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with the necessity for three males to fertilize one female egg, and that egg then encysted and stuck, in its cocoon, on the side of just one location—the Big Flint—it is no surprise that the sail population remains small. The sail, however, being the largest flying creature on the planet, is not prone to predation, also is intelligent and benefits from viral immortality. It has been proven to the satisfaction of forensic AIs that there are even sails over a thousand years old, some of them remembering the first arrival of humans on Spatterjay. Those same AIs are more cautious about the veracity of claims made by some sails of having witnessed volcanic eruptions known to have taken place ten thousand years ago.
It is perhaps a sign of the sail’s innate intelligence that it never fed on humans (the stories of people disappearing near the Big Flint are apocryphal… probably). It is a creature that feeds on the wing, and any native Spatterjay life form is a viable food resource, except leeches, which apparently give them violent flatulence, and those larger deep oceanic creatures which are just too inaccessible or too large. Sails dominate the skies, since there is only one other flying creature known on Spatterjay, and that is rather insignificant: the lung-bird -
Without any transition at all, Vrell was awake and alert. This made no sense to him because anoxia led to gradual physical shutdown, then death. He unfolded his legs and pushed himself up from the floor. Silt spilled from his carapace, but it was the only cloudiness in water which just a seeming moment ago had been murky. Now it was utterly clear and still. He must have been unconscious for longer than he had thought. With his one hand he plucked the mission timer from his weapons harness and studied it.
Impossible.
Vrell discarded the device, sure it must be damaged. Prador could hibernate for long periods, but hardly that long. Anyway, his kind could not hibernate at all unless in an oxygenating atmosphere—to do so underwater would lead to one never waking up. This was madness, surely. Vrell shook himself, spilling more silt from his carapace. He felt a huge pressure inside him, and a tension as if something internal was twisted out of position. He shook himself again, and felt something begin to shift inside his carapace. There abruptly came a crackling noise, jets of ichor squirting from under the claw patch, and a relief of internal pressure. Vrell stared in amazement at the translucent embryonic claw protruding from the now broken patch. Then, underneath him, followed one cracking sound after another. To check, he folded his eye-palp down in time to see pieces of medical porcelain sinking to the bottom. But to look was not even necessary as the incredible sensitivity of his new manipulatory hands told him all he needed to know. He was an adult; this was impossible. Yet another patch broke and a leg folded into view and, while he was studying this with his palp eye, the Prador realized he was now seeing a hazy image through turret eyes that should never have recovered sight after being burnt in an APW blast. Adolescent Prador regrew their limbs, but no Prador ever regrew its secondary eyes. Something quite odd and quite wonderful was happening to his body. But he was still trapped here.
Vrell turned towards the door; he required some new miracle to get him through that. Deciding to try something more prosaic, he drew his rail-gun from his harness, aimed at the door’s edge, and fired. A stream of missiles slammed through the water, leaving white lines, and smashed into the side of the door, then zinged away. Some of the ricochets chipped Vrell’s carapace, but he continued firing until the magazine was empty. He then took his plasma torch to the weakened metal, but only managed to cut a small hole before the torch gave out. Vrell could just about poke his claw through it, but it was still a victory, because now air was bubbling in and the water draining out. He definitely would not suffocate—just starve.
His new limbs were now growing at phenomenal speed, their growth spurt sucking Vrell’s insides empty. His hunger became savage and he scoured his prison for something to eat. There was nothing evident, no living leeches, and no remains of those he had broiled with his water gun. There should have been some in here. It seemed, therefore, that the mission timer had been correct. He knew that leeches could go somnolent for long periods and that it took years for them to die of starvation. He picked the timer back up, studied it for a long moment, then returned it to his harness. What now? What should he do now?
Vrell did have a few options left to try. He detached the rail-gun from its magazine suspended on his harness, then also detached the welding unit. Both of these implements contained laminar batteries—the plasma torch having ceased to function only because he had depleted its gas supply. He disassembled these two devices, removed their batteries, and jammed them into the hole he had made, then scuttled back towards the other blast door. The water level had sunk to the bottom of the hole now. Vrell submerged and pointed his water gun towards the two batteries. Laminar batteries did not respond well to excessive heating. Lowering his eye-palps, Vrell fired.
It took just a minute, in which the air space above him filled with clouds of steam. As the two batteries detonated, the shock wave slammed through the Prador with such force that he reflexively adopted a defensive pose: folding up all his limbs and sinking. When he finally unfolded, the water was hot and acidic, and the air above it unbreathable. Vrell scrambled over to the door to see what damage he had done. The door itself seemed to have shifted back a little way, and after a moment Vrell detected a current—the rest of the water was draining away. He jammed his claw into the buckled corner and, with his feet scrabbling at the floor, shoved as hard as he could. Was he imagining that the door flexed? That was possible, since the door, though armoured, had been constructed in layers of composite, insulation and foamed porcelain so as to absorb rather than deflect shock. Then Vrell remembered the dent he had earlier put in the wall. That too was armoured.
Vrell moved back and watched carefully. The water would constrict his movements, so he must wait. Also, his new limbs had by now attained full growth and were beginning to darken as they hardened. He would need them.
Hours passed as the water level kept on dropping. When it had sunk below his now shrunken and concave belly plates, Vrell once again approached the door. He struck it hard with his old claw, eyed the dent made, hit it testingly with his new claw to find out if that one was strong enough. Seeing it was, he then began to rain blow after blow on the door edge, denting the metal back into the underlayer of foamed porcelain. A gap grew at the edge, wider and wider. All the water rushed out.
You won’t stop me, Father.
Vrell thought of how he had been used, and how he would have been dispensed with. He knew that with the extent of his development he had been close to being considered a dangerous competing adult by his father, and consequently having his limbs stripped off and his shell broken. In presentient times, young Prador, enslaved by their father’s pheromones, would bring food to him. But once one of those youngsters reached adulthood, it would shake off that binding control and kill its father, who by then would be weak and lacking in limbs. Prador technology had changed all that. Fathers stayed strong, enhanced their pheromones, and used thrall technology to enslave other life forms. They killed their young before they reached adulthood, or else sometimes neutered them to keep them loyal, also surgically altered them and linked them into war machines. Meanwhile the fathers just kept on living. Though this was just the Prador way, Vrell was still angry, but he was deliberate in his anger, and it gave him strength.
The door retreated gradually under his blows, the lower corner coming up out of its channel in the floor, and the edge tearing out of the wall. Every time his energy flagged, he thought again about what his father would have done to him, and his strength returned. In his feverish activity, he noticed only subliminally how his shell was much darker now, almost obsidian black. After a wide gap was opened down the side of the door, he flipped sideways and pushed himself into it, to try to lever it open further, and was surprised how far he got before he became jammed. His whole body was now attenuated: the curve of his belly plates replicating the curve of his upper shell with not much bulk between. He levered himself back and forth, getting further through each time. Then something gave, either the door or his shell, he did not know, and he was finally through.