Delgado seemed to draw comfort from speaking methodically. “I called on them to cease and desist. They ignored me. I had us move closer, to no effect. Senorita, our duty is to the law and the general welfare. More and more seals were converging on us. It was clear a large gang had been poaching. I sent a man down onto a diving fin with a shock gun. The idea was to hit a few of them—only painfully, you understand, no serious injury—hoping they would disperse. Instead, two of them scrambled up onto the fin, before our man saw, and attacked him. Senorita, you know those are big animals, with sharp teeth. His squad mates on deck shot them dead. Quite rightly. He returned. Now the creatures act as if they think they’re besieging us. Naturally, knowing you were on your way, I had you called.”
He sighed. “I could wish, now, you had joined us earlier, yes, had accompanied us from the start. But that is hindsight, no?”
“Your plan was reasonable under the circumstances, Major,” Aleka gave him.
Inwardly, to ready herself for the encounter ahead, she rehearsed those circumstances: complaints, suspicions, proven losses, violent incidents, not to mention the demographics. The Peace Authority was bound to look into them. If anything, the surprise lay in how long it waited. Delgado had dropped hints—about hopes that the Lahui could somehow resolve the problem among themselves—thereby helping people around the planet believe that the tribes and cantons and ethnoi of Earth worked, because that helped keep people happy and orderly—Yes, when at last there was no choice but to mount an official investigation, it made sense for the First inspectors to go forth on their own, as well prepared as databases and vivifers could make them. Consciously or unconsciously, a local guide might lead them astray.
Yet she was in fact a human liaison, within the
Lahui, between the Keiki Moan a and the outer world. It also made sense for her and a metamorph to join the team after a while, discuss their experiences, conduct them to wherever else they two felt the inspectors should observe things. That they had been on their way when battle erupted was a coincidence.
Not a very unlikely coincidence, Aleka thought. Not when you recalled how conflict seethed in these waters.
Delgado scowled, as if deciding he had shown too much softness. “These are not the first killings,” he stated. “Humans have died.”
“Not just humans,” Aleka countered.
She could well-nigh hear him thinking, choosing his words. After all, sentient metamorphs had full rights under the law, whether they descended from his species or another. Sophotects did, which could not really be said to have any ancestors—if “rights” in any traditional sense bore any meaning for inorganic intelligences, Aleka thought while she waited.
“The destructive activity has been … almost entirely … by the … seal beings,” Delgado said. “Those humans who got killed were trying to stop it.” They had come upon it mostly by chance, and reacted more strongly than was prudent. But who would have expected fury to respond?
“Seven altogether,” Aleka answered. “And some nonfatal injuries. Keiki Moana lost many more.” Humans generally had tools aboard their vessels, knives, tridents, boathooks, anchors, which could double as lethal weapons. The vessels themselves could, if driven hard against swimmers.
Delgado’s visage congealed. “It is going to stop, senorita. And I did not say no humans are to blame.”
She believed she knew what he meant. Something of the chill crept back into her. “Hang on,” she repeated. “Don’t provoke anything. My partner and I will be there pronto.”
He nodded and went from the scanner field, though he left the phone transmitting. She peered ahead, past
Ka’eo’s bulk. The submersible was now on the horizon, a fingerling to behold but rapidly growing in her sight. She switched to manual control and sent her hands in a dance across the board. The boat swung about to a precise aim and bounded onward.
“Did you follow that, Ka’eo?” she asked.
“[I think so, oath-sister,]” he replied.
“What do you make of it?” Since it was to a Keiki she spoke, that was literally: “How do your senses take this water?”