For the first time ever, Mimco Vock felt respect for some-thing other than himself. As he watched the handful of humans rush out of the storage buildings, guns blazing, he experienced a twinge of admiration that surprised him.
For stupid dirty offworlders, they were brave. The humans reached the toilet block and took up positions, shooting into the praetorian flank. Distracted from their Vorl-catching, the Ghasts returned fire.
But Suruk the Slayer was nowhere to be seen. Vock cursed. Gunfights and demon-suction did not matter now.
Honour needed to be satisfied, as slowly and viciously as possible. His hand strayed towards the axe at his side.
Something shoved him: he spun round, ready to fight, and a praetorian strode past, a steel cylinder under one arm. 462 was waiting for it at the bottom of the ramp that led to Eight’s ship.
Taking hold of the cylinder nearly floored 462: staggering under its weight, he turned and lurched awkwardly up the ramp.
Vock ran to 462’s side. ‘Where are you going, disgraceful ant? You must assist in locating Suruk the Slayer!’
462 stopped. ‘I think not,’ he said. The airlock slid open at the top of the ramp and a science-caste drone ran down to help him with his burden. ‘This is my moment, Vock,’ 462 said. He stepped inside the ship. The airlock, slammed shut and he was lost to view.
Vock realised that now his soldiers were dead, the Ghasts no longer had room for him in their plans at all.
He stood on the ramp, shaking with fury. ‘Come back! Come back, insect-scum! May Xitipoxispot strike you down with plague!’
He spat, turned and stomped down the ramp. His vengeance, his cruel, beautiful vengeance, had gone dreadfully wrong. 462 had betrayed him, Suruk the Slayer had disappeared and his minions had jumped into an enormous hole. Without Suruk his revenge was gone, his disgrace permanent. Even if he were to seek atonement at some high precipice, Popacapinyo would tear him apart in the afterlife. Grief welled up in his furry breast: he sat down on the ramp and tried not to cry.
Something moved under the ship. Behind the rear legs, something tall wobbled and flexed. Vock leaped up as if on a scent and ran to the leg, flattened himself against it and peeped round.
A man was being pushed into the rear waste-ejection port. He wore a long coat, and he was standing on his comrade’s shoulders to reach the port. Half of his body was in the vent already, and his legs kicked as he was shoved inside.
But it was not the man that mattered. Vock slid his axe from his belt and stepped into view.
‘Pig-face M’Lak!’
Suruk glanced round, saw Vock and gave Smith a massive push. Smith shot up into the ship and the ejection sphincter closed behind him. Suruk lifted his spear. ‘So,’ he said, ‘You have come at last.’
Vock threw back his head and laughed. The grief was gone: his mind swam with bloodlust and evil glee. ‘The time has come, dirty pond-dweller! Your father disgraced me and now I shall have my revenge upon his line. Now I shall deliver your heart to Popacapinyo. . . nice and slow.’
‘Truly, then, the game begins,’ Suruk said, ‘for now the soccer mascot approaches. You killed my father. You know what happens next.’
‘Lies!’ Vock snarled, setting his whiskers twitching. ‘I am entirely innocent and nothing like a soccer mascot. I have crossed this galaxy to avenge the insult done by your father, and to offer your beating heart to the war god to atone for my failure. I, Mimco Csinty Huphepuet Vock, noble warlord of the honourable Yu—’
Suruk yawned. ‘Less prattle, more battle.’
Vock thrust out his axe in both hands and screamed a war cry. For a moment he stood there howling, shaking, gripping his weapon like a live cable, and then he charged.
Suruk ran to meet him, spear raised.
One huge boost from underneath and Smith shot through the hole. The bioship gave a convulsive shudder and he was inside, lying in an unimportant hold beside the air-lock, glistening with sealant gel. For a moment he caught his breath – then he remembered that he was covered in slime, and ripped off his coat and leather flying helmet and tried to kick them aside until the goo stuck to his boot and he overbalanced.
He lay in the dim, empty room, surrounded by pulsing biotech. A door slid open beside him. As he drew back into the shadows a Ghast technician emerged, twitching and muttering. Its white coat was lilac in the sickly light: the lenses of its goggles winked and glimmered.
Smith jumped it from behind. It was hardly sporting, but neither was Gertie. He swung the Civiliser into its bulbous head, and the technician dropped into his arms like a swooning maiden of exceptional ugliness. Smith grabbed a couple of its appendages and hauled it into the shadows. He slipped into the doorway and found a set of spiral stairs. Promising. Gun and sword at the ready, Smith climbed.
Wind whipped around the fire escape. The night air was cold and, far below, lights flickered around the chasm.
The sound of gunfire joined the pattering of the rain.
The Archpatron of the Vorl waited. Little whorls of smoke rose from his dark body as the rain passed through him. His empty sockets turned to Rhianna.
‘Hello, patron,’ C’neth said. ‘This here’s Rhianna Mitchell, some sort of human being. She claims to be a hybrid: half Vorl, half organic cereal bar, from the looks of it. Downright bizarre, if you ask me, but there you go.’
‘It is true,’ the Archpatron replied. ‘I know it to be so.’
Its voice was partly psychic, a rasping whisper that cut straight into Rhianna’s mind. ‘You came here for truth, did you not, to learn about your origin?’ It extended a hand to her like strands of toxic smoke. ‘You wondered for so long as to the nature of your father. Now I will show you. Take my hand now, Rhianna. Stand beside me, Rhianna, and know the truth.’
Whoa,’ she said, taking a step back. ‘This is getting a little bit freaky. I’m not sure. . .’
‘Take my hand, Rhianna, and we will face our destiny together. This is your father.’
