Emerald Sea

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The wind was fair from the northeast and the carrier rolled over a slight sea with a string of islands to its north.

“If this holds we’ll be up to the mer-town by dusk,” Commander Mbeki said.

“Three days late,” the skipper growled. Beating around the edge of the islands had been a slow process, especially since they’d had to negotiate some tricky shallows.

“You can’t control the winds, sir,” the commander replied.

“No, and I can’t control New Destiny, either,” Chang replied. “We lost half a day with that little encounter.”

“Well, so far, so good,” Mbeki said.

“Something in the water to port,” the lookout called.

“I think I should have knocked on some wood,” Mbeki said. “Could you be clearer than ‘something’?” he yelled.

“No, it’s… coming up from the depths. Looks like a…”

Before he could complete the sentence a gigantic tentacle snaked over the side of the ship, smashing the rail and twisting into the ratlines of the mainmast. The ship heeled hard over to port and shuddered as the weight of a giant squid caught it.

“KRAKEN!” the skipper yelled. “Chief Brooks! Axemen! Sound general quarters!”

More and more tentacles slithered over the side of the ship as the beak of the immense squid was revealed. One intelligent eye was just visible below water level and it rolled from side to side, searching for prey. It found it as one of the sailors dashing at the tentacles was caught around the waist and hoisted, screaming, over the side of the ship. The screams were abruptly cut off as the sailor’s head was thrust into the half-meter-wide, parrotlike beak of the squid. It crunched with bitter finality.

Mbeki found himself down on the deck, snatching up the fallen axe of the sailor and hacking at a tentacle that had wrapped itself around the mainmast. The beast was trying to turn the clipper over on its side and its immense weight might just manage it. The body of the beast was half out of the water, its tentacles given free play around the maindeck. It caught another of the crew, one of the marines who were stabbing at the tentacles with boarding pikes, and the marine was dragged over the side, still stabbing at the immense tentacle wrapped around his waist.

Mbeki and Brooks were hacking at the tentacle around the mainmast, in a rhythm with one striking as other raised his axe, when one of the blindly thrashing tentacles wrapped itself around the commander’s ankle and started dragging him towards the edge. He grabbed a stanchion and his arms were nearly ripped from their sockets as he struggled to keep from being taken to the beast’s maw.

Brooks leapt over the half-severed tentacle attached to the mast and hacked downward at the one wrapped around the commander’s ankle. The tentacle had only caught him with a tip and a single blow from the chief severed it to lie flopping on the deck. But even as he turned back to the one around the mast, the ship heaved over on its side and the water came up over the bulwarks as the squid half humped itself onto the ship. Now that it could see what it was doing, its tentacles attacked the axe-wielders and Brooks found himself wrapped in its slimy clutches.

He hacked futilely at the thigh-thick tentacle around his waist but it was to no avail and he found himself in the air, being lowered to the beast’s maw. He saw it open to receive his head just as a jet of fire went past his ear, and impacted squarely on the beast’s mouth.

The tentacle around his waist tightened convulsively and he felt his eyes practically pop out of their sockets as the air was driven from his lungs. The next thing he knew he was flying through the air.

Evan heard the screams from the deck and felt the ship heave over as the big kettle drum on the deck began to pound the signal for battle stations. Without a thought he caught up the flamethrower and started to make his way onto the deck. The ship heeled again and he was thrown against a bulkhead, the flamethrower half thrown over his shoulder catching his arm painfully. He saw the damned rabbit in the corridor, and shouted at him.

“What the hell are you doing just loafing along?” Evan yelled, getting the other strap over his shoulder. “We’ve got a problem!”

“And that means what to me?” the rabbit said, stopping and nibbling at his shoulder. “Me, I’m heading for the lifeboats. You can deal with whatever it is.”

“Damn you,” Evan said, stepping over the rabbit and heading for the companionway.

The rabbit looked after him then pointed a finger at himself.

“I damn thee,” the rabbit muttered. “Shoot, didn’t work.”

Evan stumbled onto the deck to a scene of pandemonium. Tentacles were slithering across the deck in every direction or were already wrapped around pieces of the ship. As he stepped out of the companionway the ship tilted to an alarming degree and water shipped over the side as the kraken hoisted itself up. He saw Chief Brooks chopping at a tentacle that had caught the XO and then the chief was caught by another tentacle and lifted into the air.

