by Toby Frost
‘I ate that for elevenses. Ah, Smith. Still going down with me, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good man.’ Wainscott was scruffy, slight, clever and quick, and probably the bravest and most dangerous man that Smith had ever met. He was also, according to rumour, a former resident of the Sunnyvale Home for the Psychologically Uneven. ‘Now, men: here’s the state of play. The filthy lemmings have fifty Kaldathrian beetle-people down there, and they’ve promised to start pulling their legs off the moment they detect any ships in orbit –hence we’re using assault pods to slip through the radar. We need to rescue these fellows before our main force goes in and plasters the fluffy bastards from on high.
‘The captives are spread between three forts, each with its own codename. We will be dealing with the first fort, codenamed Theodore. Two commando teams from the Indastan army will be taking the other two forts, Simon and Alvin. The Kaldathrians are too big to get on board, so we’ve got a medical shuttle set to follow us down once it’s safe. What’s the word from Polly Pilot, Smith?’
‘We’re lined straight up with the drop zone,’ Smith said.
‘From the looks of it we’ll land in the courtyard of this fort of theirs. The lemmings haven’t detected us, but as soon as they know we’re there, I gather they can be relied upon to go absolutely bananas.’
‘Exactly,’ said Wainscott. ‘So, priority one is to find our people and secure the area so the medic ship can put down and get them away. Priority two is to smash the place up. Wreck it.’ Wainscott grinned. ‘Plus, there’s a bonus. General Wikwot himself is believed to be in one of the forts, probably on a visit to do over the prisoners in person. If he’s down there, we Shanghai the fat sod and drag him back for trial. Understood?’
There were nods of assent from the Deepspace Operations Group.
‘Everything you’ve heard about the lemming men is true. These are the cruellest and most depraved creatures in the galaxy. You are to expect demented resistance. Now, I know the Kaldathrians may not be British citizens, or even human, but its time the Yull learned that nobody messes with the beetle people. They belong to us!’ He nodded towards the row of long sealed boxes at the far end of the hold. Each was the size of a telephone booth, held in a cradle ready for launch. ‘Ever use an assault pod before, Smith?’
‘No,’ said Smith.
‘How about a khazi?’
‘Many times.’
‘Very similar principle,’ Wainscott explained, ‘except this time it’s the ship that drops its load, not you.’ His laugh was hard and barking; arguably indicative of the man as a whole.
From the doorway Carveth said, ‘We’re in stable orbit, ready to go. So just sit tight and wait for the movement to stop.’
‘Good. Now, where’s that alien chap of yours?’
Suruk the Slayer dropped from the rafters, landing with a soft thump between them, like a kitten.
The resemblance stopped there. He stood up, and his mandibles opened to reveal a large, hungry grin. He wore his armoured vest, and there were knives strapped to his belt, arms and boots. Suruk wore a couple of his favourite skulls and the sacred spear of his ancestors was strapped across his back. ‘Greetings, friends,’ he said. ‘Not long now until our blades run red with lemming blood. We shall accost them on their doorstep like the carol singers of doom!’
They climbed into the pods. Inside Smith’s cubicle it was small and smelt of plastic. There were a few controls: a dispenser to his right would print out copies of the mission objective and landing zone; at his shoulder, a chain controlled the emergency door release.
Carveth looked into the pod. ‘I’ll be waiting up here. Good luck,’ she said. She slammed the door and Smith was suddenly alone. He leaned back against the padded seat and strapped himself in.
He felt grimly nervous, like a man with bladder trouble at the start of a rollercoaster ride. The pod shook and fell onto its side, ready to be shot out of the back of the ship – or else Carveth had pushed him over for a laugh. If she has, he thought, there’ll be hell to – and then suddenly the hold sprang open and the assault pods flew out like pips from a squashed fruit.
He was in space, hurtling towards the landing zone.
Bloody hell, he thought, what am I doing? The Empire’s work, he assured himself. Bashing the Furries. He flicked on the radio, hoping to pick up the others, or at least the Light Programme.
‘. . . have to break contact until we hit the ground,’ Wainscott was saying. ‘Remember: if you can’t get back, make sure they don’t take you alive. Use your pills. Or better still, a grenade. Hello Smith. Raring to go, are we?’
