It seemed to Jamie as if they were some sort of exhibit. Several guards had looked in on them in the last hour, and soon after Prion had left them in peace Cruger had appeared in the doorway. He dismissed his guard, as if the man were there for Cruger’s own benefit rather than as his captor, and introduced himself.
But if Cruger was more interested in Jamie and Victoria than in himself, he hid it well. After a few polite questions about who they were and where they were from, he appeared to grow bored with their predicament and want to talk about his own.
‘Of course,’ Cruger was saying, ‘if it weren’t for Senator Mathesohn’s surreptitious manipulation of events there would have been no war.’ He leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing, and Jamie guessed he was looking for some response from either himself or Victoria. Jamie stifled a yawn.
‘You know Mathesohn, of course,’ Cruger went on, still looking intently from one of them to the other.
‘No,’ Jamie said.
‘I’m afraid we don’t know anything about your world,’ Victoria said. ‘We’re travellers, as we told you.’
Cruger leaned back, smiling. ‘Of course,’ he said quietly. ‘So you said.’ He smiled. ‘Travellers who appear from nowhere, and will no doubt evaporate like the Fifth Legion when your business here is done.’
Again Jamie sensed an undercurrent, that Cruger was fishing for some reaction. And Jamie was getting bored and fed up with it. ‘Look,’ he said loudly, ‘we’ve no business here. We arrived by accident, and we’ll soon be on our way. That’s all there is to it.’
Cruger’s hands were spread wide, his face a mask of apology. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said in apparent surprise. ‘I meant no ill.’
‘That’s all right, General,’ Victoria said. But Jamie could tell from the slightly high pitch of her voice that she was annoyed with the man too.
‘Please, call me Cruger. I can’t say I care for it more than the respectful use of my proper title, but everyone here calls me Cruger. It is a way of defusing the otherwise embarrassing fact that I outrank my captors.’
‘Except for Trayx,’ Jamie pointed out.
‘Ah, but like you he is merely visiting,’ Cruger said. Suddenly he was animated, jabbing his finger at Jamie. ‘Nobody outranks Trayx. That is another of the embarrassments of this whole affair.’
‘Oh?’ Victoria asked.
‘Oh yes, Miss Waterfield. While Hans Kesar languishes in his incarceration here, Milton Trayx is Emperor in all but name.’ He laughed, though there was precious little humour in the sound. ‘So the great Republican takes the place of the mighty Emperor.’
‘Not so mighty,’ Jamie pointed out. ‘He lost the war.’
Cruger shrugged. ‘Battle is but one of the games of state. I’ll tell you this.’ He was stabbing the air again. ‘If Kesar had won the war, as he should have done, he could have held Haddron together. We should have a strong Empire, forged out of blood, sweat and tears. But instead? We have a weak Republican who cannot dare to assume the authority that needs to be exerted. We have Mathesohn and his allies desperate for another civil war to rend our territories apart and reopen barely sealed wounds. The coalition is inadequate to the task, too disjointed to wield the power needed to bring the people, the empire – yes I call it that – together again.’ The emotion was straining at Cruger’s face as he spoke, the passion spat out with his words. ‘We all know there is only one man who can save Haddron now. That’s what Trayx refuses to accept, that’s what Mathesohn is scared almost to death of admitting. And that is the supreme irony. When we need him most, Kesar is left to rot in this forsaken place.’
Jamie looked at Victoria, unsure quite what to say to this. From Victoria’s expression, she was none the wiser. But before either of them could say anything, Cruger stood up and walked to the door.
‘But what is all this to you?’ he asked, his tone as sarcastic as the sneer that he now wore. ‘You are travellers who know nothing of our problems, and who care even less.’ Then he turned, and was gone. The sound of his boots rang on the stone floor of the corridor, receding into the distance. It was joined by the noise of the guard’s heavy footsteps, running to catch up with his prisoner.