Evan found himself screaming as he ran through the jungle of writhing arms, desperately clicking at the self-starter for the flamethrower. Finally the pilot light caught and he slid into knee-deep water and pointed the device over the side, triggering it for its first test.

The stream, he noted in a strange abstraction that made the whole experience dreamlike, was darned near perfect, some droplets coming down from the stream but most of them impacting in the target area. As the jellied gasoline hit the squid just above the mouth — he’d been aiming directly for the maw but close was good enough with a flamethrower — the squid convulsed, its jets closing to pull it back. The tentacles thrashed wildly and then with another massive pulse it slithered off the edge of the ship and disappeared back into the depths so fast it was gone before the ship had heaved back up onto an even keel.

Evan found himself on the deck, the end of the flamethrower dripping jellied gasoline onto the, fortunately water-covered, deck. He stumbled to his feet and shut down the valves as sailors grouped around him, pounding him on his shoulders in lieu of his tank-covered back.

“Mister Mayerle!” the skipper bellowed from the quarterdeck.

“Sir,” Evan said, spinning in place and giving the skipper a salute that, as a civilian, was not strictly necessary.

The skipper returned it anyway and then grinned.

“Damned fine job,” the skipper said. “Thank you. But before you use that thing on my ship again, kindly find something that allows us to extinguish those little fires you just left behind.”

“Yes, sir!” Evan said. Buckets of sand had already been dropped on the dribbles that had hit the deck and looking over the side it was clear that the ship had drifted clear of the puddle of burning fuel the scorched squid had left behind.

“Commander Mbeki?” the skipper called.

“Sir?” the commander said, getting to his feet.

“We’ve got some damaged rigging,” the skipper said, turning to look at the sails, some of which were flapping in the breeze. Fortunately the wind was not strong or they would have shivered themselves to pieces. “Get a damage party to work. How’s the chief?”

“I’ll live, Skipper,” Brooks said, getting shakily to his feet.

“Bridge!” the lookout called. “Dragon, fine on the port bow! Signaling. Number Twenty-three, forty-seven, fourteen!”

“ ‘Enemy in area,’ ” Midshipman Donahue said. “ ‘Under attack. Make all sail.’ ”

“Bit late,” the skipper said. “Get to work, Commander!”

“Wait,” Joel said as one of the deck apes started to flip a severed tentacle end over the side.

“What?” the seaman asked, tired and unhappy from the battle and the cleanup. What he didn’t need was one of the damned wardroom stewards slowing him down.

“We need to keep a souvenir,” Joel said, stooping to pick up the tentacle. “We’ll put it in alcohol and set it up in the mess or something.”

“Whatever,” the seaman replied. “I’ve got work to do.”

“As do I,” the steward said, picking up the tentacle and taking it below.

Now if he could only get a gene scan out of Sheida, one of his cases might at least get closed.

He rounded up a jar and wood alcohol in the galley and then carefully stored the chunk in his seabag. After that he went and checked his telltales.

The rabbit roamed all over the ship, mostly being a minor nuisance and bugging people. But the external telltale, when he touched it, pointed to the aft of the ship and he went to pick up the data from the one in the wardroom.

The latter was occupied, however, by Commander Mbeki who had a pile of documents spread out on the table. He was sitting at the far end, fountain pen in hand, staring at the papers with an abstracted expression.

“Sorry, sir,” Joel said. “Anything I can get you?”

“Not right now, Joel,” Mbeki said, looking up with dark eyes.

“You look worn out, sir,” Joel said. “A mug of herbal tea? Some food?”

“No thanks, Joel,” the commander said, shaking his head.

“Sir, I can see you’re busy,” Joel said, nervously. “But, could I talk to you for a moment?”

“I don’t know,” the commander said, looking stern for a moment. “What about?”

Joel shut the door and then shrugged. “I sort of need to… go out of the chain of command, sir. It’s about something you mentioned. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“What’s that?” the commander said. “And you know I don’t like sailors breaking chain of command.”

“Yes, sir, but it’s about my family, sir,” the seaman said, gulping. “What you said about New Destiny, sir. Just before we shoved off one of the civilian laborer guys asked me if I knew where my family was.”

“And what did you tell him?” Commander Mbeki asked.

“I was sort of surprised, it wasn’t like we were talking or anything,” Joel replied. “He just up and asked. Then he said that if they were in Ropasa, he knew some people who were smuggling people out, those they could find…”

“Indeed,” the commander said, frowning. “You realize that there are several possibilities here.”

