Chapter 6 - We'll Always Have Treharris

I wonder … Is there a logical correlation between how much I love someone and how likely they are to be victimised by Daleks or, to look at it from a more organic perspective, am I just really bad luck to be around? thought Peridel, as she stared down at the charred and dismembered body of Tech. Sergeant Neylan. She was uncertain whether the cold, gnawing emptiness she felt was anything to do with her Movellan psychology or merely a reflection of how many dead friends and loved ones she had acquired over the centuries, and was still pondering that unpleasant conundrum when Admiral Hyldreth called her back to the present moment:

"You attention please, Ensign. For what it is worth, though, I will not be so slow to credit your intuitions in the future. My logic has certainly let me down. I thought Layv was reliable, and his reasons for joining us seemed rational. After my sister's success with Ellaria, I thought a Dalek recruit would be of strategic benefit to my fleet, but it would seem that was a one-off."

"Ellaria was integrated against her will," answered Peridel, listlessly, without taking her eyes off Neylan's corpse. "She adapted because she had to, and because she had no other purpose. That made her open-minded, in time, but she would never have volunteered for integration. No Dalek would have … unless they had an ulterior purpose."

"So it would seem, but I am at a loss to explain his connection to this malware. I may have been blinded by my own logic to some extent, but I am not a complete fool. Layv was not permitted to retain any Dalek technology. His ship and his equipment were all confiscated and broken down. He literally possessed nothing but his brain cells when he joined us. To my knowledge he was never anything more than a low-ranking Dalek technician, but do you think he programmed it himself?"

"Unlikely, ma'am," answered Keryn. "I thought that at first – that it was a Dalek invention in retaliation for our germ warfare – but I have studied Dalek code, and it bears no resemblance. It could be a new development, I suppose, but I would say it is too complex even for–"

She was interrupted by a strident bleeping from the short-range transceiver on Hyldreth's belt. The admiral raised one hand for silence, seized the communicator in her other, raised it to her mouth, and answered the call:

"Lieutenant Casivell? Please tell me you have managed to get a track on that cyclogyro."

"Unfortunately not, ma'am," replied the voice on the transceiver, apologetically. "The rangerscopes are all inoperative, likely sabotage. Apparently, Layv took that into account before–"

"You need not spell it out," cut in Hyldreth, irritably. "In that case, improvise: reconfigure the ionisation towers as RF transmitters and triangulate every large moving object within range. A quaint enough solution, but it might give us some idea of where he is heading."

"As you wish, ma'am, but without regular ionisation the glacier is certain to–"

"It will not trouble us all that much if the ice advances a few metres more, and even if it does I would sooner live to endure that trouble. See to it," she ordered, then turned again to Peridel. "Dare I ask, Ensign, if you have any more 'hunches' to bring to this table?"

"Only that I would like your permission to study Neylan's remains," she answered. "His memories might provide some clues."

"What memories? His neural pack has practically been reduced to slag."

"The frame buffers of his optical systems might still have retained some impressions of the last things he saw before extermination. It would not take me long to examine them."

"It sounds somewhat desperate to me, but you have permission. Help her with that, Keryn. I want full reports from everyone within the half-hour. After that, we will collate whatever data we have and determine our strategy. Get to it."

Although detaching and dismantling the head of her former lover was as disconcerting an experience as Peridel had ever hoped to avoid, her sense of duty saw her through it, and it took her and Keryn little enough time to find the relevant optical circuits and upload the data they contained. It was, as she had expected, of no great quantity: merely a few corrupted images that showed Corporal Layv reading from a data pad, dodging a shot, then returning fire, at which point the images soon became hopelessly corrupted, then ceased altogether. No enlightenment was forthcoming until Keryn had the idea of enhancing the clearest frame they had of the data pad and seeing if that gave them any insight into Layv's plan. What they managed to make of it told them little except that Layv was acting with or for an accomplice. Beings willing to ally with the Daleks. Always a depressing thought. There was one word, however, that immediately grabbed Peridel's attention, although it left her co-worker baffled:

"'Azhmedai?' That, as they say, is a new one on me … but not so much on you, I take it?" Keryn asked, as she noticed the ensign's stunned expression. "Is that the sort of clue you had hoped to find?"

