God Emperor of Didcot (30 page)

Behind him, Major Wainscott was calling to his men. ‘Everyone, make safe the city! Secure the walls and – what was that?’

Smith looked round. The ground had moved, very slightly, but enough to notice. Dust stirred around his boots. He glanced at Suruk, who nodded once, gravely.

‘Hell,’ said Wainscott, and something huge rose out of the Ghast compound. It came up in jerks like a marionette, buzzing and clanking, looming over the houses like a colossal gallows. An oval cockpit of shining metal, pumping out greenish smoke, and under it a dozen metal tentacles swaying like kelp, flexing and stretching. Vast legs unfolded. In the centre of the cockpit there was a single window, and behind it, in some kind of gas, a horrible grinning face peered over the battlefield.

They gawped as it unfolded against the skyline. For a second it looked down at them, and they gazed back.

Then hatches blew open on its flanks, and with a dreadful howl it took a step towards them.

‘Walker!’ Smith yelled. ‘Take cover, everyone! Get down!’

Ch-chunk
– bombs sailed from it, cut lazy arcs through the air and crashed into the city. Black mist rose. Men, M’Lak and Ghasts ran, and those caught in the smoke gargled and fell down dead.

‘It’s a Marty war-machine!’ someone cried. ‘We’re trapped!’

Wainscott was calm and grave. ‘Then we must die like Spartans, men,’ he said, reaching to his belt buckle, ‘nude!’

‘Wait.’ Smith put his hand on the Major’s arm. ‘We don’t need to drop our trousers to show it that we’re men. Leave this to me.’

Wainscott paused, clearly weighing up the attraction of bagging the Aresian compared to de-bagging himself.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, alright then. What’s your plan?’

‘I may be able to outflank it, but I’ll need you to get its attention.’

‘With pleasure!’ Wainscott reached for his belt again.

‘By shooting, preferably.’ Smith turned to Suruk. ‘Shall we call for it?’

Suruk nodded and raised a fist. Smith followed suit.

They shook their fists three times and held them out.

‘Stone,’ Smith said.

‘Rabbit,’ Suruk said. ‘Stone beats rabbit. The kill is yours. Good hunting, friend.’

The war machine strode through the city, hooting and bellowing. Poison-grenades flew out of its flanks; its tentacles smashed brick and overturned cars; its desiccator-cannon turned mortar and men to dust.

Smith ran through the back alleys. The walker honked like an ocean liner, drowning the sound of his boots on the cobbles and the pounding of his breath.

He reached the warehouse of the East Empire Corporation and ran inside. It was dark and empty.

Marble clattered underfoot. More honking, closer now.

He bounded up the stairs. On the first floor were the tea rooms, sealed chambers where the testing took place. On the second, the storage vats. The third floor was the roof.

He burst into the sunshine and the roar of guns.

Smith ran to the edge of the roof. The walker waded through the city as if through a pond. Plasma shells glowed around its hull. A sort of halo throbbed around it, dissipating the gunfire. Bloody force-field. His rifle would be useless.

How the hell did you stop a thing like that? The only weakness would be the pilot, safe in the cockpit. Think, he told himself. Aresians, horrid blancmange things that they were, lived off blood and had a very weak immune system. For a moment he considered blowing his nose down the end of the rifle barrel, but the pilot would almost certainly be immunised against human germs.

Maybe tea would poison it. But how could he get the machine to drink tea?

And besides, what was that little figure on top of the walker, cackling with glee and shaking its fists at the city below? Some sort of Ghast, surely, but one with a metal eye. . .

462 laughed as the walker knocked down one of Urn’s civic buildings. A foul smell rose up and the machine’s air vents slammed shut to block out dangerous microbes. It stopped and lifted one of its massive legs, looked at the sole and made an angry metallic sound. It had trodden in the sewage works.

462 stopped laughing and coughed into his trenchcoat.

Having scraped its foot clean on the remnants of a pub, the walker lurched onwards, gunfire crackling against the hull’s force-field. 462 cackled and banged on the roof.

‘Turn left! To the orphanage!’

Something glinted on one of the buildings. There was a puny human there, above the word TEA printed on the brickwork. 462 wondered if he ought to climb inside the walker where the force-field would protect him. No, he decided, even British humans would not be stupid enough to try to fight a war-machine of this power.

He had only ever known one person idiotic enough to try, and by now the Master of Armour would have dealt with him. He squinted at the figure as it lifted a rifle, and suddenly he knew that the Master of Armour was dead.

