“Real-keel,” muttered Brasil. “Think we should worry?”
It was hard to believe the Harlan family would run real-keel patrol boats. Still—
“Kill the drives.” Sierra Tres said it for me. “Go to standby flotation. It’s not worth the risk.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Reluctantly, I found the buoyancy controls and shut down the grav support. Instantly I felt myself starting to sink as the weight of my gear asserted itself. I prodded the emergency flotation dial and felt the standby chambers in the flotation jacket start to fill up. Cut it as soon as my descent stopped, and floated in the flashlit gloom, listening to the approaching whine of the boat.
Elena, maybe?
Green eyes shining.
The reef tipping over onto us.
As another angelfire blast cut loose, I spotted the keel of the vessel overhead, big and sharkish, and hugely misshapen on one side. I narrowed my eyes and peered in the postblast gloom, cranking the neurachem. The boat seemed to be dragging something.
And the tension drained back out of me.
“Charter boat, guys. They’re hauling a bottleback carcass.”
The boat labored past and faded northward on a bored drone, listing awkwardly with the weight of its prize, not even that close to us in the end. Neurachem showed me the dead bottleback in silhouette against the blue-lit surface of the water, still trailing thin threads of blood into the water. The massive torpedo body rolled sluggishly against the bow wave; the flukes trailed like broken wings. Part of the dorsal flange had been ripped loose at some point and now it flogged back and forth in water, blurred at the edges with ragged lumps and tendrils of tissue. Loose cabling tangled alongside. Looked as if they’d harpooned it a few times—whoever had chartered the boat clearly wasn’t that great a fisherman.
When humans first arrived on Harlan’s World, the bottlebacks didn’t have any natural predators. They were the top of the food chain, magnificently adapted marine hunters and highly intelligent, social animals. Nothing the planet had evolved recently was up to killing them.
We soon changed that.
“Hope that’s not an omen,” murmured Sierra Tres unexpectedly.
Brasil made a noise in his throat. I vented the emergency chambers on the buoyancy jacket and snapped the grav system back on. The water seemed suddenly colder around me. Behind the automatic motions of course check and gear trim, I could feel a vague, undefined anger seeping in.
“Let’s get this done, guys.”
But the mood was still with me twenty minutes later when we crept into the shallows at the base of Rila, pulsing at my temples and behind my eyes. And projected on the glass of my scuba mask, the pale red route pointers from Natsume’s simulation software seemed to flare in time with the ratcheting of my own blood. The urge to do damage was a rising tide inside me, like wakefulness, like hilarity.
We found the channel Natsume had recommended, eased through with gloved hands braced against rock and coral outcrops to avoid snagging. Levered ourselves up out of the water onto a narrow ledge that the software had tinted and flagged with a slightly demonic smiling face. Entry level, Natsume had said, shedding his monkish demeanor for a fleeting moment. Knock, knock. I got myself braced and took stock. Faint silvery light from Daikoku touched the sea, but Hotei had still not risen and the spray from the maelstrom and nearby wavecrash fogged what light there was. The view was mostly gloom. Angelfire sent shadows scurrying past on the rocks as another firework package burst somewhere to the north. Thunder rippled across the sky. I scanned the cliff above for a moment, then the darkened sea we’d just climbed out of. No sign we’d been noticed. I detached the dive helmet’s frame from the mask and lifted it off. Shed my flippers and flexed the toes of the rubber boots underneath.
“Everybody okay?”
Brasil grunted an affirmative. Tres nodded. I secured the helmet frame at my belt in the small of my back where it wouldn’t get in the way, stripped off my gloves, stowed them in a pouch. Settled the now lightweight mask a little more comfortably on my face and checked that the datafeed was still securely jacked in. Tipping my head back, I saw Natsume’s route march off above us in clearly marked red hand- and footholds.
“You all seeing this okay?”
“Yeah.” Brasil grinned. “Kind of spoils the fun, doesn’t it? Marking it out like that.”
