The Skinner s-1

by Neal Asher

  Erlin was wondering how much longer she, and Anne, had to live. Shortly Frisk and her pet Batians would start to consider them a hindrance rather than useful hostages. As soon as that time came there would be no hesitation to kill them. The Batians would do it with workmanlike precision. It was what they were employed for, after all. Frisk, however, would do it with great enjoyment, and probably as slowly and painfully as possible. Erlin had enough judgement of people to recognize a raving psychopath.

  ‘Halt here,’ ordered Svan.

  As she and Anne stopped in the centre of the courtyard, Erlin could see the crew-woman working her wrists against the cable-cuffs securing her hands behind her back. She thought to warn her of the futility of trying to break woven ceraplast, but changed her mind — she did not know, after all, how old Anne was — and instead looked away to survey her surroundings.

  It was impossible for Erlin not to think about what had once happened here: the horror of it all. A thousand years ago, Jay Hoop and his crew of pirates had landed on this island to establish a permanent cache of arms and loot. At one time or another, all of them had been bitten by the leeches and to their surprise subsequently discovered that they did not grow old and die, but while growing older, were becoming stronger and more resistant to injury. With the confidence this imparted, for centuries they had terrorized the quadrant, using this planet — named Spatterjay, after Jay Hoop’s nickname — as their base. Then had come the Prador, and the war, and…

  A distant horrid shrieking distracted Erlin from her rumination. She looked around and saw Frisk move over to one side of the courtyard, and then pace along it.

  ‘We’ll go this way,’ she gestured to a door in the wall. ‘I’ll lead.’ She pointed at Erlin and Anne, ‘You two follow me.’

  The two captives crossed the courtyard and began to trail Frisk through the warren of dank corridors, past rooms scattered with such objects as could survive seven centuries of rot and decay. On the floors lay items of ceramal and glass, silicon and artificial gemstone. Remaining from personal units, comps, and the many other devices carried by the citizens of the Polity seven hundred years ago, were the practically indestructible chips — the metals and plastic long having corroded and decayed to dust. There were also ornaments and storage crystals, visors from soldier’s helmets, diverse items of ceramal armour. Erlin was thoroughly aware that these objects were things once carried by Hoop’s captives — things that during the war became of least value to Hoop and his crew. They had wanted the persons who wore them.

  Frisk led them further through the Hold till they reached a high tunnel on the other side. Beyond the tunnel mouth, the dingle was crushed and flattened.

  ‘Svan, go and check for tracks,’ called Frisk.

  Svan trotted past them, sped through the tunnel, and began to examine the soft ground beyond. Frisk looked back at her two prisoners and grinned.

  What figure had Keech once quoted? Ten million. Ten million humans cored here during the Prador-Human war. And this woman had been one of the murderers. Erlin now knew what Keech had meant when he had predicted Frisk would no longer have the face by which he had known her. The thought of it sickened her.

  ‘They did come through here, but there’s some sort of animal footprint as well,’ called out Svan.

  With a smirk Frisk followed her into the tunnel. Anne and Erlin remained where they were, until Shib barked at them to get moving too. Through the tunnel and out into the dingle, Svan walked ahead and Frisk shifted to one side. Erlin reflected about how she herself had come here to learn from Ambel how to live — but now it seemed she had in fact come here to die. She turned suddenly when she heard a horrible high-pitched scream behind her.

  The mercenary, Shib, had made the mistake of brushing against a tree. He was now wearing a leech like a feather boa, and seemed unable to overcome his disgust enough to grab it and throw it away. The creature flowed round his neck, and drove its mouth in against his cheek. Even now the mercenary could not react.

  Svan ran past Erlin and grabbed at the leech. With a yank, she tore it from his face and flung it to the ground. Shib still stood there, keening, a circle of flesh missing from his cheek, his teeth now exposed underneath. Svan backhanded him across the other side of his face, once, twice, knocking him to the ground. The keening suddenly stopped.

