World of Water (24 page)

Bed of nails, more like.

The call ended there, and shortly afterwards the
Reckless Abandon
and the
Admiral Winterbrook
got under way again. As the boats picked up speed, Dev checked the sonar. The red dots representing the manta subs were keeping pace with them.

A strong breeze arose, whipping up choppy waves crowned with creamy phosphorescing foam. In the sky, suspended amid the constellations, Triton’s moons glared down. They appeared to have edged closer together since Den had last looked at them.

The eyes of the Ice King, Ethel had called them.

Dev, like any sensible person, did not believe in gods and had no time or sympathy for those who did. Rationalism was the Terran orthodoxy, after all. Nonetheless he couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the moons were somehow watching him, and their gaze seemed more focused now than before, more intense.

More forbidding.

Angrier.

35

O
VERNIGHT,
D
EV AND
Handler manned the helm in shifts, two hours on, two hours off. The navigation computer was perfectly capable of steering the jetboat without supervision, but both men felt safer knowing one of them was up top keeping an eye out, in case something sudden and catastrophic occurred. It helped make the two hours of sleep that bit sounder and more restful.

Past midnight, the wind sharpened and the sea swell deepened. The
Reckless Abandon
rollicked along, automatically making tiny course corrections so that it cut into the waves with its bow rather than let them hit it abeam, thus reducing their impact. The
Admiral Winterbrook
was doing likewise, so that the two boats etched parallel zigzagging paths, responding to every minor alteration in the wind’s direction while still maintaining their southerly heading.

Dev watched the two red dots of the manta subs on the sonar with envy. A hundred metres below the surface, Ethel and the other Tritonians weren’t getting buffeted about by the elements and jigging right and left erratically. Their journey was straight and smooth. Plain sailing.

During the handovers between shifts, Dev would exchange a few words with Handler. On one occasion, the ISS liaison asked if Dev really didn’t mind that he had gone behind his back, reporting to Captain Maddox.

“You seem to be taking it in your stride,” Handler said. “I’m surprised you haven’t made more of a fuss.”

“I doubt you had a choice in the matter. I can’t hold it against you,” Dev said. “Can’t even be annoyed with Maddox. That’s what top brass do if they’ve got any sense: cover all the bases.”

“I’ve not been spying on you, if that’s what you’re thinking. This isn’t some conspiracy.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Arkady Maddox might be an unreconstructed old warhorse...”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“...and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly...”

“Again, no argument.”

“...but he’s not a bad person. He’s just focused, purposeful. Likes things his own way.”

“That’s how you get the scrambled egg on your dress cap, and how you keep it.”

“At any rate, you caught me at it and the secret’s out. In a way I’m relieved. Thanks for not letting on, when you were talking to him.”

“No harm done. In future, just keep me in the loop when you’re keeping him in the loop. Okay?”

“I can do that.”

The next time they swapped roles – Handler heading up to take the helm, Dev going down to his cabin for some shuteye – Dev said, “I’ve been meaning to ask. This boat of yours. Who came up with the name
Reckless Abandon
?”

“I did. It’s not my boat, though, technically. TerCon supplied it for the use of us ambassadors.”

“Ah, I see. And because it doesn’t belong to you, you don’t really care what happens to it.
Reckless Abandon
. Might as well call it
I Can Bash Around In This Thing All I Like And It Doesn’t Matter Because The Government Will Pick Up The Tab For Any Damage
.”

“No. That’s not it. Actually, it’s what came over me the first time I drove the boat, the first time I gunned the engine on the open sea and really
drove
. Seriously, Dev, this thing’s so fast! Up until then it had always been known as
Diplomat One
, and that just seemed too boring and prosaic, completely unsuitable, so...”

Dev chuckled. “You’re a dark horse, Handler. Hidden depths.”

“Thanks. I think.”

At the subsequent handover, Handler made sure to give Dev a fresh dose of nucleotides.

“I can’t tell if these shots are making any difference,” Dev said.

“How do you feel right now?”

“Headachey. Nauseous. That could simply be seasickness, I suppose. My sea legs still haven’t quite come in. But look at this.”

He held up his hands. The skin was speckled with tiny purple blotches, particularly around the wrists and knuckles.

“I noticed one shortly after my last shot. I didn’t think anything of it, but then about an hour ago I realised all these others had appeared.”

“Subcutaneous bleeding. Capillaries spontaneously bursting around the joints.”

Dev grimaced. “At least it’s internal. Not as nasty as having the stuff pour out of your nose.”

“Painful?”

“A little, but analgesics are keeping it at bay.”

“I really regret that this has happened to you,” Handler said.

“Not as much as I do. I’m just glad a treatment was available. I’d be screwed otherwise.”

“ISS are prepared for every contingency,” Handler said. “This probably isn’t the first time there’ve been problems with the host form assembly process.”

“You’re probably not wrong.”

Dawn broke while Dev was minding the controls, and the early sky was as red as any he’d seen, a riot of carmine and crimson. Even after the sun rose and the redness faded, the prospect was no less gloomy and worrisome. Huge clouds were amassing on the horizon, taking on menacing shapes – like anvils and battleships, towering and iron-grey.