‘Something like that,’ said Smith. ‘Has anyone heard from Suruk?’
‘I am here, friends,’ Suruk growled over the intercom. ‘I was indulging in a brief slumber prior to slaughtering our foes. Are we nearly there yet?’
‘’Absolutely!’ Wainscott said. ‘Now, listen: we’ll cut radio once we hit the upper atmosphere. As soon as we hit ground the comms’ll come back on. Everyone work towards each other and regroup. And keep an eye out for those captives as you do. They’re about the size of a horse, so they shouldn’t be too hard to find. Remember: if you see anything with whiskers and a twitchy nose, kill it. Got me?’
The Deepspace Operations Group understood.
‘Loud and clear,’ said Smith.
‘Best of luck,’ Wainscott said, and the radio went dead.
Smith sat in the rocking, rattling pod, the window too high to look out of. A counter under the door lock began to roll, clicking down. Not long, he thought. The pod lurched and white fire licked at the window.
He closed his eyes and leaned back. It’s just a khazi, he told himself. Just a khazi in a hurricane. And besides, who else is here to do this, if not me?
It was no time to be afraid. The lemming-men didn’t know fear: for them, the only sin was self-preservation.
The Yull were not afraid of coward humans.
‘I’ll show them cowards,’ Smith said. Something at the side of the pod went clunk – decoys being launched, hopefully, and not the steering vanes falling off – and it shook more than before. Smith checked his rifle again. He felt a little sick.
The counter was whizzing now, too fast for the eye to take in. Smith thought about Rhianna, a billion miles away, working with the secret service’s psychic department and gone for good from him. Then about the DKR Clauswitz, the vast UE troop carrier that the Yull had rammed to announce their entry into the war. And then the city of Neustadt: overrun and burned to the ground in the same night. The lemming men had rushed headlong from their forest homeworld deep into human space. They called it the Divine Migration: to everyone else, it was merciless war.
‘Final descent commenced,’ said the pod.
*
The Marshall of the fort was strutting across the courtyard, axe swinging at his side, when the Ghast advisory officer strode over to meet him.
‘ Hup-hup,’ said the Ghast, out of courtesy.
‘ Ak nak!’ the Marshall replied. They switched to English, each finding the other’s language difficult to pronounce.
‘I hear that you wish to bring the prisoners into the courtyard,’ the Ghast said, rubbing its antennae together.
‘Yes!’ the Marshall puffed out his chest. ‘The General wishes to test his axe. Perhaps he will sacrifice some of the beetle people. Most amusing!’
The Ghast scowled. The left side of its jaw had been badly burned during the street fighting on New Luton.
Behind the scars, its malevolent eyes studied the Yullian Marshall with contempt. ‘Your petty sadism is inefficient. Drawing attention to this base with a massacre will result in our secrecy being compromised, and that will not be tolerated. Were the humans to attack—’
‘Humans, attack? Ant-soldier, you speak rubbish! They would be stupid enough to want to rescue the captives, but they would not dare try. Offworlders are too cowardly to protect their own, let alone these dung-rolling Kaldathri
ans. Hahaha! We noble Yull will slaughter all stupid talking insects – er, present company excluded, of course.’
‘Foolish. Do not say that you were not warned.’ The Ghast pulled its coat tight around its body, stamped and turned on its heel, rear end bobbing behind it in time with its steps.
Even they are cowards, the Marshall thought. When Earth is enslaved and the M’Lak dead, we shall turn on the Ghast Empire. They may be mighty, but none can stop the Yu—
An armoured telephone box dropped out of the sky onto his head, bursting him like a water-bomb. The box fell open and Wainscott sprang from it like a showgirl popping out of a novelty cake, a machine gun blazing in either hand.
*
‘I am a khazi in a hurricane,’ Smith told himself, and the bottom of the pod smacked into something, rocked, stopped, shot straight down ten feet and stopped again.
He sighed. Well, that hadn’t been too bad. He’d had worse journeys on British Monorail. The window exploded and a spear shot through like a bolt of light.
Smith threw himself down as it slammed into the head-rest. He yanked the chain and the wall in front of him flew off and hurled the lemming man behind it into a pile of crates. It squeaked feebly and died.
