A Game of Battleships (27 page)

Rhianna said, ‘So you really think of me as a cow.’

‘A mystic cow. Your psychic potential is matched only by your rampant herbivorousness.’

‘Suruk, did you see something in here a few minutes ago?’

‘Nothing escapes the hunter’s eye. I saw nothing.’

‘I thought. . I heard a kind of burbling sound.’ She gazed down at the mirror and Suruk sensed 
the edge of her mind probing at it and, from there, reaching towards him. He imagined his soul shrinking back into his body, hiding there, and Rhianna shrugged and said, ‘Maybe I ought to lay off the red weed for a while.’

Smith called out from the cockpit.

*

‘So,’ Dreckitt said, ‘you got a plan to find this guy?’

Wainscott stood before a long mirror in one of the security rooms, his face close to the glass. He 
had just finished a vending-machine pie and was picking detritus out of his beard. ‘Early days so far,’ he said. ‘But I thought I’d probably cause a stir, drive the bugger into the open.’ He took a white ball from his pocket and squeezed it between his fingers. ‘I’ve been looking for something to do with this plastique for ages.’

‘You consider jacking into the net? Every grifter on the street knows that data finds its own level.

In the neon flow of ice, truth is just another programme to slot.’

‘You mean, have I looked on the computer? Yes, I have. Tom Perdu’s a false name, of course.

Beyond that, nothing. I’ve had Nelson bring up a full map of this place, or as full as there is, leaving out the bits Barton built himself. We’ve got our work cut out.’

The door opened behind them and Susan entered, carrying a tray. She kicked the door closed 
with her heel. ‘Alright,’ she said, setting the tray down, ‘I’ve got everything we need here.’ Dreckitt looked at the tray: it contained a roll of printout, a dozen blurry photographs, two silenced pistols, cups, milk, a teapot and half a pack of digestives. ‘Your turn to pour,’ she said.

‘Listen,’ Dreckitt said, ‘I’ve got a Hoyt-Axton emotional-response recognition kit in my valise.

How about we wire it up and put some of these highbinders through the third degree?’

‘I’ve a better, comprehensible plan,’ Wainscott replied. ‘The first step is for me to publicly 
remove my underwear, thus causing a distraction.’

‘And once you’ve started undressing, what do we do?’

The major smiled and tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Wait and see, young fellow. All 
will be revealed.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

Wainscott sighed. ‘The last time we did an operation like this, I throttled the guards while Susan 
and the chaps rigged the place to explode. Problem is, we
are
the guards. Tricky.’

Susan reached across the tray. ‘We don’t need to. Look… these pictures are from the security 
cameras. Here are the Europeans coming in.’ She laid three photographs on the table as if dealing cards, then three more. ‘Here they are passing through the airlock. The next pictures show that they’ve gone 
away to get ready to join the others.’

Dreckitt leaned in. He pointed to a figure at the rear of the picture, a broard-shouldered man 
carrying two suitcases. ‘So who’s this guy? A late arrival?’

Susan shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘He’s not in their party, or else they’d be looking for him.’ Dreckitt rubbed his stubble. ‘But he’s 
following them through. I got a hunch… what if this guy at the back was laying low and took the chance to slip through, using them as a screen?’

Wainscott crunched a biscuit. ‘But where would he hide? How would he get into the station in 
the first place? We’ve got scanners that’ll pick up life-forms, humanoid shapes, explosives, guns. .’

Susan said, ‘An android might not show up. One of the older models would give out no body 
heat. If you scanned him, he'd just show up as an object. He could just power down and fold up in some corner of a ship and wait for it to arrive.’

Wainscott broke a digestive in half and peered at it suspiciously. ‘All very well, Susan. But, 
assuming this is our man
and
he is a robot, he would still have to get from the European ship and into the colony. And I can't see him getting past two dozen scanners and a bunch of M'Lak riflemen. At least, not with his head still attached.’

‘That’s the smart part of the caper,’ Dreckitt replied. ‘He was hiding in the luggage.’

‘I don’t follow you. Surely they’d know if they had the wrong luggage.’

‘Nix, pal,’ Dreckitt said. ‘Have you ever seen how they handle baggage in France?’

For a moment, Wainscott was silent.

Susan nodded slowly.