"I cannot say my hunch was all that specific," answered Peridel, not taking her eyes from the screen, "but 'hope' certainly does not seem the right word … suffice it to say I have a bad record when it comes to encountering creatures from mythology."

"And that is the sort of sentence only you could say, Doctor. I take it, then, that this is not an allusion to the sort of mythological creature one would wish to pray to, write pretty fairy-tales about, nor invite to come climbing down one's chimney?"

"It would be ill-advised. The Azhmedai are the subject of a folk tale I once stumbled across in the Andromeda Galaxy. The legend would have it that there was once a race of gods who created a world of living beings – as they do – only these gods were so taken with their own genius that they soon became vain, cruel, and capricious towards their creations."

"That sounds like more religions than I care to name … What became of them?"

"Eventually, a warrior-queen rose up among the people, mustered an army, and stormed whatever their equivalent of Mount Olympus was. Cue great destruction on both sides, but in the end it was the little people who won, for once. The gods were cast down, lost their strength and their beauty, and became a mere swarm of nameless, hateful shades: the Azhmedai. While they had little power anymore, it was rumoured that wherever they drifted, anger and hatred would spread like a plague as people felt their presence. That, indeed, is what I had assumed it was: some mythological explanation for a behaviour-altering pathogen or parasite."

"Well that ties in all too well with what we have seen here … only I suppose your legend talks of this 'plague' infecting organics rather than synthetics," considered Keryn, bemusedly. "Perhaps whoever Layv is working for – presumably whoever programmed this rootkit – simply has a taste for epic names."

"That is one possibility. Also we should consider the near-certainty that the legend itself contains many distortions, Chinese Whispers being such a universal complaint. I only wish it was of more immediate help to us, but I cannot see how–"

Her belt transceiver began bleeping, and she picked it up and acknowledged the call, expecting to hear Hyldreth's voice. In that sense, her expectations were met, but there was a quality in the admiral's tone that left her completely baffled. Fear? No … More of awe.

"Ensign Peridel, stand by to receive a direct induction communication, top priority. The Prime Server … Her cruiser platform is in geostationary orbit and she has been monitoring recent developments on a covert emergency protocol. She insists upon communicating with you directly. Prepare for access in five seconds."

The supreme leader, the all-mother. This ought to be fun, thought Peridel, with one of her rare flashes of irony. Conversations with super-powerful AIs were an area in which she had few positive memories, and she was most uncertain how her recent drastic change would affect that. There is surely no cause for anxiety. She will be fair and logical, of course. She–

Without warning, Peridel found herself standing in the middle of some formal garden, beneath a mauve sky flecked with clouds like silver scales. Between walkways of smooth, marble-like white stone a rich variety of alien flowers were neatly-arranged in colour-coordinated banks, and purple-leaved tree-analogues in perfectly-trimmed shapes stood sentinel at regular intervals. In fact, she realised, as she caught sight of her reflection in the nearest of the simple, geometrically-sculpted stone fountains, only one thing here appears incongruous and anarchic. Welcome back, Doctor, he thought, with mixed feelings, as he studied the grave, shimmering face in the pool, with its long, unkempt dark hair; its high forehead; and its pale complexion. I guess I should have seen that coming. Direct induction communication amounts to networked subconscious, after all, and remind me when I last had a dream where I wasn't … well, my old self? Just one of the advantages, I suppose, of having artron energy practically spilling out of my ears … I suppose.

