by Toby Frost
‘What the hell?’ Gilead said.
462 smiled as much as his scars would allow. ‘Good news. Our heavy guns have defeated the human anti-aircraft batteries. Speak the rest so Captain Gilead can understand it, drone.’
‘I obey!’ The drone saluted again. ‘Human Isambard Smith and the Vorl woman have escaped and their location is unknown!’
462 did nothing for a couple of seconds. ‘Unknown,’ he said.
The messenger nodded. ‘Unknown! I am informed that our attack was swift and ruthless, intended to utterly crush all resistance. Drones like myself were used for their disposability, and the human scum were taken by surprise, but—’
462 nodded to one of the praetorians. It leaned forward, and, like a groundsman snipping away an unsightly branch, bit the pilot’s head off.
‘Dinner is served,’ 462 said. ‘This is unfortunate news, Gilead. Most unfortunate. I want them found!’ He pulled his trenchcoat tight around him, turned and marched away. ‘Found!’
*
Once they were out of the city, they stopped to allow Rhianna to get changed. Smith leaned against the car and looked back at the burning city. Great floodlights roved over the buildings, shining from the landing-ships. Capital City belonged to the Ghast Empire now, as did the whole of Urn.
Carveth stood next to him. The night air was warm.
‘Guess we’re not going home just yet,’ she said.
‘We will,’ Smith replied. His voice was grim. ‘I promise.’
‘Gaze upon me!’ a squeaky voice said behind them.
They looked around: Suruk had put the praetorian’s head on the roof of the car and was working its mouth like a puppeteer. ‘I boasted of being a great warrior, and now I sit on the mantelpiece of Suruk the Slayer! Look upon me and despair, for once I was mighty and now I am a paperweight!’
‘Do you have to do that?’ Carveth said wearily. ‘All that severed head stuff. Doesn’t it strike you as kind of morbid?’
Suruk shrugged. ‘No, it is fun. Besides, you are lucky it is just heads I take. When I was a young brave I used to completely dismember my enemies. However Mazuran here disliked having all their members lying around.’
Smith watched the fires in the city, watched the wads of light on the alien ships that hovered over it. Very faintly, he could hear the sound of one of Number One’s speeches blaring from one of the spacecraft. Somewhere in the darkness, a dog howled. Rhianna was pulling a kaftan over her gymslip. She dropped the kaftan and bent over to pick it up.
‘You know, Carveth,’ Smith said, ‘I don’t think I shall ever forget this moment.’
‘Just because you can see Rhianna’s pants,’ she said.
‘I meant the alien invasion, Carveth.’
‘Oh, that,’ she replied. She sighed. ‘I’m trying not to think about that.’
4 The Rebellion Begins
Smith woke up at eight in a white, sunny room. Clear, clean light streamed in through the window. It was too nice a sky for anything evil to happen under it.
He washed at the sink in his room and dressed. He hid his rifle between the mattress and the frame of the bed and strapped the Civiliser to his side. This place was supposed to be safe, but there was no point taking chances.
On the landing he met Carveth. She was in her pyjamas, woolly slippers and dressing gown, and did not look like a key player in the struggle against alien tyranny. ‘Ugh, Boss,’ she muttered as she closed the bathroom door.
‘Morning, Carveth. Bad night?’
‘I had that nightmare about the electric sheep again. Hardly slept.’
‘Well, best get ready. Today is the day we start the war against Gertie.’
‘If I knew there was a war I’d’ve had a lie-in,’ she said weakly, and she stomped off up the corridor, toothbrush in hand.
Smith went downstairs. The rear of the building was cramped and scruffy, cluttered with equipment for the bar at the front. At the bottom of the stairs he heard voices.
One was hard and a little wheezy and could only belong to W.
‘Dammit, are you mad?’ W rasped. ‘You can’t go back, man. It’s insane.’
‘I’ll do what I want!’ the second voice barked. ‘You’re mired in tradition. What we need is to bring it to the heat, right now!’
Smith opened the door. He was looking into the kitchen. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Discussing battle plans?’
W glanced around. ‘Smith, tell this damned fool that he’s wrong. You take the pot to the kettle, not the kettle to the pot!’