‘Ooh, I never!’ C’neth exclaimed. ‘Oh, patron! I don’t know how you can say such things. Lies, awful lies! Don’t believe a word of it, dear. Innocent as a lamb, I am!’
Vock ran in howling and cut at neck-height for a trophy-kill. Suruk darted back, testing him; Vock jumped and whipped the axe down and Suruk rocked aside.
Screeching to his bloodthirsty god, Vock rushed on, cutting and cutting, and Suruk gave ground.
Vock was good, no doubt about it. This was no mere Mechi’chu’en, no praetorian: this was an expert, a mighty enemy. Vock might have tested his weapons on prisoners, but he had trained with the best fighters of the Yull. Yet my father drove him back, Suruk thought, and with the thought came fury, and he attacked.
Suruk jabbed the spear like a bayonet and Vock darted aside, but Suruk had anticipated that and he whirled Gan Uteki so that the shaft cracked Vock across the ear.
Vock was thrown over and his armour clattered as he rolled into a crouch. Squatting he looked more like a letter box than ever. He stood up quietly, arms by his side.
‘You fight well,’ he said, ‘for a disgraceful furless coward. Come. Surrender now and no slow killing. Promise.’
Suruk backed away and raised an eyebrow-ridge. ‘Is that so?’
‘Oh, absolutely, mangy offworlder. I would never—’
Vock screamed and leaped. He sailed through the air, his axe swung down. Suruk dropped onto his back and slammed his boot up into the Colonel’s groin.
Vock paused for a moment, held in the air by Suruk’s sole, and he gave a little squeak. He sprang away, yelped his war-cry and charged back in, and suddenly they were carving and dodging, raging back and forth, the air whistling with the sound of blades.
Smith reached the top of the steps and looked out into a massive hall.
The air buzzed with power: it sounded even louder than the electric toothbrush Carveth seemed to keep in her bedroom; a dull thrumming that unnerved the brain, coming from somewhere high above.
Tubes dangled from the roof like roots into a cave. The tip of each touched the rounded end of a cylinder the height and width of a man: translucent things like a forest of mushroom stalks, all linked to some machinery above.
Smith took a step into the hall, between the rows of tubes.
Technicians moved through the room, cackling as they checked their clipboards. A little party of them drew near and Smith pressed himself against one of the tubes, listening to them pass. They carried a metal cylinder between them. Whatever it was, Smith knew that he had to take it from them. Anything Gertie wanted that badly needed to be retrieved, or at least destroyed.
He turned to follow them, and something in the tube beside him moved.
Smith recoiled, his gun raised, and a moment later saw that the praetorian was in no state to fight him. It was not awake, not even finished. The monster was comatose, its limbs bobbing in nutritious sludge, its muscles knotting together under a half-formed exoskeleton. It looked like a peeled, evil prawn. A trenchcoat was growing next to it.
Smith looked at the next tube down, and the rows of tubes after that. ‘Good God,’ he whispered. ‘It’s a bloody ant farm!’
Towards the front of the rows, the praetorians were more complete; at the rear they were little more than bundles of veins and insignia. The tubes must spit them out by the platoon, Smith thought.
He had heard the stories, but he had never imagined what a Ghast soldier-factory would actually look like.
Thousands of years ago, the Ghasts had decided that females were inefficient and, instead of putting up with it like proper people, had shot them all and turned to applied genetics instead. He crept out, weaving between the tubes, following the scientists.
There was a mezzanine a little way ahead. At the top of the stairs coils of pipes ran into a monstrous bio-machine suspended from the roof; a maggot-shaped organ the size of a blimp. It looked like a very old sausage.
Smith ducked back as the scientists connected the cylinder to the pipes. The head scientist turned a dial and the air crackled with static. The blimp wobbled. The scientists stopped for a group cackle and Smith slipped past them and up the stairs, onto the mezzanine.
Vock got first blood, a gash across Suruk’s arm. Suruk went low, tripped Vock and put his knee into the lemming’s snout.
Then their blows started to strike home: a kick to Vock’s chest that buckled his breastplate, then a raking claw to Suruk’s face that missed his eyes by half an inch.
To the left was a row of maintenance sheds and Vock backed away between them. Suruk was taller and had a longer reach; the tightly-packed sheds would stop him swinging his spear. Suruk knew that trick: he stepped out of view and sprang up onto the roof of the nearest building, ran across and jabbed at Vock’s head as if to spear a fish. Vock dodged, yelled and slammed his shoulder into the corner of the shed and it collapsed in a thundering pile of plastic sheets.
Suruk crouched behind the wreckage, waiting. ‘Where are you?’ Vock snarled. Suruk heard the Yull toss a heap of plastic aside. ‘Come out, offworlder!’
Suruk listened: not to Vock’s words, but to work out his location.
‘Being with these humans shames you, Suruk Son of Agshad. Think of what you could become under the General Galactic Happiness, Friendship and Co-operative Collective.’
Suruk waited.
‘These mangy British bleat about kindness. They love the weak. They lack our fighting spirit. We Yull have been warriors for a thousand years!’
‘So have they,’ Suruk said, and he drove the spear through the wall. The blade sliced Vock’s thigh and he yowled and twisted free. The wall fell – Suruk cartwheeled back and Vock swarmed over the wreckage, an axe in either hand, feinting and cutting so fast that it took all Suruk’s skill to avoid being hit, let alone counter-attack.
Vock threw his smaller axe at Suruk and leaped after it.
