Smith looked down the boat. It slid silently through the canal, passing the buildings on the waterside. The soldiers sat quietly behind; each one a small, hunched shape like a roosting owl. Every few seconds came the soft plop of the paddles as they dipped into the water.
He felt a stab of fierce pride. Only a year ago these people had been civilians; now they were elite. Knobbly faces looked back at him from the boat, different features and colours but all determined and sharp-eyed.
And then there were the M’Lak, Morgar amongst them, mankind’s partners in this war. How quickly things could change when survival depended on it! Smith remembered when Suruk had first entered human territory, eager but naïve. Suruk had only ever come to Britain as a tourist, convinced by a misread tabloid editorial that hordes of aliens had already arrived to view Britain’s rivers of blood. Smith had helped Suruk out of a nasty altercation in Debenhams, and the two had renewed the friendship they’d forged on Didcot 3, where Suruk had tried to hack him into bits.
The boat rocked and Smith glanced up. Gunfire came from one of the further sectors of the city: it sounded like a football rattle from the canal.
Carveth pointed to Suruk’s spear. ‘How’s Sticky?’
‘Benighted midget, my blade bides well,’ Suruk said.
‘The ritual is done.’ He gazed across the black canal, fingering the shaft of his spear. He’s looking for the otter, Carveth thought, and she too looked across the wide canal, half expecting the beast to rear up behind them.
The water was full of junk: lumps of masonry, girders, even half a fighter plane, sticking out like the tail of a metal shark. No monsters, though, unless you counted the dead Ghast that bobbed as they slipped past. Its coat hung around it like the wings of a crashed bat. Water slapped gently against the side of the boat.
A chubby woman scanned the banks with thermal binoculars. ‘Nothing, Grocer.’
Green raised his hand and made a gesture to the second boat. He turned to Smith. ‘No enemy in sight,’ he explained. ‘So far.’
Smith felt Rhianna turn beside him. ‘Look!’ she whispered.
Two huge statues appeared like approaching giants, flanking the canal. On the left was King Arthur, his sword raised, a dragon coiling around his armoured feet. On the right, a woman raised a great steel lantern over the water.
‘That’s the largest statue of Florence Nightingale in the known universe,’ Green said softly. ‘People used to stand under her lamp for luck.’
As the boat slipped past Carveth looked up at the calm stone faces, pitted with shell-holes. She thought: knowing my luck, if I stood under her lamp it’d drop on my head.
‘And to the right,’ Green said, ‘our destination.’
He pointed and, as if summoned by him, a great white slab of a building slid out of the dark ahead. Carveth stared. It was bigger than the Parthenon and had more pillars than a wedding cake. Rockets and gunfire had battered and smudged the sides, but it could never have been anything other than the British Museum.
Carveth slipped a hand into her jacket. She had once heard that young conscripts carried ammo while old soldiers carried food. By this logic she was a hard-bitten veteran. She dipped her head and took a large surreptitious swig of whisky from Dreckitt’s hip flask. The whisky made her think of Dreckitt going away; it made her feel bad and want to cry, although Dreckitt had said that Famous Teacher did that to everyone.
She glanced over her shoulder as if to take one last look at the world behind. As she did, she noticed something odd: the dead Ghast was sinking. It twitched in the water, snagged on a branch, then shot down out of view as if pulled under by a whirlpool.
Or something else, she thought.
‘Bring us in,’ Green whispered, and the boat swung towards the shore.
The prow bumped against the side of the canal and at once men and M’Lak sprang onto the towpath and spread out. Beam guns and laser rifles covered the area while men with Stanford guns crept ahead.
Smith climbed out of the boat and, motioning for the others to follow, entered the museum gardens.
It was a tea party in hell. There had once been a neat little lawn here, and there were still wrought-iron tables and chairs, shadowed by tattered umbrellas. Skeletons in fine clothes sat around the lawn like victims of the galaxy’s slowest table service. Their clothes were undisturbed; their food lay in front of them.
A little light-headed, Carveth picked up a scone from one of the plates. Its bony owner grinned at her. ‘These’ll make you fat,’ she told the skeleton.
Suruk tapped her on the arm. ‘Go quietly. Dead men eat no scones.’
Rhianna leaned close to Smith. ‘What happened here?’ she whispered.
‘Marty,’ he replied. ‘A walker must have hit them. A low-power dessicator beam could do this.’
