By R A Henderson
Episode IV: No Prayer for the Dying
HELSINKI, Scandinavia Major AD5029
Aspirodor sank onto the bunk where the Doctor had rested and released a long, heavy breath. He put his hangs to his face and massaged his forehead and cheeks. Finally he looked up at the Doctor. "Why do I not like this one little bit?"
Keri gently touched Aspirodor's shoulder. "Because you're wise," she told him. She looked at the Doctor with intent. "No one wise would contemplate such a dangerous mission."
"Would it be wiser to let the whole universe be destroyed by the Zygma Beam?" the Doctor responded sharply in his defence.
Aspirodor stood again. "You're not siding with him, surely?" he demanded, jabbing an accusatory finger in the direction of Aleks.
"I'm siding with life," said the Doctor firmly. "In the face of death."
"Life?" Aspirodor hooted. "You bloody fool. If you go into that... that snakepit, you'll be dead in an hour!"
"I'm not talking about my life, Aspirodor," the Doctor said calmly. "I'm talking about all life. All life in the whole of the universe and all of Time. Life that must go on, with or without me."
"And you think that throwing your own life away to save the rest of the universe is the answer, do you? A noble gesture of self-sacrifice?"
"I'm not doing this to become a glorious martyr, Aspirodor."
"Then why? In the Name of Rassilon, why?"
The Doctor stepped past him and faced Aleks, staring into the Norwegian's eyes. "I am doing this because I am the only person who can do it," he said seriously. "And someone has to."
Aleks gave a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Doctor," he gushed. "You have no idea how much..."
The Doctor raised a finger to silence Aleks. "I don't want to hear how grateful you are or how much you appreciate what I'm doing for you," he said dismissively. "I don't want to hear any more from you at all. I'm going to solve this problem, one way or another, and when the Zygma Beam is completely neutralised then the clearing up will be the job of whoever's left."
Aleks was stunned. "You won't help us to overthrow the Alliance?"
"Humans are always squabbling over something," the Doctor replied. Before Aleks could speak again, he crossed to Kirland. "Miss Kirland, will you find me a change of clothes?"
Kirland looked puzzled. "A change of clothes?"
The Doctor nodded. "The most exquisitely fashionable suit and tie you can find and the finest shirt and shoes," he told her. "I know Salamander, and if he hasn't changed that much, as I suspect he hasn't, then he'll be the owner of an expensive and somewhat pretentious wardrobe."
"Do as he says, Ellie," Aleks said. "Now."
Kirland scurried from the room. The Doctor faced Aleks again. "You should leave too. You have work to do."
"Work?"
"You're still trying to lead a revolution, aren't you?"
Aleks nodded. "Yes, of course." And he left.
Keri regarded the Doctor carefully, trying to fathom him. "Doctor," she asked softly. "Are you really sure you want to do this Salamander thing?"
The Doctor was slipping out of his frockcoat. "Of course I don't want to," he enlightened her, trying not to sound too harsh. "But as I said, I have to."
"Let me come with you," Keri suggested. "My clothes conceal my weapons pretty well and I can look after myself in a fight. I could pass as your aide or something."
The Doctor shook his head. "I can't put you at risk. Besides, Salamander is rather old-fashioned. All his senior staff are likely to be men except..."
Aspirodor looked up. "Except?"
"His food taster," the Doctor said. "Salamander always keeps a food taster on his staff because he has a dreadful paranoid fear of being poisoned."
Keri smiled. "Food taster, huh?" she mused. "Funny. I was just saying to Aspirodor earlier that I feel a little hungry."
Seven
SCAVENGER VII: "DVORAK", Australasian Waters AD5029
Carly Rainier ducked through the hatch, taking great care not to spill the steaming cup of coffee she was carrying, and walked across the gantry to the powerpod main shutter. Resting the cup on the flat rail of the gantry she punched her access code into the keypad and waited for the computer to give her clearance. A moment later there was a loud beep and the shutter rolled up to allow access. Carly picked up the coffee again and stepped into the powerpod. "Black," she said. "No sugar."
The Rani took the cup from her and smiled. "Perfect." She put it down on the control desk in front of the computer. "Be careful not to distract me enough that I might knock it over. I've no idea how waterproof this computer is."
"This is a submarine," Carly reminded her. "Everything's very waterproof."
Ignoring the flippancy, the Rani continued to jab at the keyboard, looking for useful information and the safest way into the system. "How is the radiation screened?" she asked.
"Screened?"
"For the maintenance workers and engineers. So that they don't get irradiated."
"Oh. I don't know. I'm not the expert."
The Rani looked round at her. "Then for goodness sake, go and get me the person who is!"
Scowling, Carly slipped her commpatch out of her pocket and connected it to her collar implant. "Theo," she called.
"Yes, ma'am?" a man's voice buzzed into the air.
"I need you in the powerpod," Carly said. "Now."
"Right," said Theo. "On my way."
Carly disconnected her commpatch and returned it to the pocket of her tunic. She leaned against the wall beside the computer. "Dr Theo Caine, our top staff engineer," she told the Rani. "He knows every inch of the powerpod and the reactor."