Suruk knocked the axe away and, just in time, raised his spear to block Vock’s battleaxe. The blade whirled down and Gan Uteki broke in two. Suruk stumbled back, half of the sacred spear in each hand, and tripped. Vock loomed over him, squealing with glee, his axe raised to strike the killing blow—
Smith reached the mezzanine and stopped, incredulous with disgust. Ghast biotech was always distasteful, but this took it to new depths of scatology. Strange, pulsing cables lead from thrumming machines to the far end of the mezzanine, where they fused like veins, reaching up to a sort of elevated throne. On the throne sat a huge Ghast, leafing through a copy of Exchange and Martian, humming a marching tune. Beneath the throne the blimp began, like a monstrously swollen abdomen.
The seated Ghast sighed and behind it the blimp quivered. Smith’s stomach followed suit. He was still gawping at the spectacle when the Ghast lowered its newspaper.
‘You,’ it said.
‘Me,’ Smith replied.
‘Well, well,’ said Number Eight. ‘You must be the good Captain Smith. I congratulate you for getting this far. Sadly though, your quest is over. In two minutes’ time my DNA will be spliced with that of the Vorl and a legion of psychic stormtroopers will be mine to command. Your decadent race is finished, Smith.’
‘Decadent? I’m not the one with no toilet door, you bloody freak. What do you think this is, Holland? Put the paper down and no sudden movements.’
‘Silence!’ Eight snarled. ‘Do you not know who I am?’
Smith looked at Eight’s vast back end. ‘Some sort of queen?’
‘I am Number Eight, the first of my kind, the genetic pinnacle of the Ghast Empire. I am the new master of the galaxy. I will—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Smith said, and he rammed his sword into the side of the machine.
He was thrown back in a flurry of sparks. The explosion launched Eight from the throne, hurled him through the air and dumped him in a tangle of limbs and leather twenty feet away. Smith staggered upright, blinked and shook his head.
Eight lay on the ground, propped on all four elbows, shaking his head groggily. Smith’s sword was wedged in the machine, electricity crackling along the blade. He patted his jacket: the Civiliser had fallen out. Bugger.
Eight’s own pistol lay on the ground: Smith picked it up between thumb and forefinger and tossed it over the railing.
‘Not so fast, Captain Smith!’
He turned: 462 stood on the stairs, grinning through his facial scars. His metal eye glinted as he took a lurching step forward. There was a gun in his hand.
‘Shoot him, 462!’ Eight barked from the ground.
‘All in good time, my glorious master,’ 462 said, and his smirk widened. ‘So, here are both of the great leaders, unarmed. No doubt you both had some romantic notion of a duel to the death: warrior on warrior, champions of either side.’
‘Not really,’ Smith said.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Eight yelled. ‘Kill him!’
‘You see, Number Eight, I made a little alteration to the machinery. Oh, the Ghast-Vorl crossbreeds that result will be the fruit of your abdomen, have no fear. But they will be programmed to be loyal only to me. A legion of perfect warriors at my command, and all I need do to restart the process is to remove this sword – like this!’
462 grabbed the pommel of the sword – and screamed.
He frothed as the current ran through him, his collar and antennae standing up on end. Smoke rose up from his palm. 462 staggered back clutching his hand, turned and fled down the stairs, coat and stercorium flapping behind him.
‘Super,’ said Smith, and Eight stood up.
The Ghast cracked its knuckles. ‘To the death, then?’ it said.
‘Right!’ Smith replied, and he drove a neat punch straight into Eight’s nostrils. Eight blinked. Smith waited, and he began to suspect that something was not working here as it should. When Eight tossed him one-handed across the mezzanine, he realised that his suspicions were indeed correct.
The world froze. Vock towered over Suruk, ready to strike, and Suruk gazed up at him, unable to move.
A shadow stepped into view. It was a silhouette, a misty outline the same shape as a M’Lak, but made of darkness.
Two eyes were holes in its head. Black mandibles opened from its jawline, and it spoke.
‘Come, Suruk. It is over.’
Suruk said, ‘Are you. . .? You are no Vorl, are you?’
‘No. I am the Dark One, come to lead you from this world to the hunting-ground of the ancients. Come with me. It is finished.’
‘No!’ Suruk cried. ‘Vock was mine!’
The Dark One sighed. ‘He is about to strike the blow that will murder you. Better that you come with me now and avoid the pain he longs to inflict. Come, Suruk. The light in your eyes no longer shines so brightly. Run with me to Ethrethor.’
‘Curse you!’ Suruk growled. ‘I will not leave my father unavenged!’
‘There is no choice,’ the Dark One hissed, and his arm shot out. As it did, a hand slapped down on his shoulder and dragged him back. A second ghost stood beside it, a broomstick in its free hand.
‘Hello, Suruk,’ Agshad said.
‘Father?’ Suruk glanced left, then right. He lay before a semicircle of his ancestors, those who had wielded the spear before him and, now that it had been broken, had been freed from within: Agshad Nine-Swords, Urgar the Miffed, Brehan the Blessed, King Lacrovan. . .
‘Unhand me!’ the Dark One snarled as Agshad pulled him backwards. ‘This warrior is dead!’
‘Dead?’ Brehan the Blessed chortled. ‘Suruk’s alive!’
Agshad opened his mandibles and smiled. The Dark One thrashed in his grip. ‘Promise me one thing, son.’
‘Name it, father.’
‘Go and get a proper job, would you?’
He vanished. Vock screeched in triumph as Suruk sprang into a crouch. The axe whipped down and he darted under the blade and caught the shaft in his left hand. For a moment they stood there straining, strength against strength, and then Suruk drove his right fist up and punched Vock in the jaw.
Vock was lifted clean off his paws, tossed ten feet and dropped in a clattering heap of armour plate. His limbs flailed and he whirled upright into a fighting stance, paused, frowned, and patted the end of his snout. Alarm spread across his face.
