Lord Excellency Sur was not given to admitting mistakes. For one thing, that would make him vulnerable to potential challengers from below. Secondly, he rarely, if indeed ever, made mistakes.
Now, having had a dozen Warriors unsuccessfully try to smash the blue cuboid apart with granite hammers and glass hatchets, he felt a touch of ruefulness at having killed Icono so hurriedly.
The object stood no taller than he did. From the outside it was composed of "wood", as the locals termed it. The most obvious asset was the blue colouration.
Except that none of that was accurate. None of it. The wooden composition was fake, as was the colour; remote televisual monitoring showed the device in monochrome. This blue cuboid had no apparent ingress point. It's mass had been calculated as being in the kilotonnes, an anachronism to the factor of five hundred.
'Send it back home!' blustered Sur, wondering what the device was, and how to exploit it's presence on Homeworld. Better get rid of it here, since the local aliens were pretty adept at making trouble with nothing in hand.
The device was placed alongside a series of reports and outputs, then couriered back to Homeworld.
Next would come a sweep across the deserts to find more live fodder. According to the situation reports so far, a storage site existed to the west. That was the extent of local life-forms. Clearly the Infiltration Complex was not situated in a viable area, because from listening in to the radio-waves, the alien culture on Target Seventeen was obviously widespread.
Consider it a challege, the bio-vore aristocrat told himself. A challenge to be met and overcome!
Sarah felt both worried and annoyed at the Doctor's continued sulking, as she saw it, atop his crate. The bio-vores must have fixed their matter transmitter by now, and would be arriving by the hundred – and yet the Doctor sat and brooded, doing nothing!
She tried again to coax him down.
'Not even for a cup of tea? With extra sugar?'
All she got in reply was a sigh.
'Oh be like that then!' she crossly responded, turning to leave. Jumping down, the Doctor forestalled her with a hand on her shoulder.
'Time is running out, Sarah. The Germans will be here very soon, and by then we must have resolved the matter of the bio-vores. I dread to think what would happen if the aliens gain access to several thousand victims.'
Sarah tutted and folded her arms.
'The Afrika Corps are presumably armed to the teeth? Surely they'll manage to cope with our large friends.'
Her companion shook his head violently.
'No! That is not what must happen! The Germans and their allies need to take this depot with no trouble. Not only that, Sarah, there's also the matter of our transport. I don't know for certain, not yet, but I strongly suspect that Sur has the TARDIS. An exploitative parasite like him, along with his ruling culture, cannot be allowed access to temporal travel. Cannot and will not!'
Those last four word came back to haunt Sarah very quickly indeed. When she moved back to the heart of the depot, seeking any loose or spare tins of food that might be used to create a giant stew, Davey swiftly moved in alongside her.
'Get you to the Lieutenant,' growled the Scot, emphasising his order with a bayonet affixed to the end of his rifle.
Sarah discovered the Doctor at the end of a bayonet, Corporal Mickleborough's, in attendance on Lieutenant Llewellyn, who cradled a tommy-gun.
'What's going on!' she asked, with a plaintive tone that made both Tam and Davey look accusingly at their officer. Roger looked at Sarah with an unpleasant intensity.
'Miss Smith, I was working around the supply stacks at the W34 level and happened to discover you and Doctor Smith discussing ways to deliver this depot into enemy hands.'
Sarah goggled in frank astonishment at this accusation.
'What! You think we're a couple of German spies!' She turned to spur the Doctor into a rebuttal.
'We're not spies, Lieutenant Llewellyn. And, historically, this depot did fall into German hands. We consequently need to make sure that is what happens, to remain historically correct.'
Oh no! shouted Sarah internally. He's gone and blown the whole thing!
'What do you mean, "did"? "Historically"?' asked Roger. 'Stop talking rubbish!'
'I think we need to reveal our secret, Sarah,' stage-whispered the Doctor.
The Italians, minus Torrevechio, came to listen to the interesting argument going on between the English.
