Space Captain Smith (27 page)

‘We need to surprise the enemy in order to gain the upper hand, since they considerably outnumber us. As a result, I will go out and assess the area and try to get an idea of enemy troop movements. I’ll skirt the locale and approach from the flank to reconnoitre. Broom please.’

Carveth pushed the salt cellar in a wide arc so as to creep up on the pepper pot and reflected that the role of women in warfare had not made great strides over the last few centuries.

‘So,’ Smith said, ‘shortly I will head out to the east and survey area with the aim of getting past their sentries unseen. Any questions?’

‘What about this shuttle to the west?’ Carveth said.

‘That’s not a shuttle,’ Smith explained. ‘That’s my sandwich.’

A broken, battered landscape. The shopfronts were dark, the writing on the glass unimportant. Rubble lay in the street, clumps of grass jutting out from between the paving stones like shocked hair. On the walls there were scraps of posters, some advertising, other giving warnings from a government that collapsed years before the buildings did. Entropy and rot: Drogon was dying, and taking its time.

Suddenly, the ruins stirred. Pebbles turned and rolled and something inhuman rushed out from a gateway in a swish of leather, hurdling one of the fallen blocks. It scurried forward, helmet bobbing, and stopped in the shadow of a burnt-out car.

The reddish body straightened, and one of the trillion soldiers of the Ghast Empire stood up. It was scrawny and hard, the legs powerful and hooved for kicking downed enemies, the mantis-arms tipped with stabbing claws. There were three long-tailed bio-grenades in its belt and a disruptor in its hands.

One day, it thought, all of mankind’s worlds would look like this. One day, Earth would be a ruin like this place. The last soldier would be dead, the last island pacified, the final baby rendered into a nutritious babyshake. It grinned and took a step forward. Straight into the sights of the rifle. Crouched behind a wall, Isambard Smith lined up the crosshairs with its chest.

‘Cheery bye, Gertie,’ he said, and fired.

‘That went well,’ Smith declared a little while later. He stood in the dining room with Carveth, stirring the teapot. Since his return from surveying the area, there were two new markers on the table: a boot, representing the Ghast ship, and its lace, laid out to show the perimeter of a large building.

‘They’re all holed up in there,’ Smith explained, pointing to the bootlace. ‘It’s a municipal sports centre, disused of course. It’s where they’ve taken Rhianna, and where most of them will be, guarding her. That’s where we need to be.’

Carveth frowned and watched him pour out two cups of tea. ‘I don’t get it. Why take her there – or to this rotten planet at all? Why don’t they just whip her back to their homeworld? They’re stuck out on this rotten peehole of a place when they could be in the middle of their own empire. It doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘Who knows?’ said Smith, passing her a cup. ‘They’re aliens; who knows how they think? They may want to do their dirty work where nobody would think to look, somewhere unimportant. Or maybe they’re afraid that what they’ve got planned may go wrong and they want to keep it away from their top brass. Whatever it is, it’s evil science, and we have to put a stop to it. Now, the grounds of the sports centre are well-guarded. The first stage will be getting past their sentries.’ He leaned around the doorframe and called into the hold, ‘Suruk. are you finished yet?’

‘Nearly done!’

‘Of course,’ said Smith, ‘that’s not the only difficulty.’

Carveth said, ‘You’re telling me. There’s three of us and two hundred of them.’

‘Which means we need a way in, a way of immobilising them. Effectively, a way of getting the sentries to drop their guard and let us in.’

‘Sounds like we’re stuffed,’ she said.

‘I’ve thought of a way around that, but I’ll need your help.’

‘Not liking this plan,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Don’t worry. There’s no need for them to attack you, none at all. In fact, you’ll be a far less obvious target than either Suruk or I would be.’

She sighed. ‘Well, this idea of yours might have some sort of merit…’

Smith walked to the door. ‘Come this way,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you what I’ve got in mind.’

She followed him into the hold, and the first thing that struck her was the large red object dangling from the roof. It looked like an enormous shrimp, minus its insides, and it seemed to have been rubbed with jam.

The second thing that struck her was that Suruk was drying some large piece of material on the workbench, and using her hairdryer to do it.

