He glanced over to where Hater Of Humans sat in its Sshaped chair. The Gatherer of the Scattered Shards of Hithis was poised eagerly, watching with bright eyes and erect eyestalks as they drew alongside the sleek, spiked ship.
"Glorious," it murmured. "Absolutely glorious."
"The weapon bays have been removed," the Doctor murmured.
"We can replace them," Hater Of Humans said.
Its eyestalks suddenly whipped around towards the Doctor. "Not that we want to," it added. "We"re merely trying to turn the icaron ring off."
"Of course," the Doctor said. "I believe you."
"Look!" a Hith shouted. On the screen a squad of ten tall, angular robots were running along it towards the Skel"Ske Skel"Ske. As they watched, the bots disappeared inside the hatchway at the front of the ship.
"So," the Doctor mused, "that part of Powerless Friendless"s story was true, at least."
"Bring us alongside that walkway," Hater Of Humans ordered. "Order a squad of my personal honour guard to prevent further incursions through the doorway. Two more squads to enter the ship and find Daph Yilli Gar!"
The ship slowed to a halt under the expert pseudo-limb of the pilot, and rotated until it lay parallel to the walkway. A tube extruded from the ship"s side towards the walkway. Lasers flared as the tubes joined. Robotic grapples pulled them close, to form an airtight seal.
"Doctor," Hater Of Humans snapped, "you will aid me in . . . Doctor?"
But neither the Doctor nor Provost-Major Beltempest were there.
Adjudicator in Extremis Bij Kakrell stood on the highest point of the Adjudication lodge, watching the towers burn.
"I can"t believe it," she said, the flames casting her shadow back across the roof like a huge, flapping cape. "After all we worked for. To see it all like this.
In flames . . . " Lost for words, she just shook her head.
"The Divine Empress has declared martial law," Duke Marmion, Lord Protector of the Solar System, murmured. His thin, emaciated face seemed to glow in the light from below. Behind him, a small knot of peers the Marquesa of Earth and her retinue of counts and countesses, viscounts and vis-200countesses, barons and baronesses milled in a panic. "Crowds are gathering on the approaches to the lodge. Under the authority vested in me by the Divine Empress"s proclamation, I"ve taken the precaution of ordering all of your Adjudicators to shoot to kill."
Kakrell whirled around.
"Shoot to kill?" she snapped. "Isn"t that a little . . . premature?"
Marmion"s face was slicked with sweat, and there was a wild, uncontrolled look in his eyes that Kakrell didn"t like one bit.
"It seemed a prudent course of action," he said, ignoring her accusing gaze.
"The Surgeon Imperialis is no nearer discovering the cause of this plague of violence. She believes that it might only affect those people who have seen the inside of a body-bepple tank, but . . . "
Kakrell could have finished the sentence for him. Over sixty per cent of humans on Earth had beppled themselves in major or minor ways. This could mean the apocalypse had finally arrived.
A distant explosion distracted her. She turned her head towards the source of the sound. For a moment the world was as it had been, as it had always been, with the tops of the towers stretched out below the lodge, the forests, lakes and sculpted gardens linked by walkways and bridges.
And then one of the towers slowly sank from view, pulling its bridges after it. She could clearly hear the terrible tearing noise as they snapped, one by one, echoing like the crack of doom across the burning cityscape.
"I don"t I don"t believe it!" she sobbed, as the slow, remorseless crash of the tower hitting the Undertown reached her ears. "The null-grav engines are failing!"
"Not failing," Marmion murmured. "They"re being sabotaged."
"Then this is the end," she breathed. "The end for the Earth Empire."
"Yes," he breathed, and she glanced over at him, unwilling to believe that she could hear excitement in his voice.
"How did you do that?" Beltempest asked as the airlock of the Hith ship opened to the Doctor"s touch, revealing the translucent tunnel of the boarding tube extending ahead of them.
"It"s a gift," the Doctor said. "We"d better move fast. Hater Of Humans"s troops will be right behind us."
"Remind me," Beltempest said as they ran along towards the walkway that linked the Skel"Ske Skel"Ske to Earth. "Why exactly are we in the vanguard of an alien invasion, rather than bringing up the rear?" to Earth. "Why exactly are we in the vanguard of an alien invasion, rather than bringing up the rear?"
