The Skinner

  ‘Maybe, but it is something that has to be done. It must be killed.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Janer, surprised at her vehemence.

  ‘The head will go to where its body is, and its body is on the Skinner’s Island. They intend to go there and destroy the Skinner completely.’

  ‘This Skinner is Jay Hoop, then? You know I never believed that story until now.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And now it’s . . . heading for its own body—?’ He allowed himself a weak grin at the unintended pun.

  ‘To rejoin it, yes. And that cannot be allowed to happen.’

  Janer studied her for a long moment. He felt as if someone must have shoved him into one of the weirder type of VR scenarios. Every time he thought he had a handle on the situation, it just got stranger.

  ‘What about this Convocation?’ he asked, trying instead for a discussion of the prosaic.

  ‘The Old Captains will meet and sit in judgement on Ambel. They might decide to throw him back into the sea – or into a fire. But they might decide he’s suffered enough.’

  Janer studied her again.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Erlin.

  Janer nodded and toyed with the Hive link in his pocket. He did not know how he himself felt either. Ambel he considered a rival for Erlin’s affections but, like Ron, with his slow, huge power and calm assurance, the Old Captain was difficult to dislike.

  Frisk playfully burnt holes in the deck as Svan dived for cover. The shot Svan returned splayed mini-lightning along a rail but caused no damage. Her second shot hit Drum, and the Captain coughed as if slapped across the chest, but he remained by the helm as steady as a monolith.

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ shouted Frisk, and burnt a couple of holes through the captive sail. The sail’s wings hung flaccid, but its stapled neck quivered.

  ‘Frisk!’

  Frisk turned just in time to see Shib straddling the port rail. The pulse hit her in the chest and knocked her backwards. She tried to raise her weapon, but a second and a third pulse struck her. She staggered away while Shib made an adjustment on his weapon. Then the fourth pulse slammed her back against Drum, and blackness engulfed her.

  ‘Got her,’ yelled Shib, and went to stand over the woman. Svan came out of hiding and climbed on to the cabin-deck. She glared down at Frisk.

  ‘What setting?’ she asked.

  ‘Six,’ Shib replied. ‘Hooper.’

  ‘No sign of leech marks on her though,’ said Svan, ‘but maybe that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll have to remember that.’ They both turned as Speaker made her way precariously up the ladder.

  ‘What now?’ Svan asked.

  ‘Repair the damage to this ship. Using AG will bring us unwanted attention. Then we wait for my shuttle,’ said Speaker.

  ‘One thing,’ said Svan as Speaker turned to go. ‘To bring about this Convocation, you spoke of the Captains needing to know that Frisk is here. Our pursuit of Keech brings you no closer to that goal.’

  ‘The Captains do know that she is here, but even that is now unnecessary since a Convocation has been called at our next destination. It would seem Rebecca is not the only remaining member of Hoop’s crew here, beside himself. Gosk Balem has been found, alive.’

  ‘Hoop is here as well?’ said Shib, but Speaker descended to the lower deck without replying, then quickly returned to the hold.

  ‘I’ll watch her,’ said Svan, nodding at the prostrate Frisk. ‘You go and get on with the repairs.’

  Shib glanced down at his mutilated hand. After a moment, he stepped closer to Frisk and trod his heel down hard on her face. He was about to do so again when Svan pulled him back.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ she said. ‘If she’s Hooper, she probably won’t even notice when she wakes. Now, as I said, the repairs?’

  Shib stared at her hard.

  ‘She’ll pay,’ he snarled.

  ‘Repairs,’ Svan repeated, her voice flat.

  Shib retained enough survival instinct to recognize her tone, and moved off to do as he was told. With her hand resting on the butt of her pulse-gun, Svan watched him go. Unnoticed by the both of them, a seahorse the colour and texture of the sky, had drifted to the top of the main mast and settled there. It immediately changed appearance to the colour and texture of the mast, providing it with a baroque and somewhat odd adornment. The sail opened one crusted eyelid to expose a dark red pupil, then quickly closed it. Drum’s glance flicked impassively to the top of the mast, then down to his hands on the helm. With painful slowness, he lifted one finger from the wood, then returned it. At the back of his neck, a hole had appeared, exposing the dull metal of the spider thrall.

