World of Water Page 17

  “I can’t tell if these shots are making any difference,” Dev said.

  “How do you feel right now?”

  “Headachey. Nauseous. That could simply be seasickness, I suppose. My sea legs still haven’t quite come in. But look at this.”

  He held up his hands. The skin was speckled with tiny purple blotches, particularly around the wrists and knuckles.

  “I noticed one shortly after my last shot. I didn’t think anything of it, but then about an hour ago I realised all these others had appeared.”

  “Subcutaneous bleeding. Capillaries spontaneously bursting around the joints.”

  Dev grimaced. “At least it’s internal. Not as nasty as having the stuff pour out of your nose.”

  “Painful?”

  “A little, but analgesics are keeping it at bay.”

  “I really regret that this has happened to you,” Handler said.

  “Not as much as I do. I’m just glad a treatment was available. I’d be screwed otherwise.”

  “ISS are prepared for every contingency,” Handler said. “This probably isn’t the first time there’ve been problems with the host form assembly process.”

  “You’re probably not wrong.”

  Dawn broke while Dev was minding the controls, and the early sky was as red as any he’d seen, a riot of carmine and crimson. Even after the sun rose and the redness faded, the prospect was no less gloomy and worrisome. Huge clouds were amassing on the horizon, taking on menacing shapes – like anvils and battleships, towering and iron-grey.

  He consulted his countdown timer. It registered a little shy of 32 hours remaining. He was over halfway through his allotted three days, and he couldn’t help but ask himself how much he had actually achieved on Triton in that time. He had obtained a military escort, had fathomed the insurgents’ mindset to some degree, and had enlisted the co-operation of indigenes opposed to the insurgency. Apart from that, though, what had he accomplished? Was he any closer to ending the conflict?

  Sometimes the missions that ISS sent him on seemed overwhelming, almost impossibly difficult. It was as though the company didn’t want him to earn his 1,000 points and redeem his own body. Once or twice he even wondered whether they were sending him from pillar to post just for the sheer fun of it, deriving some sort of sick pleasure from the trouble they put him through, the teetering odds he faced. The way kings, or for that matter gods, liked to toy with ordinary mortals, just because they could.

  But that assumed that the higher-ups at ISS cared about him at any other level than as an asset. His struggles didn’t amuse them. Didn’t concern them, either. All they wanted from him was results, preferably supplied in the most cost-effective manner possible, with the least fallout, the fewest legal ramifications.

  Handler brought up coffee, and the two of them drank it side by side on the flybridge, mesmerised by the slow, stately swirl of the cloud formations. The sea had grown wilder than ever, and they stood with their knees bent to counteract its wayward buck and sway. Keeping the coffee in the cups, preventing it from slopping over the sides, was some feat.

  “What’s that?” Handler said, pointing.

  Dev squinted. It looked like another cloud, but wasn’t. It was too upright. Too dark.

  “Column of smoke,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “I don’t think it can be anything else. What’s in that direction?”

  Handler referred to the navigation map screen.

  His expression turned grim.

  “Dakuwaqa,” he said. “It’s the northernmost of the –”

  “Of the Triangle Towns,” said Dev. “I know. Shit.”

  Sigursdottir? Are you seeing this? At your eleven o’clock.

  Just spotted it. It’s Dakuwaqa, we reckon.

  Yeah, looks that way. Lot of smoke. Can’t be good.

  No shit. Are all you ISS types this sharp or are you a special case?

  I’m not just clever, I have dazzling charisma too.

  If you think that, then you’re doubly deluded.

  We should investigate.

  If you’re referring to your ludicrously inflated self-image, then no, we shouldn’t. We should leave that well alone. But if you mean Dakuwaqa, then duh. Of course. It’s what we’re here for.

  Ten to one we’re looking at the result of insurgent activity.

  That’s not a bet I’ll be taking.

