A Game of Battleships (36 page)

What would Glorious Number One do now? What was the best thing for the Ghast Empire? No 
doubt, 462 realised, it would be to sacrifice himself. A praetorian would roar and charge forward in the hope of taking some scum with it. A drone would hide in the hope of biting their ankles as they passed.

Thousands of hours of propaganda flickered through 462’s mind: endless images of other Ghasts 
heroically dying for their leader. In that moment, 462 realised that dying for the leader truly was 
something that
other
Ghasts did. The greatest service he could give to his species, and to himself in particular, was to stay alive.

‘You there!’ Smith called. ‘462! Step away from the dog-monster, you little bugger, and put all 
your hands up!’

462 thought,
What now?
As if in answer, the lift doors opened behind him.

*

The needle in the pseudo-neural feedback meter was trying to bash its way out of the dial. In 
human terms, that was agony. Carveth twisted the Hellfire away from the M’Lak warship and the lidar 
began to flash.

‘You lunatic!’ she said. ‘The lemming men are on our tail now.’ She drove the controls forward, 
yawed right and started to head back towards the
Chimera
, then decided that with the Yull close behind, that was a bad plan. ‘What do we do now?’

‘What do you think? Dodge, woman!’

‘That's easy for you,’ she said, twisting back towards the enemy fleet. On the scanner, a blip 
appeared, a ramship creeping towards the centre of the dial. She turned, swung out on a loose arc and 
yawed back on the ventral thrusters. The blip fell away for a moment, then resumed its crawl towards the middle of the scope.

‘Incoming fire,’ said the Hellfire. ‘Releasing chaff.’

‘What? You didn't tell me he had guns! He can't have guns
and
ram people – that's not fair!’

‘Then let's get rid of him.’ A green light flashed on the windscreen and a targeting box appeared 
in the top-right corner and slid into the centre as Carveth weaved. The crosshairs rotated with the Hellfire and the glowing dot within them grew. ‘
Angel of Massacre
, Edenite heavy frigate,’ the autopilot said. ‘Nutter behind, nutter in front. Seems only fair the twain should meet, eh pilot?’

She had an image of the lemming man, his yell of fury rising in pitch and volume as he drew 
closer, and an image of the Edenites, cackling as they detected her. ‘I hope you're right.’

‘Course I'm bloody right. Now, I’m squitting out chaff twenty to the bloody dozen, so let's get 
this bang-on, alright? Get ready for some flak, pilot.’

‘Oh, great,’ Carveth said, and then the frigate grew in the screen, swelling as if to swallow them.

She banked hard and twisted the fighter, the front thrusters blazing on the wings. They look like 
tombstones, she thought, and the white bulk of the
Angel of Massacre
flashed with anti-spacecraft fire.

‘Heavy lasers and ninety-cal flak,’ the Hellfire snarled. ‘Weave, girlie, weave!’ The radio light 
flickered. ‘You still with us, Beatrix Potter?’

‘You must die!’ the lemming man squeaked across their frequency. ‘Die in flames, offworlder!’

Carveth gritted her teeth and pushed the Hellfire closer.

The side of the
Angel
was a blaze of defensive fire. ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ the Hellfire said. ‘Two lemmings on our tail. It’s getting hairy.’

‘I know!’ she said. She rocked the Hellfire ninety degrees, came in as if to scrape the frigate with 
her wingtip, the Yull howling over the intercom. ‘Make it stop!’ she gasped.

‘Wilco, pilot. Diverting all power to brakes.’

‘Brake!’

The front thrusters burst into life. The nosecone was a pillar of flame. The back of the Hellfire 
swung out, throwing them out on an arc, and suddenly they were not parallel with the Edenite ship but 
facing it. ‘Chaff away!’ the Hellfire called, and Carveth kicked the pedal.

They rushed straight at the enemy, two Yullian ramships following. The
Angel of Massacre
loomed up, a dirty-white cliff, and Carveth pushed the stick forward as hard as it would go. The Hellfire dropped, the mass of the frigate rushing by in the windscreen and the ship ejected the last of its countermeasures.

*

In the cockpit of the ramship, Pilot Nonch was almost one with the war god.’Brave Yullian warrior,’ the onboard computer announced. ‘Scans confirm the target vessel as human.’

