A Game of Battleships (14 page)

‘I should have known,’ Smith whispered. ‘The lemming men of Yullia.’

*

The Stapulator clicked his pincers. ‘Lord Prong. The allies approach.’

From a distance, even to Prong's mechanically-boosted vision, the Yull looked like small bears 
standing on their hind legs. Seen closer, though, they moved with a swaggering grace, supple and poised.

The lead Yull, a white-furred brute of the knight caste, wore a red cuirass like a metal waistcoat. The others carried rifles and long-handled axes pushed through their belts. The Yullian flag, reminiscent of 
four stylised windmill sails, hung on a gallows-shaped rig rising out of the back of the lead officer’s armour.

Private Leniatus grinned. ‘Reckon they look like rabbits.’

‘Shut up, dummy!’ Carsus replied.

The lemming men huffed and drew themselves up. Prong recognised that pompous look. It was 
the expression that the Yull tended to assume when practising their favourite hobbies of axe-twirling, murder, denying murder, eating cheese and proclaiming their own greatness to anyone they hadn’t 
murdered yet.

The loudspeakers played the anthems of New Eden and Yullia. As
Smash 'em for the Lord
ended 
and the whooping subsided, the strident tones of
Remember You're a Lemming
filled the hall.

‘
Hwuphep
, dirty offworlder ally!’ the Yullian officer barked. ‘I am Ambassador Quetic the 
honoured, most reasonable envoy of the benevolent war-god of the Yull.’ Quetic bowed stiffly from the 
waist. ‘May divine Popacapinyo kill you slightly quicker than you deserve.’

Lord Prong gave the lemmings as deep a bow as his dignity and lower back would allow. ‘May 
the Great Annihilator spare you from righteous incineration,’ he said. ‘Briefly.’

A low whine came from the lift shaft. Prong looked around and saw the lights rise on the panel 
beside the doors. He felt a little tension in his gut. Slowly, the light hopped from diode to diode: left to right, then up to the next level, left to right again, then up another line.

The lift banged into place. With a piped fanfare the doors rumbled apart, and a face formed from 
the shadow inside.

At first it was a metal disc, a coin hovering in mid-air. Then light caught the glass in its centre and it became a lens. Details followed it: steel insignia on a leather coat, a bulbous helmet like a metal marrow and, below it, a scarred red face with a mechanical eye, a pair of nostrils like a skull’s and a malignant slash of a mouth.

The personal representative of the Ghast Empire limped out of the lift. Behind it, a pair of 
immense praetorian bodyguards looked around and snarled. One held a chain, at the end of which an ant-
wolf strained, growling.

Prong felt the urge to look away and he noticed that the lemming men seemed to have shrunk a 
little: Ambassador Quetic shifted his feet and puffed his chest out, but it made him look weaker than 
before.

The Ghast officer stopped, and its single eye fixed on Prong, as unblinking and cold as the lens 
beside it. ‘I am High-Research-Over-Commander Four Hundred and Sixty Two,’ he rasped, ‘and this had 
better be worth my while.’

From somewhere behind him, Prong thought he heard a British-sounding voice exclaim “Bloody 
hell! Him
again?
” He swung around and glared at the hierarchs. There was some nervous shuffling.

462 turned to the Yullian deputation. ‘Apologies for my late arrival. The minion responsible has 
made full amends.’ The ant-wolf licked its chops and one of the praetorians belched. ‘I assume you 
rodents have already indulged in the inevitable self-justificatory prattle about honour, yes?’

Quetic puffed himself up. ‘
Hwot?
How dare you insult the dignity of the noble Yull, filthy insect?

Were we not so lovely and in the presence of witnesses, you would die slow – yes, yes, slow!’

‘I shall take that as a
yes
,’ 462 replied.

It was time, Lord Prong thought, to take the initiative. He needed to show these aliens – these 
unbelievers – the power of
Project Horseman
. He coughed loudly and the visitors turned to look at him. He spoke quickly – before the Stapulator could pat him on the back.

