A Game of Battleships

by Toby Frost

  The figures emerged. They were acolytes of the Order of the Handyman, their red hoods pulled up, robes brushing the ground. The Pale Horse’s airlock had a chequered floor, and the two men looked like pawns. Slowly, reverently, they carried the wrapped painting across the gantry, past the astonished visitors and through a door on the opposite side.

  Lord Prong gestured to the spaceship. ‘Shall we take the tour?’

  Smith watched the delegates file towards the doors. One by one, they stepped through the doorway, into the blue light.

  A voice boomed out of the airlock: deep, commanding and slightly strained, as if on the verge of fury.

  ‘Welcome aboard our flight to the further regions of experience. A trol ey will appear shortly to cater for your beverage-related pleasures. Passengers are to remain chained in until the light comes on. Smoking is not al owed unless you are being incinerated. You will find emergency exits located nowhere – for there is no escape!’

  The doors slammed shut. The hierarchs milled about on the gantry, looking rather like a colony of penguins. It would not have surprised Smith to find them hiding eggs up their smocks.

  Smith ran back down the gantry, stolen robes flapping around him. He stopped before his men, slightly out of breath. ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘The invisible spaceship?’ Carveth replied. ‘Yes – I mean, I did to begin with –’

  ‘Whatever they took off the ship, we have to get it. It’s our duty to acquire useful things for the Empire. That little fellow, Prong, said it was the power unit for the drive that made it invisible.’

  ‘I agree,’ Suruk declared. ‘We must steal this mystic painting.’ He nodded to the doors at the far side of the gantry. The sill had been decorated with a relief of skull-faced cherubs. ‘Less delaying, more slaying!’

  ‘Alright,’ Smith said. ‘Follow me. Calmly, now. Remember, we’ve got every right to be here.’

  From under her hood, Carveth said, ‘We have?’

  ‘Of course. I’m claiming this place for the Empire. Come along!’

  Smith holstered his pistol and strolled out of cover. Suruk strode casually behind him. Carveth hurried along at the rear, a little figure in red.

  They walked towards the doors. ‘Calmly, everyone,’ Smith said, and he pressed the button.

  The doors parted, and they looked into a corridor. ‘There,’ Smith said, nodding to a side-room.

  The room was bare metal and smelt of grease. At the far corner, under a flag, two robed handymen were locking a large wardrobe.

  Smith closed the door. Both handymen turned.

  ‘What the hell?’ said the first man. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Don’t look now,’ Carveth replied, ‘but this is a hold up.’

  The technician ducked down to get a better look. ‘But. . you’re just a girl.’

  ‘Wrong.’ Suruk threw his hood back.

  ‘Begone, demon!’ cried the man, recoiling in terror, and Suruk brought the edge of his hand sharply into the technician’s head. He fell, and Suruk stepped to the second man and causally punched him out.

  Smith bent down and checked the fallen Handymen. One carried a hefty metal keyring. He flicked through the keys until he found one that looked appropriate. The key turned easily in the lock, and the wardrobe opened.

  Smith reached inside. His hand brushed something soft – a fur coat, from the feel of it – and he stretched further. The fur slid down, and he found himself gripping a hard wooden corner, wrapped in a thin blanket. The painting.

  It took up almost the entire back of the wardrobe. He tugged it forward a little, realising that the wrapping was taped into place.

  Carveth touched him on the arm.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t like this, boss. I mean, all this for a picture. Do we have to steal it?’

  ‘Of course we have to steal it. We’re an empire, aren’t we?’

  ‘It looks a bit heavy.’

  ‘Nonsense. Do you think that’s what was going through Lord Byron’s head when he rolled the Elgin Marbles out of, erm, Elginland? Nonsense, he was thinking –’

  ‘How can I score some laudanum and shag my aunt?’

  ‘Really, Carveth! Suruk, you take one corner and I’ll take the other.’

  They lifted the frame out of the wardrobe. ‘Careful at the back,’ Smith said. ‘Carveth, could you get the door?’

  She opened the door and looked straight into the grim face of Hieronymous Prong. She gave a yelp of surprise and slammed it shut.

  The door burst open and Lord Prong took a limping step into the room. ‘Well, well,’ he rasped. ‘I’ve been looking for reds under my bed all those years and it turns out they were in the wardrobe.’