  With a fair wind in all her sails, the Treader moved out of the atolls and into Deep-sea. The sun set in a silent viridian explosion and thick clouds hauled a deeper darkness up behind the ship. Keech shivered at the rail, testing the fingers of his injured arm. ‘Hurt?’ asked Forlam with undue interest.

  Keech nodded, closing his hand into a fist. He wanted to be fully functional for what was yet to come. He hadn’t decided about Ambel yet – but if his eventual decision went against that of this Convocation, he wanted to be ready and able to carry it through.

  ‘The Skinner gives pain,’ said Forlam.

  ‘You don’t say,’ replied Keech.

  Forlam went on, ‘They say it caught Peck, stripped him completely of his skin and ran around waving it about like a set of overalls. Peck’s never been the same since.’

  Keech didn’t suppose he would be. He also wondered about the reason for Forlam’s intense interest.

  ‘Why was it allowed to live for so long? Didn’t you all know about it?’ he asked.

  Behind and to either side of the ship, the sea reflected a yellow glow as Peck and Pland moved about lighting lanterns. Keech glanced around the ship. Anne was standing by the mast, cutting up rhinoworm meat for the sail. Janer and Erlin had gone below, and Keech wondered if they would be sharing a bunk this night. From the cabin-deck could be heard the low murmur of Ambel and Ron in conversation. Ambel was at the helm: his huge bulky shape silhouetted against the sunset. When Ron moved up beside him there was little to distinguish between them.

  ‘Not everyone knew about it. Kept it to ’emselves’ said Forlam, as if bemoaning that the location of some treasure had been withheld from him.

  ‘Who did, then?’ asked Keech.

  ‘The Old Captains mostly.’

  ‘That still doesn’t tell me why it was allowed to live.’

  ‘I guess it don’t.’

  ‘Balem knew and he did nothing,’ said Keech, testing.

  Forlam appeared distracted as he said, ‘Its final death – maybe a Convocation decision, not just Captain Ambel’s.’

  Keech let that ride: there had been no Convocation decision to pursue and kill the Skinner this time.

  ‘How many Captains?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty-three at last count,’ Forlam quickly replied, lost now in some strange abstraction – his eyes wide on the dark.

  ‘And your Ambel is one of the most respected of them.’

  ‘Yes, he is that.’

  Keech nodded and turned to head for his bunk. This man made him feel uncomfortable as there was something definitely not quite right about him – which was an interesting assessment from someone who had only recently been a walking corpse. Also, Keech felt tired and even with all his doubts and wonderings, he was relishing the experience. Even unpleasant sensations were better than having no sensation at all.

  ‘No action,’ the Warden decreed.

  ‘But they’ve put a thrall unit in him,’ argued the submind.

  ‘No action.’

  ‘But they’re criminals. She’s Rebecca Frisk. I should do something.’

  ‘No action.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I can always recall you, and send SM Twelve instead,’ suggested the Warden. ‘He too has chameleonware – which, incidental
ly, was approved by me.’

  An incoherent mutter came from the drone.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, Warden. I hear and obey.’

  The Warden shut down communication and considered its options. It logged the situation with ECS as low priority, and ran a quick summation of the facts that were certain. The spacecraft being blown in orbit had, apparently, been a cover for Rebecca Frisk’s arrival on Spatterjay. And she had come shortly after the arrival of Sable Keech. Here she had met her mercenaries, and set out after the monitor. That all seemed quite simple until you started factoring in some other items.

  Firstly, agents of unknown employ had been disseminating the information that Rebecca Frisk was on-planet, which information had led to a Convocation being called. Frisk had moved rather quickly to join the sailing ship she was now on, and had installed an AG motor. This was worrying, because the spacecraft that had supposedly been blown was only capable of carrying a certain class of escape pods, which in submersible mode could not move as fast as she had. What was going on?

