God Emperor of Didcot Read online

  The Ghast with the passports returned. It had stopped drooling. ‘Your child is lucky. We have no orders to eat it yet.’ It opened the top passport, peered at the picture, then at Smith. ‘So. You are Arthur Fonzarelli?’

  ‘Indeed so, my good man,’ Smith replied.

  ‘And the child is – how is this pronounced?’

  ‘Parkins Mhambowte,’ Carveth replied. ‘Probably.’

  The drone paused. ‘Remain there.’

  It joined its comrade at the back of the car, and they began a hushed conversation. For creatures usually unable to speak without shouting, they managed to whisper quite well.

  ‘I knew this was a bad idea!’ Carveth hissed, watching the Ghasts confer in the rear view mirror.

  ‘Quite,’ said Smith. He wore a battered civilian jacket supplied by W, and the Civiliser under it. He reached across his body and pulled the hammer down, ready to fire. ‘I think your friend short-changed us. Anyone with an ounce of brain knows that Parkins Mhambowte isn’t the name of a white female android.’

  ‘I know,’ Carveth said glumly. ‘Android names all have an R in the middle.’

  ‘Maybe we can reason our way out of this,’ Rhianna said from under the rug.

  One of the Ghasts cocked its disruptor with a hollow cracking sound. ‘Everybody out!’ it barked. ‘Get out, scum! Rak, rak! ’

  ‘Balls,’ said Smith, and he opened the door.

  ‘And the woman under the rug in the back! Out, out, all of you!’

  ‘Best do what they say,’ Smith said, and he stepped out into the dusk. Behind him, Rhianna and Carveth followed suit. The boot stayed shut.

  The first Ghast covered them while the checkpoint commander put all of its arms behind its back and puffed its chest up. ‘Ah, so you thought to deceive us, did you?’ it began. ‘Puny earthmen thought to trick the Ghast Empire. Hah! We have found you out! We see right through you, Arthur Fonzarelli! You have attempted to illegally carry this woman into the spaceport!’

  Very pleased with itself, it wiggled its antennae and gave them a toothy smirk. ‘But there is more. We have orders – specific orders – to apprehend a M’Lak, a human male and two human females of your description! Yes, orders from number 462! Now, open the boot so we can get this over with and shoot you.’

  Smith fixed the creature with a hard gaze. ‘I don’t think you ought to do that.’

  ‘Silence! Open it!’

  Carveth started to elbow Rhianna in the ribs. ‘Psychic powers, psychic powers!’ she whispered. ‘Pop their heads!’

  ‘Quiet!’ the Ghast snapped. ‘You, male. Open the boot or I strike a female!’

  ‘Shoot them,’ said the first Ghast, grinning. ‘Shoot them both.’

  ‘Silence!’ the second said. ‘Who is the secondary road-block commander here? I give the orders. You, human male – open the boot or I shoot one of the females!’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Smith. He walked to the back of the car, trying to work out how to warn Suruk. He bent down, reached to the boot catch with his left hand and slid the right across his chest, ready to draw. His fingers closed around the Civiliser, he pressed the button, the boot swung open – and there was nothing there.

  Smith thought: Suruk?

  ‘Nothing,’ the Ghast said. ‘These are not the humans we are looking for.’ It glanced at its comrade. ‘Ah well. Let’s shoot them anyway.’

  ‘Good plan!’ the other barked.

  ‘Do it,’ Smith said, looking over the Ghast’s shoulder.

  ‘As you wish, human!’ the Ghast replied.

  ‘I didn’t mean you,’ Smith said, and Suruk’s spear burst through its thorax and the Ghast screeched. The second trooper raised its gun and Smith leaped in, punched it in the jaw, threw it against the car as he drew the Civiliser and pressed the barrel into the Ghast’s side. The alien looked down, saw the gun jutting into the folds of its trenchcoat and cried, ‘Not the leather, Fonzarelli!’ and Smith pulled the trigger and it fell down dead.

  ‘I still think we could have reasoned our way out of that,’ Rhianna said.

  Smith put the gun away. ‘Do you think anyone heard that?’ he asked.

  ‘That deafening gunshot?’ Suruk said. He tugged his spear from the dead Ghast and wiped it on the thing’s coat. ‘It is possible, yes.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Smith said. ‘Carveth, you’re driving.’

