by Toby Frost
A massive red shape rose up beside him.
28935/H had been hiding behind the packing crates: out of ammunition but too fanatical to retreat. The leather coat whipped around his bulging stercorium. Under the steel helmet, yellow eyes glared out of a face that was all scar tissue and fangs.
‘I’ll smash you!’ he snarled. ‘Smash you good.’
He lumbered forward and swung a huge pincer at his head. Smith ducked and slammed his fist into the beast’s midriff, knocking him back.
‘Die!’ the praetorian grunted. ‘Weaklings must die!’
28935/H charged. Smith darted aside, stamped into the side of the alien’s knee and tripped the brute with its own momentum. He grabbed the back of the Ghast’s helmet, hooked his fingers over the front, punched his right hand forward and yanked the left hand back. There was a sickening crack and the praetorian kicked, shivered and was still.
Smith gave the body a good shove and it flopped out of the back door. He watched it fall, the leather coat wrapped around it like a dead bat’s wings. Then he closed the door.
On balance, it was probably time for a holiday.
27th of April, 1853. Success!
I am delighted to report that my first test subjects have returned apparently unharmed from their trip through the Breach. I purloined a rabbit from the Dean’s vegetable garden and purchased a tom-cat from a travelling fellow, and on Saturday night I put them both through the gateway. The rabbit seems entirely untroubled by the experience and indeed appears to want to return to the portal as quickly as possible. The tom-cat, although it has made itself scarce since its return, leaves me with the impression of being contented.
But this is not enough. I am on the cusp of a discovery that will make me the toast of Oxford. If my research is to be concluded, I will need larger test subjects. I considered using an ape, but I suspect that its absence would be missed. I need a higher organism, but one that is generally neither seen nor heard. Wait a moment – how about a child?
Part One
The Big Bang
Isambard Smith leaned back in his chair, put his model kit down and turned to the girl in his bed. ‘You know, Rhianna,’ he declared, ‘there are many spaceships in the British fleet, but I think this must be the finest.’
Rhianna looked around the room, taking in the ambiance of HMS John Pym: the exposed pipework, the slightly rusty bolts and the subtle, yet pervasive, smell of last night’s dinner. ‘Um, okay,’ she replied, brushing a stray dreadlock out of her eyes.
‘No, this ship,’ Smith said. He held up the model kit. ‘HMS Valiant, first of the Cerberus-class fast destroyer fleet. Do you know, it fires ten-pound railgun shells? Ten pounds! Imagine getting alongside Gertie and letting rip broadsides with a couple of those! Boom! No more war of aggression for you, you dirty moon-men! .. Are you alright?’
He paused, model raised ready to swoop. Rhianna gave him a small smile. ‘I’m fine.’
Smith lowered HMS Valiant. It was difficult having a girlfriend, especially a foreign vegan who disapproved of war. He had come to realise that girls were different from men and that he had to make allowances for that. If walking out with Rhianna had taught him anything, it was that women had to be treated with tact and respect. ‘You look less than chipper, old girl,’ he said. ‘It’s not a lady problem, is it?’
‘No, Isambard. Don’t you know what day it is?’
‘Indeed I do. It’s the day before the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt.’
‘It’s three days before I have to go away. And I don’t want to leave you, even though you are obsessed with battleships and high on glue fumes. I know we have to be apart, but still… I wish we didn’t.’
‘I know.’ Fear rose inside Smith: she was going to make him talk about feelings again. For any decent Englishman there were only two kinds of feelings: righteous anger and quiet satisfaction. Anger was usually directed towards aliens, traitors, foreigners and Carveth, his pilot, android and alleged subordinate; satisfaction might be felt after thwarting invaders, thrashing tyrants, eating a pie or releasing wind. He was not certain he could produce the emotions Rhianna expected of him: after all what was one supposed to think of the sea-beams glittering on the shores of Orion beyond it all being quite nice – for abroad?
‘I shall miss you too,’ he said. And he would; he knew that for a fact. ‘I like you very much.’ It sounded feeble. ‘I think you’re super,’ he added. She smiled at that, so he risked continuing to speak.
