Doctor Who. Zamper

by Gareth Roberts

  The reception sphere was empty. No trace of Taal, Christie or Cwej.

  She slumped against a wall and put her head in her hands.

  A chirruping call-sign issued from the holo-screen in Big Mother’s chamber of rest, disturbing his doze. He fumbled for his remote control and altered the setting to the fleet’s internal waveband. Immediately the image of cheering crowds on the visit to Veygaphipton was replaced by the face of a young officer. Big Mother remembered this young chap. The Second Pilot. A line of scar tissue ran from the centre of his left cheek and over the lid of his disabled left eye. Thoughtful of the fellow to get himself injured, really. It made him distinctive.

  ‘Well met, Highness,’ he said. His brows were low-set, making him appear perpetually angry. Another asset in the officer class. ‘This is Second Pilot Frinza reporting.’

  ‘Thank you, we are aware of your designation,’ Big Mother said loftily, lying. ‘Make your report.’

  ‘Highness, the spatial gateway to Zamper has opened.’

  Big Mother nodded. ‘And what about Haf– er, oh, the General?’

  ‘That’s just it, Highness. We have made a sighting of the General’s shuttle’s emergency pod. It is travelling somewhat erratically towards the opening, but does not respond to our signals.’

  Bother. This was just the sort of knotty problem that Big Mother’s old brain found difficult. What to do? ‘Er, Second Pilot, er, Frinza. Why do you not report this to your immediate superior? Such matters are below the maternal interest.’

  Frinza’s brows shifted slightly. ‘General Hezzka is my immediate superior, Highness.’

  ‘Yes, well, of course. So make your report to him, that is our point.’

  ‘But it is General Hezzka’s shuttle that returns from Zamper, Highness.’

  ‘Oh? Oh.’ Big Mother closed his old eyes. It was so hard to keep more than three facts in his head at once. ‘Hezzka, quite. Well. What do you propose, Frinza?’

  ‘I propose, Highness, to ensnare the shuttle pod in a force beam and bring it aboard the flagship. After all, it may be that the General may be unable to answer our hailing call.’

  ‘Very well, do it, do it.’ Big Mother wheezed. In his left underside was a fluttering pain. That was all he needed, a recurrence of his old trouble. ‘Do it.’ He broke the link to Frinza, closed his eyes again, and called for his nurse.

  The Secunda’s thorough preparations for her flight from Zamper had relied upon the supposition that after the death of the Management the spatial forces holding the gateway closed would be relaxed. Less than twenty minutes after leaving the blasted planet behind her she was overjoyed to see on the escape pod’s forward screen a line of coded intelligence revealing that this had indeed occurred.

  ‘Oh, how thrilling!’ She looked a little sadly at the patches of ash on the floor before the flight station. ‘Such a shame, our Mr Jottipher, that you could not have lived to see this.’ Her study of the shuttle’s defences had proved accurate. Mr Jottipher had drained the last spark of the protective voltage through his body, giving her unlimited access to the childishly simple emergency flight system. In a ship as small as this pod she could hop through the war zone with ease in a couple of weeks; there was fortunately a plentiful supply of food concentrates in stock. Not exactly suited to her needs – she had always preferred a meaty diet – but adequate.

  She let her mind wander as the inboard computer guided the pod towards the gateway. Back to East Galaxy with a million livres in guild tokens. The possibilities were limitless. In her twelve years’ absence she’d kept a close eye on the Management’s market reports, and had already decided to return to Gilby Co. Zamper was finished. On her return Gilby Co would be in the ideal position to expand, creaming off the excess credit lost in the collapse of Zamper and using it to swallow the smaller corporations that had leeched off it for so long. The deadlock was broken, finally. Away from Zamper, away from Smith, away from the position as Secunda. She had longed for this so many years.

  The forward screen clicked and chattered. She studied the row of oddly-shaped symbols that were overlaid on the widening mouth of the gate.

  And then she saw them.

  Massed on the far side of the gateway, more of their appalling majesty revealed as the gate’s violet maw parted, was a fleet of black starships, every one as big as a city. A fleet of Chelonian battleships arrayed in a classical horseshoe-formation. At this range their detectors were sure to pick her up.

  She threw back her arms. ‘No!’