  She nodded. ‘Alright.’ She climbed into the front seat and revved the engine. The others got in: Suruk and Rhianna in the back seats, Smith in the front, on the passenger side. Carveth passed Smith her service revolver and he wound down the window.

  She glanced at him. ‘Straight through, right?’

  ‘Straight through,’ Smith said.

  Carveth looked over her shoulder. ‘Hold on!’ she said, and she took the handbrake off and kicked the accelerator.

  Further down the road, praetorian 37012/B turned to its comrade, 264578/F. ‘Which do you think is better,’ it asked, ‘backhanding them across the head, or kicking them when they’re down?’

  264578/F shrugged. ‘I like both,’ it said. ‘They’re equally vicious. However, what I really enjoy is—’

  It never finished, because at that moment the reinforced bumper of a Crofton Imp smashed straight through the sentry box and mangled it. Its colleague spun around, raising its gun, and Smith put a Civiliser shell into its chest even as Suruk’s spear cleaved off one of its pincers. The car ploughed through the barrier and suddenly they were no longer in the road: around them were the vast shapes of Ghast and Edenite troop ships, and the Imp raced between them, quick as a wasp between the flanks of cattle, as all hell broke loose.

  A siren howled: Ghastish yelped over their heads from a loudspeaker. Four of Gilead’s skytroopers leaped up and started shouting. Gunfire rattled out from behind and Carveth swerved around the landing gear of an Edenite ship.

  Figures rushed in from the edges of the windscreen.

  Carveth swung the wheel and the Imp struck a power-suited Edenite with a clang, his armour sparking on the concrete before he rolled out of view. They plunged on, past the enemy ships, towards the John Pym.

  Suruk hurled a knife, Rhianna ducked down, Carveth hunched over the wheel, teeth bared in desperation, a very small way from panic. On the loudspeaker, the Ghast voice was joined by a human one. Soldiers poured onto the airfield and the Imp raced past them. Sun dragons were massing in the sky. The Ghasts were bringing up a tripod-mounted disruptor gun: two of Gilead’s men got confused and started shooting at them, and suddenly the spaceport was a cat’s cradle of bullets and beams. Three cultists ran howling onto the field and blew themselves up, which helped nobody. The Imp shot through the flames and Smith saw that the ships before them were Imperial.

  ‘That’s our ship!’ Smith cried, pointing, and at that moment a praetorian leaped onto the bonnet, smeared itself over the windscreen like a monstrous fly. It battered the glass with its claws, and Smith leaned out the window and the Civiliser clicked empty.

  ‘I can’t see a thing!’ Carveth yelled, and Suruk hoisted himself out through the window, dropped onto the running-board and grabbed the praetorian by the neck.

  He tore it loose – it fell – the car bumped over it on wrecked suspension. ‘Eat wheel, Gertie!’ Smith yelled.

  ‘Good work, Suruk!’

  Carveth shifted onto one buttock and Smith helped steer as she fumbled in her back pocket for the key. ‘Get the hold open!’ she shouted, throwing it at Smith, who foraged on the floor for the dropped key as a Ghast hover-tank slid into view.

  Smith grabbed the key as they came into range of the Pym. He glanced over his shoulder: Rhianna had closed her eyes and was making a humming sound and the tank was lining up its guns. He stuck his arm out the window and pressed the button on the key frantically. ‘Work, dammit!’

  The John Pym was fifty yards away – forty now. Smith’s finger hammered the button, and – thank God – the lights on the ship flashed on, then off, and it was op
en. The hold door dropped like a drawbridge, Carveth turned the car right, tyres screeching, and behind they heard the low Whumpf of the tank gun. She swung further right: the disruptor shell could not compensate fast enough and flew past. Explosion to the left, far off.

  She spun the wheel, and the rear of the John Pym was open to them. Carveth floored the accelerator. In the hold a drone, finding nothing worth looting, was drawing antennae on Smith’s picture of the Queen. The car hit the ramp, left the ground, knocked the drone’s head off, smashed into the back wall of the hold and was still.

  Smith half-fell into the hold, stumbled to the back door and whacked the button. The door closed. He strode to the car. ‘Everyone alright?’

  Carveth gave him a cheery, vacant wave. He tossed her the keys. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and Carveth ran to the cockpit.

  Suruk stepped off the running-board. ‘Rargh!’ he said. ‘Let’s do it again!’