‘When I first met you, I thought you were just some funny bird from New Francisco. But I’ve learned to appreciate you properly. There’s so many facets about you that I like,’ he added, making a rhetorical gesture towards some of the facets in particular. ‘You’re nice, and you’re pretty, and you like Pink Zepplin too.’
‘I prefer the acoustic stuff.’
‘I wish I knew where you were going,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ she replied. ‘But it’s top secret. They need me to help research the Vorl.’
‘I know. War effort and all that.’
She nodded. ‘Just got to chill out and carry on.’ Despite Rhianna having been born on the New Francisco orbital colony, Smith thought that she was picking up the language pretty well. He realised that they hadn’t reached the end of the convoy run yet, and he was already missing her. Well, dammit, there was no point moping about like a sad-sack. They’d jolly well have some fun first, just as soon as he’d sorted out this model kit.
Rhianna stood up and picked up her skirt from the floor. ‘Isambard, you look really stressed. Is there something wrong? Something you’re not telling me?’
‘Not really –’
‘Have you glued HMS Valiant to your hand?’
‘A little bit.’
At 3.25 Greenwich Mean Time, Captain Smith strode into the cramped cockpit of the John Pym. ‘Status report, crew!’ he ordered, dropping into his chair and picking glue off his hand. Gerald, the ship's hamster, scurried happily in his cage.
Polly Carveth consulted her notes. ‘Status is bored and slightly nervous, captain. As you can see from the chart here…’ She held up a battered Galactic Survey map. ‘We’ve passed the system core and are now proceeding with the rest of the convoy to the Ravnavar system, where we will drop Rhianna off with the Service’s contact there. Then we and the rest of the convoy will proceed to the outer rim, which in terms of our schedule puts us somewhere between mid-afternoon tea and having a little sleep.’
‘Excellent plan. We’ll need to get our energy up for late afternoon tea. Anything to report,
Suruk?’
Suruk the Slayer stood by the wall, polishing some of the better pieces of his trophy collection.
‘Only a disappointing absence of mayhem,’ the alien replied, carefully brushing some dust from the bulbous skull of a black ripper. ‘I fear that hand-to-hand combat is rather difficult to find in deep space.’
‘In which case,’ said Smith, ‘you can help me with the crossword.’ He rummaged about at the side of his seat and came up with a folded newspaper. ‘Let’s try three down… Creature that hunts prey.
Seven letters.’
Suruk lowered the trophy-skull, opened his mandibles and made a thoughtful purring noise.
‘Carnivore,’ he said. ‘Abbreviated.’
One of the instruments began to clatter rapidly. Smith glanced up, wondering what the device was for. The needles in two dials rolled upwards and a white tongue of tape began to rattle out of a slot under them as if the machine was jeering at his ignorance. ‘Important thing happening, Carveth!’ he called out, feeling that this sort of detail was best delegated.
She peered at the tape. ‘It’s a message from the tankers, boss. They say everything’s fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ Smith asked.
Carveth shrugged. ‘Well, depends on what you call fine. When you said we were taking a cruise across the galaxy I didn’t realise we’d be escorting half a billion tons of explosive fuel.’
‘Well, what happens if one of the cooling computers packs up? Or what if your girlfriend gets off her face and throws one of her joints out of the porthole while it’s still lit? I don’t like it. I might as well have stayed at home and sat on a hand grenade.’
‘Or the washing machine,’ Suruk added helpfully. ‘Do you remember that time when I walked in –’
‘Shut up, Suruk,’ Carveth said. ‘Look out of the window.’
Smith leaned forward. ‘Let him finish, Carveth. If there’s a problem with the washing machine, I want to know. A good captain always –’
‘No, look!’ Carveth pointed to the window. ‘What’s that?’
Smith squinted at the windscreen. A small ball of light had appeared in the middle of it, growing steadily. ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s just the sun or something.’
‘Suns tend to stay the same size,’ Carveth said. She unfastened her seat belt and slipped under the dashboard. ‘Tell me when it’s gone, would you?’