Green strode over. ‘It’s Marty alright. There’s ruddy great holes in the car park. You don’t want to see it. Half a dozen dead bodies lying there, sticks still in their hands, hankies still in their belts. Bastards must’ve hit them mid-dance.’
‘Morris dancers?’ Smith looked at Rhianna; she raised her eyebrows. ‘There were Morris men here?’
Green nodded. ‘You a Morris dancer, then? You could get a good session going here,’ he added. ‘Maybe set up a square on this grass here, have some light refreshments over there. . . Gertie don’t Morris dance,’ he added darkly, and he walked off to join his men.
‘Morris men,’ Rhianna said. In the dark it was impossible to tell where her hair ended and the night began. She looked as if she had formed out of the air, Smith thought, alluring and otherworldly, like something from folklore. An elf, or a gnome or something. Maybe not a gnome. ‘I wonder who they were?’
‘The last of the Hospitable Tipplers, perhaps,’ Smith said. ‘Who knows? Maybe they came here to study the artefacts, just as we mean to. Maybe they got too close to the truth and that drew the enemy here. That and the sound of bells.’
‘And for all that they were murdered.’ Rhianna looked very sad. ‘The last of the Morris people,’ she said.
‘This senseless violence won’t go unpunished,’ Smith promised. ‘We’ll find some aliens and blast the crap out of them.’
Morgar beckoned from further ahead. Smith went first, making sure that Rhianna was close behind. They scurried under a battered sign that read ‘Branwell’s Tea Shoppe’ and reached the door.
Smith turned to Morgar and Green. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘It’s my mission, after all.’
He took hold of the door handle and turned it. He pushed gently. It wouldn’t budge.
‘Locked,’ he whispered.
‘Pull,’ Carveth whispered back.
Smith pulled and the door swung open. He stepped over the threshold, rifle in hand.
He looked into a long corridor, its high ceiling exaggerated by the whiteness of the walls. There was a pedestal on Smith’s right, like an empty lectern. On the opposite wall a little brass plaque hung under a big discoloured space. Smith peered down the hall. There were glass cases, racks of leaflets and no exhibits at all.
He took a leaflet from a dispenser and unfolded it as the others followed him in.
‘We’re in the 20th Century hall, from the looks of it,’ Smith said. ‘This must be where they kept all the cultural artefacts. . . but it looks like they’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’ Carveth turned from one of the brass plaques, appalled. ‘Gone? Are you telling me we’ve gone halfway across the galaxy to find it’s all bloody gone?’
‘Shush,’ Smith replied. ‘We’re in enemy territory. Come on.’
One of Green’s men waited at the end of the corridor. ‘You won’t like this,’ he whispered.
Smith looked around the corner, into the entrance hall.
The hall was decaying, but it had once been magnificent. Behind a ticket box, a grand staircase rose to the upper levels of the museum. A ten-foot statue of Saint George dominated the foyer, his uplifted sword almost brushing the chandelier above his head.
The hall had been looted. Ropes and posts had been thrown through the windows of the ticket box. The heads of the two lions that crouched at the bottom of the stair-case had been smashed to dust. A sooty mess in one corner showed where a fire had been made from books, leaflets and pieces of broken chair.
But the statue was the worst; that was sacrilege.
Someone had drilled two holes into the saint’s forehead and thrust bits of metal into them so that they jutted out like antennae. A rope had been tied around his waist, attaching a rusty barrel to his rear so that it stuck out of his backside. They had turned Saint George into a Ghast.
‘Bastards!’ cried Smith. ‘That’s Saint George! They’ve given Saint George a metal arse, the filthy swine!’
A shadow moved on the staircase. ‘ Ak? ’
Green gave Smith a hard look. ‘That’s torn it. You’ve got them going,’ he whispered.
‘They’ve got me going,’ Smith replied. ‘How dare they do that!’ He reached to his side, for his sword.
‘What’re you doing?’ Green hissed.
‘I’m off to get some exhibits for the Dirty Moonman display.’ He drew the sabre. ‘Get a glass box ready, Green – I’m going to pin some insects.’
Green grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Let me do this,’ he said.
Step by step, the Ghast descended into view. It was an early-model drone, Smith saw: brutish and slightly porcine, like a school bully. The thing was cautious. It approached as if on unstable ground, its disruptor gripped firmly in both hands.
Smith slipped the Civiliser out of its holster.
