The Skinner (57 page)

Pilot moved a hand across the weapons console and slapped in a launch-and-seek program. A rear nacelle opened and three lines of fire sped away. Ebulan viewed them for just a moment then turned
his attention to the detectors ranged before his own eyes and the eyes of his blanks. It hardly mattered if those departing missiles found their target; they were merely diversionary.

The Warden observed the path of the three missiles for a microsecond then sent a warning to the Dome.

‘Acknowledged,’ said the submind there, with a heavy emphasis. The Warden probed a little and discovered that the submind had been on to the missiles from the moment they were
launched so had already been tracking them for at least a whole second. It ignored the mind’s sarcasm and, with that part of itself not tied up in trying to crack Prador code, it turned its
attention elsewhere.

‘Twelve, take the SMs out from the island, to attack the Prador ship,’ it sent.

‘Yeah, let’s kick us some ass!’ returned one of them.

Two observed, ‘I note you say “attack” not “destroy”. You realize we’ll be lucky even to slow it down?’

‘If you can realize that then the Warden certainly can,’ said Twelve patiently.

The Warden watched the seven drones accelerate out from the island and fall into an arrow formation. It prepared itself to upload all the subminds, should – at the moment of their physical
destruction – they even have time to transmit themselves. Through their eyes it watched the Prador destroyer come into view and with a little further probing, learnt that the enforcer drones
were ready and willing for the fight, and that SM12, though ready to do what it could, felt certain it was about to become a metallic smear on the ocean surface.

‘We go in like this,’ explained Twelve, sending them details of an attack formation selected from its library. One, Two and Seven slid to the fore and spread to the three points of a
triangle. The remaining drones spread to the corners of a square. Both shapes began revolving.

‘And the purpose of this?’ enquired Two.

‘We’ll present a dispersed and more difficult target,’ said Twelve. ‘We also have a better chance of firing past shield projectors, and intercepting lasers and rail-gun
fusillades.’

‘In your arse,’ said a voice.

‘Who the . . .?’ began Twelve, but by then they were already on the Prador ship.

The drone formation slid over the destroyer like a tube. Lasers heated their casings on this pass, and they only managed half a second of fire. Their missiles needled down at the golden armour,
most of them blasting against projected fields so that for half a second the destroyer was surrounded by coins of fire. Some missiles did get through to blow concentric ripples of flame around the
hull of the ship. But where they struck, they left only glowing spots on its armour, and those spots quickly faded.

‘Loop round,’ said Twelve. ‘We’ll go in from the side this time.’

‘Yeah, and with that you’ll achieve what?’

‘Prador war drone approaching from the east!’ yelled Seven.

‘It
was
a Prador war drone, but now it’s me.’

‘Sniper, is that you?’ asked Twelve.

‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ replied Sniper.

The old war drone had now become an amalgam of dented Prador drone with a headless aluminium crayfish attached to its surface and linked to the inside, through the split, via a fountain of optic
cables.

Sniper went on, ‘Dispersed and more difficult target, my arse. That Prador is playing with you. While it appears that you might be doing some damage, it knows there’s less chance of
anything else being sent against it. Otherwise you’d all be scrap by now.’

‘What would
you
suggest?’ asked Twelve.

‘I don’t suggest. I’m telling you that a dispersed attack is going to do nothing to affect that armour. You need to go in randomly and concentrate on just one point. Go for
something vulnerable: a sensor array or a thruster. Now do it!’

Twelve bowed to Sniper’s experience, and the formation broke as it hurtled back in towards the ship, the drones weaving all over the sky as lasers tried to pick up on them almost with a
casual indifference.

‘Seven to Ten, concentrate everything you have on that port thruster,’ sent Sniper. ‘One and Two, once they hit it, you hit the port laser with your rail-guns. Twelve,
you’ve only got a geological laser – so why the hell are you here?’

‘As a distraction?’ Twelve suggested.

‘Yeah, if you like,’ said Sniper.

‘Where are
you
going?’ Twelve asked, noticing that Sniper was receding into the sky.

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back before you know it. Or, rather, back before our friend in that ship knows it.’

