Defender of the Future
book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Twenty

They were in another very large room, this one perhaps even bigger than the hatchery. The walls were lined with pipes carrying various liquids, but the majority of the floor space was taken up by giant rectangular tanks. Ecco pressed his nose up against the cool glass of the nearest one--the interior was filled mostly with water, plain old seawater, but at the top was air.

The delphine voices were audible from here--they were at the other end of the room. He couldn't make out words. The singers were speaking in a tired monotone, as if they hadn't the energy to do any more than that. Slowly Ecco drew back from the tank and began to swim, finding his way between the great empty vessels. Karkol was nosing around the bottoms of the containers, his black eyes puzzled.

"Hello?" Ecco called softly.

The dolphins were instantly silent. He swam forward between giant walls of glass, trying to figure out where the noise had come from. One of these tanks, yes... why were most of them empty? There was debris on the bottom of one or two, fish scales. He started to swim faster, unnerved by the strangeness of the huge room. It looked like some sort of gigantic...aquarium, that was the word. Ecco tried to remember all he had heard about aquariums--Man had once put sea creatures in chambers of glass so that he could look at them.

"Hello?" he called again. "Where are you? It's okay, I'm a friend!"

There was the same frightened silence for a long moment, and then, from the far corner of the room a soft voice answered. "Who are you?"

"I'm a dolphin. I'm trying to find a way to stop the Foe ship." There was something familiar about that other voice, but he didn't consider it for the moment, trying to triangulate from the echoes where the sound had come from. The tankfuls of water were messing up the acoustics and making it difficult for him to navigate.

"We're over here... in the corner."

He swam onwards, faster, and turned towards the very end tank. This one was not empty--it held several slender blue-gray shapes. Ecco swam towards them swiftly, shocked to find other dolphins aboard ship, and then froze dead in the water as the others turned towards him.

"Ecco?" Corse swam forward quickly to the edge of the tank and pressed his nose against the glass, his eyes wide with wonder. "Ecco?" The Sapphire Bay pod leader's voice was stunned--as stunned as Ecco felt at seeing not only Corse but the others of his family now appearing, one by one. "Is that you?"

"We've been here for ages," Corse said, in a low, exhausted voice. "Ever since those things took us from the bay. We thought they'd killed or taken you too. They've held us here ever since..."

Ecco was shocked at the appearance of his friends. He had known that he was changing--growing more slender and muscled with the exercise, acquiring scars and a slightly ragged appearance from all the fights in which he'd been involved. He had been prepared for surprise from the others when they were finally reunited. But what he hadn't been prepared for was seeing a change in them that was greater still.

They all looked half-starved. Their ribs were visible through the soft skin on their sides. All the dolphins had a sunken, miserable appearance--their eyes were dull and they seemed to have lost much of that essential spark that made them them in his eyes. Ai looked half-dead, and was being supported in the water by Klik and Star. Even she had no eyes for Ecco--his childhood playmate merely lifted her head and looked at him for a moment, then dropped her gaze again, as if she were too tired to maintain it.

"What did they do to you?" he asked softly, struggling for the words. He had thought when he and Karkol destroyed the Hatchery that they had seen the full depths of the Foe's infamy--this was making him rethink everything once again. The sight of his friends in this state was worse than the sight of the larvae.

"We're hungry," Corse said, in a low voice. "Nothing to eat. We watched while they emptied out the other tanks..."

"Emptied?" Ecco gazed round at the huge room with all its empty tanks. "There were others here?"

The Sapphire Bay pod leader laughed weakly. "Were. Those monsters have been using us as a handy larder, Ecco. We fed their young with our life-blood. There were all sorts of creatures here--fish, turtles, seals, shellfish, even plants. They've emptied out all the tanks one by one. We're the last batch."

Dead waters...

"I don't know how you came to be here," Corse said, looking at him with hopeless eyes, "but it'd have been better if they had killed you. I thought--when you weren't here--they had. You should have stayed away..."

"No, you've got it all wrong!" Ecco fluked up to the tank, infuriated that he couldn't reach Corse and the others--they were separated from him by less than an inch, but it might as well have been the world. "I'm going to stop the Foe!"

"How?" the Sapphire Bay pod leader asked with a sharp little twist. "You're barely more than a calf. Not all of us together could defeat those things. They overpowered us with ease. What makes you think you'll do any better?"

"I have," Ecco said simply. "Look at me, Corse. Take a good long look. Do I look like the dolphin you knew?" He snorted. "I've had weeks to change, and by Delphinius I have! I've been further than a dolphin ever has before. I've spoken with Greshruk the Slayer, and with the Asterite too. I've swum with killer whales. I've escaped the Foe countless times, found the home bay of the lone-swimmers and I came here up the moonstream like Tidesinger. Don't judge me by who I was, Corse."

The other dolphin started, and then stared at him with a new respect in his eyes. "I see," he said softly, "I do. You've grown up in the time we've been apart. But" --he rose and blew-- "the question remains, how are you going to stop them? There were killer whales here, Ecco, and they ended up as food despite their superior strength."