  Handler set course for Dakuwaqa. The Admiral Winterbrook changed bearing too, and the manta subs duly tailed along.

  The smoke column was huge, its summit level with the tops of the tallest clouds. As the boats drew nearer to it, Dev recalled how he had once seen an entire city on fire during the war, a libertarian commune colony on a world called Roark which had succumbed to a bombardment from Polis+ dreadnoughts in near-planetary orbit. That black, roiling perpendicular plume had looked much like this one. He feared he knew all too well what they were going to find when they arrived.

  36

  DAKUWAQA WAS BURNING.

  All of Dakuwaqa was burning.

  Every dome habitat, every algae farm, every fishery, the tidal power barrages, the desalination plant, the marinas. Every inch of every structure in the township was swathed in flame and contributing to the vast pillar of smoke that loomed over it like a black ghost.

  The heat was so intense, you could feel it on your skin even at a distance of 300 metres, which was as close as the Reckless Abandon and the Admiral Winterbrook dared get.

  The roar was deafening, a great crackling bellow of combustion that rolled across the water.

  There was nothing they could do. Dev, Handler and the Marines were able only to look on in horror. Horror and awe, because in the face of such wholesale devastation, a sense of smallness and humility was unavoidable.

  Then there were the bodies.

  Bobbing in the water. Many of them charred. Some face down, others face up.

  Sea creatures were jostling over them, gorging from below, lending the bodies a ghastly kind of animation. They twitched and thrashed as countless sets of unseen teeth tugged on their flesh. Sometimes the dead even seemed to be trying to swim, limbs splashing ineffectually, the feeble crawl of the doomed.

  Ash fell from the sky in a thin black snow. Embers hissed into extinction as they hit the sea.

  Milgrom and Blunt sent up their hoverdrones to overfly the scene. The likelihood of finding anyone alive in the midst of that holocaust was slim verging on nil. A search had to be carried out all the same, just in case. There might be some pocket of the township still intact, as yet untouched by the blaze, where survivors were hunkered down, praying for rescue.

  The hoverdrones flew high around the edge of the vast thermal, surveying. Their rotor fans carved weirdly beautiful vortexes in the smoke.

  Their cameras, however, relayed nothing to their controllers’ commplants – nothing but footage of fire and ruin. Milgrom and Blunt summoned them back, and they swooped obediently to their perches on the Marines’ wristlets and folded themselves flat.

  “This is awful,” said Handler. He looked sickened, as well he might. Even a Frontier War veteran like Dev was finding the sight of a shattered township and a sea of corpses hard to stomach. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “Be thankful for that.”

  “I had no idea the insurgents would be capable of... this. It’s just insane. They’ve gone too far.”

  Dev pulled up data on Dakuwaqa’s population from an insite. The township was – had been – home to approximately six thousand. Like its companion towns Opochtli and Mazu, it was a thriving community. The warm, fertile waters of the Tropics of Lei Gong yielded the densest and most easily harvested fish stocks, compensating for the not always congenial climate. The methane mining was good here, too.

  Six thousand men, women and children – slaughtered.

  The worshippers of the Ice King had proved, once and for all, that they meant business.

  Question, lieutenan
t. How did they manage it? Up until now the incidents have been relatively small-scale. This is a major step up. They’ve either adopted a new tactic or they’ve got some weapon we don’t know about.

  That’s what I’m thinking. They could have overrun the place with sheer numbers, I guess, then torched it as they left.

  But there’d have been resistance, surely. And the settlers would have had time to get a distress signal out. This happened suddenly, without warning, too quickly for anyone to react. Nobody was able to retaliate or escape. It’s like the insurgents used a bomb...

  But they don’t have bombs.

  Something similar to a bomb, then. I mean, look at the way some of the domes are caved in. It’s hard to tell through all the smoke and flame, but can you see? It’s as though they were struck from above. Crushed, almost. As though they had things land on them.

