Siege

Smith, Carveth and Rhianna wrestled with the controls. The lower three-quarters of the windscreen were full of the bone-white walls of Mothkarak.

The maneater lounged at the far end of the cockpit. ‘You do know there’s a castle in front of you, don’t you?’

Smith looked round. ‘Either help us or get in a locker with the rest of the junk.’

‘Very well,’ it said, and it padded over, hooked a paw around the control stick and pulled it backwards. The ship swung up, almost enough to clear the walls. On the parapet, lemming men, humans and M’Lak fought for their lives.

The ship clipped the edge of the battlement, yawed crazily, and then slammed down into the courtyard.

The floor lurched. Smith fell, Rhianna landed on top of him, and the maneater slid across the cockpit. Carveth scrambled out of the pilot’s seat.

‘The bad news is that we knocked the landing gear off on the wall back there,’ she said. ‘The good news is that the lemming men broke our fall. And the other bad news is that the lemming men are here.’

Something exploded under them. A siren parped, then died away. The front fell off one of the overhead control panels and foul-smelling smoke billowed out.

Rhianna staggered upright and helped Smith to his feet. A second boom from below rocked the floor. Smith grabbed his weapons, Carveth picked up Gerald’s cage, and they hurried to the airlock.

The courtyard was mayhem. Imperial soldiers ran towards the main castle, covering one another. Soldiers climbed down from the battlements. The Yull simply dived off – the fall was high enough to break a man’s neck, but a large pile of dead comrades softened their landing. The outer wall was breached. The Space Empire was falling back.

‘With me!’ Smith shouted. ‘Everyone, to the castle!’

They ran, but it was no rout. The soldiers retreated in waves, covering each other as they went. The Yull were cut down by the dozen, but it didn’t stop them: more charged howling over their dead.

The mechanical maneater looked over its shoulder, at the yowling horde pouring over the parapet. Soldiers tried to slow the horde. Two M’Lak soldiers and a human were overwhelmed and hacked down. A bullet hit the maneater on the shoulder and pinged off into the air. ‘Oh,’ it growled. ‘Like that, is it?’

Susan stood in the middle of the courtyard, firing her beam gun from the hip. Beside her, Dreckitt had acquired a drum-magazine Stanford gun, and was blazing away as if he was back in the New Chicago underworld. He waved and dashed over, fiercely hugged Carveth and shouted ‘Goddam crazy Yull!’

Smith swung up his rifle and blasted a Yullian grenadier as he climbed over the battlements. The rodent fell back among its comrades and exploded a moment later. Slices of lemming sailed into the air.

‘Where’s Wainscott?’ Smith demanded.

Dreckitt pointed. Fire billowed on the walls and a grinning figure strode through it, all beard and shorts like Satan on holiday. ‘Which nutball let Wainscott get a flamethrower? You know what he’s like around fire. Take this to your magic kingdom, Mickey!’ Dreckitt added, firing off a burst into a screeching lemming sergeant. ‘We’ve got to go!’

‘Yeah, let’s get out of here!’ Carveth cried. ‘I – oh, crap!’

A glider sailed over the walls. The wings were ripped like an old paper bag, and the pilot had been hit several times. Smith saw the dynamite stuffed into the pilot’s sash, the wad of explosive padding out its cheeks, and as he pulled up his gun he knew that even if he killed it, the lemming man would still crash onto them.

Rhianna flicked her hand up as if greeting an acquaintance, and the glider smashed into an invisible wall. The explosion scoured the walls behind the glider, incinerating a dozen lemmings. Smith didn’t even feel the warmth of the blast.

‘Totally awesome,’ Rhianna said. ‘I mean, violence is really bad. But still…’

They ran back across the courtyard, Smith and Dreckitt covering the retreat. Susan fell back, reluctantly, and the Deepspace Operations Group accompanied her. They ran through the main entrance, and the doors slammed shut behind them. Soldiers rushed to bar them, heaping furniture around the doorway. Smith and his comrades ran towards the mezzanine.

* * *

Eight seconds later, the doors burst open and the fuselage of a Yullian fighter plane slid burning into the entrance hall. A communications orderly was plastered across the windscreen, still clutching a radio in its singed paw.

‘They’ve called in an airstrike,’ Smith cried. ‘On themselves!’

The Yull poured into the hall. In a second, the first thirty rodents went down under a hail of bullets, beams and light furniture. Two M’Lak soldiers heaved a grandfather clock onto the squeaking horde, and followed it with an antique commode.

A bald man in a morning suit ran over, holding a fire axe; Smith recognised him as the android butler.

‘The enemy have tunnelled into the cellar, sir,’ he announced sadly. ‘I found two men partaking of the spirits down there. Two lemming men, sir. I... corrected them, but there will be more.’

‘Bollocks,’ Wainscott snarled. ‘They’re in the building.’

A human soldier fell back, clutching his chest. The M’Lak threw a suit of armour over the balcony, braining several Yull with a terrible crash. For a moment, the sheer weirdness of the scene bewildered Smith: it looked as if someone had rammed a model aeroplane through a dolls house and followed it with a ceaseless tide of mice.

Chaos broke out at the rear of the lemming men. Some turned, others were tossed aside. A huge shape bounded through them, roaring and shaking its metal head. A great squol hung dead in its metal jaws, and the mechanical maneater dropped it by the staircase.

‘Ravnavar?’ it called. ‘Are you with me, Ravnavar?’

