James Cambias - A Darkling Sea

Broadtail is braced and ready to start jabbing his spear through the netting at the attackers when the world fills with noise. It is far louder than even Longpincer’s signal device. He can feel the sound with his entire body, and his head feels like it is shattering. After the painful pulse of sound there is silence. Is he deaf? He taps the front of his head and hears it very faintly, but that is all.

Something is holding his spear. He tugs on it and jerks it free. Probing with it reveals something soft in front of him. The netting has collapsed!

The attackers must be almost as deaf as he is, and Broadtail is getting used to fighting things he cannot hear. He turns his spear sideways and holds it forward, hoping one of them will brush against it. Slowly the world comes back into existence around him, although every sound is accompanied by a throb of pain.

A large adult is two body-lengths away, ahead and to Broadtail’s right. She is moving slowly with her pincers extended, feeling around. Evidently she hears him at almost the same moment, for suddenly she rushes forward.

Broadtail swings his spear, jabbing the butt end into the front of her head and stopping her charge long enough for him to reverse his weapon and brace himself.

She tries to shove the spearpoint out of the way with her pincers and rush in, but Broadtail scuttles sideways, keeping the point between them. He prods at her head, hoping to force her back, but she holds her ground and the spear grates along her shell. She bursts forward before Broadtail can get his spear back into place, and now she’s almost in pincer-reach.

The bandit raises her pincers and lunges at Broadtail, stabbing down onto his back, trying to find a weak spot in his shell. He folds his own pincers and pushes forward, getting his head underneath hers and then shoving. He feels a jolt of pain from near his tail flukes as one pincer strikes home, but it angers him more than it harms him. He slams against the bandit’s underside with all his strength and she loses her grip on the sea bottom.

The two of them are now curled around each other in a ball, rolling about the bottom. Broadtail feels the bandit’s powerful pincers getting a grip on his tail. Is she trying to crack him? She is, and he can feel the stress in his shell.

In desperation he probes her underside with his pincer tip, but her flailing legs keep him from finding a gap. The pressure on his back is almost unbearable Then the bandit gives a twitch and lets go. He feels her body settle to the bottom next to him. He tastes blood in the water.

A small adult drops down in front of him and pulls a spear out of the bandit’s back. He recognizes Holdhard by flavor. “Thank you,” he says.

Rob waited for his ears to stop ringing and risked a visual look around with his lamp. There were four big gaps in the netting where the volley of microtorps had hit the support poles. The ’tarans on both sides were staggering around looking disoriented. Hearing bangs that loud must have hit them like a flashbulb in the eyes. One of them was down and not moving; Rob couldn’t tell if it was one of Longpincer’s people or an attacker.

Time to put a stop to that! He launched Drone Two, once again using the water column above the vent for concealment. While it was on its way he switched his link back to Drone One, keeping station above the Sholen position.

Rob picked his target almost at random: one of the faint green glows among the line of Sholen soldiers. The third one from the left. He designated it, then sent the drone into a power-dive toward its target. The signal lag meant he was just an observer, watching a series of still images as the Sholen grew larger and more distinct. His intended victim must have heard the drone approach, because the final clear frame showed him turning, his face indistinct within his helmet, mouth open.

Then there was a hash of visual static with fragments of blurry images. Then the link went dead. Had the drone even hit its target? Maybe Drone Two could tell him. Rob switched links and steered his last weapon on a long curving course around to the north. Since he’d dropped One on them from above, he kept Two hugging the sea bottom. As the drone got closer to the Sholen position, Rob adopted a scoot-and-freeze pattern of movement, staying under cover and out of sight as much as possible.

Soon he was within a few tens of meters of the Sholen position. The drone camera could pick up several of their safety lights, and the passive sonar detected eight Sholen. The firing line of Sholen soldiers with microtorp guns were on the move, grouping into pairs with one facing toward Longpincer’s house and one guarding the firer’s back. Good; he’d accomplished something. He didn’t know if getting them moving was good or bad.

Time for a different kind of mischief. Maybe he could mess with their supplies or something? Or find whoever was in charge of the whole attack?

He moved the drone to a point about twenty meters behind the firing line. Sonar detected a pair of the big grazers Broadtail called “towfins” tethered by some rocks, with a single Ilmataran minding them. He didn’t dare bring the drone too close to any Ilmataran—they’d hear it coming long before even a computer-enhanced Sholen hydrophone would notice.

The camera detected a faint light just ahead of the two animals. Slowly and quietly, Rob guided the drone toward it. A long-exposure still image resolved a pair of big cylinders sitting on the sea bottom. The light was coming from an indicator panel on the side of one. Some kind of self-propelled cargo pods, Rob guessed. Which meant the Sholen had enough supplies to fight all day if they wanted to. There was no way he could damage something like that with a knife blade mounted on a camera drone. He moved on, looking for something he could hurt.

Another series of deafening blasts makes Broadtail want to curl into a ball. He clutches the rock he stands on, hoping his sense returns before a barbarian plunges a pincer into him.

Someone taps numbers on his tail. “Move back to the house.” It is Holdhard. She leads him by one feeler. Broadtail tastes the water and starts working his way up the gradient of warmth and minerals toward the main vent until he runs into one of the guidelines, then follows that.

He stumbles over a body that has a familiar flavor. It is Strongpincer, the bandit. Broadtail cannot imagine the bandit charging this far, so he suspects the blast of tossing the body past the front line.

Out of curiosity, he feels the dead bandit’s harness and finds the stone box. He tucks it into his own carrying pouch. “I remember refusing to pay you, and now it is free. You are a very bad trader,” he tells the corpse.

His hearing is starting to return and he listens. The netting is gone, and half a dozen bandits are swimming over the tangled wreckage. Time to get into a house. With solid stone at their back even a small group of scholars and apprentices can hold off any number of bandits. Broadtail wonders how they can withstand the exploding swimmer weapons.

Rob’s ears were still ringing from the second volley of microtorps when an Ilmataran tapped him on the helmet. Since it wasn’t trying to gut him with its pincers, he figured it must be one of the good guys. His lexicon translated the message as “Builder swim structure,” which sounded like an order to retreat. He banged an okay on his chestplate.

Inside the house he wouldn’t be able to maintain the link. Time for Drone Two to go out in glory.

He checked the drone’s sonar and noticed a big noise source nearby. It sounded like something splashing, or trying to swim very clumsily. On the camera he could make out a very streaky image of a Sholen thrashing about on the sea bottom. Huh? Rob moved the drone closer.