Suruk raised his right fist. Wedged in the back of his hand were two long teeth. ‘You seek these, rodent?’
‘Bathtard!’ Vock screamed. ‘Dirty offworlder bathtard! Die!’
Suruk felt no fear as Vock sprang. He leapt to meet him, the axe flew past, and Suruk hit Vock’s breastplate –grabbed it – turned him upside down and drove him head first through the lid of a wheelybin.
Suruk landed in a crouch and rose slowly to face the wheelybin. Vock’s legs protruded from the top of the bin, kicking furiously. Arms pinned to his sides, he could do nothing but howl with rage into his echoing plastic prison.
‘Let me go, offworlder! I am the dignified and honourable Mimco Vock! You shame me with your cowardith!’
Suruk chuckled. As he strolled over, he cracked his knuckles. ‘Greetings, Colonel.’
‘Offworlder, you die slow! You will beg for merthy—’
‘I think not. Now, Colonel, you are my prisoner. Listen and understand. Your war is over, as it shall soon be for all the Yull. I shall take this bin to my people and, when they crave your skull, I will plead clemency, so that you may remember this moment for as long as you live, when I drew your teeth and – what is the phrase? – dropped you into the shit. Not for you a death in battle, but a life of captivity and shame. This I do in honour of my father, whom you murdered like the coward you are when he bested your men. This, however, I do for fun,’ he said, and he punched Vock in the groin. Vock’s head made loud contact with the bottom of the bin. Suruk smiled
Eight bent down and lifted Smith up by the collar. ‘So,’ he said, ‘to the death. How amusing. Tell me, Space Captain Smith, what gave you the impression that you could defeat me? I am most intrigued.’
Smith drove the side of his hand into Eight’s temple, a blow that would have floored a praetorian. ‘What do you say to that?’
Eight frowned. ‘What’s that? Oh, I see – you were try-ing to slap me across the face.’ He raised his pincer arms.
‘Amateurs. Believe me, Smith’ – and his arm flicked out and knocked Smith’s head to one side – ‘when it comes to slapping people across the face – I – wrote – the – book! And – the – appendix!’
As if batting aside flies, Eight whacked Smith’s head left, right, left and right again. Then he tossed him onto the ground: Smith slid along the floor and into the wall.
Eight sighed.‘It is too bad that I will not be able to listen to some opera while I rip you apart, Captain Smith. Then this moment would be almost as perfect as myself.’ He brushed a spec of dirt from his lapel. ‘Why do you people bother? Tell me, captain, can you wrestle an ant-wolf? Plan an invasion? Write a piano sonata – before breakfast? I don’t think so. You humans are utterly outclassed. I mean, is there anything you have that I don’t?’
Smith hauled himself upright. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. ‘I have a nose, you alien bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Beat that.’
‘Not quite what –’ Eight began, but Smith roared and charged straight into him. His shoulder slammed into the massive Ghast, he snatched something from Eight’s belt while his left hand shot up and grabbed Eight’s singed antennae. He yanked them forward and with his right fist he punched the monster once – twice – three times in the jaw. He pulled back his arm for a fourth massive blow –and Eight opened his mouth. It was a mantrap, a tunnel lined with fangs, and Smith’s hand disappeared into it.
Eight slammed his jaws together, bit down and shook his head like a terrier killing a rat. His head tore free in a bloody flurry and Smith staggered back, clutching the half of his right arm that remained.
Eight tossed his head back and, gannet-like, swallowed Smith’s hand. He drew himself up and struck a pose suitable for a raconteur. ‘As I was saying,’ he began, smoothing his trenchcoat. He paused and looked down at his belt. ‘Odd. Where’s that grenade gone?’
Smith’s face was white. The world lurched and flickered before him like a badly-tuned television screen. Eight’s question only just reached him, but he smiled nonetheless.
‘It was in my hand,’ he said.
‘What?’ Eight’s eyes widened: his mouth fell open. Like a toddler he thrust his fists into his mouth, stumbling around as he tried to reach his gullet. ‘ What? No, no!’
Eight bellowed around his hands. ‘You can’t do this! I’m better than you!’
With the last strength left to him, Smith raised his left arm. Slowly he folded his fingers, and gave Eight the ancient gesture his people had bestowed upon invaders for a thousand years.
Eight burst like a dropped egg: strange organs and leather scraps spattered the ceiling and the walls.
‘Pillock,’ Smith said, and he passed out.
Smith woke up in his bed on board the Pym. His room was quiet and dark, and the model spaceships hanging from the ceiling looked as tranquil as soaring birds. He felt numb and a little sleepy.
The last thing he could recall was giving that big Ghast the V-sign. He smiled. Yes, he’d shown that bugger. He could remember the thing bragging about its genius. Not anymore, he thought. Eight wouldn’t even be able to play the spoons, let alone write a sonata.
Smith paused, vaguely sure that there was some fly in the ointment of victory. Nope, it was gone. He yawned and stretched, and noticed that he was not stretching quite as far as he’d expected.
‘Balls,’ he muttered, remembering. ‘He bit off my arm.’
The right arm of his pyjamas was neatly folded and pinned just above the elbow. Or the place where the elbow would have been. A drip stood beside the bed, wired to Smith’s other arm.
Suruk stepped out of the corner of the room.
‘Wainscott’s medicine woman fixed you to that tube,’ he said. ‘I assisted as best I could, but your biology is strange to me. Besides, I dislike needles almost as much as I dislike bees.’
‘Thanks. Damned nuisance, this. Rhianna and Carveth – how are they?’
‘Bizarre and futile, respectively. They are well.’
‘And yourself? Did you. . . ?’
