A Game of Battleships (28 page)

‘Carveth?’ Smith called. ‘We’ve turned the wheel –’

‘And broken it,’ Suruk added.

‘So the air supply should be blowing out!’

‘And I tore its head off. Metaphorically.’

‘We’re moving!’ Carveth cried. ‘Yaw to port, thirty degrees. Here we go!’

Smith strode to the cockpit. Slowly, with a lazy elegance suited to a much larger – and less dented 
– craft, the
John Pym
swung away from the main belt and in towards the planet itself. Smith saw light wink on a row of tiny points, like sparks in the distance – the enemy ships, those that could yet be seen.

Carveth checked the dials. ‘Pressure in the air tanks is dropping. Eighty per cent. . seventy-six. . 
sixty-nine. . er, should he be holding that wheel?’

‘Good point.’ Smith turned to Suruk. ‘Can you replace that, please?’

The alien shrugged. ‘Does a Procturan black ripper secrete resin in the woods? Of course I can.’

As Suruk returned to the corridor, bearing the severed wheel like a feral version of Mr Toad,

Smith watched the planet grow in the windscreen. Without resistance to slow it down, the
Pym
would be drawn deeper into the gravity field, pulled down towards the surface. Strange, he thought, how graceful it all was, and how deadly. Like ballet with sharks.

‘Boss? Boss!’

Smith pulled himself away from an interesting mental image.

‘Air tanks on fifty! That’s got to be enough!’

‘All right then. Suruk? Spin the wheel back!’

Carveth glanced between the windscreen, the scanner and the captain, as if she did not know 
which to trust the least. ‘He’d better get it right,’ she said, ‘otherwise we’ll be holding our breath on the way back.’

‘Anti-clockwise!’ Smith called. He watched the needle in the air gauge, sinking slowly as if under 
the weight of its own brasswork. It froze behind the dirty glass, crawling to a halt at forty-eight. ‘It’s stopped. Hull temperature’s rising, though.’

‘That’ll be the atmosphere,’ Carveth replied. ‘Once I gun the engines, we’ll look like any other gas 
flare. You can wake Rhianna up now.’

Smith hurried to Rhianna’s room, ducked under the dreamcatcher and tapped her on the 
shoulder. She glanced round, eyes wide, and smiled. ‘I guess we’re okay, right?’

‘Indeed we are.’

‘I put up a psychic shield. The Vorl taught me how to focus my abilities.’

‘Super. That was some razor-sharp meditation.’ Leaning through the door, he called, ‘Carveth?

Are we out of danger now?’

‘Apart from flying towards a planet, we’re fine.’

Together, they returned to the cockpit. Locked into the planet’s gravitation field, the
John Pym 
shot forward like a stone in a sling. Their speed made the hull glow: along the edges of the windscreen, light flickered as patches of gas reacted with the heat.

‘Just another piece of debris, burning up,’ Carveth said.

‘Good work,’ Smith said. ‘Thanks, Rhianna. That was a jolly good idea of yours. Whatever 
inspired you to think that releasing that load of hot air would help us?’

Rhianna smiled beatifically. “’ guess I was just unlocking the creative potential of my spirit.

Creativity is the oldest and most mystic force in all of us.’

‘Well, absolutely. Well said, I’m sure. Creativity wins the day, eh Suruk?’

‘Piffle,’ said the alien. ‘The day is not yet won. We have escaped, for now, but the enemy fleet 
remains. We must warn our comrades, and then return to do battle.’

‘You’re right,’ Smith said. ‘Men, our struggle against the void is not yet ended.’ Pausing 
rhetorically, he rested his elbow on the nearest item of appropriate height, which happened to be 
Carveth’s head. ‘Indeed, we have not just witnessed the end of the beginning, let alone the beginning of the end. But if the beginning’s end has truly begun, then we must devote ourselves to the noble end of beginning – oh stuff it, just take us back home.’

‘Now you’re making sense,’ Carveth said, and she fired up the engines.

*

An important point involving semi-colons had arisen in the treaty debate.

‘Could it be,’ a tall, square-jawed man declared, his voice choking with emotion, ‘that everything 
we fight for is in this one, final, dawn? Could it be that liberty, true liberty, is what I stand for…’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘…here, deep in my heart?’ Weeping openly, he took his seat again.