'What secret! How much the Huns are paying you?' snapped Roger, not happy that he wasn't being taken seriously. If that woman wasn't present –
'We come from what you would call the future,' announced the Doctor cheerily. Sarah rolled her eyes in exasperation, worried that the Doctor, in his boundless enthusiasm and ingenousness, was going to get them both locked up.
Roger merely sneered, whilst Davey nodded at Tam and grinned mockingly, tapping the side of his head.
Grumpily, Sarah thrust her hands into her pockets, feeling change from her linen trousers clink about.
'Oh, great, Doctor. Now not only are we German spies, we're insane German spies – oh – hang on a minute.'
She held out a handful of change to Roger, who squinted suspiciously at the coins.
'Go on – take a look at those. Go on, they won't bite!'
Slowly, Roger took one of the coins, shaking his head in resigned dismissal. The look on his face changed to one of consternation.
"Elizabeth II. Ninenteen Eighty One!' he exclaimed. He looked at other coins. "Fifty Pence piece, Silver Jubilee. Nineteen Seventy Seven! What the hell are these?'
'Acceptable coins of the realm,' said the Doctor, calmly.
'She's a Princess, not the Queen,' added Tam, confused. 'Princess Elizabeth.'
'Crowned in 1952,' the Doctor said in an aside.
'You're barmy,' added Davey. His voice lacked surety.
'Who wins the next Cup Final?' asked Tam aggressively.
With a look of icy superiority, the Doctor looked down his patrician nose and dismissed the question.
'I don't follow – football.'
'Never mind that, who wins this damn war?' asked Roger, with feeling.
'Oh, the Allies do,' said the Doctor airily. Roger leaned closer, wanting more detail. Sighing, the Doctor carried on. 'In less than three months the German Army, with contingents from Rumania, Italy and Hungary, will invade the Soviet Union. Before the year is out the United States will be fighting the Germans and Japanese.'
This news fell on disbelieving ears.
'The Jerries and the Ruskies are best pals,' argued Tam.
'They are not!' replied Sarah hotly. 'They avoided fighting each other so they could pick on other countries.'
'What about here in the desert?' asked Dominione, once the speeches were translated.
Imperiously, the Doctor waved his arms.
'Mixed fortunes for both sides. The British and Commonwealth finally win the decisive battle of the desert war at El Alamein and that seals the doom of the Axis in the desert.'
Everyone listening exchanged glances. Albert drew the Professor aside and asked questions about temporal paradoxes, leading into a heated debate.
'El Alamein! That's practically at the gates of Cairo!' objected Roger, his tone as hot as Sarah's of a few seconds before.
'My uncles fought there,' added Sarah, confusing past and present. 'I mean, they will fight there.'
'You're both completely bloody potty,' snarled Roger, 'absolutely round the twist.'
Torrevechio shrugged his shoulders fluidly and spouted a stream of Italian, mimicking an elephant with one arm flapping against his face.
'Quite,' replied the Doctor, drily. 'He says belieiving Sarah and I come from the future is less difficult than believing in column-like creatures who drain life.'
That riposte stopped Roger dead in his rant.
Damn it, they had to be lying! Except why would they make up such a bizarre, not to mention insane, story and expect people to believe it? Then there were those coins. And the nose-goblins. So far, in fact, neither of the two had been caught out in sabotage.
Albert and Templeman were arguing with each other over whether time-travel was possible in theory. Albert held that it was, the Professor denied the slightest chance.
'Suppose we accept your story? What have you come to the past to do, or see, or get?'
That took a little explaining. The Doctor, drawing on historical knowledge rarely needed and a bit rusty in the recall, informed his audience that the Afrika Korps would be here by the beginning of April. If the bio-vores were not dealt with by then, the arrival of thousands of humans would simply provide the aliens with thousands of victims. Nor could they assume the bio-vores would be vulnerable in the future as they were in the past. They might lack the wheel, petroleum and aircraft, but they were still highly advanced; their recent encounters would have been analysed and studied, with countermeasures devised.
Albert and the Professor were still arguing, intensity undimmed.
'Then we have the matter of my transport. My time-machine, you might call it.' Sarah translated for the Italians and Dominione perked up.
