Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Read Online Free PDF

were just so damned easy to annoy.
    His expression cleared. “If you fall,” he guessed, “to shoot you so the sharks don’t get you first?”
    “To shoot yourself ,” Sally corrected him, “so I have someone to shout at all the way to Hell.”
    Waffa followed her into the bay and helped her secure herself with webbing. Jokes aside, she would need both hands for the cannon and a single overcorrection in the flight would send her tumbling into the waves. And now there must have been a dozen huge dark shapes down there. As they watched, one of them came right to the surface and turned broadside, coasting along sideways with its swollen, mottled-black belly and a single great flipper glistening in the sunlight. Its gills were fitted with infected-looking metal-compound cybernetic fixtures but the Bonshoon Consul’s statement seemed to have been right – the machinery itself looked inactive.
    The monstrous fish continued sideways, and even from a hundred feet up Sally could see its lifeless matte-grey eye gazing up at the little ship on its searing pad of electrochemical fire. It was watching them, studying the intruders, waiting to see what they would do next. Under its vast, ancestrally-terrifying mouth, at about gill-level, the Fergunakil’s little cartilaginous hands unfolded from their place on its belly and made an unreadable gesture before curling back up.
    “Don’t fire warning shots at them,” Waffa said, evidently noticing Sally’s hand resting on another of her trusty guns. “Just shoot the gantry. If you shoot at them to try to scatter them–”
    “I know,” Sally said grimly. “It’ll just put them into a frenzy.”
    Waffa clapped her on the shoulder and returned to the main passenger compartment behind the pilot’s seat.
    The incendiary cannon made short work of the gantry. The Fergunak did not interfere with the cutting, although they were gathering in increasing numbers away on the open sea nearby, churning the waves with their slicing fins.
    To prevent them from binding the severed ends back together and sinking the hub anyway, Sally then climbed back into the cockpit area and directed Zeegon over the lopsided residential block. She pulled three small, flattened-ovoid canisters from a special padded satchel she’d brought with her, descended into the rover bay once more, and dropped one of the devices onto the solid crete roof. It detonated with a flat crump , opening a glowing crater in the sea-spray-wet surface. Sally dropped the second canister into that hole, waited, then dropped the third. With a great blast of water vapour and a surge of bubbles and inrushing water, the block dropped rapidly into the sea.
    “Demolition mines,” Sally said with a grin as she returned to the passenger compartment. “Part of your complete breakfast.”
    “Do I even want to know why you have them on a starship not much bigger than that block of flats?” Waffa asked.
    “Of course you want to know,” Sally said cheerfully. “You’d be insane to not want to know.”
    Waffa waited, but Sally grinningly decided not to elaborate. Zeegon and Waffa exchanged glances, Zeegon shook his head with a grin of his own, and turned them back around towards the hub.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    WAFFA
     
     
    Things appeared to have gone smoothly, and Decay reported that they’d taken on five of the eight young Blaren and a pair of injured adults, and were getting ready to take off. The rest of the survivors had sealed the hub’s roof access panel to protect them from the lander’s jets, and had been instructed to open up when the second team arrived and knocked. Sometimes, Decay philosophised, the low-tech solution was best.
    Then Z-Lin got on the comm. “They’re smokers,” she reported.
    Waffa saw Sally’s expression turn coldly neutral, and she leaned over to use Zeegon’s communication panel. “ All of them?” she asked.
    “All the adults we saw on the hub,” Clue replied. “Apparently the majority