At the bottom of the stairs, the Ghast turned left and Green ducked into the shadow of the statue of Saint George.
The Ghast approached, picking up its feet to avoid making noise. Its coat creaked softly. Green crept out behind it.
Green’s hands snapped around its helmet, his leg tripped the Ghast and he yanked its head back and up.
Smith heard Green grunt, saw the Ghast kick once, and there was a sound like a branch snapping in cloth. Slowly, Green lowered it to the ground, grabbed its coat and dragged it back into the shadows.
Suruk made his purring, croaking sound. Smith nodded approvingly.
‘Ugh,’ Carveth said. The whole scene reminded her far too much of a man trying to ravish a lobster.
‘Looks like they’ve sacked the place,’ Smith said. ‘I suggest we split into teams and see what’s left.’ He stepped over the dead drone and took a handful of Family Fun Maps from the leaflet rack. ‘Here. We’ll take the Yothian Cultural Artefacts hall.’
The hall was broad and high, lit by ferroglass panels in the roof. It felt desolate and cold – haunted. Carveth peered into a glass display case, which showed a dummy wearing Yothian formal dress. The Yothians were tall and broadly conical, with little yellow heads. The dummy looked like a huge road cone.
‘What an amazing civilisation,’ Rhianna said.
‘Do you think they stack?’ Carveth replied. She squinted at the metal plaque. The light was bad, and it was hard to make out the words.
‘Only in the mating season,’ Smith said. ‘Come along, men.’
They walked on. There was no sign of the tablets, nothing that would indicate where they had gone. This part of the museum had been largely left alone by the Ghasts; it was clear that it would never have housed anything of M’Lak origin.
‘Look!’ Carveth said, pointing into one of the Yothian display cases. ‘That one’s pulling a moony!’
‘The model’s fallen over,’ Rhianna explained. ‘The Yothians are far too dignified a people to do that.’
Carveth huffed. ‘Another “higher” lifeform.’
Rhianna quickened her pace to catch up with Smith and Suruk, her sandals flapping.
Carveth stayed behind, struggling to read the plaque beside the fallen model. She reached out and ran a finger over the embossed words. ‘ In courtly dress,’ she made out, ‘ which is—’ Confused, she ran her finger back and forth before realising that she was trying to read the head of a screw. A screw in the dark leads to confusion, she thought, reflecting that this was probably worth remembering.
Behind the plaque, something went thump. She sprang back, stared into the gloom and looked down at her hand.
The wall had shaken; she’d felt it in her fingers. Surely not. But here was the proof: as if into quicksand, the plaque was sinking into the wall.
‘Boss?’ she said, much quieter than she had intended.
‘Boss!’
Ten yards away, Smith looked round. ‘Shush!’ he hissed. ‘Keep it down, Carveth. Come on.’
‘But I—’ The wall split open. Air blasted into the hall and light shot around the edges of the glass case with the fallen Yothian as if a door were opening into heaven.
The case swung back, and blinding light flooded the hall, turning Carveth into a silhouette. Smith ran to her side, pistol ready. Suruk raised his spear ready to throw.
A figure stood before them in the centre of the light.
The rush of air set her skirt and sleeves fluttering. Slowly, gracefully, the woman stepped into view. Wise blue eyes looked them over. She smiled.
‘Halloo! Come here for the tour, have you?’
The woman stood at the edge of the doorway. She was attractive, Smith noticed, and vaguely familiar. She was an android, he realised, and a remarkably pretty one.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘welcome to my abode! A lady and gentleman, a Morlock and a fellow simulant. Certainly makes a change from school parties.’
Smith took a step forward. ‘Good evening, madam. Do you live here?’
She smiled again. ‘Yes, indeed I do! For I am the Archivist, you see. Ah, the Yothian seems to be pulling a moony again. He does that. Very bad. Really must sort that out.’
She led them down a set of steps, spiralling deep into the earth. Smith followed, then the others, and behind them half of Green’s men, their boots clanking on the metal stairs. The Archivist glanced over her shoulder. ‘Nearly there,’ she told Smith.
‘What is this place?’
‘This? Ah, you’ll see. Should be rather interesting, I think.’
The walls were white, as was her dress. It made her seem ethereal. She reminded Smith of the Lady of the Lake, albeit dryer. But she was too smart to be ghostly, too clever and quick. Smith thought it quite appealing.
