Wrath of the Lemming-men (3 page)

Smith looked around him. He had landed in a bunkroom, crudely hacked out of the rock. Sunflower seeds lay in a pile on the floor; pictures of what looked like dormice in suggestive poses were pinned up beside the bunks. The drop-pod stood in a shaft of light where it had crashed through the roof, as if sent down from heaven.

Shadow flicked over the light and a figure dropped onto him. Six feet of rodent hit him in the chest with a ragged screech and Smith staggered back, sprang forward and shouldered the Yull as it fumbled for its axe. Its slim, hard paws swiped at his face – he dodged and the two of them were scrabbling at one another in the dim room, knocking each other’s blows aside.

The Yull stank of sawdust and pee. ‘Filthy offworlder!’ it snarled, which struck Smith as pretty rich. ‘Now you die!’ It tried to gouge his eyes, he twisted aside and claws raked his cheek. Smith knew Fighto: he dropped his weight and knocked its legs aside, and as it lost balance he grabbed it round the neck and drove it head-first into the wall. It fell and he brained it with his riflebutt.

Now what? He paused, listened, and checked the console strapped to his wrist. No signal. ‘Damn,’ he said, and he started down the tunnel.

He reached the end of the passage and peered around the corner: crude striplights turned the corridor into a patchwork of shadow and stark light. There was a doorway up ahead, and in it a Yullian officer holding a club stood with its back to him.

‘All into the courtyard!’ he barked, addressing someone in the room behind. ‘Move, scum!’

The sword made almost no sound as Smith drew it. He ran and thrusted, the needle-thin tip slipped through the officer’s back. Smith twisted the blade and pulled it free, and the lemmingoid gargled and dropped into a heap of dead fur, like a stack of pelts.

He stepped into the room. Like jewels in dirt, dozens of huge eyes stared back at him. A beetle-person lurched out of the dark; its six legs wobbling, its carapace scorched and grimy. Slowly, as if remembering something from long ago, it looked down at Smith, raised a limb and saluted.

Smith saluted back. ‘Hello,’ he said, sheathing his sword. ‘Isambard Smith, pleased to meet you. I’m here to get you people out of here.’

‘The army?’ a voice buzzed from the floor. ‘The army’s come!’

‘Well, not the whole army,’ said Smith. ‘There’s only seven of us. But don’t worry, it’s enough. Now, can you all walk?’

‘Some cannot,’ said a third Kaldathrian, clambering upright. ‘Those monsters beat us and stole our dung to stop us from rolling it – and they call
us
savages!’

‘Don’t worry, old chap, we’re fixing them. Are there any more guards?’

‘There is a room just down the corridor,’ the beetle who had saluted said. ‘It is where they lurk and plot.’

‘Stay here,’ said Smith. ‘Lock yourselves in. I’ll be back in a moment.’

He stepped back into the corridor and nearly walked into Suruk the Slayer. ‘Blimey! You scared me there, Suruk!’

The M’Lak carried his spear in one hand, and was pulling a laden trolley with the other, draped in a cloth.

‘What’s on the trolley?’ Smith said.

‘Heads,’ Suruk said, lifting the cloth. ‘My pod landed in their mess-room, an appropriately-named location.’

Smith outlined the situation and together they strode up the corridor. There was a large metal door ahead. Smith cocked his Civiliser and Suruk turned the handle and gently pushed the door.

They looked into a laboratory. Machinery lined the walls, both human computers and alien biotech. Ghast science officers fussed over ceiling-high stasis tanks, dictating into bio-transcribers. A pair of Yullian guards watched sullenly. There was a table in the middle of it all, and beside the table was a man dressed like a chauffeur: in boots, black jacket and a cap with false antennae protruding from the brim.

‘A Ghastist!’ Smith cried. ‘Gertie-loving traitor!’

He fired and the Ghastist fell across the table. The Yull moved: Smith blasted one and Suruk’s spear flew into the other’s chest. One of the Ghast scientists reached into its lab-coat for a pistol and Suruk hurled a machete, hitting it right between the eyes. Smith shot the second Ghast.

Suruk grabbed the third and threw it through the glass of the nearest tank, then dragged it out and repeated the process to make sure.

‘Good lord,’ Smith said, looking around. ‘They must have been researching something really important here –no wonder HQ didn’t want us to bomb it.’

‘Top secret, it seems,’ Suruk said, readying his spear.