The SMs shot in over the destroyer and their missiles spread like a cloud of gnats around it. Everything seemed random until the cloud suddenly closed on the rear of the destroyer. A constant
stuttering explosion bloomed, and the casing of a thruster went incandescent. The destroyer tilted as if a giant hand had slapped its back end – but then it quickly corrected. Shortly after
that, there was a flash of purple fire, and an extrusion on the front of the Prador ship suddenly blackened and cracked open. Directly on top of that a luminous green line stabbed up from the
destroyer and something danced before it, flickered, and became just a line of dust in the sky.

‘There went Seven,’ said Two.

‘Particle beam,’ observed Nine – then, ‘EM shells!’

Twelve flew over the top of the ship, through a wall of fire. It could do nothing: its little geological laser, had it even been working, could not have touched this Prador armour. As it passed
through the fire, Twelve closed its cockle-shells and tumbled through the air, as the EM pulse knocked its AG controls out of sync. Correcting at the last moment, it noted the crash foam inside
itself melting, and that the casing on its micro-pile was developing hairline cracks.

‘Warden, take me,’ it said, accelerating towards the nearest weapons blister. The particle beam flashed out so all that struck the ship was a metallic cloud of vapour.

‘Sniper, what now?’ asked Two, as it swerved away and watched Nine, caught in the intersecting beams of three or more lasers, trying to get away, but distorting and melting in
midair.

‘Keep hitting it,’ instructed Sniper, his signal now echoey with distance.

With machine-gun sonic cracks, the surviving SMs turned and resumed attack.

‘Where
are
you?’ asked Two, as it emptied its rail-gun magazines, ahead of the last of its missiles.

There came no reply from the ancient war drone.

With a fragment of its mind, the Warden watched the battle. Much of its attention was channelled through SM11, who it had hovering geostationary over the island. Through this
drone’s sensors it observed Sniper taking the Prador drone shell up and out of atmosphere and, knowing just how effective Sniper’s ballistics programs were, it knew what the drone had
in mind. From the Polity base, it observed shield projectors slam two of the missiles fired at it down into the sea. Those two missiles vanished in two explosions that were discs of fire: straight
planar explosive – a diversion. The third missile bounced off a shield, went up, and came back down. A smart missile, released some time before and sent on patrol, made the decision to go get
it. The two missiles collided high above the base. The ensuing explosions continued all the way down to the shields, which heated under the load. Cluster missile, the Warden observed
dispassionately.

With the rest of its resources, the Warden was concentrating on its code breakers. Momentary breakthrough there . . . but the sequence folded after half a second. Through Eleven, it had some
feedback from the blank called Pilot, so now it knew it was on the right track.

Secondary automatic systems absorbed transmitted subminds, as one after another the enforcer shells were destroyed by the Prador ship. It would handle these later, the Warden decided, as it
shunted them into storage.

All that evinced any apparent emotion in the AI was when the Prador code finally started to come apart.

The island was now in sight and in range, but firing the CTDs was as yet out of the question, as they’d be intercepted long before they reached their targets. Particle
beams could not be intercepted, though. Ebulan set his blank to firing on the island and through his own viewer had the satisfaction of seeing great swathes of dingle exploding into fire, with even
rock melting wherever the beams touched it. He gave a mental instruction for Pilot to move them in low over the Old Captain’s ships, so a CTD could be used on them. When nothing happened, he
probed down the link – and just found nil response. Pilot must have been destroyed. There must have been a hit Ebulan was unaware of. He looked through another blank’s eyes in the
control area but saw no sign of any damage. Pilot simply stepped away from his console and walked from the area. Ebulan knew horror then: someone else was controlling his blank. He instructed yet
another blank to draw her weapon and go after Pilot. But Pilot acted first. He activated the emergency door between the control area and central corridor, then drew his weapon, put it on high
discharge, and with a single blast he fused the door to its frame.

Ebulan focused on the blank seated at the weapons console, and the two still here with him. He soon sent them up and running for the central corridor. The blanks inside the control area he
quickly got firing on the door. But the female blank he’d made draw her weapon first, abruptly stopped firing at the door, turned to her two companions, and cut them down – before
putting the snout of her weapon in her mouth and blowing her own head off.

In panic Ebulan did an emergency reinstall of the random code. But this made no difference to Pilot; while Ebulan was effecting the reinstall, the blank caught hold of the first of his
companions to come in after him, slammed that one’s head repeatedly against the wall, then tore out the back of his neck. Along with the flesh and bone came the spinal section of the Prador
thrall unit, and the corpse slumped. Without further instruction from Ebulan, the other two blanks stood unmoving while this happened.

