The Voyage of Sable Keech by Neal Asher

Author:Neal Asher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Voyage of Sable Keech
ISBN: 9780330521352
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2005-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Janer gazed down at the weapon he was holding. It seemed he would be getting just about all the excitement he could stand. As he holstered it, he noted that Wade had now tilted his head as if listening.

Emulation.

‘Do you hear it?’ Wade asked.

Janer listened intently. He could hear nothing but the usual sounds of the ship and the sea, but then he did not have a Golem’s hearing.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘A distinctive sound, something like a tank rolling across wooden boards, then a Batian weapon … and now laser carbines,’ Wade told him. ‘Down in the stern.’

In a fraction of a second, with a kind of snapping sound, Wade was on his feet, holding his carbine across his stomach. Could he have got me before I pulled the trigger? Janer wondered, and answered himself: Probably. He reached round and opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and turned to head for the nearest foremast stair. Reaching it, he made to go down towards the bilge.

Wade caught his shoulder. ‘Not that way. We’d have to go through most of the bilge itself to get there. We go along the main deck and down.’

They climbed the stair and stepped out onto the nighted deck. There Janer witnessed something that almost physically jerked him to a halt. He felt a further rush of adrenalin, immediately followed by confusion, as memories surfaced in his mind’s sea. Before him, a few metres above the deck and regarding him with topaz eyes, hovered an iron-coloured seahorse drone. Thirteen – the Warden’s drone that had been present during those events on the Skinner’s Island ten years ago.

‘You’re armed. Good. We need people armed. Can’t find any of Bloc’s merry crew. I reckon they’re down there after it.’

It took Janer a moment to realize Captain Ron was speaking to him from a few paces beyond the drone, and that behind him stood a crowd of Hoopers and two reifications.

‘What?’ Janer asked stupidly.

Ron stepped forward, the drone shifting aside for him. ‘Thirteen here tells me that nasty bugger is aboard.’

Janer nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ He gestured to his companion. ‘Wade just told me.’

Ron eyed the Golem. ‘How might you know that?’

Wade stepped forwards, pulled a knife out of his belt and handed it across to the Old Captain.

Peering over Ron’s shoulder, Forlam said, ‘Sturmbul. I wondered where he got to.’

Wade said, ‘What’s left of him is lying under a walkway down in the bilge. The hooder is down in the stern of this ship, and I heard weapons firing down there.’

‘Heard?’ Janer asked.

‘It has ceased,’ said Wade, glancing at him.

Ron peered at the APW that Wade held. ‘Mmm, well, best we go see what’s happened.’

Ron was armed with a heavy machete and a QC laser pistol. The others carried weapons which, in their variety, seemed to cover human history. They ranged from clubs and blades to muzzle-loaders, cartridge-fed weapons to various designs of pulse gun and laser. One of them even carried a machine gun. It was a pathetic collection of arms with which to go up against a hooder.

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