God Emperor of Didcot (28 page)

Suruk sprang to his brother’s side and held up a wine bottle. ‘Match,’ he said.

Morgar lit the rag with a crème brûlée torch. Suruk tossed the bottle into the tank, slammed the hatch shut, and the two ran back to the skimmer. Morgar threw a lever, the electromagnet died and the skimmer broke loose from the stricken hover-tank as smoke began to pour from the hatches. Battle roared around them. The Ghast tank pitched into the ground, billowing smoke as they sped away. Suruk turned to Morgar and chuckled.

‘And that,’ Morgar said with deep conviction, ‘is what happens when we play golf!’

Gilead grinned as his men loaded up. Somehow, the rebels had managed to goad sky dragons into the fight. They would be fine creatures to hunt, especially with chainguns.

‘Enhanced vocalisers on-line,’ his metal body told him.

The long room rang with his hard voice.

‘Fly, my brothers, fly!’ Gilead cried. ‘Once I’ve finished speaking. Ride out like the angel of apocalypse! Bound into their midst in your special armour and show them your—’

The lights went off.

‘Tits!’ said Gilead.

Something crashed outside. The lights on the computers flickered out like dying eyes. Around him, in the sudden shadow, he heard the falling whine of a thousand motors shutting down. Gilead stood there, too shocked to move, like a virtuoso silenced mid-cadenza.

The skytroopers stood around him, immobile in their battlesuits. Behind each faceplate, a pair of eyes flicked from side to side, horrified; a mouth opened wide, goldfish-dumb behind glass.

Gilead tried to take a step back and found that he could not. Was something wrapped around his legs? He tried to look down. He could not do that either. Fear broke over him like a wave as he remembered that his body was made of metal too. He was as helpless as his men.

One by one, the skytroopers started to topple over.

Gilead watched them fall, the slow wobbling and the inevitable crash, like mechanical skittles.

The emergency systems were working in his chest. He could still breathe, but the less essential parts of his robot body were shutting down. The enemy would be here soon.

Terror prickled up the spine he did not have.

‘Bladder control, off-line,’ his metal body said.

*

The skytroopers dropped out of the air. One moment they leaped into battle, and the next they fell like poisoned birds. To Carveth it seemed as though they had been turfed out of Heaven.

Their armour was strong. A few blew up on contact with the ground, but most just lay there, statue-like. The pulse weapon had worked: every computer within five hundred yards was dead.

Smith pointed to the city wall. ‘Landing!’ he called, and Rhianna nodded and the flock of sun dragons swooped towards the wall. The city spread and grew details as they came in. Carveth could see the fortresses of the Ghasts and Edenites and the palace of the Grand Hyrax, and crowds spilling out from all of them. Their battle was far from over, in fact the real fighting was about to begin.

From his fortress inside the city, 462 saw the train rush over the horizon and barked out the order for it to be destroyed. He knew the humans needed to get into the city and had expected them to try to ram the gates.

The Master of Armour snarled into the bio-com. Half a dozen tanks split from the battle and pounded the train with shells. In a great bloom of flame it ignited, taking two tanks with it; wreckage thumped the gates, rocked them, but did not blow them open. Force Common Toad and Force Unicorn were trapped on the plain.

The Deathstorm Legion drew back and regrouped. The M’Lak skimmers and Imperial tanks had fought hard and the ground was littered with smashed craft from either side. But the Legion was used to tough enemies. The praetorians whirled and prepared to charge Common Toad. It would be hover-tanks against civilian vehicles, bio-steel against human flesh. The Teasmen would be wiped out.

Smith sprang onto the city wall. Rhianna slipped down beside him and between them they helped Carveth out of her stirrups. Behind them, the warm air was full of noise: the wrenching of metal, chatter of guns and the steady, constant pulse of disruptor fire. ‘Now what?’ Carveth said.

‘We have to get the gates open,’ Smith replied. ‘If the others can’t get into the city, we’re buggered.’

‘Is there a key?’ Carveth said.

Smith pointed along the wall. The gates stood fifty feet high and almost as broad, locked and reinforced. There were barricades in front of the doors, heaps of objects outlawed by the God Emperor. Every few seconds a head would pop up from behind the barricades and glance around like a crazed meerkat.

‘What now?’ Carveth demanded. Something big exploded to the west and she flinched.

‘We have to get to the gate controls. And I’d put money they’re behind that barricade.’

Carveth said, ‘Maybe you could lure them away? If they went after you, I could open the gate.’

