Unlikely as it might seem, Farmer Imgelissa had again been paired with Nurbonissa to haul bottled algae. That made at least a dozen times the duo had been allocated to each other, something that would not normally have been tolerated, let alone repeated. Allowing a rapport to develop between the Farmers was frowned upon by the Overseers. Somebody wasn't paying attention to schedules.
Imgelissa waited until the sled was well on its way before broaching the subject of Warrior awakenings. He didn't want anyone overhearing things, not if it could be avoided.
'So, you've heard about Sur petioning for more Warriors to be woken? What do you think of that?'
Nurbonissa wasn't stupid or slow.
'One of two things. Either so many Warriors have been lost in this adventure that replacements are needed urgently, or the target world has such an abundance of resources that more help is needed to cope with it.'
Imgelissa snorted in disbelief. More help indeed!
'Can you see Warriors undertaking menial work like collecting minerals or live flora? If bio-morphic resources were there, we'd be there too, harvesting.'
"Pillaging" would be nearer the truth, if I were being completely honest. "Harvesting" is too tame a word. Target World Seventeen will be drained dry once we arrive in force, turned into a bad copy of Homeworld.
They dragged the sledge in silence, both thinking.
'Sur is in trouble himself, anyway. I hear that the other aristos along the coast are thinking of a prosecution,' said the younger bio-vore.
'Because that alien escaped?'
'The heretic, too. Do you know, they escaped using a bone prosthesis. Made out of metal.'
'Well, that's those from five thousand years ago for you. More metal around for working with.'
'And, just think, those detention cells were sat underneath Sur's castle. Not off in the Wastes.'
Imgelissa stopped, suddenly taken aback. Nurbonissa carried on towing for a second, until drag stoped him, too.
'What? What is it?' he asked, looking around in alarm.
Imgelissa took up the traces again.
'Just think about what we just said. How come we know so much about high politics and the inner workings of an aristocrats castle?'
The younger bio-vore wondered silently, then gave up.
'Leaks. Rumours. Information passed along. The Overseers aren't able to stop rumours starting any longer. Farmers actually saw and talked to the alien escapee – me being one of them.'
A steep incline loomed and conversation stopped whilst they hauled the heavy sled.
'What did this mysterious alien say?'
'He warned that the time of the Warriors is nearly over, that the aristocrats are going to fall, and a time of freedom from fear is at hand.'
The far side of the incline ran downhill in a long curve, along a stretch of the sea that came inland, running over a bridge of granite blocks. Clusters of Farmers could be seen wading in the shallows, bringing in scoops and nets of algae for processing. One or two waved at the sled as it passed, unusually daring in that it meant ignoring the incessant demands of the job for a few seconds.
'I feel we are on the brink of great things!'
A sombre party of three men buried the body of Sergente Capriccio behind the mud huts, alongside the larger graves dug for the soldiers killed days before. Roger took an identity tag from beneath the NCO's blouse, intending to pass it on to Tenete Dominione.
'Come on,' he said, despondently. 'You can't bring him back, Doctor.'
It took a sharp tug on Doctor Smith's arm to move him from the grave. Roger wanted them loaded up and out of the depot before any more monsters arrived, and they'd need all hands to shift crates and boxes. He left them, to return at the wheel of their Sahariana.
The young officer's knowledge of the depot proved vital, since he knew exactly where to locate the wooden crates storing Italian salvage, and where a one ton crane was stored. Both crates they wanted were, inevitably, underneath a collection of others, and the whole thing draped in camouflage netting. Roger used the Sahariana's bonnet-mounted winch to drag the netting off, then handed out a pair of long levers.
'You can't lift this stuff with your bare hands,' he warned, producing a pair of stout, battered leather gloves. He passed a pair of crowbars to Tam and Doctor Smith, indicating how far they needed to shift the outer boxes in the stack.
Tam found that Doctor Smith was far stronger than he looked, able to help shift wooden crates surprisingly easily, which gave the tough Geordie cause to pause and wonder.
'What made ye chuck petrol over that nose-goblin?' he asked, wanting a diversion from the slow, hard work.
