A Game of Battleships Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Toby Frost:

  Copyright

  Contents

  Prologue

  27th of April, 1853. Success!

  The Big Bang

  Dinner for Two

  Beast of Eden

  The Handyman’s Tale

  The Captain and the Queen

  A Meeting of Minds

  Searching for Tom Perdu

  All Hell Breaks Loose

  The Dotted Line

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  THE CHRONICLES OF ISAMBARD SMITH by TOBY FROST

  A GAME OF BATTLESHIPS

  Also by Toby Frost:

  Space Captain Smith

  God Emperor of Didcot

  Wrath of the Lemming Men

  A GAME OF BATTLESHIPS

  TOBY FROST

  Copyright

  Myrmidon

  Rotterdam House

  116 Quayside

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  NE1 3DY

  www.myrmidonbooks.com

  Published by Myrmidon 2013

  Copyright © Toby Frost 2013

  Toby Frost has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-905802-80-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Contents

  Prologue

  27th April 1863

  PART ONE

  The Big Bang

  Dinner for Two

  Beast of Eden

  The Handyman’s Tale

  The Captain and the Queen

  PART TWO

  A Meeting of Minds

  Searching for Tom Perdu

  All Hell Breaks Loose

  The Dotted Line

  Prologue

  The Fortress of Iron squatted on top of the mountain like a skull driven onto a spike. It was the shape of the ant-like head of Ghast Number One: its mouth a doorway big enough to fit a tank, the radio masts a pair of huge antennae rising above the gun emplacements that served it for eyes.

  Praetorian assault-lieutenant 28935/H, Stormfist Legion, snarled into the polar wind as he lumbered across the snow. The cold stung his lattice of facial scars, but to flinch would have been to show weakness. And weakness, of course, deserved death.

  Captain 948356/B awaited him at the doors to the citadel beside a writhing coil of bio-wire. As the lieutenant ran up, a succession of muffled explosions rippled from inside the fortress like great belches. The Earth-scum had laid plenty of bombs and the drone clearance teams were still finding them.

  ‘ Ak nak! ’ 28935/H bellowed. ‘All hail mighty Number One!’

  The captain nodded. He was slightly over half the praetorian’s height. ‘All hail our glorious leader. Are the humans dead yet?’

  28935/H swallowed hard. ‘Almost, Captain. We have them trapped in the Museum of Puny Human Artefacts. As soon as we gain access, they will be annihilated.’

  948356/B shivered and pulled his leather coat tight around his meagre body. ‘What are you waiting for? Lead me to them!’

  They slogged their way across the compound. The museum loomed above them like a corrupted Greek temple. Huge pillars clustered around the doors. Above the entrance, a bas relief showed Number One stamping on the great buildings of Earth, his heel grinding the head of the Statue of Liberty to dust.

  Ghasts swarmed around the building, flies on carrion. Trenchcoats and stercoria flapping, the ant-men rushed about yelling threats and orders to one another, pointing and saluting. One praetorian unit had shot its weakest member and, now that rigor mortis had set in, was using him as a battering ram against the service door.

  ‘We have made all efforts to break into the museum,’ 28935/H snarled. ‘Superior Ghast construction hinders our efforts.’

  ‘A feeble excuse,’ the captain replied. His breath hissed into the cold air. ‘Failure to crush these Earth-scum immediately will result in you being relocated to the delightful snow-capped mountains of the M’Lak Front!’

  28935/H saluted very quickly. He could have easily pulled his master’s head from its narrow shoulders but, without a command to do so, he was powerless. ‘We shall double our efforts,’ he promised, pulling his gun and shooting a minion to show that he meant it. He paused, and a rare moment of curiosity passed through his reinforced skull. ‘Captain?’

  ‘What?’

  “’Is it true that Isambard Smith is inside? The Isambard Smith? The one who assassinated indestructible Number Eight?’

  948356/B ignored him.

