by Toby Frost
Twenty seconds later, four missiles from the support grid hit the spaceport. Three Ghast troop carriers were blown apart, two others and an Edenite ship lost their airlock integrity. Wires and gantries hung around the wrecked craft like bunting after a wild party.
It would take days to repair the ships and get back into orbit. The skies were wide open. Both sides were planetbound.
*
Force Unicorn tore across the tea fields, smoke billowing from a hundred buggies and skimmers. On the deck of the family hovership Morgar loaded up a pneumatic harpoon while Suruk drew back the springs that would launch the electromagnets. Around them the skimmer pounded and throbbed. Agshad was at the controls.
‘There they are!’ Morgar roared over the engines.‘Deflectors up, Dad!’
Suruk glanced round. A black flag had appeared on the city wall, a Ghast skull with two jagged antennae. He nodded and looked at the trophies attached to the front of the skimmer, just above the ram. ‘These skeletons are plastic!’ he said.
Morgar looked unhappy. ‘Sorry, Suruk, it’s all we had. I had to go down the Halloween shop.’
‘What about the family invisibility device?’
‘Now that I do have,’ Morgar said, brightening. ‘I gave it a test run a few minutes ago. Then I got distracted and put it down for a moment. . .’ – he glanced around – ‘somewhere. . . Erm, shall we have a record on? It’s got quite a sound system, this skimmer.’
For a second, Suruk thought of mocking him. No, he decided. Morgar was at least trying. ‘What music do we have?’ he asked.
‘All our favourites from the good old days,’ Morgar replied, keen to show enthusiasm. The wind caught his ponytail and threw it up behind him like a flag. ‘We’ve got Napalm Death, Christian Death, Acid Death, Lawnmower Death, Death and Suzanne Vega.’
Suruk checked the grappling hooks. ‘Suzanne Vega. On second thoughts, that may be depressing. Put on the national anthem instead.’
‘ The Ace of Spades? Avec plaisir! ’
*
On the city wall the Master of Armour saw the great cloud of smoke and dust rushing towards the gates. The Master fastened its helmet-straps and climbed down from they wall, snarling orders as it came. Bio-tanks waited beside the gates. The Master of Armour scrambled onto its personal craft and pulled on a pair of goggles. The city gates opened on great motors. ‘ Atak! ’ the Master of Armour roared, and the Deathstorm Legion poured onto the plain like a black tide.
*
Carveth saw them first, a spreading black mass leaking from the side of the city like oil from a punctured drum.
‘Enemy!’ she shouted, pointing.
Smith yelled through his scarf into the head micro-phone, ‘Steer away!’
On the third dragon, Rhianna looked serene. Her dreadlocks waved behind her. ‘We’ll keep low,’ she said, and the sun dragons dipped.
Smith glanced behind him. He could see the cone of dirt following Force Unicorn as it streaked towards the city gates. Already the praetorians were wheeling to face them, picking up speed. Only one way now, Smith thought: forwards.
*
It was a long, clean hall with an open roof. Against the walls stood seventy battlesuits, like the armour of giants.
Men ran and shouted, music and inspiring speeches blared. Ammunition slapped and clattered into place, rotary cannons whirred and spun. Eden was going to war.
Gilead strode down the hall, reading from the Edenite holy book, the amplifiers in his mechanical body turned to full. ‘. . . turned he to the deniers, and ripped he them a new one, and he said unto them, “Blessed is he who asks how high, for his jumping shall be pure!” ’
Yells and cheers from the Skytroopers. A ground assistant ran to Gilead’s side. ‘Sir! First squad ready to launch, sir!’
‘Good.’ Gilead lowered the book. ‘Turn the music off.’
Someone threw the switch. Suddenly there was silence apart from the sound of humming motors. The soldiers looked uncomfortable.
Gilead put one metal leg up on a bench and rested his hand on his knee. He looked like a robot modelling for a knitwear catalogue. ‘Listen up, boys,’ he said.
‘Let me tell you a few things about our way of life.’
Someone at the rear of the room groaned; a voice muttered, ‘Oh Hell, not this again.’ He ignored them.
