The Shipping Forecast

Rockall - Part 10

Qi'tik said to her Queen: "I do not trust it, or them. What they ask for is outrageous. It cannot be done!"

The Queen was uncharacteristically quiet, turning away from Qi'tik and her anger. For the moment blind to the fact that the Queen was not of the same mind, Qi'tik carried on. "We should leave; go home and forget this place. It smells of decay and evil intent. We do not know what it is, this thing that asks so much of us, and I do not believe it's sweet words of wisdom. Gather the pod-shoal together before the storm makes it impossible and take all south again, please! ...Why do you not respond?"

When the Queen turned to face Qi'tik, it was with a sorrowful aspect that froze Qi'tik's heart. "What you suggest, we cannot do. Not because I disagree. Indeed I have the same concerns, the same fears. More even than you I am sure. We have not had the time to discuss what was spake to me by the Premier of the Eur'opan. We cannot go. The risk is too great."

"Why, my Queen? What was it the Premier spake you that frightens you so?"

The Queen slowed and came close to Qi'tik, placing her head against hers in a sign of intimacy and trust, then whispered her words. "I was threatened. The Eur'opan have a troop of shadow fish in their liner corp. If we do not do as we are bid, then the Eur'opan will attack and take the Bastions by force. The Premier told me this with great sorrow and regret. He cried as he spake."

Qi'tik reeled away and surfaced, an urgent need to breath the sweet air to quell her rising nausea. The excitement in Secci. The words of the Premier, so similar to the rock-self; repeated sorrow and regret. Were the Eur'opan lost to its influence already? She had no reason to disbelieve the presence of the shadow fish. The marker had been there all the time, she realised, there among the foreign scent of the Eur'opan, the name of those wild, dangerous selves only coming to the surface of her conscious once they were named by the Queen. Was the Nam'bia trapped? She couldn't allow it. She must convince her Queen to leave, now, whatever the risk.

Returning below in a panic, not taking the care she should have done in such dangerous circumstances, Qi'tik found Secci waiting with the Queen. Qi'tik felt a presence looming behind her and turned to glimpse a huge shape moving quickly; a sudden, strong pulse of sound that drowned her senses, then pain. Pain and darkness.

*

When she came to, it was to an immense agony that overwhelmed her; searing where her fins had been bitten, sharp and intense on her flank and back where the shadow fish had rammed her and then crushed her in its jaws. A childhood memory of her grandmatron telling the pod-nursery of how the shadow fish had once been close cousins, living side by side without rancour or hate, back when they were called Orka, before the awakening. The familiar shape of the beast, so like herself and her kin, left her feeling like she had been attacked by one of her own family.

At the surface, Qi'tik took in lungfuls of clean, cold air. She was tumbled in the waves, the mountainous swell taking her up, up, then down once more while storm-swept spume washed over her. She could see the rock near the horizon, not a great way off, and between it and her a great disturbance of brine. Diving deep to lessen the roar caused by tumbling water, Qi'tik held herself still, ignored the impulse to give in to the pain, and simply listened. Beneath the noise caused by the storm, indistinct and confused, she thought she could hear calls of alarm and fear. She recognised the sound of her own kin, and also the accent of Eur'opan; harsh and commanding. Her ability to sound-see had almost been lost in the shadow-fish attack, but even so she froze when she sensed a being slip through the brine, circling her. A liner, sleek and fast; a white tipped kind from her own Nam'bia, tasting her blood. Soon it would overcome its conditioning and attack her, nature overcoming learning. Others would quickly follow.

A new sound overcame all others; a Bastion in distress, its song an enormous, prolonged all-encompassing sound full of fear and grief. She was sure it was Wesafricanezsong, the one who had thought the journey was a trap. She began to swim towards the sound, in the direction of the rock, and down, down, to where the Bastion sung its distress. The liner kept pace in her wake, following the taste of spilled blood.

As she descended the available light reduced, and the water cooled rapidly when she passed down through the thermocline. The brine now tasted clean and sweet, and despite the light from Sol'tar being much attenuated, she could see further now the water was less turbid. Ahead there appeared several pale shapes. From the smell and half-heard chatter between them Qi'tik reasoned they were a guard; selfs from the Eur'opan put there to keep selfs like her from the Nam'bia out. As she approached, they gathered close, but when she was just a few lengths away they hesitated, then drew back, away from the liner following close behind. Two of the Eur'opan selfs detached from the guard and followed in their wake. She could hear their alarm and fear in their chatter, even though she couldn't understand what they were saying to each other.

Ahead, more shapes; more noise. The need to breathe was growing; she could manage two hundred heartbeats more she thought. Not that it mattered; she thought she would not be going much further in this life. The nearest shape became solid form; huge and dark. It was a Bastion, but not one she recognised. It was very still, moving only with the current, and its body was bare of octs or any other life. As she passed she looked into a sightless eye, the deep intelligence that always resided there now gone. A once great self, keystone to a pod-shoal's power. Dead. Abandoned.

Discarded.

Turning away, she swam on.