"Then he's just the man I need," the Rani replied. "When will he be here?"
A man burst into the powerpod. "What's going on in here?" he demanded of Carly. "Who's the civilian and why's she mucking about with my reactor? She could blow up the whole ship!"
The Rani swivelled in her chair to face him. "That, Dr Caine, is my intention," she said.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Scandinavia Minor AD5029
"So exactly what is going on?"
Mortimus ignored the huffy voice of young Susan Campbell as he inspected the device in the corner of the laboratory. He was far too interested in finding out the basic principles of its function. He'd dismissed the rest of the staff after that silly twit Salamander had fallen for his bluff about being a Time Agent from the 53rd century. Mortimus had promised an Alliance victory based on the success of the Zygma Experiment and assured Salamander that he would in the fifty-third century be no older in appearance than now. Tell an egomaniac that he'll always be young and powerful and he'll give you all the cheese in Zurich. Or wherever it was one got Swiss cheese from. So Salamander had told Mortimus that he could fully examine the devices linked with the Experiment, including the Zygma Beam projector and Time Manipulator, the control systems for the Zygma Cannon satellite in orbit and the Zygma Cannon – the pod that had been developed to project a man physically into Time, but had not yet been tested. There had been a lot of interest in that when the first announcement of its invention three years ago and Salamander was certainly keen on the idea of making another Time trip. The Zygma Beam had saved his life, and now could give him an opportunity to change it. The project was life and death to him, and that was the reason why Mortimus was allowed to dismiss the scientists but not the armed guards. The guards stood by the three exits to the lab, weapons levelled, eyes constantly watching as Mortimus, Susan, Chloe and Valentine examined the technology around the floor. Mortimus held in his hand a small disc, crystalline and off-white in colour and he was carefully examining it with a slender pen torch. "Trionics," he muttered. "Bit primitive, but it'll work as a basic key." And he waddled back toward the Zygma Cabinet and looked it up and down, shrugging and tutting to himself. "Presumably designed more for aesthetic reasons than practical ones," he said. "Dear oh dear."
Susan felt about ready to scream. She held it back though and looked at Valentine. "Do you know what's going on?"
"I know very little more than you do," Valentine said quietly. "But I can tell you what I do know... after I sort something out." He glanced over his shoulder. "Chloe?"
Chloe Knight was at Valentine's side in an instant. "Listening devices?" she asked.
Valentine nodded. "Debugger, please."
"Right," Chloe nodded and reached into her coat, carefully glancing from guard to guard to make sure no one saw her slip the device from under her arm. She passed it to Valentine.
"Setting number four, I should think," Valentine said as he discreetly palmed the device. His thumb found the dial and he activated it before slipping it into his pocket. Then he looked at Susan. "We can speak freely now."
"Won't the people monitoring those listening devices notice that they're being jammed?" asked Susan.
Valentine shook his head. "That's just it, they're not. The debugger doesn't actually debug as such. It doesn't do anything to the listening devices. It just puts up a very subtle audio-dampening field around itself for a radius of about ten feet. So as long as you stay inside the field, nothing outside can actually hear or record you. We're too quiet."
Susan breathed a sigh of relief. "That's very clever," she said. "My grandfather would love something like that."
"The Doctor," Valentine observed.
"Do you know him?" asked Susan.
"No," Valentine admitted. "I've heard good things."
Susan smiled. "Then you've not been misinformed. Now, what's going on? Why is Mortimus looking at all these Zygma bits and pieces?"
"The Zygma Experiment is dangerous," Valentine explained. "The people who developed it have made a fracture in Time. They've found a way to manipulate certain temporal particles whilst firing them along an energy beam. The beam becomes like an acetylene torch flame, cutting into Time itself from what I can gather."
Susan interrupted him. "That's crazy!" she blurted out. "That's completely crazy! Punching holes in Time like stabbing a cardboard box with a chisel could cause the total collapse of the universe. It could shatter the very foundations of causality."
"Yep," Valentine nodded. "And we have to stop it."
"We?" asked Susan.
"Us," said Chloe Knight, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the bumbling Mortimus. "Him, you and me, Valentine..."
"The Doctor," Valentine added. "Time Lords calling themselves the Master, Aspirodor, the Rani and any helpers and supporters they can get. Gallifrey called on Mortimus because apparently the effects of this project are threatening even them."
Susan was surprised. "The Time Lords asked him to rescue them?"
"Every Time Lord renegade offworld, apparently," answered Valentine.
"Quite a few refused," said Chloe. "Or weren't available for other reasons."
"But my grandfather – the Doctor – is here?" asked Susan. "That's a certainty?"
Chloe nodded. "Since I joined Team Mortimus I've been shown the ropes and put in charge of communications and monitoring. Mortimus showed me how to locate the temporal trace of a Time Lord, follow it and identify the Time Lord at the end. A trace leading to an incarnation of the Doctor was picked up in Norway in 1967 – a trace that physically crosses the path of the Zygma Beam."
