Slaves of Titan: Banjo and Alexandra, #2

By John Guy Collick

"Shadows moved in the flames, hundreds of miles tall. They had incandescent eyes and mouths and carried poles which they jabbed into the planet's crust, prising up country-sized slabs to be consumed in the fire..."

Marrakech 1925. Following the events of THE STAR TSAR, Banjo and Alexandra are fugitives hiding in Morocco from Stalin's agents. While the ex-commissar loses herself in opium dreams, the Yorkshire engineer hunts through ancient ruins for a means to return to the stars. They soon find themselves hunted by an alien assassin that slaughters without mercy, Where will they find a safe haven - in a fortress deep in the Atlas Mountains, at the end of a deadly trans-dimensional labyrinth, or as the captives of deranged Italian Futurists seeking to build a new Utopia of blood and steel in the forests of Caporetto? Whatever actions they take may ultimately decide the fate of the entire Solar System.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Guy Collick
• Release date: Jan 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9780995467378

John Guy Collick

I was born in Yorkshire, England. When I was 10 years old my grandfather gave me a copy of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and from then on I was hooked on science fiction and fantasy. I worked for Scotland Yard before moving to Japan for ten years to lecture in literature and philosophy. I am also the author of a book on Shakespeare, essays on literature and several screenplays. I now live in Hampshire, England.

Book preview

BANJO AND ALEXANDRA swung back and forth over a bottomless pit in the depths of the Atlas Mountains, each dangling by the ankles from their own steel chain. The little Russian pillock was still unconscious, arms hanging down, hands flapping as if she was trying to conduct Satan's orchestra, which no doubt lay a thousand miles below at the bottom of the shaft, tuning up. Once in a while they'd bump together. Their captors had arranged it so the two companions' heads were at the same level and whenever they met their skulls smacked like conkers.

A tunnel above admitted light into the volcanic chimney, which was otherwise sealed by a hill-sized boulder. The miserable trickle from the diseased stars outside ping-ponged off a few crystal seams, but other than that it was a featureless rock throat. Not a whiff of sulphur or brimstone from the darkness below, just the eternal leaden notes of granite, quartz and grit.

You have read your Mr Jules Verne, have you not, Signor Banjo? the bastard had asked as his chums tied them up. The sleeping gas wore off faster with the engineer, but he hadn't time to muster enough strength to fight back, otherwise Prince Mincing Shit and a few more of his flunkies would be heading core-ward. This truly does lead to the centre of the Earth. I would keep still, very very still. If your chains break, you will fall for days.

Alexandra shuddered, arms flailing. Banjo wondered if she was waking up, but the Russian merely grunted and flopped back into unconsciousness. She's not fondling the lass in her sleep is she? Has she no sense of place?

While he oscillated gently to and fro, feet growing numb, he supposed there was an odd poetic justice to all this. He'd first met the canting lunatic after being captured in an iron works in the middle of Siberia eighteen months ago. At the tag end of the Civil War, the Soviet army drove the last of the international troops out of a slush, shrapnel and soot-coated dump called Ikayungri, leaving him trapped behind in an immense factory. The Reds had strung him up by his ankles in a shed and were getting ready to cut his bollocks off with rusty shears to add to their stew, and then push the rest of him into a furnace. It was only when Alexandra had heard him swearing at his captors in English that the commissar intervened and saved his life.

Because they shared a love of scientific romances, the mad bint had got it into her head to convert Banjo to communism. That hadn't lasted, but they'd stuck together and now dangled upside down side by side in a right perilous do. At least this time his beard was shorter, so he could see what was going on, which was bugger all. It was also a damn sight hotter here than in Siberia. Big blobs of stinging sweat trickled out of his cheek whiskers and into his eyes. He felt like one of those hams they sold in Barcelona markets, strung up on a hook and dripping endless mucky grease into a foil bucket. He was also starting to feel the urge to piss and no matter the gymnastics it'd be bound to go everywhere.

