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.
‘Damn! I can’t pull the trigger! Try to hold him aboard!’
Keech released his hold and swapped the weapon to his right hand. Boris, still holding on to Roach, was dragged over the seat when the worm tried to haul his companion into the sea. Keech’s first shot burnt a hole into the worm’s head. It paused in its tugging only to blink at them, then started pulling again. Keech fired again, then a third time, opening a smoking crater in the bone between the worm’s eyes. Abruptly the creature released its prey and rose up out of the water like a cobra about to strike. Keech took aim at the underside of its head: one shot that blew open something soft and yellow. The worm went rigid, coughed, then dropped into the sea like a puppet with its strings cut.
‘I told you I weren’t going!’ Roach shouted at the creature floating limply beside the scooter.
‘Oh shit,’ said Boris, staring in another direction.
Keech and Roach turned and gaped at the approaching mound of molly carp.
‘This isn’t going to stop it,’ said Keech, holding up his pulse-gun. ‘What we need is something like my APW.’ He glared accusingly at Roach, who tried his best not to look sneaky.
‘I can’t help it. Me arm ain’t working properly,’ the crewman protested.
‘This is it, then,’ muttered Boris.
The molly carp surged up to the scooter, but turned at the last moment and snapped up the rhinoworm. Because of its unusual mode of propulsion, it was able to stop dead once it had hold of its prey. It rested right beside the stationary scooter watching the occupants with one eye while it noisily munched on the rhinoworm’s head.