God Emperor of Didcot (26 page)

‘Hey, Boss!’

Smith glanced up. Carveth sat on a strange, turbine-like device, surrounded by a little group of engineers, both human and M’Lak. Her machine looked antique and purposeless, like pieces torn off a steamship and reattached at random. She had salvaged a armoured breastplate from somewhere, which was too big for her.

Swinging her legs, she looked less than intimidating.

‘What’s that you’re sitting on?’ he called.

‘Whopping great vircator,’ she replied. Soldiers slipped around Smith, a continual murmur of ‘’Scuse us, mate,’ like a stream passing over rocks. ‘Had to use some bits from the
Pym
, especially for the, um. . . motor,’ she finished, pleased to have remembered the technical term.

‘I tell you, one blast from this thing and we’ll shut down every computer within five hundred yards. There won’t be a calculator within a half mile good for anything other than writing “boobies” upside-down – assuming this thing works, that is. Still, you can’t really test a bomb, can you?’

‘Barnes Wallis did.’

‘You mean you can test a bomb? Ah, hell.’ She shrugged. ‘Bit late now, I suppose. Hey, what do you think of my body armour? It does wonders for the figure. I’ve got bigger turrets than a dreadnought in this thing.’

‘Very nice.’

She twisted round so as to give him a profile view.

Sticking her armoured chest forward she said, ‘Like you always say, Boss: up and forward!’ She thumped the vircator with her palm. ‘With this thing, you’ll win the war. Or the Turner Prize.’

Smith wondered if she hadn’t been at the sauce. A hand came down on his shoulder and he glanced around. It was Susan, the tall engineer from the Deepspace Operations Group.

‘Alright?’ she said. ‘The boss wants a word with you, matey.’

‘Wainscott? Where is he?’

‘Follow me.’

She strode off, and Smith waved to Carveth. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, now!’ he called, and he followed Susan through the crowd. ‘Where’re we going?’

‘Up to the front. The others are waiting for you. They won’t kick off the speeches until you’re there.’

Men moved out of the way in front of them. Only now did Smith realise that the soldiers were all facing in roughly the same direction, watching the far side of the hall. It was like waiting for a concert to begin.

‘Speeches?’ he said to the back of Susan’s head. ‘I hope that doesn’t involve me!’

‘ ’Course,’ she replied. ‘The bloke who brought the Morlocks here, the one who fought off the suicide pirates of Yull – people’ll look up to you.’

‘Only because I’ll be on a stage.’

‘Rubbish. You give the men something to think about, an example.’

‘Really? I’m an example to follow?’

‘Well, more study than follow, but yeah. Come on.’

Fear and pride wrestling in his gut, Smith followed her.

She fished in her thigh pocket as they walked and took out a small metal box. ‘Here. Swiped them off a dead Goddie. I gather they’ll fit your Civiliser.’

She passed the box to him over her shoulder. It was surprisingly heavy. ‘
Depleted Uranium revolver shells
,’ he read. ‘
Warning: Radhaz
. What does that mean?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Just don’t keep them in your trouser pocket. You don’t want to end up dressing on both sides. Here we go.’

A fat man moved aside and there was a short flight of stairs before them. Susan climbed and Smith followed, and suddenly, like a mountaineer breaking through a layer of cloud, he stood alone. He turned and looked out across a thousand faces, all looking back.

They stared at him, and he stared back, a rabbit caught in a thousand headlights. Seeing the brave, hopeful faces of the men, he realised that he had passed beyond fear: this was terrified paralysis.

Impasse. Very slowly, like a deep-sea diver, Smith made his way to the microphone in the centre of the stage. It seemed a million miles away, on the other side of a desert.

He raised his hand and grabbed the stand as if to choke it to death.

The microphone fell off the end of the stand with a metallic squeal and thumped into the floor. Smith bent down to pick it up. ‘Hello?’ he asked it.

‘Alright mate!’ a cheery voice shouted back in the audience, and there were laughs.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, citizens of Urn, today we save our planet from—’

Someone prodded him in the back. ‘From – Major Wainscott?’

‘It’s not your bloody turn yet,’ Wainscott hissed. ‘It’s my go first.’

‘I’m all in the wrong order,’ Smith said. ‘Terribly sorry, everyone. Sorry.’ He walked to the back of the stage and sat down. ‘God I’m a stupid prat sometimes,’ he told himself. ‘I pity the people I lead.’