To Susan it made sense. "The beam picked him up and delivered him here."
Valentine suddenly elbowed her sharply in the ribs. "The guards are coming over." He switched off the debugger. Two guards were marching toward him. "Can we help you, gentlemen?"
"What are you three whispering about?" demanded one of the guards.
"We're scientists," Susan said quickly. "We've been comparing theories on the potential of the Zygma Experiment. That was what the Administrator Marshal wanted us to do, study the project and expand it a little."
The guard eyed her suspiciously. "Well talk loudly enough for us to hear you," he said sharply, prodding her a little with his gun before turning to return to his post.
"Now's fine, Valentine!" called Mortimus tunefully.
Valentine shot the guard in the back of the head, killing him.
Susan's and Chloe's faces hit the tiled laboratory floor as they were shoved in the back.
The other guards all fired on Valentine, but he wasn't there. Suddenly there was confusion. Susan looked up to see Valentine materialise behind two guards in a flash of yellow-white light. He was carrying a personal transmat device! He systematically and coolly shot both guards dead one at a time and vanished again before the remaining three guards opened fire, making black burnmarks in the door in front of which he had stood for a fraction of a second. Finally one guard got wise. He pointed a gun at the back of Chloe's head as she lay on her stomach on the floor, defenceless. "Stop it now!" the guard shouted. "Or her brains will be mopping the floor!"
"Boo!" said Valentine from behind the guard, startling him. The guard, taken by surprise, jumped straight into the energy bolts from his comrades' firearms as they tried to kill Valentine, who by the time the guard's smoking corpse hit the floor had once again evanesced. The guards ran over to where their colleague had fallen and Valentine materialised ten feet behind them, raised his gun and with two shots half a second apart smoked their brains like kippers. He glanced at Mortimus. "They'll have been tagged," he told the Monk-shaped Time Lord. "The alarms will go off any second."
The alarms went off.
"It's all right," said Mortimus. "I've done the necessary damage." He rushed to Valentine's side and held out a hand. "One of you take my hand, the other his," he instructed the girls.
They hesitated.
"Quickly!" snapped Valentine. "We've both got transmats and they take two. We can go straight back to the TARDIS."
Chloe grabbed Mortimus's hand. "No dirty tricks or I'll bite your scrotum off."
Susan grabbed Valentine's hand. "Bite what?" she asked as they dematerialised.
The doors of the lab burst open and guards poured in, a massive bubbling torrent of black and grey uniforms, guns swinging left-to-right. Behind them, Magnus Greel stormed into the room. He looked around. "Where are they?" he growled. "Where are the insurgent scum? When I catch them they'll wish they'd died with the vermin in Brisbane!"
A guard was crouching on the floor. "They've gone, your Honour," she said. "And they've killed their guards. How the hell did they manage to sneak weapons in here?"
Greel marched over to her side. "What did they use?" he demanded.
The guard shrugged. "By the looks of these head injuries, high-energy weapons. Better – or at least nastier – than anything we've got."
"Like the weapons used in the revolt at Cagayan de Oro," Greel murmured. He thought for a moment. "They must have the same supplier," he said finally. "Someone is developing new weapons, and the only way they can be developing weapons of that quality is with stolen or embezzled government money. We have a traitor in our ranks."
"We do," Karl Klass announced as he marched into the room from the door at the far end, also surrounded by armed guards. "And the Administrator Marshal seems to think it's you. I'm sorry, Magnus. I'm placing you under arrest."
"You slime-tailed, spineless sycophant!" Greel spat as his own guards also pointed their guns at him – including the girl he'd just been talking to – and stepped back. "The Administrator Marshal accuses me and you dance like a marionette to his tune! We were friends!"
Klass sighed. "I know, Magnus. I do regret this. But I can't afford to value my personal attachments too highly in my position. My primary concern is to protect the interests of the Alliance."
Greel was fumbling discreetly around the workbench next to him, hoping to find some oxidising chemical in a bottle to throw to cause a distraction so that he could escape and maybe buy time. His fingers closed around a hard glassy object, and a little rub of it informed him that it was the lattice key for the Zygma Cabinet. He was about to put it down when he had an idea, and he slipped it into his pocket instead. He still had friends, and friends more loyal to him than Karl Klass. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "All right," he grunted. "I suppose I'd better be taken to a cell."
"You can go to your chambers, Magnus," said Klass. "The Administrator Marshal, on my recommendation, has authorised the privilege of House Arrest. There will be guards on all the doors and windows and all of your calls will be monitored. The first sign of trouble and you can go to the Malcontentment Suite."
Greel sighed. "Thank you, Karl." And he allowed himself to be led away. He wasn't worried. House Arrest was a good thing. He didn't need to make any calls. Mr Sin would soon hear of Greel's capture and take action.
