Defender of the Future
Book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Three

He had to go back. It was the only sane thing to do. Whatever was out there, it had scared off everything that would normally live on the coastal straits. Ecco turned and glanced back, into the deeper waters; he could faintly hear the last of the refugees, passing swiftly out of earshot. There was literally no sign of life around him--nothing at all. What in Sea could have caused so much sheer dread?

Ecco began to swim again, slowly, forward into the silent waters. His body was on autopilot, carrying him forward without any real direction from the brain. He had to pass through the straits in order to reach the blue whales--there was no alternative route. The only other thing he could do would be to turn back. Flee, like a calf jumping at shadows? Yeah, sure, that would really impress Star... Ecco surfaced for air, automatically, then slipped back down again. His shadow passed over unmoving ripples on the sand, over a bare, white expanse devoid of life. It was very quiet.

He had to go on. If nothing else, the young dolphin intended to at least catch a glimpse of Orcus's "creatures" for himself.

The sand rolled out beneath him like a road. The water became clear as crystal; now there weren't even the usual planktonic life forms floating near the surface. Ecco glanced down and saw the rocks scattered across the sand; normally they would be literally covered with weeds, plants, little shelled things, anemones... all kinds of plant and animal life. The dolphin's eyes widened, and he dived for a closer look. His suspicions were confirmed; the rocks were as bare as if they had only just been torn up from deep within the earth. Something had scraped even the stones clean of life.

Ecco went on, swimming very slowly and cautiously. The water shallowed further, becoming a reef that would once have blossomed with all kinds of life. He nudged an outcrop of coral, and it crumbled before his snout. Dead...

He halted suddenly. Had he heard something? With an effort the young dolphin stilled all movement, hanging motionless as a stone in the silent waters. His muscles were trembling now, urging him to flee while he still had time. He could understand the blue shark's terror; whatever had caused this, it was making him feel the same way. He wanted to flee himself, but doggedly he held himself still, determined to get his first look at the mysterious foe. It was an effort. Ecco listened harder, focusing his whole being into his ears... and at last he heard it. It was a strange, high screaming noise, hardly animal at all. There was something alien about it. The eerie sound jarred through the water like sharp edges, and he realised that there was teeth in it. It was a noise of death and destruction... a harbinger of doom. Ecco trembled violently, suppressing an overpowering urge to turn tail and swim, swim he knew not where. He was too terrified to let out a sonar click, and so he first saw the creatures with his eyes.

A ghostly shadow flickered in the blue, at the limits of his vision. Two shapes moved towards him with steady, calm precision, fading out of the blank azure of the sea. The shrilling noise grew louder, a sound that could not possibly have been made by any beast of this world. Limbs flickered like squid, bending in the current. Ecco began to backfin slowly as the creatures came closer. There was a lazy grace in their movements; the confident, unhurried motion of the predator closing in on a helpless morsel. As they approached he saw more detail; they were like crabs, covered in some sort of dark and shiny chitinous shell. He could not make out exactly where the head was, nor whether they had eyes, but he could certainly see the mouth and the fishhook teeth in the slowly working jaws. Segmented tentacles writhed through the water. The things had an odd, bobbing gait. They circled through the water towards him as if dancing in some dark courtship ritual.

With a terrible shock, Ecco realised that the screeching he could hear had words in it--words in some horrific alien tongue. He could understand nothing of what they were saying, but there was a dreadful hunger there, a dark, cold devouring urge that would leave nothing in its wake. The dolphin knew that these things, whatever they were, were responsible for the dead water... and the death of Orcus's pod. He backed away, keeping the monstrous things in constant view.

The attack came from below and to the side. Ecco's only warning was a momentary rush of water upon his flank; he reacted with the speed of a bullet, flinging himself out of the way as the third foe snapped and flailed through the water where he had been a moment ago. The body took over from the stricken mind, dashing and diving out of the way on sheer instinct. The monsters were fast--as fast as himself, possibly. Nothing mattered but instant survival. Ecco leaped right out of the water, as far as he could, as one of the monsters erupted right beneath him. He hit the waves with a crash and dived, fluking with all the speed he could muster. They gave chase, sticking close to his tail with terrible power.

The dolphin felt a sudden sick pain in his side, and he thought coolly, They got me--like they got Orcus. Blocking out the pain, he charged forward, and had the bitter pleasure of feeling his snout drive deep into the chest of the nearest foe. Segmented tentacles lashed his head and chest. He batted them away and dashed around the stunned monster, heading whence the others had gone--to the deep waters. The screeching in his ears drove out all conscious thought.

