Defender of the Future
book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Eighteen

The song swelled and grew, filling water and air alike with its power. Above, the moonlight was searingly bright, purest silver. Ecco felt a shiver run right through him, and a pricking in his forehead--by the pale radiance in front of him he knew that the stars on his head were glowing again under Tidesinger's moon. A few lengths away, Naylle and others of her pod were shining brightly with the reflected points of light. The song poured into the water around them, flooding Ecco and Karkol with sound. He glanced towards the shark and saw how Karkol's eyes were wide, frightened.

"Karkol... are you okay?" he asked. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the song, and it was a battle within himself to disturb it. He needn't have worried--nothing could have stopped that eerie music, that call from the hearts of the entire Earth.

"They're falling back," the shark said through his teeth. "Greshruk can't hold them, not even with all the sharks in the world. Ecco, we're losing..." The sound of battle was indeed coming closer, forcing its way through the outskirts of the Moonsong and introducing a note of discord to the music. The nearest sharks were visible now as they darted in and out of the roiling cloud of blood and pieces that was the slowly advancing line of the Foe.

"We can't lose now!" Ecco snarled.

There was a high, thin scream from the edge of the circle. One of the Foe had broken through and sunk its jaws into a porpoise. The little singer struggled for a moment and then went belly-up. A great white shadow fell over the Foe and it died a moment later in Greshruk's bloodstained jaws, but the Slayer's momentary absence allowed another through.

The song faltered, as Castor and the killers broke off. "Fight!" the sperm whale trumpeted. "Those with teeth to rend, protect the singers!" The circle of Foe was closing all around them--the earthborn were outnumbered now. A Foe plummeted into the water right beside Ecco and Karkol, and both squealed in alarm before realizing that it was dead--it twisted slowly down towards the sandy floor, deep gashes in its carapace from the talons of the birds who had killed it. There were feathers floating on the surface, now, along with bedraggled corpses and a red and oily film.

Ecco cast his gaze around, seeing the sharks now turning as one to face the Foe, creating a wall of bodies between the alien monsters and the singers. The water was misted with blood. He fluked swiftly to the surface and tailwalked, seeing a scene that could have come out of Hell itself. There was an orange light in the sky now, a light that came not from the sky but from the land--there was smoke on the water. Outside the circle, the sea bubbled and foamed with the battle. The sky was a melee of flying bodies--eagles and other birds, ludicrously smaller than the Foe, were nevertheless holding them back.

Clouds covered the entire sky, save for one patch right above them where the moon shone through brightly. There were no stars visible. The sound of the song was failing beneath a cacophony of cries and the shrieking of the Foe.

"Tidesinger," Ecco screamed, "help us now! Please!"

Whether it was that the echoes of the song finally reached the lofty heights where the moon lay, or whether Ecco's thin voice, and the passion in his heart, got through where all else had failed, it could not be said. But something happened. In the east, five bright lights began to shine, piercing through the black cloud cover and banishing the lightning. The symbol of Delphinius grew and grew, until it showered white light onto the Stone. And Ecco alone heard the softly singing voices from somewhere far above, and felt the stars on his head blaze out into a hot white mirror-light.

There was a soft rushing from the heavens above. The moonlight was pouring down in a concentrated beam, onto the spot at the base of the stone where Ecco and Karkol waited. All around them the water began to shiver and churn as if disturbed. The moonlight pushed down on them with an almost physical force--as if they were swimming underneath a waterfall...

A Foe charged towards them, screaming in rage. Two sharks broke from the circle, gave chase and dragged the alien beast down before they could react--it struggled, kicking and squealing and venting ichor, as it was forced slowly down to the sea floor. As if there was no such danger, Naylle appeared before them both in a moment more, blown their way in a billow of blood. The white dolphin's eyes were wild; the stars on her body shone as bright as Ecco's own. "Go!" she cried. "Quickly as you can! We cannot hold them back any longer!"

"We can't leave you!" Karkol yelled desperately.

It was Ecco who dashed in front of the shark. "We have to!" he shouted, blocking Karkol's way when the shark would have shoved past him. "Karkol, we have to go on! It's the only way we're ever going to win this war!"

"Go!" Naylle begged, tears starting to her eyes. More Foe approached, black in the bloodied water, and she turned to face the monsters, felling them with a blast of Battlesong. "For the love of Ocean, just go!" she screamed back at them both.

It was as if the water itself was burning with a pale silver fire. The moonlight cascaded down, was caught in the current, and pulled this way and that, flowing in streams between the struggling bodies of whales and Foe. Ecco and Karkol both struggled to reach the surface, the current pushing them downwards--it was an effort to push up to where the light hit the surface of the water, sending up curls of bright silvery steam. Delphinius's stars were fire in the east.

