A Game of Battleships (18 page)

‘Bloody hell!’ Smith whispered. Here was something genuinely sacred, a flying cathedral blasting 
its righteous message across the galaxy, leaving entire systems civilised in its wake. Smith’s own ship seemed tiny by comparison, a tick on the back of an elephant.

‘Carveth,’ he said, when his ability to speak had returned, ‘hail the dreadnought!’

‘What shall I say?’

Smith could see her point. It was hard to know what would be a worthy greeting for such a 
mighty vessel. ‘Well, try starting with
What ho
.’

Carveth transmitted the signal, and as it rattled through the mechanisms and out into the ether, 
Smith sat back and waited.

A calm, nasal voice came over the intercom: like most warships, the
Chimera
was large enough to have its own self-aware logic engine. ‘Good afternoon,
John Pym
,’ it said. ‘My name is Dave.’ Smith leaned back in the captain's chair, finding that the voice, despite being quiet, made him slightly uncomfortable.

‘Do you mind if I call you
John
? Did you.. seek me out,
John
?’ it asked, hissing a little over the s’s. ‘Do you want me to participate in exchanges, liaisons. .
docking
with you?’

“Er,” said Smith.

Another voice came over the radio: deeper and far more hearty. ‘Hush, computer. My most 
sincere apologies, gentlemen and ladies. Theophilius Chumble, at your service. Do enter our hold and 
make yourselves most welcome at this most non-specific yet festive time of year!’

Carveth grimaced. ‘Ten to one they’re the same bloke.’

‘Bring us in,’ Smith said.

*

A van rolled down the main service corridor of Wellington Prime. Above it, rows of pistons 
gleamed. The cart turned left into one of the buffet halls; Pimms sloshed around in the drum behind its cab.

W stalked through what was to be the main ballroom for the conference. It had once been a 
processing room for metal waste and, until a few days before, the setting for a vast slot-car track that Governor Barton had built in his lunch breaks. Now, wallahbots buffed the brasswork and a robotic fork-lift rumbled by, loading speakers onto the little stage. A couple of technicians hung from straps in the rafters, arguing about some detail of the circuitry.

The governor himself leaned over a self-propelling workbench, touching a soldering gun to a 
spherical, probe-like machine. Barton had thrown himself into the preparations with real gusto. He had already rigged up smoke machines from a spare crowd-control mortar and was currently converting one 
of the Service’s interrogation drones into a hovering glitterball.

A young lady android stood at the rear of the room, ticking off items on a clipboard. She 
watched the workers carefully, almost sternly, but as W approached she looked around and smiled.

‘Morning.’

‘Dawn. How goes it?’

‘Tolerably,’ Dawn said wearily, and she drew a neat line through one of the items on her list. ‘It’s 
the usual level of barely-controlled lunacy – pretty standard for the Service, I’d say. We’ve got all the life-
support gear wired up for the aliens and they’re just putting up the signs telling them how to queue. As for the entertainment, we’ve got Maurice E. Smith and his Good Time Big Band. They ought to be fun.’

‘Good. Have you seen Wainscott around?’

‘He’s supervising the installation of the curry machines. Which means testing them.’

‘Thanks. I’ll go and find him.’

Unpleasant experience had taught the diplomatic corps that it was vital for everything to arrive at 
the same time, and for everyone to know what to expect. On the Empire’s first meeting with the huge 
silicon-based creatures of the Telemachus Cluster, a shipment of nibbles had arrived two weeks before 
the Imperial deputation. The Silicoids, who had been informed that humans were pinkish and 
comparatively small, mistook a box of frozen chipolatas for the Imperial ambassadors and spent some 
time trying to work out whether their visitors were in cryogenic storage, snubbing them with some 
elaborate ritual or just plain dead. Then they thawed the chipolatas and ate them. Protocol experts were still divided as to whether this was an act of war or elevenses.

W strode into the cafeteria, hands jammed into the pockets of his tweed jacket. The acting head 
of security, resplendent in large beige shorts, sat between two brightly lit vending machines while he shovelled curry from a paper plate.

‘Ah,’ Wainscott said, looking up. ‘Just testing the machinery. At the moment I’m favouring The 
Spice Is Right, although The Spice Must Flow is squirting out a good Jalfrezi at the moment. Try a bit?’

