by Toby Frost
Rhianna raised her hands. ‘Whoa. That’s just... no way.’
‘It’s what I’d do,’ Carveth said. ‘Think about it. You want to set the city against itself, right? So you wreck something people care about. And then you put the blame on someone else.’ She pointed. ‘On the Morlocks. And then, when the trouble starts, you start another poster campaign, telling the Morlocks that we’ve turned on them.’
Smith suddenly felt very old. He turned to the piles of paper stashed behind the printer. He knew for certain that there would be other posters, blaming the scrapbots, or the Popular Fist, or whoever was needed to be the latest scapegoat.
‘But people would never swallow that,’ he said. ‘We’re British, for God’s sake.’
Carveth shook her head. ‘We think Black Pudding is food. We’d swallow anything.’
‘Speak for your –’
‘Mazuran.’ Suruk touched Smith’s sleeve. That meant it was urgent: the M’Lak disliked physical contact. ‘The Yull have stooped low here, and not just because of the ceiling. This very basement is proof of their debasement. We must act quickly. Wherever this guildhall is, we need to secure it.’
Smith said, ‘You’re right. Let’s go. Rhianna, can you get us safely past the bears?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then follow me, men. We have a city to save!’
They hurried back down the tunnel, clambered up into the enclosure and picked their way through the dark towards the railing. Far away, at the very edge of the horizon, the glow of morning had begun to appear, as if the sky was about to catch alight. Smith climbed the rope first, thrashing and cursing, and helped the others up. Suruk was last, hardly needing the rope as he scrambled up the wall.
Below them, the bears settled back down to sleep.
‘Thanks, old girl,’ Smith said, leaning towards Rhianna. ‘You did a jolly good job there.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Good work, chaps.’
Carveth leaned against the railing and slowly recovered her breath. She was not a natural climber. ‘Next time, Boss, could we just go to the children’s farm?’
‘Certainly not. I know what you’re like around baby animals. The last thing I want is a reputation as the man who let his pilot push over a six-year-old so she could have a go on the lambs.’
‘I never did that! It was a rogue duckling.’
‘Never mind. To the car!’
* * *
They drove back as dawn rose over Ravnavar. A few rockets and transport craft blazed up into the sky. The roads were filling with the usual vehicles, pedestrians and alien monsters. The sunlight turned the trees by the roadside into pulsing light as they drove past. Smith felt tired. He took a wrong turning on the Queen Kylie Viaduct and ended up stuck behind an extraordinary M’Lak vehicle, two thirds tank to one third mobile disco, decked out with trophies and fluorescent lights. Across the back was a painting of Grimdall the Rebel, the closest thing the planet had to a patron saint, riding a mechanical tiger and waving two swords.
As they pulled into the scrapyard, Nalgath the Scrapper was slicing a heap of fridge doors into armour plate. He worked with a laser cutter, a device somewhere between a pitchfork and a chainsaw. A group of small scrapbots stood a little way off, hoping to buy new limbs and sell a variety of items that had either fallen off or been unscrewed from a lorry.
The John Pym seemed mercifully untouched, although Smith wondered whether their host had been snipping bits off the wings.
There was no time to waste, so they only stopped for one pot of tea. Carveth broke open the weapons locker while Smith fired up the radio and dialled the local police station.
‘Inspector Kallarn the Enforcer, please.’
‘Huh,’ a voice muttered.
‘Isambard Smith here. I wondered if we could talk.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been kind of thinking that myself, ever since you knocked down half my police station.’
‘That wasn’t me. It was a mad ravnaphant. Listen, something big’s happening. The Yull have infiltrated the city. They’ve dug tunnels under the zoo. Their leader is called General Wikwot –’
‘Huh? He’s in jail. A place on the edge of town.’
‘Not anymore he’s not.’
‘Huh?’
Suruk tapped Smith on the shoulder, and passed him a mug of tea. As Smith drank, the alien took the microphone. ‘Friend, the lemming scum have dug a burrow beneath the bear enclosure, from which they plot to hurl foul slanders upon us. Their aim is to turn M’Lak against Metchi’cheun and hinder our war against the Yull. They even claim to have found the relics of Grimdall, to use as a bargaining tool. Meet us in two hours at the Guildhall. Bring warriors.’ He hung up.
