A Game of Battleships (21 page)

‘How do you know Prong?’ the creature with the diamond-shaped face whispered.

‘He’s our –’ Carveth paused, unsure whether these horrors would consider Prong to be an enemy 
or a friend – ‘we just know him.. ’

‘The usurper!’ the queen growled. ‘He bound and tormented us – and not in a good way.’ A sort 
of realisation crept across her grey face. ‘Bring him to me!’

‘But I don’t –’

‘Don’t you gyre with me, you uffish little girl! Bring him to me, and then maybe,
maybe
, we’ll leave you alone.’

Carveth started to speak but the queen raised a finger to her lips. In a swish of stitched leather, 
the others turned away. They stepped into the mirror in turn, each vanishing into the flat, polished glass.

In the reflection, lightning crackled.

The Queen of Hearts looked back and Carveth’s stomach twisted in fear. ‘Prong,’ the queen said, 
rolling the R. ‘Because if you don’t – it’s
off with your head
.’

And with that, she stepped back through the mirror. Her crown impacted loudly with the top of 
the frame, and the queen ducked through, snarling about migraine.

And then she was gone.

*

‘So let's go through this again,’ Smith said. ‘You came back here, you made a cup of tea, you ate a 
biscuit and then you summoned Satan. I can’t leave you for five minutes, can I?’

‘Indeed,’ Suruk replied. ‘It is terrible. I really liked those biscuits. Especially the ones with the 
picture of a cow. I like breaking the heads off,’ he added, as Smith passed him a mug. ‘Thank you.’

‘It wasn’t the Devil,’ Carveth replied. ‘You’re making me sound crazy. They were talking playing 
cards.’

‘Well,’ said Suruk, ‘just be pleased that you were not stuck at a table, obliged to drink wine and 
eat pudding. It was most tiresome.’ The idea of a portal to Hell seemed to have cheered him considerably.

‘Perhaps you ought to have played cards, if they asked nicely. Who knows what you could have won?’

Smith frowned. ‘Just because they were polite doesn't make it a good idea. Last Christmas you 
asked nicely for a chainsaw, Suruk. And the Christmas before that…’ He took a deep sip of tea and 
closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the concentrated moral fibre to reach his mind. ‘It seems to me that there's only one thing to do. We'll tackle this the way we tackle all our difficult problems.’

‘Indeed,’ Suruk snarled. ‘With righteous fury in our hearts and a blade in our hands! Many blades!

Many blades of considerable size!’

‘Let's just lock it away and pretend it didn't happen,’ Carveth said. ‘Like Suruk did with his 
offspring.’

The alien sat down again, slightly crestfallen. ‘Oh,
them
,’ he said. ‘I was hoping no one would remind me.’

‘I wish Rhianna was here,’ Carveth said. ‘She’d have something up her sleeve. Probably just a 
joint, but better than nothing.’

‘Both of you have a point,’ Smith put in. ‘But for now, the most important thing is that the cause 
of all this trouble is chained down and put away.’

Carveth leaped to her feet. ‘Wait!’

‘I'm talking about the mirror,’ Smith said. ‘Listen, crew… it may be that we've activated some 
kind of portal to another dimension, or that Carveth has finally flipped her lid and gone completely 
doolally. Our eventual task will be to determine whether this thing does actually lead to some sort of hellish netherworld and, if so, claim it for the British Space Empire. But for now, we must contain the mirror as best as we can. Given that the engine room is currently full of man-eating frogs, I propose that we chain the mirror and store it in the hold, face down. Then, we tell nobody until we reach safe haven and deliver it to the authorities. All clear?’

He was relieved, and quite surprised, to see that they understood. They got up from the table, 
ready for bed. Suruk cheerily volunteered to help secure the mirror. He seemed entirely unconcerned by the idea of demons emerging from it. Perhaps that sort of thing was usual in his culture, Smith reflected, or maybe he just relished the challenge of cutting off Satan’s head.

‘Time to rest, Mazuran,’ said the M’Lak. ‘We must consider this tomorrow. I will stand guard. If 
there is any change, you will know, albeit probably from the sounds of battle.’

‘Thanks, Suruk. I appreciate it. Listen, do you think there is anything in this?’