He consulted his countdown timer. It registered a little shy of 32 hours remaining. He was over halfway through his allotted three days, and he couldn’t help but ask himself how much he had actually achieved on Triton in that time. He had obtained a military escort, had fathomed the insurgents’ mindset to some degree, and had enlisted the co-operation of indigenes opposed to the insurgency. Apart from that, though, what had he accomplished? Was he any closer to ending the conflict?

Sometimes the missions that ISS sent him on seemed overwhelming, almost impossibly difficult. It was as though the company didn’t want him to earn his 1,000 points and redeem his own body. Once or twice he even wondered whether they were sending him from pillar to post just for the sheer fun of it, deriving some sort of sick pleasure from the trouble they put him through, the teetering odds he faced. The way kings, or for that matter gods, liked to toy with ordinary mortals, just because they could.

But that assumed that the higher-ups at ISS cared about him at any other level than as an asset. His struggles didn’t
amuse
them. Didn’t concern them, either. All they wanted from him was results, preferably supplied in the most cost-effective manner possible, with the least fallout, the fewest legal ramifications.

Handler brought up coffee, and the two of them drank it side by side on the flybridge, mesmerised by the slow, stately swirl of the cloud formations. The sea had grown wilder than ever, and they stood with their knees bent to counteract its wayward buck and sway. Keeping the coffee in the cups, preventing it from slopping over the sides, was some feat.

“What’s that?” Handler said, pointing.

Dev squinted. It looked like another cloud, but wasn’t. It was too upright. Too dark.

“Column of smoke,” he said.

“You sure?”

“I don’t think it can be anything else. What’s in that direction?”

Handler referred to the navigation map screen.

His expression turned grim.

“Dakuwaqa,” he said. “It’s the northernmost of the –”

“Of the Triangle Towns,” said Dev. “I know. Shit.”

Sigursdottir? Are you seeing this? At your eleven o’clock.

Just spotted it. It’s Dakuwaqa, we reckon.

Yeah, looks that way. Lot of smoke. Can’t be good.

No shit. Are all you ISS types this sharp or are you a special case?

I’m not just clever, I have dazzling charisma too.

If you think that, then you’re doubly deluded.

We should investigate.

If you’re referring to your ludicrously inflated self-image, then no, we shouldn’t. We should leave that well alone. But if you mean Dakuwaqa, then duh. Of course. It’s what we’re here for.

Ten to one we’re looking at the result of insurgent activity.

That’s not a bet I’ll be taking.

Handler set course for Dakuwaqa. The
Admiral Winterbrook
changed bearing too, and the manta subs duly tailed along.

The smoke column was huge, its summit level with the tops of the tallest clouds. As the boats drew nearer to it, Dev recalled how he had once seen an entire city on fire during the war, a libertarian commune colony on a world called Roark which had succumbed to a bombardment from Polis+ dreadnoughts in near-planetary orbit. That black, roiling perpendicular plume had looked much like this one. He feared he knew all too well what they were going to find when they arrived.

36

D
AKUWAQA WAS BURNING.

All of Dakuwaqa was burning.

Every dome habitat, every algae farm, every fishery, the tidal power barrages, the desalination plant, the marinas. Every inch of every structure in the township was swathed in flame and contributing to the vast pillar of smoke that loomed over it like a black ghost.

The heat was so intense, you could feel it on your skin even at a distance of 300 metres, which was as close as the
Reckless Abandon
and the
Admiral Winterbrook
dared get.

The roar was deafening, a great crackling bellow of combustion that rolled across the water.

There was nothing they could do. Dev, Handler and the Marines were able only to look on in horror. Horror and awe, because in the face of such wholesale devastation, a sense of smallness and humility was unavoidable.

Then there were the bodies.

Bobbing in the water. Many of them charred. Some face down, others face up.

Sea creatures were jostling over them, gorging from below, lending the bodies a ghastly kind of animation. They twitched and thrashed as countless sets of unseen teeth tugged on their flesh. Sometimes the dead even seemed to be trying to swim, limbs splashing ineffectually, the feeble crawl of the doomed.

Ash fell from the sky in a thin black snow. Embers hissed into extinction as they hit the sea.

Milgrom and Blunt sent up their hoverdrones to overfly the scene. The likelihood of finding anyone alive in the midst of that holocaust was slim verging on nil. A search had to be carried out all the same, just in case. There might be some pocket of the township still intact, as yet untouched by the blaze, where survivors were hunkered down, praying for rescue.

The hoverdrones flew high around the edge of the vast thermal, surveying. Their rotor fans carved weirdly beautiful vortexes in the smoke.

Their cameras, however, relayed nothing to their controllers’ commplants – nothing but footage of fire and ruin. Milgrom and Blunt summoned them back, and they swooped obediently to their perches on the Marines’ wristlets and folded themselves flat.

“This is awful,” said Handler. He looked sickened, as well he might. Even a Frontier War veteran like Dev was finding the sight of a shattered township and a sea of corpses hard to stomach. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Be thankful for that.”

“I had no idea the insurgents would be capable of...
this
. It’s just insane. They’ve gone too far.”