God Emperor of Didcot Read Online Free PDF

brutal, chiselled jawline. Above the jaw was a Caucasian face that cosmetic surgery had left angry and permanently surprised, the face of a beach-bronzed Adonis for whom kicking sand in people’s faces had never been quite enough.
    ‘You see?’ said the Grand Hyrax. ‘ Gilead likes it.’
    ‘Oh, I like it alright,’ Gilead said, his voice dreamy. ‘Everything you say is right, especially the suffering bit. These people stole my body; they deserve to pay. Every day a hundred things remind me how much I owe the British Empire.’ Out of instinct he scratched his crotch, leaving scratches in his paintwork. He glanced down. ‘See what I mean?’
    ‘I see,’ said Calloway.
    ‘Yeah.’ Gilead paused, the coffee pot tilted at his cup. ‘All I need is the call from my uh, sponsors, and we’ll be good to go. And then this place will be ours.’
    ‘Mine,’ the Hyrax said.
    ‘It will belong to the New Eden, with you as governor.’ Gilead explained. ‘This rock may not look like much, but it’s the right hand of the British Empire. Once we’ve got control of it, we will squeeze – and squeeze – until we’ve choked the life out of these godless bastards and paid them back for what Isambard Smith did to me.’
    ‘You choke someone around the neck, not the right hand,’ Calloway observed.
    ‘You choke them how I say,’ Gilead retorted. ‘When Johnny Gilead plays hardball, if you’re not rolling with us, then you ask how high. Remember that next time you doubt the word of the Lord, because the word of the Lord is strong .’
    He raised his hand and crushed the coffee pot in his metal fingers. From his metal chest a female voice said, ‘Compression damage imminent.’
    ‘We hit them very soon, and then they stay hitted,’ Gilead said. ‘Once our new allies are ready, all your people need do is take the missile grid and this planet belongs to us.’ The pot buckled; coffee ran down his steel fist, onto the table and the cups. ‘My cup runneth over,’ Gilead said. ‘It’s a sign.’
    ‘It’s going on the carpet,’ Calloway said coldly. ‘Which is presumably a sign that you’re a fool.’
    *
    ‘Still,’ said Smith, as they turned into the suburbs, ‘leaving aside these religious madmen and the coup they’re obviously plotting, it is quite a lucky assignment because we’ll be able to see Rhianna again. Once we’ve foiled the Crusadist uprising, I thought I might take her some flowers and see if she’d like to go out for dinner sometime.’
    The car rolled past broad lawns and long, wide houses. Mowing machines slowly drew stripes on grass. The children of Imperial bureaucrats threw balls for retrievers, spaniels and fat Labradors.
    ‘It’s a good plan,’ Carveth said. ‘Of course, you’ll have to find her first.’
    ‘Oh, I’ll find a way.’
    She sighed. ‘I only wish I could be so confident about my own situation.’
    ‘I’m sure you’ll meet someone sooner or later,’ Smith replied. ‘There’s probably plenty of single men on a world like this.’
    ‘Most of them have a pulse,’ Suruk observed. ‘You will be spoilt for choice.’
    Something went ping on the dashboard and a needle sprang up in one of the dials. ‘Looks like we’re here,’ said Smith, and he turned the car into a wide gravelled drive.
    Ahead, shining in the hard sun, the front of a huge white house loomed up like a glacier. Long windows winked as the light caught them. A striped awning threw shadow across a pool. Wallahbots rolled across the lawn, clipping the hedges and plumping the pillows on the sun loungers.
    ‘Well,’ Carveth said, ‘it’s nice to know that the Security Service’s budget is going where it’s needed.’
    Smith stopped the car and they got out. One of the wallahbots turned from its work and waddled over to them, gravel crunching under its stumpy legs. A little panel slid back in its domed head and a probe scanned them. It said, ‘Wooty doot-doot?’
    ‘I’m here to see the owner of