The turbul shoal, forever patrolling the depths—feeding and being fed upon—their outer flesh constantly needing to be replaced, were always hungry. The scent of ichor in the water drove them to a frenzy with half-remembered feasting on the contents of easily broken shells. However, the still-present other scent from the giant whelk itself reminded them of near escapes, the loss of outer flesh and sudden reductions in their number.
The first turbul nosed cautiously up out of the depths—a long five-hundred-kilogram creature with caiman jaws and bright blue fins grown seemingly at random from its cylindrical dark green body. It sucked the water in through its nostrils, blowing it out through the gill holes down its length, flicked its whip tail, the hatchet fin on the end of that dislodging rocks down the slope behind it, and came on. Ahead of it the infant whelks again extruded eye-stalks and tentacles to test the water, immediately became agitated and drew closer together. The turbul circled, joined by others of its shoal. Then it shot in.
The whelks immediately retracted excrescences they had been cautiously easing out again, and sucked down hard on the bottom. The turbul clamped its jaws closed on the shell of one near the brood’s edge, wriggled its long heavy body and tugged the creature from the bottom. A few metres up it released the creature, arched its body, and slammed its tail fin into shell. The blow nearly cut the whelk in half and the turbul began champing down its tender flesh, the water growing cloudy about it.
The others began to attack now, then the whole shoal hit. It was as if someone had detonated an underwater mine. Silt and ichor exploded in every direction; iridescent shell drifted down through the water. Long heavy bodies rolled and thrashed. Whelks were jerked through all this, shattered and torn apart. Half an hour later the shoal began to lose interest and drift away, but now prill and leeches swarmed in to snap up what remained. In another half-hour they were gone. All that remained was a mess of glittering shell, and even that gleam disappeared as the silt settled down to shroud it.
Hovering on AG, Sniper watched the Island of Chel being slowly revealed by the morning sun. Below him geodesic domes nestling in the spreading sprawl of the Hooper town were licked by the yellow-green glare. The dingle surrounding this settlement was cut through by numerous paths, shadowy now, and many wide plascrete roads had been built. One extended from the greatly enlarged docks to branch into the town, another stretched in from the floating shuttle platforms. There were vehicles down there: wheeled cars and transports. Windcheater’s rules concerning antigravity transport now prevented the use of AG taxis between the platforms and domes and anywhere else on the island and, for that matter, on the planet. The rules did not apply to him or the other drones, however. Windcheater liked them—did not mind them up in his air.
A shuttle rose from the platforms, not a flying wing but a long flattened cylinder with thruster nacelles to the rear. It rotated in mid-air, aiming for the horizon, and then its motors ignited, their glare matching the rising sun. Watching it go, the old war drone keyed into the Warden’s com frequencies, glad to see that the AI had not yet found the covert programs he had left in place. Sniper could now listen in to secret communications, but for how long that would last he did not know. It would end as soon as the AI changed its frequency codings.
As he had guessed, the shuttle was a planetary one that Windcheater allowed to transport reifications to Mortuary Island. He was just about to shut off the link when he picked up some unusual traffic between the Warden and numerous sources below. One particular exchange riveted his attention.
‘He came through while you weren’t yet back in charge here,’ said a voice from the main dome. ‘We were tracking him aboard some private ship concerns and expected him to join the Gurnard, where our agents could have apprehended him. Turns out that lead was a dead end. He in fact used the runcible network long before. We since traced his journey through five jumps from Earth.’
‘Don’t you think you should have informed Sniper?’ the Warden asked.
‘My instructions were to keep this from him. It’s a touchy situation and apparently Sniper is not that good at being diplomatic.’
‘Agreed, but perhaps diplomacy is not what’s required here.’
‘I’m just following orders.’
‘So you’ve lost this individual now?’
‘Seems that way. He walked out of the Metrotel leaving his luggage behind him and just never came back. My agents are scouring the island but there seems no sign of him.’
‘Yes, I’m receiving their reports now.’
‘He could have gone into the sea. That’d be no problem for one like him.’
The Warden replied, ‘I think you overestimate Polity technology and underestimate the dangers of the deeps.’
Sniper spun, in his frustration, like a silver coin. Who or what were they talking about? The answer was provided by yet another communication between one of those agents and the Warden.
‘We’ve scanned the Trancept Arcade. No sign of that signal and no one has eyeballed the Golem. Chelar released a cloud of micro-eyes in there, so if he puts in an appearance we’ll be on him in a second.’
Submind Seven, not so ebullient now his master was back in control, replied, ‘Check the concourse now. You got nothing on secondary emitters?’
‘No—there must be hundreds of them all over the planet, smuggled in over the last few years. The primary U-space transmitter could be anywhere in the vicinity of the planet—supposing there’s only one of them—or it might be encoded through the runcible itself.’
‘Bastard to track that down, man. About a hundred thousand constant aug links, and thousands more private messages.’
‘You’re telling me?’
‘Yeah, I am. Keep searching.’
The communication cut off.
Golem? It had to be a renegade—they were not unheard of. But what was it doing here and, most importantly, would any explosions be involved? Sniper slowed his rotation as a com channel opened to him.
‘Did you get all that, Sniper?’ the Warden asked.
‘Sneaky fucker,’ the old drone replied.
‘I’m sneaky?’
The Warden changed codes and the secret com channels abruptly disappeared. Sniper swore and wished he had left more hidden programs but, not expecting anything to start happening here so soon, he had not considered any of those channels very important.
‘Do you need any help?’ he wheedled.
‘I don’t know,’ said the Warden. ‘I like my drones to follow orders and I’m not sure I have use for one carrying enough armament to cripple a destroyer.’
‘I promise not to blow up anything,’ Sniper replied.
‘You and I know that, should circumstances permit, you won’t keep to that promise. However, I need someone to search the sea surrounding Chel, and to check all sailing ships that departed from there over the last two weeks.’ The Warden spat down a list and the probable destinations of those ships. ‘I’ve dropped SMs Six to Ten in geosurvey shells and am moving Eleven and Twelve into the area. You can coordinate with them.’
Sniper let out a long whoop as he arced out of the sky to hit the sea with a huge splash. As he sank he turned on his sonar and all his other useful detectors. A glister immediately scuttled out from a mass of floating sargassum to investigate the disturbance, took one look at the great shining drone, then scuttled back. Sniper tracked it with a launch tube, and loaded a mini-torpedo with a phosphorus warhead. Immediately a U-space link opened to him.
‘And Sniper, show a little restraint with the local fauna. I don’t want an ecological disaster,’ the Warden added.
Sniper harrumphed, withdrew the tube, and began searching.