Space Captain Smith (8 page)

There was silence as Smith got to his feet. Suruk gave a low and dirty chuckle. ‘War! That’s the best news all holiday!’

Five minutes later Smith was in the kitchen area, a bottle of beer in either hand, pouring the contents into the sink. Two empty bottles stood on the draining board beside him. He looked at the bottle in his hand. The beer flowed away so quickly, he thought. Like time, like the years of his life flowing away, all to end on this wretched ship. Glug, glug. And what had he achieved? Any meaningful relationships? A career that would bring him fame and success? No. Years of being the only non A-grade student at Midwich Grammar followed by a brutal upbringing in Harcourt Park School for Boys had led straight into an insipid career as a minor space pilot. If he died now, would he get into heaven? Probably by default, he reflected: his life had been so mediocre that God probably wouldn’t have bothered watching it.

‘Oh my God,’ he cried, ‘what a waste! What the hell am I
doing
?’ He stopped pouring and drank the beer instead.

‘Fancy pouring good beer away. Bally idiot.’

Suruk entered the room, his spear in hand. Smith looked up and said, ‘All set?’

‘I have everything I need,’ the alien said, counting on his fingers. ‘Machete, parang, kukri, stiletto, Bowie knife, 76 wakazashi –’ he moved onto his other hand – ‘and the spear of my ancestors. All set.’

‘Good. I’m making petrol bombs. I’m also getting drunk and angry.’

‘Tell me, Isambard Smith: how many Ghasts are there on a Ghast warship?’

‘I don’t know. Three, four hundred?’

Suruk thought about it for a moment. ‘We are going to die, then.’

Smith realised that he was damned if he was going to surrender. He did not fear the Ghasts: after six years in a minor prep school north of Harrogate, he felt that he could take anything. An arcane hatred was stirring in him, the atavistic urge to stick something pointed in creatures who did nothing other than stand in lines, shout and try to tell him what to do.

‘They’re not having my people, Suruk. I know she’s a wishy-washy nuisance, but she’s a woman, and she’s on my ship, and they’re not having her. My crew matter to me. Same goes for whatshername. The pilot.’

‘Death in battle. Hohoho! Are you resigned to it?’

There was a simple answer. Despite his inability to remember a part of his life that had not been rubbish in some way, Smith felt that he had a lot more to offer the world: more precisely, certain parts of him had a lot to offer attractive women. He felt that he deserved to live: he still had a lot to prove to the world. ‘I don’t know. I would rather stay alive. But I won’t give in.’

‘It is not necessarily so.’

‘How do you mean?’ So far, he had assumed that they had a straight choice of being forced to go down fighting or being murdered once their captors had tired of them. But if Suruk the Slayer was saying this, perhaps there was an alternative, a way of surviving, of snatching some kind of success from the jaws of glorious defeat.

‘I have a plan, Mazuran. But we will need to delay our enemy for it to work. Then, we will carry out great and terrible slaying: we will fight like warriors, but will live to fight again. Then the prize female will want to breed with you. Perhaps the short annoying one as well, if your ancestors favour you.’

‘I’ll do it anyway. What do we need?’

‘So,’ said Narzak the Despoiler, ‘I’m like, “This kill is mine”, and he’s like, “No way! This kill is so mine”, and I’m like, “N-uh! Check out the spear before you start hassling me, alright”, and he’s like, “Back off, little warrior,” like he’s totally amazing or something.’

‘Some people just need to cool down,’ Azrag Bloodhammer said from the other side of the room. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I told him to get off his high horse and chill. Then I cut off his head. What’s that flashing thing on the panel?’

The control panel of the good ship
Smashface
was hidden, like much of the craft, under a thick layer of bones, red paint and things no longer edible. Azrag shoved the junk aside and his small eyes peered through the gloom at the controls. ‘It’s a message,’ he said. ‘Says it’s from Suruk the Slayer. Apparently he’s looking for Thador Largan.’

‘That’s way uncanny,’ Narzak said, ‘because he’s on this ship.’

Azrag skim-read the message. ‘ “Join us for a mighty battle. War… killing… honour… party of the decade…”

Fetch the guys! This is going to rock!’

Carveth rested the shotgun on her hip and began to push cartridges into the breach. She zipped up her waistcoat and emptied the spare shells into the watch pocket.

‘You know you can have the Maxim cannon if you want,’ said Smith.

