Neal Asher: The Voyage of the Sable Keech

Seeing the creature loom out of the underwater gloom, Vrell immediately recognized it from the bio-files concerning this planet’s fauna. The humans called it a molly carp—the second part of its name resulting from its huge main body resembling a Terran fish called a carp. However, rather than use its tail for propulsion, this creature towed itself along the seabed with masses of belly tentacles. Now, it drew to a halt, those same tentacles winding together to form one trunk, so it came to stand like some strange fleshy tree. Perhaps this was some form of camouflage? No, the trunk twisted, turning the utterly level carp body towards Vrell, and thick lips drew back from a mass of translucent teeth.

Vrell felt his guts shrink with fear. Those few weapons he had retained were useless here, as they had been specifically designed for land warfare. Moreover, the natural cowardice of Prador adulthood—which he had only recently attained—had been exacerbated by many recent attempts on his life. He kept moving further down into the depths, his beacon return telling him that his father’s ship was not far away. The carp eagerly closed in and began to circle him, observing. Perhaps it was curious about this potential dinner.

Vrell now surmised that his father, Ebulan, had been verging on senility, of which his venture to this hostile world had been just one sign. The war against mankind had been over for most of Ebulan’s lifetime and now trade and better relations were growing between the Prador and the humans. Because of atrocities Ebulan, with the connivance of certain humans, had committed here during that long-ago war—the coring of humans to use as Prador slaves—his fortunes in the Kingdom had recently been on the wane. However, coming here in an attempt to wipe out the Old Captains—ancient sea captains who were the only remaining survivors of the coring trade and therefore actual witnesses to Ebulan’s crimes—had been futile. Vrell, being an adolescent rigidly under the control of his father’s pheromones, had no say in the matter, and nearly died as a result. During those same events Ebulan’s spaceship had been knocked out of the sky by some missile, and it seemed likely that all those aboard were dead. Vrell assumed himself the only survivor—and maybe not even that for much longer.

The bottom here was a sloping stone slab crawling with leeches. Vrell skirted the occasional clusters of spiral-shelled hammer whelks, knowing that a concerted attack from them would be enough to crack his shell. The frog whelks he encountered quickly scattered, perhaps thinking him some new kind of glister—a creature he resembled only in that he possessed an exoskeleton and a similar number of legs. Vrell saw the vague shape of his father’s crashed spaceship ahead of him, picked out by the glow of still-burning internal fires, when the molly carp finally attacked.

It came in fast and low, clamping its thick-lipped mouth on his damaged claw. It rolled over, its tentacles starring around it. Vrell tried to spin over as well, but was not fast enough. The monster tore Vrell’s claw away from his body, gristle and tendons ripping out of his carapace and his green blood squirting into the water. The pain of that would have been more than enough, but while he was on his back, struggling to right himself, leeches attached themselves to the wound and began eating their way in. His bubbling scream echoed into the depths as he finally righted himself and forced himself onwards. He turned one palp eye and watched the molly carp champing down on his claw, crushing the shell as easily as chalk and sucking out the meat. He could feel the leeches simultaneously working their way into his carapace, chewing into his flesh, but could do nothing about that without the surgical tools stored inside the ship. Once it finished the claw, the carp tilted its head like a diner appreciating a particularly tasty starter, then it came after Vrell again.

The molly carp hit his side, flipping him over again, bowed itself down over him and snatched away one leg. Vrell dragged himself away on his back, as the carp made a half-hearted attempt to pin him down with its tentacles. Almost the instant he was upright again, another leech attached to this new wound, and also began boring its way in.

As the Prador struggled on, the carp paused to run its recent prize back and forth in its mouth like a toothpick. Vrell screeched and bubbled as it finally snapped this down and surged towards him again. Ahead, the edge of Father’s ship loomed like a cliff, and in that cliff Vrell spotted an open triangular port. The carp hit him again, took away one of his remaining two manipulatory limbs, and mashed it up in a cloud of green blood. Leeches now ribboned the surrounding water. Vrell hit the lower lip of the port and scrabbled to pull himself inside, but the carp clamped its mouth on the Prador’s carapace edge, and began to drag him out. Vrell turned both his eye-palps to triangulate, then kicked back with one sharp leg, piercing one of the creature’s eyes. The carp released him, drew back, then jerked forwards again to close its mouth on that same leg. Luckily it slipped at the last, and took off only the foot as Vrell lurched inside, reaching out with his remaining claw for the door controls. They were dead, however—there was no safety here.

Vrell sculled hard for the far wall of the chamber as the carp nosed inside after him. He noted, along the side wall, four empty clamps which had contained his father’s activated war drones. He was now in the drone cache. There were spare drone shells left in another two clamps, but they contained no minds so could offer no help. The control and backup mind would be here somewhere, but somnolent. He reached an airlock, jammed his claw into the pit control and began pumping the hydraulic opener. Slowly the lock door eased up, releasing air that rose in wide flat bubbles to silver the ceiling. These distracted the carp. It rose up high on its tentacles, sucked in a bubble and blew it out again. Then it returned its attention to the panicking Prador.

The door was open nearly wide enough. Vrell jammed himself underneath it and tried to heave it up further. He felt the carp bite on the rear of his carapace, and shell cracking with an agonizing underwater thump. But the attacker’s teeth then slipped and the Prador propelled himself into the lock beyond. The molly carp itself was too big to follow, but still probed after him. Through a haze of pain, Vrell pumped the door shut, hoping to sever some of the creature’s tentacles, but the molly carp withdrew them just before the lock closed.

When the seal on the inner door broke, water quickly drained into the ship. Intermittently issuing bubbling groans, Vrell continued working the hydraulic door mechanism until he could follow the water into the dank corridors. His father, he felt sure, was dead, but he had no intention of finding out for sure just then. He could feel that the three leeches inside his carapace had finished feeding—probably sated on the flesh they had already eaten as they bored their way in—but they were shifting about and the pain was still intense. He could do no more than keep dragging himself along the corridor on his three remaining legs, unable to even swat away the ship lice that dropped on him from above to graze around the edges of his wounds.

One of Father’s human blanks lay in the corridor, cut in half and burned down to bone in places, but still moving weakly. Suddenly, despite his pain, Vrell felt the hard clamp of hunger. He had not eaten in many days, and his recent transformation into an adult had sapped his energy. With his remaining claw he snipped away one of the blank’s arms, held it up to his mandibles, and began stripping cooked flesh away from the bone. He was about to move on, but realized the arm had not sated him, so he then picked up the remaining torso. Soon he had finished that and, feeling more energized, began eyeing the blank’s severed hips and legs. But then the leeches started moving inside his carapace again and, hissing like a leaky air compressor, he lurched onwards.