God Emperor of Didcot Read online

  The toilet was long and red, and looked like a cross between a science lab and a 1920’s ocean liner. The tiles were scrupulously clean. As he entered, Smith saw a antique robot in a tuxedo sitting by the wall. It stood up.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ it said and brushed his collar down. ‘Might sir require assistance aiming the artillery?’

  ‘Quite all right, thanks,’ Smith replied. Quietly, the android left the room.

  Further up the room, a suited figure stepped away from the urinal. It was the man that Featherstone had pointed out as Calloway. Calloway looked around and looked straight at Smith, and Smith at once knew that trouble was coming. Nobody made eye contact in the gents.

  ‘Captain Smith,’ Calloway said. He had a lean, thin smile. ‘A little focus group tells me you’re looking for me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Smith. ‘What have you done with Featherstone?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be joining us shortly, don’t worry.’ Calloway was several years younger than Smith and much better groomed. He looked annoyingly rich, Smith thought, but in a fight he would come off the worse – assuming that he also had a splitting headache and a strong urge to fall asleep.

  ‘Let’s talk outside the envelope, Smith,’ Calloway said. ‘Bounce some ideas around. My client, the Grand Hyrax, has gained pretty solid support across the board, owing to his charismatic speaking and the, uh, progressive crusade-based reform package he’s planning to deliver. I’d say it’s a no-brainer that in a timescale of, oh, one to three months he’ll be looking to make good on the governor-ship. I’m being straight down the line with you, Smith.’

  ‘Go on,’ Smith said. He resented having to communicate with a lifeform that spoke like an estate agent.

  ‘Okay. Let’s try to take this forward, so we’re both in the same ballpark. Maybe Brady here can help.’

  Smith glanced around. The android had returned. It closed the door quietly and leaned against it, hands behind its back.

  Calloway ran a tap and splashed a little water onto his expensive-looking hair. ‘Brady, did Captain Smith come alone?’

  ‘Apart from Mr Featherstone? I believe not, sir. He arrived with a young lady, who is otherwise absorbed for now. I believe he has also been seen with a greenskin, sir. A greenskin warrior.’

  ‘I see. So, Smith, are you with me on this one? I’d suggest you get on board while there’s still a window of opportunity. The Grand Hyrax is a reasonable man – he’s not looking to reinvent the wheel, just to engage in a little religious genocide, maybe run with that idea a bit, but nothing I don’t think we can’t agree on. So, are you with the programme?’

  Smith frowned. His head was swimming. ‘What are you on about, man?’

  The android Brady stepped forward. It took its hands from behind its back, revealing the hatchet it carried.

  Calloway said: ‘You’re not with the programme, are you?’

  Smith said, ‘What?’

  ‘Tackle this problem head-on,’ Calloway said. He waved his fingers in front of the hand dryer and the sound of rushing air filled the room. ‘Sunset him.’

  Brady swiped with the axe: Smith leaped back, darted in, punched the android in the gut and then remembered that it was made of metal. Smith drew back, dropping into the Fighto first stance. Brady frowned and swung the axe at Smith’s head and Smith sprang to one side, put his leg behind the android’s knee and shoved it in the chest.

  Brady was top-heavy: tiles shattered under its back as it hit the floor. The axe skittered out of its hand and struck the wall. Smith ran after it. Brady’s eyes blinked frantically, and, like a zombie rising from the grave, it sat up and lurched upright.

  ‘Regrettable,’ Brady said, rubbing the back of its skull, and its free hand shot out and grabbed hold of Smith’s jacket. Smith whirled around and buried the axe in Brady’s head.

  Smith let go of the axe and slowly Brady fell back and lay still. Its joints had locked solid, and the android looked like a broken doll. The dryers stopped.

  Smith looked at Calloway.

  ‘Now then,’ said Smith. He felt terrible. Calloway rocked in his vision: the Hyrax’s PR man seemed to be on the deck of a floundering ship. ‘I’m taking you in.’

  A flushing sound came from the left and one of the toilet doors opened. Featherstone emerged. ‘Turned out nice again,’ he announced.

  ‘I’ve caught Calloway,’ Smith said. ‘The bugger set an android on me.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Featherstone said. ‘The stuff clearly hasn’t worked on you yet.’

