Space Captain Smith (28 page)

They walked in a row, armed to the teeth, between rows of Ghast troopers and confused, beer-addled mercenaries. Heads turned, comments were whispered and guns were drawn as Smith, Suruk and Carveth strolled into the middle of the enemy camp.

A little group of soldiers looked up from their breakfast and fell silent. Someone turned a radio off. Nobody tried to stop them.

Gilead winced. Sometime during the night his eyes seemed to have been taken over by a chameleon, and the three newcomers moved back and forward in his vision like little men with hammers on an old Austrian clock. They still looked like idiots, he thought, but they were not hung over. Gilead picked up his jacket, on which a pigeon had deposited solids while he was drunk, and clambered into it as they drew near.

The praetorian led them to a long table outside the sports centre. Here, surrounded by minions and loose Drogonian women of startling ugliness, Gilead and his closest comrades had passed out.

A man lurched in front of Smith. ‘Hey!’ It was Gilead’s second-in-command. He blinked a couple of times, as if unsure of how he’d ended up in a uniform with a gun in his hand, and said, ‘You! What the hell do you want?’

‘They want the angel,’ a voice slurred behind him. Captain Gilead stepped out, looking very low. His jacket was open and stained, his shirt a rumpled mess. A ceremonial sword dangled from his belt like a broken tail. He turned his head ponderously and fixed his gaze in the area around the praetorian. ‘Why aren’t these disbelievers dead?’

The praetorian regarded him with as much disgust as its face could manage. ‘They are armed with a nuclear weapon,’ it said, pointing to the silver cylinder Smith carried on his back. Gilead took a step closer and squinted. ‘That’s not a bomb, you dumb bastard,’ he said. ‘That’s an old beer keg with a yellow sticker on the side.’

‘Not so, Gilead,’ Smith called. ‘It’s an important reactorpart of our ship. We have dismantled it and rigged it to explode at the slightest touch.’

‘Then why’s it got a tap on the side, huh?’

‘That’s how the atoms get out,’ Smith said, thinking quickly. ‘It’s an atom tap.’

Gilead threw back his head and laughed, and immediately regretted doing so. ‘You make me laugh!’ he said, grimacing. He strolled over, shaking his head. ‘You’re pathetic. You come in here with a beer keg and the only person you fool is this stupid ant-man here.’

The praetorian hissed. ‘You will have respect for us!’

‘Ah, go polish your thorax. You’re such a two-bit operation it’s wonderful, Smith. But you’re outgunned this time. Take a look around you. You see all this?’ he demanded, taking in his men with a great sweep of the arm. ‘See those boxes over there? That gun under the netting? The heavy disruptor on that tripod? You know what that is? Military force. Not your little arsenal but
force
: real, serious, hot, holy, sexy military force. I could use that walkie-talkie there and call up an orbital missile that’d wipe you off the planet and take a picture of your face as it flies up your nose. I could take you out just like that. I’ve got half a mind to do so, too.’

‘Still looking for the other half, eh?’ Smith fixed him with cold, calm eyes. ‘You’re contemptible, Gilead. You’re so stupid you probably think “erudite” is a type of glue.’

‘I like you,’ Gilead said. ‘But I don’t like you half as much as I hate your ungodly guts. I’ve been waiting for this moment: you and I face to face, man to pansy unbeliever. Your precious bomb is nothing more than a beer keg. You’ve got nothing left, Smith, no cards to play, and all I’ve got to do now is to choose how best to send you all to hell.’

‘You’re forgetting something,’ Smith said. ‘It’s a fortyfive Markham and Briggs Civiliser, and it’s pointed right at your gut. I was hoping you’d come closer to gloat. It makes you an easier target. Make one move, you mad fanatic, and I’ll martyr you all over the back wall.’

Gilead paused. His eyes met Smith’s for a long moment and, very slowly, he looked down. The gun jutted from Smith’s hip, the long barrel pointed straight at Captain Gilead’s chest.

‘You were too busy ranting to see me draw it,’ Smith said.

‘That’s not fair,’ Gilead replied. ‘That’s not fair!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do that! I’m the one with the guns here!’

‘We want Rhianna,’ said Isambard Smith.

‘And you could throw some beer in too,’ Carveth said.

‘But none of that tasteless rubbish. Good stuff only.’

Something broke in Captain Gilead then. He looked at Smith, the man he’d dismissed as a weakling that he could bully and sweep aside, and knew that these people, with their broken spaceship and their shabby empire, were the rock against which he would bash himself to death.

