A Game of Battleships (34 page)

‘Weapons down, chaps,’ Smith said. ‘Our work here is done.’

Suruk swayed a little. ‘Surely you jest. Think of the glorious trophies and the honour we would

gain from slaying this beast! Not to mention that it threw me into a tree.’

Smith shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t kill it.’

‘Why not, Mazuran?’

The monster blinked and looked around, as if unsure how it had arrived. Smith turned to look at 
Rhianna. ‘Because it made me think of you.’

‘Um…’ she replied. “Is that because you remembered that I don’t approve of slaughtering 
helpless animals?’

‘Yes. And also because it’s out of its face on mushrooms.’

Suruk peered at the beast, then at Rhianna. ‘Actually, now you mention it, there is a certain 
resemblance –’

‘It’s just a dumb animal,’ Smith added.

‘Dumbest animal I ever saw,’ Dreckitt said. ‘Come on. Let’s find the boss lady and hand out 
some chin music.’

*

The Hellfire shot out of the
Chimera
like a pip from a fruit, the loss of pressure hurling it into space as the engines fired. Suddenly, all comfort was gone: Carveth couldn’t see the other fighters or even the
John
Pym
; only the stars ahead, glittering like broken glass. The cockpit was tiny, the engine roared behind her, and she missed the others terribly – especially, she was surprised to find, Gerald.

‘All systems go,’ said the autopilot. ‘Resetting the tonnage counter to zero. Let’s get down to 
business.’

‘I’ve never done this before,’ she said. It came out in a rush.

‘It’s simple. Find the enemy. Blow him up. Repeat until victorious.’

‘Right,’ she said, her hopes that the Hellfire would fly itself fading fast. She had to hold the stick, which meant that she wouldn’t be able to spend the battle with her hands over her eyes.

It took eight minutes of hard flying to reach the enemy. Carveth watched the dials, checked the 
fighters around her and wondered if there was an android god and, if so, what the hell it was playing at by letting her get into this mess. She ran though the instrument panel and sensed the depth of control she had over the ship. What were Smith and Dreckitt doing now?

Objects leaped into view. Three spacecraft like chunks of grey stone and, behind them, a sleek 
black shape, a Ghast vessel. She could see the burning-world symbol of the Edenites painted on the 
nearest battleship – and then something shot past her line of sight.

‘What was that?’

‘Enemy,’ said the Hellfire. ‘Throttle back to combat speed. Don’t want to miss the action, do we?

Good plan, that, going in for the big fish first. I like your style.’

Panic bubbled up. ‘I didn’t see the little ones!’

‘Well keep your eyes peeled, because here they come. Weapons armed. Ready to stuff a few 
rockets up the big fellow’s jacksie?’

The radio crackled. ‘New girl’s gone straight in. Break and engage, chaps.’

The enemy rushed in like swooping flies, completely silent. Lights burst from a ship – missiles, 
and the Hellfire snapped, ‘Countermeasures away. Got one turning on the rear.’ Light flashed on the right side of the screen. ‘First blood to Allie. Nice kill, Hellfire 3946. Pilot? Bandit, three o’clock.’

‘Really? Where?’ Carveth swung the ship – it moved so easily! And suddenly there was a light 
ahead, the engine of a Ghast fighter.
Got him!
she thought, and she pressed the left thumb-trigger. The lasers opened up, cutting quad stripes through the night before her. The Ghast jinked, twisted right and down, looping to come back at her. She turned left, yawed the ship ninety degrees and cut the main 
engine. The Hellfire kept on course, but spun on its axis – suddenly the Ghast was directly before her.

‘Fire!’ she yelled, clenching the controls in her fists. Chainguns, lasers and missiles streaked out. One of the missiles flew off, bewildered by chaff, but the second turned in and, like an iron filing to a magnet, smashed into the alien ship. It burst in a flurry of light, suddenly nothing but embers.

‘I got him, I got him! Did you see that?’

‘Nice work.’ The tonnage counter whirled on the dashboard. ‘Now, the warships.’

‘Yes, right.’ She shook with fear and wild, shameful glee. ‘I got him, I bloody got him.’ She pulled 
up, and the grey-white frigate dropped into her vision. The craft’s hide was alive with turrets, whirling to provide defensive fire as the Hellfires made their pass. ‘That’s a lot of guns,’ she said, realising how feeble her voice sounded.