'Petrol evapourates rapidly and especially so in a high ambient temperature, and the latent heat of vapourisation, when applied to the epidermis of a non-excretory individual – ah. Sorry. In English? The "nose-goblins" don't sweat, Tam. They have a very efficient system of keeping their body temperature in balance, probably based on a super-dense capillary network. Liquids like petrol, or after-shave, or even whisky, would dramatically destabilise that balance when they evapourate from the skin. The "nose-goblin" goes into shock.'
Tam nodded wisely, grateful for the slightly simpler explanation.
'You're a bit of a Renaissance man, Doctor Smith,' announced Lieutenant Llewellyn, busily hauling chains on the one-ton crane and panting in rhythm whilst doing so. 'Biology, atomic physics, neurology, improvised weapons.'
'Wellll – I dabble!' beamed the Doctor, hoping not to become a focus of attention. 'You know how it is – widely read, widely travelled. Been around a bit, seen a few things.'
Roger, using the crane, swung a crate ("track spares for M11/39" according to his notations on the flimsies) over and across, dumping them abruptly on the gravelly ground. His lack of care was rewarded with a shattered clinking sound and the release of a puddle from the crate. A cloyingly sweet smell filled the air.
'What the hell is in there!' he asked nobody in particular, sounding astonished.
Tam sniffed.
'Booze, sir.'
'Amaretto,' corrected the Doctor, sniffing also. 'Italian almond liquer,' he informed the two British soldiers.
When they prised the crate open with crowbars, they discovered twelve layers of liquer bottles, each layer consisting of twelve bottles. The bottom two layers had been broken by Roger's rough treatment, but one hundred and twenty intact bottles remained.
Tam whistled.
'This is not a licence to get paralytic, Corporal Mickleborough!' snapped Roger sternly.
'Did I mention whisky as effective against bio-vores?' mused the Doctor aloud. 'For "whisky" read "Amaratto".' He cast a cynical eye over the crate of bottles. Pretty obviously, someone had been up to mischief here, hiding alcohol in what ought to be a wooden box full of tank tracks.
Within an hour both crates they sought had been removed from the stack, then hoisted onto the Sahariana, which made heavy going back to their old rendezvous in the wadi. Tenente Dominione's face fell the instant he realised Sergente Capriccio wasn't amongst the returnees. Roger handed over the metal tag and the Doctor translated.
'Dead?' queried Sarah minutes later. She wasn't sure how she felt, remembering the Segente's garlic-laden breath and wickedly-sharp knife when he'd taken her prisoner. Not a gentle or civil man.
'Killed whilst saving my life, and Tam's,' added the Doctor. Sarah immediately felt like an ingrate and blushed to her boots.
Within an hour of the three returning to their wadi hideout, argument broke out about where to stay. Eventually the party voted, eight versus two, to return to Mersa Martuba. The bio-vore sentries were dead, there were immense amounts of supplies at the depot and food in the wadi had nearly been exhausted. Plus the Doctor needed a suitable environment in which to build his atomic bomb.
'You and I have more basic worries, Sarah,' he cautioned the young journalist whilst travelling in the back of the incredibly noisy Chevrolet. 'I fear the TARDIS materialised in the desert, right in front of a column of attacking bio-vores.'
Sarah goggled in anxious disbelief.
'What! How do you know!'
The Doctor explained. He had spotted a tell-tale square imprint in the desert sands that might have been the result of the TARDIS landing once the Hostile Automatic Displacement system stopped operating. A square imprint, appearing from nowhere. In coroborration, the Arab caravan travelling from west to east had diverted to investigate the ground-trace. So too had the bio-vores, only since they won the skirmish they had retained the trophy.
'Where is the TARDIS now?'
'Probably back at the dig. Taken there for further study.'
Sarah chewed her lip. No TARDIS? That meant she and the Doctor were stranded here in early 1941, stuck in the contemporary without any means of achieving the hypertemporary. Well, she was stuck. The Doctor could endure ten times the wait she could without any ill-effects, given his lifespan. In fact some of his Time Lord mates could well drop by in a decade or two to see what had happened to him.