‘I hate you!’ Gilead screamed. ‘I hate you! I hate all of you people, with your make-do attitude and your not shouting all the time! Look at you, with your stupid moustache and your stiff upper lip. You make me sick, you atheist agnostic heathen!’

Suruk said quietly, ‘
Urug mashai nar sergret, Mazuran
.’

Smith glanced at the tripod-mounted heavy disruptor and nodded. ‘J
aizeh, Suruk. Urenesh
, old friend.’

‘Good luck to you too.’

‘You accursed, hell-spawned, democracy-loving bastards! And look at this, this so-called woman of yours, wearing trousers in public. Woman? Whore of Babylon, more like! If you were one of my wives, I’d have you stoned to death!’

Carveth shrugged. ‘Stoned as in rocks, right?’

‘Of course rocks!’

‘Nah, I don’t fancy that much.’

‘And you’re fat!’

‘You’re dead,’ she said.

‘Fatter than all my wives laid end to end! And then this thing, this disgusting mockery of the sacred human form!’

‘Hello,’ Suruk said.

‘This thing should be shining shoes, not walking around like a man! You call this frog-monkey-thing a
friend
? It’s bright green! It ought to be a
slave
!’

Suruk laughed, a reliable indication that violence was near. Carveth was surprised to find that she was too angry to be afraid. Son of a bitch called me fat, she thought. And some other stuff. But mainly fat.

‘Damn you,’ Gilead yelled, ‘damn you all, you hellbound blasphemers! You wrecked my ship and beat my men! But not any more, because now I’m going to cut off your stupid heads!’

He drew his ceremonial sword and waved it in the air like a dervish.

‘Finished,’ said Smith.

‘Oh, I’m just starting,’ Gilead replied.

‘That wasn’t meant to be a question,’ Smith said. The shot hit Gilead smack in the chest and threw him thirty feet. He kicked once and lay still. They stood there in the silence that followed, in the eye of the storm. Carveth glanced around the crowd, waiting to spot the fool who made the first move. The Ghast Empire froze. The Church of God the Annihilator stared back at her, enraged but afraid. A slight breeze stirred the sacred banners. She looked down at Gilead, lying in the dust.

‘What a cult,’ she said.

The praetorian jerked up its gun and the safety catch clicked off and Smith whipped around and blasted it in the side, looked down the barrel of his pistol and shot it twice again.

Suddenly, in the crowd, mayhem.

As one they grabbed, cocked, loaded and drew a hundred guns. A great wave of movement ran through the men and Ghasts, and they surged forward as the first shots burst out. Carveth braced herself and the Maxim cannon yawed around and cut down the first rank of mercenaries. Above the rattle of her gun, she was yelling. A Ghast trooper ran to the heavy disruptor on the table and started it up. Suruk roared, threw his spear and the trooper dropped across the controls. He bounded after his spear and into the middle of the Ghasts, a long knife rising and falling in either hand.

Smith emptied the Civiliser into one of Gilead’s fanatics, felt the hammer click on an empty chamber, tossed it aside and pulled the rifle into his hands. Gilead’s ranting had made him furious: this was no longer about bagging a couple of Gerties for the mantelpiece, but something darker, more fundamental. This was decency against madness, people who’d never gone looking for trouble against zealots and tyrants. He fired without aiming, knocking a Ghast to the ground. A disruptor beam shot past his head and he cranked the handguard and fired again. ‘Come and get it!’

‘Mazuran! Here!’

He whirled and saw Suruk at the centre of a scrum of Ghasts and men. Too close to use their guns, they had drawn knives and shock-sticks, and were faring badly. Smith ducked down and ran low, Carveth’s wild firing accidentally providing him with cover. He brained a Ghast with his rifle butt and reached the M’Lak’s side.

‘Aha,’ said Smith, and he shoved a dead Ghast out the way and grabbed the controls of the heavy disruptor.

‘Here we go—’

‘
Ak
!’ half a dozen Ghasts yelled as Smith aimed the disruptor and vapourised them. He swung it left and right, reaping a great swathe across the yard, turning brick to dust and cultists and Ghasts to smoke. ‘Who wants the Empire?’ he cried. ‘Come and get it, you little buggers!

You think you can bully me?’