Smith reached to the navigation console and took down the slide rule. ‘Stop worrying, Carveth.
It’s way off. It won’t reach us for at least a parsec.’
‘Actually,’ said the voice from below the dashboard, ‘parsecs measure distance, not ti –’
The world exploded.
Smith opened his eyes. He was looking at the stellar chart attached to the ceiling. His chest felt heavy and breathing was difficult. Faces loomed in at him: Carveth, slightly grimy from her time under the dashboard, and Suruk, his mandibles parted in an enormous grin.
‘What happened?’ Smith asked.
‘We got hit in a blastwave,’ Carveth said. ‘Systems are down to twenty-five percent. The main engine’s on half power and we’ve lost part of the landing gear.’
‘On the plus side,’ Suruk added, ‘we rode the sun.’
Smith hauled himself upright. Breathing became less difficult as Carveth lifted the hamster cage off his chest. ‘What about Rhianna?’ he asked.
‘I’m here.’ She stood in the doorway. A single droplet of blood ran down her forehead. She wiped it off and peered at her forefinger as if she’d never seen the stuff before. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, stepping into the room.
Smith blinked. ‘Nothing broken. But your head…’
Rhianna reached up to her scalp. There was a circular object wedged in her dreadlocks. She breathed in and yanked it free: it was a panmelodium music-disc, fallen from the shelf in her room. She looked at the title. ‘ Relaxing Moods,’ she said. Rhianna closed her eyes and the blood on her head dried.
Suddenly, there was no cut at all. ‘There.’
‘Well then,’ said Smith, ‘everybody’s fine. We can get back to escorting this con –’
Carveth raised a hand. ‘Er, slight problem. There isn’t a convoy any more.’
Smith rushed to the window. In the far distance, the remains of half a dozen robot tankers rolled slowly in the void. They looked like scraps of metal eggshell, spinning lazily from the force of the blast, their edges glowing as the remnants of the fuel cooked off.
‘Good God!’ Smith whispered. ‘They’ve exploded.. Carveth, this is a disaster.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘And it raises a single question.. ’
‘Will they dock it from our wages?’
‘Is this the work of the enemy? Can it be that even here, deep in the back end of space, we can still feel the insidious touch of the Ghast Empire? Is there no region so dark or obscure as to be safe from the vile probings of alien tyranny? Is this the main thrust of the attack or must we –’
‘Basically, yes.’ Carveth sat down and shook her head. ‘I knew this was a bad idea. God, I’ve not seen such a horrible cock-up since Suruk tried to milk that bull on Ambridge Prime – hang on, there’s something on the scanner –’
‘Look!’ Rhianna cried.
Space rippled in front of them. The stars flexed and bent as if painted onto stretching rubber: space seemed to pull back, then spit something out of itself before the John Pym. Cold blue lightning crackled over soot-encrusted steel. For a moment Smith saw the front of a spacecraft: bigger than the Pym and angled as if to ram it head-on; striped with red as though smeared in blood; spikes welded to the hull; chains thrashing between them in an electrical storm. The storm swelled, wrapping the hull of the craft in crackling white lightning – and suddenly it was gone. Only space remained.
‘Well, crikey!’ said Smith. ‘Did everyone see that, or am I just concussed again?’
‘It was totally real,’ Rhianna replied. ‘Believe me, I know a hallucination when I see one. I mean,
when I see something that isn’t really there, I really know it’s not real. If you see what I mean.’
Smith tried not to work it out. ‘Well, at least nobody’s hurt. Carveth, check the instruments!’
At the back of the room, Suruk rubbed his stomach. ‘I feel uneasy,’ he said. ‘I am afraid that the impact may have triggered my reproductive cycle.’
Carveth moved towards the door, then looked back. ‘What did you say?’
The alien grimaced. ‘Most irksome. It seems that I am about to breed. I feel nauseous.’
‘You’re not the only one,’ Carveth replied. ‘The thought of you having babies. .’
‘Bucket, quick!’ Suruk snarled.
