A Game of Battleships

by Toby Frost

  The John Pym slid out of the docking bay as the piratical horde fell back. It took off surrounded by chaos, one of dozens of red-striped, trophy-bedecked spacecraft. No one saw it go. Everybody had other things to worry about.

  Deliverance faded in the viewscreen. It looked like a ball of flame, then a match-head, and then a tiny red spot in the centre of space, a mere zit on the face of the galaxy.

  ‘God!’ Smith said from the captain’s chair. ‘What a dreadful place. Carveth, set us a course for British Space. Where’s Suruk?’

  ‘He’s gone to check his spawn,’ Carveth replied. ‘He said you wouldn’t mind if he borrowed your cricket bat.’

  ‘Righto. Well…’ Smith got to his feet. ‘Let’s have a look at this precious painting of theirs, shall we?’

  As often happened in the British Space Empire, it was time for the brave explorers to sit back, put the kettle on and try to work out exactly what priceless treasure they had stolen. Smith set the package up on end at the far end of the hold and got to work on the ropes with a Stanley knife. He let Suruk continue to tend to his frogs, or alternatively fight them off; the alien was not noted for his artistic tastes and tended not to hang anything on his walls that he had not hacked off somebody first.

  Smith regarded himself as rather more sophisticated. After all, he could tell a Henry Moore sculpture from a large piece of Blu-tac from quite a long way off. As he cut the ropes he wondered what sort of thing the Edenites would want to look at: the torture of the damned, presumably, especially the large-chested damned. What a bunch of perverts they were. Anyone decent would want girls dressed up properly, like one of the Bronte sisters, say. . As the cloth fell from the frame, he reflected that he really ought to try to get Rhianna to wear a big white nightie again.

  All was now revealed, but instead of angels firing machine guns at the unrighteous, Smith was looking at himself.

  ‘It’s a mirror,’ he said. ‘How strange.’

  He reached out and tapped the glass with his fingertips. Nothing unusual happened.

  Carveth had been watching from the back of the room, somewhat warily. She approached like a person with vertigo looking over a cliff. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘They really must be stupid to try to power a ship with this. . you don’t think they swapped it for something else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Smith replied. ‘Rum, Carveth. Most rum.’

  ‘Weird.’ She stared at her reflection as if expecting it to wink at her. ‘Nice frame, though. You could take it on Antiques Roadshow and find out if it’s worth anything.’

  ‘It does look rather old. First Empire, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Greetings!’ Suruk announced, striding into the room. ‘Is there tea?’ He frowned. ‘So, this is the trophy the Edenites so wished to guard. Curious. Is there anything strange or sinister about it?’

  ‘Excluding your reflection? No.’ Carveth said.

  ‘Peculiar. I must confess, it is not a pleasing thing. The workmanship seems a little gauche to my mind. It definitely needs more bloodstains.’

  As Suruk turned, Carveth pointed. ‘Erm, you’ve got something stuck to you.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes. Just look in the mirror. Down a bit, to the left. . you’ve got a frog stuck to your bottom.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Smith added. ‘Lower your hand – there.’

  Suruk reached down and located a large toad-like creature attached by its fangs to the seat of his trousers. Carefully, he prized its jaws apart. It squatted in the palm of his hand, glaring at its father with unabashed malice. Tiny tusks glinted at the edge of its broad mouth. ‘One of my spawn. They are teething and will try to savage anything.’

  ‘Clearly, Smith said. It did seem a very odd way to demonstrate filial affection.

  Suruk shook his head. ‘It is fortunate for me that I have no buttocks. And, for him, it is fortunate that I dislike sitting down. Still, good to see that my spawn are becoming suitably ferocious. I shall hurl him back into the engine room.’

  ‘On the bright side, at least someone finds you appetising,’ Carveth said. ‘Let’s get this tea made.’

  While the others were taking tea in the mess-room, Smith checked the scanners. No doubt the Edenites would be wild with rage by now. As soon as they had rid themselves of the space-pirate uprising, they would be in hot and heavily armed pursuit.

