‘And why should I tell him that?’ asked the sail, still irritated.
‘Because if you do not, that whole fleet — and you yourself — will end up as a crust of ash spreading on the ocean.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I think it highly likely that waiting for that fleet at the Skinner’s Island is a CTD. You should have no trouble finding information on such devices through your aug. If you do have trouble, then try “contra-terrene device”.’
As the Warden withdrew, Windcheater had no trouble locating an encyclopaedia entry concerning CTDs. After reading it carefully he suddenly felt very vulnerable and very small. Snapping his head up from the deck he tried to locate Sprage. However, the Captain was in his cabin, so the sail shifted his head up behind Olian, who stood at the rail gazing out at the growing number of ships. He nudged her in the back with his snout.
‘What is it, Windcheater?’ Olian asked him.
‘Did you know,’ said the sail, ‘that a CTD the size of a coffee flask can erase an entire city?’
‘That’s common knowledge to us, and we’ve lived with it for centuries now. Did you know that during the Prador war five entire planets were destroyed with them?’
Windcheater went slightly cross-eyed for a moment. ‘This fleet must not get closer than ten kilometres to the island, so the Warden warns. He claims there’s a CTD waiting for it there. I suppose it will be a relatively small-yield device, but even that’s too much. I think that if we continue to move any closer I’ll consider my contract void and get straight out of here.’
Olian’s face went a little white as what the sail had just told her slowly impacted. She pushed herself back from the rail and hurried to Sprage’s cabin.
Windcheater lifted his head higher to scan the many ships now under sail. Eighteen so far. He thought deep and hard about all of the things he had learnt over the last few days. There was the Polity, huge and embracing thousands of worlds; there was the Prador Third Kingdom; and beyond these there was probably an awful lot more. His own kind, he realized, needed to gain some real leverage — in terms of political, economic, and possibly military power. Not so they could become major players in the grand scheme of things, but just to make sure that others would not inadvertently wipe them out.
And, so brooding, Windcheater began to make plans for his people and his world.
16
The huge whelk shell was now nearly empty of flesh and the heirodont felt sated enough to return to the depths. Soon all the leeches clinging to its surface would be turned to mere threads by increasing pressure and, unable to feed, would detach and rise back to the surface. For the heirodont, leeches represented the bane of its life: never having evolved the nerveless fleshy covering of turbul or boxies, it was put in constant pain by the onslaughts of smaller leeches, and could even be killed by some of the larger ones. This last danger should perhaps have made it more observant of its surroundings but, though intelligent enough to know that this giant whelk had been the same one that had evaded it earlier, it was also stupid enough to concentrate on its meal too closely. It still had its nose deep inside the cavernous shell, tatters of flesh hanging about it like cave moss, when an enormous leech struck it from the side.
SM3 likened its appearance to a Harrier jump-jet, an ancient flying machine it had spotted on an ‘historical weapons’ site, but SM4 argued, on surveying the same site, that it looked more like a helicopter gunship. At their inception, the two subminds had not possessed sufficient mental differences from each other to have anything to debate, but as the hours rolled on they slowly began to develop individuality.
‘Why do you think the boss put that nancy in charge of us?’ Three asked its companion as they searched their assigned sector.
‘Well,’ said Four, who was becoming the more dominant of the two enforcer-drones, ‘I reckon it’s all down to prior physical experience of this world. We got the programming but we ain’t got the experience.’
Flexing its nacelles, Three harrumphed.
‘Yeah, Twelve might have done a bit more than us, but it ain’t got the firepower.’
Four, who had been playing ‘devil’s advocate’, moved into the defensive. ‘It’s not all about what you can do, but about what you can understand.’ Even as it said this, the drone was not quite sure what it meant.
‘Twelve might have more experience of the physical world, but he sure ain’t got the watts to handle it. That’s what we’re for,’ argued Three.
‘Well,’ began Four — and then fell silent for a moment. ‘Did you get that?’
‘Sure did!’ said Three excitedly.
The enforcer drones dropped low, and decelerated on ribbed fusion flames. Below them, the sea was kicked up in two tracks of white spray when they turned as one to nose back along the course they had been following. They moved more slowly now and slid apart, their dishes and antennae swivelling as if scenting prey.
‘There: underspace signature,’ said Four with satisfaction.
The drones turned again and hovered over the seawater like a couple of wasps zeroing in on a fizzy drink. They bobbed in the air as they attempted to read something from the tightly beamed signal — trying to pick something up from it by inductance, without interrupting it.
‘We have something!’ Four bellowed across the ether.
Flashes of quaternary code flashed through from their receivers, as they tried to nail down some sequence of the code.
‘Direct transmit all you are receiving,’ SM12 instructed them.
‘We’re getting it!’ shouted Three, as it tried to pull together something coherent to pass on. Then, ‘What’s that?’
Four did not get a chance to answer its companion, as a black line cut from the surface of the sea directly towards SM3. The drone fragmented round a disk of light, its weapon nacelles cartwheeling across the waves. Four blasted away from the surface, and something detonated below it. Then, to one side, a Prador war drone broke from the surface and headed towards it. Four released two seeker missiles and planed away. One missile exploded way out of range, but the remaining one blew just ten metres from the Prador drone and swallowed it in fire. Four slowed then abruptly accelerated, as the Prador drone came through that flame with only a coating of soot on its armoured skin.
‘You cannot survive,’ the Prador drone transmitted.
Two missiles came shooting after Four like hunting garfish. The drone blasted higher, only to be slammed sideways as its path intersected that of a stream of rail-gun fire. Pieces fell from Four’s body as it tried to swerve out of the way of this hammering fusillade. But the gunfire tracked it, and the drone could do nothing but sling power into its fusion engine. The EM shell extinguished the drone’s engine only fractions of a second before the two missiles came up at it from below. Four didn’t even see them. It disappeared in a double explosion, nothing of it larger than a fingernail surviving the twin blasts.
The shore was already in sight as the rhinoworm chose its moment to attack. It thumped against the scooter, slewing it sideways, and its beaked mouth clamped over Roach’s foot. Roach let out a yell, and promptly dropped Keech’s antiphoton weapon into the water. Keech reached over and caught hold of Roach’s jacket, while Boris lunged over the driver’s seat to link his arms around Roach’s chest.
‘Shoot the fucking thing!’ Keech yelled at Boris.
‘I can’t! He’ll go in!’
Keech swore, and tried reaching for the weapon in Boris’s belt.
‘I ain’t going! I ain’t going!’ Roach yelled.
‘Hang on!’ Boris yelled pointlessly.
Keech’s arm felt leaden as he tried to move it with its cybermotors, then his face became a mask of pain as something crunched in his wrist. He finally managed to pull the weapon free and aim it at the rhinoworm.