Chronicles of Isambard Smith 05 - End of Empires Read online

  End of Empires

  Also by Toby Frost:

  Space Captain Smith

  God Emperor of Didcot

  Wrath of the Lemming Men

  A Game of Battleships

  End of Empires

  Toby Frost

  Myrmidon

  Rotterdam House

  116 Quayside

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  NE1 3DY

  www.myrmidonbooks.com

  Published by Myrmidon 2014

  Copyright © Toby Frost 2014

  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 978-1-905802-89-0

  Set in 11/14pt Sabon by Reality Premedia Sevices, Pvt. Ltd

  Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

  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

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  The Player of Board Games

  The Plot Against Ravnavar

  Red Rebellion!

  PART TWO

  General Difficulties

  Drums up the River

  Animals of the Riverbank

  PART THREE

  Ambassadors

  Celestial Beings

  They Shoot Ponies, Don’t They?

  A Day on the Riviera

  Siege

  About the Author

  The Chronicles Of Isambard Smith By Toby Frost

  Prologue

  Long ago, the great god Popacapinyo made the world. First, he made the wolf and the hawk, and he made them swift and deadly. Then, he formed the bear and the badger, who are strong but slow. And then he made the cunning snake and the ape, who lie in wait for the foolish and the weak.

  Then Lord Popacapinyo turned his hand to the world, filled as it was with tricks and traps, and he made other animals, the ones that eat grass instead of meat. To all these creatures he gave a gift, so that they would evade capture and live to breed again. Some were quick, some strong, some crafty, but he saved the greatest gift of all for last: the Spirit of Sacrifice.

  That gift he gave to the lemming.

  And he took the lemmings in his hand and spoke:

  ‘You, and only you, will never know fear or cowardice. You will never stand alone, because you will all run together. You will have what all other races lack, and that will make you greatest of all. You have Lemming Spirit.

  ‘All the world will be your foe, Rodents of a Thousand Enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. So you must catch them first. Attack all the world, lemmings, and show them terror, for they are weak and afraid. Show them your lemming spirit, and then kill them all!

  ‘Dar huphep, huphep Yullai!

  ‘For glory, the glory of the Yull!’

  At 08.30, Greenwich Galactic Mean Time, a staff car and troop lorry rumbled into the remains of the British Quarter. The lorry rolled between the shells of buildings, past the broken sheds and abandoned allotments, the Yullian flag fluttering from its radio antenna. Foliage covered the cab roof. Half a dozen severed heads hung on a chain across the front grille like beads on a necklace.

  It stopped in Coronation Square. A huddle of beetle people waited; as the lorry drew to a halt they pushed their young to the rear of the crowd, out of sight.

  Lemming men jumped down from the back of the lorry, their new rifles gleaming, and fanned out in a glittering circle of bayonets as Colonel Fremcar Nonc stepped out of the staff car. He looked from side to side, taking in the dilapidated buildings and the empty pole from which the Union Jack had once flown, and smiled.

  Nonc was new to this region but rumours of his prowess had already spread. He was, by all accounts, paranoid, self-important, unbearably pompous and sadistic to the point of lunacy, which made him fairly typical for a soldier of the Divine Amiable Army of the lemming men of Yull.

  A semicircle of cringing natives awaited their new master. One of the beetle people scurried forward to welcome Nonc.

  ‘All hail, noble Yullian warlord,’ it chirped. ‘We thank you for liberating us, and welcome –’

  ‘Silence, slave,’ said Colonel Nonc, casually bashing him over the carapace with his walking stick. ‘I do not bandy words with savages. Where is the human?’

  ‘The woman waits in the potting shed, honoured master. She is bound, as you requested –’

  ‘Enough! Conversing with you besmirches me. Lead the way to the prisoner.’

  ‘Please, gracious master, follow me.’

  Nonc followed, scowling. Four of his toughest warriors accompanied him. The beetle led them around the side of the governor’s house, through the crater-ridden vegetable garden. The offworlders had left in a hurry, Nonc reflected: they had not even bothered to pick their sprouts. One good charge from the Yull and the cowardly humans had fled. Somewhere to the north they were still trying to fight, it seemed: the last death throes of their weakling empire. They had forgotten how to be rulers, how to act with wisdom and justice.

  He belted the beetle with his stick. ‘Piss off now, barbarian!’

  The five lemming men stomped into the governor’s potting shed. It was large and clean, lit with electric lights. In the middle of the room were two chairs, and on one of them sat a woman in British army uniform, her hands behind her back and a rope around her waist.

  Nonc sat down opposite and pulled a table over. He reached into his sash and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman said.

  Nonc frowned, wondering how to break the ice.

  ‘Shup!’ he screamed, and he slapped her across the face. ‘Ugly weakling flat-snout pig-monkey coward, your war of aggression is over and your verminous slave race must all die slow! Cigarette?’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’ Nonc had been looking forward to telling her that she couldn’t have one. ‘Now then,’ he began, cracking his knuckles, ‘you have nothing to fear from me, offworlder scum. So let us have a little chat, eh?’