"If Powerless Friendless is aboard that craft," the Doctor panted, "then Bernice is probably with him. Knowing Bernice, there"s no knowing what trouble she"s getting herself into."
201."Fair enough," Beltempest said, his trunk swinging as he ran. "Just so I know."
They reached the end of the boarding tube, where it had been melted into the substance of the walkway. The Doctor"s head turned right, as if he intended to swing into the walkway and run on towards the Skel"Ske Skel"Ske, but his entire body turned left and took him off towards the doorway to Earth. An expression of comical amazement twisted his features.
"Doctor?" Beltempest shouted, coming to a halt. "I thought . . . ?"
The Doctor slowed to a halt just inside the doorway, and frowned. "The TARDIS?" he said in puzzlement and dawning joy. "The TARDIS! I"ve found her!"
"What"s a TARDIS?" Beltempest asked.
"She"s . . . Never mind. Go and find Bernice. Keep her out of trouble. Tell her tell her I have another engagement. Tell her . . . " he paused, thinking.
How to pa.s.s a message on without attracting suspicion? Pig Latin, perhaps?
He knew that Bernice was familiar with it. The question was, was Beltempest?
"Tell her, "Ashtray the ipshay,"" he said finally.
Beltempest frowned.
"Ashtray the ipshay? Will she understand that?"
"It"s vital to us all that she does," the Doctor said, and with that he was gone.
Beltempest glanced back along the boarding tube. A solid phalanx of Hith warriors was sliding towards him.
"Come on, lads," he yelled, and ran towards the Skel"Ske Skel"Ske.
"Yes," the man behind the desk said. "Come to me, Doctor. I"ve opened the way for you. I"ve made it easy. Don"t disappoint me now."
Through the eyes of a security camera above the door to hypers.p.a.ce, he watched the Doctor"s hesitant footsteps, and whispered: "Come into my par-lour."
"Said the spider to the fly," the Doctor said and wondered why the thought had popped into his head. Then again, this had all the signs of a cla.s.sic trap.
Beltempest had wondered why the Hith hadn"t suspected one, and now the Doctor was in a similar quandary. Well, he he was there, and that was the only sign he needed. He and traps seemed to have a natural affinity for each other. was there, and that was the only sign he needed. He and traps seemed to have a natural affinity for each other.
The room through the doorway was plain, apart from a desk and a door in the far wall. The Doctor paused for a moment to inspect the dry coffee stain on the floor, then quickly dived behind a desk at the sound of pounding footsteps. In the metal wall he saw the reflections of a horde of sleek, four-armed bots running past. He counted to ten, then climbed to his feet and left the room through the other door.
202.The corridor outside was deserted. Left or right? He closed his eyes and sniffed with his mind. Right. Right, and up a number of levels.
There was a null-grav shaft at the end of the corridor. He climbed into it and let it carry him upwards. Carry the battle to the enemy, that was his motto.
Walk blithely into the arms of danger, that was another one. Sheer stupidity usually carried the day, that was a third.
The shaft kept going up, and so did he. The TARDIS was getting slowly and surely closer. Bernice would be all right for a little while longer. She would understand that his present priority was to ensure that the TARDIS was safe.
Wouldn"t she?
He kept checking up and down the shaft"s length, but n.o.body else was using it. Was that an ominous sign?
Flashing past one of the upper levels, the Doctor thought he saw a sleek metal form standing watching him from the opening. It made no attempt to step into the shaft after him. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps it hadn"t noticed him.
Another, standing in an opening. Its head twisted to watch him hurtle past, ever upward. He watched it diminish below him. He was expected: that much was obvious. And he thought he knew by whom. The Interstellar Nanoatomic ITEC that was an unforgivably obvious clue, a real c.o.c.k pheasant of a clue, as Holmes would have said.
The null-grav field began to slow him down as he approached the top of the shaft, and the TARDIS. He slowed to a halt, and waited nervously in the shaft, gazing into the shadowed room that lay through the only exit.
The director"s office. Under normal circ.u.mstances, there was no way that he should have been allowed to get that far. Ergo Ergo, he was expected.
Nothing. No sound. No movement.
Cautiously he stepped into the room.
The carpet was deep and soft. A desk stood over to one side, lights flickering in its depths. His deep-seated empathic connection with the TARDIS told him that his time craft was over to one side, but for the moment he was more concerned with the way the lights from the desk played over a metal shape sitting behind it: a bot whose surface had been formed into the creases and folds of an old fashioned, high-collared suit. He couldn"t quite see the face, but he didn"t need to. He knew who was sitting behind the desk; or rather, who was sitting inside the machine that was sitting behind the desk.
