by Toby Frost
‘Toodle-oo. Oh, Captain Smith?’
‘Yes?’
She held out her hand. ‘Souvenir pencil and eraser. Do come again.’
The door swung shut, and she disappeared back into her realm. The dust settled, and the hall was empty and derelict again, as if she had never been there. ‘Most obliged,’ Smith said.
Rhianna sighed. ‘It’s a collection of looted artefacts, taken from helpless—’
Suruk raised a hand. ‘Be still. Our foes are close.’
They crept down the hall, weapons ready.
A squad of praetorians was busy in the atrium. Two had pulled down a statue of Athene and were kicking it.
Another pair had mistaken the ticket booth for an item of historical significance and were tearing it apart with pincers and teeth. A scrawny lieutenant looked on approvingly.
Smith aimed his rifle at the lieutenant. ‘You there! Get your hands off my culture!’
As he said culture it reached for its gun. The rifle-shell slammed into its chest and it flopped twitching into the back wall. Smith cranked the handguard and Green’s silenced Stanford tore the two praetorians at the ticket booth apart. Frantic movement at the statue. Smith put the crosshairs on one monster, blew its head off, lined up the other as it lifted its disruptor and shot it through the neck.
‘And that’s why they tell you not to touch the exhibits,’ he said.
Only gunsmoke moved in the atrium. They advanced, the soldiers spreading out to cover the staircase and doors.
Tormak took a fact-sheet from a dispenser and slipped it into his back pocket.
Smith glanced at Suruk. ‘Hear anything?’
The alien shook his head. ‘Not even a sausage.’
Green motioned to the main doors and his troops took up covering positions. A bearded soldier drew the bolts back and opened the door.
New Luton was silent. The ruins were oddly peaceful, as if the city was still being constructed and the builders had gone home for the night. A fire glowed in the distance, an ember in a scene of grey and blue.
‘Looks clear,’ Green said. He took a step towards the door. ‘Alright, let’s go.’
‘Wait!’ Rhianna hissed. Green looked round as she rubbed her temples. ‘Everyone, look out!’
Green said, ‘What?’ and above them, something creaked.
Spikes drove through the ceiling, twisted into tentacles and ripped the roof away in a scream of girders. Suddenly the cold sky was above them, studded with stars. Lights swung into the aperture and a dreadful howl filled the hall.
‘Marty!’ Green called. ‘Get down!’
A dessicator-beam punched through the roof, turned a joist to rust, clipped a soldier and blasted her to particles.
The war-machine honked and whined. A metal tentacle snatched a soldier into the air and squeezed him in two.
‘Plasma, now!’ Green bellowed.
‘Behind us!’ Carveth cried.
Smith spun round: a figure ran into the corridor behind them, leather coat flapping, backside bobbing behind it.
‘Ghasts!’ he called, and he fired from the hip, missed and the Ghast threw itself down, aiming its disruptor. There was a loud flat boom and the alien slumped like a puppet without strings. Carveth stood there, panting, the shotgun smoking in her hands.
Behind it, two more Ghasts ran into view, carrying a heavy disruptor between them. Smith fired again and one collapsed. Suruk hurled a knife into the other’s throat.
From the hall came the roar of plasma-fire and a sudden glow as if a furnace door had been thrown open. The war-machine bellowed.
‘Back!’ Green shouted. ‘Back to the boats!’
Ghasts poured into the corridor. Disruptor fire rang around the hall.
Rhianna was motionless, eyes closed, concentrating, using her powers to shield herself. All very well, thought Smith, but soon the Ghasts would be within striking range and what good would her skills be then?
He grabbed her arm. ‘Rhianna? We have to—’
Something hit him hard, as if God had punched him in the chest. The world swung up and he felt his back strike the floor. A scream, and then voices shouting ‘Boss! Boss!’ and ‘Isambard!’
Hands grabbed him and pulled him up. He was hauled out of the corridor, across the chaos of the atrium, his head spinning. A woman was yelling something. The arm holding him up smelt of ammonia. Suruk, he realised. His crew – where were they?
‘Rhianna?’ He thought he saw her and reached out.
‘No time for love, Captain Smith,’ Suruk growled, and he was dragged through the doors, felt the night air on his face and shook his head like a dog shaking water off its chops.