Carveth looked into the cockpit. ‘Boss? The car’s loaded, and Rhianna’s threatening to drive. We’d better go.’
‘Righto,’ said Smith. ‘Suruk, tell Nalgath not to chop up the ship while we’re gone. I’ve got a call to make.’
‘Going to ring the Service? You’d best make it quick.’
‘Not exactly.’ Smith reached for the radio. ‘I’m going to get a photocopier repaired.’
* * *
General Wikwot had been forced underground, but for someone who lived in a burrow, that was no great hardship.
He disliked the cellar of the disused funfair where the Ringleader kept court. It smelled of grease, and the presence of humans had dirtied it in a way that no set of overalls could have kept out. Still, the carousel horses had poles through them. That reminded him of his childhood, which he had spent impaling people.
A city has its own soul, Wikwot thought as he struck a match on the bared teeth of a horse. It will be a pleasure to kill the soul of this place.
He took a long drag on his cigarette.
Ravnavar was a dump: the sooner he was back with his soldiers and off this mess of a planet, the better. Ugly buildings full of mangy unrodents. And the lavatories! The barbarians concentrated their droppings in one place, instead of distributing them as evenly as possible throughout the vicinity. Degenerates, all of them.
Thin light came in from high, narrow windows. On the far side of the room, the Ringleader sat in front of a dressing-room mirror, powering the bulbs from a wire slotted into the side of his dented torso. After his encounter with the bears, the gangster had spent the morning tidying his face with an eyebrow pencil and a soldering iron.
Wikwot had a small degree of sympathy. A real leader took pride in his appearance, and while the Ringleader’s moustache wasn’t made out of proper whiskers, like a lemming’s, it made up for that by being self-twirling.
Hydraulics whined and a great wedge of light stretched across the room. A silhouette like a huge steel toddler waddled forward, its broad feet stomping the concrete. Wikwot’s paw moved to the axe on his belt, but the Ringleader didn’t even look round.
‘Got something to tell me, Rom?’
‘It’s Ram, boss.’
‘I hope you have something more than that. Where is your brother?’
The huge robot leaned forward when at rest, its forearms hanging down like an ape’s. ‘Gone to collect a debt. There’s some people owes us money. Like… anyone.’
‘Slave!’ Wikwot barked. ‘Where is my space rocket?’
‘You watch it, lemming,’ Ram said. ‘I know a lot of dolly birds what’d like a new fur coat.’
‘Silence! You may not speak so to one honoured by the war god Popacapinyo. Ringleader – where is my transport?’
Ram growled. ‘Watch it. You show us some respect.’
Wikwot snorted. ‘Respect? Popiqoc. A true warrior does not let himself be mauled by bears. Ringleader, you have spent all morning locked away with tools, banging away at yourself. If you had not had your arse kicked, why else would you panel-beat your own buttocks?’
The Ringleader looked round, and for a moment Wikwot thought that the robot would be enraged. Instead, the Ringleader said: ‘Show the general, Ram.’
Ram clanked across the room and stopped u
nder a portable generator bolted against the wall. His massive hand pulled a lever. The generator buzzed – and then the carousel burst into parping life, a blaze of light and brass, whirling and trumpeting.
‘Observe,’ the Ringleader said, standing up. He pointed to the window.
Wikwot peered. ‘I need a cloth. The glass is dirty.’
‘You’re made of fur,’ the Ringleader.
Wikwot growled and used the back of his paw. Outside, lights flickered on a battered helter-skelter. For a moment, the general wondered what these stupid machines meant, and then he saw the conical top of the helter-skelter, the fins welded to its sides.
‘That?’ Wikwot shouted over the tootling racket of the carousel.
The Ringleader gestured at it. ‘Only the finest for a Yullian general.’
‘That is not a spaceship. That is a giant firework.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Ringleader. ‘We shall launch it with a patriotic fanfare. Nobody will notice your departure. You will leave Ravnavar as a true Briton, and land on Andor like a true lemming.’
‘By crashing into it.’
‘I thought you people liked doing that. It never stopped your air force.’