‘Dear Lord!’ Wainscott whispered, ‘that really is fiendish. It gives a whole new dimension to 
industrial action.’ He scowled at the table, then picked up one of the silenced pistols. ‘Time to go to work, gentlemen. We have a good idea of what this fellow looks like. We know he can’t be carrying more than a suitcase of kit. Let’s put him out of action before he does the same to us.’

Dreckitt put his hat on and pulled the brim down low. ‘I’m on the case.’

Wainscott shoved the pistol into his shorts. ‘Then it’s the usual plan… locate and destroy. Search 
every room, every corridor and air vent before this person gets the chance to work his evil. And tell that Le Fantome chappie what’s going on. We may need his skills. After all, we hunt a dangerous enemy. Our 
villain’s already passed himself off as a French public sector employee – he may strike at any moment!’

*

Suruk got to the door first but, for someone with shorter legs and no boots, Rhianna was close 
behind. They rushed through the doorway like junk falling out of a cupboard. ‘What is it?’ Rhianna said.

Smith looked up from the scanner. The light of the screen gave his face a sepulchral glow. ‘Men, 
I have worrying news. We have a reading of multiple blobs on this object here, headed straight towards the kitchen.’

Carveth leaned forward in the captain's chair, tried to get up, and flailed like a fat man in a 
bathtub. ‘Er, how many blobs? How fast are they going?’

‘Six,’ Smith replied. ‘About an inch every ten seconds.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Carveth struggled upright and pressed in beside him. ‘Enemy ships, closing fast!’

‘Good God,’ Smith replied. ‘What do I do?’

‘Squeal and wee,’ Carveth replied. ‘Or we could change places.’

‘Good plan.’ They squeezed past each other awkwardly. Smith dropped into the captain's chair, 
picked a long hair off the headrest and said, ‘Pilot, take immediate evasive manoeuvres. Are we seen?’

She checked the instruments while replacing the cushions. ‘No signs of detection. If they were, 
by now we'd be in hailing range or in pieces. I’m pulling back into the asteroid field. The mass should confuse their sensors.’

The
John Pym
slipped between the asteroids and Carveth killed the engines. ‘Hmm,’ said Smith, peering at the windscreen. ‘The enemy don’t look like much.’

‘They’re far away,’ Carveth replied. ‘According to the scanners, if we were the size of an egg, any 
one of those ships would be as big as a buffalo. And you know what happens if a buffalo sits on an egg.’

Suruk raised a hand. ‘A monstrous, horned chicken?’

Smith shook his head. ‘Your optimism is misplaced, old chap, along with your understanding of 
biology.’ He sat back in the chair. In the hamster cage, Gerald had dug himself into his bedding. ‘Well, we’re outnumbered and outgunned. By the inexorable logic of history, at this point we British ought to win. On the other hand, we don’t have any guns and those ships are actually rather large. Carveth, turn us round.’

‘Wait,’ she replied. ‘Look at the way they’re moving. They’re scanning the area. As soon as we 
leave the asteroid belt, we’ll be wide open.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘At the moment, we’re safe within the belt. But once they come looking –’

‘Damn!’ Smith hissed. He rubbed his forehead, trying to coax out a plan. What would Admiral 
Nelson have done? Sought comfort from Hardy, or even, given the desperation of the circumstances, 
attempted a desperate manoeuvre with Hornblower. They had to escape and, more than that, get back to 
the station and warn the others. ‘If we fly out of the asteroids,’ he asked, ‘what will they detect?’

‘Well, us,’ Carveth replied. ‘I mean, our engines.’

‘So if we were to fly away without using our engines, we’d be alright, yes?’

She paused. ‘You do realise that the engines are the bit that makes us move, right?’

‘So all we need to do is get clear. The asteroids are orbiting the planet over there, so if we get 
close enough–’

‘We’d drop into the gravitational field.’

Suruk chuckled. ‘And creep up on them, silent as a quanbeast in a herd of ravanphants!’

‘Creep
away
from them,’ Carveth said. ‘But we’d have to pull out of the asteroid belt and get closer to the planet to slingshot off its gravitational field. And that means firing the engines. And then we’d stick out like a walrus in a tutu.’

Rhianna said, ‘Let’s use the power of wind.’

‘What?’

They turned and looked at her. She sat in one of the emergency seats, legs crossed under her.