Enough of this.

What their captors didn't know was that, during their sojourn in the village of the Star Tsar, the pair had consumed several bowls of alien food filled with tiny machines that now scampered up and down their bloodstreams, conferring boosted strength. Alexandra, being a weedy bookworm, would be easy to carry. If Banjo jackknifed he might be able to grab his own chain and use his knees and one hand to pull himself up while hauling the comatose Red after him. Halfway was close enough to the entrance for him to swing back and forth until their momentum carried them into the tunnel. All he'd have to do then was wrestle free of their chains and Bob's your uncle.

He wriggled around to face his friend and reached out to grab her. At that moment the idiot flailed out at her dream enemies and smacked Banjo in the mouth, sending him into a corkscrew spin. The Englishman swore long and violently as he pendulumed to and fro. He lunged once more and caught the woman's trouser leg. This was proving a lot harder than anticipated. Every movement sent the pair of them oscillating in the semi-darkness. Their manacles chafed and twisted together and rust fell into his eyes and up his nose. If the links got tangled, they wouldn't be going anywhere.

Banjo reached up to ease the two chains apart. Alexandra's loosened around her ankles and she began to slip. The engineer bellowed and grabbed wildly for the woman's belt, but only succeeded in pushing himself away. One of the Red's feet slipped out, and the lass hung from the other like a wonky cross. As she swung back Banjo reached upwards to grab the chain in an attempt to loop it tighter. He'd underestimated his strength. Far above, the piton holding the links to the ceiling snapped, the metal rattled past his fingertips, and Alexandra, still unconscious, fell into the bottomless darkness.

Marrakech, Morocco, February 1925.

Chapter One

THE SIROCCO DANCED down from the mountains to twist dust into angel hair spirals between the red houses. The woman bent her head to one side, leaning into the fire-wind, and pulled the brim of her hat down to shield her face.

Mad!

The bookseller nodded in her direction before continuing to jab Alexandra in the stomach with the edge of a tatty copy of Science and Invention. The man had boxes of Alexandra's old dreams sitting on top of his dusty trestle table - magazines from America full of articles and stories of Super Science acted out on the covers in primary colours by wild-eyed mannequins. A mere franc for half a dozen promises of a better world. Entranced by 'The Stellar Express' - a bright orange starship that was all rivets and blow-torch rockets painted by an artist she'd grown to love called Frank R. Paul - she'd been fumbling under her robe for spare change when she noticed the woman in the empty courtyard at the end of the alleyway.

To begin with Alexandra had assumed she was another sightseer in her flawless white dress and fringed parasol - a pampered daughter of the bourgeoisie hunting for the Arabian Nights of the newsreels. As if sensing she was being observed the woman turned and smiled. Even at this distance her cedar-wood eyes were so striking that the Russian's mouth popped open, dry lips unsticking in the dusty air.

A zephyr surged over the ragged edges of the Marrakech rooftops. The tourist staggered, putting her arms out to steady herself like a nervous passenger on a ship, and crumpled into a heap, hat cartwheeling over the ground.

The heat is not good for ladies...

Alexandra ignored the hawker and ran down the alley. As she reached the yard, glancing round for a pump or a well, a squat tank of a man in a shabby suit burst out of a doorway, and scuttled towards the girl, hunched down so he looked like he ran on all fours.

No way was Alexandra going to let the bastard put a hand on her. She shouted in French. The stranger glanced up and in a single movement pulled a knife from his jacket and threw it at her. His aim was useless and the dagger hummed past her cheek. A grunt behind and she span around to find a second man wearing an odd black uniform flip over onto his back, the handle of the blade sticking out of his left eye. That brought her up with a jolt.