And Smith’s voice answered it with the others. Cheering, they rushed down to fight.

* * *

The Yull were in the lower passages now and the great cool vaults under Mothkarak echoed with gunfire and squeaky battle-cries. The tunnels were simply too complex to defend; on the other hand, they were almost impossible to storm. A fair number of the lemming men were lost not to gunfire, but to being mislaid. In the dim stone corridors the Yull were ambushed and slain: by fierce squads of defenders and their own confused comrades. The robot spiders that carved and repaired the castle caught several lemming men and scrimshawed them to death.

The Yull were inside, but at terrible cost. Their enemies fought with a fury that they had not anticipated. Had any of them dared to tell their superiors, or survived to do so, General Wikwot might have suspected that he no longer had a monopoly on not giving up. Instead, he ordered another wave of lemmings into the cellars. After all, he thought, tunnels were a rodent’s home from home.

* * *

‘We can hold the front,’ Wainscott said, as a wallahbot brought up a massive urn of tea. ‘You lot go up and find W.’

Smith turned from the balcony and led his crew upstairs. They picked their way up a winding staircase that smelt of damp and linoleum, climbing up the spine of the castle. Guns boomed through the walls.

Smith let himself think about Suruk. Surely he couldn’t be dead: Suruk was too tough and too crazy to be killed by the Yull. He seemed immortal, the way Wainscott did. But then, people weren’t. He hoped Rhianna had been able to send help to Suruk: being hit on the head with Suruk’s own spear probably hadn’t helped her psychic abilities.

He realised suddenly that, without the skulls, violence, bladed weaponry and occasional requests for bail money that being Suruk’s best friend entailed, life would be a much emptier place.

They emerged onto a narrow landing. Floorboards creaked and dust trickled down from above. Cannon fire rippled like thunder through the walls.

An open side-door led into one of the smaller libraries. Two women manned a tripod-mounted laser, the barrel poking out of the French windows. The nanibot stood beside them, and as Smith approached, she lowered her rifle and deactivated the sights.

‘Well, hello there,’ she said. ‘Goodness me, isn’t it noisy?’

‘We’re looking for W.’

‘Of course.’ She pulled up the rifle and took a shot out of the window. ‘It’s a terrible mess, isn’t it? Did you know, cleaning up can be fun? I’m taking out the trash with my rifle, and it’s ever so jolly.’

Carveth muttered, ‘Well, she’s flipped her switch.’

‘Don’t be impolite. He’s right this way.’

She pointed, and they hurried through. At the back of the library, the spymaster stood behind a table covered in maps. A bank of military display screens flickered behind him, flashing with muted gunfire.

‘Wainscott’s holding the front entrance, sir,’ Smith said. ‘Looks like we might be able to keep the Yull back.’

W shook his head. A roll-up stuck out of the corner of his mouth like a mummified twig. ‘’Fraid not, Smith. We’ve got lemmings in our underworks and ammo’s not looking good. Some of the M’Lak are down to knives already, although I think they might have just thrown their guns away. Look at this.’

He pulled one of the screens down on a jointed brass arm. It showed forest, the canopy rippling like the surface of a lake. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing to two large shapes. They moved forward, stately as ships, sending the trees around them swaying.

‘Ravnaphants!’ Rhianna said. ‘Aren’t they majestic? Wait a minute. Are they ours?’

‘No,’ said the spy. Under his thin moustache, his mouth was hard and set. ‘They’re enemy, and they’re stampeding this way. If those things reach us, there won’t be a castle left to protect.’

‘Good God!’ Smith exclaimed. ‘Can we stop them?’

‘Maybe,’ W said. He bent down and picked something off the floor. When he stood up, he was holding an immense shotgun, the barrels wide enough to accommodate a fist. ‘This is my ravnaphant gun. Thought it might come in handy.’ He reached to the table, picked up a teacup and took a large gulp of the contents. ‘There’s a tunnel leading out into the grounds,’ he said. ‘If I hurry, I might be able to come up just before them and bag the buggers. Thing is – well, you’d better take my place after that. There’s a whole lot of lemmings out there.’

Rhianna ran a hand through her hair. ‘So you’re going to go out there, shoot the ravnaphants and then die? You can’t do that! Ravnaphants are nice.’

‘Not a lot of choice,’ W said. ‘If I don’t make it back, tell everybody that I thought they were – well, pleasant company. Remember: the mildness of the British people is their greatest strength. And all tyrants must die. I think that covers it.’

He started for the door.

‘Wait,’ Smith said. ‘I’ve got a plan. What if we distracted the Yull?’

‘How? They’re crazed. All they want is blood.’

‘Then we’ll give it to them. Do those monitors transmit as well as receive?’

‘Yes, but the image is terrible.’

‘The worse the better. I’m going to need a camera, some white sheets, a lot of red paint, timed explosive, a Yullian dictionary, a bottle of helium and several women in nurses’ uniforms. Do you think we can find all that?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘Rhianna, you can help me. And Carveth?’

An explosion, muffled but huge, shook the windows. Dust rained from the ceiling. She looked round. ‘Yes?’

‘Fetch Gerald.’

* * *

Wikwot watched the ravnaphants advance from his vantage point in the treehouse. The beasts lumbered towards the castle walls like slow torpedoes. They would smash straight through, once they had got up enough speed, like a drunken uncle falling onto a wedding cake. Of course, with each step they crushed a dozen of the Yullian footsoldiers that swarmed around them, but that was war for you.