The sight of a myriad stars unobscured by the atmosphere of a planet was not a new one to the Doctor. But even so, he found himself gazing up in awe as Trayx led him across the walkway between two of the high towers on the rim of the fortress. Behind them, the ragged rock of the asteroid was a dark cliff that melded with the blackness of space. But the sight forward, over the battlements, was as spectacular as anything the Doctor had seen. This was not a view through the thick glass of a small porthole in some rusting space station. Here they were out among the stars themselves, able to see the intricate colours on the edge of each dot of light, to discern the gradations in the rings around the nearby planet, to appreciate the silent emptiness of the void together with the majestic glory of the light that shone through the heavens above and before them.
‘It’s quite a view,’ Trayx said quietly as the Doctor paused to look out over the ramparts. ‘I never tire of it.’
‘Do you often visit this place?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Not often enough. There is far too much to be done at home.’
‘Magnificent,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Magnificent.’ He pointed to a distant speck of light. ‘Is that Praxis Minima? I seem to recognise the red shift at its anterior.’
‘You are interested in the stars and their courses?’ Trayx was beside the Doctor now, leaning over the battlements with him. Below them, on a lower walkway, two guards exchanged words, beyond their earshot and oblivious to their commander on the upper level.
‘I have some small expertise in the matter,’ the Doctor admitted, ‘and an interest, yes.’
Trayx clapped him on the shoulder so hard that his chest was pushed against the stone of the rampart. He winced, trying not to cough too obviously.
‘Then I have something to show you, Doctor,’ Trayx was saying. ‘Something I think will appeal to your intellect as well as your sense of wonder.’
On the lower walkway, Darkling whispered to Haden. He knew there were microphones and cameras. Even if he had not been told, he could have guessed. What he did not know was whether the surveillance system could see and hear him at the moment. So he whispered, as if that would make any material difference.
‘Which of the stars shall I bring you?’ he asked her quietly.
Haden’s laugh was as muted. She knew why he was whispering. She might have been on Santespri for only a few weeks, but already Darkling had told her almost everything he knew about the place. He had been assigned to show her around when she was transferred from the Frastis Penal Centre to replace another of Kesar’s guards who had died in a loading-bay accident. There was a tortuous logic to having a Republican show round a new Imperial prisoner. The notion was that there would be little love lost between soldiers from opposing sides.
In fact, there was a camaraderie between the two garrisons that belied the function of the fortress. With the war over, there was little thought for recrimination among the military. They dealt with what was, not what might have been. And Darkling had taken immediately to the new young woman as he showed her around Santespri. Since that day they had both angled for duties together.
Darkling looked at her again, letting his eyes wander over her round, open face. He stared at her short hair, parted on the side as she pulled off her helmet, adjusted the chin strap and then replaced it. They were both wearing combat fatigues rather than full battle armour. The heavy blast-plating could be strapped over the fatigues in under three minutes should it prove necessary. There was a certain protocol to wearing full armour within the fortress, but out on the battlements there was an unwritten and largely unspoken agreement that the duty patrol could dispense with the armour. It was one way of getting volunteers for the most tedious and least necessary watch.
Darkling watched as Haden continued her own beat to the far end of
the battlements, his eyes lingering on her perfect pacing and slight swagger. He watched the way her trousers bent smoothly with her leg as it flexed; how the fabric curved round her hips and her thighs.
Haden swung round at the far end, facing Darkling again. She smiled as he turned to resume his own patrol. And in that moment he was again struck with the familiarity of her face. Again he felt that he had seen her somewhere before. But where?
They had both been at Tembraka, he knew that. They had spoken about it several times, about the battle, about the noise, about the strategies of their commanders. They had been on opposite sides, of course, but that merely lent an edge to their reminiscences.
Each had their memories of the battle tainted. Darkling because he had been on the losing side. That time. Haden, he knew, remembered the battle not for the victory of Kesar’s troops, but because of her own loss. Her brother had died at Tembraka.
