The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  ‘Cavalry’s back,’ said Roach, pointing.

  Boris couldn’t quite grasp what he meant, until his eyes followed the direction of his companion’s finger and, after first discerning the glow from a malfunctioning thruster, he witnessed the erratic approach of the AG scooter. Both men stared at it in dubious silence for a moment before shouting and waving. Soon the machine was close enough for Keech to spot them so he brought it in right over their heads and tried to keep it hovering there.

  Boris watched open-mouthed as it slowly sank towards them.

  ‘Jump on as quickly as you can!’ Keech yelled. ‘We’ll only get one chance at this!’

  ‘Great,’ said Roach flexing his half-dead arm.

  ‘You go first,’ said Boris.

  The scooter continued to drop towards them, now tilting in the air so its rear end met the surface of the water first. Roach shoved down on his carboy to lift himself up enough so that he could grab the rim of the luggage compartment with his one operable arm. He was hanging there, unable to pull himself further, until Keech himself reached back with one hand and grabbed him. The scooter sank half a metre into the sea as Roach struggled up on to one of its wings beside Keech.

  Boris then snatched at the same area, and began pulling himself on to the other wing. Keech reached back intending to help him, then abruptly turned away to slap some control in the partially dismantled console, as the AG’s hum became a vibration. Boris found it easier boarding with two operable arms, and soon the two crewmen were squatting either side of the driver’s seat, clinging on to whatever they could. Meanwhile Keech manipulated the controls, but seemingly to no effect.

  Abruptly the seahorse leapt out of the water and landed with a thud in the luggage compartment. The scooter now rested deep enough in the water for the occasional wave to splash in after it.

  ‘Here goes,’ said Keech, very carefully upping AG. The motor under his seat issued a grating hum, then spat out a couple of black smoke rings. The scooter rose briefly, until its back end was just clear of the water, then slowly began to sink back again. Keech then opened the tap that supplied pure water to the thruster still functioning. It cracked out a brief blue flame that had them drifting across the surface of the sea. Again, he tried AG, but swore when it failed to lift them clear.

  ‘Can’t you give us some lift?’ he said.

  Behind his back Boris and Roach looked askance at each other.

  ‘What can we do?’ Boris whispered.

  ‘We ain’t got no lift,’ added Roach.

  Keech ignored them and turned to peer down into the luggage compartment.

  ‘Did the EM burst get you as well?’

  The seahorse gazed straight back up at him, with its remaining topaz eye flickering. It emitted a stuttering crackle that sounded vaguely apologetic. Keech swore once again, then turned to Boris. ‘What about the rest of the crew?’ he asked.

  ‘Dead,’ said Boris.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ continued the monitor as he nursed the scooter along.

  In a flat tone, Boris began to tell the monitor about the Prador, about the human blanks and the weapons they carried. At one point Roach interjected a bitter monologue about Rebecca Frisk, while eying an ominous swirl in the water behind them.

  The big leech turned up when even Ron’s and Ambel’s drain-cleaner snoring had ceased to keep the others awake. Janer was over on the opposite side of the perimeter when it surged out of the dingle and bore down on those he was guarding. Even so, he hesitated before taking aim. He’d never seen anything quite like this; the huge slimy creature was the size of a hippopotamus and the gaping tube of its leech mouth as wide as a bucket. It didn’t move fast, but it moved deceptively. One moment it was oozing over the perimeter at full width. The next moment it drew itself out thin and long, then flowed forwards again – and was poised over the curled-together bodies of Anne and Forlam. Not familiar with the settings on the weapon he held, or even which trigger to pull, Janer aimed it and fired.

  The carbine made no noise whatsoever, and there was of course no kick. Drifting smoke from the fire vaguely traced out the pulsing path of a beam of coherent light the width of Janer’s wrist. Where it struck the leech, bright flame flashed, and its slimy flesh melted away. The beam cut through the creature like boiling water poured on ice, smoke and steam condensing in a flat cloud in the air immediately above. The leech made no sound other than a hiss that could have emerged from its boiling insides, and it oozed its way out of the clearing just as fast as it had oozed into it. Janer kept firing at the monster until he could no longer see it behind the clouds of smoke and steam.

