A Game of Battleships

by Toby Frost

  In his cabin he knelt down and dragged the encryption engine from out under the bed. It looked like a cross between a sewing machine and a very old cash register. A set of instructions was included.

  Following steps one to three of the instructions, Smith wrote out a short message, setting out the situation and requesting assistance. Then he pushed the message into one side of the engine and pulled the lever. A pair of rollers pulled the note into the integral mini-furnace, a dial on the front ticked and spun, and fine grey dust fell into the disposal tray.

  Step Four told Smith to eat the instructions. As he chewed he hoped that there was no Step Five, and then wondered why he hadn’t just fed the instructions into the furnace instead of eating them. He pushed the engine back under the bed, climbed on top and closed his eyes.

  A loud pinging sound jolted Smith awake from a dream about scones. He struggled upright, knelt down and dragged out the encryption engine. A ticker-tape message clattered out of a slot in the side.

  MESSAGE RECEIVED. CONFIRM YOU ARE IN PICKLE. ASK FRANK JURGENS AT

  ADENAUERPLATZ (OFF RUE CHARLES DE GAULLE) ABOUT PHANTOM. HE CAN BE

  TRUSTED. PLEASE ACQUIRE 2 BOXES CHEAP LAGER IN DUTY FREE. VITAL FOR

  FUTURE OPERATIONS. OVER.

  As he studied the message, the radio began to ring. Smith stumbled to the cockpit and fiddled with the controls.

  ‘Hey!’ the speaker called.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that HMS John Pym?’

  ‘It is,’ Smith replied warily.

  ‘I was receiving your distress call about one hour ago,’ said the voice. ‘I am calling from Tannhauser Gate orbital station. I am sorry to hear about your spacecraft breaking down.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Smith replied. ‘Still, mustn’t grumble –’

  ‘Perhaps you should trade it in for a German one. They are quite reliable, you know. My friend is having very much the same trouble as you. He bought a Triumph Dolomite, as antique, and the engine fell out on the Autobahn. It is the unions, he says.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about your friend’s car, but can we land yet?’

  ‘Of course! The docking sequence will begin in ten minutes. But, ah… you might want to carry your own baggage. The handlers, you know.’

  *

  ‘Burn them!’ the Lord Ezron, the Grand Jackalope, bellowed at the ceiling. ‘Let their eyes be plucked from their heads, oh Great Annihilator, their lying tongues torn out, their bodies devoured by jackals and the jackals scattered to the four winds! And with that, I declare the Democratic Republic of New Eden’s first conference on women’s rights open!’

  Lord Ezron sat down to catch his breath, and the other twenty-six hierarchs grumbled their thanks over the sound of the festivities outside.

  ‘Item One on the agenda – should women have rights? Anyone? Then it’s still a no. And with that, I declare the conference closed. Back to the meeting.’

  Today, as a billion banners and flags proclaimed, was Enlightenment Day on the planet of Deliverance, and consequently many things and people were being set alight. The banging in the street was probably caused by fireworks. It was hard to tell: along with smiting and hacking, there was a lot of shooting in the Republic of Eden on any day at all.

  The Supreme Convocation of the Democratic Republic sat around the table in their ceremonial helms of sanctity, which gave them the look of a support group for wizards. At the end of the table sat the Grand Mandrill, the Keeper of the Flame, Incinerator of Unbelievers. His name was Lord Hieronymous Prong, and his black, broad-brimmed hat bore the ancient symbol of the buckle and skull.

  He was asleep.

  ‘Now,’ said Ezron, ‘unless anyone has any objections, I’ll turn to the agenda for today. First, we have a request from the True Brotherhood of the Chicken Rampant, who have discovered another thing that might possibly offend their beliefs. They seek permission to slaughter everyone potentially responsible.’

  One of the other hierarchs had been chewing his beard. ‘What are their beliefs?’ he demanded through a mouthful of fluff.

  ‘They believe in.. ’ Ezron consulted the agenda, ‘finding things that offend their beliefs.’

  ‘Fair ’nuff,’ the hierarch said, and he went back to sucking his beard.

  Ezron ticked the list of action points. ‘Now for Item Two. We have a proposal from the High Cockatrice himself, Hierarch Beliath, who tells me that he has found a new way to solve the sin of lust.