One of the monsters popped up before him, suddenly, from behind a rock. Ecco swerved and shot upwards into the sunlight again. He breached, and breached again--leaping through space, spending more time above the water than in it. Behind him the foe came rushing, silent as a shark, leaving only ripples in its wake. But Ecco was into his full speed now; almost flying each time he jumped, going several lengths above the water with each breach. The crashing of the water around him drowned out the sound of the monsters as they fell back.

He would have swum all the way to Sun River, had not the wounds started to slow him down. Ecco faltered and then shuddered down to first gear, feeling sharp stinging around his head and a deeper ache on his side, low down near the tail. He could no longer hear the alien screeching in the water. Half-sick with pain, the dolphin kept swimming, hardly caring where he was going as long as it were away from them.

At last, he was able to stop, his mind slowly beginning to work again. Ecco turned and looked back into the endless blue from where he had fled. There was no sign of the monsters, but there was a thin red taste in the water. Bending his body with some difficulty, he managed to take a look at the injury he had gotten from their jaws. It wasn't as bad as he had feared; there was a deep tear in his silvery skin, and the dark crimson muscle was visible beneath a thin remaining layer of subcutaneous fat. The muscle itself wasn't damaged; he could still swim perfectly well, though it stung. What Ecco was more concerned about was the blood from that and the shallow scratches criss-crossing his forequarters.

Bloodtrail.

The sharks would soon pick up on it. It was their job; they were angels of mercy to wounded beasts, finding them and dispatching them with swift, efficient haste. Ecco could probably fight off one or two blues and whitetips, but where one was, more would soon follow. Sharks could sense one part of blood in a million of seawater--and if a white pointer got wind of his injury... well, a whole pod would have difficulty dissuading one of those giants. One lone dolphin would stand little chance.

Ecco turned around and, with a cold detachment that surprised him, started to swim again. If he kept moving, it would make it more difficult for the sharks to track him, and sooner or later the wounds would have to stop bleeding. He was not incapacitated yet; there was still hope. The young dolphin surfaced to breathe, checked the position of the sun--it was getting on for evening again--and headed south, back towards Sapphire Bay across the open ocean. His tail stung.

Obviously, there was no way he was going to get through the straits--not with the creatures there. Having seen them in the flesh and escaped, Ecco had to agree with Orcus; there was no way dolphins could fight such things. The foe, whoever they were, were perfected killing machines. Even sharks paled in comparison with their infinite destructive capacity. Ecco remembered the dead waters in the straits, and shivered. How could it be possible--how had the monsters so completely stripped the fertile coastal sea of life?

He sighed heavily and surfaced for air. There was no way to reach the whales. What he needed to do now was return to the pod and tell Corse of the situation. Possibly the pod leader would agree to leave now, once he had heard Ecco's testimony. Corse might even know of another way to the northern seas, one which would bypass the straits.

Ecco cruised for a while, recovering from the shock. He kept moving more or less in a straight line, heading south. Once or twice small sharks came after him, but backed off when they realised that he was as large as they. A particularly persistent blue got rammed in the gills for its trouble, and thought better of it. By nightfall, the wound had more or less stopped bleeding. Ecco relaxed into the water, letting his tail carry him home.

Dolphins did not sleep. But, they did dream, a gift from their ancient landbound heritage. The mind could at times completely quit the body, which had its own instinct for survival and could safely be left alone for a short time. Ecco's eyes were open as he slid through the darkening waves, but he was seeing a different world.

The two dolphins swam through a sea that was midnight black, and very still. Their voices were like crystal bells, carrying for miles in the ancient stillness. They sang in a tongue he did not understand--a cosmic language, a tongue born in the heart of a star. He realised that the twain were life-mates. They swam very close. Krill shone around them, glowing with a bright white light.

No, not krill... they were stars, shining all around. Stars that were mirrored on the hot white bodies of the dolphins. Lights gleamed on their sides, shimmering points of light embedded in their very skin. The lovely creatures sang softly to each other as they swam through their intangible realm. From the darkness beyond unfolded a jewel--a globe of blue and green, like a great colored oyster-pearl. Great swathes of foam shimmered beneath the skin of the jewel, and at top and bottom white glistened like diamonds.

The dolphins swung towards the globe, and he realised that it was not a pearl up close, but something unimaginably huge seen from afar. And, with a sudden start of wonder, he realised that it was his own world, hanging suspended in the sea of stars. The song of the sky-dolphins washed over him, lovely and mournful--calling to him.

A shadow fell over the Earth that hung before him. He looked up and saw a dark, chitinous shape, so huge that it dwarfed the Earth as the Earth dwarfed him. The creatures... some sort of ship... The sky-dolphins fled glittering into the night. A giant limb reached down and enfolded the earth, muffling its light.

One by one, the stars winked out.