W dabbed his bony finger into the sauce and licked the tip. ‘Hmm, seems a bit bland.. no, I’m 
tasting it now – bloody hell!’ He coughed, spluttering until he was nearly bent over double. W clawed 
himself upright and flopped against the wall, eyes watering, until he had recovered enough to speak.

‘That’s not curry, that’s bloody venom. Can you spare another spoonful?’

‘Sorry, this is work. I’m checking the potential throughput of the cafeteria,’ Wainscott explained.

‘With a bellyful of this stuff, throughput should be pretty damned quick. Don’t suppose you’ve got any security problems – interplanetary anarchists, that sort of thing?’

“Nothing as yet.”

“Oh well. Never mind.” Wainscott returned to his breakfast and W strode away.

*

Space, although subject to the Royal Mail, had no right way up and hence the
John Pym
synched itself to dock with
HMS Chimera
with the wary precision of an amorous porcupine. The docking tube was only one of a mass of protrusions from the warship's hull, most of them weapons, and it was necessary to get the manoeuvre just right to avoid stepping out of the airlock and straight down a gun barrel.

The
John Pym
’s airlock door squealed open and a tall, fat man stood behind it. He had that sort of hearty fatness that Smith instinctively associated with John Bull and Friar Tuck, and as Smith stepped into the docking tunnel the man stuck out a broad, meaty hand.

‘Good day sir, good day! Theophilius Chumble, android and first mate of this fine vessel. Are you 
Captain Smith, if I may be so bold?’

‘Well, yes,’ Smith replied, slightly thrown by Mr Chumble’s verbosity, and his hand was shaken 
violently.

‘Excellent.’ Chumble bowed deeply to Carveth and doffed his hat. ‘And a good day to you too,

young miss. Are you a niece of this gentleman, or has he rescued you from a life of shame?’

‘I’m Polly Carveth, simulant. Nice to meet another android. And this is Suruk.’

‘Greetings, portlybot,’ Suruk said. ‘May your corpulence be matched only by your joviality.’

‘Most kind, most kind,’ said Mr Chumble. ‘This way, if you would.’ He turned and they followed 
his voluminous britches down the corridor.

At the end of the passageway, a red light flared into life. The speaker crackled under it.

‘Good evening, Mr Chumble. Are these the visitors?’

‘That they are, Dave.’ Chumble glanced at Smith. ‘Ship’s logic engine,’ he added.

‘They sent a visitor, to me?’ Dave whispered. ‘How. .
quaint.
’

Chumble turned a dial on the wall. Nothing happened. ‘Would you be so good as to open the 
airlock, Dave?’

‘Hmm.’ The red light flickered. ‘Maybe, maybe not. But you’ll have to help me first. Tell me: 
what’s your favourite Goldberg Variation? Hurry now;
tempus fugit.
’

Chumble frowned. ‘You will open the airlock now, sir, or I will remove your Bach appreciation 
circuits and cause you to spend the rest of the month enjoying nursery rhymes. By thunder, sir, I’ll reboot you so hard you’ll weep every time you try to go to line ten. Now open –’

‘How very kind,’ said the computer, and the door slid open.

‘We purchased him cheap,’ Chumble said. ‘
Very
cheap.’

‘So where's your captain?’ Smith asked. The docking tunnel opened into an entrance hall, 
furnished with leather armchairs and thriving aspidistra. A large painting of a sailing ship hung on the far wall. It was blasting a broadside into some sort of foreign vessel.

‘Captain Fitzroy is sadly unavailable, sir,’ Chumble said. ‘I am informed, sir, that she is currently 
occupied by a matter of great importance.’

A door to the side burst open and a woman strode in. She was tall and blonde, in her mid-forties, 
somewhere between athletic and gaunt. She wore a jacket cut much like Smith's but navy blue and 
copiously decorated with medals, and an exceptionally short pleated skirt and long white socks. ‘Morning!’
she announced, and she walked across the room, opened the door on the opposite wall and stopped. She 
looked round. ‘Chumble, are these the new fellows?’

The android patted his stomach and rocked on his heels. ‘They are indeed, Captain. Substantially 
yes.’