  Hierarch Beliath. Please tell me this doesn’t involve a pair of garden shears.’

  Beliath rose coughing from his seat. ‘It has forever been the case,’ he rasped, ‘that men were created in the image of the Great Annihilator, ever since our blessed forefathers made him up. What have women given the world, except to unleash a tide of lust into our once-pure hearts? Behold!’ he cried, fishing a photograph out of his white robes, ‘I looked at a picture of a woman and look what happened to me! If that isn’t sinful, I don’t know what is!’

  The picture was quietly passed around the table. The hierarchs shook their heads sadly.

  ‘Horrible,’ said Lord Othred.

  The photograph made its way past the sixteen representatives of the Bureau of War, past the hierarch of the Bureau for Liberty, who was currently trying to dissolve his own office to escape the tyranny of excessive government, and to Prong himself, who had started to snore.

  A hierarch slipped the photograph in front of him. ‘Grand Mandrill?’ He paused then nudged the old man’s arm. ‘Lord Prong?’

  Prong’s eyes flicked open like a trap. Lurching forward, he blinked several times and yelped ‘Faith is purity! Purge it with flame! What’s going on?’

  The hierarch tapped the table, and Lord Prong looked down at the photograph.

  ‘Gah!’ he cried, drawing back into his chair. ‘What devilry is this? Save us from this – this – whose is this?’

  Daringly, Hierarch Beliath gave the Grand Mandrill a stern look. ‘I was debating the licentiousness of women, Lord Prong. There will be a slideshow later. But for now, I propose that there is only one way of ridding New Eden of the evil taint of lechery – we must kill all women!’

  Cheers broke out among the hierarchs. ‘Crusade!’ one wheezy voice croaked.

  Lord Prong felt the soft whirr in his temple that told him his frontal lobe accelerator was going to work. He was festooned with bionic enhancements, largely to compensate for the fact that he was two hundred and eighty-three. Sitting in his metal throne, a bundle of wires protruding from the side of his head like a broken television, it occurred to him that there might be a small flaw in this magnificent plan.

  ‘Fool!’ Prong rasped, and the microphone on his throat amplified his voice into a doom-laden roar. ‘You overstep yourself, Beliath. Did you consider the obvious result of killing every woman in the Republic of Eden? Who would we have to pick on then, eh?’

  ‘Oh,’ Beliath said, chastened.

  ‘Quite. Also, we would not be able to breed.’

  ‘The Ghasts have cloning machines,’ Hierarch Grumm put in. ‘They could lend them to us. They are our allies, after all.’

  ‘Oh they’re much too busy for that,’ Beliath replied, in a tone of bitter sarcasm. ‘They’ve got their new friends the lemming men to think about. Apparently the lemming men are really fanatical.’

  ‘How can they be more fanatical than us?’ Ezron demanded. ‘We’re a theocracy, for the Annihilator’s sake – may he butcher everything in his divine mercy. It doesn’t get any more fanatical than that!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We were committed to working with the Ghasts. I remember how it used to be… we’d do the religious genocide while they purged the galaxy of inferior lifeforms.” He sighed.

  “We had something special together.’

  ‘We can get them back,’ Prong said.

  The hierarchs turned. Wild eyes and conical hats swung towards Prong’s throne. ‘What?’ Grumm demanded, throwing an arc of spittle across the table.


  The Grand Mandrill smiled. ‘Item Three. My underlings have been working on a little project.

  You might want to think of it as a secret weapon.’

  ‘A gun?’ Grumm was of the Cordite sect and revered firepower.

  ‘Of course not!’ Beliath said. ‘Lord Prong is a good Ignian. It’ll be a special flamethrower for divinely roasting unbelievers.’

  ‘Good tries, gentlemen,’ Prong replied, ‘But wrong. The Department of Forbidden Science has been looking into non-Euclidian geometry. I refer, of course, to inter-dimensional travel.’

  ‘Blasphemy!’ So far in the meeting, the Exalted Coelacanth, most venerable of the elders, had been silent, his head lowered in prayer or slumber. Now he struggled to his feet and shook his small, hard fist. ‘This is a gross insult to Edenites everywhere. We must hunt out the dimensional travellers and kill them all!’

  Prong sighed. ‘No, it’s us who’d be travelling. Sit down, damn it!’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ The Coelacanth sat down again and settled back in his chair.