'So you see we do have a slight dilemma. Cobble together a crude nuclear weapon and destroy the alien trans-mat complex, at the cost of losing the TARDIS. Or, find our transport and leave, only for the invaders to over-run this world and destroy our future.'
Sarah recalled an earlier incarnation of the Doctor, and what he'd said – boasted, really – about the TARDIS.
'Surely a nuclear bomb can't destroy the TARDIS?'
'No,' replied the Doctor patiently. 'But don't forget the HAD System is still functioning. Under a nuclear attack I hate to think how far away in temporal terms the old girl would vanish to. Even if she stayed put, I don't really relish the prospect of trying to release her from being trapped in a cubic mile of radioactive glass.'
When they got back to the smokey, hazy depot, the sun had nearly set.
'Avoid grouping if possible,' cautioned the Doctor. 'The bio-vores have technology that can detect living organisms. I think we're safe from an attack here, since there aren't many of us.'
'Bloody marvellous,' complained Davey. 'Come on, Tam, I know where there's a crate of Vickers'. I'm not going to have them nose-goblins creep up on us.'
Sarah took the opportunity to acquire a change of clothing – a pair of olive drab trousers and a shirt. She'd have loved a shower, too, and then felt selfish and ungrateful of such shallow thoughts.
'Keep your sleeves rolled down,' suggested Roger when she emerged from the mud hut after changing. 'Otherwise you'll burn tomorrow in daylight.'
'Thanks,' she replied moodily. 'I think I'll try and make a meal. Can you show me where tinned food is kept?' It was very domestic and rather stereotypical, but it would take her mind off the unpromising situation.
It took a while, trial and error, a broken tin opener and searching with a torch amongst tins stored in a decrepit mud hut, but Sarah managed a very passable stew, cooked in a big metal ammunition box she scrubbed clean with sand.
'Tinned stew, tinned potatoes, tinned beans, salt and other bits and pieces,' she declared proudly. 'Cooked over three of those little spirit stoves.'
Tam and Davey were taken dixies of the stew, fell upon it gratefully and devoured it in minutes.
'That were fu- hmph! – that were great,' declared Tam, handing back the empty dixie. Davey was too busy scoffing his to reply, soaking up the remains with a stale wad.
Sarah stood back and looked at the impressive construction the two soldiers had made. A great six-foot high arc of sandbags, behind which were ammunition boxes of .303 bullets. Two Vickers machine guns had been set up to fire between narrow slots in the sandbag barrier.
'Doctor Smith said a thick enough barrier of metal would stop the ray guns,' explained Tam. 'And we've got the sandbags, too.'
'This is solid ground, as well. We're not going to get glassed.'
The Doctor rapidly took over one of the mud huts, one which had been used by the depot staff to store tools. He cleared a space on the floor, laid out a tarpaulin with a rock at each corner, then returned to the crate containing the x-ray equipment.
'Now I miss the sonic screwdriver,' he grumbled to the night, having to very carefully lever the lid off the crate. The delicate equipment within had been wrapped in muslin, then linen, then restrained with wooden braces and the crate filled with sawdust. A lining of thick foil held the sawdust in place.
'Oh. Radium. Well, we'll just have to work with that,' he said, seeing the symbol stencilled on the outer casing of the equipment and leaving it on the tarpaulin.
His next problem came when he snooped around the hut, failing to find any tools sufficiently small or precise, so he went to find Roger, who was smoking a cigarette and pointing out constellations to Sarah.
'I could get you screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench.'
'No! That just won't do! I need precision instruments, not – yes, Sarah?'
'Would a dentist's stuff be any good?'
'Yes! Yes it would!' enthused her mentor.
'Remember Roger showing us around when we'd just got here? There was a dentists drill on display.'
'Brilliant!' grinned the Doctor, shaking Sarah's hand madly. He tracked down the depot inventory and read the flimsies until finding what he wanted, then dashed off.