  ‘Rhianna,’ Smith said. She sat in the back of the car, eyes closed, humming to herself. Either she was meditating, or she had gone completely mad.

  Something struck the side of the John Pym. It shook a little and dust fell from the roof. ‘Go, Carveth!’

  He looked into the car. ‘Rhianna, we’re taking off,’ he said. ‘You need to strap yourself in.’

  ‘Not now,’ she said, and she began humming again.

  Suruk tapped his arm. ‘Leave her, Mazuran. You must rule the ship.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded, still uneven from the drive, and lurched into the cockpit.

  The engines fired up.

  ‘We’re not going to do this,’ Carveth called, wrapping her hands around the stick. ‘Soon as we’re up, they’ll lock a missile onto us.’ She switched the auxiliary power to the main thrusters as she spoke. Outside, gunfire. More tanks were pouring onto the strip. Someone was battering at the airlock.

  ‘Just try.’

  He strapped himself in; not that a seatbelt would do much against half a dozen heatseekers. The engines roared.

  ‘Here goes!’ Carveth said, and the ship tore from the ground. Bullets and lasers clattered against the hull. A railgun team ran out of cover, and Carveth swung the jets and sent them running, chased by flame. The Pym shot upwards, its oversized engines straining, and Smith gripped the armrests and prayed that they would not be shaken to bits.

  As the ship rushed upwards, sun dragons whirled around it. Drawn by the chaos, they were attacking the landing site. Smith watched, awed. A dragon spat onto an Edenite tank and a bolt of static leaped from its mouth, frying the machine. Another was pulling the aerials off a transport ship. A dropping the size of a small oak fell onto and through the control tower like a tossed caber, partially collapsing it.

  Great veined wings filled the screen for a second then disappeared. Smith came back to life. They had to move, fast. The sun dragons would fight anything smaller than a starship, W had said. He was surprised they hadn’t already attacked.

  Smith thumbed the radio, and chattering gibberish filled the cockpit. A human voice broke in. ‘Great One, the unbelievers are attacking the missile array!’

  Wainscott! Smith thought. ‘They’ve hit the missile grid!’

  he said. ‘We’re safe! Apart from the A.A. guns, obviously.’

  Carveth grinned. ‘A.A? Pah! We’re way out of range.’

  She leaned close to the window and made a rude sign. ‘Try getting us now, tossers!’

  ‘Don’t get cocky,’ Smith warned. ‘Just key in the route and let’s go.’

  ‘Ah, we’re fine at this altitude. They just look like big ants from up here.’

  ‘They are big ants, Carveth.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ She typed on the computer. ‘We’re climbing. We’ll be off Urn in two minutes.’

  ‘Good. Let’s check on Rhianna.’

  Suruk was waiting in the hold. Rhianna still sat in the back of the car, meditating.

  ‘Wainscott’s attacked the missile silos,’ Smith announced. ‘We’re safe to get away.’

  ‘Thanks to my ace piloting,’ Carveth said. ‘And driving.’

  ‘And my plan, if I may say so,’ Smith replied, peeved by her stealing the credit.

  ‘Ahem,’ Suruk said. ‘Actually, behold.’

  He opened the door, and they looked in. Rhianna was indeed unharmed: eyes closed, humming, concentrating on something that Smith and Carveth could not see.

  ‘So she hums,’ Carveth said. ‘So what? I can do that too, when I’m not flying the ship. Sometimes both at once.’

  ‘No,’ Suruk replied. ‘You spoke of her powers, now you see them. Her thoughts protected us from harm.’

  Carveth snorted. ‘So it’s her who stopped us getting shot?’ she said. ‘Prove it.’

  Smith touched Rhianna’s shoulder. ‘Rhianna?’ he said softly.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Hey, guys,’ she said.

  ‘I was wondering—’ Smith said.

  A laser hit the back of the ship. The hold controls exploded in a shower of sparks. The lights went off.

  The lights came back on. Carveth got up from the floor and brushed herself down. ‘Point made,’ she said, and she ran to the cockpit.

  ‘Well,’ said Carveth, an hour later, ‘I’ve checked the cameras best as I can. We’re well out of orbit now, and there’s nothing they could send up that could follow us. Missile-wise, we’re safe.’

