From the Deep of the Dark by Hunt Stephen

Author:Hunt, Stephen [Hunt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

‘Are you deaf?’ bellowed On’esse as Sadly and Daunt hesitated in climbing off the harvesting raft, snorkel spiders circling the boat with an eager, hungry intent.

‘This is inhuman,’ Daunt called out. ‘I must protest.’

‘Protest all you like,’ laughed On’esse, ‘but protest from the water. You have just as long as it takes my soldier here to reload his gun. All of you, restart your cropping!’

‘Cracked old arsehole,’ cursed Morris, now moving down the tree, but as slowly as he could. Obviously hoping someone else would get to the water first and attract the remaining snorkel spiders’ attention. ‘He’ll do for us all.’

Dick Tull could only agree. He’d had the luck to be on the tree strap, cutting down fruit when the attack started, otherwise he’d be taking part in this slow-motion race to see who would survive. Just so long as On’esse doesn’t notice I’m no longer holding my machete and orders me down too. Commandant On’esse had lost his patience waiting for his raft’s big tripod mounted gun to be reloaded with a fresh shell. He pulled out his pistol and waved it threateningly towards the nearest guard station. ‘You there, push the surface dwellers off your platform – those stands are for us, not these vermin.’

Something moved behind the commandant’s launch. At first, Dick thought that what he was watching was one of the snorkel spiders attracted to the commandant’s still humming engine, but the shape kept on rising and rising. Not a flurry of mandibles, but an orange-coloured carapace mottled with camouflaged yellow stripes, a long flat curve of armour wider than the commandant’s launch and balanced by two huge serrated claws.

‘Tiger crab!’ warned Dick.

‘Not just any tiger crab,’ muttered Morris, abandoning any pretence to be heading back into the water. ‘It’s Old Death-shell back again.’

Now Dick saw what the heavy bore weapon on the front of On’esse’s boat was for. Unfortunately for the camp commandant, he’d already wasted its shell on a hapless Jackelian victim. Desperately trying to reload, the soldier on the bow was near decapitated when Old Death-shell brought down its two claws onto the boat. Struck amidships and stern at the same time, the boat crumpled into three pieces under the tiger crab’s touch, On’esse discharging his pistol as he was flung back by the collapsing craft and the impact of the man-sized claws. His pistol shot rebounded off the shell close to Old Death-shell’s eyestalks, a new black scar of explosive residue joining a hundred others. Old Death-shell wore its previous encounters with the guards and their prisoners of war like medals on its armour, a constellation of scratches and lacerations speaking of how hard it was to kill. Trampling the boat, fair dancing across it in triumph, the tiger crab’s eight legs carried it over the debris and towards the thrashing form of On’esse. Old Death-shell’s left claw lazily swung around into an upper cut, smashing the commandant and sending him flying out of the surface before landing with a splash and a thump towards the bottom of Dick’s tree.

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