'As in the romance by Hubert George Wells?' he asked.
'Mine is considerably more secure, Tenente. Which is a good thing, as I am fairly certain the bio-vores have captured it.'
'Bit careless, that,' said Roger in an undertone. Sarah caught the tone of the words, if not their content, and glared at the officer.
'You said your transport was destroyed,' recalled Davey. 'Back when we found you in the desert.'
'Misplaced, yes, but not destroyed. Attacking the TARDIS does that. Transposes her, I mean.'
The conversation led to a logical conclusion: that the Doctor needed to get his transport back from the bio-vores. He couldn't do this openly, since the aliens might very well kill him on sight. The human – or, as in his case, humanoid – form differed from the bio-vores so much that he couldn't move around openly.
That left sneaking in, which would be equally difficult, except in the case of potential Trojan Horses left out on the sands – the abandoned Sahariana's. Doretti, the Italian radio operator acting as sentry atop the wooden platform, reported that parties of bio-vores would venture from their desert fastness to drag away the desert cars one at a time.
Sheer inevitability, as the Doctor knew. The bio-vores came from a metal-deficient environment. Those Sahariana's represented an incredible free mineral bounty, too much temptation to resist.
Which was why, an hour later, he hung underneath the hot, rusty, oily undercarriage of a Sahariana, roped securely to the exhaust system. The plan was to sneak in, get the TARDIS and sneak out back to Mersa Martuba. Simple, and no need to use the atom bomb just yet. Simple if everything went smoothly.
Sarah joined Doretti on the viewing platform, using the Doctor's own telescope to check on his situation. The car he chose lay almost beyond view from Mersa Martuba, a static speck on the shimmering, baking gravel.
Phew! If I get home safe from this I promise never to moan about a London summer again! she promised herself. Doretti took pity on her and offered his fatigue cap to shade her head. Sarah regarded the dirty, greasy article with misgivings, but felt relieved when the Italian insisted she take it and put it on.
Is it making my head buzz? she wondered. There aren't any flies out here. So what is making that noise?
Doretti, however, manifested an air of confused attention, casting around for the source of the noise Sarah could hear.
'What could that be?' he asked. Sarah shrugged.
'Oh no! It's coming from the dig – have those monsters discovered the Doctor?'
She swept the sands with the telescope, whilst Doretti used binoculars, neither being able to spot aliens.
'Hey!' called Albert from below. 'There's an aircraft!' He pointed out to the east.
A mosquito-like blob rapidly resolved itself into an airplane, a high-wing monoplane that flew low and slow, getting lower by the second. Sliding rapidly down the crude ladder and collecting splinters, Sarah raced over to Albert. The engine sounded ragged and uneven.
Dominione had thought faster than anyone, revving up one of the desert cars and moving across the main route in the depot, throwing up a cloud of dust.
The oncoming plane flew lower and lower, eventually rebounding high into the air several times in false landings before settling into a long, slow taxi amidst huge dust clouds, engine revving and misfiring intermittently. Dominione raced over the gravel after the still-moving aircraft, vanishing into the obscuring cloud. The closer he got, the more obvious signs of damage became; several of the windscreen panels were shattered, the fuselage was rent and both wings sported narrow holes.
Even though the plane had landed, the pilot didn't stop the engine, which continued to send volumes of stinging grit and sand into Dominione's face. Finally the engine coughed violently and died, visibility cleared and the officer drew level with the cockpit.
'Ah! The devil take it!' he muttered, seeing the pilot lying face-down over the controls. 'Those monsters have killed another.'
Not quite, or not yet. The pilot groaned when the cockpit door grated open. Shards of shattered glass, edged like razors, lay on the cockpit floor.
Being as careful as he could, Dominione managed to get the dying man into the Sahariana, getting liberally doused with blood. Sarah and Lieutenant Llewellyn met him at the entrance to the depot, where he stopped.
'The pilot. He was injured by the monsters, and I fear he is dying,' explained the Italian.