  There was a huge silver automatic in his hand, scrimshawed with holy writ. Even less pleasant was his smile, which looked like the product of muscle failure. Behind him came Hierarch Beliath and his inevitable smell.

  ‘Close the door,’ said Prong. ‘Best the allies don’t know these idiots got this far.’

  The door clicked. Beliath said, ‘That one’s a dirty alien.’

  Prong grimaced, as if trying out his face and not liking the fit. ‘Put my property down.’

  ‘Gladly,’ Smith replied. As he set the parcel on the ground, he flicked his hand into his robe.

  Smith turned holding a Markham and Briggs Civiliser. ‘I’ll put you down too, if you’d like.’

  Prong raised his hand. Smith’s gun roared and the Civiliser shell hit Prong in the chest and blasted straight though him. Prong’s pistol clattered on the ground.

  Slowly, the Grand Mandrill patted his chest. ‘Only a lung,’ he wheezed. ‘I’ve not used those things for ages.’

  ‘Pipe down, you two,’ Smith replied. ‘You’re under arrest.’

  Prong and Beliath glared at them with guilty rage, like a couple of dirty old men surprised outside a netball court. Carveth produced the shotgun from her robes.

  ‘How dare you try to stop us?’ Beliath snarled. ‘Don’t you know how offensive that is to us? We are men of faith.’ He drew himself up and cocked his head back. ‘We require special treatment.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Smith replied. ‘You smell terrible.’

  Beliath sneered. ‘It is written that deodorant is decadent and washing is weak, just like your society. After all, do I look like a powdered fairy?’

  ‘More like a smelly gnome.’

  ‘So move it, King Leer,’ Carveth added, and she pulled her hood back.

  Beliath shuddered violently. His eyes, already wild, took on the appearance of poached eggs in the mouldy ham of his face. White specs of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth, joining the assorted detritus already clustered in his beard. ‘A woman,’ he spat, goggling. ‘A woman in the guise of a Handyman!’ Beliath clutched at his robes, yanking wads of fluff from his head. ‘The shame, the brazen, wanton, licentious, dirty, filthy, naked shame of it.’ Gasping, he turned to Prong. ‘Grand Mandrill, we must kill her to wash this stain from our honour. Yes, I’ll burn you, Jezebel, just as soon as I’ve got you out of those robes –’

  He lunged at Carveth with both hands, palms out to grab and squeeze. She raised the shotgun and fired.

  The shot threw Beliath against the wall. His whole torso was red. His face gawped, as though he had no idea how he had got into this terrible state. Then he dropped onto the floor.

  ‘Nice,’ Suruk said.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ Carveth said. ‘Honest.’

  Smith looked at Beliath and wondered how many years’ bad luck you got for killing the Ancient Mariner.

  On the far side of the room, Prong coughed. He patted his meagre chest. ‘Praise the Annihilator.

  Faith alone has saved me. That and bionic lungs.’

  Smith put his gun against Prong’s hat. ‘Your brain’s not bionic. If it was, it would work better.

  Prong, I am taking you prisoner. You will return to our ship with us.’

  ‘So no fas
t moves, bucklehead,’ Carveth added.

  Prong chuckled. ‘Is that the best you can do, captain? A .45 Civiliser? By Edenite standards, that’s a pretty low calibre weapon.’

  ‘Then it’ll match your brain. Now move.’

  Prong opened the door and stepped out. Smith followed, close behind. The door slammed shut and, slowly, the pack of guests looked around.

  They stood in a loose row in their various uniforms, the extended family of evil waiting to have its photograph taken. Smith saw whiskers and polished armour on one side, antennae and leather coats on the other and white robes and pointed hoods in the centre, but the differences were superficial. He was still looking at the lowest dross of the galaxy.

  ‘Hands up!’ Smith cried.

  ‘Back, rabble!’ Suruk snarled. ‘Keep at bay, or I shall drench the walls with idiot blood!’

  There was a moment’s pause. The Edenites glared back at him, their eyes wild and hooded hats high. They resembled an exceptionally butch drag act about damsels. The lemming-men looked at one another, affronted and furious. From the Ghast deputation a thin, nasal voice exclaimed ‘Oh, for Number One’s sake – not you! ’

  ‘462…’ Smith said. ‘For once, it’s not you saying “we meet again”. It’s me. Well, we meet again.’

