by Toby Frost
‘Shush!’
‘Is she weird? I bet she’s into all, like, stuff. She’ll have you doing all sorts of weird things. You want to watch your arse around a woman like that, literally. But I’m really happy for you.’
‘And I salute you,’ Suruk said. ‘May your seed swim briskly, and a legion of great warriors spurt boldly from your loins.’
‘Erm, thanks.’
‘But beware, Mazuran! For softness ruins many a warrior, and many times have I been honoured to call you friend. So by my honour, she’d better be good enough for you, or the blade of Suruk will claim her skull!’
‘Well, that’s very kind.’
‘We will still be friends, will we not?’
‘Of course we will.’
‘Good. You have done well, distasteful as human breeding is to me. Your tenacity paid off: sometimes, it is the longest odds that pay the greatest dividends. Which reminds me,’ he added, turning to Carveth, ‘seeing that they have finally mated, you owe me five Earth pounds.’
She scowled and fished out her wallet. ‘Ah, bloody hell.’
‘You had a bet on me and Rhianna?’ Smith tailed off, vaguely horrified.
‘Well, yeah,’ Carveth said. ‘More of a sweepstake, really. I thought I’d make some easy money.’
Smith sighed. ‘I suppose you want some of my tea, too.’
He returned to Rhianna’s room. She rolled over and said drowsily, ‘They know, right?’
A muffled whooping issued from the lounge. ‘’Fraid so,’ Smith said.
She smiled, a long, sly smile that he could feel between his pockets. ‘Want to give them something to whoop about?’
‘Oh, righto.’ He approached and put the mugs down on the bedside table. Smith got into bed, fully clothed.
Under the covers, he thrashed about.
‘What’re you doing?’ Rhianna said.
‘Taking my trousers off.’
‘You don’t have to keep covering yourself. I’ve see guys naked before.’
‘I’m a bit of a wreck, I’m afraid.’
She sighed. ‘That’s just negative body image, thrust upon you by the fascist media. Now, come here.’
They made love again. Looking up at Rhianna as she bounced about Smith thought, I could really get used to this.
Fifteen minutes later he sat up in bed with the covers pulled up to his armpits. Rhianna lay next to him on top of the sheets, completely naked. From Smith’s point of view, this was a pretty good arrangement.
She was sleek and tanned, with a dancer’s body. Her breasts were quite small, her navel a neat dent in the very-nearly-flat expanse of her stomach. She’d once mentioned something about belly dancing; Smith would have liked to see that. Her legs and armpits were, mercifully, shaved, although, he reflected, she seemed a bit fluffy ‘down there’. At the moment she lay on her front, revealing a small tattoo between her shoulder-blades. It was probably meant to be a Chinese character, but from here it looked like a stickman. Her legs were bent at the knee and crossed at the ankles, showing him her rather grey soles.
The end of her bed, he’d noticed, was slightly grubby from her feet.
‘I really feel we connected there,’ Rhianna said.
‘Well of course,’ Smith said. ‘I mean, after all, I, ah, don’t know how much more connected you can get than that. If you were a space station we’d have swapped astronauts by now.’
‘I mean emotionally,’ Rhianna said, ‘Spiritually. I felt it was a –’ she made a weighing-out gesture with her hands, which Smith recognised as a trouble sign – ‘I felt that it was more, somehow, than just the ritual intrusion of the chthonic male into the sacred feminine other.’
Smith thought about it. ‘You’ve got smashing boobs, Rhianna,’ he said.
3 Preparations for Battle
It was good weather for fighting. A light wind cooled Suruk’s skin and the fragrance of tea seeped into his nostrils.
The humans were bringing up their tanks. The task of building them had been farmed out to various workshops and many had improved on the standard designs, giving them cowcatchers, fluted chimneys and extra scrollwork on the armour plate. The tanks had parked up in rows in the tea warehouses, as if for a particularly violent traction engine show.
A little way off, a pair of humans in black gowns were talking to a group of soldiers. Priests, Suruk realised.
Suruk recognised the soldiers as the Deepspace Operations Group, Wainscott’s men.