Climbing into the Sahariana, Sarah found a canteen of water and tried to wet the pilot's mouth. He was young, handsome and dying in front of her. Blood oozed out of a dozen puncture wounds that ripped holes in his tunic.
'Drink this,' she murmured, biting her lip.
'Une femme?' he whispered, opening his eyes. 'Oui! C'est une bonne femme,' he said, closing his eyes and smiling a little, before gasping once.
That was the last sound he made, and they buried him alongside the recently-dug grave of Sergente Capriccio. Sarah wept openly at the grave, crying into a grubby handkerchief Roger offered her. When her tears finally stopped she felt hollow yet steeled by a bitter determination.
'That's it!' she hissed, after a long series of curses.
'Miss Smith!' exclaimed Albert.
'There were a few words I've never heard in there,' muttered Davey to Tam.
'We get ready to defeat those monsters while the Doctor is gone!'
'He warned us not to attack them,' said Dominione when she translated. He stood in shirtsleeves, having discarded his uniform jacket, stained with the pilot's blood.
'Not attacking. Defending! Lieutenant, I want that tank dragged to face eastwards, with plenty of shells for it.'
Roger considered telling her that the A13 still weighed a hell of a lot even with the engine gone, and with the engine gone you couldn't drive it – he considered, and decided not to. That Miss Smith was a most determined gal when she put her mind to it!
'Then we need a barrier, a method of concealing ourselves. A smokescreen, for instance.'
Davey paged through the collection of flimsies left to them by the Doctor.
'Here we go – smoke candles. Stack E3.'
'There's the Sahariana with the flame-thrower,' reminded Torrevechio.'Ghastly thing!' commented Sarah. 'It needs protection for whoever drives it. Otherwise they'll just drop senseless when those monsters get into range.' She translated.
'Glass doesn't seem to stop the ray guns. Metal did. A solid metal screen would protect the driver,' mused Dominione.
'Very good! Get onto it!' ordered Sarah. 'Then we have a hundred and twenty bottles of liquer that make good substitute petrol bombs. Albert, I want you to go and have a look at the aircraft, see if it can be flown.'
Albert frowned.
'I don't know,' he began. 'It looks hit pretty hard by – that is - oh alright,' he finished weakly, under Sarah's beady glare.
They moved the immobilised A13 by dragging it, attaching two Saharianas and a truck by tow cables, then using the corner of a mud hut for extra leverage. The clutch on the truck burnt out, which was small beer when compared to the benefits of having a fully-protected metal fort to defend with. Both of the tank's engine covers were unbolted and used to make a shield for the Sahariana carrying the flamethrower, one slatted metal plate in front of the driver, the other wired to it and positioned to his left, covering the open flank there. The metal drum containing petrol sat alongside the driver to the right, protecting him from rays on that flank.
'Open at the rear. To retreat, one must select reverse gears,' explained Torrevechio.
Albert swept the Lysander cockpit clear of glass shards, poured sand on the spilt blood and then swept out that sand. He sat in the pilot's seat, uncomfortably aware of the rents torn in it. The engine turned over when he identified and pressed the starter button, running fitfully. Must have copped flak.
Instead of a RAF roundel on the fuselage, the Lysander had a Cross of Lorraine, and the lettering "FAFL".
'Free French Air Force,' translated Albert. "Marengo" had been painted onto the nose in white lettering.
He reported these facts back to Sarah. Essentially, the plane could fly. Not for long, given the uneven way the engine ran. Plus, he hadn't flown in over two years.
'Free French?' asked Sarah. British, Australians, Italians, now there were French in this insane war fought in a baking broiling wilderness.
'Oh aye, a real united nations we are. Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Kiwis, Indians,' Davey told her, unboxing belts of machine gun ammunition.
'Sounds a little like UNIT!' smiled Sarah, finding amusement in small things, since they were all that were amusing at present.
'Eh? Unit of what?'
'No – U – N – I – T. "United Nations Intelligence Taskforce." Sort of world police in the future. Well, provided we deal with these monsters.'
