A Game of Battleships (16 page)

idol,’ he whispered, raising his blades, ‘I will cleave the unsightly knockings from your chest!’

‘No you won’t,’ Smith replied, and Suruk seemed to deflate slightly, like a child that had just

dropped an ice cream. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Smith, ‘we have our artefact. We’re going home.’

The
John Pym
slid out of the docking bay as the piratical horde fell back. It took off surrounded by chaos, one of dozens of red-striped, trophy-bedecked spacecraft. No one saw it go. Everybody had 
other things to worry about.

Deliverance faded in the viewscreen. It looked like a ball of flame, then a match-head, and then a 
tiny red spot in the centre of space, a mere zit on the face of the galaxy.

‘God!’ Smith said from the captain’s chair. ‘What a dreadful place. Carveth, set us a course for 
British Space. Where’s Suruk?’

‘He’s gone to check his spawn,’ Carveth replied. ‘He said you wouldn’t mind if he borrowed your 
cricket bat.’

‘Righto. Well…’ Smith got to his feet. ‘Let’s have a look at this precious painting of theirs, shall 
we?’

As often happened in the British Space Empire, it was time for the brave explorers to sit back, 
put the kettle on and try to work out exactly what priceless treasure they had stolen. Smith set the package up on end at the far end of the hold and got to work on the ropes with a Stanley knife. He let Suruk 
continue to tend to his frogs, or alternatively fight them off; the alien was not noted for his artistic tastes and tended not to hang anything on his walls that he had not hacked off somebody first.

Smith regarded himself as rather more sophisticated. After all, he could tell a Henry Moore 
sculpture from a large piece of Blu-tac from quite a long way off. As he cut the ropes he wondered what sort of thing the Edenites would want to look at: the torture of the damned, presumably, especially the large-chested damned. What a bunch of perverts they were. Anyone decent would want girls dressed up 
properly, like one of the Bronte sisters, say. . As the cloth fell from the frame, he reflected that he really ought to try to get Rhianna to wear a big white nightie again.

All was now revealed, but instead of angels firing machine guns at the unrighteous, Smith was 
looking at himself.

‘It’s a mirror,’ he said. ‘How strange.’

He reached out and tapped the glass with his fingertips. Nothing unusual happened.

Carveth had been watching from the back of the room, somewhat warily. She approached like a 
person with vertigo looking over a cliff. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘They really must be stupid to try to power a ship with this. . you don’t think they swapped it for something else?’

‘I don’t know,’ Smith replied. ‘Rum, Carveth. Most rum.’

‘Weird.’ She stared at her reflection as if expecting it to wink at her. ‘Nice frame, though. You 
could take it on Antiques Roadshow and find out if it’s worth anything.’

‘It does look rather old. First Empire, I’d have thought.’

‘Greetings!’ Suruk announced, striding into the room. ‘Is there tea?’ He frowned. ‘So, this is the 
trophy the Edenites so wished to guard. Curious. Is there anything strange or sinister about it?’

‘Excluding your reflection? No.’ Carveth said.

‘Peculiar. I must confess, it is not a pleasing thing. The workmanship seems a little gauche to my 
mind. It definitely needs more bloodstains.’

As Suruk turned, Carveth pointed. ‘Erm, you’ve got something stuck to you.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. Just look in the mirror. Down a bit, to the left. . you’ve got a frog stuck to your bottom.’

‘She’s right,’ Smith added. ‘Lower your hand – there.’

Suruk reached down and located a large toad-like creature attached by its fangs to the seat of his 
trousers. Carefully, he prized its jaws apart. It squatted in the palm of his hand, glaring at its father with unabashed malice. Tiny tusks glinted at the edge of its broad mouth. ‘One of my spawn. They are teething and will try to savage anything.’

‘Clearly, Smith said. It did seem a very odd way to demonstrate filial affection.

Suruk shook his head. ‘It is fortunate for me that I have no buttocks. And, for him, it is fortunate 
that I dislike sitting down. Still, good to see that my spawn are becoming suitably ferocious. I shall hurl him back into the engine room.’

‘On the bright side, at least someone finds you appetising,’ Carveth said. ‘Let’s get this tea made.’

While the others were taking tea in the mess-room, Smith checked the scanners. No doubt the 
Edenites would be wild with rage by now. As soon as they had rid themselves of the space-pirate 
uprising, they would be in hot and heavily armed pursuit.