HELSINKI, Scandinavia Major AD5029
Jamie mockingly wolf-whistled as the Doctor emerged from the sleeping quarters completely transformed. His skin was darker, swarthier, almost Mediterranean, and his once scruffy mop of hair had been carefully combed and sleeked into a stylish, sculpted shape. His shabby black frockcoat, creased shirt, limp bow tie and baggy checked trousers had gone, replaced by a pristine silver silk shirt, a scarlet silk tie and a bespoke suit in rich Royal blue. His old scuffed shoes had also been replaced, and the new patent leather brogues gleamed almost to the point of dazzling the onlookers in the Faith dormitory hall. "That's quite enough, Jamie," the Doctor chided the young Highlander. "This isn't really an appropriate time for your rather unique sense of humour."
Jamie shrugged it off. He examined the hair and suit. "I've seen you looking a bit like this before, I'm thinking," he observed.
"The style does seem familiar," added Victoria. "I can't quite put my finger on it..." Suddenly her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Salamander?" she whispered.
The Doctor nodded. "I'm afraid so."
"Oh no!" Victoria breathed.
Jamie was a little taken aback. "Salamander? But he died, you said. He was blown out of the TARDIS. You said no one could survive out there."
"Normally no one can," agreed the Doctor. "But someone else was using a sort of Time machine at the exact same moment that he fell out of the TARDIS. It was pure luck. It picked him up, rescued him."
"And now he's taken over here?"
"Yes, Jamie."
The truth was sinking easily and painfully into Victoria. "That's why you're wearing those clothes," she said. "You're going to impersonate him again, aren't you?"
The Doctor nodded gravely. "I must."
"Och, it's too dangerous!" Jamie protested.
"I've already had this argument with Aspirodor," the Doctor said firmly. "Please don't force me to have it again with you. I know impersonating Salamander is playing a dangerous game, but Salamander is playing an even more dangerous one with Time – a game that could kill everything in the universe – and I have to put a stop to it."
"Well if you're going into that lions' den I'm coming with you," Jamie said adamantly.
"No, Jamie," the Doctor replied with equal stubbornness. "Salamander would recognise you and Victoria. Remember he knows you both."
"So we just stand around here like a couple of spare parts?"
"No. I have another mission for you. Aspirodor plans to sabotage Salamander's time technology, and you are going to help him. Just follow his instructions and when he tells you to break something, make sure you break it into pieces so tiny that a team of microsurgeons couldn't repair it."
Jamie dismissed the fact that he didn't know what a microsurgeon was. He had the gist and knew his task. Break things to the point of no repair when so ordered. "Right. What about Victoria?"
The Doctor faced Victoria with a stern face. "Now, this is very important," he said.
"Please don't ask me to just stay here out of danger," Victoria said quietly but seriously.
"I wouldn't dream of it," the Doctor told her earnestly. "I need you to help these people here in Finland with the rabble-rousing. You've always had a rebellious streak, Victoria. The time has come for you to put it to good use. Join this rebel group and help encourage these oppressed and downtrodden people to take up arms against Salamander and his Alliance. A war is about to begin on Earth."
Victoria was horrified. "A world war?"
"Yes," the Doctor said with an air of finality. "And we are going to start it." He stepped aside of the door to the sleeping area to allow everyone still inside to emerge. Aspirodor, Keri, Aleks and Kirland joined the Doctor in the hall. "Mr Nystrom," the Doctor said to Aleks. "I will be flying to Cagayan de Oro immediately." His voice had changed. He sounded Spanish to Victoria, or Portuguese. Mexican maybe. "You will take care of Miss Waterfield, and you will be personally answerable to me for her safety and wellbeing."
"Yes, Administrator Marshal," Aleks nodded with a mocking grin, his eyes glowing. They were literally glowing, Victoria noticed. That couldn't be right.
"Aspirodor," the Doctor continued. "Take Jamie with you on your mission and make sure you get it right first time."
Aspirodor marched past the Doctor and nodded to Jamie. "Come on," he said. "My TARDIS." And Jamie marched after him.
"Miss Kirland, you may return to your duties," the Doctor said. "Take Miss Waterfield to one of the communal areas and give her a list of necessary tasks."
"Marshal," nodded Kirland, playing along as she scurried off. Aleks followed her.
The Doctor restored his natural voice as he found himself alone with Keri. "How was I?"
Keri shrugged. "I don't know Salamander."
"Doesn't matter," said the Doctor. "I've done this before. Come along, Miss Kalonen. We've got a plane to catch."
Eight
PEKING, China AD1937
The Min Yao machine reached its destination as the sun started to peek over the horizon, bathing the city in a dark red glow as if the streets were filling with blood, blood washing over the roofs of buildings and soaking the once green grass of the parks. The kind of vivid artistic perception of inspiration that Min Yao had once had but possessed no longer. Not since her Master had made her part of the machine. That was the trouble with these idiotic humans and their slapdash attempts at time technology. Their designs weren't really flexible and therefore had to be used by saboteur in the same way as by inventor. So it needed a living human brain to open the access points to the Zygma Beam. Min Yao would do. Anyone would do. The Master would happily have tied in the brain of a four year-old had nothing else been available. Of course, he was already waiting at her destination, having travelled there in his TARDIS to meet her. According to coordinates he had registered earlier, this corner of the city would be the exact physical target location of the Zygma Cannon nested in a satellite more than five hundred years in the future. He was safe in 1937, but trapped there and limited in his powers to do much about it because of the way that the various devices of the Zygma Type had messed up Time lately. But he had a plan and now he had the means to execute it. His TARDIS doors were open as the massive machine rolled up to it and slowed to a stop mere inches from where his stood. "Very good, Min Yao," he told the machine. "You've done excellently."
