The Skinner

14

Boris tried, without much success, to accept that his life had changed now and that there was really nothing to regret. Because of his tetchiness resulting from his failure to come to terms with it all, Goss had kicked him out of her bunk.

‘And don’t come back until you’ve figured out what you really want!’ she’d shouted, then turned over with her back towards him.

As he climbed up on to the deck of the Ahab, he wondered just what exactly she had meant by that. He greeted Gollow and a couple of Ron’s juniors, who were sitting playing cards below a deck lantern, and then went to the port rail to urinate over the side. When he was rebuttoning his trousers, he glanced over at Roach, standing at the helm, and the man gave him a knowing grin.

Boris turned away. Obviously the man had heard Goss shouting at him. He decided then that he would try to patch things up with her, rather than talk to this weasely man. He didn’t like Roach. He didn’t like this ship — felt uncomfortable aboard it. Did he really like Goss all that much? Most importantly, did he really hate Captain Ambel? Regret was there — there was no escaping it. He stood on the crux of indecision, and while he pondered, he noticed the approach of the other ship.

‘Vessel to starboard!’ he yelled at Roach, and reformed his attention on the ship. There was something wrong with it, its lights had a much whiter tint than was usual, and they lit a wake that indicated the ship was travelling at a hell of a rate. Yet there was little wind, and from what Boris could see of its sail, it was hanging in the wrong direction.

That’s Drum’s Cohorn!’ Roach yelled back at him.

Boris hurried back towards the forecabin. ‘What’s he doing out here? Last I heard, he’d got a full load of turbul on and was heading back for port,’ he said as he approached the ladder.

‘Drum’s a changeable fella,’ commented Roach.

Boris climbed up and joined him on the cabin-deck. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said.

‘Sail ain’t right… Take the helm for me,’ said Roach.

Boris did as instructed while Roach went over to Captain Ron’s telescope. He swore once, took his eye away, and then put it back.

‘I see Drum at the helm, but there’s others there that ain’t his crew.’ Roach turned from the scope and shouted down along the deck. ‘Scart! Get everyone up on deck, and get ‘em up armed!’

‘Aye, Captain!’ one of the card players yelled back.

‘ “Captain”?’ said Boris, and Roach gave him a sour look. Boris then nodded towards the deck cannon. ‘That loaded?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Roach.

‘Might be needing it,’ Boris observed.

‘Best you load it, then,’ said Roach, squinting at the lower deck to see if his orders were being carried out.

The Cohorn rapidly closed in while Boris packed the deck cannon with a paper-wrapped charge, then a bag of stones. He noted, as he worked, that the prow of the approaching ship was white and misshapen; it had many things on its deck that should not have been there. One of those things was moving about, and seemed to have too many legs for comfort.

‘Goss! Get yerself on deck! And bring up the guns!’ Roach yelled.

‘Biggest prill I ever saw,’ said Boris, taking a box of sulphur matches from his pocket and striking one on the rail.

‘That ain’t no prill,’ said Roach, who was a century older than Boris. ‘That’s a buggering Prador.’

Boris grimaced as he got the cannon’s igniter wick smouldering. It hadn’t been necessary for Roach to tell him that. Boris had seen plenty of pictures of the creatures, and heard quite enough stories from drunken Hoopers in the Baitman.

Goss charged up on deck clutching a handful of ironmongery, which she began to distribute. After this, she studied the approaching ship for a moment, then ran for the ladder. Boris leant over and accepted the weapons she handed up: two pump-action shotguns and one pulsed-energy handgun. The handgun had to be Ron’s. No one else but an Old Captain could afford such a thing.

‘Maybe they don’t want trouble?’ said Roach with what might have passed for humour.

‘In your arse,’ said Goss, feeding shells into one of the shotguns.

There was no warning. Something flashed, leaving shadowy afterimages in their eyes. There was a dull crump, the ship lurched, and a spar crashed to the deck. Next, there was a double flash and one rail exploded into splinters. On the other side of the ship the other rail sagged, where it too had been broken, and was now being pulled down by the weight of the ship’s rowing boat. Boris pointed the deck cannon, fired, and had the pleasure of seeing two figures keel over on the Cohorn.

