by Toby Frost
She shrugged. ‘It sort of came out.’
He sighed. ‘You did a good job, Battle Girl.’
‘Cheers, Boss.’
‘Now stop making a fuss and put the kettle on.’
* * *
The call came in while Smith was sitting in the John Pym, cursing the effect of the Andorian climate on his model kits. Wainscott’s team were out in the forest demolishing a warren. Smith called Carveth and Suruk out of the hold and woke Rhianna from a trance. It was time to fly.
Their target had once been a pumping station and had changed hands several times. Most of the decoration had been chipped and blasted away. Only a brass lion still stood over the entrance, tarnished and dented.
Half a dozen Equ’i waited at the landing point. ‘He’s in here,’ said the guide, pointing with a hoof. ‘Good luck to you, Princess Polly.’
‘Actually,’ Smith replied, ‘I’m in charge here.’
‘You?’ The guide whinnied, which Smith hoped was not laughter. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain,’ Smith said and, ignoring their offers and pleas of assistance, he walked into the station and into the dark.
It smelled of death, droppings and dandelion wine. Smith entered without his rifle, his sword sheathed and pistol holstered.
In the shadows, something massive lay on a bench.
‘Wikwot,’ Smith said. He felt a sort of angry pride. Here was the monster who had led the murdering armies of the Yull, who had thought that he would butcher Smith’s friends at will.
Well, bollocks to you, you drunken old fart.
The shape moved. Smith felt Wikwot’s gaze on him. ‘So,’ Wikwot said. ‘This is the end.’
Smith nodded. ‘Watership downfall.’
‘Offworlder,’ said the general, ‘where are you from?’
‘Woking, originally.’
‘I always wanted to go there. Mainly to trash it, but I’ve heard some of the countryside is not bad. Nice place to live. Get a job, dig a warren, have kids… At the end of the day, it’s all about the money and the does.’
General Wikwot sat up slowly. He was huge, Smith saw. Defeat and bad living had not made him any less of a brute.
Wikwot put something in his mouth. A match flared. Wikwot’s cigarette – Lucky Foot brand – and his white, blind eye gave him a hellish quality.
Smith took another step forward. An empty bottle of dandelion wine clinked against his boot.
‘They will say that I was a maniac,’ said the alien. ‘That I let my men run amok… Lies. I never lost control.’
Smith said, ‘From the smell in here, I’d say you lost control a long while ago.’
There was silence. Wikwot shifted position.
‘About thirty miles north of here, the rivers converge,’ he said. ‘We Yull call the meeting point Botlnec. Sometimes, at high tide, the light catches the water, and all the fish come to the surface as it shimmers in the moonlight. It’s... actually, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this. Probably should have laid off the wine.’
‘Come on,’ Smith said. ‘It’s finished, Wikwot.’
‘Are you an assassin, then?’
‘No. I’m a spaceship captain. And I’d be a pretty rubbish assassin if I told you that I was.’
Wikwot drew on his cigarette. He sighed. ‘How did it come to this? Two great empires, fighting to the death over this wretched planet. So much death, so much sorrow. How did we end up this way?’
Smith shook his head. ‘Well, it’s difficult to explain, really. I suppose both of our empires wanted the same things: power, prestige, territory. And then there are the economic factors. But it chiefly stems from you being a colossal arsehole, and going on a crazy rampage with your huge army of colossal arseholes. That’s pretty much it.’
‘Ah,’ Wikwot said. ‘That.’
‘I’ll be having your axe, please.’
The general got to his feet. He looked down at Smith, and quietly slid the battleaxe from his belt. Something stirred deep in his eye, beneath the self-pity and drunkenness; a mean, sullen anger.
They looked at each other for a moment, man versus lemming. Smith looked down at the axe in Wikwot’s hands, and knew that the general could. And why not? Wikwot could cut Smith down and run out to meet his death, to die as brutally as he had lived.
‘I’ll accept your surrender now,’ Smith said, and he put the Bearing into his voice. ‘If you don’t mind.’
Wikwot stared at him.
‘With all due respect, I’ll be taking the axe.’
Wikwot’s eye narrowed.
Smith focussed the Bearing. ‘If you’d be so kind, General.’
Wikwot held out the axe. ‘Oh, fecinec,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Smith took it from him. They walked out into the light.
The smelly gloom of the pumping station fell away, and Smith felt the sun on his face. He grinned as he saw his friends. The battle against the Yull was as good as over, and he and his crew had not just survived, but won. They had helped to make the galaxy free and safe. The tyranny of the lemmings was no more.
Suruk clenched his fist. ‘Victory!’
‘Hooray!’ Carveth cried.
‘Awesome!’ Rhianna said.
‘Yes, jolly good,’ Smith replied. ‘Settle down, everyone. I know we saved the galaxy, but that’s quite enough emotion for now.’
‘Offworlders.’