Suruk smiled. ‘I did indeed. My father is avenged. The warlord Vock lingers in the hold, pinioned within a plastic bin. Now we take him back as our prisoner, for trial.’
‘Good work, old chap! Excellent stuff.’
Smith realised that he could hear the hum of engines.
An, ugly crunching noise from the cockpit told him that the John Pym had just gone up a gear. ‘We’re moving,’ he said.
‘We travel to New Luton with our new comrades. Major Wainscott follows us in his craft, warlike and probably nude. I like him. The Ghast vessel and its spawning factory are no more. Now we shall conclude our mission.’ The alien frowned. ‘As your medic, I advise you to rest. Your arm is growing back much too slowly.’
‘I see. Look, I know the Yull are bastards, but I don’t want you roughing Vock up too much, or the prisoner—’
‘I shall not injure the prisoner; there would be no challenge to it. Besides, for Vock a long life in captivity will be far more satisfying. In the meantime I shall do nothing more cruel than play him Les Fleurs – several hundred times. Per day.’
‘Well, as long as we don’t have to listen to him banging on about his honour all the time—’
‘I doubt it,’ Suruk said. ‘Sooner or later he will either go mad or hibernate.’
‘I ought to check on things,’ Smith said. ‘Could you help me get dressed?’
‘Gladly.’ Suruk bent down and came up with Smith’s trousers. ‘Tell me, which side do you dress on – front or back?’
Carveth opened the airlock and they stepped out into chaos. The black sky throbbed with explosions and laser-beams: gunfire hid the roars and cries of Ghasts and men.
Aresian walkers were tearing down the barricades at the edges of the Imperial compound. Praetorians swarmed around their legs like piranhas. Yet Jones’ men fought on, hard and disciplined, the railgun teams covering each other, the fire from small arms and landships holding the waves of attackers at bay.
Smith heard C’neth’s nasal voice behind him, ‘Gawd, what a dreadful place. You could have at least taken us somewhere nice, not this crap’ole.’
Jones ran up to meet them. ‘Alright, Smith! God, what happened to you, man?’
‘I had a run-in with Ghast Number Eight. Turns out he bit off more than he could chew.’
‘Good – bloody hell, man! What’s that?’
‘Oh, and this must be the charming local welcome,’ C’neth observed.
‘This is C’neth of the Vorl,’ Smith replied. ‘Good to see you, Jones.’
‘You too, mate. So you found a Vorl to take back, eh? Rescue party, is it? I’ll give orders to fall back by squads: there’s too many Ghasts to stay here.’
‘Nobody’s falling back. We’ve brought reinforcements.’
Smith looked over his shoulder, at his friends. Suruk was twirling the two pieces of his spear. Carveth was preparing to advance behind Dreckitt. Rhianna was smiling vaguely. Behind them, loading up a fresh magazine, Wainscott stood grinning and fully clothed. His men checked their weapons, looking like dangerousness made flesh. And behind them all, the great ranks of the Vorl rolled out of the two spaceships like a bank of mist, their faces grim and deathly, tendrils of smoke stroking the air like the scarves of a thousand Morris men.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jones whispered. ‘This is a turn up for the books. I wasn’t expecting this!’
‘ You’re surprised?’ C’neth said. ‘You’re not the one who’s just found out he’s got a daughter – and she’s solid!’
‘Well,’ Smith said, ‘only one thing for it. Could some-one help me draw my sword, please?’
Carveth helped.
Smith lifted the sword above his head. ‘Right then,’ he called, ‘you all know what to do. Ladies, gentlemen, Suruk, Jones, Morgar, strange ghost people and Rhianna’s dad – for the Empire, charge! ’
*
‘And that’s how the battle of New Luton was won,’ Carveth finished up. ‘Or at least the bits I saw. I was hiding under a table for quite a lot of it.’
‘How. . . er. . . very interesting,’ King Victor replied.
He gave Carveth a short bow, and she responded with a curtsey that nearly put her on the floor like a broken deckchair. Smith held his breath and forced himself to remain calm as the king moved down the line.
Although their mission would stay secret, W had arranged for the king to meet Smith, Carveth, Rhianna and Suruk before he knighted General Young later in the day. The four of them stood in a smartly-dressed row in the Great Hall of the Imperial Palace on Ravnavar Prime, the Emerald of the Empire.
The hall was the size of a cathedral nave, the walls decorated with polished brass and racing green. Lances jutted from the vaulted ceiling and from them hung banners from a hundred campaigns, many little more than tattered rags. High in the rafters, like a preserved shark, there hung the Hellfire used by the Space Marshall in his first hundred missions, donated to the people when he ran out of room on the fusillage to tally up his kills. The hall was empty apart from a pair of guards at the far end and a prim man in a morning suit who looked entirely dull and was probably a bodyguard-assassin of extreme lethality.
The crew were very excited to meet the king. Rhianna had pretended to be disinterested in the whole procedure, but she was wearing her smartest flip-flops and a skirt tied-dyed in the official colours of New Francisco.
Carveth had reached a level of prattling nervousness that made Smith deeply uncomfortable and Suruk was intrigued by the whole idea of meeting King Victor, ‘son of Elvis, of the line of Arthur’.
King Victor’s vague, pleasant eyes met Smith’s. The King smiled gently and said, ‘Erm. . . so, what do you do?’
‘Captain Isambard Douglas Winston Smith, Your Majesty,’ Smith said, nervousness sending his gut and bladder into an alarming whirl. ‘I’m in charge of the John Pym.’
