The Voyage of the Sable Keech s-2

by Neal Asher

  The heirodont suddenly stopped shaking itself and headed for the surface. Hundreds of tonnes of heirodont, plus many tonnes of whelk, rose high into the night. The enormous tail thrashed the waves for a second, then the two crashed down again. But the whelk did not lose her grip.

  Aboard the ship, only a few hundred metres away, Captain Ambel gripped the Trader’s rail as the wave hit. He was the oldest of Old Captains, and thought he’d seen all this ocean had to offer.

  ‘Fuck me sideways,’ he muttered.

  * * * *

  A low boom reverberated through the ship and Janer stumbled aside as the floor tilted, and caught himself against a rack of dowelling rods. Other items here in the maintenance section, where Ron had brought them in search of further weapons, crashed to the floor.

  ‘The rudder,’ said Captain Ron. He took a comlink from his belt and spoke into it: ‘Garl, what happened?’

  A voice replied, ‘Just lost the helm—no response. The rudder’s right round and I’m getting all sorts of red lights up here.’

  ‘Tell Zephyr to take off sail. I’ll get back to you.’ He put the comlink back on his belt and nodded ahead to where armed reifications were scrambling up one ladder from the bilge. By the sound, others were also scrambling up a ladder further along. ‘Looks like the battle ain’t going too well.’ Rapping a knuckle against the floating drone, he added, ‘Go take a look, Thirteen. Let me know what’s going on.’

  The drone shot forward, then down through the opening out of which the ladder looped. Kladites, now in the maintenance section, were crowding past to head for the mast stairwells. Janer eased along a partition wall, grabbed the ladder rail and pulled himself round so he could peer down. Bloc’s people were ascending one behind the other, from all the way down. He stepped back out of their way.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ron asked, snagging a shrivelled man bare of a helmet.

  The man stared at him, eyes flat black photo-receptors, mouth opening and closing. ‘It’s hunting us now,’ he said, the movements of his mouth bearing no relation to his words.

  ‘What did you expect?’ the Captain asked, puzzled.

  ‘Aesop,’ said Janer, pointing to the ladder.

  Ron released the black-eyed reif, waded through the crowd, then caught hold of Aesop by the scruff and hauled him from the ladder.

  ‘What happened down there?’ Ron asked.

  Aesop continued to struggle, saying nothing. Then abruptly he froze. ‘It is, it is…’ His voice changed and he went on almost calmly, ‘The hooder somehow managed to get aboard. We only just discovered it. I… Bloc sent us down to see what we could do.’

  ‘Did someone use explosives down there? The rudder’s damaged.’

  ‘We… do not know.’

  Hooded and masked, Bones now appeared, standing just behind Aesop.

  ‘Well, we can’t just leave it down there,’ said Ron. He released Aesop, and the reif sped away, Bones scuttling after him.

  As the ladder cleared, Janer asked Ron, ‘What do you suggest?’

  Ron scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘Seems we got little choice. We gotta fry that bugger before it sends us to the bottom.’ He turned to Forlam. ‘You, take five of the boys and find Bloc. We want Batian weapons—I’m sure he recovered some. Get them and meet us back here soon as you can.’

  Forlam pointed at five of his fellows, and was about to head off.

  ‘I’ll come too,’ said a male reif, stepping forwards. ‘I might be able to help.’

  Ron now led them away from the hatch, and through the maintenance section to a locked bulkhead door. He palmed the plate beside it, and it opened. In the next section he walked over to a cage. Janer moved aside as the remaining Hoopers crowded past him. Wade stepped up to stand beside him.

  ‘The Captain has a problem,’ the Golem observed, ‘and I wonder if it is one he can solve.’

  ‘Old Captains are very capable,’ Janer replied. He nodded towards Ron as the Captain studied the cage lock, shrugged, then tore off the barred door.