"We have to swim up that?" Karkol yelled through the rushing of the water.

"Let's not think about it!" Ecco shouted back. Below them, the Foe had broken through the lines at last. The fighters were falling back in no sort of order, save for the Slayer who cruised back and forth through the midst of the enemy, her jaws opening and closing like a vice. A trail of blood four feet wide stretched out behind Greshruk, and her eyes were rolled right back in her head as she shuddered in the ecstasy of the frenzy.

Karkol didn't make any more complaints. With a huge surge, the great white shark forced his body right out of the water in a gigantic leap that carried him eight feet or more. The Foe screamed towards the place where he had been. Ecco took one look and followed the shark's example, bursting free of the water and into the hot silver moonlight.

They didn't stop. To their mutual shock, they found themselves heading upwards further and further, swimming side by side, neither daring to stop or even slow down. Ecco was reminded momentarily of his entry into Atlantis--but in moments he was higher even than that. The sea fell away beneath him.

"I don't believe this!" Karkol yelled.

"Just keep going!"

The Foe met in a seething cloud of bodies where they had been. But the silver moonlight seared the bodies of the alien creatures so that they fled shrieking and smoking back into the darkness of the sea. And there Greshruk was waiting, blind and ravenous. Ecco and Karkol fluked higher and higher still, hearing the last ragged remnants of the song begin to fade away beneath the screams of battle. Around them now were not the struggling bodies of sharks and dolphins, but the soaring, screaming hosts of birds who fought the Foe in the air. The alien beasts were much larger than the feathered ones, but the birds were making up for this by sheer numbers. In one unbelieving glance Ecco saw more seabirds than he had ever seen in his life, and all kinds of land-birds from tiny songthrushes to the great golden eagles.

Everything was visible up here. The bay seemed smaller than a sprat from Ecco's bird's-eye view--he could see the bubbling, roiling circle of battle concentrated around the Moonsong Stone. Its outer edges were strewn with bodies and pieces of bodies, and the whole of the water had a reddish tinge to it. He could see Castor--the great sperm whale, and the even more gigantic blues, were about the only individuals he could pick out from this distance. Further out, across the land, Ecco saw that the orange glow stretched right across to the far horizon where he could see the curvature of the world. Race memory which went back more than thirty million years informed him: Fire. Fire on the land, and blood in the water.

"How will we ever survive this?" he moaned.

"Ecco!" Karkol shouted suddenly. "Look! Over there! I see something!"

Out in the deep ocean, there was a commotion in the storm-tossed waters--they were pouring out of the way, as if something unimaginably gigantic was forcing its way up from below. Ecco and Karkol stopped, over five thousand feet up, and stared as the thing broke out, water cascading off its circular sides. Slick as an insect, it was a circular disk of the same black insectoid material as the Foe itself. It rose slowly into the air where it blotted out the very stars, and then began to move upwards and in their direction, gathering speed.

"That's the Foe ship!" Ecco yelled. "It has to be! It's huge!"

Something was happening all around them--the moonlight was fading. The song had finally failed, and now its power was bleeding away again. They were starting to feel gravity, pulling them down towards the water that was full of death. "Swim!" Karkol bellowed, forging ahead. "Fast as you can! We have to get higher!"

The Foe ship moved slowly towards them, inexorable as the tide. It was going to pass right through the flickering moonstream, if they could only reach it in time...

The dry plains burned with terrible swiftness, the grass roaring into flame and driving the animals back. The Foe attacked swiftly and mercilessly, forcing the desperate earthborn back further and further until they were nearly to the sea. A pride of lions, fierce and frightened, were pushed right onto a peninsula and fought on with their backs to the water and their faces to the flame.

Fire burst in the pine trees, and the wolves ran through the snow, kicking up great drifts of the powdery stuff. They could not outrun the Foe, however, and the pack soon found themselves facing five of the monstrous creatures.

A great male wolf snarled as the Foe advanced, every hair on his body standing up on end. His mate joined him, and the two stood side by side, defying the advancing monsters with their last breath.

The horses shivered in terror on the heights, as the fire ripped through the rich grazing lands below from whence they had run. It did not take long for their meager refuge to be found, however, and the Foe raced up the hill towards them. Bravely mares and stallions stood together, forming a ring with their vulnerable young in the center. As the Foe dashed towards them with jaws agape, the brave ones reared and lashed out with razor-sharp hooves, caring nothing in their desperation for the greater numbers of their enemy.

