A Game of Battleships (35 page)

‘We’re going into Prong’s ship.’

‘Now you’re talking! Lead on!’

Former Ambassador Quetic lumbered around the throne. He carried an axe and wore a metal 
breastplate, painted red. Above curled whiskers, two pink eyes glared at the raiders like headlamps.

He fished a watch out of his armour and studied the dial. ‘Not much time, offworlders. Go now, 
or I shall make you late!’

Suruk snarled. Dreckitt cocked his pistol. Wainscott lifted his gun. Smith said, ‘The day I take 
orders from a dirty lemming…’ and Rhianna tapped him on the arm.

‘We ought to leave, Isambard. Think of Polly.’

‘You’re right. Former queen, your empire requires you to open the portal back to our world.

Quickly, now.’

The queen gestured to the shadows. A door opened and two tubby men pushed out a large 
mirror in a heavy frame. It was similar to the one on the
John Pym
, although the frame had a smoother, more organic design. The fat twins saluted.

The queen pointed. ‘And here it is. Prong has configured his end of the portal to work one way 
only – otherwise I would have visited him a long while ago. Once you are through, there is no going 
back.’

‘We can live with that,’ Smith replied.

‘Then be my guests. When you see Prong, tell him that the game is up.’ The queen turned to the 
portal, the hem of her gown hissing over the stones. ‘Goodbye. And you, Captain Smith… if you decide 
to cross me, just remember that I’ve got your number.’

‘Actually,’ Rhianna said, ‘he’s already dating someone. Goodbye.’

‘Let’s get cracking,’ Wainscott said. ‘This place is so demented it makes me want to pull my 
trousers off.’

Smith nodded. The mirror showed only darkness. His reflection was gone. There was nothing 
left to do but step through. ‘Madam,’ he said, bowing slightly, ‘if you’ll excuse us all, we have a spaceship to catch.’

The queen nodded and the executioner drew back. ‘You are all extremely curious,’ she said, and 
she dropped wearily into her throne.

*

Carveth burst back into life to see a needle slide out of her thigh. She screamed, realised that the 
Hellfire’s emergency systems had woken her, remembered that she was in a space battle and did some 
more screaming.

‘Warning,’ said the dashboard. It had a new voice, a synthetic woman’s voice. ‘Severe damage to 
undercarriage. Landing gear destroyed. Pseudo-neural feedback at maximum. Shutting down systems.’

Lights dimmed and vanished. With a low whine, the engines faded into nothing. Carveth sat up, 
frantic. The ship was dying around her. She was stuck here. Stuck in a metal coffin –

‘No!’ Carveth cried, ‘no,
wait!
’

‘All systems closing down–’

‘Shut your bloody face, you stupid cow!’ the Hellfire roared. The cockpit burst into life, the lights 
flickered and held. ‘I’ll stop when I say so, you hear? Right,’ it barked. ‘You alright, pilot?’

‘You’re alive!’

‘Absolutely. Dammit, this hurts. I took a bad hit there. How’s tricks?’

‘Terrifying!’

The ship let out a fearsome laugh. ‘That’s what I like. Make a joke of it. Good girl. Now, the last 
time I checked this wasn’t a meeting of the WI – unless that stands for Wanker Incineration – so I want to see thumbs out of posteriors and on the damned controls.’

‘Er, you’ve lost your undercarriage.’

‘Yes, and if you look really closely, you might see me give a damn. I don’t need wheels to blow 
scumbags from the sky!’

‘But doesn’t it hurt? The feedback gauge says maximum –’

‘In all honesty? Yes, this hurts. You wouldn’t believe how much. But I won’t stop, you hear? I 
will not stop until I’m done, not while there’s a battle to win – and nor will you! Now let's get back out there, dammit!’

‘I think we should go home.’

‘Pilot, do you believe in fairies?’

‘No.’ Her voice quavered.

‘Well I do, because I’ve got a live one sitting in my cockpit. Now, are you going to lay waste to 
space or be a waste of space?’

Her head swam. ‘Lay space?’

‘Good. Hands on the throttle and take us round. Nobody shoots us up and flies away. Nobody!

Do you believe me?’

‘I believe!’ a tiny voice squeaked. For someone who didn’t believe in fairies, Carveth sounded a 
lot like Tinkerbell.

