Wrath of the Lemming-men (28 page)

Carveth looked at her gun, as if unable to believe that it would work. ‘Oh,
arse
.’

‘We will have to slay them all,’ Suruk said. ‘Still, there is at least a bright side to this situation.’

‘Which is?’

‘We will have to slay them all.’

‘Great,’ Carveth said.

Smith said, ‘Go on. Leighton, you’d best go and give them a hand. I’ll be down in a minute.’

He watched as Suruk shepherded the other two out of the room.

Smith turned to Rhianna. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘This is it. See if you can call up the Vorl while we’re away. Stay safe, Rhianna. I won’t be long.’

‘You too, Isambard.’ She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Go in peace.’

He loosened his sword. ‘Something like that.’

The Yullian sentry raised his telescope to his eye and looked left, then right. Nothing. The road was deserted.

Content that nobody was watching, the sentry slipped his axe into his belt, pulled down a picture of Sally Squirrel and with a dirty chuckle stashed it in his pack.

Susan punched an inch and a half of stainless steel into the base of his neck. The sentry gasped and shivered, and she lowered him to the ground.

Wainscott stepped out of the shadows. Craig lifted the sentry’s legs, Wainscott his shoulders, and they struggled into a storeroom and laid the dead lemming on the floor.

Wainscott tipped his head and listened. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘You can come out now.’

Dreckitt breathed out; it felt like he was deflating.

‘Goddam,’ he said. He’d thought he was good, but these people were either brilliant or insane and he was still uncertain which. The Deepspace Operations Group had been very pleasant to him, but to see them at work was unsettling. Susan – who reminded him of Pippi Longstocking as she might have been depicted by Wagner – was talking to Nelson, the unit’s computer expert.

‘Alright,’ Nelson said, turning from his portable set. ‘There’s two Ghast ships touched down about a mile West of here. The main movement of troops is towards the central building, Ballad Point. The lemmings are flocking to it.’

‘Maybe they’re going to jump off the roof,’ Craig said.

‘Doubt it,’ Wainscott replied. ‘Not while there’s someone they could murder in there. Alright, everyone. If our chaps are here, they’ll be in Ballad Point. We’ll take the main entrance. Susan, you and Brian work up from the flank.’ He smiled. ‘Cheer up, Dreckitt. As soon as we’ve dealt with these few hundred maniacs, you’ll be with your filly again.’

Smith and Leighton dragged a table to the top of the stairs and laid it on its side. Carveth carried a computer terminal, and while she propped it up against the table the men hurried back for more goods. Soon they had made a bar-ricade of office furniture, stretching across the landing.

‘They’ll have to come up the stairs,’ Leighton said, ‘straight into your guns.’

Carveth was pushing a monitor up against the barricade when she heard them down below. Like soft rain onto a plastic roof: dozens of paws on the stairs.

Beneath her the ground began to shake, and she ducked down and clutched her shotgun across her chest.

The feet stopped pattering. She crouched there, hearing her own breath.

‘
Hephep
!’ a voice shouted from below.

‘
Huphep!’
the lemming men shouted back.

She closed her eyes. They were down there, no mistaking now. Cold seeped over her skin.

‘Humans! This is lieutenant Hephuc, servant of the revered Colonel Vock!’

The speaker did not have an accent, as such, but his voice was quick and straining, like an accelerating moped working through the gears.

Smith glanced at Carveth: she was staring straight at him, eyes wide, small hands locked around her gun. Smith winked at her.

‘Is Colonel Vock there?’ Smith called.

‘Yes!’ the voice snapped back. ‘He’s on the stair!’

‘Where on the stair?’

‘Right there – ow!’

‘Attention, vermin!’ It was a new voice. ‘I am Colonel Mimco Vock! My stupid minion does not realise that you ridicule him with your cowardly windmill song. Offworlder scum, you cannot stand in our way. The time of man has passed: this is the hour of the Yull!’

Carveth suddenly caught a glimpse of him: Vock was at the very edge of the stairs, back pressed against the wall, and for a second she saw him in profile. He wore bright red armour, polished to a shine, along with a helmet with large, round ceremonial ears. His chin was tilted up, his whiskers trimmed and waxed. The overall impression was of viciousness, pomposity and fur. Then Vock stepped aside and he was gone.

‘British, there are four of you and two hundred of us,’ Vock called, and Smith could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Perhaps it is time to consider surrendering, eh?’

‘Alright then,’ Smith replied, ‘come out in tens with your hands up.’