‘You’re still holding the microphone,’ Wainscott said.

Smith passed him the microphone and looked down the line of people on the stage. He recognised Wainscott, W, Agshad, Sam O’Varr and, surprisingly, Rhianna. Agshad and Rhianna waved at him. The others were unit leaders, captains in the two-week-old People’s Army of Urn. They looked smart and tough.

He wondered where Suruk was. Not crouched in the ironwork overhead, where Smith would have expected him to be to get a bird’s eye view of the proceedings. The alien had probably gone somewhere quiet to meditate in preparation for battle, to commune with the souls of his ancestors in peace. A sun dragon swooped low over the building and pulled up, looping the loop. For a moment Smith fancied that he could hear wild, cackling laughter coming from its back. Surely it couldn’t be – he squinted, puzzled, but it had zipped out of sight.

Wainscott’s speech was quick and functional. The first stage of the attack would be the seizure of the orbital missile grid by a crack team led by Wainscott himself and accompanied by a number of sun dragons. The missile array would be immediately launched to cripple any Ghast ships waiting off-world or in the spaceport. Then the main assault on the capital would begin.

There were to be three attack groups, named after the sacred animals of the Empire. Group Lion would approach the city wall around the Edenite sector by dragonback, using the electro-magnetic pulse weapon to weaken the Edenite armour before launching a commando raid. This was to be a small unit led by Captain Smith, who, Wainscott explained, was somewhat better at commando raids than he was at holding a microphone.

The second force, Unicorn, would consist of fast-moving light armour: mostly the M’Lak skimmers, but also jeeps and armoured cars built by the Teasmen. This would approach the walls at speed, striking fast and hard at the Ghast hover-tanks as they emerged to defend the city. It would also include a train, loaded with explosives, which would be used to break the city gates. Unicorn, he explained, was to expect fanatical resistance.

The final force, Common Toad, would be the anvil on which the invaders were to be smashed. This would consist of infantry and heavy armour. Once Unicorn had guided the train into position and used it to breach the city gates, Common Toad was to enter the city and begin the fierce street-fighting needed to drive out the Hyrax and his Crusadists. It was anticipated that the Ghasts would leave garrisons inside the city. These would need to be destroyed.

‘None of you will get it easy,’ Wainscott declared.

‘These are serious, determined enemies, many of them specially created for this very task. You can expect this to be a fight to the death. Many of you will not make it back. On the plus side, it’s not raining.

‘So, we on this stage can only wish you good luck and offer you the greeting of the ancients.
Rockaturi te
salutamus!
’ he cried, and he held his Stanford gun aloft.

The hall thundered with cheering.

‘Now I’ll hand over to Captain Smith. Smith, your go now.’

Smith stood up and looked over the soldiers. Their faces were lifted to him: humans and M’Lak, male, female and neuter, young and old, all ready to face the most ferocious enemies the Empire had ever seen. In their eyes was determination and anger, clear and white-hot, at once full of hope and rage, idealism and readiness to fight.

He realised that he had no idea what to say. What could he say to such people? What was there to say that they did not already know? His experience of public speaking was limited to opening a village fete, when he had been mistaken for a prominent horticulturalist. He remembered the question-and-answer session, and grimaced as he recalled his response to a query about pricking-out in rubber gloves.

Rhianna caught his eye and she nodded urgently at the audience.

He glanced round to her. ‘What do I say to them?’ he whispered.

‘Say whatever’s in your heart,’ Rhianna said.

Smith thought about it. ‘Can you hear me alright at the back?’ he asked.

Someone cheered; a thumb was raised.

‘It’s nice that so many of you have managed to make it here today. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I’d like to say a few words.

‘You know, in peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as a modest disposition,’ he declared. ‘But in war–’ Smith stopped, suddenly aware that he knew much less Shakespeare than he’d thought. What did happen in war?

Brazen it through, he told himself. If you’re confident, nobody need ever know. ‘But in war, let him get really really angry!

‘Gertie wants our stuff. Well he can’t have our stuff! Space belongs to the Empire – we saw it first!

‘This isn’t just a war for Urn: this is a war for civilisation itself. Here is our message to the Ghast Empire: if you will not civilise yourselves, then we will civilise every last one of you, to the last ant-man!