And 462! Surrounded by the reassuring clatter of gears and cogitation devices, it was hard to 
believe that the horrible little creature still existed. Each time they met, Smith chipped another bit off his enemy and 462 climbed a notch higher on the greasy pole of the Ghast hierarchy. Smith fired up the lidar, wondering as he did whether he and 462 would be locked in combat forever until the pair of them were 
geriatric. It was a nightmarish image: a ninety-year-old wrestling with a giant ant with floppy antennae and a back end as leathery as its trenchcoat.

He made himself concentrate on the scanner. They were approaching the edge of British space 
and could expect warships to be patrolling the borders. With any luck they would be able to put in a call for assistance.

A light flickered on the control panel. Behind old plexiglass, a needle fluttered like a captive 
moth. Smith pulled the printout lever and, as the tickertape began to spool, he took the
Spotter’s Guide to
Spacecraft Residue
from the shelf.

The signs matched. A large craft had been this way and, from the mixture of Navy-issue nuclear 
vapour trail and teacake crumbs, it was British. Quickly, he typed out a message and cranked the handle marked
Broadcast
. Satisfied, he returned to the hold.

The mirror stood at the back of the room, as oblong and unhelpful as one of those alien obelisk 
things they sold in junk shops. He looked at himself for a while – not doing too badly, despite the pies – 
and peered at the ornate frame, trying to make sense of the little markings in the corners. One looked like pieces of a square, the other like a heart, cut into bits and arranged at random, and almost lost in a mass of applied vines that covered the frame like scrollwork on a sewing machine. Very odd indeed.

On a whim, he walked around the back. A piece of elastic had been strung across the rear of the 
mirror and tucked into it was a note. He glanced at the heading and saw the words:
For attention of sacred
hierarchs only
. Smith strode into the mess. This was worth sharing with the crew.

‘Chaps, I have news,’ he said, as Suruk slid a mug across the table. ‘I found this stuck to the back 
of the mirror.’ He unfolded the paper.

‘What does it say?’ Carveth asked.

Smith lifted the message to the light. ‘Ahem.
All hierarchs are to note that a typographical error has been
detected in the posters promoting Il iteracy Week. An extra space should be added to posters, to make them read:
The gun is good, the pen is evil.
For the avoidance of doubt, the penis is evil too. That will be covered in Self-Hate Week.’

Smith lowered the paper. ‘Hmm. Well, that's pretty frustrating, really.’

‘That's probably the point,’ Carveth replied.

Disappointed, Smith turned the paper over. The rear side was a medieval painting frequently 
used on Edenite stationery that he recognised as:
The Damned are Tortured with Musical Instruments
. It was all distastefully inventive: on seeing a man grievously tormented by a misplaced oboe, Smith reflected that merely having to listen to a child playing the recorder would have been punishment enough.

‘So what’ve we got?’ Carveth asked, rooting around in the biscuit tin. ‘Besides Lord Prong’s 
favourite preening-screen and a bunch of very angry goddies combing the galactic fringe for us, that is.’

‘I don’t know,’ Smith replied. ‘But the Edenites wanted this thing. They’re a bad crew and 
therefore us stealing it is good. If nothing else, we can give it to the British museum. That’ll hack off the Edenites a treat.’

‘Makes no sense to me,’ Carveth said. ‘I wish Rick was here. He’d know what to do.’

No doubt he would, Smith reflected. Rick Dreckitt had started out as an android bounty hunter 
and private eye, and was now one of the toughest operatives in the Service. After years hunting gangs on the mean streets, Dreckitt would probably want to bust some loogans with a Chicago typewriter, before 
handing out chin music harder than a chiseller grifting bindle stiffs. Which would be. . great, probably.

‘I rather wish Rhianna was on board,’ he said. ‘This all seems her sort of thing.’

‘Pining, boss?’ Carveth sighed. ‘Fair enough. But we can do this without her. I mean, she’s hardly 
vital to the war effort. Remember when they had that
Dig for Victory
campaign and she made us listen to jazz records?’

‘Her counsel would be welcome,’ Suruk said. He took a deep swig of tea, clamping the mug 
between his mandibles while his hands reached for the biscuit tin. ‘On the other hand, my offspring are 
numerous and enraged and my lack of a jacksie has preserved my britches from the gnawing of the 
spawn. This bodes well.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ Smith said, refilling their mugs, ‘but there’s something else you need to know.