‘Good plan. But what would get them going enough to leave their positions?’

‘A bunch of witch-burning, pagan-hating lunatics?’ She frowned. ‘Tell you what. I’ll borrow Rhianna for a moment and we’ll think about it.’

*

Like a gunfighter in the Old West, Rhianna stepped into the middle of the street. Thirty yards down the road, the Hyrax’s men were reinforcing the barricade, piling up televisions as if making a fort from building bricks.

‘Excuse me?’ Rhianna said.

They ignored her. One of the main tenets of their cult was misogyny, and it was less effort to ignore a woman than bludgeon her.

‘Excuse me!’

A wide-eyed young man nudged his commander, a hoary old madman wearing a sandwich board on which he had chalked the Crusadist edict of the day. The two exchanged a few words, and sandwich waved to his colleagues and pointed to Rhianna. The barricade came to life and one by one forty fanatics turned to look at her.

‘Thank you,’ she called. ‘Now, I’d like to open up a discussion with you all.’

From his vantage point on the city wall, Smith lifted the rifle. So this was Carveth’s plan, was it, using Rhianna to get their attention? He’d be having stern words with her later. Smith was new to this relationship stuff, but letting your pilot use your lady friend as cultist-bait was probably not the done thing.

Rhianna cleared her throat loudly. ‘I reject your theocratic fascist regime!’ she declared. ‘The subjugation of my sisters through inane propaganda is a crime against herstory and the false etymology of the so-called God Emperor merely sustains a phallocentric conspiracy!’

Sandwich board was joined by a man wearing a sack and carrying a rocket launcher. He had attached a large picture of the Hyrax to his scalp with a staple gun. Staples looked at Rhianna for a while, shrugged and tapped his temple with a finger. ‘Nutter,’ he said.

Smith cursed. It’s not working. The Crusadists aren’t taking the bait. I should never have let Rhianna go near them. Now she’s in danger. Dammit, there isn’t much time—

Carveth shoved Rhianna out the way. ‘Let the expert do it,’ she said. ‘Hey, wankers!’ she yelled at the Hyrax’s men. ‘Yeah, you, with the thing on his head! You’re crap, your God Emperor kisses ant-man arse and I hate you! Oh, and if that doesn’t bother you, then get this: Free Speech and Democracy!’ she yelled, and with that she pulled her breastplate aside, lifted her T-shirt to her chin and did a little dance.

Smith had known the battle would be tough, but he had not anticipated being repelled in quite this manner. For a stunned second nobody moved, and then a voice screamed, ‘Behold! The bumps of Beelzebub!’ and as one the whole pack of cultists surged from the barricade.

Carveth did not much notice – she was far too busy swaying at the waist to show off her heresies to their best advantage – and Rhianna grabbed her by the arm. ‘Let’s go!’ she called, and Carveth snapped back to reality and realised that a horde of madmen was coming to murder her.

They ran. Bullets clipped past, wild and badly-aimed and, as Carveth and Rhianna passed the gates, Smith got a bead on the man with the picture stapled to his head.

Get her into cover, Carveth, he willed, and to his surprise the android seemed to wake up and she and Rhianna ran into a side street, each tugging the other along.

Smith put the crosshairs onto the back of the rocket launcher. Here we go, he thought with satisfaction, and he pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit the launcher and blew it apart. The explosion caught the spare rockets on Staple-head’s belt and that, as Smith had hoped, caught the wads of condensed explosive strapped to half a dozen other cultists. The whole horde blew up fifty yards from the city gates. Guns, cloth and scraps of Crusadist dropped in front of the gates.

Smith hurried down from the wall and found Carveth and Rhianna at the bottom, waiting for him.

‘Bloody good work,’ he said. ‘That was brave of you both.’

Carveth shrugged. ‘Typical, isn’t it? Several million men on this planet and the only one I get to show my bits to looks like Rasputin.’ She closed her chest-plate. ‘Still, it just goes to show: if you want to get the doors opened –use the knockers.’

462 was studying a holographic projection of the city, collating battle reports. All seemed well outside: the humans were fighting keenly, but the Deathstorm Legion was holding its ground, keeping the raiders from the city gate. Within the city, the Hyrax had sent his men on a mission to kill anyone hindering the righteous, which, 462 expected, would keep the city-folk quiet until the battle was won. The train had been destroyed and without it the attackers could be wiped out in the open. He smiled and took a sip of pulped minion.