The ship was rising fast now--Ecco and Karkol only had ten more seconds or so to achieve the right distance, and the song was fading all around them. It was an effort to get anywhere now. Below them the world was nothing more than a toy, a great mist-shrouded ball. They were above the cloud cover, forcing their way up the shaft of moonlight. Ecco had no idea how far up they were, but he could feel the freezing coldness of the air on his chilled skin, and the dryness of it actually hurt him. Above them the stars shone cold and pale in a sky of velvety blackness; in front of them the moon was dazzlingly bright and shockingly close, filling their entire field of vision.

A feathered form circled close to them for a moment--a bright golden eye fixed upon them. The eagles had been keeping as near to them as they could, driving off the airborne Foe who would have charged the moonstream and risked the burning. Now, though, they had all fallen back save this one, one of the largest males.

"Thanks!" Ecco shouted to the fiercely flapping bird. He had no strength to say any more than that.

The eagle nodded, then faltered in its flight as the thinning air refused to let it struggle upwards any more. "I can go no further!" it shouted back in a shrill, keening voice, and began to spiral downwards towards the clouds. "Good luck to you, earth-friends!"

"We're not going to make it!" Karkol yelled.

"Yes we are!" Ecco glanced to his left, saw the ship coming. "Harder, Karkol, harder!" It felt as if there was barely anything to push against now, and they could hardly tell even whether they were still moving--they had no reference points now save the moon and the far-off stars.

"The ship's going to cut us off!"

The edge of the alien ship slipped into the moonstream, and a shadow crossed the face of the moon itself. Moonlight poured over the sides of the Foe ship like water, glittering on the blank black carapace. Ecco increased his efforts, pumping his tail as hard as he could--Karkol steamed up beside him, struggling to maintain his position. Slowly the ship moved across their field of view, cutting off more and more of the moonstream. Ecco's eyes scanned its underside, searching for something--anything--that would allow them entry. He found it.

"Karkol, the hatch! Do you see it?"

"I see it!" the shark bellowed back. "Let's go!" He surged ahead into a charge, jaws opening and eyes rolling back. The tail scissored back and forth before Ecco's eyes--he went flat out himself to try and catch up with the shark. A Foe drone flashed by them and fell awkwardly, struggling to maneuver in the too-thin air.

Karkol smashed into the hatch with all his power, bending the metal grille right upwards. There were popping, snapping sounds as rivets broke and the mesh creaked and snapped. But it didn't go all the way. The shark flailed in the air as the moonstream faltered, and Ecco realized that in a moment they would both fall--all the way down. He charged forward like an arrow from a bow, and rammed snout-first into the hatch beside the shark.

There was a slam, and a rending shriek of metal. The hatch burst and swung inwards, opening a hole that was as dark as the deepest waters. Liquid poured out, like water except strangely more viscous. The last of the moonstream's support flickered and faded right away as the ship passed right overhead, cutting it off completely. Their upward momentum carried them on through the hole, side by side... into the lair of the Foe. A flicker ran across the surface of the ship and, as if it were organic, it sealed itself--a new grille grew across the old one, stopping the leakage of material.

It was suddenly surprisingly quiet, save for a low mechanical hum from somewhere.

Ecco and Karkol were silent, trying weakly to regain their senses and find out which way was up. They were together in a wide corridor that was made of the same stuff as the Foe's own bodies--that black, insectile chitin. Ropes and tubes of it criss-crossed the passageway like conduits, making it seem as if they were inside the body of some gigantic beast. A very ill beast, if the dark cobwebby color of their surroundings was any hint. Diffuse light came from glowing globes set into the walls at odd intervals, corresponding to some strange alien idea of symmetry. There was a certain hideous resemblance between this and the ordered beauty of Atlantis.

"We made it," Karkol said at last, after a long moment. "Son of a..." He growled softly to himself.

"The way out's blocked," Ecco said, glancing down at the hatch. He paused. "The moonstream's closed too, Karkol... there's no way back for us."

"I know," the shark said quietly. He turned and looked at Ecco with serious black eyes. "And so did you, before we even started this. We're not gonna get out of this alive, Ecco... no way."

Ecco bowed his head.

Karkol turned and began to swim slowly, along the corridor. "But," he said, glancing back, "maybe we can save a hell of a lot more people than ourselves. C'mon, Ecco. Let's go look for a way to waste this place."

A slow, evil smile spread across the dolphin's face as he contemplated the destruction of the ship and the burning, explosive death of all the thousands of Foe upon it.

"You got it, good buddy."