Hogarth nodded and relayed the order. Moments later, shapes that had been indistinct on the dusty ground revealed themselves to be marine soldiers dressed in battle armour.
With precision and efficiency the squadron of marines moved off in the direction of the mountains.
Zoe was beginning to forget that she had ever had a human existence; all she was aware of was her hull, her engines, and her decks full of humans as she sailed through s.p.a.ce. Ahead of her was a series of meteorites and other objects in planetary orbit around Axista Four. Her sensors - the ship"s sensors, Zoe corrected herself - were of the opinion that these were all natural. Zoe, the real Zoe with two arms and two legs, suspected otherwise. She had seen these satellites close up when she had flown her stolen fighter craft and something about them suggested that they might have been artificial.
Now, in this replay of events a hundred years ago, Zoe saw that she had been correct to be suspicious of them.
As she entered her own orbit - the ship, she reminded herself firmly, not me - the nearest satellite had reacted.
Hidden weapons bunkers opened and locked on their targets.
Before anyone on board The Big Bang The Big Bang could react, they were hit by multiple missile strikes. could react, they were hit by multiple missile strikes.
The Big Bang was a colony ship not a battle cruiser. It had no offensive capability and precious little in the way of defensive capability either. The missiles exploded with savage brutality all over the hull. Zoe felt each impact as if her own body was being pummelled. Unable to cope with the pain she screamed but somehow managed to stay conscious. was a colony ship not a battle cruiser. It had no offensive capability and precious little in the way of defensive capability either. The missiles exploded with savage brutality all over the hull. Zoe felt each impact as if her own body was being pummelled. Unable to cope with the pain she screamed but somehow managed to stay conscious.
What had been a pleasure, a dreamlike joy, now turned into a total nightmare. Zoe could only watch helplessly as the alien satellite-based weapon arrays fired again and again. Zoe groaned in pain; the damage to The Big Bang The Big Bang was more than it could endure. Her crew had fought bravely to control the fatally wounded s.p.a.ceship but there was little else they could do. Zoe watched in horror as the surface of the planet rushed towards her. Incredibly, as the ground got nearer, the pilot seemed to gain a measure of control over the descent. The nose of was more than it could endure. Her crew had fought bravely to control the fatally wounded s.p.a.ceship but there was little else they could do. Zoe watched in horror as the surface of the planet rushed towards her. Incredibly, as the ground got nearer, the pilot seemed to gain a measure of control over the descent. The nose of The Big Bang The Big Bang came up just enough to avert a full disaster. Zoe screamed as she felt came up just enough to avert a full disaster. Zoe screamed as she felt The Big Bang The Big Bang make its painful landing, bouncing in an ungainly fashion, tearing itself up against the unforgiving planetary surface. For Zoe, still linked to the AI, the sensory feedback was agony. She felt every blow, every injury. It was too much for her human mind to take. She screamed again. make its painful landing, bouncing in an ungainly fashion, tearing itself up against the unforgiving planetary surface. For Zoe, still linked to the AI, the sensory feedback was agony. She felt every blow, every injury. It was too much for her human mind to take. She screamed again.
Billy Joe had just returned to his grandfather"s office and was shocked to see the open door leading to a room whose existence he had never suspected. "Grandpa?" he called, and without waiting for a reply he had walked through the door.
The sight that greeted his eyes was scarcely credible. A room full of high technology - in his grandfather"s office! How could that be? Everyone knew Tam Kartryte was totally committed to Back to Basics. Back to Basics. How was it possible for his grandpa to have a secret like this? And then a terrible thought hit him. Was this what had driven his father to argue with Grandpa on the day that he died? Had his father discovered this room too? How was it possible for his grandpa to have a secret like this? And then a terrible thought hit him. Was this what had driven his father to argue with Grandpa on the day that he died? Had his father discovered this room too?
A woman"s scream tore through his thoughts and Billy Joe took in more details of the room. Jamie"s friend Zoe was sitting in a chair, connected by wires and a kind of electronic helmet to some kind of machine. And she was in pain.
"What are you doing to her?" he cried, rushing forward to try and rip the wires from her head.
"Get back," his grandpa ordered. "You could kill her."
Billy Joe dropped his hands but still looked concerned as Zoe jumped and twitched in her seat.
"She looks like she"s dying. We"ve got to do something..."
Billy Joe saw something on his grandpa"s face that he had never seen there before, blind panic. "I just don"t know what to do," confessed Tam Kartryte to his grandson.
Kirann took a step back and felt herself come up against something solid. "Ohh," muttered the Doctor. "Sorry," she whispered. Jamie had also retreated, leaving the three of them trapped with nowhere to go, completely encircled by the approaching Tyrenians.