‘Now listen. Today, we fight the British, a tribe of English people descended from Glaswegians. English people are like insects, hellbound communist insects. When they have tea, or queue up for things, they’re queuing to enter their hive, working to make the whole galaxy march to their godless Red tune.’
‘This heathen planet is ours now and, twenty-six more captured planets later, your service will have won you the right to semi-vote for our current ruler. Because if you don’t fight, you don’t vote. Well, kind of vote.'
‘A man needs to fight to become pure, you see. War makes men out of boys, like it made a man out of me. It takes weak boys and turns them into heroic warriors worthy of Ancient Rome. Some people call me a war-monger. I say No! I am a Roman, and I want boys! You boys!
‘And I got you. You are warriors for the New Eden. You are the finest, the most disciplined – no yelling yet, I’m not finished – the most disciplined fighters in the world. You live to defend the pass from apostasy. You are men of Spurta, and I call on you to cover my pass!’
Gilead blinked back tears. ‘Go forth and massacre these Urnies in the name of the Great Annhilator, and always remember: when you’re on the battlefield, with bullets singing round you and glory in your heart, it was Johnny Gilead who sent you there! Kill these pansies! I love my men!’
The men scrambled into their bulletproof suits and the sound of weapons powering up rose around Gilead like the hum of bees, and his tight, sculpted face managed a smile. His men shouted, banged, stamped on the floor with metal legs. ‘Move out!’ he called. ‘On the bounce!’
‘Move out!’ a captain barked over the radio. ‘Get up to the firing line, damn you!’
The fighting suits clattered across the room. Men whooped and yelled. A dozen bulky, slab-sided sky-troopers readied their jets.
Weeping openly, Gilead retreated to the far end of the room. The best men in the world, he thought. The best men in the world. The roaring of jets filled the room like a tidal wave and, with a minimum of collision and unnecessary gunfire, a dozen armoured troopers leaped into the sky.
*
Specks shot out of the city like pips from a squeezed fruit, fragments from an exploding grenade. Carveth peered at them, trying to figure out what they were. Some sort of anti-personnel weapon, fired too soon? Lights flared at the back of one of the specks, then another, and she realised that they were jets. The specks took shape, growing limbs. They looked like jigsaw pieces, now like the silhouettes of toddlers. She realised then that they were men in armoured suits, approaching them in enormous bounds.
‘Trouble!’ she yelled into the radio.
‘Edenites,’ Smith replied. His voice was hard and clipped. ‘Rhianna, we need air cover.’
‘Okay,’ she said, and she began to hum.
Smith laid the rifle across the saddle in front of him.
The dragon’s wings were loud and steady like the beating of a colossal heart. He lifted the rifle, sighted one of the nearer dots, and began to move the barrel up and down in sync with the skytrooper’s jumps. Smith held his breath.
Up a bit, to anticipate him—
The gun thumped against his shoulder and the bullet caught the trooper on the bounce. The man spun aside mid-jump and ploughed into the ground. A ruffle of fire in the dirt outside the city wall marked his passing.
‘Invincible suit, eh?’ Smith said.
In response a missile arced out and blew the nearest dragon apart. It burst like a dropped pie. Smith saw it and was sickened: the dragons were beautiful, and he knew for a fact that the cultists would be howling with glee, like apes on a hunt. Gunfire flickered out of the skytroopers,
white lights that rushed past them.
Carveth, on the radio. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
Smith said, ‘Soon.’
‘They’re—’ A skytrooper bounded up in front of her. Carveth screamed. Her vision was full of camouflaged armour and spinning guns, and her dragon spat at it. A white bolt of static leaped from the sun dragon’s head to the wet battle-suit, and the suit fell, shorting. Two missiles arced round to the left and smacked into one of the flanking dragons. The skytroopers bounded forward, hitting the ground and leaping up as if on elastic wires. Carveth clenched her hand around the thin chain that would fire up the EMP bomb.
‘Can I pull the chain yet, Boss?’
Smith looked left, at Rhianna. There was something oddly dignified about her, he thought. She looked like Boadicea: upright in her seat, hair streaming out behind her, not quite as clean as she could be—
A bullet flew past his head. Shells sparked on dragon-scale. Down below, Force Unicorn was nearly at the city wall. The praetorians were pouring out of the city.
