Space Captain Smith (30 page)

‘You see my point,’ the agent said.

‘Absolutely,’ Smith said, nodding quickly. Here was a man even more determined and fanatical than himself. He could now understand why girls tended to shrink away from him when he started talking about cricket.

‘My cover is that I work as a journalist,’ said the visitor.

‘I’ll contact you when the Empire has need of your services. In the meantime, should you have any problems, ask for me.’

He took out a pen and wrote a letter on a napkin, followed by a number. He pushed it across the table to Smith. ‘That’s my codename,’ he explained. ‘It means

“Master Spy”.’

‘W’, said Smith.

‘Other way up.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Well,’ said W, ‘I’d love to sit here and chat all day, but I’m not some sort of useless Nancy and I’ve got to get on. If I need you, I’ll let you know: and if you need me, let me know that I ought to let you know.’

‘What about Rhianna?’ said Smith. ‘What will happen to her?’

‘You’re worried about her?’

‘Well, yes. She was a good friend to all of us.’ Smith had had an unsettling mental image of the security service putting Rhianna in a packing crate and wheeling her off to a warehouse full of other packing crates, and leaving her there.

‘Absolutely,’ Carveth said, reaching for the poppadoms.

‘I’m worried sick. It’s put me right off my food.’

‘Well,’ said W, ‘I can’t tell you much. Suffice to say that her help against the Ghasts will be invaluable. She’ll be quite safe, and you have my word that she will come to no harm.’

‘Good,’ said Smith, ‘that’s a relief. But will I ever see her again?’

W stood up and shook his head. ‘I hate to say it, but I very much doubt you will.’

‘Bugger,’ said Isambard Smith.

462 was picked up by a Ghast supply ship several days later and taken to Selenia, homeworld of the Ghasts. His wounds were severe, and in normal circumstances he would simply have been shot and rendered into nutritious soup. The fact that he woke in a bed frightened him because the only reason to keep a failed minion alive was so he could be tortured to death at some more convenient moment.

On the third day he was able to get up and assess his injuries. Smith’s bullet had removed one of his eyes and, unaccustomed to putting their colleagues back together again, the Ghast doctors had been untidy when fitting its replacement. 462 stood in front of a full-length mirror and, had he possessed tear-ducts, he would have wept.

‘Look at me!’ he hissed, ‘Look at me! How am I supposed to look like an officer of my rank with facial scars and a metal lens instead of one eye?’ He pulled on his trenchcoat and, feeling sorry for himself, walked out to meet his superiors.

An unmarked hovercar took him to another unmarked hovercar, which took him to a vast building that jutted out of the city centre like a gigantic black fridge. Half a dozen praetorians escorted him through a hall big enough to produce its own atmosphere. A sign on the wall read:
Party Rally here later – Rain Expected
. The praetorian on the door saw his scarred face and stepped aside. The door slid back and he was led into the presence of Number Two.

Number Two was small and ferret-like. He had cameras instead of eyes: rumour had it that these relayed everything he saw to Number One and were only turned off when he had a bath – which almost never happened. He was fanatically loyal and smelled bad. At present he was stamping a huge pile of paper.

‘Greetings,’ he lisped. His voice was thin and high.

‘Strength in conquest, glorious Number Two!’ 462 yelled, struggling to keep the fear from his voice. ‘May I sit down?’

Number Two stamped half a dozen sheets of paper. 462 looked around the room, which was decorated like a teenager’s bedroom. Pictures of Number One were everywhere: on the walls, the desk, even, worryingly, on the ceiling above the pull-down bed.

‘No,’ said Number Two. ‘Make yourself useful – sign a few of these death warrants.’

‘Yes, glorious Two! With my own signature?’

‘Of course not. You are disposable. Sign it as me.’

‘As a number, or in letters, sir?’

‘Your choice. Knock yourself out.’ Two pushed a wad of paper across the desk, and the biopen wriggled after it.

‘Now, you are probably wondering why you are not dead yet, yes?’

The mention of his death made 462 so nervous that he accidentally signed one of the warrants as Three.

‘You continue to exist because you are the only surviving member of our species to have seen the Vorl. I wish it was I who had witnessed this sight but, sadly, the fates were against me. Your experience makes you useful. You now exist for one purpose only: to locate the Vorl again and bring it to us for experimentation.’

‘Is that not… erm… two purposes?’

