Space Captain Smith (7 page)

He stood there, waiting. ‘What’re they doing, waiting to attack?’

‘I don’t think so. They’re just… staying away. I don’t get this. They’re pulling back.’

He listened. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the captain.’

‘I’m staying here. Call me if they go.’

Smith lowered himself awkwardly and sat down on the floor beside the airlock. He stared out across the empty hold, at the chains and pulleys that dangled from the roof, and the rear door big enough to accommodate a truck. He waited. Five minutes passed.

‘Are you coming back soon?’ Carveth said over the radio. ‘You said you were making a sandwich about half an hour ago, and I’m still hungry.’

Smith pulled himself up and stomped back to the corridor. Rhianna did not seem to have moved throughout the incident. He unbuckled the suit and hung it in the locker, then he made some tea.

‘Biscuit?’ he said, returning to the cockpit. ‘Here’s some tea.’

‘Thanks, Cap.’ Carveth still held the controls, moving her hands along with them as the autopilot returned the ship to its programmed route. Smith put the Maxim cannon back in the weapons locker.

‘Don’t ask me, because I just don’t know,’ Carveth said as he sat down. ‘God only knows why they decided to go away. Just be glad they did. That could have been a real crisis.’

‘I doubt it would have bothered our guest,’ Smith replied. ‘She’s been sitting there half-asleep all through it all.’

‘So you’re not sold on the space cadet?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, she’s attractive and pleasant enough, but I find it hard to warm to the kind of stuff she believes in. Sappy nonsense, all this pagan stuff, listening to trees and tying bits of string on dolphins.’ He stood up.

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a sleep.’

Smith lay on his back, staring at the ceiling and trying to think. He missed the Captains’ Lounge back at the company. This time he would have a story or two to tell: his battle with void sharks, his experience of the Franese and his strange near-miss with a second pack of creatures that would normally have been trying to chew through the hull. Funny business, all that.

He had put up a couple of pictures, the same ones he always took on missions. There was a map of Known Space, with the Empire a broad swathe of pink running across the centre, and a reproduction of Waterhouse’s
Lady of Shallott
. Now, he thought, there was a proper woman, not a weed like Rhianna or an oddment like Carveth. The Lady sat in her boat, her damsel-sleeves almost trailing in the water, staring out and awaiting rescue. She wouldn’t give you sarcastic backchat, or spend hours on the sofa staring into space. She would be appreciative, and awed, and good at cakes. She might smell of small onions, though. He drifted off into sleep.

Smith dreamed that he was in the Captains’ Lounge, sitting on a wicker chair under the stuffed monocorn head that jutted from the wall, a souvenir of Wickton’s expedition to claim the Outer Systems. He was describing to a rapt, mainly female audience how he’d defeated the void sharks. He looked around, and Carveth and Rhianna were in the room. ‘That’s not how it happened,’ Carveth said. ‘No, it really happened like this,’ Rhianna said, and Smith awoke.

The intercom rang and a copy of
Tales of Adventure
fell off the shelf next to it and landed on Smith’s head. Muttering, he stretched out and switched on the intercom.

‘Yes?’

‘Come up here, now,’ Carveth said, and for once there was nothing flippant in her voice.

He reached the cockpit in his dressing gown. The others were there already, the alien and the visitor standing behind the pilot’s chair. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Look,’ Carveth said.

Something turned lazily in the middle of the screen. From here it looked like a shard of sooty porcelain or a scrap of bone, a snapped, shattered, ragged thing. It was partly hollow, like broken honeycomb. Little fires winked around its edges. Without air to feed them, the explosions were tiny, like the glow of embers.

‘We picked up the call on emergency frequency while you were asleep,’ Carveth explained. ‘Probably an automated distress call. That used to be a frigate. There would have been fifty people on board.’

‘My God,’ said Smith. ‘Is there anyone alive?’

New lights flared up along the stricken ship. Its systems were in their final, terminal throes. The core computer would be burning out, the doors no longer sealing, the oxygen stores leaking away. It was dying.

‘From a wreck like that?’

‘Check, Carveth.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘Just do it, woman!’

‘It is dead,’ Suruk said.

She nodded and pressed buttons, turned dials. ‘The emergency kits would have beacons attached, on the lifeboats and the suits…’ she said, studying the controls.

‘No beacons.’

‘Fifty people,’ Rhianna said from the back of the room.

