Chronicles of Isambard Smith 05 - End of Empires (20 page)

My God, thought Smith, what a bunch of monsters. How could anyone –

And a skinny figure shot out of the undergrowth at the riverside, sprinted to the Yullian officer and buried a machete in its throat.

‘For the Empire!’ Wainscott bellowed.

‘Bloody right,’ Smith said. ‘With me, crew!’

He charged forward, felt the undergrowth slide past his coat, and something caught his boot. Smith stumbled, slipped, thumped onto his arse and slid. He shot ten feet down a chute of mud, picking up speed, and flew out of the forest. For a moment he was in the air, and then the mud dropped him neatly onto the shore.

He stood up, impressed by his ability to land on his feet. That wasn’t all bad. Then a voice squeaked ‘Now die!’ and a huge shape barrelled towards him, all fur and bayonet.

Smith drew his Civiliser, cocked the hammer, and Suruk slammed down from above into the lemming man. He jabbed with his spear and it did deadly work. ‘More,’ Suruk growled, pointing.

Wainscott’s men raced out of the forest as the mortars boomed again and the greenery burst open behind them. The Sey were built for running. Arik the Huntress bounded towards a lemming man – she looked as spindly as a heron compared to the brutish Yull. She’s dead, Smith thought. With those tiny little arms –

The lemming man raised its axe. The Sey bounced up and smashed both heels into the lemming’s snout. His helmet crumpled like a concertina. Ooh, Smith thought. So that was why they had such little arms.

Twenty yards away, a grenade blew up at the waterline, throwing spray and clods of mud into the air. A Yullian soldier stopped and raised his rifle. Smith aimed his Civiliser two-handed and shot the rodent once in the chest, staggering the beast. It lurched upright, and he gave it a second shell. That seemed to stop the bugger.

Suruk stood up from a big furry body. Carveth was panting, crouched low around her shotgun. Rhianna threw her hand up, and a mortar shell burst far above them, suddenly harmless as a firework.

Carveth was less terrified than usual, if only because she was annoyed that her whole left side was covered in mud. In attempting to follow Smith – he was in charge and had a big gun – she had fallen onto her bottom and slithered about twenty yards through what smelt like a fishing village at low tide. Now, watching the lemming men come charging across the river, the whole thing felt surreal as much as frightening.

But that didn’t stop her really wanting to be somewhere else.

‘
Yullai!
’ a soldier screamed, running at her like an idiot, and it was easy to pull the trigger and blast him onto his back, thrashing in the shallows. Dreckitt – thank God – appeared beside her, legs braced and hat pulled down as if about to clear out a crime den.

Fifty yards to the left, a Yullian officer collided with one of the Sey trackers. They stumbled around, and suddenly the Sey fell. The officer held up what looked like half a big snake, screeching to its war-god. Sickened, Carveth realised that it was the tracker’s head and neck. Craig from the Deepspace Operations Group ran in from the side and bashed his rifle over the lemming man’s head. They went down in a tangle of limbs.

A fresh whoosh from the scaffolding and more lights sailed into the sky. This time the angle was tighter, the peak of the arc more pointed. ‘They’re firing at us!’ Carveth yelled, pointing. ‘They’ll hit their own people!’

‘They would!’ Smith shouted and he ran forwards, so she did the same.

Suruk bounded through the low water, his spear swinging out like a pendulum, sending furry heads spinning into the air. Several lemming men were climbing up the scaffolding, and were now almost at the top. One tried to belly-flop onto Suruk, missed and crashed into the water, sending up a plume of spray. Suruk speared it like a fish.

He tugged the spear free and saw a Yullian officer thirty yards ahead of him, exactly at the same time that it saw him.

The officer slid the axe from its belt and held it over its head. ‘Filthy savage!’ it shouted. ‘
Huphep yullai!
’

For a creature with stumpy legs, it could move. The lemming man tore across the ground screeching, feet pounding the mud like pistons. Its voice rose into a warbling shriek of hatred. Lumps of froth sailed from its chops.

Twenty yards from Suruk, it accelerated into a frantic sprint. At ten yards, it swung the axe up two-handed and cut.

Suruk stepped six inches to his right and flicked out the spear. He felt something brush the blade and the Yullian officer shot past, took three more steps and stopped.

Suruk raised a hand to his mandibles and coughed politely. The lemming’s head fell off. Its body hit the ground.

‘Riff-raff,’ Suruk said.