The doors opened and a squad of Edenite soldiers ran in, bulky and pig-faced in armour and gasmasks. The last of them pushed a shopping trolley, and in it stood Captain Gilead.

‘What is this?’ 462 demanded. ‘Get out of there at once!’

‘Bad news,’ Gilead said. ‘They’ve shut down our systems. The skytroopers are out!’

‘What? Out of the city?’

‘Out of the battle! They used an EMP bomb on the walls. We – we just stopped!’

‘So I see.’ 462 took three slow, deep breaths. He stood up and Gilead’s guards took a step back, glancing at one another. 462 approached. A nasty smile spread across his scarred face.

Gilead’s eyes flicked left and right. ‘Look—’ he began.

‘No,
you
look!’ 462’s hand shot out, Gilead flinched and the Ghast’s hard fingers clamped around his ear.

‘Look at this!’ and 462 whirled and strode across the room to the bank of monitors on the far wall, dragging Gilead after him. The trolley weaved on its castors and Gilead howled.

462 jabbed a finger at the viewscreens. ‘Your supposedly elite regiment has failed! Tell me, Gilead, what have you got to say for yourself?’

‘My ear really hurts,’ Gilead said weakly.

‘Silence!’ 462 looked at the screens. ‘What’s this? The gates are open!’ He leaned into the comlink and barked, ‘They’re coming in! Pull back to the city!’

He turned away from Gilead, snarling. So, he thought. If it’s a fight at close quarters that you want, that’s what you’ll get. Nice and close, our strength against yours. He glanced around. ‘You, drone! Take the batteries out of the propagandatron and wire them to this idiot.’

The drone bent to its task. Gilead found that he could move again.

‘Send out your remaining troops,’ 462 said. ‘I want full mobilisation, now!’

‘Yes, sir!’ Gilead cried, relieved to be mobile once more, and he saluted so hard and fast that his metal arm knocked him out.

As Wainscott reached the battlefield, the Ghasts withdrew. Common Toad had arrived unhindered at the city gate and its soldiers were joining Force Unicorn. Inside the gates men and M’Lak climbed down from a host of vehicles, shaking hands and spreading out. Soldiers ran into buildings, threw up furniture to make strong points, scuttled from home to home.

‘Hullo,’ the major said, approaching Smith and his crew. Wainscott was dusty and jaunty, and there was a slightly manic glint in his eyes. ‘Gertie hiding, is he?’

‘The tanks pulled back,’ Smith explained. ‘Headed west, it seems. They’ll be back. Good work on the missile grid, by the way.’

‘Thanks. We rather caught them with their trousers down. Which is ironic,’ Wainscott added, ‘since I often catch enemies with my trousers down. Helps with the air flow,’ he added, noting Smith’s expression. ‘Wind resistance and all. Well done on the gates, Smith. Stick with this chap,’ he said, turning to Rhianna. ‘He’s a good egg. No more than that – several eggs: a veritable omelette of justice. Bear that in mind, young lady,’ he added, jabbing a finger at Rhianna’s chest. ‘Not a lot of girls get to walk out with an omelette.’

Smith pointed and said, ‘Look, Wainscott, it’s Suruk!’

Suruk, Morgar and Agshad strode through the soldiers.

As they approached Agshad gave them all a deep, formal bow. ‘Warriors Smith and Wainscott,’ he said. ‘Fair maiden Rhianna, fair-to-middling maiden Carveth. I greet you all.’

‘Welcome back!’ Wainscott said. ‘Right, everyone, the first and second legs of our attack seem to have gone well. Now, we just need to pull off the third leg and we can all lie back and have a cigarette. But I warn you, it’s going to be tough.’

‘I believe the phrase is “People’s going to die”,’ Suruk said, and he smiled horribly.

‘Let’s get going,’ Smith said. ‘Coming with me, Carveth?’

She nodded, realising that there was no way out of this mess. Once again the swimming pool of life had been tainted by the incontinent toddlers of fate.

From the jeep Susan called, ‘Everyone ready?’ Soldiers loaded weapons, vehicles rumbled and threw up dust, boots stamped and a low, menacing grumble of determination ran through them all. The fighting up to now had been a preamble. This would be the meat of the battle.

Smith looked at Rhianna. ‘I think you should stay here,’ he said.

‘I can manage,’ she replied.

‘It’s not that. You ought to stay back and talk to the dragons. We still need them.’ He patted her on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got incredible powers, Rhianna, just like Morgan le Fay or Mary Poppins. Besides, I can’t make you fight. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position or violate your principles.’