A Game of Battleships (33 page)

‘Let’s get going,’ he said. ‘Wainscott, how about we split up and work our way towards the 
central tower– the one that’s central right now, that is?’

‘Good idea,’ Wainscott said. ‘The one with the heart on it?’

‘That’s the fellow.’

‘Two-pronged attack, meeting in the middle. My chaps’ll flank round the maze.’

Smith nodded. ‘Then we’ll head through that little forest. See you there, Wainscott.’

‘Will do,’ the major replied.

I hope this is right
, Smith thought as he hurried down the steps. Suruk, Rhianna and Dreckitt 
followed. If the
John Pym
was damaged while they were away, they could be stuck here forever. Still, at least it wasn’t raining.

*

The lift was a mass of twisted ironwork and sparks. Captain Fitzroy took the stairs, bounding down the steps three at a time. Emergency lights strobed in the near dark, and she was lucky to reach the bottom without falling end over end.

They were bringing up the wounded from the portside gun deck, wheeling them into the forward 
mess for triage. Captain Fitzroy flattened herself against the wall to let the gurneys go past. Castors squeaked: deep within the ship, something collapsed on itself with a slow metallic groan. A doctor called for the orderlies to bring up the resuscitating gear.

‘Captain?’

She looked down, recognising the freckled young woman on the trolley. Ensign Driscoll, former 
right wing, would not be seeing the lacrosse pitch for a while.

‘Tallulah,’ said Captain Fitzroy, ‘what
have
you been doing to yourself?’

Driscoll spoke through a mix of pain and sedatives. ‘You know that big brass lion attached to the 
mess wall?’

The captain nodded.

‘It fell on me. I can’t –’

‘Say no more, Ensign. Your captain is here. You’ll be right as rain in no time.’

‘I think – I think I’ve lost my leg.’

‘Lost it? Nonsense, Tallulah.’ She pointed down the corridor. ‘Look, it’s just over there. You see?

There’s nothing to be worried about. Just a quick spell in sickbay and you’ll be on the pitch in no time.

We’ll be whacking balls at the Household Division before you can say… can say – surgeon!’

‘She’s fainted, ma’am,’ the medic replied.

‘Patch her up, dammit!’

She hurried to the port gun deck, ducked under a joist and surveyed the chaos within.

The vast chamber had always looked like a mixture of a cathedral and a pumping station. Now it 
was bombed out: several guns had been completely destroyed and the emergency systems had barely 
managed to contain the damage. Most of the fire had been blasted out the airlocks, but shockwaves had 
buckled the roof and strewn the floor with lidar computers and range-finding gear. Cogs stuck out from the far wall like throwing-stars, hurled there by the force of the blast. An electrical cable with a girth like a python sparked and crackled at her boots.

The chamber was full of people: the injured and those trying to keep them alive. Three 
technicians in hazard armour sprayed coolant foam onto a small fire. A pair of ratings carried one of their 
colleagues past her. A gunner hung dead in the rafters, tossed there by the explosion. Twenty yards away, First Lieutenant Collingwood stood beside the wreckage of a railgun, struggling to drag a fallen girder from off the barrel housing.

‘Come on, you idle buggers, lend a hand here!’ he yelled. ‘Mr O’Hare!’ He jabbed a finger at a 
round-faced ensign. ‘Run to the engine room… tell the chief I want three more technicians and two more sparkies. My orders, tell him – no arguments!’

The lad rushed past the Captain, seeming not even to notice her. ‘Status report, Mr Collingwood!’

He was covered in dirt, she saw. His left trouser leg was stiff with foam. ‘Not looking clever,

Captain.’

‘How long ‘til we can get back in the game?’

He shook his head.

‘Well, how long ‘til the remaining guns are functional at least? Come on, man.’

‘Forty minutes, ma’am, maybe an hour.’ He wiped sweat off his brow. ‘It’s not just that, ma’am.

The crew are done in. And some of the lads think there’s nowt can be done, neither – not against a ghost ship.’

‘What? I won’t have that sort of talk. Put me on the main speakers!’

‘Aye aye, ma’am.’ He stepped to the comms post, activated the ship’s address system and rang 
the large brass bell beside it.