‘For Popacapinyo!’ the Yullian pilot yelled. ‘Offworlder warship, now you die!’

A new voice, human and terrified: “You god-damned overgrown muskrat! We’re on the same si
– ’

The ramship crashed straight into the
Angel of Massacre
.

*

For once, the explosion was audible. It roared over the intercom for five seconds, the voice of the 
Hellfire bellowing in triumph. ‘Got you, you tinpot bastard.’ On the dashboard, numbers whirled. ‘Look at that tonnage counter, pilot. Jackpot!’

‘Bloody hell,’ Carveth managed.

‘That wasn’t bad,’ the Hellfire said. ‘For a new girl.’ A minute passed. ‘Message from home.

They’ve got Shuttles up and running, thank God.’

Carveth flopped back in her seat. The thought of home made her want to cry.

‘Back to the
Chimera
,’ said the ship. ‘I’ll drop you off at your crate on the way.’

‘Right,’ she said, keeping her voice level. ‘Wait a moment. What do you mean, you'll drop me off?

You mean you can fly without a pilot? You could have flown this whole mission on your own!’

‘Sorry, but I have to have a pilot on a mission. Just in case I short out. Health and safety, you 
know.’

‘
Whose
health, and
whose
safety?’

They turned for home.

*

Felicity Fitzroy watched the
Angel of Massacre
explode. As its engines melted down, the other Edenite ships broke formation. Hellfires shot into the gaps, harrying the enemy. The Edenites set a course out of the system. It brought them within range of the
Chimera
.

The dreadnought’s guns thundered, and one of the Edenite warships blew apart in a storm of 
railgun shells. It broke up in a flurry of little fires, chunks of fuselage spiralling from the body like 
fragments of pottery shattering in slow motion, and Felicity Fitzroy grinned at the scanners and 
applauded herself.

The last Edenite craft,
Hand of Dust
, shot forward to be crippled by a salvo from the
Blade of
Wisdom
. Sedderik sent his demands over the radio and the Edenites agreed to any surrender that didn’t involve a M’Lak boarding party. A Ghast vessel, smaller and faster than its allies, turned tail and fled.

Nobody noticed the shuttle that shot into its hold a second before the engines flared, and it was not until much later than its name was recognised:
Systematic Destruction
, the vessel of 462.

The
Chimera
and
Blade of Wisdom
circled the
Pale Horse
, locked their targeters onto its hull and waited to find out what was inside, as if looking at a parcel that had started to tick.

*

‘Well,’ said the Hellfire as they pulled up beside the
John Pym
, ‘here's your ship. I've seen sardines travel in more style, but each to their own, eh?’

‘God, you're obnoxious,’ Carveth replied. ‘But you're also about the bravest and toughest self-
aware machine I've ever met. And I've met some. Who do I ask to give you medals?’

‘Thanks, pilot, but gongs just slow me down,’ the Hellfire replied. It sighed. As ever, if it felt any pain, it showed nothing. ‘Someday, this war will be over. You can retire to the country and live quietly and I'll get myself rebuilt as a big red racing car. In the meantime, whenever tyranny raises its ugly head, I'll be there to shoot it off. Remember, pilot: you may not be an expert, but anyone who flies with me and doesn't end up ejected or dead is exceptional.’

‘Thank you,’ Carveth replied. ‘It's been an honour.’

‘Likewise. Now naff off out of my cockpit.’

*

The bridge was secure, but the rest of the
Pale Horse
was in chaos. Smith checked the monitors: those few that still worked showed him things he wasn’t sure he wanted to see. He looked across the bridge, at the wide array of dead enemies, and reflected that it was time to go.

‘Isambard?’

He glanced round. Rhianna stood before him, dwarfed by an enormous man in armoured 
dungarees. The soldier carried a dead Yullian under one arm and patted it absently as he stared at the roof.

‘I’ve got a prisoner,’ Rhianna explained. ‘This is Leniatus, Lord Prong’s bodyguard. He’s a bit – 
you know. .’

‘I got a lemming,’ Leniatus said. ‘You want a go?’

‘Well, jolly good,’ Smith said. ‘So much for them fighting to the death, then.’

Rhianna shrugged. ‘You’ve just got to offer people the right things.’

‘I'm going to prison,’ Leniatus said. ‘They got a farm.’

‘Super,’ said Smith. ‘Don’t suppose they’ve got any escape pods, by any chance?’