‘Now the smashing begins!’

Something moved behind them and Smith turned, gun ready, to recognise one of Wainscott’s men. ‘Craig?’

Craig was slim and pale, the Deepspace Operations Group’s disguise expert. At the moment he looked like himself. ‘Careful, Captain! You could have my eye out with that.’

‘Sorry,’ said Smith. ‘I’ve found the prisoners; they’re down the corridor. They’re pretty roughed-up. How’s things up top?’

‘Busy. Listen: we need to be away in five minutes. I’ll get the beetles out; you give us a hand clearing the courtyard topside.’

‘Righto,’ Smith nodded, and Craig jogged out of the room. ‘Just coming.’

Smith would never know what made him reach over the dead Ghastist and pick up the man’s leverarch file.

Perhaps it was providence, or destiny, or just that the file had shiny metal bits on the front. But he had only flicked through a couple of pages before he knew that he was dealing with something very serious indeed. ‘Good God,’ he whispered.

‘What have you found, Mazuran?’ Suruk demanded.

‘I’m not sure. . . it’s in Ghastish. Let’s see. . .
Hak
natsak
– that means surgery of the reproductive organs – 
smak Vorlak
– attacking the Vorl?’ He looked up. ‘Suruk, this is vital information. We have to get it to W at once.

This lever-arch file could contain the destiny of the universe!’

Suruk looked doubtful. ‘A small, flat destiny, it seems.’

Major Wainscott ran through the warren with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, killing all before him.

He booted a door open, saw a Ghast advisor getting up and shot it as it drew its pistol. A Yullian soldier leaped out of nowhere: Wainscott dodged its axe, sprang in and sank his knife into the rodent’s throat.

The lemmings were fighting to the death. Good, he thought: he’d never liked them anyway.

He searched the room but there was nothing to destroy or kill. Wainscott sighed, somewhat disappointed, and stepped back into the corridor to come face-to-face with the biggest rodent he had ever seen.

It was a mound of solid fat on solid muscle that blocked off the passage as if poured into it. There were black circles around the eyes; the brute’s left pupil was dead and white. The beast shook its chops.

‘General Wikwot,’ Wainscott said.

The general snarled. He raised his huge paws; steel hooks were strapped to his fists. His voice was coarse and hard. ‘Well, well, the offworlder bigwig. But are you big enough to fight me, eh?’ Wikwot took a step closer, teeth bared. ‘This warren is mine!’

Smith emerged into smoke and dazzling light. The courtyard was empty and burning: black fumes billowed from a row of Yullian ramships standing against the far wall.

The guards, at least forty of them, lay across the yard as if scattered by a sower’s hand. The air was full of fluff.

Susan and Nelson had set up the beam gun behind a pile of sacks. Smith strode forward to meet them, Suruk by his side, pushing the trolley – and a figure jumped out from the battlements. Smith whirled, raising his pistol, but the Yull had already fallen into two pieces, neatly bisected. Susan lowered the beam gun.

Something moved on one of the ramships. An explosion had cracked its wing, and its pilot ran down the length of the fuselage, straddled the nose and began to unscrew the nosecone.

No one seemed to have noticed. Puzzled, Smith watched the pilot as it took a small mallet from its jacket.

‘Bloody hell!’ cried Smith as he flicked up his pistol.

The gun kicked in Smith’s hands and the Yull shrieked, stiffened and slid off the nose. The courtyard was suddenly quiet.

A side door burst open and a crowd of beetle-people scuttled out. Wainscott struggled into the courtyard after them, dragging what looked like a pile of fur coats behind him. His knuckles were bloody and split. ‘Good work, Smith!’ he said, dropping his burden on the ground.

‘Here’s the General – and a fat bugger he is too. Rather a successful trip so far, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, very good. Looks like we cleaned out the whole fort.’

A grappling hook sailed over the wall. Smith raised his rifle, looked down the sights and waited for the furry head to appear – and thirty more hooks followed it. ‘Oh hell,’ Smith said. ‘They’re climbing the wall!’

A howl of mingled rage and glee rose up from a thousand voices outside the fort. ‘Bugger,’ Wainscott said.

‘Everyone take places and prepare to hold!’

The first Yull appeared in Smith’s sights. He fired: it squeaked and fell out of view. Beside it two more lemming men popped up, and then the Yull were swarming over the wall, clambering onto the battlements. Smith glanced left, then right, then behind, and saw furry bodies scrambling over the wall on all sides.