‘
Ak, fak
,’ he said.

The shot hit 462 in the leg and knocked him off the walker. He dropped from sight. Smith smiled – and the walker turned towards him.

The desiccator-beam drew a searing line across the roof.

Smith ran to the door and charged down the stairs, hearing rubble fall behind him.

He reached the second floor, panting. The war machine honked. It loomed up in his imagination, a vast silver thing like a kettle on legs. Yes, he thought, almost a walking urn—

On the other side of the office was a sampling-urn.

Smith switched it on, grabbed packets of tea and dumped them in the top. He’d come up with a plan once he’d had a drink.

With a sound like the wrath of God, the walker ripped the front off the building. It dipped its cockpit, and the window filled the hole in the wall as if a helicopter were hovering outside. Floodlights threw Smith’s shadow across the urn. Behind the glass the pilot drooled and grinned.

Tentacles wriggled into the room. A hollow spike slid from the tip of each tentacle: syringes, for collecting blood.

A syringe darted out, quick as a snake, and Smith threw himself down and it punched into the urn. There was an awful sucking sound. He drew the Civiliser, raised it in both hands and shot the walker in the vents.

Hot tea sprayed the cockpit. Tea fumes rushed into the vents. The Aresian sucked in, expecting Smith’s blood, and got a mouthful of Earl Grey instead. The pilot spat and thrashed with rage, tentacles battering at the glass. Then, suddenly, it shuddered, froze and slowly sagged across the controls. The metal arms flopped onto the floor.

‘Blimey,’ Smith said.

He staggered outside to the sound of cheers. Wainscott leaped up and down before the war machine. ‘There you go, you dirty bugger! What d’you think of that then, eh?’

‘I think you should put your trousers back on,’ Smith said, and he fainted.

Wainscott looked down at him. ‘Strange,’ he observed. ‘Fancy fainting at a man with no trousers.’

Carveth lay in her bed, her eyes shut tight. ‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘How crap is that?’

Dreckitt stood next to the bed. There was not much space in her cabin, and he seemed too big, out of scale.

‘You’re not dying,’ Dreckitt said. ‘You’ll pull through.’

‘I feel like a tortoise that’s been turned onto its back in the hot sun,’ she gasped.

‘A tortoise?’

‘You know, a turtle? Same thing. It’s not fair!’ Carveth cried. ‘My first battle and this happens to me! I’m not even two and now I’m going to die!’ She began to cry. ‘You know what? I’ve seen nothing people wouldn’t believe. No attack ships on fire, nothing. Sod all. I got made, I had a few hangovers, got no nookie, and then I died. And now all these moments will be lost, like farts in a hurricane. I don’t want to die having seen so little of life and having fat legs.’

‘You’re not for the Big House,’ Dreckitt promised. ‘You’re only sleeping the little sleep, sister.’

She opened her eyes. ‘I’m going to a better place,’ she whispered. ‘A place with green fields, and ponies, and maybe the odd unicorn.’

Wainscott put his head around the door. ‘Hello,’ he said, and he stepped into the room. ‘Heard you were in trouble. Can’t have that. So, where’s the patient?’

‘She’s down here,’ Dreckitt said. He got out of the way.

Wainscott nodded sagely. ‘Polly, is it?’ He leaned over her. ‘Polly? Can you hear me, Polly?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Good. I want you to open your eyes for me, Polly. Can you do that?’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Try, Polly.’

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

‘Good,’ Wainscott said. ‘Now, listen. You’re going to pull through, Polly. You’re going to get better, and you won’t die, and you know why?’

‘No,’ she said weakly.

‘Because I bloody say so! Die on my watch? You’d be lucky! Now get out of bed before I court-martial you for wasting time, you lazy sod! There,’ he said, ‘that should do it,’ and with that he left the room.

‘Nutjob,’ said Dreckitt, feeling rather disappointed.

The door opened again and Wainscott looked back into the room. ‘I heard that.’ He left, closing the door behind him.

‘Oh well.’ Carveth sighed. ‘Suppose I’d better live, then. Don’t want to get court-martialled.’ She blinked. ‘Don’t suppose you could check my stitches, could you?’

They met in the palace on the next day. In the Great Hall, where the Senate of Urn had gathered, four hundred citizens waited and talked. Some wore armour and carried guns, others had on their work-clothes. All were Teasmen, free people of Urn.

