Cats. Because of course they are cats. One of them turns to the camera.
CAT
What, you were expecting maybe Elon Musk?
BAD TRAVELLING
Neal Asher
The captain hung in his hammock like a sack of whale blubber, his eyes closed and his mind lost in dream smoke. Cert, the cabin boy, stood at the helm and was hardly tall enough to peer over it. And Bosun Torrin had drunk enough sea-kale rum to feel no responsibility for anything. He knew the sea killed the drunk, the negligent and the fatigued, for it was without forgiveness, without mercy, but just then he did not care. He should have. Saparin was the first to notice the clumped sargassum, but by then they were already upon it.
“Steer to port! Steer to port!” Torrin screamed, his rum bottle smashing on the deck as he stumbled and weaved toward Cert. The boy wrenched the helm to the side and the ship heeled over, its tarred wood and rope creaking in deep protest. There was a lurch as the mass of rotting weed dragged across the hull and a thick waft of decay as it broke apart.
“Drop the port boom! Drop it!” Jorvan bellowed at Melis and Calis.
The two crewmen ran to obey while others, not lost in stupor, scrambled for the great knife harpoons scattered about the soiled deck. Soon clutching these ill-kept tools, they stood with faces pale as the ship shuddered and groaned past the bed of weed. All knew what it meant to go too close to the sargassum, for the great clumps of rotting weed brought creatures of the deep to the surface, creatures that would not otherwise be able to reach the ships. The ship lurched then began to pull free.
“Hard starboard, now,” said Jorvan.
Torrin looked askance at him, but did not countermand the order, since he had been about to give it. He looked over the port rail and saw the mass of weed, a great yellow scum on the sea, receding behind them. He offered up a thank you to Cerval then peered with annoyance at his broken bottle. The deep hatchetting thud turned him round, and the ensuing thuds had him and the rest of the crew backing away from the rail.
“Thanapod,” said Jorvan, First Knife, and perhaps the only man aboard who kept his ship-metal blade clean and honed.
The thanapod shattered the starboard rail as it scrambled on deck, its ten legs propelling it rapidly across the planking as a rain of blunt harpoons bounced off its carapace. It was on the captain in a moment as he sat up in his hammock with the pipe of his hookah clutched in his right hand. The thanapod dragged him from his hammock with its two sets of long forelimbs, and drove the barbed hooks these limbs terminated in straight into his fat body like sticks into dough. Its flat armoured tail clacked against the deck as with one stalked eye it watched the crew. The other stalked eye it turned to the task in hand. As the pain penetrated his befuddlement, the captain realised this was no dreamfish-induced hallucination, and began to writhe and scream. The thanapod caught one flailing arm in its mouth and with one of its mandible pincers it neatly snipped. The crunching was loud as it consumed the captain’s hand.
Through drunken haze, amidst the shouting and terror of the crew, Torrin gaped in horror. He watched the captain being eaten alive, screaming until a ripped artery finally spilt his life. At three metres long, this thanapod was no ordinary one. Harpoons bent and blunted on armour which, as it scraped around the deck, sounded like stone. The crew retreated and clumped defensively together. Perhaps, once it had fed, this monster would depart the ship.
“We must attack it,” yelled Turk as soon as he came from below. He was their barrelman, he possessed the black skin that marked him for his position from birth, for only by the hands of those born of the dark may the dead be handled before their last passage into it. His face and shaven skull were dyed white, and the pits of his eyes stained red. The crew feared him, and in this they obeyed him. He led a charge at the back of the creature and harpoons jabbed and clanged. The monster thanapod swept its tail and the crew retreated leaving Turk on his knees by the creature, trying to prevent his intestines from spilling across the deck.
While they watched the last of the captain being consumed, Torrin wondered guiltily if Turk had urged the attack because there would be nothing left of the captain to barrel; no bones to preserve and no skin to cure. He watched as the thanapod then grabbed Turk, spun him, and stood him upright before it. Torrin closed his eyes on what followed.
Turk’s scream was guttural with agony, and his offal fell in one steaming mass to join the few remnants of the captain stuck to the bloody deck. Now the thanapod turned Turk to face the crew, while its long forelimbs probed inside his empty stomach cavity and into his chest. Turk’s eyes rolled up into his head as he died and finally hung unstrung. Torrin opened his own eyes. What was this? Why did it handle him so? Blood jetted from Turk’s mouth and his head snapped upright. Gurgling and hissing he spoke.
“Have fed,” he said. “Let me into hold.”
Soberness began its painful return to Torrin after he emptied his stomach over the rail.
“The hatch,” he said to the crew, waving vaguely at the forward hatch as he staggered from the rail. Some glared at him contemptuously, some gaped at him in bewilderment, all moved aside. He kicked over the latch and heaved the heavy cover open. He quickly stepped back as the thanapod threw Turk’s corpse across its back and scuttled over. It went in through the hatch with a sound like a chest of tools cast down a well. One small hind limb snagged the cover as it passed through and slammed it shut behind.
“Cerval protect us, what now?” asked Deacon, his fingers white on the haft of the harpoon he gripped so tight.
“What now? What now?” Melis crowed. “It eats our captain, uses our barrelman like a glove puppet and you ask; ‘What now?’ We’ll sell it with our barrels of shark oil and jable. We’ll have it dance on the jetty so we get a better price! Cerval protect us!”
“Oh, be silent,” said Jorvan. “We must think on this.”
“We should seal the hatch,” said Torrin and, as one, the crew stared at him.
Jorvan said, “Your lack of spine brought us to this.” He nodded to where Cert crouched by the rail. “You let the captain’s bum-boy steer this ship. You let discipline slip, and you drank rather than face your responsibilities.” The other members of the crew now stared angrily at Torrin, though there were some amongst them who could see that Jorvan’s words were equally as damning of them. They soon freed themselves of this guilt though, as it is so much easier to blame others.
“What has that to do with the hatch?” asked Torrin, backing away from the glare of rage.
Jorvan tipped a finger to the smashed rail where the thanapod had come aboard.
“You think the hatch cover will stop it? You think such cowardice is enough?” he asked.
“It’ll hunger when it’s done with Turk. You see if it won’t!” shouted Melis. Jorvan turned and slapped him hard across the face. He subsided. Jorvan looked to the rest of the crew. “It must die,” he said, “else it will kill us all. We must find a way to kill it.”
“What would you suggest?” asked Deacon. “Chiselling a hole through the armour on its head so we can get a great knife into it?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Torrin.
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that I am going to cut your throat once we are back in port,” said Jorvan.
“Let him speak,” said Deacon.
They all gazed at Torrin with hostility and waited for what he had to say.
“It speaks,” said Torrin.
“And this means what?” asked Jorvan.
“It means we might be able to… negotiate.”
Jorvan and the rest of the crew gazed at him disbelievingly. Jorvan turned and stared pointedly at the spread of gore across the deck, the tangled remains of the captain’s hammock.