Theatre of the Gods (30 page)

When the Pope learned that he was to wake his fleet, the Fleet of the Nine Churches – the largest and most destructive death fleet ever assembled – and take it deep into the universe, and then to the next universe, on the biggest and most ambitious crusade ever attempted, eliminating along the way any person, peoples or worlds that should obstruct him, to bring about the destruction of a single
demon girl, it was as if all his birthdays had happened at once. And the Pope, to be fair, had an unusual number of birthdays.

He rose early on the day they were to embark, and that almost never happened, and when his aides arrived they found him already sitting in his favourite chair in his red leisure suit with white stripes, his hat on the table next to him. He was kicking the chair legs impatiently. ‘When are we going?’ he cried.

‘After breakfast, Excellency,’ said Cardinal Mothersbaugh. The Pope hated waiting. He didn’t understand that preparing a fleet of 180,000 ships, some as big as planets, took, oh, at least a day. And so he sat, drumming on the table with his fingers, putting on and removing his hat, admiring himself in the long mirror, threatening to kill people, until finally he got word that the fleet was ready.

And the Fleet of the Nine Churches was a sight to behold (or not, for it was painted black so as to be all but invisible in the depths). It had fearsome dreadnoughts, and prison ships equipped to take entire populations for relocation. There were moon-eaters (ships large enough to chomp and digest entire moons or small planets). When the fleet lifted from its moorings and sounded its klaxons the universe trembled. Perhaps even the gods themselves were woken from their slumbers. The Pope was carried down the gangplank in a ceremonial chair, but when he got inside all ceremony was dropped and he ran giggling to the command centre.

Now he stood on the bridge, in his white cylindrical hat embroidered with a gold ‘X’.

‘Let’s teach that stupid Devil Girl a lesson she won’t forget!’ he cried.

ESCAPE

They woke late. Roberto was stamping around the decks and when they came above he threw up his arms, like, ‘What time is this? I ask you!’ The dinophytes had not tired, and they continued to rock the steel boat with a gentle fury, such that it was impossible to breakfast on anything but a solid.

The Gentrifaction were in a terrible state: nerves shot, eyes oozing black-mascara tears. They sat at breakfast with kerchiefs to their mouths and could not console one another.

After breakfast an emergency meeting was held and things were decided. The first thing that was decided was that the slate was clean. All transgressions were forgotten and they would now work as a team. They held a small service for Bortis. Connofeast’s hamster ball had picked up several small, sticky pieces of him as it rolled towards the ship. They peeled them carefully off and put them in a small box. It was discovered that the hamster ball had also carried spores into the docking bay, and these had already manifested in a kind of venomous shrub, a variety of shrieking moss and a gnawing lily.

‘I knew a girl called Gnawing Lily,’ said the captain, but everyone ignored him.

‘There is a chilling sentience here,’ said Fabrigas, ‘a hive mind,’ before he sent the bosun in with fire and industrial herbicide.

The second thing that was decided was that it would be
impossible to make the
Necronaut
launch-worthy. The steering systems and the sails were badly damaged, and, though Roberto could help, some things could only be repaired from outside, and that, under the circumstances, was impossible. ‘It is a thorny problem,’ said Fabrigas.

Descharge found him mulling things over on the navigation deck. ‘I need to let you know, as a gentleman and an officer, that I do not believe in this “clean slate”. I still intend to make you pay for your crimes. You and your captain.’

‘Oh, and who will you take me to? The Queen who betrayed you? Your beloved navy? They tried to destroy your fleet.’

‘Nonsense.’

Fabrigas turned momentarily to an empty corner, then smiled, turned back and said, ‘The commander of that attacking fleet was someone you might know. A Commander Mattlocke.’

Descharge briefly lost control of his smug expression.

‘Could this be the same Mattlocke you’re competing with for the position of Supreme Imperial Commander? How interesting. With you gone he’d get just what he’s wanted for so long: to lead the fleets in a war against the Vangardiks. How very interesting.’

Descharge fixed Fabrigas with a look so hard it made him draw back. ‘Your tricks won’t work with me, old fool. I’ll see you swing.’ And he left.

‘What a nice man,’ said Carrofax. ‘So you mean to help the girl after all?’