‘General!’ an adjutant called up. ‘An outgoing transmission from the Space Empire.’

‘Excellent.’ Wikwot slid down the tree, his bulk conveying him quickly to the ground. ‘Do they beg for mercy?’

‘Yes, my lord. Look!’

The minion held up a screen. The image was blurry, but Wikwot could make out a confused looking woman in a white outfit with a big red cross on the front.

‘Um, hi,’ she said. ‘Look, lemming guys, could you not attack the big shed out the back where we used to keep all the aviation fuel? Because we’re using it as a hospital, and it’s full of women and children – you know, civilians – and it would be totally bad if –’

She was abruptly shoved out the way. The camera shook: a whiskered face appeared close to the lens. A voice squeaked ‘Huphep Yullai!’ and the screen went dead.

Wikwot looked at the adjutant. ‘Well,’ he said, a grin stretching across his chops, ‘looks like our boys have found the good stuff. To the big shed! Kill the unrodents – kill them all!’

* * *

Smith peered over the windowsill. ‘Looks like it’s working,’ he said.

Rhianna carefully removed her improvised white hat from the chaos of her hair. ‘Do you think they’ll go for it?’

‘Of course. The lemming man may fight fiercely, you see, but in his heart he is a bully and a moral coward. His base masters have ordered him forward, and, drunk with cruelty, he has no option but to obey. Our noble soldiers, on the other hand – why are you both smiling at me?’

‘The helium’s not worn off,’ Carveth said. ‘And I’ll have my hamster back, while you’re at it.’

Smith passed Gerald over. Anyone sane would never have mistaken a blurry hamster for a member of their own species, but then the lemming men were not sane. He had given them what they wanted – the opportunity for a massacre – and they would be powerless to resist. At the far end of the library, the mounted laser was firing again.

‘You know,’ he squeaked, as Rhianna removed her improvised uniform, ‘you look quite nice dressed as a nurse.’

‘Uh-oh,’ said Carveth.

‘At least it’s not a Bronte sister,’ Rhianna replied.

Carveth gawped. ‘God, that’s wrong. Which one was it?’

Rhianna shrugged. ‘All of them, I think.’

‘When you’re finished, Carveth,’ Smith chirruped, ‘we have work to do.’ He picked up the map. ‘Rhianna, Carveth, give it a few minutes and have the ladies on the gun back there shoot the shed up. That ought to do the furries a bit of no good. I’m off to help W.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Rhianna said.

‘I won’t,’ Carveth added. ‘I mean, I would, but Gerald here deserves a rest.’

Smith looked at Rhianna, reflecting that she wasn’t the best person to take on a hunting trip. He wondered how he would dissuade her, especially since his voice was currently several octaves higher than usual. He’d think of something by the time they got out of the castle, by which time he might sound less like a bird. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

They took one of the many sets of back stairs. Rhianna held the map and Smith went first, sword out. They hurried down the steps, boring deep into the castle. The air seemed to thicken and chill; the boom of explosions became a distant rumble.

The construction robots had passed through here a long time ago, carving useless side-passages and storerooms that now housed nothing except dust. Smith and Rhianna ducked behind a statue that depicted a fat angel in a bowler hat.

‘Look,’ Rhianna said, pointing downwards, and for a moment Smith thought she meant her sandals. Then he saw the bootprints in the dust.

The passage ended in a staircase. The steps seemed to rise into the ceiling: as they got closer, Smith saw a hatch in the roof. ‘Here we go,’ he trilled, and he pushed it open.

They climbed out into the forest, into the sound of gunfire and yells. At one time, Smith realised, the place had been an outpost of the castle: broken walls still ran across the ground, overgrown with creepers. Smith closed the hatch, feeling the heat like a weight on his back.

‘Where’s W?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I can sense him –’

Something huge exploded to the right. Smith dropped down, tugging Rhianna’s hand. A fireball flew into the sky, preceded by a squeaking wave of lemming men. They sailed into the air, about half of them still in one piece, and crashed down upon the wreckage below with an unpleasant sound like wet cement.

Then he realised: Carveth must have blasted the fuel store. ‘It’s raining lemming men,’ he said. ‘Hallelujah.’

‘Smith,’ a man whispered. ‘Smith, is that you?’

They shoved through the undergrowth. W lay on his back. He wore a combat helmet: the visor had been ripped and twisted away, as if it had exploded from inside. The spy’s mouth and hand were bloody.

He was pinned down by the corpse of the biggest squol that Smith had ever seen. It was a brute; a scarred, sandy-yellow rat-hound with a spiked collar and a tail that had been broken in so many places that it resembled a lightning-bolt. Smith grimaced and helped Rhianna to heave the body aside.

W coughed weakly and sat up. ‘Bloody thing jumped me. I managed to stab it in the brain with a fountain pen.’ He stared glumly at his wounded hand. ‘Via its mouth, unfortunately. The gun’s yours, Smith. I’d be lucky to bag groceries, let alone a ravnaphant.’

Smith picked up the gun and broke it open. The cartridges were the size of tin cans.

‘Solid shell on the right, lead shot on the left. Use the shot to get its attention, and then aim at the head. You’ll only get one chance. The only thing worse than an angry ravnaphant is a randy one.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Their arses go red in the mating season. It’s very bad news for everybody.’

Deep in the forest, Smith heard the stomp of huge feet like drums.

‘Isambard?’ Rhianna said.