'I suppose he know's what he's doing?' asked Roger. The seemingly-demented Doctor Smith had proved to be extremely clever and quick, but cooking up a bomb that only existed in pulp magazines – that was a bit of a stretch, even for an imagination that had been stretched considerably already.
'Oh yes,' replied Sarah with absolute assurance. 'If he says he can, then he can.'
Detachment Leader Icono deposited the mystery Artefact alongside a Science Support building at the Infiltration Complex, sliding it off the Transport Car via the manipulators.
Incredible! The blue box simply appeared out of nowhere in the path of the interception convoy moving to meet that life-signs trace. First the desert stretched in front of them, barren,endless and empty, the next – there the big box stood. The fodder had moved to investigate the new arrival, until they all dropped where they stood under the stun rays.
Uncomfortably aware that the aliens of this world did not have matter transmission technology, Icono immediately knew the artefact was important. So, he brought it along. It could be analysed at the Infiltration Complex.
More good news awaited him when he returned to the HQ building; the trans-mat was operational once more, test packages having been successfully sent from Homeworld and back there.
'Excellent!' Which was mostly true. Lord Excellency Sur might not appreciate the losses suffered by the Warriors under Icono's leadership, and Evisceration might be on the horizon. Only "might". With all the ingested life energies acquired from this planet's fodder, over sixty of the surviving Warriors were budding. A dozen new Warrior offspring, small and reedy yet, were being rehearsed and drilled. So the losses weren't as bad as seemed to begin with – or at least that's how Icono hoped Lord Excellency Sur, would feel.
He went to look at the artefact.
'It has no openings in the outer shell, Leader,' said a Warrior technician. 'A completely sealed unit.'
The Technician's posture, leaning backwards, expressed more surprise.
'And?'
'I'm not entirely sure of this, Leader, but we used an infrasonic generator to try and determine the artefact's internal layout.'
'Yes, yes, carry on.' Icono knew what infrasonics were used for – to process minerals by the kilotonne. Under infrasonic stimulation different ores and minerals could be separated out from sand.
The technician pointed over to the artefact, with cables trailing to the big, cone-shaped ultrasonic generator butted up against it.
'A pulse would penetrate the object, and be reflected back from the internal structure, allowing us to plot the layout.' Another hesitation. 'The pulse took an hour to return.'
Icono had anticipated a revelation about the object being solid, or full of liquid, or perhaps live aliens. Hearing "an hour" he stared hard at his minion.
'An hour? Why so long? How long ought a reflected pulse to take?'
'Ah – approximately eighty milliseconds, Leader. By implication, this object is far larger on the inside than it is on the outside. By a factor of several hundred thousand.'
An astonished Icono walked over to the artefact. There it was, upright, innocent, and apparently made of that compacted fibrous material used to obstruct the approach to the HQ building.
Yet to be larger on the inside!
'Er – these aliens do not have the technology to create a five-dimensional object, Leader. They are mechanically ingenious, yes, yet still millenia away from such an artefact.'
Icono nodded, thinking.
'This couldn't be an example of trans-mat gone wrong?'
The technician waved his hands.
'No, Leader. Without a reception platform, an object could not be sent. The gravity-lens technique used for the Infiltration Complex will only work for objects of similar dimensions.'
'Who else knows of this?'
'Nobody yet, Leader – AH!' grunted the technician as Icono Eviscerated him, draining the hapless minion until his dessicated husk lay shrivelled on the sands.
'Useless drone!' shouted Icono, to create the wrong impression. 'Dismantle that generator. Reel in that cable. Send out a Transport Car to haul in one of the immobilised alien vehicles for recycling!'
Twenty Two: A Bigger BangThe ten human survivors at Mersa Martuba spent an uneasy night, one person taking it in turns to be on sentry duty. This amounted to standing on the platform mounted over the mud huts, looking to the east.
Perhaps the "ten humans" could have been amended to "nine humans and one Gallifreyan". The Doctor forbade anyone to enter his appropriated mud hut, citing the need to keep conditions as near sterile as possible. He also wanted to prevent any twentieth century inhabitant witnessing scientific methodology from several centuries in the future. Sarah's inspired suggestion about dental tools bore fissile fruit by dawn the next morning as a gritty-eyed Doctor downed his tools, taking care not to scratch or rub his eyes.
