A Game of Battleships

by Toby Frost

  Runic texts suggested that the hunter had flown into a rage after discovering that the Vikings' horns were part of their helmets and not their skulls. So perhaps Carveth wasn’t going mad after all. Stranger things had happened than a portal to another dimension opening out of a mirror in the back of his spaceship.

  Maybe in Devon. Smith needed another drink.

  He awoke with a sharp pain in his head, a rifle across his lap and a picture of Rhianna stuck to his face with dribble. Looking down, he found a glass smeared with a sticky, brown substance. It had either been used as a vessel for neat Pimms or a tool for crushing bugs.

  Smith nearly tripped over the Pimms bottle as he stepped into the corridor. A look at the hold door reminded him. Ah yes… they’d gone out to dinner, Carveth had returned early and summoned God-knew-what from some sort of other dimension. Worrying.

  He strolled into the mess, where Carveth was eating chocolate. “Morning all,” he said, sitting down. She grimaced and raised a fizzing cup of Carlill’s Patent Sobriety Tincture tentatively to her lips.

  ‘Now then,’ said Smith, ‘we need to talk about this mirror. I’ve been doing some research, and against my better instincts I think you may not have gone mad.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Oh yes, I opened a portal to Hell. With board games. Or did I just dream that?’

  ‘You didn’t. There is, potentially, an explanation. But you should know it’s a very strange one –’

  The intercom clattered in the cockpit. ‘Arse,’ he said, and he strode in.

  Outside, Shuttles and the other Hellfire pilots were playing football in the Chimera’s docking bay.

  Lights flickered in the cockpits of the fighters and, from the sound of it, the Hellfires themselves – or at least their autopilots – were keeping up a running commentary. Smith toggled the intercom, but it was Dave rather than Shuttles who spoke.

  ‘Good morning, Captain Smith. Did you sleep well? Or did you dream about anything?

  Repressed nightmares, unwholesome sexual practises, perhaps? Pray tell.’

  Smith thought about the things he tended to dream about – cricket, breasts, model kits, being bullied at Midwich Grammar School and that awful time he’d had to escort Fizzy Sipworth back from the Space Pilots’ Ball – and said, ‘Bit arsey for a computer, aren’t you?’

  ‘We’re about to dock with a space station identified as Wellington Prime,’ Dave replied. ‘Just one more thing, Captain. They say a man knows himself best when he faces danger. When you look deep inside yourself, what do you see?’

  ‘Last night’s dinner, you bally weirdo,’ Smith replied, and he flicked the ‘off’ switch.

  *

  HMS Chimera slid out of the darkness of space like a metal glacier and rumbled into range of Wellington Prime. Before it, the space station glinted in the three nearby suns, its docking rings and gravity-generators spinning smoothly as though it was a great clockwork mechanism that turned the planets around it.

  The crew of the John Pym stood with Captain Fitzroy in one of the Chimera’s viewing lounges and watched the approach. Only one ship was docked with the station. It looked like a freighter, but Smith saw unusual hatch-lines down the side and large cargo pods under the wings. He wondered if it might be one of the Empire’s Q-ships, disguised to trick enemy vessels into making a dishonourable sneak attack and equipped to punish them for such unsportsmanlike behaviour.

  ‘See you in the airlock, chaps,’ said Felicity Fitzroy as she strode past, the Bhagparsian cat clinging to her shoulder like a pink striped parrot. The doors hissed closed behind her.

  Smith sighed. There was a lot to be worried about.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Carveth said. ‘One, we’re getting off this ship. Two, the Edenites aren’t chasing you. And three, nor is Captain Fitzroy.’

  Out of three, she was about half right.

  Part Two

  A Meeting of Minds

  A life-sized poster hung in the atrium of Wellington Prime. It showed the Lord Marshall of Space, a man not known for his level temper, driving his mechanical heel through a Ghast helmet whilst scowling around his pipe. ‘I'm stamping out tyranny,’ said the caption. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you're up to, eh?’