‘Wind can move us.’

‘Doubt it,’ Carveth replied. ‘Wind doesn’t make me go anywhere. It’s everyone else that moves.’

‘But we’ve got air tanks, right? And they’re kinda under high pressure? So if we release some of 
the air, won’t that push us to one side, like a rocket?’

Smith looked at the ships in the screen, tiny dots moving out on the same trajectory. ‘Maybe. . 
maybe. Dammit, you’re right! It’s just a matter of maths, like back at school. Every force has an equal and opposite hypotenuse. It’s the sum of the diameter or. . circumfugal force. At any rate, I’m circumfused.’

‘Ouch!’ Suruk observed.

‘Carveth, we have Rhianna to thank for this plan. Suruk, you and I will check on the air tanks.

We don’t want to jettison too much.’

The alien stood up. ‘Excellent,’ he said, rubbing his mandibles together. ‘We have delayed long 
enough. Time to grab the bull by the udders.’

‘The horns, you mean,’ Smith replied.

Suruk paused at the doorway. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it was definitely the udders.’

It took six minutes to find the emergency venting control. It was behind a panel in the corridor 
that Smith hadn’t known he could open and consisted of a large metal wheel. ‘I shall assist,’ Suruk said, reaching in. ‘It is like a jam jar – or a lemming man’s head.’

‘Can I help?’

Smith looked round: Rhianna stood in the corridor. ‘You could make us some tea.’

‘I meant, maybe I could use my psychic powers to hide the ship?’

‘Good idea. Could you stick the kettle on first though, old girl?’ For some reason, she didn’t look 
overly pleased. Perhaps they were running low on tea.

Carveth’s face appeared in the cockpit doorway. ‘We’re sinking through the asteroid belt,’ she 
announced. ‘Two minutes and we’ll be ready to jump into the gravity field. Three, tops.’

‘Alright. On your mark, pilot.’

‘No, on yours. You’re the captain.’

He felt curiously affronted by this. ‘But you know how spaceships work. You fly this thing.’

‘So do you now.’

Suruk leaned close to Smith, near enough to jab his ear with a mandible. ‘Fear not, Mazuran.

Apparently, manoeuvring in space is just a matter of angles. Like one of your ball games.’

That did nothing to reassure Smith. At the mention of ball games he remembered a sodden plain 
of half-frozen mud, more warzone than Wembley; damp socks sliding down over glass-cold shins, of the 
smack of hard leather ball into podgy gut; of being the last in a row and a half-broken voice saying 
‘Suppose I’ll have to take Smith’. Character building, they’d called it, the traditional euphemism for ritual humiliation.

Smith was suddenly no longer ten. He looked around, and the alien grinned back at him. ‘You 
have your battle-face on, Mazuran,’ Suruk said. ‘You look like a little dog killing a rat.’

‘Let’s get to work!’ Smith replied. ‘Carveth? What’s our position?’

She called back, ‘In thirty seconds’ time, we won't look like an asteroid any more. More like a 
sitting duck.’

‘Carveth, power us down!’ he said, looking at the wheel.

‘Systems down,’ she replied.

The background hum disappeared and, as the lights sank to emergency bulbs, the sound around 
them faded away. The
Pym
sped on without air to slow it and as quiet and dead to scanners as the rocks around it.

A new sound rose from the cabins behind him: Rhianna humming as she settled down into a 
meditative state. It made Smith uncomfortable but he did not know why.

‘We're leaving the asteroid belt,’ Carveth announced. ‘Right about. . now.’

‘Ready, Suruk?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Then let’s turn it. On three. One. . two.. three!’

He grimaced and tried to spin the wheel. Damn, the thing was stiff! It must have rusted shut 
from disuse. Smith gritted his teeth, grunting with effort, feeling his muscles ache from the strain.

‘Dammit!’ he puffed, stepping back, ‘Bloody thing’s –’ and the wheel spun in Suruk’s hands so quickly 
that it flew off, sending the alien headlong into the opposite wall.

Suruk climbed to his feet, slowly rubbing his head. ‘What happened? Why am I holding this 
wheel? I will destroy you all! Oh, hello.’

It occurred to Smith that he and Suruk had been turning the wheel in opposite directions. No 
wonder it had been reluctant to move.