One of the M’Lak stood up. ‘Maybe.’ It sat down.

The Minister for Colonial Affairs leaned over to W. ‘I say, if this foreign chap blubs when he 
talks about freedom,’ he whispered, ‘what’ll he be like against a horde of Ghast stormtroopers?’

C’Neth rose like steam from a kettle. ‘Look, we need to discuss this punctuation,’ he explained, 
addressing himself at random to the delegation from the Arabian League. ‘If you can’t bring yourself to deal with the details, what about the big things? Drop your commas and soon you’ve not got a leg to 
stand on. Not that I have any legs,’ he added, glancing down. ‘Below the waist I just taper to a point.’

‘Don’t you just,’ said Sann’di.

‘Ooh! Isn’t he bold?’

W slipped out the room. Entering the corridor was like coming up for air. He rubbed his 
forehead and leaned against the wall. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror opposite, he resolved never to look at his reflection again and then sighed.

In a swish of dark material, Dawn, the organisation simulant, was at his side. ‘Everything alright?’

‘Leaving aside the idiots bickering over a semi-colon while the end of the galaxy rapidly 
approaches, fine. Any news from Wainscott?’

‘His men are sweeping the lower decks. The M’Lak Rifles are on high alert. If they get any more 
alert, they’ll start chopping people’s heads off just to make sure they’ve not swallowed any dynamite.’

‘Good.’

‘Those drone things are scanning the public areas. The governor’s got them rigged with all kinds 
of gear. And there’s a chap from Engineering wants to talk to you. Says he’s got information on a signal.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Billiard Room Four. Do you need a bodyguard?’

W shook his head. ‘We need everyone looking. Tell them to get on with it.’

‘Right you are.’

W hurried down the corridor, slipped his pass-fob over a side-door and ducked into the riveted 
chaos of the back stairway. He trotted downwards, the low ceiling brushing the top of his mop of black hair, his boots clanging like hammers on the metal steps.

At the foot of the stairwell, a wallahbot directed him to Billiard Room Four. It bowed on a hinge 
and gestured with an arm of polished brass. ‘The gentleman awaits.’

The man rose to greet him. He was in his fifties, broad-shouldered and wide-necked. He wore 
dark overalls and spectacles that looked curiously delicate on his tough boxer’s face. The little badge on his lapel said ‘Brian.’

‘Brian,’ he said, pointing at it.

‘Eric,’ W replied. They shook hands. ‘I gather you have some information for me.’

‘Indeed.’ Brian’s voice was heavy and slow, but he sounded anything but stupid. ‘I’ve found an 
anomaly – a potential security breach, I think. I thought I ought to come and report it. You are the right person for that, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely.’

He adjusted his glasses. ‘I can take you to it.’

‘Lead on.’

They returned to the maintenance stairway. The air smelt of grease and metal. W took the lead as 
they descended. Brian hummed to himself but W could not make out a tune.

‘I’ve got a gun pointing at your back,’ Brian said. ‘Well, a crossbow.’

‘I thought you might,’ W replied. ‘How did you smuggle it in, by the way?’

‘Inside me. I’m an android – a custom job. Fixed frame, modular plastic skin, no metal parts.

When I think of the lengths I had to go to in order to get through your security. . Ugh.’

They walked on. ‘Out here,’ Brian said.

They stepped out onto a storage deck. The floor was metal, the air hot and greasy. Machines 
banged and rumbled in the distance as if they stood in the back room of a colossal laundrette. But that was nothing to the odour of spice. The smell of curry powder filled W’s nose and mouth. The air was 
thick and intoxicating.

Brian kicked the door closed. W looked around.

‘I put out a signal,’ Brian said. ‘Getting hold of the gear wasn’t easy, but by now our fleet should 
have your co-ordinates. Which leaves me to get on with Part Two of the plan: eliminating enemy 
personnel.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ W said.

The android smiled. ‘Why not? When I’m done, this space station will be reduced to debris. I 
myself will escape and, believe me, I will leave no trace of you.’

‘You’re a marked man now. My people will hunt you down like game.’

