For the first and last time in the launch, the captain’s voice came over comms. “’Tis not the Beast. Abort.”
As pilot it was my duty to do as she said, to return the boat to the launch bay and make it ready for better luck in better skies. But for long moments I couldn’t obey. I was too busy watching Titans duel.
Krakens are strange. You don’t see them often and whenyou do you normally die. The only time you can safely watch a Kraken doing its thing is when it’s trying to kill something that isn’t you. And the only time you can do that is when you’re somewhere like a brit-cloud, somewhere so dense with life that you might not be the only edible object in a hundred klicks.
Just like my tendency to get all awed and philosophical at the vastness of the Jovian sky made me a pretty shitty lookout, my tendency to get all obsessed and fascinated at deep-sky kaiju battles made me a pretty shitty pilot for a hunter-boat. But right there and then, holy crap was it worth it.
The Kraken was huge and strange and abominable. A pulpy white mass of float-sacs and malice all studded with eyes and disgorging tentacles from its underside in numbers I couldn’t track. The Death’s Head—normally a fairly docile animal if you didn’t bother it—thrashed and whipped its long, barbed tail through the sky and did its best to fight back. Problem was, its whole thing was that massive battering-ram skull it had, and while that was great for smacking the crap out of other Leviathans, clouds of angry Wyrms, or the occasional unlucky or overconfident hunter-barque, it did basically nothing against a beast made of air and membranes that fought by wrapping its enemies in arms as long as rivers.
“… to ship,” Locke was saying as I tuned back in to the world around me. “Now.”
And they were right. If I dallied much longer I’d get my pay docked or find myself having an accident around an airlock. As the Kraken was drawing the Death’s Head into its all-too-everywhere embrace, I turned my attention to the console and started bringing us about.
Outside, whatever mouthparts the Kraken had hidden amongst its tentacles started to crack through the Leviathan’s carapace, spraying misty gouts of colorless gore onto the winds.
“Go,” Locke was repeating. “There’s nothing for us here.” And I thought I heard them add “and nothing for her either” under their breath.
It was—from my perspective—a bit reductive to say there wasnothingfor us here. Nine out of ten voiders in the fleet signed up to see the cosmos as much as to pay their bills, escape their debts, or fulfil a death wish. And Kraken-versus-Leviathan was one hell of a bit of the cosmos to see. Buuuuut, they were right that hanging around wasn’t going to do much to make us richer or improve our life expectancies, so I punched in the coordinates and took us home.
That evening, the Krakens were the talk of the mess.
“Ubi mel,” said Q quite conversationally, “ibi apes.”
Dawlish nodded. “And where there’s Kraken, there’s Ridgebacks.”
I hadn’t made as full a study of cetology in those days as I have since, so I asked why.
“Food chains,” he explained. “The Death’s Heads eat the brit, the Krakens eat the Death’s Heads. The Ridgebacks eat damned near anything, but theyfavorKraken.”
Over the years I’d come to question most of what I’d been taught as a child about the obviously designed nature of, well, nature. But there was something about a world that had such sequences in it that lined up uncomfortably with lessons I’d learned and unlearned and relearned and rejected long ago.
At the other end of the table, Truelove and Marsh were eating far from us lesser peoples. But physical distance didn’t stop them chiming in.
“It has nothing to do with food,” intoned Truelove. “It is the will of the stars.”
“Will of the stars?” I asked. Most of the crew didn’t like to engage the Starry Wisdomers on matters of faith, but my own background made me hunger for foreign theologies. They helped me feel less like I’d given up my only chance of salvation.
“All devourings,” Truelove explained, “are but a prefiguration of the Great Devouring that is to come. All beasts that devour are but a reflection of the great beast that devours and will consume all come the end.”
Dawlish jabbed contemplatively at his bowl of gray slop. “Bullshit.”
Marsh looked shocked, but Truelove took it completely in stride. “It means nothing to the stars if you believe or do not believe. What I say is true. The Kraken is a sign. A time of consuming approaches.”
“The Kraken’s a fish,” replied Dawlish. “A big fish for sure. A sky-fish. But it’s an animal like any animal.”
“So say you.” Truelove liked to cite the fact that other people had said things as evidence that those things were incorrect. “But the ship is alive with portents. The captain goes to the hunt in a boat with no crew, guided by machine blasphemies if I’m any judge.”
The Old Ionian, who seldom agreed with Truelove on anything, agreed with him on this. “There’s something unnatural in the systems, right enough. If not a ghost then some forbidden technology that’s as good as one. Or as bad.”
Dawlish set down his spoon. “Things can be dangerous without being spirits or blasphemies. If the captain’s brought a thinking machine, she’s breaking the law, not the cosmic order.”
“Never mind the law”—this was the Tall Ganymedian—“whatever she’s doing it’s fucking with the ship’s systems. Today we lose entertainment, who’s to say we won’t lose navigation tomorrow?”
“The captain has a mission,” said Dawlish, sounding very slightly like he was trying to convince himself as much as anybody, “perhaps even an obsession. But I don’t think she’d wreck the ship for it.”
The Tall Ganymedian gave that awful, ironic smile he always gave. “Bet your life? If this beast she’s after turns out to be real—”
“It is real,” said Truelove. “And terrible. And chosen.”