Carveth was cowering. ‘Now!’ he yelled. ‘Now, Carveth!’
She had pulled many chains many times, but doing so had never been such a relief.
*
Force Unicorn tore in from the flank and crashed into the side of the Deathstorm Legion – in the case of the M’Lak, literally. Tank armour buckled, metal squealed against metal, guns and harpoons blasted, vehicles exploded and the two armies tore one another apart.
Morgar aimed the skimmer’s main gun, fired and cheered as the harpoon sank into the hull of a Ghast hover-tank. The wire snapped taut and the skimmer and hover-tank whipped around one another. Morgar hit the controls and the engines reeled them in. He bounded across the deck and slapped Suruk on the shoulder.
‘Boarding action, I believe!’
Suruk leaped onto the railing, drove off with his legs and landed with a soft thump on the enemy craft. His brother jumped onto the wire and ran down it, a golf club cocked over his shoulder. A hatch flew open, a praetorian tank commander stuck its head out; Morgar swung his club and number three wood connected with steel helmet– thunk! – and the tank commander’s head flew into the tea fields below. ‘Fore!’ Morgar cried.
Suruk sprang to his brother’s side and held up a wine bottle. ‘Match,’ he said.
Morgar lit the rag with a crème brûlée torch. Suruk tossed the bottle into the tank, slammed the hatch shut, and the two ran back to the skimmer. Morgar threw a lever, the electromagnet died and the skimmer broke loose from the stricken hover-tank as smoke began to pour from the hatches. Battle roared around them. The Ghast tank pitched into the ground, billowing smoke as they sped away. Suruk turned to Morgar and chuckled.
‘And that,’ Morgar said with deep conviction, ‘is what happens when we play golf!’
*
Gilead grinned as his men loaded up. Somehow, the rebels had managed to goad sky dragons into the fight. They would be fine creatures to hunt, especially with chainguns.
‘Enhanced vocalisers on-line,’ his metal body told him.
The long room rang with his hard voice.
‘Fly, my brothers, fly!’ Gilead cried. ‘Once I’ve finished speaking. Ride out like the angel of apocalypse! Bound into their midst in your special armour and show them your—’
The lights went off.
‘Tits!’ said Gilead.
Something crashed outside. The lights on the computers flickered out like dying eyes. Around him, in the sudden shadow, he heard the falling whine of a thousand motors shutting down. Gilead stood there, too shocked to move, like a virtuoso silenced mid-cadenza.
The skytroopers stood around him, immobile in their battlesuits. Behind each faceplate, a pair of eyes flicked from side to side, horrified; a mouth opened wide, goldfish-dumb behind glass.
Gilead tried to take a step back and found that he could not. Was something wrapped around his legs? He tried to look down. He could not do that either. Fear broke over him like a wave as he remembered that his body was made of metal too. He was as helpless as his men.
One by one, the skytroopers started to topple over.
Gilead watched them fall, the slow wobbling and the inevitable crash, like mechanical skittles.
The emergency systems were working in his chest. He could still breathe, but the less essential parts of his robot body were shutting down. The enemy would be here soon.
Terror prickled up the spine he did not have.
‘Bladder control, off-line,’ his metal body said.
*
The skytroopers dropped out of the air. One moment they leaped into battle, and the next they fell like poisoned birds. To Carveth it seemed as though they had been turfed out of Heaven.
Their armour was strong. A few blew up on contact with the ground, but most just lay there, statue-like. The pulse weapon had worked: every computer within five hundred yards was dead.
Smith pointed to the city wall. ‘Landing!’ he called, and Rhianna nodded and the flock of sun dragons swooped towards the wall. The city spread and grew details as they came in. Carveth could see the fortresses of the Ghasts and Edenites and the palace of the Grand Hyrax, and crowds spilling out from all of them. Their battle was far from over, in fact the real fighting was about to begin.
From his fortress inside the city, 462 saw the train rush over the horizon and barked out the order for it to be destroyed. He knew the humans needed to get into the city and had expected them to try to ram the gates.
The Master of Armour snarled into the bio-com. Half a dozen tanks split from the battle and pounded the train with shells. In a great bloom of flame it ignited, taking two tanks with it; wreckage thumped the gates, rocked them, but did not blow them open. Force Common Toad and Force Unicorn were trapped on the plain.