Goss began firing shells at the approaching ship. But then all of them were rocked back as something crashed below and sea-spray fogged the air. Boris looked over the side at the hole blown in the hull, just above the water line, and the fires burning within.

‘We’re gonna sink,’ he said to Roach.

The little man just appeared angry as he aimed again at the figures visible on the approaching ship. Boris picked up another paper cartridge, then stepped back from the cannon when it suddenly began to smoke.

‘Huh?’ he said brilliantly, as heat spectra travelled the length of the barrel, and it blued, then began to glow. Abruptly he realized that there was either a laser or some sort of inductance weapon being pointed at it. He ducked at the same time as Goss, and she slid the other shotgun across to him. Roach was now down beside him aiming with the handgun, a dangerously furtive look on his face.

‘They’re just playing with us,’ he said. ‘We’ve had it.’ Through the cross rail he shouted down to the main deck, ‘Scart! Gollow! Cut the boat free and get the rest of ‘em into it!’

‘But, sir!’

Do as you’re bloody told! You reckon you can take em’ on with that club?’

Boris looked down to see Roach’s orders being obeyed. Two of the juniors were busy at the sagging rail trying to untie the rowing boat. Something else hit further along the ship and a lantern went down spreading flame across the deck. A third crew-member joined the two at the boat and hacked at the ropes with his panga. That was Gollow, and Boris felt unaccountably proud. The ship’s boat crashed into the sea and those on the lower deck quickly began to follow it down. Goss stood upright now, a wild look on her face, as she provided covering fire.

‘Goss! Get down!’ Boris yelled.

She staggered back then stared at the smoking hole under her breasts.

‘Shit,’ she said — and was blown in half.

Boris yelled and stood up again, firing at the ship as it swung alongside, then blasting at the figures that came leaping across. One of them was the bloody great prill!

Something hit him right in the stomach and sent him staggering. He felt it exit through his back and heard it clatter to the deck. Both he and Roach stared at the small black cylinder, just before it exploded. The blast threw Boris over the rail, so he found himself hanging off one side of the ship. Roach, who had been knocked back against the remaining rail, struggled upright, then reached over to catch Boris by the scruff of his neck. He was about to start hauling him back onboard when a huge armoured claw closed on his arm, and something cold and metallic was pressed against the back of his skull.

‘Shit,’ he said — just like Goss had done.

The claw clamped shut, making a sound like a vegetable knife going through a carrot. Roach yelled as his bones shattered and muscle was crushed. His hand went flaccid, and Boris yelled out and plummeted into the sea. Then, hand-things like iron pulled Roach around and hurled him aside. For a second he thought he too was going to end up in the sea, but instead he slammed against the main deck, and bounced. Then someone grabbed him again and flung him against the mainmast. He slid down it, waiting for that terminal shot. But it never came.

‘Oh look,’ someone sneered. ‘They’re escaping.’

Roach turned his head to one side and dimly made out the silhouette of the ship’s boat out on the gleaming sea. The Prador now loomed over him as it moved forwards and brandished a weapon in one of its main claws. The object was long and heavy-looking, and was fed by tubes and cables from a pack strapped underneath the creature’s body. There followed a whooshing roar, and the sea all around the escaping boat turned white. There was no time even for screams, as the rowing boat and everyone in it disintegrated under rail-gun fire.

‘Bastard,’ Roach managed, just before a hand closed in his hair and slammed his head back against the mast. He thought how the woman would have been attractive if her face wasn’t so twisted by whatever it was inside her.

‘Now, you and I are going to have a little chat,’ she told him.

With a feeling of chagrin, Janer watched as Erlin slept in a tangle of sheets, then he rose from the side of the bunk and took up his clothing. As soon as he was dressed, he shoved a hand into his trouser pocket and took out the jewelled Hive link. Some new species of loneliness, he wondered, and then fixed the link back into his earlobe. There came a vague clicking as it induced a signal in the receiver imbedded in the bone behind his ear — for the visible ear stud was not the actual link, rather it acted as the on/off button — but he received no communication from the mind. Still none came as he left the cabin, passing Forlam in the gangway, and headed for the ladder. The link only buzzed into life once he was on deck, watching the slow grey roll of the predawn sea.