The dogs poisoned her, yelled the murderer in French, and then the courtyard boiled full of tunics, dust-soaked kaftans and knives. A Berber tribesman took a swipe at Alexandra with a Legionnaire's cavalry sword. So these bastards were set on killing. Right then - she'd have no qualms about drawing on the remnants of the Star Tsar's power. Alexandra jumped inside the arc of the swing, lifted her attacker by the neck and hurled him at the far wall. The man hit it like a wet sack and an exclamation mark of blood and brains sprayed up the stucco.

All a brown-eyed Slav needed to do to walk the streets of Marrakech unnoticed was wear a Berber robe and veil. A perfect disguise right up to the point when a diminutive tribeswoman killed a man twice her size by throwing him across a courtyard.

The scene froze.

Shit.

Six left - four locals and two Europeans - one in a pale green linen suit, the other wearing the same uniform as the corpse with the blade in his face. You're barely sixteen. He had a floppy brown quiff and cruel pebble eyes glowered behind the fringe as he pointed a gun at Alexandra's heart. The other man, still gawping at the corpse slumping down the brickwork, grabbed his wrist before he could pull the trigger. Despite her cover being blown Alexandra couldn't help but grin at their stupidity.

If he shoots me the French garrison'll be down on us.

The bald tank pushed past, yelling oaths in Arabic, and ripped open floppy-hair's stomach with the dead Berber's sabre. The pistol skittered across the broken cobbles. Alexandra's deranged ally ducked to avoid another sword thrust, yanked his weapon out of the European's belly and opened the throat of the tribesman next to him. The remainder of the gang fled, their wounded comrade staggering after, one hand clamping his guts in, the other clawing along the wall. He got five steps before sitting down cross-legged with a whimper. Alexandra saw the bookseller halfway up the alleyway, eyes round as dinner plates, still gripping the scrunched-up Science and Invention.

They'll come back in their thousands. We must take her to safety, said the tank.

Alexandra snatched up the dropped automatic and pointed it at the man's head.

Step away.

I watched her in the cafe. The waiter poisoned her coffee, and those bastards followed her, waiting for her to fall.

I said, move back.

He shuffled a few feet off. Alexandra quickly knelt down, keeping one eye on her would-be rescuer. The girl looked remarkably serene given that she was lying in the blood-spattered dirt, but her breath smelled of cardamom and petrol. He was right. She'd been drugged.

I'll take her to the barracks. The French soldiers will protect her and there's a doctor.

The fighter stood between her and the only exit. He was a gargoyle-featured cannonball with a deranged light in his eyes, short and bull-shouldered like a wrestler. Tricky to defeat, despite Alexandra's own alien strength, but she wasn't going to leave the girl in his hands. The man jabbed a thumb at his own chest.

Nabil of Jordan! You are not local are you? European? He glanced back down the street. Too late.

A crowd of men pushed aside the bookseller, kicking his table over so that books and magazines tumbled in the bleached air. Among the kaftans she spotted more black uniforms. A crack, and a round chewed a handful of stones out of the stucco above Alexandra's head. This lot carried rifles and were no longer frightened of using them close to the barracks. She could hang around and hope the Zouaves would eventually turn up - if she was completely stupid.

Nabil kicked in a door and beckoned her over.

This way.

He went to fetch the fallen girl but Alexandra picked the woman up, surprised to feel hard muscle in her shoulders. The Jordanian's mouth popped open. He glanced at the tribesman slumped at the bottom of the wall, and then at Alexandra. She waited for the inevitable question but Nabil vanished inside. She sidled through the narrow entrance and tried to knee the door shut. The idiot had jarred it off its hinges. In the dark, sweaty gloom ahead the Jordanian was shouting obscene curses. She heard the sound of more splintering wood and a woman's entirely understandable scream of outrage.

Alexandra discovered Nabil climbing through a broken shutter while a Berber grandma beat him with her fists. Before the owner could react, she barged past and followed onto the roof.