‘I do not know. Many years ago, when I was a mere spawn, impressionable and technically 
incapable of criminal responsibility, the elders of my tribe told me of a land beyond the great waterfall that plummets over the cliffs of Bront. He who recited the correct charm and then leaped through the 
waters, would emerge in a land of wonders. So I travelled for nine days, until the waters were in sight.

Speaking the charm, I sprang through the waterfall.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Stars, Mazuran. I knocked myself out on the cliff. The elders were lying through their mandibles.

How they laughed when I returned. To begin with.’

‘Righto. Pardon me, but how does this affect our current position?’

‘Not even slightly.’ Suruk gave Smith a reproachful look. ‘What a peculiar question!’

‘Well, time for bed, eh?’ Smith turned back to his room.

For once he felt glad that Rhianna was not there. Carveth was going crazy – really, properly 
bonkers – and now he was too. Smith had received a transmission from the spirit world: Carveth had 
ventured into another dimension accessible through a looking glass. What next?

Smith stood beside his bed, the model aircraft dangling around his head as if attacking King 
Kong. He reached over to the bookshelf, fished out the
Boys’ Bumper Book of British Gumption
and flicked through to the history section.

Strange things had often happened in the past and it was only recently that many of them had 
become publically known. Aresian death-tripods had landed in Reading in 1898, but luckily the fresh air had braced the aliens to death before they had done any damage; it was highly likely that the first simulant had been created during a thunderstorm in the early nineteenth century; archaeologists had found the 
severed arm of a M'Lak hunter in the ruins of a Viking longhouse, along with a dozen headless Vikings.

Runic texts suggested that the hunter had flown into a rage after discovering that the Vikings' horns were part of their helmets and not their skulls. So perhaps Carveth wasn’t going mad after all. Stranger things had happened than a portal to another dimension opening out of a mirror in the back of his spaceship.

Maybe in Devon. Smith needed another drink.

He awoke with a sharp pain in his head, a rifle across his lap and a picture of Rhianna stuck to his 
face with dribble. Looking down, he found a glass smeared with a sticky, brown substance. It had either been used as a vessel for neat Pimms or a tool for crushing bugs.

Smith nearly tripped over the Pimms bottle as he stepped into the corridor. A look at the hold 
door reminded him. Ah yes… they’d gone out to dinner, Carveth had returned early and summoned 
God-knew-what from some sort of other dimension. Worrying.

He strolled into the mess, where Carveth was eating chocolate. “Morning all,” he said, sitting 
down. She grimaced and raised a fizzing cup of Carlill’s Patent Sobriety Tincture tentatively to her lips.

‘Now then,’ said Smith, ‘we need to talk about this mirror. I’ve been doing some research, and 
against my better instincts I think you may not have gone mad.’

‘Oh, God.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Oh yes, I opened a portal to Hell. With board games. Or 
did I just dream that?’

‘You didn’t. There is, potentially, an explanation. But you should know it’s a very strange one –’

The intercom clattered in the cockpit. ‘Arse,’ he said, and he strode in.

Outside, Shuttles and the other Hellfire pilots were playing football in the Chimera’s docking bay.

Lights flickered in the cockpits of the fighters and, from the sound of it, the Hellfires themselves – or at least their autopilots – were keeping up a running commentary. Smith toggled the intercom, but it was 
Dave rather than Shuttles who spoke.

‘Good morning, Captain Smith. Did you sleep well? Or did you dream about anything?

Repressed nightmares, unwholesome sexual practises, perhaps? Pray tell.’

Smith thought about the things he tended to dream about – cricket, breasts, model kits, being 
bullied at Midwich Grammar School and that awful time he’d had to escort Fizzy Sipworth back from the 
Space Pilots’ Ball – and said, ‘Bit arsey for a computer, aren’t you?’

‘We’re about to dock with a space station identified as Wellington Prime,’ Dave replied. ‘Just one 
more thing, Captain. They say a man knows himself best when he faces danger. When you look deep 
inside yourself, what do you see?’

‘Last night’s dinner, you bally weirdo,’ Smith replied, and he flicked the ‘off’ switch.