  ‘Get up.’

  Shib slowly rose to his feet: shame, fear and madness fighting for predominance in his expression.

  ‘Keep moving you two,’ said Svan, heading back to lead the way. Erlin thought her insane to leave this humiliated man at her back. When Shib drew his hand laser she assumed he was going to burn a hole through Svan’s back. Instead, he incinerated the leech, and reholstered the laser.

  ‘Get a move on,’ he snarled at her.

  * * * *

  SM12’s cockle-shell body was of an extremely rugged construction: its outer shells formed of centimetre-thick foamed steel, and its internal components braced in a ceramal-composite lattice, but even so it knew that the pressure a kilometre down would collapse it as easily as a snail in a vice, if it did not prepare. Floating on the surface, Twelve folded away its single laser, then using an internal system pumped crash foam at high pressure into all its internal cavities. Next with its shells slightly open, it turned off its AG and sank like the lump of metal it was.

  Five hundred metres down Twelve observed with interest one of the herbivorous deep-water heirodonts cruising past, the leeches on its body turned to strands by the pressure. The creature resembled a truncated whale, its face, however, just a wall of feeding sieves; its body short and roped with muscle, studded with round fins, and terminating in a wide vertically presented tail. It suddenly dived when it was past the SM and, as it went rapidly down, the leeches clinging to its skin began to break away. A little relief it would find in the depths, before having to return upwards to feed and be fed upon.

  Twelve followed it down, the drone’s crash foam collapsing into a thick hard layer around its internal components. The substance offered some protection, but the SM knew that some parts of itself would inevitably get damaged. Essential components, however, would be fine, being constructed on the whole of hard silicon composites and foamed ceramal.

  Seven hundred metres down, and the SM’s self-diagnostic program told it that a reflective cylinder in its laser had cracked. Twelve had expected this to happen, as there was no way of injecting crash foam, or even admitting seawater, into the cavity within the cylinder — and to do so would have screwed the optical perfection of the system anyway. The rate of its descent was also slowing in proportion as the density of the water increased. The drone dared not reverse its AG to pull itself down faster, as that would be too easily detected. Shortly it passed the heirodont, which was now thinner than it had been above, the water having compressed it too. The creature’s eyes glimmered from their pits as it turned and sculled hesitantly towards Twelve, but the drone was well past it before it could decide if this strange-looking object was animal or vegetable.

  Now it was getting colder, and dark enough to necessitate Twelve switching from visual to low-intensity sonar, changing the emitted signal at random so that nothing constant could be detected. The Prador vessel lurking down here somewhere would be sure to have some kind of detection equipment out. A thousand metres down, and the lip of the trench finally came into sight. But Twelve did not bother to alter its course as it hit solid rock and, in a spray of silt, bounced over the edge. Using water jets, it corrected its tumble and studied the cliff face it was falling past. Down here, in weedy crevices, were whelks as big as houses riding on spreads of flat white tentacles; odd, diamond-shaped jellyfish adhered to clear surfaces, giving some expanses of rock the appearance of one great scaled beast; and long blue glisters hunting bulbous boxies that might easily be mistaken for soap bubbles. All very interesting, but all recorded and on file up on Coram. Twelve focused its attention downward, as the bottom of the trench floated up to meet it. It bounced in a cloud of
silt and razor-thin shell fragments, then with great care extended the range of its sonic scans.

  Nothing — nothing within range at least — but there was still plenty of the trench to search for it was many kilometres long. Twelve chose one direction at random, and with a blast of water propelled itself that way. Even before it properly got going, it noticed that one very regularly shaped boulder to its right was returning an odd signal. It risked a change in frequency and got an immediate result: the boulder was hollow. It had found the Prador ship already! But, no, that couldn’t be right; this object was much too small to contain an adult Prador. With care, Twelve moved in closer and closer to it then settled to rest on the bottom. A feeling almost like frustration came over it when it realized that nearly half of its scanning signals were now coming back to it with the same odd reverberation as had come from the unknown object. With chagrin, it admitted to itself that the pressure must have damaged its sonar. Unless…

  In its cortex, SM12 mapped the shape of the boulder and compared it to images of Prador ships it had kept stored in a history file. This object was a flattened ovoid with one end seemingly sheared off. It therefore did not match the shape of any of the ships in Twelve’s file. However, it did match part of one. Twelve shot up from the bottom as it realized what it had found was a weapons turret, and that what it had just been resting on was not the bottom of the trench. Jetting higher, it scanned right across what it had landed upon.