He approached. Wainscott waved. He looked slightly more presentable than usual, but still far from ideal, as if he had slept on a park bench instead of under it.
Wainscott rubbed his stubbly beard and gave Suruk a hard, friendly smile. ‘Mr Slayer,’ he said. ‘You all set?’
‘Indeed. And you?’
‘We’re ready,’ Susan said. She wore a Beam gun across her body, a cumbersome weapon that looked as if it had been improvised from several other sources, including a shotgun and a watering can. A big curved powerpack jutted from the top of the gun. It was ugly and lethal.
‘Then may your ancestors guide your blades today, friends. But I must tell you one thing before we make war. Isambard Smith did a thing of wildness last night with the seer Rhianna, and you all owe me five pounds.’
They huffed and produced their wallets. Patiently, Suruk collected a handful of crumpled notes and stuffed them into his back pocket. ‘I thank you,’ Suruk said, turning to leave.
The elder priest struggled up the hill. ‘Good morning,’ he said as he passed Suruk.
The alien croaked thoughtfully. ‘You too, shaman.’
‘Father McReedy, please. Do you need a blessing?’
‘I think not,’ he said, thinking of the sweepstake. ‘I have been fortunate already. Oh, and priest – Isambard Smith’s end got away. You owe me five pounds.’
An hour later, Smith ventured out of the John Pym. He felt awkward and uncertain after his night with Rhianna, as if he had ingested some powerful drink and was waiting for it to take effect. He wanted to be left alone. The last thing he needed, he felt, was to have to hold hands and introduce her to everyone as his girlfriend. He had left her inside the ship, dozing. He’d felt that it was best to leave her: she looked pretty sleeping. Shame she snored like a pig. Still, you couldn’t have everything. As long as their relationship remained private, he would have the peace and quiet to make sure that everything worked out fine.
As he reached the bottom of the steps Wainscott slapped him on the back. ‘Heard you gave the dippy bird a portion. Tidy work there, old man.’
‘Hello, Wainscott,’ Smith said coldly.
The major’s eyes twinkled. ‘Reckon we’re close to going in against Gertie,’ he said. ‘Soon we’ll move towards the city and give the ant-men a damned good thrashing.’
‘Today?’
‘Chances are. There’s a meeting at eleven: I’ll be there along with W, a few captains from the Teasmen and the Morlock chaps. You’re welcome to come along.’ He stepped away, paused and looked back. ‘Oh, and Smith, I’ll have the medico look out for you, in case there’s any, ah, chafing. I’ve known a few foreign women myself, if you get my drift. As I always tell my men: avoid rash entanglements and your entanglements avoid a rash.’
He tapped his nose sagely and walked away. Smith grimaced, feeling like a deflating balloon. His delicate romance was clearly as private as a soap opera, and he had a nasty suspicion which smallish android pilot would be responsible for that. Now, if only everyone else would just leave him alone—
‘Hey, Boss.’ Carveth tugged his arm.
He looked round. ‘Hello,’ he said, warily. ‘Everything alright?’
‘No.’
‘Worried about the battle?’
‘Yes, funnily enough. Boss, this is mad!’ she whispered. ‘We’re going to get slaughtered!’
‘Nonsense,’ he replied. The sheer urgency in her voice unsettled him. He had always known that she was no fighter, but to hear her talk like this felt wrong.
‘I was talking to Susan just now. Do you know where they found Wainscott, originally?’
‘In his home, I heard.’
‘In a home! He’s special forces alright: bloody special. We’re outnumbered, outgunned and our commanding officer is a bloody crazy nudist!’
Twenty yards away, Wainscott turned from conver-sation with a tank driver and waved at them. They waved back, embarrassed.
‘See?’ said Smith. ‘Perfectly normal. He’s got his trousers on and everything.’
Wainscott took a fruit from his pocket and bit into it.
‘He’s eating a lime,’ Carveth said.
‘Perhaps he likes them.’
‘So? I like badgers but I wouldn’t put one in my mouth.’
