Space Captain Smith

by Toby Frost

  ‘I like you,’ Gilead said. ‘But I don’t like you half as much as I hate your ungodly guts. I’ve been waiting for this moment: you and I face to face, man to pansy unbeliever. Your precious bomb is nothing more than a beer keg. You’ve got nothing left, Smith, no cards to play, and all I’ve got to do now is to choose how best to send you all to hell.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something,’ Smith said. ‘It’s a fortyfive Markham and Briggs Civiliser, and it’s pointed right at your gut. I was hoping you’d come closer to gloat. It makes you an easier target. Make one move, you mad fanatic, and I’ll martyr you all over the back wall.’

  Gilead paused. His eyes met Smith’s for a long moment and, very slowly, he looked down. The gun jutted from Smith’s hip, the long barrel pointed straight at Captain Gilead’s chest.

  ‘You were too busy ranting to see me draw it,’ Smith said.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Gilead replied. ‘That’s not fair!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do that! I’m the one with the guns here!’

  ‘We want Rhianna,’ said Isambard Smith.

  ‘And you could throw some beer in too,’ Carveth said.

  ‘But none of that tasteless rubbish. Good stuff only.’

  Something broke in Captain Gilead then. He looked at Smith, the man he’d dismissed as a weakling that he could bully and sweep aside, and knew that these people, with their broken spaceship and their shabby empire, were the rock against which he would bash himself to death.

  ‘I hate you!’ Gilead screamed. ‘I hate you! I hate all of you people, with your make-do attitude and your not shouting all the time! Look at you, with your stupid moustache and your stiff upper lip. You make me sick, you atheist agnostic heathen!’

  Suruk said quietly, ‘ Urug mashai nar sergret, Mazuran.’

  Smith glanced at the tripod-mounted heavy disruptor and nodded. ‘J aizeh, Suruk. Urenesh, old friend.’

  ‘Good luck to you too.’

  ‘You accursed, hell-spawned, democracy-loving bastards! And look at this, this so-called woman of yours, wearing trousers in public. Woman? Whore of Babylon, more like! If you were one of my wives, I’d have you stoned to death!’

  Carveth shrugged. ‘Stoned as in rocks, right?’

  ‘Of course rocks!’

  ‘Nah, I don’t fancy that much.’

  ‘And you’re fat!’

  ‘You’re dead,’ she said.

  ‘Fatter than all my wives laid end to end! And then this thing, this disgusting mockery of the sacred human form!’

  ‘Hello,’ Suruk said.

  ‘This thing should be shining shoes, not walking around like a man! You call this frog-monkey-thing a friend? It’s bright green! It ought to be a slave!’

  Suruk laughed, a reliable indication that violence was near. Carveth was surprised to find that she was too angry to be afraid. Son of a bitch called me fat, she thought. And some other stuff. But mainly fat.

  ‘Damn you,’ Gilead yelled, ‘damn you all, you hellbound blasphemers! You wrecked my ship and beat my men! But not any more, because now I’m going to cut off your stupid heads!’

  He drew his ceremonial sword and waved it in the air like a dervish.

  ‘Finished,’ said Smith.

  ‘Oh, I’m just starting,’ Gilead replied.

  ‘That wasn’t meant to be a question,’ Smith said. The shot hit Gilead smack in the chest and threw him thirty feet. He kicked once and lay still. They stood there in the silence that followed, in the eye of the storm. Carveth glanced around the crowd, waiting to spot the fool who made the first move. The Ghast Empire froze. The Church of God the Annihilator stared back at her, enraged but afraid. A slight breeze stirred the sacred banners. She looked down at Gilead, lying in the dust.

  ‘What a cult,’ she said.

  The praetorian jerked up its gun and the safety catch clicked off and Smith whipped around and blasted it in the side, looked down the barrel of his pistol and shot it twice again.

  Suddenly, in the crowd, mayhem.

  As one they grabbed, cocked, loaded and drew a hundred guns. A great wave of movement ran through the men and Ghasts, and they surged forward as the first shots burst out. Carveth braced herself and the Maxim cannon yawed around and cut down the first rank of mercenaries. Above the rattle of her gun, she was yelling. A Ghast trooper ran to the heavy disruptor on the table and started it up. Suruk roared, threw his spear and the trooper dropped across the controls. He bounded after his spear and into the middle of the Ghasts, a long knife rising and falling in either hand.

