The Voyage of the Sable Keech s-2

by Neal Asher

  Orbus reached out, unhooked an optic cable from where it had been tied to the framework above the U-space engine, and plugged it into the casing. Reaching for the collet that fully engaged the cable, he then paused for a moment. The itchy dug-in tic-like irritation at the back of his neck felt unbearable, but maybe now he could do something about it. With a huge effort he lifted his hand away from the casing. He found the further he moved it, the less effort he required, as he eroded the control over him. Finally, his hand poised at the back of his neck, he ground his nails in hard, scratching through skin and flesh down to the multi-legged cylindrical device beside his spine. The relief was immense—this was an itch he had been unable to scratch. Sighing, he glanced drunkenly round at his fellows, his mouth clamped shut to stop his leech tongue from escaping.

  Their skin was dark blue, and they all possessed leech tongues, too. Lannias had a forehead now divided into segments, and Shalen’s face jutted forwards as if turning into something bestial. But with robotic precision they all continued reattaching the optic and power feeds, and reinstalling the support equipment. Only Drooble, right next to him, showed any hesitation in his movements. And Orbus noticed a small scabby split had appeared in the back of the man’s neck, over his thrall.

  As he placed an optical amplifier against the casing and began pulling the clips across to hold it in place, Orbus considered his present situation. He had known something like this might happen, having heard Drum’s story, but what now? He was only moments away from being able to pull the thrall from his own neck—its control of him now slipping away. Afterwards, he could continue with the job in hand without any noticeable interruption, as Vrell’s instructions were firmly embedded in his memory rather than in the thrall itself. However, if the Prador at any time changed those instructions, or checked the thrall linkages, it would soon realize it no longer controlled him. Orbus wondered what would then happen. The thrall, once being rejected, could not be reattached. Vrell would either core him fully, or else kill and eat him. Not the most promising of choices.

  He must escape, then, or die trying. He again glanced at these four members of his crew. He would free them of their thralls, as perhaps, despite their inclinations, they would realize what choices remained to them. Orbus reached up, stuck a finger into the wound in his neck, hooked it around the thrall’s body, and pulled hard. The thing came out like a huge splinter, its wriggling legs coated with yellow pus. Reaching back to the tool chest, Orbus took out a large clamp, closed it on the thrall, then dropped both clamp and thrall underneath the engine casing. Had he destroyed it, Vrell might have been alerted. Now, with the heavy clamp on it, the thing would not be able to crawl away to alert the Prador. Drum had only got away with destroying his thrall because he had been enslaved to it by voice, not through a direct radio channel. Orbus then finished attaching the amplifier, before turning to Drooble, as he reached over for something on a work surface extending from one side of the tool chest. Orbus stabbed a finger into the opening wound at the back of the man’s neck, and quickly hooked out his thrall.

  ‘Oh, oh the bastard,’ said Drooble.

  ‘Keep working,’ said Orbus, taking up another clamp.

  Drooble gave him a wild look, the tip of his leech tongue questing around his chin, but he found enough sanity to obey his Captain. Orbus then moved around the engine casing, and positioned himself beside the next of his co-workers.

  * * * *

  Kladites packed the foremast stair leading up to the enclosed bridge, which was also crowded. Including Ron and Forlam, there were five Hoopers here at the controls, besides John Styx and Santen Marcollian. Erlin was standing back against a wall, with Bones behind her, his bladed bony fingers at her throat. Two Kladites stood either side of the Captain, their weapons trained on him unwaveringly. A putrid smell permeated the air. Bloc, standing behind Aesop with his back to the forward window, was obviously the source of the stench.

  Something was obviously going seriously wrong with Bloc’s preservation routines. Rather than resembling a dried-out mummy, he now bore the appearance of a corpse that had lain rotting on a riverbed for some time. Some of his grey skin had slewed aside from the back of one hand and also from his neck, to reveal white flesh beneath. The transparent syntheskin on his skull had bulged up like a damaged fingernail, and the grey morass underneath it was veined with vivid yellow. His spectacle irrigator sprayed intermittently, and both his eyes wept constantly. When he moved, looking from side to side as if expecting attack at any moment, the exposed white flesh of his neck became beaded with yellow pus.

  Janer realized Bloc was long overdue for going into a tank, since the Spatterjay virus, which in a living body fed upon dead tissue, was feeding on his entire body—rotting it away.

  ‘Well, this is interesting,’ said Janer. ‘What are we doing here?’

