A Game of Battleships (5 page)

‘Well, yes, I suppose –’

‘Excellent! Let us conquer it!’

‘Um, no. Europe’s on our side. Pretty much.’

Suruk rubbed his chin thoughtfully, after moving his mandibles out the way. ‘Troubling. We shall 
have to proceed with caution. I shall examine my phrasebook.’

‘You’ve got a phrasebook?’

‘Of course. It would be rude to pick fights in English.’

*

Smith sighed deeply and pushed away the Scrabble board. ‘Well,’ he announced, ‘that was excellent. Good work, Rhianna: I didn’t expect you to get ‘quibble’ on a triple word score. Although I’m not sure it is actually a rude word.’

‘It isn’t,’ she replied. Rhianna looked down at the Scrabble board and shook her head. ‘You 
know, when I suggested we do something more adult, I didn’t really mean making rude words on the 
Scrabble board.’

‘Oh,’ Smith said. He peered at her. He felt much like a competitor in a decathlon who has heard 
the whistle blow without knowing the order of the events. He was obviously meant to guess something.

She was clearly not entirely happy, but he had no idea about what. Dimly, it occurred to him that she 
might have taken him to her cabin for something entirely different.
Damn!

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I misunderstood. Never mind, we can have a bit of the other 
later on. Right now I really need a sleep.’

‘Right,’ Rhianna said. ‘You go and do that. I’ll just meditate.’

Stepping outside, he nearly bumped into Carveth.

‘Question, Boss… When we get to France, will we have time to go to the duty free?’

‘I doubt it. Besides, it’ll just be full of chocolate and frilly pants. Nothing we might need.’

‘I need those! Come on, Boss, let me go. I’ll buy something for Rhianna, so you can give it to her 
on her birthday.’

‘Oh, all right then,’ Smith said, and he headed to his room.

In his cabin he knelt down and dragged the encryption engine from out under the bed. It looked 
like a cross between a sewing machine and a very old cash register. A set of instructions was included.

Following steps one to three of the instructions, Smith wrote out a short message, setting out the 
situation and requesting assistance. Then he pushed the message into one side of the engine and pulled the lever. A pair of rollers pulled the note into the integral mini-furnace, a dial on the front ticked and spun, and fine grey dust fell into the disposal tray.

Step Four told Smith to eat the instructions. As he chewed he hoped that there was no Step Five, 
and then wondered why he hadn’t just fed the instructions into the furnace instead of eating them. He 
pushed the engine back under the bed, climbed on top and closed his eyes.

A loud pinging sound jolted Smith awake from a dream about scones. He struggled upright, knelt 
down and dragged out the encryption engine. A ticker-tape message clattered out of a slot in the side.

MESSAGE RECEIVED. CONFIRM YOU ARE IN PICKLE. ASK FRANK JURGENS AT

ADENAUERPLATZ (OFF RUE CHARLES DE GAULLE) ABOUT PHANTOM. HE CAN BE

TRUSTED. PLEASE ACQUIRE 2 BOXES CHEAP LAGER IN DUTY FREE. VITAL FOR

FUTURE OPERATIONS. OVER.

As he studied the message, the radio began to ring. Smith stumbled to the cockpit and fiddled 
with the controls.

‘Hey!’ the speaker called.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that HMS
John Pym
?’

‘It is,’ Smith replied warily.

‘I was receiving your distress call about one hour ago,’ said the voice. ‘I am calling from 
Tannhauser Gate orbital station. I am sorry to hear about your spacecraft breaking down.’

‘Thanks,’ Smith replied. ‘Still, mustn’t grumble –’

‘Perhaps you should trade it in for a German one. They are quite reliable, you know. My friend is 
having very much the same trouble as you. He bought a Triumph Dolomite, as antique, and the engine 
fell out on the Autobahn. It is the unions, he says.’

‘Look, I’m sorry about your friend’s car, but can we land yet?’

‘Of course! The docking sequence will begin in ten minutes. But, ah… you might want to carry 
your own baggage. The handlers, you know.’

*

‘Burn them!’ the Lord Ezron, the Grand Jackalope, bellowed at the ceiling. ‘Let their eyes be plucked 
from their heads, oh Great Annihilator, their lying tongues torn out, their bodies devoured by jackals and the jackals scattered to the four winds! And with that, I declare the Democratic Republic of New Eden’s first conference on women’s rights open!’