They ran together across several houses, dodging through lines of washing and hopping over low parapets. Alexandra had slung the unconscious girl over her shoulder, but the weight still threw her off balance and she needed all her concentration to avoid pitching into alleyways on either side. The sirocco snatched sand from the paprika skyline and threw it into her face in hot gusts. Another rifle shot, and she spotted two men on a distant tower, weapons in hand. Ahead, the landscape broke into a shattered field of crazy cracks and ravines - the dark gouges of a maze. Nabil dropped into one and the Russian jumped after, still holding the woman. The Jordanian stared at her open-mouthed. I know, I know, I should have broken both legs. Star Tsar strength. She'd have to concoct an excuse later.

Silence enveloped her in the narrow blood-coloured slot between shuttered houses. The soft, coaxing scents of coffee, spices and perfume hung in the air - they were near a souk, but which one? Her guide had already snapped out of his surprise and climbed through the nearest window. Inside, two old men wearing yarmulkes huddled over the biggest book she'd ever seen - easily the height of a man - their heads almost touching. One held a shard of pottery and a magnifying glass.

Nabil!

Now these brothers are honourable. They are the greatest sages and full of learning, but the filthy colonialists are too blind to see their ancient wisdom, and lock them in the shit holes.

Shit hole? You call our home a shit hole?! Begone you rascal! Madam, please will you take this beast from us? Oh! The lady? Is she ill? Sick? Lie her down here. We have tinctures.

Aaron! We have to move on! Assassins are chasing us!

"Assassins? Oy vey! Is there no one you do not anger with your impious insults, Nabil?"

The other brother reached behind the book and pulled out a shotgun. He cracked it open and stuffed two shells into the barrels.

Go, go, into the Stream of Life!

Aaron lifted up a tapestry at the end of the lamp-lit room and gestured down a flight of stone steps. The intruders ducked through the hole in the wall.

Bless you, bless you!

Begone monster, and don't let us see your face ever again!

Halfway down Nabil took a lantern from a hook and looked up at his companion.

The Stream of Life - a very great secret.

Alexandra found herself splashing through ankle-deep pools of freezing water, following Nabil's lamp. Its soft cones picked out walls of thin brick towering into vaults and arches. She recognised the architecture. A giant Roman cistern? How can this be secret? It's enormous. But the only sounds were the splash of their own feet and, when they paused while the man got his bearings, the drip of ancient water in the blackness. They came to a slope of collapsed masonry, climbed up towards daylight and emerged in an alley so narrow it was barely a crack in a wall. Four more turns, and her guide heaved aside a gate.

Even with her boosted powers, Alexandra's shoulders ached and her lungs burned. She carried the girl through into a courtyard where two young women in robes and scarves gently took her burden.

My sisters, Beela and Lujain.

A third, older lady with a headdress covered in coins glared at Alexandra, then at the unconscious European. She slapped Nabil so hard he staggered.

My mother, whom I worship and adore.

Inside, his sisters lay the patient on a divan in a back room. Alexandra wanted to see if she had any identifying papers, but was unceremoniously pushed out and a heavy curtain yanked across in her wake.

She looked down the passageway - with its red and white carpets laid neatly in rows along the floor and hanging from the curved stucco walls - trying to remember when she'd last stood inside an ordinary home. Her hands were shaking. Was it the after-effect of the chase, or the feeling that this haunted fool of fortune didn't belong in such a world? She ran her finger over the rough edge of the doorway. I just killed a man by cracking his head open on a wall like this.

The sound of curses and banging pots ahead snapped her out of it. When she entered the room the tank hit himself on the chest with both hands.

Nabil of Jordan!, just in case Alexandra had forgotten. As you bore witness today, Jordanians are real men! They will kill and slaughter anyone, anyone! But not women or children, or Jews. Jews are the chosen people. The European colonialists are cowards - all show and swagger but they don't know how to do this.

Nabil pantomimed gouging someone's eyes out and then slitting their throat.

That is why they hire us to be their warriors and spies. Because the French, Spanish, English, Italians and Germans run away all the time, like this.

