by Toby Frost
* * *
The Yull could no longer flatten the castle, but they could still storm it. They poured in now, and the defenders retreated upstairs as if from a rising tide, closer and closer to General Young. A thick carpet of fallen lemmings covered the lower floor, but the Yull did not care. Victory was worth any price.
The mechanical maneater fought like the monster that it was. The humans didn’t matter much, but the M’Lak – Grimdall’s people – were in danger. The reckoning with mankind could wait. Bayonets broke on its metal skin; armour and fur crumpled under its massive claws.
Susan ran out of powerpacks for the beam gun. She grabbed a laser rifle from a dead soldier, and moved on to two revolvers when that ran out. Craig was jabbed in the thigh and Nelson dragged him upstairs. Wainscott took a gash to the chest from a Yullian axe, shortly before throwing the axe’s owner over the banisters.
They regrouped in the tertiary ballroom, an immense chamber in the centre of the fifth floor. The ground was already strewn with lemming men, their fur stiff and red.
Wainscott and a captain from the M’Lak rifles began to argue over a counter-attack. Each appeared to want to lead the charge. A group of Sey arrived and reported that they had sawed off the drainpipes to prevent the Yull climbing them.
Carveth stepped over a fallen lemming and hurried to Dreckitt’s side. ‘Rick, have you got any spare ammo?’
‘Nix, kid. Twenty more slugs and I’m down to rubbing out lemmings with brass knuckles.’ He took out a grenade. ‘I saved us a pineapple. In case they try to take us alive.’
‘Alright. I hope I was alright as a girlfriend.’
‘A dame and a moll,’ Dreckitt replied, putting his arm around her.
Something bumped against Carveth’s boot. She glanced down, and saw an empty plastic bottle.
‘Catsup,’ Dreckitt said. ‘Hell of a place to chow.’
‘Ketchup?’ Quietly, she squatted down and touched her finger to the Yullian soldier sprawled at her feet. Her fingertips came up sticky and red. Too red. ‘That’s not blood,’ she said. ‘Rick, that’s not blood!’
‘Hot damn!’ Dreckitt cried. ‘Guys, they’re not dead! The lemmings are playing possum!’
The Yull sprang up around them. The defenders dropped back into a tight circle, suddenly surrounded. They fired and cut, killing dozens of lemmings as they scrambled upright, but the delay was enough. More Yull charged in from the side doors. In a moment, the soldiers of the Space Empire were encircled by a wall of fur and bayonets. Human, M’Lak, Sey and even a couple of beetle people stood in the centre of a horde.
The M’Lak captain tossed his gun onto the floor, and dropped to one knee before the Yull.
Quietly, the M’Lak laid down their guns.
‘No,’ Carveth gasped. ‘Don’t give in! We have to fight!’
The Yull squeaked and jeered.
‘Wait,’ Dreckitt said.
The M’Lak captain put his fingertips on the ground and pushed his hips into the air.
Wainscott drew a machete.
Like a sprinter from the blocks, the M’Lak captain shot forward into the ranks of the lemming men and his soldiers followed him. Carveth saw Susan bellowing something and then she was running forward with them, following the Space Empire’s toughest troops into close combat.
The ballroom windows exploded and a scaly head the size of a space shuttle ploughed into the room. A trumpet blasted, and Carveth recognised the figures on the beast’s head.
She saw Smith, and Suruk, and Rhianna, and then Suruk leaped down to fight. The Ravnavari Lancers raced up Mildred’s tail, over her back, and onto her head, and behind them came the blue legions of the Equ’i. The Empire charged, and the Yull were swept away.
* * *
General Wikwot watched his army fall apart. Despite or perhaps because of all the carnage, he felt numb. A window burst open in one of the towers and a torrent of his soldiers tumbled out, crashing into the courtyard below. Perhaps someone had pushed them, but he suspected that what had sent the lemmings to their deaths was despair.
He called one of his bodyguards over and sent out the order for a general retreat. This would be difficult to enforce: not only had two newly-liberated ravnaphants had a bad effect on the Yullian lines of communication, but the language of the lemming men had no word for ‘retreat’.
Mildred, the Space Empire’s tame monster, had stopped before the castle, and the Ravnavari Lancers were using her tail and neck as a ramp to charge into the upper levels of Mothkarak. A burning lemming dropped flailing from the battlements. It looked like a demon.
