Event Horizon (Hellgate) (104 page)

“Muscles spasm to pump water through a valve system running through the center of the body,” Rusch observed. “No wonder they’re fast. If they’re a food animal, they’d be tough to catch.”

For a moment Marin struggled to put his finger on the real gist of what she had said. It was Vidal who placed it. “Hunters,” he said hoarsely. “Zunshu are the intelligent species here, and they evolved in an oceanic environment as hunters. You’ve seen the prey animal. The rest of them might have hightailed it away when they saw us coming, but they’re
hunters
. We knew they had to be.”

“But they’re not hunting now,” Shapiro said sourly. “They’re hiding.”

“Which demonstrates good sense,” Rusch added into the loop.

“And you,” Dario said in acid tones, “wanted a fight.”

“Expected a fight,” Shapiro allowed.

“Wanted,” Dario snorted. “We all did. We
wanted
a stand-up knife-fight, and we’d hammer them into submission, make ’em shut up, sit down and
listen
while we read the bastards terms, told ’em how it was going to happen, what they owed us.”

As he spoke they were moving again – quickly now, keenly aware of the passage of time. The longer they tarried in an alien milieu that was as fascinating as it was incomprehensible, the more likely they were to walk into disaster. Marin fell into step at Travers’s side, every moment now panning his sensors and weapons in every direction as if his instincts could not trust the gundrones.

“Relax, we’re covered,” Travers said, just audible over the loop.

“Tell that to my nerves.” Marin mocked himself with a note of acid humor. “There’s a Neanderthal hunter inside me, and he’s dead certain there’s a sabre-tooth tiger breathing right down the back of his neck!” He raised his voice. “Lai’a, how far is the computer core?”

“Turn left at the aperture set 15 meters above you, enter the passage,” the AI told him, “and a cluster of apparatus is 120 meters ahead of you. The apparatus is sealed inside a bubble of inert gas, approximately seven meters in diameter. Do
not
flood the chamber. Machinery within is susceptible to –”

Movement at the extreme left of the field of view allowed by the helmet camera made Marin’s heart jump. He spun as fast as the armor would permit – the gundrones were faster, and before he could level a weapon on the creature it was covered by forty others. The drones were configured to fire only if they detected live weapons systems, and though guns were primed, they waited.

Listening to the pulse drumming in his ears, Marin blinked at the creature, eyes racing over it, only one word in his mind –
Zunshu
. It hovered in what a human might have called a doorway; the chamber beyond was dim, almost dark.

Zunshu
. Smaller than human dimensions, he saw – perhaps a meter and a half from end to end, green-russet-gold in color, like an ambush predator designed by evolution to blend into its environment. Elongated, feathery gill structures in its sides beat much faster than his own pulse. Six big, dark eyes clustered around and above a bush of cilia which undulated constantly, tasting, sniffing. The eyes blinked in odd patterns, bottom lid to top, and never two eyes at the same time. He saw nothing he would have identified as a mouth, but 30 centimeters below the gesticulating cilia was the slit-like opening of what seemed to be a pouch, served by four thick members, more like paddles than tentacles. The paddles were supple, dextrous, restless, patting the pouch nervously, tracing the line of its opening – exactly like a human wringing his hands and patting his lips in anxiety.

The creature had no legs, Marin saw; a fin shape extended down and back like a rudder. What use would legs be to a creature that evolved in liquid? It had no arms, but six slender members, each almost meter long, clustered to left and right of the sensor-rich snout, coiling, uncoiling, with boneless, rapid, jerky movements as if the creature were terrified. Fang-like spines peeped out from the ends of the longest two of these ‘arms’ and were retracted again like cat claws, in a quick rhythm of instinct, or fright, or both.

The body was as wide as the torso of an adolescent human, skirted by graceful, rippling flanges of muscle giving it tremendous precision of movement. The muscles flushed from color to color, perhaps reflecting the creature’s mood – in which case, purple and green were its hues of fear, Marin guessed.

But its defining feature was the fluted spiral of the gorgeous, white-gold shell which it wore like a parasol. Part of the body extended back into the shell, and chambers inside were certainly filled with gas – the creature was positively buoyant. As Marin looked closer he saw that glands on its flanks effervesced, emitting froths of tiny bubbles – adjusting the pressure in the shell?

Was this individual male, female, young, old, startled, curious? Humans and Resalq saw no clue, but he could guess this one had been left behind in the rush to get away. It might be an infant, an invalid, an imbecile, or simply an individual who had been caught unawares.

The limb-like members around the sensor-rich snout … the face? Marin could
see
no face, but he knew no other word … spread, gestured, flushed with color. The creature blinked three of its eyes rhythmically, which almost looked as if it were winking, while its flanks effervesced.

“Mark … is it signing?” Rusch whispered, as if she thought she must murmur though she was back in the makeshift Ops room, experiencing threedee telepresence. “Barb?”

“The colors, the gestures,” Jazinsky agreed. “It could be talking to us right now.”

“And we wouldn’t know how to respond or reply,” Shapiro said in a tone of profound frustration. “Lai’a, record everything you can. If there’s any way to interpret what it’s saying … if it’s actually saying anything –”

“It is making sounds, General,” Lai’a said musingly. “They are under the range your suit audio can detect, but the gundrones are recording.”

“Sounds? What kind of sounds?” Mark asked eagerly. “Something we could hope to mimic?”