  ‘Because, I was thinking. . Number Eight was genetically perfect – all the posters say so – and if you can kill something that’s genetically perfect. .’

  ‘Lean forward.’ The praetorian leaned. ‘Bit closer. I can’t reach.’

  28935/H almost bent double. ‘How is this, great one?’

  ‘Perfect.’ 948356/B slapped him across the jaw. ‘Never think for yourself!’ he shrieked. ‘Now smash your way in and slaughter them!’

  *

  In the cool dark of the museum, under the glow of Florence Nightingale’s lamp, Major Wainscott gathered his men. The Deepspace Operations Group loaded their weapons under an exhibit entitled Puny Humans Tolerate iIlness.

  ‘Pay close attention,’ Wainscott said, stroking his beard. ‘We’ve got two minutes at most before those ugly bastards bash their way inside. The charges are laid, but we need to get some distance. Smith, how’s our transport?’

  Isambard Smith took his mouth away from the siphon and said, ‘Nearly done,’ and got a spurt of petrol in the face for his trouble.

  ‘Excellent. We’ll go out guns blazing. Susan, you and the chaps’ll be on top deck.’

  His second in command pushed a fresh power-pack into the top of her beam gun. ‘Right.’

  ‘Now, where’s that damned alien?’

  ‘Greetings!’ Suruk the Slayer strolled out of the dark, past a model of Louis Pasteur Failing To Develop A Deadly Viral Weapon. Suruk opened his mandibles and smiled. ‘Apologies for my lateness. I was distracted by Feeble Bladed Weapons of the Stunted Himalayas. I trust I have not missed any of the carnage?’

  Smith spat out petrol and stood up. ‘We’re all set. Let’s get loaded up. We’ve only got half an hour to meet up with the ship.’

  ‘Well said,’ Wainscott replied. ‘Hop on, men! And hold on tight!’

  *

  Ghasts crowded around the front entrance. ‘Obedience is strength!’ a praetorian roared, and it ran head-first into the doors. ‘Oof!’ It staggered back, helmet ringing.

  A second praetorian shoved it aside and charged the doors, snarling like a dog. ‘Obedience is strength! Oof!’

  Captain 948356/B smiled as he watched them. ‘How ironic,’ he mused, ‘that the humans should die among the worthless clutter of their pathetic cu
lture.’

  ‘Culture?’ snarled the lieutenant, cocking his gun. ‘Where?’

  948356/B smirked into the wind. ‘And how very, very pleasing.’

  The doors exploded. In the last half-second of his life, 948356/B saw something like a shining red cliff come roaring out of the museum in a howl of engines and twisting steel. He saw a window and a human face behind it, and realised that he was looking at Captain Isambard Smith – and then the bus hit him and he burst across the windscreen like an enormous fly.

  The Routemaster ploughed through ranks of bellowing praetorians like a runaway juggernaut.

  Smith activated the windscreen wipers, and the blades threw gouts of purple alien slime across the snow.

  The horn tooted merrily and the storm-ants, unable to disobey their orders, rushed forward and were reduced to mush.

  A Ghast threw itself at the bus, clinging on with all four arms. It headbutted the windscreen and smashed its helmet through the glass in four brutal blows. The alien thrust its face through the hole and tried to bite the steering wheel. ‘Nutrition is victory!’ it snarled. ‘Eat the weak!’

  Smith drew his .48 Civiliser, pushed it into the praetorian’s nasal hole and blew its rudimentary brains out.

  By God! thought Smith, as the bus bumped over a succession of bulbous steel helmets and bulging rear ends, sometimes duty was its own reward.

  ‘All aboard, fools!’ Suruk the Slayer bellowed from the far end of the bus. He snatched at coats and helmets as the vehicle drove through the Stormfist Legion, hauling the ant-men onto the running-board. The great sickle-shaped blade in his hand rose and fell and heads rolled against the base of the stairs before Suruk tossed the bodies back into the snow. ‘No ticket? Then I shall conduct you to your doom!’