  Why had Bloc decided to do this?

  ‘You—over there.’ Bloc directed Janer to go and stand beside Erlin.

  Janer did as instructed, turning to Erlin with, ‘What’s going on?’

  Ron interjected bitterly, ‘Seems Bloc doesn’t want anyone trying to get to the Prador ship to rescue the crew of the Vignette.’ The Captain ignored the two Kladites covering him, though his angry gaze never strayed from Bones. ‘Now why is that, do you reckon?’

  Vignette? Janer quickly put together the facts just made available to him, and came to the only conclusion possible: the Prador must have grabbed the crew, so they were human blanks now, slaves. That then was one source of Ron’s anger. He remembered their conversation outside the Baitman when they had first encountered Wade. ‘Never underestimate how Old Captains feel about that,’ Ron had said, referring back to thralldom and the Prador. The other source of his anger was the threat to Erlin, who all Old Captains now looked upon as something of an icon.

  ‘It is not your right to speculate,’ Bloc bubbled. ‘You will all remain here, and everyone else must remain below decks.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ron, ‘that’s to prevent anyone going over the rail to make that rescue attempt.’ He finally now looked around.

  ‘That is correct,’ Bloc replied.

  ‘What’s your interest?’ asked Janer.

  Bloc glanced at him. ‘You will all stay here,’ he repeated.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Ron. ‘I can understand you keeping some of us here, but what about the rest of them?’ He pointed at John Styx, Santen Marcollian and the Hooper crew. ‘This lot could cause you no more problems than those below decks, and it is a bit crowded in here.’

  Bloc froze as if this was too much input to process, then after a moment said, ‘Very well. You’—he pointed at Ron—‘will remain here along with Erlin and Janer.’ He turned to John Styx. ‘You too will remain.’

  ‘Then I will stay too,’ said Santen Marcollian.

  Styx looked at her. ‘Santen, please leave with the rest.’

  Bloc seemed to have some trouble with this, since his eye irrigators were drenching his face again. ‘You will both stay… as hostages.’

  ‘There you go,’ remarked Ron, looking towards Forlam, who was now heading for the door with some others. ‘So you lot remember, no one is to go over the side and submerse.’ While Forlam looked back at him he added, ‘Anyway, there’ll be no one to lead a rescue, what with that Polity drone, Thirteen, having been destroyed by laser.’

  Janer winced at this flagrant hint, but it seemed to have shot straight over Bloc’s putrefying head. The four Hoopers and the reif filed out of the bridge and headed below decks.

  ‘What now?’ Janer asked.

  ‘We wait,’ said Bloc. ‘We wait until it’s all over.’

  * * * *

  The sun was due to rise at any time now, and was turning the sky into a rainbow maelstrom. Ambel thought about the battle they had witnessed the previous evening. He had recognized the glare of particle beams cutting the sky, laser flashes and the dull crump of explosions. But then it had all suddenly ceased, and only minutes later gold-armoured P
rador and spherical war drones had been speeding overhead, to the sound of Captain Drum’s curses as he waved his fist at the sky. Either Vrost had won the victory he sought, or for some other reason the Prador captain had recalled its forces. Ambel, though, now had more immediate concerns.

  The island was visible; a dark mass poised between the psychedelic sky and its reflection in the ocean. Within a few hours they would be hitting the beach, and less than an hour after that, mayhem. He turned to Captain Drum, who now stood beside him on the foredeck.

  ‘Maybe it won’t touch the Moby,’ he suggested.

  ‘Maybe it’ll tie a white flag to its tentacle and immediately surrender,’ Drum replied.

  He seemed a bit tetchy this morning, but Ambel felt this had less to do with rowing all night bringing across his crew, weapons and supplies from the Moby, and more to do with witnessing Prador up there in the sky, out of reach.

  ‘Anyway,’ Drum added, ‘you better hope it does attack my ship.’

  Ambel glanced down at the two crews standing ready on deck. They were all armed, and the harpoons from both ships were sharpened, their ropes attached. Ambel just hoped they would be able to find something to which those ropes could be tied. He harrumphed, raised his binoculars and gazed across at Drum’s ship. The sail, Cloudskimmer, was doing an excellent job, controlling the Moby’s fabric sails and steering the ship with his jaws clamped on the helm. But inevitably the Moby was lagging behind.

  ‘How much are you paying him?’ Ambel asked.

