Read Online World of Water by James Lovegrove - Free Book Online Page B

groaned softly and insistently, and every now and then a shudder ran through it like a small earth tremor. Dev was conscious of the slight tilt of the floor under him. The ship was skewed to port and aft. He couldn’t tell if the incline was steepening or not.
    The whaler doubtless had a double hull and watertight partitions between its bulkheads, as any large ship did. Polymer-crystal adhesive injectors as well, to soak up the water and provide a seal. A single, localised rupture in its skin would not be a fatal blow. It would, though, necessitate bringing the ship to a dead stop, if only so that a damage inspection could be carried out.
    Dev could only presume that the Tritonians had put a hole in the Egersund for precisely that reason – disable the whaler so that the captain had no alternative but to halt. Then they could board with ease.
    The search party arrived at the Egersund ’s mess hall, where Dev half expected to see unfinished meals on the tables. But the room was spick and span. When the Tritonians struck, the crew had been busy outside dealing with the freshly caught redback whale, not having a meal.
    Sigursdottir ordered a five-minute rest break. Milgrom kept lookout at the main door while the others set down their rifles and took a load off their feet. A canister of water was passed round, although Dev, pointedly, was not offered any.
    He shared with Sigursdottir his theory about how the Tritonians had forced the Egersund to stop. She agreed it was the likeliest scenario.
    “The thing about these particular indigenes,” she said, “is they’re not dumb. Don’t go thinking they’re primitives, savages, whatever. They aren’t. They’re a sophisticated, technologically adept race. Just because they don’t have Riemann Deviation drive spaceships and comms devices wired into their brains doesn’t mean they’re not every bit as smart as us.”
    “Crafty buggers as well,” Blunt interjected.
    “They may have started from a different baseline,” Sigursdottir continued. “They may use organic materials rather than predominantly inorganic like we do. But you underestimate them at your peril. Out of the water as well as in, they’re to be respected.”
    “And blasted to bits if they so much as look at you funny,” Milgrom commented from the doorway.
    “Hoo-rah!” said Francis, and she and Blunt high-fived.
    Sigursdottir grimaced. “As you can tell,” she said to Dev, “the Tritonians haven’t exactly endeared themselves to us in recent months.”
    “TerCon Marines,” said Dev. “Famous for their tolerance towards civilians and non-Terrans.”
    That almost – almost – provoked a smile from the stolid, imperturbable lieutenant. He could see it in her eyes, even if it didn’t quite extend to her face.
    “ISS operatives,” she retorted. “Famous for being sarcastic dickwads.”
    “I’ll have you know I earned us that reputation single-handedly.”
    They resumed their journey through the Egersund ’s labyrinthine interior, heading further down, deeper. Signs on the wall pointed the way toward a storage hold, so they followed them until they emerged into a cavernous space, very cold, traversed by conveyor belts, which were currently static. Compressor fans on a dozen huge refrigeration units thrummed reverberantly. Heavy-duty hooks were suspended from the ceiling on pulley chains, swaying ever so slightly as the stationary ship lolled.
    Here, at last, were the crew.
    There were perhaps forty of them all told. They hung from the hooks, limp and inert, and had, to a man and woman, been eviscerated. Innards lay clumped in heaps below their feet, still attached to their owners, unspooled from gashes in their bellies. Flesh had been stripped away, in some cases clean to the bone. Here and there a limb had been lopped.
    Like countless redbacks, the whaler’s crew had been methodically and ruthlessly butchered.
    “The phrase ‘poetic justice’ springs to mind,” said Dev.
    “The