‘We have no choice for the meantime. I can’t exactly feed her to the plants, and apparently she could be harmful to us if we keep her too long.’

‘“Harmful” is an understatement. She gets more unpredictable the closer she gets to maturity. I will find out what I can and guide you.’

‘Good. And find out who this Calligulus is, too. And find out why I keep dreaming about starfish. And find out where in all the heavens we are.’

‘I will. Although I can tell you that if there’s one place we most certainly are not, it’s heaven.’

*

Fabrigas came back to the group to propose a radical escape plan. He had confirmed the position of the nearby planet. It was close enough that with sufficient upward force they would be able to break the bonds of the plants’ embrace, and the moon’s feeble gravity, then drift across space to the new planet where repairs could be made. ‘I propose we overload our landing jets so they explode!’ This, he reasoned, should give them the thrust to throw them clear of the moon.

‘Joo want to blow us up?’

‘Exactly. I want to blow us … up.’

‘Why are joo always trying to kill us?’

‘I’m not trying to kill us. Our hull is strong. I chose this ship for its structural integrity. We should be fine.’

‘Should?’

‘Most likely.’

‘It was a stupid plan,’ said Lambestyo. ‘If the moon is deadly, the planet it orbits could be terrifyingly dangerous.’ And besides, they had shredded their supersonic chute on landing. Descharge agreed. In fact, the crew was unanimous in their condemnation of the plan, but also in their awareness that they had no other options.

Fabrigas did his best to reassure them. ‘I will calibrate the explosion precisely. I promise. It will be a controlled blast.’

CONTROLLED BLAST

‘Everybody try to stay limp!’

This was the last thing they heard from Fabrigas before the blast knocked them senseless. The explosion the old-beard had ‘calibrated’ beneath the treble-armour-plated hull of the
Necronaut
was so powerful that those closest to the epicentre were temporarily deafened. They departed the moon like a ballerina who has just sat on a fire-wasp, leaving behind a crater of charred vegetation 180 yards wide. Even as they barrelled most unballetically into space their iron hull rang on like a gong. The forces of gravity knocked most of them unconscious, and when they came to they saw the wild, willing jungles of Bespophus receding below, crying and reaching up to them like children, and soon they found themselves once more floating in space.

They drifted for a long, long while.

ABOUT ME

Why don’t I tell you a little about myself? What? Now? While our friends are locked in dreadful floaty peril? Certainly. They will stay off the boil for as long as we need them to.

Each creature has its job. Bakers bake, explorers explore, murderers murder. I am a writer. I bake with words, I explore the limits of imagination, I murder expectation. I was once a great and renowned man: a poet, philosopher, raconteur, hypno-
flâneur
(an exponent of the art of walking while automatic writing). I rose to fame after the publication of my first collection,
The Excrementalists
. And when I say ‘rose to fame’, I mean that the subjects of my book, the aristocratic poets of my Empire, tried to kill me. But they could not divert me from my labours. Every morning I would rise at 11.15 – no later – my servants would bring in my breakfast and coffee, they would bathe and anoint me with fine unguents. Then, in the early afternoon I would put a warm towel about my head and I would write! I would write for exactly two hours, not a second less. Then I would see to my correspondence, then I would walk in the grounds with my house guests (usually other famous writers) and we would discuss philosophy, politics, or the issues of the day. But this is the life of a young poet: it demands dedication, sacrifice.

Then there was a revolution, bloody and terrible. All my friends were put to death – which vexed me greatly – even the ones who’d tried to kill me – which didn’t. I lost everything. All I had accumulated,
striven for and inherited was washed away in a tide of blood and aristocratic tears. My hand shakes when I think of what I’ve lost: my first editions, my handmade shoes, my collection of porcelain puppies in amusing poses. All vanished, like tears in the rain. But I am lucky to have escaped with my head. It turned out that a leader of the revolution, one Dejanne Hammer, was a fan. (Oh, save me from my murderous fans!) I was saved from death in return for a signed book and a kiss, but was condemned to a fate far worse. I was forced to go to the vulgar press and earn a crust writing adventure books. All the wit and genius bequeathed to me by nature would now be channelled into the task of penning these crude pulp tales.