  One of his men pulled down the blinds.

  ‘I understand you were captured by the beetle-things yesterday, on the outskirts of the town. I also understand you are of the Deepspace Operations Group, fools who presume to fight our glorious, entirely lovable empire. For you are she who wields the knife, consort of the ghost-warrior Wainscott – may a thousand demons chew out his wretched heart. You are his witch-woman, the banshee-warrior, she who is called… Susan.’

  The woman said nothing. Nonc took a deep drag on his cigarette. Thoughtfully, he tapped the ash away and touched the glowing end to the tabletop. He turned it slowly, a smile creeping across his face as the formica began to scorch.

  ‘Offworlder, you will tell me where I can find th
is so-called Wainscott. The Greater Galactic Happiness and Friendship Collective is most troubled by his continuing resistance to our grand plan for the betterment of the galaxy and wishes only to benevolently torture him to death.’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll show you where he is.’

  ‘Ah, offworlder, how easily you break!’ Nonc leaned back in her chair. ‘Now, where is he?’

  The woman scratched her head. ‘Well, it’s difficult.’

  ‘Really?’ Nonc said. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew across the tip. ‘Perhaps your tongue needs loosening... Wait! You just scratched your head! The beetle people said you were tied up –’

  ‘Actually,’ Susan said, ‘it’s not difficult at all. He’s right behind you.’

  Nonc whirled around and there he was, the demon himself: bearded and unkempt, standing in the doorway in his boots and underpants, a bandolier across his bare chest and a machete in either hand. Nonc’s guard lay at Wainscott’s feet, a scarf tied very tightly around his neck. The sentry’s tongue stuck out.

  ‘Morning,’ Wainscott said, and he took a step into the shed. Behind him Nonc glimpsed chaos. A beetle-person swarmed over the cab of the truck and punched its pincers through windscreen and driver alike. Nonc’s adjutant staggered past, arms folded over a great cut across his waist: one of the beetles scurried up behind him and casually snipped off his head.

  ‘I would have let you go,’ Wainscott said, twisting his neck to examine the ceiling. ‘The thing is, Susan here’s our medic, and she’s got my pills… and without my pills I get pretty bothered. In fact, it’s been a little while already.’ He hit the door with his heel and it swung shut. ‘Now,’ Wainscott said, and a huge, evil grin crept across his face, ‘how’s about you give up, and we’ll call it quits?’

  Six minutes and much squeaking later, Susan opened the door and the two humans stepped outside.

  ‘Well,’ Susan declared, slipping her commando knife back into its sheath, ‘that went rather well, didn’t it?’

  Wainscott blew some fluff off his knuckles. ‘Remind me to join you in the potting shed more often. Nelson!’ he called, waving across the square.

  A man jogged over in modified army gear, a long-range communications rig strapped to his back-plate. ‘Boss?’

  ‘Any of the furries get away?’

  ‘None, boss. They fought to the death.’

  ‘Excellent. Get Craig and Dreckitt to dump Colonel Nonc and friends in the forest. We’ll take the lorry and ditch it upriver. Best not bring the heat on these beetle chaps. Problem, Nelson?’

  ‘Well, there was one more thing...’

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘HQ radioed in. They want to know what you’re doing and why you won’t answer their calls.’

  Wainscott put his hands on his hips. ‘We’ve discussed this. Tell ’em the usual: I’m on a secret mission, killing lemmings by the bucketload. That ought to shut them up. Orders!’ he snorted. ‘I don’t know why you see the need to bother me with this sort of piffling stuff. I have work to do.’

  Susan watched Nelson go to relay the orders to the beetle people. ‘He’s got a point, you know,’ she said. ‘What is it now, three months since we’ve made contact with HQ?’

  ‘I measure time in deeds, not hours,’ Wainscott replied. ‘Except for my birthday, of course. Two weeks next Tuesday, Susan. Make a note.’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Good. You know what the lemmings call me?’ Wainscott jabbed his thumb at his filthy bare chest. ‘The Ghost Who Walks In Shorts. They’re scared – not just of me, but of the people who I command. You, Susan, are a part of that: maybe not a ghost in your own shorts, but certainly close to mine.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘One day, you could have your own nickname.’

  ‘I already do.’

  ‘Really? What do they call you?’

  ‘Sane Susan.’

  ‘How peculiar,’ Wainscott observed, and he strode away.

  PART ONE

  The Player of Board Games

  It was the heat that woke him. Isambard Smith lay on his bed like a castaway drifting on a raft, watching the ceiling fan turn above his head. He thought about Imperial attack shuttles, rising above a forest so thick that it was always night between the trees. Fire blasted from their engines. Flames washed over the foliage like a tidal wave, and Smith closed his eyes. Then he thought about breakfast.

  ‘Ravnavar,’ he said. ‘Bollocks, I’m still on Ravnavar.’