Smith looked around him. He had landed in a bunkroom, crudely hacked out of the rock. Sunflower seeds lay in a pile on the floor; pictures of what looked like dormice in suggestive poses were pinned up beside the bunks. The drop-pod stood in a shaft of light where it had crashed through the roof, as if sent down from heaven.
Shadow flicked over the light and a figure dropped onto him. Six feet of rodent hit him in the chest with a ragged screech and Smith staggered back, sprang forward and shouldered the Yull as it fumbled for its axe. Its slim, hard paws swiped at his face – he dodged and the two of them were scrabbling at one another in the dim room, knocking each other’s blows aside.
The Yull stank of sawdust and pee. ‘Filthy offworlder!’ it snarled, which struck Smith as pretty rich. ‘Now you die!’ It tried to gouge his eyes, he twisted aside and claws raked his cheek. Smith knew Fighto: he dropped his weight and knocked its legs aside, and as it lost balance he grabbed it round the neck and drove it head-first into the wall. It fell and he brained it with his riflebutt.
Now what? He paused, listened, and checked the console strapped to his wrist. No signal. ‘Damn,’ he said, and he started down the tunnel.
He reached the end of the passage and peered around the corner: crude striplights turned the corridor into a patchwork of shadow and stark light. There was a doorway up ahead, and in it a Yullian officer holding a club stood with its back to him.
‘All into the courtyard!’ he barked, addressing someone in the room behind. ‘Move, scum!’
The sword made almost no sound as Smith drew it. He ran and thrusted, the needle-thin tip slipped through the officer’s back. Smith twisted the blade and pulled it free, and the lemmingoid gargled and dropped into a heap of dead fur, like a stack of pelts.
He stepped into the room. Like jewels in dirt, dozens of huge eyes stared back at him. A beetle-person lurched out of the dark; its six legs wobbling, its carapace scorched and grimy. Slowly, as if remembering something from long ago, it looked down at Smith, raised a limb and saluted.
Smith saluted back. ‘Hello,’ he said, sheathing his sword. ‘Isambard Smith, pleased to meet you. I’m here to get you people out of here.’
‘The army?’ a voice buzzed from the floor. ‘The army’s come!’
‘Well, not the whole army,’ said Smith. ‘There’s only seven of us. But don’t worry, it’s enough. Now, can you all walk?’
‘Some cannot,’ said a third Kaldathrian, clambering upright. ‘Those monsters beat us and stole our dung to stop us from rolling it – and they call us savages!’
‘Don’t worry, old chap, we’re fixing them. Are there any more guards?’
‘There is a room just down the corridor,’ the beetle who had saluted said. ‘It is where they lurk and plot.’
‘Stay here,’ said Smith. ‘Lock yourselves in. I’ll be back in a moment.’
He stepped back into the corridor and nearly walked into Suruk the Slayer. ‘Blimey! You scared me there, Suruk!’
The M’Lak carried his spear in one hand, and was pulling a laden trolley with the other, draped in a cloth.
‘What’s on the trolley?’ Smith said.
‘Heads,’ Suruk said, lifting the cloth. ‘My pod landed in their mess-room, an appropriately-named location.’
Smith outlined the situation and together they strode up the corridor. There was a large metal door ahead. Smith cocked his Civiliser and Suruk turned the handle and gently pushed the door.
They looked into a laboratory. Machinery lined the walls, both human computers and alien biotech. Ghast science officers fussed over ceiling-high stasis tanks, dictating into bio-transcribers. A pair of Yullian guards watched sullenly. There was a table in the middle of it all, and beside the table was a man dressed like a chauffeur: in boots, black jacket and a cap with false antennae protruding from the brim.
‘A Ghastist!’ Smith cried. ‘Gertie-loving traitor!’
He fired and the Ghastist fell across the table. The Yull moved: Smith blasted one and Suruk’s spear flew into the other’s chest. One of the Ghast scientists reached into its lab-coat for a pistol and Suruk hurled a machete, hitting it right between the eyes. Smith shot the second Ghast.
Suruk grabbed the third and threw it through the glass of the nearest tank, then dragged it out and repeated the process to make sure.