Ecco woke with a start, shivering in the chill water. He was still moving, but the quality of the sea had changed around him; everything was colder, bereft of the sun's last fading light. He had lost several hours in his dreaming. It had to be nearly midnight; the moon was up again, filling the sea with silver.

He could hear it again--a high, alien shrieking. Somewhere far in the distance it was, many miles back along the bloodtrail he had left. The wound had nearly closed by now, but Ecco still felt afraid. They were looking for him. He understood the meaning behind those alien words. The creatures were angry because he had escaped them, had successfully fought them off. They intended to hunt him down, come what may.

The dolphin cast a haunted glance back into the miles of empty pelagic ocean, and then sped onwards, fluking swiftly through the waters.

He made better time this time, despite his tiredness and hunger; he didn't stop to play around like before, but swam straight and true. He saw few creatures on his solitary journey; once a couple of porpoises passed by, but the little singers didn't respond to his hail--seeing the larger dolphin as a threat perhaps. Afraid of the creatures, Ecco turned and headed into the shallower waters where he could at least draw comfort from the presence of other living things: he would rather take his chances with the tiger sharks than be out in the open with nowhere to flee.

Once again, the sound of the creatures faded out behind him, but this time Ecco did not slow or rest up. He knew that they were there, somewhere behind him; they would not be shaken that easily. He did pause to consider whether it would be wise to rejoin the pod if he was leading the foe straight to them, but then he thought of Corse, faithfully keeping the pod in Sapphire Bay to wait for him... even when the creatures appeared at the mouth of the bay... the bottlenoses fighting to the death rather than leave a pod member behind...

They would do that, he knew. He might be a young and sometimes woolly-headed member of the group, but he was a member of the group, and Corse would not give up on him until it was absolutely clear he was not going to return. It was an indication of the horror of the creatures that Orcus had been driven to flee and leave his family behind. Ecco shuddered, knowing that to stay away was to doom the pod. He needed to tell them what he had seen, so that Corse and the others could come up with another plan of action. He swam faster, intent on putting as much water between himself and the foe as possible so that when he finally arrived in Sapphire Bay, they would have plenty of time to get together and leave.

Ecco remained alert for sharks, but was surprised to find that the coastal waters were for the moment free of large predators. He managed to grab a few fish as he passed over reefs, but the few sharks he did see were not interested in him or the shoals. The water was full of whispering. News traveled fast, it seemed. Ecco remembered the blue shark that had fled screaming into the ocean.

The moon was just about setting when he saw the first of the landmarks; the tide pools that lay before the cape. Ecco's home bay was just around that cape; he only had a few more miles to go. Thoughts of home gladdened his heart and sped his tail--thoughts of Star. He had not allowed himself to feel fear or uncertainty before, having to concentrate all his being on staying alive, but now he felt able to be afraid. The tide was turning again, waning with the moonset.

He paused to listen at the end of the tide pool stretch. The seas were silent. No sign of the creatures anywhere. Peace and tranquility surrounded Ecco like a cloud. Unconsciously his pace slowed again as he approached the cape; it was nearing dawn now, and the moon was half below the horizon, a liquid disc of silver. Ecco surfaced and blew perfunctorily before diving again and listening. Nothing. Not a sound.

...not a sound. His heart began to beat fast again. He could hear nothing at all, save the soft wash of the water against his sides. For the rest, the sea was silent as the grave. Feeling a sudden sheer panic, Ecco dived, clicking in a search for life--any life. These were coastal waters! He should be able to hear the rustling of bottom-feeding fish amongst the weeds--the skittering of crabs on the coral--even echolocation from the porpoises he knew lived among the tidepools. He could hear nothing.

The rocky floor of the tide pool was bare. Bare rock, without even a film of algae to cover it. The sand was pale and still in the moonlight. Worm casts eroded slowly in the current, their makers nowhere to be seen.

Ecco began to swim faster. Faster and faster he went, until he was flying through the water as if pursued. He quit the tide pools without stopping for breath, and rounded the cape in a haze of bubbles. As he swung round into the familiar surroundings of Sapphire Bay, the sun burst out above the horizon in a blast of gold and pink.

Ecco ignored it. Fluking strongly, he dashed into the bay, and, careless of monsters, cried out for the others. "Corse! Ai! Star! Where are you?!" Only the echoes of his cry came back to him, informing him that the bay was as empty and barren as the straits had been. There wasn't even a hint of blood in the water. He swept over the sandbanks, nearly beaching himself, and dashed into the deeper waters where the dolphins often congregated. Even the cliff face was empty of life.

Ecco swam round the entire bay and then turned back into the middle. Nothing--no sign left to tell where they had gone. Shocked and terrified and now entirely alone, he drew in his fins and screamed out a single word, shrill with delphine rage.

"Noooooo!"

And then the distraught dolphin heard the distant shrieking start again...