Smith looked around. She had taken a deep breath, which meant that trouble was on the way. ‘You’re not about to tell me that hunting ravnaphants is wrong, are you?’

‘Actually, yes. Totally wrong.’

Smith took a few steps away, towards the ruined walls, and Rhianna said, ‘Maybe we can make friends with it.’

‘How? If you want to pat it on the head, you should have brought some scaffolding.’ Desperation made him sound bitter.

‘Them, Isambard. There’s two of them.’

The ground began to shake. The footsteps sounded more like artillery than drums now. As Smith looked at Rhianna, the gun seemed to shrink in his hands. ‘God,’ he said. ‘What’re we going to do?’

‘Maybe I can contact their minds.’

‘They’ve got two brains. Each. And neither’s very clever.’

‘I could make them friendly.’

‘Alright. Be careful.’

He strode towards the noise. The trees thinned down, and he saw the first ravnaphant ploughing through the forest, branches breaking around its shoulders like ice around an Arctic ship. It was as tall as a cliff, covered in ancient scars and skin thicker than tank armour.

But it had also been badly used, like anything that the lemmings took alive: there were fresh cuts in the armour, and syringes the size of telegraph poles stuck out of its flanks, no doubt full of some vile combat-drug. On its back, a horde of Yull jeered and chanted, wild with bloodlust.

‘Slow him down,’ he said, and he broke the gun open. Rhianna closed her eyes, and Smith took out the solid shell, and replaced it with shot.

The first beast strode a little slower now, but each step was still enormous: it could march straight through the castle. The ground shook, rocked. The second monster lumbered into view.

‘The other one!’ Smith shouted. ‘Make them friendly!’

The first beast was nearly on top of them now. The huge legs boomed around them, crashing down like pistons in a starship’s engine room. Something like a huge fleshy pendulum swung from above, and Smith thought, That’s a funny place to have a tail –

‘I will fill their hearts with love!’ Rhianna cried, beaming.

‘That’s not its heart!’ Smith yelled back, and tugged her out the way. They dashed aside, between the first beast and the second, through a storm of dust and panicked animals. Suddenly they were clear, and as the first ravnaphant passed them, Smith pulled up the gun and fired both barrels into its rear.

It lumbered to a halt. The lemming men riding it shouted and tried to goad it on. The ravnaphant’s back twitched as the realisation that it had been shot travelled from its backside to its brain. A red mark swelled from the point of injury: the shot had been like a slap across the arse.

The second ravnaphant paused, took a good look at the red bottom in front of it, drew the obvious conclusion and leaped onto its comrade’s back.

In a second, two hundred lemming men died horribly. Those not flattened outright were ground to paste by the vigorous motions that followed. Smith was reminded of the liaison between his aunt’s Jack Russell and a table leg.

The first ravnaphant dimly realised what was going on, and reminded the second that they were both male by kicking it in the groin. The second beast roared and staggered, sending lemming men flying into the forest like water off a wet dog’s back. The ground rocked and shuddered as the two beasts bellowed at each other.

Smith stood there a moment, overcome with awe, and then Rhianna grabbed him. ‘Isambard, we did it!’

They stood there, gazing at two of the galaxy’s most majestic creatures in one of the galaxy’s less majestic spectacles. ‘And so did they,’ Smith replied. ‘To each other. Or at least, they tried.’

Together they walked back to W. He stood upright, leaning against a tree, smoking a roll-up. ‘Did you bag them both?’

‘Good as,’ Smith replied.

‘You should get them mounted,’ the spy replied.

‘Actually, they mounted each other.’

‘That was some bloody good work,’ Smith said as they started back towards the trapdoor. He squeezed Rhianna’s hand.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t all that hard to communicate with them. They’re a lot like men, really Their brains are in their –’

A rumble ran through the air. Smith felt it in the ground, too, under his boots. ‘Not again!’

The sound rose, and the branches above them trembled. This time, the noise was coming from the South, not the East, but it was still set to crash into them.

Smith looked at Rhianna. ‘Can you slow this one down?’

She looked vague, but grim. ‘I’ll try. I’ll see what I can do.’

She walked out to meet it. Smith followed, W lurching along beside them. They looked up at the forest. And the trees burst apart before them. The ravnaphant came lumbering through, striding forwards, and Smith saw a castle on its back, studded with howitzers: Union Jacks dangling along its flanks, and galloping in its wake, row upon row of lancers riding great green beasts.

‘Mildred!’ he cried.

Someone blew a bugle, and the ravnaphant lifted her head and bellowed. A tiny figure stood between her eyebrow-ridges: legs braced, arm out before it.

‘Look!’ Rhianna cried. ‘It’s Suruk! And he’s surfing the ravnaphant’s head!’

* * *

The Yull could no longer flatten the castle, but they could still storm it. They poured in now, and the defenders retreated upstairs as if from a rising tide, closer and closer to General Young. A thick carpet of fallen lemmings covered the lower floor, but the Yull did not care. Victory was worth any price.

The mechanical maneater fought like the monster that it was. The humans didn’t matter much, but the M’Lak – Grimdall’s people – were in danger. The reckoning with mankind could wait. Bayonets broke on its metal skin; armour and fur crumpled under its massive claws.

Susan ran out of powerpacks for the beam gun. She grabbed a laser rifle from a dead soldier, and moved on to two revolvers when that ran out. Craig was jabbed in the thigh and Nelson dragged him upstairs. Wainscott took a gash to the chest from a Yullian axe, shortly before throwing the axe’s owner over the banisters.

