The Skinner (44 page)

‘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 controls. 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.’

‘Will you let us have weapons at least?’ Frisk asked.

While Vrell considered the matter, it was Speaker who replied.

‘She and her mercenaries may indeed take weapons ashore. They will not be able to get back through your defences.’

‘Ebulan! What is this? What are you doing? I thought we were friends,’ cried Frisk.

‘You wax sentimental, human. You have been an inefficient tool I tolerated only because there was no easy replacement for you. You became a living proof of what I achieved during the war
with your kind and a demonstration of the source of my power. I brought you here to serve another purpose, even though you had become an embarrassment to me and a danger to my political ambitions.
As Vrell has stated: You no longer serve that purpose.’

Rebecca Frisk stared expressionlessly at Speaker, and then turned to the rope ladder leading down to the ship’s boat. One of the blanks filled a rucksack with a selection of weapons and
tossed it over to the Batians. Svan picked up the sack with a glare at the heavily armed blanks. With a final look of hatred flung at Vrell, she followed Frisk down the ladder. Shib went after her
with a similar expression.

‘Isn’t it dangerous to let them live?’ asked Vrell, as he watched the boat being rowed ashore by the male Batian.