"I know," Ecco said quietly, "but I'll find a way." His voice was determined; he looked at Corse with a challenging expression, refusing to drop his gaze.

Suddenly, Star let out a squeal of fright. "Ecco, behind you!"

He whirled with a burst of Battlesong ready, fully expecting to see a Foe drone closing in. But there was nothing there--Karkol, having cruised out from behind another tank, blinked and glanced quickly around. "I don't see nothin-" Ecco began, turning back again towards the other dolphins, but then it dawned on him.

"Shark!" Ai wailed. The dolphins panicked, dashing this way and that in their glass tank, but of course there was nowhere for them to go.

Ecco glanced at Karkol with a slightly helpless expression. The shark dipped his pectoral fins and tossed his head, a great white's equivalent of a shrug. "Would it help if I told 'em I'm a vegetarian?" he suggested.

"Oh, please," Ecco muttered, trying not to laugh. He turned back to the captive dolphins. "Listen!" he cried. "I know this is kinda hard to understand, but the shark is on our side! His name is Karkol! We came up here together to fight the Foe!"

Corse stared at him as the commotion slowly quieted. "A shark? You've been swimming with a shark?"

"What's wrong with that?" Karkol asked defensively.

Ecco would have sighed, remembering the problems they had had with the lone-swimmers in Lunar Bay. "The sooner we get out of here, the better," he muttered, then spoke up again. "Yes, a shark. Karkol's a friend. Without him, I'd be dead several times over. So just calm down, people, he's not going to try and eat any of you!" Tearing his attention away from the silent dolphins, Ecco turned to face Karkol. "Find anything that looked helpful?"

"I think I know how to let 'em out," Karkol said, motioning with his snout towards something near the door. "There's a big bank of controls and stuff there. They open those gates at the end of each tank. But dolphins're air-breathers, right? They'll drown if we let 'em out."

"Don't suppose we can give them the Power of Air?" Ecco suggested. The shark just shook his head. Irritated, Ecco glanced back at the other dolphins in the tank. "How did you guys get in there, anyway?"

"The Foe brought a machine," Corse said dully. "A great big thing, the size of a whale. There was a bright light that lifted us up... It pulled us all right out of the water and up a funnel, then dumped us in here." His snout gestured up to where the end of a large tube hung suspended above the tank. "It's closed off. We tried to jump up it before... before we grew too weak." He closed his eyes in silent despair.

"Don't give up," Ecco begged, then turned to Karkol again as an idea grew in his head. "Karkol, there was air in the hatchery. If we could get them there somehow, then open the doors, we might be able to lower them down the same way they came up..."

"We're in no condition for a fight," Corse said. "Ai was hurt when they pulled us out of the water, and Orcus..."

For the first time Ecco saw the common dolphin, on his own in the far corner of the tank. Orcus's wounds were only half-healed. His eyes were closed; he lay on the floor, as if dead. Ecco could see no sign of life.

"He's been like this for days," Corse explained. "We push him to the air to breathe every few minutes." The pod leader sighed heavily. "His life-mate was in the next tank, Ecco--they took her away a week ago."

"Oh, no," Ecco said softly. "Poor Orcus..."

"Look, no offense, people, but we'll have to talk about this later." Karkol turned and glided towards the control panels. "Just come and look, Ecco--there's gotta be something on here that will help."

With a regretful glance back at the dolphins, Ecco followed the shark. The controls were certainly impressive--he had never seen so many levers and buttons, not even in Atlantis. Swiftly he scanned over the banks, noting the weird alien architecture of the controls and the way the levers were designed for Foe limbs. But there were features he recognized. Sixteen round buttons all in a line... there were sixteen tanks. Fifteen of the buttons were dark, but one was lit up palely green. Ecco's snout brushed over it, then he glanced back at the other dolphins in their tank and drew back.

"What are you going to do?" Karkol asked curiously.

Ecco frowned, looking at the controls. "We need a diversion..."

There was a big lever right in the center. He grasped the shaft in his jaws, and pulled hard.

They were plunged into darkness. The soft mechanical hum in the background wound down and died, and the shrill, frightened cries of the dolphins became the only sound on the ship.

"You got your diversion!" Karkol yelled. "Turn it back on again!"

Ecco heaved the lever back, badly frightened--the lights went on again, and a low rising whine became the familiar hum of the engines. "Whoops," he said shamefacedly, as Karkol's annoyed eyes came to rest on him. "Guess that one cuts the power..."

"Try a different one," the shark said firmly.

Ecco shoved another lever.

Something happened to gravity--it came back with a vengeance. They were both thrown violently against the wall as the world seemed to tip on one end. Inside the tank, the water surged as the dolphins slammed against the glass barrier, squealing. Clenching his jaw, Ecco fought his way back to the control panels, and swiftly tried lever after lever, button after button. Hisses of hydraulic mechanisms filled the air as all the various doors in the area opened and closed, lights flashed and the whole ship shook variously. Sparks suddenly erupted from the console, and klaxons somewhere else sounded frantic warnings.

"I think you just told everybody where we are!" Karkol yelled over the din.

