Then a vast pincer shot up from the water, clamping round her waist. Francis screamed shrilly as she became wedged between two of the serrations and the pincer applied bone-cracking, gut-bursting pressure.
She let go of the detonation lever, and a split second later there was a loud rending noise, not unlike a burp, as a three-metre-diameter sphere of matter condensed instantaneously down to the size of a poppy seed.
Encompassed within that sphere was all of Private First Class Francis and a sizeable chunk of the Ice King’s pincer.
The Ice King emitted a sound that Dev would quite happily have gone to his grave without ever hearing again, a cross between a screech and an earth tremor. It thrashed its injured pincer around, spraying gobs of grey-blue blood in all directions. The Ninety-Nine Point Nine had gouged out a perfect, clean-edged cavity in the claw. The wound was far from life-threatening – the equivalent of a person losing a pea-sized section of the ball of their thumb – but it clearly hurt.
“Yeah, motherfucker!” Blunt crowed, weeping. “Take that, bitch! That’s what you get! And there’ll be more of the same if you come for me.”
“Let’s go, Marines,” said Sigursdottir. “Francis has bought us some breathing space. Don’t waste it. Make it count.”
And they swam, into the teeth of the storm, powering through the waves that endlessly, endlessly tried to beat them back.
Even as they inched closer to Mazu, Dev kept looking over his shoulder. The Ice King had sunk out of sight. He hoped it had slouched off somewhere to tend to its wound, but he doubted it. The bastard thing wasn’t going to give up that easily. He knew from experience just how remorseless and tenacious it could be.
It reappeared – or rather, the tsunami that heralded its presence did.
The Ice King was coming for them yet again.
There was no point yelling a warning, urging everyone to swim harder. It would have been redundant. They were already going as fast as they could.
The tsunami curled, crested, swelled. Reyes and Cully, with Jiang between them, were lagging at the rear of the group. They would be first when the Ice King caught up – first to be pincer-grabbed and eaten.
But then they rose from the water. It was as though they were being lifted, all three of them, and were suddenly surfing rather than swimming.
Dev beheld this weird sight, asking himself if it was some tidal miracle, some bizarre trick of the waves or currents that was buoying the three Marines up and along.
Blunt was scooped up by the phenomenon next, then Handler and Fakhouri.
Finally it came for Dev, Milgrom and Sigursdottir.
All at once the nine of them, Marines and ISS employees alike, were skating along the surface faster than they could possibly have swum.
And Dev was grinning. Grinning like an idiot.
Because underneath them was something solid, a black, rubbery, undulating mass, and it was Ethel’s manta sub, and it was ferrying them on its back, keeping them ahead of the Ice King, whisking them like a magic carpet towards Mazu.
58
THE MANTA SUB swerved to a halt beside Mazu’s western marina, where every berth stood empty after the mass exodus.
The humans on the manta’s back scrambled off onto the pontoons.
There wasn’t time to pause or retrench. The Ice King was still coming. With Sigursdottir leading the way and Reyes and Cully stretchering Jiang by the arms and legs, the group ran for cover.
The manta sub dived, seeking cover too.
The fleeing humans reached the gateway that linked the marina with the rest of the township, just as the Ice King hit the outer edge of the marina.
Literally hit, barrelling straight into the pontoons, which bucked and buckled under the impact.
Fakhouri lost her footing and stumbled, but Dev grabbed her, and everyone kept on running. They ran across a footbridge that leapt up and down under them like something in a funhouse at a fair. They ran round the perimeter walkway of a residential dome, then across another footbridge to a dome housing the power-distributing substation for the tidal barrages.
Sigursdottir waved them to a halt, and they hunkered down, sheltering in the lee of the substation dome.
“Milgrom, surveillance. The rest of you, take a breather, but get ready to run again if Milgrom says run.”
Milgrom sent up her hoverdrone over the marina. Its stabilisers worked hard but still it careened and yawed crazily in the high winds.
