A Game of Battleships

by Toby Frost

  ‘Hey!’ Rhianna stepped back, drawing up like an offended cobra. ‘That's not me.’

  ‘Indeed it is. If you are not careful, your abilities will cause you to explode. You must master the power within you and release it slowly in.. ah.. puffs. A true ruminant, of course, has two stomachs. You do not even have that advantage.’

  Rhianna said, ‘So you really think of me as a cow.’

  ‘A mystic cow. Your psychic potential is matched only by your rampant herbivorousness.’

  ‘Suruk, did you see something in here a few minutes ago?’

  ‘Nothing escapes the hunter’s eye. I saw nothing.’

  ‘I thought. . I heard a kind of burbling sound.’ She gazed down at the mirror and Suruk sensed the edge of her mind probing at it and, from there, reaching towards him. He imagined his soul shrinking back into his body, hiding there, and Rhianna shrugged and said, ‘Maybe I ought to lay off the red weed for a while.’

  Smith called out from the cockpit.

  *

  ‘So,’ Dreckitt said, ‘you got a plan to find this guy?’

  Wainscott stood before a long mirror in one of the security rooms, his face close to the glass. He had just finished a vending-machine pie and was picking detritus out of his beard. ‘Early days so far,’ he said. ‘But I thought I’d probably cause a stir, drive the bugger into the open.’ He took a white ball from his pocket and squeezed it between his fingers. ‘I’ve been looking for something to do with this plastique for ages.’

  ‘You consider jacking into the net? Every grifter on the street knows that data finds its own level.

  In the neon flow of ice, truth is just another programme to slot.’

  ‘You mean, have I looked on the computer? Yes, I have. Tom Perdu’s a false name, of course.

  Beyond that, nothing. I’ve had Nelson bring up a full map of this place, or as full as there is, leaving out the bits Barton built himself. We’ve got our work cut out.’

  The door opened behind them and Susan entered, carrying a tray. She kicked the door closed with her heel. ‘Alright,’ she said, setting the tray down, ‘I’ve got everything we need here.’ Dreckitt looked at the tray: it contained a roll of printout, a dozen blurry photographs, two silenced pistols, cups, milk, a teapot and half a pack of digestives. ‘Your turn to pour,’ she said.

  ‘Listen,’ Dreckitt said, ‘I’ve got a Hoyt-Axton emotional-response recognition kit in my valise.

  How about we wire it up and put some of these highbinders through the third degree?’

  ‘I’ve a better, comprehensible plan,’ Wainscott replied. ‘The first step is for me to publicly remove my underwear, thus causing a distraction.’

  ‘And once you’ve started undressing, what do we do?’

  The major smiled and tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Wait and see, young fellow. All will be revealed.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

  Wainscott sighed. ‘The last time we did an operation like this, I throttled the guards while Susan and the chaps rigged the place to explode. Problem is, we are the guards. Tricky.’

  Susan reached across the tray. ‘We don’t need to. Look… these pictures are from the security cameras. Here are the Europeans coming in.’ She laid three photographs on the table as if dealing cards, then three more. ‘Here they are passing through the airlock. The next pictures show that they’ve gone away to get ready to join the others.’

  Dreckitt leaned in. He pointed to a figure at the rear of the picture, a broard-shouldered man carrying two suitcases. ‘So who’s this guy? A late arrival?’

  Susan shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s not in their party, or else they’d be looking for him.’ Dreckitt rubbed his stubble. ‘But he’s following them through. I got a hunch… what if this guy at the back was laying low and took the chance to slip through, using them as a screen?’

  Wainscott crunched a biscuit. ‘But where would he hide? How would he get into the station in the first place? We’ve got scanners that’ll pick up life-forms, humanoid shapes, explosives, guns. .’

  Susan said, ‘An android might not show up. One of the older models would give out no body heat. If you scanned him, he'd just show up as an object. He could just power down and fold up in some corner of a ship and wait for it to arrive.’

  Wainscott broke a digestive in half and peered at it suspiciously. ‘All very well, Susan. But, assuming this is our man and he is a robot, he would still have to get from the European ship and into the colony. And I can't see him getting past two dozen scanners and a bunch of M'Lak riflemen. At least, not with his head still attached.’