‘Those are minions,’ Wikwot replied. ‘They do not count.’
Wikwot reached out and flipped the lever, cutting the power. The carousel wound to a halt with a groan. ‘It will suffice. I will put myself in hibernation for the journey. Just make sure that there is plenty of sawdust and some nuts for when I wake up.’
A second huge robot lumbered in. ‘Boss, boss!’
‘Rom, my esteemed companion,’ the Ringleader said. ‘I take it there is a reason that you have abandoned your watch on the Guildhall?’
Rom scratched his processor. ‘Yeah. There’s people there.’
‘People. Would you care to elucidate, before I render you limb from limb?’
‘Um... the ones you wanted me and Ram to do over.’
‘Excellent!’ The Ringleader sprang to his feet. His single lens glinted in his newly-painted face. ‘I took the liberty of placing a little incendiary surprise in the Guildhall. Today, my friends, we will light the spark that will make this city burn. General, I offer you a ringside seat.’
Wikwot smiled. ‘Yes. I will watch the offworlders die. Then I will leave this city to you.’ His hand slipped onto his axe. ‘Do your civic duty, robot. Clean up and take out all the trash. Every last one of them.’
Red Rebellion!
The Great Guildhall of the Imperial General Union was vast, ornate, covered in statues and surprisingly hard to find, mainly because it looked like most other public buildings in the Space Empire. Only at close range was it clear that the statues carried hammers and toolkits instead of swords and trumpets, and that in place of haloes, they wore pencils behind their ears.
Smith trotted up the steps to the guildhall. Scrolls were sculpted over the doorway, bearing the names of great reformers.
He stepped in, and at once the heat of the morning was gone. Inside, the guildhall resembled a cathedral, and he stood at the entrance to the nave. In alcoves, stone angels held up spanners and cogs. Goggled cherubs swung mallets and hauled stone chains. In the centre of the hall, a huge marble figure raised its hand like Hamlet with Yorick’s skull. The skull had been replaced by Ravnavar itself, and Hamlet wore a cloth cap instead of a ruff.
Smith felt somewhat awed. Technically, he was entitled to be there, as a low-ranking member of the Space Pilots and Captains’ Egalitarian Department, but as he looked around the mighty hall he felt the familiar worry that someone would spot him and throw him out. He advanced down the nave, through shafts of light and the motes that spun in them, past statues of the Empire’s great guildsmen, to the wooden booth by the entrance to the gift shop.
A small man sat in the booth, filling in a coupon. ‘Morning, brother. Sisters,’ he added, nodding to Rhianna and Carveth. ‘Thing,’ he said to Suruk. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes,’ Smith said. ‘I’m here on a matter of great urgency.’
‘Urgency,’ the man replied, in the tone of someone leafing through a dictionary to find an unfamiliar term.
‘I need to search –’
‘Can I stop you there? Is that a matter of dire urgency, or moderate urgency? Because if it’s dire urgency, I’ll have to ask you to fill in a form.’
‘What?’
‘Moderate emergency is two forms.’ The clerk reached under his desk and pulled out a sheet of blue paper. ‘This is a URF/290/C, requesting immediate relocation to the front of the queue. Now, your name goes here, and your countersigning officer –’
‘But there isn’t a queue.’ Smith gestured to the empty hall around him. ‘These people are with me.’
The clerk took off his spectacles and peered at them. ‘Not now there isn’t. But what if some other guildsmen came along with an equally important request? We’d need to know who to let go to the front of the queue. Very important form that,’ he added, tapping the paper. ‘There’s not many people get to fill in a URF/290/C. There’s people that’d queue all day just to see one of those.’
‘They’d queue all day to see a form that let them go to the front of the queue? But they’d only see it when they got to the front of the queue. So why would they want to queue up?’ A sharp pain in the forehead told Smith that it was time to think about something else. ‘Look, just give me the form –’
‘There’s a bomb!’ Carveth yelled.
A moment’s silence followed. Slowly, the clerk looked round at her. ‘Sister,’ he said, ‘we are all equal here. So wait your turn. If you want to go before this man here, you’ll have to have the right documentation. And you need to get in line for that.’