Rhianna watched the mortar shells reach their zenith. She threw her hand up as if finishing one of her interpretative dances and the shells burst, fragments pattering harmlessly against the forest canopy.

Further downriver, Susan called, ‘Reloading!’ and Nelson covered her as she slapped a fresh battery into the top of the beam gun. She pulled the gun up, tapped the venting lever and advanced, firing from the hip. A pair of Yull hauled something onto the top of the scaffolding – a tripod-mounted death ray, from the look of it. Susan fired, swinging the beam to slice them both apart, and their gun fell into pieces. ‘Yeah, torture that,’ Susan said. She glanced right, and saw that Smith and little whatsit the pilot had reached the scaffolding.

Smith ducked under a pole and saw a lemming man working a large machine. Needles flickered in dials; the air hummed. Knowing the Yull, it was presumably some kind of pain amplifier. The rodent looked round, snarled, and Smith raised his pistol and civilised it in the head. Twice.

And suddenly, that was that. Smith stood over the corpse of the lemming man, the machinery still whirring and clicking. A propaganda poster hung from the scaffolding. It showed a grinning Yull resting an axe on its shoulder. Its other hand held up a globe of Earth onto which an unhappy face had been drawn.

‘Bastards,’ Smith said. He ripped the poster down and walked outside.

Dead lemmings lay everywhere. They clogged the shallows as if they had been pushed out of a passing plane. Suruk smiled as Smith approached. ‘A reasonable haul,’ he said.

A little way away, Carveth had collared Dreckitt and, whilst kissing him, was trying to pull his hip flask out. At least, Smith hoped that was his hip flask. Who knew what androids kept down there?

Rhianna was looking at the sky. ‘Are you okay, Isambard?’

He nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘That was... way harsh,’ she observed. ‘War is really bad. Hey, check out the clouds!’

Smith shivered. He felt feverish, suddenly, aching. Then the feeling was gone, and he realised that what he’d felt was anger and fear.

* * *

Wainscott was as good as his word – or at least, Susan was good at making him stick to it. They buried their dead in the undergrowth and the Sey matriarch spoke a quick word over them. Then they headed back. Wainscott had lost six people in the fight; the lemming men had lost fifty-one.

There was no time to make tea yet, Wainscott explained: as soon as they discovered the raid, the Yull would send reinforcements to exact a brutish revenge on anyone in the vicinity. Not taking tea was the hardest part of the battle, Smith thought: it was as natural to him to brew up after a victory as it was for Suruk to collect the severed heads.

On the path ahead, a M’Lak soldier said something to Nelson and one of the beetle people. Nelson gave a brief snort of laughter, then moved on. The beetle person clicked appreciatively.

‘I like to think,’ Rhianna said, ‘that one day, all the peoples of the galaxy will be able to work together the way as we’ve seen today.’

‘Yes,’ Smith said. ‘Imagine if everyone could lay down their differences and work as one to kill the bloody lemming men.’ He sighed. ‘What a world that would be.’

‘That’s not really what I meant,’ she said. ‘I meant that everyone should learn to be kind, and friendly, and live peacefully and be, you know...’

‘British?’

‘Voices down, chaps.’ Smith glanced around: it was Craig who had spoken. He was the unit’s infiltrator, a master of disguise, and he strode between the trees with a quick ease. None of Wainscott’s people were especially bulky. They all seemed to take after the major himself: fast and wiry. The Yull looked like ogres by comparison.

‘Sorry,’ Smith replied.

‘Oh, that’s no problem. It was a bit of a scrap, wasn’t it?’ Craig grinned. ‘Of course, nothing like the sort of fights I used to have down at Madam Fifi’s before the war. Sailors, gangsters, you name it. There wasn’t a night when I didn’t chuck someone through the window.’

‘You were a bouncer?’

‘I was Madam Fifi,’ Craig replied. He chuckled and walked on.

Funny business, war, Smith reflected.

They stopped for tiffin. ‘My legs are coming off,’ Carveth announced, prodding a log with her gun to make sure that it was not some sort of resting dinosaur. She flopped down and sighed. ‘God did not make me to take exercise standing up.’

Smith felt rather sorry for her. His own legs ached, and he felt filthy with sweat. Given the thick fur on the lemming men and the weakness of their bladders, it was surprising that the two armies were not tracking each other on smell alone.