‘Splendid. Good work,’ said the king as a mechanical cherub hovered past, belching out a cloud of lavender essence as it disappeared into the galleries. King Victor put out his hand and they shook. Smith had acquired a bionic arm on the National Health Service to tide him over until his new arm could be attached and it had developed a number of minor twitches from its last user, a commando. Today it was holding out and King Victor’s neck remained unbroken. ‘Um. . . keeping well, are we?’
‘Mustn’t grumble, your Majesty.’
‘Yes, er. . . absolutely. Of course.’
Smith was not sure what to make of Victor Rex, ruler of two dozen sentient species, figurehead of three hundred worlds and organic farming enthusiast. It was an open secret that he and Queen Kylie – who was currently visiting Proxima Centauri to open an orbital sports centre –were simulants, grown to specification. So far, Victor had been unfailingly polite but rather awkward, only showing real interest when he had got into a discussion with Rhianna about the possible sentience of the local foliage.
Still, he seemed harmless enough.
‘Well,’ said the king, ‘carry on, er, Captain Smith. Now then, who might you be, my good green fellow?’
‘Greetings! I am Suruk the Slayer, and I bring you this.’
Suruk was adorned with some of his most impressive trophies, one of which he quickly unhitched from his belt and dropped into King Victor’s outstretched hand. ‘It is the skull of a Procturan ripper. May his death-howls prove sweet music to your noble, if somewhat protruding, ears. May you make soil organically enriched with the bones of our slain foes! In its jaws I have put a list of rewards I would like.’
‘Um. . .’ said King Victor. ‘Yes, very good. And what do you do on board the ship?’
‘I kill everything! If I might inquire,’ Suruk added, ‘which battles exactly are you the Victor of ?’
They left with the honour of having been thanked by the King himself. A wallahbot gave them picnic hampers and guided them to a gilt lift, and they were whisked up through the centre of a spire, hollow like a scrimshawed horn. The lift’s scrollworked doors clattered open and they stepped onto a balcony that curved around the top of the tower.
‘I shall arrange for your transport, gentlemen,’ the wallahbot grated. It rolled back into the lift and, with a rattle of motors, descended from view.
The view from the palace was astounding. Below them lay the garden city of Ravnavar. The roofs of greenhouses winked at them in the sun. The parks looked almost luminously alive: in one of them the Colonial Guard were drilling; and in another a placid Ravnaphant was giving children rides, forty at a time. An airship drifted past, advertising war savings. Tiny red oblongs rolled through the streets: buses bringing wellwishers to watch General Young receive her knighthood.
‘Ooh, biscuits,’ said Carveth, peeking into her hamper. ‘Now then: who’ll give me a Cumberland sausage for two pots of the King’s Own Jam?’
A hundred yards below, the first wellwishers were arriving to cheer the general to the palace. A huge banner had been hung between the mighty Arcadian veen trees on Imperial Avenue, saying: THREE CHEERS FOR AUNT FLO. Quite right too, thought Smith, looking down at the gathering crowd. Had Young not halted the Yullian invasion, the city would be burning by now.
The sun was shining and the pavements looked almost white. The forests glowed at the edge of the city. A light wind blew across the spire, rustling Carveth’s dress and forcing Suruk to push his top hat down over his ears. The smell of roast beef drifted up to them from a kitchen in the palace below.
‘Nice day, isn’t it?’ Smith said, holding out his arm for Rhianna to take.
Carveth looked out across the glistening city.
Somewhere out there, past the towers and minarets and the shining forest, there were Ghasts and Yull who hated everyone, and a war that still needed to be won. But on a day like this it seemed as if even nature was on the Empire’s side. God, she decided – not the brutal god of the Yull, but something subtler and more intelligent – was indeed in his heaven, and if all wasn’t right with the world, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘on days like this, I think we will win.’
Smith waved for an air-taxi. ‘Of course we’ll win,’ he replied. ‘We’re British, aren’t we?’
The taxi halted beside them, thrusters humming.
‘Where to, guv?’ it asked, opening a door.
‘Hospital, please,’ Smith replied, and he stepped in. ‘See you this evening,’ he called as the door closed behind him.
There was a small television in the corner of the hospital waiting room. On it, General Young was climbing the steps to the imperial throne, where King Victor waited in fleet uniform. He knighted her and, as the Scourge of Yullia stood up, Jerusalem parped out of a choir of hovering trumpet-bots.
W sat on the far side of the waiting room, looking hard and thin. He wore his usual battered tweed jacket, which made him look like an impoverished schoolmaster, but there was a plastic collar around his neck and two wires ran from his temple to a speaker mounted beside his throat. The room smelt of cough mixture.
‘Hallo, Smith,’ W’s speaker said.
‘Hello, sir.’ Smith sat down. ‘How’s things?’
‘Could be worse,’ W rasped. ‘The metal missed my jugular and most of my nerves. The doctors’re putting in a new voicebox this afternoon. Apparently, they’re going to whip my lung out while they’re at it. How about your arm?’
‘This afternoon, too.’
‘Did you meet the king?’
‘Yes, indeed. He seemed a nice enough chap. We’re having a bit of a do tonight. Want to come along?’
‘I may well do. Have to eat ice cream for a few days, what with the new neck.’ The long, solemn face turned to him. ‘Well done on Number Eight, Smith.’
‘Thank you, sir. Just a shame he ended up in so many bits. He’d have looked good over the fireplace.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Eight was one of the smartest buggers Gertie’s ever bred up. We think he was planning to take over from Number One. With him at the helm, God knows what evil they could have done.’
On the television, General Sir Florence Young was holding aloft the axe of a Yullian general, addressing the attendees. ‘This is for you!’ she declared, and the crowd’s cheering drowned her out.