Twenty Four: The IdeaThe Doctor's horizon was very limited – the underside of an Italian Army Sahariana desert car. He didn't know how long it would take before the bio-vores came out to drag the car away, which meant enduring several hours of excruciating dullness, flexing his joints from neck to ankle in a routine to stop boredom or constriction affecting him.
The only diversion that occurred was the sound of an aircraft, getting nearer and closer, until it vanished to the west. After that, nothing happened. Whilst unable to check his watch or the half-hunter in his pocket, this long period of tedium might have been thirty minutes or many hours.
Faint squeaking and rattling warned and wakened him from a half-doze, incredible as he found that. The strange noise grew louder and nearer, until he could see a black chassis on squashed, semi-fluid track pontoons. The sturdy limbs of a dozen bio-vores appeared, dragging thin cabling behind them. These cables were applied to the car's bodywork and, jerkily, the Sahariana was towed slowly off.
Thankfully the vehicle's ground clearance was high, so he suffered only occasional bumps and scratches from the desert floor. This slow progress became slower once the towing bio-vores moved onto loose sand, until they stopped briefly.
Hot as it was underneath the car, it swiftly became even hotter as the two vehicles moved forward again. Sweat beaded on the Doctors bare skin, and a blast of heat akin to an open oven struck his back.
Partially-cooled molten glass! he realised. The bio-vores had paused to allow a barrier of molten glass to cool sufficiently for the Sahariana to cross without sinking or bursting into flames. The sweat poured off him, sizzling when it hit the smooth, radiant surface of the glass; airless and scorching, the underside of the car reflected heat back at him. Stinking fumes from the tyres stung his eyes.
Then, abruptly, the heat vanished. Bare and dimpled sands beneath the Doctor's back replaced the patterned mirror of glass.
Aha! A moat! he realised. A barrier established around the dig to protect the bio-vores and their Infiltration Complex. Using geo-thermal power to keep it molten, directed from their science buildings.
Progress remained slow as the pair of vehicles crept up the inclined sands leading to the sand bowl, then became dangerously erratic on the opposite slope, the Sahariana sliding sideways and running forward.
With a twang! like the parting of a rubber-band, the tow cable snapped, shattering apart into glass strands, allowing the towing tank to rumble downwards in safety, and the Sahariana to end up free-wheeling down the wall of sand, across the level basin floor and into a revetment.
Battered, cut by flying glass and now wrenched, the Doctor hastily struggled to untie the rope holding his wrists to the exhaust pipe. His lessons from Harry came in handy, and by using his muscles, teeth and brute strength he worked free in half a minute, dropping to the ground and crawling away from the machine.
Only just in time – a group of bio-vores came stamping across the sands, to examine their new booty, exclaiming in surprise and awe at the amount of metal present in the alien artefact.
Sneaking away like a silent shadow, the Doctor realised there were far more bio-vores at the dig than he'd calculated for. Hundreds and hundreds – he needed to find the TARDIS immediately or he'd be caught.
And there it was, visible even in the shimmering air, sitting proudly and alone -
With horrible timing, a warning shout went up from a bio-vore patrol, who pointed and called to their colleagues. The Doctor stopped trying to sneak and took to his heels at high speed, hoping deperately to stay at liberty long enough to locate his time machine.
A few glass darts were fired at him, only for the firing to cease immediately: there were too many bio-vores present to have loose shards flying around. For the same reasom no stunners were used. Agility, a swiftness of pace and skill at rugby enabled him to duck and weave for over a minute as the ailens chased and tried to corrall him.
Coming to a dead stop, the Doctor was hit by a solid knot of bio-vores, bowled over and pounced upon. For all that, what really caused him to feel dismayed was the absence of the TARDIS, no longer resident on the platform.
It was gone.
Lord Excellency Sur gloated as he stepped off the trans-mat platform, looking behind him at the big blue box.
Physically transcendentant! A five dimensional object huge on the inside, compact on the outside. Alien, far beyond the technology of the aliens resident on Target World Seventeen.
With a short start of surprise, he realised the detachment on guard duty at the trans-mat here on Homeworld was far larger than normal. And one of his peers, Lord Excellency Url, stood in attendance at the control console.
