World of Water (43 page)
“It’s them,” Cully declared. “I don’t believe it. It’s them!”
Sigursdottir responded:
Reading you loud and clear. This is Lieutenant Sigursdottir. State your position.
The voice from the
Astounding
came back with the news none of them had thought they would live to hear.
Estimating your location by signal strength, we’re ten minutes out. What is your status?
Sigursdottir gave a succinct précis of the situation, emphasising that immediate retrieval would be welcome.
Understood, lieutenant.
She added:
We also have your mission objective, right in front of us. Do you have payload prepped and ready to deliver?
The
Astounding
replied in the affirmative.
Sigursdottir said:
You’re already within range. We can attempt evac unaided, but we have injured. Please advise.
Silence from the Marine hydrofoil, a silence that spoke of option-weighing and decision-making.
“Are you really asking them to lob a Sunbaker right at us?” Dev said.
Sigursdottir shrugged. “It may be their best and only chance. The Ice King’s here, cornered, corralled. Targeting’ll be simple. All they have to do is program the
Astounding
’s gun to lock in on our signal source and calculate the appropriate firing solution.”
“Giving us fuck-all time to get to minimum safe distance?”
“Nobody said soldiering was easy.”
“And what about the Tritonians? The ones who’ve, let’s not forget, just pulled our fat from the fire? You’re not going to leave them to get incinerated along with the Ice King, surely.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
The next voice that came over their commplants was a familiar one.
Lieutenant Sigursdottir, this is Captain Maddox. I understand you have a visual on this so-called Ice King.
Sigursdottir confirmed it:
It’s a couple of hundred metres from our current position. We’ve kept it here as long as we could, in anticipation of your arrival.
Maddox sounded satisfied:
Excellent work. Commendable. You realise I’m faced with a difficult choice, of course. The creature cannot be allowed to continue to roam unchecked. By your own admission, you lost track of it once already. Who’s to say that might not happen again?
Sigursdottir glanced round at her fellow Marines. Neither Milgrom nor Cully would meet her gaze.
That’s an affirmative, sir. We realise what you’re saying. We appreciate the candour.
Again, Maddox sounded satisfied.
I knew you would. I’m registering Harmer’s commplant ID on this channel.
I’m here, Maddox. Alive and kicking.
Delighted to hear it. Sigursdottir’s last report had you missing, whereabouts unknown. Tell me, in your professional opinion as an ISS operative, has there been Polis Plus activity on Triton?
That’s not really important right now. What’s important is –
For the record, Harmer. I need to know. Are Polis Plus behind the insurgency? Do you have conclusive proof that the digimentalists have been carrying out covert operations on this planet?
I wouldn’t call it conclusive, but the balance of probabilities suggests so. The Ice King itself is, I reckon, a Plusser construct, animated by an installed Plusser sentience.
Would you swear to that?
I don’t see how it matters. At the moment, the priority is killing the fucking thing.
I’m going to have to push you. Yes or no?
All right. Yes. It’s the Plussers. Now listen. Before you let the Sunbaker fly, you have to give me, Handler and your Marines time to clear the area. All I’m asking is five minutes’ grace.
“How do we get far enough away in five minutes?” said Sigursdottir. “Maybe if we had a boat. But we don’t.”
“Same way we got away from the Ice King after it downed the
Admiral Winterbrook
,” Dev said. “Hitch a ride on the back of a Tritonian sub. I can arrange that. I just have to persuade Maddox to hold off from firing long enough.”
Five minutes would give the Ice King the chance to get away too, Harmer. I’m afraid I can’t allow that. Can’t take the risk.
This is crazy. You’re not only going to kill us, you’re going to kill about a hundred Tritonians as well.
Indigene casualties I can live with. Collateral damage. The rest... is a matter of regret, to be sure. But you were a soldier once, Harmer. You’ll know about sacrifice and the greater good.
That’s bullshit, Maddox. You’re signing a death warrant for a hundred-plus people. It’s too high a price to pay just to eliminate the Ice King. There’s another way. We both know that. There must be.
It’s the burden of rank to have to make tough calls. I want it to be known, Harmer, that you have done a sterling job. And you, Lieutenant Sigursdottir – Eydís – you and your team have served with distinction. I’m committing this conversation to commplant memory, for posterity’s sake. A transcript will go on your service records, and you will all gain posthumous citations for your actions here today, I promise you that.
Maddox, you fucking lunatic! Don’t do this!
Let’s not besmirch the moment with name-calling, Harmer. I’m signing off now. In a minute or so, the Sunbaker will be on its way. Kindly make your peace with that fact.
No!
But Dev was hurling the word into the void. Maddox had disconnected. He was gone.
Dev looked round at Sigursdottir.
“A shell travels at five hundred metres per second,” he said. “If the
Astounding
is ten minutes away, that’s, what, fifteen kilometres. Meaning thirty seconds from launch to impact. Add another thirty seconds, say, to deliver and confirm the go command, and approximately a minute for the artillery officer to input the firing solution and elevate and rotate the cannon.”