Reyes and Cully, panting hardest of anyone, gladly set down the still unconscious Jiang.
“We owe your Tritonian lady friend,” Sigursdottir said to Dev.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Not bad for a sea monkey, eh?”
Milgrom didn’t so much as twitch.
“And Francis,” said Blunt. “Owe her too. She died delaying the Ice King. Only wish she could have taken that fucking great cunt of a thing with her.”
“She set the Ninety-Nine to maximum radius,” said Fakhouri, “and it was like a paper cut to that monster.”
“Maybe a couple more Ninety-Nines, well placed...?” Reyes suggested optimistically.
Sigursdottir shook her head. “Nothing we’ve got on us is going to do anything but piss the Ice King off even more than it’s already pissed off. When the Sunbakers get here, that’s another story. Milgrom, what’s the creature’s status?”
“Hear those noises?” said Milgrom.
Above the wail of the syzygy storm came the sound of crashing and crunching – manmade structures being violently dismantled.
“That’s the marina getting the urban renewal treatment. The Ice King’s having a field day turning pontoons into kindling.”
“It won’t stop either,” said Handler. “Not until Mazu has gone the way of Dakuwaqa and Opochtli.”
“Actually, you may be wrong there,” said Milgrom. “It’s just started backing off, seems like.”
Now only the storm was audible – the wind keening, the sea roaring.
“Yeah, it’s withdrawing. Starting to do that circling thing again.”
“Prolonging the agony,” said Cully. “It knows we’re here. It’s toying with us.”
“It realises we’re trapped,” Reyes chimed in. “It can take all day if it wants. I’ve seen a killer whale do this with a sperm whale calf it’s already wounded. The orca just trails the calf, occasionally going in for a bite or just to thump it with its nose. Enjoying the victim’s helplessness.”
“Or,” said Dev, “if there’s a Plusser inside the Ice King, like I think there is, he’s calculating the best way to get to us.”
“What if he – it – whichever – loses interest?” Sigursdottir said.
“I don’t think there’s much danger of that, judging by past performance. If only there was.”
“No, this isn’t wishful thinking on my part. I’m concerned. The Ice King could maybe decide there aren’t enough of us to make hunting us worthwhile anymore. Why trash a whole township, go to all that trouble, just for nine humans? We’re not even a snack. There’s richer, easier pickings elsewhere.”
“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing,” said Handler. “We get to live.”
“Yes, but another township, fully populated, suffers,” said Sigursdottir. “Also, we’ll have lost track of the Ice King. Right now, we know where it is because it knows where we are. If it trundles off, it could go anywhere.”
“I get what you’re driving at,” said Dev. “I don’t like it, but I get it. For better or worse, we have the Ice King where just we want it.”
“This is where the Astounding is heading for. This is our last reported position, and without the Admiral Winterbrook’s comms array we’d have no way of getting a message through to say that the target has moved on, if it does. Commplants are useless until the storm blows over.”
“And there’s not a boat to be had anywhere,” said Milgrom, “so we can’t follow the Ice King to keep track of it.”
“Ethel could in her sub,” Dev said, “bu
t we’d still have the same communications issues.”
“What it boils down to,” said Sigursdottir, with grim resignation, “is our mission parameters have just changed, yet again. We’re no longer monitoring the Ice King. Our job now is to keep it here, by any means necessary, until the Astounding arrives.”
“Fuck me,” said Reyes.
“Not while there are dogs on the street,” said Cully, which raised a bleak laugh and a smile or two.
“How long do we have to do that for?” said Blunt. “Not fuck Reyes, obviously. Keep the Ice King here.”
“It’s four and a bit hours until the earliest likely rendezvous with the Astounding,” said Sigursdottir.
“Four hours, twenty-one minutes, to be specific,” said Fakhouri.
“During which time we try to make the Ice King not forget about us but also try not to get ourselves killed?” said Cully. “That’s kind of a tall order.”