‘How dare you insult me! It is you who cannot defeat us! I have granted these soldiers the honour of depriving you of your ammunition. Once your guns are dry, I will assault and I will take you alive – screaming, and very much alive.’

Suruk chuckled. ‘You will drink deep of your own folly, fools.’

Smith checked his rifle and loosened his sword in its scabbard. ‘Listen,’ he said quietly, ‘these bastards think that because we value our lives, we’re not a fraction as good as them. But they don’t realise the half of it: when a man fights for what he believes in, he fights twice as hard as a dozen lemmings. Alright?’

Carveth did some mental arithmetic. ‘Alright,’ she said.

Smith reached into his jacket and took out her war diary. ‘You ought to hang on to this.’

‘Thanks,’ she replied.

Suruk leaned close to Smith. ‘There will be many dead lemmings and much fur. Would your breeding-woman appreciate a nice new muff?’

‘Probably not, but thanks.’

‘Then let us begin, Mazuran.’

‘You there, rodents!’ Smith called. ‘I’ve got something for you to chew on!’

‘Sunflower seeds?’ a Yull cried hopefully, and yelped as an officer beat it into silence.

‘But if you want it, you’ll have to come and get it. You think you’re up to climbing a few stairs, or do you need clogs on for that?’

Vock squealed with rage. ‘Stupid offworlders, now you die.
Humph!
Now we will rip out your hearts, plunder your cities and chew on your seeds! You cannot stop the Divine Migration!
Hep Tiktokicloc! Huphep
Popacapinyo! Yullai!
’

‘
Yullai!
’ they screamed, hysterical with rage, and under the screams came the drumming of hundreds of feet. ‘
Yullai!
’

A pack of lemmings burst into view and Smith’s rifle cracked out, Carveth’s shotgun boomed and they fell squeaking. More swarmed up and Smith fired, cranked the handguard and fired again, his hands a blur as he sent shell after shell into the horde and tossed the Yull back down the steps.

They rushed forward in a swarm of dyed fur. Howling, they charged at the barricade and, howling, they fell back down, bowling their comrades over behind them. The Yull trampled the wounded and the hesitant and the carpet was thick with furry bodies but still they did not stop. Screaming to the war god the Yull surged up again and Smith’s rifle ran dry.

He pulled his pistol as the first lemming reached the barricade. As Smith blasted the Yull, Suruk scrambled over the defences to meet them hand-to-hand. His spear whirled and three rodents fell headless down the stairs.

‘Drink folly, lemming-spawn!’ Suruk roared, and he cut down another Yull and leaped back before he could be overwhelmed.

Smith’s pistol was empty, and as he fished out a speed-loader Lloyd Leighton ran to his side and heaved a document shredder down the stairs, braining several Yull. He stormed down the length of the barricade, wild with fury, battering furry heads with a bronze statuette of Andy Atom. ‘Oh, you want some fun, do you? You too, huh?’

A frothing, grinning soldier crawled over the barricade and Smith ran it through. ‘Stuff this in your cheek pouches!’ Beside him Carveth pumped the shotgun and fired again and kept on until her arms arched and the recoil bruised her side. Suruk threw a Yull to the ground and lopped off its head. But although the stairs were hidden under fur, it was clear what was happening: whether by accident or design, the Yull were making a ramp of dead lemmings in front of the barricade.

A murmur ran through the Yull, a ripple from the foyer to the top of the stairs: ‘
Wesscot!’

Smith stopped, panting, unable to catch their meaning.

The lemmings stood back, ready to fight but frozen by indecision. Why didn’t they attack? Was that gunfire he could hear, far away?

‘
Wesscot hakup Yull! Fecinec!
’

The Yull scurried down the stairs. They drew back from the barricade as if draining into the ground. Suddenly the staircase was silent, and only the furry bodies remained, like so many old coats. A cloud of fluff hung in the air.

‘That’s right, run!’ Carveth leaned over the barricade.

‘Show us your little fluffy tails!’ She looked round and her grin disappeared. ‘Oh,
hell
.’

Lloyd Leighton was dying. He lay on his back, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth like jam. A small axe stuck out of his chest. With a sort of fascination, Carveth noticed that the axe handle was lacquered black, beautifully inlaid with gold.

Leighton took a massive, wheezing breath. ‘Ant-people left me to die. . . with ghosts. . . and now a goddam rodent hits me with an axe.’ He swallowed hard, and blood ran from the corners of his mouth. ‘Typical!’ His chest fell and the axe shuddered as the life sank from his eyes, deep into his head.