“I hadn’t thought about it at the time, sir,” Joel shrugged. “But I have since. It might be legit. Then again…”

“It might have been a New Destiny agent trolling for sources,” Mbeki replied, his face hard.

“Yes, sir,” Joel gulped. “The thing is, I told him who my wife and daughter were. What do I do now? I feel like such an idiot.”

Commander Mbeki rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger and grimaced.

“Well, don’t think you’re the lone idiot,” he muttered. “Joel, for now, you’ve brought it to my attention. I’ll think about what to do with it. I should pass it on to the Criminal Investigation Division. But those idiots can’t find their ass with both hands. For now, I’m going to sit on it. If you get any more contacts, any more, tell me. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Joel replied. “What should I do if, you know, if they’re from New Destiny and they found them? What if they tell me to…”

“In that case definitely contact me, not CID,” the commander said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Take care, Joel,” the commander said, picking up his pen and uncapping it. “And we did not have this little conversation.”

Edmund scrambled up a ladder dangling over the port side as the ship heeled to starboard; the carrier was getting its dragons back.

“Belay that,” he said, waving at the receiving party. “No time.” He looked up in the dim light at where teams of sailors were rapidly rerigging the damaged cordage. “What happened?”

“We were attacked by a kraken, General,” the skipper said. “That was the second attack that we sustained. And I doubt that the kraken was some generic denizen of the deep; it was definitely aiming for us.”

“Damn, damn and double damn,” Edmund snarled. “We have a hell of a situation here, Skipper. Let’s go below.”

Edmund sketched out the attack on the mer-town and listened as the captain detailed the two attacks on the ship.

“Well, we’re in a fine pickle,” Edmund admitted. “The mer need to move. They say that there’s a much more defensible position over by the Bimi islands and they want to go there. Soon. Normally that’s not a problem. But they can’t protect, or even carry for that matter, their babies, not if they’re under attack. And I’d guess that as soon as the ixchitl and the orcas lick their wounds they will be back.”

“You want us to transport the children?” the skipper said, frowning. “We can do that, but I can’t guarantee that we won’t be attacked again. That kraken… was frightening. And I can think of ways that it could attack that we wouldn’t be able to counter with Evan’s flamethrower. Grab us from underneath and gnaw through the hull comes to mind.”

“It’s the best chance that we’ve got,” Edmund said, well aware that with a spy on board it was more dangerous than he was making out. “Bruce is dead. Jason hasn’t been elected as their leader but he’s already taking charge, and he’s on our side. Hell, all the mer are on our side except a couple that are dead set on supporting New Destiny and they have made themselves scarce since the attack. We’ve got the mer, and the delphinos for that matter, on our side. But we need to get them to this Key Harbor or whatever and get their babies protected. And the only way to get the babies there, is by sending them with you. I’m putting the lives of the mer in your hands, Skipper. Can I trust you?” Edmund realized very well that he might be putting them in the hands of an agent of New Destiny, but looking in the eye of the skipper he saw not a flicker of misdoubt.

“Before anything happens to them I will die in their defense, sir,” the skipper replied. “And so will every one of my crew.”

“I need some of the dragons,” Edmund said with a nod. “I’ll take Joanna, Chauncey and Donal. You take the rest and the regular riders. They’ve shown they can take on just about anything that New Destiny has thrown at them; I’d be surprised if the three of them, working together, couldn’t even take on a kraken.”

The skipper nodded seriously at this, then started to crack a smile. Finally he put his hands over his face, trying very hard not to laugh. Edmund could tell it was half hysterical.

“Are you finding something humorous, Colonel?” he said coldly.

“It’s just…” the skipper said, taking a breath and wiping his eyes. “General, just for a moment, step back and think. I’m commanding a dragon-carrier. And I’m fighting kraken and black-sailed caravels. Every now and again… it just catches me off guard and I have to giggle. I got this job because I was a tall ships’ sailor. I took out barkentines so that groups of people could experience what it was like to sail in the tall ships. Now I’m figuring out how to use dragons to protect my warship. It just… gets me sometimes. I wouldn’t do this in front of the crew, but…”

Edmund stared at him coldly for a moment, then grunted. Before he knew it he was laughing as well.

“Okay, you got me, but I just gutted a Changed human being and stuffed my arm into its chest, to use it as a shield,” he said, chuckling blackly. “You think you’ve had a strange day?”