The stairs ended at an airlock door. The Archivist paused at the lock, ready to dial the entry code. ‘Seeing that you’re not a school party, I don’t think we need to scan for lice,’ she said brightly, and her finger flicked around the dial. The airlock slid open and lights boomed and flickered in the cavern beyond.
They stood at the edge of a warehouse the size of a cathedral nave. Rows of packing cases made corridors and partitions in the vast room, interspersed with relics too large to be packed away. Paintings lined the walls.
‘Blimey,’ Carveth said, which Smith thought was pretty accurate.
Kaldathrian dung-statues stuck their heads above the lines of crates like malodorous giraffes. A Yothian fertility glider hung from cables in the roof, its landing gear dangling lewdly over their heads. Smith recognised a sphere of rock, twenty yards across and etched with symbols: the ball from a game of planet-hockey played by the Voidani space-whales, a sport capable of devastating whole solar systems. Current thinking held that the ancient Voidani had once played this sport near Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs when the ball went off-side and demolished Central America.
‘Behold!’ Suruk pointed to a statue of a huge M’Lak, throwing its head back to laugh – unusually, this one was broad as well as tall. ‘Brehan the Blessed. We are in the halls of the M’Lak.’
‘Amazing,’ Smith said to the Archivist. ‘You compiled all this yourself?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I had a couple of robot forklifts to help, but yes. I’m rather glad you dropped in, to be honest. Terrible conversationalist, your robot forklift.’
‘It must have been a lot of work.’
‘Not really. I mean, a lot of what there was has been lost. The war does that, of course. The best you can do is keep a few things safe. We all need culture, don’t we? Look at that,’ she added, pointing to a framed picture on the wall. ‘I bet you’ve never seen one of those before.’
They stopped. Smith peered up at a poster almost as tall as he was. It looked like Ghast propaganda, but although the style was right, the subject was undoubtedly wrong. It showed a Ghast perched on a stool under a spotlight, legs crossed in front of it. Instead of a trenchcoat and helmet, it wore long gloves and a little round hat and was sticking its stercorium out.
‘What the devil is that?’ Smith said.
‘It’s an advertisement for some kind of show,’ the Archivist replied. ‘It’s almost two thousand years old, dating just before the first Number One took power. Once, the Ghasts had names, lives, identities of their own. But then they had to take the choice that comes to all sentient life sooner or later: the tough option of individual freedom, or the comfort of collective obedience. Mankind chose freedom, after some indecision. The Morlocks have always chosen freedom. But the Ghasts chose. . . poorly.’
‘So they were once proper people,’ Smith said.
‘Foreigners, of course, but still people. Incredible. But not impossible, I suppose. It just goes to show how far you can fall.’
The Archivist pointed at the picture. ‘It may be all the history they have. Once, even the Yull were sane. They had a civilian government, a developing society. . . back then they only jumped off cliffs on special occasions.’
Smith stepped back from the picture, its spell broken. ‘It’s quite something,’ he told the Archivist. ‘You’ve done the Imperial People a great service by keeping all of this safe.’
‘Unless anyone actually wanted their ancient artefacts back,’ Rhianna observed from behind.
Smith didn’t comment: Rhianna had been quiet and a bit sulky ever since they had got here. Her disapproval of the museum had increased greatly since they had met the Archivist, for reasons he could not figure out. Funny bunch, girls. You’d have thought that two intelligent, attractive women would get on very well. He thought about this for a while. Something tugged at his sleeve.
‘—think we’ve found it,’ Carveth was saying. ‘Come on boss, wakey-wakey.’
Smith followed her past scowling statues of famous M’Lak. At the far end of the corridor stood a slab of stone nearly nine feet high, covered by a tarpaulin. At a nod from the Archivist, one of Green’s men pulled the tarpaulin away.
Down one side of the stone were blue characters; down the other, red markings, representing concepts and arguments respectively. There could be no mistake – this had been made by the M’Lak.
‘Whoa,’ Rhianna said.
‘This is ancient indeed,’ Suruk declared. ‘I can read ideas – notions – but I am shamed to say that the exact meaning is lost to me. It tells of the days before time, that I know, but otherwise it is as clear as a Scotsman’s mist.’
‘Me too,’ said the Archivist. ‘Not really my area, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps I may help.’ They looked around: Morgar stood behind them, cleaning his glasses on his clan colours. ‘There is one amongst us who understands ancient things. Tormak!’ he called. ‘Come here a moment, would you?’