  The frogmoles quietened, and other sounds issuing from things Janer had no name for, ceased as well. He stood gasping with shock, nausea churning his stomach. He realized his back was right up against the perimeter and leapt away from it, turning his weapon on the dingle. No movement. Nothing. After a moment the nausea subsided and he looked around at his companions. Ron and Ambel were still snoring loudly on opposing sides of the clearing. Forlam and Anne had not even stirred, while Erlin was still sound asleep in her padded sleeping bag, and Pland was showing no signs of life either. The only one to move was Peck, and that was just to grunt and turn over. For a moment Janer couldn’t believe that not one of them had woken. Then he grinned to himself and stood up straighter. What a rush!

  The molly carp surfaced ten metres behind them, and sculled along like a faithful dog until Boris managed to get his gun out of his belt, but the creature submerged before he could draw a bead on it. A sinuous swirl appeared five metres to one side of it, and the pink snout of a rhinoworm broke the surface.

  ‘We got problems,’ muttered Boris, aiming at its snout, but electing not to fire when it also resubmerged.

  ‘How observant of you,’ said Keech. He had the side of the AG motor cover hinged open so he could inspect the burnt-out control system. After a moment he pulled an optical IC and plugged in an optic cable from the control column. The motor surged for a moment, lifting them a metre above the waves. A quick burst from the thruster had them skating away, and they were fifty metres from the two escorting creatures before the scooter started to lose height again.

  ‘Fsk pock . . . help?’ said SM13 and the three of them turned to stare at it.

  ‘Self-repair?’ asked Keech.

  ‘Sprerz-sprock,’ said Thirteen, and rose a few centimetres out of the luggage compartment before dropping back.

  ‘It speaks?’ said Roach.

  ‘They often do – but usually only to say “Take that, fucker”. But then my own experience of SMs has mainly been restricted to those uploaded into war drones. They don’t normally employ a wide vocabulary. They don’t really need one,’ replied Keech.

  ‘Sprzzz carp Sniper.’

  ‘Makes no sense at all,’ muttered Boris. ‘What’s SM stand for anyway?’

  ‘Submind. So the Warden’s obviously taking an interest in what’s happening down here. We’ll probably be seeing a few of this one’s brothers and sisters some time soon. Pass it here.’

  Boris hefted the probe out of the luggage compartment and handed it carefully to Keech. The monitor grabbed it in one hand and shoved it under his seat, on top of the AG motor, which was now letting out faint wisps of black smoke.

  ‘It might be able to give us some lift in a bit. We’re going to need it,’ he explained.

  ‘Scugger-fuck,’ said the probe. It thumped against the underside of the seat, and the scooter lifted fractionally. Keech gave the thruster a quick burst, and the scooter surged forward just enough to avoid the rhinoworm that had chosen that moment to try for a mouthful of Roach.

  ‘We ain’t gonna make it,’ whined Roach.

  Keech passed him the weapon he’d used against Frisk’s ship. ‘This still works, but be careful; there’s no control system, so it could fire in any mode. Don’t use it unless you really have to,’ he warned.

  Roach held the weapon in one hand and pensively inspected its contro
ls. He peered down the silvered insides of the twin barrels, then quickly pointed them away from himself.

  ‘These are illegal, ain’t they?’

  ‘Yes, does that bother you right now?’ asked Keech.

  Roach aimed the weapon at the two following swirls. ‘Not particularly,’ he admitted.

  When Pland took over the watch he began by joyously zapping even the smallest leeches that entered the clearing, until Janer thought he’d never get to sleep. Sitting up, wrapped in foil-like heat blanket by the fire, he opened his pack in search of a suitable pill. For a moment he eyed the hexagonal package he’d brought along at the mind’s insistence, then closed his pack again, as he’d decided against the pill. He didn’t want to fall into a heavy sleep, with things like that huge leech out there. He lay down again and stretched himself out on the lumpy ground.

  ‘Anything from the Warden?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m allowed to speak now, am I?’ asked the mind.

  ‘I didn’t want you distracting me while I was on watch.’