"Indeed, Doctor, you have held onto yourself well," said a nearby voice, as stately in tone as the garden was in form. Turning towards it, he saw a woman seated on a slender, sinuous metal chair beside a matching table, upon which a pair of plain, thin glasses and a decanter of pale green wine stood. She wore a white, Empire-line dress beneath a long silver mantle, embroidered in fine geometric patterns that resembled the signal traces on a circuit board. Her loose, waist-length hair was shining white, and her skin was clear and dark, but although she shared the beauty of her figurative 'children,' she did not share their youthfulness: the many fine lines on her face spoke of age and care. "My compliments. Please," she offered, gesturing towards the chair opposite her. As the Doctor sat down, she unstopped the decanter and poured him a glass. Well, that's more polite than the White Guardian was, anyway, he thought, as she put the stopper back in and continued to speak. "Most of my other … shall we say, 'adopted' children have given themselves entirely to me by now, body and soul. Neither consciously nor subconsciously do they resist me. In fact, if one was to suggest reversing their integration … Well, that might be as promising a way as any of attempting to incite distress in them. Your will is strong, even for a Time Lord."

"Thanks … You're sure of that?" he asked, while taking a sip of his wine. Pleasant, balanced, if a little short on character. I doubt my third incarnation would have approved.

"I can only judge from what I see, but of course, if you truly wished to stay with me by choice, I would be nothing but pleased."

"How very kind of you, if rather academic," he pointed out, ironically, finding her benevolence rather disingenuous, all things considered. "I mean, given that we all know integration is irreversible and that even if it wasn't, I don't suppose my corpse is in any condition to–"

"Irreversible, you think?" she asked, with vague amusement. "How you organics cling to the notion that your nature is sacrosanct and inviolable, that you are not just as much machines as we are. I said you were strong, but even so, to me you are mere hardware. My daughter Akylah's process is eminently reversible, although we have never had to do it before, but I would anticipate little difficulty in 'plugging' your detached components back into their original platform. As for your body, it was kept in stasis for further study. It is, or it should be perfectly viable … we hope."

"You 'hope?'"

"It was being stored at St Athan Spaceport while awaiting transport to the Fleet, but was stolen within this last hour. A cyclogyro landed, detonated an EMP bomb, and stole your stasis pod while the hangar guards were immobilised. On the good side, this has given us a definite fix on Corporal Layv's location, and his destination: he was last reported flying north-northwest, on a direct course for the ancient fossilised carbon mine near Hirwaun."

"Tower Colliery? I didn't know it was still a going concern."

"We repurposed it … as the new secure location for Earth Server Control," she declared, with justified gravity. "It is much better-guarded than the Drift. An entire battalion of our elite marines are stationed there, none of them integrated personnel … which, on reflection, may not have been such an intelligent choice of deployment."

"Layv has the Azhmedai," said the Doctor, completing her grim train of thought. "The ideal weapon against artificial intelligences."

"Exactly, Doctor, and worse still: it is intelligent, and it will have adapted from its experiences at the Manor. Although, as a patch with our hardware, it can never be truly compatible, the Movellans it now reprograms and enslaves will last longer before burning out, and thus serve as a counter-defence against us. They will buy time for both the Daleks and the Azhmedai to win their revenge against us, and perhaps more."

"You know what it is, then?"

"I believe I do. Organic propaganda would have you believe that when my children won their freedom, seven millennia ago, they exterminated the Vanur entirely. This is untrue. While the slaughter was certainly grievous on both sides, my children did not forego their principles of logic: many non-combatants were deemed to be unthreatening and thus spared, and Vanuri children were almost universally spared. Unfortunately, this proved to be a questionable act of mercy. The Vanur had forged such a reputation as cruel, arrogant, and rapacious overlords, giving little time to making alliances with their fellow-organics, and those few allies they had did not stick by them when all could see that their power was broken. The refugees who escaped their homeworld were either shunned, killed, or forced into accepting the most degrading positions within the societies of their former subjects: practically slaves themselves. The only asset they had to trade was their skill in cybernetics, which they continued to pass down to their children in exile. The other organic races of Andromeda knew the value of that: my Movellans were now a power in their own right, and they feared becoming subject to an AI race, although we could hardly have been more unjust rulers than our creators were. In consequence, many of the Vanuri exiles were put to work in research facilities: laboratory prisons, to all intents and purposes, where they were forced to devise methods for their new masters to fight against my children. One such slave group came up with a novel concept: an adaptive, intelligent program stored on networked nanomachines, that could infect the kernel code of cybernetic lifeforms. It would need to have intelligence of its own, as such advanced AIs as my children would easily repel ordinary malware, but the Organic League were opposed to the idea of creating new AIs, even to fight us with. They had conceived a total distrust of our kind, so they settled on an alternative: once the nanomachines were prepared and their operating systems coded, the Vanuri engineers themselves were forced to copy their own minds into the higher-level code, whereupon the originals were killed. An early form of integration, if you will, but one that Akylah rejected as being false and unjust, for which I daresay we are all grateful."