‘The tables have turned on the Yull,’ W said. ‘They fear mankind now – and they know full well what the Morlocks will do to them once they get the chance. Now we get our own back.’ His eyes half-closed, and he reclined in his battered chair, surrounded by the smell of medicine and dust. ‘They’ve had their last migration,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a hard fight, but our men are the equal of anything they can put into the field. And then the Ghasts – but still, all in good time.’
‘W,’ said Smith, ‘what will happen to the prisoner we took?’
‘Vock’s slave? Oh, he’ll be fine. We keep the few we capture on a farm, under guard. They’ll go back to Yullia once we’ve won the war. After all, it wouldn’t make much sense for the lemming homeworld to have no lemmings on it, would it?’ He leaned forward, his big hands resting on his knees. ‘Tell me, Smith, what will you do with yourself when the war’s over?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll probably go down the pub.’
W raised a thick eyebrow. ‘And after that?’
‘Curry.’
‘Good choice. But the space war’s not over yet, Smith, not by a long way. There’s plenty for us to do. The secret war is going to get pretty damned busy.’
‘Quite,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a lot of work ahead. We’ve got a lot of Ghasts to deal with, and the lemmings aren’t just going to kill themselves, either.’
‘Actually, Smith—’ W began, and he sighed. ‘Anyhow, it’s going to be a tough few years for mankind. And while the army moves on, wreathed in glory, we chaps in the Service will have our own clandestine struggle to win: fighting unseen, relying on skill, secrecy and cunning to see us through – subtle and crafty, known only by our deeds.’
The door opened and a nurse looked into the room.
‘Mr Lint? Your lungs are ready.’
She looked at Smith, who shook his head.
‘Eric Lint, please?’
‘Oh, bollocks to it,’ W said, and he stood up.
‘Come on, you buggers, sing up!’ Wainscott stood on the dining table, waving a mug above his head. For his size he had an impressive voice and he bellowed across the room like an enraged ruminant. His eyes had a terrible aspect and he looked like the sort of man who could have wooed Boadicea. Unusually, though, he was still wearing his best uniform – all of it – which was all the more surprising as Emily the android kept trying to finger his epaulettes.
Around him stood, sat and lay the Deepspace Operations Group, Morgar, Tormak the Rune Reader, Jones the Laser, Grocer Green, W (testing out his new lungs with a roll-up and a sing-along), the Grand Archivist and George Benson, who wore a bandage on his head and was in charge of the drinks. And on the wall beside the table, next to the stuffed praetorian’s head, soon would hang the two sacred axes of Colonel Mimco Vock.
‘ Who am I? Who am I? ’ Wainscott roared, and a ragged set of yells joined him for the refrain. ‘ I am the Berkshire huntsman and this is the Berkshire hunt! ’ The song broke down into cheers; Wainscott stumbled off the table, Jones climbed up after him, promising to show them all how it was really done and Tormak the Rune Reader punched both fists into the air and roared ‘Glorious!’
It seemed like a good moment to slip out and change Gerald’s water. Smith stepped over one of Carveth’s android protégées who had passed out in the doorway like a schoolgirl-shaped draft excluder.
On the way to the cockpit he passed Carveth’s room.
Dreckitt lay sprawled across Carveth’s bed, looking as if he had dropped into it from a great height. He stirred in his sleep. ‘No more,’ he said weakly, ‘Not again, Polly, please.’ Smith ignored him.
Smith wandered into the cockpit, thoughtfully flexing the fingers of his new right hand. The light was on and the slow, steady squeak of Gerald’s wheel pulsed through the room. Smith dropped into the captain’s chair, the sound of merriment filtering up the passage behind him.
The mock leather creaked as he made himself comfortable: drunk and oddly calm, as if he had staggered into the eye of the storm.
He did not feel triumphant. With tranquillity came an odd sense of sadness that he could not have explained even if he had been sober. He looked across the cockpit at the row of novelty items on the dashboard, and remembered the first time he had seen them over a year ago.
They had taken off from New London as beginners, and now they were – well, if not elite as such, at least approaching competence.
‘Hey, Isambard.’ Rhianna slipped into the room with an enticing hiss of tie-dyed skirt. She perched on the arm of his chair and looked down at him. ‘Chilling out?’
‘Yes, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘How’s things?’
‘Pretty cool.’ She sighed. ‘It’s been kind of heavy though. All those lemming people, then meeting the Vorl, then finding out one of them was my father – Mom must have been so stoned,’ she added, with a kind of awed pride. ‘Crazy.’
‘Still,’ said Smith, ‘you did get to go to a theme park.’
‘Yeah,’ Rhianna said. ‘You do take me to some amazing places.’
‘Seeing as we were on a mission, I thought it was pretty good,’ Smith began, a little hurt.
She laughed and patted his shoulder. ‘I’m kidding. It’s cool; just relax. Okay?’
‘Righto. I’ll do that. I’m. . . ah. . . hep to that, daddy-o.’
‘I think I like you better uptight. Want some?’ she added, holding out her hand. A tiny joint was wedged between her fingers; it looked to be largely made of yellowed paper and spit.
‘Fine with the beer,’ Smith replied.
‘Where’s Suruk?’
‘Out in the forest, communing with the ancestors. I would help him, but this is something Suruk has to do on his own,’ he said. ‘After all, no one else would understand a word of it. Goodness knows how he’s planning to fit all those ancestors back into his spear.’
‘I really hope he can,’ Rhianna said. ‘After all he’s been through. . .’
‘I suppose so,’ Smith said. ‘You know, when it comes down to it, we’ve not done too badly – so far.’ He picked up the novelty paperweight from the dashboard and turned it over in his hands. A storm raged around Parliament inside the plastic dome.
