Ace veered to the right.
Defries sprinted leftwards. Damn, she thought, that thing’s after me. I get all the luck.
She scanned the gently sloping face of rock. Plenty of fissures, but nowhere to hide for anything bigger than a lizard. The thrumming of the speeder’s engine was getting close. Much too close. Where’s Ace? Shoot the damned thing, now!
Nothing for it. Defries stopped, turned, dropped full length on the ground, and aimed her blaster. The hoverspeeder was only twenty metres away. It had looked kind of cute, from a distance. Now it looked like thirty tonnes of metal falling straight towards her.
If I’m very lucky, she thought, I might just avoid being turned into a long smear of guts and blood. She aimed at the cockpit – and saw Daak’s chainsword.
The DK was no more than a shadow, seen through the reinforced glass sphere at the front of the speeder. His chainsword, lifted high above the dome, descended in an arc and stopped with a tortured howl as it hit the carbon-reinforced vitreous.
The glass shattered like an eggshell, and blew away. Daak leapt through the flying shards and into the cockpit. The chainsword rose again, and fell, and Defries ducked her head as the speeder suddenly banked and sliced through the air only a metre from where she lay.
She looked up again. The hoverspeed was swooping and diving as Daak wrestled with the controls. She stood up, instructed her legs to stop feeling like jelly, and set off after the machine.
Daak brought the speeder to a halt on the far side of the plateau, in Ace’s path. Not a coincidence, Defries thought. Ace had stopped running, and now walked towards the hoverspeeder very slowly, as if waiting for Defries to catch her up before she reached it.
Daak spent a few minutes kicking the remains of the pilot out of the front of the cockpit, and then settled himself into the pilot’s bucket seat and swivelled lazily from side to side, waiting for the women.
They arrived together, wind-worn and battle-weary, converging on the grounded speeder. Surrounded by gale-jangled remnants of the vitreous bubble, Daak sat like a lord and looked down, grinning, as they approached.
What an insufferable pig, Defries thought. I don’t know what Ace sees in him. He’s a hunk, sure, but some rough trade is just top coarse.
‘What kept you, Daak?’ she yelled, still five metres from the speeder. ‘You took your time. Another five seconds and you’d have had to scrape me off the underside of this thing.’
‘Or you could have kept down on the platform,’ Ace added. ‘I could have plugged the pilot if you hadn’t been in the way.’
‘Ungrateful bitches,’ Daak said, still grinning. ‘You could have plugged him that good?’ He pointed down to the messy heap lying on the rock in front of the speeder.
Ace and Defries reached the place. Ace grimaced, reached down and hesitantly pulled aside the tattered sheet of black silk. The wind took it, and tore it fluttering from Ace’s fingers. Ace turned her head away from the uncovered corpse. ‘Jesus. He looks even worse than you do, Daak.’ She looked again. ‘In fact, I bet he wasn’t much prettier when he was alive.’
‘Android,’ Defries said. ‘There’s not enough blood for a human. There’s metal and circuitry mixed up in there. That’s a relief.’
‘You’d rather be up against androids?’ Ace said.
‘I’d rather not kill colonists.’
‘That goes for me,’ Daak threw in, to Defries’s surprise.
‘Me too, I suppose,’ Ace said, as if she didn’t care. ‘Let’s get off this rock and out of this weather.’ She started to climb into the cockpit.
Defries went up to her and stopped her climbing by placing a hand on her boot. That made Defries think of Johannsen. People were dying. Didn’t Ace care why?
‘Well?’ Ace said, looking down.
‘Sometimes I wonder, trooper, just who you’re fighting for. Do you have any loyalties?’
Ace continued to look down at Defries. Her face showed no expression. For a moment Defries thought that Ace was going to kick her, but she just shook off Defries’s restraining hand. ‘You’d be surprised,’ Ace murmured. She stepped into the cockpit, picked her way across it, and went to stand alone on the weapons platform.
When Defries pulled herself over the projecting fragments of glass and into the cockpit, Daak was still half out of the pilot’s seat, staring at Ace’s back and her wind-whipped hair. Defries swivelled his chair to face the front.
‘You ever seen androids like that before?’ she said.