They regrouped in the tertiary ballroom, an immense chamber in the centre of the fifth floor. The ground was already strewn with lemming men, their fur stiff and red.

Wainscott and a captain from the M’Lak rifles began to argue over a counter-attack. Each appeared to want to lead the charge. A group of Sey arrived and reported that they had sawed off the drainpipes to prevent the Yull climbing them.

Carveth stepped over a fallen lemming and hurried to Dreckitt’s side. ‘Rick, have you got any spare ammo?’

‘Nix, kid. Twenty more slugs and I’m down to rubbing out lemmings with brass knuckles.’ He took out a grenade. ‘I saved us a pineapple. In case they try to take us alive.’

‘Alright. I hope I was alright as a girlfriend.’

‘A dame and a moll,’ Dreckitt replied, putting his arm around her.

Something bumped against Carveth’s boot. She glanced down, and saw an empty plastic bottle.

‘Catsup,’ Dreckitt said. ‘Hell of a place to chow.’

‘Ketchup?’ Quietly, she squatted down and touched her finger to the Yullian soldier sprawled at her feet. Her fingertips came up sticky and red. Too red. ‘That’s not blood,’ she said. ‘Rick, that’s not blood!’

‘Hot damn!’ Dreckitt cried. ‘Guys, they’re not dead! The lemmings are playing possum!’

The Yull sprang up around them. The defenders dropped back into a tight circle, suddenly surrounded. They fired and cut, killing dozens of lemmings as they scrambled upright, but the delay was enough. More Yull charged in from the side doors. In a moment, the soldiers of the Space Empire were encircled by a wall of fur and bayonets. Human, M’Lak, Sey and even a couple of beetle people stood in the centre of a horde.

The M’Lak captain tossed his gun onto the floor, and dropped to one knee before the Yull.

Quietly, the M’Lak laid down their guns.

‘No,’ Carveth gasped. ‘Don’t give in! We have to fight!’

The Yull squeaked and jeered.

‘Wait,’ Dreckitt said.

The M’Lak captain put his fingertips on the ground and pushed his hips into the air.

Wainscott drew a machete.

Like a sprinter from the blocks, the M’Lak captain shot forward into the ranks of the lemming men and his soldiers followed him. Carveth saw Susan bellowing something and then she was running forward with them, following the Space Empire’s toughest troops into close combat.

The ballroom windows exploded and a scaly head the size of a space shuttle ploughed into the room. A trumpet blasted, and Carveth recognised the figures on the beast’s head.

She saw Smith, and Suruk, and Rhianna, and then Suruk leaped down to fight. The Ravnavari Lancers raced up Mildred’s tail, over her back, and onto her head, and behind them came the blue legions of the Equ’i. The Empire charged, and the Yull were swept away.

* * *

General Wikwot watched his army fall apart. Despite or perhaps because of all the carnage, he felt numb. A window burst open in one of the towers and a torrent of his soldiers tumbled out, crashing into the courtyard below. Perhaps someone had pushed them, but he suspected that what had sent the lemmings to their deaths was despair.

He called one of his bodyguards over and sent out the order for a general retreat. This would be difficult to enforce: not only had two newly-liberated ravnaphants had a bad effect on the Yullian lines of communication, but the language of the lemming men had no word for ‘retreat’.

Mildred, the Space Empire’s tame monster, had stopped before the castle, and the Ravnavari Lancers were using her tail and neck as a ramp to charge into the upper levels of Mothkarak. A burning lemming dropped flailing from the battlements. It looked like a demon.

It all made no sense. Unrodents were all cowardly and weak: they had no skill or appetite for war. Yet here they were, massively outnumbered, laying waste to his army. For a moment, Wikwot wondered if he had underestimated these stupid, fat, clumsy, timid, shameful, smelly, idle, mangy degenerates, and then an explosion to the right jolted him back to the present.

At first he thought the trees were moving. Then he looked up, and saw that what he’d taken for a trunk was a colossal leg. It was one of the captured ravnaphants, celebrating its new liberty by flattening its former tormentors.

It took a step towards him. A surly rage rose up in Wikwot’s mind and he drew the battleaxe from his belt. He was still the general.

The monster lumbered closer, and its tiny eyes saw Wikwot far below. The bodyguards screamed and scattered. Wikwot hefted his axe as the ravnaphant raised its foot, and a great shadow fell across the ground.

‘Come back!’ the general yelled at his minions. ‘Come back, you cowards! It’s only a ravnaphant!’

* * *

It was, without doubt, time for tiffin.

Smith wandered through the castle. He was co-opted to help carry some of the wounded to the medical centre set up in one of the larger kitchens. Lemming men lay everywhere.

Light and strange smells flickered from a workshop. Smith peered inside: one of the construction robots had sliced a sofa open and pulled out its padding, and was currently putting the finishing touches to a huge stuffed squol in a spiked collar. W watched from the far side of the room, his arm in a sling and a cup of tea clenched in his fist. He must have reprogrammed the robot to carry out taxidermy. Smith closed the door and crept away.

He found Rhianna and Susan in a drawing room, looking like guerrillas lost in a Jane Austen novel. ‘These dials show power output,’ Susan said, tapping the beam gun on the chaise lounge beside her. ‘Ohms, Watts, Bechdels… Hello Smith. Seen Wainscott around?’

‘I think he’s upstairs.’

‘Just don’t let him take off into the forest. I’ll have to stick posters on the trees: Lost: one commanding officer. It’d be embarrassing.’

