Wrath of the Lemming-men

by Toby Frost

  There was a small television in the corner of the hospital waiting room. On it, General Young was climbing the steps to the imperial throne, where King Victor waited in fleet uniform. He knighted her and, as the Scourge of Yullia stood up, Jerusalem parped out of a choir of hovering trumpet-bots.

  W sat on the far side of the waiting room, looking hard and thin. He wore his usual battered tweed jacket, which made him look like an impoverished schoolmaster, but there was a plastic collar around his neck and two wires ran from his temple to a speaker mounted beside his throat. The room smelt of cough mixture.

  ‘Hallo, Smith,’ W’s speaker said.

  ‘Hello, sir.’ Smith sat down. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Could be worse,’ W rasped. ‘The metal missed my jugular and most of my nerves. The doctors’re putting in a new voicebox this afternoon. Apparently, they’re going to whip my lung out while they’re at it. How about your arm?’

  ‘This afternoon, too.’

  ‘Did you meet the king?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. He seemed a nice enough chap. We’re having a bit of a do tonight. Want to come along?’

  ‘I may well do. Have to eat ice cream for a few days, what with the new neck.’ The long, solemn face turned to him. ‘Well done on Number Eight, Smith.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Just a shame he ended up in so many bits. He’d have looked good over the fireplace.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it. Eight was one of the smartest buggers Gertie’s ever bred up. We think he was planning to take over from Number One. With him at the helm, God knows what evil they could have done.’

  On the television, General Sir Florence Young was holding aloft the axe of a Yullian general, addressing the attendees. ‘This is for you!’ she declared, and the crowd’s cheering drowned her out.

  ‘The tables have turned on the Yull,’ W said. ‘They fear mankind now – and they know full well what the Morlocks will do to them once they get the chance. Now we get our own back.’ His eyes half-closed, and he reclined in his battered chair, surrounded by the smell of medicine and dust. ‘They’ve had their last migration,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a hard fight, but our men are the equal of anything they can put into the field. And then the Ghasts – but still, all in good time.’

  ‘W,’ said Smith, ‘what will happen to the prisoner we took?’

  ‘Vock’s slave? Oh, he’ll be fine. We keep the few we capture on a farm, under guard. They’ll go back to Yullia once we’ve won the war. After all, it wouldn’t make much sense for the lemming homeworld to have no lemmings on it, would it?’ He leaned forward, his big hands resting on his knees. ‘Tell me, Smith, what will you do with yourself when the war’s over?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll probably go down the pub.’

  W raised a thick eyebrow. ‘And after that?’

  ‘Curry.’

  ‘Good choice. But the space war’s not over yet, Smith, not by a long way. There’s plenty for us to do. The secret war is going to get pretty damned busy.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a lot of work ahead. We’ve got a lot of Ghasts to deal with, and the lemmings aren’t just going to kill themselves, either.’

  ‘Actually, Smith—’ W began, and he sighed. ‘Anyhow, it’s going to be a tough few years for mankind. And while the army moves on, wreathed in glory, we chaps in the Service will have our own clandestine struggle to win: fighting unseen, relying on skill, secrecy and cunning to see us through – subtle and crafty, known only by our deeds.’

  The door opened and a nurse looked into the room.

  ‘Mr Lint? Your lungs are ready.’

  She looked at Smith, who shook his head.

  ‘Eric Lint, please?’

  ‘Oh, bollocks to it,’ W said, and he stood up.

  *

  ‘Come on, you buggers, sing up!’ Wainscott stood on the dining table, waving a mug above his head. For his size he had an impressive voice and he bellowed across the room like an enraged ruminant. His eyes had a terrible aspect and he looked like the sort of man who could have wooed Boadicea. Unusually, though, he was still wearing his best uniform – all of it – which was all the more surprising as Emily the android kept trying to finger his epaulettes.