‘Allies,’ he announced, ‘I, Lord Hieronymous Prong, Sin-Hunter of Eden and Grand Mandrill of 
the Innermost Conclave, have called you here to witness the harnessing of arcane power in the conquest of our enemies. My minions, with the grace and blessing of this bunch –’ he indicated the hierarchs 
behind him – ‘have turned their wisdom to mastering the occult. Through the complexities of Dodgson 
physics, we have created the ship you see before you… the
Pale Horse
.’

‘Show us,’ said 462.

‘Yes, yes!’ Quetic barked. ‘Demonstrate its capabilities, offworlder, or be shamed!’

‘Ah, pipe down, fluffy.’ Prong felt much better now. He was in his stride. ‘You want to see what 
we can do? Stapulator, give the order to fire her up. Brother hierarchs, begin the ritual!’

*

Smith pushed his hood out of his eyes. On the gantry, the Edenites were performing some sort of 
ceremony. One of the pointy-hatted crowd, perhaps their leader, strode to the front and threw up his 
arms.
‘I get up in the morning, looking for witches,’
he cried.
‘I find some women and set them alight!’

The rest of the hierarchs swayed.
‘Oh, oh,’
they chanted,
‘the Edenites!’

Smith slipped a hand into his robes and drew his Civiliser. ‘Stay here, everyone. I’m going to get a 
better look.’

Suruk tapped his shoulder. ‘Leave some slaying for me. Oh, and be careful.’

Smith crawled along the gantry, bent double to stay out of sight, and ducked behind a cart full of 
sensor equipment. The Edenites were still chanting, their white conical hoods wobbling in unison, and to Smith’s astonishment the ship seemed to be answering them. A low electric growl issued from the
Pale
Horse
, like an amplifier before the striking of the first chord. The chains along its length rose in a field of crackling static. Blue lightning played across the hull: first in sparking flashes, then in a continuous dancing light.

And then the spaceship vanished.

‘Oh,’ said Smith. There didn’t seem to be any better way of putting it. Where the devil had the 
thing gone? He felt rather glad he hadn’t been hiding behind the
Pale Horse
.

Up ahead, the observers seemed no less astonished than he was. The Edenite hierarchs had gone 
into a frenzy of chanting, their conical hats bobbing together like teeth in the jaw of some enormous 
beast. 462, curse him to Hell, had limped several steps back and his guards struggled to keep his ant-wolf on its leash as if barked and snapped. The lemming men gawped in awe. A Yullian officer staggered back, terrified, and one of Prong’s enormous guards picked him up and patted his head.

In a blast of blue light, the
Pale Horse
reappeared. The cockpit became dark, the electricity subsided. The chains fell limp and clattered across its hull.

‘Where did it go, Prong?’ Quetic demanded. ‘Offworlder, where did it go to?’

‘Silence!’ 462 had taken a scanner from the inside of his trenchcoat. Two little antennae sprang 
up from the main body of the device. ‘The sensors report a fluctuation in the presence of the vessel,’ he rasped. ‘Either this machine has become inefficient, or your craft. . moved.’

Quetic shook his armoured head. ‘But. . how? How can it be here and suddenly not? Who is 
responsible for this? And,’ he added, looking round, ‘what is your bodyguard doing with my adjutant?’

‘I got me a rabbit,’ Leniatus said.

The lemming-man thrashed in the ogre’s arms. Smiling, Leniatus patted the Yullian, making the 
warrior’s head bob alarmingly.

‘Put Adjutant Xeptoc down!’ Quetic snapped.

Leniatus took a step back, hugging the Yullian even tighter. ‘No! He’s my friend!’

‘I meant drop him.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Leniatus dropped the Yullian.

Adjutant Xeptoc stood up, shuddered and howled. ‘The dirty offworlder patted my head. I am 
forever disgraced!’ The adjutant turned, shrieked, and hurled itself over the railing. Quetic scowled, 462 
smirked, and Leniatus looked sad. Smith crept closer.

‘Now,’ Prong declared, ‘soon you will observe the power unit for the Dodgson drive. It is this 
piece of techno-arcane genius that enables the
Pale Horse
to shift dimensions. Once the drive is activated, the
Pale Horse
no longer inhabits realspace. For your safety, we will deactivate the power unit.’

Smith was hardly listening. With a soft hiss, a hatch opened like a gash on the side of the ship.