Smith looked round. Wikwot stood a few feet behind him, thumbs hooked over his sash. Suruk scowled, and Smith wondered if the old monster had one last trick up his fluff-covered sleeve.
‘You people,’ Wikwot said, and he shook his head. ‘What strange creatures you are. You live like weaklings, but you fight like wild beasts. You conquer half the galaxy, but when people put cream in tea instead of milk, you call it obscene.’ He looked them over, one by one, and sighed. ‘Take it from me, as a warlord of the Greater Galactic Happiness and Friendship Collective: you are all very, very weird.’
‘Weird?’ Smith replied. ‘Certainly not. You see, my good lemming, we can’t be weird. We’re British.’
About the Author
Toby Frost studied law and was called to the bar in 2011. Since then he has worked as a private tutor, a court clerk and a legal advisor, amongst other things. He has also produced film reviews for the book The DVD Stack and articles for Solander magazine. The first of his Isambard Smith novels, Space Captain Smith, was published in 2008.
www.tobyfrost.com
www.spacecaptainsmith.com
THE CHRONICLES OF ISAMBARD SMITH
by TOBY FROST
Space Captain Smith
In the 25th Century the British Space Empire faces the gathering menace of the evil ant-soldiers of the Ghast Empire hive, hell-bent on galactic domination and the extermination of all humanoid life.
Isambard Smith is the square-jawed, courageous and somewhat asinine new commander of the clapped out and battle damaged light freighter John Pym, destined to take on the alien threat because nobody else is available. Together with his bold crew – a skull collecting alien lunatic, an android pilot who is actually a fugitive sex toy, and a hamster called Gerald – he must collect new-age herbalist Rhianna Mitchell from the laid back New Francisco orbiter and bring her back to safety in the Empire.
Straightforward enough – except the Ghasts want her too. If he is to get back to Blighty alive, Smith must defeat void sharks, a universe-weary android assassin and John Gilead, psychopathic naval officer from the fanatically religious Republic of New Eden before facing his greatest enemy: a ruthless alien warlord with a very large behind…
‘Gives the sacred cows of sci-fi a good kicking before racing home in time for tea.’ Dirk Maggs, director of BBC Radio 4’s The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
£7.99 ISBN:978-1-905802-13-5
God Emperor of Didcot
Tea… a beverage brewed from the fermented dried leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis and imbibed by all the great civilisations
in the galaxy’s history; a source of refreshment, stimulation and, above all else, of moral fibre – without which the British Space Empire must surely crumble to leave Earth at the mercy of its enemies. Sixty per cent of the Empire’s tea is grown on one world – Urn, principal planet of the Didcot system. If Earth is to keep fighting, the tea must flow!
When a crazed cult leader overthrows the government of Urn, Isambard Smith and his vaguely competent crew find themselves saddled with new allies: a legion of tea-obsessed nomads, an overly-civilised alien horde and a commando unit so elite that it only has five members. Only together can they defeat the self-proclaimed God Emperor of Didcot and confront the true power behind the coup: the sinister legions of the Ghast Empire and Smith’s old enemy, Commander 462.
A storm is brewing!
More shootouts than Jane Austen, more laughs than Thomas Hardy, and much better aliens than that Trollope chappie!
£7.99 ISBN: 978-1-905802-24-1
Wrath of the Lemming Men
From the depths of Space a new foe rises to do battle with mankind: the British Space Empire is threatened by the lemming-people of Yull, ruthless enemies who attack without mercy, fear or any concept of self-preservation. At the call of their war god, the Yull have turned on the Empire, hell bent on conquest and destruction in their rush towards the cliffs of destiny.
When the Yullian army is forced to retreat at the battle of the River Tam, the disgraced Colonel Vock swears revenge on the clan of Suruk the Slayer, Isambard Smith’s homicidal alien friend. Now Smith and his crew must defend the Empire and civilise the stuffing out of a horde of bloodthirsty lemming men – which would be easy were it not for a sinister robotics company, a Ghast general with a fondness for genetic engineering and an ancient brotherhood of Morris Dancers – who may yet hold the key to victory…
‘The best Isambard Smith adventure yet!’ Waterstones
£7.99 ISBN: 978-1-905802-35-7
A Game of Battleships
The fate of the galaxy rests on just one man. That man is Captain Isambard Smith, and the galaxy is in a whole lot of trouble.
When the British Space Empire is attacked by a mysterious warship with the ability to jump between dimensions, Smith must investigate – which would be much easier without the threat of fanatical cultists, pirates and legions of army ants, and if his ship wasn’t infected by man-eating toads.
Soon Smith and his moderately brave crew are drawn into a deadly game – a game without rules and where only one thing is certain… it just isn’t cricket!
Smith’s mission will take him on a perilous journey where he must face his greatest fears: from the edge of space, through hell itself – and even to France…
‘Wonderfully crafted, inventive and utterly hilarious. Captain Smith, I salute you!’ Professor Elemental
£7.99 ISBN: 978-1-905802-77-7