Suddenly the ship lurched sideways under multiple concussions. Ebulan made one of the two blanks draw his weapon and shoot Pilot through the chest. In panic, he sent the other blank back to the
weapons console. There he checked the readings and saw that the attacking SMs had finally managed to blow a thruster.

An abrupt feeling of pain. Shut off. Ebulan lost contact with the blank that had just shot Pilot. He now sent the one over at the weapons console to go and look, and meanwhile transferred direct
control to himself. Now he had full views outside, tracking on the attacking SMs, and could also see through his remaining blank’s eyes. He fired off the defensive lasers, shifted shields and
strafed the sky with particle beams.

Pilot wasn’t dead – just a hole through his chest. Old Hooper. Ebulan’s blank drew his weapon, but his arm, and the hand holding the weapon, thudded to the deck.

Another attack from the SMs. Ebulan released five missiles on random trajectories to pull them off.

What?
The last blank went too, collapsing into pieces. Pilot held a shell cutter, and was coming this way.
What?
Armoured doors were opening and closing back there.
How?
Something above, but now control codes were going haywire, and external vision was fading. Behind Ebulan, the shell cutter screamed as it bit into the armoured door. He spun around and stared at
the door in horror, blind now to everything outside his ship.

Sniper gazed down at the planet through the Prador drone’s eye pits, and all he got was an image in shades of grey. Well, he thought, if that was how they saw the
universe, it was no wonder they were so unfriendly. Switching back to his remaining palp-eye he got the same image in panoramic colour, before turning that eye to the stars. Might be the last time
he saw them, he thought, then berated himself for getting all slushy. Then reversing AG on his cobbled-together vehicle, he plummeted for the planet below.

‘Hey, Warden, what’s the SP?’ he asked.

‘Sniper, I see that underestimation of you has been somewhat of a fault in your enemies. Do you think you’ll manage to stay on target?’

‘Yeah, but I might not get there all in one piece.’

‘Then,’ said the Warden, ‘you’ll be glad to know that I’ve just broken the Prador control code, and the master of that ship is not having a very good
time.’

‘Well, if you’ve broken the code, that means you’ve got some capacity spare to receive me,’ replied the war drone.

‘You’re prepared for subsumption then?’ asked the Warden.

‘Not really,’ said Sniper, ‘but it beats actually dying.’ As he said this, he felt the underspace link with the Warden open and consolidate. This was strictly his option,
and it seemed like an open pit-trap to him. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘a guy once called me ugly inside and out.’

‘And what was your response to that?’ asked the Warden.

‘Cut his head off,’ Sniper replied, and so saying began to hum a tune over the ether. Then the old war drone grated out the words to a song:

‘
There once was an ugly duckling, its feathers all tatty and brown.
’

The armoured shell exceeded fifteen thousand kilometres per hour through the stratosphere. Sniper fed all power not already being sucked away by the reverse AG into the Prador shield, and by
distorting its focus managed to cone it out in front. This gave him another couple of thousand kph, even with increasing air resistance. Now he also fed pure water into the fusion boosters and
accelerated.

‘
All the other birds, in so many words, said
—’ From the Prador ship, precisely in the predicted position below him, no weapons were fired, and no shields swung into
place. In this last second Sniper managed to broadcast his final words, before transmitting himself.

‘
Quack, get out of town.
’

The explosion blew plasma through the central corridor. The dead blanks lying there were picked up in the blast and turned to oily flame. The wave of fire hit the weakened door
into the control area and folded it back. Instrument panels and dead blanks alike were pasted against the inner hull by the blast, and feedback knocked out generator after generator. AG motors shut
off; others came on and were instantly fused by power surges. The thrusters went out, and Ebulan’s ship dropped from the sky like a brick. Now direct-linked into the controls, Ebulan gave off
bubbling screams as those links fed power back to him, and set two of his control boxes on fire. He slammed against the wall of his chamber, and his own AG went out. He had just regained enough
control to get the shields out underneath the ship to absorb most of the shock. But projectors burnt out as the ship hurtled towards the sea, then slammed into the waves. Seawater exploded out from
under the destroyer as it settled, almost gracefully at the last.