“You want to go first then?”
“After you, Mister Eishundo.”
Without giving myself time to think about it, I reached up and grasped the first indicated hold, braced my feet, and heaved myself onto the cliff. Swung up and found a grip with my other hand. The rock was wet with maelstrom mist, but the Eishundo grip held. I brought a leg across to fit against an angled ledge, swung again, and grasped.
And left the ground behind.
Nothing to it.
The thought zipped through my mind after I’d gone about twenty meters, and left a slightly manic grin in its wake. Natsume had warned me that the early stages of the climb were deceptive. It’s apeman stuff, he said seriously. Lots of wide swings and grabs, big moves, and your strength’s good at this stage. You’re going to feel good. Just remember it doesn’t last.
I pursed my lips, chimpanzee-like, and hooted gently through them. Below me, the sea smashed and gnawed restlessly at rock. The sound and scent of it came bouncing up the cliff face and wrapped me in windings of chill and damp. I shrugged off a shudder.
Swing up. Grab.
Very slowly, it grew on me that the Envoy conditioning hadn’t yet come online against my vertigo. With the rock face less than half a meter in front of my face and the Eishundo muscle system thrumming on my bones, it was almost possible to forget that there was a drop below. The rock lost the coating of spray from the maelstrom as we climbed higher, the repeating roar of waves faded to distant white noise. The gecko grip on my hands made glassy, treacherous holds laughably comfortable. And more than all these factors, or maybe the culminating Eishundo touch, what I’d told Natsume seemed to be true—the sleeve knew how to do this.
Then, as I reached a set of holds and ledges whose markers the mask display labeled with a rest-point symbol, I looked down to see how Brasil and Tres were doing, and ruined it all.
Sixty meters below—not even a third of the whole climb—the sea was a blackened fleece, touched with Daikoku silver where it rippled. The skirt of rocks at the base of Rila sat in the water like solid shadows. The two big ones that framed the channel where we’d come in now looked as if they’d fit into my hand. The back-and-forth sluice of water between them was hypnotic, pulling me downward. The view seemed to pivot dizzyingly.
The conditioning came online, flattening the fear. Like air lock doors in my head. My gaze came up again to face the rock. Sierra Tres reached up and tapped my foot.
“Okay?”
I realized I’d been frozen for the best part of a minute.
“Just resting.”
The marked trail of holds leaned left, an upward diagonal around a broad buttress that Natsume had warned us was pretty much unclimbable. Instead he’d lain back and moved almost upside down under the chin of the buttress, feet jammed against minute folds and fissures in the stone, fingers pinching angles of rock that barely deserved the name hold, until he could finally get both hands on a series of sloped ledges at the far side and haul himself back into a nearly vertical position.
I gritted my teeth and started to do the same.
Halfway there, my foot slipped, swung my weight out, and pulled my right hand off the rock. An involuntary grunt, and I was dangling left-handed, feet flailing for purchase far too low to find anything apart from empty air. I would have screamed but the barely recovering sinews in my left arm were doing it for me.
“Fuck.”
Hang on tight.
The gecko grip held.
I curled upward from the waist, craning my neck to see the marked footholds in the glass of the mask. Short, panicky breaths. I got one foot lodged against a bubb
le of stone. Tiny increments of strain came off my left arm. Unable to see clearly with the mask, I reached up in the dark with my right hand and felt about on the rock for another hold.
Found it.
Moved my braced foot fractionally and jammed the other one in next to it.
Hung, panting.
No, don’t fucking stop!
It took all my willpower to move my right hand for the next hold. Two more moves, and it took the same sickening effort to look for the next. Three more moves, a fractionally improved angle, and I realized I was almost to the other side of the buttress. I reached up, found the first of the sloping ledges, and dragged myself hyperventilating and cursing upright. A genuine, deeply grooved hold offered itself. I got my feet to the lowest ledge. Sagged with relief against the cool stone.
Get yourself up out of the fucking way, Tak. Don’t leave them hanging about down there.
