Authors: Neal Asher
‘They shouldn’t be there,’ he pointed out.
‘Hoop’s place,’ reminded Ambel.
‘But that was centuries ago.’
‘Human bone don’t rot here, not unless it’s Hooper bone,’ said Ron.
Janer was about to ask why, but realized Erlin was not here to answer him.
‘A more suitable monument than that, I guess,’ he said, referring to the Hoophold.
‘Bugger,’ said Peck, with reference to nothing in particular.
They walked on, moving parallel to the moat, until they came to a place in the wall where there had once been a steel door. Some fragments of corroded metal still jutted from the stonework and
the earth below was stained red with rust. Here, Ron scrambled down the slope to the edge of the stagnant water. He tucked his machete under one arm, pulled on his gloves and squatted down. He
dipped the blade into the water then with great care sprinkled a few sprine crystals on to the wet metal before grinding them all to paste with the stone he had retained. After smearing the paste
all along the razor-sharp edge, he tossed the polluted stone away.
‘Cross here,’ he ordered, holding the machete carefully away from his body as he waded through the stinking water.
Ambel quickly followed, then Peck. Janer halted at the edge, trying to detect movement below the oily surface.
‘No leeches there. The bones have poisoned it,’ said Ambel.
Janer decided to take him at his word and waded across. He tried to ignore a skull that they had disturbed from the bottom, which was now bobbing about in the silt like a Halloween novelty.
Once they had climbed the other side of the moat, they entered Hoop’s demesne through the rusted door. The wall was two metres thick and above their heads were open murder holes the
purpose of which, in an era long before this place had been built, would have been to pour molten lead over unwelcome visitors. Janer wondered if Hoop had ever used them for such a purpose.
Probably yes, just for the hell of it.
Inside, was an open courtyard, with stairs all around leading up to the top of the walls. Beyond this lay a further confusion of walls and buildings. Ron led the way across the courtyard then
halted to point down at the flagstones. No one commented on a long distorted footprint clearly visible in the dust. Hefting his machete, Ron gestured for them to continue. He guided them through a
long tunnel into yet another courtyard, then beyond that into an overgrown garden.
Janer stared around him at familiar Earth plants that had managed to survive here, seeding and reseeding themselves down the centuries. Wild rose covered one wall and some sort of orchid
sprouted from the black ground below a tilted sundial. The wall bordering the far end of the garden had some kind of vine embedded deeply in its strange decorations. On top of that wall rested the
Skinner’s head.
Janer raised his carbine just as the head moved, and he realized this was the second time he had been mistaken. The head was actually behind the garden wall, not resting on it. Behind the wall
– and reattached to the long body that was now stepping into view.
‘Oh bugger,’ said Peck, more pertinently this time.
The Skinner was complete again and Janer had never before witnessed such a terrible sight. For here was a real monster: a blue man four metres tall and impossibly thin, hands like spiders, a
head combining elements of warthog and baboon with much of a human skull, evil black eyes and ears that
were
bat wings, spatulate legs depending underneath the long jaw like feelers and,
when it opened its long mouth, row upon row of jagged black teeth.
‘Only just reattached itself,’ said Ron calmly. ‘Look at its neck.’
Janer gazed at the neck and saw a leech mouth located where an ordinary man would have his Adam’s apple. He raised his carbine again, wondering how Ron could sound so analytical.
The Skinner roared, and came charging at them in ridiculous but horrible loping strides. Peck was already blasting away with his shotgun before Janer could fire. Janer’s hit burnt skin
from the monster’s chest and seared one bat-wing ear. Yet the Skinner didn’t even slow down, so Janer kept firing – as an arm like softball bats joined by pieces of elastic came
sweeping in his direction. The hand hit him with horrible force – as if he’d run full tilt into the iron bars of a cage. He flew back into a tangle of roses and was slammed against a
side wall. The breath whooshed out of him and he found he just couldn’t move.
He was aware of Peck crouching behind the sundial, still blasting away, and next saw the sundial and Peck both taken up in a single grasp, heard stone crunching, and saw something bloody being
discarded to one side. Then Captain Ron was there with his machete, and the Skinner became more wary, as it dodged Ron’s attempts to lop off its limbs. Suddenly it darted forward in a blur of
motion. There was a clang and a whickering sound as the machete spun through the air, then another clang as it bounced off the wall to Janer’s right. This second sound seemed to return the
life to Janer’s limbs, and he started to haul himself out of a tangle of roses, swearing as thorns snagged the skin of his face.
