The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  In his ship deep in an oceanic trench Ebulan watched the pictographic information sliding in on one screen then turned his attention to another screen showing a real-time image. Foam bubbled from his jaws as he chewed on a lump of putrid meat, and then spat it out for the delectation of the lice skittering round the floor.

  The Warden had to know that a ship was down here, or it would not have brought out this kind of firepower, though the AI obviously did not yet realize just what kind of ship it was dealing with, else it would be screaming for help right now. Ebulan disconnected one control box – the human blank concerned slumping at a scanning console – and direct-linked into a rear hold. There, through the box, he got an image of the four heavy-armour drones he carried with him. Each was a flattened ovoid four metres across, armed with rail-guns, missile launchers, and screen projectors. These, again, were not AI: the intelligences inside each of them derived from the surgically altered and then flash-frozen brains of four of Ebulan’s many children. They were totally loyal, fixed as they were in a state of constant adolescence – enslaved by their parents’ pheromones.

  As Ebulan sent a signal, red lights ignited in recesses in the drones’ exotic metal shells. The hold was flooded with muddy seawater and rapidly filled up, then a triangular door opened on to the deep ocean. The four drones motored out into the murk, the images viewed by their recessed eyes coming up on the screen before Ebulan.

  ‘Children,’ Ebulan said to his four kin. ‘You will assume the roles of remote emitters, once you are in position. If detected you must defend yourselves, then immediately reposition. I want the signal maintained at all times.’

  ‘Yes, as you will,’ they replied as one.

  ‘Skinner’s Island,’ indicated Captain Ron as, out of mistiness across the sea, the purpled mounts of the landmass came into sight.

  The atmosphere on the ship became even more subdued than it had previously been, and the crew, about their tasks on the deck, proceeded with the care of people not wanting to wake someone, or something, from sleep. As they drew closer, Janer tried to study their destination with a clinical eye. Was it this place’s reputation that made it seem so sinister, or was it just sinister anyway? he wondered. The island appeared little different to the others he had seen: a rocky mass thrust out of the sea, shallows and beaches and then a thick wall of dingle. Janer scanned the expanse of sea between the ship and the island’s beaches. Out of the shallows jutted sandbanks on which frog whelks and hammer whelks clustered like herds of sheep, while small molly carp and occasional glisters patrolled the waters around them. And there were leeches of course – always plenty of them. He couldn’t nail it down: the same yet not the same. There was something brooding about this place. An air of menace emanated from that deep dingle and the rocky outcrops.

  Ron steered the ship for a suitable cove and kept right on going.

  ‘Brace yourselves, boys!’ he shouted.

  The Treader slid into the shallows, the sandy bottom speeding underneath liberally poxed with leeches. It passed a mound that seemed entirely composed of frog whelks, and a hundred stalked eyes followed the ship’s progress. Janer braced himself for the crash, but none came. First there was a deep vibration, then a grating, then the ship was slowing and he was gradually dragged towards the bows by his momentum. Peck caught hold of his belt and didn’t let go until the ship had shuddered to a halt five metres from the shore.

  ‘Let’s be doing it then, Captain Ron,’ said Ambel.

  ‘Right with you, Captain Ambel,’ said Ron, sliding down the forecabin ladder.

  Ambel moved to the prow and dropped the anchor over the side, towing its chain – now wiped clean of grease – after it. Janer couldn’t see why the chain had been thus cleaned, or why the anchor had been dropped at all, as the ship was unlikely to drift.

  ‘Shoo, bugger off,’ Ron told the sail.

  The sail snorted in indignation, released all its various holds and, in a folding of spines and sheeted skin, it hauled itself up to the top spar, and from there launched itself into the sky. Janer watched it go, then turned back to observe Ambel – but Ambel had gone.

  ‘Right with you,’ said Ron, and leapt off the prow of the ship.

  ‘What the hell?’ muttered Janer, moving down the ship to the bow rail. He got there in time to see Ambel wading ashore through the metre-deep water, with Captain Ron following just behind him. The two of them dragged the anchor chain ashore and once there quickly stripped the leeches from each other and stamped the creatures to slurry.

