A Game of Battleships (13 page)

‘How about a nose?’ No-Nose laughed. Beer exploded from his nostrils. The buccaneer girl 
shifted down the bench.

‘Listen,’ Smith replied. ‘Let me ask you something. What is it that you stand for? Is it booze?

Plunder? Women? Senseless violence? Yes to all of those, probably. But what really drives you? For what does every space pirate truly thirst?’

Eyes and patches met across the room. Hands and hooks scratched battered heads.

‘Shanties?’ a voice suggested.

‘Revenge on the Navy, damn ’em?’

‘You’re all wrong,’ Smith replied. ‘It’s fun. You all want fun.’

‘Fun?’ No-Nose snorted derisively, with unpleasant results. Then he frowned. ‘So what if we do, 
swabby?’

‘Fun,’ Smith replied, ‘is the very thing your new allies hate.’

A rumble ran through the room. The space pirates, never the most analytical thinkers, 
experienced a moment of contemplation.

‘Think about it. Why is it, that when they find something enjoyable, the Edenites have to call a 
halt to it in the name of so-called piety? Why is it that everything you enjoy is to them a crime to be wiped out? Sex, booze, brawling, doing exactly what you please: the Edenites would see them eradicated like so many cockroaches of, er, joy. Why, they’d criminalise every natural urge in the world if they thought it would bring a little more misery to the human race. When I have a natural urge, I follow it through – and I bet you all do the same.’

‘I used to,’ said one of the pirates, ‘but me shipmates got me some tablets.’

No-Nose stood up and brushed his coat down. ‘Mates, this parley is all very well, but what’s he 
got to offer us in return? We’ve not come here for nothing.’

‘Ask my crew,’ Smith said. ‘Suruk, what do you want?’

‘Battle, of course,’ the M’Lak replied. ‘Blood, doom and the skulls of my enemies. With my 
blades I delight my ancestors through the gift that keeps on giving… the heads of ignoble fools.’

A rumble of mixed approval and apprehension came from the privateers. Smith turned to 
Carveth. ‘And you?’

‘Me?’ She looked appalled. ‘Well, I – I want to stay alive, I suppose. . and right now I could do 
with a drink.’

‘See?’ Smith said.

No-Nose rubbed his chin. His lack of a nose made him look as though he was in the early stages 
of turning into Suruk. For a moment he stared at the ceiling fan, and suddenly he exclaimed: ‘Well, damn!

Violence and booze. Perhaps you do have a point after all. I could do with hearing a bit more about 
pillaging but, curse it, I’m with ye. Enough of this Edenite nonsense! I ask ye, what good is a god who hates his own creation? That’s a theological tautology. Me hearties,’ he added, for good measure. ‘So 
now…’ he said, leaning closer, and giving Smith a very distasteful view of his nostrils, ‘where might all this entertainment be found?’

*

In true Edenite style, the edges of the Upper Level landing pad were decorated with burning bodies.

Stakes stood along the edge of the pad, surrounded by piles of wood: when important Edenites visited, it was customary to light up some apostates to show them the way in. A huge statue of the Great 
Annihilator stood at the far end, his fangs bared, a gun in one hand and a time bomb in the other.

On the videoscreens, a reclusive hierarch named Gurt the Spelunker was delivering a furious 
sermon. Live from his cavern, he railed against the decadence of the democratic world and the prevalence of guano.

Lord Prong’s heart sank as he stepped onto the gantry. A small group of Edenites had gathered 
on the edge of the walkway, brandishing guns and big placards. Their feathery hats identified them as the True Brotherhood of the Chicken Rampant.

‘Hey, you kids!’ Prong's amplified voice rang around the cavern. ‘Get off my landing pad!’

One of the Brothers Rampant broke free from the others and rushed up. His eyes had a 
worrying, ecstatic gleam. ‘Lord Prong! How can you stand by and let this travesty happen?’

The Stapulator Documentarium clacked his pincers, and the zealot backed away a little. Prong 
sighed. ‘What travesty?’

‘This one!’ the young man cried, pointing at his placard. ‘Something terrible is going on. Do you 
have any idea how offensive to my beliefs that is?’

‘Your sign is blank,’ Prong said. He felt every one of his two hundred and eighty years.