  And 462! Surrounded by the reassuring clatter of gears and cogitation devices, it was hard to believe that the horrible little creature still existed. Each time they met, Smith chipped another bit off his enemy and 462 climbed a notch higher on the greasy pole of the Ghast hierarchy. Smith fired up the lidar, wondering as he did whether he and 462 would be locked in combat forever until the pair of them were geriatric. It was a nightmarish image: a ninety-year-old wrestling with a giant ant with floppy antennae and a back end as leathery as its trenchcoat.

  He made himself concentrate on the scanner. They were approaching the edge of British space and could expect warships to be patrolling the borders. With any luck they would be able to put in a call for assistance.

  A light flickered on the control panel. Behind old plexiglass, a needle fluttered like a captive moth. Smith pulled the printout lever and, as the tickertape began to spool, he took the Spotter’s Guide to Spacecraft Residue from the shelf.

  The signs matched. A large craft had been this way and, from the mixture of Navy-issue nuclear vapour trail and teacake crumbs, it was British. Quickly, he typed out a message and cranked the handle marked Broadcast. Satisfied, he returned to the hold.

  The mirror stood at the back of the room, as oblong and unhelpful as one of those alien obelisk things they sold in junk shops. He looked at himself for a while – not doing too badly, despite the pies – and peered at the ornate frame, trying to make sense of the little markings in the corners. One looked like pieces of a square, the other like a heart, cut into bits and arranged at random, and almost lost in a mass of applied vines that covered the frame like scrollwork on a sewing machine. Very odd indeed.

  On a whim, he walked around the back. A piece of elastic had been strung across the rear of the mirror and tucked into it was a note. He glanced at the heading and saw the words: For attention of sacred hierarchs only. Smith strode into the mess. This was worth sharing with the crew.

  ‘Chaps, I have news,’ he said, as Suruk slid a mug across the table. ‘I found this stuck to the back of the mirror.’ He unfolded the paper.

  ‘What does it say?’ Carveth asked.

  Smith lifted the message to the light. ‘Ahem. All hierarchs are to note that a typographical error has been detected in the posters promoting Il iteracy Week. An extra space should be added to posters, to make them read: The gun is good, the pen is evil. For the avoidance of doubt, the penis is evil too. That will be covered in Self-Hate Week.’

  Smith lowered the paper. ‘Hmm. Well, that's pretty frustrating, really.’

  ‘That's probably the point,’ Carveth replied.

  Disappointed, Smith turned the paper over. The rear side was a medieval painting frequently used on Edenite stationery that he recognised as: The Damned are Tortured with Musical Instruments. It was all distastefully inventive: on seeing a man grievously tormented by a misplaced oboe, Smith reflected that merely having to listen to a child playing the recorder would have been punishment enough.

  ‘So what’ve we got?’ Carveth asked, rooting around in the biscuit tin. ‘Besides Lord Prong’s favourite preening-screen and a bunch of very angry goddies combing the galactic fringe for us, that is.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Smith replied. ‘But the Edenites wanted this thing. They’re a bad crew and therefore us stealing it is good. If nothing else, we can give it to the British museum. That’ll hack off the Edenites a treat.’

  ‘Makes no sense to me,’ Carveth said. ‘I wish Rick was here. He’d know what to do.’

  No doubt he would, Smith reflected. Rick Dreckitt had started out as an android bounty hunter
and private eye, and was now one of the toughest operatives in the Service. After years hunting gangs on the mean streets, Dreckitt would probably want to bust some loogans with a Chicago typewriter, before handing out chin music harder than a chiseller grifting bindle stiffs. Which would be. . great, probably.

  ‘I rather wish Rhianna was on board,’ he said. ‘This all seems her sort of thing.’

  ‘Pining, boss?’ Carveth sighed. ‘Fair enough. But we can do this without her. I mean, she’s hardly vital to the war effort. Remember when they had that Dig for Victory campaign and she made us listen to jazz records?’

  ‘Her counsel would be welcome,’ Suruk said. He took a deep swig of tea, clamping the mug between his mandibles while his hands reached for the biscuit tin. ‘On the other hand, my offspring are numerous and enraged and my lack of a jacksie has preserved my britches from the gnawing of the spawn. This bodes well.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Smith said, refilling their mugs, ‘but there’s something else you need to know.

  I’ve picked up a British ship on the lidar. I’ve sent across a request for an escort while we’re carrying this mirror. With any luck they’ll find us, escort the ship to safety, and this whole business will be at an end.’