  Hezzka had given in to the parasite Bernice’s request for another rest on their descent through the catacombs. If the truth were known, he was most probably the more tired of the pair, he reflected. The loss of his back left foot was irksome. A soothing internal chemical aided in lessening the pain, but the wound made it difficult to walk using his full weight, placing a strain on his right side. They stopped, and he regarded Bernice curiously. His experience of her kind had not prepared him for her wisdom, kindness and sincerity. There still lingered a natural series of doubts. The way she moved and her milky odour were displeasing. But Hezzka felt he was in the presence of a very special person. Given the choice between Bernice and Ivzid as his First Pilot he would not hesitate in recommending the former.

  ‘There is a long-standing dislike between our peoples,’ he said. ‘My mission to Zamper was intended to lead to the eventual destruction of parasites. I now find myself conspiring with one.’ He shook his head at the strangeness of life.

  She frowned. ‘I hear that your rivals on Chelonia believe in co-operating with humanity and the other races.’ Hezzka sensed that she was choosing her words with care so as not to offend him.

  He raised his right front foot for emphasis. ‘The anthem of Chelonia mocks the claim of parasites to intelligence. But I fear you are intelligent.’ He settled his eyes on a small pile of rocks. ‘And that I have failed the empire to which I have sworn undying loyalty.’

  ‘I know some parasite anthems about Chelonians,’ she said. Hezzka recognized the slightly higher timbre of her voice, used when she was making a humorous remark.

  ‘Oh really?’ He raised the pitch of his own voice to demonstrate his friendliness. ‘You will demon –’ He checked himself. ‘Please, sing one of these.’

  She appeared surprised. ‘Oh. Well all right.’ She coughed, and then began to sing, in a most unharmonious musical progression, ‘I’ve never met a nice Chelonian, and that’s not very surprising, man, ’cause they’re a bunch of arrogant reptiles that hate human beings.’

  An uncomfortable silence followed.

  Despite his improved opinion of this parasite Hezzka felt a surge of anger. ‘You find my people amusing. This anthem is vulgar, typical of parasite thinking.’

  She came closer and moved her shoulders in a nonchalant fashion. ‘They aren’t my sentiments. It’s an old Earth rhyme. I don’t have much experience of your people. It’s not for me to judge you.’

  ‘You speak wisely.’ Hezzka girded his shell, indicating it was time they moved on. ‘There is a similar kitchen-motto amongst my people. “Let he who is innocent of all moral taints fire the opening salvo of plasma bolts.”’

  The path cleared for Ivzid by the Goddess led to an area from which light streamed white and pure. He peeked his head around a piece of rock and the brightness shone directly in his face. Ivzid shuddered and recalled the sacred chapter, and the descent of the prophet Gilzza from Mount Ephyiddon carrying the 77 tablets of behaviour, his aged shell silhouetted against the glorious luminescence of the Almighty One.

  The confirming moment of fate.

  He powered himself forward and into the cavern beyond. Instantly he was gripped by a horror that transcended any he had known before. It was a fear he experienced not as a Chelonian but as an animal, that whitened his eyes and caused his claws to retract as a shiver passed through his frame. All about was strangeness, alienness. The cavern was dominated by an artifact of unnatural design, its facets sparkling in the
whiteness that obscured its upper half in a turbid haze. The light appeared to slide down the thing in a cool mist, giving it the aspect of a monstrous living waterfall. Worst of all, huddled at its base, their greasy shapes distorted through patches of vapour, were hundreds upon hundreds of the revolting Zamp creatures. Ivzid’s reasoning faculties were overwhelmed by what he could only have described as an impression of wrongness. A wave of pure unqualified evil. It was a sensation for which nothing in his experience could have prepared him.

  Suddenly, something else impinged itself upon his dazzled senses. Two somethings; two shapes, parasite shapes, silhouetted against the great gleaming thing as the prophet had been. Both parasites were shorter than average, and one of them wore a crumpled circlet of some kind on its head and carried some sort of silly stick. It was talking. ‘…some kind of non-specific rite surfacing from the autonomic consciousness…’

  Ivzid croaked, ‘Parasites!’