‘All the more ammo to explode,’ the Hellfire replied.

‘I’m not sure.’ A panel came on beside her head: apart from two dozen winking lights, a pointless 
grid-picture of the enemy warship appeared spinning like a bauble on a Christmas tree.

‘You’d better not be weeding out, my girl,’ the ship growled. ‘Because if you’ve got cold feet now, 
they’ll be much colder when you’re floating in space. Now, let’s teach these alien bastards who
really
owns the galaxy. All weapons ready, pilot. Just locking us in with the others. . nice.’

The radio burst into life, a horrible shrieking noise, and Carveth flinched. ‘What the hell was 
that?’

‘Nothing,’ the ship replied. ‘Ghast broadcast, trying to intimid –’

The delay was enough. A disruptor shell clipped the bottom of the left wing and ploughed 
through the underside of the Hellfire, hurling the fighter off course. They spun away, back towards the
Chimera
. A siren blared in the cockpit. Carveth screamed.

‘Bloody malfunction!’ the Hellfire yelled. The battle went end over end in the windscreen, ships 
chasing each other like clothes tossed in a washing machine. ‘Bastards’ve hit the – arrg –
mit mein
fliegender Zirkus
– bloody buggering processor –
un prince tres petit, sur un planet tout seul
–’

And as the Hellfire went dead, Carveth passed out.

*

Smith burst out of the wood, Dreckitt and Rhianna just behind him. Rhianna paused to catch her 
breath, while Dreckitt fanned himself with his hat. ‘Bloody forest,’ Smith muttered. ‘Why can’t they have a path?’

‘Yeah,’ Dreckitt added, ‘made out of bricks. Yellow ones.’

They stood at the base of a broad staircase, made of something that looked like both sandstone 
and nougat. Before them, the main mass of the castle rose up and moved slowly. Gawky birds circled the towers. Smith drew the Civiliser. Rhianna tapped his arm.

‘That tower,’ she said, pointing. ‘It’s in there.’

Each tile in the tower’s roof was painted as a playing card. It was a roost for gargoyles, an 
imposing blend of castle and a cathedral. There were no guards. Far above them, a carpenter sat on a w
ooden gantry, looking at a plan. He reached under his paper hat to scratch his head, then turned the 
plan the other way up. A moment later he began to scratch his head again.

‘I see no sign of Major Wainscott,’ Suruk said.

Smith nodded. The sheer brightness of the place was unnerving. ‘No, for one thing, the place is 
still standing. I’d have thought he would have blown part of it up by now.’

‘He’s probably gone to apply for a green card,’ Dreckitt said. ‘I say we bust this joint without 
him, flying monkeys or not.’

‘Totally,’ Rhianna said. ‘It’s time to smoke or get off the hookah.’

Smith walked up the steps. The palace doors were twice his height. The left one was ajar. ‘With 
me,’ he said, and as he stepped inside the lights came on.

They rose from beneath the floor, turning the chequerboard tiles into a grid. A reddish glow lit 
the walls, revealing letters scratched into the paintwork, as if with a blade: W Kt to R Q. It was as Carveth had said, Smith realised: the chains of cards, the paintings of queens and kings. But she had not mentioned the throne under the centre of the hollow tower or the immense candelabra that hung above

them like a twisted anchor, playing cards impaled on its spikes. A woman sat on the throne. The place 
smelled of tallow and old cabbage.

The doors slammed shut.

The Queen of Hearts stood up. In silhouette her crown made her look like a horned demon: it 
was not much of a relief to realise that the crown was metal, given that it was nailed straight into her brain. She seemed to glide down from her throne, her face as pale as the moon.

‘So,’ she growled, ‘the white queen sends her knight. And three more pawns.’

Smith glanced left and right. From the shadows, figures moved forward. They were the ones 
Carveth had described – the Grim Reaper ace of spades, the thuggish king of clubs, the sharp-faced knave of diamonds fingering its pointed chin mockingly. This was a nightmare, Smith thought. It took all of his moral fibre to look the queen in the eye: foreign she might be, but she was something very close to a 
deity.

‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘we are not pawns.’

‘Can it, lady,’ Dreckitt said. ‘I’m done with the crazy talk. We’ve banged gums long enough.’

‘Oh, no…’ hissed the diamond-faced minion, ‘the banging’s hardly started.’