‘What? No, I guess not. I never mixed much with tin goons. My speciality’s ripping them open.’
‘So much less taxing than analytical thought,’ Defries said. ‘Well, I’ve never seen an android like that before. They’re all pretty much alike, even from different manufacturers. That one’s a real freak.’ She thought about it. Daak started looking over his shoulder towards the weapons platform. ‘You did well, Dalek Killer,’ she said, attracting his attention again. ‘No kidding. You requisitioned us some transport. Now we’d better put some distance between us and here. I guess you’ve worked out how to fly this thing. So which way?’
She and Daak looked to the left, and then to the right, along the plateau. The view was about the same both ways.
‘This way.’ It was Ace’s voice, from the back of the speeder. There was an urgency in the voice that made Defries and Daak turn and climb the three steps to the weapons platform.
They stood beside Ace, and took in the panorama that was laid out like a map below the edge of the plateau. Defries hardly noticed the lakes and the vegetation: she was studying the strange complex of structures that had been built on a vast slab of rock in the centre of the fertile valley.
‘It’s a colony base camp,’ she whispered. ‘Glorious Humanity, it’s the original base. It’s still here. And still in use. Look at the shuttle runways. But what are all those walls and staircases and ramps and towers? What are they made of?’
‘It’s stone, isn’t it?’ Ace said. ‘Someone’s dressed it up to look like a castle out of a fairy tale. Or a nightmare.’
‘This could still be Spinward’s main base on the planet,’ Defries said. ‘Maybe we’ve found what we’re looking for.’
‘Good,’ Daak said, and started the motors of his chainsword. ‘Let’s take it to pieces.’
‘I give the orders,’ Defries said. ‘We’re tired, hungry, in need of plastic skin here and there. If we were fit, a frontal assault would be suicide. As things are, I’d feel happier trying to eat that chainsword. We’ll go and find a place to rest a while.’
‘No,’ Ace said.
‘What? Trooper, if you won’t obey a straight order... What is it?’
Ace’s arm was outstretched, rigid, pointing to a road that meandered along the valley floor. Defries looked through the viewfinder of her blaster, found the convoy moving along the road, and increased the magnification.
Four of the black-robed androids were on foot, stumblingly escorting a big, open wagon pulled by a four gigantic horses. Roped upright in the wagon was a blue box. It was taller than a man, and big enough to accommodate four or five people inside. It had a shallow-pitched roof, with a blue light at the centre. It was oddly heavy – or perhaps the horses were very tired.
‘What the hell is that?’ Daak said, pre-empting Defries by about half a second.
‘It’s the TARDIS,’ Ace replied, with a smile in which Defries detected more than a hint of malicious enjoyment of her audience’s incomprehension. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine. We arranged to meet here. He must be inside that tarted-up colony camp. He’s probably in trouble, he usually is. He’ll be expecting me to ride in with the cavalry. And all I’ve got is you two.’
‘Cut out the clever crap, trooper.’ Once again, Defries found herself having to ignore insubordination, this time in order to extract information. ‘We’re not going anywhere until I get some answers. Who is this guy? What is that blue box? And why in hell should we care?’
‘He’s c
alled the Doctor. He looks human, but he’s not. The TARDIS is his – well, he travels in it. And we need to find him because he’ll be right in the middle of whatever’s going on. He always is. And the TARDIS is our best hope of getting out of here.’
‘Sounds like he’s a loser,’ Daak said. ‘But – the Doctor. I think... Hell, I...’ He shook his head and snarled. ‘Anyway, that chicken coop’s not big enough for a one-man transmat.’
The DK was having memory trouble. Defries wondered whether it was the early defrost. Or maybe just a faulty copy. Didn’t matter either way. He was already a dead man.
‘It’s deceptively spacious,’ Ace said. She was still smiling, and still watching the cart as it crawled through a Gothic gatehouse and into the compound.
The crazy auxie was going to go down there, Defries realized, whatever Defries’s orders were. And Daak would follow her. Defries shrugged. She’d just have to make the best of it. And anyway, she wanted to kill.