  ‘That’s the smart part of the caper,’ Dreckitt replied. ‘He was hiding in the luggage.’

  ‘I don’t follow you. Surely they’d know if they had the wrong luggage.’

  ‘Nix, pal,’ Dreckitt said. ‘Have you ever seen how they handle baggage in France?’

  For a moment, Wainscott was silent.

  Susan nodded slowly.

  ‘Dear Lord!’ Wainscott whispered, ‘that really is fiendish. It gives a whole new dimension to industrial action.’ He scowled at the table, then picked up one of the silenced pistols. ‘Time to go to work, gentlemen. We have a good idea of what this fellow looks like. We know he can’t be carrying more than a suitcase of kit. Let’s put him out of action before he does the same to us.’

  Dreckitt put his hat on and pulled the brim down low. ‘I’m on the case.’

  Wainscott shoved the pistol into his shorts. ‘Then it’s the usual plan… locate and destroy. Search every room, every corridor and air vent before this person gets the chance to work his evil. And tell that Le Fantome chappie what’s going on. We may need his skills. After all, we hunt a dangerous enemy. Our villain’s already passed himself off as a French public sector employee – he may strike at any moment!’

  *

  Suruk got to the door first but, for someone with shorter legs and no boots, Rhianna was close behind. They rushed through the doorway like junk falling out of a cupboard. ‘What is it?’ Rhianna said.

  Smith looked up from the scanner. The light of the screen gave his face a sepulchral glow. ‘Men, I have worrying news. We have a reading of multiple blobs on this object here, headed straight towards the kitchen.’

  Carveth leaned forward in the captain's chair, tried to get up, and flailed like a fat man in a bathtub. ‘Er, how many blobs? How fast are they going?’

  ‘Six,’ Smith replied. ‘About an inch every ten seconds.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Carveth struggled upright and pressed in beside him. ‘Enemy ships, closing fast!’

  ‘Good God,’ Smith replied. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Squeal and wee,’ Carveth replied. ‘Or we could change places.’

  ‘Good plan.’ They squeezed past each other awkwardly. Smith dropped into the captain's chair, picked a long hair off the headrest and said, ‘Pilot, take immediate evasive manoeuvres. Are we seen?’

  She checked the instruments while replacing the cushions. ‘No signs of detection. If they were, by now we'd be in hailing range or in pieces. I’m pulling back into the asteroid field. The mass should confuse their sensors.’

  The John Pym slipped between the asteroids and Carveth killed the engines. ‘Hmm,’ said Smith, peering at the windscreen. ‘The enemy don’t look like much.’

  ‘They’re far away,’ Carveth replied. ‘According to the scanners, if we were the size of an egg, any one of those ships would be as big as a buffalo. And you know what happens if a buffalo sits on an egg.’

  Suruk raised a hand. ‘A monstrous, horned chicken?’

  Smith shook his head. ‘Your optimism is misplaced, old chap, along with your understanding of biology.’ He sat back in the chair. In the hamster cage, Gerald had dug himself into his bedding. ‘Well, we’re outnumbered and outgunned. By the inexorable logic of history, at this point we British ought to win. On the other hand, we don’t have any guns and
those ships are actually rather large. Carveth, turn us round.’

  ‘Wait,’ she replied. ‘Look at the way they’re moving. They’re scanning the area. As soon as we leave the asteroid belt, we’ll be wide open.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘At the moment, we’re safe within the belt. But once they come looking –’

  ‘Damn!’ Smith hissed. He rubbed his forehead, trying to coax out a plan. What would Admiral Nelson have done? Sought comfort from Hardy, or even, given the desperation of the circumstances, attempted a desperate manoeuvre with Hornblower. They had to escape and, more than that, get back to the station and warn the others. ‘If we fly out of the asteroids,’ he asked, ‘what will they detect?’

  ‘Well, us,’ Carveth replied. ‘I mean, our engines.’

  ‘So if we were to fly away without using our engines, we’d be alright, yes?’

  She paused. ‘You do realise that the engines are the bit that makes us move, right?’

  ‘So all we need to do is get clear. The asteroids are orbiting the planet over there, so if we get close enough–’

  ‘We’d drop into the gravitational field.’

  Suruk chuckled. ‘And creep up on them, silent as a quanbeast in a herd of ravanphants!’

