Chronicles of Isambard Smith 05 - End of Empires (3 page)

‘Emily,’ Carveth said, tensing herself to run, ‘are Stephen and Matilda real?’

Emily threw back her head and laughed. ‘Of course, Polly! They’re right here, in my handbag!’ She reached into her bag and took out a china cow and a china pig. ‘They say hello.’

Well, thought Carveth, at least she hasn’t attacked me yet. Perhaps she really is on the road to recovery. Perhaps soon she’ll be released into the community, and lead a perfectly normal life.

‘You’re vatgrown, aren’t you?’ Emily said. ‘Flesh and blood, like me?’

‘Well, yes...’

‘Well then, let’s have some food! The luncheons at these conventions are always quite delicious. The range and quality of food on offer is really a revelation to the palate. I believe they’re just reheating the fish pie as we speak!’

Nope, Carveth thought, she’s utterly insane. ‘I’ve really got to go,’ she said. ‘I left the iron on. In orbit.’

* * *

The general mobilisation meant that there had been no room to park the
John Pym
at the main spaceport; as a result it was hidden in the construction yard of Nalgath & Spawn, a M’Lak firm describing itself as ‘precision aeronautics contractors and junkyard’. As Smith left the
Pym
, he saw that Nalgath the Scrapper was admiring the nosecone of his spaceship, which was worrying.

‘An impressive piece of metal, that,’ Nalgath said. As usual, he wore a welding mask with the visor flipped back like a raised lavatory seat. ‘I will give you seventy quid for it.’

‘Certainly not!’ Smith replied. ‘This is a high-quality spacecraft, I’ll have you know.’

‘Seventy-two. And five for the lights.’

Ravnavar might have been the greatest of the Space Empire’s colonies, but it was also the most chaotic.

Fifty percent of the population was M’Lak. They were comparatively urbane but had still not been persuaded to give up the ancient pastimes of Formal War and the breeding of enormous monsters, neither of which suited an urban environment. By and large, they were left to their own devices, most of which were dangerous.

The trouble, Smith reflected, was that the M’Lak were just not very much like humans. They had only a vague idea of family and government, no real concept of religion and a very tenuous idea of ownership. Worst of all, they seemed to only barely realise that the Space Empire didn’t exist to supply a free ride from one battlefield to the next. On the other hand, they were extremely tough, good fighters and surprisingly nice chaps, once you got past the skull collecting.

Beside the M’Lak, Ravnavar was full of robots – most of them built out of scrap and despised by other robots for having no blueprints – and a fair number of Kaldathrian beetle people, who served as sanitation officers. Every night, they rolled the city’s dung to the edge of town, where they were building a reeking skyscraper. And somehow, this utter jumble was supposed to halt the Divine Migration of the Lemming Men of Yull.

Smith had been hoping that the Secret Service would provide him with an impressive car, preferably one that could fly and shoot lasers. Instead, they had given him a battered Compton Gnome with a dented bumper and a flower crudely drawn on the roof. The inside smelt of joss even before Rhianna got in it. She had christened it Carma.

They collected Suruk from the station and Carveth from the hotel where the robot convention was taking place. Rhianna was driving, and because she considered licences and tests to be part of an oppressive system, Smith spent the journey gritting his teeth and kicking the floor where he wished the brake was.

‘You’re stressing me out, Isambard,’ she said after the fifth time he had warned her of an approaching hazard. ‘I’ve got to stop and chill out.’

‘But this is a roundabout! You can’t stop here!’

‘Oh,’ she retorted as a dozen horns parped around them, ‘so you want me to chill out while I’m driving along? Now
that’s
just irresponsible. Are these road signs optional?’

Many of the other drivers seemed to think so, including the M’Lak. Two white buggies weaved through the traffic, each festooned with spikes and hell-bent on ramming the other. They made contact, and their loudly-dressed occupants started hitting one another with clubs. The Contact Golf season had begun.

They reached the hall slightly late and still alive, which Smith thought was pretty good in the circumstances. He helped unload the suitcases full of equipment for playing Warro. A full game required a very large number of pieces, which they had purchased beforehand from the Strategy and Tactics department of the NAAFI.