Lord Ezron sat down to catch his breath, and the other twenty-six hierarchs grumbled their 
thanks over the sound of the festivities outside.

‘Item One on the agenda – should women have rights? Anyone? Then it’s still a
no
. And with 
that, I declare the conference closed. Back to the meeting.’

Today, as a billion banners and flags proclaimed, was Enlightenment Day on the planet of 
Deliverance, and consequently many things and people were being set alight. The banging in the street 
was probably caused by fireworks. It was hard to tell: along with smiting and hacking, there was a lot of shooting in the Republic of Eden on any day at all.

The Supreme Convocation of the Democratic Republic sat around the table in their ceremonial 
helms of sanctity, which gave them the look of a support group for wizards. At the end of the table sat the Grand Mandrill, the Keeper of the Flame, Incinerator of Unbelievers. His name was Lord 
Hieronymous Prong, and his black, broad-brimmed hat bore the ancient symbol of the buckle and skull.

He was asleep.

‘Now,’ said Ezron, ‘unless anyone has any objections, I’ll turn to the agenda for today. First, we 
have a request from the True Brotherhood of the Chicken Rampant, who have discovered another thing 
that might possibly offend their beliefs. They seek permission to slaughter everyone potentially 
responsible.’

One of the other hierarchs had been chewing his beard. ‘What
are
their beliefs?’ he demanded 
through a mouthful of fluff.

‘They believe in.. ’ Ezron consulted the agenda, ‘finding things that offend their beliefs.’

‘Fair ’nuff,’ the hierarch said, and he went back to sucking his beard.

Ezron ticked the list of action points. ‘Now for Item Two. We have a proposal from the High 
Cockatrice himself, Hierarch Beliath, who tells me that he has found a new way to solve the sin of lust.

Hierarch Beliath. Please tell me this doesn’t involve a pair of garden shears.’

Beliath rose coughing from his seat. ‘It has forever been the case,’ he rasped, ‘that men were 
created in the image of the Great Annihilator, ever since our blessed forefathers made him up. What have women given the world, except to unleash a tide of lust into our once-pure hearts? Behold!’ he cried, 
fishing a photograph out of his white robes, ‘I looked at a picture of a woman and look what happened to me! If that isn’t sinful, I don’t know what is!’

The picture was quietly passed around the table. The hierarchs shook their heads sadly.

‘Horrible,’ said Lord Othred.

The photograph made its way past the sixteen representatives of the Bureau of War, past the 
hierarch of the Bureau for Liberty, who was currently trying to dissolve his own office to escape the 
tyranny of excessive government, and to Prong himself, who had started to snore.

A hierarch slipped the photograph in front of him. ‘Grand Mandrill?’ He paused then nudged the 
old man’s arm. ‘Lord Prong?’

Prong’s eyes flicked open like a trap. Lurching forward, he blinked several times and yelped 
‘Faith is purity! Purge it with flame! What’s going on?’

The hierarch tapped the table, and Lord Prong looked down at the photograph.

‘Gah!’ he cried, drawing back into his chair. ‘What devilry is this? Save us from this – this – 
whose is this?’

Daringly, Hierarch Beliath gave the Grand Mandrill a stern look. ‘I was debating the 
licentiousness of women, Lord Prong. There will be a slideshow later. But for now, I propose that there is only one way of ridding New Eden of the evil taint of lechery – we must kill all women!’

Cheers broke out among the hierarchs. ‘Crusade!’ one wheezy voice croaked.

Lord Prong felt the soft whirr in his temple that told him his frontal lobe accelerator was going 
to work. He was festooned with bionic enhancements, largely to compensate for the fact that he was two hundred and eighty-three. Sitting in his metal throne, a bundle of wires protruding from the side of his head like a broken television, it occurred to him that there might be a small flaw in this magnificent plan.

‘Fool!’ Prong rasped, and the microphone on his throat amplified his voice into a doom-laden 
roar. ‘You overstep yourself, Beliath. Did you consider the obvious result of killing every woman in the Republic of Eden? Who would we have to pick on then, eh?’