The Doctor stepped forward into the room. "I should have guessed," he said.
"Interstellar Nanoatomic ITEC. An obvious anagram of International Electromatics. Your Freudian slip is showing."
Tobias Vaughn stood up, the multicoloured light from the desk reflecting from his metal body, casting rainbow highlights across the room and onto 203the side of the TARDIS. Behind him a red glow filtered in from the wall-wide window.
"You"ve no idea how refreshing it is to see a familiar face, Doctor," he drawled in that plummy, affected, once-heard-never-forgotten voice. "Even if it won"t be around for very much longer."
204.
Chapter 15.
"I"m Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today The Empire Today , on the spot, on , on the spot, on and off the Earth. Martial law is in effect across the Earth. Initial and off the Earth. Martial law is in effect across the Earth. Initial reports are that the Imperial Landsknechte and the Order of Adjudicators are deploying in force to ensure that the provisions of the reports are that the Imperial Landsknechte and the Order of Adjudicators are deploying in force to ensure that the provisions of the Imperial Proclamation are enforced. And as the riots spread further, Imperial Proclamation are enforced. And as the riots spread further, and damage to property tops thirty trillion Imperial schillings, we and damage to property tops thirty trillion Imperial schillings, we ask: are we listening to the death knell for humanity?" ask: are we listening to the death knell for humanity?"
Bernice slammed her fist into the control console. It sank in up to the wrist.
"It"s no good," she said, fighting to extract her hand from the spongy surface.
"I can"t get any of these controls to operate."
"Not like that you can"t," Powerless Friendless snapped.
It occurred to Bernice that the Hith navigator had become a great deal less willing to tolerate other people since he had regained his memory. He reminded her more and more of Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone, and the resemblance kept sending small pangs of memory through her heart.
Homeless Forsaken was dead, and she didn"t want the same thing to happen to Powerless Friendless or Daph Yilli Gar, as she supposed she ought to call him.
"We"ve been in and out of these control cells for the past hour," she said. "One step ahead of the bots and several steps behind any idea of how to turn the engines on. You were the navigator, Powerless Friendless. Can"t you remember anything about this vessel?"
"I told you," Powerless Friendless snarled, "my memories are still in pieces.
Dantalion did a good job. He"s managed to put most of them back together again, but there are still a lot of holes. The most important one is: I can"t remember how to turn the engines on."
"But you operated the comm system."
"The comm system is different!" he shouted, and immediately flushed grey in shame. "I"m sorry, Bernice. What I meant was, I have no problem remembering how to operate the comm system. My memories in that area are intact."
Bernice frowned. "Hang on," she said, "if the engines are off, and emitting icarons, how come the comm system and the gravity generators still work?"
"Organic capacitors," Powerless Friendless said. "It meant we could still call for help if there was a power failure."
205."Makes sense," Bernice said. "It was an experimental ship, after all." She sighed, and glanced around the tiny room. "But that doesn"t explain why there are so many control rooms."
"So we don"t have to see each other," Powerless Friendless explained. "Hith are solitary creatures."
She nodded. Something moved in the corner of her vision. She turned, ready to run, but it was only Krohg wandering across the floor.
"This is like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box," she said, turning back to Powerless Friendless. "Let"s try again. How much can can you remember about the engines?" you remember about the engines?"
Powerless Friendless rippled in the Hith equivalent of a shrug. "Only that the control nexus goes over there." He pointed to a puckered area of panel.
Bernice walked over and examined the area. Tiny veins seemed to terminate in cilia that jutted upright like stalagmites.
"Like all good jigsaws," Bernice sighed, "there"s a piece missing. Come on: let"s check some of the other control cells for this nexus thing. I don"t suppose you can remember what it looks like?"
As she spoke, she touched the area of wall that operated the door. The muscle-like sheet swept back, revealing a large expanse of burnished metal.
A bot.
Its outstretched gun arms were aimed at her head.
"Ms Summerfield," it drawled, "I believe we have already met."
She slammed the door shut again and leaned against it. "Then again," she said, "perhaps there"s a couple of nooks and crannies here we overlooked."
A section of the door suddenly bulged inwards in the shape of a large fist.