Light spilled out. Two figures stood backlit in the entrance, carrying a long, flat object wrapped in a cloth.

A painting,
Smith thought.
What the hel have they got a painting for?

The figures emerged. They were acolytes of the Order of the Handyman, their red hoods pulled 
up, robes brushing the ground. The
Pale Horse
’s airlock had a chequered floor, and the two men looked like pawns. Slowly, reverently, they carried the wrapped painting across the gantry, past the astonished visitors and through a door on the opposite side.

Lord Prong gestured to the spaceship. ‘Shall we take the tour?’

Smith watched the delegates file towards the doors. One by one, they stepped through the 
doorway, into the blue light.

A voice boomed out of the airlock: deep, commanding and slightly strained, as if on the verge of 
fury.

‘Welcome aboard our flight to the further regions of experience. A trol ey will appear shortly to cater for your
beverage-related pleasures. Passengers are to remain chained in until the light comes on. Smoking is not al owed unless you
are being incinerated. You will find emergency exits located nowhere – for there is no escape!’

The doors slammed shut. The hierarchs milled about on the gantry, looking rather like a colony 
of penguins. It would not have surprised Smith to find them hiding eggs up their smocks.

Smith ran back down the gantry, stolen robes flapping around him. He stopped before his men, 
slightly out of breath. ‘Did you see that?’

‘The invisible spaceship?’ Carveth replied. ‘Yes – I mean, I did to begin with –’ 

‘Whatever they took off the ship, we
have
to get it. It’s our duty to acquire useful things for the Empire. That little fellow, Prong, said it was the power unit for the drive that made it invisible.’

‘I agree,’ Suruk declared. ‘We must steal this mystic painting.’ He nodded to the doors at the far 
side of the gantry. The sill had been decorated with a relief of skull-faced cherubs. ‘Less delaying, more slaying!’

‘Alright,’ Smith said. ‘Follow me. Calmly, now. Remember, we’ve got every right to be here.’

From under her hood, Carveth said, ‘We have?’

‘Of course. I’m claiming this place for the Empire. Come along!’

Smith holstered his pistol and strolled out of cover. Suruk strode casually behind him. Carveth 
hurried along at the rear, a little figure in red.

They walked towards the doors. ‘Calmly, everyone,’ Smith said, and he pressed the button.

The doors parted, and they looked into a corridor. ‘There,’ Smith said, nodding to a side-room.

The room was bare metal and smelt of grease. At the far corner, under a flag, two robed 
handymen were locking a large wardrobe.

Smith closed the door. Both handymen turned.

‘What the hell?’ said the first man. ‘What is this?’

‘Don’t look now,’ Carveth replied, ‘but this is a hold up.’

The technician ducked down to get a better look. ‘But. . you’re just a girl.’

‘Wrong.’ Suruk threw his hood back.

‘Begone, demon!’ cried the man, recoiling in terror, and Suruk brought the edge of his hand 
sharply into the technician’s head. He fell, and Suruk stepped to the second man and causally punched 
him out.

Smith bent down and checked the fallen Handymen. One carried a hefty metal keyring. He 
flicked through the keys until he found one that looked appropriate. The key turned easily in the lock, and the wardrobe opened.

Smith reached inside. His hand brushed something soft – a fur coat, from the feel of it – and he 
stretched further. The fur slid down, and he found himself gripping a hard wooden corner, wrapped in a thin blanket. The painting.

It took up almost the entire back of the wardrobe. He tugged it forward a little, realising that the 
wrapping was taped into place.

Carveth touched him on the arm.

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t like this, boss. I mean, all this for a picture. Do we have to steal it?’

‘Of course we have to steal it. We’re an empire, aren’t we?’

‘It looks a bit heavy.’

‘Nonsense. Do you think that’s what was going through Lord Byron’s head when he rolled the 
Elgin Marbles out of, erm, Elginland? Nonsense, he was thinking –’

‘How can I score some laudanum and shag my aunt?’

‘Really, Carveth! Suruk, you take one corner and I’ll take the other.’

They lifted the frame out of the wardrobe. ‘Careful at the back,’ Smith said. ‘Carveth, could you 
get the door?’