  He looked from Suruk to Carveth and took in their doubtful expressions. ‘On the other hand,’ he added, ‘it is just possible that we might end up in a complete mess and have to fight our way out.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Suruk said. ‘You know, Mazuran, for a moment you had me worried.’

  *

  462 limped into Prong’s office. The room was not large and was lit by light redirected from below. The red glow fell on chains and instruments of interrogation. Prong sat behind his desk, on which the Creed of the New Eden, Eleventh Edition stood like a wall between him and his visitors. He was using the tenth edition as a cushion to give himself a few extra inches of dignity.

  462 looked around the grim, red room, the fire and the torture implements and said, ‘If I may check, Lord Prong… Hell is the place you don’t like, yes?’

  ‘Course it is!’ Grimacing, Prong shifted about on his seat. ‘Where’s the lemming man?’

  ‘Ambassador Quetic is admiring the workings of your spacecraft. We find the Yull are easily amused. Perhaps he has climbed into one of its wheels.’

  “If he’s in there, when it. . activates, he’ll be damned. There’s no coming back from there.’ Prong gave a laugh that turned, via a wheeze, into a coughing fit. ‘Damn commies shot Beliath,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘An insignificant minion. You have others.’

  ‘He was a good man. Well, not exactly a good man, more an idiot, but a prize idiot.’ Prong jabbed a finger across the table. ‘We need to pay those goddam blasphemers back!’

  The screen on the far side of the room blared into life. ‘Do you want a government that cares about you, and a god who looks out for the poor and needy? Of course you don’t, because that’s commie talk! You need a government that despises you and robs you blind, and a god who just wants to kill everything! That’s why –‘ Prong turned the volume down.

  ‘You realise that there have not been any communists for five hundred years,’ 462 observed.

  ‘Of course I do, you young antsnapper. But you’ve got to keep people afraid. It keeps the money coming in. And more money means more handmaidens – or, as the case may be, more piles cream.’ He shifted uneasily. ‘Now then.. I’m having space combed for those godless bastards who stole my refraction portal. In the meantime, the Pale Horse will fall back on its built-in lagomorphic vortex.’

  462 peered at the row of tomes on Prong’s shelf. He drew out a copy of Phrenology and Acupuncture, frowned at the grim-looking fellow on the cover and slid it back into place. ‘Good. Do you know who the man who raided you was?’

  Prong shrugged. ‘Some heathen fairy from the British Space Empire,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ 462 turned, hands clasped behind his back. ‘His name is Isambard Smith. He gave me this metal eye, this limp and this scar on my hand that reads Made in Sheffield.’

  ‘Sounds like he kicked your – what is that thing, a thorax?’

  462’s antennae twitched irritably. ‘A stercorium. The most highly-evolved waste-disposal organ in the galaxy. Its efficiency is matched only by the pleasantness of its odour. But I digress. Behind a facade of jovial idiocy, Smith possesses cunning and ferocity worthy of a pure-bred antwolf. It is quite a thick facade, I should add.’

  “Sounds like a tough customer.”

  ‘He is. You must watch these British, Lord Prong. I have studied their culture extensively. Their outer mildness masks an inner strength, just as the flaky exterior of one of their ‘Cornish pastries’ conceals the meat within. Their society equips them for war. The British child is brainwashed from birth, beginning with an indoctrination programme codenamed Watch with Mother. It then passes through the ranks of the paramilitary reconnaissance organisations known as Guides and Scouts – as we call them collectively, the Brownwoggles. Next comes drilling in the arts of Maypole and Morris, bringing psychological conditioning to a level rivalling even the Praetorian storm divisions. Add to this the colossal intake of moral fibre, synthesised via the combat beverage tea, of which the average Briton consumes between two and six pints per day, and you have a creature whose moral rectitude is limited only by bladder capacity.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Quite. We have attempted to emulate them, but our own Strength Through Morris initiative has not been wholly successful.’ 462 glanced away, pushing aside unpleasant memories of colliding helmets and flapping black handkerchiefs. ‘Send out your men to find Smith. If nothing else, keep him busy. We need the Pale Horse for our next objective.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘ Classified, Prong. Suffice it to say that there will be merciless killing involved, which should satisfy your religious sensibilities.’