Inside the hall, several dozen people stood around tables, both in military uniform and civilian clothes. Smith was surprised to note that they were not all human: there were half a dozen M’Lak officers in Imperial uniform or traditional hunting gear and two smallish beetle people – lacking thumbs, they would probably be given a head start. Everyone was neater and more wholesome than Smith had expected from a group of board game enthusiasts. In fact, Smith realised, the least hygienic person present was his girlfriend. But she was also the prettiest.

A multi-armed probe drone, reprogrammed for this event, greeted them and handed out lemon squash. ‘Over there, gents,’ it said, indicating an empty table.

‘Right, chaps,’ said Smith. ‘To business!’

They opened their cases and began to unpack the equipment that they would need to play Warro.

Although the idea of a game with model tanks had seemed brilliant at first, Smith had soon realised that painting two hundred of the damned things was going to drive him insane. Instead, he had delegated the work. Now, as his crew produced their efforts, he realised the folly of his plan.

Carveth had opted to paint her detachment a lurid pink. Rhianna, who had taken charge of the infantry, had created less of a company than a commune. Her missile deployment vehicle now sported a selection of teepees in place of warheads. A fair number of her soldiers were armed with flowers and several were definitely not making war, but love.

Suruk opened his case and took out a single mass of spiked plastic. He set it down on the table with considerable pride. ‘I made a few improvements.’

Smith looked at the object, which resembled a castle on caterpillar tracks. ‘What’s that?’

‘My own invention,’ Suruk replied. ‘Fully equipped for the modern battlefield. Look, I made the front out of a combine harvester. That way, when it is charged by the lemming men...’ He chuckled.

‘Hallo, Smitty!’

Smith looked round. On the other side of the table stood a woman wearing a blue Space Fleet jacket. She was about forty, tallish and attractive in an outdoorsy way. Beside her stood a portly android in a waistcoat, a wad of rulebooks jammed under his arm like Christmas presents.

‘Captain Fitzroy, Mr Chumble,’ Smith said, feeling something deflate within him as he spoke. Felicity Fitzroy captained the
Chimera
, a warship significantly bigger than the
John Pym
. Smith had thought he’d seen the last of her on Wellington Prime, but clearly the Service still had need of her tactical skills. Either that or they had called her in to captain the inter-agency lacrosse match.

‘Good to see you,’ Fitzroy said, whirling her arms. ‘I should warn you, though: I’m a pretty dab hand at games. What ho, short stuff,’ she added, staring at Carveth. ‘Shouldn’t you have a few more tanks there?’

‘I traded them for cavalry,’ Carveth said.

‘Tactical decision, you see,’ Smith added. ‘Leaving no element of warfare unexamined in order to defeat the enemy.’

‘Nah,’ Carveth said. ‘I just like horses.’

‘Ladies, gentlemen and beings!’ A large man with a thick moustache had climbed onto the small stage at the far end of the room, followed by a creature like an upright aardvark in a metal jumper. ‘I’m Hereward Khan, and I’m proud to welcome you all to the Service’s yearly strategic planning conference and board games festival. A supercharged logic engine is standing by to decide any rules queries you may have. Today’s winner will receive a lovely decanter and two tickets to an unarmed combat training course of your choice. I’m delighted to say that the prize will be presented by one of the Space Empire’s trusted allies, the ancient mystics of Khlangar.’

‘Whoodle-oo,’ said the aardvark.

And so the game began.

* * *

It was exercise time in Segaran Prison. A line of dejected Ghasts, Edenites and the occasional lemming man stood about in the yard, all bored and slightly dazed.

General Wikwot stepped into the sunshine and looked at his former comrades with contempt. They seemed to have lost the will to do anything. Of course, Ghasts and humans were feeble creatures, but the three other Yull filled him with disgust. They did very little except sit about, sniffle and regret having disgraced themselves by surrendering. Every so often, one would make an attempt to scale the radio antennae and fulfil his duty to the lemming gods by jumping off, but they tended to get pulled down by the guards, whereupon they would roll about on the floor and cry.

Pathetic
, Wikwot thought, rubbing the sleep out of his one working eye. He had offered to help restore morale by slowly killing several of the other lemming men, but the guards had turned him down. They were pathetic too.

Half a dozen Ghasts stood on the prison’s cricket pitch. A young human was trying to morally educate them, but the concept of fair play made the ant-people twitchy and uncomfortable.