‘Rubbish,’ said the other man. ‘You may as well entrust the tea to a savage.’
Suruk strolled in. ‘Greetings!’
‘This hothead is Major Wainscott,’ W said.
‘Wainscott, Deepspace Operations Group,’ said the man. ‘Wasn’t here, don’t exist, pleased to meet you.’ He put out a hand and Smith shook it. Wainscott was bearded, quick-eyed and quite small, and wore the largest pair of shorts Smith had ever seen. He was slightly dusty and made Smith think of a geography teacher and a tramp, things he did not usually connect with military prowess. ‘Glad to meet you, Smith. Dar urgai vashuk min,’ he added to Suruk, making a stabbing gesture.
Suruk laughed. ‘ Ungak mar shalad,’ he said running a finger across his throat.
‘Likewise, sir,’ Wainscott said, and bowed. ‘I have great respect for your people. You are fierce fighters.’ Still bowed over, he tapped a scar that ran through his hair, from the front to the back of his head. He straightened up.
‘Major Wainscott is a master of unconventional warfare,’ W added.
‘Absolutely,’ Wainscott said. ‘Conventional military doctrine enables the opposition to predict one’s plan of attack. Me, I pull ‘em down, wave ‘em round my head and go in with the old chap flapping in the breeze like the banner of Ghengis Khan. Scares the hell out of the enemy, every time.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Smith. He looked around the kitchen, uncertain how to follow this. Perhaps some of Wainscott’s brain might have fallen out when he acquired that scar. ‘Are those the tea fields out there?’
‘Indeed,’ W said. ‘Pure, unpicked tea.’
Smith crossed to the window and looked out. Having arrived in the small hours, he had not realised the scale of the plantation outside. The deep green of the tea plants stretched on and on from the window to the horizon: pure life, pure tea.
‘The blood of the Empire,’ he said to himself.
‘Which the Ghasts intend to stop,’ W said. ‘As we talk, the great plantations are harvesting as much tea as they can and hiding it. A second front has been formed, and we’re trying to get as much tea as possible stashed away before the enemy can get to it.’
‘Will the farms be destroyed?’ Suruk asked.
W shook his head. ‘Worse than that, I’m afraid. Rumour has it that Gertie means to put the plantations to some perverted use of his own. My contacts tell me that they intend to test out tea on their own shock divisions, in the hope of breeding moral fibre into their own men.’
Smith pounded his fist on the sideboard. ‘Dirty swine!’ he cried.
‘So far, tea gives the Ghasts no strength,’ W explained. ‘In fact, it’s mildly poisonous to them. But no doubt they’ll try to harvest it for themselves. At any rate the Crusadists regard tea as sinful, and will probably ban the general population from drinking it in order to weaken their will to resist.’
‘This is terrible,’ said Smith. ‘You’re telling me that the Ghasts mean to use this entire world as a testing-ground to enhance their own legions?’
‘Mankind’s war may rest on this one world,’ Suruk said. ‘And from that, the whole human galaxy. My people, of course, are unconquerable warriors.’
Carveth came in, still in her dressing gown. ‘Alright all. Got any cereal?’ she asked, opening the cupboards.
‘Quite,’ W said. ‘With tea in their veins, the Ghasts could become nigh-on unstoppable. What sort of cereal did you want?’
‘F
rosties would be nice.’
‘There’s some in the next one down. History shows us that the decline in tea-drinking was directly linked to the weakening of moral fibre between the two Empires. With prolonged absence of tea, there is an actual risk of permanent moral decline. There, next to the Rice Crispies.’
Smith shuddered. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Without us to protect it, the sheer military force the Ghasts could muster would overwhelm Known Space in weeks.’
Wainscott had been listening quietly by the window. ‘That’s where we come in,’ he said. ‘The Deepspace Operations Group, if I may say so, is the smartest, best-trained, best-equipped military unit in human history, excluding nobody. I would say that one member of the DOG is the equal of twenty elite Ghast praetorians.’
Smith turned to him. ‘How many men do you have?’
‘Five. Well, four if you don’t count me. But by God we’re good.’