  ‘Creep away from them,’ Carveth said. ‘But we’d have to pull out of the asteroid belt and get closer to the planet to slingshot off its gravitational field. And that means firing the engines. And then we’d stick out like a walrus in a tutu.’

  Rhianna said, ‘Let’s use the power of wind.’

  ‘What?’

  They turned and looked at her. She sat in one of the emergency seats, legs crossed under her.

  ‘Wind can move us.’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Carveth replied. ‘Wind doesn’t make me go anywhere. It’s everyone else that moves.’

  ‘But we’ve got air tanks, right? And they’re kinda under high pressure? So if we release some of the air, won’t that push us to one side, like a rocket?’

  Smith looked at the ships in the screen, tiny dots moving out on the same trajectory. ‘Maybe. . maybe. Dammit, you’re right! It’s just a matter of maths, like back at school. Every force has an equal and opposite hypotenuse. It’s the sum of the diameter or. . circumfugal force. At any rate, I’m circumfused.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Suruk observed.

  ‘Carveth, we have Rhianna to thank for this plan. Suruk, you and I will check on the air tanks.

  We don’t want to jettison too much.’

  The alien stood up. ‘Excellent,’ he said, rubbing his mandibles together. ‘We have delayed long enough. Time to grab the bull by the udders.’

  ‘The horns, you mean,’ Smith replied.

  Suruk paused at the doorway. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it was definitely the udders.’

  It took six minutes to find the emergency venting control. It was behind a panel in the corridor that Smith hadn’t known he could open and consisted of a large metal wheel. ‘I shall assist,’ Suruk said, reaching in. ‘It is like a jam jar – or a lemming man’s head.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  Smith looked round: Rhianna stood in the corridor. ‘You could make us some tea.’

  ‘I meant, maybe I could use my psychic powers to hide the ship?’

  ‘Good idea. Could you stick the kettle on first though, old girl?’ For some reason, she didn’t look overly pleased. Perhaps they were running low on tea.

  Carveth’s face appeared in the cockpit doorway. ‘We’re sinking through the asteroid belt,’ she announced. ‘Two minutes and we’ll be ready to jump into the gravity field. Three, tops.’

  ‘Alright. On your mark, pilot.’

  ‘No, on yours. You’re the captain.’

  He felt curiously affronted by this. ‘But you know how spaceships work. You fly this thing.’

  ‘So do you now.’

  Suruk leaned close to Smith, near enough to jab his ear with a mandible. ‘Fear not, Mazuran.

  Apparently, manoeuvring in space is just a matter of angles. Like one of your ball games.’

  That did nothing to reassure Smith. At the mention of ball games he remembered a sodden plain of half-frozen mud, more warzone than Wembley; damp socks sliding down over glass-cold shins, of the smack of hard leather ball into podgy gut; of being the last in a row and a half-broken voice saying ‘Suppose I’ll have to take Smith’. Character building, they’d called it, the traditional euphemism for ritual humiliation.

  Smith was suddenly no longer ten. He looked around, and the alien grinned back at him. ‘You have your battle-face on, Mazuran,’ Suruk said. ‘You look like a little dog killing a rat.’

  ‘Let’s get to work!’ Smith replied. ‘Carveth? What’s our position?’

  She called back, ‘In thirty seconds’ time, we won't look like an asteroid any more. More like a sitting duck.’

  ‘Carveth, power us down!’ he said, looking at the wheel.

  ‘Systems down,’ she replied.

  The background hum disappeared and, as the lights sank to emergency bulbs, the sound around them faded away. The Pym sped on without air to slow it and as quiet and dead to scanners as the rocks around it.

  A new sound rose from the cabins behind him: Rhianna humming as she settled down into a meditative state. It made Smith uncomfortable but he did not know why.

  ‘We're leaving the asteroid belt,’ Carveth announced. ‘Right about. . now.’

  ‘Ready, Suruk?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Then let’s turn it. On three. One. . two.. three!’

  He grimaced and tried to spin the wheel. Damn, the thing was stiff! It must have rusted shut from disuse. Smith gritted his teeth, grunting with effort, feeling his muscles ache from the strain.