  Erlin moved up to stand beside Janer. ‘This is what brings it home to you,’ she murmured.

  The two captains then took up the anchor chain, Ambel in front and Ron behind, pulling on it until it grew taut. Janer doubted he would have been able even to take the curve out of the heavy chain.

  The Captains looked at each other. ‘On the count,’ said Ron. ‘One and two and three . . .’

  Janer realized his mouth was open, but couldn’t think straight enough to close it. With a deep grinding the ship itself began to move. He saw that, with each step the Old Captains took, their feet sank deep into the sand. Two, three metres, the ship moved. Ron and Ambel dropped the length of chain they were holding at the edge of the dingle, then moved back to take up another section of it at the shoreline.

  ‘One and two and three.’

  The prow of the ship was heaved up on to the beach, then the two captains dropped the chain. They pulled themselves out of the sand and walked back to the vessel, as casual as if having just completed some very menial task. The rest of the crew had not even bothered to watch, but continued gathering together supplies.

  ‘Collect your stuff,’ Erlin advised Janer.

  ‘It is estimated that a Hooper in his third century has the strength of a three-gee heavy-worlder,’ the Hive mind observed. ‘But no one has measured the physical strength of an Old Captain.’

  ‘How much does this ship weigh?’ Janer whispered to it.

  ‘Its dead weight is considerable,’ said the mind, and Janer translated this as meaning it didn’t know. It went on with, ‘Obviously, being partially supported by the sea, and with it being dragged, there are matters of friction and so forth to be factored in.’

  ‘All I asked you was how much the ship weighed,’ said Janer.

  ‘Not less than thirty tonnes,’ the mind replied, almost grudgingly.

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ said Janer. ‘There I was thinking it might be a lot.’

  It took a quarter of an hour for them to get supplies, weapons and most of the crew on to the beach. It took another ten minutes for Ambel to persuade Peck that it was in his best interests not to stay on board. Janer could not understand why the ship’s rowing boat had also been lowered, until they were all gathered on the sand, where Ambel and Ron addressed them.

  ‘Too many of us crashing about inland there’ll spook the Skinner, and we’ll never catch him,’ said Ron. ‘So some of you boys’ll not be coming.’

  Janer glanced around at gathered crew. The strongest reactions came from the juniors, as it was obvious where Ron’s speech was leading. Some of these Hoopers wore looks of disappointment; however, most of them looked relieved.

  ‘Thing is,’ said Ambel, ‘you lads cannot be hanging about here in full sight, what with that lunatic woman coming after us, so me and Ron here think it best you take the ship’s boat round to the east of the island’ – he gestured in that direction – ‘and find yourselves a handy cove to moor up in.’

  ‘Now, I know you’re all disappointed,’ said Ron, ‘but that’s the way it’s got to be. Any questions?’

  Some of the crew-members addressed were already heading back towards the ship. A few hung back, Sild amongst them.

  ‘What is it, lad?’ Ambel asked the man.

  ‘I’m not a lad. I was a hundred last birthday and I know me own mind,’ Sild grumbled.

  ‘And?’ Ambel asked.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Sild. ‘I know we ain’t got your m
uscle, and I don’t want meself stripped by no Skinner. . . . but I just want to say that you’re my Captain, and you’ll always be that.’

  Ambel seemed at a loss to find a reply and he stood there dumbly as Sild moved off with the others. After a moment he shrugged, then turned to face Janer and Erlin.

  ‘Best you two go with them,’ he said.

  ‘Not one chance in hell,’ said Janer, and Erlin just shook her head. Ambel nodded, expecting this response, then, hoisting his blunderbuss up on to one shoulder, turned towards the dingle.

  Ron took up a huge machete, advanced on the wall of vegetation, and set to. Ambel followed, and the rest of them, after taking up their packs of supplies, followed after him.

  Beyond the first thick layer of dingle, things began to get a little easier, though there were numerous peartrunk trees, with their concomitant crops of leeches, to get past. Janer clutched Keech’s carbine to himself and kept a wary eye on the dingle. There were things moving around in the bluery – big, slimy things with buzz-saw mouths.