‘Who is Number Two here? Now, go. A ship and a suitable number of personnel will be placed at your disposal. Feel free to use them as you will, provided you do exactly as I say. Understand?’

‘Yes, glorious Two!’ 462 was delighted. Not only was he not going to be made into dinner but he was being sent out to wreak revenge! A fast ship, a powerful weapons system and more minions than you could shake a failed minion at – who could ask for more than that?

‘Good. Proceed to your ship and await orders. We shall capture the Vorl and Earth shall be ours! Hahaha!’

And Isambard Smith shall be mine as well, thought 462. Then we will see who the clever, deadly, efficient one of us really is. Ten to one it is still me.

‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Hahaha!’

*

John Bradley Gilead was woken by his medical team. He blinked, felt the soft pillow around his head and saw the doctor lean in over him.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘In hospital.’

Hospital, yes. Gilead remembered what had happened now: he’d been about to cut the head from that unbeliever Isambard Smith, when the man had pulled a gun and shot him. Ah, yes.

‘I can’t feel anything,’ he said. ‘How badly did he injure me?’

‘Badly, actually,’ the doctor replied. ‘It was serious, I’m afraid. We had to amputate.’

‘Amputate? What the hell did you amputate?’

‘Your body. On the bright side, we’ve given you free cosmetic surgery. Your chin looks great now.’

Gilead took it quite well. After he had stopped screaming, he said, ‘You mean that’s all I am? Just a severed head?’

‘Oh no,’ the doctor replied, a little surprised. ‘Goodness no. We salvaged your bladder, too.’

‘That’s it? That’s all I am, a bag of piss with a head on top?’

‘How things change,’ a hard voice said from the other side of the bed. Gilead glanced around and a one-eyed, trench-coated thing leaned over and studied him. Before, 462’s face had looked like a twisted caricature of a man’s. Now, he was a monocled, scarred, parody of a twisted caricature. Judging by the state of his face, he’d tried to French kiss a combine harvester.

‘Welcome back, Gilead,’ said 462. ‘We have work to do, I believe.’ He took a step closer. ‘Isambard Smith lives.’

‘God damn him!’

‘Indeed. The half-alien – or, as you would put it, halfdeity – Rhianna Mitchell is in British space. You and I are going to get her back.’

‘And that heathen Smith?’

‘Of course. We shall deal with Captain Smith.’

‘Hah! He’ll wail and gnash his teeth, once I’ve handed them back to him! Why, when I get my hands on him, his life won’t be worth living!’ He frowned. ‘I will get some hands, won’t I?’

The Ghast attempted a smile. ‘Oh yes. You’ll get everything you need. I have been ordered by mighty Number Two to provide us with the equipment to hunt him down.’

Gilead smiled. ‘Well, that’s something. Alright, 462, let’s go! We’re going to party and all I need is some body to go with!’

Under an orange sky, Midlight clanked and smoked. Steam blasted into the air from the vents of several dozen landed spacecraft, spread out across the docking area. Towers loomed over the great shipyard and enormous cranes rolled back and forth like siege engines on catapillar tracks, their sides dotted with lights. Every so often, a flurry of sparks would leap into the air in a glowing arc as new armour was welded to a ship in preparation for the war to come.

They were already calling it the Ghast War, although it hadn’t started yet. The empires of Earth were arming themselves: in the galactic West, the M’Lak tribes were preparing to renew their feud against the vicious Yull. Around the
John Pym
sat mighty drop-shuttles, each capable of making planetfall with a full battalion inside. The
Pym
looked like the runt of the litter. In the cockpit, Polly Carveth was on the phone. ‘
I
don’t know,’ she said, ‘you’re the bloody expert. Lasers or something, missiles, maybe. How about missiles with lasers on? What do you mean we can’t have any? Well, what about one of those guns with all the barrels that spins around? Right, whatever you say. Thanks a bunch.’

She put the phone down, got up and wandered into the living room. ‘Fleet Command is being an arse. No spaceship weapons for the likes of us,’ she said. Smith stood by the door. Suruk was holding a large wooden shield up against the wall. On it was the stuffed head of one of 462’s praetorians. ‘That’s a shame,’ said Isambard Smith. ‘I suppose they need them more elsewhere. Up a bit. That’s it.’

Suruk banged a nail into the wall and they stood back and admired the praetorian’s head.

‘Looking good,’ Carveth said. ‘He’s nicely stuffed.’

