by Neal Asher
‘Come on! What are you waiting for!’ the Captain bellowed.
The monster began to ease forward again, and Ambel began to move back. Then Drum stepped into view from the right, hefting a leech harpoon. He let out a growling shout and hurled the weapon, hard. The point of it struck the whelk’s main body, but only penetrated deep enough for the barbs to engage. Behind Drum, Roach took up the rope and hauled it taut, while behind him two juniors wrapped the end of it twice around a peartrunk tree. The creature slapped its tentacle down, aiming for Drum, but clipped the rope instead. With a wrenching sound the tree tilted, and one of the juniors still clutching the rope was jerked hard against the trunk. He bounced once and landed limply on the ground.
‘Over here!’ shouted Anne from the other side and, firing her carbine, began to cut smoking lines across the monster’s flesh. It swung towards her, further loosening the tree. Another crewman ran forward eagerly, swinging his machete at a nearby tentacle. The blade just bounced off it, and while the man stared with puzzlement at his weapon, the same tentacle shot up and hit him with a sound like a sledgehammer hitting a peach. He left the ground and disappeared into foliage, five metres up.
‘Ready, lads,’ said Ambel, taking up the harpoon at his feet. Pacing forwards, he threw this second weapon with all his might. It struck a soft spot just below shell, and penetrated deep. Behind the Captain, Silister and Davy-bronte took up the harpoon rope and wrapped it around a rocky outcrop. Ambel began running to the left, spying Drum heading to the right. The other Captain snatched up another harpoon.
‘We need to get in closer!’ Ambel shouted to him. ‘We can’t afford to have any of these come loose!’
On the other side of the creature from Drum, Boris carted his dismounted deck cannon out of cover. As he fired it, the recoil flung him over onto his back. Striking the whelk’s shell, its projectiles exploded glittering shards all over Drum, who was now charging in with his harpoon held level. Peck, pumping cartridge after cartridge into his shotgun, covered Boris as he struggled to his feet and recovered the cannon. Drum struck, driving the harpoon half a metre in below the whelk’s eye, then with a bellow and another massive shove, thrust it in a full metre. The whelk’s bubbling squeal was painful to hear.
Another harpoon from Ambel, this time straight through the end of a major tentacle. A group of five hauling on the rope, trying to draw the limb down and immobilize it. Someone screaming on the other side, the ragged remains of a human thumping down onto the earth. Yet another harpoon from Drum, but snapped off before its rope could be secured. A peartrunk tree, ripped out of the ground, slammed down on two fleeing Hoopers. More harpoons. More ropes. Someone suspended high, crunched up like paper, discarded. Another Hooper dragged in to disappear underneath the fleshy skirt. Now came Ambel’s tenth harpoon. He ran in while crew opposite him fired on the creature, again distracting it. He swore when one badly aimed shot thumped into his stomach, then drove the harpoon down hard into the base of a large tentacle, rested his full weight on it, and shoved again. The weapon went right through into the ground.
Ambel looked up to see one dinner-plate eye observing him from only a metre away, just as the tentacle twisted, smacking the harpoon haft hard against his shoulder. He felt his collarbone break, staggered back, then turned to run. He caught sight of Crewman Pillow struggling to tie off this latest rope, then a tentacle wrapped around Ambel’s waist, jerked him to a halt, and lifted him off the ground.
The whelk now reared, exposing its serrated beak and, on the ground below, what was left of a crewman it had grabbed earlier. The Hoopers kept firing on it from all sides as it drew Ambel in, champing that beak in anticipation. Some shots penetrated, most just bounced off. Black lines crisscrossed the tentacle holding Ambel, along with the glowing pockmarks of pulse-gun fire. Drum charged forwards with another harpoon, aiming for the same limb. He hurled it just as another tentacle swept his feet from under him, missed his target, but the harpoon struck and penetrated shell. Ambel heard a hissing, and smelt something rank.
‘Fire at the shell!’ he shouted. ‘Fire at the shell!’
