‘Cut in standard power,’ he ordered, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the vibrating hull.
Collig looked across at Mishar and a tacit understanding passed between them. Acting in unison now, they performed a perfect deceleration procedure.
Nothing happened.
Jorus read the surprise on his pilots’ faces. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Negative response, Jorus!’ Mishar screeched.
‘We’re out of control!’ shouted Collig. ‘We’re going to dephase!’
‘Did the experiment work?’
The humanoid had a head like a white kingfisher, with a very long pointed beak. It was a rainbow of yellows fading into greens and teal-like blues. Her body was covered in beautiful snowy feathers – like a swan – but with a pattern that looked like flames running down her back. As she spoke, the elaborate feathered crest on her head shook. This was Euxine.
The man she addressed was hunched over a large computer bank, LEDs flashing in sync with the program it was running. He wore a simple one-piece suit, which bore a handful of unstitched tears, and his beard was a little ragged and untrimmed.
‘Are you going to be silent again, Rassilon?’ Euxine asked, a hint of a sneer in her voice. ‘You know that annoys me.’
The Time Lord turned to face his captor. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was merely trying to concentrate on the readings.’
‘And …?’
‘It does not appear that the time experiment worked,’ Rassilon said raising his eyebrows. ‘I will have to fine-tune the mechanism. Check the program again. This is unchartered territory.’
‘Yes. “Uncharted territory”,’ Euxine mimicked her prisoner. ‘I know. You have said that every time the experiment has failed.’ She came forward, waving a winged arm at the Time Lord. ‘I need this to work. The Ra’ra’vis will have time travel. You will see to that.’
‘You’re a scientist,’ Rassilon implored, spreading his arms. ‘You know that breakthroughs do not come all at once but with, well, time …’
‘Time,’ said Euxine. ‘I would choose your next words very carefully, Lord President. They may be your last!’ She turned and waved her wing at a Ra’ra’vis guard that stood the other side of a grilled door. The soldier released the lock and hurriedly opened the door for his leader to pass.
Rassilon returned to the computer. A small tickertape readout was spilling from a slot in the machine’s side. The Time Lord took it in his hands and read the information once more. This time, though, he allowed himself a discreet smile.
He had been reckless, that was true. He should never have left the safety of the main fleet to check on the rumours of a Vampire nest in this quadrant. But the bickering politicians had told him that they were fighting on so many fronts already that a new one could not be opened up. Besides, there were no troops available. So, he had come himself. Alone. He was a warrior, after all; capable of taking care of himself. Or so he thought.
Then he’d run into what he assumed was simple engine trouble and had been forced to put down on a conveniently placed asteroid. Of course, he’d sent a message to the fleet giving his coordinates. As soon as he’d done that, his communications had been blocked and an energy dome had formed over his one-man craft. An electro-magnetic pulse had hit his ship, and all its circuits had been blown. Before he had even time to fish out a staser, the asteroid had suddenly – and unexpectedly – gone to warp.
The Ra’ra’vis did not appear until they arrived at the planet on which he was now imprisoned. He’d recognised the bird-like aliens as they appeared in the dome shortly before they pumped his ship full of a very strong knockout gas. Even he could not filter it out of his system, and when he awoke he was in a large cell. It was well furnished and actually comfortable. He’d certainly been in worse military accommodation during his many centuries of warfare.
What surprised him was that the cell was simply an antechamber to a large laboratory. It was not as well equipped as the ones he was used to working in on Gallifrey, but what was there was a very good approximation of the apparatus required for rudimentary time travel experiments. Rassilon had marvelled at this and expressed his admiration to Euxine when he met her for the first time.
The sly Ra’ra’vis had accepted Rassilon’s praise and then informed him that they had been intercepting the Time Lords communiqués about their temporal experiments for many years. Their best scientists – including Euxine herself – had been trying to emulate them in their own laboratories, but without success. Their military had then hit on the idea of kidnapping Time Lord scientists and forcing them to work for the Ra’ra’vis.