  ‘This is turning into a very tedious day,’ 462 replied, crossing all his arms. ‘Praetorian? Remove these imbeciles.’

  One of his guards cocked his gun.

  Smith raised his pistol and let off a single shot into the rafters. ‘That’s enough! Right, you bloody savages,’ he called. ‘In the name of the British Space Empire, stop your ignorant gibber-jabber or I’ll blow your filthy brains out!’

  ‘That’s liberal talk!’ Hierarch Ezron roared. ‘Kill ‘em all!’

  In a clatter of guns, knives and axes, thirty of space’s worst villains drew their weapons.

  Suruk moved. His robe fell and his arm flicked out to the parcel he carried. There was a long, hooked knife in his hand. ‘Fools, listen. My blade is sharp and poised. Should I fall, it will tear this relic of yours. Strike me down and you will fail your rulers, betray your orders and generally resemble chumps.’

  Carveth stepped in, laying the shotgun against the parcel.

  462’s tongue slid out of his mouth and moved from side to side. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That is a powerful piece of materiel. Praetorians, no shooting.’

  ‘Well said, dirty ally,’ Quetic added. ‘There must be no gunfire. In which case – axe attack!’ He raised his axe and gave a warbling scream of mingled hatred and glee. ‘ Hwuphep Popacapinyo – darhep yul ai! ’

  ‘Wait –‘ 462 hissed as Quetic’s soldiers came to life around him. They rushed forward, bayonets first, and Smith realised that Prong and the painting were turning into considerable impediments to his escape.

  He shoved Prong aside and lifted the Civiliser, took careful aim, and shot one of Quetic’s howling minions in the thigh. ‘Everyone back!’ Smith called, and to his horror he saw that Carveth had pre-empted him and was running flat out the way they had come. Bloody coward, he thought, and a revving sound made him turn to the left.

  He dodged back instinctively as a whirling blade swung down. A giant in a dark uniform and a steel breastplate stood before him waving a circular saw of the type used to cut paving slabs. Smith drew his sword, but Suruk dashed past him. The alien leapt onto Carsus’s chest, and with one massive yank on the Reborn’s armour sprang into the air. Carsus looked up, raising the whining saw again – and Suruk’s spear flashed out. Carsus’s head, which had always looked like an afterthought, rolled off his shoulders and his enormous body dropped like a felled tree.

  Suruk landed lightly beside the armoured corpse. ‘No helmet. Amateurs.’

  Smith looked back just in time. Steel flashed before him before he drove his sword up to block Quetic’s axe. The impact sent them both staggering. The lemming man leaped back in, swinging, but Smith dodged and sliced the alien across the arm. Quetic cursed in Yullian – ‘ Fecinec! ’ – and flopped against the railings, his whiskers flecked with froth.

  ‘Boss!’ a voice cried at Smith’s side. He looked around, and saw Carveth. Before he could rebuke her cowardice, he saw that she was pushing a porter’s trolley. Suruk heaved the painting onto it.

  A fresh batch of guards ran onto the gantry behind them. The Ghasts were readying their guns.

  Prong's amplified voice roared at them not to shoot.

  ‘Boss!’ Carveth called, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Smith replied. ‘In the name of democracy and the British Space Empire… run like buggery, men!’

  They tore down the gantry, Suruk pushing the trolley while Smith and Carveth laid down as much covering fire as they could. As one, the mob of enemies surged forward, yelling, hissing and yowling. Smith fired off two more bullets, killing an Edenite thug and stunning one of the praetorians with a shot that made its helmet ring like a gong.

  An angel-shaped surveillance drone swung overhead, trilling out a warning. As if in answer, a pair of metal doors burst open on the left and a chanting gaggle of cultists rushed out, wearing large metal bells over their heads. Each carried two hammers, and they would have overwhelmed Smith and his crew, had they not used them to strike their bells. The fanatics staggered like bees in smoke, their dirge muffled by their clanging headgear, and Suruk deftly wheeled the trolley between the swaying bodies, clearly fighting the urge to play a tune on their heads with his spear.

  Smith fished the speedloader from his pocket and pushed a fresh set of shells into his pistol.