‘It's blank
now
,’ the zealot replied. ‘But as soon as we figure out what this dreadful thing is, then, by the Annihilator, we’ll fill our signs out and those potential blasphemers will regret the day they were probably born!’ He lowered his voice. ‘Personally, I think it's to do with pornography. We just need to find the right evidence. .’

Lord Prong sighed. He turned to Lieutenant Carsus. ‘If you would, please?’

Carsus grabbed the zealot and yanked him into the air. The young man howled as the Reborn 
lifted him over the railing. Below, the lava bubbled like hot soup.

‘Tell me, chicken boy,’ Lord Prong rasped, ‘Can you fly?’

Carsus hurled him over the edge. He screamed for a moment and then was lost to view. Only a 
loud plop and a terrible sizzling hiss marked the young man's passing. On the far side of the pad, the protesters lowered their placards and shuffled away.

Private Leniatus leaned over the railing. He gazed down sadly, and the gantry creaked under his 
armoured bulk. ‘Now we'll never know,’ he said.

‘Never know what?’ said Prong.

‘If he could fly. 'Cos he's dead.’

*

‘This robe smells of zealot,’ Suruk growled as they approached the gate. ‘Some fool has testified 
all over it.’

‘We’ll deal with that later, old chap,’ Smith replied. ‘Let me do the talking.’

‘You’ll have to,’ Carveth said, tugging her hood down over her face. ‘You’re the only one of us 
they’ll listen to. I suppose they don’t let women and aliens into their precious Holy Order of the 
Handyman.’

‘Well,’ Smith said, ‘it does say Handy
man
. It’d sound odd if it was handyperson. That just sounds like you’ve got too many arms.’

Carveth flapped her sleeves. ‘Boss, let’s just get this sorted, eh?’

The guard swaggered out to meet them.’

‘Good day, my man,’ Smith declared. ‘My colleagues and I have come to repair your machines.’

The guard scowled. ‘Do I know you? I’m going to have to check that.’ He pulled his commlink 
close to his mouth. ‘Control, I’m making a confirmation request under Chapter 35 of the Book of 
Appliances. Handymen, provide details on your work.’

‘Sorry?’

‘What’re you here to mend?’

‘Er. . a washing machine?’

The guard muttered into the radio again. ‘Very well. I have confirmation of a sullied vestment on 
Circle Two. Move along.’

A portion of the great door swung open and they passed inside.

There was something particularly grim about walking under the watchtowers, Smith thought.

This must be what it was like to be an Edenite, or a Ghast or lemming man: forever watched from above, as though some cruel child had lifted the roof off the dolls’ house, waiting for an excuse to punish the toys inside.

‘This way,’ he said quickly, keeping his head down, and they hurried into the sector reserved for 
true followers of Eden.

It was much like the area set aside for mercenaries, except that most of the damage was caused 
by decrepitude rather than exuberant cutlass-waving. There were no pubs. The grim housing blocks were 
broken up by grey concrete buildings that could have been bunkers or churches. Stone angels flanked the 
road, brandishing flags and sabres, their cold, stern faces raised skyward. Enormous samplers hung down walls, threatening all manner of vengeance.

No sense of architecture, the Edenites, Smith thought. Back in the Empire, from Nexis VII to 
New Neasden, the places of worship looked
proper
.

Smith could see the lava bubbling beneath the metal pavement. The sight of it gave him a strange 
mix of vertigo and hunger for tikka masala. He had started to sweat. He raised a hand, half-hidden by his wizard’s sleeve, and pointed at a column rising to the roof. At its base was a pair of double doors: LIFT.

Halfway to the lift, a horn blared above them. They froze under a concrete angel raising its 
trumpet, trying not to clamp their hands over their ears. Smith slid his hand under his robes, to the guns and sword stashed there.

A loudspeaker crackled.
‘New Eden is destined to restore purity and moral rectitude to the galaxy,”
it proclaimed.
“But have you considered the sort of reward you’ll receive in the afterlife? For a smal fee, you can specify the
hair colour and dirty pillow size of the virgins you’ll be granted as a reward for your service. Just send your money to. .’

‘False alarm,’ Smith said, and they hurried to the doors.

As the lift rose, Suruk shook his head. ‘You humans should invent some gods that actually like 
you.’

‘People aren’t all like that,’ Carveth said.