  ‘You did not want me talking about the packet of sprine crystals Captain Ambel has brought along.’

  ‘That too,’ said Janer.

  ‘Just one crystal in the front of the box and I will cease to . . . bug you.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Would independent finance be a suitable motivation?’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘At present you are effectively in my employ. You travel where I wish you to travel, and you take my eyes with you. Ten million shillings paid into your private account would make you independently wealthy and you could travel wherever you wished. You could go to Aster Colora, as you have always wanted. You could return to Earth any time you wished. There are many things you could do.’

  ‘Ten million just to put one crystal in the front of your little box?’

  ‘Yes,’ the mind replied.

  ‘That can only mean your intentions are against Polity law, and I’d probably be charged as an accessory. Accessory to multiple murder would mean being mind-wiped at best.’

  ‘Spatterjay is not within the Polity.’

  ‘It is not in the Polity yet, and are you telling me your hornets will stay here on-planet?’

  ‘No crime has been committed.’

  ‘Yet.’

  ‘You argue that, yet under Polity law any Polity citizen may bear arms.’

  ‘Within limits,’ said Janer.

  ‘The only proscribed items are explosives and energy weapons. That proscription is very specific as concerns weapons in the gigawatt range, which, incidentally, is precisely the level of weapon that a representative of Polity law has already been using here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The monitor, Sable Keech, was in possession of an anti-photon weapon capable of a gigawatt burst. The penalty for owning such a weapon is moral reconditioning.’

  ‘So that’s what it was,’ said Janer.

  ‘I would be in possession of no such weapon. What I would possess would merely be for personal defence.’

  ‘I’d like to go to sleep now.’

  ‘You have no way of refuting my arguments. Consider this: you get ten million in your account and my aims are achieved now. The alternative is that they are achieved in the next solstan year and you do not get ten million in your account. You would, in fact, have to seek gainful employ with someone else.’

  ‘Threats now.’

  ‘Promises.’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea to inflict this planet with hornets carrying sprine in their stings. Individual hornets are still just insects and they’ll react to defend themselves unless directly under your control. A lot of people here could die.’

  ‘Ten million shillings.’

  ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ said Janer guiltily.

  The mind made a buzzing, self-satisfied sound.

  When Janer woke again, he felt as though he’d only been asleep for a moment – until he noticed that he could now distinguish sky from dingle. He looked around to see who was on watch, and saw Forlam sitting at the perimeter, the carbine resting across his lap, and his back turned to the dingle. The crewman looked tired and bored – no doubt Pland had scorched all the leeches in the immediate area earlier in the night – and much in need of relief.

  Janer was about to call out to him, when he realized he must still be asleep and dreaming. Standing behind Forlam was a blue man – or rather the body of a man. This figure stood about four metres tall, and impossibly thin and long-boned. His hands looked like giant harvestman spiders, his torso a long arc of ribs, and his arms and legs seemed to possess more joints than they should do. Also, he had no head. This is what persuaded Janer he must be dreaming – that and the slow and silent way the blue man moved. Anyway, surely Forlam would not court disaster by sitting with his back to the trees, would he? As Janer tried to wake up, tried to call out, he became aware of Ambel’s snores, and connected them with some kind of reality.

  Suddenly he realized this was no dream. Between the blue man’s shoulders sprouted a questing leech’s mouth, and Janer now knew who this man had been.

  ‘Forlam!’

  But his cry came too late. One long bony hand reached down and took Forlam up like a doll. Forlam yelled once and the carbine dropped to the ground. Then he saw what had hold of him and suddenly went silent, mesmerized. The man-thing raised him to its horribly eager leech-mouth and that mouth attached to Forlam’s torso.

  Forlam screamed.

  ‘What the bloody hell!’ Ambel sat upright.

  Janer leapt across the still-prostrate form of Captain Ron and dived for the carbine. He seized it just as other questions were shouted. Ambel’s blunderbuss went off with a huge bang and the sound of its shot striking the man-thing was the slap of a spade on flesh. The blow peeled back skin which immediately rolled back into place. The thing kept grinding at Forlam and Forlam kept on screaming.