  ‘What stuff?’ Smith replied, then, ‘Wait a minute! You poisoned m – urh – uh – oof.’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Featherstone, ‘it has.’

  3 The Fall of Didcot 4

  Smith came to looking at a very blue sky with waves in it.

  Everything seemed pleasant and restive. Then he realised that it was not a sky but Featherstone’s swimming pool and that not only was he the wrong way up and unable to move, but his trousers were down. It took very little nous to work out that the situation was bad.

  His head and shoulders had been thrust through the bottom of a wicker chair, pinning his arms to his side. His hair brushed the carpet.

  ‘Ah,’ said a voice, ‘so you’re awake, Captain. Excellent.’

  Featherstone stepped into view. He wore a black uniform with riding boots and very wide trousers. He was sipping a cocktail and smoking a cigarette through a long holder, and he looked absurd, Smith thought, before remembering that Featherstone was not the one wedged in a piece of furniture with his bare arse in the air.

  ‘So, you see me in my true colours,’ Featherstone remarked.

  ‘You dirty chauffeur! Let me go at once!’

  ‘I am not a chauffeur,’ Featherstone replied, annoyed. ‘I am a Ghastist.’ He finished his cocktail and took a black officer’s cap from the sideboard. He put it on. Two false antennae jutted from the brim.

  ‘Traitor!’ Smith cried, and thrashed. ‘You filthy, scum-sucking, Gertie-loving traitor! By God, Featherstone, you’d better surrender now, or what I do to you with my fists will make the drop from the scaffold look like a jolly on Brighton pier!’

  ‘Not so, my dear Smith. At least, not until we’ve had a chance to talk properly. You see, the Ghasts have made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Our empire stands for decency, civilisation, progress, equality – tiresome egalitarianism. The Ghasts have a far better idea of what constitutes fun. Once the Edenites have put the Grand Hyrax in power, this world will be as good as a colony of the Ghast Empire. And then, the Ghasts will want help from men like me – help in thrashing the living daylights out of the locals. How could I turn down a chance like that?’ Featherstone sighed. ‘But enough talking. To business.’

  He opened a small cabinet and ran his finger along a row of things that Smith could not quite make out. ‘Ah, that’s it,’ Featherstone said, and he drew out a long cane. ‘You must understand, Smith, that I need information about the Secret Service from you. Later I shall get considerable entertainment beating your little pilot girl’s backside until it turns blue, but this is business only. I’m not some kind of pervert, you know,’ he added, flexing the cane.

  ‘You’re as good as dead,’ said Smith. ‘My men are close behind me.’

  ‘But not as close as I am, old fellow,’ Featherstone said.

  The door burst open. Carveth and Suruk stood in the doorway. Carveth was holding a huge pistol – Smith’s Civiliser. ‘Nobody move!’ she cried. She blinked. ‘Oh. . .shall I come back later?’

  ‘No!’ said Smith.

  ‘How strange,’ Suruk said. ‘Which one is the female?’

  The cigarette holder dropped out of Featherstone’s mouth and landed on Smith’s behind. ‘Aargh!’ Smith cried and it fell onto the floor. ‘Bloody kill him, you idiots!’

  Featherstone took a step towards the dressing table.

  ‘Now look,’ he said. ‘There is a perfectly innocent explanation for all of this.’

  ‘
I’d like to see it!’ Carveth said and she laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Smith cried. ‘He’s a bastard traitor, and once he’s done with me he means to beat your arse to death!’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Carveth said. ‘ Now you tell me. Well, in that case – beat this!’

  The Civiliser blasted into life and the recoil almost knocked Carveth flat. The bullet hit Featherstone smack in the chest and tossed him against the wall. He lay there, slumped and dead, at the end of a runway of blood.

  Suruk strolled in, seemingly unbothered by the whole episode. He nudged Featherstone with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Good riddance to him. Why is he dressed as a chauffeur?’

  ‘This is the worst night of my entire life,’ said Smith. ‘Would someone mind getting me out of here?’

  Suruk helped him out of the chair while Carveth looked away. Smith pulled his trousers up. ‘Ow,’ he said. ‘Bloody cigarette burnt my arse.’