‘Pay attention, team!’ Captain Fitzroy did not lean into the microphone; she just put her hands on 
her hips and raised her voice. ‘The enemy have gone into the lead: they got the drop on us and dealt us a low blow. But we’re not out of the game yet. Men, this ship is England – a particular playing field of England, where history tells us all battles are won. I know you have suffered, and I cannot blame you if you are downhearted. But as your captain I ask you this… would you see them burn witches in Picadilly?

Would you call a gang of six-foot rodents your lords and masters? Would you have your children live in an ant farm?’

The shouts from the intercom were almost drowned out by those around her.

‘Gather your strength, crew. Let those who cannot fight leave the field, and let those who still 
can fight refresh themselves on the orange slices of righteousness. Pull your socks up and grab your 
sticks, girls, for the game is far from over!’

There was a raucous cheer; someone called ‘Huzzah!’ Captain Fitzroy turned to Lieutenant 
Collingwood. ‘Ready for action in twenty minutes?’

‘Why, no! Ten’ll be plenty, ma’am.’

‘Good.’ She flicked the intercom to the bridge. ‘Mr Chumble, bring us around. We’re going back 
in.’

*

Suruk took the lead, having the greatest experience as a tracker. The little forest smelled of pine needles and sap. The air was thick and close. Every so often Smith glimpsed the high towers between the foliage and he was relieved that they remained on course.

In fact, this new dimension wasn’t too different to being in the Chilterns, at least not this part of 
it. It was not unlike some of the trips Smith had been as a schoolboy, apart from the dragonflies with smouldering heads, the thing that had snarled at them from the undergrowth – looking like a cross 
between a badger and a corkscrew – and the unnerving suspicion that some of the flowers were watching 
them. At least they didn’t even have to make soup from powder, this time.

The ground was thick with needles, springy underfoot, and Smith was glad that Rhianna had 
worn her boots, even though he couldn’t see her ankles now when she hitched up her skirt. Strange, he 
thought, how erotic he found her ankles. Equally strange that you couldn’t really
do
anything with them.

Such poor design pointed to either evolution or a deity without the basic kindness to indulge his sexual peculiarities. It was all very –

‘Look!’ Rhianna said.

The trees parted, and in the centre of the clearing, next to a clump of the biggest mushrooms 
Smith had ever seen, stood a long table. It was heaped with crockery, as if it had been used as a canteen 
by a passing army. Plates, cake-trays, samovars, teapots and silver cutlery lay in piles. Some of the silver had begun to tarnish.

‘Hell of a place to chow down,’ Dreckitt said.

‘Well,’ Smith replied. ‘They’ve got teapots. They can’t be all bad.’

Suruk raised a hand. ‘Wait.’

Smith knew that tone. He froze. Suruk had stopped in the shade of a tree, seemingly lost in 
thought. Dreckitt paused, his hand halfway to his pistol. Rhianna stood with her head tilted to one side, frowning, as if trying to get some water out of her ear.

‘I heard something,’ the M’Lak whispered. ‘A burbling sound.’

‘You sure it wasn’t a brook?’ Smith replied. ‘Brooks burble.’

‘I fear not, Mazuran. There was whiffling, too.’

‘Whiffling and burbling? Sounds bad. Any thoughts, men?’

Dreckitt pulled down the brim of his hat. ‘In my line of work, the only thing that whiffles and 
burbles at the same time is a wise-guy on a grift. And I’m not talking some bindle stiff pulling a scam behind the eight-ball. Hell, in this joint I’m just glad none of us is called Dorothy.’

‘Thanks for that,’ Smith replied. ‘If you could just transla –’

He was drowned out by a roar from beyond the trees. Something huge ran behind the firs in 
great bounding hops, the saplings bending to let its massive body through. Each bouncing step pounded 
the earth, setting the trees shuddering. A great scaly back appeared above the conifers, lifted by flailing, undersized wings. A neck thicker than a man’s waist snaked between the trunks, and Smith glimpsed a 
hideous face, all horns, buck teeth and glowing eyes. It saw them. It roared again.

‘Wait, Rhianna,’ Smith said. ‘You could communicate with the sun dragons back on Urn. Tell it 
that we’re friends.’

‘Okay.’ She pressed her fingertips to her temples. ‘I can feel its mind, but it’s all nonsense.