‘I need a bit of a sit-down,’ he said.
The world was going dim. He slipped out of Suruk’s grip and sat down on the museum steps. Men were running around him, shooting and firing. A weird mechanical yodelling was going on nearby. Something like a metal mosquito was striding through the street, bits of the museum roof still clutched in its tentacles. A rocket spiralled through the sky and burst prettily against its shields. Something huge and lithe slipped between two houses on the waterside, half a boat in its mouth.
Carveth hopped from foot to foot, making agitated sounds. ‘Get up!’ she shouted. ‘We have to go!’
‘Um,’ Smith replied, rubbing his skull. He felt wetness there: blood. ‘Bit of an achey head, I’m afraid.’
Rhianna knelt down in front of him. He smiled at her.
‘Hullo, girlie.’
She took his hands in hers. ‘Isambard? Look at me.’
He lifted his head, aware of how tired he was and how pretty she looked. It would be so easy to close his eyes, to topple forward and bury his head between the soft pillows of her benevolence. He let himself fall, feeling only drowsiness and the softness of her hands – and sound rushed through his brain like a tidal wave. Suddenly he heard gunfire, explosions, shouts and the whine of machinery.
Morgar was in the middle of Green’s men, directing their fire. To the right, Suruk whipped his spear round and sliced a praetorian in half.
Smith scrambled to his feet, sharp pain jabbing at the back of his head.
‘We have to go!’ Rhianna called. ‘Any longer here and we’re herstory!’
‘Too late!’ Carveth yelled. ‘Look!’
The war-machine turned and the blinding glare of its spotlights swallowed them up. Their shadows stretched in the light as if trying to pull free from their bodies. The walker hooted in triumph, and as Smith lifted his rifle, it fired its dessicator.
The beam tore open the concrete on which they stood, cracked the pavement apart, turned a tree behind them to confetti. They were silhouettes in the light, statues trapped in a bubble of roaring sound. Carveth was flinching, Suruk hurling his spear. And before Smith, hair streaming around her like a goddess, Rhianna shielded them all.
The beam flicked off. Suruk’s spear sailed out and hit a Ghast in the chest. Carveth peeked between her hands.
The war machine lifted the dessicator to its main portal and gave the gun a good shake.
Rhianna smiled at them all. In a circle around them, the pavement was unbroken. The crack in the earth stopped just before her sandals.
Carveth turned to Smith. ‘I told you she was weird.’
The walker took a step towards them and its cockpit exploded, its pilot bursting like a dropped blancmange.
The legs buckled and collapsed.
A landship rolled around the corner of the museum, a clanking, puffing castle on tracks. A great ramp dropped open in its prow. Half a dozen turrets swung to cover the road, and a figure appeared at the battlements on the main tower, waving down to them.
‘Mayhem, is it?’ Jones the Laser called. ‘You’d better get inside. I would let you have your boat, but the death-otter’s eaten it, see?’
The landship creaked and shuddered to a halt in the Imperial sector and the soldiers ran out into hard, slanting rain. Smith jogged behind Green’s men, win
cing as the night air chilled the back of his head. He had spent the last forty minutes in the landship’s medical bay, drinking tea and sitting still as a surgical wallahbot stitched his scalp together, and his head was stiff with anaesthetic and surgical Brylcreem.
‘A successful mission, I think,’ he said, and a bioshell exploded twenty yards away.
The compound was under siege. Ghasts lay around the perimeter in heaps. Soldiers manned the concrete barricades in two-man railgun teams. A sergeant stood in the middle of them, directing their shooting at a pack of hovertanks. ‘Front rank, fire! Second rank, fire!’
A sudden flash of metal between two buildings; a damaged walker lurched across the road with a warbot clinging to its leg. Two beetle-people scurried out of what had once been a fire station, hauling a Gatling cannon between them. Injured men and prisoners were dragged away. Fresh soldiers ran through the ruined houses in a half-crouch and dropped into the battle line. The night stank of fire and dust.
Jones waited for them a little further on. ‘This way!’ he called, pointing, and they headed for the main HQ, Smith slowing so as not to leave the women behind.
Now he could hear Ghasts, yapping and snarling on the right. Someone screamed, and gunfire rattled off to the south.