‘There’s a great big bomb under here,’ Carveth said. ‘And I’m with him. We’re all in this together –’
‘Indeed we are,’ said the clerk. He leaned back in his chair and looked wistfully over their heads at a statue of miners on an asteroid. ‘Indeed we are.’
Smith drew his pistol. ‘Right, that’s it!’ he declared. ‘We are taking over this building in the name of Popular Fist.’ The clerk’s eyes, suddenly wide, were locked on the barrel of the Civiliser. ‘A bomb has been planted by enemies of – well, of the people, actually, and we mean to find it. Now please –’
With a hiss of greased steel, a shutter dropped down in front of the booth. Someone had stencilled a message on the metal: Back in 5 Mins.
Smith leaned in and battered the metal with the butt of his gun. ‘Damn it, open up! What’s going on in there?’
A voice, muffled by armour, came back. ‘I’m on lunch.’
Smith turned round. ‘Bugger. It looks like we’re on our own here, men.’
Carveth sighed. ‘I thought there’d be someone to help us. I mean, where are all these workers, anyway?’
‘At work, I suppose.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I could really use half a dozen burly men right now. I mean, we could.’
Doors creaked open at the far end of the hall. Smith turned, covering the nave with his pistol. Half a dozen people approached, carrying toolboxes and portable scanners. At their head was a dark-haired woman in blue overalls.
‘Heard you needed a photocopier fixed,’ she called, ‘Wait – it’s you.’
‘Miss Chigley,’ Smith said. ‘Thanks for getting here so quickly. We’ve got to work fast, I’m afraid.’
‘Not a problem. I brought some of the lads to help.’ A rumble of greeting came from her comrades. ‘Er, what’s with the big gun?’
‘Well, I’ve captured this place in the name of Popular Fist. I thought it’d give us some space to work.’
Her mouth fell open, as if a puppeteer had forgotten to operate it. ‘You did what? You’ll make us look like mentalists!’
‘Well, you are a revolutionary fringe party.’
‘Not like that! We want to reform the post office, not start holding up buildings.’
‘Well, we have shared en
emies. You know what to do.’
She grimaced. ‘Looks like I do. Alright, lads, let’s get the gear up. You owe me, Captain Smith. I hope you realise the mess we’re all in.’
‘Carveth,’ Smith said, ‘help Miss Chigley. Suruk, you and I will bar the doors. Rhianna, could you get on the tannoy and ask everyone to leave? Tell them there’s been a problem with the drains or something.’
‘That should flush ’em out,’ Carveth added.
‘Just get on with it,’ Smith replied, and as he holstered his pistol, he wondered whether starting a revolution in the middle of the city had been all that wise.
* * *
‘The trouble with this war,’ Bargath observed, ‘is that it’s full of damned foreigners.’
Half a dozen lancers sat in one of the Palace’s many common rooms, resting after lunch and mutually disapproving of the television. The morning had been as hearty as the meal: Morgar was not sure whether his stomach hurt more than the wounds he had acquired whilst tumbling off Frote’s back. He was not a natural jouster.
‘They should bloody well stop their nonsense.’ Colonel Pargarek had sunk so low in his armchair that Morgar had taken him to be asleep. Now the colonel struggled to sit up, as if crawling out of quicksand. ‘All these Ghasts and Yull. Bloody lemmings, pissing everywhere. It’s a disgrace.’
‘I hear the M’Lak Rifles are dealing with the Yull,’ Morgar ventured.
‘Oiks,’ said Pargarek. ‘One kills from the saddle, with a sabre, not running about with these silly arm-blades of theirs. Like this,’ he added, swishing his fist around.
A woman appeared on the television screen. She was good-looking, in human terms, Morgar realised, although dishevelled. He gestured for the wallahbot to turn the volume up: the girl seemed curiously familiar. Colonel Pargarek had fallen asleep, and was drooling on his mandibles.
‘… which is like, totally, bad?’ she was saying. ‘I mean, I’m really opposed to interfering with other people’s lives, but there’s like a bomb here, so you should, you know, go outside or something.’
‘Who’s this dullard?’ Bargath said, without malice. ‘I do wish they’d keep these people indoors.’