'Mine own executioner,' he murmured, folding arms and looking at the improvised weapon. He had needed to leave the hut several times in order to obtain stand-in material for the "device" – foil for a reflective inner surface, cordite carefully arrayed in a spherical layer, signal wire between the two hundred and sixteen blank .303 cartridges on the outside of the football-sized object.
Crude, hurried and liable to misfire, it was still the most potent single explosive object this world had ever seen. Trinity would not take place for another four years; the thousand-bomber raids over Europe were still years away; the suitcase-sized Atomic Demolition Munition was decades away. The Doctor's "football" sat on the tarpaulin, with a yield he estimated as between (at best) 0.225 kilotonnes and (worst case, crossed fingers not working) 0.015 kilotonnes.
'Looks like a Dada hairdryer,' observed an irreverent Sarah, looking in through the blanket that overhung the doorway.
'This "hairdryer" would give a permanent wave truly permanent in nature. Permanent meaning for ever.'
'Ah,' replied Sarah, well-versed in when her mentor was being serious. As he was now. 'Your home-made atomic bomb?' A silent nod proved her correct. 'So all we have to do is get it to the dig and – hey presto! – no invasion?' She clapped her hands together to emphasise the "hey presto".
Despite himself, the Doctor found a grin rising to his face.
'Sarah, you have a way of putting things that cuts to the crux of the matter! Yes. If we want humanity and planet Earth to continue, the trans-mat must be destroyed.'
Over a frugal breakfast of jam and toasted wad, he enlarged on that matter with the other survivors. His first statement was heavy with import.
'I have constructed a bomb that will destroy the bio-vore's entire complex of buildings at the Makin Al-Jinni dig.'
For several seconds congratulatory noises could be heard, until Albert asked the key question.
'How do we get it there?'
Sarah threw her arms wide.
'Any suggestions welcome! Come on, come on, you're all old desert hands. You must have suggestions.'
'Our enemies have no conception of heavier-than-air flight. An aircraft would stand a good chance of getting into the defended area,' commented the Doctor, in both English and Italian.
'No aeroplanes?' asked Davey. Tenente Dominione looked at his fellow Italians and shot a series of questions at them.
'There are Italian aircraft on forward airfields near Bir El Daba. Fighters and bombers. Unfortunately it is a hundred kilometres away.'
'I can fly, after a fashion,' said Albert nonchalantly, dipping a stale wad into his tea. 'Learned in the University Air Squadron, after the Munich Crisis.'
'You never told me that!' exclaimed a surprised Professor Templeman.
'Ah, they wouldn't let me carry on to become a dashing RAF pilot. Perforated ear-drum. Good thing for me, or I'd probably not be here now. Still, I reckon I could fly a single-engine job with a few hours to practice.'
'How does your porcupine of a bomb work, Doctor Smith?' asked Roger.
'If an electrical current is applied to this wired cartridge, all two hundred and sixteen cartridges will fire at once. That produces reasonably uniform detonation of the inner cordite liner, which creates a spherical implosion that forces the fissile core into a supercritical mass thanks to velocity of displacement.'
Roger looked sideways at Sarah, who shrugged and nodded.
'Ah. Right.'
'That is, if everything works properly in sequence.'
Davey asked more questions.
'Why don't they have any aircraft?'
The Doctor shrugged. He didn't know for certain, so he took his best guess.
'Lack of metals, timber or fabric for building them. No fuel to power them, no avian wildlife to emulate. There may have been birds on Wasteworld at one time, millenia ago. Of course they died when their habitats were consumed, or they were directly consumed by the bio-vores.'
That brought a tug of memory to his mind. Lord Boasting Fuhrer Sur, that bloated pompous windbag, seemed familiar with flying creatures. Odd, considering –
'We have a bit of a problem with that "Lance Fiamme", Doctor,' said Dominione.