Ecco let out an infuriated whistle and jammed a final lever down so hard he broke it. The surging, bucking ship returned to normal--almost--but the doors were all still open, and there was still a definite gravitational pull to the left. Outside, a wide corridor was revealed; only half the lights were on. Some of the fuses must have blown or something. The sound of the Foe was audible, faintly--if the tone was anything to go by, they were screaming baffled commands at each other. Ecco grinned sharply, imagining the chaos that must be going on.

He swam to the open door and looked out. No Foe yet. Swiftly Ecco exited and went to the left, remembering that they had come from that direction via the pipe. Out of caution he kept to the shadows, just in case any Foe were about in the area, but he saw nothing hostile. He passed two doorways and rounded a corner, and there was the now familiar sight of the hatchery, mist spilling out of the door that was half-open.

He turned and swam back, counting the lengths in his head. Around a thousand yards... the other dolphins should be able to swim that, even exhausted as they were. Ecco glanced about swiftly, and re-entered the tank room. "Karkol, the hatchery's right there. I think we should get them out of the tank and to safety as fast as possible. I don't know how long all this is going to throw the Foe."

"Right." The shark glided smoothly over to the controls. "You want I press this?" he asked.

"When I say." Ecco swam up to the tank, finding the door at one end--barely visible seams joined this to the main body of the tank. The other dolphins watched him silently with frightened brown eyes. He looked up into Corse's face and paused, preparing what he had to say. "Listen," he said finally. "Everyone take a long breath, as long as you can. Get Orcus to as well. I'm going to let you out of the tank, and then we're gonna swim along a corridor and into another room where there's air. We might get attacked on the way, so you'll have to hurry. Can you make it?"

"We'll make it," Corse said grimly. "Klik and I will handle Orcus."

"Right." Ecco watched silently as, one after the other, the dolphins took breaths from the air at the top of the tank. "Ready? Karkol, now!"

The shark poked the button down. There was a loud bang of releasing pressure, and a cloud of water and air boomed out from behind the seams of the tank's glass wall. Ecco was pushed back by the force of it--the end of the tank swung open, allowing the Sapphire Bay dolphins and Orcus to swim free. It was a sorry cavalcade--Ai could barely swim, and Orcus needed to be pushed and prodded into action by Klik.

"Let's go," Ecco said, turning towards the door and feeling acutely ashamed of his own fit, strong body in the face of his friends' starvation. The dolphins flinched away from Karkol as he passed, but he gave them a wide berth and slipped out into the corridor instead.

"I'll watch out for Foe," he called back. "Try and keep 'em out of sight."

"Will do..." Ecco practically swam rings around the other dolphins, trying to exert them to greater effort. Ai swam awkwardly, favoring one side and letting out periodic  soft whimpers of pain. Their progress was painfully slow. One by one, the dolphins slipped under the door and out into the corridor where Karkol waited, glancing nervously around for sign of any approaching enemy. It seemed to take forever to cross the long stretch--Ecco could have done it in a few short seconds, and he grew frustrated at the others' weakness.

"They're coming," Karkol warned from back down the corridor. "I can't see 'em yet, but I can hear 'em coming."

Ecco chivvied Ai towards the hatchery door, Corse keeping pace on his other side. It took both of them to shove the struggling female under the door and into the other room; Klik took charge, pushing her upwards to where the air waited. Ecco blinked, seeing all the other dolphins making swiftly for the surface. Was that all the time I used to have? he thought. Between one breath and the next?

"Ecco?" Corse was swimming down towards him again, fighting off exhaustion. The pod leader drew up a length or two away, and looked at him with puzzlement. "Don't you need to breathe at all?"

"I'll explain later," Ecco said hurriedly, hearing Karkol shout from outside. He glanced round and saw a panel beside the door with another button on it. Only one thing that could be used for... "Listen, I'm going to lock you guys in here, okay? Don't open the door for anything. You should be safe enough in here for now, the Foe can't get in the way we can." Without waiting for Corse's reply, he fluked over to the panel. "I'll see you later!" he called.

"Ecco..."

He turned.

"Whatever you're going to do, good luck." The pod leader looked at him with a grave expression. "I always misjudged you... Ecco-fa."

Ecco stared at him. The honorific term jarred with his own name. He had always held Corse in such deep respect... now, something intangible had changed between them. Ecco was the one with all the power. He wasn't sure if he liked that. "Bye," he said softly.

He hit the button. The door went down swiftly--Ecco dashed beneath it, and cleared the descending metal weight by a whisker. Karkol was waiting outside, anxiously glancing left and right--the sound of the Foe was very close now in the tunnels. Ecco found the panel on the other side of the door and rammed it sharply with his snout--there was a burst of sparks and the green light on the button flickered and died. Just to make sure, he hit the button once or twice, but it only clicked dully. The door remained closed.

"That's it," he said to Karkol. "The Foe are after us alone, now. They'll leave the others be." He swallowed hard. "It's all up to us."

"I hear you," the shark agreed solemnly. "Let's get going."

Behind them, Foe drones erupted round the corner. Ecco and Karkol set off down their chosen passage, flitting in and out of the shadows. From now on there would be no more hiding. It was time to find the mother.