It all made no sense. Unrodents were all cowardly and weak: they had no skill or appetite for war. Yet here they were, massively outnumbered, laying waste to his army. For a moment, Wikwot wondered if he had underestimated these stupid, fat, clumsy, timid, shameful, smelly, idle, mangy degenerates, and then an explosion to the right jolted him back to the present.
At first he thought the trees were moving. Then he looked up, and saw that what he’d taken for a trunk was a colossal leg. It was one of the captured ravnaphants, celebrating its new liberty by flattening its former tormentors.
It took a step towards him. A surly rage rose up in Wikwot’s mind and he drew the battleaxe from his belt. He was still the general.
The monster lumbered closer, and its tiny eyes saw Wikwot far below. The bodyguards screamed and scattered. Wikwot hefted his axe as the ravnaphant raised its foot, and a great shadow fell across the ground.
‘Come back!’ the general yelled at his minions. ‘Come back, you cowards! It’s only a ravnaphant!’
* * *
It was, without doubt, time for tiffin.
Smith wandered through the castle. He was co-opted to help carry some of the wounded to the medical centre set up in one of the larger kitchens. Lemming men lay everywhere.
Light and strange smells flickered from a workshop. Smith peered inside: one of the construction robots had sliced a sofa open and pulled out its padding, and was currently putting the finishing touches to a huge stuffed squol in a spiked collar. W watched from the far side of the room, his arm in a sling and a cup of tea clenched in his fist. He must have reprogrammed the robot to carry out taxidermy. Smith closed the door and crept away.
He found Rhianna and Susan in a drawing room, looking like guerrillas lost in a Jane Austen novel. ‘These dials show power output,’ Susan said, tapping the beam gun on the chaise lounge beside her. ‘Ohms, Watts, Bechdels… Hello Smith. Seen Wainscott around?’
‘I think he’s upstairs.’
‘Just don’t let him take off into the forest. I’ll have to stick posters on the trees: Lost: one commanding officer. It’d be embarrassing.’
On the way back, Rhianna and Smith ran into a group of soldiers hurrying to the ballroom. A crowd packed out the area: humans, M’Lak, beetle people, Sey, Equ’i and even a couple of robots listening to the small figure on the stage.
It was General Young. She was short, but as tough and determined as she had been when she’d sent him after Wainscott: a terrier of a woman. Smith caught scraps of her speech. Unused to the concept of retreat, the Yull were in disarray. The remainder of the Divine Amicable Army had simply fled into the forest and were being harried by the lancers. Plans were afoot to destroy the Yullian food stores in order to hinder their retreat: at any rate, Smith assumed that was what ‘blast their nuts with a flamethrower’ meant.
‘But it is you who achieved this,’ the general said. ‘I may have had the idea, but you did the work on the ground. One cannot forge a sword if the steel is not there already. The Yull lost because you fought harder and better than them. I anticipate that the Yullian army will fall back to higher ground, and then jump off it. We will therefore be pressing on, but first we will consolidate our position – and celebrate.’
Smith headed off. He had come lately to the battle for Andor, and the real glory was owed to those who had seen the war against the lemmings from the start, when it
had looked likely that the Empire would be finished and its planets overrun. He disengaged Carveth from Dreckitt and discreetly removed Suruk from a conversation with Morgar and Bargath.
‘The lancers are giving my brother a commission!’ Suruk announced. ‘I fear that the Empire is still in great danger.’
Smith found battered wicker chairs and they sat on the verandah, looking out over the forest. Slowly, everyone drank their tea and began to comprehend the scale of the victory.
The sun was rising, setting the sky alight. On the horizon, two ravnaphants, recently freed from the tyranny of the lemming men, were still arguing about which of them was the female. It slightly spoiled the atmosphere, but not much.
‘Bloody good show, everyone,’ Smith said. ‘I mean it. Bloody good.’
Suruk chuckled. ‘A mighty victory. Fierce justice has been served to the foul armies of the Yull. Severed heads and biscuits all round!’
‘Right now,’ said Carveth, ‘I just want to sleep.’
