God Emperor of Didcot (2 page)

‘Hullo, Suruk,’ he said. ‘How’s things, old man?’

The alien turned and opened his mandibles. He had been polishing the rows of skulls on his mantelpiece and still wore his apron. There was a duster in one of his hard fists and a can of Mr Shiny in the other.

‘Ah, Mazuran. I greet you as a friend. Once again we step into this steel beast and bring the justice of the blade to our enemies. I hear the call of battle once more, and I answer it.’

‘Ah, so they called you up as well, eh? One of those secret service chaps, I suppose.’

‘Uh? Secret service, you say?’ Suruk reached up and quickly removed a pair of sunglasses and a coiled earpiece from one of his skulls. ‘Ah. . . Do you know, they never visited me. They must have got lost on the way or something. I, ah, had a mystic dream instead. Something of that sort.’

‘Well, here we are again. How was your holiday?’

The alien shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It has become touristy. No eccentric locals in their quaint clothing, no pretty pictures on the houses anymore, no lively street parties: sectarian Belfast has really gone downhill. Ah well. Perhaps we shall get a few good battles in space instead.’ He did his equivalent of frowning. ‘I notice the little woman is here again.’

‘Well, she
is
the pilot.’

‘I shall greet her.’ He left the room and Smith followed him. Carveth was in the cockpit, having a last flick through the Haynes manual before takeoff. On the far side of the dashboard, Gerald the hamster toured his cage, sniffing. ‘Ah, so you still live, puny one,’ Suruk said.

‘Hello, Frogboy. You do know that someone’s stuck a dead crab to your face, don’t you?’

‘Now look,’ said Smith. ‘Let’s try to be civil, shall we?’

‘Of course,’ Suruk said. ‘Indeed, I am impressed that you are here, and from the smell of things have not yet shamed yourself at the prospect of danger. I expected you to be the sort of coward that whenever duty calls, nature calls louder.’

‘No, no, glad to be on board,’ Carveth said with a weak smile. ‘Glad to be back in space. Just can’t wait to face those hungry aliens. Super.’

There was an element of truth to this. She was indeed relieved to be away from Earth, largely because she had done little but embarrass herself since stepping off the ship. At the East Empire Company Christmas party, she had mistaken a Yothian trade delegate for a Christmas tree and tried to put a fairy on his head. Carveth was eventually removed, but by then the damage had been done, especially when she knelt down and tried to reach under the Yothian, repeatedly slurring ‘Where’s my pressie?’

‘Well, excellent,’ said Smith. ‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we? Full speed to Proxima.’

‘Right, Boss.’ Carveth leaned over and knocked down two rows of switches with the side of her hand. From deep within the guts of the ship there came a coughing sound, then a steady hum as the engines fired up. Smith pulled on his seatbelt, hearing the growl of the engines creep up through the walls. In a dozen brass dials on the main console, the needles swung trembling into the red. The back of his chair began to shake. Suruk ducked into the corridor. Gerald took shelter in the bottom of his cage.

Carveth wrapped her hands around the throttle and threw the switch and, with a mighty roar, the
John Pym
leaped four feet into the air and stopped.

‘Whoops,’ she said. ‘Handbrake’s on.’

Two hours later, Carveth knocked on Smith’s door, and when he didn’t reply she opened it. The Captain sat in his armchair with his back to her, headphones on, drumming his fingers on the armrest.

‘Ah, ah woomaahn,’ he sang, ‘Woomahn, you hurt me deep inside. Woomahn, on the steed of Sauron you ride. . .’

Carveth leaned over him and lifted the headphones away. ‘Pink Zeppelin?’ she inquired.

‘
Mordor Woman Blues
,’ Smith said. ‘How’s things in the control room?’

‘Dunno – I’m not there, am I?’ She looked at the headphones. ‘I never got prog rock. Can’t see what’s so progressive about singing about a wizard for half an hour, myself. If you ask me, anyone stupid enough to set the controls for the heart of the sun gets what he deserves. Fancy a look outside?’

‘Yes, why not?’

Smith followed her into the cockpit and took his seat in the captain’s chair. Carveth nodded at the navigation computer. ‘I’ve plotted a course for the Proxima Orbiter. Some idiot had set the Didcot system as our destination. We’re bloody lucky I looked before I hit the switches, else we’d be going in the wrong direction.’

‘Oh,’ said Smith. ‘Sorry about that. I was doing a bit of research, trying to see how far we are from things–’

‘From Rhianna, you mean? We’re about eight thousand million miles.’

‘Eight thousand million and twenty eight.’