Anne was the first to transfer her aim, perhaps realizing Ambel’s intent. And that was all it took, as her shots ignited the methane now hissing from the shell. There came a drawn-out roaring explosion, the shell splitting to spew out a sheet of flame that ignited the surrounding foliage. As the whelk screamed, Ambel found himself hurtling through the air above.
‘Oh shit and buggeration,’ he managed, before coiling himself into a ball as he crashed back down.
It was some hours later that Silister and Davy-bronte found him, and helped him back to join the others. He stood and observed the whelk, its shell still smoking, pinned tight by thirty harpoons securely roped down. One of its eyes was missing. The other blinked at him.
‘Gulliver,’ he muttered, pointing a shaky finger, but later found that his fellow Lilliputians had not done too well. Two of them were dead—sprine was administered to them because their head injuries were so bad that little remained inside their skulls. Seven others would be severely immobilized until their backbones healed; one was missing his legs, which were somewhere inside the whelk; and not one of them had come through this without broken bones.
‘It could have been worse,’ he said, finally.
He understood why Drum nearly ruptured himself with laughter.
19
Boxy:
this fishlike creature obtains its name from the cubic shape of its body. Like the turbul, the boxy carries a sacrificial outer layer of flesh but, due to its odd shape, is unlike the turbul in being slow-moving. That boxies manage to survive and prosper was originally put down to their breeding rate: after mating, one fully fleshed female will convert all her outer flesh into upwards often thousand eggs, and she can do this as often as eight times a year. The true reason for their flourishing remained misunderstood until their behaviour was studied by the Polity Warden’s submind drones. Boxies habitually swim together in large shoals, and when an attack by leeches is unavoidable, they clump together to neatly form a large cubic mass. Those carrying the least outer flesh congregate towards the centre. Should an attack continue, this basic mass will rearrange, continuously positioning the more fleshy boxies to the outside. This is classic herd-like behaviour — putting the more vulnerable individuals to the centre. Some types of whelk have also evolved similar herding behaviour, specifically the frog whelk—
Bloc knew he could not hold it together for much longer. New error messages kept flashing up in his visual cortex every few minutes, and if he did not get himself into a tank soon, he would end up like Bones and have no body to resurrect. Also, since it was becoming evident that the Prador ship might soon be on the move, things were getting a bit tense here on the bridge.
‘If it comes straight up, we’re buggered,’ announced Captain Ron. ‘Let’s start the engines so, if we get a chance, we can pull clear.’
Bloc stared down at his right hand, which was gripping his carbine. It was shaking, and that could not be due to the putrefaction of his body but to some deeper fault. He must not let anyone off this ship—that fact was hard-wired into his mind, had become his main purpose for being—but enforcing that order was now destroying his chance at resurrection. The longer he remained here in control, the more of his body would be eaten away. But once placed in a tank he would no longer be in control, and then would they even keep him there, after all he had done? He must remain totally in control to prevent anyone leaving the ship, but he… but… but… His thoughts spun round and round in circles, and for a moment he could not even find the will to speak.
‘Bloc, let us start the engines,’ Ron repeated.
‘You will remain…’ was all Bloc could manage.
‘We’ll all end up in the sea,’ muttered Aesop.
Bloc immediately clamped down on him hard, but the effort of doing so resulted in displacement of the mess of software in his head, and he was mentally blinded by the mass of error
messages scrolling up in his mind. As soon as he managed to turn them off, another flashed up:
MEMSPACE: 00018
He cleared that, and when he could finally see again, he found John Styx standing before him.
‘Look.’ Styx pointed outside.
Bloc turned his head to see one of the towering weapons turrets sinking. It was slowly being withdrawn into the Prador ship.
‘It’s preparing to leave,’ explained Styx, ‘and if it destroys our ship in the process, what then? All of us end up at the bottom of the sea, no Kladites to adore you, no power for you to exercise, no triumphant arrival at the Little Flint—your dream of the Sable Keech ended.’
Bloc felt a flash of anger. They were disrespecting him again, ignoring what he was and all he had done for them. He said to Styx, ‘You… know too much.’
‘What’s to know? That you’ve deified a man who would have nothing but contempt for you. You crave worship as much as you crave control. Let us at least try to move the ship to safety.’
