"Grab your S and S and let's go, then".
By "S and S" Troyd meant shotgun and shockstick. The shockstick was almost identical to the ones Valentine had seen and used in the Southwest, save that it had a longer and heavier rubberized handle.
They went down into one of the holds. The side of the ship was punctured below the waterline. Scale and rust gave some color to the old sides, and the barnacles and whelks were making inroads into the water pooled in the bottom of the hold.
The smell was even worse down here thanks to the confined space. Valentine looked around at the staring bright red goggle eyes of the squatting and lounging Big Mouths.
They were hard to describe. Scaled like fish everywhere but the mouth and belly, they had huge triangular heads that tapered off to thin hips, where they were equipped with the long rear legs of a frog, ending in flippers and residual digits - almost useless for gripping, according to Troyd. Short arms, mostly used for climbing out of the water and pivoting on land, had webbed, gripping toes. They had blue green backs and pale, tartar-colored bellies.
The hold echoed with the sound of their breathing, as they sucked air through gill-like openings: slee-kee, slee-kee.
They liked to position themselves against an object, an underwater rock or log, with their rear legs folded. They could execute fair-sized leaps even without something to push off, but when properly "sprung" they could cover thirty yards or more in a lightning-flash hop.
Valentine watched a larger Big Mouth come up through a hole in the bottom of the ship and crowd another one out of the way with a few threatening snaps of vertically hinged jaws.
"What keeps her afloat?"
"One of each of the holds, forward and rear, is full of buoyant stuff, and the slop barges to either side are fixed permanently as camels. Marker barrels, Ping-Pong balls, flotation foam from old life jackets and airplane cushions, coconut coir, just about anything guaranteed not to sink. You could rip out the whole bottom of this ship and she wouldn't go down. At least I don't think she would".
Pools of filth rested in the shallow water lapping in the hold.
"They like it dirty down here, don't they?"
Troyd shrugged. "The shit feeds the slime. Little fish and crabs feed off the slime. Bigger fish eat the little fish. The Big Mouths eat the crabs and bigger fish, leading to more shit. It's a regular circle of life".
A Big Mouth splashed around in the filth, wiggling its rear hips and hunching its back. "Lying around, eating, and shitting, that's about all they do when they're not in training".
Valentine noted that the full-grown Big Mouths had stainless steel rings at their forehump between the eyes and in a fleshy taillike growth between the legs.
"What are the rings?" he asked.
"Front one's a towline or tether line. You'll see how those work. Rear is attached to some gonad tissue - that's a control line. About the only way you can direct them is to yank 'em by the balls. But haul too hard on the reins - they'll swing around and try to bite yours off".
Troyd let Valentine absorb that factoid and then continued: "Okay, we've seen lying around and shitting. Let's go look at the eating and training".
They took a flagged motorboat over to a sheltered bay between Maury and Vashon islands. OXE, mostly male but with a few women, stood on little floating platforms heaped with white buckets, or paddled around in sea kayaks, or were pulled about lying on floats Troyd called "boogie boards".
"Hey, Finn, can I borrow your ring?" a man called from a platform. "I'm going into the city this weekend and I could use a little flash".
Troyd laughed. "You'll have to bite it off like that whatsit in the old movie. How are they working?"
"Good. Eager. Donaldson lost one this morning, though - it attacked him. The others already ate it. They didn't get a frenzy going, probably the big breakfasts you're issuing".
"Glad to hear it". Troyd tossed a thermos of coffee to him. "Be nice and share for a change".
"We're going to have to get you a sea suit", Troyd said as they pulled away from the platform. "The water's pretty cold in the bay this time of year".
He pointed to a platform next to the shore. "That's training. You'll learn the hand signals easy enough - there's only sixteen of them. We fire flares when we want them to attack. For the BMs, that is. There's another dozen or so the handlers use to keep in touch with each other".
"What about at night?"
"Same signals, with chemical glow sticks. The BMs actually respond better at night. I think they can see the glow sticks better than they do hands.
Same thing with the flares. Just don't pull your flare pistol early - they'll see it and get all idgitated and go nuts because they think it means food".
"I need to know everything about capabilities. Especially speed in water over long distances, and on land".
"On a long haul they average, um, fifteen or twenty miles per hour. That varies depending on currents. They slow down a bit in really cold water too".