  The one wearing the circlet turned his much-wrinkled head and a curious expression that Ivzid could not make sense of dropped over his features as he stepped forward. ‘Oh no,’ he said acidly. ‘And just when I was starting to enjoy myself.’

  The other parasite, which Ivzid could now see was an aged female, huddled close to her mate. 'Ah. One of our new buyers.’ She addressed Ivzid directly. ‘Shouldn’t you be in your quarters, sir? The Management –’

  ‘The Management is dead!’ Ivzid slouched forward, his head turning suspiciously from side to side. ‘You will make account of yourselves, and this –’ he waved a foot at the artifact ‘– evil object.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the circleted one. ‘You seem to be rather ahead of us. The Management is dead, you say?’

  Ivzid reared up. ‘Explain yourself! Do not trifle with the exalted one!’

  The circleted parasite spoke in an aside to his companion. ‘Exalted one? Dear, dear. Even worse than usual for a Chelonian.’

  ‘I heard that!’ snarled Ivzid. ‘Do not think you can hide your whispers, parasite!’

  He doffed his circlet in an insulting gesture. ‘I do beg your forgiveness. We don’t appear to have been introduced. I’m the Doctor. This lady is called Smith.’

  Ivzid scoffed. ‘Doctor? Veterinarian would be more appro–’ A thought struck him. A fragment of half-forgotten legend came into his mind. ‘The Doctor?’ he said slowly. ‘The Doctor? Of the brotherhood of Doctors?’

  He bowed his head.

  ‘Ha!’ Ivzid cackled. ‘You are known to us as Sla – Ifrok – Yalkoz – Slan!’

  ‘Oh really? My Chelonian’s a little rusty, but I assume that means fearsome and deadly enemy or some such?’

  Ivzid shook his head. ‘It is narrow dialect for “interfering idiot.” Now explain yourself. This device is of your making?’

  The one called Smith answered. ‘Of course it isn’t.’ She spoke with a disrespectful air. ‘Now, if you’ve nothing constructive to contribute to this expedition, would you mind returning to the surface?’

  She soon backed off when Ivzid sprang forward, baring his teeth with a growl that gave full vent to the frustration and foreboding that he had felt ever since his assignation to the Zamper mission. ‘You parasites are conspiring with these Arionite beasts.’ He narrowed his eyes at the Doctor. ‘Your efforts to thwart the expansion of the empire are known to me. Fate and the Goddess have led me to this encounter. I sense some evil and it must be destroyed!’

  The Doctor’s shoulders slumped and he folded his body on top of a rock. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ he said, as if he thought Ivzid’s entrance of low importance.

  At first, the disappearance of Cwej and the others had been accepted by Forrester as merely another example of the sort of dim-witted error with which her life had recently become plagued. It was only a while later, as she descended the echoing and eerily empty tubeways of the Complex, that niggling doubts about the incident presented themselves. It suited her to blame Cwej for things, but she couldn’t imagine what could have driven him to lead the others away. The girl Christie had been knocked flat, and Taal was hardly a threat. Of the Chelonians there was no sign.

  But the really unsettling thing, the nasty implications of which sent a shiver through her aching shoulder-blades as she turned a corner without stopping to think, was that she was making her own way down through the previously baffling maze of tubeways without the slightest hesitation. She knew where she was going. The route was unfolding in her mind as if this was her neighbourhood. It was no big deal, there was no voice booming from the clouds subjecting her to an irresistible force. She just kept walking down, and down.

  Weirdest of all, she wasn’t worried. The doubts and fears she’d felt since stepping from the TARDIS had been lifted from her troubled brow. Her internal cynical voice, normally so strong, had been reduced to a faint murmur.

  Second Pilot Frinza was waiting in the observation gangway as the drifting emergency pod of Hezzka’s shuttle was manoeuvred neatly aboard the flagship. He observed as the wedge-shaped craft was lowered gently by the invisible beams of force onto the black guidemarks painted on the floor of the airless shuttle bay. Thanks to the skill of the fleet’s beam-practitioners, the landing was faultless. The grand doors of the shuttle bay were winched shut, and in a matter of moments full compression was achieved.