‘There are many words that mean a lot to us, words like justice and freedom. And among those words, one phrase stands out today: “Bugger off, ant-people!” ’

Wainscott put his hand up. W pulled it down.

‘So now, as Shakespeare would say, we must imitate the action of the tiger, and fight from dawn to dusk and sheathe our swords from lack of argument, because today we take the war to Gertie and kick his big red arse all over the shop, and if anyone asks on whose authority, you can tell them that Shakespeare told you so! That’s right! Forwards, men! No longer shall the Grand Hyrax sit comfortably on the throne, for today we shall throw him up and blow him off! And now, without further ado, I declare this army open!’

Hands slapped him on the back as he stepped down from the stage. ‘I saw you at the Palladium last year,’ a woman said. ‘Didn’t realise you did political stuff as well.’

They met up outside. Around them, men climbed into machines and the air throbbed with the expectant hum of engines. Carveth watched as a group of engineers strapped the pulse weapon to the back of the dragon she would ride. This is it, she thought, as something like a brick dropped inside her stomach. We’re going to war.

Rhianna toured the beasts with a short, dark-haired man who seemed to be some kind of groom, checking the saddles and patting them down. Once they had looked at the sun dragons that the crew of the
Pym
would use, they moved on to the creatures that Wainscott and his men would take for their attack on the missile grid.

‘Pass me that gun, would you?’ Smith asked Carveth.

She handed him her Stanford gun. Smith looked down the barrel, peered into the mechanism, made sure that it would work. He passed it back. ‘There you go.’

Standing between the dragons, they could not see the army preparing to move out. It seemed as if they were the only people here, surrounded by noise, caught in the eye of the storm. Smith said, ‘Going to be a busy day, from the looks of it. We’ve had quite a turn-out.’

‘I wish I had,’ Carveth said. ‘I’m terrified. One good scare and it won’t just be this dragon that drops its payload.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ said Smith. ‘We need you with us, Ship’s Engineer.’

‘Only because I’m the one who bought the Haynes manual.’

‘Still Ship’s Engineer.’

She nodded. ‘Alright.’ Carveth pulled her goggles down. ‘Let’s go. Hey, look!’

Wings flapped on their right. One sun dragon hauled itself into the air, wings battering the sky until it was flying properly, then a second beside it, and a third. Static crackled at their jaws.

‘Wainscott’s men,’ Smith said. ‘Want a leg up?’

‘Please.’

Carveth put her boot in Smith’s hands and he pushed her into the saddle. She reached behind her, where the pulse engine was stashed, and wrapped the starter cord around her hand.

‘Just follow us,’ Smith said, knowing full well that she would make the journey with her eyes screwed tightly shut.

Two slight, tall figures slipped between the dragons, light on their feet like dancers: Suruk and Morgar. As Smith looked at them, he felt that he could see a similarity in their strange faces that went beyond them being aliens.

‘Hullo,’ he said.

‘Greetings,’ Suruk said. He was eating from a small pot with a spoon. ‘Ah, it is a good day for a fight.’

‘When did you last have a bad day for a fight?’ Carveth asked. ‘And how come you’ve got yogurt?’

‘It is not yogurt. It is Vaseline.’

Smith looked the aliens over. ‘Joining us, Suruk?’

The warrior shook his head. He carried all his knives, and Gan Uteki, the sacred spear of his ancestors, was strapped across his back. ‘No, Mazuran, I shall not. I have come to wish you good hunting. If I do not see you later, then we will meet in the halls of the valiant.’

‘Thank you.’ He glanced at Morgar. ‘So you two are going with Agshad, then?’

Morgar nodded. There was a thick strap across his body and a tube on his back. The heads of a dozen golf clubs protruded from it. ‘We will ride together, all three of us,’ he explained. ‘Just like in the old times. Family day out.’

Carveth looked down from the saddle. ‘Good luck, Suruk. May your enemies be numerous, and the battle around you as thick as you are.’

‘And may you have a thousand chances to lose your cowardice. Be careful of your steed’s dorsal ridges, too. These dragons can be quite uncomfortable – I gather.’

‘Thanks.’ Carveth sighed. ‘You know what I want? I want us to win without any fighting. I don’t want to have to fight anyone at all. I mean, look at me. I’m not built for hack and slash – more slack and hash if I had my way. I want us all to be safe and for me to come home without any of this blood and thunder stuff.’