  Carveth reached the lift – she had never realised that legs as short as hers could go so quickly – and thumped the control panel. The doors rolled apart and Suruk pushed the trolley at the gap.

  ‘It will not fit!’ he snarled.

  ‘Turn it side-on, you stupid sod!’ Carveth shouted.

  ‘Apologies, that was foolish.’ Suruk turned the parcel and pushed it end first into the lift. They crowded in around it. Smith fired two more shots down the gantry, deterring nobody, and slammed the door behind them. Slowly, the lift began to sink.

  Carveth flopped against the wall. ‘All this,’ she moaned, ‘for a bloody picture. It’d better have some ponies on it.’

  She had a fair point, Smith thought – apart from the bit about ponies. After all this effort, he would be severely disappointed if the painting didn’t contain at least one artistically valid set of antiquities: the poetess Sappho admiring some Greek jugs, perhaps, or Guinevere and Lady Godiva – preferably in the same scene. .

  The lift rumbled around them. Carveth remembered to reload the shotgun. Above, a bell started to toll, a rapid, urgent pulse. ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Who was that old bloke? Oliver Cromwell or somebody?’

  ‘More fathead than roundhead,’ Smith replied. ‘A member of the Edenite religious police. Most hierarchs don’t know which end of the red-hot poker to do the poking with, but that fellow – well, if his ship’s anything to go by, he’s a sharp biscuit. And 462, here of all places. .’ He shook his head. ‘I knew that bugger was alive, but I thought they’d have sent him to the Morlock Front, or at least given him a research job. Clearly there wasn’t a backroom big enough for his swollen arse.’

  Carveth pointed to the lift controls. ‘We’re nearly at the bottom. They’ll be waiting –’

  ‘Suruk?’ Smith said. ‘Time to give the signal.’

  The alien reached to his side and took out a flare pistol. He held it out to Smith. ‘You must fire it, Mazuran. I have taken the oath to fight only with the weapons of my ancestors. Guns just breed violence,’ he concluded, solemnly drawing a pair of machetes.

  Smith turned the pistol over in his hands. ‘I hope this works,’ he said, and the lift jolted to a halt.

  As the doors opened, he shoved the gun into the aperture, angled it upwards and pulled the trigger.

  The flare sailed up above Deliverance, over the wa
ll dividing the hired men from the devotees. In the Booty Hut, Captain No-Nose Chang saw the light and spluttered with surprise. Grog bubbled up the wrong way, pouring out of the centre of his face like a frothy proboscis. ‘With me, lads!’ he called, stumbling to his feet. His nasal passage fizzing uncontrollably, he charged out of the door, the itching driving him wild. Behind him, his men cheered and drew their weapons.

  The lift doors rolled open onto a medieval picture of Hell. As Smith stepped out, the gates exploded. A horde of the galaxy’s lowest piratical scum poured in, unkempt and furious, waving guns, cutlasses, tankards and grappling hooks. Hideous faces grinned behind lank hair and scars. Alarms howled and warning lights strobed in the rafters.

  On the far right, the front of a temple flopped down like a drawbridge and a great machine rolled forth: part tank, part grimacing idol. The face of the Great Annihilator glowered down at them, and a mechanical roar yowled from between its fangs. From the brim of the war-god’s iron hat, Lord Prong called down curses on the raiders and the young folk of today. A bevy of cultists swarmed around the caterpillar tracks, flagellating wildly. Occasionally a robe would snag on the workings and a fanatic would be whisked under the war machine, to lubricate the gears.

  The pirates met the Edenites in a terrible clash of blades and guns. A rocket sailed out of the pillaging horde and blew the top off one of the mobile fort’s turrets. A couple of hatches dropped down from the idol’s chest and two great rotary guns spun in place of nipples.

  ‘It’s got laser tits,’ Carveth gasped. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’

  Beside her, Suruk gazed at the battle like a small child looking at a Christmas display. ‘Craven

  idol,’ he whispered, raising his blades, ‘I will cleave the unsightly knockings from your chest!’

  ‘No you won’t,’ Smith replied, and Suruk seemed to deflate slightly, like a child that had just

  dropped an ice cream. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Smith, ‘we have our artefact. We’re going home.’

  The Captain and the Queen