Yet it was no panic. The men were ferocious and disciplined. This was their ground, the Empire’s ground, and they would fight for it. A wave of giddiness struck Smith and, with it, deep respect for the common people who had come here to fight.
Morgar caught up with them at the entrance to the command building. ‘Hello again!’ he called. ‘And how are we all?’
‘Pissed,’ said Carveth. She too had availed herself of the landship’s medicinal facilities, and consequentially smelt of brandy.
‘We’re holding rather well,’ Morgar said. ‘We’ve drawn back to the second perimeter and we’re keeping them at bay. The landships have held the museum and are linked up with us. The beetle-people are reinforcing our defences with – well, you can guess what with.’
‘Good stuff,’ said Jones. ‘Tell the beetles that the defences need as much extra armour as they can manage.’
‘I’m sure they’ll work something out.’
‘Is there anything we can do?’ Smith asked.
There was a little pause. Two men ran past, carrying an empty stretcher.
Morgar said, ‘You should go.’
Jones nodded. ‘He’s right. You’ve got a job to do and it’s not here. It may be a fool’s errand, maybe not, but good luck anyway.’
‘I suppose so,’ Smith said. ‘Even if it’s a fool’s errand, we’re still best qualified to do it.’
Morgar led them down the road, and at the far end they started up the ramp towards the landing pads. ‘You should be able to break atmosphere without trouble,’ he said.
Men were hauling the camouflage tarpaulins off the John Pym. Suruk glanced at Smith. ‘You should wake its engines,’ he said, gesturing to the ship with a mandible. ‘I will follow you presently.’
Smith nodded. ‘Carveth, go and fire the ship up.
Rhianna, you ought to get inside. Jones, could I have a word?’
‘Course.’
They took a long step away from Suruk and Morgar. Smith watched the two women climb the ramp to the launch pads. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Er, there’s an awful lot of Ghasts out there. I mean, I don’t know if the fleet can help, but if you’d like me to put a good word in—’
‘We put a good word in about three months ago,’ Jones replied. ‘It was Help. The fleet’s about as useful out here as an Australian in a whispering contest. Listen, you can tell HQ that I’m not wasting good people for nothing. You’ve seen how our soldiers fight here, and that’s all the more reason not to leave them on their own. We’ll fight to the last if needs be, but I won’t waste men, see?’
‘Yes,’ said Smith, impressed. ‘I see.’ He held out his hand, and they shook. ‘Good luck, Jones. You’re a decent chap.’
‘Thanks. You too. Now, bugger off and let me get on with this.’
Morgar took off his glasses and wiped the rain off the lenses with his clan colours. When he put them back on, Suruk was smiling. ‘I am pleased, brother.’
Morgar said, ‘Oh yes? What with?’
‘You.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed. You have applied yourself well to the ways of war. You fought boldly at the museum. Of course, I would rather that you used a proper blade than a puny Earth-gun, but there is no denying that you have behaved honourably.’
Morgar pushed his glasses up. Since he had no nose as such, they slid down again. ‘Gosh,’ he said.
Suruk looked around, ‘Perhaps now I should learn the law, to equal you in a profession. It is as Father would have wished.’
Morgar shook his head. ‘He would have wanted you to protect your friends. Right now the galaxy doesn’t need more lawyers: it needs a maniac with a sacred stick.’ He glanced up at the Pym, watched steam rise from its hatches, listened to its engines cough. ‘I can take care of things here. You’d best go before the elders find some other idiot for you to get engaged in battle with.’
‘Well said,’ Suruk replied. He lifted Gan Uteki, consecrated spear of the ancestors, as if to brandish it at the whole of New Luton. ‘I will stay fast and cunning. No enemy will slow me now, no elder force me into unholy acrimony. To you I say these words: Mimco Vock shall fall by my hand!’
‘And to you, Suruk, I say these words: have a nice trip. And if you see General Vock – pull his whiskers for me.’
Suruk turned and jogged up to the ship. At the airlock he raised his spear. ‘Good hunting, brother!’ he bellowed over the roar of the engines, and Morgar waved back.
9 From Museum to Theme Park
Major Wainscott’s pod dropped open as it hit the ground and he jumped out into the snow, slapping a fresh magazine into the side of his Stanford gun. He was confronted by a depressing lack of hostile fire, so he threw himself clear of the pod, anticipating an ambush. Nothing happened.