  The Warden decided to widen his logic field. Results: the immediate consequence of Frisk’s presence here being known had been the calling of a Convocation of the Old Captains. That made no sense. But perhaps something to do with the Prador? The Warden opened its Hoop files and began to check Prador associations, and to compare them with present events in the Third Kingdom. Ebulan, a human name given to a very old adult Prador, seemed the most prominent name. Slowly, the Warden began to discern a possible scenario emerging.

  SM13 continued its silent vigil. It watched as Shib hung two sheets of plass across the gaping hole in the front of the ship, moulded them to the shape of the hull by means of a small heating unit, then injected crash foam in between both sheets. The foam set instantly, then Shib went to carefully shut off AG. The ship settled back into the sea, and the patch-up held firm. Thirteen momentarily considered introducing a few weaknesses around the repair but found it didn’t have the nerve to defy the Warden. It turned its attention elsewhere.

  The sail was slowly recovering, though the damage done to it had been severe. Its brain had been partially cooked, but not completely destroyed, and was now regenerating. It could do nothing as yet, by dint of it having had its neck stapled to the mast, but it was working on that: methodically flexing its neck muscles against the strips of metal securing it.

  Drum was a much more interesting possibility. Thirteen had noted the Captain’s finger movement and, listening in on conversations between Shib and Svan, it surmised that the accident was in some part due to Drum not immediately obeying a verbal instruction from Svan. It also noted the typical Prador metal exposed at the back of Drum’s neck, and surmised that a spider thrall had been used on him, but that the Captain had not been fully cored. Now, his virus-filled body was attempting to reject the device controlling him – just as the body Frisk had stolen was attempting to reject what remained of her. Such endless possibilities.

  At present the sail and Drum were in no immediate danger, however. Yet, if either of them became capable of any more decisive action, they would likely put themselves in mortal danger. Then, the submind decided, it could act, despite the Warden’s orders. So it sat up on the mast, with the AI equivalent of smug satisfaction, and awaited events. Then it saw the one-armed woman climb out of the hold and, when it read the Prador glyphs tattooed on her body, it suddenly realized that something very important had been missed.

  ‘Warden! Prador blank!’ was the extent of the message it shrieked, before other events came upon it rather abruptly. A flash of intense light haloed the ship, and a thunderclap shook it. Thirteen had just detected something metallic in the sea – before its senses whited out and a power surge fused its AG.

  ‘Damn,’ it managed, before tumbling from the masthead and axing down into the deck timbers.

  Shib drew a bead on the baroque metal drone. The seahorse wobbled in the splintered planking and little gusts of smoke puffed from a couple of its small vents. ‘Drone shell – probably loaded with one of the Warden’s subminds,’ said Svan. ‘That was an EM burst hit it. So it won’t be getting up again.’

  ‘What do I do with it?’ Shib asked.

  ‘Throw it over the side.’

  Shib lowered his weapon and moved towards the drone. He tried to pick it up with his injured hand, and then had to holster his weapon and use both hands to tug the device from the deck timbers. When he finally lifted it, he found it as heavy as a cannon ball. It was hot as well, continuing to puff smoke and make small buzzing sounds. He tossed it over the side, watched it rapidly sink – and then turned quickly, drawing his weapon at the splashing sound behind him. He lowered his weapon on identifying the wedge-shaped Prador transport rising out of the sea on the other side of the ship.

  The transport drew level with the rail, and opened like a clam. Out of it, in full war harness, sprang the large adolescent Prador he had earlier seen inside the destroyer. The creature rocked the whole ship as it hit the deck, the armoured spikes of its feet driving like daggers into the planking. Throwing up splinters, it turned – and demolished a section of rail with a sweep of its claw. Quickly following the creature through this gap came four heavily laden human blanks, just as fearsomely armed.

  ‘Get us back on course – now,’ rasped the Prador’s translation box.

  ‘And if we don’t?’ said Shib.

  He did not even have time to duck. An armoured claw, reeking of the sea, closed round his neck and lifted him from the deck.

  ‘All are dispensable,’ Vrell rasped. ‘All.’