Suddenly there was a crackle of gunfire and two of the nearest fell to the floor. The others turned to see where the attack had come from.
"Get down," ordered the Doctor to his fellow prisoners.
Kirann had caught a glimpse of one of the attackers. "It"s Federation marines," she said, as the Doctor pulled her into the nearest cover. They ducked behind one of the Deep Sleep cabinets.
Within moments the room was full of smoke and confusion.
Beams of energy lit up the smoke through which shadowy figures could be seen moving. A stray shot cracked the gla.s.s of the Alisorti tank, showering the ground with a mixture of liquid. The Alisorti, unable to survive out of water unless attached to a Tyrenian, began to die, flapping around and screeching in a painful tone.
Jamie couldn"t even see the exit any more. It was a battle-ground, more deadly for being in a contained s.p.a.ce. He could see bodies on the ground but it was impossible to see whether they were Tyrenians or humans.
The Doctor tapped him on the shoulder. "Follow me..."
Keeping low, the Doctor led them through the smoke, his uncanny sense of direction taking him round the area of most intensive conflict towards the door. They had to steer carefully around the dead Alisorti, which were already beginning to stink in a quite disgusting manner. Kirann followed him, and Jamie brought up the rear, carrying the now unconscious body of Max. The sound of energy weapons and grenades continued to fill the room.
The Doctor came to a door and they hurried out, into a corridor. A battle-suited figure trained his weapon on them but didn"t fire. The visor on the helmet slid open to reveal that the figure was Cartor.
"Get out of here!" he ordered, gesturing them to go past him.
The Doctor waved Kirann and Jamie on in the direction Cartor had indicated but paused to speak further with Cartor. "How did you find this place?" he asked.
"We bugged our captive and let him escape..."
Another explosion erupted close to them and Cartor shielded the Doctor with his body. "Have you ever considered; suggested the Doctor, "that you might have been led into a trap?" Cartor, however, wasn"t listening; he was busy weighing up his options. The terrain here inside the alien bunker was not the best place to stand and fight; it was, after all, alien territory. Experienced though they were, his marines were at a distinct disadvantage.
Cartor activated his communicator. "This is Cartor. Pull out, now," he ordered. He looked down at the little figure of the Doctor. "Let"s go then, Doctor. You can brief me on this place when we get out of here..."
Inside the Deep Sleep chamber, the Tyrenians were beginning to regain the initiative. The initial shock of the attack had surprised them but now they were recovering rapidly. Four of the humans had fallen and the rest appeared to be retreating. The revived warriors were slightly disorientated and bemused, but they had been well trained. Accepting Zenig as their new commander without question, they had begun to react instinctively, quickly throwing off any residual confusion.
Zenig observed that the humans seemed to be retreating.
He sent a group of his warriors to follow the humans while holding a dozen back to secure the room. Within minutes, Zenig was receiving reports that the last of the humans had left the bunker. Zenig placed guards at the access points and recalled the rest of his troops to the Deep Sleep chamber.
The debriefing was short and to the point. The humans had killed Commander Lorvalan. The humans had destroyed their settlement. The humans had invaded the bunker. That battle was now over. But the war, he promised them, was yet to come.
The Federation debriefing was more than thorough; it was interminable. The Doctor, Kirann and Jamie were questioned, separately and together, for hours, on everything they knew about the aliens and their base. The one person who knew more about the aliens than anyone else was, of course, Max. But he was in intensive care aboard the Hannibal, somewhere between life and death. somewhere between life and death.
Finally the Doctor had had enough. "I don"t know any more about the Tyrenians," he repeated angrily, getting to his feet in the middle of yet another round of questions, this time led by Cartor himself. "I don"t know how many of them there are, I don"t know what they want and I don"t care. I just want to get back to my friends at Plymouth Hope. If you can just let Kirann have her transport back, we"ll be on our way."
Jamie had rarely seen the Doctor so angry. He felt sure this display would just antagonise the Federation major, but to his surprise Cartor merely smiled and nodded.
"I can do better than that," he announced. "I"ll have a shuttle take you back there directly."
"Thank you," the Doctor replied, his anger ebbing away.
"That would be most kind." Jamie and Kirann got to their feet, ready to go with the Doctor.
"So what will you do about the Tyrenians?" asked the Doctor, as Cartor ushered them out of the interview room.
Cartor continued to walk them towards the transport as he answered, "For the moment, nothing."
"Good, good," said the Doctor, "because I think there"s been a lot of misunderstanding here. I don"t think the Tyrenians are a threat."