‘Good lord,’ Smith said, looking around. ‘They must have been researching something really important here –no wonder HQ didn’t want us to bomb it.’
‘Top secret, it seems,’ Suruk said, readying his spear.
‘Now the smashing begins!’
Something moved behind them and Smith turned, gun ready, to recognise one of Wainscott’s men. ‘Craig?’
Craig was slim and pale, the Deepspace Operations Group’s disguise expert. At the moment he looked like himself. ‘Careful, Captain! You could have my eye out with that.’
‘Sorry,’ said Smith. ‘I’ve found the prisoners; they’re down the corridor. They’re pretty roughed-up. How’s things up top?’
‘Busy. Listen: we need to be away in five minutes. I’ll get the beetles out; you give us a hand clearing the courtyard topside.’
‘Righto,’ Smith nodded, and Craig jogged out of the room. ‘Just coming.’
Smith would never know what made him reach over the dead Ghastist and pick up the man’s leverarch file.
Perhaps it was providence, or destiny, or just that the file had shiny metal bits on the front. But he had only flicked through a couple of pages before he knew that he was dealing with something very serious indeed. ‘Good God,’ he whispered.
‘What have you found, Mazuran?’ Suruk demanded.
‘I’m not sure. . . it’s in Ghastish. Let’s see. . . Hak natsak – that means surgery of the reproductive organs – smak Vorlak – attacking the Vorl?’ He looked up. ‘Suruk, this is vital information. We have to get it to W at once.
This lever-arch file could contain the destiny of the universe!’
Suruk looked doubtful. ‘A small, flat destiny, it seems.’
*
Major Wainscott ran through the warren with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, killing all before him.
He booted a door open, saw a Ghast advisor getting up and shot it as it drew its pistol. A Yullian soldier leaped out of nowhere: Wainscott dodged its axe, sprang in and sank his knife into the rodent’s throat.
The lemmings were fighting to the death. Good, he thought: he’d never liked them anyway.
He searched the room but there was nothing to destroy or kill. Wainscott sighed, somewhat disappointed, and stepped back into the corridor to come face-to-face with the biggest rodent he had ever seen.
It was a mound of solid fat on solid muscle that blocked off the passage as if
poured into it. There were black circles around the eyes; the brute’s left pupil was dead and white. The beast shook its chops.
‘General Wikwot,’ Wainscott said.
The general snarled. He raised his huge paws; steel hooks were strapped to his fists. His voice was coarse and hard. ‘Well, well, the offworlder bigwig. But are you big enough to fight me, eh?’ Wikwot took a step closer, teeth bared. ‘This warren is mine!’
Smith emerged into smoke and dazzling light. The courtyard was empty and burning: black fumes billowed from a row of Yullian ramships standing against the far wall.
The guards, at least forty of them, lay across the yard as if scattered by a sower’s hand. The air was full of fluff.
Susan and Nelson had set up the beam gun behind a pile of sacks. Smith strode forward to meet them, Suruk by his side, pushing the trolley – and a figure jumped out from the battlements. Smith whirled, raising his pistol, but the Yull had already fallen into two pieces, neatly bisected. Susan lowered the beam gun.
Something moved on one of the ramships. An explosion had cracked its wing, and its pilot ran down the length of the fuselage, straddled the nose and began to unscrew the nosecone.
No one seemed to have noticed. Puzzled, Smith watched the pilot as it took a small mallet from its jacket.
‘What on Earth is he doing?’ Smith said, more to himself than anyone else, and the end of the nosecone fell off to reveal a plunger and a large red button. Howling something to its war god, the pilot leaned back and swung the mallet down, towards the button –
‘Bloody hell!’ cried Smith as he flicked up his pistol.
The gun kicked in Smith’s hands and the Yull shrieked, stiffened and slid off the nose. The courtyard was suddenly quiet.
A side door burst open and a crowd of beetle-people scuttled out. Wainscott struggled into the courtyard after them, dragging what looked like a pile of fur coats behind him. His knuckles were bloody and split. ‘Good work, Smith!’ he said, dropping his burden on the ground.
‘Here’s the General – and a fat bugger he is too. Rather a successful trip so far, don’t you think?’