‘Hiding, are you?’ Wainscott muttered into his beard, setting his backpack cogitator to scan for life as he studied the landing zone through his gunsight. Up ahead, the Leighton-Wakazashi headquarters loomed like a frosted cliff, the tinted windows glistening like black ice.
His Portable Information Transmitter Headset crackled. ‘Boss?’ Susan said. ‘Any contact?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘They’re definitely hiding. Spread out and move up, thirty yard intervals. See any moon-men, do them over. Over.’
Ducking low, he ran across the landing pad. A Ghast shuttle lay beside the company ships, its narrow black nose pointing at the company buildings like a mangled, accusing finger. Nelson was crouched beside its front leg.
‘Anything, Nelson?’
The technician shook his head. ‘Looks like Gertie headed North.’
‘Towards the company buildings, eh? Alright, let’s go.’
They ran towards the rail terminal. Halfway there, Wainscott dropped down and prodded something half-buried in the snow. It was a dead Ghast, its coat frozen stiff like beaten lead, body twisted and teeth bared in rage or pain, or both. ‘Dead drone here,’ he told the intercom.
‘Got a few here,’ Susan’s voice crackled back. ‘Someone made a tidy job of their landing party. Small-arms fire, mainly. There’s not a lot left by the looks of it.’
‘Bugger!’ Wainscott replied. ‘Meet me up by the main entrance. There may be some inside.’
He ducked behind a battered sign beside the executive offices. It read: Welcome to Leighton-Wakazashi, bringing you tomorrow’s future today! Access for paupers at side entrance only.
Wainscott lay down and waited, the snow hiding his outline, Nelson watching his back. Susan, Brian and Craig jogged up beside him and he rose to a crouch. ‘If Gertie’s here, he’s in there,’ Wainscott said, nodding at the doors ahead. ‘I’ll take the doors. Brian, Craig, flanking. Watch our back, Susan. Nelson, would you be so good as t
o bypass the door controls?’
They ran to their positions. Wainscott nodded to Nelson, and he pressed a device against the doors. A counter spun on Nelson’s machine, the lock whined, and the doors slid apart.
A dozen people stood behind the doors: policemen, mainly, and with them a line of young women, all of them armed. A man in a long brown coat stepped forward to greet the Deepspace Operations Group.
‘Wainscott?’ he said.
‘Dreckitt?’ Wainscott lowered his Stanford gun. ‘What’s all this, then?’
Dreckitt holstered his pistol inside his coat. ‘The ants sent a mob of gunsels down here. We managed to hold them off. We thought we’d lay low and wait for you.’
‘You killed them all?’
‘Yep.’
The wide-eyed girl beside Dreckitt gave Wainscott a victory sign. ‘Yay! Go ultra robot lady team!’
Wainscott looked them over, sighed and turned to his men. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing here to kill. Bloody mission’s a write-off. Come along Susan, we’re going home.’ He stepped back into the snow.
‘Wait!’
Wainscott glanced round. ‘Well?’
Dreckitt said, ‘Major, if you’re looking for the enemy, I can help. W’s taken a slug and that leaves you and me running this case. Polly Carveth, my squeeze, taught these dames how to pack a piece. She’s out there with Isambard Smith, looking for the Vorl. If you want to go help them, I’d be first to ride your running board.’
Wainscott looked at Susan and grimaced. She shrugged.
A tall, elegant android in a long dress and bonnet stepped forward and curtseyed as she reached the door, as if about to welcome them into her home. ‘I am Miss Emily Hallsworth, formerly of Mansfield Theme Park. Major, I believe Mr Dreckitt is making you an offer of assistance. He has certain information as to the whereabouts of your colleague – and, I should add, Miss Polly Carveth. Despite his uncouth manner, I would suggest that you accept Mr Dreckitt’s aid and head forthwith to assist Captain Smith.’
‘Yeah,’ Dreckitt added, ‘you said it, sister.’
‘Sister? I certainly hope not, Mr Dreckitt.’ Emily smiled at Wainscott. ‘So, Major, it would seem prudent for you to relieve us of Mr Dreckitt’s rather working-class presence. But before you leave—’ and her eyes gleamed – ‘that’s a rather splendid uniform you happen to be wearing, isn’t it?’