by Toby Frost
‘Two,’ Carveth said. Smith braced himself.
‘Three!’
She spun the wheel; it whirled and the door opened with a squeal of metal.
They looked down the Ghast docking tube: a corridor, full of mist, stretching off into somewhere that they could not see. The walls were ribbed, vaguely organic. Somewhere behind the mist, a light shone towards them.
‘What’s all that?’ Carveth whispered.
Suruk turned to her. ‘Small woman, wait.’
Smith flexed his fingers around the rear grip of the Maxim cannon. It was strapped straight to his belt, and it was heavy. He felt tired already, although whether it was from the weight of the gun or from fear, he did not know. The light in the docking tunnel flickered as something ran past it. ‘Dammit!’ said Smith. ‘Can’t get an aim!’
The light vanished, came back on, and suddenly it was a strobing, pulsing beam as something scuttled past, then another, and another—
‘Dozens of them!’ Smith exclaimed.
Suddenly Carveth sprang up and fired the shotgun into the docking tube. ‘Come and get it, tossers!’ There was a screech of rage, and a muffled thump of something falling to the ground. The tube was silent. She looked back at the others. ‘So much for the cat and mouse stuff,’ she said sheepishly.
Lights flashed in the dark, bolts of light coming for them. ‘Down!’ Smith cried, and the wall exploded above his head, the metal corrupted and bubbling. Smith leaned into the entrance and let rip. The Maxim cannon roared like steel sheets being torn, sending bullets thundering down the tube. Shadows screamed and fell. In a great horde the Ghast boarding party rushed at them. Bullets and white beams turned the docking tube into a maze of light. Carveth saw something rush out from the mist, limbs whirling, and she racked the slide and shot it in the chest. It roared and fell, and a thing like a vast insect rushed along the wall, and she blew that apart before it could clear the mist and she would have to look at it. Smith’s gun ripped out and a row of them fell, more of their comrades scrambling into the gap. Rhianna screamed.
The round counter spun down to zero and Smith tore out the ammo drum and slapped a new one into place.
‘Score one for Blighty!’ he yelled, and he opened fire. Disruptor shots hit the box beside him and it melted and collapsed.
Something new appeared in the fog: sparking lights, the business ends of shock-sticks. ‘Aha!’ Suruk cried. ‘Proper fighting!’, and for the first time one of the Ghasts cleared the fog and leaped on them.
Carveth only caught a glimpse of it – the goggling eyes in a skull-like face, the long coat, the antennae poking through holes in its steel helmet – and then Suruk whirled in front of her and sliced off its head. They kept firing: the enemy swarmed forward, frenzied.
No time for aiming now. Smith kept his finger down and raked the corridor from side to side. The light in the docking tube was blocked out by the rush of Ghasts. Suruk hurled a knife into the horde, Carveth pumped and fired until her gun was dry and her terrified fumbling fingers snatched the revolver from her belt. Smith threw the cannon down. ‘I’m out!’ he cried, and they heard the hiss as he drew his sword. Suruk held out a bomb to Carveth, she lit the rag and he hurled it into the corridor. There was a flash of fire, and he threw another, and suddenly there was nothing alive in the docking tube. Silence from the Ghasts. Nothing moved in the passage except smoke. Smith looked at his crew. ‘They know we’re out,’ he said.
Rhianna was bolt upright and shaking. ‘Why don’t they attack? Why don’t they attack?’
‘They wish to make sure,’ Suruk said, and as he did a fresh batch of raiders ran into the light and charged at them.
Suruk roared and leaped into the gap. Blades whirling, he felled one and then another as they tried to swarm over him to the humans beyond, calling out the names of the techniques he used as he cut down his enemies. Distantly, he heard Carveth’s revolver going off and sensed Smith at his side – but that did not matter. He was in the spirit world, running with his ancestors, feeling them guide his spear.
A trooper leaped the boxes and knocked Carveth to the ground. The revolver bounced out of the simulant’s hand. The Ghast grinned down at Carveth, flexing its pincerarms. Carveth gave in to fear and howled. Rhianna stared at it, horrified. Something happened to her with the slow certainty of a dream. The wooden sword rose in her hands, drew back, and she dropped in a position she knew only from Tai Chi. The sword whipped out and struck the Ghast in the head.