  Smith stood in the atrium and looked around, taking in the brass scrollwork, the heraldic animals gambolling across the ceiling and the great holographic map of the Space Empire rotating in the centre of the room. He hadn't expected a rubbish-processing plant to look so good. ‘Well,’ he said, turning to Carveth, ‘I bet you're glad to be back on British soil, eh?’

  ‘It's metal, technically,’ she replied. ‘Still, I never thought I'd say it, but I'm bloody relieved to be in this gigantic shiny dustbin.’

  Captain Fitzroy strode past, hands behind her back. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Some people,’ she told Carveth, ‘are never satisfied.’ She walked on, chin raised. Chumble strolling along beside her, humming tunelessly like a broken fridge.

  ‘She still thinks I'm your girlfriend,’ Carveth whispered. She met Smith's eyes and they both managed not to shudder.

  Smith walked into the station, brooding. The wrath of Eden was the least of his problems: Carveth had either opened a portal to another dimension or was completely insane, and Smith himself had either received psychic messages from Rhianna or was completely insane. At least Suruk was as normal, he thought.

  Suruk caught his eye and smiled. ‘Worry not, Mazuran. Perhaps the peace talks will fail and we can fight all the delegates.’ Yes, Suruk never changed.

  They turned the corner and Smith stopped, astonished. All the old hands were waiting there: Rick Dreckitt, his hat pulled down low and brown overcoat inexplicably wet; beside him Susan of the Deepspace Operations Group, looking somewhat naked without a beam gun slung over her shoulder; Wainscott, looking strangely overdressed with his trousers on; and W, the master spy himself, his mouth twitching upward into the tiniest hint of a smile.

  As Smith stepped forward, Carveth ran past and nearly knocked Dreckitt flat. ‘Damn, lady,’ the android gasped, ‘you know how to squeeze!’

  ‘Ah, Smith,’ Wainscott said, stepping forward. ‘Ready to raise hell again?’

  ‘Wainscott? What’re you doing here? Have we got a mission, then?’

  ‘No, not really. I just thought that we could get your ship, find a dodgy-looking planet and blow

  –’ Wainscott noticed that W was giving him a stern look. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Good to see you,’ W said gloomily. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Well,’ Smith said, ‘our engine room’s full of killer frogs, our convoy got blown up and we’ve opened a portal to Hell. Still, mustn’t grumble.’

  ‘Killer frogs, eh?’ W nodded thoughtfully. ‘While I bear amphibians no ill will – indeed, man has much to learn from the toad – an engine room full of them sounds excessive.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Smith sighed. ‘Frankly, sir, problems are gathering in my mind as surely as beetle-people around a big ball of dung. Not that my mind is made of dung, but you see what I mean.’

  W sighed. ‘So your convoy blew up.. ’

  ‘Indeed so," Smith said. ‘It was destroyed by enemy action –’

  ‘Not us,’ Carveth added.

  ‘By a vessel powered by. . well, by what we think may be a portal to another dimension.’

  From the left came a peal of laughter worthy of a mad scientist. Felicity Fitzroy was discussing something with Susan. ‘I see you’ve met Captain Fitzroy,’ W said. ‘She’s in charge of our deepspace protection. Our aim is to keep things low key.’

  Smith reflected that if they wanted to keep their dealings quiet, the best policy would be to tell Felicity no jokes. In space, everyone could hear Captain Fitzroy laugh.

  ‘Make a damned fine lax forward,’ she declared and Susan, perhaps not realising that she was talking about lacrosse, stepped back.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said W. ‘Dreckitt ought to be in on this too �
� if you could just prise your android pilot off my synthetic bounty hunter. Journeys end in lovers meeting and all that, but I think she’s about to blow his fuse.’

  W led them into a side-lounge. Two massive radio scramblers had been propped against the far wall. W pulled the lever on each and, as lightning ran up the Tesla coils, he took a seat and tried to ignore the static threatening to turn his pencil moustache upright.

  ‘Whatever is said here goes no further,’ the spy began. ‘First, I should explain my presence here.’

  They listened as W set out the plans for the conference. ‘This meeting offers us the chance not only to formalise our alliance with the Vorl,’ he explained, ‘but also to make a fresh deal with the Khlangari, who as a client state of the Voidani will be under space whale protection. It's a very delicate time, Smith. This will need tact, intelligence and sophistication.’