“Did you join the Marines for fun, Private Cully,” said Sigursdottir, “or did you join the Marines because you wanted challenges in your life?”
“Challenges, sir. To become all that I can be, sir.”
“Good answer. So here’s our new objective, people. For the next four hours, twenty minutes at least, we’re going to be playing hit-and-run with Crabcakes out there, until such time as Captain Maddox turns up and cooks it with a Sunbaker. We bug it and annoy it, and do all we can not to get massacred in the process. Got that?”
A round of aye-ayes and roger thats from the Marines.
“Awesome. Harmer, Handler, you’re welcome to sit this one out. This is military business.”
“Not a fucking chance,” said Dev. “But you, Handler, should maybe find somewhere to hole up.”
“Given the extent of my combat experience, that might be wise,” Handler said. “I can watch over Gunnery Sergeant Jiang until she recovers.”
“Appreciated,” said Sigursdottir.
Dev opened his mouth to suggest that she oughtn’t to trust Handler with Jiang.
“Something to add, Harmer?”
“Just that...”
No. Handler would never be that stupid, that foolish. If something bad happened to Jiang while she was in his care, who would be the most obvious suspect? Him. Handler knew that Dev was waiting for him to incriminate himself further somehow. His continued wellbeing hinged on Jiang’s continued wellbeing.
“Nothing, lieutenant.”
“Good. So let’s check weapons, count ammo, work out a strategy...”
As the Marines got in a huddle and conferred, Dev pulled up the countdown timer on his commplant once again. He hadn’t halted it even after deciding that the deterioration of his host form was a fraud. It read:
26:33:47
He reset it for the new deadline.
04:20:00
Until the Astounding was due.
That was the minimum length of time he and the Marines had to engage with the Ice King and keep it occupied in order to allow Maddox to come and deliver the coup de grâce. What was once an indicator of Dev’s theoretical allotted lifespan was now the Ice King’s.
And, he hoped, no one else’s.
59
MILGROM SIDLED UP to him.
“This isn’t going to be easy for me to say...” she began.
“Then I’m going to relish it all the more,” Dev said.
“Yeah, well, screw it. You needn’t have done what you did back there at the Winterbrook, when it was going down.”
“No, I did. Nobody else could have. Except maybe Handler. So, nobody else.”
“Yeah. Useless limp-dick fuck, that guy. I saw the way he pushed past Francis, trying to get out.”
“Sorry about the shoulder, though.”
Milgrom flexed the joint, which had been sprayed over with healant-impregnated synthetic skin. “Nano-surgeons are knitting up the damaged tissue, and artificial endorphins are doing the rest. It’s cool. I’m just trying to say I’m in your debt – and I fucking hate that.”
“Being in someone’s debt? Or mine in particular?”
“Both.”
“Tell you what,” Dev said. “We’re quits if you give me a couple of the protein bars you Marines have all got stashed in your emergency ration pouches. I’m famished.”
“Deal.”
THE COUNTDOWN TIMER stood at:
03:51:08
So far, the Ice King had confined itself to prowling around Mazu, nothing more. Every so often Blunt or Milgrom would risk their hoverdrones to the storm and confirm that it was still inspecting the township’s outskirts. Fakhouri had established a closed-loop link between everyone’s commplants, converting Mazu’s principal satellite uplink into a local-network relay hub. They could communicate remotely with one another, just not with the wider world.
Dev felt better almost straight away after wolfing down the protein bars. Hunger and tiredness were what had been making him cranky and unreasonable – not, as Handler had glibly tried to convince him, intracranial bleeding. Once again, the ISS liaison had been trying to pull a fast one.
Dev still couldn’t figure out what Handler’s agenda was. What did he stand to gain by making Dev less efficient at his job? Who did it benefit? Not Handler himself. Polis+? The insurgency? Who?