The Doctor closed his eyes, feeling tired. He needed to wash his hands thoroughly, to get rid of any radium particles picked up during construction of the bomb.
Dominione carried on. The weapon was actually for mounting in a tankette, was five feet long, muzzle-heavy, needed to be electrically operated and worked from a 120 litre drum. Impossible for a single person to carry.
'Put it in one of the Saharianas,' said Sarah. 'In the passenger seat. Stick it over the bonnet, rivet it there, Bob's your uncle.'
'No he isn't,' replied Dominione, puzzled.
'I meant - ' began Sarah.
'If you'll give me a minute or two to rest, I'll wire up the flame-thrower to the ignition system of your car,' offered the Doctor, yawning massively.
Roger hushed the others and they left the sleeping Time Lord for an hour before rousing him.
Lord Excellency Sur, pressured by his fellow aristocrats, was going to travel to Target World Seventeen himself. Not alone, of course. He would be accompanied by a thousand Warriors, going into the trans-mat in relays.
Originally he'd only petitioned for four hundred Warriors to be awoken from hibernation. His peers, unhappy at the escape of an alien and heretic from custody in Sur's own castle, ordered twice that many to be sent. Then they added another two hundred, just in case. No mercy for any alien fodder at the other end of the trans-mat was their implicit message, and no room for blunder on the part of Sur.
Sending so many Warriors meant that logistics became a major issue. Bottled algae would need to be harvested and sent through in huge amounts, so the Farmers needed to be chivvied into working harder, and a few Eviscerated. "Pour encourage les autres" wasn't a phrase Sur knew, although he would have approved of it entirely.
A huge combat contingent wasn't the only novelty. On the authority of the collective coastal aristocracy, heavy weapons unused in centuries were taken out of storage, re-assembled and tested. They were sledged to the departure platform and sent with the first wave of Warriors.
Lord Excellency Sur arrived with his personal bodyguard as part of the second wave of arrivals. Trying to maintain a semblance of imposing dignity, he kept his cape on and made sure to swirl it commandingly.
Target World Seventeen! he exulted when the unfamiliar surroundings of the Infiltration Complex appeared in place of the departure platform. Hot, and dry. No moisture in the air. Nowhere near the sea, then.
His bodyguard hustled him off the platform, allowing another consignment of bottled algae to come through.
Assault Detachment Leader Icono hurried over to Sur, bowing and grovelling with just the right amount of subservience. Sur knew that the Regional Leader back on Homeworld, Boma, didn't feel very positive about Icono's performance so far. Too many casualties.
'Lord Excellency Sur! Permit this worthless minion to present you with an alien trophy, recovered from the desert,' rattled off Icono, knowing that to preserve his life he needed to divert Sur.
'What defences do you have in place to protect the trans-mat?' barked Sur, equally aware that to preserve his rank, if not his life, he needed to be managing matters efficiently in the eyes of his peers. At least one member of his bodyguard, and doubtless more amongst the newly-awoken Warriors, would be working for his fellow aristocrats, feeding back information via couriers and coded message sheets.
Icono presented an itemised rota and inventory, and he presented it quickly.
"Permanent perimeter patrol of three Sentinels.
Random pattern patrol of five Warrior groups numbering ten in
each.
Life Signs Scanner 2 allocated to periodic sweep of Infiltration
Complex.
HQ projection-fusor programmed to deliver 360 degree molten
protective barrier.
Three Transport Cars mounting heavy stun cannon on call."
Thus read Sur. He could not find any obvious failings, so he waved a dismissive arm at Icono.
'What is the trophy you mentioned?'
Eagerly, the Detachment Leader showed his superior a large blue cuboid.
Sur leaned backwards in exaggerated surprise.
'A blue box! How outstanding! What shortage of blue, boxlike objects Homeworld has! Truly, this is a trophy beyond compare!'
The Detachment Leader turned back to the object, indicating it with an outstretched arm, ready to describe how unusual it was, and what dimensionally-transcendent qualities it possessed.
Unfortunately he never got the chance, as Lord Excellency Sur Eviscerated Icono the instant the latter's back was turned.