"Thank you, Master," the machine grated, its once pretty voice now inhuman, its pearl-black eyes staring almost adoringly at the Master through the glass canopy of the cradle into which her body was strapped and her head wired.
The Master picked up a reel of cable that ran from inside his TARDIS and reeled it out to the Min Yao machine. He found the correct fittings and cabled the machine up before darting back inside his TARDIS. He checked the cable connections to his console and began to make adjustments on his computer. The settings were precise, the calculation meticulous and methodical. He was going to be right on target. In a few minutes he would fire the makeshift Zygma Gun on top of the Min Yao machine into the future and blow that satellite into iron filings.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Scandinavia Minor AD5029Mr Sin heard the conversation from under the chair. Originally he would just have followed his orders and killed Salamander, but then Karl Klass had come into the room and Salamander had ordered that Magnus Greel be arrested. Klass had tried to plead for Greel, but had only managed to reduce the level of restriction on Greel. That complicated things. It would put Greel in a lesser position to carry out his plans. Now it would not be wise to kill Salamander. Only Salamander could order Greel's release. Sin had had to suppress his chuckling when he heard Klass concernedly telling Salamander that Greel was now being called the Butcher of Brisbane in some circles. Salamander had said Greel was becoming an embarrassment to the Alliance, and at these 'sensitive' times the Alliance could not afford embarrassments. Klass had then suggested that, in order to prevent further embarrassment, perhaps Salamander should make a personal appearance at Cagayan de Oro, where the revolt seemed to be picking up speed, and at least personally investigate Minister Sidhu's failure. After a little gentle pressure applied through appealing to his common sense and reason, Salamander had succumbed and he and Klass had left together. Sin had then clambered back into the ventilator. Salamander would die in time enough, but liberating Magnus Greel was now more important.
FLIGHT FIVE-ONE-FIVE D, airborne over Asia, AD5029
Keri continued reading out the briefing notes written by Aleks Nystrom from the datapad.
"Your primary objective therefore is to cause or at least make possible the total and permanent collapse of the Supreme Icelandic Alliance. Assassination of Salamander is a very favourable option. There are also a number of other members of the Alliance government who should be at worst captured, at best killed. They are listed in Appendix viii. The most significant of these persons is Magnus Greel, Minister of Justice and Adjudicator-Prime to the Australasian Sector, whom we are now calling the Butcher of Brisbane for his destruction of that fine city and murder of every man, woman and child living there. He must be brought to us alive so that he can be forced to suffer as he has made others suffer before he dies as he has made others die.
A number of dangers will face you if you should enter the Alliance Citadel at Reykjavik. Firstly the perimeter of the Citadel is patrolled by vicious beasts who were once men and women like us, men and women who fought the Alliance and were stripped of their humanity as punishment. There are armed guards all over the Citadel – the security is very high. Also, the Ministers have a fiendish pet. The Peking Homunculus has the exterior appearance of a grotesque doll, but inwardly is an advanced robotic assassin with a basic artificial intelligence supported by the cerebral cortex of a pig. It is free to roam the Citadel except for in areas occupied by Salamander, who finds it disturbing, and it is armed and dangerous."
The Doctor grimaced. "Peking Homunculus," he said. "I don't like the sound of that."
Keri shook her head. "I don't like the sound of any of it," she replied. "Assassinate people? Capture men and bring them back to be tortured? Okay, so these guys are bastards – pretty fierce bastards – but doesn't treating them in this way make the Faith as bad as the Alliance?"
"Aleks is mad, Keri," the Doctor explained. "He isn't really aware of what he's saying. His brain's been turned into a spiral staircase by the Zygma Beam, and I've seen people disappear up staircases like that and never come back."
"How profound."
"Thank you. I'll remember it and perhaps use it again one day."
"If Aleks is crazy, won't that threaten the... the war effort? I mean, he's the leader and he's deranged. Look what happened to Adolf Hitler."
"Aleks is dying, Keri. He'll be dead by tomorrow. The Zygma Effect is eroding his brain and body, rapidly aging him. Haven't you noticed that fresh wrinkles have been appearing around his eyes every time we've seen him, or that his hair was black when we met him and grey when we left?"
"Vau. That's pretty bad."
The Doctor nodded. "I know. But when he dies, his sister Isgaard will become leader, and by then they won't need the Zygma Tap anymore, because I'm going to make sure that by tomorrow there's no Zygma Beam to tap into."
"So why are we flying to the Philippines rather than to Reykjavik if we have to corner Salamander?"
"Because Salamander isn't there."