  ‘Dammit!’ he puffed, stepping back, ‘Bloody thing’s –’ and the wheel spun in Suruk’s hands so quickly that it flew off, sending the alien headlong into the opposite wall.

  Suruk climbed to his feet, slowly rubbing his head. ‘What happened? Why am I holding this wheel? I will destroy you all! Oh, hello.’

  It occurred to Smith that he and Suruk had been turning the wheel in opposite directions. No wonder it had been reluctant to move.

  ‘Carveth?’ Smith called. ‘We’ve turned the wheel –’

  ‘And broken it,’ Suruk added.

  ‘So the air supply should be blowing out!’

  ‘And I tore its head off. Metaphorically.’

  ‘We’re moving!’ Carveth cried. ‘Yaw to port, thirty degrees. Here we go!’

  Smith strode to the cockpit. Slowly, with a lazy elegance suited to a much larger – and less dented – craft, the John Pym swung away from the main belt and in towards the planet itself. Smith saw light wink on a row of tiny points, like sparks in the distance – the enemy ships, those that could yet be seen.

  Carveth checked the dials. ‘Pressure in the air tanks is dropping. Eighty per cent. . seventy-six. . sixty-nine. . er, should he be holding that wheel?’

  ‘Good point.’ Smith turned to Suruk. ‘Can you replace that, please?’

  The alien shrugged. ‘Does a Procturan black ripper secrete resin in the woods? Of course I can.’

  As Suruk returned to the corridor, bearing the severed wheel like a feral version of Mr Toad,

  Smith watched the planet grow in the windscreen. Without resistance to slow it down, the Pym would be drawn deeper into the gravity field, pulled down towards the surface. Strange, he thought, how graceful it all was, and how deadly. Like ballet with sharks.

  ‘Boss? Boss!’

  Smith pulled himself away from an interesting mental image.

  ‘Air tanks on fifty! That’s got to be enough!’

  ‘All right then. Suruk? Spin the wheel back!’

  Carveth glanced between the windscreen, the scanner and the captain, as if she did not know which to trust the least. ‘He’d better get it right,’ she said, ‘otherwise we’ll be holding our breath on the way back.’

  ‘Anti-clockwise!’ Smith call
ed. He watched the needle in the air gauge, sinking slowly as if under the weight of its own brasswork. It froze behind the dirty glass, crawling to a halt at forty-eight. ‘It’s stopped. Hull temperature’s rising, though.’

  ‘That’ll be the atmosphere,’ Carveth replied. ‘Once I gun the engines, we’ll look like any other gas flare. You can wake Rhianna up now.’

  Smith hurried to Rhianna’s room, ducked under the dreamcatcher and tapped her on the shoulder. She glanced round, eyes wide, and smiled. ‘I guess we’re okay, right?’

  ‘Indeed we are.’

  ‘I put up a psychic shield. The Vorl taught me how to focus my abilities.’

  ‘Super. That was some razor-sharp meditation.’ Leaning through the door, he called, ‘Carveth?

  Are we out of danger now?’

  ‘Apart from flying towards a planet, we’re fine.’

  Together, they returned to the cockpit. Locked into the planet’s gravitation field, the John Pym shot forward like a stone in a sling. Their speed made the hull glow: along the edges of the windscreen, light flickered as patches of gas reacted with the heat.

  ‘Just another piece of debris, burning up,’ Carveth said.

  ‘Good work,’ Smith said. ‘Thanks, Rhianna. That was a jolly good idea of yours. Whatever inspired you to think that releasing that load of hot air would help us?’

  Rhianna smiled beatifically. “’ guess I was just unlocking the creative potential of my spirit.

  Creativity is the oldest and most mystic force in all of us.’

  ‘Well, absolutely. Well said, I’m sure. Creativity wins the day, eh Suruk?’

  ‘Piffle,’ said the alien. ‘The day is not yet won. We have escaped, for now, but the enemy fleet remains. We must warn our comrades, and then return to do battle.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Smith said. ‘Men, our struggle against the void is not yet ended.’ Pausing rhetorically, he rested his elbow on the nearest item of appropriate height, which happened to be Carveth’s head. ‘Indeed, we have not just witnessed the end of the beginning, let alone the beginning of the end. But if the beginning’s end has truly begun, then we must devote ourselves to the noble end of beginning – oh stuff it, just take us back home.’