  As Vrell lowered him back to the deck, Shib glared at the Prador with hate and disgust. When finally it released its hold, he glanced up to the cabin-deck where Svan stood at Drum’s shoulder issuing instructions. The motor churned the sea behind the ship, and Drum swung the helm over, turning the vessel away from where it had been drifting, the transport attached limpet-like at its side.

  Moving away from Drum, Svan watched cautiously as one of the blanks came up the ladder. The blank looked straight into the polished barrel of Svan’s weapon, then went and crouched down by Frisk. The blank pulled the injector from Frisk’s belt and quickly hurled it over the side. Using a new injector, the blank gave the woman a dose, before substituting the injector in her belt with the new one. As Svan watched this she realized immediately that she had been lied to – then she climbed down to the lower deck and moved up beside Shib. They watched silently as blanks started bolting armament and defences to the deck. Their transport, now empty, sank back into the sea.

  ‘Getting a little complicated,’ observed Shib, staring at the Prador, with beads of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Next chance we get, we’re out of here,’ murmured Svan.

  ‘Nice to get a chance,’ said Shib, still rubbing at his throat.

  The Warden registered the message, and the EM blast, and then all its speculations and calculations slammed together in a logical whole. There was a Prador adult somewhere on the planet below. There had to be one, to run a human blank. Now, all of a sudden, Rebecca Frisk and the events on Drum’s Cohorn were only important in how they pertained to the presence of that Prador.

  ‘SM Twelve, keep away from that ship. I won’t tell you again,’ warned the Warden when it detected the little drone moving in close again.

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  The Warden went on, ‘Did it occur to you that the debris you scanned earlier might have been planted in orbit, that in fact no ship was destroyed in the atmosphere?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  The Warden scanned back over its visual files, only confirming that – of course – none of its eyes had been close enough for it to identify what kind of vessel had approached Spatterjay.

  ‘Obviously didn’t occur to you either,’ interjected another voice.

  ‘Sniper, this is a private channel,’ said the Warden.

  ‘Yeah, and your security sucks. Come on, when are you gonna get with some dire
ct action?’

  If the Warden could have smiled, it would have done so then. It had only taken the smallest chink in its armour for the war drone to break through, and then from under the sea, in the belly of a molly carp: proof that even after all this time Sniper had still not lost his edge.

  ‘Our priority is to trace the Prador vessel. SM Thirteen was knocked down by an EM burst shell, the kind of weaponry often found on their war craft. That, combined with the tricky manoeuvring it executed on the way in puts it at nothing less than an attack ship.’

  ‘Yeah, so whadda you doing about it?’ demanded Sniper.

  ‘SMs numbers one to ten, activate and upload to drone shells in defence satellite Alpha, and run diagnostics,’ said the Warden.

  ‘Now that’s more like it, but is it enough? That lot are only police-action spec. You want soldiers not enforcers,’ said Sniper. ‘Why don’t I come and play, too?’

  ‘You will remain exactly where you are unless the situation becomes critical – though there is something else you can do for me.’

  ‘What?’ said Sniper grumpily.

  ‘I want an overlay program from you. You know the kind I mean.’

  Sniper’s reply bounced through subspace: a tight package of viral information. The Warden studied its format and its pasted-on title, then beamed it directly to the cylindrical satellite that was now moving into position. One of its long ports opened and ten black coffin-shapes dropped out of it. Hitting atmosphere they started glowing like hot irons.

  ‘SM Twelve, I want you there in position to shepherd them. They’ll be a bit erratic to begin with.’

  ‘Yes, as I can hear,’ said SM12.

  The Warden listened in to the close chatter between the ten SMs.

  ‘Let’s kick arse!’ was the gist of their excitement, overlaid on sounds as of mechanical projectile weapons being loaded and primed. With the amused tolerance of a parent, the Warden watched their continued descent to the surface of the planet. Subminds that had previously only been used for ecological, geological and meteorological surveys had changed very little even when they uploaded into the newest enforcer shells. Sniper’s overlay program had immediately changed that. But then that program had, after all, been called ‘attitude’.