  I see that. And then those same things set them alight. But the Tritonian weaponry I’ve encountered so far has all been hand-to-hand. Have you heard of them deploying anything with this level of yield?

  Not before now. But the evidence of my own eyes is telling me the status quo has changed. And with Dakuwaqa gone, where’s going to be next?

  Opochtli or Mazu, I’d imagine.

  We’ve got to send a warning. Get both townships to evacuate.

  Good idea. We should also head for one of them ourselves, whichever’s nearer. Try and overtake the insurgents before they can launch another attack of the same magnitude. We’re going to have to be extra careful, though. Remember the Egersund?

  What about the Egersund?

  The people who carried out the massacre left a vessel behind, didn’t they? To finish the job. The rest of them moved on after they’d done killing the crew, but the cuttlefish sub hung around in order to sink the ship and us with it.

  Your point being...?

  It was a trap. Straight out of the terrorist playbook. You commit an atrocity, knowing that someone is bound to come running. Then, to cause maximum carnage and outrage, you spring a sneaky follow-up attack and take out the people who’ve just arrived.

  Like in the days of suicide bombers. One of them would blow up the marketplace, then when the cops and ambulances turned up, a second suicide bomber would take care of them too.

  Or there’d be a second improvised explosive device with a delay fuse to catch the people who went to the aid of the people hurt by the first improvised explosive device. Who’s to say the insurgents haven’t done the same thing here, just like at the Egersund? We need to keep our wits about us and proceed with caution. I wouldn’t put it past these cunning bastards to have left another trap for us.

  The two boats moved off slowly, giving Dakuwaqa a wide berth and making sure to stay upwind to avoid catching any stray embers from the blaze.

  I’ve managed to hail Mazu, Harmer. The head councillor there was already concerned after contact with Dakuwaqa was lost. He knew the place had gone dark but had no idea why.

  And now that he does...?

  He’s implementing a full, township-wide emergency evacuation. Every functioning boat is going to embark as many passengers as will fit and get the fuck out of there as fast as it can.

  Great. What about Opochtli?

  Not so great. We’re not getting through. Private Fakhouri is multiple-messaging everyone on the town’s contacts list insite. Not a single reply yet.

  Fakhouri. Dev remembered her from the tapas restaurant on Llyr. A quiet and unassuming individual with dark, intelligent eyes, she had seemed happy for Milgrom, Blunt and Francis to hog the limelight. From what he could tell, she was a stickler for protocol and accuracy, as befitted a comms specialist.

  Fuck.

  Might just be some kind of signals interference. Typhoon brewing. Maybe that’s playing havoc with the satellite relay.

  You don’t think that anymore than I do.

  No, I do not.

  Then Opochtli’s our next port of call.

  “Uhh, Harmer?”

  “Yes?”

  Handler gestured at the sonar screen.

  Dev scowled. “What in the name of sanity is that?”

  Less than a kilometre ahead sat an amorphous shape, like some pale red amoeba. It was perhaps half a kilometre across, and it lay more or less directly in their path.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not a single entity,” Handler said. “It’s diffuse. A mass of... something. Somethings.”

  “Fish? A shoal?”

  “Hard to say. The sonar profile is similar, but not the same.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It just appeared a moment or so ago. Like it welled up from below.”

  “We should divert around, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Already on it.”

  “Good work.”

  Sigursdottir...

  Seen it. Any ideas?

  Not a clue, but it’s big and anomalous and I don’t like it for both those reasons.

  Me either.

  It’s also... Shit. Yes. I think it’s moving. As in, trying to cut us off.

  It didn’t seem possible, but the amoeboid mass on the screen was indeed moving. It was shifting as if to intercept the boats, its central mass thinning as it extended towards them. Dev thought of a pseudopod unfurling. An arm reaching out to curb them.

  Looking ahead, all he could see was a dark patch in the churning whitecaps, where the sea’s surface was that little bit less wrinkled, a little smoother. It didn’t give much indication as to what lay beneath.