  ‘Fuck,’ said SM12, who — unlike Thirteen and Sniper — was not normally given to profanity.

  * * * *

  The flood had turned the ground into a soft morass, and made it easy to dig himself in. Vrell remained utterly motionless as the mad human yelled and stomped about.

  ‘Come out, come out wherever you are!’ Drum yelled.

  Antiphoton fire suddenly incinerated a tree only a few metres to Vrell’s right, dropping burning cinders on the ground all around the eye he had folded upwards from his visual turret. He slowly turned that eye and observed the human drawing closer, as he inspected the muddy ground.

  ‘Fucking Prador,’ growled Drum.

  Vrell assumed this anger must be directed at him personally because he had been the one who had installed the thrall unit in this particular human. Didn’t this Drum understand that Vrell was only obeying orders? Vrell watched the human’s antics some more, while slowly sinking his eye deeper into the concealing mud. Soon the human would be right on top of him. What would he do then? A few hours ago, he would have leapt out of this muddy hide and blasted away with his weapons, but now… what if he missed? The human could kill him. Vrell felt terrified. Deep inside himself, he felt a certainty that violence was meant for others. His own task now involved frequent use of the complicated organ exposed by the shedding of his two back legs — the organ he now squatted protectively over.

  The human came forward, till he stood right at the edge of the morass. He first tested it with his foot then put weight on that foot. Vrell remained utterly motionless as the foot trod down on his carapace. He observed Drum scratching his head, then slowly revolved his muddy eye as Drum walked right across the Prador’s back and off on to the boggy ground beyond. Once the Captain was out of sight Vrell shifted slightly, and again considered making his escape. On the other hand, Drum had not detected him here. Vrell decided to stay buried for a while longer.

  * * * *

  Captain Sprage stood on the main deck of the Vengeances his thumbs tucked into his thick leather belt and his pipe tucked into the corner of his mouth. He seemed oblivious to the bucking of his ship as it rode the swell, but stood there firmly, almost as if his feet were nailed to the deck. He observed that the waves were decreasing now, and the main danger was past. Surprisingly, there had not been that much danger. Yes, that first immense wave had sunk the Bogus and the Rull, but captains Jester and Orlando had survived their dunking in the sea, along with all of their two crews. The irony was that the undersea explosion causing the wave had also affected just about every sea creature in the area. Sprage pulled his pipe from his mouth and studied the leeches and glisters floating on the surface. He had counted fifteen different varieties of whelk, and noted that the underwater shock had broken open prill and that many were floating dead on the surface. He even noted some forms of life he’d never seen before: deep-bottom dwellers that had swollen into grotesque giant shapes on ascending to the surface. None of these creatures showed signs of recovering.

  ‘How come none of ‘em are reviving?’ he asked generally.

  Windcheater lifted his head from the deck and peered over the side. Sprage took a furtive glance at the creature’s metal aug and wondered if that was the reason for the sail’s need to interfere with the status quo. On the other hand it had probably been bolshy long before, else why would it have acquired an aug in the first place? After a long hard look overboard, Windcheater swung his head round and up to the deck.

  ‘The hyper-shock has caused major cellular disruption. The EM burst killed between eighty to ninety-five per cent of the viral fibres. The combination of these two has taken each life-system beyond chance of recovery,’ said the sail with extremely uncharacteristic precision.

  ‘What about us, then?’ asked Sprage, scratching at his sideburns.