On the way back, Rhianna and Smith ran into a group of soldiers hurrying to the ballroom. A crowd packed out the area: humans, M’Lak, beetle people, Sey, Equ’i and even a couple of robots listening to the small figure on the stage.

It was General Young. She was short, but as tough and determined as she had been when she’d sent him after Wainscott: a terrier of a woman. Smith caught scraps of her speech. Unused to the concept of retreat, the Yull were in disarray. The remainder of the Divine Amicable Army had simply fled into the forest and were being harried by the lancers. Plans were afoot to destroy the Yullian food stores in order to hinder their retreat: at any rate, Smith assumed that was what ‘blast their nuts with a flamethrower’ meant.

‘But it is you who achieved this,’ the general said. ‘I may have had the idea, but you did the work on the ground. One cannot forge a sword if the steel is not there already. The Yull lost because you fought harder and better than them. I anticipate that the Yullian army will fall back to higher ground, and then jump off it. We will therefore be pressing on, but first we will consolidate our position – and celebrate.’

Smith headed off. He had come lately to the battle for Andor, and the real glory was owed to those who had seen the war against the lemmings from the start, when it had looked likely that the Empire would be finished and its planets overrun. He disengaged Carveth from Dreckitt and discreetly removed Suruk from a conversation with Morgar and Bargath.

‘The lancers are giving my brother a commission!’ Suruk announced. ‘I fear that the Empire is still in great danger.’

Smith found battered wicker chairs and they sat on the verandah, looking out over the forest. Slowly, everyone drank their tea and began to comprehend the scale of the victory.

The sun was rising, setting the sky alight. On the horizon, two ravnaphants, recently freed from the tyranny of the lemming men, were still arguing about which of them was the female. It slightly spoiled the atmosphere, but not much.

‘Bloody good show, everyone,’ Smith said. ‘I mean it. Bloody good.’

Suruk chuckled. ‘A mighty victory. Fierce justice has been served to the foul armies of the Yull. Severed heads and biscuits all round!’

‘Right now,’ said Carveth, ‘I just want to sleep.’

‘Nonsense,’ Suruk replied. ‘This is just the beginning. We will press on and take the war to the lemming men. They know now that there are no warriors to equal us. What other empire has cavalry that ride dinosaurs, which all ride one huge dinosaur? I ask you that. We will clean up the Yull, and dispatch the scum Edenites, and then the Ghasts. They will throw down their arms, and those who do not, we shall hack apart! These are nice biscuits, by the way.’

‘Well said,’ Smith agreed. ‘The lemmings are finished, Carveth. Even now the lancers are shipping the prisoners off to the safari park.’

‘Safari?’ Carveth demanded. ‘That’s a bit soft, isn’t it? You’re talking about pony-killers here.’

Suruk laughed. ‘It’s not their safari, little woman. They get the choice: five years’ penal servitude or two weeks on a M’Lak game reserve. We have to train the young warriors up somehow.’

Rhianna stretched and sighed. ‘You know, guys, I think we all learned something today.’

Smith nodded. ‘True. Being deranged isn’t everything. The lemming men may be bizarre and insane, but we British are far more than that.’

‘Yeah,’ said Carveth. ‘We’re really crazy.’

‘Speak for yourself, Piglet,’ Suruk put in. ‘Today I surfed a dinosaur. That seems entirely sensible to me.’

Rhianna frowned. ‘No, not that. I’ve learned that we truly are one. Human, M’Lak, Sey, Kaldathrian, if we all just came together as one, we could –’

‘Conquer everything,’ Smith said.

‘Well, yeah, but…’ She stood up and walked to the railing. The dawn seemed to catch light in her messy hair. ‘I’ve learned that sometimes, there is no choice. You have to fight, or you have to die, and if you die, innocents will die as well. Just like the ponies that Polly protected. You have to stand up for your friends, like Suruk did when he protected us at the lake, shortly before he, er, knocked me out. Or like you did, Isambard, when you went out to rescue W.’ She turned and looked across the trees. ‘The galaxy is a beautiful place, and we must protect it: whether you do so by fighting in the front line, or by working in the factories, or just using your psychic powers to make enormous monsters have unusual sex.’

‘It’s called the Doctrine of Just War,’ Smith said.

Suruk nodded. ‘Just War. An excellent idea.’

‘Just as in justified, not as in only.’

‘It will suffice anyway,’ Suruk said.

There was a moment’s silence. Then, from below, came the voice of the nanibot, prim, high-pitched and efficient. ‘Major Wainscott! Major Wainscott, this is quite intolerable! If you do not put your trousers back on this minute, I will put you across my knee – again!’

‘Let’s go inside,’ Carveth said. ‘Right now.’

* * *

‘Good evening. I’m Lionel Markham, and this is We Ask the Questions. Tonight, we’ll be discussing the new proposals put forward by the Imperial Government for a Federated Empire, to represent the various planets of space and, I quote, “Civilise the Entire Galaxy, one hellhole at a time”.

‘Today, Ravnavar formally received Dominion status, granting it full control over all aspects of policy apart from its membership of the Empire and capacity to declare war. In the fine tradition of democratic compromise, this has made nobody happy at all. Joining me in the studio are two prospective MPs, hoping to be elected in the upcoming Ravnavari by-election: for the fringe party, Popular Fist, Julia Chigley; and lancer and independent candidate Morgar, Architect of Doom.