  ‘I’m sure that is so. But a hooder is a very dangerous creature that is very difficult to kill. Most projectile weapons would kill this ship before killing the beast itself. The same rule applies to most beam weapons.’

  ‘You’re just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you,’ said Janer.

  As if he had not heard, Wade continued, ‘I have my APW which I can fire very very accurately—accurately enough not to damage this ship. There is, however, a weapon perfectly suited to this situation. It is highly illegal in the Polity, because it is both hugely destructive and there is absolutely no material defence against it.’ He eyed Janer.

  Janer considered all sorts of denials, but you did not hide the stolen fire extinguisher when the house was burning. Obviously Wade knew all about the weapon Janer carried.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, more courageously than he felt, and turned to head back along through the maintenance section.

  Wade caught his shoulder and redirected him. ‘Down the ladder here. Our friend is no longer at the stern. He is directly below us.’

  * * * *

  As Forlam led the way to the deck, he felt there was something familiar about the male reif accompanying them. Then he dismissed the thought—live long enough and everyone starts to look familiar, and he had more important things to consider. People were being killed aboard this ship, and reifications were being… sort of killed. Of course reifs did not feel pain, so he dismissed them from his thoughts. But how Sturmbul must have suffered. Forlam had been very interested to hear from Isis Wade earlier how hooders fed. He walked on with his stomach lurching with an excitement he felt loath to identify.

  Climbing up on the lamplit deck he glanced up and saw that all the fabric sails were now reefed. The Golem sail was just discernible up its mast, silhouetted like an iron statue against the starlit sky. One of the living sails was on the midship deckhouse. Forlam could not guess why it would be there until he saw its head dart down, a pinkish tail thrash into view, then the head jerk back tearing up a mouthful of flesh. Huff was dismembering a rhinoworm and chomping it down.

  ‘This looks interesting, Forlam,’ said the reif.

  Dragging his attention away from the sail, Forlam glanced round at him, then peered along the deck to where he was pointing. A large group of people had gathered in a clear area of deck between the fore and mid deckhouses.

  ‘Do I know you,’ Forlam asked him as he studied the group.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘You know my name.’

  ‘I make it a point of remembering the names of those who might present a problem to myself and others.’

  ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And who are you?’ He did sort of know what the reif meant but, like the excitement he felt, did not want to analyse it too closely. He knew he had never been quite right since that time the Skinner had torn out most of his guts, and his subsequent change.

  The group ahead consisted of milling Kladites, amongst them Bloc and the just arrived Aesop and Bones. Though he felt misgivings, Forlam began trotting towards them. He had his Captain’s orders after all. The reif kept pace with him, moving without that usual jerkiness Forlam associated with his kind.

  ‘My name is John Styx.’

  You’re lying.

  ‘Well, John Styx, my Captain tells me I’m more of a danger to myself.’ Forlam gritted his teeth.

  ‘I thought your fascination with pain less focused than that.’

  Forlam was about to demand an explanation of that, but now they were getting near to the group.

  Bloc suddenly noticed them and stepped forward. ‘What is this?’

  Forlam launched into an explanation. ‘Can’t have a hooder running about below. It’s already damaged the rudder. We need weapons badly. The Captain wants to know where you stowed those Batian weapons?’

  After a pause, Bloc said, ‘All personnel not on duty should return to their cabins.’

  ‘What?’ sa
id Forlam, excitement suddenly turning to anger.

  Bloc continued, ‘This is not the concern of Hoopers. We will deal with the problem as we see fit.’ The reif’s eye irrigators were currently attempting to drown his face.

  John Styx stepped forward and spoke up. ‘I think the matter is somewhat more urgent then you would suppose. The rudder is jammed over and we are now adrift. If this ship rams an atoll or a packetworm coral…’

  Bloc seemed taken aback by that, for a long moment passed before he said, ‘I am aware of the damage to the rudder, which was caused by a misguided attempt to use a grenade against the hooder. But the matter needs some consideration, since charging in there with Batian weapons might result in even further damage. As to the ship ramming an atoll…’ Bloc gestured to the lack of sail. ‘It is drifting now and the damage would be minimal.’