From the troops stepped a slight, rather refined-looking warrior. He ran a hand through his thick mane, looked up at the stone and said, ‘Ah, yes, well, yes. . . quite.’
‘This is my old friend Tormak,’ Morgar said. ‘Listen closely, for he’s a clever chap.’
Suruk turned to the newcomer. ‘You are a speaker of runes, friend?’
‘Fine art and antiquities, actually,’ Tormak replied. ‘Not really my field, this, but still. . .’ For a while he scrutinised the stone. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is definitely the Tablet of Aravash. As you no doubt know, it is written that if the Tablet ever sees the light of day, Armageddon will begin. Which would be a problem, were Armageddon not going on right now.’
‘Oh,’ said Morgar, ‘I suppose galactic war does rather count. I never thought of it like that. . .’
‘So there is nothing to fear from the Tablet,’ Suruk observed. ‘Let us shed some light upon it.’
Smith turned to the Archivist. ‘Could we move the tablet?’
‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘we can do much better than that.’
She reached up and pulled a cord, and a lamp flicked on above the stone.
‘Daylight bulb,’ she explained.
With a soft crackle, the tablet began to fall apart. Dust trickled from the blank rock, rolled down the face of the stone, piled itself into a heap at the base. The sand fell in thin sheets over the rock, and where it had been there were little marks, channels cut into the stone. Like the breaking of a mould or the stamping of a coin, images appeared in the smooth face of the tablet.
There were two figures repeated several times on the stone: one could have been Suruk as drawn by a six-year-old, or by Suruk himself. Smith found the other unsettling.
It was a M’Lak, no doubt, but a sort of upright shadow with huge holes instead of eyes, leaping over the horizon.
‘Shall I read?’ Tormak asked.
‘Go ahead,’ said Smith.
‘Proceed,’ Suruk replied.
Tormak pointed to the top right of the stone. ‘Well, I’d say this stone depicts several scenes involving the afterlife. Up here is a pair of stock figures, you see: a warrior and, next to him, this rather sinister stylised person. He repre-sents death. He is the Dark One, who leads warriors from this life to the next. The pictures show the warrior’s journey in a sequence, rather like the Beano.’
Tormak moved his hand across the stone.
‘In this picture here, the writing reads: Suddenly, the warrior’s bright eyes burn dim. How can this be? The answer is that the Dark One has come to take him. In this next picture, we see them passing through the Ways of the Dead, until finally they arrive at Ethrethor, the hunting-ground of the dead. The last picture reads The Dark One leads the warrior to the ancestors. The ancestors hail the noble hunter and they all have a party.’ Tormak stepped back and rubbed his chin. ‘Interesting. Now that is unusual.’
‘Go on,’ Smith said.
Tormak indicated a set of runes. ‘These are very peculiar. They give a location for Ethrethor. It says: They shall meet where the day never ends and laughing they shall ride the very lightning.’
They looked at the stone, staring at the symbols as if the force of their gaze could draw meaning from the rock.
‘I know not,’ Suruk said.
‘It’s really interesting,’ Rhianna said, ‘but no.’
‘So we draw a blank,’ Smith observed.
‘Maybe not.’ He looked round. It was Carveth. She glanced nervously from face to face, as if surprised to find that she had spoken. ‘Chances are I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life. But that’s what the adverts say for Lloydland: There’s so much fun the day never ends.’
‘But what of the lightning?’ Rhianna asked. ‘Surely that’s a reference to the respect for the power of nature held by indigenous peoples.’
‘Nah, it’s a ride at Lloydland.’
Smith turned from the stone to Carveth. ‘How do you know all this?’
The android shrugged. ‘They send me offers sometimes. I get discounts from being in the Pony Fan Club.’ She folded her arms, suddenly defensive. ‘I can join the Pony Fan Club if I want. I’m only two.’
Smith looked back at the tablet. ‘So it’s some sort of prophesy, you say? I’m not entirely convinced. I’ve never heard of a prophesy advertising a theme park before.’
‘Well, not a prophesy as such. But if Lloyd Leighton owned the land, why not stick a theme park there anyway?’
‘Hey, yeah,’ Rhianna said. ‘And Leighton was well-acquainted with Number Two. Maybe there is more to Lloydland than we thought. . .’
‘So Lloydland is where Leighton went to research the Vorl,’ Smith said quietly. ‘And that’s where he disappeared. And, from the looks of it, where we will find the Vorl.’