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘This’ll do as much good as anything else. I’d rather give the big gun to someone halfcompetent.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘We’re going to give them a good show. Suruk, did your chaps say how long they’d be?’

‘I do not know. But their spacecraft has a larger engine than this, and their pilot is much less fat. They should not take long.’

‘Then we’ll hold them as long as we can. How long do we have before the Ghasts dock?’

‘Two minutes,’ Carveth said. ‘And I’m not fat. Can I have a bit of that beer?’

‘Oh, sorry.’ He passed it over. ‘There you go.’

Carveth took a swig and passed it back. ‘Whoa!

Bracing.’

Rhianna stepped into the corridor. She was holding the wooden practice sword from her bag. ‘I’m ready to fight,’ she announced.

‘Like that?’ Smith said. ‘These are Ghast stormtroopers. You’ve got flip-flops and a stick.’

‘They want me, not you,’ Rhianna said. ‘I ought to help.’

‘You could always go on your own and we could get away,’ Carveth suggested. She met Smith’s eye and added,

‘Just a thought.’

‘I would have suggested it,’ Rhianna said, ‘but I knew he wouldn’t let me.’

‘Point,’ Carveth said.

They had pulled up some of the empty cargo boxes from the hold to use as a barricade. Smith and Rhianna stood behind the boxes on one side of the door, Suruk and Carveth on the other.

‘Are you ready, men?’ said Smith.

The loudspeaker crackled into life.

‘Ghast Empire calling! This is warship commander 462 addressing you, weakling human Earth-scum! Warship
Systematic Destruction
is preparing to dock with your puny craft. On hearing the docking tube attach, you will open the hatch and surrender immediately!’

‘Hang on,’ said Smith. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

‘What?’

‘We have a, um, a highly contagious terminal disease. We need at least half an hour to get better.’

‘We are immune to disease! Only weaklings succumb to disease, and weaklings must be destroyed! We will board now!’

‘Let’s just kill them all,’ Suruk said.

‘Open the door or we will train lasers on your feeble craft and slice it in two!’

Smith quietly passed two petrol bombs to Carveth. ‘Did you bring a lighter?’ he whispered.

‘Not for this,’ she replied, snapping it out of her pocket.

‘This isn’t exactly how I was planning to get wasted.’

‘Ghast ship? We’ll open the door,’ Smith said into the radio.

Something hit the ship with a dull, metallic clang that reverberated through the hull. ‘That’s them,’ Rhianna said.

They waited.

Carveth stepped out from the boxes, over to the door.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ she said, reaching to the airlock.

‘On three,’ said Smith. The pilot wrapped her hands around the wheel. ‘One.’

‘Two,’ Carveth said. Smith braced himself.

‘Three!’

She spun the wheel; it whirled and the door opened with a squeal of metal.

They looked down the Ghast docking tube: a corridor, full of mist, stretching off into somewhere that they could not see. The walls were ribbed, vaguely organic. Somewhere behind the mist, a light shone towards them.

‘What’s all that?’ Carveth whispered.

Suruk turned to her. ‘Small woman, wait.’

Smith flexed his fingers around the rear grip of the Maxim cannon. It was strapped straight to his belt, and it was heavy. He felt tired already, although whether it was from the weight of the gun or from fear, he did not know. The light in the docking tunnel flickered as something ran past it. ‘Dammit!’ said Smith. ‘Can’t get an aim!’

The light vanished, came back on, and suddenly it was a strobing, pulsing beam as something scuttled past, then another, and another—

‘Dozens of them!’ Smith exclaimed.

Suddenly Carveth sprang up and fired the shotgun into the docking tube. ‘Come and get it, tossers!’ There was a screech of rage, and a muffled thump of something falling to the ground. The tube was silent. She looked back at the others. ‘So much for the cat and mouse stuff,’ she said sheepishly.

Lights flashed in the dark, bolts of light coming for them. ‘Down!’ Smith cried, and the wall exploded above his head, the metal corrupted and bubbling. Smith leaned into the entrance and let rip. The Maxim cannon roared like steel sheets being torn, sending bullets thundering down the tube. Shadows screamed and fell. In a great horde the Ghast boarding party rushed at them. Bullets and white beams turned the docking tube into a maze of light. Carveth saw something rush out from the mist, limbs whirling, and she racked the slide and shot it in the chest. It roared and fell, and a thing like a vast insect rushed along the wall, and she blew that apart before it could clear the mist and she would have to look at it. Smith’s gun ripped out and a row of them fell, more of their comrades scrambling into the gap. Rhianna screamed.

