Free Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost

–’ he moved onto his other hand – ‘and the spear of my ancestors. All set.’
    ‘Good. I’m making petrol bombs. I’m also getting drunk and angry.’
    ‘Tell me, Isambard Smith: how many Ghasts are there on a Ghast warship?’
    ‘I don’t know. Three, four hundred?’
    Suruk thought about it for a moment. ‘We are going to die, then.’
    Smith realised that he was damned if he was going to surrender. He did not fear the Ghasts: after six years in a minor prep school north of Harrogate, he felt that he could take anything. An arcane hatred was stirring in him, the atavistic urge to stick something pointed in creatures who did nothing other than stand in lines, shout and try to tell him what to do.
    ‘They’re not having my people, Suruk. I know she’s a wishy-washy nuisance, but she’s a woman, and she’s on my ship, and they’re not having her. My crew matter to me. Same goes for whatshername. The pilot.’
    ‘Death in battle. Hohoho! Are you resigned to it?’
    There was a simple answer. Despite his inability to remember a part of his life that had not been rubbish in some way, Smith felt that he had a lot more to offer the world: more precisely, certain parts of him had a lot to offer attractive women. He felt that he deserved to live: he still had a lot to prove to the world. ‘I don’t know. I would rather stay alive. But I won’t give in.’
    ‘It is not necessarily so.’
    ‘How do you mean?’ So far, he had assumed that they had a straight choice of being forced to go down fighting or being murdered once their captors had tired of them. But if Suruk the Slayer was saying this, perhaps there was an alternative, a way of surviving, of snatching some kind of success from the jaws of glorious defeat.
    ‘I have a plan, Mazuran. But we will need to delay our enemy for it to work. Then, we will carry out great and terrible slaying: we will fight like warriors, but will live to fight again. Then the prize female will want to breed with you. Perhaps the short annoying one as well, if your ancestors favour you.’
    ‘I’ll do it anyway. What do we need?’
    ‘So,’ said Narzak the Despoiler, ‘I’m like, “This kill is mine”, and he’s like, “No way! This kill is so mine”, and I’m like, “N-uh! Check out the spear before you start hassling me, alright”, and he’s like, “Back off, little warrior,” like he’s totally amazing or something.’
    ‘Some people just need to cool down,’ Azrag Bloodhammer said from the other side of the room. ‘So what did you do?’
    ‘I told him to get off his high horse and chill. Then I cut off his head. What’s that flashing thing on the panel?’
    The control panel of the good ship Smashface was hidden, like much of the craft, under a thick layer of bones, red paint and things no longer edible. Azrag shoved the junk aside and his small eyes peered through the gloom at the controls. ‘It’s a message,’ he said. ‘Says it’s from Suruk the Slayer. Apparently he’s looking for Thador Largan.’
    ‘That’s way uncanny,’ Narzak said, ‘because he’s on this ship.’
    Azrag skim-read the message. ‘ “Join us for a mighty battle. War… killing… honour… party of the decade…”
    Fetch the guys! This is going to rock!’
    Carveth rested the shotgun on her hip and began to push cartridges into the breach. She zipped up her waistcoat and emptied the spare shells into the watch pocket.
    ‘You know you can have the Maxim cannon if you want,’ said Smith.
    ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘This’ll do as much good as anything else. I’d rather give the big gun to someone halfcompetent.’
    ‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘We’re going to give them a good show. Suruk, did your chaps say how long they’d be?’
    ‘I do not know. But their spacecraft has a larger engine than this, and their pilot is much less fat. They should not take long.’
    ‘Then we’ll hold them as long as we can. How long do we have before the Ghasts