The trooper stumbled but its claws lashed out for her. She did not move – the geometry of the universe shifted – and somehow they missed, swiping through air where her body should have been. It lurched aside and, as Carveth grabbed the revolver and swung it up, the trooper’s head was in her sights.
The world was slowed: to Carveth, it seemed like a dream. She fired, killed one Ghast and blasted the next as it lumbered into range. Suddenly it was rather easy, and somehow, she knew that Rhianna was making it so. Rhianna blinked and was awake again. The enemy were gone. Smith was calling to them all, asking who was hurt. Suruk stood surrounded by spidery bodies, bellowing in triumph. Carveth had a finger up her nose. And voices were answering Suruk’s calls – not Ghasts any more, but the M’Lak, his friends.
‘It was most excellent,’ Thador Largan told Suruk forty minutes later. ‘We got the prow right in place and caught them really smooth. We like cut straight through and then, well, you know, honour and stuff.’
Narzak and Lorgan had joined the humans in the John Pym. In an attempt to flush out the invaders the Ghasts had simply opened several of their airlocks, and the M’Lak were forced to take shelter while the Systematic Destruction pulled away. Now, the Ghasts had fled, and the Smashface had docked with the John Pym to collect Suruk’s friends.
‘It was indeed good work,’ Suruk said. ‘The pinkies here were about to be overcome. You were most fortuitous with your timing.’
On the other side of the lounge, Carveth was pouring beer down her neck. To Smith, sitting opposite her, it seemed as if she had disengaged the need to swallow, and was just tipping the stuff down the chute.
‘I’m telling you,’ she said, pausing just long enough to speak, ‘it was really strange. There she was, just standing there, and suddenly everything went weird and they sort of stopped trying, so I shot them. It wasn’t like she did anything fancy either. She just stood there. It was almost as if they couldn’t hit her. That’s almost as impressive as frogboy over there.’
Smith was finding it difficult to concentrate. In the last fifteen minutes he had celebrated his continuing existence by drinking three bottles of beer. As a result, his vision was slightly uneven and his front marked by a stripe of spluttered lager. ‘So what do you reckon?’ he managed, quickly turning back to his bottle as it began to froth. ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with her?’
‘My considered medical opinion? She’s a killer mentalist with knobs on.’
‘She might just be trained.’
‘Trained in what, psychic ninja death? Why should she be? She’s the first ninja I’ve met who spent their free time listening to whale noises. That said, she is the first ninja I’ve met full stop.’
‘Well, it does seem odd that a pacifist who works in a health food shop might turn out to be some sort of mystic assassin.’
‘Well, yeah. I doubt they get many samurai attacks at Veggie-world. Besides, it wasn’t quite like all that. It was more… it’s not easy to describe.’
‘Go on.’
‘It wasn’t martial arts. It was more that things changed around her. She suddenly seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Not that she disappeared or anything like that. Blimey, I’m an android and I can’t work out how to explain this.’
‘I think I understand.’
‘Smith, those void sharks. She was meditating all through that and they didn’t attack us at all.’
‘Yes. But I don’t see… hold on… no… what’re you saying?’
Carveth sighed. ‘I’m not sure, Cap. It’s too strange for me to describe properly. I’m an android, a simulant. I’m pure rationality. I don’t even drink alcohol, let alone believe in magic powers. Well, not much alcohol. But what if she’s right? What if she really is in tune with nature or something?’
‘I see what you mean.’ Smith frowned, rubbing his chin.
‘My God. Think of the unholy power you could unleash with such abilities. It would be just like Doctor Dolittle all over again.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. You do know that was just a book, right?’
‘Figure of speech.’
‘But you remember that bit in Snow White when all the animals come out and dance around with her?’
‘I don’t watch children’s films.’ Smith shrugged and stood up. ‘I’ll have a talk with her, see if she wants to say anything. Good work with the shotgun back there, by the way. Bagged a couple of good’uns. Thanks for that.’