It was maddening. Behind the scenes, Dev knew, someone was pulling strings. The trouble with fighting an alien enemy who could hide within people, who could pass for human, was that they could be anyone, anywhere. You could never be sure who to mistrust.
“Okay,” said Milgrom. “Looks like the Ice King might be thinking about ditching us.”
“Who’s nearest it right now?” said Sigursdottir.
“Blunt.”
Via commplant, Sigursdottir instructed Blunt to open fire. From Mazu’s northern end came the sound of gunshots.
Did you score a hit?
Blunt confirmed that she had. The Ice King was suddenly interested in that corner of the township.
Then move, Marine! Get out of there!
There was a cacophony of destruction. Blunt had been positioned at Mazu’s tidal barrages. They now succumbed to the Ice King’s pounding claws.
Blunt? Private Blunt? Are you all right? Do you copy?
Blunt’s voice came over the shared link eventually.
I made it out. Skin of my teeth. Ice King’s made quite a mess of things.
03:27:52
The Ice King became curious about a series of small fires that Reyes and Cully had set on the artificial beach on Mazu’s south side. It seemed entranced at first, then it exploded with rage and smashed up both the beach and the adjacent promenade.
03:05:03
The Ice King revisited the ruined marina and began probing there. Something had lured it: the sound of a human voice, shouting and yelling. Fakhouri had rigged up the loudspeakers from a nightclub with a microwave receiver and was transmitting to them from her commplant. The noise fascinated the Ice King until it realised it had been hoodwinked. Then, in what looked like a fit of pique, it demolished not only the speakers and what was left of the marina but a nearby warehouse dome as well.
02:41:14
Some high-ex grenades lobbed into the water by Milgrom from Mazu’s main algae farm brought the Ice King bursting clear of the sea. Milgrom, executing a series of huge augmented leaps from growth bed to growth bed, just managed to get away with her life. The algae farm was a write-off.
02:33:20
Blunt struck again, loosing off a salvo of ultra-velocity coilgun rifle rounds from a vantage point on top of one of Mazu’s taller domes. She aimed for the Ice King’s face with sniper accuracy, and got its attention. She slid down the dome and jumped for safety an instant before a giant pincer crashed upward from underneath, spearing the dome and wrenching it down into the sea.
02:11:10
Reyes and Cully set another fire, a large blaze this time that engulfed an entire residential dome within minutes. The Ice King gave it short shrift. In a show of contempt, it flattene
d the dome with a heavy stroke of one pincer.
“Let’s tally up what we’ve achieved so far,” said Sigursdottir as the Marines and Dev gathered outside Mazu’s main central dome. There were almost exactly two hours left until the Astounding was due.
“We’ve lost about a quarter of the township,” said Milgrom.
“We’ve had a fair few close shaves,” said Blunt.
“But we’re still alive, all of us,” said Sigursdottir, “and Mazu’s still afloat and the Ice King’s still here. That’s a win in my book.”
“But we’re only halfway to the Astounding’s ETA,” said Fakhouri. “The Ice King could decide to wander off at any time.”
“Or decide to trash the place completely,” said Reyes, “and us with it.”
“The trick is to make sure it stays curious but doesn’t get bored or frustrated,” said Dev. “A fine line, and so far you’ve walked it. But we need something more. Something else.”
“Ideas?” said Sigursdottir.
“A vague one.”
“You work on that, Harmer. Meanwhile, we’ll carry on as we have been.”
The syzygy storm began to abate. The rain was marginally less torrential, the winds now gale force only, screeching somewhat less deafeningly than before. The storm still seemed to have a few more hours left in it, but a peak had been reached and passed.
Dev hopped the rail of a footbridge and went looking for Ethel below.
He stayed in the shadow of Mazu, casting a watchful eye around him, making sure he knew where the Ice King was at all times. The township clanked and creaked and groaned overhead. He swam through clumps of wreckage and detritus, including a miasma of mucus-green sludge from the disintegrated algae farm.
World of Water Page 27
