Read Online Gridlinked by Neal Asher - Free Book Online

re-engaged AG, and turned on the turbine. It was more for something to do than to serve any purpose. Sod the power wastage. He could understand how Geneve wanted to join in, sitting there with her thumb up her arse, and eager to use the sophisticated targeting equipment run by the console in front of her. Abruptly she stood up.
    'I'll make us some coffee,' she said, and ducked through the bulkhead door into the rear half of the cabin. Pelter watched her go with that dead expression on his face. Veltz could feel sweat pricking his forehead. He almost cried out wim relief when the device Pelter clutched let out a beep and drew the Separatist's attention to its narrow screen.
    'East,' he said, 'about two kilometres.'
    'Geneve! Get back in here!' Veltz bellowed as he wound the turbine up to full power. The catamaran slammed forward with enough force to press Veltz and Pelter back into uieir chairs. In the galley Geneve swore, and tüere was a clattering sound. Veltz eased off on the acceleration when the catamaran was at a speed he felt comfortable with. He had never found the top speed. Just as the AG was insufficient for the Meercat, the turbine was far too much. Two such turbines had been capable of boosting into orbit a shuttle weighing ten times as much as the catamaran.
    Geneve hurried back into the cabin, all dioughts of coffee forgotten. She plumped down in her chair and fixed her lap strap across, before hinging a targeting mask across her face. She took hold of the control handle on her console. A low droning came from below the cabin as the harpoon gun lowered. Cable-feed motors quickly cycled up to speed.
    'You should be getting sight of it shordy,' she said.
    Veltz could see the ribbed wake of the carrier. He too secured his lap strap, men looked at Pelter until he had his attention before nodding towards the distant disturbance. Pelter got out of his seat and walked up to stand behind the two of them.
    'I see it,' he said. 'Just don't miss.'
    Veltz decelerated as they closed on the visible signs of the egg-carrier. Pelter stumbled, men quickly got back into his own seat and strapped himself in. Veltz made sure the Separatist did not see the satisfied grin he allowed himself at that moment.
    'Go port and past,' said Geneve.
    Veltz eased the Meercat over and followed her instructions. He reduced AG so the water acted as a brake. The harpoon whined and thumped as Geneve moved the control handle.
    'No good. Come back on the other side,' she said.
    Pelter glared out at the monstrous creature as it breasted the swell in what seemed the slow-motion leaps of a giant slug. The core of hate and explosive anger in him seemed to be reaching a nexus. He would have some satisfaction here with at least some kind of kill, some kind of pain, in recompense for the pain he felt. Here he would find something to damp out the image, which kept replaying in his mind, of the narrow barrel of that thin-gun only centimetres from his face.
    'All slow. Locked in!'
    Veltz slammed back on the turbine and the AG controls. There came a crump from underneath the cabin, and a black line cut from there, across waves like translucent iron, to the apex of an arch of flesh. The cable motor shrieked as their brakes went on, and a vague smell of something burning permeated the cabin. Pelter watched the cable go slack, then tighten again, as the motor went into reverse and that arch folded down. A great froglike head broke the surface and its black maw opened and bellowed. The egg-carrier thrashed and stirred up a bluish spume. Each rime it thrashed, the cable motors whined as they gave or took accordingly. The catamaran was tugged sideways across the swell, waves beating flat against it till it seemed the boat might break. Veltz studied Pelter, expecting him to ask if the craft could take this sort of pounding. Inexperienced people usually did, yet Pelter did not. Instead, he stared at the thrashing of the dark otter, and the spreading stain of its inky