Guns rattled and cracked from the courtyard. The Yull leaped at them from the battlements, unable to resist the urge to jump. ‘That’s a lot of lemmings!’ Wainscott called over the stuttering roar of his gun.

Smith shouted into the radio. ‘Carveth! Where the devil are you, woman?’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ her voice crackled back. ‘You know what a bugger this ship is to park.’

Smith had a sudden uncharitable mental image of her, boots up on the console, leafing through
Custom
Model
, reading ‘My boyfriend ran off with my RAM upgrade’.

Howling war cries and waving axes the Yull poured in from all sides. Smith aimed his pistol and put one down at twenty yards; the next got five yards closer before he dropped it, the third reached ten. . .

‘Soon they will be upon us!’ Suruk declared, twirling his spear.

‘Smith,’ Wainscott called, ‘where’s our transport gone?’

‘Up there!’ Smith said, pointing, and in a rush of engines the
John Pym
dropped down as if from the sun itself, the hold door open. Behind it, a medical ship, specially armed.

Lemming men rained down around them from the walls. Suruk killed two with his spear.

The
Pym
landed, legs creaking under its weight, and Carveth ran down the ramp.

‘Did you find them?’ she shouted over the engines.

‘Yes,’ Smith shouted back. The beetle people were climbing into the medical ship, supporting one another.

He saw that several were missing legs and fury rushed through him like an electric charge. ‘Bastards,’ he snarled, and he raised the rifle to shoot another lemming dead.

Wainscott’s men were pulling back to the ships, closing in as they neared the ramp. The Yull fell like a breaking wave, covering the courtyard in fur. But they kept coming.

Carveth yanked Smith’s sleeve. ‘Let’s get the sodding hell out of here!’

‘Are you deranged?’ Suruk demanded as he bounded up the ramp, pulling his trolley behind him. ‘They have hardly reached us yet!’

Three minutes later, the Empire sent in a formation of Hornet light bombers and blew Fortress Theodore to bits.

An hour and a half after that the
John Pym
reached the Fifteenth Fleet, slipped between the great dreadnoughts and docked with the transport ship
Edward Stobart
. It took half an hour before they were cleared to open the hatches, allegedly owing to bioweapon quarantine procedures but really, Smith suspected, because the dockers had lost the paperwork.

Smith leaned back in the captain’s chair, sipping his tea as he watched the warships drifting round the
Pym
like sleeping whales. He had hoped to see some Hellfires dart between them, but only a post shuttle trundled from one craft to another. After a while the boarding light turned green and at the airlock they said goodbye to the Deepspace Operations Group.

‘That was damned good work,’ Wainscott said, leaning back against the wall. Behind him Susan and Craig carried the unconscious General Wikwot, who looked like a bear in a breastplate. ‘Easy in, easy out. Well done, Smith.’

Wainscott leaned in and ruffled Carveth’s hair. ‘You too, pilot girlie.’ He glanced at Suruk, clearly considering whether it was wise to ruffle his mane. ‘And you,’ Wainscott added, deciding against it.

‘All in a day’s work,’ Carveth said, hooking her thumbs over her belt. Glory did not often come her way. She pulled what she imagined was the sort of face tough, competent pilots had. ‘Whatever the mission, you know we’re big enough to take it on.’

‘Which is exactly why I’ll be using you next time,’ Wainscott said, and the smile faded somewhat from Carveth’s face.

‘Next time?’ she squeaked, and Wainscott turned to Smith, oblivious.

‘Cheerio, Smith.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking, but where’s that floaty bird who used to be with you? Funny sort, smelt of herbal tea?’

‘Rhianna,’ Smith said. ‘She – well, she doesn’t work for us anymore. I – well, I suppose she had trouble being sufficiently committed.’

‘I’ve had trouble with commitment myself,’ Wainscott said, and his eyes widened. ‘I’m not going back in there. You can’t make me!’

Susan tapped him on the arm. ‘That’s committal. It’s alright, Boss.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Wainscott shrugged. ‘Well, bad luck about that. Still, she never seemed
quite right
, you know? Anyway, can’t stand here making jaw forever. Come along Susan, we’ve got a war to win.’

‘Us too,’ Smith said, and he turned the wheel and the airlock swung open with a sharp, rusty creak. Wainscott gave them a little wave and wandered out into the trans-port ship, his men chaperoning him like students around an elderly don.