  ‘Very well,’ said Frinza. He turned to the team waiting alongside him on the gangway, three hand-picked lads from his own division decked out in full combat gear, complete with filter-masks slung about their necks. ‘We’ll go in now. Prepare weapons.’ He nodded over their shells at the head of medical division, who was waiting with a full sled of surgical lasers in the eventuality of either of the returning expedition needing assistance. The environments report on the pod stated that at least one living being was aboard, but could not specify further. Frinza thought it best to cover all the possibilities.

  The door to the shuttle bay opened. He led his team down the ramp, the digits of his right front foot curled about his primed footgun. He resisted the urge to engage his battle-drive. Sometimes it was better to respond to a delicate situation with delicacy.

  He signalled the team to halt before the pod’s entry hatch. But for the accustomed rumble of the flagship’s engines there was silence. Frinza felt in his equipment-belt for his all-purpose coder, personally issued only to officers of higher rank. He turned its pronged end to the concealed coder plate at the side of the entry hatch, and sent the release code.

  A second later the hatch creaked open. Frinza noted the scorch marks made when the pod had been detached. The traction port beyond was apparently empty. ‘General Hezzka? Sir?’ He stuck his head through the opening. ‘Mr Ivzid?’ There was an unpleasant milky odour.

  His skin crawled as a creature stumbled from the shadows. Frinza was rather ashamed of his reaction, but then again, he had never seen a parasite before except on a holo-screen. What struck him above all was how spindly and unhealthy it looked. It was wrinkled and besmirched with red marks, which he presumed to be bruises – wasn’t parasite life-juice red? In the second surprised second he sensed rather than saw the soldier just to his left readying himself to open fire.

  He raised a steadying foot. ‘Wait, wait.’

  The parasite fell before him, its bony body folding in a peculiar way. In its strange clothing, a sort of wrap that was drawn by strings about the central portion of its body leaving its pallid limbs bare, it looked like a snake that had swallowed a small animal whole, the head of the vanquished one crying out from the mouth. Frinza tried to stop himself thinking of the infections that it probably carried.

  It spoke. ‘Please, please, help me,’ it said. ‘Mercy, mercy.’

  Frinza knew exactly what his men were thinking. It was as much as he could do to restrain himself. But he was a good officer and knew the value of moderating natural reactions with intelligence. He turned to the nearest man. ‘Olzubad. Fumigate this parasite and have it confined.’

  It was good, thought Smith, that the Chel
onian was unarmed. At last she appreciated the neutrality clause of the 473 year-old standard and unalterable Zamper contract. After further insulting her and the Doctor, Ivzid had crept nearer to the base of the artifact and the slumbering mass of Zamps, shaking his head in disgust. If he’d been armed he would no doubt have caused havoc.

  She whispered to the Doctor, ‘Do you think he was telling the truth about the Management?’

  He nodded. ‘I think it likely.’ He tapped the tips of his index fingers together in a nervy gesture and frowned. ‘I’m a little concerned about Bernice and the others.’

  ‘Why should they be in any trouble?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they be?’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of Ivzid. ‘Chelonians never travel alone.’

  Ivzid, who had made his way as close as possible to the artifact without becoming caught in the slime trails, swung his head about angrily. ‘Yes, I see it now!’

  The Doctor huffed. Smith was amused to see the change in him; it was as if he needed an enemy to feel truly alive. Energy flowed from him in waves. The force of his personality was almost unsettling. It was like standing next to a giant dynamo that suddenly switches itself on. ‘Would you be kind enough to share your discovery?’

  ‘This is some plot you and the Arionites have put together,’ Ivzid rambled on. ‘The facts fit. You thought to lure the last loyal column of the Chelonian people to this dismal cosmic cul-de-sac and entrap us using this… this monstrous device.’

  ‘Oh really.’ The Doctor whirled his umbrella about gaily. ‘And what, in your opinion Ivzid, is the nature of this monstrous device?’

  ‘It is devil’s work of some kind, the mechanism is unimportant.’ He shuddered. ‘You thought to destroy us with these Zamp beasts. I sense a powerful evil.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ the Doctor said hotly. ‘Typical Chelonian paranoia. It really is past time your people grew up. What you see here is a product of a race shackled for generations, using their newly-acquired gifts to free themselves. Their intent is merely to survive, to propagate their kind in the natural way of things. As a renowned twentieth-century philosopher once said, mating is better than hating.’