I’ve picked up a British ship on the lidar. I’ve sent across a request for an escort while we’re carrying this mirror. With any luck they’ll find us, escort the ship to safety, and this whole business will be at an end.’

He looked from Suruk to Carveth and took in their doubtful expressions. ‘On the other hand,’ he 
added, ‘it is just possible that we might end up in a complete mess and have to fight our way out.’

‘Indeed.’ Suruk said. ‘You know, Mazuran, for a moment you had me worried.’

*

462 limped into Prong’s office. The room was not large and was lit by light redirected from 
below. The red glow fell on chains and instruments of interrogation. Prong sat behind his desk, on which the
Creed of the New Eden, Eleventh Edition
stood like a wall between him and his visitors. He was using the tenth edition as a cushion to give himself a few extra inches of dignity.

462 looked around the grim, red room, the fire and the torture implements and said, ‘If I may 
check, Lord Prong… Hell is the place you
don’t
like, yes?’

‘Course it is!’ Grimacing, Prong shifted about on his seat. ‘Where’s the lemming man?’

‘Ambassador Quetic is admiring the workings of your spacecraft. We find the Yull are easily 
amused. Perhaps he has climbed into one of its wheels.’

“If he’s in there, when it. . activates, he’ll be damned. There’s no coming back from there.’ Prong 
gave a laugh that turned, via a wheeze, into a coughing fit. ‘Damn commies shot Beliath,’ he said 
breathlessly.

‘An insignificant minion. You have others.’

‘He was a good man. Well, not exactly a good man, more an idiot, but a
prize
idiot.’ Prong jabbed a finger across the table. ‘We need to pay those goddam blasphemers back!’

The screen on the far side of the room blared into life.
‘Do you want a government that cares about you,
and a god who looks out for the poor and needy? Of course you don’t, because that’s commie talk! You need a government
 
that despises you and robs you blind, and a god who just wants to kill everything! That’s why –‘
Prong turned the volume down.

‘You realise that there have not been any communists for five hundred years,’ 462 observed.

‘Of course I do, you young antsnapper. But you’ve got to keep people afraid. It keeps the money 
coming in. And more money means more handmaidens – or, as the case may be, more piles cream.’ He 
shifted uneasily. ‘Now then.. I’m having space combed for those godless bastards who stole my 
refraction portal. In the meantime, the
Pale Horse
will fall back on its built-in lagomorphic vortex.’

462 peered at the row of tomes on Prong’s shelf. He drew out a copy of
Phrenology and 
Acupuncture
, frowned at the grim-looking fellow on the cover and slid it back into place. ‘Good. Do you know who the man who raided you was?’

Prong shrugged. ‘Some heathen fairy from the British Space Empire,’ he said.

‘No.’ 462 turned, hands clasped behind his back. ‘His name is Isambard Smith. He gave me this 
metal eye, this limp and this scar on my hand that reads
Made in Sheffield
.’

‘Sounds like he kicked your – what is that thing, a thorax?’

462’s antennae twitched irritably. ‘A stercorium. The most highly-evolved waste-disposal organ in 
the galaxy. Its efficiency is matched only by the pleasantness of its odour. But I digress. Behind a facade of jovial idiocy, Smith possesses cunning and ferocity worthy of a pure-bred antwolf. It is quite a thick facade, I should add.’

“Sounds like a tough customer.”

‘He is. You must watch these British, Lord Prong. I have studied their culture extensively. Their 
outer mildness masks an inner strength, just as the flaky exterior of one of their ‘Cornish pastries’ 
conceals the meat within. Their society equips them for war. The British child is brainwashed from birth, beginning with an indoctrination programme codenamed
Watch with Mother
. It then passes through the ranks of the paramilitary reconnaissance organisations known as Guides and Scouts – as we call them 
collectively, the Brownwoggles. Next comes drilling in the arts of Maypole and Morris, bringing 
psychological conditioning to a level rivalling even the Praetorian storm divisions. Add to this the colossal intake of moral fibre, synthesised via the combat beverage
tea
, of which the average Briton consumes 
between two and six pints per day, and you have a creature whose moral rectitude is limited only by 
bladder capacity.’