Carveth folded her arms. ‘Boss, don’t you think this is a bit sad? I mean, she’s almost on the other side of the Empire. Not to mention her being part scary-psychic-alien-ghost-thing.’

Smith sighed. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. She might as well be on the moon. In fact, it would be a damn sight easier if she was. We could just drop round for the afternoon then. It’s difficult to accept that she’s gone for good. She’s not an easy person to forget, you know.’

‘Not if you’ve heard her playing Bob Dylan, she’s not. Christ, she was lucky I didn’t ram that harmonica down her neck.’

Despite himself, Smith agreed. Rhianna had once stood in for an over-medicated member of Spaceport Convention, a reasonably well-known folk band, which had left her with pretensions of musical skill. She had a rather operatic voice that tended towards the squeaky, which, if not actually awful, was certainly an acquired taste.

Carveth shrugged. ‘She had her moments, I guess. She was clever, and good-looking, but on the plus side she was always good for a smoke. That woman had more grass on her than a cricket pitch.’

‘I don’t really know what to do, to be honest,’ said Smith. ‘I rather miss her, Carveth. Maybe she even liked me back.’

‘That whole trying to have sex with you thing makes me think so. Too bad you offered her tea instead. In future, remember that if a woman asks you to debag her, she doesn’t mean for you to put one less in the pot.’

‘Carveth, is there a chance you’ll ever stop banging on about that?’

‘At least I would bang on if I got the chance.’

He glanced away, staring literally into space. ‘It’s very difficult to know what to do. She just seems so far away, even if she ever was interested. Whatever chance I had, I missed it. I almost wish I could forget about her and find somebody else, but I can’t. Where else will I find someone like that again?’

‘Why not just get another one?’ Suruk said from the door. He stepped into the room and stretched his arms and mandibles and yawned.

‘Get another one?’ Smith cried, appalled. ‘She’s not a bloody cheese sandwich, Suruk. More like. . . a sandwich made of gold.’

‘So, inedible,’ Suruk said. ‘Completely useless.’

‘You know,’ Smith said, ‘it all reminds me of a song Rhianna once played. It said, “You don’t what you’ve got’ til it’s gone”. It’s only now I realise how true that is. I think it was by Motorhead.’

‘Joni Mitchell,’ Carveth said.

‘Well, same section.’

‘What, folk?’

‘No, M.’

‘Fair enough.’ Carveth turned her attention to the controls. ‘We’re nearly there. Look.’ She pointed to a speck in the left of the screen, gradually growing. ‘That’s it: the Proxima Orbiter. Funny how they all start to look like baked bean tins, isn’t it?’

Smith nodded. ‘Less 2001 than 57 varieties,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to get tired of space. It’s all rather black.’

‘Don’t feel bad, Captain,’ said Carveth. ‘I know it’s hard about Rhianna, but you’ve got to keep trying. I’ve been waiting for fate to throw me together with the right man – or any man, for that matter – but I always try to keep cheerful. You know, sometimes I think about Rick Dreckitt. I liked him. We went on a date and everything.’

‘He only took you on a date in order to kill you, Carveth.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t, did he? That’s a start, right? We could have had something there.’

‘A gunfight?’

‘Cynic.’ She typed their co-ordinates into the navigation computer. ‘Proc’s picked us up and we’ll come in on autopilot. We’ve got priority docking.’ She spun around in her chair and studied Smith. ‘Come on, Cap, put on a happy face. You’re depressing me.’

‘Just land the ship, would you please?’ said Smith.

‘Lady, gentleman and colonial life-form, you are clear to enter,’ the computer said, and with a hiss the pistons drew back and the airlock doors rolled apart.

The station docking hall was full of soldiers, full of activity and talk. Armoured men chatted with Proxima’s stevedores. Troopers carried boxes of equipment between them, jogging from electric trams to the airlocks that led into their own ships. Mechanical arms flexed from the wrought iron ceiling, loading and refuelling the vehicles.

Three Conqueror landships waited by the far wall while their turrets were checked, occasionally letting out puffs of steam like agitated horses. In the corner, an NCO argued with a clipboard-wielding simulant.

‘Convoy, from the looks of it,’ said Smith.

Technically, the worlds of the British Empire were self-sufficient, but as the war against the Ghasts intensified the battlefront shifted, and one colony after another was equipped and fortified to become the latest outpost of the Pax Britannicus Interstella. No doubt these men would end up as the garrison of some highly-productive factory-world that the Empire could not afford to lose.

An electric car rolled up beside them and a woman in RSF uniform looked them over. ‘Captain Smith?’