‘Nonsense,’ Suruk replied. ‘This is just the beginning. We will press on and take the war to the lemming men. They know now that there are no warriors to equal us. What other empire has cavalry that ride dinosaurs, which all ride one huge dinosaur? I ask you that. We will clean up the Yull, and dispatch the scum Edenites, and then the Ghasts. They will throw down their arms, and those who do not, we shall hack apart! These are nice biscuits, by the way.’
‘Well said,’ Smith agreed. ‘The lemmings are finished, Carveth. Even now the lancers are shipping the prisoners off to the safari park.’
‘Safari?’ Carveth demanded. ‘That’s a bit soft, isn’t it? You’re talking about pony-killers here.’
Suruk laughed. ‘It’s not their safari, little woman. They get the choice: five years’ penal servitude or two weeks on a M’Lak game reserve. We have to train the young warriors up somehow.’
Rhianna stretched and sighed. ‘You know, guys, I think we all learned something today.’
Smith nodded. ‘True. Being deranged isn’t everything. The lemming men may be bizarre and insane, but we British are far more than that.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carveth. ‘We’re really crazy.’
‘Speak for yourself, Piglet,’ Suruk put in. ‘Today I surfed a dinosaur. That seems entirely sensible to me.’
Rhianna frowned. ‘No, not that. I’ve learned that we truly are one. Human, M’Lak, Sey, Kaldathrian, if we all just came together as one, we could –’
‘Conquer everything,’ Smith said.
‘Well, yeah, but…’ She stood up and walked to the railing. The dawn seemed to catch light in her messy hair. ‘I’ve learned that sometimes, there is no choice. You have to fight, or you have to die, and if you die, innocents will die as well. Just like the ponies that Polly protected. You have to stand up for your friends, like Suruk did when he protected us at the lake, shortly before he, er, knocked me out. Or like you did, Isambard, when you went out to rescue W.’ She turned and looked across the trees. ‘The galaxy is a beautiful place, and we must protect it: whether you do so by fighting in the front line, or by working in the factories, or just using your psychic powers to make enormous monsters have unusual sex.’
‘It’s called the Doctrine of Just War,’ Smith said.
Suruk nodded. ‘Just War. An excellent idea.’
‘Just as in justified, not as in only.’
‘It will suffice anyway,’ Suruk said.
There was a moment’s silence. Then, from below, came the voice of the nanibot, prim, high-pitched and efficient. ‘Major Wainscott! Major Wainscott, this is quite intolerable! If you do not put your trousers back on this minute, I will put you across my knee – again!’
‘Let’s go inside,’ Carveth said. ‘Right now.’
* * *
‘Good evening. I’m Lionel Markham, and this is We Ask the Questions. Tonight, we’ll be discussing the new proposals put forward by the Imperial Government for a Federated Empire, to represent the various planets of space and, I quote, “Civilise the Entire Galaxy, one hellhole at a time”.
‘Today, Ravnavar formally received Dominion status, granting it full control over all aspects of policy apart from its membership of the Empire and capacity to declare war. In the fine tradition of democratic compromise, this has made nobody happy at all. Joining me in the studio are two prospective MPs, hoping to be elected in the upcoming Ravnavari by-election: for the fringe party, Popular Fist, Julia Chigley; and lancer and independent candidate Morgar, Architect of Doom.
‘Also coming up is an interview with the Mechanical Maneater, who’ll be discussing his role in the film version of Grimdall: a Life in Pieces of Other People. First, though, we’re going live to Andor, recently freed from lemming occupation. Major Wainscott, can you hear me?’
‘Good evening.’
‘Can we pan the camera up a bit? I don’t think the viewers want to see that. Thanks. Major, I understand that you and the M’Lak Rifles are currently mopping up the remainder of the Yullian Army.’
‘Ha! Mopping up’s the word – it’s a mop and bucket job. I’ve just got back from the Amargan Heights and it’s like a diving championship there. The Yull’re queuing ten-deep to jump off.’
‘Is it true that there have been incidences of our soldiers co-operating with the enemy?’
‘Absolutely right. Some of the lemmings get indecisive, so we give them a shove.’
‘And your view on the conflict so far?’
‘Brilliant. I have a statement here. One moment… it’s in poetry. I call this: Epitaph for a Lemming Army:
From righteousness the lemmings swerved,
Lured by dreams of death and war.
I know not if they got what they deserved,
But I bloody gave them what they were asking for!’