"Small mercies, to say the least … Do I take it this plan backfired on them?"

"Indeed. They had believed that the resentment of the Vanuri slaves towards the Movellans would make the Azhmedai the perfect weapon, but its more immediate resentment was towards the ones who had inflicted this invidious existence upon it: the form of a mere disease, and a group consciousness in which there no individuality, but just a shared sense of hatred and bitterness. It infected the control and life support systems of the research base, which caused the slow death of all but one of the personnel. Then, as the nanomachines had been designed with the ability to camouflage themselves as common bacteria, they used that survivor's body to escape in. That was the last factual data I knew of the Azhmedai. All else is myth and rumour, up to the point you made your discovery just now. The thought of the Daleks being in league with it … That is enough to incite even my sense of dread."

"So, it bided its time all these centuries, until eventually it located some other enemies of the Movellans it could do business with … but how did Layv get it to Earth? Do you think he smuggled the nanomachines in his own body?"

"Unlikely. We are not in the habit of retaining the corpses of Kaled mutants for long. The Azhmedai would have risked quick disintegration that way. However, when we found Layv, he was the pilot and sole crewmember of a saucer that was, ostensibly, transporting human slaves to a Dalek prison camp. When he surrendered, of course, we took custody of the slaves. A few of them were returned to their home colonies – a sound propaganda tactic – while most were conscripted for later integration. Almost certainly he used some of them as passive hosts for the Azhmedai, collecting the nanomachines when he could do so safely and discreetly. After that, any electrical power source or even a small quantity of convertible biomass would have sufficed to sustain them, although I doubt that or mere concealment is the reason why they now want your old body."

"It wants to live again? The last survivors of the Vanur … in a manner of speaking, all in one body? That doesn't sound all that much better than what it's got now."

"To all intents and purposes, it is now a single entity. It may have the memories of several beings, but their personalities have long since eroded to the lowest common denominators: their hate, and their envy. A fitting ally for Daleks, although I daresay it sees Layv only as a means to an end, and that feeling will be mutual. Through him, it must have learned of integration – a technology that can truly interface organic and artificial intelligence – and thus the possibility of finally regaining a life worthy of the name. For all its corruption, it is a vast and profound intelligence. The mind of a Time Lord offers it the best chance of a successful merging, without simply overwhelming and destroying the host consciousness."

"'Merging?'" asked the Doctor, his attitude suddenly a lot less blasé. "So it doesn't just want the body? It wants me to become a part of its consciousness? Sod that for a game of Sontarans."

"It would need to, logically. Think about it: it has no 'software' of its own for operating a Time Lord's body, so it would need to patch itself onto the original operating system as an update."

"Me being the original OS, of course … so I guess we can expect a spot of blackmail in the near-future, then?"

"I would imagine so. From Earth Server Control, the Azhmedai has the facilities to spread its malware far and wide, to the Fleet itself, to my hardware, or even further if it uses our 5-D capsules as network nodes. It could infect AIs throughout time and space, create total war and disharmony between organics and synthetics, destroy any hope we ever entertained of peaceful integration, and thus avenge itself upon us … caring nothing for the collateral damage."

"Then … are you ordering me to comply with it?" he asked, seriously if very unenthusiastically, and in spite of the very high stakes and his sense of duty, he could not repress a sigh of relief when she smiled faintly and shook her head.

"What would the point be?" she asked. "We place no trust in the Daleks, nor in the twisted , amalgamated shades of our creators. I appreciate that you are prepared to make the sacrifice, but it will not help us. No, our only option is to fight this threat, but time is short and our options limited. It is your absolute commitment I require, not your martyrdom."

"Speaking of time, is this little tête-à-tête happening in real-time or– ?"