  Smith emptied the Civiliser into one of Gilead’s fanatics, felt the hammer click on an empty chamber, tossed it aside and pulled the rifle into his hands. Gilead’s ranting had made him furious: this was no longer about bagging a couple of Gerties for the mantelpiece, but something darker, more fundamental. This was decency against madness, people who’d never gone looking for trouble against zealots and tyrants. He fired without aiming, knocking a Ghast to the ground. A disruptor beam shot past his head and he cranked the handguard and fired again. ‘Come and get it!’

  ‘Mazuran! Here!’

  He whirled and saw Suruk at the centre of a scrum of Ghasts and men. Too close to use their guns, they had drawn knives and shock-sticks, and were faring badly. Smith ducked down and ran low, Carveth’s wild firing accidentally providing him with cover. He brained a Ghast with his rifle butt and reached the M’Lak’s side.

  ‘Aha,’ said Smith, and he shoved a dead Ghast out the way and grabbed the controls of the heavy disruptor.

  ‘Here we go—’

  ‘ Ak!’ half a dozen Ghasts yelled as Smith aimed the disruptor and vapourised them. He swung it left and right, reaping a great swathe across the yard, turning brick to dust and cultists and Ghasts to smoke. ‘Who wants the Empire?’ he cried. ‘Come and get it, you little buggers!

  You think you can bully me?’

  Carveth was out of bullets – the Maxim cannon clicked where it should have roared and suddenly she felt much smaller. She tore at the straps and the gun dropped away. Drawing her service revolver, she ran towards the others. Suruk was fighting a pack of men and Ghasts, beating them back as they tried to reach the table-mounted gun. The heavy disruptor thrummed as it threw out pulses of energy. Smith hit a box of homing grenades and it exploded, throwing one of Gilead’s men into the air as he tried to type their co-ordinates into a guided rocket.

  ‘Who wants it?’ the captain shouted. ‘Who wants to empty my pockets now? Oh, you want my dinner money, do you? I’ll take the whole class on! Not so big now, are we, Curtis Minor!’

  Carveth saw the way out: doors behind the flailing mass that was Suruk and half a dozen others. ‘Cover me!’ she yelled, more a plea than a command, and she took out a screwdriver and shoved it into the side of the control panel. Her fingers tore off the front of the panel and yanked wires apart. Running out of hands, she leaned in and ripped out the green wire with her teeth. Something hit the door above her head – a disruptor bolt, followed closely by a severed arm.

  The heavy disruptor ran out of power. The remaining soldiers charged them.

  Carveth shoved two wires together and the doors burst apart. She leaped into the space between them and Suruk sprang into the dark after her. The doors hissed in their grooves and, as they started to close, Suruk grabbed the nearest one and pulled it back. ‘Now, Mazuran!’

  ‘And that’s for my tuck money!’ Smith roared. His rifle cracked out. He leaped through the doorway, coat flapping behind him, and Suruk let go and the door slammed closed. Something thumped against the other side, but to no avail. The three of them stood in the dark of the sports centre, dust swirling around them, panting. Smith’s hands were shaking. ‘Damn you, 3B,’ he said. From the floor, Carveth said, ‘You have issues about your schooling, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Smith. ‘And you know, if I hadn’t repressed them all these years, I’d never have found the furious anger needed to drive off that horde of lunatics out there. And
that, men, is why I’m proud to be British. Now, come on,’ he added. ‘We must rescue Rhianna!’

  Meanwhile, in what had once been the badminton courts, the Ghasts were rigging up their camera equipment. With the help of a couple of Gilead’s mercenaries, they had connected their long-range telecasters and were ready to broadcast to glorious Number One.

  462 tapped his microphone. ‘One-two, one-two,’ he said, and stopped when one of his subordinates started marching. Ghast scientists bustled past and the lead technician came over and brushed some red dust on his face and antennae.

  ‘It is just for looks,’ the technician explained. ‘It is terrible when you have an important speech to make and you just do not look the part.’

  462 adjusted his trenchcoat. ‘Does my stercorium look big in this?’

  ‘No bigger than mine!’ the technician said. ‘You look marvellous. And ever so evil.’