‘Yuck!’ she said. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Our enemy,’ Smith explained, gazing up at the thing that dangled from the roof. ‘That is a partly-skinned Ghast Shock Adjutant, which I bagged while I was outside. You see, the Ghast doesn’t think quite the same as we do: his brain is less advanced than that of an Englishman, or indeed a woman. Thousands of years of mindless obedience have left him with a corroded mind, reduced reasoning capacity and almost no discernable backbone. What little brain he has is attuned to recognise simple shapes, insignia, things like that.’

‘How does that help us, Boss?’

‘Well it means that if it smells right, and looks vaguely right, the chances are that he’ll think it’s a Ghast. And if it’s shouting at him and wearing a bigger coat, he’ll probably salute it.’

A wave of realisation swept over Carveth, like nausea. This plan had a strong whiff of cockup about it. With dread she said, ‘You’re turning it into a pantomime horse, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

Suruk turned from the workbench and held up the result of his efforts. It was a long coat, with a Ghast’s head sewn into the lining. With its helmet still on, it lolled crazily. The two pincer-arms stuck out the back, held in place by a clever framework of industrial wire, stickybacked plastic and string.

‘The coat can be draped over the wearer’s shoulders,’

Smith explained. ‘The head would sit on the user’s head, like a sort of big hat with teeth in.’

Carveth shook her head. ‘It’s totally unconvincing. You couldn’t make a worse disguise if you put a stick up your bum and claimed to be a toffee apple. It doesn’t look anything like a live Ghast, and what’s more, you’ll be far too tall with that thing on your head. You’re about the same height as one of them as it is: you’d be a head too tall if you wore it. You’d have to use someone much… oh no. No, no. You must be kidding. I won’t do it. I won’t—’

Divisional Shock Adjutant 84309/G approached the sentries with an odd, shuffling gait, head rocking back and forward as if to an unheard beat. To Isambard Smith, who was crouched in the rubble watching through the ship’s binoculars, it looked as if the Shock Adjutant had consumed several bottles of wine.

Two sentries stood in front of the gate to the sports centre. They held their disruptors across their chests and stared straight ahead.

‘This is insane,’ the Shock Adjutant whispered from its chest.

‘Shut up and get on with it,’ Smith said into the radio.

‘Keep looking in the phrasebook and make sure the translator’s on. If it gets nasty, pull rank on them.’

The sentries stamped their feet as Carveth approached. Peering out of the front of the Adjutant’s coat, she was spared the sight of its lolling head flopping forward and fixing the nearest sentry with an idiotic, unfocussed gaze.

There was a short pause.

‘Um, hello,’ said Carveth.

‘Sir!’ the sentry barked. ‘Show your identification!’

The translator was working, but the vocabulary was not. Within the coat, Carveth rifled through her notes and said the first thing she saw.

‘Silence! You will all be shot!’

The sentries drew themselves up and were very quiet indeed. Inside the coat, Carveth tried not to whimper with relief.

‘Traitors will be stamped out ruthlessly!’ she continued, warming to her theme. ‘Earth must be destroyed!’

‘Yes!’ the sentry said. ‘Of course, sir, but we need to see your pap-’

‘Hands up, Earthman! These prisoners are of no further use to us! Quick, quick!’

The sentries exchanged a glance. ‘We shall fetch a superior officer to make this decision,’ said one. ‘You must wait here.’

They turned, opened the gate a fraction, slipped through and it slammed in Carveth’s hidden face.

‘Well, that went well,’ she said into the radio. ‘Now they’ve gone to get a bigger gun.’

‘Stay there,’ Smith replied. ‘They’re going to let you in.’

‘Not so much “let” as “do”,’ Carveth said, and the gate opened behind her.

Another, smaller Ghast stepped out. How many of the damn things were there, she wondered? They seemed to have so many medals, symbols of rank and general purpose sinister-looking junk attached to them that it was hard to tell who was in charge until they started to shout. The new arrival took off his cap and ran a hand through his antennae. ‘So!’ he said, ‘You are late returning, Divisional Shock Adjutant 84309/G. Your uniform is uneven. This is intolerable! Stand to attention!’

Carveth tried, acutely aware of the wobbling of the large head she wore as a hat.

‘This is a disgrace!’ the officer yelled. ‘Explain yourself, 84309/G!’

Apologetically, she said, ‘Destroy all humans? Quick, danger?’

‘Enough!’ the officer stepped forward, drew back its arm and backhanded the wobbling head around the face.

‘How dare you answer back a superior?’ the officer barked. ‘I am a—’ One of the sentries nudged it and pointed to the head. About to embark on a furious lecture, the officer peered at the target of its abuse and realised that 84309’s head was now the wrong way round.