He started to caper around the table, squeaking. For a horrible moment she was reminded of Banjo's impersonation of H. G. Wells. Not another one, please God. Mother shouted something and her son suddenly became very subdued.

She is angry with me for taking you into the Stream of Life. It is a very big secret. And she thinks you are my lady friend and that we are going to be married.

Well tell her I am absolutely not your lady friend.

If I do that she will be even more angry.

Alexandra forced herself to calm down.

Who are those men who chased us?

I don't know. Thugs in the pay of a slaver looking to kidnap a pretty European girl?

With those uniforms?

Nabil gave an indifferent shrug.

Marrakech is the city of a thousand uniforms. What does it matter? We are safe now. We cannot be found.

Banjo watched the little dot of the truck disappear across the desert, heading back towards Marrakech. Surprise, surprise - they'd abandoned him. He'd suspected the two brothers were getting cold feet the closer they got to the mountains as they kept muttering to each other and casting shifty glances in his direction. If that ambulatory bollock Nabil had come along as promised they'd have stayed in line, but the sweaty bugger had stood him up. When the engine conked out he stupidly wandered behind a boulder for a piss, only to hear it starting up again as the treacherous pair hightailed it home, leaving the mad Englishman standing in the middle of the scrub. Even though he'd refused to bring Alexandra after their last argument, he could still hear her voice inside his head - full of sour cant and maiden aunt wisdom.

You didn't plan or prepare did you? he whined in imitation. He kicked a few stones towards the horizon before strolling over to the water-skin lying in the road. They'd clearly left it out of guilt but keeping him alive was their biggest mistake. As soon as got back to town he'd string the rats up by their knackers and use them for target practice.

Banjo looked around. The mountains rose up to the north-east. In the opposite direction a flat plain stretched away towards the so-called Rose City, and beyond that the sea. He reckoned he was about fifty miles from Marrakech, deep in the countryside. Round here the landscape was largely bushes with a few stunted trees. At least it'd be easier to navigate than the desert on the other side of those peaks.

You should have brought her with you after all. At least you'd have someone to take it out on.

What had they argued about again? The Bolshevik had gone off on one of her blue funks, moaning about the betrayal of communism and how the entire Russian nation was a morass of ungrateful, traitorous vermin because they hadn't fallen all over the collected works of Karl Marx with cries of ecstasy. Tired of endlessly stewarding the lass through her sulks he'd resorted to an apothecary at the end of some hellish ginnel in Derb Debbachi. After trying to fob him off with a bottle of Sanatogen, and earning himself a kick up the arse for his pains, the crazed Armenian had concocted the 'Tears of Theodora' in a purple vial which Banjo later emptied into Alexandra's coffee.

All had been well and good - she'd drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face. However, the next morning found his friend dancing in her underwear on the roof in the light of the dawn, singing Russian hymns at the top of her voice, and tearfully begging the invisible fairies hovering above her head to fly her to the Kingdom of the Sun. It had all been very entertaining so Banjo let her carry on until a small crowd began to gather and he deemed it prudent to bundle the daft cow up in a blanket and lock her in the khazi until the effects wore off. For some reason the ungrateful turd hadn't seen the funny side and after enduring ten minutes of pompous shouting Banjo had stuck two fingers up and stomped off to adventure by himself.

In those mountains ahead lay an abandoned observatory, and in it he reckoned he'd find a clue to the mystery of the dead glass maker. A month ago an Egyptian famous locally for his skill with lenses had been found stamped flat in the middle of a load of giant footprints. If they'd been faked it was a perversely complicated way to finish a bloke off. Having said that, when his mother and wife returned with some French soldiers the body had vanished into thin air and the sand looked as if nobody had walked on it for centuries - at least that's what Corporal Delamotte, aka Sebastian the Shagger, had whispered to him over brandy and cards in the opium den next to the morgue. Apparently the fellow had been fashioning a lens as big as a church door, which had also vanished.