  ‘Mask,’ Erlin warned him at one point and, not having encountered putrephallus weeds before, he was a bit slow to cap the filter mask over his face. He nearly filled it with vomit.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked when he had recovered enough to point at the horrible baggy bird-thing clinging to one of the phallic flowers.

  ‘Lung bird,’ Erlin told him. ‘They’re about the only creatures here that other creatures won’t eat. They stink worse than their food, and are full of toxins. No one’s figured out how they manage to stay alive. But no one’s really wanted to get close enough to find out.’

  ‘And those.’ Janer pointed again.

  ‘Frogmoles. Don’t step on one. They’ve got barbed spines that’ll go through just about anything, and you’d need surgery to have them removed,’ said Erlin.

  ‘Charming.’

  Beyond the peartrunk trees and stands of putrephallus, yanwood trees reared into the sky. Below them the ground was clear of new growth, though thickly layered with oily oval leaves that smelt of kerosene. With the vegetation now thinning sufficiently for Ron to put away his machete, they picked up their pace and soon came to a place where ahead of them reared something like a grassy slope. What was growing on it – though the same green as ordinary grass – consisted of small translucent spheroids that popped when trod upon and let off a smell like coffee and curry powder combined. They were also slippery underfoot when burst, so climbing the slope became hard going.

  At the crest of the slope, bare rock jutted up like bones flayed of flesh. Here they halted, mainly to let Janer rest, him being only a newly made Hooper. Sitting on one of the rocks he gazed down another incline into dingle like a green and blue sea resting between mounds. This landscape beyond stretched on into a haze of distance and was lost. Strange hootings and squeals came up regularly from this tangle of vegetation.

  ‘Bigger island than I thought,’ said Janer. ‘How’d they expect to find the Skinner here . . . if he is here?’

  ‘He’s here,’ said Erlin.

  Before she could go on, Peck muttered, ‘Bugger’ll find us, I’ll be buggered.’

  ‘That’s a comfort,’ said Janer, standing up and shrugging his pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulders. Ambel and Ron glanced back at him for a moment, then set off down the slope towards the dingle, Ron already drawing his machete in readiness.

  ‘Another point to note is how easy we’ll be to track, if Rebecca Frisk does come here,’ said Janer.

  ‘If?’ said Erlin.

  ‘Well, Keech might have solved that problem for us.’

  ‘Emphasis on the “might”,’ muttered Erlin.

  They continued on down the slope, after the others.

  For most of the afternoon, Ron hacked a trail for them, and Ambel took over thereafter. He did not take over the chore because Ron was tired, but because he was bored with the task and Ambel had got bored with just walking behind him. They slogged on until it was getting too dark to easily dodge the leeches falling from the peartrunk trees. Then Ambel hacked out a clearing in an area with few overhanging branches, and marked its perimeter by jabbing sticks into the ground.

  Pland lit a fire of peartrunk wood while Anne prepared rhinoworm steaks to roast over it. They ate in silence as the moon, Coram, rose into the sky like a mouldy pearl, and then laid out their bedding.

  ‘You take first watch, Janer. Don’t let any leeches past the perimeter. If anything comes that’s too big for you to handle, wake me or Ron,’ instructed Ambel.

  Janer patrolled the perimeter with his carbine held ready. With this weapon he doubted there would be anything too big for him to handle. The smaller leeches – the ones about the size of his arm – he kicked back into the undergrowth. Frogmoles kept well clear, their eyes glinting from the firelight out there in the darkness. No one warned him about anything else.

  Keech found the best way to keep himself out of the water was to use what power the remaining thruster possessed to drive down towards the sea, then up again and away in one burst. Thereafter he drifted along fairly levelly until the thruster cooled down enough for him to use it again. A problem was the scooter’s tendency to try to flip over whenever he applied thrust. Further problems consisted of the failing AG, which was taking him closer and closer to the surface despite his use of the thruster, the fact that the thruster was taking longer and longer to cool down each time he used it, and also that there were some horrible noises and occasional sprays of sparks emerging from under the cowling. His burnt back and mauled arm now seemed of secondary importance. And all these hindrances were of less importance than the fact that he had miscalculated.