The Stardial Chamber always had an effect on Trayx. In truth, it was the one reason why Santespri had been maintained during the empty years when it had lain all but neglected, before the civil war. The fortress was now far from the frontier it had originally been built to defend, lying alone and strategically irrelevant well within the borders of Haddron space. But the Stardial Chamber had set it apart from a dozen other similar outposts, all of which were now forgotten ruins.
The Chamber occupied the whole of the top half of the largest of Santespri’s three massive towers. The size of the room alone was impressive, as Trayx was reminded when he threw open the massive wooden doors and gestured for the Doctor to enter.
‘Oh, thank you.’ The Doctor bobbed his head in a parody of a bow as he edged past Trayx and entered the chamber.
He stopped dead on the threshold, his gasp of awed astonishment easily audible.
The room was huge, but it was not just its size that held the Doctor in awe. The walls were a mass of tubes, rods and cables which laced together high above the floor, forming a tangle of web work. Above this web, the top of the tower appeared open to space. Starlight glanced off the intricate mechanisms, glinting through the thick glass that focused it on to the inlaid marble floor of the chamber.
‘You’re impressed.’
The Doctor turned. Or at least, his body made a slight effort to turn back towards Trayx. His attention remained firmly on the room he now stepped into. ‘I am. Yes, indeed.’ He was looking all around as he walked slowly towards the centre of the floor. He laughed out loud, clapping his hands together and seemingly about to dance a jig on the spot. ‘Oh, my goodness gracious me.’ He exhaled loudly and ran into the room. He threw his arms open wide, turning a full circle in the middle of the chamber, all the while staring up at the top of the tower high above him.
Trayx joined the Doctor at the centre of the room. ‘It had a similar effect on me when I first saw it,’ he admitted. ‘And it was a ruin then. Now it’s been restored… Well, you can see for yourself.’
‘I can.’ The Doctor was nodding his head rapidly. ‘I do. It’s magnificent.’ He beamed at Trayx. ‘Thank you for showing me this,’ he said. His voice was quiet and sincere, his eyes smiling. ‘I’ve rarely seen anything quite like it.’
Trayx frowned. ‘Rarely?’
But the Doctor seemed oblivious to Trayx’s concern. ‘Oh yes, very rarely. Of course,’ he confided in a hushed tone, ‘the real trick would be to fit it all into a small, blue wooden box. But we can’t have everything, can we?’ He nodded again. ‘Oh yes, this is very impressive indeed.’ He coughed, the sound echoing slightly in the huge chamber. ‘Er, what is it? Exactly?’
Trayx shook his head and laughed. ‘You know, Doctor, I am never quite sure when you are being serious.’
‘I have that problem myself,’ the Doctor replied quietly.
Trayx looked about him, wondering where to begin his explanation. In a sense, the room was an observatory. In another sense, it was a clock. Though in truth it was neither of these. The walls were lined with the rods and cables that came together high over their heads to form a latticework structure that broke the space above into quadrants. And it was space, for the top of the tower appeared open to the sky above. Actually, a massive lens was fitted into the tower in place of its roof, focusing the light of the stars above and beyond into the latticework so that it formed a condensed map of the space outside Santespri. The result was a sort of double image, with the actual stars visible dimly behind the focused points of light that represented them against the lattice.
The lattice itself was harnessed to the drive system. The drive system was an arrangement of cog wheels and gears that sprawled across the huge curved expanse of the tower wall. Even as Trayx struggled to explain the underlying principles to the Doctor, a cog clicked round one notch and the arrangement of the latticework above them changed, reconfigured to catch up with the progress of the stars within it.
‘You measure time with this?’ the Doctor asked as he watched the interlaced beams and girders shuffle their positions and click into new ones.
Trayx nodded. ‘It’s possible, though nobody would ever come to this room merely to check their watch.’ He broke off as he realised that the Doctor had pulled a gold pocket watch from within his battered coat and was shaking it. A thick chain attached the watch to somewhere indiscernible within the coat, though Trayx noticed that as the Doctor moved the watch and pulled the chain tight, so one leg of his checked trousers twitched in apparent sympathy.