Keri raised an eyebrow. "That's not in the briefing."
The Doctor shook his head and leaned back in the comfortable seat he had randomly taken on the otherwise empty plane. "Aleks told me. He has an agent on the inside. If we just went to the Citadel my bluff may not work to get us in, especially if Salamander beat us back there. But Salamander is conducting a personal investigation into some rebel movements in Cagayan de Oro, the place we're going to. If we can ground Salamander and cut off his lines of communication with the Citadel before we hurry there ourselves, then we could bluff our way in quite easily."
"That's pretty smart," Keri smiled. "Aspirodor was right about you."
The Doctor was a little surprised by the remark. "Was he?"
"Yeah," Keri said with a slight grin. "He always told me you had a pretty good knack for wriggling your way into trouble."
"Yes," the Doctor sighed. "Well, let's just hope this time I can also wriggle out of it." He made himself comfortable and reclined. "I suggest you get an hour's sleep, Keri. We've got a busy evening ahead."
PEKING, Great China AD5029
Kara Dagan woke up for about the fifth time in the same strange place. He recollection of events was hazy and seemed broken up into small, indigestible pieces. The cold, slimy metal chute, lubricated with the sweat and bodily waste of terrified others who had descended before her, probably including little Aislin, had ended abruptly and she had crashed into freezing cold, churning water. At first she thought she was going to drown. The more she struggled to swim to the surface, the more it seemed there was no surface to swim to. And then a couple of pairs of hands had grabbed her roughly and hauled her out of the water, coughing and spluttering and then kicking and screaming. They hit her a good few times to shut her up, sprayed something in her face. She'd passed out. Then she'd woken up on a plane, strapped down. There were loads of other beds around her, all containing other female prisoners, every girl naked, bruised, abused, strapped down tight and just about ready to submit. Kara hadn't been ready to submit. While there was life there was hope, and she knew that while she was still alive she could still work as hard as possible to make trouble for those bastards at the Citadel.
She'd spoken to a couple of the girls, the few who were still fit to talk. Most weren't interested; seemed to be ready to just accept that there was no chance. About three listened to her, took encouragement from her and tried to have a last few moments of humanity sharing their feelings. The whole situation was tragic and diabolical. Was this what human beings of the finest quality had been reduced to by the greed and corruption of self-appreciating scum? Was this always going to be the way of the world? Kara started thinking about Aleks, wondering if he was still alive and free to do whatever he could against the Alliance. She wondered if he missed her and if he might have mounted a rescue operation for her. Of course he would miss her, she knew that. And of course there would be no rescue mission. The war effort was too important to risk everyone in the Faith for the sake of one person, no matter how much Aleks Nystrom might've loved her. And he did love her. She had remembered the love. She went on remembering the love until she passed out again, and while she slept she dreamed of the love. She remembered when she had been a correspondent for an Australian newspaper, young and brash and impulsive, trying to get under the then-newborn Alliance's skin to get herself a good story. The Administrator Marshal had only just seized power back then, and no one had any idea how drastically things were about to change. Everyone would be worked to death to make money for the Zygma Experiment very soon. Those were the last innocent days, and Kara remembered meeting Aleks when she was chasing an international story in Norway, where a somewhat negative view of the new Alliance was being rather commonly taken. Norway was invaded by Alliance troops at the end of her first week there, and she had been dragged into hiding by one of the rebels. Aleks Nystrom was young and handsome and had that romantic, roguish revolutionary air that many women – including Kara – found highly attractive. She remembered how hard it was to get a moment alone with him because he was always busy crusading. And she remembered having sex with him in the back of a hovertruck after having finally cornered him and refused to let him excuse himself. She remembered how good it had felt.
Then she'd woken up here, in the place she now found herself, a cold room with shiny metal surfaces and sterile white walls, still strapped down to a bed or trolley or something, the sickly smell of disinfectant in the air. And she'd remembered people coming in and out, most of them wearing surgical gowns and gloves, some of them inspecting her, taking blood or injecting drugs. One man would come in and give her a shot to knock her out. She'd spent most of her time in this room slipping in and out of consciousness. Someone came in, flat shoes slapping hard on the tiled floor, dressed in a surgical gown and mask, but pretty obviously a woman. The woman carried a syringe. Kara's mouth was dry, but she was determined to speak. She couldn't remember if she'd tried to speak to any of these people before, or if they'd listened, or if she had spoken, what she'd said. But she wanted to keep on trying. "Why do you do it," she croaked to the female surgeon. "Why do you let yourself be turned into a butcher? You're a surgeon, right? Ever saved anyone's life?"
"I save lives every day," said the surgeon, preparing the syringe with an injection needle and checking to see that it was functioning correctly. "I work in the triage unit."
Kara felt herself smile. It felt painful and wrong, but also good. "How does it feel to save those lives and then destroy mine?"
The woman looked down at her, and the expression in her eyes was hateful. "Wonderful," she told Kara. "It feels so rewarding, after working so hard to heal wounds, burns, broken bones and failing organs, after watching some of those poor sods die knowing I can't do a thing for them, to get my revenge in person on the bastard scum that put them in that state in the first place."