Wikwot tried to look innocent as he walked by, hoping that his cheek pouches were not too distended.

‘Look, chaps,’ the guard was saying, ‘it’s pretty simple. Most of you stand around the field. One of you stands at the crease –’

‘Non-conformity!’ yelped the Ghasts. ‘Smash him!’

‘No. He’s the batsman, you see –’

‘Is he the officer?’

‘There isn’t an officer. There’s an umpire, though –’

‘It is our duty to enlarge the Ghast umpire!’ the Ghasts shouted, almost in unison. ‘Crush all resistance!’

Wikwot sneered and kept on walking. He had work to do, and his cheek pouches were full of mud.

It had been hard at first, getting used to captivity. Wikwot knew that he should have sought a death worthy of a true lemming man and hurled himself off a cliff, but somehow he was too important for that. Even in the worst moments of despair, when he had been tempted to nibble his wrists or hammer a carrot up his own nose, he had known that the war god had chosen him for a special task, almost certainly related to revenge.

‘Wit-what?’ the guard called. ‘General Wit-what?’

Wikwot stopped and suppressed a wave of hatred. Not only had the stupid humans failed to beat or torture him, thus demonstrating their fundamentally cowardly nature, they consistently got his name wrong. He wondered whether they did it on purpose. He turned and tried to smile without revealing that his mouth was full of dirt.

‘We’re playing a game of cricket. It’s very good for the morals, you know. Want to help out?’

Wikwot shook his head. Inside his cheeks, saliva had started to mix with the dirt, forming a sort of mud mousse. He broadened his smile, thinking about how much he wanted to rip out the guard’s heart.

‘Are you alright? Your cheeks look puffy. We don’t want you getting ill before your court appearance.’

I am sure you don’t
, Wikwot thought. Soon they would have their reckoning with him – not on the field of battle, with axes, but before some puny judge in the Crown Court of Ravnavar. He pointed to his mouth and shook his head.

‘You’ve got toothache?’ the guard asked.

Wikwot mimed frantically.

‘In your wisdom teeth?’

Wikwot pointed to the cricket pitch and mimed opening a book.

‘Oh, you’re going to read
Wisden
?’ the young man asked. ‘Very good.’

Wikwot slipped around the corner, opened the kitchen bins and spat out several kilogrammes of mud. He reached into the bin and scattered a handful of onion skins over the mud. With luck it would be mistaken for prison chocolate pudding.

He hurried back towards Hutch 25, his current place of residence.

The Ghasts were finally getting round to playing cricket. ‘We’ll play one hand, one bounce,’ the young guard explained.

‘One hand, one bounce, one umpire!’ the Ghasts shouted back.

Wikwot passed them by, giving the players a cheery wave, and entered his room. He closed the door and the smile dropped off his muzzle.

Quickly, he pulled out the bed. The general bent down and picked at the edges of the floorboards. Two came up, and once he had pulled them out, the rest followed easily. He looked down into the hole beneath, big enough to accommodate his body, and his real smile appeared.

* * *

Warro could take minutes to lose and decades to master. The main objective was to defeat the other players via battlefield manoeuvres, whilst placing ones trumps in check by getting to the far side of the board and building a hotel on the opponent’s general. At least, that was the aim of the Primary Board. The Secondary Board, representing psychological warfare, economic structure and magic, required the playing of cards selected from a deck of underground stations. The third and final board involved small robots, personifying the moral arguments underpinning the battle, which continually struck each other. At least two of the playing pieces on the Tertiary Board were technically alive, and bonus points were awarded for inducing them to copulate.

Turn One took two hours. By Turn Two, the game had started to simulate not just the chaos of battle, but the ennui of non-battle. Rhianna fell asleep and Carveth finished her packed lunch and began picking items out of Smith’s. Then Captain Fitzroy made a bold thrust into Smith’s baggage train, using enfilading fire to cover her advance – and rolled a six.

‘Right,’ she declared, ‘I’m playing my joker now, which allows me to make a sweeping assault on your left wing. Because I’m attacking your side, your cavalry has to play a morale card or be destroyed.’

Smith played his morale card, which Fitzroy promptly trumped with her own card, Baker Street Station. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but that’s your cavalry gone.’