‘Also coming up is an interview with the Mechanical Maneater, who’ll be discussing his role in the film version of Grimdall: a Life in Pieces of Other People. First, though, we’re going live to Andor, recently freed from lemming occupation. Major Wainscott, can you hear me?’

‘Good evening.’

‘Can we pan the camera up a bit? I don’t think the viewers want to see that. Thanks. Major, I understand that you and the M’Lak Rifles are currently mopping up the remainder of the Yullian Army.’

‘Ha! Mopping up’s the word – it’s a mop and bucket job. I’ve just got back from the Amargan Heights and it’s like a diving championship there. The Yull’re queuing ten-deep to jump off.’

‘Is it true that there have been incidences of our soldiers co-operating with the enemy?’

‘Absolutely right. Some of the lemmings get indecisive, so we give them a shove.’

‘And your view on the conflict so far?’

‘Brilliant. I have a statement here. One moment… it’s in poetry. I call this: Epitaph for a Lemming Army:

From righteousness the lemmings swerved,

Lured by dreams of death and war.

I know not if they got what they deserved,

But I bloody gave them what they were asking for!’

‘Thank you, Major. That’s quite enough.’

* * *

It took two months to finish off the Yull.

The lemmings were too angry to give in and too frenzied to retreat in good order, and so they died in droves. The Equ’i located the Yullian food reserves and commando units blew up the stores. Central Command sent a batch of new Cauteriser landships fresh off the production line and they followed Mildred the ravnaphant from one warren to the next. The ravnaphant broke the warrens open, the landships turned their heat rays on the contents and the infantry finished off whatever remained.

‘You know something?’ Wainscott said as they picked their way through what had once been a Yullian fort. Water dripped from the leaves above them, as warm as gravy. ‘I’m getting sick and tired of arseholes thinking that we’re weak because we’re nice.’

‘You’re not nice,’ Susan replied.

The fort looked like a rainy day in Hell. Everything had been roasted: cinders crunched underfoot.

Smith looked at the skeleton of a lemming man. War hadn’t turned out to be quite as easy, or as much fun, as the lemmings had thought. He wondered what had happened to General Wikwot. Presumably, he’d jumped off a cliff.

Wainscott stopped. ‘What day is it?’

Smith shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. I think it’s Saturday.’

‘Fry-up tomorrow,’ Wainscott said. ‘I love the smell of bacon in the morning. It smells like… breakfast. Someday, this war’s going to end,’ he added. ‘Bloody nuisance, that.’

‘There’s still the Ghasts,’ Smith replied.

‘So there is,’ the major replied, and, whistling, he continued.

* * *

Two days later, Rhianna was sitting in the castle gardens, close to the edge of the forest. The presence of the ravnaphants had resulted in a lot of fallen trees and she sat on one of them, having first checked that it was not one of the creatures’ enormous droppings.

It was a comparatively quiet day and an ideal time for her to improve her mind by emptying it of all thought. She perched on the log, vaguely aware of the world around her, contemplating the majesty of space by staring into it, when something rustled in the forest to her left.

She glanced round. A lemming man stumbled out of the undergrowth. It wore a crude cowl stitched out of what looked like a Yullian banner. It lurched forward, zombie-like, dragging its rifle behind it. The cheeks, once packed with nuts, were hollow. It stared at her.

‘Must... kill... slow...’ the lemming muttered. ‘War-god...’ Its nose twitched, and a violent shiver ran over its matted fur. ‘Grubgrub,’ it gasped.

‘Hey, little fella,’ Rhianna said. ‘Are you hungry?’

The lemming man, who was six feet two, dropped onto the far end of the log.

‘Okay,’ she said, reaching into her bag. ‘I’ve got a special cookie here. I baked them, so they’re quite strong. You’ve got to take it easy.’ She leaned over, holding the biscuit out at the end of her arm. The lemming man stared at her hand, eyes swimming. Then its paw flashed out and it grabbed the biscuit and crammed it into its mouth. ‘Whoa!’ Rhianna said. ‘That’s... a lot. Just chill, alright?’

The Yull chewed slowly. It swallowed. ‘Tastes of… herbs. Now I must kill you.’ It paused. ‘Got another? I feel strange.’

‘I’d feel strange if I ate a whole one,’ she replied. ‘Just ease down.’

‘No! Must… fight… kill offworlders for Popacapinyo… crisps would be nice now.’

Slowly, almost elegantly, the lemming man slid off the log and dropped with a soft crump into the undergrowth. It lay there for a while, giggling, and then fell asleep.

‘Crazy,’ Rhianna said, and got back to clearing her mind. Four seconds later, it was empty again.

* * *

Carveth had been busy. Her fame as Battle Girl had spread, even though her coronation as Honorary Princess of the Equ’i had been disrupted when she burst a blood vessel from an overload of glee. A foreign reporter came to interview General Young and spoke to Carveth as well. A week later, the post shuttle brought them an allied magazine called Freedom Hell Yeah! which featured her on its cover – to Smith’s surprise, with her clothes on.

Smith flicked through the pages, taking in the exciting stories and bizarre spelling, and found a mention of the Space Empire. ‘Battle Girl, second cousin of the Queen of England, leads the Roaring Commandos, a team of heavily-armored – Carveth,’ he said, lowering the magazine, ‘you are not Queen Kylie’s cousin. I hope you’ve not been making stuff up. That’s our allies’ job.’

She shrugged. ‘It sort of came out.’