Leniatus nodded several times, very quickly. ‘Oh yeah. They don’t let me use them since I 
wouldn’t open the pod bay doors and they told me that was bad.’ He looked down at Rhianna. Why is 
your hair like dead things?’

‘They’re dreadlocks,’ Rhianna replied.

‘My lemming has nice hair,’ Leniatus opined.

Whooping laughter chattered through the intercom. ‘All change!’ a voice howled, and a woman 
answered: ‘Off with it!’

Smith did not want to know what ‘it’ was. ‘Wainscott, are you ready?’

On the far side of the room, the major was cutting the insignia from a praetorian’s trenchcoat.

He looked up and nodded.

The raiding party took the lift down through six levels of what sounded like mayhem. Leniatus 
kept trying to tug Rhianna’s hair. She managed to dissuade him gently. Smith hoped that he wouldn’t try it on Susan, who would probably throttle him with his own dungarees.

The doors slid open and there, under a huge picture of the Annihilator, stood the pod doors. The 
sight of the escape pods sent a wave of relief through Smith as if they were the entrance to a pub.

‘Well,’ Wainscott said, ‘this is it. We’ll take the prisoner. The pod on the left is yours.’ He leaned in close and whispered, ‘Thought you might want some time with your lady friend. I’m sure she’ll be most grateful to escape with you, if you get my drift.’ He seemed to spasm – he was in fact winking. ‘I know all about the ways of woman, eh Susan? Saw it on a James Bond film. Now, time for me to get back to 
Captain Fitzroy and give her my report.’

*

Smith wanted to return to Wellington Prime in the
John Pym
: partly so that its role in the battle would be recognised and partly because he was not sure how to park anything else. The crew sat in the cockpit, 
drinking gin and discussing wonders they could barely comprehend, as had happened many times before.

Something flared on the scanners, a sudden blaze of blue light. Electricity raged over the
Pale 
Horse
's hull, the chains flailed in the vacuum, and it was gone.

‘It's disappeared,’ Carveth said. ‘The greatest discovery for two thousand years, lost for good.

Thank God for that.’

Suruk sighed. ‘I fear that they will not return. Given the choice of this reality or an eternity of 
chess and decapitation, I know which I would take.’ He sipped his gin: as M’Lak custom dictated, he had not taken any tonic water. ‘A game of chess is similar to a swordfight, for you must think carefully before you move. However, it is hard to saw through an enemy's neck with a little wooden knight. So, not that similar.’

Rhianna’s eyes became both distant and slightly alarmed. ‘Whoa, imagine being trapped in there, 
where logic and proportion are meaningless, shifting like crazy tides of existence. Thank goodness that’s not happened to me for at least a fortnight.’

Sometimes Smith wondered whether she got off her tree a bit too often. He topped up the 
crew’s glasses and poured himself another drink. It was going down well. ‘So what happened to your 
fighter, Carveth?’

‘The Hellfire went back to check on Shuttles and get welded up. They make those things tough.’

‘You didn’t do so badly yourself,’ Smith said.

‘To be honest, I didn’t dare get killed.’

‘You were damn lucky,’ Smith said.

She looked hurt. ‘It’s all skill, boss, honestly.’

‘Getting a ride in a Hellfire, I mean. All I got to do was go to another dimension. Come on,’ he 
added, ‘you’ve all done bloody well, crew. Let’s lock the mirror up and go home.’

Together, they walked into the hold. The mirror stood where they left it. It looked absurdly 
harmless. Smith closed the hold door – just in case – and reached out to the glass.

‘Not so fast,’ a voice wheezed from the shadows.

Lord Prong stepped out, pistol in hand. The skull glinted on his Helm of Sanctity. He looked 
smaller and nastier than ever, as though viciousness had shrivelled him into the wicked raisin of a man that faced them now.

‘Well, well,’ the Grand Mandrill said. ‘You forgot to close the other mirror.’

Smith shook his head. Interdimensional travel and gin did not make good headfellows. Or 
bedfellows. ‘Gosh,’ he said, ‘I didn’t expect
you
to use a portal to Hell.’

‘Why not?’ It makes perfect sense. And if it doesn’t, then that’s a doctrinal matter. And what 
does doctrine say?
Burn more witches!
So everybody’s happy.’