Wrath of the Lemming-men (33 page)

‘Straight out of Agincourt,’ said Smith. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ He listened to her leave the room and sat back in the chair. He felt inexplicably weary. The stitches in his arm ached. He sighed, tired and contented, and thought: well, we actually did it. We fought the lemming men, rescued New Luton, and we’ve even got the Vorl on our side. And here I am, with my crew – my friends. How could things have ended better?

A light flickered on the dashboard.

A little drowsy, Smith pulled himself up and leaned forward to get a good look at the panel. It was not the self-destruct light – Carveth had shown him that a while ago – so there was probably no immediate problem, unless it was some sort of missile detection system. No, he realised, it was the long-distance intercom.

Tape clattered out of the slot. Smith watched it emerge like a snake from a burrow and ripped off a length. The message read: ‘Turn on the television.’

The television took a bit of finding. Puzzled, he sighed and heaved it onto the main console, found the plug and wired it up. His apprehension slowly rising, he switched it on.

With a sudden click, he was looking at a Ghast officer.

It sat at a desk, a row of flags hanging behind it like dangling wire. Martial music played in the background: a band accompanying a Ghast warbling in heroic treble.

The scarred, one-eyed face turned towards Smith and smiled.

There was something wrong with 462, something beyond the usual facial scars and metal lens. His working eye was slightly unfocussed, and he seemed to have slumped a little in his chair. There was a brightly-coloured paper helmet on his head and a tube of liquid before him.

‘Well well,’ he said, his voice slightly less crisp than usual, ‘we meet again.’

‘So it seems,’ said Smith. ‘But if you’ve come here to threaten, Gertie, I can tell you that—’

‘Threaten you? Nonsense.’ 462 waved his antennae dismissively. ‘I would not dream of it. In fact, I seek only to share your moment of victory.’

‘What?’

‘I thought I would congratulate you. Shake your hand, as it were.’

‘With a serrated pincer, no doubt.’

‘Not at all. For once I have no desire to snip off your puny appendages. It is most amusing: once again your weak Earth-mind is unable to fully appreciate the irony of your situation. Neither of us has lost out from your last little adventure. The death of Eight has left, shall we say, a vacuum of power here. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but I myself do not.’

Slowly, like a crocodile breaking the surface of a lake, a long, bestial head rose above the level of the desk beside 462. There was a conical party hat wedged between its antennae.

‘This is Assault Unit One, the former property of the glorious Number Eight. Now that Eight has been killed and the pieces regrettably devoured by his own praetorians, Assault Unit One belongs to me. You see, the Ghast Empire required someone to take over Eight’s duties and, as his assistant, it was assumed that I had the ruthlessness and skill to take his place. My superiors suspected that I had assassinated Number Eight and promoted me for my initiative.’

Smith stared at him. He did not feel anything much, only a vague, exhausted contempt. He would never be rid of 462, he realised – not until he killed the monster himself. ‘I suppose you let them believe that?’

‘I dropped the odd hint.’ 462 smiled and took a sip of liquid. ‘Mmm, that tastes effective. You know, we Ghasts do not indulge in many frivolous celebrations.’

‘It probably comes from living in a one-party state.’

‘Quite so. And this, as you can see, is the party.’

‘And you’re in a state.’

462 adjusted his paper helmet. ‘Well, perhaps so. After all, my unfortunate predecessor did keep an impressive cellar of nine-percent sucrose solution.’ He raised the liquid tube. ‘So thank you, Captain Smith. You have saved me a lot of unbecoming dirty work. Number One needs a personal assistant to help him with Number Two. Perhaps I shall become his deputy.’

‘So you’d be clearing up after Number Two? It sounds disgusting but, for you, pretty appropriate.’

462 shrugged. ‘Ah, who knows where inexorable destiny will carry us? But at any rate, I think we shall meet again. It may not be for some time – I have other business to attend to. But I will see you again and then, Smith, I shall have the pleasure of destroying you for good.’

‘Just bugger off, would you?’ said Smith. ‘Go and dance round your trenchcoat or whatever you chaps do.’

‘As you wish. But I suspect that you have not seen the end of me.’ 462 gave a mocking wave.