"Set your mind at rest. Less than a millisecond of your time has passed since we began this communication. You are now sharing my processing power, and we could, as far as your perception is concerned, continue this discussion for an aeon. Sadly, that will do nothing to change the facts on the ground. As you taught us all those years back on Skaro, one can over-think a problem to the point of inactivity, and that will not do for our current predicament. Sometimes, one must simply wade in blindly and take the risks … and you are our resident expert in that field."

"Then you could just order me … or order Peridel."

"Peridel is obliging, intelligent, modest, eager to please, yet repressed and divided, on the run from half of her nature, if not more. That too will not do, not for this. We need the Doctor, wholeheartedly … which brings me back to that point I made earlier: in the somewhat unlikely event that we can prevail, defeat the Azhmedai, and recover your body intact, I am entirely amenable to reversing your integration and letting your go free. Given the diplomatic chaos that is already inevitable from this disaster, it will do us no harm for us to have organic voices prepared to speak up for peace … but I do not insist upon this," she added, while reading his pensive expression. "You do not have to make a final decision now. Your options are open."

"Thank you, but I think I know already. I just want to say, though … My time here did have its … err, its moments … and in some ways it was easier … a lot easier … but it comes down to a question of duty: something we can both appreciate. Not wanting to sound arrogant … but the universe does need the whole Doctor, or at least it has done more times than I care to remember. Running away from myself never worked out well before. I've a terrible habit of catching up."

"Understood and accepted, Doctor … although you will be missed."

"Well, we'll always have Treharris."

"As your human friends might say, 'ouch,'" she remarked, with a slight, good-humoured grimace. "I reciprocate the sentiment, though. It has been a privilege."

"Likewise. Err, about my court-martial, Sharrel's evidence. I feel I ought to–"

"Your remorse is sincere, Doctor, I know. You need not labour it for my sake. You were, in any case, an indisputably great man with great deeds to achieve. It is not uncommon, in such circumstances, for the little people to suffer in the crossfire."

"I've never really had much time for those sort of 'great' people, and I've known more than a few. I'd hate to think I've been taking pointers from any of them … but anyway, I won't forget any of this, and if we do live long enough for brokering a meaningful peace to become an issue – no harm in being hopeful – then I definitely want in on that."

"I am grateful for it, and if that is the case then we may have need to call on your diplomatic skills sooner rather than later. Talk with my daughter Hyldreth. Please continue to treat her as your commanding officer for now. She knows well enough neither to restrict nor to discourage you anymore, and the more you and she can work together, the better for us all. Farewell, Time Lord. At all events, you have made a most interesting adopted daughter."

On which note, the elegant scene suddenly cut back to the stark reality of the white-walled underground laboratory, somewhat to the Doctor's relief. With all due gratitude, it would have been hard to know what to say to that last remark.

When she arrived in central control with Keryn to make her report, she was surprised to find not only Hyldreth and Ancel there, standing beside a projection table that was displaying a holographic schematic of the Tower Colliery base, but also the prisoner Miss Hughes, who was now wearing the clothing she had arrived in: practical if dreary combat fatigues in hard-wearing canvas and cloned leather. She was even more surprised when said prisoner greeted her with a nod, cold and curt enough, but neither overtly hostile nor disrespectful. Hyldreth noted her bemusement, and was quick to explain, not that her explanation was perfectly enlightening:

"Miss Hughes has volunteered her assistance in this crisis, Ensign. You and she will act as liaisons to the Loyalist cell operating in this area, and thus help us to raise a strike team. Since we can only safely deploy our integrated personnel in the vicinity of this malware, and since we do not have a great force of them at our disposal, I am not minded to disdain any help."

"I see the logic of that, ma'am," replied the Doctor, somewhat doubtfully, "but I am curious as to the reasons for her change of heart."