  ‘Will it help the needy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then damn it, I’m in!’ Prong punched his fist into his palm, then checked that none of his fingers had dropped off. ‘I hate the needy. Scrounging bastards. Just make sure there’s enough carnage and Eden is yours to command.’

  ‘It always was,’ 462 said, and he smiled and turned away.

  *

  With a low rumble of castors, Theophilius Chumble pushed a trolley laden with food down the corridors of the HMS Chimera. As second-in-command and ship’s android, responsibility for the proper running of one of the Empire’s dreadnoughts rested on him, and part of that involved waking up the captain. He stopped the trolley, fished the fob-phone out of his waistcoat and checked the time.

  Chumble knocked as he opened the door and strode paunch-first into Captain Fitzroy’s room.

  ‘Good morrow, good morrow!’ he chuckled, rubbing his hands together. ‘And what a fine morrow it is, Ma’am.’

  Felicity Fitzroy sat up in bed, dislodging the striped Bhagparsian feline that had been resting on the covers. It yawned, sighed and went back to sleep.

  Clad only in regulation space-knickers, the captain got up, rubbed her eyes, stuck her arms up as if to punch the sky and said, ‘Hullo, Chumble. Another sunny day in the space fleet, eh?’

  ‘Absolutely, Captain. Now,’ he added as she flung her arms down and touched her toes, ‘I think breakfast is called for. Half a synthetic roast chicken and a snifter of port would be capital, methinks.’

  Captain Fitzroy pulled on her dressing gown. It was dark blue and had epaulettes. ‘Jolly good idea.’ She reached down and prodded the heaped covers. They groaned and, slowly James Shuttlesworth, ace space-fighter pilot, pulled back the duvet until his eyes were visible.

  ‘Morning sleepy,’ said Captain Fitzroy. ‘What ho there, Shuttles.’

  ‘Uh.’

  ‘Guess what I had last night,’ Captain Fitzroy demanded.

  He groaned. ‘I don't know. A lot to drink?’

  ‘You!’ She whirled her arms and yawned. ‘I banged you s
illy. Who's the best girl in the fleet, eh?’

  ‘You,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Good-oh.’ It was only right that he should have known the answer to that question, since Captain Fitzroy had shouted it at him several times the night before, in flagrante delicto.

  ‘Look, Felicity, we really ought to stop doing this –’

  ‘If you don't want to joust, leave your lance in the castle,’ Captain Fitzroy replied as she strode into the bathroom. ‘No time for sluggards here – am I right, Mr Chumble?’

  ‘Most certainly you are, Ma’am.’ Chumble rocked on his heels. ‘You know, once I made the acquaintance of a most slovenly fellow, by the name of Frampton Gusset –’

  ‘Have to wait, I’m afraid,’ she replied, sawing at her mouth with a toothbrush. ‘Busy day today.

  What’s the mission, Mr Chumble?’

  ‘Well, let me see.’ Chumble took out his fob-phone, flicked it open and consulted the screen. A series of muffled bangs indicated that the captain was getting dressed. ‘I do believe that today, we’re not doing very much at all.

  ‘Excellent!’ Captain Fitzroy emerged, dressing as she approached. ‘Patrolling the borders of the Empire, eh? All aboard,’ she said, adjusting her bra. ‘Mr Chumble, have the wallahbot laser another notch on the bedpost. Activate the deck-swabbing machine. Oh, and feed the cat, would you?’

  *

  Carveth was in the cockpit and Suruk had retired to his room to polish the new additions to his skull collection and rearrange their hats. Feeling tired and lonely, Smith decided to look in Rhianna’s quarters.

  He felt oddly furtive about going into Rhianna's room, even though he was doing so because he honestly missed her and not with the intention of looking at her pants again. It was strange how different her little metal cube was to any of the other metal cubes; it was as though each cabin trapped some of its owner's personality like a genie in a bottle. Smith's bottle would have contained tea; Suruk's, probably blood; and Carveth's, bubble bath cut with Prosecco. Smith ducked under the genuine tribal dreamcatcher that hung from the ceiling like a dead bird splattered across the grille of a juggernaut, and stopped to marvel at the number of books that Rhianna owned.