In the old, days, Defries had read, when humankind was still stuck in one planetary system, when the Martians and the Cybermen came back, the soldiers were genetically manipulated to follow their leaders and implanted with intelligent chips that could be used to enforce military discipline. Desperate times, different priorities. Mostly, Defries thought that things had improved since the break-out. There was a lot wrong with the way the corporations ran the colonies. A lot. She’d seen things... But in general it was good for mankind to look outward to the stars. It lessened the tendency for people to fuck up their own heads and others’ with neural implants, semi-organic picoprocessors, and viral drugs.
Yet sometimes, like now, she wanted a neural-driven transmitter that would send a signal that would send Ace and Daak into painful paroxysms if they so much as thought of questioning her instructions.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘Daak, you see to the speeder. Engines, controls, fuel. It’s the only transport we’ve got, and I don’t want a breakdown. Ace, weapons check. Power levels, all three of us. Plus the cannon on the speeder. And see if you can rig up something forward-firing. I’ll come round with the skin and some shots – protein and Zip should do it.’
‘And then?’ Ace said.
‘Then we go in. One hoverspeeder against a fortification full of androids and heavy weapons.’
‘My kind of fight,’ Daak said.
‘Doctor!’
‘Benny!’
‘Is it – Elaine!’
‘Francis? Oh, Francis!’
The door clanged shut. The two pairs of prisoners hardly noticed: they were too busy exchanging news. Elaine, still holding Bernice’s hand, had jumped into Francis’s arms. Benny tried to, concentrate on the Doctor’s words while her eyes continually strayed towards Elaine.
‘Been having an interesting time?’ The Doctor was the same as ever. Rumpled clothes and unruffled demeanour. It did her good to see him again, His ice-blue gaze darted into every corner of the room.
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ Bernice said. ‘Two near-death situations, one rescue of a fellow-prisoner, several moments of heart-stopping tension. You?’
‘Oh, much the same. Intriguing planet, this.’
Elaine was chattering to the chap with the soulful face as if she’d never forgotten how to talk. Bernice grinned. ‘What? Oh yes, very. But – you must have escaped from the TARDIS?’
‘Escaped?’
Oh God, I’ve offended him.
‘Professor Summerfield, you should never underestimate the guile of a Time Lord. I suppose you thought I hadn’t noticed the occasional vagaries in the systems?’
‘Occasional vagaries? Doctor, both you and the TARDIS have been going ga-ga for months. Ever since I’ve been on board. I began to think it was something to do with me.’
‘I had to keep you in the dark. All part of the plan. And it worked. The TARDIS is fully recovered. As good as new. Well, as good as – as good as Sun Park.’
‘Sun Park?’
‘Everton.’
‘What?’
‘Stripy mints. One of my favourites.’
Bernice gave up. She hoped the TARDIS was in better shape than the Doctor. ‘So all we have to do is get out of here, and get back to the TARDIS.’
‘Unnecessary,’ the Doctor said smugly. ‘They’re bringing her here.’ He cocked his head, as if listening. ‘Very close now.’
Bernice hardly heard him. Elaine’s hand had started quivering in hers; the girl was sobbing. Bernice flashed an apologetic smile to the Doctor, and turned towards the young couple.
The young man was weeping, too. Francis. Hardly more than a boy, in fact. Slim, with sharp-features and large, dark eyes. A look of corruptible innocence that Bernice found rather appealing. As many women would, she thought. But tears are a great leveller; everyone looks ugly with red-rimmed eyes and a screwed-up face.
‘Christina!’ Francis sobbed, and Elaine’s cries rose in a crescendo and then subsided again.
‘Christina!’ Elaine stammered, and Francis wailed the name again and again.
Bernice watched helplessly. She squeezed Elaine’s fingers, and placed a hand on Francis’s shoulder. The weeping continued.
The Doctor seemed to find the scene embarrassing. When Bernice glanced over her shoulder, he averted his eyes and took a consuming interest in the door hinges.
Elaine and Francis stopped crying. Bernice gave them an encouraging smile, which they returned weakly, and detached herself from their embrace with one last squeeze and one last pat on the shoulder.
The Doctor was scowling at the door. As Bernice approached, he kicked it. The clang echoed in the empty room.
A tad theatrical, Doctor, Bernice thought.