'Thank you for deigning to wait on me,' chaffed Sur, swirling his cape. 'What honour do I have to thank for your presence?'
Url stared unamusedly at the new arrival and his big blue box.
'Whilst you have been – apparently acquiring property – whilst you have been away, we have been enduring trouble with the Farmers, Sur.'
Sur stopped his theatrical cape-twirling and goggled at Url. Trouble with the Farmers? Those lackeys? They were bred to be meek and submissive fodder and fodder raisers. What kind of trouble could they make!
'What kind of trouble?' he asked, gesturing his escort away to find transport for the cuboid trophy.
'Violence. Killing. Refusal to provide algae quotas.'
Sur bent backwards in sincere surprise. He couldn't speak for whole seconds.
'All happening in your bailiwick, Sur. Consequently, you are being held responsible.'
'Me! This is intrigue plotted by a rival, nothing more!' he blustered.
'The Farmers have killed Warriors, Sur!' snapped Url. 'Warriors. This is unheard of!'
Sur stomped off the platform to the console, genuinely unsettled at the news from Url, if it was in fact news and not some subterfuge. He shuddered to think of the potential threat to civilisation from rebellious Farmers, who constituted the greater part of Homeworld's population. The bodyguards around Url discreetly prevented him from closing the gap, until Url waved them away.
'We need to discuss this threat, Url,' began Sur. 'On the brink of a whole new world to exploit and enslave, this threat cannot be allowed to divert us. Cannot. Will not!'
Pinioned between two bio-vores, the Doctor felt that his life could be measured in minutes, at best.
That means the chaps at Mersa Martuba might very well be tempted to use the "Porcupine Bomb", he commiserated with himself. Which was not a good thing. He'd built the wretched thing as a last resort, assuming that he'd be there to decide what constituted a last resort. He wanted to avoid blind bashing with sheer firepower.
Well, if the TARDIS wasn't here on Earth, it must be at the other end of the trans-mat, on Wastelandworld. Probably with that pompous parasitical windbag Sur rubbing his hands – or analogues thereof – over acquiring it. Damn, he came so close to getting back to it!
One of the aliens dragged him around, to throw him at the feet of another bio-vore, one hung about with various equipments and a helmet, too.
'Small alien,' said the well-accoutured bio-vore. 'You are associated with previous incursions here at the Infiltration Complex. Also sabotage on Homeworld - '
'That's not the half of it,' interrupted the Doctor. 'I own a large blue box your aristocracy have stolen from me.'
For a second utter silence reigned across the roasting sands and baking alien architecture.
'You!' said a bio-vore, exhibiting what must be amusement, since they didn't bend backwards for the non-verbal surprise gesture.
'Completely true. I don't suppose many of you are familiar with dimensionally-transcendental, polymorphic, temporal-mechanic architecture?'
The prospect of immediate death receded slightly as the bio-vore strung about with bits and pieces stood back to consult with others.
'You are clearly not one of the local species,' declared the bio-vore in a tone that smacked of saving-face. 'Hence you will be sent to Homeworld instead of being Eviscerated.'
'Ah yes. Half a loaf and all that,' murmured the Time Lord ironically. A cuff from the bio-vore sent him reeling across the gritty gravel floor of the desert basin.
'Less insolence, alien lifeform!' boomed the bio-vore. 'Get on the trans-mat platform.'
Standing on the massive disc that constituted what Professor Templeman had dubbed "The Dias", the Doctor chewed his lip and wondered if his subconscious had conspired to get him up here.
His splendid isolation lasted only a few seconds, since four bio-vores dragged a Sahariana up the approach ramp and onto the platform, to stand next to him.
'Hello there!' he greeted them, beaming in entirely inappropriate fashion. 'I'm called The Doctor.'
The four aliens looked intently at him. They were without the equipment that nearly every other bio-vore wore.
'Let me guess – you are the Homeworld peasantry?'
Eight eyes looked at him with interested incomprehension.
'The opposite of the Warriors? You harvest and produce the algae cultures that sustain life on Wastelandworld?'