'Nearest Sub-Leader!' shouted Sur. A heavily-laden bio-vore jogged over to him.
'Assault Detachment Sub-Leader Kotani, Lord Excellency,' snapped the new arrival, astute enough not to cast a look at Icono's shrivelled remains.
'You are now the Detachment Leader. Notarise Homeworld with the next courier despatch.'
Sur swirled his cape, looking with disbelief at the big blue box. Conditions here must have unsettled Icono's mind, to think such a thing was remotely interesting!
Group Captain Windermere, sitting propped on his chair, looked doubtfully at Major Hampson of the Royal Army Service Corps.
'I don't have any orders to follow,' he pointed out to the soldier. 'And my chaps are fully stretched at the mo. Ferrying aircraft to Crete and Greece, attacking Tripoli, establishing new airstrips in virgin desert, helping watch the Med. I can't really spare anyone to go scooting around on anything as insubstantial as a hunch.'
Major Hampson sighed and nodded. Very well then, it came down to bribery.
'Look, sir, a hundred men in Murraycol went off on my say-so. We've heard nothing from them and can't contact them ourselves. The depot and staff come under my responsibility, and by second-hand information I know they suffered casualties. All I want to know is what is or isn't happening at Mersa Martuba.'
With that, he put a four-gallon petrol tin on the Group Captain's desk. Wordlessly, he undid a catch at the base, releasing the whole upper part of the tin, which he removed. A bottle of Caribbean over-proof rum occupied the inside of the tin.
'My chaps are stretched pretty tight,' continued the Group Captain, eyeing the bottle with appreciation. 'That's my chaps. We do have the GMC on Middle East Desert Air Force strength, and they aren't my chaps.'
Major Hampson tried to look interested.
' "GMC"?' he asked.
'Free French pilots. "Groupe Mixte de Combat". Dour lot. No sporting chivalry of the air for them – killing Bosche or the Eyeties is their idea of a good time.'
The cover went back on the petrol tin and Group Captain Windermere took charge of it with the avid attention of a parent cradling a child.
'They fly Lysanders and Blenheim ground-attack birds. We'll ask them to conduct a familiarisation flight, see what's up at your depot.'
'I expect it's nothing, really. I just want to make sure.'
Trans-mat platforms couldn't send telecommunications between each other. Thus, information between Homeworld and Target Seventeen was exchanged by sending inscribed scrolls or bio-vore couriers. In the case of Lord Excellency Sur's edict on speeding up algae production, the demand came as an inscribed scroll, one which bore the elaborate house crest of Sur. It was passed to the most important bio-vore on duty at the trans-mat station.
Senior Overseer Fosor unrolled the scroll and read it before passing it on to a party of Warrior guards and his assistant, Sub-Senior Overseer Kosadi. Kosadi read the declaration once, then again, more slowly.
'A five-fold increase in algae production?' he echoed, staring at Fosor. 'And Eviscerate Farmers?'
The senior stared back at Kosadi.
'What is your reticence due to?'
'Simple fact!' retorted Kosadi. 'Even trying to achieve an increase in production by a factor of five is over-ambitious. To attempt to drive it by killing those who are trying to produce the algae is – is - ' He struggled to find the correct word.
'Enough discussion,' said Fosor, comparatively mildly. 'Implement the coercion.'
"Stupid" was the word Kosadi had been reaching for, thought Fosor. A very apt word. A stupid decision taken for stupid reasons.
Wait! he shouted silently, catching himself. I never used to question the aristos like this. And if a junior ever expressed lack of support for the aristos, then it was automatic punishment for them.
May the cold and dark take him! What had thrown his mind so far off-track? The turmoil and excitement of recent days must have been responsible.
If so, he wasn't the only one. As a Senior, Fosor got access to restricted information in limited circulation. Today's statistics bore heavy import: algae production declined in daily terms by three per cent. A three per cent fall - unseen for decades. And Sur wanted to get five hundred per cent from what was only ninety seven per cent at best!