‘Yes I have; it’s big and re—’ Smith began, but the connection was gone. 462 was still on the screen, his hat slumped over one antenna, arm frozen in mid-wave. His hand was scarred from where he had grabbed Smith’s sword. As Smith stared at the screen he made out the words ‘Made in Sheffield’ seared across 462’s palm.

‘I’ll bag you yet,’ Smith promised the image. ‘My crew and I will not rest until you are defeated. We—’

A huge robot suit danced past the nosecone.

Smith leaped up, ran out and hauled the airlock open.

Dwarfed by the twenty-foot Leighton-Wakazashi fighting suit that danced around it, the
John Pym
’s stereo stood on the tarmac, pumping the greatest hits of Queen into the warm night air.

Nearby Yoshimi Robot-Pilot watched, horrified. ‘Oh, Captain Smith!’ she cried. ‘Polly Pilot wanted to borrow my fighting suit, and now look!’

The robot’s head spotted him and the speakers boomed:

‘Look at me, boss! I’m tall! Can you see me, world? I’m the tall one now!’

‘You bloody idiot!’ he yelled back. ‘Stop that at once!’

The fighting suit paused, shocked, and straightened up.

For a moment it stood there, hands on hips, looking curiously offended – and then it raised one vast hand and blew him a mighty raspberry.

‘Oh, what the hell,’ Smith called back. ‘Carry on, Carveth.’ He looked at Rhianna and smiled. ‘Care for a dance?’

The trees closed over Suruk’s head, almost hiding the sky. The forest was damp and hot and its smell seemed to wrap itself around him. A fine night for battle, he thought, and a fine night to make peace with his ancestors.

He knew when he had found the right tree, a mighty alien pseudo-conifer with a trunk as broad as a watchtower. He swung the rucksack onto his back, bent his legs and sprang onto one of the lower branches. He flexed his fingers and jumped again, and in a moment he was springing from branch to branch, bouncing off the trunk and limbs, leaping ever upward until he cleared the forest canopy as if bursting from below the waves.

Suddenly he was looking at the moon. Light rain tapped his skin. Under his boots the branch on which he balanced swayed gently with the wind, and Suruk swayed with it.

‘Greetings, Father,’ he said. ‘It is I, Suruk the Slayer.’

The sky was silent.

‘Morgar has become a good warrior,’ Suruk said. ‘He has slain many of our enemies. Dozens of Ghasts have fallen to his hand. Soon he shall join those taking vengeance to the foul Yull and teach them to fear the House of Urgar. I am sure you are proud, Father.

‘And I wish you to be proud of me, as well. When last we spoke you said that I should get a proper trade, and you lamented that there were no lawyers or doctors in our family. I have remedied that. The fight with Vock was great and terrible, as you saw. In return for my work in shaming Mimco Vock and revealing the Vorl to mankind, the greatest scholars of the British Empire have forged a helm and cape for me, and anointed me by post Doctor of Law. And not just any doctor, Father, but an
honorary
one!’

Suruk reached into his bag and took out a mortar-board hat. It would not fit easily on his head, but with a bit of shoving he managed to wedge the mortar-board in place.

The rain grew in force, pattering down on his hat.

Thunder rippled through the trees and, a mile away, lightning broke the sky.

Perched on the branch, Suruk drew two last items from the bag and raised them in his hands. ‘See, Father. I swore to follow you and to bring vengeance and honour to our line. Let the ancestors know that this I have done! In this hand, the axe of Mimco Vock: in the other, the scroll of learning of the University of New Stoke. Look closely now, my Father: are you not avenged?
Are you not
avenged?
’

He threw his head back and bellowed into the rain, arms raised as if to hold up the head of a mighty beast for the ancestors to see. The thunder roared back at him and a bolt of lightning shot into the axe, down the shaft, into Suruk. He shuddered and frothed, frozen mid-cry, and dropped like a rock into the forest below.

Suruk awoke stretched out on his back, surrounded by the smell of singed mane. He flexed his limbs; they still worked, but he did not get up. The rain was warm around him and he smiled up at the sky through wisps of smoke.

‘I shall take that as a yes,’ he said.