  462 strode in front of the nearest camera. To his left, on a stretcher-bed, lay Rhianna, comatose. The brainscanning helm had been placed on her head, and behind it loomed the huge machinery of the scanner with its twin Tesla coils.

  A worried-looking functionary jogged up. ‘Glorious Commander!’ it barked.

  ‘What is it?’ said 462.

  ‘There is trouble outside! Space Captain Smith has arrived!’

  He shrugged. ‘Have Gilead’s men deal with him. They are all disposable. Nothing must interrupt my moment of glory. Roll cameras!’

  The technician gave him a nod. 462 looked into the lens.

  ‘All hail glorious Number One! This is Medium AttackShip Captain 462, reporting from the planet of Drogon, a wretched outpost of contemptible human space! Here, our iron will has enabled us to destroy our opposition and score a mighty triumph for our Empire! Before you, All Knowing Leader, we have the captured woman from whom we shall construct the ultimate bioweapon. Today, we shall take one step closer to our goal of conquering the galaxy! Behold, as our technology harnesses the power of her mind!’

  He turned to the scientist operating the scanner. ‘You, minion! Turn the dials up to… four!’

  The leisure centre had the same look as everything occupied by Ghasts. Despite being there for about five hours, they had covered it in banners and propaganda posters, announcing that the swimming pool and judo mats had been annexed for the good of the Greater Ghast Empire. Smith cocked the rifle and ran deeper into the complex, aware that the survivors of the fight outside would soon find another way in.

  ‘This looks like it!’ Carveth said, pointing to an enormous poster blocking the way to the badminton courts. The poster showed a small, pompous Ghast waving its fists and glowering into the middle distance. Both its antennae were slicked over to one side of its head.

  ‘That’s Number One,’ said Smith. ‘Their god.’

  The sound of breaking glass came from behind.

  ‘Mine,’ Suruk said, looking over his shoulder. ‘Go.’

  Smith turned to Suruk and met his friend’s villainous eyes. ‘Good luck, Suruk. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I have a sharp spear and an empty mantlepiece,’ the alien said. ‘I need no more than that. Now go.’

  ‘This way!’ Carveth cried, and Smith rushed up the stairs after her to the viewing gallery. Smith booted the door open and charged through, saw the stretcher and the machinery behind it, lifted the rifle and yelled, ‘You there! Stop that at once!’

  Ghasts spun around. Smith fixed the sights on 462’s bulbous skull. ‘None of you move, or I’ll bag your leader!’

  The Ghasts froze. Electricity crackled between the conduction pillars. Above Rhianna’s head the air had become a little hazy, like smoke.

  Smith surveyed the scene with horrified awe. ‘What the devil are they doing down there?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Carveth said from his side. ‘I’m only a spaceship pilot.’

  ‘Stop that nonsense!’ Smith called down. ‘Release that woman right now, or by God I’ll put a bullet in your Tesla coils!’

  462 attempted a winning smile. He took a step towards the viewing gallery. ‘Of course, Captain Smith. But before you unleash righteous mayhem, perhaps you would like to know what we are doing here, yes? I think so. For that is what unites us, Smith, much as we may fear to admit it.’

  Still smiling, he stepped out into the open. Smith kept 462’s head in the crosshairs. ‘You and I are both on the same quest, you see: the quest for knowledge. You too have stared up at the stars and thought, What secrets does the galaxy hold, and how can I beat them out of it? Does it not pique your scientific curiosity to know that you are standing in the room where history will be made? That you, Isambard Smith, are about to witness the greatest experiment your world will ever know?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Smith.

  ‘Oh well. Kill him,’ he said.

  Smith fired and the technicians scattered. The bullet hit 462 in the helmet, ricocheted into the ceiling, hit a joist, shot down, struck the control panel and spun the dial to eleven.

  Above Rhianna the cloud grew and grew. As it billowed out Smith cried, ‘Oh my God, no! I’ve cooked her head!’

  462 laughed triumphantly, despite cowering on the floor in the shadow of the stretcher. ‘Fools! Victory is mine! Look!’

  Something was forming in the smoke. Awed, Ghasts and men stared at the column as it twisted and condensed into the shape of a human being wreathed in mist. It turned to look over the room, and in its serene, smokeswathed face Smith caught an echo of Rhianna, the girl he had fallen for and might even have loved had she been a bit cleaner.