‘Hmm,’ said Smith. ‘I don’t really think that carries your argument.’ He sighed and turned to her. ‘Look, Carveth. It doesn’t matter if Wainscott is mad or not. He’s a nice bloke, and good at his job. At least we know that, with him at the wheel, the need to save Urn will remain the driving force. For now, sanity can take a back seat in the car of freedom.’
‘I take it the car of freedom has no brakes?’ Carveth looked up suddenly. ‘What’s that?’
There were specks in the sky – V-shaped things like seagulls drawn by a child. Smith put his rifle scope to his eye. ‘Sun dragons,’ he said. ‘Coming here.’
‘Oh, arse,’ Carveth said.
‘Stay here,’ said Smith, and he ran towards them.
The forest and the railway buildings hid the creatures.
As he ran closer confusion spread through the men: people were calling to one another, some preparing weapons, others trying to hold them back. A furious argument had broken out among the tank crews. Smith ducked into the shadow between two engine-sheds and suddenly he was in a dark corridor, looking out at a field full of light and dragons. They sat on the grass, clung to the trees at the edge of the field, circled lazily overhead.
Their wings rose into the air like unfinished arches, their long necks swaying in the breeze like ropes linking the land and sky.
A few daring soldiers walked between the dragons, awed. They put out tentative hands and felt scales, heard the crackle of static. Sam O’Varr stood between two huge creatures, her shocked gaze flicking from the sun dragons to the empty cup she held as if they had sprung from it.
Suruk stood at the edge of the group, eating a biscuit. He looked mildly interested.
Rhianna approached from the middle of the field. A sun dragon stood behind her and, as Smith watched, the great beast spread its wings with a heavy rustle like distant thunder. Turn the land on them, he thought. Well, well.
‘You did this, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Urn did it,’ Rhianna replied. ‘The planet has declared war on those exploiting it! Nature has arisen to claim back her own.’
‘It is true!’ cried the Sauceress O’Varr, throwing out her arms. ‘As the leaves told it, so it is! Be afraid, oh invaders, for the time of squeezing-out is at hand!’
Smith smiled. ‘Then let’s squeeze.’
*
Ghasts are not natural individualists. For two hundred generations they had lived like termites, packed close together, each a tiny cog in the steamroller of their race.
Their lives – short and brutal – were spent on battlefields and transport craft, close by their comrades, always in packs. What they lacked in individual initiative they made up in group ferocity. They were the best-drilled troops in the galaxy, bar none. Which was fortunate, 462 reflected.
Soon the weakling humans would make their move to take back their world. They would fight keenly. It would take elites to drive them back and wipe them out.
As he entered the dormitory, seventy praetorians leaped up as if electrocuted and jabbed their claws into the air:
‘ Ak nak! ’
‘Enough,’ 462 said, and they turned back to their work: stripping and feeding their weapons, polishing their antennae, picking their teeth clean ready for mankind.
462 smiled. The Edenites might be fools – more precisely, total fools – but these were state-of-the-brood fighting machines, custom-grown to deal with Earth. To begin with, the Ghasts had underestimated the Empire’s will to fight. It had looked like a simple matter of driving a bio-tank over the flowerbed of Imperial democracy, piling out and scoffing Earth’s children while mankind’s leaders faffed about and muttered, ‘Steady on!’ Instead, the attack ships had been met with fanatical, demented resistance, and the knobbly-faced, four-limbed, tiny-bottomed little turds had fought back with the ferocity of praetorians.
They dare call us Gertie, he thought, and he hissed.
A particularly huge praetorian stepped over and saluted. ‘Great one!’
He looked up at it. ‘You are?’
‘The Master of Armour.’
462 peered at him. ‘What happened to the previous Master of Armour?’
‘38,259B? He showed signs of being honourable,’ the praetorian said. ‘So we had him shot. His number is erased.’
‘So there never was a previous Master of Armour.’
‘Never was a who?’
‘Quite.’
‘Is all well, 462? You look. . . distracted.’