I scrambled up the next set of holds until I was on top of the buttress. A broad shelf glowed red in the mask display, smiling face floating above it. Rest point. I waited there while Sierra Tres and then Brasil emerged from below and joined me. The big surfer was grinning like a kid.
“Had me worried there, Tak.”
“Just. Don’t. Fucking don’t, all right?”
We rested for about ten minutes. Over our heads, the battlement flange of the citadel was now clearly visible, clean-cut edges emerging from the chaotic angles of the natural rock it jutted above. Brasil nodded upward.
“Not far to go now, eh?”
“Yeah, and only the ripwings to worry about.” I dug out the repellent spray and squirted myself liberally with it all over. Tres and Brasil followed suit. It had a thin, faintly green odor that seemed stronger in the fitful darkness. It might not drive a ripwing away under all and any circumstances, but it would certainly put them off. And if that wasn’t enough . . .
I drew the Rapsodia from its holster on my lower ribs and pressed it to a utility patch on my chest. It clung there, easily at hand in fractions of a second, always assuming I could spare the hand to grab it in the first place. Faced with the prospect of meeting a cliff full of angry, startled ripwings with young to defend, I would have preferred the heavy-duty Sunjet blaster on my back, but there was no way I could wield it effectively. I grimaced, adjusted the mask, and checked the datajack again. Drew a deep breath and reached for the next set of handholds.
Now the cliff face grew convex, bulging out and forcing us to climb at a sustained backward lean of twenty degrees. The path Natsume had taken wove back and forth across the rock, governed by the sparse availability of decent holds, and even then opportunities to rest were few and far between. By the time the bulge faded back to a vertical, my arms were aching from shoulder to fingertip, and my throat was raw from panting.
Hang on tight.
I found a display-marked diagonal crack, moved up it to give the others space, and jammed an arm in up to the elbow. Then I hung there limply, collecting breath.
The smell hit me about the same time as I saw the gossamer-thin streamers of white dangling from above.
Oily, acidic.
Here we go.
I twisted my head and stared upward for confirmation. We were directly below the colony’s nesting band. The whole expanse of rock was thickly plastered with the creamy webbing secretion that ripwing embryos were birthed directly into and lived in for their four-month gestation. Evidently, somewhere just above me, mature hatchlings had torn their way free and either taken wing or tumbled incompetently to a Darwinian conclusion in the sea below.
Let’s not think about that right now, eh?
I cranked the neurachem vision and scanned the colony. Dark shapes preened and flapped here and there on protruding crags in the mass of white, but there weren’t many of them. Ripwings, Natsume assured us, don’t spend a lot of time at the nests. No eggs to keep warm, and the embryos feed directly off the webbing. Like most hardcore climbers, he was a part-time expert on the creatures. You’re going to get a few sentinels, the odd birthing female and maybe some well-fed parents secreting more gunge onto their particular patch. If you go carefully, they may leave you alone.
I grimaced again and began to work my way up the crack. The oily stink intensified, and shreds of torn webbing began to adhere to my suit. The chameleochrome system blanched to match wherever the stuff touched. I stopped breathing through my nose. A quick glance down past my boots showed me the others following, faces contorted with the smell.
And then, inevitably, the crack ran out and the display said that the next set of holds was buried beneath the webbing. I nodded drearily to myself and plunged a hand into the mess, wriggling fingers around until they found a spur of rock that resembled the red model in the display. It seemed pretty solid. A second plunge into the webbing gave me another, even better hold and I hacked sideways with one foot, looking for a ledge that was also covered in the stuff. Now, even breathing through my mouth, I could taste the oil at the back of my throat.
This was far worse than the climb over the bulge. The holds were good, but each time you had to force your hand or foot through the thick, clinging webs until it was secure. You had to watch out for the vague shadows of embryos hung up inside the stuff, because even embryonic they could bite, and the surge of fear hormones they’d release through the webbing if you touched them would hit the air like a chemical siren. The sentinels would be on us seconds after, and I didn’t rate our chances of fighting them off without falling.