“Daneh,” Edmund said, coming up behind the doctor as she was tying off the last suture in one of the injured mer.

The square had been a shambles after the battle, but most of the debris, dead ixchitl and pieces of dead mer, had been cleared out. The ixchitl had been disposed of by the simple expedient of feeding them to the dragons.

Some of the mer had taken less of a dose of neurotoxin than Bruce, who had been hit by at least two harpoons. They had been able to maintain a ragged breathing and Daneh had concocted, on the spot, a form of tail-to-chest resuscitation that had let them live long enough for the fast-decaying toxin to work itself out of the body. Others had been badly bitten by ixchitl or had simply injured themselves in the flight to safety. It was one of the latter she was finishing work on, a young mer-man who had gashed his arm, badly, on the coral, jamming himself into a crevice.

“Hold on, Edmund,” Daneh replied. “You’re going to need to favor that for a few days or the stitches will tear out. I’d put a bandage on it if we were on the surface, but nothing really stays here in the water. Just be careful of it.”

“I will, ma’am,” the boy said, wincing at the pain of the wound.

“Daneh, I want you and Rachel to go on the ship,” Edmund said as the boy swam away.

“I’m going to be needed with the mer,” Daneh said. “There’s going to be more fighting. I’m not just going to run for safety.”

“Daneh,” the duke said, drifting closer and lowering his voice. “You and Rachel are the only ones I can send that I know aren’t the leak. You’re going to have to find some way to figure out who it is.”

“You know it’s that damned rabbit,” she replied, quietly. There were mer around and it would do their morale no good to know that the women and children were being sent on a ship that had a potential agent onboard.

“No, I don’t know it’s the rabbit,” Edmund said. “And neither do you. Don’t assume that. The one person I refuse to suspect, though, is Evan.”

“Why?” Daneh said, then frowned. “Not that I would, either.”

“Because he’s such a perfect little engineer,” Edmund replied. “You can tell what he’s thinking just by looking at him. I don’t think he could carry it off. I may be wrong, but I also think that he might have an idea how to ferret out the mole. Whoever it is has to be communicating somehow. Even if he’s being visited by an avatar, there are traces of their presence. Evan should be able to figure something out. If he can’t, I’m out of ideas.”

“Okay,” Daneh said. “I can see that. But Rachel could go.”

“I want both of you to go for the same reason you both came down here, I trust you more than Rachel and, really, it’s going to need two. Just go, okay?”

“Okay,” she sighed, reaching out to stroke his face. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will,” Edmund said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

Getting the mer-women out of the cavern was easier than retrieving their babies. But the latter, well swathed in sailcloth, were lifted out through the light fissures and then both groups were ferried out to the ship and hoisted over the side on slings.

While that was going on the ship was discharging its cargo. Since there weren’t enough of the bronze-headed spears that had been brought as friendship gifts, they were supplemented with boarding pikes. The pikes were made of low-carbon steel and would rust quickly in the salt environment but they were all that were available. As this was going on, Edmund went over the side and rounded up Herzer and Jason.

“Here,” he said, when he finally found them going over plans for the retreat. He thrust out two scabbarded short-swords, wrapped around by heavy belts of a synthetic fabric.

Herzer drew his and tried to whistle. The blade was bright silver and surprisingly light. The design was identical to the Blood Lord blades that he had trained with but while they were light and maneuverable, this blade felt like a feather.

“What is this?” he asked. “Titanium?”

“No, it’s a high-tech alloy from the twenty-third century,” Edmund replied. “Angus showed it to me just before the Fall. It takes power to work initially, but I had some prepped when the Fall came. I made those just before we came down here as a bribe to Bruce. It’s much better than titanium; among other things you can shape it to a damned near monomolecular edge. Don’t run a finger down the blade to see how sharp it is.”

“I won’t,” Herzer said, strapping on the sword. The belt was just long enough.

“Thank you,” Jason said, sounding weary.

“We’re taking Donal, Chauncey and Commander Gramlich,” Edmund said. “Put that in your calculations.”

“Thank you again,” Jason said. “I thought you were going on the ship.”

“No, I’m sending Rachel and Daneh that way,” he admitted. “But I’ll hold on to Joanna to keep up.”

“The straps aren’t going to take the strain,” Herzer pointed out. “It’s going to be a long ride. And they’re only half as effective if they’re stuck in the water all the time.”

“I know,” Edmund said with a grin. “I think it’s time to find out if you can ride a dragon bareback.”