With no warning – he'd been concentrating elsewhere when the alert sirens wailed – he was suddenly on a platform elsewhere with semi-circle of armed bio-vores watching him. Him and the party that arrived with him. Twin cooler suns and warmer winds played across his body.
'You are the alien escapee,' hissed one bio-vore, his mouth covered by a great spade-like hand.
'That's me. I broke free. So may you,' agreed the Doctor. 'Metaphorically.'
A reception party of Warrior bio-vores strode across the platform to take possession of the Sahariana. They shoved the other bio-vores aside without any pause for thought, leading to an uncomfortable argument between the two parties. The Warriors far outnumbered the four menial workers, who nevertheless stood up to the bullies.
Looking on, the Doctor realised he had arrived at a critical point in the revolution taking place in bio-vore culture.
Matters reached a crux when one of the Warriors, indulging in what they had done to Farmers innumerable since recorded history, tried to Eviscerate one Farmer. The leaching proboscis lanced out –
- to be severed at mid-point by the Doctor with a great razor-edged shard of glass discovered in his pocket (a remnant from the shattered glass towing cable), swept down in a slashing movement straight from a karate text book.
The mutiliated Warrior stumbled backwards, screaming thinly and clutching at the stump waving bloodily on his face. With an unexpected reprieve, all four Farmer bio-vores suddenly raced from the platform, bowling over several Warriors. Glass darts flew, orders were shouted and two Farmer corpses were dragged back to the trans-mat complex minutes later.
'You! You again!' barked an unpleasantly familiar voice from the platform's control console.
'Ah, hello, Sur, old chap. How's tricks?' asked the Doctor in an entirely assumed nonchalant voice. He had remained perfectly still whilst the pursuit went on.
'Rather a lively alien, for one supposedly dead,' added another caped bio-vore standing next to Sur. 'Perhaps they have the secrets of resurrection, eh?'
'Kill him! Kill him now!' shouted Sur, with ferocious emphasis. His bio-vore compatriot moved backward a step, keeping eyes on Sur whilst still speaking.
'Alive and well and spreading revolt, sufficient for the punishment,' said the bio-vore, suddenly shooting out it's proboscis. Lord Excellency Sur, having failed his peers, was deemed liable to pay the ultimate sacrifice.
Sur felt the paralysing impact of Url's proboscis, hitting between his scapulae, the traditional killing point. The energy drain was instant and enormous, preventing any last speeches or wishes or thoughts apart from that last one –
what will happen to the big blue box?
For all that Sur was a loathsome political parasite, the Doctor felt a touch of horror when he saw the alien reduced to a lifeless bundle of shrivelled fibres, which drifted away in the winds. Another victim of the foul civilisation that flourished here on Wastelandworld!
Lord Excellency Url wasted very little time over the dessicated remains of Sur. The Lord had been a buffoon, managing to lose both an alien captive and a heretic and allowing discontent amongst the slave population of his littoral. Farmers killing Warriors! The very idea! As if something like that could ever occur in a littoral not rigorously monitored and maintained, like his own.
Now, there remained the peculiar matter of that alien, the alien supposedly in control of the big blue box that Sur took so much trouble to acquire. What did the technical Warriors babble? "Dimensionally transcendental". An artefact uncountable millenia beyond the technologies of either Homeworld or Target World Seventeen. So, the alien must be likewise.
'Fetch me the alien!'
Faced with a alien similar in comportment and appearance, to Sur, the Doctor didn't mince words.
'Your time is coming to an end! You and your artificially-created slave culture, with it's legacy of waste and blame-avoidance.'
Lord Excellency Url sneered in best bio-vore style, which merely seemed like a sneeze to the Doctor.
'Threaten away, alien. You will only live as long as we need you to explain the secrets of your puzzle-box.'
'Ha!' sneered the Doctor, a grimace that merely seemed like a palsied hiccough to Url. 'Ha!' Witty or wise response failed him, and he repeated the sneer whilst thinking. 'Ha! Ha! and – er – ha, again.'