‘Keech… would understand.’ Wouldn’t he? Everything was too confusing now.
Styx stepped forwards. ‘You said I know too much. Would you like to know how? I know so much because I’ve known about you for a lot of years, Taylor Bloc. I knew all about the corruption and murder you instituted while you were alive, and how you used Cult power to obtain the industrial contracts that first made you rich.’
‘Enough,’ said Bloc, still trying to find some control in his own mind.
Styx continued relentlessly, ‘I knew about your interest in Prador technology, for my interest was the same if not more than yours. I should have dealt with you back then, but I had more pressing concerns, and anyway I’d learnt that certain groups on Klader were sending friends Aesop and Bones after you, so thought that would be the last I’d hear of you. It wasn’t until recently I learnt how you had been reified and were apparently served by two individuals called Aesop and Bones. Imagine my surprise. Imagine how little time it took me to figure out what you had done.’
‘I said… enough…’
‘You know,’ said Styx, ‘I actually thought about a change of career. But while there are shits like you running around, I’ve still got a job to do.’
MEMSPACE: 00007
‘Of course I should have arrested you before you got this far, as here we are beyond Polity law, but it’s surprising the power you have to fascinate. I should have acted. I should not have allowed you to establish power over the reifications on this ship.’ He pulled from his jacket an aerosol canister of a kind Bloc immediately recognized, and held it up. ‘I should not have allowed this.’
In a puzzled voice, Ron asked, ‘What’s that, then?’
Erlin, still restrained by Bones, replied, ‘It’s a hormone from a creature that grazes on fungus, and has a smell almost irresistible to hooders.’
Ron shrugged, then stepped over to one of the consoles.
‘Stay were you are!’ Bloc shrilled.
‘I think we’ve had enough of this,’ said Ron. With casual speed he reached out with his hands, grabbed both his Kladite guards and slammed them together so hard that their balm spattered the surrounding consoles. They stayed upright for a moment, then began to sag. Ron ignored them, pressing a button and stooping over the intercom microphone. ‘Okay, Hoopers, time to come out and play. Take down these Kladite buggers.’
‘Kill him!’ Bloc screamed.
Ignoring the weapon in his own hands, Bloc sent an instruction to Aesop, who raised his carbine and fired it at Ron. The beam sliced into the Old Captain’s arm, but briefly, for Janer was there in an instant, driving a thrust kick into Aesop’s chest and slamming him back over a console and straight into one of the windows.
‘That smarts.’ Ron merely patted out his smoking limb, but when the two Kladites at the head of the stairwell started firing, he roared and charged straight across the bridge. Ignoring the holes being burnt into his body, he grabbed the two of them and slammed them together, before throwing them down amidst those trying to cram up the stairwell. Ramming the door shut on them, he spun the wheel and smashed his fist into the door’s coded locking mechanism. By now the three remaining Kladites inside the bridge had also opened up on him. He ran at them, caught them, and one after the other tossed them out the gap where a window had been knocked out by the tsunami. They were nothing to him, the burns they inflicted were nothing to him. For the first time Bloc had some true intimation of what it meant to be an Old Captain.
Ron now headed over to another console and pressed a sequence of touch-plates. A new vibration thrilled through the ship as its engines started.
‘Stop… or I kill her!’ Bloc shouted, then shook his head, blinded again by error messages. He staggered back, waved his arm in front of himself. Chaotic vision returned. Through Aesop’s eyes—Janer was pinning that reif to the floor—he saw himself waving his arm with rotten skin hanging off it in a sheet. He whimpered, fought for control, regained full vision.
‘Stop the ship or I kill Erlin!’ Bloc shouted.
‘You forget,’ said Erlin, ‘I’m a Hooper.’ She reached back, grabbed Bones and ducked down, throwing him. He landed near Ron and shot upright again. Ron backhanded him with such force he flew in a flat trajectory out of the window, after the Kladites. Erlin stood clutching a hand to her bloody throat. She spat some blood and grinned, exposing gory teeth.