  Around him stood, sat and lay the Deepspace Operations Group, Morgar, Tormak the Rune Reader, Jones the Laser, Grocer Green, W (testing out his new lungs with a roll-up and a sing-along), the Grand Archivist and George Benson, who wore a bandage on his head and was in charge of the drinks. And on the wall beside the table, next to the stuffed praetorian’s head, soon would hang the two sacred axes of Colonel Mimco Vock.

  ‘ Who am I? Who am I? ’ Wainscott roared, and a ragged set of yells joined him for the refrain. ‘ I am the Berkshire huntsman and this is the Berkshire hunt! ’ The song broke down into cheers; Wainscott stumbled off the table, Jones climbed up after him, promising to show them all how it was really done and Tormak the Rune Reader punched both fists into the air and roared ‘Glorious!’

  It seemed like a good moment to slip out and change Gerald’s water. Smith stepped over one of Carveth’s android protégées who had passed out in the doorway like a schoolgirl-shaped draft excluder.

  On the way to the cockpit he passed Carveth’s room.

  Dreckitt lay sprawled across Carveth’s bed, looking as if he had dropped into it from a great height. He stirred in his sleep. ‘No more,’ he said weakly, ‘Not again, Polly, please.’ Smith ignored him.

  Smith wandered into the cockpit, thoughtfully flexing the fingers of his new right hand. The light was on and the slow, steady squeak of Gerald’s wheel pulsed through the room. Smith dropped into the captain’s chair, the sound of merriment filtering up the passage behind him.

  The mock leather creaked as he made himself comfortable: drunk and oddly calm, as if he had staggered into the eye of the storm.

  He did not feel triumphant. With tranquillity came an odd sense of sadness that he could not have explained even if he had been sober. He looked across the cockpit at the row of novelty items on the dashboard, and remembered the first time he had seen them over a year ago.

  They had taken off from New London as beginners, and now they were – well, if not elite as such, at least approaching competence.

  ‘Hey, Isambard.’ Rhianna slipped into the room with an enticing hiss of tie-dyed skirt. She perched on the arm of his chair and looked down at him. ‘Chilling out?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Pretty cool.’ She sighed. ‘It’s been kind of heavy though. All those lemming people, then meeting the Vorl, then finding out one of them was my father – Mom must have been so stoned,’ she added, with a kind of awed pride. ‘Crazy.’

  ‘Still,’ said Smith, ‘you did get to go to a theme park.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rhianna said. ‘You do take me to some amazing places.’

  ‘Seeing as we were on a mission, I thought it was pretty good,’ Smith began, a little hurt.

  She laughed and patted his shoulder. ‘I’m kidding. It’s cool; just relax. Okay?’

  ‘Righto. I’ll do that. I’m. . . ah. . . hep to that, daddy-o.’

  ‘I think I like you better uptight. Want some?’ she added, holding out her hand. A tiny joint was wedged between her fingers; it looked to be largely made of yellowed paper and spit.

  ‘Fine with the beer,’ Smith replied.

  ‘Where’s Suruk?’

  ‘Out in the forest, communing with the ancestors. I would help him, but this is something Suruk has to do on his own,’ he said. ‘After all, no one else would understand a word of it. Goodness knows how he’s planning to fit all those ancestors back into his spear.’

  ‘I really hope he can,’ Rhianna said. ‘After all he’s been through. . .’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Smith said. ‘You know, when it comes down to it, we’ve not done too badly – so far.’ He picked up the novelty paperweight from the dashboard and turned it over in his hands. A storm raged a
round Parliament inside the plastic dome.

  Rhianna stood up. ‘I’m going outside for a moment,’ she said. ‘I think I could do with some quiet. I never realised Major Wainscott’s folk singing was so. . . authentic.’

  ‘Straight out of Agincourt,’ said Smith. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ He listened to her leave the room and sat back in the chair. He felt inexplicably weary. The stitches in his arm ached. He sighed, tired and contented, and thought: well, we actually did it. We fought the lemming men, rescued New Luton, and we’ve even got the Vorl on our side. And here I am, with my crew – my friends. How could things have ended better?

  A light flickered on the dashboard.