Carveth nodded. ‘And by a happy coincidence, it has rides and ice cream. Everybody wins.’
Boots clanged on the stairs behind them. A soldier jogged into the hall, gun swinging against his hip as he ran. ‘Captain Smith? Orders from the Grocer to get you topside, sir. Gertie’s here.’
They hurried back up the steps into the museum. Green was waiting for them. At the doors, Smith turned back.
‘Thank you, madam,’ he said. ‘Your assistance has been invaluable. It may have saved the universe.’
‘It’s always nice to have visitors,’ the Archivist replied.
‘Toodle-oo. Oh, Captain Smith?’
‘Yes?’
She held out her hand. ‘Souvenir pencil and eraser. Do come again.’
The door swung shut, and she disappeared back into her realm. The dust settled, and the hall was empty and derelict again, as if she had never been there. ‘Most obliged,’ Smith said.
Rhianna sighed. ‘It’s a collection of looted artefacts, taken from helpless—’
Suruk raised a hand. ‘Be still. Our foes are close.’
They crept down the hall, weapons ready.
A squad of praetorians was busy in the atrium. Two had pulled down a statue of Athene and were kicking it.
Another pair had mistaken the ticket booth for an item of historical significance and were tearing it apart with pincers and teeth. A scrawny lieutenant looked on approvingly.
Smith aimed his rifle at the lieutenant. ‘You there! Get your hands off my culture!’
As he said culture it reached for its gun. The rifle-shell slammed into its chest and it flopped twitching into the back wall. Smith cranked the handguard and Green’s silenced Stanford tore the two praetorians at the ticket booth apart. Frantic movement at the statue. Smith put the crosshairs on one monster, blew its head off, lined up the other as it lifted its disruptor and shot it through the neck.
‘And that’s why they tell you not to touch the exhibits,’ he said.
Only gunsmoke moved in the atrium. They advanced, the soldiers spreading out to cover the staircase and doors.
Tormak took a fact-sheet from a dispenser and slipped it into his back pocket.
Smith glanced at Suruk. ‘Hear anything?’
The alien shook his head. ‘Not even a sausage.’
Green motioned to the main doors and his troops took up covering positions. A bearded soldier drew the bolts back and opened the door.
New Luton was silent. The ruins were oddly peaceful, as if the city was still being constructed and the builders had gone home for the night. A fire glowed in the distance, an ember in a scene of grey and blue.
‘Looks clear,’ Green said. He took a step towards the door. ‘Alright, let’s go.’
‘Wait!’ Rhianna hissed. Green looked round as she rubbed her temples. ‘Everyone, look out!’
Green said, ‘What?’ and above them, something creaked.
Spikes drove through the ceiling, twisted into tentacles and ripped the roof away in a scream of girders. Suddenly the cold sky was above them, studded with stars. Lights swung into the aperture and a dreadful howl filled the hall.
‘Marty!’ Green called. ‘Get down!’
A dessicator-beam punched through the roof, turned a joist to rust, clipped a soldier and blasted her to particles.
The war-machine honked and whined. A metal tentacle snatched a soldier into the air and squeezed him in two.
‘Plasma, now!’ Green bellowed.
‘Behind us!’ Carveth cried.
Smith spun round: a figure ran into the corridor behind them, leather coat flapping, backside bobbing behind it.
‘Ghasts!’ he called, and he fired from the hip, missed and the Ghast threw itself down, aiming its disruptor. There was a loud flat boom and the alien slumped like a puppet without strings. Carveth stood there, panting, the shotgun smoking in her hands.
Behind it, two more Ghasts ran into view, carrying a heavy disruptor between them. Smith fired again and one collapsed. Suruk hurled a knife into the other’s throat.
From the hall came the roar of plasma-fire and a sudden glow as if a furnace door had been thrown open. The war-machine bellowed.
‘Back!’ Green shouted. ‘Back to the boats!’
Ghasts poured into the corridor. Disruptor fire rang around the hall.
Rhianna was motionless, eyes closed, concentrating, using her powers to shield herself. All very well, thought Smith, but soon the Ghasts would be within striking range and what good would her skills be then?
He grabbed her arm. ‘Rhianna? We have to—’
Something hit him hard, as if God had punched him in the chest. The world swung up and he felt his back strike the floor. A scream, and then voices shouting ‘Boss! Boss!’ and ‘Isambard!’