  Upstairs, the five members of the Deepspace Operations Group poured fire into the aliens.

  Susan swung the beam gun and praetorians fell apart as the laser touched them. The Ghasts ran after the bus, blazing away wildly, even trying to chew through the hubcaps as it sped past, but a combination of murderous gunfire and moral fibre drove them back.

  The bus left its pursuers behind. No doubt the Ghasts would be calling up reinforcements but, for now, the way was clear. Smith switched on the radio. ‘Claymore calling John Bull,’ he barked into the intercom. ‘Claymore calling John Bull. Come in, John Bull.’

  A girl answered him. ‘This is Claymore,’ came the reply.

  ‘No it isn’t. You’re John Bull. I’m Claymore.’

  ‘You know,’ Polly Carveth said, ‘this would have been much easier if you’d let me choose my own callsign.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, I get to choose the callsigns.’ Smith swung the bus onto a narrow road. A notice in Ghastish threatened death. Most notices in Ghastish did that. He ran it over. ‘ I’m the captain.’

  ‘But why do I have to be crappy John Bull?’

  ‘Because if I let you choose your own name you’d be Glitter Pony or some similar nonsense.

  This is a commando raid, not a gymkhana.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t. I’d be Polly Princess.’

  ‘Damn it, Carveth, are you going to pick us up or not?’

  ‘Keep your bulls on, Claymore! I’m on my way.’

  The bus rumbled down the narrow roads towards the landing strip. Nothing followed it: Smith knew that, back at the fortress, the Ghasts would be readying their hover-tanks, calling up reinforcements to cut the humans off before they could escape the planet. Suruk chuckled. Without any enemies to slay, the M’Lak was leaning out the doorway, tongue out, enjoying the falling snow.

  The gunfire had stopped on the upper floor. Wainscott bounded down the stairs and stopped beside Smith’s shoulder, rubbing his hands and smirking at the road ahead.

  ‘Almost at safe distance,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Smith consulted a diagram sellotaped to the dashboard. ‘Listen, when we hit the fence it’s going to get hotter than a Friday-night phaal. We’d better time this right.’

  ‘Very true,’ Wainscott said, rubbing his beard. Technically, he was in charge of the mission, but Smith knew that he was always willing to listen to reason in the field – in as much as he was capable of listening to reason at all. The fact that Wainscott was not yet nude apart from his gun and boots meant that the mission was going pretty well.

  ‘Ready?’ Smith said.

  Wainscott glared over Smith’s shoulder at the road ahead. ‘Ready.’ He turned and ran back upstairs. Suruk put the last of the severed heads into his bag and zipped it shut. Smith gunned the engines and the bus crawled downhill. The thrusters of dozens of hovertanks had turned the road into a frozen track as smooth and pale as milk. He hoped that the chains on the wheels would do the trick.

  Nelson, the Deepspace Operations Group’s technician, called down the stairwell: ‘Enemy behind!’

  Smith looked in the rear view mirror. Vehicles were pouring down the road, a black armoured snake. He accelerated. ‘What’s the range?’ he called back.

  ‘We’re out of the blast range.’ This was Wainscott. ‘Let ‘em have it, Nelson!’

  Five miles away, the Fortress of Iron exploded. The huge skull on the hillside cracked and burst apart. Thunder rippled through the valley, knocking great sheets of snow from the hillsides. The steering wheel jerked in Smith’s hands, and he wrestled them back on course.

  ‘Boom!’ Wainscott chortled.

  ‘Very good!’ Suruk exclaimed, as if at a joke. ‘Very good indeed!’

  The landing pad was up ahead. Smith saw rows of space-fighters parked behind an alien fence.

  ‘Hold on,’ he called, and he turned the wheel and drove straight through the bio-wire. The bus swung out, ploughing into a row of fighter-craft, smashing their tail-fins. Two Ghasts ran onto the far side of the landing pad, hauling a disruptor-cannon between them.