  ‘I had a bad night too,’ Suruk said. ‘I played a game called poker. Nobody could read my expression because of my tusks, so I won a pile of little round biscuits and something called a yacht. The biscuits turned out to be plastic so I threw them all away. Most disappointing.’

  *

  ‘What a damned mess,’ W said, forty-five minutes later.

  He sat on an angular chair, rolling a cigarette. He looked battered and shabby and, like all of them, out of place in Featherstone’s modernist home. ‘The worst of it is, I suspected him all along.’

  ‘You could have told me that before he set light to my bum.’ Smith stood at the far end of the room. At Carveth’s request they had put a sheet over Featherstone’s body.

  Suruk’s request, that they punt him into the swimming pool, had been ignored.

  ‘Well, not him specifically.’ W licked the cigarette closed, took a little metal case from his pocket and dropped the cigarette in it for later. ‘I thought someone here would be corrupt, but I didn’t realise it reached this far.’

  ‘Corrupt hardly covers it,’ said Smith. ‘My main regret is that it wasn’t me who got to top the bugger. And that he pulled my trousers off.’

  ‘This city seems to be riddled with Ghastists and potential traitors,’ W said glumly as he stood up. ‘I blame the so-called higher echelons of society, seeking to oppress the working man.’

  ‘What this place needs is a proper British garrison,’ Smith said.

  ‘Very true. Most of the population certainly see themselves as citizens. But I doubt the army could spare the men to hold the place. Oh, did you see your lady friend?’

  ‘Yes, thanks; that was decent of you. Although I don’t think she is mine, as such. Think I missed my chance there.’

  Carveth entered the room with a tray. ‘Here’s the tea,’ she announced. ‘When are we going to call the plods? That dead chauffeur creeps me out.’

  ‘It strikes me that they must be pretty confident to try to take you out of the running,’ W said.

  ‘I suppose they know our plans as much as we do,’ Smith said. ‘Featherstone must have been telling them all along.’

  ‘No doubt.’ W took a cup from the tray and drained it.

  ‘You wonder if this will force their hand. The police should have Calloway by now and without him –’ His pocket made a ringing sound, and he took out his fob-phone. ‘One moment. Sorry everyone. Hello?’ he said into the receiver. ‘That you, Wainscott? All well are we? Oh my God. . .’

  He strode across the room and flicked on the television.

  A deep-voiced man stood on a rooftop, an armoured waistcoat over his shirt. Behind him, something in the city burned.

  ‘– have stormed the missile defences in the name of the Grand Hyrax, proclaiming themselves the rightful rulers of Urn. The coup is being fiercely resisted by the local Citizen Guard, and the Edenite forces have been driven back to the missile compound and the spaceport on the West of the city, which they are currently holding despite being encircled. The Citizen Guard have released a statement claiming that they expect to completely defeat the coup within twelve hours.’

  ‘So the Hyrax has played his hand,’ W said. ‘But not very well, it seems.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Smith. ‘Now the cards are on the table, the odds are against him. To continue the poker metaphor, he’ll soon “snap”. That said, we ought to help out. I’d be happy to have a pop at Johnny Cultist.’

  ‘I too,’ Suruk said. ‘There has been enough talk. Less jaw, more war, I say.’

  The announcer continued, ‘This is R. Trevor Humphries, reporting from – Good Lord, what the blazes was that?’

  Lights in the sky – landing lights, hundreds of them.

  Ships were descending over the city, ray-shaped battle-ships.

  Between his teeth Isambard Smith said, ‘Gertie!’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Carveth said at his side. ‘It’s an invasion!’

  ‘My God,’ W rasped. ‘That’s what they grabbed the missile station for, so the Ghasts could land! There must be thousands of them!’

  ‘Smashing!’ said Suruk the Slayer. ‘What are we waiting for? Let us kill everything!’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Carveth cried. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’

  ‘That may not be so easy,’ W said. ‘Look.’

  The picture swayed on the screen and faded out. In its place, a monster appeared: a mixture of ant and man in a high-backed, organic chair, its rough approximation of a face glaring into the screen. All Ghasts looked alike to Smith, but there was something about this one that disgusted him especially – something he recognised despite the facial scars and the glinting circle of its artificial eye.