The trail was cold, but Alexandra had the bright spark idea that it was for a telescope, and so they'd started to hunt for observatories nearby. All the ruins they visited so far had been from an age long before Galileo had the wit to stick lenses in a tube to make things bigger. It was only after a prolonged drinking session with his latest friend, Nabil the Jordanian, that he'd learned there was one last observatory somewhere in the mountains. The idiot's foolhardy pride and desire to single-handedly defend his nation's honour led to him promising to take Banjo there. And then followed the episode with Theodora's tears and the Yorkshireman had ended up on his own. What's more, Nabil hadn't turned up either. There was just an idling truck at the rendezvous site, clearly stolen from the French garrison, with a couple of shifty buggers claiming to be his mates.

So here he was, in the middle of nowhere and faced with a long walk back to town. He wasn't too worried. The Star Tsar's magic space fruit had fortified his constitution even beyond the boundaries of standard Yorkshireness. All he needed to do was find one of the caravan trails converging on the city. The observatory would have to wait until he'd made his peace with Alexandra, and persuaded her to pull her head out of her bottom and come with him to solve the riddle of the flat glass maker.

The light was fading and the mountain peaks shimmered orange in the last of the sunlight. Banjo looked to the north and spotted a figure in the distance - transformed into a quivering black diamond by the heat haze. He'd heard that bandits infested these hills but he could only see one - easy to handle with a couple of belts round the ear. Another lost wanderer perhaps. A companion might ease the boredom and speed things up on the long trek back into town if yonder soul knew the way.

He started to walk towards the figure which looked like it wore the black robes of a Bedouin. Odd. You didn't see many of them on this side of the range. He gave a cheery wave. No response. It also seemed to be heading in the opposite direction as after fifteen minutes the stranger was no closer.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers.

He headed back towards Marrakech, though with dusk falling the long shadows jumbled the terrain into a mess and the wind had risen, kicking up a dust haze to obscure distant landmarks. He was in danger of getting lost, thanks to his own stupidity. Maybe catching up with that unfriendly pillock wasn't such a bad idea after all, otherwise he'd be drifting around in circles all night.

He turned and stopped with an oath. The figure stood a quarter of a mile away on top of a low rise that definitely hadn't been there before. It was following him after all. He glowered, clenched his fists, and strode towards it. Again it drifted backwards, maintaining the same distance, and it no longer looked like a nomad in black desert robes. He didn't know what it resembled, other than something vaguely spindly, as if his night companion needed a good meal or a cactus had decided to up stumps and go for a wander.

It's a sodding mirage.

All of a sudden he wasn't so sure he wanted to talk to the distant figure after all. Was it actually another traveller, or a rock or a tree? The temperature dropped and that black scrawl against the fading light started to give him the willies.

Oh whistle and I'll come to you my lad, he muttered and stooped down to grab a couple of hefty stones to throw at it if it came any closer. Except he no longer faced west across the scrub. Instead he stood at the end of a long shallow valley with the domed hills rising on either side and the peaks straight ahead, still touched by the fading sunlight.

How did I get here?

Cursing mightily, he tramped to the top of the nearest rise. A ludicrously fat moon hung just above the mist, which lay like a pale lake in the hollows and troughs stretching into the distance. The desert sky was usually as clear as a bell, and in their more mellow moments he and Alexandra had lain on the roof of their rented house and mused up at the stars, wondering if Ekaterina was queening it over any of their planets. Above that strange fog this night appeared equally beautiful - the Milky Way an immense impasto streak arcing over his head - but everything looked bigger and bent out of place. It must have been the heat syphoning off the rocks and sand, twisting the universe awry.

He took a swig from his water skin and glanced back. At least that black bugger had vanished. He turned to face the trail and found himself staring at three French legionnaires who pointed their rifles straight at him. Jesus Christ.

Bonsoir, lads.

What were they doing here? Weren't all the forts over the other side of the mountains? They looked gaunt and ill, in filthy uniforms, as if they'd just staggered off the field at Verdun. Banjo noticed a mad look in their eyes he didn't much care for. Deserters. That made them dangerous.