Somebody wants to kill something – that’s clear, at any rate.’

‘Me,’ Suruk said. He stepped past her, giving his spear an experimental swing. ‘I shall deal with 
this being. This is a battle I must fight alone. And in case it isn’t, I would prefer it if you let me have the first go.’

Smith shook his head. ‘Sorry, old chap, but we’re doing this together.’

The creature lumbered forward. It had short legs, but the wild flapping of its wings helped lessen 
their burden. Trailing whiskers like those of a catfish brushed the trees. The eyes burned red, the mouth gabbled and snarled.

Dreckitt checked his pistol. ‘What a way to go out,’ he growled. ‘Twenty-five years on the mean 
streets, and I get blipped off by a turkey the size of a dinosaur.’

‘Maybe it’s karma,’ Rhianna replied. ‘You know, for like all those Thanksgivings or something?’

The monster ran its huge hand down the table, scooping up a clattering heap of crockery, and 
hurled it at them. Rhianna threw her hand up, shielding the four explorers, and the air was full of 
exploding china. Its head – somewhere between a catfish and a bald rabbit – swung down on its python- 
like neck, and peered at them all.

Smith raised his Civiliser, looked down the barrel, and shot it between the eyes.

The beast stumbled back, shook its head as if to clear it, and lashed out. Smith ducked aside, but 
not quickly enough, and the hand knocked him onto the table, amid the three-tiered ruins of a massive 
cake-stand. Smith twisted, broken china crunching under his weight, and fired twice. The bullets 
disappeared into the monster’s chest as if into porridge. It reached out for Smith’s head – 
And Suruk brought his spear down on the beast’s fingers. It roared and backhanded him, and 
Suruk parted company with the ground. He flew briefly upwards before making loud contact with a tree.

Dreckitt’s gun banged once, twice, and the creature drew back to the far end of the long table.

‘It’s immune to my rod!’ Dreckitt snarled.

The beast leaped onto the far end of the table. The table flipped up, the edge nearly hitting Smith 
under the chin, and a rain of saucers broke on the ground around it.

Suruk staggered out of the forest, rubbing his head.

‘Suruk, be careful!’ Rhianna called. The goggle-eyed head swung to face her.

To her credit, she did not scream. Less to her credit, she reached out and said, ‘Hey, I can totally 
see its tonsils. Check it out, guys…’

Smith tore the tablecloth from the remains of the tea party. ‘Over here!’ he called, flapping the 
cloth. ‘Look!’

He sidestepped, waving the cloth like a matador. The monster turned, quick and lithe for all its 
grotesqueness. ‘Run, everyone!’ Smith called. ‘I’ll distract it!’

‘Then what’ll you do?’ Dreckitt demanded. ‘Give it indigestion?’

Smith ignored him. The creature drew back and up, its little wings working as if to break off its 
back and fly away. It blocked out the sun; the trees and spires disappeared as it rose into the air. The long neck drew back, like a cobra’s body.

The monster pounced. ‘Run!’ Smith yelled, and he threw himself and Rhianna out of the way. Its 
claws, like two thrashing spider-crabs, shot past him, clenching on one of the huge mushrooms as if to throttle it. The beast’s head darted forward, bit a steak-sized chunk out of the mushroom and spat it out in a cloud of spores.

Smith found himself on top of Rhianna in thick grass, which had been much better when he’d 
imagined it in private. He hauled himself upwards, grabbed his gun and helped Rhianna to her feet.

Beside him Dreckitt raised his pistol. Suruk, still groggy, pulled his spear back to throw.

‘Now then…’ Smith said, lifting his rifle.

Rhianna touched his arm. ‘Wait, Isambard. Look.’

The monster stood a little way off, one of its arms raised as if to strike. But it was still: the great eyes were fixed on its own talons, not on the humans below. Slowly, the monster moved its claw away

from its face, gazing at it in awe, like a medieval artist discovering the wonders of perspective.

The shot was perfect, despite the cloud of fungal spores surrounding the creature’s head. One 
good bullet and it would be ready to adorn the trophy wall, next to the stuffed praetorian. But there was something in its expression that made Smith pause, a mixture of wonder and confusion that seemed eerily familiar.

‘It ate all the mushrooms,’ Rhianna said.