God Emperor of Didcot (27 page)

Suruk shook his heavy head, wondering. ‘You know,’ he said, spooning another white lump of Vaseline between his jaws, ‘I always thought there was something strange about you.’

Within the city walls it was still. The Hyrax’s thugs patrolled the streets in armoured cars, shouting the curfew from loudhailers. The chimneys were smokeless, the packing factories unmanned.

The Crusadists did not get out of their vehicles. The Grand Hyrax’s men had developed a habit of going missing recently: some died, a few defected, others just disappeared. They lied about their losses when they spoke to the Hyrax, and the Hyrax lied some more when he told Gilead, and Gilead lied a little when he spoke to the Ghasts, who trusted nobody, especially not a bunch of disposable humans.

A showdown was coming and everybody knew it.

For most citizens, it would be a chance to get rid of the God Emperor. The Hyrax was now utterly hated. His palace was surrounded by razor wire and every day new severed limbs were displayed on the roof, cut from those brave enough to defy Edenite law. His newest rule had made wife-beating compulsory: even Gilead could tell the difference between a hobby and a legal obligation.

‘The man’s crazy,’ he said, turning from the tiny window. ‘I mean, he’s holy, yes, but mad, too. He’s no use to us. Pious but crazy,’ he concluded, shaking his head. ‘Who would have seen it coming?’

‘He helped destabilise the planet,’ 462 replied. ‘Besides, his men may soak up a few bullets for us yet.’

They sat in a Ghast bunker, a smooth biological con-struction the shape of a scaled-up tortoise shell. The aliens had brought it with them. It had some sort of technical name, but the locals called it the Terrapin of Terror. Being inside it was like hiding in a large, armoured shoe.

Number One glowered at them from the dark walls, waving his four arms in a variety of poses. To Gilead the rows of posters looked like the dance steps to a Chinese translation of the YMCA. That made Gilead uncomfortable. Images of the Village People were banned in the Republic of Eden, except for the traffic cop, who was a respectable figure of authority.

Still, the Deathstorm Legion meant business. Whatever rubbish the Grand Hyrax came up with, here was ruthlessness and efficiency to match his own men. When the enemy attacked, his sky-troopers would be fighting beside the Ghasts. The Emperor-Prophet had never been more than a puppet, but the praetorians were. . . well, tough puppets.

The vidcom blasted out a fanfare. With a bio-technological squelch, the screen flickered into life.

A drone appeared on the screen, the sky behind it.

‘Strength is obedience!’ it yelled, saluting with all its arms.

‘Strength is obedience,’ 462 replied. ‘Report at once.’

‘World-Commander 462! We have picked up sun dragons on the visual, approaching the missile defence grid!’

Leather creaked as 462 shrugged. ‘So?’

‘Normally we would not waste ammunition on mere animals. But these – they are flying in formation.’

‘I see. Shoot them, just in case.’

‘Yes, Great One! Edenite scum, ready the—’

The drone screamed and shot off the top of the screen as if launched from a catapult. A jumble of noise burst from the speaker – roaring, gunfire, crackling sparks –and the screen went dead.

462 stared at the screen for a moment. ‘That drone. . .’ he said. ‘It. . . disappeared off the top of the screen.’

‘It’s been ascended!’ Gilead gasped.

‘Of course it’s not been ascended!’ 462 whirled and his thin fist thumped a control panel. A siren wailed. ‘Ready your men for battle, Gilead! Our enemies have taken the missile silo!’

‘But – they’ll shoot at the city!’

462 pointed his antennae up and dropped his helmet on over them. ‘Rubbish! They are too cowardly to shoot their own city. If they wish to defeat us they will have to draw near, and then – then they will be smashed between my praetorians and your skytroopers! Get your men suited up!’

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.