Smith dropped down and grabbed the emergency flight recorder box. He tipped the emergency flight recorder out of the box, shoved it into Suruk’s hands and darted back just in time for Suruk to be noisily and voluminously sick. They stood around him like murderers around the body of their victim, realising the enormity of the horror they faced.
‘That,’ Suruk announced, ‘was most unpleasant.’
Rhianna was first to recover her composure. ‘Well, that is wonderful news, Suruk. New life is always a cause for celebration. When are you due to, er, procreate?’
‘About five seconds ago,’ Suruk replied.
Carveth crept forward, one hand over her mouth. ‘God, Suruk, you’ve been eating a hell of a lot of tapioca,’ she said.
‘That is not tapioca. Tapioca is unnatural.’ Suruk straightened up. ‘It is spawn.’
Smith stepped forward. It was all rather horrible: any proper spaceship, he reflected, would have had a trained medic or a mechanical nanny to deal with things like this. ‘Right. Thanks for that, Suruk.
Perhaps if you could remove your, er, substance, we can get back on with things. No doubt you’re very pleased at having bred –’
‘Not especially,’ Suruk said.
‘– but we do have to get back on with our mission. Even though all the ships we were escorting have exploded.’
‘Wait,’ Rhianna declared. She drew up to her full height in a soft hiss of tie-dyed fabric. ‘I feel we should formally congratulate Suruk on his experience. After all, Isambard, children are our future–’
‘What – now? ’ Face contorted with alarm, Smith stumbled back towards the door.
Carveth tugged his sleeve. ‘She means mankind’s future.’
‘Oh, right!’ Smith smoothed his uniform down. ‘Right, yes, of course. Children – good idea for mankind. In general. Very true.’
Suruk flexed his mandibles. ‘Excuse me, humans. Once you have finished gabbling about the sanctity of reproduction, do you have somewhere where I can dump this frogspawn, please?’
*
Like an explorer wading through jungle, Carveth shoved a roll of dangling tubes out of the way and pressed on into the heart of the engine room. Behind her, Suruk looked around with suspicion. The ship rumbled around them. The air smelt of burning.
‘All this dust and questionable repair work,’ he muttered. ‘On my planet, an engine room would be very different. Less gaffer tape and more skulls.’
‘It looked better before we were caught in a colossal explosion,’ Carveth replied. Above her, one of the boi
lers vented itself with an angry hiss. She set her torch up on the secondary piston array and angled it at the far wall. ‘God, what a mess! The main spinner’s burnt up its oil, the red thing up there’s now down here – and barely red – and just look at the bit that goes round the other bit. It’s going round a different bit entirely!’
‘I have full confidence in your expertise,’ Suruk replied. ‘Is this room not radioactive?’
‘Well, it’s colour-coded,’ Carveth replied. ‘If it’s green and glowing, it’s time to be going.
Especially that corner over there.’
‘Then that is where the bucket shall go.’ Suruk thrust the bucket of frogspawn into the corner, under a cracked pipe.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘It is an old custom to leave one’s spawn in the engine room. Since we M’Lak reproduce asexually, we have no genetic variance. Therefore, we must induce variation through other means.’
‘So you’re all irradiated at birth? That explains a lot.’
‘I assume our planet of origin was rather more volatile than much of space. Of course, only the greatest elders know where it is. . and they forget quite a lot, too.’
Carveth looked around the room, surprised just how much duct tape had been used in the construction of the John Pym’s engines. ‘So what do we feed them on?’
‘Feed? My spawn, you mean? Well, I was not really planning on feeding them on anything.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘They have each other.’
‘They eat each other? That’s horrible!’
‘It is the only way. Would you want your galaxy swamped by a wave of my spawning?’
‘That’s even more horrible. God, Suruk, you really are gross.’
The alien shrugged. ‘It is the honourable way. As the ancients said in the days before time, when the spirits of the forefathers roamed across space, “Better tusks than rusks”. The surviving spawn will become warriors, eventually – unless one remains in the water and grows to be a seer.’
‘A what?’
‘Never mind. It is bad to speak lightly of the Gilled.’ Suruk cracked his knuckles. ‘Now then, what needs repairing?’