‘That’s right. We own space, you and me. That fat Edenite crate belongs to you. You just need to 
take it. We’re going to bag him.’

Carveth’s eyes looked over the systems monitors. Her heart was pounding, her throat tight, but 
something in her hands and mind was ready and quick, as though the Hellfire’s spirit had seeped into her.

She pulled them around so slowly that the engines hardly fired, until the pale grey bulk of an Edenite frigate lay before her.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll do this. But we’re out of missiles. We need something massive to get 
through that armour.’

‘Perhaps we should ask around,’ the Hellfire said, and she thought she heard an evil smirk in its 
voice.

The radio crackled into life. ‘Morlock fellows, what’s your status?’ the Hellfire asked.

‘We fight fiercely, taking nosecones for the Hangar of Victory,’ a voice replied. ‘Yet the
Blade of
Wisdom
is hard-pressed by crazed lemming men, eager to end themselves on our armour.’

‘Roger,’ said the Hellfire, ‘on our way. And there,’ it added, as Carveth’s shaking hand set the co-

ordinates, ‘are all the armour-piercers you could want.’

*

Smith checked the Civiliser and drew his sword. He faced the mirror, and a determined man in a red 
jacket looked back as if to challenge him. Then he took a deep breath and strode into his reflection.

He felt cold wash over him, and he was through, in a darkened room, surrounded by red-robed 
technicians. ‘Hands up!’ he shouted, and the Edenites went for their guns.

Smith closed one eye and put two shots into the chest of a stormtrooper, then blasted a 
Handyman as he raised his shotgun. A side door burst open and an Edenite lumbered forward as the 
rotary cannon he held whirred into life. A second later a spear flew out of the mirror and into his chest.

Suruk bounded out after it. 

Wainscott was next, then Susan and Dreckitt. The major kicked out the legs of a robed thug in a 
conical hat and punched him unconscious before the brute could even shout ‘Unbelievers!’

‘Right,’ Smith said, ‘let’s head up and take the bridge.’

From the floor came a thin, hard laugh.

A Handyman lay at Rhianna’s feet. His face was waxy in the bad light, his hair hung down like 
something dead. He smiled. ‘You’re damned, heathens. There are a hundred times your number on this 
ship. Even your precious moral fibre will be nothing against such odds. Your blasphemy will be wiped 
out.’

Susan said, ‘He may have a point. Taking the control room might be possible, but if they rush the 
doors. .’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever we do, we need to work fast. Once they know we’re here, they’ll blow the airlocks and suck us out.’

‘So now what?’ Dreckitt said.

‘We open the portal,’ Smith replied. ‘The queen said that it was fixed to be one-way. What if we 
alter that?’

Suruk chuckled. ‘And then all Hell will be released. Apt.’

Smith turned to Dreckitt. ‘Could we do that?’

He shrugged. ‘If I can get the codewords, easily. But without them, not a chance.’

Susan glanced at the Handyman. He sat before them, cradling his wounded arm. ‘
He
knows.’

‘Hands off me, woman!’ the Edenite spat. ‘You may torture my flesh, but I’ll never talk.’

‘No, we may not,’ Smith said. ‘I refuse to stoop to such levels. Rhianna, would you mind 
preparing some sort of herbal tincture –’

‘No, not the herbal tincture! Keep that witchcraft away from me! Don’t you know what that 
could do to me?’

Not very much, Smith thought.

‘Annihilator curse you, I’ll show you how it works.’ The man heaved himself slowly upright. On 
his own, without his comrades to make noise beside him, he was weak. No moral fibre, Smith realised.

‘What shall I do with the portal?’

‘Open it. And then it's up to you – although I'd suggest that you run like hell.’

*

‘Attention, attention!’ the scanner declared. ‘Clumsy humans defile the sacred space of Yullia. Destroy the unrodents with noble self-sacrifice!’

‘I hear and obey!’ Wingman Thwekic Nonch yawed his fighter and twisted away from the M’Lak 
battleship. The puny frog-monkeys were defending their ship fiercely for a bunch of offworlder 
weaklings. In the edge of the windscreen, another Yullian fighter exploded in a sudden blossom of fire.