‘That’s awful.’

A piece of metal from the hull floated past. It must have been the size of the
John Pym
, a huge sheet of plating wrenched into a pretzel shape. Smith lowered himself slowly into the captain’s chair, like an old man. Numbly he realised that his dressing gown was not covering his knees, and he pulled it closed.

Carveth looked down the binoculars and held them out for Smith. ‘The
Tenacious
,’ she said. ‘It’s one of ours.’

‘What happened to it?’ Rhianna asked. Her voice sounded lost, disembodied.

‘The engine’s still intact,’ Smith replied. ‘Its missiles must have gone… or somebody torpedoed it.’

‘Nothing on the signals,’ Carveth said. ‘I say we go.’

‘Check again.’

‘Right.’ She looked back to the dials, very slowly turning one of them with her hand. They could hear the click of the dial as she explored the band, from top to bottom. Nothing.

Smith said: ‘Is the emergency signal still going?’

‘Yes. It’s two hundred miles away from the main wreckage, moving away fast… Probably blown clear.’ She turned and looked at Smith. ‘Boss, I know this is bad, but there’s nobody left alive out there… And I don’t think it was a malfunction that did for them.’

Smith ran a hand through his hair. Technically speaking, there could be people on the ship, survivors whose suit beacons didn’t work, or who were unconscious, or too shocked to put them to use, or a hundred other reasons why, waiting for help, hoping that somebody would come.
Technically
, but they all knew otherwise.

‘Take us out of here,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody alive. Set the co-ordinates and put us back on course.’

‘Right,’ said Carveth. The
John Pym
rumbled: they heard the soft whine as the thrusters swung to push them backwards, away from the scene.

A light flashed on the radio. ‘Hang on,’ Carveth said.

‘That must mean something. It’s picked something up.’

She pressed the headset against her ear. ‘It’s a standard S.O.S. transmission,’ she said. ‘Wait, there’s something on the end… it’s in code.’ She looked around at Smith. ‘Why is it in code?’

‘Run the code
6079Smith
through the decoder,’ he said.

‘Is that their code?’ Rhianna asked.

‘It’s the only one I know,’ he said.

Carveth pulled the console down on its jointed metal arm and typed. ‘Then it’s for you. I think you’d better hear this.’

The loudspeakers crackled at the edges of the room and a voice filled the air between them, like the voice of God. It took up the cockpit, a deep, actor’s voice, the voice of a man who was not quite elderly.

‘This is Bentham Cartwright, Captain of HMS

Tenacious
, fleet number 2305. If you can hear me, I am assuming two things: firstly, that I am addressing Captain Isambard Smith and the crew of the
John Pym
and, secondly, that our mission to protect you has been a failure. For that I apologise.

‘Captain Smith, no doubt you have wondered as to the purpose of your flying to New Fran to collect a seemingly unimportant dissident, to rescue her from the possibility of that colony being annexed by the Ghast Empire. You are presumably on the way to deliver Miss Mitchell to the city of Midlight, on Kane’s World. It is vital that you continue with this mission. You are to proceed with all possible speed to your destination and to stop for no reason whatsoever. It is absolutely imperative that she reaches the destination intact and unharmed. The only higher priority is that you prevent her from falling into the hands of the Ghasts or their allies.

‘You employer, Mr Khan of Valdane Shipping, has long had links with the Deepspace Operations Group of Great Britain and its Colonies. He gave you this task because your ship was unimportant, less likely to be noticed than a larger, military vessel. He arranged for us to follow you and protect you – which, if you are hearing this, we have been unable to do.

‘Mr Khan believed that you would be less likely to reveal yourself or make any errors if you did not know you were being shadowed. It was a mission where ignorance was vital, a mission for which you were the ideal choice. Now, however, you are no longer safe. You are exposed, and it is you and you alone on whom the safety of your ship relies…’

‘We’re stuffed,’ Carveth said.

‘… I can only wish you good luck. May your ship prove up to the task ahead.’

‘Yep, we’re stuffed all right,’ Carveth said.

‘… I am merely hoping that your crew can deal with this responsibility and see you through with honour and success.’

‘So am I,’ said Smith.

‘Good luck, Mr Smith. And remember, on no account must Miss Mitchell be passed to the enemy. In the event, you know what you must do. Goodbye, and carry on.’