‘It was foolish of you to cut communication with me. You are now in extreme danger,’ warned the mind. This was not what Janer had expected.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is a ship now coming towards you. Aboard it is one Rebecca Frisk, with two Batian mercenaries, and possibly others. They are coming to kill Sable Keech, and no doubt any others who are with him. They have Prador weaponry.’

‘That’s not so good,’ said Janer, at a loss for anything else to say.

‘It is not good,’ agreed the mind. ‘I would suggest that you tell someone.’

Janer glanced up at Captain Ron standing at the helm, then around at the morning activity on board. All seemed so slow and tranquil that what the mind had just told him did not gel for a moment.

‘Now would be a good time,’ urged the mind.

‘Oh fuckit,’ said Janer and trotted down the deck to the forecabin. As he mounted the cabin-deck, Ron gave him an amused look that suggested he might want to slow down a bit. Without more ado, Janer told him the mind’s wonderful news. Ron’s expression lost its humour and he looked over Janer’s shoulder as Ambel joined them.

‘Seems we got problems,’ said Ron.

Ambel gazed enquiringly at the two of them.

‘We got Rebecca Frisk and some Batian mercenaries with Prador weapons coming right up our backsides,’ said Ron.

Ambel glanced around at the open sea. ‘We don’t stand a chance out here,’ he said.

‘The island,’ Ron stated.

‘Seems the best option,’ said Ambel.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Janer.

‘Does your Hive mind know how long we’ve got before they reach us?’ asked Ambel.

‘The Warden informs me that at present they’ve stopped to… that they have halted their journey. You still have time to reach the island,’ said the mind.

‘We’ve time to reach the island,’ echoed Janer, wondering exactly what their pursuers had stopped to do.

‘Alert the others,’ said Ron. ‘Tell them to get their gear together. We’ll be at the Skinner’s Island in about five hours.’ He turned to Ambel. ‘Might not be time to ferry everyone in.’

‘Beach her then,’ said Ambel, his hands tightening hard enough on the helm to make the wood groan in protest.

Janer went to do as bid encountering Keech on the main deck and telling him what was happening.

‘I thought it a bit improbable that she handed herself over to ECS,’ the monitor said.

‘How’d she manage it?’ Janer asked.

‘Not sure, but I’d bet she’s now not wearing the face I knew her by.’

Janer brooded on that as he rushed to wake Erlin up and to find Pland. Anne had by now joined Ron and Ambel on the cabin-deck.

For the next hour, there was a continuous flurry of activity as supplies were brought on deck and weapons were taken out of waterproof packaging to be checked over. Keech cut the lines holding his scooter to the deck. From its baggage compartment he took out his attaché case and opened it.

As Janer approached him, Keech tossed him an item from the case. Janer nearly dropped it, finding it heavier than he’d assumed.

‘Never seen one of these in real life,’ he muttered.

‘Give your handgun to one of the crew. You won’t be needing it now. That’s a QC laser carbine. Half an hour continuous fire, thousand-metre kill range, and auto-sight.’

Janer handled the weapon as if it had suddenly turned into a snake. ‘Bit drastic,’ he said.

‘You might well need it,’ said Keech.

Janer turned to Forlam, who at that moment came up beside him.

‘Here,’ he said, passing over his handgun. Forlam stared at the weapon for a moment, then suddenly looked pleased and thrust it into his belt. Janer thought it was rather a strange grin the crewman wore.

Forlam pointed at the weapon Keech was quickly assembling from the case. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

Keech clicked the twin barrels — as of a shotgun — into place, then the folding stock, before opening out the fan of cooling fins from the main body of the weapon. He gave it a slow visual inspection then carefully took up a gigawatt energy canister and screwed it into place underneath.

‘This,’ he murmured, ‘is completely OTT.’ With that, he mounted his scooter, pulled the leg straps across his thighs and secured them in place, then slammed his vehicle up into the sky. He gave no one time to ask where he was going. No one needed to ask.