Light streamed in through the domed glass roof, throwing wedges of brightness across an Imperial flag that hung from the apex, surrounded by motes of dust. A small group of M’Lak chatted with a local journalist.

Wallahbots rolled through the crowd, serving tea. The pictures of the Hyrax had been pulled down and burned.

The severed heads had been buried decently, the propaganda screens smashed and tossed into a skip.

There was a long crack in the marble floor and bullet holes against the far wall. Nobody had tried to clear those up, and nobody would. It was here that the Hyrax’s fanatics had been swept aside by a horde of angry citizens: democracy in action.

As Smith entered he caught snatches of conversation.

‘Started the clear-up already,’ one of the soldiers was saying. ‘Once the drones’re done with the city we’ll have them help out with the tea harvest. They’re only too happy to join in. Thought we’d pulp ‘em for surrendering or something.’

A solid man in a cap of office nodded. ‘It’ll be hard work, but nowt t’British working man can’t handle. Have to put it t’guild once new Senate’s voted in.’

‘I just grabbed the back of his coat and started pounding this big round thing – oh, hello Boss.’

‘Hello Carveth. Up and running again?’

She nodded and pulled up her shirt. Her midriff was wrapped in bandages. ‘I started to die but I got told off.’

‘I came to see you, but you were sleeping,’ said Smith.

‘You did a lot of good work back there.’ Smith saw Rhianna leaning against the opposite wall.

She waved. Where’s Suruk? Smith mouthed, and Rhianna pointed. The warrior lounged in the shadows, a sports bag by his feet. Smith tried not to think about what it might contain.

The doors at the far end of the room opened. Wainscott entered, followed by W. ‘Alright, no funny business,’ said a voice, and behind them filed out a group of Edenite captains, several gaunt, dusty praetorians, and the Grand Hyrax.

They were a battered looking lot. The Edenites looked confused and hurt, and several had red eyes, probably from crying. They looked so woebegone that Smith almost pitied them. Behind them the praetorians hissed and snarled, surly and all the more angry without a means of venting their rage. They still wore their leather coats, although these would soon be taken to make office chairs for the war effort. As they entered Carveth bent over and performed an insulting mime with their death’s-head flag.

But the real prize came last. Men and women scowled and clenched fists as the God Emperor of Urn emerged. A nasty rumble ran through the room, a ripple of muttered abuse. ‘Traitor.’ ‘Murderer.’ ‘Beardy tit.’

The Hyrax wore a long white gown and his facial hair was even wilder than usual. His eyes had a mad, cornered quality quite appropriate in a man named after a sort of feral guinea pig.

‘Apostates!’ he shouted at the people. He made a sudden break for freedom, but Wainscott grabbed him by the collar.

‘No we don’t, old son,’ Wainscott said.

Someone had brought a stereo into the hall, and they all stood while ‘Jerusalem’ was played. As the music ended, W stepped forward and coughed into his palm.

‘Hello everyone,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come.’

His long, battered head swung left to right as if on a hinge, taking them in. Under his moustache his mouth pulled itself up into a smile, fighting against the current of his face.

W said, ‘Today we are here to receive the surrender of the occupying forces. The whole of Urn will be given its liberty, and power will pass to the Senate again. Once again, Urn will be a free planet under the protection of the British Space Fleet.’ He smiled a little more freely, as if satisfied that it would not damage him to do so.

‘This is just the beginning, citizens! Today we have boiled a pot whose steam shall be seen across the entire galaxy. The tea must flow, and it shall! The banner of the British Space Empire will be unfurled across a thousand worlds, carried forth by the citizens of Urn, and before them the tea will flow like a steaming brown river of shi—’ He coughed violently – ‘of shimmering moral fibre.’

Sudden movement at the side of the hall, and the Hyrax broke free of his guards, spun around and snatched a sword from one of the soldiers. He leaped into the middle of the room, brandishing it before him, and jabbed a grimy finger at W. ‘Kill this man!’ he yelled. ‘Kill him!’

Nobody moved. Even the Edenite captives looked unimpressed.

‘Your powers are useless here,’ W said. ‘They always were.’

The God Prophet snarled and waved the sword. ‘Curse you to a thousand hells! Well then, which one of you cowards will fight me, eh? One to one, my blade against yours! My god – me – against your decadence! Who’ll take me on? You, you wheezing wreck? You, you stumpy blonde Jezebel? Or you, the one men call Smith?’ The madman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, you. I hear you’re a good fighter. Will you face me, heresiarch?’