Url made a gesture, indicating that the small alien ought to be removed to a place of confinement. Inspired by this sentence, the Doctor suddenly joined a mass of interconnected dots.
'And – and I know why you and Sur wanted Sorbusa executed as a heretic. Sorbusa and his comrades. Nothing to do with heresy!'
Url snorted in amused contempt, picking up his own woven cape.
'It's because they knew you from five thousand years ago, isn't it?'
Lord Excellency Url's talons scrabbled nervously on the cape, sliding uselessly across the woven strands of glass.
'You and Sur and the other aristocrats were those responsible for destroying this world's entire ecosphere all those thousands of years ago, weren't you? But you decided to avoid the blame, and instead live off the life energy of your fellow creatures. Didn't you!'
Url felt a great weakness hit him, centering on his stomach and knees. How, how, how in the howling hell of the devil's winds could this alien know such things!
'Oh yes,' continued the Doctor, feeling all the pieces fall into place like a computer-controlled jigsaw. 'Avoid trying to solve the problems, avoid coming up with solutions, try and export the failure to other worlds with your Infiltration Complexes. Make sure your own failure doesn't get analysed or discussed or even mentioned. Ensure that you and yours survive by creating a culture of slaves, slaves bred to be exploited and killed.'
Url couldn't speak, his throat choked with emotion, hatred and bile and fear. Instead he stretched out an arm, pointing, clenching and unclenching the talons.
'Kill me if you like,' continued the Doctor. 'But you have sown the seeds of your own destruction.'
'SILENCE!' shrieked Url, hurting his vocal cords with the violence of his shout. 'Guards! Guards, take this alien to the Place of Execution!'
Perhaps half the Warrior detachment on duty moved to detain the transgressing alien. To Url's creeping apprehension, fully half the detachment did not move at all. In fact, they seemed to be talking to each other. Discretion ruled that he also avoid being seen by the detachment, if they were so lary about obeying him.
How had that alien known the truth about events so far in the past! mused Url, sliding away from the trans-mat platform carefully. He had been part of the authority who failed to prevent ecological collapse, as had Sur. The policy decision taken then had been to maintain a supervisory watch over bio-vore society, to keep their civilisation going until other resources could be discovered. The detachments sent off to other worlds were deemed heretical because they didn't – couldn't - understand the rationale behind the new culture grown up in their absence.
With an uncharacteristic twinge of conscience, Url wondered briefly if he and the other scientists-become-aristocrats had gotten it wrong.
Regardless, he intended to see that small alien Thedoctor strung up at the execution plaza, ready to divulge the secrets of Sur's big blue box.
'Faster! Faster! Don't you know you're on a tight schedule!' called the Doctor to his captors, who dragged him over the dead grey sands of Homeworld to the Place of Execution.
One of them hit their captive across the back of the head, leaving the Doctor wincing and with a big bruise to contemplate.
The Place of Execution was grim, grey and unpopulated. A big shallow granite bowl, with a semi-circle of terraces rising up around it for any audiences who might care to watch. A circle of glossy black glass poles stood erect in the middle of the granite basin, with tell-tale piles of organic debris strewn around their bases.
'No last request granted?' asked the Doctor as he was secured to a pole with what looked like liquorice bootlaces.
'No,' grunted the bio-vore doing the tying. 'Except to say that if you struggle, the restraints will cut off your limbs.'
'Oh, I see. Ultra-thin silicon dioxide filament? Perfect cutting tool. Especially for organic surgical purposes, don't' you agree?'
The detachment retired to the first tier of benches, to sit in ghastly judgement of his demise, judged the Doctor. More bio-vores joined them, with a late arrival striding across the granite basin to the Doctor; the same bio-vore who had shouted so loudly back at the trans-mat.
'Is this the best you could do? Really, I'm almost insulted,' joked the captive Time Lord. 'I mean, an important prisoner like myself, with the -'
'Silence!' shouted Url, glancing at his guard detachment with worry. He couldn't be sure that they were all on his side any more, not with how things were going, not with humble, servile Farmers daring to kill. 'I have come to pronounce a sentence of death!'