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‘Here’s the new toy we’ve built for you,’ he said.
‘Quite,’ said Wade.
Janer turned to Ron, as Bloc began speaking again. ‘I guess we should go get our stuff.’
‘Why not,’ said Captain Ron, looking at Wade thoughtfully.
Wormish tangles of packetworm coral rose in the sea like three Hindu temples, beaches of grey sand accumulated around them. Ambel sca
‘Must be fairly recent.’ Boris nodded towards the huge corpse. He was holding the helm with one hand and contemplatively flexing the fingers of his other hand. Ambel lowered his binoculars and eyed the man. Stitching the fingers back on had not been such a problem, but reattaching the tendons that had snapped back up into his arm had been messy and painful.
‘We’re not going to have any problems are we?’ Ambel asked.
Boris shrugged. ‘It was an accident.’
‘Then take us in.’
Boris turned the helm to bring the Treader round, then he shouted, ‘You awake up there?’
Galegrabber hurriedly turned himself, and the sails he controlled, to catch the best of the wind to bring the ship in towards the grey beach. Ambel glanced down to the deck to make sure someone was ready to drop the anchor, then returned the binoculars to his eyes.
It was a recent death. The leech’s rider prill were milling about just beyond it, not yet aware that their ride was dead and so might now have made the transformation into di
‘Might be a bit risky,’ said Boris.
‘But there’s something to gain.’ Ambel lowered his binoculars. ‘You get that deck ca
They changed position and Boris kicked open the ammunition box situated below the swivel-mounted ca
‘A
‘Juniors below!’ he ordered as at the last moment the Treader came about, the sail reefing both fabric sails and itself, and climbing high up the mast, out of reach. The ship drew up sideways against a bank of sand, next to which the water was still deep. Sild dropped anchor then hurried off to find his musket. Peck swiftly freed his shotgun from its wrapping of oily cloth, fed some shells into it, then pumped one into the chamber. Already the prill had spotted the ship and were ru
‘I said juniors below,’ said Ambel.
Sprout hung his head and, trailing his machete behind him, slowly followed the other junior crew. Ambel hoped Sprout would soon understand juniors do not heal as quickly as older Hoopers, and this was the only reason Ambel sent him below on such occasions.
‘And leave your machete—I’ll be needing it.’
A
‘Save your shots,’ Ambel warned. ‘You’ve only got one more energy canister for that.’
A
The leading prill fragmented in a great gout of sand, broken carapace and detached sickle legs. Ambel fired too and blew more of them to pieces, then hurriedly reloaded. Sild fired once, splitting one prill into two halves, which flipped over backwards with legs wriggling in the air. A
‘Juniors up!’ Ambel bellowed. He walked over to A
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘Peck can guard my back,’ he slapped the gory blade against his gory hand. ‘I’m go
Erlin gazed down at the island, and it seemed a perfect agate in the pale green ocean, but for one flaw near its edge. This flaw had obviously been scraped out and repositioned just offshore. As Zephyr began to spiral down through cold dispersed cloud, her view became clearer, and she realized she was seeing an enormous ship. Ah, so a piece of the island had been scraped out and beaten into a ship mould to produce this. You’d think it would sink being made of all that stone and mud…
On some level Erlin knew she was not thinking in any logical ma
‘There the Golem leave to serve out the rest of their indenture to Cybercorp elsewhere. Perhaps some of them, in time, will wear bodies like mine. I envy them such choices,’ said Zephyr.
Bodies… lump of flesh… blood…
Before she knew what she was doing, Erlin was trying to claw at the creature above her. She was suddenly so very hungry. Then abruptly she saw her extruded tongue waving before her face and some sanity returned. She gaped at her broken fingernails and vaguely recollected that she had attacked the sail before. Then she stared at her dark blue fingers, mesmerized.
‘What we going to do when we get down there?’ asked one of the other two sails. ‘We can’t let her loose like this. Things might get a bit… hectic.’
‘Arrangements have been made,’ Zephyr replied.
Gazing down at the planet through satellite eyes, the Warden observed Erlin’s arrival at Mortuary Island, and though the AI had not interfered, it felt some shedding of responsibility. Then, gazing through many other eyes at ground level, it felt frustration. The Golem agent of the ancient hive mind was practically untraceable now. In the time frame posited, thousands of Golem had arrived and departed, including the indentured ones who had built the Sable Keech. This was worrying, for no one could be sure what the hive mind’s motives or intentions might be.