  A little drowsy, Smith pulled himself up and leaned forward to get a good look at the panel. It was not the self-destruct light – Carveth had shown him that a while ago – so there was probably no immediate problem, unless it was some sort of missile detection system. No, he realised, it was the long-distance intercom.

  Tape clattered out of the slot. Smith watched it emerge like a snake from a burrow and ripped off a length. The message read: ‘Turn on the television.’

  The television took a bit of finding. Puzzled, he sighed and heaved it onto the main console, found the plug and wired it up. His apprehension slowly rising, he switched it on.

  With a sudden click, he was looking at a Ghast officer.

  It sat at a desk, a row of flags hanging behind it like dangling wire. Martial music played in the background: a band accompanying a Ghast warbling in heroic treble.

  The scarred, one-eyed face turned towards Smith and smiled.

  There was something wrong with 462, something beyond the usual facial scars and metal lens. His working eye was slightly unfocussed, and he seemed to have slumped a little in his chair. There was a brightly-coloured paper helmet on his head and a tube of liquid before him.

  ‘Well well,’ he said, his voice slightly less crisp than usual, ‘we meet again.’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Smith. ‘But if you’ve come here to threaten, Gertie, I can tell you that—’

  ‘Threaten you? Nonsense.’ 462 waved his antennae dismissively. ‘I would not dream of it. In fact, I seek only to share your moment of victory.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I would congratulate you. Shake your hand, as it were.’

  ‘With a serrated pincer, no doubt.’

  ‘Not at all. For once I have no desire to snip off your puny appendages. It is most amusing: once again your weak Earth-mind is unable to fully appreciate the irony of your situation. Neither of us has lost out from your last little adventure. The death of Eight has left, shall we say, a vacuum of power here. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but I myself do not.’

  Slowly, like a crocodile breaking the surface of a lake, a long, bestial head rose above the level of the desk beside 462. There was a conical party hat wedged between its antennae.

  ‘This is Assault Unit One, the former property of the glorious Number Eight. Now that Eight has been killed and the pieces regrettably devoured by his own praetorians, Assault Unit One belongs to me. You see, the Ghast Empire required someone to take over Eight’s duties and, as his assistant, it was assumed that I had the ruthlessness and skill to take his place. My superiors suspected that I had assassinated Number Eight and promoted me for my initiative.’

  Smith stared at him. He did not feel anything much, only a vague, exhausted contempt. He would never be rid of 462, he realised – not until he killed the monster himself. ‘I suppose you let them believe that?’

  ‘I dropped the odd hint.’ 462 smiled and took a sip of liquid. ‘Mmm, that tastes effective. You know, we Ghasts do not indulge in many frivolous celebrations.’

  ‘It probably comes from living in a one-party state.’

  ‘Quite so. And this, as you can see, is the party.’

  ‘And you’re in a state.’

  462 adjusted his paper helmet. ‘Well, perhaps so. After all, my unfortunate predecessor did keep an impressive cellar of nine-percent sucrose solution.’ He raised the liquid tube. ‘So thank you, Captain Smith. You have saved me a lot of unbecoming dirty work. Number One needs a personal assistant to help him with Number Two. Perhaps I shall become his deputy.’

  ‘So you’d be clearing up after Number Two? It sounds disgusting but, for you, pretty appropriate.’

  462 shrugged. ‘Ah, who knows where inexorable destiny will carry us? But at any rate, I think we shall meet again. It may not be for some time – I have other business to attend to. But I will see you again and then, Smith, I shall have the pleasure of destroying you for good.’

  ‘Just bugger off, would you?’ said Smith. ‘Go and dance round your trenchcoat or whatever you chaps do.’

  ‘As you wish. But I suspect that you have not seen the end of me.’ 462 gave a mocking wave.

  ‘Yes I have; it’s big and re—’ Smith began, but the connection was gone. 462 was still on the screen, his hat slumped over one antenna, arm frozen in mid-wave. His hand was scarred from where he had grabbed Smith’s sword. As Smith stared at the screen he made out the words ‘Made in Sheffield’ seared across 462’s palm.

