in force, or anything.”

  “Sneer all you want, but I’ve thought this through.”

  “No, you haven’t. You’re pretending it’s a cunningly laid plan. You may even believe it. But all it really is, McCabe, is cheap, spiteful playground tactics. Dietrich managed to snag a Tritonian, and you saw a chance to demonstrate how big and bad you are. Toughest dude in town. ‘Not scared of Tritonians, me. Watch me beat this one up. That’s how much I hate them.’”

  “Hand me that fish stunner, Kelso,” McCabe said.

  “You going to zap me?”

  “Crossed my mind.”

  79% on the progress bar. Nearly there. Dev had to keep stalling.

  “To shut me up, I suppose,” he said. “Because I’m saying stuff you don’t want your friends to hear. Because you know it’s true.”

  “Or it could just be I find you intensely annoying.”

  84%. If McCabe jolted him with the fish stunner, the commplant would fritz again.

  Dev had to delay him just a little bit longer.

  “Listen, McCabe. Here’s the deal. I’m with Interstellar Security Solutions.”

  “ISS. One of those mercenary spooks. Is that so?”

  “Yes. I’m on Triton to defuse the situation, the unrest, before it spirals out of control.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I’m appealing to you, human to human – don’t do something really regrettable, something you can’t come back from. Release me, release the Tritonian, before it’s too late.”

  90%. Getting there.

  “Too late for what?”

  “You can still walk away from this, with no repercussions.”

  “Hate to say it, but he has a point, McCabe,” Kelso piped up. “If he’s ISS, that’s something else. A whole level of hot water we don’t want to end up in.”

  “If,” McCabe said. “He’s lying, ya idiot! Anything to save his skin.”

  “This body is a host form,” Dev said, “a vehicle for my downloaded consciousness, purpose-built so that I can interact with Tritonians as well as with you lot.”

  McCabe shook his head slowly. “No, I reckon what you are is what you look like, an interspecies ambassador. Another one. Chlumsky says he and Dietrich faced off against two of you. You’re the other guy’s replacement, that’s my guess. He’s training you up before he steps down from the job. Or vice versa.”

  “Sounds plausible,” Dev said, “but I assure you it’s not the case. I am ISS.”

  96%. Almost. Almost. Just a few seconds more.

  McCabe brandished the fish stunner, hefting it in his hand. “I doubt a real ISS operative would admit it so openly. Aren’t they supposed to be secret agents or some such?”

  “Field operatives. Not necessarily covert. We advise, participate, recruit and develop assets, collaborate with locals, forge alliances. We don’t like to advertise ourselves, but we don’t hide in the shadows either.”

  98%.

  McCabe pondered.

  “Nah,” he said. “You’re someone who’s got too inquisitive for his own good, that’s all. Ambassador or not, you’ve made a major mistake.”

  “And you’re going to kill me for it? To cover up what you’ve been doing here?”

  “Kill you? Probably not. Maybe just show you the real state of interspecies relations on Triton right now.”

  He thumbed the switch on the fish stunner, activating the power cell.

  99%.

  Come on, come on.

  “So you won’t forget,” he continued. “And you’ll never be able to pin anything on us, by the way. Go whining to your TerCon paymasters, it won’t help you. You won’t be believed. No one in this room will have seen anything. Your word against ours. There’s a dozen of us, and we’ll deny it ’til we’re blue in the face.”

  McCabe didn’t look round to check that he had his cronies’ consent. They were browbeaten, in his thrall. Whatever he told them, whatever rules he laid down, they would go along with.

  His grin was broad and cruel.

  100%.

  Commplant online.

  Reyes! Cully!

  McCabe brought the fish stunner forward and poised the electrodes beside Dev’s neck.

  “Brace yourself,” he said.

  I’m at McCabe’s Mechanics and Chand –

  Lightning exploded in Dev’s head.

  26

  MCCABE HAD DIALLED down the voltage on the stunner. Now, instead of producing a knockout-level charge, it merely caused pain.

  Excruciating pain.

  Dev writhed, the muscles in his neck and chest contorting. The chains dug into him as he twisted and strained spasmodically against them. The chair legs rattled on the floor.

  It may only have lasted a handful of seconds, but for Dev it was a white-hot, timeless forever. When McCabe eventually withdrew the stunner, he continued to twitch and shudder for a full minute afterward.

  The involuntary movements gradually ebbed and faded. Dev tasted metal at the back of his throat. His ears were singing.

  He w
as just starting to catch his breath when McCabe shocked him again.

  This time he felt his eyeballs bulging as though they were going to erupt from their sockets. His teeth clenched so tightly together that three of his molars cracked.

  As the pain and convulsions subsided, Dev heaved air in and out his lungs, coughing and wheezing. A string of drool leaked down from one corner of his lips.

  “How’s that?” McCabe asked. “Sparky enough for you?”

  “Not as bad as... your body odour,” Dev panted out raspily. “Personal hygiene... not a big thing... on Triton?”

  McCabe chuckled as though this was one of the wittiest remarks he had heard in a while. Then his smile dropped and he jabbed the stunner into Dev’s groin.

  Dev nearly blacked out. It felt as though a hand was reaching up from between his legs into his abdominal cavity and giving his innards a good, hard twist.

  “You know,” he said when the pain had abated and his thoughts were no longer a senseless jumble, “there are certain people... who’d pay to have that done to them... and you’re giving it away.”

  “What does it take to shut you up?” McCabe said wonderingly.

  “I don’t know... big guy. Nothing you’re capable of.”

  McCabe looked set to use the stunner on Dev a fourth time, but then had a better idea.

  “Haul the sea monkey out of the tank again,” he said, and his cronies scurried to obey. “You care about the natives,” he told Dev. “Maybe more than you care about yourself. Why else would you have risked your neck to save this one?”

  “Don’t,” Dev said.

  “Don’t give him a going-over with the stunner? Why not? I was planning to anyway, but I just realised it’ll be a lot more enjoyable if you’re still awake and watching. You’ll feel it almost as strongly as he does. Two for the price of one.”

  Dev lunged at McCabe, teeth bared. A futile gesture. There was a tiny amount of slack in the chains but not nearly enough. He didn’t even get close. All he succeeded in doing was thrusting the chair forward a few centimetres.

  “Ah-ah!” said McCabe. “Easy, boy. Bad dog. What were you hoping to do? Chew me to death?”

  “If it came to that. Leave him alone, you bastard. Carry on electrocuting me, by all means, but the Tritonian – he’s suffered enough. He’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake.”

  “A kid who’s a terrorist. Once you decide to be a terrorist, age ain’t nothing but a number.”

  Dev seethed impotently as the Tritonian was set dangling before McCabe. His commplant was offline once more and stubbornly refusing to reboot. He suspected it had gone into enforced hibernation, executing a shutdown protocol in order to preserve itself against the electric shocks. External reactivation would be required, probably a full software reinstallation too.

  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

  THE 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.”