Carveth was out of bullets – the Maxim cannon clicked where it should have roared and suddenly she felt much smaller. She tore at the straps and the gun dropped away. Drawing her service revolver, she ran towards the others. Suruk was fighting a pack of men and Ghasts, beating them back as they tried to reach the table-mounted gun. The heavy disruptor thrummed as it threw out pulses of energy. Smith hit a box of homing grenades and it exploded, throwing one of Gilead’s men into the air as he tried to type their co-ordinates into a guided rocket.

‘Who wants it?’ the captain shouted. ‘Who wants to empty my pockets now? Oh, you want my dinner money, do you? I’ll take the whole class on! Not so big now, are we, Curtis Minor!’

Carveth saw the way out: doors behind the flailing mass that was Suruk and half a dozen others. ‘Cover me!’ she yelled, more a plea than a command, and she took out a screwdriver and shoved it into the side of the control panel. Her fingers tore off the front of the panel and yanked wires apart. Running out of hands, she leaned in and ripped out the green wire with her teeth. Something hit the door above her head – a disruptor bolt, followed closely by a severed arm.

The heavy disruptor ran out of power. The remaining soldiers charged them.

Carveth shoved two wires together and the doors burst apart. She leaped into the space between them and Suruk sprang into the dark after her. The doors hissed in their grooves and, as they started to close, Suruk grabbed the nearest one and pulled it back. ‘Now, Mazuran!’

‘And that’s for my tuck money!’ Smith roared. His rifle cracked out. He leaped through the doorway, coat flapping behind him, and Suruk let go and the door slammed closed. Something thumped against the other side, but to no avail. The three of them stood in the dark of the sports centre, dust swirling around them, panting. Smith’s hands were shaking. ‘Damn you, 3B,’ he said. From the floor, Carveth said, ‘You have issues about your schooling, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Smith. ‘And you know, if I hadn’t repressed them all these years, I’d never have found the furious anger needed to drive off that horde of lunatics out there. And that, men, is why I’m proud to be British. Now, come on,’ he added. ‘We must rescue Rhianna!’

Meanwhile, in what had once been the badminton courts, the Ghasts were rigging up their camera equipment. With the help of a couple of Gilead’s mercenaries, they had connected their long-range telecasters and were ready to broadcast to glorious Number One.

462 tapped his microphone. ‘One-two, one-two,’ he said, and stopped when one of his subordinates started marching. Ghast scientists bustled past and the lead technician came over and brushed some red dust on his face and antennae.

‘It is just for looks,’ the technician explained. ‘It is terrible when you have an important speech to make and you just do not look the part.’

462 adjusted his trenchcoat. ‘Does my stercorium look big in this?’

‘No bigger than mine!’ the technician said. ‘You look marvellous. And ever so evil.’

462 strode in front of the nearest camera. To his left, on a stretcher-bed, lay Rhianna, comatose. The brainscanning helm had been placed on her head, and behind it loomed the huge machinery of the scanner with its twin Tesla coils.

A worried-looking functionary jogged up. ‘Glorious Commander!’ it barked.

‘What is it?’ said 462.

‘There is trouble outside! Space Captain Smith has arrived!’

He shrugged. ‘Have Gilead’s men deal with him. They are all disposable. Nothing must interrupt my moment of glory. Roll cameras!’

The technician gave him a nod. 462 looked into the lens.

‘All hail glorious Number One! This is Medium AttackShip Captain 462, reporting from the planet of Drogon, a wretched outpost of contemptible human space! Here, our iron will has enabled us to destroy our opposition and score a mighty triumph for our Empire! Before you, All Knowing Leader, we have the captured woman from whom we shall construct the ultimate bioweapon. Today, we shall take one step closer to our goal of conquering the galaxy! Behold, as our technology harnesses the power of her mind!’

He turned to the scientist operating the scanner. ‘You, minion! Turn the dials up to… four!’

The leisure centre had the same look as everything occupied by Ghasts. Despite being there for about five hours, they had covered it in banners and propaganda posters, announcing that the swimming pool and judo mats had been annexed for the good of the Greater Ghast Empire. Smith cocked the rifle and ran deeper into the complex, aware that the survivors of the fight outside would soon find another way in.

‘This looks like it!’ Carveth said, pointing to an enormous poster blocking the way to the badminton courts. The poster showed a small, pompous Ghast waving its fists and glowering into the middle distance. Both its antennae were slicked over to one side of its head.

‘That’s Number One,’ said Smith. ‘Their god.’

The sound of breaking glass came from behind.

‘Mine,’ Suruk said, looking over his shoulder. ‘Go.’

Smith turned to Suruk and met his friend’s villainous eyes. ‘Good luck, Suruk. Is there anything I can do?’