Smith felt the slight pang of annoyance he always felt when he saw RSF personnel. They had prestige, good pensions and, most importantly, access to Hellfire Space-Deployment Fighters, something of which he was secretly very jealous. ‘Ah, yes, that’s me,’ he said. ‘Here are my colleagues. We’re here to accept a very important mission, the details of which I can’t tell you.’

‘Great. Hop on. Don’t damage the suitcases.’

They climbed onto the back of the car and it rolled away down the long corridor to the docking offices. Smith pushed a rucksack off his lap and reflected that, although not a difficult man, he would rather have accepted the mission in something other than a luggage cart.

They passed little groups of dockers taking their second morning tea-break, as authorised by their guild. The cart rolled to a stop beside a metal door. ‘Here we are,’ the RSF woman said.

They dismounted. Abruptly, the door opened a crack and a gloomy oblong of a head was thrust into the corridor. It had a thin moustache and messy black hair, and belonged to W, the master-spy. ‘Ah, Smith, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Come on in.’

‘You’re just in time for tea,’ W said, ushering them inside.

They stepped into a large, high-ceilinged room, perhaps once a store, now an office made cosy by the vast amount of junk and paperwork lying about. On the wall there was a bad picture of someone who might have been King Victor. The desk was hidden under files, several maps and a scroll-worked computer. Behind the desk, a Factual Information Bureau poster showed a knight with a pencil moustache marching at the head of a variety of stern-looking citizens. The caption read ‘Forwards To Victory!’

The oddest item stood against the wall: a wheeled tea-urn the height of a man, made of dented, shiny metal with a tap on the front.

A small group of people in caps stood beside the massive urn, dour and serious. They wore short black coats over blue overalls and solid boots: guild uniform.

One grunted at the new arrivals; another gave them a sullen nod. A small, solid man stepped forward from the group. He wore the long brown coat and cloth cap of a high-ranking Union official. Behind his ear was a pencil of office.

‘Isambard Smith, Polly Carveth and Suruk the Slayer,’ said W. ‘This is Wilfred Hebblethwaite, assistant advisor to the Ministry of Food and the Grandmaster of the Collective Union of Plantation Production Associates.’

‘How do,’ the small man said. He shook hands with Smith and Carveth and said, ‘Does it bite?’

‘Not with my hand,’ Suruk said coldly, and they shook.

W nodded at the opposite wall. A simulant sat in an office chair, dapper and attentive. She had the refined, rather sharp features of a Type 64, one of the many models more advanced than Carveth.

‘Well hello there!’ she said, getting up. ‘A pleasure, I’m sure. Call me Hattie.’ She put out a hand. ‘Captain Smith, Mr Slayer, Miss Carveth – always nice to see a fellow sim.’

‘Hello,’ Carveth said.

‘Nice to see you again,’ W said. ‘Hope you’re all well.’ He coughed nastily into his palm, looked at it, thought better of shaking hands and sat down. ‘I’ve called you here to discuss a rather difficult problem that’s arisen of late. But first let’s have some tea. There’s some cups over there, Miss Carveth—’

‘Right,’ said Carveth. She stood up, picked a mug off the side table and put it against the urn and turned the tap.

‘Get your hands off my nozzle!’ said the urn.

‘Bloody hell!’ Carveth cried. ‘There’s someone
in
there!’

‘Course there is,’ said the urn, and with a slow creak it rolled into the centre of the room. She stepped back, astonished. ‘I’m the Grandmaster,’ said the Urn. ‘Weren’t you listening?’

‘I meant for you to pass me the cups,’ W explained. Carveth sat down, looking rather shell-shocked. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. It’s important that these things are done properly.’

‘Quite right too,’ said the Grandmaster from within his urn. ‘If I hadn’t flooded my system with the stuff, I’d want a cup as well.’

‘We could tip one in the top,’ W suggested, filling the kettle.

‘Thanks awfully, but no.’

‘To business, then.’ W brushed down the leather patches on his elbows and crossed his long, thin legs. He was a scarecrow of a man: bony and unkempt. ‘Hattie. Perhaps you could give us a run-down of the situation in this sector?’

‘Certainly!’ she said, and a lens folded down from her Alice band and dropped in front of her left eye. A quick flicker of light burst from the lens and her features became hard and cold, the eyes a little distant. Hypnos, Carveth realised: the hyper-normative operating status of a top-range strategy synthetic. Hattie’s voice was quick and precise. ‘Status report, East Empire Company Sector Twelve. Full mobilisation. All available units diverted to front line to counter anticipated Ghast attack over sectorial edge. Six full divisions in immediate war zone. Fifteenth Fleet on full alert. Equipment and morale optimal. Sector defences graded A2, anticipated A1 in three standard weeks.’