The Skinner

‘I still don’t understand,’ said Windcheater.

‘I’m bored,’ said the war drone then, with a gesture of his heavy claw towards the covered artefacts, ‘Keep them safe for me. I’ll be back when I’ve finished counting fucking whelks.’

A blade of fusion flame stabbed from underneath and behind the war drone, and then he shot away into the sky. Windcheater nodded once, then allowed his eyes to cross and his foot-talons to clench once more. The other sails, all of them called Windcatcher, looked on with the same blank lack of understanding as ever.

Keech controlled the scooter with a simple program set up in his aug, while he flipped up the control console’s screen and activated it. The aug program kept the vehicle gliding five metres above the sea and heading south, and as such it did not take up much processing space. Through another part of his aug, Keech accessed the local server, downloaded a mapping program, and relayed it to the scooter’s computer. He could easily have read the map in his aug, but sometimes he preferred a more hands-on approach. Perhaps it was his age… In a moment, the screen indicated his present position on a 500-kilometre-square grid-map. Ahead of him was a cluster of islets the map obscurely named the ‘Pepper Shells’, and east of him was an object labelled ‘The Big Flint’. He was speculating on whether or not this meant Spatterjay had chalk beds — out of which flint is propagated — when there was a sudden spray of water, a crashing noise, and the scooter slewed sideways through the air.

Keech immediately took manual control and turned the scooter to prevent it tipping over. As the scooter rapidly decelerated, he glanced sideways and wondered just for a moment if he was hallucinating. The head of a pink rhinoceros, at the end of ten metres of wormish body that was being dragged through the waves, had clamped its beaked mouth on the scooter wing, just behind the port thruster. The scooter’s AG units whined as it tipped and Keech found himself looking into angry little blue eyes. He quickly pulled the column in the opposite direction and boosted the starboard motor. There was a growling rumble and more sea spray shot in the air. The scooter rose, and tilted further. The rhinoworm’s body came clear of the water, then the creature abruptly let go and dropped back into the sea. Keech shut off the motors and let the scooter regain its stability, then he slammed the motors on full as the head of the worm rose out of the sea again. The Pepper Shells were now off to his left. He turned the scooter towards them, chose one and headed for it as quickly as he could, now careful to keep the scooter more than ten metres above the sea’s surface.

There were at least fifty islets, all no larger than fifty metres across. Keech slowed the scooter and eased it down to the centre of the largest of them. He saw that his landing area consisted of worn stone inset with quartz crystals of every shade imaginable. Scattered loosely on this surface were broken shells and fragments of pink and white chitin like broken porcelain. The scooter crunched on these as it settled. Keech dismounted and immediately inspected the vehicle’s wing: there were scratches on the metal, but it was otherwise undamaged. But the rhinoworm had come close to tipping the scooter over before its beak slid off, and from the organic part of his brain Keech had felt a surge of emotion that felt very much like fear. He gazed back out to sea and recognized the sinuous wave of the worm approaching. It was persistent; he had to give it that. Movement close by then attracted his attention and he glanced down at the shore close by to see a mass of spiral shells shifting about. Abruptly one of these bounced into the air on a thick white foot like an anaemic tongue, and came in to land only a few metres away from him. From this shell rose two eyestalks. As one, from all those down on the beach, rose a small forest of similar eyestalks. He had never seen anything quite so ridiculous. But when the shell nearest to him tilted back to expose a large circular mouth full of more moving parts than a high-tech food processor, he quickly remounted his scooter and took off. As he passed over those on the shore, a couple of them leapt up in the air and bounced off the underside of his scooter. He raised it even higher above the sea as he sped for his destination. The creatures here would have found his flesh unpalatable, but that would be little comfort to him.

With the rhinoworm and those things which he supposed must be frog whelks a couple of kilometres safely behind him, Keech eased the steering column to rest and shut off the motors. The scooter drifted along twenty metres above the waves while he again studied the map. Twelve kilometres to go, and then he must go down again. He reached behind him to get hold of his black attaché case, which he opened on his lap. From the objects inside, he selected a short QC laser carbine to complement the JMCC pulse-gun at his hip. He also selected a tray with a touch-control panel on the side. In this tray rested three i

Lumps of coral protruded from the sea, like worm-casts of stone and Gothic arches. The sea hissed and slurped between them, and past the banks of greyish sand mounded below. Through his binoculars, Ambel studied a clump of sargassum that was slowly being broken up and sucked through one of these cha

‘Peck, you’ll keep watch with Gollow and Sild,’ he called, nodding towards the two juniors he had only recently hired, while reminding himself to memorize the names of the other recent additions. ‘It’ll be me, A

‘Aye, Captain,’ answered Boris as he eased the helm over and brought the Treader into a deep-water cha

‘Give him another two hundred years and he might grow up,’ muttered Boris.

Ambel nodded in agreement, then gestured to the deck ca