  ‘Ghast Empire calling!’ it barked. ‘I am 462, Assault Commander of the invading forces. As I speak, the space-craft of the mighty Ghast navy are deploying six divisions of elite praetorian shock troops to hold this world. You are now part of the greater Ghast Empire, Earth scum! Ahahaha!’

  ‘462,’ Smith whispered. ‘My God. I thought I’d killed him.’

  ‘Resistance will not be tolerated! All opposing us will be shot!’ His face broke into a hideous smirk. ‘Remember, people of Urn, anyone who co-operates and donates his more nutritious relatives to the new order will be spared. Anyone who resists us will die, for we are infallible, and the triumph of our legions shall be proof of our infallibilinessity! All glory to Number One!’

  462 saluted with his pincers and antennae, and he faded from the screen. In his place the emblem of the praetorians filled the screen like a pirate flag: a stylised Ghast skull with antennae.

  ‘Dirty aliens!’ Smith exclaimed. ‘This is British soil! Or it would have been in a couple of months.’ He frowned. ‘Six divisions, eh? There’s a rifle in the car. Follow me, everyone – we’re going to stop them dead in their tracks!’

  The night sky was alive with lights. From the undersides of a dozen ray-shaped craft, searchlights swept the ground. Over the rush of thrusters, Ghast loudspeakers bellowed anything they could: ranting speeches from Number One; unfeasible promises of comfort under the Ghast Empire; crazy threats and jumbled insults.

  All through the journey W sat in the back next to Suruk, talking on the fob-phone to his colleague Wainscott. Suruk wound down the window and stuck his head out to get a better view, and the smell of burning rushed into the car with the warm night air.

  ‘This is a terrible idea,’ Carveth said. ‘I mean, haven’t you noticed that we’re actually going towards the enemy? Four people can’t defeat six divisions, especially if a quarter of them are hiding. It’s like mooning people at light speed: it just won’t work. At a guess.’

  A jeep swung across the road in front of them. Smith braked hard, and a man jumped down and ran over.

  Smith pulled back his jacket and slid his hand onto the Civiliser. ‘One moment,’ W said, and he got out and paced across to the jeep.

  The newcomer wore big shorts and a khaki shirt. At this distance he looked like a bearded, oversized boy scout. For a moment they exc
hanged words, then W turned back to Smith. ‘The spaceport’s taken!’ he called. ‘They’ve got the ships. We’re trapped here.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ Carveth said.

  W strode back to the car, coughing into his hand. ‘They’re unloading biotanks, Edenite battlesuits, the whole bloody lot. The place is overrun: the cultists are going crazy in the city. There’s no way we can outfight this many. Even Wainscott thinks we’re in trouble.’

  The spy stood in the dark outside the car, fires and searchlights lighting the night behind him, the headlamps turning his face into a crumpled mess of lines. For a moment he seemed confused. ‘Listen, Smith. We’re trying to get everyone out of the city that we can.

  Forty miles east of here is a plantation called Chartham. We’ll meet at the bar there and plan our next move.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Smith. ‘Where’s Rhianna?’

  ‘This is an emergency, Smith,’ W said. ‘I think—’

  ‘It’s an emergency for her, too. You know the Ghasts have always wanted her for her powers, and now they’ve got the chance. More than anyone, she’s in danger right now. Gertie must be dribbling at the thought of getting hold of her. I would – if I were Gertie, of course. She needs a helping hand more than any of us right now, and I propose to give her one.’

  W nodded. ‘You’re right. We can’t have them taking her alive. Have you got a map?’

  ‘Here.’ Smith passed him the road map and W drew a cross on it.

  ‘Here, at the edge of the city. St Carmilla the Tactile’s school for Ladies of Unusual Talent. Once you’ve got her, meet us at Rick’s Bar, Chartham plantation just as soon as you can. Understood?’

  ‘Right,’ said Smith. ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  W strode over to the jeep. Smith spun the car in the road and they drove away from the flames into the night.

  They took the back streets; the Ghast attack was swift and unexpected, but already people were pouring out of the city, fleeing to the great tea plantations and the townships that serviced them. Smith drove through the industrial district to avoid the traffic, past the hulking shadows of warehouses and packaging plants, beneath the smiling billboards. He glanced into the rear view mirror and saw a huge face holding up a cup beneath a moustache as wide as a bus. ‘Tea – for vigour and regularity!’ the slogan said.