462’s working eye, already small, narrowed warily. He knew well what this meant. Independent thought was dangerous. In the Ghast Empire, everything was communal. The Ghast that locked itself away from scrutiny was inevitably suspected of treason. He knew well that taking an unsupervised stroll was unwise; taking an unsupervised dump, potentially fatal. ‘I was just reflecting on our mission to eradicate humanity. Yourself?’
‘We are watching an instructive film later, Glorious Leader, which clearly demonstrates our destiny to conquer the galaxy! Will you join us?’
‘Is it the one with the beetles that represent various forms of sentient life, competing to rule the universe?’
‘Yes, My Leader!’
‘I know how it ends. I won’t spoil it for you, but we turn out to be inherently superior and kill everything else. Come with me.’
They walked through the dormitory. At the end of the room, the Master of Armour opened the door and they stepped into a dark, ridged passage that sloped into the earth.
The praetorian followed 462, a pace behind him. At the thought of killing, it had started to drool. ‘Leader, will we destroy humans soon?’
‘Very soon.’
‘Good.’ There were scars down the Master of Armour’s jaws. Its eyes were tiny behind its battered face, candle-flames behind a screen of melted wax. ‘The Deathstorm Legion waits on your command.’
‘The humans will be determined.’
‘So are we, 462. There is not a man living who could defeat me – nor a M’Lak, either.’
‘Excellent. Listen, I want you to look out for one man above all. His name is Isambard Smith, a captain of little value. It was he who took my eye.’ 462 flicked a slimy switch sticking out of the wall, and a sphincter door opened before them. ‘If you see him, destroy him.’
‘I obey,’ the Master of Armour snarled, and they walked through the door. They stepped into a lift, and it whisked them down. Marching muzak played and the Ghasts hummed along.
Our banner flying in the wind
Spring’s joy is all around
We march on through the happy land And burn it to the ground.
The leaves turn green before us Birdoids sing around our heads
Lambs and puppies dance around
Then we shoot them dead.
We march as friends together,
Our beloved flag held high
As friends we sing our happy song, Die, Earthlanders, die!
‘That one always puts a goose in my step,’ 462 said as the lift stopped. They stepped out into another corridor.
‘Now, then,’ he said, ‘let’s see how our allied friend is doing. . .’
There was an airlock at the far end of the corridor. Fans spun in the roof and disinfectant gave the air a ste
rile tang. A porthole was set in the middle of the airlock.
Something stirred behind it. Seen through glass it looked like a creature of the deep ocean, as if it should be moving in water, not purified air.
462 rapped on the porthole. Tentacles thrashed and a huge, soulless eye thumped against the glass.
‘Good morning,’ 462 said.
A speaker on the wall rattled and croaked. ‘Keep back,’ the beast said. ‘Keep your filthy germs away!’
‘And how are you?’
‘Better if you keep your disease-ridden head away from me.’
The Master of Armour snarled. ‘Shall I gut this insolent pig?’
‘There’s no need for that. He will have his uses, should the humans prove particularly stubborn. Stay blood-thirsty,’ he told the porthole, and he smiled.
*
They gathered at the main local terminal, a hall large enough to hold an army. Like a huge greenhouse, the hall had a glass roof and seemed airy despite the thousands of soldiers who stood in it. Above them, great steel vaults reached out like trees across a country road.
The trains were black boxes among the men. People climbed up on them to get a better view, clinging to the ornamental funnels. Newly-made banners jutted up from the crowd, depicting heraldic beasts, swords, knights, teapots and working men. In the centre of the room one train waited, cordoned off by the army’s engineers. This would be going straight for the city gates, packed with dynamite.
Smith walked in and was immediately unsure what to do. People were all around him, as green and numerous as grass in their camouflage, blurring into a single mass like a coating of thick mist above the floor. He stood on tiptoe, looking for a familiar face.
‘Hey, Boss!’
Smith glanced up. Carveth sat on a strange, turbine-like device, surrounded by a little group of engineers, both human and M’Lak. Her machine looked antique and purposeless, like pieces torn off a steamship and reattached at random. She had salvaged a armoured breastplate from somewhere, which was too big for her.
Swinging her legs, she looked less than intimidating.
‘What’s that you’re sitting on?’ he called.