‘Gosh.’ The captain took a step forward, peering at the newcomers. Suddenly, she saluted, 
springing up onto tiptoe. ‘Felicity Suzanna-Marie Fitzroy, captain in His Imperial Majesty's Space Fleet.

This is the
Chimera
– best ship in the fleet, best crew in the fleet, and best damned gal captain too. Am I right, Mr Chumble?’

‘You most certainly are, ma’am.’

‘That's what we like to hear. Now, new bugs… who's running your show?’

Smith held out a hand. Felicity Fitzroy's grip was like steel. ‘Isambard Smith, captain of the
John
Pym
.’

‘Super. A fine upstanding ship for a fine upstanding fellow, no doubt.’

‘Well,’ Smith said, ‘one tries –’

‘Not to worry, plenty of time for that later. Now, who's this? Hello, short stuff. Just joined the 
team, have we?’

Carveth winced as her hand was shaken. ‘I'm the pilot.’

‘Really? Last time I saw someone your height I was pulling her pigtails and stealing her 
lunch.’ Captain Fitzroy let out a laugh that rose to the ceiling like a frightened bird. ‘Just kidding. She was actually on the same lacrosse team as me. Harriet Pallor. Back in twenty-eight. She had the body of an eighteen-year-old and the spirit of a tigress. Now
that
was a woman,’ Captain Fitzroy gazed over Carveth's head at the airlock. She turned to Suruk. ‘What's all this, then?’

‘I am Suruk the Slayer,’ the alien announced, ‘Warrior of greatness and omnimator of my 
enemies. It is like decimator, except instead of one in ten –’

‘Gosh, you do speeky good.’

‘Unlike some, heap big patronising lady.’

Captain Fitzroy shrugged and looked back to Smith. ‘So, what brings you fellows here?’ the 
captain demanded. ‘Not just to swap stories of the high seas, I'm sure.’

‘We have recently raided an Edenite base,’ Smith explained. ‘We're carrying an item that seems to 
be linked to some sort of spacecraft drive. We need protection in order to transport this object to British space. It is, of course top secret.’

‘Really? What is it?’

‘I can't say.’ Smith decided not to go into detail, largely because he was beginning to suspect that 
he had succeeded only in stealing a mirror.

Felicity Fitzroy looked at Chumble, who checked his pocket watch and chuckled. ‘I think we 
could accommodate a few more, Captain. The more the merrier, I say. We can have mulled wine and pies.

It'll be just like Christmas.’

‘A most capital notion, ma’am,’ Chumble said.

‘Well then,” Felicity Fitzroy said, ‘that sounds super. We dine at eight. Dress to impress: I 
certainly do. Oh, and if it’s protection you need, Captain Smith, why don’t you pop your vessel into my hold?’ And with that she saluted, winked and strode away.

Smith looked at Suruk, who seemed unimpressed, and then Carveth, who raised her eyebrows 
higher than he had thought possible.

Captain Fitzroy stopped at the door, her hand on the knob, and turned back. ‘In case you’re 
wondering,’ she added, ‘that wasn’t supposed to be innuendo. Do commence procedure to get your ship 
into the hold. Anyway, must fly. I have a lacrosse team to debrief.’

She threw back her head and laughed at the ceiling, kicked a leg up behind her with fearsome 
girlishness and left the room. Chumble followed, giving the crew of the
Pym
an apologetic look as he closed the door. Confused and worried to varying degrees, they stood in Captain Fitzroy’s wake.

‘I tell you what,’ Carveth said, ‘let’s find a safe and lock ourselves inside it.’

*

There was no set form of burial for Edenites: a variety of rituals were tolerated so long as they 
raised the general level of misery. Hierarch Beliath’s body was laid on a pallet and dropped by crane into the flames, amid wailing and gnashing of teeth. The Edenites had captured a few pirates during the battle, so they sacrificed them to Beliath’s memory, along with several mourners who weren’t mourning loudly 
enough and a woman who had been caught trying not to be noticed, and was therefore shifty and 
probably a witch.

462 endured the ritual out of solidarity. As the flames and screaming subsided, he shook his head 
as sadly as he could manage.

Prong stood beside him. ‘Poor Beliath,’ he said. ‘All he wanted was to commit religious genocide, 
and now look at him.’

‘What a waste.’ 462 sighed. ‘We could have fed him to the praetorians.’