“With Resalq or human vocal apparatus – no,” Lai’a said at once. “However, the audible sounds superficially resemble those created by various amphibians. Here is a sample.”

Over the open loop, Marin listened to a stream of gurgling, whopping, rumbling and croaking. Travers swore softly, and Shapiro groaned. “I deserve this. For months, I’ve been preparing rational arguments to be delivered in inspiring language, imagining myself looking the enemy in the face, pleading the innocence and indignation of both our species.”

“Language, Lai’a?” Mark might not have been aware of a syllable Shapiro had said. “Is it speaking?”

“Definitely,” Lai’a assured him. “And I am recording. I will need comprehensive samples, plus some point of reference. Without that point of reference, the spoken language will remain identifiable
as
a language, but impossible to translate.”

“And they,” Travers added, “are going to have to provide the reference points.”

“They’ll have to
want
to talk,” Vidal warned. “If they don’t want to –”

As he spoke, the creature shot a dense cloud of black ink, spun and jetted away with a venting of compressed gas from the shell. It vanished into the darkness of the chamber, leaving just a fog of ink and a trail of bubbles, which in moments dissolved into the mineral-heavy water.

“The ink cloud is a neurotoxin,” Lai’a reported, “similar to venom delivered by the fangs you saw in two of its six ‘arms.’ These characteristics identify these creatures as hunters; their agility, speed, buoyancy and venom render them among the biosphere’s most potent hunters. Analysis of the neurotoxin suggests one of these creatures could disable or kill a prey animal one hundred times its size. Closeup imaging of the four paddle-like members set around the feeding pouch shows three ranks of oscillating flat blades on the edges of each paddle. The feeding method is simple. The creature seizes disabled prey with two of the members while the remaining two carve into the flesh and pass wedges direct to the feeding pouch, which may be mouth or gut, or a combination of both. Further data is required to differentiate.” Lai’a paused for a moment, and its tone was terse. “More Zunshu are in the dim compartment. The gundrones detect at least twenty, clustered together in the darkness. They appear to be hiding.”

“Any trace of weapons back there?” Travers wondered.

“No. The creatures appear to be extremely timid.” Lai’a paused. “The chamber into which they retreated has two ‘doors.’ They can escape at whim. However, they are hiding in the shadows.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Marin said softly. “They can see we’re in armor, bristling with weapons. They have to know instruments can look into darkness – shadows are no defense.”

“Yet they remain clustered in the dimness,” Lai’a told him.

“As if they think we can’t see them.” Vidal turned to look back the way they had come. “Are these retards? They were left behind – because they’re morons, it wasn’t worth the bother of rounding them up?”

“Or …” Mark hesitated. “They could be captives. Slave laborers, stolen from another community?” He made exasperated sounds. “These might not be Zunshu at all. A captive race?”

“How about a sub-species of Zunshu, considered inferior and expendable,” Dario suggested.

“These could be low-caste Zunshu,” Jazinsky added. “The high-caste and smart ones picked up and ran when they saw us coming. These guys are subordinate, the ones who draw the filthy jobs, clean the latrines, and are denied education. They might also be in-bred to produce timidity, subservience, even stupidity.”

“A docile, expendable labor caste.” Travers sounded disgusted. “It figures. But unless I miss my guess, it also means they’re sure to have a warrior caste at the other end of the social ladder.”

“Very likely,” Mark said with grim conviction, “and also a caste of academics. Given this system, one might expect to find a priesthood of some description, even if they don’t recognize deity.”

“Hustle –
again
,” Vidal said sharply. “We’re not going to get answers by shining flashlights down rabbit holes. You want to task a drone to image the whole bunch? Make it quick.”

“It’s the computer core we need,” Dario agreed. “The answers are about 120 meters ahead of us!”

“Lai’a, send
one
gundrone five meters into the chamber,” Mark said quietly. “Get all the images and video possible. Don’t try to trap them. If they flee, let them run. As for us … as the man said,
hustle
!”

A ‘door’ – or window, or hatch, Marin was unsure – was fifteen meters up on their left. They rose into it on repulsion, following three gundrones with two behind, while one lingered on the edge of the dimness where the group of creatures seemed to believe they were unseen, safe. The passage rose on an angle, twisted through a corkscrew and inclined down again, through more than a hundred meters of shining mother-of-pearl and wriggling colonies of bioluminescent
crustacea
.

The drones dropped out first into an almost spherical bubble where the light came from everywhere and no direction seemed to be ‘up.’ A moment of disorientation caught Marin by surprise before be resorted to instrumentation. He and Travers stood back now, and Curtis found himself consciously setting a perimeter, walking it, while Mark, Dario and even Midani Kulich began to croon over the contents of a bubble-within-a-bubble. Within the transparent-shelled capsule was a six meter by three meter case, almost like a missile housing, save that it was tapered and convoluted, the surface striated with gorgeous, feathery veins.

“It’s a carbon monoxide environment inside,” Dario was muttering as they took readings.

“Circuitry … holographic, crystalline matrix.” Mark was breathless, as if with excitement. “This is it, Lai’a, you picked it right.” He aimed every sensor he possessed into the bubble, which exuded a soft, pearly illumination.

Marin shifted to see around them, and frowned over what he saw within. The object itself was as alien as everything in this place, but his helmet display repeated the deep scan Mark was running, and as he glimpsed the inside of the object he murmured a soft oath. “Now, that’s – familiar.” He heard the edge in his own voice.