  He noted, however, that the manta subs had pulled back. They were no longer keeping pace with the jetboat and the catamaran.

  That was most definitely not a good sign.

  “Handler, bring us about,” he said. “I still have no idea what that thing is, but we can’t go round it and we certainly don’t want to go over it.”

  Handler disabled the navigation computer and took manual control. He threw the Reckless Abandon into a tight U-turn.

  At that moment, Dev realised to his dismay that a second amoeboid shape was manifesting on the sonar screen.

  Right behind them.

  It occupied the space between the surface boats and the manta subs, cutting the two sets of vessels off from one another.

  Encirclement.

  They had been well and truly suckered.

  Was this what had wrecked Dakuwaqa, Dev wondered? Was this the insurgents’ weapon of mass destruction?

  If so, he, Handler and the Marines were deep in the shit.

  And if it wasn’t, if it was something else...

  Then they were, he suspected, just as deep in the shit.

  37

  THE AMOEBOID SHAPES on the sonar screen were closing in, extending and bending together to form a rough oval, with the two boats corralled within.

  Still there was nothing visible to the naked eye except a greasy smoothness on the sea’s surface, somewhat like an oil slick. Now and then Dev caught a glimpse of a brown, whip-like something bulging out of the water, there and gone in a split second. Limb? Body? Tentacle? He couldn’t tell.

  Handler spun the Reckless Abandon, looking for a way out, but in vain. The two masses finished merging and became one, shutting off all channels of escape.

  And now it began contracting around the boats, like a noose tightening. The area of clear water inside it shrank fast. Handler had to nudge the Reckless Abandon up beside the Admiral Winterbrook. There was nowhere else to go, no more wiggle room.

  On the catamaran, the Marines were preparing to fight. Milgrom manned the forward point-defence gun, the targeting system of which was now slaved to her commplant. Jiang had torpedoes primed and ready to fire.

  They got a heads-up from Sigursdottir.

  Hang on, gentlemen. We’re going to fight our way out. It’s going to get loud.

  It got loud. The point-defence gun’s quartet of barrels boomed, sending volleys of 12.7mm fragmentation rounds into the water in broad, sweeping arcs. A torpedo shot out of its
tube in the catamaran’s left hull like a seal slipping off an iceberg. It furrowed straight ahead, detonating some fifty metres from the Admiral Winterbrook, raising a funnel of white water mingled with fragments of dark, pulpy tissue.

  The net result of these heavy-ordnance attacks was...

  Nothing.

  The oval mass just kept on narrowing in remorselessly, undeterred. The Admiral Winterbrook might as well have been chucking paper darts at a wall, for all the effect its firepower had. Sigursdottir seemed to realise as much, because no more torpedoes were forthcoming and the point-defence gun soon stopped its strafing.

  All at once the hollow, tightening oval on the screen became a solid and the two boats were fully engulfed. The mass had swamped them. There was no distinguishing their sonar signatures amid the pinkish cloud that had subsumed them.

  Dev peered over the side of the jetboat and saw dense, tangled rods of living matter seething in the water. They were lobed and fluted, with here and there a blister of some sort, a pouch the size of his fist. His nose was hit by a strong brackish smell that took him back to a school trip to the seaside in his youth.

  Could it be...?

  Then the Reckless Abandon’s engine died.

  Handler hit the ignition. Yanked the throttle handle back and forth.

  No good.

  “We have power,” he said, flustered. “Just no propulsion.”

  The boat’s computer flashed up an explanation. The pump intakes were blocked, so the engine had automatically shut down to protect itself from overheating.

  “That stuff’s clogged them up,” Dev said. “Any way of clearing them?”

  “Apart from going down into the water and doing it by hand? No.”

  “I wouldn’t get into the sea right now if you paid me. I’m not sure what this shit around us is, but climbing into it doesn’t strike me as the way to find out.”