Popacapinyo favours him, thought Wingman Nonch, and then he realised that it was gunfire, not 
collision, that had destroyed his squadron-mate. ‘You failed!’ he yelled. ‘A thousand curses on your 
cowardice!’ He toggled the radio. ‘Scanners detect approaching Hellfire. Moving to intercept with extreme proximity.’

‘May you leap to glorious victory,’ his squadron leader replied. ‘All glory to the war god, brave 
Nonch. And don't come back.’

Nonch swung his ramship to face the human fighter. It rose into view with an almost lazy grace 
as if it did not expect to meet opposition. The Ghasts had clearly strafed it before, since the thing had been riddled with disruptor fire.
Stupid fat of worlders!
Nonch's snout twitched with contempt at the furless halfwits, so weak and complacent in the fact of Yullian greatness. How could a species be so stupidly 
arrogant?

The radio crackled and Nonch toggled it. He recognised the tone of an autopilot.

‘What ho, lemming-feller!’

‘Offworlder!’ Nonch cried, ‘Death to your cowardly vessel! In collision I seek immortality!’

‘You'll have to catch us first, old boy. Come and get it, Whiskers.’

The radio cut.

*

462 was at the far end of the bridge when the rear doors burst open and a puny bearded human 
ran in. For half a second he assumed it was just another Edenite weakling until he recognised the bearded man’s uniform. ‘Hands up, loonies!’ Major Wainscott shouted, and immediately the shooting began.

The guards went down in a second. A side door opened and a bevy of gene-doctored ogres like 
men crossed with hippos thundered in. One of them swung an axe over his head and managed to get it 
stuck in the ceiling. One of Wainscott’s men, clean-shaven and darker-skinned than the major, slapped a charge on the giant’s side and ducked away as the brute ripped his weapon free. 462 just had time to 
ponder how being huge was not a great advantage in cramped conditions before the blastwave threw him 
to the floor.

He opened his eye and found himself lying next to an Edenite soldier. The man still wore his 
combat sunglasses; in death he looked like a dummy. 462 rolled over and saw his praetorian standing over him, blazing away with a disruptor. Assault Unit One bounded over and licked 462’s hand. Disappointed 
to find him still alive, the ant-wolf snarled.

On the wall banks of monitors threw up crazy images. Mayhem had broken out across the entire 
ship. Figures like Earth chessmen were smashing the Edenites’ sacrificial altar of the Annihilator. A huge 
beast had stormed into the barracks and was shovelling cultists into its buck-toothed maw. One of the 
monitors flashed up a woman's face, an enormous metal crown seemingly nailed to her head, a striped cat in her arms. Woman and cat smirked at 462 and the screen went dead.

On the far side of the bridge, a M’Lak savage held up a severed head and bellowed at the roof. A 
female human swung a laser cannon. The beam bisected a trio of lemming-men as they rushed into the 
room.

‘Remove me from here!’ 462 shouted from the floor, and the praetorian grabbed the nearest bit 
of him – his ankle – and dragged him towards the lifts, covering their retreat with disruptor fire. 462 
scuffed along the carpet, his coat riding up behind him like the cape of a failed superhero, as he made a mental note to destroy all humans as soon as possible – Edenite and otherwise.

They stopped at the lifts. 462 clambered upright and hammered on the button. Gunfire raged 
behind him. His bodyguard dropped behind a statue of the Annihilator and fired off bursts to keep the 
attackers at bay. 462 watched the lights descend as the lift approached.
Come on, come on!
he thought.
Don’t
you realise how important I am?

The lift didn’t stop. 462 pounded the door with his small fists, put his working eye to the 
window, and saw a face: a sour, wrinkled face, seemingly crushed under the weight of an enormous 
buckled hat. With a rumble of engines, Lord Prong was whisked away.

‘Prong!’ 462 barked. ‘Come back! Don’t go – you could martyr yourself and give me the lift. You 
ungrateful little geriatric little…
ak, fak
!’ said 462. He looked down at Assault Unit One and sighed. ‘Just you and me, eh?’ It growled at him.

A gun boomed and the praetorian fell. 462 looked up to see Isambard Smith lower his Civiliser.

They looked straight at each other for a moment as if unsure what to do and then both exclaimed, ‘You!’