  He’s delaying, thought Forlam. Why is this shit delaying?

  ‘Far as I see it,’ he said belligerently, ‘you are the owner, but Captain Ron is in charge here, and he’s ordered me to fetch weapons. We need those Batian weapons.’

  ‘It would be safer, I think, if you returned to your cabins,’ Bloc replied.

  Forlam stepped forward too. ‘Listen, you worm, that hooder has to be dealt with. I don’t care about your fucking god complex. I don’t care about these brown-nosing deadbeats with their noses up your anus. My Captain wants those weapons and you’ll either give them to us or we’ll go over you to find them!’

  Now Bloc took a pace forwards. His movements were jerky, his eye irrigators strangely still. ‘You… will… do as you are told!’

  Forlam was about to protest further when Styx laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Perhaps—’ he began. There came a shuddering crash which sent Forlam and Styx staggering. Some Kladites fell to the deck, and Bloc went down on his backside.

  ‘Atoll?’ Styx suggested brightly.

  * * * *

  ‘What the hell!’

  Janer stayed where he had fallen on the catwalk below the ladder as the ship swayed underneath him. Wade hopped down off the ladder—he of course had not fallen. The Golem stooped down and offered a hand, and hauled Janer to his feet.

  ‘Maybe we’ve run aground,’ suggested Wade. ‘That doesn’t affect our task.’

  ‘Mmph,’ was Janer’s only response, but his reservations grew as they moved on into the bilge. After having seen a hooder in the flesh for the first time on Mortuary Island, he agreed with Ron: nasty bugger. Perhaps they should have waited for Ron and the rest. Perhaps he should have handed his weapon over to someone more handy.

  ‘Who is this individual you must apprise of certain truths, and what is the cataclysm you want to prevent?’ he asked.

  ‘We make enough noise and we attract the hooder,’ said Wade.

  ‘Well, we didn’t come down here to avoid it,’ Janer replied.

  Wade glanced at him. ‘A point, a definite point.’

  ‘So perhaps while we search you can explain yourself.’ Janer now had his weapon in his hand, as did Wade.

  ‘Should I even try? I’m the evil agent of a hive mind come here to do some dastardly deed. What was it? Oh yes, obtain sprine so my master’s hornets can carry it in their stings and dominate this planet.’

  ‘That about sums it up,’ said Janer. ‘It would also explain your interest in a submersible kitted out for removing the bile ducts from ocean-going leeches.’

  They were now on a walkway. Just ahead of them lay a jumble of bones and reif joint motors. An eye irrigator was spraying intermittently into the empty socket of a stripped skull. Wade prodded at the reif wreckage with his toe.

  ‘You know, this one is only dead in his or her own terms. I have to wonder what this individual’s reaction would be if its crystal was reawakened in a Golem chassis. Would this one choose to be shut down again and have its crystal destroyed?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Janer, peering into the distant reaches of the bilge.

  ‘Yes, death as a matter of degree. Strange times we live in.’

  Janer let that one ride. He could not make much out of it. Instead he said, ‘The hive mind I worked for wanted sprine so it could dominate this world. And it seemed likely that, had it succeeded, Polity AIs would not have minded that much. Sprine hornets would have acted as a counterbalance to the indestructibility of Hoopers.’

  ‘That is not the case now… if it ever was,’ replied Wade.

  ‘What?’

  Wade held a finger up to his lips and Janer fell silent. He could hear nothing unusual, but that did not mean the Golem could not.

  After a moment he whispered, ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘I suspect it is feeding. Unusual that. On their home planet the prey must remain alive to prevent certain poisons being released from the inedible to the edible portions of its body.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Janer.