The officer looked at its hands, both puzzled and impressed by its own strength. ‘Whoops,’ it said, and took a step back.

Carveth slid a hand onto her gun. In the shelter of the abandoned brewery, Smith watched through the binoculars and said, ‘Arse.’

‘You did that,’ said the officer to the sentries. ‘I outrank you, and I saw you doing that. It’s all your fault his head has done that.’

‘Nobody move!’ Carveth yelled, and in a frantic, leathery spasm she drew her pistol and shrugged the greatcoat onto the floor. The service revolver trembled in her hand. ‘Nobody move! Stick ’em up! All of ’em!’

They stared at her.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Do it!’

‘You said ‘Nobody move’,’ the Ghast officer said, ‘but you also want us to raise our hands. We do not understand. These orders are contradictory.’

‘I so want to obey my orders, but I can’t!’ the left sentry said miserably. ‘I feel worthless and unhappy! What should I do?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Carveth replied. ‘Look: put your hands up and then stay still. Good. Now, open the doors.’

The three Ghasts exchanged a hopeless look. ‘But—’

‘Move, put your hands down and then open the sodding doors! God, it’s no wonder you need a glorious leader to tell you what to do. If it wasn’t for Number One none of you thickos would ever wipe his own spiracle, let alone conquer the galaxy.’ She turned to the wasteland.

‘Captain, I’m having problems here!’

Smith and Suruk emerged from the rubble and joined her. ‘It didn’t quite go as planned,’ she said. ‘They sussed me when my false head came off. Then they all turned out to be wallies.’

‘Not to worry. Let’s get ready and go in.’

Suruk had brought the Maxim cannon, and once again Carveth strapped it on. Smith took the slimy, pulsating guns from the three Ghasts and threw them away as Suruk tied the aliens up.

Smith loaded his rifle. He put the Civiliser into his shoulder holster and opened the blade of his penknife. Suruk helped Carveth into the Maxim cannon. She cleared the mechanism and slapped an ammo drum into place, watching the round counter spin up to 999. Smith took a large metal cylinder out of his rucksack and strapped it to his back. What, she wondered, was that?

Smith looked down at the three Ghasts. Suruk had bound them with plastic bin ties and now they lay in a neat row on the pavement, pressed together like politically extreme sardines. Smith bent down and took the officer’s identity pass from his coat pocket.

‘Now,’ he told them, ‘you are all captives of the British Space Empire. I am a man of my word, and I can guarantee that so long as you remain civil and don’t try to invade anywhere, the worst you can expect from us is an educational film about voting. But I warn you, gentlemen’ – and he scowled over his moustache at them – ‘should any of you try it on, you will be in very, very serious trouble indeed. For there is an innocent woman inside that you have taken hostage, and we look very dimly upon that. I tell you, I am a man of steel, and I don’t take kindly to interfering—’

‘Boss,’ said Carveth, ‘let’s just get the doors open.’

‘Right,’ Smith replied. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

She swallowed and looked him in the eye. ‘Why not?’

Suruk chuckled.

Smith ran the officer’s identity pass through the lock and pushed the doors apart.

Into the gap stepped the biggest Ghast Smith had ever seen: comfortably six feet six, darker in colour than its comrades, the praetorian looked down at them and drooled.

‘Move and I shoot you,’ Smith said. ‘Take us to your leader.’

‘No!’ said the praetorian. Its voice was a low, evil growl.

‘We have an officer here,’ Smith suggested. ‘We wish to exchange him for our friend.’

‘Officers are replaceable. There is no reason why you should speak with our commander.’

‘Well,’ said Smith, ‘how’s this for a reason, then?’ He shrugged, and the silver cylinder slid into his arms. ‘I’ve got a thermonuclear detonator.’

It had been a night of hard and determined celebration. Despite the crippling of his ship, Captain Gilead felt that he was on the cusp of a great victory. While the Ghasts paced back and forth and listened to a speech by Number One, Gilead and his men opened some beers and enjoyed a screening of
Helicopters Blowing Up Sheds
, Gilead’s favourite film. Eventually, having drunk himself silly and yelled himself hoarse, he passed out during the second reel of
100 Wackiest Executions
. Now he blinked and watched Isambard Smith and his heretic crew approach, like hangovers made flesh.