‘It’s certainly a tough place, this. You know, I always expected to land on one of those planets where all the natives treat you as a deity, like you see in films. I’ve been to dozens of different planets and I’ve never met any natives who’d worship any of us. It’s pretty disappointing.’

Carveth shrugged. ‘Seriously, would you want to be on the same planet as people who worship Suruk?’

The M’Lak stood against a tree-trunk, in its shadow. ‘The Yull do not seem to be pursuing us,’ he said.

They brewed up quickly and drank. In the trees above, a death possum screeched out an advertisement to any females in the vicinity and was promptly grabbed and eaten by a hellcat. The hellcat crept down the tree-trunk, which suddenly revealed itself to be a greater bladed mantis. The mantis dragged the dead cat to the ground, wiped its pincers and was immediately jumped by a gang of slaughterbees and stripped to the bone.

‘Truly,’ Suruk said, ‘Nature is a beautiful thing.’

They walked again.

Smith’s feet were sore; the relentless greenery of the forest made his head swim, as if he had been staring at a neon strip-light. He needed a curry and a sleep.

Carveth looked awful. At one point, she tripped on a root and there was a sudden panic as she hit the ground. A dozen laser rifles covered the trees, looking for a sniper. Dreckitt grabbed her hand and told her to hold on, goddam it, while Nelson tried to stem the bleeding. It took her three minutes to get up – partly because she was enjoying the rest, partly because she was embarrassed to say that she hadn’t been hit, but mainly because three of Wainscott’s soldiers were sitting on her to protect her from another shot. Several people looked annoyed when she stood up, but none more so that Wainscott himself, who had clearly been hoping for one final scrap.

Food and water were unpleasantly warm, failing to refresh even when cut with lime cordial. Smith wondered how long his supply of moral fibre would last. Wainscott’s team must have had vast reserves of the stuff.

At last, the path became clearer and he recognised things he had passed on the way in. ‘Ship’s up ahead,’ he told Carveth.

‘Yay!’ she cried.

‘Easy, little lady,’ Dreckitt whispered. ‘If the furries want to throw us a Mickey Finn, now’s the time to do it. If I was boss lemming, I’d put a mob of hoods in a chopper squad and stash them down the path to blip us out.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s the straight dope,’ Dreckitt said, pulling his hat down low, and they advanced.

They moved slowly now, creeping forward on a wide front. Wainscott and Susan directed operations with clicks and hand gestures. Smith was left on the path, the easiest terrain but also the most open.

‘I can see the ship!’ Carveth shouted, and immediately clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, pointing.

The
John Pym
lay lower in the water than Smith had remembered, its hull half-obscured by branches and vines. The cover had got thicker since they had left it: Andor was already claiming the ship as its own.

Smith raised his rifle and looked down the scope. ‘It seems all right… the airlock’s still shut.’

‘Rusted shut or welded?’ Carveth asked.

‘Rust.’

‘Same as usual, then.’

Rhianna touched his arm, at once stopping his advance and reminding him that he really ought to get her to do the business outdoors again. He dismissed the thought: death waited everywhere here, and disrobing would be no way to approach it. The Venus flytraps here were more like man-traps, and the last things he needed trapped were his flies or his man.

‘I can sense something. Life,’ she whispered.

Carveth looked around at the thick jungle, and said, ‘Could you be more specific?’

‘Negative chakras,’ she replied.

‘Careful, chaps,’ Smith whispered. ‘If you see a chakra, blow its head off. I –’

Someone yelled.

He whipped around, heard something thump into the leaves and a man shouted, ‘I’m hit! Got me in the leg!’

The jungle was alive. Fear and alertness rushed through Smith as if he had been injected with it. ‘Form a perimeter!’ Wainscott barked. ‘Expect rear attack. I want beam guns covering the path. Each man check the man beside him. Second group, swing out for a flank attack!’

And then everything was quiet again. The clatter of weapons being readied died off, and Smith could hear the forest again, and the M’Lak medic beside the wounded man, his voice strangely loud in the quiet: ‘I shall draw the venom on the wound, then bandage it. You may feel a sting, being but puny –’

The fallen man, just visible between the trees, let out a quick hiss of pain. Up above, a bird squarked.

Smith felt fear winding up inside his chest. His back itched. His face was filthy with sweat. Carveth looked frozen, her breathing shallow and quick. Rhianna had put her back against a tree, and seemed to be concentrating hard. Suruk had begun to grin.