Space Captain Smith (29 page)

‘I have a sharp spear and an empty mantlepiece,’ the alien said. ‘I need no more than that. Now go.’

‘This way!’ Carveth cried, and Smith rushed up the stairs after her to the viewing gallery. Smith booted the door open and charged through, saw the stretcher and the machinery behind it, lifted the rifle and yelled, ‘You there! Stop that at once!’

Ghasts spun around. Smith fixed the sights on 462’s bulbous skull. ‘None of you move, or I’ll bag your leader!’

The Ghasts froze. Electricity crackled between the conduction pillars. Above Rhianna’s head the air had become a little hazy, like smoke.

Smith surveyed the scene with horrified awe. ‘What the devil are they doing down there?’

‘How should I know?’ Carveth said from his side. ‘I’m only a spaceship pilot.’

‘Stop that nonsense!’ Smith called down. ‘Release that woman right now, or by God I’ll put a bullet in your Tesla coils!’

462 attempted a winning smile. He took a step towards the viewing gallery. ‘Of course, Captain Smith. But before you unleash righteous mayhem, perhaps you would like to know what we are doing here, yes? I think so. For that is what unites us, Smith, much as we may fear to admit it.’

Still smiling, he stepped out into the open. Smith kept 462’s head in the crosshairs. ‘You and I are both on the same quest, you see: the quest for knowledge. You too have stared up at the stars and thought,
What secrets does
the galaxy hold, and how can I beat them out of it?
Does it not pique your scientific curiosity to know that you are standing in the room where history will be made? That you, Isambard Smith, are about to witness the greatest experiment your world will ever know?’

‘No, not really,’ said Smith.

‘Oh well. Kill him,’ he said.

Smith fired and the technicians scattered. The bullet hit 462 in the helmet, ricocheted into the ceiling, hit a joist, shot down, struck the control panel and spun the dial to eleven.

Above Rhianna the cloud grew and grew. As it billowed out Smith cried, ‘Oh my God, no! I’ve cooked her head!’

462 laughed triumphantly, despite cowering on the floor in the shadow of the stretcher. ‘Fools! Victory is mine! Look!’

Something was forming in the smoke. Awed, Ghasts and men stared at the column as it twisted and condensed into the shape of a human being wreathed in mist. It turned to look over the room, and in its serene, smokeswathed face Smith caught an echo of Rhianna, the girl he had fallen for and might even have loved had she been a bit cleaner.

The spectre shook its dreadlocks and looked around. 462 broke the silence. ‘Ahahaha! Can you not see? The perfect weapon!’

‘The Angel of the Apocalypse!’ cried one of Gilead’s men.

‘It’s Casper!’ Carveth gasped.

‘We have separated her Vorl soul from her puny human body!’ the Ghast commander cried, leaping up and shaking fists and claws in triumph. ‘Without humanity to limit her, she will serve the ruthless logic of the Ghast Empire! The Vorl will be ours, and with their strength we shall annex the Earth!’

‘Annex this!’ Smith replied. His rifle cracked out and 462 fell clutching his eye.

‘Fight to the last! Anyone surrendering will be shot!’ the Ghast shouted. ‘You will never defeat me!’ he added, and he ran from the room.

Something crashed through the doors behind them and a huge, lumbering thing bounded down the gallery, hissing and drooling. Panic flooded Carveth’s senses: the revolver in her hand seemed to flick up of its own accord, and in a moment she had pumped four shots into the praetorian’s chest. Behind it, she saw dark shapes gathering on the staircase: Ghasts, mustering for an attack. She glanced around. In the main hall, the spirit-thing was taking on a different appearance – it seemed to be stretching into something leaner, more gaunt, altogether more grim. Slowly it reached out towards them with a wisp of a skeletal hand.

‘I think we might be in the soup,’ Smith said. ‘Looks like it’s ghost or Ghasts. Any ideas?’

‘How about we cower and squeal?’

He nodded. ‘For once, you may have a point.’ He turned to the nebulous creature floating opposite them and said, ‘I say, you! I am a citizen of the Brit—’

The Ghasts charged up the stairs.