  ‘Twice his normal fee, plus he wants an aug like the one you gave Galegrabber.’ Drum gazed at Ambel estimatingly. ‘Supposing I can afford it.’

  They had yet to settle who was to blame for all this. Whelkus titanicus had started out pursuing Ambel, and Drum had opined that had he himself sailed away, it would have left him alone. Ambel disputed this, adding that the creature’s behaviour seemed very odd, and anyway it had not pursued him through any fault of his own. Drum then decided it was Erlin who would shortly be owing him a lot of Spatterjay New Skind.

  Their pursuer surfaced occasionally, as if not wanting them to become complacent about it. Earlier, when they had necessarily run slightly athwart the wind and as a consequence slowed, it had drifted to one side, pulling away from the Treader, which was closer, to go after the Moby instead. It might have caught them otherwise. Ambel felt the whelk was enjoying the chase far too much.

  ‘If there’s shallows way out,’ Ambel said loudly, ‘we’ll use both ship’s boats to ferry everyone in. All the harpoons will have to take precedence in the boats. Without them we’ll be running around this island till we all turn into skinners.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll get everyone ashore before it attacks,’ murmured Drum.

  ‘Let’s hope for a steep beach,’ Ambel murmured back.

  As they drew closer to the island, the sun gilded the underside of distant cloud and now began washing colour from the sky. Meanwhile, the island’s central volcanic cone became distinct above thick foliage. A great swathe of peartrunk trees had been toppled, probably by the recent wave, but enough still stood for Ambel’s purpose.

  ‘Keep us straight,’ Ambel told Boris, then bellowed, ‘Peck, get forward and keep an eye out for shoals!’

  His shotgun resting across his shoulder, Peck obeyed.

  ‘The rest of you,’ Ambel continued, ‘load the boats. We want to launch as soon as we can, even if we can beach the ship.’

  The crews began stowing harpoons and other items in the boats, which were hung like upside-down beetles’ wings on davits either side of the ship. With Drum following, Ambel climbed down to the lower deck, then headed forwards to peer over the side. Even though the rising sun reflected off the water, he could see the occasional shape passing below the ship, and undulating masses that were the upper foliage of kelp trees.

  ‘We need to get right in, and quick,’ said Drum, pointing.

  Ambel squinted in the direction indicated, noticing a mass of something floating on the surface. At first he thought he was seeing sargassum, then realized the mass was moving. Juvenile rhinoworms—the situation just got better and better.

  ‘Starboard, two points!’ Peck abruptly yelled.

  The ship turned slightly, and Ambel observed a twisted mass of packetworm coral like some sunken temple sliding by to port. The ship shuddered as a grating vibration came up through the deck.

  ‘Okay,’ Peck muttered, ‘three points.’

  ‘Let’s get that anchor chain up—we might be needing it,’ said Drum.

  The two Captains moved up behind Peck and began hauling heavy anchor chain out of the chain locker and coiling it on the deck.

  Soon, over the side of the ship, the bottom became clearly visible. Ambel estimated the depth to be four metres. Also visible down there were the pink anguine shapes of more juvenile rhinoworms. Nothing else was evident, but then anything else around here would have been eaten by now, no matter how solid its shell.

  ‘I reckon we’ll be able to pull her in,’ stated Ambel.

  ‘We’ll need cover,’ said Drum.

  Ambel nodded and turned to the crew. ‘Anne, Davy-bronte, and anyone with Polity weapons, let’s have you up here!’

  Anne stepped forwards screwing a new energy canister into her laser carbine, then came Davy-bronte, brandishing his QC laser. Ambel was glad to see that some of Drum’s crew also carried the necessary weapons: one pulse gun, a laser carbine and a pulse rifle.

  ‘Okay,’ said the Captain, ‘the rest of you with old guns, divide yourselves evenly between the two boats. That way you can cover us from either side if we have to haul the ship in.’ Their various antiquated automatic weapons, rifles, six-guns and shotguns would not prove very effective against worms swimming under water, but were better than nothing.

  When Ambel turned to face forward again, he observed Drum holding an apple-sized silver device with a small touch-pad connected to one end. ‘I was saving this to shove up a Prador where the sun don’t shine, but I guess I’ll have to use it now.’

  ‘Don’t drop it too near the hull,’ Ambel advised.

  Drum snorted.

  Now the bottom was only a few metres down, and the beach close. Ambel heaved up the anchor and moved beside Peck, gesturing him to stand back.

  ‘It’s reached her,’ said Drum.

  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 writhin
g 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 —