Smith reached out and shook Carveth by the arm.

‘Carveth? Go upstairs and check on Rhianna. Go on!’

She blinked and looked at him. ‘Right. Right, Boss.’ She took two steps away and turned. ‘What’ll you do?’

Smith stood up and readied his sword. Suruk waited on the other side of the barricade.

‘Come, Mazuran. We have business with the lemming men.’

‘Forward!’ Wainscott cried, and he shot out the window and charged into the hall. Dreckitt rushed in behind him, Nelson tossed a grenade and the Yull turned from the stairs and ran at them.

It was murderous. The Yull rushed in like a wave of fur.

Wainscott’s gun stuttered as he flicked from one target to another. Dreckitt blasted shells into the horde, too panicked to aim properly. ‘They’ll surround us soon,’ Wainscott called, as if pointing out an interesting wild bird.

‘What?’ Dreckitt yelled back, hoping that he hadn’t heard the major right, but by then the Yull were in full attack.

The lemming peasants died fast: in nothing more than forage caps and dyed green fur, they fell in droves. But among them were armoured nobles, hiding in the scrum.

They shouldered their way through the pack, using the peasants as cover, holding up bulletproof shields like riot police. The Yull closed around the raiders.

Wainscott’s Stanford gun was dry, so he tossed it to Craig – ‘Reload, please’ – kicked a Yullian officer in the chest, drew a sword and ran it through. Craig slapped a new magazine into the side of the gun and threw it back – by then in a blue-steel blur Wainscott had cut down three more lemming men. He caught the gun and went straight in, firing with the left, slicing with the right, teeth bared in a mad grin, his men covering him as he carved his way through the squeaking horde.

Figures bounded down the stairs behind the Yull. ‘It’s Smith!’ Dreckitt yelled, pointing.

‘Super!’ Wainscott raised his sword in recognition.

‘We’re surrounded!’ Dreckitt shouted back.

Wainscott looked mildly perturbed. ‘Of course – right where we want them. Hammer and anvil.’

‘What?’ Deckitt called back, and a bright light arced out of the side of the hall. A low thrumming accompanied it, and as light sliced through the Yull, he realised what it was: Susan’s beam gun. Wainscott might be crazy, he thought, but he was smart.

462 lowered his binoculars. ‘The allied rabble is being rapidly depleted.’

Eight shrugged. ‘Mere serfs.’

They stood several hundred yards away, in the shadow of Number Eight’s personal shuttle. A bio-brolly spread its curved wings overhead. Gunfire flickered in the main lobby of Ballad Point.

A praetorian lumbered over to them, dipped its brutal head and snarled into 462’s earhole.

‘Excellent!’ 462 barked. ‘I am informed that the psychoscopic scanning has confirmed my suspicions: the Vorl are here. Seismic charges have been placed. All we need is to move clear and fire the main explosive.’

Eight nodded. ‘Proceed,’ he said. ‘Bring specimens to me. I will be in my shuttle, sitting on the biosplicer.’ He turned, paced up the ramp and disappeared inside.

Smith stood on the stairs, firing into the lemming horde.

The Yull were outflanked, pinned between Wainscott and the beam gun. It was an ugly business, but Vock’s men were doomed.

Carveth reached the offices. Rhianna sat cross-legged on the floor in Leighton’s room, her hand resting on one of the Vorlian crystals. Her eyes were closed and she was humming. Carveth paused, not sure whether Rhianna was achieving anything or just powering up. She hoped that Smith and Suruk were alright. She sat down and started to reload her gun.

Suruk was having a splendid time. He sprang into the rear of the horde and his spear sang in his hand, felling the enemy on all sides. A Yullian noble charged in, armour glinting, and Suruk dodged his axe, kicked him over and leaped onto his chest. One good push and Suruk shot forward, riding the fallen noble like a skateboard. He whipped his spear left and right, leaving a trail of decapitated lemming men behind him as he headed towards Wainscott’s team. Heads for the house of Agshad!

Smith raised his pistol and put two shots into Vock’s standard bearer. Wainscott was either conserving ammunition or just enjoying himself, dodging and cutting with his sword, fast and deadly. The Yull still yelled their battle cry and attacked, but there was despair in their voices now, not glee. Smith lowered his gun and suddenly a Yull stood frozen before him, blinking and astonished.