  ‘Now then,’ Prong said, smiling down the length of the table. ‘Seventy-two hours ago, we successfully tested a prototype. In only a few days our allies will be sending deputations to view the weapon in action. High ranking delegates from the Ghast Empire will be among them. We’ll see who looks unimportant when we reveal a dimension-shifting spacecraft to them.’ He peered down the table.

  ‘So wash your robes, alright?’

  *

  The airlock swung open and Smith found himself looking into the French quarter of Tannhauser Gate. Flags hung from the ceiling of the space station; accordion music drifted through the air. A poster showed a girl in armour, the stars of Europe forming a halo over her bowl-cut hair. There was even scrollwork on the ornamental lamposts, although it looked rather flimsy compared to that back home. Still, Smith thought as he stepped in, Europe didn’t smell of cheese and nobody had demanded to see their papers yet.

  In fact, nobody seemed to have noticed them at all. Two ancient men sat under a sign that read café. As Smith approached they looked away.

  ‘It’s a caff!’ Carveth said. ‘Who wants a sandwich de bacon, then?’

  Smith put out his arm to bar her way. “Careful, Carveth. They like strange food here,” he added, lowering his voice to a sinister whisper. “Even their national anthem is about mayonnaise.”

  Like gunslingers arriving in a suspiciously deserted town, they walked warily down the street.

  Smith wondered what all the strange signs meant. A poster advertised something called Le Chat Noir – a public convenience, presumably. The smell of bread floated out of a shop called Le Maison de Pain. Maison meant house, Smith recalled. Presumably it was a dentist’s, or some rum kind of knocking-shop.

  Rhianna took her smoking tin from her bag. ‘Are we in Amsterdam yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Smith replied. She looked disappointed. ‘If I remember rightly, the Europeans divide their territory into quarters, depending on which mini-country they’re from. At least. . where are we?’ Taking a deep breath, and mustering all the European he could remember from Form 3B, he approached the two old men outside the café.

  ‘You there,’ he declared. One of the old men moved one of his eyes. ‘Can you direct me to the Rue Charles de Gaulle, my good man?’

  The other old man said, ‘Eh,’ and shrugged. Clearly he was searching his memory for the answer.

  After a little while, Smith realised that the man had not understood him.

  ‘No,’ Smith replied, raising his voice and speaking more slowly as if addressing a relative both senile and half-deaf, ‘I… am… British. I… am… looking’ – he mimed a sailor surveying the horizon – ‘the Rue Charles de Gaulle.’ Unsure of how to mime this, he pointed to his moustache. ‘Erm.. do you speak Latin? Omnes Gal ia divisa est in partes tres, perhaps?’

  ‘ Bof,’ said the other old man.

  Suruk leaned in to Smith’s side. ‘Mazuran, I fear that these ancients require special treatment.’ He smiled horribly and cracked his knuckles.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s really –’ Smith began, but by then Suruk’s shadow had fallen across the table.

  The alien cleared his throat sacs with a sound like a car backfiring. The old men looked up.

  ‘ Felicitations, humains,’ the alien declared. ‘ Ou est la Rue Charles de Gaul e, s’il vous plait? Je voudrai attender un concert du jazz moderne. ’

  ‘ Le jazz moderne? ’ the nearer of the two replied.

  ‘ Oui,” Suruk replied. “Especialment le Serge Gainsbourg.’

  ‘ Mais oui! ’ The man leaped up, threw his arms open, looked at Suruk, thought better of it, and pointed down the road instead. Suruk nodded, listening.

  Smith turned to Carveth. ‘What’s he doing? Is he getting directions?’

  Suruk returned, still smiling. ‘Good Lord,’ Smith said as he approached, ‘how the devil did you manage that?’

  ‘It was most simple,’ the alien replied. ‘All I had to do to make them co-operate was address them in their own strange parlance. Now, follow me, old bean. Chop-chop.’

  ‘Shall do!’ Smith cried.

  Adenauerplatz stood at the very edge of the German quarter, behind the Rue Charles de Gaulle, near to the Place Charles de Gaulle and the Avenue Napoleon et Charles de Gaulle. They turned the corner, and looked into a square as neat as a snooker table, lined with glass-fronted houses. On the far side stood a bright white cube three stories high.