Things went rather distant for Polly Carveth then. Part of her watched Captain Smith get knocked to the ground by a wave of force that threw her down beside him. Another part of her realised that this wispy thing must be a Vorl. But the majority of her was watching the heads of a dozen Ghast soldiers explode like popcorn. The camera lenses cracked. The control panel of the Tesla machine burst into sparks, frying several Ghast technicians. The first soldier rushed onto the gallery, clambered over the dead praetorian and popped. The second soldier said, ‘
Ak?
’ and burst. And suddenly a crackling bolt of energy ran through the sports hall, overturning the ping-pong tables and singeing the posters about verruca health, and it was all Carveth could do to crouch down and keep her bladder under control. And then it was over. The room was full of dead Ghasts and the smell of ozone. A scrap of paper floated down from the ceiling. It said,
Will patrons kindly refrain from
, but it didn’t get any further because the rest of it was burnt and covered in alien blood. Carveth stood up, ears ringing, numb.

‘Well, that’s told them!’ said the Vorl, surveying the carnage and putting its insubstantial hands on its hips. It floated outside the gallery, its head gaining bulk as it changed back from a skull to a human face.

‘Hand, Carveth?’ said Isambard Smith. Carveth put out a hand and helped pull him up. He brushed his tunic down and said, ‘Thanks. Right then. You, ghost fellow – what the devil do you mean by hiding inside Rhianna like that? I demand an explanation.’

‘You saw what I just did,’ the Vorl replied. ‘You should fear me, Captain Smith.’

Smith took a step towards it. ‘I refuse to be intimidated by a talking fart!’

At his side Carveth whispered, ‘It just rescued us. It is Rhianna.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Smith. ‘Right. Well, thank you, Rhianna’s ghost or whatever you are. Very decent of you to help out like that.’

‘I am indeed Rhianna, but only a part of her,’ the Vorl said. ‘The Ghast machinery separated the two parts of her being. In doing so, they unleashed me. But I am incomplete, and I must return.’

Smith whistled softly. ‘So Rhianna was half-Vorl!

Golly. And to think I fancied her!’ he added in what he thought was an undertone. ‘But… how is that possible?’

‘Rhianna’s parents were hippies,’ the swirling thing explained. ‘They travelled the cosmos, seeking new experiences and enlightenment. One night, they visited the Vorl homeworld. Her mother and my father met up over a few joints and… well, you know.’

‘Of course. I saw a picture. God, she must have been high as a kite.’

‘I don’t think either party was very proud come sunrise,’ said the Vorl. ‘Now, would you mind deactivating that machine, please?’

‘Goodness knows how we’ll break it to her,’ Carveth said as they picked their way down the stairs, past the fallen Ghasts. ‘ “Terribly sorry, but not only are you halfwoman, half-alien deity, but your mum got knocked up by Will’o the Wisp.” For that matter,
shall
we tell her at all?

What happens if she gets pissed off on the way home and zaps us all?’

In the middle of the sports hall, Smith turned down the dials and pulled out the wires. ‘Thank you,’ said the Vorl, and as they watched, it diminished, sinking down into Rhianna, sucked back into her sleeping body. She stirred in her sleep. She was still beautiful, Smith thought, although this was not quite the way he’d envisaged her waking up beside him. He reached out and gently put his hand on her brow.

Rhianna’s eyes flicked open. ‘Get your hands off me!

Ugh! I’m covered in electrodes!’ She sat bolt upright and looked down at herself. ‘What the hell have you done with my bra, you fascists?’

‘Oh my God,’ Smith said, averting his eyes.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Rhianna said, calming down. ‘Sorry. Hi, guys. Um, could someone find my top, please?’

Carveth put Rhianna’s clothes on the bed and she got dressed under the sheets. ‘So, er, what happened? I remember a dream… about smothering, I think… or maybe hovering… and then – well, then I was here.’

‘The Ghasts were experimenting on you,’ Carveth said.

‘We raided them and rescued you. Were it not for the captain here and his incredible and frequent acts of deathdefying bravery, you’d be dead.’
You owe me big
, she mouthed at Smith.

‘Well, yes,’ said Smith. ‘There was a certain amount of heroic derring-do, now you mention it – and a fair few alien invaders got their comeuppance.’

‘Wow,’ said Rhianna. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t usually condone anything involving vi – Oh, screw it. Knowing you did that really turns me on.’

‘Good-oh,’ said Captain Smith. ‘Now, let’s go back to the ship and have some tiffin.’

Suruk was waiting at the ship. ‘I got locked out,’ he said.

‘These will look great on the mantelpiece,’ he added, indicating two large carrier bags. ‘It’s been quite a day. So, did the Vorl appear and kill everyone with lightning?’

‘
What
?’ said Carveth.

‘The Vorl. Did one of them turn up and use psychic powers and lightning to save the day?’