  ‘Good thing I came back from that convoy mission to the far side of the Empire that you sent me on.’

  ‘Er, yes. Now, speaking of very delicate matters, tell me about this portal you've found.’

  Quickly, Smith set out the details of the destruction of the automated convoy, the raid on Deliverance, and the theft of the mysterious device. ‘I want you to understand,’ he finished, ‘that Carveth has my full backing.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Unless she's gone mental.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Carveth said.

  W sat, brushing static off his tweed as he listened. After a while his hair sank down and he nodded thoughtfully. ‘Prong, eh? I should have known he’d be calling the shots. It was inevitable that he’d take Lord Forke’s place.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Witchfinder Forke? Well, you know what Edenites are like. He tried to have carnal knowledge of a grenade launcher. The grenade launcher finished first.’

  ‘But what about me?’ Carveth demanded. ‘I’m not mad, am I?’

  ‘No,’ W said, ‘you’re not mad.’

  ‘I told them I wasn’t mad,’ Wainscott muttered into his beard, ‘but did they listen? I was sectioned for single-handedly destroying an enemy orbital battlestation. That’s bloody gratitude for you!’

  ‘We’ve discussed this before,’ W said. ‘We wouldn’t have minded you blowing it up if there had actually been a war on. As it was the British Government had to formally apologise to Number One. If the Prime Minister hadn’t called him a pint-sized dickhead in the process, it could have been a deeply humiliating situation.’

  ‘Should’ve blown him up too,’ Wainscott replied.

  ‘Now,’ W said, ‘to the matter in hand. Who here has heard of Dodgson physics?’ He looked around the room. ‘Alright then, who’s heard of Newtonian physics? Physics in general? Anyone in the front row?’

  Suruk raised a hand. ‘It is said that a rainbow turns to light when it passes through a prison.’

  ‘Force and angle applied to neck equals dead sentry,’ Wainscott added.

  ‘Right. Both of those are nearly examples of physics. Such rules govern the world. But there may be other places, outside our plane of being, where the normal laws of time and space no longer hold sway.’

  ‘I hear similar things about Croydon,’ Smith mused.

  W took a deep draught on his roll-up, followed by a massive swig of tea. ‘The story begins six hundred years ago, at the height of the Victorian era. Although Britain’s previous empire spanned the globe, it may surprise you to learn that it was not a time of perfect freedom, justice and equality. In many cities, the main source of labour, currency and combustible material was the urchin. Yet many brave people strove to improve mankind's lot through reform and innovation. Today, we have such bold pioneers to thank for everyday comforts such as umbrellas, heavy artillery and the defleminating purdoscope.

  ‘One such pioneer was Charles Ludwig Dodgson, an Oxford-based mathematician and fruitcake.

  Quite what basis he worked from, we don’t exactly know. But sometime in the late 1860s, he began to build a machine that would give him access to a world running upon a different system of physics.’

  ‘A different system?’ Smith found it hard to believe, even now.

  ‘Indeed, Smith. And through that machine, he took his brain to another dimension.’

  ‘He took his brain to another dimension?’

  ‘He took his brain to another dimension. Pay close attention… to judge from the records that Dodgson kept, whatever he found there was lethal – or at least lethal to adults. He formed the conclusion that, even with an endless supply of urchins, it was simply too dangerous for further exploration. It appears that at least sixty percent of the otherworld's inhabitants wanted to remove heads – a full two percent more than most M’Lak planets. Dodgson closed down his experiment and went into theoretical mathematics and children’s literature. His test apparatus has never been located. Until now, that is.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Smith said, ‘So what we have in our ship is –’

  ‘A portal to another dimension, yes. You’ve done well to bring it back. We may have to jettison it into the sun but, at the moment, it’s safest in your ship. Keep it locked away, Smith! People have killed to get into the otherworld, and to stay there. You will, of course, tell none of the allied aliens about this.’

  ‘What about the other nations of Earth?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Smith,’ W said. ‘We’ve known our fellow humans for thousands of years. I wouldn’t trust them with a bloody cheese roll.’