  ‘Good-oh.’ Smith lowered a digestive biscuit into his tea. ‘So what’s the damage?’

  Carveth put her boots up on the dashboard. In his cage, Gerald’s wheel squeaked. ‘To be honest, Boss, it’s hard to tell without going outside. But at that range, the laser wouldn’t be strong enough to do much except mess up the electrics. I suppose we may have a slow puncture, but as it is, all I can be sure it’s done is break the big door at the back of the hold. I can repair that as soon as we put down.’

  Smith was impressed. Carveth’s programming as a sexbot tended to intrude on her ability to describe the workings of the ship without resorting to crude innuendo.

  She was doing well so far.

  ‘Which just goes to show,’ she added, ‘that if you’re going to take a long beam without proper protection, you’re best off getting it in the rear entrance.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Smith. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

  She shrugged and turned the page of her magazine.

  ‘Land on the nearest standard-grav world and have a look. At worst I’ll have to do a bit of welding.’ She tapped the navigation console, causing the needles in several dials to spin wildly. ‘We’ll be passing Didcot 5 soon and I’ll run a scan: if that’s no good to land on we’ll have a look once we get to Suruk’s place, Didcot 6.’

  ‘Righto. How long will the repairs take?’

  Carveth sucked in air. ‘Ooh, let’s see . . . Give it, say, an hour to check the hull, two hours max to spray on new sealant, fifteen minutes to suck on my teeth and tell you it’s tricky – about four hours ought to do it.’

  ‘Four hours? Are you sure it’ll take that long?’

  ‘Call it five.’

  Smith took a sip of tea. He tasted it, swallowed, and thought: this stuff is precious now. How long until our reserves run out? With Urn blockaded the army could not be kept in tea. Without the forces to liberate Urn the Empire would be slowly wrung dry – and then its moral fibre would break. The people of the Empire would be left helpless and, without spine, no more capable of defending themselves than foreigners. We have to work fast, he thought. The fate of the Empire rests on our skill.

  Suruk strolled in, put his face close to the windscreen and looked out into space. ‘Are we there yet?’

  ‘Few hours yet,’ Smith replied. ‘We’ve got to do some repairs first. What’s that you’re reading, Carveth?’

  She held up the magazine. ‘This month’s Girl Android,’ she said. ‘“Ten Sexy Ways to Improve Your Processing Speed”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason.’ She shrugged unconvincingly. ‘Just th
ought I might. I mean, you never know, right?’

  ‘She wishes to spawn with the other simulant,’ Suruk said.

  ‘What, Dreckitt?’ Smith replied. ‘Ugh. He struck me as a low sort of fellow. Not the type I’d want my crew dealing with. I take it you’re giggling at the absurdity of the idea, Carveth?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said, grinning behind her magazine.

  She frowned. ‘On an unrelated topic, do I look fat?’

  ‘Of course not.’ They looked around: Rhianna stood in the doorway. She entered in a swish of tie-dyed fabric. ‘Body image is just a construct, Polly. You should be happy with yourself no matter what your size.’

  Carveth checked the scanner and sighed. ‘Which sounds very much like “Buck up podgy”, if you ask me. I need to lose some weight.’

  Rhianna picked up Girl Android and shook her head wisely. ‘This is really terrible,’ she said, flicking through the pages.

  ‘Bloody right. Four pounds fifty and there’s not even a photo story.’

  ‘Polly, have you ever heard of Body Fascism?’

  ‘Some disgusting alien practice, no doubt,’ Smith remarked. ‘Insult to nature, your Ghast.’

  ‘No, not exactly. It’s what happens when we adopt a restrictive concept of beauty and try to fit every type of person into one narrow stereotyped image. There are many different, diverse sorts of woman – one could be thin, or, um, larger, or—’

  ‘Attractive?’ Smith suggested. He felt that he was getting the hang of this.

  ‘None of which stops me weighing far too much,’

  Carveth said.

  Suruk turned from his study of the stars. ‘You’d be lighter if I cut your head off,’ he said. ‘How about that?’

  Smith looked over his shoulder. Rhianna was sleek and alluring. Her midriff was bare, which was something not often seen in the Empire. Somewhere or other she had discarded her shoes. ‘You look nice,’ he said.

  She smiled; something inside him softened, and something on the outside did the opposite. ‘Thanks. You know, I’m glad to be back aboard.’