  ‘Bugger! . . . Bugger! . . . Bugger!’ yelled Peck, pumping his shotgun and blasting away with each repetition of the word. Each hit slewed away fragments of the creature’s skin and punched a grey hollow, but each hollow quickly refilled and blue skin slid back into place. There were other shots, Janer did not discern from whom. He aimed at blue gut and fired. The creature’s torso smoked and it jerked backwards, skin charred away to expose knotted woody fibre underneath. As Janer fired again, it pulled Forlam away from its mouth and hissed out a cloud of blood. A third shot charred skin from its legs, but seemed to cut no deeper than that. It suddenly dropped Forlam to the ground and took a long stride back into the dingle. It was gone in a moment.

  ‘Oh God, it was him.’ Erlin shuddered.

  ‘Bugger!’ Peck yelled again, and went roaring across the clearing after the man-thing. Ambel caught him by his jacket collar and flipped him on to his back. With a sick expression on her face, Erlin grabbed her medkit and went over to where Forlam lay moaning in the undergrowth. Ron chose that moment to snort awake and sit upright.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked the Captain.

  Janer stared at him, then cracked up. This was all just too bizarre. He sat on the ground and laughed so hard his stomach hurt – this inappropriate hilarity ending with a fit of coughing. Ron stared at him with a puzzled expression, then transferred his attention to Ambel, calmly reloading his blunderbuss, then to what Erlin was doing. Pland and Anne were holding Forlam down while she worked on him. She had picked up Janer’s heat sheet and was cutting it into wide strips. Nothing else was big enough to suffice as a dressing for the hole in the crewman’s body.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Peck, sitting upright.

  Ron stood up and walked over to examine Forlam. There he exchanged a few brief words with Erlin before coming back, obviously irritated, to Janer and the rest.

  ‘Best get packed and moving,’ he said.

  ‘Forlam?’ asked Janer.

  ‘I’ll carry him. We gotta catch that thing afore its head finds it,’ explained Ron.

 
; ‘Catch it?’ said Janer, but Ron was no longer listening. He had his attention fixed on Ambel who had pulled on gloves to open a waxed packet secured at his belt. Ambel then took out a single red crystal and crumbled it into the sheath of his knife. He then spat into that sheath and replaced the knife.

  ‘Best be moving,’ he growled and stared towards where the Skinner’s body had vanished.

  The Hive mind chose that opportune moment to address Janer. ‘Frisk’s ship has moored in the cove,’ it announced.

  ‘Better and better,’ Janer spat.

  Rebecca Frisk stared at the open door, and the two human blanks waiting there. The leading one, a heavily muscled man with virus-blue skin and a mass of scar tissue down the side of his face, gestured at her with the nerve-inducer he held. She rose and walked forwards, and the two of them parted to allow her past. She considered trying to snatch a holstered weapon, then shelved the idea. These blanks were as old as the Captains and, like all the other bodies she and Jay had supplied to the Prador, had been infected with the Spatterjay virus from the moment of capture. Their bodies would be much stronger than the body she inhabited, since it had been infected for several centuries less than theirs. She might be able to knock the Batians about, but not these two.

  Vrell waited for her on the lower deck, turning to watch as she climbed through the hatch. To one side the two mercenaries stood glaring. Frisk immediately noted that they had been disarmed.

  ‘You will go ashore,’ said Vrell. He gestured with one of his legs to a ship beached there. ‘Ashore are Sable Keech, Gosk Balem and the thing that was once Jay Hoop. It does not concern me what you do there.’

  ‘I’ll get Jay,’ said Frisk.

  ‘That does not concern me. You will not remain aboard this ship.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Vrell turned away from her, and she felt the hard hands of the blanks close on her upper arms. They moved her over to where the two Batians stood.

  Vrell continued, ‘You no longer serve a purpose. The Convocation has been called and all the Old Captains are coming to attend it. Within days they will all be here, to discuss the fate of Gosk Balem. I must keep this ship here until then. You pose a threat to the completion of my task merely by being on board. You are not under my control – nor are your mercenaries. You will all go ashore.’