‘Oh,’ Beliath said, chastened.

‘Quite. Also, we would not be able to breed.’

‘The Ghasts have cloning machines,’ Hierarch Grumm put in. ‘They could lend them to us. They 
are
our allies, after all.’

‘Oh they’re
much
too busy for that,’ Beliath replied, in a tone of bitter sarcasm. ‘They’ve got their new friends the lemming men to think about. Apparently the lemming men are really fanatical.’

‘How can they be more fanatical than us?’ Ezron demanded. ‘We’re a theocracy, for the 
Annihilator’s sake – may he butcher everything in his divine mercy. It doesn’t get any more fanatical than that!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We were committed to working with the Ghasts. I remember how it used 
to be… we’d do the religious genocide while they purged the galaxy of inferior lifeforms.” He sighed.

“We had something special together.’

‘We can get them back,’ Prong said.

The hierarchs turned. Wild eyes and conical hats swung towards Prong’s throne. ‘What?’ Grumm 
demanded, throwing an arc of spittle across the table.

The Grand Mandrill smiled. ‘Item Three. My underlings have been working on a little project.

You might want to think of it as a secret weapon.’

‘A gun?’ Grumm was of the Cordite sect and revered firepower.

‘Of course not!’ Beliath said. ‘Lord Prong is a good Ignian. It’ll be a special flamethrower for 
divinely roasting unbelievers.’

‘Good tries, gentlemen,’ Prong replied, ‘But wrong. The Department of Forbidden Science has 
been looking into non-Euclidian geometry. I refer, of course, to inter-dimensional travel.’

‘Blasphemy!’ So far in the meeting, the Exalted Coelacanth, most venerable of the elders, had 
been silent, his head lowered in prayer or slumber. Now he struggled to his feet and shook his small, hard fist. ‘This is a gross insult to Edenites everywhere. We must hunt out the dimensional travellers and kill them all!’

Prong sighed. ‘No, it’s
us
who’d be travelling. Sit down, damn it!’

‘Oh, okay.’ The Coelacanth sat down again and settled back in his chair.

‘Now then,’ Prong said, smiling down the length of the table. ‘Seventy-two hours ago, we 
successfully tested a prototype. In only a few days our allies will be sending deputations to view the weapon in action. High ranking delegates from the Ghast Empire will be among them. We’ll see who 
looks unimportant when we reveal a dimension-shifting spacecraft to them.’ He peered down the table.

‘So wash your robes, alright?’

*

The airlock swung open and Smith found himself looking into the French quarter of Tannhauser Gate. 
Flags hung from the ceiling of the space station; accordion music drifted through the air. A poster 
showed a girl in armour, the stars of Europe forming a halo over her bowl-cut hair. There was even 
scrollwork on the ornamental lamposts, although it looked rather flimsy compared to that back home. 
Still, Smith thought as he stepped in, Europe didn’t smell of cheese and nobody had demanded to see 
their papers yet.

In fact, nobody seemed to have noticed them at all. Two ancient men sat under a sign that read 
café
. As Smith approached they looked away.

‘It’s a caff!’ Carveth said. ‘Who wants a
sandwich de bacon
, then?’

Smith put out his arm to bar her way. “Careful, Carveth. They like strange food here,” he added, 
lowering his voice to a sinister whisper. “Even their national anthem is about mayonnaise.”

Like gunslingers arriving in a suspiciously deserted town, they walked warily down the street.

Smith wondered what all the strange signs meant. A poster advertised something called
Le Chat Noir
– a public convenience, presumably. The smell of bread floated out of a shop called
Le Maison de Pain
.
Maison
meant
house
, Smith recalled. Presumably it was a dentist’s, or some rum kind of knocking-shop.

Rhianna took her smoking tin from her bag. ‘Are we in Amsterdam yet?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Smith replied. She looked disappointed. ‘If I remember rightly, the Europeans 
divide their territory into quarters, depending on which mini-country they’re from. At least. . where are we?’ Taking a deep breath, and mustering all the European he could remember from Form 3B, he 
approached the two old men outside the café.

‘You there,’ he declared. One of the old men moved one of his eyes. ‘Can you direct me to the 
Rue Charles de Gaulle, my good man?’