  Smith turned to his men. ‘Look,’ he announced, ‘I’m going to try to communicate with these fellows. Why don’t you go and have a look round while I get this done?’

  ‘I think I shall assess the local shops for, ah, implements,’ Suruk said. ‘I will come and find you later. You should not be too hard to find.’

  ‘Good plan. What about you ladies? I’m sure this meeting won’t involve anything you’d find interesting.’

  ‘Except the spaceship of which I’m the pilot?’ Carveth shrugged. ‘Nah, you can deal with this. I’m off for a drink and a pasty.’

  Rhianna wore her considering things expression. ‘On the one hand,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I do believe that any consultation on this should be decided with the participation of everyone concerned. On the other hand, I need to find a Dutch café and get some supplies.’

  Smith decided not to inquire further. He approached the bright white cube.

  Inside was a large desk, behind which a young man with a headset was typing at the smallest keyboard he had ever seen. As Smith approached the desk, the man stopped typing and said, ‘Captain Smith? Good morning. Commissioner Jurgens will see you now. Please do head through the door there,’ he added, pointing to a blank wall.

  A section of the wall swung inward with a gentle hiss of air. Behind the door stood a short, middle-aged man in a roll-neck sweater and blue blazer. ‘Good morning!’ he exclaimed, stepping back.

  ‘Do come in, please. I am Frank Jurgens, Deputy Commissioner. I have been expecting you, as they say.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Smith. Jurgens’ office looked rather like a normal room, if somewhat whiter and more angular. The furniture seemed to have been built to solve a geometry problem, but that aside, it was actually quite normal, Smith thought as he looked around. You could almost think it was Brit – wait a moment!

  He stopped before a framed poster. On a red background, four stern men in identical outfits stood in a row, glaring towards the horizon. Uniforms, horizon-staring, ferocious youths of indeterminate sexual preference? This could only mean one thing – the sinister world of foreign politics! Jurgens had seemed such a nice chap, too. But then, Europe was part of abroad. You never knew…

  “Ah, Kraftwerk,” Jurgens said, noticing Smith’s interest. ‘Some very great musicians have come from Germany, you know.’

  ‘Music?’ it occurred to Smith that these strange people might be a popular beat combo. ‘From Germany? But… where’s the tuba?’

  ‘Kraf
twerk were way before their time,’ Jurgens explained, and he raised an eyebrow. ‘They had neither a tuba nor leather shorts.’

  ‘Nudists, eh?’ Smith wondered if he was being taken entirely seriously. ‘I’m more a Pink Zeppelin man,’ he said. Jurgens gave him a rather curious look and sat down.

  ‘So then,’ Jurgens began, crossing his legs, ‘I understand your vessel was attacked by persons unknown on the edge of European space.’

  ‘That’s right. We were guarding an automated convoy. The enemy appeared out of nowhere, literally. There was a flash of light and then suddenly they were gone, just like that.’

  Jurgens frowned. ‘It sounds as if the technology used was highly advanced. I took the liberty of looking at your spacecraft from the docking bay cameras. From the looks of it, your attacker must have used some sort of rust-generating beam on your hull. Most unfortunate.’

  ‘Er. . yes,’ Smith replied. ‘A rust laser. That’s it. Any chance of a cup of tea?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Smith accepted his tea warily and peered into the very white cup. It was not too bad, he decided, taking a sip. Not bad at all.’

  Jurgens nodded. ‘Now, Captain Smith, do you have any idea who might have attacked you?’

  ‘Well, no. I mean, it could be any number of enemies, you see. Space is full of rum types,’ he added, remembering not to mention who the rum types might include. ‘Aliens envy Britain its space empire. What with the Ghasts on one side and the bloody lemming-men on the other, it’s not as if we’re short of enemies. And then there are all the lowlifes who work for Gertie – Aresians, filthy Ghastists, that sort of riff-raff.’

  ‘And envious foreign powers too, no doubt.’

  ‘Well, of course – I mean, no, not at all. Except for that loony who runs Russia. Mad King Boris, that’s the fellow. Otherwise, I’m sure you chaps are fine.’

  ‘It is indeed fortunate that King Boris declared war upon himself. The European Federation has the same problem, Captain Smith. It is forever defending its borders against those who would wish to force their laws and customs upon us.’

  ‘I’m sure it does. I’d like some more tea, please.’