The ship seemed to be tilting, then Bloc realized that no, it was turning. The Prador spaceship must have dropped down to pass under it, for to his left one of the low turrets was generating its own wake. What could he do now? The Prador had abandoned him, and now a void was opening in his consciousness. His attention swinging to Santen and Styx, he raised his carbine and fired. Santen stepped quickly in front of Styx, and staggered back gazing down at her burning chest, then up at Styx who had caught her.
‘You think… I didn’t guess,’ she said to him, smoke issuing from her mouth.
MEMSPACE: 00005
Styx lowered her to the floor, her hardware obviously damaged for she showed no further signs of moving. Bloc swung his carbine from right to left, trying to cover everyone remaining in the bridge.
‘All your dreams, Bloc’ Styx shook his head as he stood. ‘I think, before you shoot me and Ron subsequently rips your head off, I’d like to tell you more about myself and my investigations.’
‘What’s… to know?’ asked Bloc dismissively.
‘Well, I’m a policeman,’ said Styx.
‘So? There is no law out here.’
‘Yes.’ Styx carefully held up his left hand and pulled back the sleeve to expose an antique watch. So as not to get anyone too excited he slowly reached out, pressed buttons on the side of it to change the display, then pressed his thumb against that display.
What now?
Travelling out from either side of the wristband, a fizzing light spread like embers on fuse paper, across John Styx’s shrivelled skin. Behind this fire, his skin seemed to inflate, till it adopted the normal healthy texture of a living human being’s. Though Bloc recognized some very sophisticated chameleonware effect, he could not understand the why of it.
The light fizzed to the tips of Styx’s fingers and went out. It travelled up his arm and into his sleeve, lighting his clothing from inside as it spread all the way around his body. Eventually it reached his collar, travelled up his neck and over his face, revealing living human features.
Something familiar…
Bloc tried to dismiss the thought. Everyone knew that the longer you lived, the more readily your brain catalogued people by type, till everyone began to look familiar. Then it hit him so hard, the realization of who now faced him, that he lost his last shreds of control. He sank down on his knees.
‘Well bugger me,’ said Ron. ‘That policeman.’
The man stepped calmly forward, tugged the laser carbine from Bloc’s limp grasp and turned the weapon to shove it against his chest. The carbine was pointed slightly to one side,
precisely at where Bloc’s crystal was located. It was all too much.
OUTPARAFUNCT: B.P. LOAD INC. 100 %
WARN: EXTREMITY PROBES NIL BALM LA71-94, LH 34–67…
WARN: ALL E-PROBES REG. VIRAL INFECT.
MEMSPACE: 00002
One after another, warning messages were now scrolling up before his inner vision and he seemed unable to shut them down. The next thing Bloc knew he was flat on his back staring through a flood of artificial tears at the roof of the bridge.
‘How does it feel to have a ship named after you?’ asked Captain Ron.
‘Well, I’m honoured of course,’ replied the man standing over Bloc.
MEMSPACE: 00000
OVERLOAD: CRYSTAL SAFETY MODE
Blackness.
* * * *
The retracting weapons turret was closing the gap. Ignoring what injuries he might cause the two crewmen, Wade shoved them up through it then followed them. The spaceship was moving lower in the sea now, the blast of its turbines stirring up a great wall of silt specked with glittering shoals of boxies, whose cubic bodies seeming like pixel faults in a solid holographic display. The Sable Keech was now a few metres up, sliding over, driven by its own screws. The submersible port had to be some distance ahead of him, and there was no way he could swim to it encumbered with his present load. His APW strapped across his back, he quickly tore off his gloves, boots, then the syntheflesh coverings of his hands and feet revealing his skeletal metal fingers and toes. In his left hand he grabbed the cables binding the wrists of the two crewmen, squatted, then drove himself upwards off the Prador ship. Two metres up and the keel of the Sable Keech was speeding immediately over him. He closed his free hand on the keel’s edge, sliding and tearing up splinters, drove his fingers in, then brought up his feet and drove in his toes. The current’s drag threatened to dislodge him, until he released the crewmen, quickly stabbed his hand underneath the cable binding their wrists and slid it along his arm till the pair were dangling from its crook, then took a grip of the keel with his other hand. Now to climb.