He sighed. ‘You did a good job, Battle Girl.’

‘Cheers, Boss.’

‘Now stop making a fuss and put the kettle on.’

* * *

The call came in while Smith was sitting in the John Pym, cursing the effect of the Andorian climate on his model kits. Wainscott’s team were out in the forest demolishing a warren. Smith called Carveth and Suruk out of the hold and woke Rhianna from a trance. It was time to fly.

Their target had once been a pumping station and had changed hands several times. Most of the decoration had been chipped and blasted away. Only a brass lion still stood over the entrance, tarnished and dented.

Half a dozen Equ’i waited at the landing point. ‘He’s in here,’ said the guide, pointing with a hoof. ‘Good luck to you, Princess Polly.’

‘Actually,’ Smith replied, ‘I’m in charge here.’

‘You?’ The guide whinnied, which Smith hoped was not laughter. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain,’ Smith said and, ignoring their offers and pleas of assistance, he walked into the station and into the dark.

It smelled of death, droppings and dandelion wine. Smith entered without his rifle, his sword sheathed and pistol holstered.

In the shadows, something massive lay on a bench.

‘Wikwot,’ Smith said. He felt a sort of angry pride. Here was the monster who had led the murdering armies of the Yull, who had thought that he would butcher Smith’s friends at will.

Well, bollocks to you, you drunken old fart.

The shape moved. Smith felt Wikwot’s gaze on him. ‘So,’ Wikwot said. ‘This is the end.’

Smith nodded. ‘Watership downfall.’

‘Offworlder,’ said the general, ‘where are you from?’

‘Woking, originally.’

‘I always wanted to go there. Mainly to trash it, but I’ve heard some of the countryside is not bad. Nice place to live. Get a job, dig a warren, have kids… At the end of the day, it’s all about the money and the does.’

General Wikwot sat up slowly. He was huge, Smith saw. Defeat and bad living had not made him any less of a brute.

Wikwot put something in his mouth. A match flared. Wikwot’s cigarette – Lucky Foot brand – and his white, blind eye gave him a hellish quality.

Smith took another step forward. An empty bottle of dandelion wine clinked against his boot.

‘They will say that I was a maniac,’ said the alien. ‘That I let my men run amok… Lies. I never lost control.’

Smith said, ‘From the smell in here, I’d say you lost control a long while ago.’

There was silence. Wikwot shifted position.

‘About thirty miles north of here, the rivers converge,’ he said. ‘We Yull call the meeting point Botlnec. Sometimes, at high tide, the light catches the water, and all the fish come to the surface as it shimmers in the moonlight. It’s... actually, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this. Probably should have laid off the wine.’

‘Come on,’ Smith said. ‘It’s finished, Wikwot.’

‘Are you an assassin, then?’

‘No. I’m a spaceship captain. And I’d be a pretty rubbish assassin if I told you that I was.’

Wikwot drew on his cigarette. He sighed. ‘How did it come to this? Two great empires, fighting to the death over this wretched planet. So much death, so much sorrow. How did we end up this way?’

Smith shook his head. ‘Well, it’s difficult to explain, really. I suppose both of our empires wanted the same things: power, prestige, territory. And then there are the economic factors. But it chiefly stems from you being a colossal arsehole, and going on a crazy rampage with your huge army of colossal arseholes. That’s pretty much it.’

‘Ah,’ Wikwot said. ‘That.’

‘I’ll be having your axe, please.’

The general got to his feet. He looked down at Smith, and quietly slid the battleaxe from his belt. Something stirred deep in his eye, beneath the self-pity and drunkenness; a mean, sullen anger.

They looked at each other for a moment, man versus lemming. Smith looked down at the axe in Wikwot’s hands, and knew that the general could. And why not? Wikwot could cut Smith down and run out to meet his death, to die as brutally as he had lived.

‘I’ll accept your surrender now,’ Smith said, and he put the Bearing into his voice. ‘If you don’t mind.’

Wikwot stared at him.

‘With all due respect, I’ll be taking the axe.’

Wikwot’s eye narrowed.

Smith focussed the Bearing. ‘If you’d be so kind, General.’

Wikwot held out the axe. ‘Oh, fecinec,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Smith took it from him. They walked out into the light.

The smelly gloom of the pumping station fell away, and Smith felt the sun on his face. He grinned as he saw his friends. The battle against the Yull was as good as over, and he and his crew had not just survived, but won. They had helped to make the galaxy free and safe. The tyranny of the lemmings was no more.

Suruk clenched his fist. ‘Victory!’

‘Hooray!’ Carveth cried.

‘Awesome!’ Rhianna said.

‘Yes, jolly good,’ Smith replied. ‘Settle down, everyone. I know we saved the galaxy, but that’s quite enough emotion for now.’

‘Offworlders.’

Smith looked round. Wikwot stood a few feet behind him, thumbs hooked over his sash. Suruk scowled, and Smith wondered if the old monster had one last trick up his fluff-covered sleeve.

‘You people,’ Wikwot said, and he shook his head. ‘What strange creatures you are. You live like weaklings, but you fight like wild beasts. You conquer half the galaxy, but when people put cream in tea instead of milk, you call it obscene.’ He looked them over, one by one, and sighed. ‘Take it from me, as a warlord of the Greater Galactic Happiness and Friendship Collective: you are all very, very weird.’

‘Weird?’ Smith replied. ‘Certainly not. You see, my good lemming, we can’t be weird. We’re British.’