Amazingly, one of the juniors, who had either somehow survived the burst of rail-gun fire or had gone over the side during the attack, now yelled nearby as darkness seeped out of the sky. Before dawn, one of the mercenaries, perhaps out of boredom, finally shot a shell into him. Roach wished they would do the same to him.

Through a haze of pain, he tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

‘Now I want to be utterly sure of this. Think about it a little before you reply,’ said the woman he now knew was Rebecca Frisk.

He’d thought about it a little when she’d asked him the last time, and the time before — and on every occasion he’d told her the truth. She didn’t care about truth, though. She wasn’t doing this for truth. She was doing it because she liked to see suffering. Roach bit on his tongue as she played the laser, on wide beam, over his feet and legs. He’d screamed the third time she’d done this, in the hope that would satisfy her. But it hadn’t. She’d just go on until there was nothing left of him to scream. It was Frisk’s way, just as it was the way of her husband, or what was left of him.

‘Think carefully now,’ warned Frisk.

She seemed oblivious to everything else — had a crazy look in her eyes and jerky shudders running through her body with metronomic regularity. Roach did pretend to think carefully, while he listened to the low conversation going on behind her.

The mercenary woman was speaking to the Prador. ‘… time for this?’

‘Delay… Convocation… does not matter.’

‘Fucking lunatic’ That last came from the male mercenary. He seemed to find Frisk’s pursuits contemptible, but then his kind tortured people only for business, not for recreation.

‘Tell me again about Jay,’ demanded Frisk.

Roach leapt at the chance. At least while he was speaking, she wasn’t burning his legs.

‘Ambel… y’know, Balem Gosk, kept the head in a box in his cabin. I reckon Peck musta — aaaargh!’

‘Oh I know all about that. Tell me something new, something interesting.’

‘AG vehicle approaching.’

Roach could not identify from where that voice had come. The others were blanks, so perhaps it was their master speaking. He knew that this Prador on board wasn’t an adult. It still had all its legs.

‘Rebecca Frisk, we must return to our vessel,’ grated the translator box of the same Prador.

Roach prayed that this would mean the end.

Frisk stood up and confronted the Prador, angry that her little game had been interrupted.

‘I want to take him with me,’ she spat.

‘We do not have time. To the vessel — now.’

The Prador turned away. The blanks were already leaping from the Ahab, ahead of it. Frisk seemed about to rebel. Abruptly she turned, walked up to one of the mercenaries, and snatched his weapon from him and thrust her carbine into his hands instead. This is it, thought Roach. This is when I end up spread all over the deck.

Frisk, though, did not shoot him. She moved to the deck hatch, kicked it open releasing gouts of smoke, and then fired shot after shot below. Roach could feel the ship shuddering. When she was finished, she grinned at him with satisfaction, before following the Prador from the ship. The mercenaries went last, and without looking back.

Roach couldn’t believe it: he was going to survive. All he had to do was work on these ropes tying him to the mast… It was then that he realized what the smoke meant, and what Frisk had been doing. He saw how smoke was also wisping up through the holes in the deck and could hear the crackle of flames from below. He continued to struggle at his bonds, but the torture had weakened him too much and he only had one arm to work with — his broken arm still being dead meat from the shoulder down. He listened to the sound of the Cohorn pulling away, its flaccid sail booming in the wind of its passage, and wondered which would get him first: the fire or the sea.

‘You bitch!’ he yelled, and heard her laughter growing distant. He sat panting for a while, then had another go at his bonds. Doing so, he heard sounds coming up from beside the ship, and had a horrible vision of prill clambering aboard. He stared over at where the ship’s boat had been suspended and saw a rope there jerking. The sound, he began to realize, was a continuous cursing monologue. Shortly after, Boris hauled himself over the rail, the bottom half of his body covered by a writhing mass of leeches. With further cursing and the occasional yelp, Boris began to detach them, one by one. Roach didn’t even have the energy left to yell at him to hurry up, even though he could feel the deck getting hot underneath him.

Keech stared down at the wrecked and burning ship, and the two figures remaining on its deck, then he turned his image intensifier to examine the second ship. Over there, a Prador and a number of humans — any of which might be Frisk herself. He set his scooter on hover, took up his weapon, and aimed. Half charge: he’d flame the deck.