Kara felt utterly shattered. She should have realised that when the surgeon said she worked in the triage unit she hadn't meant patching up civilians. Civilians didn't matter to these people. In her triage unit the only people treated were Alliance soldiers and guards injured during rebel attacks. The people this woman cared about, and the people that Kara had hurt, maimed, crippled and even killed. She wasn't going to get any sympathy out of this one, then. So much, she thought, for bedside manner. She closed her eyes and prepared to accept the needle.
There was a loud crash.
Kara's eyes were open again in an instant. She could hear gunfire and a lot of banging and shouting. The alarms started going off. Rebels! Could Aleks have actually been insanely romantic enough to have launched that rescue attempt? Surely not. She'd slap him silly when she got back to him if he had. Right before kissing his face off. The noise of chaos was getting closer, and then suddenly there was a massive crash of metal on tile as the medical laboratory door hit the tile and a bunch of people – surely rebels – burst in. Kara couldn't see them; the surgeon was in the way. But she saw a flash from an energy weapon lance through the surgeon's head and felt her face and shoulders being splattered with blood and small brain fragments as the woman crashed into the trolley and then hit the tiles in a very dead heap. Kara heard someone shout, "Release her!" He sounded Asian. Someone grabbed her straps and started ripping them off. Kara pulled a wrist free and looked up at the man. He was small, golden-skinned and a little perhaps oriental-looking. Of course! He was Filipino! Aleks had told her about the massive secret army being carefully assembled underground in the Philippines, but she'd always thought that it was just one of his stories to encourage hope in his own troops. Now she realised that it was true all along. The army had to be complete by now, and they'd obviously stolen planes and ships, started getting around the planet to take back captives and to capture enemy bases. "Thank you," she croaked to the Filipino.
"You're welcome," he said. "Do you remember who you are?"
Kara sat up. "Dagan," she said. "I was with Faith One Helsinki."
"Aleks Nystrom's woman?" the Filipino asked.
"I'm nobody's woman, but I'm Aleks's partner, yes."
"I'll tell him you're alive. I'm sorry."
Kara touched the man's hand. "Why? Why are you sorry?"
The man pointed over her shoulder. "Look in the mirror."
Suddenly Kara felt afraid. She turned slowly around, swinging her legs off the trolley and putting her feet on the floor. She carefully moved toward the mirror, her inward feeling of horror rising as she came closer. The face she stared at wasn't her own. This one was mostly green and scaly, her eyes bulging and reptilian like a frog's, her wide mouth crammed with needle-like teeth. Suddenly she looked down at her hands. She had no hands. At the end of each arm was a cluster of monstrous talons. They had already begun the process of malconditionment, and it was almost complete. Kara turned away from the mirror. She wanted to cry, but they had taken her tear ducts away. "I will have blood for this!" she shrieked, clacking her new claws. "I WILL HAVE BLOOD!"
CAGAYAN DE ORO, Filipina Cluster AD5029
Salamander stood back as the small retinue of guards he had brought with him opened the hatch that led into the mine recently closed down by insurgents. He looked down into the mouth of the tunnel. He could see that it was lit, but not well-lit. He glanced at Karl Klass, his expression nervous. "And you are sure there is no one down there now?"
Klass nodded. "The mine's empty, except for the investigation team you ordered down here yourself." He stepped into the mouth of the cave. "Do you want me to go down ahead of you?"
"Please do, Karl," Salamander said. He nestled into a ring of guards as Klass walked into the darkness and the group moved in behind the Deputy Marshal. Salamander shivered as he set his feet on the slippery stone rollway that had been used to shove large rocks from the nearby quarry into this pit to be examined for traces of minerals and fossil fuels and then broken up for processing. He stopped for a moment to slip off his polished shoes and his socks, trusting his bare feet a little better on the stone despite the discomfort of the subterranean cold. He'd been used to cold rock floors under his bare feet, though. He remembered swimming in the cenote when he was a boy, especially the day he ran for his life to swim in it, his back on fire. He watched Karl Klass move deeper into the mine and followed him cautiously. Karl was a good man, a man for the Alliance, but even he could be misinformed and tricked. Anyone could by a man devious enough.
It wasn't long before the rollway ended with a flat granite wall, but off to the side there was the cutting floor and before stepping onto it Salamander put his socks and shoes back on after wiping his feet with his handkerchief. There was grease or oil or something on that rollway ramp. Klass walked into the centre of the cutting floor and indicated a small group of labcoated figures examining the walls and floor. "These are your investigators, Administrator Marshal," he said. "Come and meet them."
"Ah, gentlemen!" Salamander beamed. He strode over them and found himself looking straight down the barrel of a gun. Startled, he looked up into a pair of eyes he had seen before. "Valentine..." he gasped.
"The one and only," smirked Valentine.
"Guards!" Salamander shouted. "Kill them! Why aren't you killing them!"
It was Karl Klass who answered. "They're not guards, Marshal," he said. "They're insurgents. They always were. I picked them myself."