Where are you from? asked the skinny tubercular-looking one with the corporal's insignia.

Marrakech.

They exchanged glances of wild hope as if he'd told them that Mistinguett herself was waiting for them at the Folies Bergères just over the next hill.

The road is open?

Odd thing to ask.

Head diagonally across the desert with the rising sun on your left and you'll reach the city. It's about fifty miles.

Fifty miles?

His patience ebbed.

It's not far - a couple of hours' drive maximum.

They stared at each other and then into the distance beyond Banjo. He saw real tragedy in their eyes, mixed with a terrible fear. He reckoned that any second they were going to chuck their rifles aside and start running for the sea.

I got stranded here. Maybe you could give me a lift back into town in one of your trucks.

We have no trucks.

Horses?

General head shaking.

Camels?

Blank stares.

What did you do? Eat them all?

Banjo had always nursed a sneaking admiration for the courage and admittedly pigheaded determination of the French to prove themselves superior to everything on the planet. But Christ, these dunderheads weren't making it easy for him. The scrawny bastards shuffling in the dirt hardly resembled crack soldiers, or even the vicious scum of the Earth from whence the Legion did most of its recruiting. They looked like consumptive Bedlamites. And now they'd started twisting this way and that, pointing their rifles into the encroaching darkness. One was crying quietly to himself.

It is not safe here, monsieur. You must come with us to the fort.

Fort? I didn't know there were any in this neck of the woods. Shouldn't you be up north massacring the Berbers with your Spanish mates?

Protection down here consisted of the Second Zouaves and a bunch of locals billeted in Marrakech and Fez. Still - anything was preferable to trudging through the darkness without any bearings, and if there was an outpost nearby he could cadge some food. He'd spend the night with his new Gallic chums and set off back in the morning. Besides, they might even be able to help him track down this observatory of his.

"Okay, take me there. Honneur et Fidélité and all that caper."

They trudged down into the next dip, giving Banjo a chance to study them in closer detail. Grubby uniforms with tatty leather straps, rust staining the rifle barrels and the corporal had a sole flapping on his right boot. This wasn't the Legion Banjo had heard about. Didn't they make them eat their own shit for dinner if a hair was out of place or a moustache insufficiently pomaded? But if they came from a fort they wouldn't be deserters, unless the outpost didn't exist and they planned on murdering him. If so, they'd be in for a rude shock. Yet, after half an hour of increasingly nervous marching along twisting valleys and over oddly smooth ridges Banjo spotted walls and a blockhouse glowing bone-grey underneath that peculiar moon, which now stood almost directly overhead. One glance at the fortifications and he realised all really was not well.

Chapter Two

IN HER DREAMS Alexandra walked with Stalin along Brighton pier, bleached wood hot under her bare feet. The boards stretched ahead into a still sea-born haze that turned the pavilion into geometric clouds. In the waking world the Georgian had stayed behind when the young revolutionary and her friends escaped the London smoke and their Scotland Yard tails to spend a day by the seaside. She felt she ought to describe the scene to her companion, point out the landmarks he'd missed, but she couldn't see anything familiar, and had more important things to talk about.

In the Yablonoi mountains we found a creature from the stars - a prisoner of the Old Believers. He possessed Super Science beyond our wildest dreams - food that cured illness and gave us increased strength, technologies that would have taken our dream of communism and transformed it into utopia, but your friend Bakolov twisted the Star Tsar's knowledge and used it to fashion an army of monsters.

Stalin stuck his hands in his pockets and favoured Alexandra with a smile. Her own party, the men and women in whom she'd placed all her hopes for the future, had cut a deal with a White madman who planned on enslaving the workers and turning them into mindless machines.

"Why, Comrade Stalin? Why would you take my dreams of Futurity, of the liberty and fellowship of humanity in the name of Super Science, and turn them