  The spectre shook its dreadlocks and looked around. 462 broke the silence. ‘Ahahaha! Can you not see? The perfect weapon!’

  ‘The Angel of the Apocalypse!’ cried one of Gilead’s men.

  ‘It’s Casper!’ Carveth gasped.

  ‘We have separated her Vorl soul from her puny human body!’ the Ghast commander cried, leaping up and shaking fists and claws in triumph. ‘Without humanity to limit her, she will serve the ruthless logic of the Ghast Empire! The Vorl will be ours, and with their strength we shall annex the Earth!’

  ‘Annex this!’ Smith replied. His rifle cracked out and 462 fell clutching his eye.

  ‘Fight to the last! Anyone surrendering will be shot!’ the Ghast shouted. ‘You will never defeat me!’ he added, and he ran from the room.

  Something crashed through the doors behind them and a huge, lumbering thing bounded down the gallery, hissing and drooling. Panic flooded Carveth’s senses: the revolver in her hand seemed to flick up of its own accord, and in a moment she had pumped four shots into the praetorian’s chest. Behind it, she saw dark shapes gathering on the staircase: Ghasts, mustering for an attack. She glanced around. In the main hall, the spirit-thing was taking on a different appearance – it seemed to be stretching into something leaner, more gaunt, altogether more grim. Slowly it reached out towards them with a wisp of a skeletal hand.

  ‘I think we might be in the soup,’ Smith said. ‘Looks like it’s ghost or Ghasts. Any ideas?’

  ‘How about we cower and squeal?’

  He nodded. ‘For once, you may have a point.’ He turned to the nebulous creature floating opposite them and said, ‘I say, you! I am a citizen of the Brit—’

  The Ghasts charged up the stairs.

  Things went rather distant for Polly Carveth then. Part of her watched Captain Smith get knocked to the ground by a wave of force that threw her down beside him. Another part of her realised that this wispy thing must be a Vorl. But the majority of her was watching the heads of a dozen Ghast soldiers explode like popcorn. The camera lenses cracked. The control panel of the Tesla machine burst into sparks, frying several Ghast technicians. The first soldier rushed onto the gallery, clambered over the dead praetorian and popped. The second soldier said, ‘ Ak? ’ and burst. And suddenly a crackling bolt of energy ran through the sports hall, overturning the ping-pong tables and singeing the posters about verruca health, and it was all Carveth
could do to crouch down and keep her bladder under control. And then it was over. The room was full of dead Ghasts and the smell of ozone. A scrap of paper floated down from the ceiling. It said, Will patrons kindly refrain from, but it didn’t get any further because the rest of it was burnt and covered in alien blood. Carveth stood up, ears ringing, numb.

  ‘Well, that’s told them!’ said the Vorl, surveying the carnage and putting its insubstantial hands on its hips. It floated outside the gallery, its head gaining bulk as it changed back from a skull to a human face.

  ‘Hand, Carveth?’ said Isambard Smith. Carveth put out a hand and helped pull him up. He brushed his tunic down and said, ‘Thanks. Right then. You, ghost fellow – what the devil do you mean by hiding inside Rhianna like that? I demand an explanation.’

  ‘You saw what I just did,’ the Vorl replied. ‘You should fear me, Captain Smith.’

  Smith took a step towards it. ‘I refuse to be intimidated by a talking fart!’

  At his side Carveth whispered, ‘It just rescued us. It is Rhianna.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Smith. ‘Right. Well, thank you, Rhianna’s ghost or whatever you are. Very decent of you to help out like that.’

  ‘I am indeed Rhianna, but only a part of her,’ the Vorl said. ‘The Ghast machinery separated the two parts of her being. In doing so, they unleashed me. But I am incomplete, and I must return.’

  Smith whistled softly. ‘So Rhianna was half-Vorl!

  Golly. And to think I fancied her!’ he added in what he thought was an undertone. ‘But… how is that possible?’

  ‘Rhianna’s parents were hippies,’ the swirling thing explained. ‘They travelled the cosmos, seeking new experiences and enlightenment. One night, they visited the Vorl homeworld. Her mother and my father met up over a few joints and… well, you know.’

  ‘Of course. I saw a picture. God, she must have been high as a kite.’

  ‘I don’t think either party was very proud come sunrise,’ said the Vorl. ‘Now, would you mind deactivating that machine, please?’