As Janer recovered the carbine and sighted it on the Skinner’s head, he saw it looming over Captain Ron as if relishing the prospect of tearing him apart. Ron just stood there with his
arms folded, his legs braced, and a placid look on his face. This made the Skinner hesitate. Janer stepped forward, then promptly fell flat on his face – briars had become looped around his
ankles. As he struggled to right himself and draw a bead on the creature again, he saw Ambel sneaking in behind.
The Skinner drew back one hand clenched into a fist, but Ron merely grinned at it. As Ambel drove his sprine-poisoned knife into the calf of the Skinner’s leg, Janer opened fire again.
The scream it made was deafening: an amalgam of a human scream of agony and the squealing of a pig going to slaughter, but with its volume stepped up five-fold. Janer winced at the hideous
sound, but kept firing at the Skinner’s head. As it screamed, it lashed back with its foot and hurled Ambel ten metres through the air behind it. It then struck out at Ron, slamming him so
hard into a wall that the Captain nearly went through it, rubble falling about him. Still screaming, it took two loping steps towards Janer, who thought he was done for then. His laser burnt away
skin, but seemed to have no other effect on this monster.
The Skinner ignored him as it hurtled past, scrambling over the six-metre wall behind him.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Keech.
‘Hell’s ’bout right,’ muttered Roach.
‘What do you mean?’ Keech asked.
Roach glanced at Boris, and shrugged. ‘Ain’t like nothin’ I’ve heard before,’ he said, then promptly sat down to inspect his charred boots. After searching the
pockets of his ragged coat, he found a length of fishing line, which he used to bind one loose sole back into place. Keech watched Roach impatiently as the crewman finished this task, then stood to
test his weight on the makeshift repair.
‘Are you quite ready now?’ Keech demanded.
‘Ready as I can be. Had me arm busted and me legs fried, so I ain’t gonna be hurrying anywhere,’ Roach grumbled.
Keech stared at him, unable to find a reply, then turned and set off through the dingle again. Roach and Boris exchanged a look, then slowly moved after him. A few paces farther on, Roach
gestured at the SM Boris was cradling like a baby.
‘Why don’t you get rid of that thing?’ he asked.
‘It saved our lives,’ said Boris.
Roach snorted. ‘It’ll slow you down,’ he said with a sneaky grin.
They both glanced ahead at Keech, and began to walk just a little slower.
‘Yeah, definitely slow me down,’ said Boris, then grunted in surprise.
The SM had abruptly become the weight of something made of paper. He held it out on the flat of his hand and looked askance at Roach.
Roach shook his head. ‘Didn’t say we was in any hurry.’
Boris grinned weakly, tucking the SM under his arm, and together the two crewmen dawdled after Keech.
‘Signal detected. Transmitting,’ said SM5.
Sniper slammed himself into the sea as the only effective method of high-speed braking. As he went in, his course cut like a white icicle under the waves, until he had slowed enough to turn and
explode from the surface again. In seconds he was accelerating towards SM5’s last location – only the drone was gone. All that showed on radar was a dispersing signal.
‘It got him,’ said SM1 angrily, as it came hammering in from the west.
‘No kidding,’ said Sniper. He now routed the radar signals through a clean-up program and detected the Prador drone a couple of kilometres from where SM5 had been, and moving
away.
‘I can see you,’ he sent.
The Prador drone swerved in a ‘u’ and came hammering back towards him.
‘That you behind me, Two?’ Sniper asked conversationally.
‘Sure is,’ replied Two.
‘Good, I want you to veer off and go drop a cluster of mines
here
.’ Sniper sent co-ordinates. ‘Seems these arseholes always miss the upswing.’ Behind Sniper, Two
shot away, chuckling over the ether.
‘One, you put a laser on it, and keep it on it,’ Sniper instructed.
‘Won’t touch that armour,’ SM1 pointed out.
‘I know it won’t, but it’ll have to keep on juggling its sensors. It won’t lose me, but it may well miss something smaller.’ Sniper turned so he was hurtling
sideways and, reaching precisely where he wanted, spat two missiles into the sea.