Suruk looked around the room. ‘Interesting. Is that item on your head part of your skull?’

‘Quiet, frog-creature!’ The queen glared at Suruk. He glared back. ‘I had thought the guardian 
would have killed you in the forest.’

Suruk shrugged. ‘We defeated it, but we let it go. Some things are too beautiful to destroy, and 
history’s largest dragon-turkey is one of them.’

The queen scowled at him, a bad policy for anything with a distinct head. She took a step 
forward. ‘So, what do you want from me? A game of chess, perhaps? I can kick a bishop through a 
stained glass window. An underling like you would be no problem. I have a taste for pawn as well as the occasional queen.’ She seemed to grow slightly, her face lit with a kind of hungry severity. ‘I am the grandmistress of the chess board, the lady of the high stake. I’ll mate you in so many different moves you’ll be aching for months afterwards.’

‘That’s enough of that,’ Smith said. ‘I am Captain Isambard Smith of the British Space Empire 
and these are my comrades. We didn’t come here to play chess with you.’

‘Cards, then.’ The queen raised her white hands and cracked the knuckles. ‘How about a quick 
shuffle? No?’

‘No way.’ Rhianna glared straight back. ‘Who died and made you queen?’

The queen smiled: the lights dropped and shuddered, and suddenly the room was full of pulsing 
shadow. ‘Nobody’s died – yet. I did not inherit this place: I am it.
I
am the ruler of this realm, lady of pleasure and games, mistress of the cards.’

Suruk looked her over. ‘I have seen such cards in the telephone boxes of Earth.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the queen. ‘My courtiers and I have always been here, seeking new. . techniques 
of entertainment.’ She reached into her dress and took out a little box. Its sides moved as her long fingers manipulated them. ‘Like this Rubik’s cube. Opiates, potions, croquet. . what’s your pleasure?’

‘We want Prong,’ Smith said.

To his right, steel hissed. The knave of diamonds held a hideous piece of apparatus, tapering to a 
wicked point. ‘Right you are!’ it said.

‘
Lord
Prong,’ Smith added. ‘It’s his name.’

‘Aw,’ said the knave, and its shoulders slumped. It put the spike away.

‘Ah, Prong,’ the queen said. ‘Go on.’

‘We need to pass through the mirror or whatever it is to reach him. He’s an enemy of the British 
Space Empire. Which, by the way, you’ve joined. Congratulations.’

Rhianna added, ‘He’s the high priest of a cult of vicious lunatics. He has no respect for people’s 
rights and wants to prevent the peoples of the galaxy forming an alliance to promote peace and unity.’

‘The guy’s a two-bit bum,’ Dreckitt said.

‘Most bums have two bits,’ the queen said thoughtfully. ‘But it sounds like the same man. Prong 
found a way to manipulate this place. Not just to pass into it, but to use it to flick an object between your world and mine.’

‘We’ve seen the object of Prong’s you refer to,’ Smith said. ‘And it is terrible indeed.’

‘Every time Prong uses his machine, it damages us,’ the queen said. ‘It drains the life from this 
place, makes it more like your world.’ She shuddered. ‘More
logical
,” the queen said, as if it was a dirty word. She leaned forward, her crown looming up like a metal cliff. ‘I blame him for the demise of my 
walrus.’

‘Typical,’ Rhianna said. ‘No concern for the environment.’

‘I see.’ Smith glanced at the wall. The paint was mildewed in patches. He had previously thought 
that it was what estate agents called a ‘feature’ but perhaps the decay was attributable to Prong. ‘So how does this machine work?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ the queen said. ‘I just rule here.’

‘Fair enough,’ Smith said. It reminded him of Carveth’s attitude when he asked her about faster-
than-light travel. She had explained that some things just worked because they jolly well did.

‘Come with me,’ the queen said. ‘Although you may need more peons to take Prong.’

‘We’ve got friends, back in the gardens.’

She frowned. ‘Maybe no more. The guardian will re-appear, and it will not be pleased.’

‘Wrong,’ a voice said from the doorway. Wainscott stepped into the hall in a clatter of armour.

The major was smiling broadly: Susan and the rest of his team had a look of hard determination. ‘A.P. 
Wainscott, Major, British Army, he declared. ‘Sorry we’re late. Stopped for tea. Madam, you seem to have a chess piece nailed to your head. Smith, update.’