‘Perhaps. But I can change my spots. I’ve been careful to let a few cameras get a picture of me.

They’ll be looking for the wrong person now.’ Brian stopped smiling. His features twisted, stretched and shrunk as if drawn onto drying clay. Brian’s face was longer, the eyes deeper set, the brow lined and 
jawline hard.

W swallowed hard. He was looking at a version of himself: an imperfect copy, but one good 
enough to fool the colony sensors.

‘All I need now,’ Brian observed, unable to avoid grinning, ‘is to copy your stupid little 
moustache. Perhaps if I drink some cocoa. Now move.’

They walked: the real man in front, his duplicate behind. W scowled into the corridor. Up ahead, 
something bubbled and slurped. W clenched his fists. He was too angry about the insult to his moustache 
– measured carefully against an actual pencil – to be very much afraid.

Behind them both, one of Barton's drones puttered across the corridor and disappeared into a 
side passage. It gave no indication of having seen them.

‘On the left,’ Brian said.

W’s eyes prickled as they turned the corner. The corridor opened out and suddenly the room 
glowed red, as if they stood at the edge of Hell. Before them, in a great vat the size of a swimming pool, lay the station's third-level curry repository. Evil lights flickered on the ceiling. The air was rank with spice.

‘Now then,’ said Brian, ‘Your decadent empire is about to end. The New Eden will snuff you out 
like a candle. We will not even leave a trace to gloat over. Starting with you.’

W sniffed the air, filled his artificial lungs with raw curry. ‘Undiluted Madras.’

‘As I said, there will be no traces. You’re going for a swim.’

He flicked up the crossbow and W took a step back. The red liquid roiled and bubbled like lava 
at his heels.

So, thought the spy, this was it: death and disintegration without even a portion of rice to soak up 
his remains. He looked at the android, the crude mimicry of his own face, and wished that he had a 
cigarette and a nice cup of tea.

W opened his mouth, tilted his head back and took a huge hit of industrial-strength Madras. It 
had much the same effect: though his throat tightened, his eyes stung and his heart burned as he exhaled, fury spread through his meagre body, enervating him.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Right now the only thing I can think of worse than you killing me is you 
banging on about it. So you might as well have done.’

‘Suits me,’ Brian said, and he fired.

W froze for a second, then pulled on his jacket. The dart fell out, tinkling on the steps: a three-
inch sliver of hardened plastic, the tip smeared with something like oil.

‘Nerve toxin,’ Brian said.

‘Moral fibre and Harris tweed,’ W replied. ‘And a bulletproof waistcoat.’

One of the maintenance drones swung into the corridor, the sound of its rotors muffled by the 
bubbling vats.

There was a short pause. Brian flexed his fingers. ‘Then I’ll have to strangle you,’ he said. ‘The 
world’s a tough place. And you’re just too mild to survive.’

Brian leaped forward; W darted aside, his fists up. He looked like a geography teacher in the 
rutting season, elbow-patches out, all bony hands and tweed. Brian went straight in, driving out with a hardened plastic fist – as one of Barton’s drones crash-dived into the back of his knee.

The android stumbled. W lunged, grabbed the collar and waist of Brian’s overalls and threw him 
over his shoulder, back first into the bubbling, reeking sludge.

Brian flailed, cried out and sank from view. For half a second the vat was still and then the 
android broke the surface, thrashing. Brian yowled. His face seemed to melt, reform, run through half a dozen shapes it had taken; the cheeks fat and jolly one moment, cadaverous the next, the mouth 
stretching to a dreadful, malfunctional howl.

‘Too mild, eh? Did you bite on a chilli?’ W asked.

Brian did not hear him. With a final screech, the android pressed his hands to his running face 
like
The Scream
of South Asian cuisine.

‘Munch on that,’ W said.

Barton ran in as Brian sank out of view. His drones chugged into the room behind him, their 
rotors uneven in the thick vapour; several had gun attachments. They looked hand-made, the sort of 
thing the governor might have produced in a quiet afternoon. They circled the vat like vultures.

A white plastic skeleton surfaced in the curry. It had neither overalls nor human features any 
more; the voice came out of a speaker mounted where its throat had been. 
‘Well,’ it said, ‘this is awkward.’