‘He was nicely stuffed the moment he raised a hand against the Empire,’ Smith replied, and he laughed.

Chuckling, they left Suruk to admire the trophy. Smith stepped into his room and Carveth stood by the door, waiting for him. ‘We’ll be cleared for takeoff in forty minutes,’ she said.

Smith sat down on the bed and sighed. ‘Then we can get back into space and crack on with another adventure, I suppose,’ he said, a little sadly.

Carveth nodded. ‘What’s up, Boss? You don’t look too happy.’

The captain shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. It’s not that I’m not pleased to have stopped our sworn enemies creating a bioweapon of incredible power… it’s just that, well, you know, I had these feelings for Rhianna but I never really got the chance to, well, to—’

‘Get her drunk and show her your guild navigator?’

‘That’s a very crude way of putting it, Carveth. What I felt for Rhianna was noble and pure and far above such base considerations – but yes.’

‘You see,’ Carveth said, ‘it wasn’t meant to be with you and Rhianna.’ She sighed and sat down beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently. ‘But you’re a fleet officer, and she’s made out of gas. Some things just aren’t meant to be. Take me for instance—’

‘I think you’re being a bit harsh on yourself there.’

‘I’ve not finished. Take me for instance and that Rick Dreckitt. Okay, he was dead tasty, but he was a homicidal bounty killer and I was on his hit-list. That’s no basis for a proper relationship. We’d have been incompatible. And I’m afraid it’s the same with Rhianna and you.’

‘Maybe,’ said Smith. ‘But at the time it just seemed so right, you know?’

‘I know. But some things aren’t meant to last. Listen,’

Carveth said, and she shifted position and broke wind noisily. ‘Now, take what I just did. It was satisfying when I did it, and in its own way it was special and beautiful, but its moment has passed, and now it’s gone.’

‘It hasn’t gone, actually,’ Smith said.

‘No, you’re right,’ she said, sniffing and getting up.

‘That’s horrible. I’m off.’

‘Carveth, please tell me that there was a purpose to this beyond coming in here and farting on my bed.’

‘Of course. I was just showing you that, you know, things mean stuff and – oh look, there’s somebody at the door.’

The doorbell made its butchered-cattle noise and Carveth looked into the corridor. ‘Well, guess who?’ she said, and she grinned and hurried to the airlock to let their visitor in.

‘
Namaste
, Polly,’ said a voice.

Smith seized a can of deodorant and began a frantic dance around the room, blasting the edges of the room in a bid to make it smell less like a decaying vegetable. ‘Hey there,’ said a voice from the doorway and he froze on one leg, the can in his hand.

Rhianna looked no less beautiful and dishevelled than before. She wore a new top, Smith suspected, although all her clothes looked scruffy and smelt of joss. She slipped her shoes off at the door and came in.

‘Hello there,’ Smith said with awful jollity, the deodorant still in his hand. ‘Just doing my exercises, with this can.’ He pumped the air a few times with it and tossed the thing on the bed, feeling feeble. ‘How’re you?’

‘Oh, not too bad. I’m okay.’

‘Good. Good, super. Glad to hear it.’

‘And you?’

‘Fine, fine. So, um, how’s tricks?’

She shrugged. ‘Better for you saving my life. I’ve got to see some people from the Colonial Security Service: they want me to stay here a while and help them. I get to wear a colander on my head. It’s for the war effort, you see.’

‘Oh, right. Well, we’ve got to be off, I’m afraid. We’re needed back on New London and we’ve got to go soon. Schedules to keep and all that, you know.’ He laughed nervously. Seeing that he was not going to see her for a very long time after this, he did not know why he did.

‘Forty minutes,’ Rhianna said.

‘You know?’

‘Yes. I hurried here when I found out. You see, I never got to say thank you for rescuing me, Captain Smith – at least, not properly.’ She tapped the door with her heel and it swung shut.

‘Oh?’ said Smith.

‘Oh,’ Rhianna said and she approached, smiling. She sat down next to him, rather closer than was normal for a chat in Woking.

‘You see,’ she said, and he could feel her breath, ‘I never quite got to do what I wanted, either. But I thought, maybe now we’ve got a little while before you’ve got to go, we could get to know one another properly.’

‘Get to know each other?’ said Smith.

‘I thought we could – you know – get friendly,’ and she took off her scarf, leaned back and sighed. Her eyes met his. ‘Don’t you want to be friendly with me, Isambard?

After all we’ve been through together?’