‘Damned right,’ Smith added. ‘Not in the Space Empire.’ He looked down at the little figures 
below, either swaggering with their guns or rushing from place to place hoping not to be noticed. Some sort of padre had emerged from a temple in a pointy hat, and was shouting orders. Citizens scurried to obey. ‘That’s no way for a fellow to live.’

‘If I were a deity,’ Suruk observed, ‘I would sell hats.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The gods of man love headgear,’ the M’Lak explained. ‘I would open a special shop and sell my 
attire from it. Then I would be very wealthy, and would purchase a spacecraft in which to put my spears.’

‘But if you were a deity,’ Carveth pointed out, ‘you could just make the money anyway.’

Suruk pondered the issue. ‘But I like hats.’

The lift stopped with surprising smoothness. ‘You have ascended to the Second Circle,’ it 
announced, and the doors slid apart.

Rows of shuttlecraft confronted them, their nosecones sleek and white like fangs. Smith looked 
down the row of vessels. Several were covered in presumably sacred scrawl. One or two had a rather 
nasty fake-marble effect, with gold trimmings. None of them resembled the thing that had attacked the 
convoy.

Suruk tapped his shoulder and pointed. ‘Mazuran, look.’

It was hard to see what his sleeve was indicating. Then Smith realised: Suruk did not mean the 
gantry ahead of them, but the one above. Smith looked up to see two immense men lumbering overhead, 
their boots thumping the perforated floor. Between them was a smaller fellow in some sort of dark 
uniform and, behind him, a chanting, muttering pack of high-ranking Edenites. He watched as they 
trooped past over his head and, with a mounting sense of horror, he realised quite what the hierarchs 
wore under their robes and how distressingly inadequate it was.

He looked down and met the appalled eyes of his men. ‘Chaps,’ he announced, ‘this looks bad.’

‘That,’ Suruk said, ‘was a disquieting experience.’

Smith reached into his robe and drew his Civiliser. ‘Mark my words, men,’ he said, ‘evil is afoot.’

‘It looks more like a small willy to me,’ Carveth replied.

‘I see evil more as a sort of claw,’ Suruk added. ‘But then, humans do have very unpleasant feet.

Is it severing time yet?’

‘That depends.’ Smith glanced around. ‘Look over there.’

Under the gantry was a narrow access ladder. In the red light of the fire below, it looked like a 
stripe of soot against the wall.

‘I’ll go first,’ Smith said. He climbed the ladder, rung over rung, his boots ringing on the metal. It was hard not to think of the drop below. He stepped onto the upper gantry and waited for the others to appear. The three stood in their robes beside the ladder, looking like ghosts searching for someone to scare as they waited for Carveth to get her breath back.

They walked down the gantry, trying to look as innocuous as armed maintenance-monks could 
do. Ahead, the walkway swung left and, as they turned, Smith saw the white, pointed hats of the hierarchs 
sticking up above the railings like a mobile picket fence. They followed, pausing every so often to check non-existent faults in the walkway.

‘We’re close,’ Carveth said. Her voice was small and worried.

‘Chin up, pilot,’ Smith said, and he patted her on the shoulder.

‘Hands off, Boss. If they suspect I’m a woman, they’ll murder me.’

‘They might not realise. It’s hard to tell in these robes.’

‘Okay then, they’ll think we’re both men, touching each other for fun. Because if there’s one 
thing religious fanatics love, it’s gay handyman sex.’

They crept around the corner. Carveth stopped. ‘It’s here!’ she whispered.

Before them lay the ship. The hull was covered in dirt, half-obscuring the runes burned and 
painted onto the metal. The systems were powered down, the long chains dangling like dead fronds, but 
blue phosphorescence still pulsed behind the tinted lenses of the cockpit. Something had scored a grid into the prow of the vessel, criss-crossing it with deep scars as if it had driven at high speed into a gigantic wire fence. Its name was stencilled along the dirty hull:
Pale Horse
. Something about the ship made Smith’s skin crawl, as if with the fear of being touched by something cold and dead. Even the party of hierarchs kept a little way back.

A light flashed on the wall at the far side of the gantry. Under the light, a pair of iron doors 
creaked apart and figures stomped onto the landing-pad. Heavy-set and armoured, too broad for humans, 
they approached the Edenites. Smith glanced at his crew. Under his hood, Suruk bared his teeth.