‘No problem,’ she said, and her shaking hand reached for another bottle of beer.
Suruk was bidding his comrades goodbye in the corridor. Smith glanced through the open hatch and caught a glimpse of their ship; crudely painted with symbols he could not recognise, the walls hung with trophy racks. ‘Good plan back there, Suruk. You saved our skin.’
‘I thank you. Besides, I have always owed you a debt.’
Suruk drew a machete. ‘Now, if you do not mind, the skull one of these alien stormtroopers will make a charming paperweight.’
Smith left Suruk to it and knocked on Rhianna’s door.
‘Hi, who’s there?’
‘Smith. Can I come in?’
‘Sure,’ she said, and he walked in. Rhianna was sitting up on the bed, reading a book about Tibet. The room smelt of joss sticks. She had brought cushions with her, it seemed – a choice that seemed both offensively new age and irritatingly feminine. The cushions had swirly patterns on them that seemed subliminally to invite him to throw them out the window.
‘How’re you?’ she said. She looked very Bohemian, in an insipid way, and he rummaged through his mind, trying to establish who it was that she resembled. ‘Well,’
Smith began from the doorway, unsure of how to approach this situation, ‘that was exciting, wasn’t it?’
‘You can close the door,’ Rhianna said.
‘Right.’ He closed the door and stood in front of it. She pulled her feet up and patted the end of the bed. ‘Sit down if you want.’
‘Absolutely.’ He sat down. Smith suddenly realised who Rhianna reminded him of: Miss Brooke, his art teacher when he had been eight, and the first woman to whom he had ever been attracted. He had discovered this attraction shortly after Miss Brooke had found him stealing pencils, for which she had slapped him across the back of the head and paraded him in front of the class. He hoped the incident had not affected his psychological development. It would be unfortunate if he were only able to achieve sexual satisfaction by culminating a relationship in front of an audience of twenty jeering eight-year-olds.
‘Well, that was something. Always good to have a crack at some alien types. Most of the time they deserve it, too.’
She nodded.
‘Dangerous sort, your Ghast. Ferocious and organised. No moral fibre, though,’ he added, feeling for reasons he could not pin down that he was digging himself into a hole that he could not yet see. ‘Your Ghast’s like your foreigner, you see – clever enough, in a low cunning sort of way, but ultimately not the ticket, not at all.’
Rhianna raised a finger. ‘Can I just stop you there, bearing in mind that I am a foreigner?’
Ah, so that was it. His satisfaction in having located the hole was mollified by the knowledge that he had just jumped into it. ‘You don’t count, of course,’ said Smith. ‘I mean, it’s not like you’re French or anything. You’re just … just… unusual, that’s all.’
‘That’s sweet of you.’
‘Thanks.’ Smith was wary of being called ‘sweet’: like many men, he had always interpreted it as a euphemism for ‘emasculated wimp’. Yet from Rhianna the usual undertone of being a spineless, easily-manipulated cretin was not there. He wished he knew how to deal with women. Life had not offered him much opportunity. Most of the girls on the Captains’ Training Course seemed to have stepped from the work of either Tolkein or Wagner – sometimes, cruelly, both.
‘I mean, my point is that your Ghast is not the right type at all. Were any of us bound to fall into his hands, he would treat us without a shred of decency. Whereas, of course, were you bound and falling into my hands, you can rest assured that I would never think of behaving indecently with – to – you. Quite.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Absolutely. So do you have magic powers?’ he demanded, going in for the kill.
‘Does Wicca count?’
‘Baskets? No.’
‘Then no. Why?’
‘I just wondered.’ A more subtle approach was required. ‘Rhianna, when you go for walks, do animals come and dance round you?’
‘Like in Snow White?’
‘Exactly.’
‘No. Isambard, did you get hit out there? In the head, perhaps?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Thank you for defending me.’ She shifted position, folding her legs under her, which had the effect of sliding her towards him slightly. Smith wished this conversation could be carried out in a larger room, preferably around a table and through intermediaries. ‘I owe you, and your crew. Thank you.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Not at all. And don’t think you have to repay me in any way, financially or, otherwise. You are a guest on my ship, and your passage will remain free from my interference.’
