The Skinner (39 page)

‘But—’

‘I can always recall you, and send SM Twelve instead,’ suggested the Warden. ‘He too has chameleonware – which, incidentally, 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 direct 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’.

No matter how hard he tried, Ambel could not go back behind the pain. His first screams on the deck of Sprage’s ship all those years ago had been his birth screams.
I’m Ambel now, I’m not this monster that fed Hoopers to the furnace – they’ll recognize this.
But even as he thought these things, he could not rid himself of the
memory of the look of hurt betrayal Boris had given him. Yet there were no lies:
I am not Gosk Balem. I’m not.

‘I’m for bed,’ said Ron. ‘Wake me in a couple of hours.’

‘Use mine,’ said Ambel.

‘I’ll do that,’ said Ron. He patted Ambel on the shoulder as he went past him to the ladder. Ambel listened for the sound of a door closing then abruptly remembered that there
was no door any more: the Skinner was away and all secrets were out. He glanced back and saw that Sable Keech, too, had finally gone to his bunk. The only ones remaining on deck were a single
junior checking the lamps, and Anne and Forlam, who by the attention they were giving each other, would be heading bunkwards soon anyway. An aberrant thought crossed Ambel’s mind: Ron could
be a problem to him, but a harpoon dipped in sprine would quickly solve that issue. The rest of them he could kill with ease, with the possible exception of Keech. There was no telling what kind of
weaponry the Earth monitor carried. Ambel shook his head. Did others ever think such thoughts?

Did he think such thoughts because, underneath all those years of being Ambel, he still really was Gosk Balem? No. He believed others
did
think such things. The test of character was in
what you did, not what you thought about doing. He could no more actually murder these people than could a molly carp fly.

‘Deep thoughts?’

Ambel glanced sideways at Erlin as she slipped up on to the cabin-deck beside him. He hadn’t heard her approach. He looked down at her bare feet, then to the thin slip she wore, then at
her face.

‘Boris calls them “long thoughts”, because if you think too deep you lose sight of the point. Full of daft comments like that is Boris,’ said Ambel.

‘He hurt you,’ said Erlin.

‘It hurt, but I expected nothing else. I’m surprised that Anne and Pland still call me Captain and still act friendly. Either they feel no betrayal or they’re just waiting for
their chance to shove me over the side.’

‘I doubt that. You’re not surprised at Peck still calling you Captain?’

‘Nothing Peck does surprises me. The Skinner turned his skin inside out and turned his head inside out as well. He stepped off the far side of weird long ago.’

‘He’d kill for you.’

Ambel turned his calm gaze upon her for a long moment, then faced forward, nodding slowly. Erlin moved a little closer and rested a hand on his arm.

He said, ‘I’d best have a little talk with Peck. Don’t want him doing anything drastic.’

‘Do you want to know why I came back?’ Erlin asked.

Ambel turned to look at her. ‘I guessed you’d get round to telling me in your own time,’ he said.

Erlin pulled her hand away, annoyance flashing across her face. ‘Do you even care?’ she asked.

Ambel glanced at her. ‘Of course I care. The critical question has to be: do
you
?’

She took a breath and started again. ‘Then you
know
why I’ve come back,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Ambel, his hands resting easy on the helm, his face almost tranquil, ‘but it’s best you tell me all about it.’

Erlin took another slow shuddering breath, but all her rehearsed words dissipated like smoke. ‘I came back because it gets so empty out there,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I
can’t see the point of going on. Achievement or failure? After a time you don’t care about the difference . . .’ Erlin trailed off and stared at Ambel in the hope that he might
understand.