  *

  That afternoon – at least, judging by the clocks on Wellington Prime – they moved the John Pym from the hold of the Chimera to dock separately with the main space station. Shortly afterwards, Carveth disappeared to her quarters with Dreckitt and, having given her the usual warning about not using the kitchen table again, Smith walked into the colony to see how things were progressing.

  They were far from out of danger yet. Even if W's conference went smoothly, there was always the risk of the Edenites tracking the John Pym down – and even if that didn't happen, there was a fair possibility of Wellington Prime being swamped by Suruk's killer frogs or the card-game-obsessed minions of Hell or, most likely of all, the whole lot of them at once.

  The service personnel were pinning up posters in the lounges. Smith sat down under one that said Please note that haggis is food – presumably for the benefit of foreign delegates. Sipping his vending-machine tea, he realised that he missed Rhianna very much.

  Strange, really. Had someone told him that two years before, he would have snorted with derision and returned to assembling a model aeroplane. Yet he had become one of those fellows he would previously have dismissed as effete: the girl-liking sort. Of course, with Rhianna elsewhere, he and Carveth could belch and not eat vegetables but it didn't seem worth it, somehow. He knew Rhianna was doing something very important for the benefit of the Empire and, hopefully, she would return very soon and tell him that it hadn't involved any men.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Captain Fitzroy. He glanced up as she loomed over him like a blonde, jaunty cliff. ‘How's the little lady?’

  ‘Oh, fine. Off seeing her boyfriend.’

  ‘What? Isn’t that you?’

  ‘Oh – right. . yes.’ Smith realised that the fiendish cunning of his own plan had outwitted him.

  ‘Yes, she is seeing him, because he’s me. . and she is watching me. From afar. She might be watching now, you know,’ he added, as Captain Fitzroy sat down beside him.

  ‘Looking forward to greeting the aliens?’

  ‘Oh, definitely. You see some funny-looking fellows in space. Of course, you have to be reasonable about it, though. I mean, if we went around giving people trouble just because they’re noisy and wear peculiar clothes, we’d have outlawed bagpipes years ago.’

  Felicity laughed, and crossed her legs at the ankle. She was wearing dress trousers, creased like folded paper, and her boots were extremely shiny. ‘Listen, Smitty…’

  Very warily, he
said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your girlie seems rather keen on that Dreckitt fellow – security chap or whatever he is. You want to watch him. I know a sly operator when I see one. Takes one to know one!’ Her head flopped back and she vented her laugh like a burst of steam.

  A bell rang above them. They glanced up as words began to scroll across the board on the far side of the room. Spacecraft docking procedure initiated. Yothian deputation passing through quarantine control. All greeting personnel to Atrium Four.

  ‘Well,’ said Smith, leaping up, ‘I must be going – got to see the Yothians, you know. Lovely place,

  Yath. Yoth. See you later!’

  *

  From the darkness of space, craft converged on Wellington Prime. Some travelled in convoy, others swiftly and alone, their jamming devices raised until they were within the colony’s defensive grid. Only a few spaceships were big enough to make the voyage without strength in numbers or subterfuge.

  A huge M’Lak warship slid out of the void, flanked by its own fighters. It was covered in armour plate and, painted orange and decorated with symbols denoting clan ownership and events in its history.

  Had he seen it, Captain No-Nose would have been deeply envious.

  Two hours later, a grey, horseshoe-shaped craft halted just outside lidar range: a half-sentient vessel made by the Voidani space whales for their protegees, the Khlangari. A hatch slid open in the biomechanical croissant, and a shuttle sped forth. It contained five of the greatest mystics of Khlangar: foremost among them, the renowned Ambassador Tai’ni. As their mother ship withdrew to a safe distance they opened communications and hooted their arrival.

  And so it began. Smith found himself travelling from airlock to airlock, greeting the great powers of Earth: representatives of the Indian Union, the South American Congress, the United Free States, the Pan-African League and Norway. A security team disarmed each group as they arrived, while a pair of troopers from the M’Lak Rifles stood nearby, a cheerful reminder to everyone not to start any trouble if they wanted to keep their heads.