Keech pulled back one of the three triggers, and lit the air between himself and the target ship with a line of purple fire. Seawater erupted and flashed into a ball of flame that splashed across an invisible disk.

‘Shields,’ was all he managed to say before his scooter dropped out of the sky. Letting his APW hang by its strap, he grabbed the controls, and saw the message flashing up on the screen: ‘EMERGENCY DIVE: EVASIVE’.

A missile screamed past overhead and made a slow turn beyond him. Keech slammed the control column forward and put all the scooter’s power into the dive. Gs threatened to steal his hands from the controls, and tried to drag him from the seat, but his leg straps held him in place. He went into cyber mode as his flesh began to fail, and used his arm motors to pull the scooter out of the dive at the last moment. The missile streaked past two metres below him, entering the sea with a crack. An explosion lit the underside of the waves, with a rapidly spreading disk of light. He was a hundred metres up from the surface when it erupted. No time for self-congratulation, he told himself, as another two missiles sped towards him.

Keech slammed the control column forward again and sped away from the two ships. As he departed, he took two of the guard spheres from his pocket, and held them in his hand. Glancing back he spotted the noses of two missiles like two chrome eyes. The ships themselves were still visible. He went into rapid descent. Only a second or two more and he’d be out of sight. Only a second or two more and the missiles would reach him. He tossed the two spheres up in the air and they shot away behind.

‘Fuck you, monitor!’ Frisk yelled, shaking her fist at the double explosion on the horizon. She turned to Vrell, grinning maniacally. After a moment of gazing at a creature with no emotions she could identify, she sobered and turned towards the forecabin.

‘Bring us about,’ she instructed Drum.

‘No,’ said the Prador — and the ship did not deviate from its course.

‘We have to check,’ said Frisk.

‘There will be nothing to see,’ replied Vrell.

‘We have to be sure!’ Frisk yelled.

Vrell did not consider this worthy of further reply.

‘This is what we’re here for, you shell-brained prawn!’ Frisk yelled and kicked out at something on the deck. A metal staple went skittering across the timber and the sail cautiously opened one red eye to track its progress. But no one seemed to have noticed.

‘Restrain her,’ ordered Vrell.

Abruptly several arms closed about both of Frisk’s. She whipped her head from side to side at Svan and Shib — who were doing the restraining — and considered freeing herself until Svan shoved a gun up under her chin.

‘I’ve had about enough of you,’ said the Batian woman, then looked to Vrell.

‘Take her away and confine her in one of the cabins. She may yet serve a purpose.’ Vrell turned with a complicated scuttling of legs, and regarded Drum still stationary up at the helm. ‘Continue on course, no deviation.’

Drum reached up to scratch at the back of his neck, then nodded and continued with what he had been doing anyway. The Prador noted this unprogrammed action but thought nothing of it. It did not have the experience of humans to know whether such scratching was an autonomous action or not.

‘Well, there went the cavalry,’ said Boris.

‘Yeah,’ said Roach, and gritted his teeth while Boris put in another stitch to close the split in Roach’s arm. It seemed a somewhat pointless exercise, what with a fire raging below and gouts of steam hissing through the holes in the deck.

‘That was Keech,’ explained Boris, now applying the needle and thread to some of the more embarrassing rips in his own tattered trousers.

‘Yeah,’ said Roach and, feeling a vague tingling in his fingers, he tried to flex them. He managed a little movement, but there would be no real strength in either his hand or his arm until flesh and bone began properly to knit. He thought it would be nice if they enjoyed the time to do so.

‘Should we try and put it out?’ Boris wondered.

‘No chance. This ship’s bound with sea gourd resin. Once you get that alight, you ain’t gonna get it out again,’ Roach replied.

‘Maybe the ship’s boat’ll come back,’ Boris suggested, while studying Roach’s expression.

‘The boat ain’t coming back,’ said Roach.

Boris nodded his head once at this confirmation — he hadn’t seen what happened to the juniors in the ship’s rowing boat, but he’d a damned good idea.