Carveth poured out the Frosties. ‘Well, as long as there’s less than a hundred aliens in this interplanetary invasion force, it should be a walkover,’ she said. ‘We’re stuffed.’ She sat down.
‘Not necessarily,’ W said. ‘We may well have an army of our own. I need to speak to my contacts to establish how many men are on our side, and what we’ll be up against.’
‘Good,’ said Smith. ‘The sooner we can hit back, the better.’ He turned to the window again and saw a slim figure strolling between the tea plants, dark hair pulled back from her face by a multicoloured band. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why don’t you talk to your chaps and we’ll reconvene in, say, half an hour? It’ll give us time to get ready, and we might have come to an agreement about bringing the pot to the kettle by then.’
It was only nine o’clock, but the sun was fierce. Worse than that was the humidity: it seemed to seep through Smith’s shirt and into his flesh, leaching the energy out of him. He strode through the tea plants with his sleeves rolled up and waistcoat unbuttoned, hearing the leaves hiss as they brushed against his sides, wishing that he had brought his Panama hat.
Rhianna stood a little way further into the field, motionless. She did not turn as he approached. He walked around to the front of her, keeping a proper distance, and saw that her eyes were closed. She was making a soft humming sound, like an aged fridge.
‘Hey, Isambard,’ she said. She wore a very long skirt, the usual sandals and an exceedingly small top, which seemed to have decided not to be a bra at the very last minute. Her dreadlocks looked like the offspring of an octopus and a rat, but in a good way. She was very beautiful, he thought, if slightly grubby.
‘Hullo Rhianna. How’d you know it was me?’
‘I recognised your footsteps. Beautiful here, isn’t it? The colours are so bright. It reminds me of a picture Gauguin painted of Tahiti.’
Smith did not know much about art, but knew enough not to say that he knew what he liked. ‘Well, I never knew that,’ he said. ‘I suppose he deserved a holiday, after all that cosmonaut business.’
Rhianna gave him an odd look. They walked through the tea together, talking.
‘So,’ he said, ‘how’s things? Still psychic?’
‘I’m good, thank you. And yes, I have been working on improving my talents. I learned a lot at St Carmilla’s.
These days, I focus on my chakras, and I can feel. . .positive energy, flowing through me.’
Smith frowned, unsure what this meant. He had forgotten how difficult it could be to talk to Rhianna. A voice at the back of his mind told him that if he focused on Rhianna’s chakras he too would feel positively energised. He decided that he had been spending too much time around Carveth.
‘Well, that’s jolly good. Don’t suppose you can blow things up with your mind yet, by any chance?’
Rhianna frowned. Damn, he thought, I did it again. It could be very frustrating trying to date a pacifist while the galaxy crawled with creatures that needed a damn good kick. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘I understand,’ Rhianna said. ‘It must be difficult to embrace peace when you come from a culture inherently steeped in latent violence.’
‘What, England?’
‘The British Empire, Isambard.’ A gentle wind stirred the tea leaves, taking a little of the humidity out of the air.
On the horizon, a sun dragon turned lazily, soaking the heat up on its wings, charging itself. It must be huge, Smith thought: perhaps eighty feet across the wings.
‘Well, we’re nowhere near as bad as the Ghasts,’ Smith replied, annoyed. ‘Or bloody Gilead’s lot, imposing their gibberish on us all.’
‘That’s really heavy.’ She sighed. ‘Why can’t we all be friends, and enjoy freedom of religion?’
‘Damn right. This Eden cult should be banned. We need to resist these bastards until there’s not one of them left. Passively, of course. Thing is, I could do with your help.’
She stopped walking and looked at him. ‘Really?’
‘Definitely. Alright, you can’t blow up tanks yet, but you do have skills and, well, you know. I’d be worried about you otherwise.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Isambard. I’ll think about it.’
She smiled, and he smiled back. For the first time in their conversation, he felt that he was reaching her.
‘I worry about you,’ he said. ‘The enemy might come here, looking for you. They’re not like normal people: they have no concept of decency. I’d be afraid in case you did something dippy.’