  Both missiles aimed at him had been of the EM-burst variety. Not only did they have the capability of turning an enemy vehicle into a disperse spray of molten metal, but they released a burst of radiation that scrambled any electronics in the vicinity of the explosion. The thruster had burnt out after taking in a cloud of ionized gas; the EM had not been kind to the AG coils, and com was completely out; the screen had melted and buckled.

  Keech had been in worse situations than this – after all, he wasn’t dead yet, and he’d been in that one before. So he nursed the scooter along, using manual and jury-rigged controls and a modicum of prayer, wondering if he was imagining seeing eager movement in the sea whenever the scooter dropped lower.

  15

  The giant whelk’s immediate response to the presence of the heirodont, was to spit out the last leech-covered turbul body it was chewing, and attempt to clamp itself down against the bottom. But up here the bottom was comprised of a thick layer of stones and silt and broken shell, so that there was nothing firm to hold on to. With a flick of its tale the heirodont drifted forward, eyeing the desperate creature as it struggled to find purchase, then cruised round it in a slow circle. The whelk turned as it did this, stalked eyes keeping its nemesis in view. The heirodont finally seemed to comprehend its luck, and suddenly drove into the whelk and tipped it over. Flailing its tentacles, the whelk opened huge wounds across the heirodont’s head, but to a creature quite used to being fed upon by leeches every day, these were as nothing. With its mandibles the heirodont gripped the rim of the whelk’s shell and twisted it over so it was forced upside-down into the treacherous surface it had been unable to grip; driving its snout into hard flesh with teeth admirably suited to the purpose, the heirodont began to chew.

  The heavy resinous yanwood of the ship was not buoyant. Like a steel hull holed in the same manner, it started to go down, water breaking through smashed timbers and gouts of steam blasting from the deck hatches. Boris emerged from one of those hatches, hauling up two sprine carboys on a rope behind him. Once on deck he danced about and swore as he beat out his smouldering clothing. When the ship suddenly lurched and tilted he grabbed the carboys and slid them to the edge, pounded the corks to make sure they were secure, then tossed both containers over the side, down to where the drone floated below. Lying by the shat
tered rail, to which he had crawled, Roach peered down into the water.

  ‘This a good idea?’ he queried.

  ‘The only one,’ confirmed Boris as he helped him to his feet.

  Roach was about to say something more when the ship lurched again. Without more ado, they leapt into the sea and splashed towards the carboys. Near the fizzing seahorse the water tingled with an electrical charge and was warmer than expected.

  ‘Aargh, that smarts,’ yelped Roach.

  Boris just grunted an acknowledgement and stared at all the creatures swarming beyond an invisible perimeter. He looked beyond them to where the water swirled occasionally as a large rhinoworm cruised by, snapping up stray leeches.

  ‘Must tell the Captain he needs floats,’ said Roach.

  ‘You’ll have to tell him he needs a new ship,’ said Boris. As if to reinforce his words, the ship groaned, slowly tilted further to one side, and water surged inside it, extinguishing the last of the fires. Soon its whole deck was awash, and as if making one last attempt to stay afloat the ship righted itself as it went down. The two masts slid last into the sea, and the water was turned into foam all around by escaping air – not just the activity of leeches and other creatures as they moved in to investigate. For a little while there were remarkably few of these in the water immediately surrounding the two men, but they knew this situation would not continue.

  Roach looked alternately thoughtful and sneaky.

  ‘Ain’t my fault,’ said Roach, both reflection and sneakiness in his tone.

  ‘No, I guess not,’ said Boris, peering at the little man in the halflight and thinking how it didn’t really matter any more, as he’d soon be joining Goss and the rest of the crew, chewed up in the stomachs of leeches and prill. He checked again that the laser was still in his belt, though exposure to water might prevent it from working.

  As the leeches returned from inspecting the empty ship, their cordon appeared to be narrowing and it seemed to Boris that the fizzing around the seahorse had subsided – either that or the leeches were becoming inured to it and slowly moving in on them.