Abruptly, the deck tilted, and swathes of steam roared out of the open hatch. Boris and Roach peered over the side at the swarm of leeches attracted by the commotion, and by bits of Goss floating in the water. Beyond this writhing mass, the molly carp was cruising.

Boris instantly dropped his needle and thread and scuttled across to pick up the handgun Roach had dropped earlier.

‘I’ll not have happen to me what happened to my Captain,’ Boris swore.

‘I ain’t neither,’ said Roach, thinking what a waste of time it had been to sew up his arm. It had kept the boy occupied anyway. He stared at the water, ignoring the weapon Boris was handling so nervously. He tried not to wince when Boris reached over and pressed the warm snout of it against his head.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said.

‘No point delaying,’ said Boris. ‘Only makes it harder.’

‘I said wait a minute,’ said Roach, angrily knocking Boris’s hand away.

‘What for?’

‘Look,’ said Roach, pointing at the sea.

An iron seahorse had just risen to the surface, the seawater fizzing all about it, and leeches jerking spastically in their hurry to get away. It tilted so as to glare up at them with one topaz eye, the other one burnt black.

‘We should attack ‘em, splash ‘em, kill ‘em, hit ‘em…’ was the essence of the communication between drones one to ten with ‘attitude’. All ten of the drones, now they were in atmosphere, had extruded stubby wings to which were attached their weapons pods. In one part of itself, the Warden agreed. Frisk’s ship had encountered one other and left it burning. Sable Keech’s seven-century search for justice and vengeance had ended in a few brief explosions, and it seemed unlikely there would be any chance at another reification for him. But all these were emotional issues. On a flat calculation of life and death, the sailing ship was unimportant. First, the Warden had to find the Prador spacecraft, for from it could issue destruction perhaps an order of magnitude greater.

‘SM Twelve, I want them in pairs, covering the relevant eight sectors — same division as for geostudy. I want all signals reported. Specifically I want thrall-unit carrier waves and command codes. It won’t be a direct transmission, as that would be too easy to trace should we get hold of any thrall units at the receiving end. Somewhere down there, the enemy will have secondary and perhaps tertiary emitters.’

‘Coded U-space signals are difficult to detect,’ observed Twelve.

‘Almost impossible would be a more accurate summation. It is not the signal itself you will detect, but overspill from the secondary emitters before the signal starts tunnelling. On detecting this overspill, you will have found an emitter. I want no action taken against emitters located. Just transmit everything you get to me.’

‘Yes, Warden,’ said Twelve.

The muttering from the other drones, which formed a backdrop to SM12’s reply, made the Warden wonder just how good an idea it had been to load Sniper’s little program into them. No matter — the AI returned its attention to the information packages coming in through from the submind ghost of itself trawling the loose AI net forming around the Prador worlds. These packages now detailed the rabid progression of events in the Third Kingdom and were fascinating. It seemed that the Prador were almost desperate for closer ties and trade opportunities with the Polity and, as had been demonstrated quite graphically before the sector AI, with such drastic changes in the offing, the old guard there was having trouble hanging on to power. Already some further high figures among them had not done so well. Three had been assassinated by direct methods: in two cases by explosives and in the third case by an injection of a putrefying virus. Two others had been killed by their own blanks after control programs had been subverted. Now that was what the Warden had found most interesting.

Ebulan, one of the highest-ranking Prador in the Kingdom, was also of particular interest to the Warden. It was he who once had dealings with Hoop and his merry crew, and who had become rich and consequently powerful on the trade in human blanks. This hideous practice was now becoming frowned on in the Prador Kingdom, because of the change of Zeitgeist that had led to this aim for closer ties with the Polity. So Ebulan’s power was waning.

Ebulan — that name came up repeatedly. Could it be that agents of his were the ones here on Spatterjay? If so, what was their purpose?

Floating just below the surface of the waves, the turtle-shaped remote probe folded its emitter dish and switched to passive observation. Twenty similar devices scattered across the surface of the sea performed a similar action, only two of them remaining in the relevant areas to maintain the U-space signal relay. They were not AI these machines — the Prador neither liked nor fully understood such technology — but they had proved more than sufficient to their limited task. Now that would have to change, however.

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 muscle, 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.