  He thought of the dust, the haggling crowds, the tang of roasting spices on a roadside stall. Smith remembered soldiers arguing over equipment, pursued by swarms of tough journalists, half a dozen types of native alien porters, interpreters, criminals and batmen, recalled the shining eyes of troopers driven by war to despair or exultation – and above it all, the ceaseless, droning, soul-destroying sound of the bloody Doors.

  ‘Rhianna, will you please turn that racket down!’ Grimacing, Smith sat up and thumped the partition wall. He flopped back against the pillow.

  The door opened. Rhianna Mitchell put her head into the room. She wore a large sun-hat, from which a number of dreadlocks flopped down as if she was making a bad job of hiding a dried squid on her head. The smell of Aresian Red Weed followed her into Smith’s bedroom. She looked hurt. ‘Isambard, that’s not a racket. That’s poetry. It’s like... truth.’

  ‘Truth my arse. They said that this was the end ten minutes ago and I’m still waiting for them to pipe down. I’m not surprised Jim Morrison’s only got one friend: if I was his brown-eyed girl I’d have left him ages ago.’

  She entered the room and looked him over. ‘You’ve still got a temperature, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you take the medicine I prepared?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, hoping that she would not notice the alarming new tint that the pot-plant was acquiring, thanks to a range of herbal remedies being tipped into its soil. Rhianna’s concoctions restored normality in much the same way as rubber bullets and tear gas. ‘Look, old girl, would you mind terribly putting the kettle on? I could do with some tea. I need to be on top form today.’

  They had been invited to attend a Strategic Development Conference by the Service’s Games and Diversions Department, which in plain English meant that they were going to play board games against spies.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Rhianna. ‘It’s like, really bad that you’re not feeling well. You know, I’ve developed this technique to help when I’m feeling down and I need to forget all my troubles.’ She paused to take a long drag on the hand-rolled cigarette she held, releasing a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air. She watched the ceiling fan chopping through the smoke for a moment, and then kept on watching it. ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Smith. ‘Thanks for looking after me, old girl.’

  Rhianna sat down beside him and swung her legs up. Removing her hat, she kicked off her sandals, yawned and stretched. Smith watched her stretching. It made listening to the Doors quite bearable. ‘I bought some amazing stuff at the market earlier,’ she said. ‘Maybe that would help.’

  ‘What sort of... stuff?’

  ‘Well, it’s a native oil.’

  ‘Sweaty bunch, are they?’

  ‘The ancient peoples of Ravnavar make it from the sap of the glue-pine tree. When the wild quanbeast releases musk onto the tree, it reacts in a unique way.’

  Smith imagined the unique way, and decided that he didn’t want anything to do with the drippings of a shrub that had been daubed in alien-pee. ‘What’re you supposed to do with this stuff?’

  ‘Well, I could rub it onto your afflicted areas.’

  ‘Could you leave the stuff out? You know, just rub my… er, areas?’

  Smith adjusted his pyjamas. Rhianna stared at the ceiling, perhaps admiring the selection of model aircraft that Smith had attached to it with string.

  ‘You know this game thing we’r
e here for?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we read the rules first?’

  ‘I thought you said rules were oppressive and fascist?’

  ‘That’s just Scrabble. There should totally be three A’s in “craaazy”. That’s how I pronounce it.’

  ‘Well,’ Smith replied, ‘I’ve been studying the rules of Warro. I’ve finished the quick-start pamphlet and I’m now onto page seventy-eight of the basic rules. Actually, I think it might be the small type that’s made me feel ill. All that squinting, you know.’

  ‘I don’t believe in rules,’ Rhianna said. ‘People should just be able to… you know, express themselves.’

  Smith heaved himself upright and slowly got out of bed. He pushed his feet into slippers, put his dressing gown on and checked his moustache in the mirror. ‘Yes, but it’s a board game. You have to have rules, otherwise it’d be every man for himself, like abroad or something. What would happen if I decided to pop up my pirate while you were trying to do Othello? Pure mayhem.’ The thought of mayhem made him pause. ‘Wait a minute. It’s terribly quiet here. Where’s Suruk?’

  ‘He went into town to buy a hat.’

  ‘Oh God. Do the police know? I know he’s keen and all, but I do worry that he’ll just get bored of waiting and kick off the war without getting to the front line first. I’ve never seen anyone keener to get to grips with the lemmings. And he does get a bit worked up about hats. Oh well…’ Smith reached down and hauled a book the size of a telephone directory from the floor. ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Warro,’ he announced, dumping it onto the bed. ‘Three weeks more and I’ll have it all worked out.’

  ‘I know,’ Rhianna said, ‘Why don’t you study the rules, and I’ll put the playing pieces together? It’ll be really creative.’

  ‘Excellent idea! I’ll get Carveth to help you once she gets back from her robot convention. And don’t let her paint my tanks pink, alright?’

  * * *

  At 8.33 the porterbot rolled into the station café. ‘Gor blimey,’ it announced, closing the airlock in a rush of cold air, ‘sensors indicate that external ambient temperature has decreased to freezing brass monkeys and all.’