Of course, they had had no idea when they set their asteroid traps that they would catch Rassilon. A stroke of luck, Euxine claimed. Rassilon wondered if this was a lie and they had been after him all along: tracking his movements and springing their trap as soon as he’d left the protection of his forces.
He had no proof this was the case and, with no other option, Rassilon had started to work for the Ra’ra’vis using their rather basic technology. From what they had told him about their own test results, he knew that, although they were close to the Time Lords in their quest for true mastery of time, the aliens were missing core parts of the research.
This allowed Rassilon to add in extra components that he told Euxine were necessary. He could not send a distress signal with the machinery he had; it was not meant for communication. It would have been like trying to light a fire with an ice cube. Indeed, he could not use it to do anything extraordinary, and certainly not to travel in time. However, the technology was advanced and did allow him to set up warp fields and interfere with the hyperspace dimensions.
When Euxine had demanded progress and wanted to see a demonstration, Rassilon had showed the Ra’ra’vis scientist his hypothesis about using hyperspace as a means of entering the time vortex. He knew it was a dead end because it had already been tried on Gallifrey. Crucially, Euxine did not know this. The ‘experiment’ had gone ahead and, while it seemed to have failed, Rassilon had succeeded.
He had pulled a ship in warp drive to him.
It had been a rough journey. The Vogo had been buffeted and spun, testing the inertia inhibitors to their full limits. It had survived, however, and so had the crew.
‘Damage report?’ Jorus asked groggily.
‘No damage to systems or structural integrity,’ Collig said.
‘But we’re not where we should be,’ Mishar added.
Jorus stood and his legs managed not to buckle under him as he walked across the pilots’ pit. ‘Where are we, then?’ he asked.
Mishar shook his head. ‘The computer’s trying to get a fix, but none of the stars or constellations match those we know.’
‘That means …’ Jorus sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘We’re a long way from home.’
‘A very long way,’ confirmed Mishar.
‘I want an analysis of our intra-space warp field,’ Jorus said. ‘We should only be a couple of light years from Voga. That was the plan. What went wrong?’
He retired to his cabin to think, but it wasn’t long before he was interrupted. Collig entered and told him that they had picked up something very odd in their analysis of the intra-space accident. Together they went down to the engine bay.
Here the only Vogan who really knew the ship’s engine backwards was cleaning his ears with a conduit sponge, his feet up on a bank of instruments as he reclined in a battered, high-back chair.
‘Keston!’ Jorus said, bringing the engineer from his chair with a jolt.
‘Captain!’ Keston jumped up, sending his long white locks into a mess around his face. He tidied the stray strands of hair and threw the sloppiest salute any Vogan had ever given, before moving across to a holoprojector mounted on the wall.
‘We use this for monitoring the engines, checking the integrity of the intra-space field, that sort of thing,’ he explained and then hit a button. The room darkened and a cross section of the Vogo appeare
d. Around it was an oval of swirling patterns.
‘So this is the ship,’ he pointed to the Vogo.
Jorus gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Thank you, Keston. I know what my ship looks like.’
‘Right. Sorry,’ Keston flustered. ‘But … but this is the field our engines generate at intra-space speed.’ He waved roughly at the oval pattern. ‘Now, this is an exact rendition of what happened after we entered intra-space.’
The oval pattern began to fluctuate and suddenly it shrank so that the prow of the ship almost protruded from it.
‘That was the worst point,’ Keston said. ‘The misalignment.’ He turned to Collig. ‘The one you thought was gonna cause a dephase collision. And it shoulda done, too.’
The oval then grew again – this time to much larger proportions – before flaring and then dissipating entirely.
‘And then we came out of intra-space … here. Wherever “here” is.’ Keston laughed.
‘Collig tells me there was something odd?’ Jorus prompted the older man.
‘Yes! The flare. Did you see it?’ Keston rewound the projection. Again they watched as the oval grew and then just as the light increased, he paused the image. ‘There!’