The Deathstorm Legion drew back and regrouped. The M’Lak skimmers and Imperial tanks had fought hard and the ground was littered with smashed craft from either side. But the Legion was used to tough enemies. The praetorians whirled and prepared to charge Common Toad. It would be hover-tanks against civilian vehicles, bio-steel against human flesh. The Teasmen would be wiped out.
Smith sprang onto the city wall. Rhianna slipped down beside him and between them they helped Carveth out of her stirrups. Behind them, the warm air was full of noise: the wrenching of metal, chatter of guns and the steady, constant pulse of disruptor fire. ‘Now what?’ Carveth said.
‘We have to get the gates open,’ Smith replied. ‘If the others can’t get into the city, we’re buggered.’
‘Is there a key?’ Carveth said.
Smith pointed along the wall. The gates stood fifty feet high and almost as broad, locked and reinforced. There were barricades in front of the doors, heaps of objects outlawed by the God Emperor. Every few seconds a head would pop up from behind the barricades and glance around like a crazed meerkat.
‘What now?’ Carveth demanded. Something big exploded to the west and she flinched.
‘We have to get to the gate controls. And I’d put money they’re behind that barricade.’
Carveth said, ‘Maybe you could lure them away? If they went after you, I could open the gate.’
‘Good plan. But what would get them going enough to leave their positions?’
‘A bunch of witch-burning, pagan-hating lunatics?’ She frowned. ‘Tell you what. I’ll borrow Rhianna for a moment and we’ll think about it.’
*
Like a gunfighter in the Old West, Rhianna stepped into the middle of the street. Thirty yards down the road, the Hyrax’s men were reinforcing the barricade, piling up televisions as if making a fort from building bricks.
‘Excuse me?’ Rhianna said.
They ignored her. One of the main tenets of their cult was misogyny, and it was less effort to ignore a woman than bludgeon her.
‘Excuse me!’
A wide-eyed young man nudged his commander, a hoary old madman wearing a sandwich board on which he had chalked the Crusadist edict of
the day. The two exchanged a few words, and sandwich waved to his colleagues and pointed to Rhianna. The barricade came to life and one by one forty fanatics turned to look at her.
‘Thank you,’ she called. ‘Now, I’d like to open up a discussion with you all.’
From his vantage point on the city wall, Smith lifted the rifle. So this was Carveth’s plan, was it, using Rhianna to get their attention? He’d be having stern words with her later. Smith was new to this relationship stuff, but letting your pilot use your lady friend as cultist-bait was probably not the done thing.
Rhianna cleared her throat loudly. ‘I reject your theocratic fascist regime!’ she declared. ‘The subjugation of my sisters through inane propaganda is a crime against herstory and the false etymology of the so-called God Emperor merely sustains a phallocentric conspiracy!’
Sandwich board was joined by a man wearing a sack and carrying a rocket launcher. He had attached a large picture of the Hyrax to his scalp with a staple gun. Staples looked at Rhianna for a while, shrugged and tapped his temple with a finger. ‘Nutter,’ he said.
Smith cursed. It’s not working. The Crusadists aren’t taking the bait. I should never have let Rhianna go near them. Now she’s in danger. Dammit, there isn’t much time—
Carveth shoved Rhianna out the way. ‘Let the expert do it,’ she said. ‘Hey, wankers!’ she yelled at the Hyrax’s men. ‘Yeah, you, with the thing on his head! You’re crap, your God Emperor kisses ant-man arse and I hate you! Oh, and if that doesn’t bother you, then get this: Free Speech and Democracy!’ she yelled, and with that she pulled her breastplate aside, lifted her T-shirt to her chin and did a little dance.
Smith had known the battle would be tough, but he had not anticipated being repelled in quite this manner. For a stunned second nobody moved, and then a voice screamed, ‘Behold! The bumps of Beelzebub!’ and as one the whole pack of cultists surged from the barricade.
Carveth did not much notice – she was far too busy swaying at the waist to show off her heresies to their best advantage – and Rhianna grabbed her by the arm. ‘Let’s go!’ she called, and Carveth snapped back to reality and realised that a horde of madmen was coming to murder her.