  Gunfire clattered outside. A shot clipped the engine block and suddenly black smoke poured into the cabin. In the top right of the windscreen, next to several holes, a speck had appeared and was growing into Smith’s battered space freighter, the John Pym.

  ‘Our transport arrives!’ Suruk announced.

  Smith threw on the brakes, turning the bus side-on to the enemy. As he slipped from the driving seat, the windows burst in a roar of disruptor-fire. He crept down the length of the bus, boots crunching on shards of glass. A fresh burst of alien shooting slammed into the side, wrenching the metal.

  ‘All change!’ Smith called. ‘The ship's here!’

  ‘I think we may have angered them,’ Suruk observed, as he picked up his bag of heads.

  Wainscott glanced at Susan. ‘All set?’

  She nodded. ‘I'll keep you covered. Craig, pop some fog out there!’

  They ran out in a billowing wall of white smoke. The air was cold and smelt of burning. Susan levelled the beam gun and the laser arced out and cut down the Ghasts on the heavy disruptor. Two more ran in to take their place.

  The John Pym dropped from the sky like a meteor – far too much like one for Smith's tastes. At a hundred feet up, Carveth clearly remembered the brakes and the engines roared as it slowed and turned, peeling the paint from the roof of the bus. Half a dozen praetorians ran to meet it.

  The John Pym twisted mid-air and the great rusty boom of the tail hit the bus. It rocked and flopped onto its side, flattening six solider ants under several tons of steel.

  The Pym's landing legs hit the tarmac. The loading ramp dropped open, and the raiders rushed into the safety of the hold.

  The soldiers ran through the hold and into the mess-room. Smith paused by the door, hand on the lever. ‘Where’s Wainscott?’

  ‘Right here.’ Wainscott looked back at the landing pad. It was littered with dead praetorians. He snorted. ‘Elite shock troops my arse. Come on, chaps, let’s get the kettle on!’

  Smith braced himself as the John Pym tore off from the ground. He closed the mess door and walked into the corridor. He followed the Deepspace Operations Group into
the kitchen, then wandered through to check on the rest of the crew.

  Suruk was already in his room, making space for the new additions among the skulls on his mantelpiece. In the next cabin down, Rhianna Mitchell sat cross-legged on a pile of genuine Procturan crystal-cushions, a lopsided dreamcatcher hanging above her head. Smith wanted to kiss her hello, but it would be unwise to disturb her meditation. It was Rhianna’s psychic ability that was keeping them off the Ghast radar.

  He started to creep past. ‘How’d it go, Isambard?’ she asked, not opening her eyes.

  ‘Pretty damned good, thanks. Want some tea?’

  ‘Herbal?’

  ‘Certainly not. I’ll bring you one in.’

  ‘Namaste, Isambard.’

  ‘Carry on,’ he said, and he strode into the cockpit.

  Polly Carveth looked round from the pilot’s seat. She wore her utility waistcoat and had rolled up

  the sleeves of her collarless shirt. The ship’s emergency goggles looked enormous on her small face. ‘Are we safe yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Nearly, Carveth.’

  ‘Thank God for that. How was it?’

  ‘Clockwork.’

  She glanced at the console on her left. ‘Uh-oh. We’ve got a pressure problem, boss.’

  ‘Pressure? What’s happened?’

  ‘We’ve taken a leak. Either they’ve shot us or some lemon’s not shut the back door properly.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ Smith replied. ‘Carry on.’

  He left the cockpit and headed down the corridor. Rhianna still sat in her trance, looking pretty and smelling herbal. The Deepspace Operations Group were pouring out the tea. Smith yanked the door open and stepped into the chill of the hold.

  The air was thin: they were leaving the atmosphere behind. Smith crossed the hold, the wind howling around the open door, and reached out to the button.