“Two minutes max,” said Sigursdottir. “Even on a Tritonian sub, we’d still be within blast radius. But,” she added, “
you
won’t.”
“Huh?”
“You and Handler. And the Tritonians. Anyone with gills. You can dive. Dive deep. The water will protect you, cushion you. It’ll absorb the force of the explosion better than air does. On the surface none of us stands a chance, but under, you just might.”
“Who’ll keep the Ice King on the spot, if the Tritonians all go? Who’s to say it won’t chase after us as we dive?”
“That’ll be our business,” said Milgrom. “Face it, we’re fucked whatever. You and Handler, get to the Tritonians and tell them to skedaddle. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“And Jiang? Blunt?”
“They’re lucky,” said Sigursdottir. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
Dev flicked his gaze from Sigursdottir to Cully, then to Milgrom.
Their minds were made up. They were resigned, stoical.
Good soldiers.
In that instant, he despised Captain Maddox. More than he had ever despised anyone.
“Guys...”
“Go!” Milgrom barked. “Get your bony backsides into the water! Now!”
64
D
EV AND
H
ANDLER
dashed-stumbled-leapt down the stairs.
Reflexively, Dev reset his countdown timer yet again. Another rough estimate. Another lethal deadline.
00:01:30
Out from the foot of the staircase.
Diving into the water, into the thick of the battle between the Tritonians and the Ice King.
00:01:17
Spread the word,
Dev told Handler.
Make it clear to them that if they don’t get out of here this instant, they’re ashes.
Handler went one way, Dev the other. Over and over they beamed the message. To every Tritonian in every eye socket cockpit they saw, they delivered the warning and told them to pass it on.
Gradually, but picking up pace, the Tritonians spread the word, flickering from one to the next like signal fires.
00:01:02
Dev swam round the ring of subs, battling through turmoil of cross-currents and vortexes, thanks to the frantically gyrating bulk of the Ice King.
There!
00:00:59
Ethel’s manta. He kicked hard, digging deep, finding every last erg of energy he had.
Descend!
he flared at her.
Descend or die!
She picked up on the fear, the sheer burning urgency of the statement.
00:00:52
Dev crawled to the surface for one last look.
He was just in time to see Milgrom leap from the penthouse balcony onto the Ice King’s back, a thirty-metre drop.
The huge Marine broke her leg as she landed, but didn’t let it stop her. She staggered upright, pulled a gun and emptied it into the Ice King’s carapace. She was singing, howling, screaming, swearing, all at once, a barely coherent berserker caterwaul of defiance and hate.
More bullets rained down onto the Ice King from Sigursdottir and Cully on the balcony.
00:00:47
Dev took it all in at a glance. His last abiding image of Milgrom was her hobbling across the Ice King, dragging a leg with a shattered tibia, like a wounded Amazon warrior queen making her final, fatal stand against some mythical monster.
He ducked back under, to find Ethel’s manta waiting for him.
Don’t just float there,
she said.
Grab on!
Dev seized hold of the nearer of the manta’s cephalic lobes, and the sub flipped up its tail, and down they went.
00:00:39
Down, with a motley school of other subs beside them.
Down, like a storm, like hail.
00:00:27
Down from light to thickening darkness, and Dev had no idea how far they would have to go to escape the Sunbaker’s blistering, multimillion-degree incandescence, how much water they needed to put behind them so as not to get flash-fried...
00:00:15
The manta beat its wings. Dev felt pressure mounting in his ears.
00:00:08
From photic zone to aphotic. From bathyal realm to abyssal.
00:00:03
He pictured the fusion warhead shell in flight, and Sigursdottir, Cully and Milgrom now able to hear it coming, the projectile hurtling through the air with a noise like reality being ripped in two. Inside, the seed of a miniature star, waiting to be born.
00:00:02
He pictured the three Marines looking up, knowing their lives were measured in a handful of seconds, and all the while Jiang and Blunt lay indoors, unconscious, cocooned in blissful ignorance.
00:00:01
Everything was black around him now, apart from the lights of Tritonian faces, near and far, photophores ablaze with unrestrained panic.
00:00:00
Nothing.
No explosion.
No glare of brilliance from above.
Maybe he had underestimated the length of time it would take to launch the Sunbaker.
Maybe Maddox had thought better of it, rescinded the order.
Maybe –
Then it came.
The undersea world turned magnesium white.
Every sub was limned with silver, given a glowing halo. Every detail of every one of the giant sea creatures’ bodies was picked out in sharp, pristine relief. The sucker on a tentacle, the fluted ribbing on a fin, the join between shell plates.
It was as though Dev was seeing it all in freeze frame, a snapshot of a terrified downward stampede.
Then came the pressure wave.
Appalling.
Deafening.
Cataclysmic.
65
L
ATER – DAZED BUT
recovering – they felt able to speak again.