Jorus peered at the image, and then something made him take a sharp intake of breath. He moved forward to check what he was seeing.
‘Give it a moment,’ Keston said, grinning as if he was introducing a new-born to the family.
What Jorus had seen was a pattern of circles. Some were concentric and others interlacing. But as he started at them, they formed a single word that he could actually read.
‘“Help”?’ he asked.
‘Exactly!’ Keston said.
‘We believe it is a psychic message,’ Collig said. ‘It’s not in our language, but it contains within it a psychic impulse that, when read, translates the message.’
‘A distress call.’
‘Precisely, captain!’ Keston was holding a spanner of some kind now and jabbed it at Jorus as he spoke. ‘We need to respond.’
‘And it was this distress call that pulled us off course?’
‘No,’ Collig said ‘But the message and the navigational deviation bear the same intra-space signature. It’s the same person. Or people.’
‘A distress signal sent by someone who has universal translation at their fingertips and can pull a ship across half the galaxy?’ Jorus asked. ‘Who could exert that kind of power and yet need assistance?’
‘Rassilon!’
Euxine stormed into his cell and held up a data-tablet. The Time Lord was lying on his bed.
‘We analysed your last experiment.’
‘Ah,’ Rassilon said swinging his legs onto the floor and sitting up.
‘Ah, indeed!’ the Ra’ra’vis said. ‘We found your little message.’
‘I’m your prisoner, Euxine. You cannot blame me for wanting to escape. I have a war to fight. One that affects your people, too.’
‘Do not bring the Vampires into this,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Please. You’re obsessed. And how many times have I told you? Hellion is too far away from this conflict of yours for it have any bearing on us.’
Rassilon shrugged.
‘You will have to be punished,’ she said.
‘What?’ Now he was standing. ‘You have treated me well, Euxine. I understand your thirst for time travel. Believe me. But I will escape your gilded cage and fly home.’ He parodied the wing movement the Ra’ra’vis made when she moved her arms. ‘I was thinking of not wiping your race from existence. But if you treat me badly …’
Euxine smiled at him, her eyes twinkling. She had come to know this Lord of Time since he had been incarcerated in her care. She understood that he truly was a great man. She also knew he was only half serious – as she was about the punishment.
‘You have resorted to playground impersonations,’ she said. ‘Tut. Tut!’ She turned and walked out of the cell. ‘We will be monitoring you even more closely now,’ she added over her shoulder. ‘And no supper tonight!’
The Vogo sailed through the strange, new planetary system. It was on silent running protocol. While the ship did not possess a cloaking device as such, it did have an adaptive camouflage shield: taking the visual data gathered from the port bow array and projecting it from the starboard array, and vice versa.
On the bridge, the illumination from control panels and computer screens was dimmed, the main lighting switched to a dull yellow, almost like moonlight. Jorus was leaning forward in his command chair as the pilots manoeuvred them at low speed from planet to planet. The logic was that whoever was holding this high-tech alien prisoner would be scanning for approaching ships and they had no idea which planet the captive was on.
‘Sir, I think we have something,’ Mishar said. ‘There are some strange readings coming from an asteroid field around the fourth planet.’
‘Strange?’
‘Our instruments are picking up complex alloys, Jorus,’ the junior pilot said. ‘They don’t occur naturally.’
‘Change course to intercept the largest asteroid,’ Jorus said. ‘Bring us to a full stop a safe distance from it. And ready a DOVE.’
The DOVE was a small, self-propelled probe that was designed for Defensive Observation, Verification and Examination. It would be able to get in closer than the Vogo could without alerting anyone to its presence. The DOVE had enough equipment to give the Voganauts a very good idea of what was hiding among the asteroids.
As they neared, the field of spinning rocks, a port opened on the Vogo’s hull. It had a twin on the opposite side of the ship. More normally they fired varied types of spatial torpedo, but this time it was a probe that was propelled from the firing tube. The DOVE flew steadily towards its target, slowing as it came nearer to the large asteroid. Behind it the Vogo came to a halt much further out.
