Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

“Still no skrit in commerical quantity,” a speaker told us, “but we’ve got a bork on scope.”

Dylan was suddenly all business. “Does he look interested in us?”

“Nope. Not particularly. Big one, though. Four, maybe five tons. About twelve hundred meters south-southwest and at about twenty meters depth. Not going much of anywhere, maybe going to come up for some sun is all.”

“Well, keep an eye on him,” she ordered, “and warn me of any changes in behavior.” She walked out onto the outer deck around the bridge and I followed. The wind from our speed was pretty fierce, although there was a windshield just forward of the real bridge and actually an auxiliary wheel. She stared out at the open sea, as did I, but I could see nothing.

“Yup. There he is,” she said unemotionally as she pointed. I squinted in the indicated direction but could see little. I began to wonder if she was putting me on or if my eyes weren’t as good as hers.

“I don’t see a thing.”

“See—way off there? Look real hard in the sky. Squint a little against the reflection, or put on your dark glasses.”

I put on the glasses, which I didn’t particularly find comfortable, and tried to see. “Look in the sky?”

She nodded. “See those little black specks?”

I tried very hard, and thought I could see what she meant. “Uh-huh.”

“They’re geeks,” she told me.

I tried to remember what a geek was. Some kind of flying horror, I seemed to recall. A carrion-eater. “Do they always follow borks?”

She nodded. “They’re too lazy to make kills for themselves, and borks are greedy killers who are not too efficient about disposing of their kill. Oddly enough, the bork feeds mostly on skrit, which is why we have the problems we do, but it attacks and takes bites out of almost everything, including other borks. Some sort of natural balance, really. The borks feed the flying creatures and several other sea creatures by the kills they make and don’t or can’t consume. That’s why we even have limits on the number of borks we can kill.”

“He’s turning,” came the voice on the speaker. “We’ve got the bed pretty well located now and he’s heading right toward it. I’ve sent a slowdown order to the fleet. Shall we engage?”

She looked thoughtful. “Call Karel. Ask if she’s in any position to assist a runaway.”

There was a short pause, and I gathered by their manner that it was better just to stand out of the way, and let them do what they knew how to do so well. I had an uneasy feeling about all this, though. I kept hearing that “four, maybe five tons” over and over again.

“Karel says she’s about twenty minutes away, and escort’s about forty.”

She looked at me. “Where’s Sanda?”

“In the lounge, last I checked.”

She turned back to the speaker. “Make sure the passenger is secure inside, then tell Karel to pour it on. Gun crews to full alert status. Stand by to close.” She went to the outside wheel and reached to one side, flipping a switch. The boat slowed noticeably. Then, one hand on the wheel and the other on the throttle, a stick with a big black ball on top, she took full control of the boat from the autopilot.

“You better go inside and get strapped in,” she told me. “We’re at least going to have to turn the bastard and I don’t want to lose you.”

I nodded absently, feeling a little tightness in my stomach. Lots of nasty things and nastier situations I could handle, but out here on the open sea facing a creature I’d only seen pictures of, I was totally at the mercy of Dylan and her crew. We were closing on the thing. I could clearly see the nasty-looking geeks, about half a dozen of them, circling a dark patch in the water.

“Qwin! Please!”

“All right, all right. I don’t want to distract you. I was just wondering why they called them borks.”

At that moment the sea ahead of us exploded wth an elephantine mass at least three times the size of the boat. An enormous slit opened, revealing a tremendous cavity linked with sharp teeth and wriggling, wormlike tendrils. “BOOOOAAAAARK!” it roared, so loud that it echoed like thunder across the open sea and almost burst my eardrums.

“Ask a stupid question,” I muttered, turned, and dashed for the lounge. Sanda was already there, strapped into a chair and watching out the window. I joined her, almost getting thrown against the side by the sudden change in the boat’s direction.

Sanda’s expression was stupefied and vacant, her mouth open, and when I got myself into a seat and stared out the window I probably looked about the same myself. “Oh, man!” she breathed.

The entire side of the ship seemed dominated by the monstrous reddish-brown thing that continued to show more and more of itself. I couldn’t translate what I was seeing to the pictures and diagrams I’d seen of the things.

Out of the water on either side rose four huge tentacles with bony spikes all over. The tentacles alone looked as if they could pick up and crush the boat, and those bony protrusions looked as if they could easily penetrate not only the plastiglass but the armor plating itself. Worse, I knew that the entire surface of the bork’s skin was tremendously sticky and abrasive at the same time, so that the merest touch could rip flesh from bone.

And we were slowly cruising by now, as if on a sightseeing tour!

Suddenly I heard the engine rev up, whining as if it were strained to the limit: We had been moving so slowly that we were actually hardly up on our hydrofoil skis at all. Then the guns let loose, shaking the ship from stem to stem and sending cups and such flying. The guns were explosive projectiles; you couldn’t use a disrupter system on something mostly underwater because you might not be able to stop the effect. Besides, a weaker laser wouldn’t put a dent in something this size, whose vital organs were always well underwater and away-from direct attack by boats.

I had to admit that for the first time in my life I felt not only helpless but terrified.

The shells struck the thing and exploded with enormous force, releasing not only a powerful explosive charge but also some kind of electrical one as well. The creature roared and moved faster than I would have believed anything that big could possibly move. But still we remained, just crawling past.

With a splash I thought might sink us by itself, the thing had appeared to retreat and dive at the same time, but I was suspicious of this respite. We waited tensely.

Suddenly we were jerked almost out of our restraining straps as the full power of the engines was released at once and the ship almost jumped out of the water.

In a matter of no more than a couple of seconds, the bork rose with a roar and enfolded an area of ocean astern of us. I realized with a sinking feeling that that area of sea was where we had just been.

The aft gun opened up with a full series of shots, pouring it into the great beast. With its computer laser-guidance system it must have poured twenty or more exploding charges into the thing, and they barely made a dent in it.

Again the bork seemed to shrivel and sink beneath the waves. Outside somewhere over the roar of all the action I kept hearing fierce, loud cries of “Geek! Geek!” like some sort of bizarre cheerleading squad—which in a way it was.

So much for how creatures on Cerberus got their names.

For more than half an hour we played cat and mouse with the beast, luring, feinting, and shooting at it with enough ordnance to totally obliterate a medium-sized city. After a while you could see the areas of the creature that had been shot away, and occasional wounds still bubbling and hissing from the electrochemicals shot into it that water would not extinguish. But no matter how many times it was hit, there seemed to be another section just as nasty and virtually untouched.