The round counter spun down to zero and Smith tore out the ammo drum and slapped a new one into place.

‘Score one for Blighty!’ he yelled, and he opened fire. Disruptor shots hit the box beside him and it melted and collapsed.

Something new appeared in the fog: sparking lights, the business ends of shock-sticks. ‘Aha!’ Suruk cried. ‘Proper fighting!’, and for the first time one of the Ghasts cleared the fog and leaped on them.

Carveth only caught a glimpse of it – the goggling eyes in a skull-like face, the long coat, the antennae poking through holes in its steel helmet – and then Suruk whirled in front of her and sliced off its head. They kept firing: the enemy swarmed forward, frenzied.

No time for aiming now. Smith kept his finger down and raked the corridor from side to side. The light in the docking tube was blocked out by the rush of Ghasts. Suruk hurled a knife into the horde, Carveth pumped and fired until her gun was dry and her terrified fumbling fingers snatched the revolver from her belt. Smith threw the cannon down. ‘I’m out!’ he cried, and they heard the hiss as he drew his sword. Suruk held out a bomb to Carveth, she lit the rag and he hurled it into the corridor. There was a flash of fire, and he threw another, and suddenly there was nothing alive in the docking tube. Silence from the Ghasts. Nothing moved in the passage except smoke. Smith looked at his crew. ‘They know we’re out,’ he said.

Rhianna was bolt upright and shaking. ‘Why don’t they attack? Why don’t they attack?’

‘They wish to make sure,’ Suruk said, and as he did a fresh batch of raiders ran into the light and charged at them.

Suruk roared and leaped into the gap. Blades whirling, he felled one and then another as they tried to swarm over him to the humans beyond, calling out the names of the techniques he used as he cut down his enemies. Distantly, he heard Carveth’s revolver going off and sensed Smith at his side – but that did not matter. He was in the spirit world, running with his ancestors, feeling them guide his spear.

A trooper leaped the boxes and knocked Carveth to the ground. The revolver bounced out of the simulant’s hand. The Ghast grinned down at Carveth, flexing its pincerarms. Carveth gave in to fear and howled. Rhianna stared at it, horrified. Something happened to her with the slow certainty of a dream. The wooden sword rose in her hands, drew back, and she dropped in a position she knew only from Tai Chi. The sword whipped out and struck the Ghast in the head.

The trooper stumbled but its claws lashed out for her. She did not move – the geometry of the universe shifted – and somehow they missed, swiping through air where her body should have been. It lurched aside and, as Carveth grabbed the revolver and swung it up, the trooper’s head was in her sights.

The world was slowed: to Carveth, it seemed like a dream. She fired, killed one Ghast and blasted the next as it lumbered into range. Suddenly it was rather easy, and somehow, she knew that Rhianna was making it so. Rhianna blinked and was awake again. The enemy were gone. Smith was calling to them all, asking who was hurt. Suruk stood surrounded by spidery bodies, bellowing in triumph. Carveth had a finger up her nose. And voices were answering Suruk’s calls – not Ghasts any more, but the M’Lak, his friends.

‘It was most excellent,’ Thador Largan told Suruk forty minutes later. ‘We got the prow right in place and caught them really smooth. We like cut straight through and then, well, you know, honour and stuff.’

Narzak and Lorgan had joined the humans in the
John
Pym
. In an attempt to flush out the invaders the Ghasts had simply opened several of their airlocks, and the M’Lak were forced to take shelter while the
Systematic
Destruction
pulled away. Now, the Ghasts had fled, and the
Smashface
had docked with the
John Pym
to collect Suruk’s friends.

‘It was indeed good work,’ Suruk said. ‘The pinkies here were about to be overcome. You were most fortuitous with your timing.’

On the other side of the lounge, Carveth was pouring beer down her neck. To Smith, sitting opposite her, it seemed as if she had disengaged the need to swallow, and was just tipping the stuff down the chute.

‘I’m telling you,’ she said, pausing just long enough to speak, ‘it was really strange. There she was, just standing there, and suddenly everything went weird and they sort of stopped trying, so I shot them. It wasn’t like she did anything fancy either. She just stood there. It was almost as if they
couldn’t
hit her. That’s almost as impressive as frogboy over there.’