  ‘Very much not nice for the prey. But why has the hooder behaved the way it has here? At the encampment it was similarly maddened, though it did feed as it should, on a couple of occasions. It was starved, but I don’t think that accounts for this.’

  Janer stared at Wade’s profile. The damned Golem was leading him away from the subject. ‘What, precisely, is not the case now?’

  Wade turned to him. ‘The Polity no longer needs sprine hornets as a counterbalance to Hoopers.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Supposing it to be true that they ever did, then it’s because there is a small population of alien sentients on this planet who would be in danger of being wiped out by those same hornets. However, I question your assertion: what about boosted and mechanically augmented humans, or those loaded to Golem shells? Where is their counterbalance?’

  ‘So you’re not here after the sprine?’ Janer at least wanted to be clear on that.

  ‘Why come here for it?’

  ‘It’s also obtainable off-planet?’

  Wade rubbed his forefinger against the bridge of his nose—a very human gesture. ‘Do you think for one moment that the leech genome is unknown to Polity AIs? Do you think, as a corollary, that they do not also know the formula for sprine?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that hive minds know it.’

  ‘No, not unless they happened to decode it from any of the millions of samples of leech flesh that have been taken off-world, or have managed to steal it from secure storage.’

  Was he to believe this? It all sounded perfectly plausible, but then Janer would not expect a lie from this Golem hive-mind agent to be implausible. And anyway, if Wade did consider Janer’s knowledge and suspicions a threat, why hadn’t he already neutralized that threat? Or was that why they were down here now?

  Janer slowed his pace to allow Wade to get ahead of him. The Golem stepped down a few steps, out of the previous unroofed corridor onto a grated walkway. Up ahead now, Janer could hear movement. Something big and hard-edged was travelling rapidly across a wooden floor.

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you, or can afford to believe you.’ said Janer.

  Now ten paces ahead, Wade turned to face him. ‘I am not any danger to the people of this world. I understand its exigencies. I realize why sprine is so valuable to them.’

  What the hell was he talking about?

  Janer raised his weapon and aimed it straight at Wade’s chest.

  ‘You’re a tourist then?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. When we have time I will tell you why I am here. We no longer have the time now.’

  The noise was louder now: hard carapace on metal, gratings rattling. Something so big should not move so fast. Darkness rose behind Wade, rows of red eyes glared and multiple sickle limbs clattered together, as if sharpening each other. Maybe this was the solution to all Janer’s qualms.

  When he was ready, he pulled the trigger.

  * * * *

  Bloc did not know if his anger was real, or some feedback through that now fully functional third channel. Nevertheless, he felt it burning red inside his mind, dislocated from the f
unctions of glands but emulating them all the same. But it only revealed itself in the fidgety movement of Aesop and Bones as it spilled through his links to them.

  OUTPARAFUNCT… WARN: EXTREMITY PROBE… B.P. LOAD…

  MEMSPACE: 00030

  He shut off the messages conflicting with his vision and hauled himself to his feet. This could have been avoided had he gained full control of the hooder before bringing it here. However, gaining full control of it, through the spider thralls implanted in each segment of its body, had required programming similar in function to the way a shepherd controlled his sheepdog. The whistles and hand signals were given when the animal naturally did what would later be required of it: one whistle for left, another for right, others for come here, or go there. The animal mind, connecting sound and action, would then carry out those actions in response to the whistles. But some willingness was required on the part of the animal itself. The hooder was not so willing, and it was difficult to prevent this particular dog biting the sheep. It had attacked the Kladites he had sent down to finish off any of Ellanc Strone’s followers who had escaped. But now he was beginning to gain control of the beast—he was returning it to the chain lockers in the bow—and these people now wanted to destroy it. All this would not have been required but for the obstinacy and selfishness of… people. He had done his best for them all—had always done his best. It was the fault of those who interfered with his plans, those who tried to halt his progress in every respect. His gaze returned to Forlam, then he strode forward with his two shadows close behind him.