Stick your hand in. Flex it about.
Get a grip. Move.
Pull clear and shake your hand free. Gag at the liberated stink. Stick your hand back in.
By now we were coated with clinging strands of the stuff and I was finding it hard to remember what climbing on clean rock had been like. At the edges of a nearly cleared patch, I passed a dead and rotting hatchling, caught upside down by the talons in a freak knot of webbing it hadn’t been strong enough to break before it starved to death. It added new, sickly-sweet layers of decay to the stink. Higher up, a nearly grown embryo seemed to turn its beaked head to look at me as I reached gingerly into the gunge half a meter away.
I drew myself up over a ledge made rounded and sticky by webbing.
The ripwing lunged at me.
Probably, it was as startled as I was. Rising mist of repellent and the bulky black figure that came after, you could see how it would be. It went for my eyes with a repeated stabbing movement, punched the mask instead and jerked my head back. The beak made a skittering noise on the glass. I lost my left-hand grip, pivoted on the right. The ripwing croaked and hunched closer, stabbing at my throat. I felt the serrated edge of the beak gouge skin. Out of options, I dragged myself back hard against the ledge with my right hand. My left whiplashed out, neurachem-swift, and grabbed the fucking thing by the neck. I ripped it off the ledge and hurled it downward. There was another startled croak, then an explosion of leathery wings below me. Sierra Tres yelled.
I got another grip with my left hand and peered down. They were both still there. The ripwing was a retreating winged shadow, soaring away out to sea. I unlocked my breath again.
“You okay?”
“Can you please not do that again,” gritted Brasil.
I didn’t have to. Natsume’s route took us through an area of torn and used-up webbing next, finally over a narrow band of thicker secretion, and then we were clear. A dozen good holds after that and we were crouched on a worked-stone platform under the main battlement flange of the Rila citadel.
Tight, traded grins. There was enough space on the platform to sit down. I tapped the induction mike.
“Isa?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Her voice came through uncharacteristically high-pitched, hurried with tension. I grinned again.
“We’re at the top. Better let the others know.”
“All right.”
I settled back against the stonework and breathed out loose-lipped. Stared out at the horizon.
&nb
sp; “I do not want to have to do that again.”
“Still this bit left,” said Tres, jerking her thumb upward at the flange. I followed the motion and looked at the underside of the battlement.
Settlement-years architecture. Natsume had been almost scornful. So fucking baroque, they might as well have built a ladder into it. And the glimmer of pride that all his time as a Renouncer didn’t seem to have taken away. ’Course, they never expected anyone to get up there in the first place.
I examined the ranks of carving on the upward-sloping underside of the flange. Mostly, it was the standard wing-and-wave motifs, but in places there were stylized faces representing Konrad Harlan and some of his more notable relatives from the Settlement era. Every ten square centimeters of stonework offered a decent hold. The distance out to the edge of the flange was less than three meters. I sighed and got back to my feet.
“Okay then.”
Brasil braced himself next to me, peering up the angle of the stone. “Looks easy enough, eh? Think there are any sensors?”
I pressed the Rapsodia against my chest to make sure it was still secure. Loosened the blaster in its sheath on my back. Got back to my feet.
“Who fucking cares.”
I reached up, stuck a fist in Konrad Harlan’s eye, and dug in with my fingers. Then I climbed out over the drop before I could think about it. About thirty hanging seconds and I was onto the vertical wall. I found similar carvings to work with and seconds later was crouched on a three-meter-broad parapet, peering down into a cloister-lined, tear-shaped ornamental space of raked gravel and painstakingly aligned rocks. A small statue of Harlan stood near the center, head bowed and hands folded meditatively, overshadowed at the rear by an idealized Martian whose wings were spread in protection and conferral of power. At the far end of the rounded space, a regal arch led away, I knew, to the shadowed courtyards and gardens of the citadel’s guest wing.