Hands grabbed him and pulled him up. He was hauled out of the corridor, across the chaos of the atrium, his head spinning. A woman was yelling something. The arm holding him up smelt of ammonia. Suruk, he realised. His crew – where were they?
‘Rhianna?’ He thought he saw her and reached out.
‘No time for love, Captain Smith,’ Suruk growled, and he was dragged through the doors, felt the night air on his face and shook his head like a dog shaking water off its chops.
‘I need a bit of a sit-down,’ he said.
The world was going dim. He slipped out of Suruk’s grip and sat down on the museum steps. Men were running around him, shooting and firing. A weird mechanical yodelling was going on nearby. Something like a metal mosquito was striding through the street, bits of the museum roof still clutched in its tentacles. A rocket spiralled through the sky and burst prettily against its shields. Something huge and lithe slipped between two houses on the waterside, half a boat in its mouth.
Carveth hopped from foot to foot, making agitated sounds. ‘Get up!’ she shouted. ‘We have to go!’
‘Um,’ Smith replied, rubbing his skull. He felt wetness there: blood. ‘Bit of an achey head, I’m afraid.’
Rhianna knelt down in front of him. He smiled at her.
‘Hullo, girlie.’
She took his hands in hers. ‘Isambard? Look at me.’
He lifted his head, aware of how tired he was and how pretty she looked. It would be so easy to close his eyes, to topple forward and bury his head between the soft pillows of her benevolence. He let himself fall, feeling only drowsiness and the softness of her hands – and sound rushed through his brain like a tidal wave. Suddenly he heard gunfire, explosions, shouts and the whine of machinery.
Morgar was in the middle of Green’s men, directing their fire. To the right, Suruk whipped his spear round and sliced a praetorian in half.
Smith scrambled to his feet, sharp pain jabbing at the back of his head.
‘We have to go!’ Rhianna called. ‘Any longer here and we’re herstory!’
‘Too late!’ Carveth yelled. ‘Look!’
The war-machine turned and the blinding glare of its spotlights swallowed them up. Their shadows stretched in the light as if trying to pull free from their bodies. The walker hooted in triumph, and as Smith lifted his rifle, it fired its dessicator.
The beam tore open the concrete on which they stood, cracked the pavement apart, turned a tree behind them to confetti. They were silhouettes in the light, statues trapped in a bubble of roaring sound. Carveth was flinching, Suruk hurling his spear. And before Smith, hair streaming around her like a goddess, Rhianna shielded them all.
The beam flicked off. Suruk’s spear sailed out and hit a Ghast in the chest. Carveth peeked between her hands.
The war machine lifted the dessicator to its main portal and gave the gun a good shake.
Rhianna smiled at them all. In a circle around them, the pavement was unbroken. The crack in the earth stopped just before her sandals.
Carveth turned to Smith. ‘I told you she was weird.’
The walker took a step towards them and its cockpit exploded, its pilot bursting like a dropped blancmange.
The legs buckled and collapsed.
A landship rolled around the corner of the museum, a clanking, puffing castle on tracks. A great ramp dropped open in its prow. Half a dozen turrets swung to cover the road, and a figure appeared at the battlements on the main tower, waving down to them.
‘Mayhem, is it?’ Jones the Laser called. ‘You’d better get inside. I would let you have your boat, but the death-otter’s eaten it, see?’
The landship creaked and shuddered to a halt in the Imperial sector and the soldiers ran out into hard, slanting rain. Smith jogged behind Green’s men, wincing as the night air chilled the back of his head. He had spent the last forty minutes in the landship’s medical bay, drinking tea and sitting still as a surgical wallahbot stitched his scalp together, and his head was stiff with anaesthetic and surgical Brylcreem.
‘A successful mission, I think,’ he said, and a bioshell exploded twenty yards away.
The compound was under siege. Ghasts lay around the perimeter in heaps. Soldiers manned the concrete barricades in two-man railgun teams. A sergeant stood in the middle of them, directing their shooting at a pack of hovertanks. ‘Front rank, fire! Second rank, fire!’
A sudden flash of metal between two buildings; a damaged walker lurched across the road with a warbot clinging to its leg. Two beetle-people scurried out of what had once been a fire station, hauling a Gatling cannon between them. Injured men and prisoners were dragged away. Fresh soldiers ran through the ruined houses in a half-crouch and dropped into the battle line. The night stank of fire and dust.