‘I take it there are no hands as such,’ the Doctor was saying. ‘More like a sundial, I suppose.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Trayx pointed to the markings on the floor, and the Doctor jumped a foot in the air as if he had only just noticed them.
The floor was lined with polished black marble. The focused lights of the stars was reflected again in the floor, the depth of the stone making it seem as if they were lamps embedded in the floor itself. Inlaid in the centre of the circular floor was a seven-pointed star. Lines of polished white stone radiated from the points of the star, cutting through the three concentric circles that also rippled out from the star, as if it had been dropped into the tower and the shockwave recorded for ever in differing colours of marble. Each ring was divided into sectors by short markings across it, spaced evenly around the circle. The inner circle was cobalt blue, then saffron yellow for the middle ring. The outermost circle was marked off along its edge with dagger-like markings. It was blood red against the jet black.
‘The points of the star,’ Trayx explained, ‘point to the postulated seven corners of the universe. The rings are each marked off in sidereal time drawn from the relative movements of different stars within the Haddron Republic.’
The Doctor considered this, tapping his watch to his chin as he followed the middle ring right round its course. All the while he studied the markings and lights on the floor in front of him. When he got back to where he had started he turned to Trayx. ‘So what time is it?’ he asked.
Trayx shrugged. ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘The time is marked for every major city under Haddron rule. At least, those under Haddron rule when this chamber was built. Several have since ceded. Several others have tried and as a result are no longer cities of the same stature.’
‘The great empire not quite what it once was?’
‘The Republic is in good health.’
The Doctor grunted as if he did not entirely believe this, then turned his attention back to the air above them. ‘You use the power, of course,’ he said suddenly, describing circles in the air with his finger. ‘That’s how this Stardial works, I take it.’ Without waiting for an answer, he went on. ‘And to be able to plot the time in every major city means that every major star within the Republic must be visible in the heavens from this point. Correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Santespri is angled so it looks back in towards Haddron. When the fortress was built we were on the outer rim of Haddron territory.’
‘And the power?’
‘Yes, I believe the ligh
t that is focused here from the stars outside is somehow harnessed to drive the mechanisms within this chamber.’
The Doctor stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘But only within this chamber?’ he asked. ‘You don’t use it for anything else?’
Trayx was at a loss to understand what the man meant. ‘Such as?’
‘Well, to provide essential power for the rest of the fortress. Heating, lighting, life support.’ The Doctor was waving his hands as if he could shake the ideas into Trayx’s head. ‘Cooking the dinner,’ he finished in an exasperated squawk.
‘I imagine the mechanism of the dial itself takes most of the collected power.’
‘Really?’ The Doctor seemed disappointed with the answer. ‘Well, it can’t be very efficient then, can it? The potential energy locked up in the solar emissions must be enormous. To say nothing of the cosmic rays and radiant heat.’
‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ Trayx said quietly. ‘I know little of such matters. But I do know that this room is one of the most awe-inspiring sights I have ever seen.’
The Doctor was smiling again. His voice had returned to its softer, almost lazy tone. ‘I think so too,’ he said. ‘It’s a marvellous place.’
Darkling watched Haden turn again at the end of the walkway. Yet again he was struck by a distant familiarity.
And at that moment, caught in mid-step under the open starlit sky of Santespri, his heart almost bursting with admiration – or perhaps something more – Darkling felt the blood run to ice in his veins. He was back at Tembraka, the smoke of the battle embracing him as he strode forward through the mud and guts. Then suddenly, it was pulled away leaving a corridor between him and the enemy. The sides of the corridor were glowing smoke, the diffuse light illuminating the path he trod, and shining on the figure in front of him.
The figure was looking down at the ground, picking its way carefully over the shattered remains of the attack units and the torn bodies of the dead. The man’s armour was scarred and dented. But the insignia on his shoulder was clearly visible as he looked up. As he saw Darkling. As he raised the fusion blaster.
Doctor Who: Dreams of Empire: 50th Anniversary Edition Page 9