There was more. A hundred and fifty Farmers failed to report for work yesterday. Normally there would be accidents, abscondments, all sorts of eventualities amongst the eighty five thousand Farmers under Sur's region. Never so many as a hundred and fifty. Perhaps that shortfall in algae production could be blamed on missing Farmers?
Even more worrying, an Overseer and half a dozen Warriors were missing. They were members of the elite, able to Eviscerate humble Farmers. So why were they absent? Where could they have gone? Bulletins were circulating amongst the other coastal cities, giving descriptions and asking for details if the missing were encountered.
It was all most, most worrying.
Fosor would have been further alarmed by events later that day on the littoral. Five Warriors were assigned to track down and Eviscerate any lone Farmers, any found wandering about without enough licence or permission, any deemed not to be working hard enough. They began from the barracks at the fringe of the Trans-Mat complex, planning to work northwards along the shore.
Pickings were not good. The Farmers at first stood far out in the shallows, flecked with the algae, working away with nets and scoops. There were solo workers, yes, but none of the Warriors deemed it dignified to wade out into the waters.
Occasional groups of Farmers trudged to and from the depths, bottling their harvested sea greens. None came singly.
Finally the Warrior group got fed up and picked on a group of three Farmers walking back into the shallows. With the traditional accusatory shout of "Transgressors!" the Warriors charged their prey.
Who fought back.
Stunned incomprehension at this unparalleled display of resistance cost the life of one Warrior, beaten to death with the solid end of a net-pole. When the short, brutal fight was over the Farmers had been Eviscerated, but another Warrior suffered near-fatal injuries. His surviving comrades duly Eviscerated him, before he could protest or petition that he ought to live.
Worried that they might be Eviscerated themselves if the details of the botched ambush got out, the three Warriors didn't make out a report of what had happened.
"Boccata il Dragone": the words now graced the bonnet of Dominione's Sahariana, painted on in white matt, paint discovered by Sarah in one of the mud huts. She had hauled fuel in the leaking, flimsy petrol tins from Supply Stack E14, filling up the huge drum that fed the flamethrower. This drum sat where a passenger would have been, securely strapped onto the seat. Projecting over the dashboard and the bonnet was the flame gun itself, riveted into place. The curved, beak-like muzzle hung slightly forward of the front bumper, deliberately, to prevent any burning petrol from falling onto the car.
True to his word, the Doctor wired up the flamethrower to the Sahariana's ignition system, enabling the fuel to be pressurised and fired. Torrevechio gleefully tried the weapon out, sending a streak of smoking fuel fifty yards over the sands. Fortunately, he possessed enough foresight to turn the car away from any stacks in the depot, so the only victim was the desert gravel.
'What does that mean, Sarah?' asked Roger, pointing to the bonnet.
'Roughly, "breath of the dragon". I'm not quite sure about the grammar, but I like the sentiment.'
'I don't think Doctor Smith does. He's gone off to brood.'
With a disdainful jerk of his thumb, Roger indicated the Doctor, sitting on a crate, looking deeply morose.
'He just doesn't like death and killing, Roger.'
The young officer eyed Sarah, wondering if she was pulling his leg.
'Nor do I, especially as it might be me getting killed to death.'
This nadir in the conversation ended when Tam came over to ask if the radio was still U/S? Roger went off with the Geordie NCO to try, once again, to get in touch with a higher formation.
Sarah climbed up alongside the Doctor.
'Don't sit in a brown study all day! What ails you?'
Making a visible effort, her companion and mentor turned his gaze from the horizon, looking sombrely into her eyes.
'I heard your comment about death and killing, Sarah. It does pain me to resort to violence, all the more when it is so extreme.'
'We don't have a choice!' retorted Sarah hotly. 'Those bio-vores will wipe us out and go on to infest the whole planet!'
The Doctor said nothing, merely staring sadly at her.
'Besides which, we still haven't got a way to get your home-made bomb into the trans-mat site. And it might not go off if we did get it there. And there's still the greedy monsters left on their homeworld, all ready to come back here.'
This time the Doctor shook his head.
'Not this planet, Sarah. The microlens that allowed the bio-vores to land their platform here has long since devolved.'