"Really?" Cartor didn"t sound at all convinced. "They"ve attacked both the settlements on this planet once already.
What makes you think they won"t again?"
"They haven"t heard what I have to say to them yet," said the Doctor firmly. "As soon as I"ve checked on Zoe, and spoken to both the Loyalist and Realist leaders, I intend to open peace negotiations," he announced.
Cartor stopped in front of a shuttlecraft and indicated a waiting Federation pilot. "Hosyin here will get you back to Plymouth Hope, Doctor." The Doctor looked him in the eye.
"You won"t be taking any action before I can get back, will you Major?" Major Cartor returned his look impa.s.sively. "Of course not, Doctor. Have a good flight."
Zoe had collapsed and, apart from occasional twitching, there was no sign of life in her at all. Billy Joe had run to fetch Dee but she was as much in the dark as to what to do as the rest of them. She took Zoe"s pulse and looked at Kartryte and his grandson with a concerned expression. "She"s alive," she announced, "but only just..."
"I still think we should get her disconnected from that thing," Billy Joe insisted.
Kartryte shook his head. "It"s too dangerous," he insisted.
"I don"t know - it sounds like a very sensible idea to me,"
announced a new voice. Billy Joe turned and saw three new figures arriving: an attractive woman he hadn"t seen before, his friend Jamie still wearing his bizarre skirt and Jamie"s mysterious friend, the Doctor.
Oh my goodness!" exclaimed the Doctor as he came far enough into the room to see what was going on. "What have you done to her?"
"She"s online to the ship"s AI recording of the crash," Tam explained.
"Well, get her offline. The positive feedback could kill her!"
the Doctor cried.
Dee told the Doctor the extent of their ignorance. The Doctor looked desperately at the equipment - surely there was an emergency cut-off? He pulled a panel off the front of the unit containing the AI, revealing a ma.s.s of wires, diodes and tubes containing a slow-moving liquid that the Doctor supposed was the organic element of the system. "Jamie, may I borrow your knife, please," he asked, his eyes scanning the view in front of him.
"Aye," said Jamie reaching into his sock and pulling out his skein dhu. The Doctor reached back and took the blade before giving his next move some careful consideration.
Beside him, Zoe groaned again. Time, as usual, was not on his side, thought the Doctor. For Zoe"s sake, he had to act.
Crossing the fingers on his left hand (out of sight of the others), he sliced through a wire. Nothing happened. The readouts still showed Zoe to be deep in the Al-induced coma.
The Doctor tried cutting a second wire, this one of a different colour. He glanced up at Zoe - still no change.
"This is no good," he muttered.
He took a deep breath, grabbed a handful of wires and sliced. This time there was a result. The wires sparked in his hand, causing him to leap back, waggling his burnt fingers.
At the same time the readouts went dead and the sensors that had been buried in Zoe"s skin fell away.
Ignoring his sore fingers, the Doctor jumped to his feet and hurried to Zoe"s side. Jamie looked over at him, his face a mask of concern. The Doctor gave him one of his shy smiles, "Don"t worry, Jamie, I think Zoe is going to be just fine," he told him.
He turned to Kirann, Dee and Tam. "Now, then. Let"s see if we can sort out your mess too, eh?"
Billy Joe sat on the porch outside his grandpa"s office and contemplated the changes that he had experienced over the last few days. Everything was different now, everything. It wasn"t just the physical things although they were, of course, the most obvious. The Federation shuttlecraft looking over the corral at the end of Main Street, the cl.u.s.ter of shiny white prefab buildings that the Earthers were calling the Colony Expansion Administration Centre, the big-wheeled, solar-powered buggy parked in the road; these were hard to miss.
However, it was the subtle changes that Billy Joe was sensing: the change in the people, the change in the mood. It was like the sharpness in the air after a heavy thunderstorm, alive with possibilities.
Billy Joe watched as the settlers responded to Kartryte"s request and came into town. Some came in carts, some on horseback, and those working the farms closest to the town just walked. But they all came with a new look on their faces, a response to the overwhelming changes that had been unleashed. Billy Joe saw suspicion and fear on some, as they pa.s.sed the shuttlecraft, while others looked at it with eager fascination. Despite the rules, there had always been discussion and gossip about the wider universe, about s.p.a.ce travel, about where their forebears had come from and, although in many this fascination with the unknown died out as they grew older, worn away by the relentless cycle of the seasons and the fight for survival, in others it was merely dormant, waiting for an event like this to spark its resurgence.