Rhianna smiled slightly less. ‘Like I said, I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘Just give me time to meditate on it. But don’t hassle me, Isambard. That’s what The Man does, remember.’
‘I won’t, I promise. We’re having a meeting inside later. You’d be welcome to come and listen to us.’
Rhianna said, ‘I think I’d better help out. With all those Imperialists in there, you could do with someone to help dialogue’ – she made her weighing-out gesture – ‘flow. I suppose there won’t be anyone else to represent the voice of enlightened woman.’
‘Well, we’ve got Carveth.’
‘I’ll be there.’
The television was on in the bar. A semicircle of big wicker chairs stood around it, and ten people were watching a long-bearded man on the screen, addressing the camera like a hermit explaining his avoidance of civilisation.
‘This is showing every twenty minutes on every channel,’ W said.
The Hyrax sat back in his throne and smoothed his beard.
‘Citizens of Urn. Greetings in the name of the most gentle god, the bloody-handed Annihilator. I am the Grand Hyrax, or, as my passport now says, God-King-Prophet-Emperor of Urn. You may have noticed that last night a revolution occurred, putting me in power over all of you. Now that order has been restored, let me put you at ease regarding the situation.
‘The British-sponsored democratic government is over and the governor beheaded. I am now supreme ruler, and you will worship me or die. This change took place for two reasons: one, to protect your liberty, and two, to halt the tide of godless heresy. I will address these points in order. First, though, let me thank the legions of the Republic of Eden, who have assisted me in this crusade.’
There was a commotion on the screen, and suddenly Gilead’s big, blubbering face was thrust up against the camera. ‘The best fighting men inna world,’ he sobbed, and he took a swig from a bottle of weak beer. ‘Bless you, in your powered armour, and your. . . hats. Bless you. Kill ‘em all!’ he yelled suddenly, as he either fell or was pulled off-screen.
The Hyrax smoothed his beard down and continued.
‘Firstly, liberty. This coup took place to protect your liberty. Some of you may find this strange, as you currently have less liberty, owing to my regime being a vicious theocratic hell. Well, to use a phrase of a friend of mine, try thinking outside the box. It is well known that to have a large degree of liberty, it is necessary to surrender a small amount to allow for police, security services and the like. We have taken this concept a step forward: since
you have surrendered all your liberty, you now have even more liberty to do exactly what I say or die like the filthy heretic scum you are. Feel free to agree with me on this point.
‘Secondly, heresy. I don’t think I have to explain this.
The only people unfamiliar with the concept are the very heretics who invented it. As a result, only a heretic would fail to welcome the drastic and brutal actions I intend to take against suspected heretics across the globe. As soon as the situation calms down sufficiently for me to inflame it with a crusade, you will be able to watch heretics being dealt with on your very TV sets. And believe me, we know how to deal with heretics. On with the show trials!
‘In the interim, the legal system has been simplified. You will now do exactly what I say. If in doubt, don’t do it, especially if it makes you happy. In particular, tea is now banned. This evil drink has turned the pious into degenerates, and inflamed women with foul desires. It has turned their thoughts to disobedience, their once pious bodies to licentiousness, filled them with wanton lusts, the sweat glistening on their great, big, heaving—
‘Anyway, tea production is to end from now on. Anyone drinking, growing or brewing tea is a heretic wallowing in the filth of their own depravity and will be subject to the full penalties of my new law! Heretics will be wiped aside! The nine-headed beast shall rise three times – three times – from the lake of fire, and crusade will envelop the galaxy! The unrighteous will burn in eighteen hells, and I – I alone – shall be crowned God-Prophet of the entirety of space, by me, the God-Prophet! You have been warned, you decadent, contemptible, hellbound, infidel scum!
‘Thank you for listening.
‘PS. This counts double for girls.’
The Hyrax shuddered, glanced off-camera, and the picture faded to the Crusadist flag. W glanced around the room and switched off the machine.
‘Anyone want to say anything about that?’
Carveth put her hand up. ‘Knob-end,’ she said.
There was a murmur of agreement around the room.
‘So,’ Major Wainscott said, ‘these are the puppets up which the Ghastist hand is thrust.’