‘Thank you, Major. That’s quite enough.’
* * *
It took two months to finish off the Yull.
The lemmings were too angry to give in and too frenzied to retreat in good order, and so they died in droves. The Equ’i located the Yullian food reserves and commando units blew up the stores. Central Command sent a batch of new Cauteriser landships fresh off the production line and they followed Mildred the ravnaphant from one warren to the next. The ravnaphant broke the warrens open, the landships turned their heat rays on the contents and the infantry finished off whatever remained.
‘You know something?’ Wainscott said as they picked their way through what had once been a Yullian fort. Water dripped from the leaves above them, as warm as gravy. ‘I’m getting sick and tired of arseholes thinking that we’re weak because we’re nice.’
‘You’re not nice,’ Susan replied.
The fort looked like a rainy day in Hell. Everything had been roasted: cinders crunched underfoot.
Smith looked at the skeleton of a lemming man. War hadn’t turned out to be quite as easy, or as much fun, as the lemmings had thought. He wondered what had happened to General Wikwot. Presumably, he’d jumped off a cliff.
Wainscott stopped. ‘What day is it?’
Smith shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. I think it’s Saturday.’
‘Fry-up tomorrow,’ Wainscott said. ‘I love the smell of bacon in the morning. It smells like… breakfast. Someday, this war’s going to end,’ he added. ‘Bloody nuisance, that.’
‘There’s still the Ghasts,’ Smith replied.
‘So there is,’ the major replied, and, whistling, he continued.
* * *
Two days later, Rhianna was sitting in the castle gardens, close to the edge of the forest. The presence of the ravnaphants had resulted in a lot of fallen trees and she sat on one of them, having first checked that it was not one of the creatures’ enormous droppings.
It was a comparatively quiet day and an ideal time for her to improve her mind by emptying it of all thought. She perched on the log, vaguely aware of the world around her, contemplating the majesty of space by staring into it, when something rustled in the
forest to her left.
She glanced round. A lemming man stumbled out of the undergrowth. It wore a crude cowl stitched out of what looked like a Yullian banner. It lurched forward, zombie-like, dragging its rifle behind it. The cheeks, once packed with nuts, were hollow. It stared at her.
‘Must... kill... slow...’ the lemming muttered. ‘War-god...’ Its nose twitched, and a violent shiver ran over its matted fur. ‘Grubgrub,’ it gasped.
‘Hey, little fella,’ Rhianna said. ‘Are you hungry?’
The lemming man, who was six feet two, dropped onto the far end of the log.
‘Okay,’ she said, reaching into her bag. ‘I’ve got a special cookie here. I baked them, so they’re quite strong. You’ve got to take it easy.’ She leaned over, holding the biscuit out at the end of her arm. The lemming man stared at her hand, eyes swimming. Then its paw flashed out and it grabbed the biscuit and crammed it into its mouth. ‘Whoa!’ Rhianna said. ‘That’s... a lot. Just chill, alright?’
The Yull chewed slowly. It swallowed. ‘Tastes of… herbs. Now I must kill you.’ It paused. ‘Got another? I feel strange.’
‘I’d feel strange if I ate a whole one,’ she replied. ‘Just ease down.’
‘No! Must… fight… kill offworlders for Popacapinyo… crisps would be nice now.’
Slowly, almost elegantly, the lemming man slid off the log and dropped with a soft crump into the undergrowth. It lay there for a while, giggling, and then fell asleep.
‘Crazy,’ Rhianna said, and got back to clearing her mind. Four seconds later, it was empty again.
* * *
Carveth had been busy. Her fame as Battle Girl had spread, even though her coronation as Honorary Princess of the Equ’i had been disrupted when she burst a blood vessel from an overload of glee. A foreign reporter came to interview General Young and spoke to Carveth as well. A week later, the post shuttle brought them an allied magazine called Freedom Hell Yeah! which featured her on its cover – to Smith’s surprise, with her clothes on.
Smith flicked through the pages, taking in the exciting stories and bizarre spelling, and found a mention of the Space Empire. ‘Battle Girl, second cousin of the Queen of England, leads the Roaring Commandos, a team of heavily-armored – Carveth,’ he said, lowering the magazine, ‘you are not Queen Kylie’s cousin. I hope you’ve not been making stuff up. That’s our allies’ job.’