Jones waited for them a little further on. ‘This way!’ he called, pointing, and they headed for the main HQ, Smith slowing so as not to leave the women behind.
Now he could hear Ghasts, yapping and snarling on the right. Someone screamed, and gunfire rattled off to the south.
Yet it was no panic. The men were ferocious and disciplined. This was their ground, the Empire’s ground, and they would fight for it. A wave of giddiness struck Smith and, with it, deep respect for the common people who had come here to fight.
Morgar caught up with them at the entrance to the command building. ‘Hello again!’ he called. ‘And how are we all?’
‘Pissed,’ said Carveth. She too had availed herself of the landship’s medicinal facilities, and consequentially smelt of brandy.
‘We’re holding rather well,’ Morgar said. ‘We’ve drawn back to the second perimeter and we’re keeping them at bay. The landships have held the museum and are linked up with us. The beetle-people are reinforcing our defences with – well, you can guess what with.’
‘Good stuff,’ said Jones. ‘Tell the beetles that the defences need as much extra armour as they can manage.’
‘I’m sure they’ll work something out.’
‘Is there anything we can do?’ Smith asked.
There was a little pause. Two men ran past, carrying an empty stretcher.
Morgar said, ‘You should go.’
Jones nodded. ‘He’s right. You’ve got a job to do and it’s not here. It may be a fool’s errand, maybe not, but good luck anyway.’
‘I suppose so,’ Smith said. ‘Even if it’s a fool’s errand, we’re still best qualified to do it.’
Morgar led them down the road, and at the far end they started up the ramp towards the landing pads. ‘You should be able to break atmosphere without trouble,’ he said.
Men were hauling the camouflage tarpaulins off the John Pym. Suruk glanced at Smith. ‘You should wake its engines,’ he said, gesturing to the ship with a mandible. ‘I will follow you presently.’
Smith nodded. ‘Carveth, go and fire the ship up.
Rhianna, you ought to get inside. Jones, could I have a word?’
‘Course.’
They took a long step away from Suruk and Morgar. Smith watched the two women climb the ramp to the launch pads. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Er, there’s an awful lot of Ghasts out there. I mean, I don’t know if the fleet can help, but if you’d like me to put a good word in—’
‘We put a good word in about three months ago,’ Jones replied. ‘It was Help. The fleet’s about as useful out here as an Australian in a whispering contest. Listen, you can tell HQ that I’m not wasting good people for nothing. You’ve seen how our soldiers fight here, and that’s all the more reason not to leave them on their own. We’ll fight to the last if needs be, but I won’t waste men, see?’
‘Yes,’ said Smith, impressed. ‘I see.’ He held out his hand, and they shook. ‘Good luck, Jones. You’re a decent chap.’
‘Thanks. You too. Now, bugger off and let me get on with this.’
Morgar took off his glasses and wiped the rain off the lenses with his clan colours. When he put them back on, Suruk was smiling. ‘I am pleased, brother.’
Morgar said, ‘Oh yes? What with?’
‘You.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed. You have applied yourself well to the ways of war. You fought boldly at the museum. Of course, I would rather that you used a proper blade than a puny Earth-gun, but there is no denying that you have behaved honourably.’
Morgar pushed his glasses up. Since he had no nose as such, they slid down again. ‘Gosh,’ he said.
Suruk looked around, ‘Perhaps now I should learn the law, to equal you in a profession. It is as Father would have wished.’
Morgar shook his head. ‘He would have wanted you to protect your friends. Right now the galaxy doesn’t need more lawyers: it needs a maniac with a sacred stick.’ He glanced up at the Pym, watched steam rise from its hatches, listened to its engines cough. ‘I can take care of things here. You’d best go before the elders find some other idiot for you to get engaged in battle with.’
‘Well said,’ Suruk replied. He lifted Gan Uteki, consecrated spear of the ancestors, as if to brandish it at the whole of New Luton. ‘I will stay fast and cunning. No enemy will slow me now, no elder force me into unholy acrimony. To you I say these words: Mimco Vock shall fall by my hand!’
‘And to you, Suruk, I say these words: have a nice trip. And if you see General Vock – pull his whiskers for me.’
Suruk turned and jogged up to the ship. At the airlock he raised his spear. ‘Good hunting, brother!’ he bellowed over the roar of the engines, and Morgar waved back.