World of Water by James Lovegrove Page B

was doing. “Why didn’t you head for the surface like the rest of us? Why’d you hang back? What was going through your tiny little mind?”
    “It’s complicated. There was that cuttlefish sub...”
    “So you thought you’d stop and sightsee, is that it? Just float there like an idiot, making a target of yourself.”
    “I was communicating. The Tritonians were curious about me, and I had an idea I might be able to negotiate with them.”
    “And then another bunch of them came along, and you were basically pincered. They could have taken you out any time they liked. Lucky for you, Reyes and Cully were suited up and ready to go. I had them on standby just in case. If they hadn’t swooped in and grabbed you when they did...”
    “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful. But even if the Tritonians in the cuttlefish sub weren’t going to listen to reason, the ones in the manta sub would have. They weren’t like the other lot. They were a different kettle of fish – wait, is that racist?”
    “Different? In what way?”
    Dev shrugged noncommittally. “Less radical, I suppose. Moderate. I don’t know for sure, but I’m wondering if not all Tritonians are the same. There are factions. Different degrees of resentment. They’re not all fanatical human-haters.”
    “You’re saying there are good Tritonians as well as bad ones?”
    “Seems so.”
    “Well, duh,” said Sigursdottir, rolling her eyes. “Of course. We’d be nuts if we thought every last one of them was a ruthless revolutionary. That would be racist. Trouble is, in the midst of a conflict situation you can’t necessarily tell the sheep from the goats and you don’t have time to make distinctions. You have to assume every indigene is an enemy combatant and act accordingly. Otherwise you might make a mistake – the sort of mistake you don’t get the chance to learn from.”
    “I don’t disagree with that,” Dev said. “But if you want to create more of those ruthless revolutionaries, lobbing torpedoes indiscriminately at friendlies and hostiles alike is a good way of doing it. Friendlies can turn into unfriendlies fairly quickly.”
    “Yes, well, thanks for the advice, Harmer, and fuck you. I could have left you down there. I could have told Reyes and Cully to stay put on the Winterbrook and not risk their necks to save yours. If I didn’t have my orders, I probably would have. For you to stand here and lecture me on how to deal with insurgents – that’s the icing on the turd. I’ve been stationed on Triton for three long years. I know how shit goes down on this planet. You don’t come waltzing in out of nowhere and tell me how to do my job. You don’t have that right.”
    There were witnesses to this exchange, which took place on the Admiral Winterbrook ’s bridge. Corporal Milgrom was there, and so was Gunnery Sergeant Jiang, a woman so petite that next to the hulking Milgrom she looked like a schoolgirl. Even the diminutive Sigursdottir stood a head taller than her. Jiang’s size spoke of an upbringing on one of the ergonomically compact Sino-Nipponese asteroid collectives. No one was that short except by design.
    Milgrom, for her part, stood menacingly at Sigursdottir’s shoulder to let Dev know that everything her commanding officer said, she backed to the hilt – the hilt of the shimmerknife she was lovingly fondling. Jiang outranked Milgrom and was the second most senior Marine on board, but it was clear which of them regarded herself as Sigursdottir’s XO and adjutant.
    Dev was annoyed that the Admiral Winterbrook had attacked the manta sub, but he knew that antagonising Sigursdottir any further would be counterproductive. The Marines were tolerating him at best. It would be pointless to give them a reason to actively hate him.
    “Look, all right,” he said. “What’s done is done. I don’t want to get into politics or counterinsurgency tactics or any of that. Handling the Tritonians, that’s your concern. Mine is