Smith gave Suruk a hard stare. ‘You knew? All this time, and you knew that’s what would happen?’

Suruk shrugged. ‘Of course. It’s an old legend of ours.’

‘So why the hell didn’t you let on? It could have saved us some bother, you know, if we’d known what we were up against.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Suruk said, ‘I do not wander about telling silly stories all the time. I would look like some sort of benighted idiot. Now, who has the keys? I cannot wait to get the stove on and start cleaning up these skulls.’

The
John Pym
touched down at Midlight central terminus on Kane’s World six Greenwich Standard days later. Under a vaulted, scrollworked ceiling, they waved goodbye to Rhianna and watched her wander into the crowds, oddly conspicuous amid the sober, busy citizens of the Empire.

‘I rather liked her,’ Smith said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘But I never knew what to do.’

‘I know,’ Carveth said. ‘Never mind, Boss. Other fish in the sea.’

‘Maybe we’ll see her again,’ said Smith, but he didn’t sound convinced.

A few days later, much to Carveth’s disappointment, they received no medals in front of any cheering crowd. What they had done was to stay secret. In place of the proud march between ranks of the Empire’s finest soldiery, Mr Khan faxed them some luncheon vouchers and they went out for a curry instead.

It was a strange end to the job, Carveth thought, but not a bad one: drinking several pints of imported lager, laughing at Smith’s uncanny impersonation of Florence Nightingale and watching Suruk ladle frightening amounts of Prawn Madras into his mouthparts. Everything was going well and Carveth was drunk enough to be humming along to the piped sitar music when a tall, gaunt man stopped at the end of the table.

‘Isambard Smith?’

Smith looked up. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

The newcomer was about fifty, with a tired, battered face that looked much less healthy than the mess of black hair on top of it. He had a pencil moustache and deep-set eyes that were by turns kindly, hard and wise.

‘I need to talk to you. I’m a friend of your employer, Hereward Khan. Here.’

He passed Smith an envelope in one large, bony hand. Smith tore it open and studied the contents.

‘Well, you clearly know Mr Khan,’ he said. ‘Can I ask your name?’

The newcomer looked awkward. ‘Well, I can’t really tell you that. It’s secret. Suffice it to say that when you were sent on this mission on behalf of certain unnamed people, I was one of them. May I?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Smith, and the man sat down.

‘Before I say anything else, I must remember to give you this.’ He reached into his jacket and took out a second envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, and he passed it to Carveth. ‘For your good work.’

She held it up to the light, saw no cheque-shaped silhouette inside and opened it anyway. A passport and a driving licence fell out.

‘What’s this?’ she said.

The visitor’s lined face twitched into a smile. ‘Have a look.’

She opened the passport. ‘It’s me,’ she said. The man crossed his long legs. ‘That’s right. It’s you. You’re an Imperial citizen now, Miss Carveth. The appropriate papers have been filed and there’s nothing to prove that you’re anything other than a fully-functional simulant who has spent the last three years working for a boring haulage firm.’

‘You mean they can’t come after me?’

‘Absolutely. The corrupt plutocracy of the Devrin Corporation will have no more fun at your expense. You can assert your citizenship anywhere and rely on our battleships to back it up.’

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Thanks!’ She glanced through the documents. ‘Says here I’m the visual equivalent of twentyeight. Whoa, I’d better find a man before I’m too old.’

‘You’ll all be rewarded financially,’ said the visitor.

‘You’ve set back the Ghast plans for galactic domination at least three weeks, if not more.’ He leaned forward and said, ‘But I’m afraid I’ve got a favour to ask of you. I want your help.’

‘Need someone’s head cut off?’ Suruk growled.

‘Not exactly. But there’s need for a fast civilian ship these days. You see, a great conflict is coming, and it will not be politicians who save the galaxy. Mankind needs common men like yourselves – ordinary, bog-standard, unimpressive, slightly dull men who will defend it from the scourge of Ghastism. The common people of the Empire will not stand for tyranny!’ he cried, and his eyes seemed to catch fire. ‘No! The Imperial people will rise, and Ghastist blood will run wherever tyrants dare threaten our way of life! The alien dream of an enslaved Earth will be over, and the golden light of Democracy shall shine like a beacon across space! We shall tear down their citadels and planetscape their worlds into the likeness of sacred Albion!’

He hit the table with his fist, sending Carveth’s pint rocking like a broken chess-piece. The room was silent. The sitar music started twiddling in the background.