On the bridge, Jorus and the command crew watched as the DOVE manoeuvred between two smaller asteroids, getting closer to the large one. Suddenly the two rocks – about the size of one-man skimmers – sprang together, crushing the probe and sending small components spinning away to rebound off smaller rocks.
‘Warning! This is a Symple-Guardz asteroid field. The planet beyond is under quarantine due to space plague. Any attempt to pass through the asteroids will result in your destruction.’
The transmission that had been playing throughout the ship ceased. The crew looked uncertainly at one another. Then they all turned to Jorus.
‘Sentient asteroids?’ he asked.
‘Not sentient, captain. Autonomous.’ Keston was leaning in the doorway, smiling.
The Ra’ra’vis maintained a very small staff at the base: a squad of eight guards and one officer, three technicians who monitored the planet’s defences as well as any stray communications they might pick up and a ‘backroom’ team of three scientists. This was Euxine’s full contingent. She didn’t need it to be larger due to the automation. One of the technicians was approaching her now across the control room. He told her in hushed tones that he had detected an infringement in the asteroid field. When she asked for clarification, he told her that it was a small space probe of unknown origin. Euxine checked it wasn’t Gallifreyan and then dismissed it. If there were hostiles out there, they would be in for quite a ride.
It was perilous, but Jorus was willing to risk it. He ordered the Vogo in closer to the asteroid field. As he suspected, the rocks had rearranged themselves so that the two largest ones were now spinning less than a thousand metres off the prow. Keston had explained that the asteroids were probably controlled by a computer system. Whatever sized object it detected, the system sent two rocks large enough to crush it. They didn’t do so immediately; only once the object closed on the planet.
Jorus knew that to pass beyond the asteroid field and reach whoever it was that needed the Voganauts’ help, he would need to buck the system in some way. He ordered the launch of a second DOVE. This time, he’d ordered Collig to remote pilot it so that the probe pa
ssed between the two largest spinning boulders. He figured that the system would use those rocks as they were nearest and capable of the job rather than assign the job to two smaller ones.
As the DOVE sped towards its doom, he had Mishar monitoring the asteroids very carefully because they would only have one chance.
‘DOVE closing on nearest target,’ Collig confirmed. ‘300 metres.’
‘No other large asteroids in the vicinity?’ asked Jorus.
‘200 metres.’
‘None that could cause us any real damage,’ Keston said. Jorus had assigned him the seat usually reserved for his second officer, but as Collig was the second officer, he already had a seat in the pilot pit.
‘100 metres.’
Jorus bit his lip.
‘Asteroid moving!’ Mishar called.
On the screen, the two huge boulders closed on the DOVE and then suddenly accelerated, crushing the device.
‘Retract solar sails! Engines to full!’ Jorus said. ‘Head straight for those asteroids!’
The Vogo sped forward, just as the asteroids parted once more. They kept moving apart as the Vogan ship flew towards them, their image increasing in size alarmingly on the holo-display. Just as the two vast rocks reached the peak of their separation, the Vogo was already sailing between them. The asteroids raced to crush the ship, but they missed the main section, sliding across the stern of the vessel with a stomach-turning grating sound.
‘We’re through!’ Collig said.
‘Scan the planet surface for life signs.’
The report came back that there were minimal life signs – sixteen or seventeen – all clustered on one small area on the eastern continent of the northern hemisphere.
‘Prepare the guards for a landing party,’ Jorus said. ‘Collig, Keston – you’re with me. And if anyone contacts the ship, act tough!’
Meda was a moral Ra’ra’vis. She had never really liked her job. She didn’t like being away from her family; she hated missing the solstice of Pajaro and the celebratory meal that always accompanied it with four generations of her brood.
She thought she’d been posted to Chilsos complex as a punishment. She had just come on duty, replacing the quiet Calcatori. She disliked him, too. He’d told her about the probe in excited yet hushed tones and then disappeared to his rest quarters.
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