‘I don’t understand why they’re keeping us in here,’ he grumbled. ‘The usual routine is that I get frog-marched into the presence of the Topmost Panjandrum so that he can have a good gloat. I can’t find out what’s going on while I’m locked in the basement.’
‘He might be a she, of course,’ Bernice said.
‘He might turn out to be set of sub-atomic particles bouncing around in a box in intelligent wave formations,’ the Doctor fumed. ‘He might be anything. That’s the trouble. I just don’t know. Hush!’
‘I didn’t –’
‘Hush!’ Concentration and worry creased the Doctor’s forehead. ‘Can you hear it?’
There was a continuous, low rumble, which Bernice sensed rather than heard. ‘Old-fashioned rocket engine?’
‘Two jets, with a rocket booster. A short-hop shuttle, probably.’
‘It’s taking off, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. It’s certainly taking off. With a heavy cargo, I’d say. And we’re not on it.’
He was getting angrier by the minute. Bernice didn’t understand. Francis and Elaine, looking questioningly at the Doctor, wandered towards the door.
‘What’s the matter?’ Francis said, unwisely in Bernice’s opinion.
The Doctor spun round to face him. ‘We’re in the wrong place, that’s what’s the matter,’ he said with ominous self-control. ‘We are here. The Panjandrum is elsewhere. Would you like to start digging the tunnel, or shall I?’
‘Cybershit and Dalek dung!’ Defries wriggled backwards from the edge of the rock until she was out of sight from the base station below. Crouching, she ran back to the speeder. Ace wasn’t going to like this.
Ace was at the front of the vehicle, using Daak’s chainsword to hack at the metal-plated skirt. The DK was standing behind her, making comments that she ignored.
‘Stop that!’ Defries called. She reached the speeder. Ace and Daak turned to face her. ‘They’ve launched the shuttle.’
‘What?’ Daak raised his fists as if he intended to box Defries’s ears.
‘Bang goes Plan A,’ Ace said. ‘It was a nice easy target. There it goes. And the TARDIS inside it.’
Defries followed Ace’s gaze. The shuttle was already no more than a streak of silver. It disappeared into the clouds.
‘Esc
ape trajectory,’ Daak said.
‘Yes, of course,’ Defries said. ‘Interesting. They’re taking your friend’s box to a space station. I suppose, Trooper Ace, that your advice would be to follow it?’
Ace smiled. ‘Can’t think of anything better. But we can’t fly this old banger to a space station.’
‘No problem.’ Daak turned and hoisted himself into the speeder’s cockpit. ‘We’ll go in and find us another shuttle.’
Defries couldn’t see any alternative, but she felt obliged to point out the difficulties. ‘They’ll try to stop us,’ she said. ‘The original plan was just to get in there, and that was suicide. Now we have to get in, steal a shuttle, fly it out, and then take it off planet. If I say the words giant squid, does that remind you of what could be waiting for us out there?’
‘What’s the alternative?’ Daak yelled.
‘No alternative,’ Defries said, and climbed up beside him. ‘I just thought I ought to remind you that we’re all doomed. But I’ve got a job to do.’
‘And I want to stick close to the TARDIS,’ Ace said, appearing on the stripped-down rear platform. ‘You two remember to keep your heads down. This cannon has a three-sixty degree field now. And Belle: the front thruster’s blocked. That lash-up pedal near your right foot releases it. We’ll fly nose-down, but we can take a rough ride and it might just save you a laser shave when I start shooting. When you push the pedal, the thruster’ll blow – straight out the front of the skirt. Wicked waste of fuel, but it’ll fry anything close in front. Best I could do.’
‘Quit talking.’ Daak laughed, and hit the ignition button. ‘I just want to kill something.’
The Doctor had been staring at the ceiling for a very long time. Bernice thought she detected more than a suggestion of injured pride in his rigid stance. Escaping from prisons was one of his specialities, but this time he had conspicuously failed. He hadn’t said a word since his last attempt to bamboozle the androids who had brought them more bread and water.
Bernice was almost grateful for the hours of enforced idleness, Every change of scene, every sudden shock, had threatened to plunge Elaine back into catatonic silence. The cell, although uncomfortable and oppressive, made for a haven of quiet and stillness within which Bernice had been able to calm and draw out the traumatized girl.
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