Rhianna stood up. ‘I’m going outside for a moment,’ she said. ‘I think I could do with some quiet. I never realised Major Wainscott’s folk singing was so. . . authentic.’
‘Straight out of Agincourt,’ said Smith. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ He listened to her leave the room and sat back in the chair. He felt inexplicably weary. The stitches in his arm ached. He sighed, tired and contented, and thought: well, we actually did it. We fought the lemming men, rescued New Luton, and we’ve even got the Vorl on our side. And here I am, with my crew – my friends. How could things have ended better?
A light flickered on the dashboard.
A little drowsy, Smith pulled himself up and leaned forward to get a good look at the panel. It was not the self-destruct light – Carveth had shown him that a while ago – so there was probably no immediate problem, unless it was some sort of missile detection system. No, he realised, it was the long-distance intercom.
Tape clattered out of the slot. Smith watched it emerge like a snake from a burrow and ripped off a length. The message read: ‘Turn on the television.’
The television took a bit of finding. Puzzled, he sighed and heaved it onto the main console, found the plug and wired it up. His apprehension slowly rising, he switched it on.
With a sudden click, he was looking at a Ghast officer.
It sat at a desk, a row of flags hanging behind it like dangling wire. Martial music played in the background: a band accompanying a Ghast warbling in heroic treble.
The scarred, one-eyed face turned towards Smith and smiled.
There was something wrong with 462, something beyond the usual facial scars and metal lens. His working eye was slightly unfocussed, and he seemed to have slumped a little in his chair. There was a brightly-coloured paper helmet on his head and a tube of liquid before him.
‘Well well,’ he said, his voice slightly less crisp than usual, ‘we meet again.’
‘So it seems,’ said Smith. ‘But if you’ve come here to threaten, Gertie, I can tell you that—’
‘Threaten you? Nonsense.’ 462 waved his antennae dismissively. ‘I would not dream of it. In fact, I seek only to share your moment of victory.’
‘What?’
‘I thought I would congratulate you. Shake your hand, as it were.’
‘With a serrated pincer, no doubt.’
‘Not at all. For once I have no desire to snip off your puny appendages. It is most amusing: once again your weak Earth-mind is unable to fully appreciate the irony of your situation. Neither of us has lost out from your last little adventure. The death of Eight has left, shall we say, a vacuum of power here. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but I myself do not.’
Slowly, like a crocodile breaking the surface of a lake, a long, bestial head rose above the level of the desk beside 462. There was a conical party hat wedged between its antennae.
‘This is Assault Unit One, the former property of the glorious Number Eight. Now that Eight has been killed and the pieces regrettably devoured by his own praetorians, Assault Unit One belongs to me. You see, the Ghast Empire required someone to take over Eight’s duties and, as his assistant, it was assumed that I had the ruthlessness and skill to take his place. My superiors suspected that I had assassinated Number Eight and promoted me for my initiative.’
Smith stared at him. He did not feel anything much, only a vague, exhausted contempt. He would never be rid of 462, he realised – not until he killed the monster himself. ‘I suppose you let them believe that?’
‘I dropped the odd hint.’ 462 smiled and took a sip of liquid. ‘Mmm, that tastes effective. You know, we Ghasts do not indulge in many frivolous celebrations.’
‘It probably comes from living in a one-party state.’
‘Quite so. And this, as you can see, is the party.’
‘And you’re in a state.’
462 adjusted his paper helmet. ‘Well, perhaps so. After all, my unfortunate predecessor did keep an impressive cellar of nine-percent sucrose solution.’ He raised the liquid tube. ‘So thank you, Captain Smith. You have saved me a lot of unbecoming dirty work. Number One needs a personal assistant to help him with Number Two. Perhaps I shall become his deputy.’
‘So you’d be clearing up after Number Two? It sounds disgusting but, for you, pretty appropriate.’
462 shrugged. ‘Ah, who knows where inexorable destiny will carry us? But at any rate, I think we shall meet again. It may not be for some time – I have other business to attend to. But I will see you again and then, Smith, I shall have the pleasure of destroying you for good.’
‘Just bugger off, would you?’ said Smith. ‘Go and dance round your trenchcoat or whatever you chaps do.’
‘As you wish. But I suspect that you have not seen the end of me.’ 462 gave a mocking wave.
‘Yes I have; it’s big and re—’ Smith began, but the connection was gone. 462 was still on the screen, his hat slumped over one antenna, arm frozen in mid-wave. His hand was scarred from where he had grabbed Smith’s sword. As Smith stared at the screen he made out the words ‘Made in Sheffield’ seared across 462’s palm.
‘I’ll bag you yet,’ Smith promised the image. ‘My crew and I will not rest until you are defeated. We—’
A huge robot suit danced past the nosecone.
Smith leaped up, ran out and hauled the airlock open.
Dwarfed by the twenty-foot Leighton-Wakazashi fighting suit that danced around it, the John Pym’s stereo stood on the tarmac, pumping the greatest hits of Queen into the warm night air.
Nearby Yoshimi Robot-Pilot watched, horrified. ‘Oh, Captain Smith!’ she cried. ‘Polly Pilot wanted to borrow my fighting suit, and now look!’
The robot’s head spotted him and the speakers boomed:
‘Look at me, boss! I’m tall! Can you see me, world? I’m the tall one now!’
‘You bloody idiot!’ he yelled back. ‘Stop that at once!’
The fighting suit paused, shocked, and straightened up.
For a moment it stood there, hands on hips, looking curiously offended – and then it raised one vast hand and blew him a mighty raspberry.
‘Oh, what the hell,’ Smith called back. ‘Carry on, Carveth.’ He looked at Rhianna and smiled. ‘Care for a dance?’