Carefully, still aware that there was a gun on him, Salamander turned. "You, Karl?" he asked, totally amazed. "You have been against me all this time?"
"Slowly worming my way to the top," Karl nodded. "I even managed a sneaky name-change. My real name is Karl Nystrom. My brother is the leader of this revolution."
"I'll have you malconditioned for this!" growled Salamander.
Karl shook his head. "No more malconditionments, Salamander," he said curtly. "This is the end. Allow me to introduce some friends of mine. The man pointing a gun at your head is called..."
"Valentine," Salamander said bitterly. "We've met. For some reason he and his friends, two women and some sort of monk, bluffed their way into my complex and then did nothing but examine the Zygma Cabinet, kill a few guards and vanish."
"We did a bit more than examine that cabinet of yours, Salamander," chucked another annoyingly familiar voice. The voice of that monk. "And the ladies are here too."
"Yes," Karl interjected. "And that brings me back to the introductions. Also present is Kerttu 'Keri' Kalonen, escorting the revolution's best friend. Say hello, Keri."
"Hello, Keri," Keri said from behind Salamander.
"Say hello, Doctor," smiled Karl.
Salamander felt his blood run cold as a voice he always knew he would hear again but prayed he never would said, "Hello, Salamander."
SCAVENGER VII: "DVORAK", Scandinavian Waters AD5029
"Silent running," Carly Rainier ordered as the long-range field scanners registered that the submarine had entered Scandinavian waters and that the robot sentinels set to guard the base from attack under the sea were starting to gather at extreme range. The lights changed and the main engine sounds cut out. "Alaresto," Rainier barked. "Defence status."
"Full capacity," Lieutenant Alaresto assured her. "Torpedoes on standby, depth charges ready, sonic disrupters fully charged, energy shielding fully charged."
Rainier nodded. "Excellent." She glanced across at another officer. "Bennett," she called to him. "How's Rani getting on?"
"Hang on, I'll check," said Bennett. He fiddled with his commpatch and nattered a bit, then looked over at Rainier. "She's almost ready."
"Right," said Rainier. Then she looked at someone else. "Reinhardt, transmat status."
Reinhardt punched a code into her computer panel. "Ready," she said. "We can all get to Scavenger XIII, just out of range of the blast radius."
Rainier turned back to Alaresto. "How long before we're close enough to make our target?"
"Five hours, Commander," Alaresto said.
Rainier sat down. Five hours. Five hours to a nuclear explosion and the beginning of all-out war on Earth. She hoped that she was choosing the lesser of two evils.
HELSINKI, Scandinavia Major AD5029
Aleks Nystrom was dying.
Isgaard sat at his bedside, constantly wetting a handkerchief and mopping his brow. He looked so old. He was only thirty-nine, and yet his hair was pure white. Five days ago it had been grey, and three months ago it had been black. His face was bony and wrinkled like the face of an eighty year-old. He looked so ancient and weary. And in the past hour he'd gone blind. Isgaard looked down at him sadly as he shifted uncomfortably in the bottom bunk, seeming to be starting some kind of fit. "Shh," she soothed him. "What has this dreadful Zygma Beam done to you? Look at what it has turned you into. Why did it have to happen, huh?"
"World... needed... someone," Aleks croaked, his voice barely a whisper and full of the creaks of extreme old age. "Someone... to fight. To give them... something... to fight for."
"You had to play the hero, big brother," Isgaard sighed. "You never learn."
"Not... playing," said Aleks. "This was never... a game."
Isgaard felt a tear on her cheek. "You'll always be a hero, Aleks," she sniffed. "All the free people in the world will remember what you did for them. You gave us all hope. You made us strong and gave us the will to fight. This revolution would be nothing without you."
Aleks smiled, his ancient, desiccated face almost cracking. "Sweet Issy," he whispered. "A loyal and loving sister. I could wish for no better. "Then suddenly he tensed up. "I see... the Doctor!"
"You can see?" asked Isgaard, surprised. "You're blind, Aleks. You must be delirious."
Aleks struggled to shake his head. "No, my beloved sister," he smiled. "My eyes have forsaken me, but still my mind can see all of Time. And I see the Doctor face the enemy!"
Isgaard nodded. "The final battle, an end to the tyranny of the Alliance."
"Yes..." breathed Aleks. Then suddenly he tensed up again. "No!" he howled, screwing up his face. "The Doctor... someone save him! NO!"
Isgaard gripped Aleks's hand. "What's the matter? What's happening."
Aleks sank into his bed again. "We are lost," he whispered. "The Doctor dies today."
"Are you sure?" demanded Isgaard, squeezing her brother's hand. "Are you sure it is not the Administrator Marshal who dies?"
"The Doctor," Aleks said, slowly shaking his head. "The Doctor wears his own clothes again. Salamander, the Administrator-Marshal, wears a perfect suit. The Doctor wears shabby clothes that look untidy and do not fit properly. It will be the Doctor. It must be. The Doctor dies today. He dies."
TO BE CONCLUDED...