World of Water by James Lovegrove

Puzzlement? No, something a bit stronger, a bit more indignant than that.
    He tried to ‘speak’ himself, reaching inside for feelings of surrender and goodwill. He had no wish to be rammed by the cuttlefish sub as the Egersund had been. A direct, head-on blow from it would mash him to pulp.
    His face tingled but he wasn’t sure he was radiating the message he intended. The acquiescent sentiments he was striving to convey seemed muddled somehow. There was apprehension in there. Doubt. A hint of confusion.
    It would have been better had he been less dazed. Clarity of mind would have brought purity of emotion.
    As it was, the Tritonians’ own faces registered jade-green bafflement shot through with ruby-red ripples of contempt. They weren’t sure what Dev was saying but they knew they didn’t like it.
    Or him.
    The vast bulk of the Egersund continued to sink slowly in the background while the cuttlefish sub thrust past Dev, then swung round so that its arms were facing him.
    A pair of tentacles unfurled towards him with a languid, python-like grace. They were lined with suckers and tipped with diamond-shaped pads with a soft, prehensile dexterity. They groped for Dev, and he understood, with a surge of panic, that the Tritonians were planning to take him prisoner. Either that or rend him limb from limb with the tentacles.
    The panic was like a bolt of lightning in his brain, a sudden, sharp flash, dispelling confusion.
    Dev’s hand went to the hypervelocity pistol at his hip. One of the features of the gun – a reason it was a favourite among Marines – was that it worked underwater.
    The tips of the tentacles were around him, almost enfolding him, as he brought the HVP up to fire.
    Just as his finger tightened on the trigger, however, the tentacles retracted. They re-joined the cuttlefish sub’s arm cluster, folding together neatly beneath.
    Dev had time to wonder if the pilots were responding to the threat of the HVP. A sabot round could easily sever one of those tentacles.
    Then he became aware of a second craft hovering nearby, just behind him. This one had the kite-like outline of a manta or a stingray, with gently undulating wingtips and a tail ridged with dorsal fins.
    Another organic submarine, the bulbous eyes mounted at its front housing another pair of pilots.
    One of the pilots was busy communicating with the two Tritonians in the other vessel. Dev watched incredibly complex light patterns flicker over their faces, a back-and-forth three-way dialogue. The exchange moved too swiftly and was too convoluted for him to follow properly, but he got the gist of it.
    The manta sub pilot appeared to be saying that the human – Dev – was to be left alone. The cuttlefish sub pilots were unhappy about this and felt that no human, not even one who was part-Tritonian, should be immune from harm. Their wrath was great, as proved by the punishment they and their fellows had meted out on the giant surface ship that would soon be afloat no more. No one should escape it.
    The manta sub pilot insisted that Dev should be spared. He was...
    Dev could not really grasp the next bit.
    Different? Unusual? Rare?
    He had the impression that the manta sub pilot was talking from experience, as though Dev was a known quantity.
    Peering, he realised that they had met before. At least, he thought so. It was the female Tritonian who had helped save him from the thalassoraptor. Her co-pilot was the male who had killed the predator deftly with his spear.
    Dev wasn’t one hundred per cent sure it was the same two Tritonians. He wasn’t familiar enough with the indigenes to distinguish them one from another easily. Their features were all somewhat similar, and he hadn’t yet worked out which physical characteristics were the crucial ones, the ones to look for in order to tell them apart.
    But the female had that scarified nautilus design at her breastbone. How many other Tritonians bore that?
    He didn’t know the answer, but it was too