The colonists, mostly the eldest men of each family but also some women and a couple of Plymouth Hope"s few children, filed into the Meeting Hall, filling the room with nervous chatter. As Billy Joe followed them in, the room fell silent when his grandpa, Freedom, Dee and the woman they called Kirann, climbed on to the stage at the front of the room.
Jamie and the Doctor were sitting on the front bench. As Billy Joe found himself a seat in the back row, he noticed that the red-haired Federation officer - Veena was it? - had slipped into the hall too. She leant against the back wall and got comfortable.
"Thanks for coming, folks," Tam began. "I know there have been rumours circulating, wild rumours I suspect, and it"s about time you all knew the facts. These have been an extraordinary few days here on Axista Four, days that we and our children will remember for a long time. We"ve known in our hearts that we were at a crossroads, a turning point.
We"ve been in crisis for years, long before our friends, the so-called Realists, broke away. But all that has changed now; our dispute has been dwarfed by new concerns, new challenges." He paused, looking out over the faces of his audience, looking into their eyes, and trying to gauge their reaction to his words. He saw fear and despair, confusion and incomprehension, but he also saw some nods of agreement and expressions of hope, even confidence.
"We"ve lived for a hundred years by principles laid down by our founding father, a man who died in the process of establishing this colony before he could enjoy his new world.
But he left a legacy that was more than just a set of rules to live by; he left us his own daughter, to carry on his leadership. For years she has been kept alive by technology we can barely comprehend, frozen between life and death in machines deep inside the wreck of the colony ship. But with the help of our "other" visitors," he nodded in the direction of the Doctor who tried to shrink down in his seat, while Jamie waved to the audience in acknowledgement, "we have finally brought her back to life. I give you Kirann Ransom." He gestured expansively with his hand and introduced the founding father"s daughter.
Kirann was not sure what kind of response she would receive; she knew that rumours of her revival had been in circulation - but for the majority of the audience it was clear that her existence was a total shock. For a long moment there was silence and then a trickle of applause that soon became a flood. In moments people were stamping their feet, clapping their hands, screaming with delight. It took nearly ten minutes before order had been re-established sufficiently for her to make her address.
She kept it simple. She told them her father would have been proud of the colony"s survival during the first hundred years, and touched at the devotion with which they had adhered to the principles he had laid down. She could see that this played well with them; if nothing else they needed that affirmation right now.
"But," she continued after another wave of applause had washed over her, "there are things he would be disappointed by." There was a general tensing amongst the townspeople.
"My father intended this to be a living colony. An organic, growing thing. But there"s been a limit to your growth, an artificial barrier to the development of the colony I"m talking about Back to Basics." Back to Basics."
There, she"d said it now. Some of the more fundamentalist of her audience were now looking at her with open hostility but, she noted with relief, they seemed to be in a minority.
"I was part of the movement when it started back on Earth.
It was always about ideas and about choices. It was a reaction to our total dependence on technology that few of us could actually understand. It was about taking time to think about and change our behaviour over ecological matters. But it was never meant to be a creed. Not some kind of prescription for how you lived every detail of your life. It was a set of ideas, principles to guide you. Guide Guide not not rule. You rule. You weren"t meant to avoid technology at all costs, merely to look for simpler alternatives where possible. My father would never have lived as long as he did without technological a.s.sistance; he wasn"t a modern-day Luddite and he didn"t expect you to live theme-park lives replicating the Wild West. weren"t meant to avoid technology at all costs, merely to look for simpler alternatives where possible. My father would never have lived as long as he did without technological a.s.sistance; he wasn"t a modern-day Luddite and he didn"t expect you to live theme-park lives replicating the Wild West.
All he wanted was to start life here afresh, with a simpler lifestyle but not a stagnant one."
Kirann stopped, letting her words sink in.
"He wanted this colony to live, not die."
When the Doctor and Jamie came back to Kartryte"s office, they were delighted to see that Zoe was awake and on her feet again. Dee, however, still looked worried. "I do think you should rest a little more," she said anxiously.
"Really, I"m fine now," insisted Zoe.
"Excellent," said the Doctor, coming through the door. You see, Jamie, I told you she would be all right..."
Zoe looked up at the Doctor, a serious expression in her dark eyes. "Doctor, I need to talk to you... about what I"ve found out..."
The Doctor nodded. "You know what happened at Planet Fall?"
"Everything that was recorded by the colony ship"s semi-sentient computer. It was awful."
"Yes, I rather suspect it must have been. The ship was shot down by automatic defensive systems the Tyrenians had left in orbit, yes?"
Zoe pouted, annoyed that the Doctor seemed to know everything already. "That"s why the damage was so random,"
she added a little sniffily.
"And do you know what happened after the crash?" asked the Doctor gently.