‘Warden, how much code did you get?’ he asked as he observed the missiles torpedoing away on their preprogrammed course.
‘I could do with more, Sniper,’ said the Warden. ‘Why – are you getting bored?’
With the Prador drone hurtling towards him behind its two rapidly accelerating missiles, Sniper swore then slammed down into the sea. He was fifty metres down when one of the Prador’s
missiles detonated on the surface spearing white lines after him with its shrapnel. The second missile followed him down. He released some chaff, then a couple of mines, before abruptly changing
direction. There were explosions behind, then a huge splash to his right. The Prador drone was coming straight after him, vapour and bubbles exploding from armour that had been heated by
SM1’s laser.
‘Over here, arsehole!’ Sniper sent.
‘You are dead,’ the Prador sent back.
‘Ooh, now I’m all frightened.’
Sniper instantly changed course and shot up to the surface at forty-five degrees. The Prador went straight back for the surface, knowing it could come on Sniper quicker through the air. With its
sensors confused and misreading, it saw only at the last moment the mines Two had dropped there. Emerging from the sea in a swarm of explosions the Prador shuddered into the air, seemed merely to
shrug to itself, then accelerated towards Sniper again. Sniper turned on it and fired his antiphoton weapon. Violet fire ignited on the disk of a projected screen.
‘OK, so you’re tougher than I thought,’ sent Sniper.
The Prador slowed, its screen still out in front of it.
‘You’re looking forward to this, ain’t you?’ Sniper sent, bouncing his signal off the sea.
‘I am,’ returned the Prador, ‘and now it will end.’
Below the Prador, two white fumaroles speared up from the sea. The first missile was powerful enough to blow a bar of plasma through its armour. The second missile went in through the same hole
and gutted it. The distorted shell, which was all that now remained of this Prador drone, arced into the sea. Still burning inside, it planed for a moment on superheated steam, then sank.
‘Stupid,’ said Sniper as he tracked the glow into the depths.
The screams were terrible, and Erlin was glad to hear them recede into the distance. If the Skinner had come her way, she was not sure what she could have done, other than
die.
‘Do you suppose that’s it, then?’ she said. ‘Do you think they’ve poisoned it?’
‘You’d know as well as me,’ said Anne.
Erlin shook her head and concentrated on the task in hand.
Pland finished knocking a length of peartrunk wood into the ground nearby on which Erlin suspended the drip she had prepared, then turned on its plastic tap. Next, she pressed another
tranquillizing drug patch against Forlam’s upper arm. The recumbent crewman was completely out of it, and that’s just how she wanted him to stay – for the present. She pressed a
thumb to his bottom jaw and pulled it down. Forlam’s tongue had turned into the feeding mouth of a leech, but at present it lay flaccid behind his teeth. Erlin inspected the back of her hand
and the hole where a neat circle of flesh had been excised. Forlam’s tongue had done that to her when she tried to look in his mouth earlier, while he was conscious. He’d been most
apologetic afterwards.
‘Needs lots of Dome food,’ suggested Pland, staring off in the direction the other four had gone.
‘I know that,’ said Erlin, ‘but right now we haven’t got any – just a few supplements.’
‘There’s plenty on the
Treader
,’ said Anne. ‘Maybe I ought to sneak back and fetch some.’
Erlin glanced at Forlam, then back at her.
‘He certainly needs some Dome food. Could you manage it without getting yourself killed?’
Anne gave her a pitying look, then stood up.
‘I’ll run,’ she said, and turned to go.
Just then, three figures stepped into sight. All three wore black crabskin armour. All three were armed.
‘Shit,’ said Pland, and reached for the laser at his belt.
His hand touched the grip just as there came a sound as of a hammer striking an apple, and he flew backwards, landing on his back and skidding along the ground. Wisps of smoke rose from his
chest. He just had time to lift his head and blink at his attackers, then a dull explosion turned his torso into an expanding ball of fire. In an explosion of torn flesh and blood, his head flew
one direction and his arms and legs in various others.
‘Nobody move!’ yelled the figure which had fired.
Anne moved to draw her automatic and Erlin quickly grabbed her arm.
‘Don’t!’ she warned. ‘Your bullets won’t get through that armour.’