The message ended. The four of them were quiet, as if they had been listening to a funeral address. Smith broke the silence. ‘Get us out of here, Carveth. Top speed.’

The
John Pym
raced through the dark of space, away from the murder-scene. Smith sat grimly in the captain’s chair, his eyes fixed on the instruments. Carveth said nothing as she worked the controls. Rhianna had gone back to the lounge, presumably to pray to whatever it was she worshipped. Suruk was peering into the hamster cage.

‘There is one good thing,’ Suruk said.

‘What’s that?’ Carveth said, not looking round.

‘At least we may have a proper fight before we get home.’

‘You know,’ she replied, ‘you may find this surprising, but I really would prefer not to have to bother.’

‘Quiet,’ said Smith. ‘How far have we gone?’

‘From the
Tenacious
? About six thousand miles.’

‘Good. Keep going. If we stay on this course and at this speed, we should be fine.’

Something exploded behind them. The whole ship lurched forward and Smith was thrown back in his seat, knocking the air from his lungs. In the living room, Rhianna shrieked. Warning lights broke out across the console. A siren howled in the corridor.

‘Something’s wrong!’ Smith yelled.

‘Really?’ Carveth shouted back. Teeth gritted, she was wrestling the control stick as if fighting a cobra. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Dammit, we’re hit! What’s the damage?’ cried the captain.

‘Serious hull weakening on the port! Engine’s shutting down to prevent overheating. We’re down to forty percent efficiency.’

‘Hell! Can’t you override it?’

‘Not unless you want to be in two galaxies at once. Much more and it explodes.’

‘Dammit to hell!’ Smith pinched his brow. Feet pattered on the floor behind him, and he heard Rhianna say, ‘I fell off my chair. Is something wrong?’

‘Just a bit,’ Carveth called back. Panting, she released the stick. The ship stayed level. ‘Torpedo up the poo-chute.’

‘Oh Gaia! Is it – like what happened to the other ship?’

‘Looks that way.’

The loudspeakers squealed. Suddenly the room was full of bitter, raucous sounds, as though they had tuned by accident into some frenzied squabble in a duckpond. The voices barked and hissed at one another, like geese struggling to express human anger. In the stillness after the explosion, all four of them stared up at the speakers like prisoners waiting to hear the sentence passed.

‘What is that?’ Rhianna breathed.

‘Ghasts,’ Smith replied.

‘Attention human scum!’ the loudspeaker screeched.

‘Attention human scum! Ghast Empire calling!’

Very slowly, Isambard Smith picked up the intercom.

‘Put me on, Carveth.’

‘Right.’

‘Ghast ship, this is Captain Isambard Smith of the Second British Empire. What do you want?’

‘The destruction of the entire human race! Space shall be cleansed of the human taint!’

‘Anything we can do, or are you just generally annoyed?’

‘You will deliver the woman from New Fran to us immediately. Failure to do so will result in your swift and ruthless annihilation!’

The three crew watched Smith’s pallid face. A light sheen of sweat had appeared at his hairline. He swallowed. ‘You may not have this woman. You are outside Ghast space and acting illegally.’

‘Silence! There is no law! There is only strength! You will surrender immediately and pass the woman to us, or we shall destroy you all!’

‘You are making a very grave mistake,’ Smith said quietly. The voice gave an insane, wild laugh. ‘We do not make mistakes! Surrender at once! Resistance is fertile!’

‘Don’t you mean futile?’

‘… That’s what I said! Surrender or die!’

‘How dare you! Do you think I would give up a woman, someone who I am honour-bound to give safety on my ship, just because the arrogant minions of an alien despot hurl threats and abuse at me?’

‘Well, yes, we do.’

‘Alright then, give us ten minutes.’

‘Hahaha! Puny weaklings surren—’

Smith hung up.

‘Oh no.’ Rhianna closed her eyes and put her hands out in front of her. She was breathing with difficulty.

‘Channelling positive thoughts. Positive thoughts. In with the good, out with the negativity. In with the good—’

Carveth looked around the room. ‘Ah, crap. Any ideas, anyone?’

Rhianna said, ‘Okay, let’s make a Calm Circle. Let’s all join hands and try to visualise—’

‘Get the guns,’ Smith said. ‘Carveth, go down to the engine rooms and bring up a gallon of petrol and some rags. Suruk, fetch your spear and sharpen up your knives. Rhianna, just put your shoes on. We’re going out fighting.’