  From where she was leaning on the rail, Tay turned and glanced towards the sail as Windcheater’s eyes crossed. Tay said, ‘You ran that last one through a weapons-site learning program. I suggest you try the Warden for your next answer.’

  Windcheater uncrossed his eyes, tilted his head for a moment, and then parroted, ‘The hyper-shock only affected creatures in the water, and the EM burst was considerably damped by the dense wood of your ship’s hulls. The Warden estimates that any of the EM burst that did get through will have killed less than ten per cent of the viral fibres in your bodies.’

  ‘Beneficial, then,’ said Sprage, putting his pipe back in his mouth with a solid click.

  ‘Signal from the Pumice!’ yelled Lember from the nest.

  Sprage took the small metal cylinder that Tay had given him, out of his pocket, and held it above the tobacco packed into his pipe. After a couple of flickers of red light, the tobacco began glowing again, and Sprage thankfully sucked in a good lungful of smoke. As he let it trail back out of his nostrils, he decided he had a lot to thank Polity technology for, not least being able to light up his pipe on a windy deck.

  ‘Relayed signal!’ shouted Lember. ‘They want to know if it’s time to go in!’

  Sprage extracted his pipe. ‘Tell ‘em yes. We’ll moor for the night and land in the morning. No point blundering about in the dark on Skinner’s Island. That’d be unhealthy.’

  * * * *

  When Twelve shot screaming from the sea, the Warden picked up the gist of what it was saying, and reacted immediately. A high-speed analysis of its files provided some basis on which to make its suppositions. The AI was now eighty-seven per cent certain that the Prador aboard the war craft was the old Prador called Ebulan. Ebulan had been Hoop’s main Prador contact during the war, and at the forefront of some of its more risky campaigns. Confirmation then: Ebulan was here to cover his tracks. Any other Prador would have remained in the safety of the Kingdoms, and sent agents here instead to accomplish its ends. That Ebulan had come here himself was indicative of — to put it succinctly — which way he might now jump. Maybe Ebulan would not go so far as to directly involve his own ship but, that ship being a Prador light destroyer, the Warden was taking no chances.

  ‘Priority message: Gate for all incoming visitors is now closed. More instructions to follow.’

  The Warden observed the effect of this announcement in the main concourse and in the arrivals lounges. People immediately began consulting their personal comps. In the first minute, the Warden counted two hundred enquiries directed through the consoles on Coram base. It fielded these with the same message, then directed its attention towards the code-breaker programmes it was running. No closer to cracking it yet, and that
code was the easiest way through the skin of the Prador vessel should it eventually show itself. The Warden gave yet another command.

  In the lounges and concourses, humans and altered humans observed — through the chainglass panoramic windows — weapons turrets cracking through the ice and sulphurous crusts, and rising into view. These turrets were black and grey and vaguely resembled the feeding heads of giant water worms. Some people nodded their heads and related to newcomers how this was the second time this had happened since they had been here. Children pointed out the various protrusions from the turrets, and identified them as anti-photon cannons, particle-beam projectors, racks of smart missiles, near-c rail-guns, and so on. Concerned parents remarked that there must be a deal of meteor activity occurring in this system and wondered why they had not been warned.

  EXIT GATE IS NOW OPEN-PORT TO LOCAL SYSTEMS.

  As soon as this message came up on the board, a silence descended in the base. Those very few ancients who were old enough to remember the Prador war, or even more recent conflicts, immediately headed for the runcible gate to get through before a panic started. Many of them remembered open-port evacuations of stations and moons near space battles. A few of them remembered what had subsequently happened to some of those stations and moons.

  The Warden let things ride for a while as, after its first message, the exit gate had begun working to full capacity. It directed its attention planet-ward, to its submind on the Polity base.

  ‘Full lock down and defences,’ it instructed the submind.

  ‘Shit about to hit?’ asked the mind.

  ‘Most likely,’ conceded the Warden.