  ‘I’ll bag you yet,’ Smith promised the image. ‘My crew and I will not rest until you are defeated. We—’

  A huge robot suit danced past the nosecone.

  Smith leaped up, ran out and hauled the airlock open.

  Dwarfed by the twenty-foot Leighton-Wakazashi fighting suit that danced around it, the John Pym’s stereo stood on the tarmac, pumping the greatest hits of Queen into the warm night air.

  Nearby Yoshimi Robot-Pilot watched, horrified. ‘Oh, Captain Smith!’ she cried. ‘Polly Pilot wanted to borrow my fighting suit, and now look!’

  The robot’s head spotted him and the speakers boomed:

  ‘Look at me, boss! I’m tall! Can you see me, world? I’m the tall one now!’

  ‘You bloody idiot!’ he yelled back. ‘Stop that at once!’

  The fighting suit paused, shocked, and straightened up.

  For a moment it stood there, hands on hips, looking curiously offended – and then it raised one vast hand and blew him a mighty raspberry.

  ‘Oh, what the hell,’ Smith called back. ‘Carry on, Carveth.’ He looked at Rhianna and smiled. ‘Care for a dance?’

  Epilogue: A Message from the Ancestors

  The trees closed over Suruk’s head, almost hiding the sky. The forest was damp and hot and its smell seemed to wrap itself around him. A fine night for battle, he thought, and a fine night to make peace with his ancestors.

  He knew when he had found the right tree, a mighty alien pseudo-conifer with a trunk as broad as a watchtower. He swung the rucksack onto his back, bent his legs and sprang onto one of the lower branches. He flexed his fingers and jumped again, and in a moment he was springing from branch to branch, bouncing off the trunk and limbs, leaping ever upward until he cleared the forest canopy as if bursting from below the waves.

  Suddenly he was looking at the moon. Light rain tapped his skin. Under his boots the branch on which he balanced swayed gently with the wind, and Suruk swayed with it.

  ‘Greetings, Father,’ he said. ‘It is I, Suruk the Slayer.’

  The sky was silent.

  ‘Morgar has become a good warrior,’ Suruk said. ‘He has slain many of our enemies. Dozens of Ghasts have fallen to his hand. Soon he shall join those taking vengeance to the foul Yull and teach them to fear the House of Urgar. I am sure you are proud, Father.

  ‘And I wish you to be proud of me, as well. When last we spoke you said that I should get a proper trade, and you lamented that there were no lawyers or doctors in our family. I have remedied that. The fight with Vock was great and terrible, as you saw. In return for my work in shaming Mimco Vock and revealing the Vorl to mankind, the greatest scholars of the British Empire have forged a helm and cape for me, and anointed me by post Doctor of Law. And not just any doctor, Father, but an honorary one!’

  Suruk reached into his
bag and took out a mortar-board hat. It would not fit easily on his head, but with a bit of shoving he managed to wedge the mortar-board in place.

  The rain grew in force, pattering down on his hat.

  Thunder rippled through the trees and, a mile away, lightning broke the sky.

  Perched on the branch, Suruk drew two last items from the bag and raised them in his hands. ‘See, Father. I swore to follow you and to bring vengeance and honour to our line. Let the ancestors know that this I have done! In this hand, the axe of Mimco Vock: in the other, the scroll of learning of the University of New Stoke. Look closely now, my Father: are you not avenged? Are you not avenged? ’

  He threw his head back and bellowed into the rain, arms raised as if to hold up the head of a mighty beast for the ancestors to see. The thunder roared back at him and a bolt of lightning shot into the axe, down the shaft, into Suruk. He shuddered and frothed, frozen mid-cry, and dropped like a rock into the forest below.

  Suruk awoke stretched out on his back, surrounded by the smell of singed mane. He flexed his limbs; they still worked, but he did not get up. The rain was warm around him and he smiled up at the sky through wisps of smoke.

  ‘I shall take that as a yes,’ he said.