She moved slightly, towards him. Smith sprang upright and lurched to the door. ‘Right, see you later,’ he said, and left.
The M’Lak ship was gone, and so were the Ghast bodies. There were only clues left to hint at the fight that had happened here: the wreckage of a couple of crates, patches of melted metal where stray disruptor bolts had hit the walls and the stain of oily Ghast blood on the floor. Smith hastened to the cockpit.
‘Well, I think that covered it,’ he announced, dropping into to the captain’s chair.
Carveth was studying a clipboard. ‘You were gone a while. Did you pump her for or in exchange for information?’
‘Yes. Apparently she’s not Snow White and she isn’t magic either. Although she may be lying, of course. Didn’t think of that. What’ve you got there?’
‘It’s a list of all the things wrong with this ship.’
‘Bad news?’
‘They could bring it out in paperback. That torpedo hit us hard. We’ve got serious damage to the thrusters, heatwarping in the secondary camshaft and the right-side emergency jet’s completely knackered. We can’t thrust, our shaft’s bent and we’ll probably never shoot off from the right hand again.’
‘What sort of engines do the thrusters use?’
‘Multi-stroke Wankel-rotary. Why?’
‘Just wondered.’
‘But that’s not the worst of it. We’ve got no Supralux.’
‘What does that all mean?’
‘Well, we don’t have a hope of repairing the damage unless we reach civilisation. But we can’t move between systems and at our current state we won’t get home for about thirty years.’
‘Blast!’ said Smith. ‘We should have asked those Morlocks for help.’
‘Are you kidding? They’d have given us a push straight into the sun. I don’t know what their ships run on, but I wouldn’t want to share jump-leads with them.’
‘Good point, I suppose. What about the Ghasts?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. If they’re anything like I think they are they’ll be sorting themselves out ready to come back for another go. You know, we could really do with a mechanic.’
‘Aren’t you the mechanic?’
She frowned. ‘I’m the pilot. I can’t be flying this thing
and sticking it back together at once. Don’t you know about spacecraft design?’
Smith shook his head. ‘Nothing bigger than Airfix, I’m afraid. Balls: out of the frying pan and into the fire.’ He sighed and checked Gerald’s water. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘We’ve got no options. We’ll have to put down at the nearest civilised world and see what they can do. If not civilised, then we’ll have to make do with inhabited.’
Smith nodded. ‘So we can make planetfall?’
Carveth said, ‘Fall in the sense of dropping out the sky, yes. I’ll try and steer us down, but we sure as hell won’t be getting up again without a boost.’
‘Right. Well, I suppose that’s all we can do in the circumstances. Soon we’ll be in Republic of Eden territory. They may be a bunch of trigger-happy fanatics, but they’re mad enough for the Ghasts to stay out of their way.’
‘How do you mean?’ she said.
‘I’ll show you on the navigational computer. If I can find which bank of consoles it is.’
‘There’s a machine for locating it.’
‘What, a satnav for the satnav?’ The console bleeped, and Carveth pointed to a screen on which a threedimensional mock-up of the galaxy spun slowly. Smith zoomed in on their position.
‘We’re still in New Fran’s space, right?’ he said. ‘The sooner we cross the border into Republic space the better. The Franese are so wet they wouldn’t raise a finger if the Ghasts started a war in their territory. But if the Ghasts start destroying neutral ships – like us – in Republic of Eden territory, they won’t be welcome at all. The Republic’s so heavily policed that the Ghasts won’t dare attack us once we’re in their space. You see?’
‘That’s smart,’ Carveth said. ‘But you know it’s a bad week when you’re looking to those tossers to keep you safe. Still, what choice have we got?’ She sighed. ‘Right you are, Boss. I’ll set us a course straight for the border. Into the fire it is.’
462 sat in the captain’s chair of the Systematic Destruction, drumming his pincers on the armrest. A minion stood beside him, polishing his helmet. 462 reached up and prodded the intercom.