And so I work now on assignment, for a pittance. While I work my poetry languishes and my genius shrivels under the flabby mediocrity of the novel. The novel! That most base of all written forms. I who have written epic poems for queens and salted the ears of dauphins with saucy couplets.

Anyway, one must not dwell upon life’s misfortunes. One must push on. Let’s return to our adventure.

BELLY OF THE BEAST

The first thing the crew aboard the
Necronaut
realised as they gathered themselves was that they were blind. Leaves, vines and swiftly growing mosses had completely covered the exterior of the vessel and would not shift. All they had was audio feedback, and the anti-crash bats – who were utterly frantic.

‘Are you mad?!’ Lambestyo shouted when he found the old-beard. ‘You said you would do a controlled thing!’ His ears were ringing.

‘I did!’ shouted Fabrigas. ‘But there are
degrees
of control.’

The crew tried to regain their composure. Most had peed themselves. Some had done worse. The Gentrifaction were in a more hysterical state than the bats. G. De Pantagruel was weeping while fanning a prostrate Scatalletto who still had not regained consciousness.

Eventually, after a very, very long time, the hull and their ears stopped ringing, and audio reported the sound of drumming. ‘We need to change heading!’ screamed the lad as the ba-booms grew heavy in his phones, but of course they had no steering, ‘We have no steering!’ They were at the mercy of the gravity of the planet they were drifting towards. ‘We’re at the mercy of its gravity! Crash positions!’

A pressure wave hit their craft – it was a roar you didn’t need phones to hear, and it made the whole ship shake, a roar so deep it was like the sound of a steel beam a mile thick being twisted by a pair of giant hands.

‘That is a very, very large thing,’ said Fabrigas. The bats in the nose were losing their precious little minds.

Then the
Necronaut
found itself tumbling, still blinded by the clinging vines. Its crew saw a blur of friends and objects. Then there was a crunch as the vessel slammed into something immovable. They were airborne again for what seemed like for ever. Then, for reasons they couldn’t understand, they touched softly down, as if a pair of giant invisible hands which enjoyed bending steel beams had plucked them from the air and set them back on solid earth.

*

Darkness, total and unyielding, when no light is present but the zany specks that flit around behind the eyes. People rose like foals on battered legs. The ship groaned and listed like a bathtub set upon a mattress. Audio picked up the music of a jungle whose eerie blips and calls sounded like a ship’s sonar. Underneath was something else, a rumble like the thrumming of a boiler. ‘Where are we? The sea?’ said Miss Fritzacopple, whose shoulder was badly bruised. She could be forgiven for thinking so. They used cargo hooks to push small viewing holes through the dead foliage which caked their vessel. They sent lanterns out on grappling poles and discovered a floating loveliness in the dark: the foliage was wafting slowly and things that looked like squid were drifting past. Pale-eyed birds of fancy watched from the undergrowth.

‘We are on land,’ said Fabrigas. ‘But the gravity here is very weak.’

Their lamps found crooked trees in a misty lagoon, sumptuous roots plunging like serpents into the mud. Eyes big and small reflected their lamplight. They saw foliage that didn’t want to eat them hiding creatures that might.

‘We have landed in a swamp,’ said the captain, ‘and what’s the bet it wants to eat us?’

At that moment a seismic ripple passed through the ship and the
Necronaut
was left rocking and creaking like an ancient toad.

‘We could have slipped into a crevasse,’ mused Fabrigas.

‘Well, I see no reason to hesitate,’ said their captain. ‘We can’t survive or launch without key supplies. We will form a party to search the area for readies, and the rest should stay onboard and begin repairs. We should aim to sail in three days. This is my plan. What smell you, little green girl?’

‘Confusion,’ said Lenore. As she sniffed, her dead eyes rolled up and quivered white in their sockets. ‘But there are tasty things. Fires. Peoples.’ She closed one eye. ‘And oils for wicks and gears.’

‘This could be a good place for us,’ said Fabrigas. ‘Do you think you can guide us to the food and oil?’ And Lenore laughed brightly. She turned her sickly green face up to the light.

‘Of course. You know I’ll give you my nose. Always.’ She folded her arms. ‘But will you hear my price?’