*

HMS Chimera
slid out of the darkness of space like a metal glacier and rumbled into range of 
Wellington Prime. Before it, the space station glinted in the three nearby suns, its docking rings and gravity-generators spinning smoothly as though it was a great clockwork mechanism that turned the 
planets around it.

The crew of the
John Pym
stood with Captain Fitzroy in one of the
Chimera
’s viewing lounges and watched the approach. Only one ship was docked with the station. It looked like a freighter, but Smith saw unusual hatch-lines down the side and large cargo pods under the wings. He wondered if it might be one of the Empire’s Q-ships, disguised to trick enemy vessels into making a dishonourable sneak attack and equipped to punish them for such unsportsmanlike behaviour.

‘See you in the airlock, chaps,’ said Felicity Fitzroy as she strode past, the Bhagparsian cat 
clinging to her shoulder like a pink striped parrot. The doors hissed closed behind her.

Smith sighed. There was a lot to be worried about.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Carveth said. ‘One, we’re getting off this ship. Two, the Edenites aren’t 
chasing you. And three, nor is Captain Fitzroy.’

Out of three, she was about half right.

Part Two

A life-sized poster hung in the atrium of Wellington Prime. It showed the Lord Marshall of 
Space, a man not known for his level temper, driving his mechanical heel through a Ghast helmet whilst scowling around his pipe. ‘I'm stamping out tyranny,’ said the caption. ‘What the bloody hell do you think
you're
up to, eh?’

Smith stood in the atrium and looked around, taking in the brass scrollwork, the heraldic animals 
gambolling across the ceiling and the great holographic map of the Space Empire rotating in the centre of the room. He hadn't expected a rubbish-processing plant to look so good. ‘Well,’ he said, turning to 
Carveth, ‘I bet you're glad to be back on British soil, eh?’

‘It's metal, technically,’ she replied. ‘Still, I never thought I'd say it, but I'm bloody relieved to be in this gigantic shiny dustbin.’

Captain Fitzroy strode past, hands behind her back. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Some people,’ 
she told Carveth, ‘are
never
satisfied.’ She walked on, chin raised. Chumble strolling along beside her, humming tunelessly like a broken fridge.

‘She still thinks I'm your girlfriend,’ Carveth whispered. She met Smith's eyes and they both 
managed not to shudder.

Smith walked into the station, brooding. The wrath of Eden was the least of his problems: 
Carveth had either opened a portal to another dimension or was completely insane, and Smith himself 
had either received psychic messages from Rhianna or was completely insane. At least Suruk was as 
normal, he thought.

Suruk caught his eye and smiled. ‘Worry not, Mazuran. Perhaps the peace talks will fail and we 
can fight all the delegates.’ Yes, Suruk never changed.

They turned the corner and Smith stopped, astonished. All the old hands were waiting there: Rick 
Dreckitt, his hat pulled down low and brown overcoat inexplicably wet; beside him Susan of the 
Deepspace Operations Group, looking somewhat naked without a beam gun slung over her shoulder; 
Wainscott, looking strangely overdressed with his trousers on; and W, the master spy himself, his mouth twitching upward into the tiniest hint of a smile.

As Smith stepped forward, Carveth ran past and nearly knocked Dreckitt flat. ‘Damn, lady,’ the 
android gasped, ‘you know how to squeeze!’

‘Ah, Smith,’ Wainscott said, stepping forward. ‘Ready to raise hell again?’

‘Wainscott? What’re you doing here? Have we got a mission, then?’

‘No, not really. I just thought that we could get your ship, find a dodgy-looking planet and blow

–’ Wainscott noticed that W was giving him a stern look. ‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Good to see you,’ W said gloomily. ‘How’s things?’

‘Well,’ Smith said, ‘our engine room’s full of killer frogs, our convoy got blown up and we’ve 
opened a portal to Hell. Still, mustn’t grumble.’

‘Killer frogs, eh?’ W nodded thoughtfully. ‘While I bear amphibians no ill will – indeed, man has 
much to learn from the toad – an engine room full of them sounds excessive.’

‘Well, yes.’ Smith sighed. ‘Frankly, sir, problems are gathering in my mind as surely as beetle-
people around a big ball of dung. Not that my mind is made of dung, but you see what I mean.’