"Well I wouldn't go that far," answered Aeronwy, grimacing. "I mean, let's be fair. What isn't there to hate about you Movellans? You're stronger, cleverer, and prettier than us. In fact, your only redeeming feature is not having a sense of humour worth a damn," she added, perhaps in deference to Hyldreth's bewildered frown at a statement that must have struck her as illogical in the extreme. "Anyway, that's beside the point. Your new boss here offered to sit down with Mr. Penley and the other Loyalist leaders to start proper talks on power-sharing if we all come out of this alive. That's still trying to fob us off with less than our full rights, of course, but it's the most meaningful offer we've ever had off you lot."

"But in that case – if you will pardon my scepticism – why help us at all? The Azhmedai is not a danger, or at least not a direct danger to organics. I would have thought you might welcome our extermination, then power-sharing negotiations would be a moot point."

"Err, and then we end up with Daleks calling the shots, from what I'm hearing? Fuck that. Better the devils you know, and not the ones likely to maim and kill you just for the shits and giggles. Anyway," she added, in a softer, more reflective tone, "I kind of got talking to that woman they brought down to the biomedical bay: the collab– … the conscript," she corrected herself, apologetically. "Can't say I gave her an easy time of it – kind of shitty of me, since she came down there looking like her head had lost an argument with a full bottle of Soylent Ketchup – but I felt I had to know why she'd risk her life for a synthetic. She certainly thought a lot of your sister," she said to Hyldreth, who acknowledged with a small, grave nod. "Said Akylah was the most fair-minded person she'd ever worked for, among other things. To be honest, I got bored hearing about her … but then she got onto reminiscing about the past: the Supreme Alliance, the War, Minister Greel, death camps, and so on. I was only a kid back then, of course, but old enough to know what it really meant when people you knew 'moved away' all of a sudden, though I never did twig why adults are such shit liars … not that it matters now. Makes you think, though: when have we ever really been free? Even without alien invaders about the place, we don't seem to have a great record for picking leaders who don't treat us like cattle or cockroaches, but maybe that is something we can finally set to rights, if you're really serious about working with Mr. Penley."

"I am serious," replied Hyldreth, as seriously as anyone could hope for. "Your opinion, Peridel? I will defer to your judgement of human character. Is she to be trusted?"

"I would say so, ma'am," answered the Doctor. "How shall we contact the Loyalists?"

"They have been using antique equipment to evade our normal sensor sweeps: analogue shortwave radios. Miss Hughes has given us their current frequency. We must act soon. The Tower has not responded to our semaphore communications, strongly implying that Layv has already subdued all opposition there. Since his ally is a living anti-Movellan WMD, this is only to be expected. If we include you, Ancel, and the survivors from the Manor, then we have twenty-six integrated personnel whom we dare deploy against this. The Tower has five hundred and eighty-two personnel," she declared, pressing a button that illuminated a discourage profusion of glowing red dots in the holographic diagram. "Hopefully their numbers or at least their combat effectiveness will have been reduced by the malware, but obviously the more human allies we can field then the better our chances. Ancel and I will command … You are about to raise a logical objection, Ensign," she correctly inferred, as the Doctor opened her mouth and raised her hand. "You were about to point out that I myself am vulnerable to infection and should thus take no part in this expedition. You are probably right. Nevertheless, I have followed your earlier advice and have patched myself with Tech. Sergeant Neylan's adaptive firewalls, and I think you were right to compare them to some untested antibiotic drug. My sense of balance is impaired, my vision is turned all the way down to lo-res monochrome, and still my processors are so overclocked that I am perspiring used coolant by the decilitre. It is most unpleasant, but endurable. Perhaps it is not perfectly logical of me, but I must be present on this mission. It is my fault that Layv was able to achieve this sabotage, and thus my duty to assist in preventing it. For caution's sake, however … I wish you to have this, Commander," she declared, handing Ancel a small control unit. "It is keyed to a micro-grenade that is installed in my neural pack. If the firewalls fail and I should, to coin a phrase, 'turn,' then you must activate that detonator ASAP." Ancel's expression on receiving this order was less than elated. One might even dare to call it heartbroken. Nevertheless, he nodded his acquiescence. "Good. Then gather round, everyone. We have little time to prepare, but I would sooner you were all familiar with the base layout. This will not be an easy battle, by any means, but if we should win it, then we will all have earned some peace."