Chapter Three

Yahs watched the man watch the Time Lord. The Lord had self-ejected from the Puppeteer's Scaffold as if birthed. As he exited the monstrous metal womb, his thin, wet frame tumbled down in a lacy gob of mercury like some macabre marionette, and the energetic connects evacuated the flesh of his back in red upward-climbing streaks. Strands of the silver fluid snaked backward into their recesses, and then the ship began to shake with a monstrous rattle as tiny bolts and cogs and gravity-less globules of mercury jiggled free of their holdings and flew across the room.

The man called Jack was clutching the Time Lord as though he were a newly-hatched nymph; Then Jack turned, looked blankly in Yahs's direction, and climbed into the crèche the Time Lord had vacated. The Time Lord remained still on the grates, just as the man had lain him for a moment, until finally, as the man called Jack disappeared inside the Puppeteer's Scaffold, a trembling word broke the surfeit of calm that had washed the room in silence.

"Ow."

Yahs came to the Lord and knelt, forcing his powerful back legs behind him as he lowered himself, then, forward claws trembling, he reached down and slipped them carefully beneath.

"Yahs… yiliyk na'tui; huasuh na'hiit. " the Lord spoke Xjantu gently, despite the catch in his throat. Obviously, he was quite dangerously dehydrated from his time within the crèche. The intubation must have injured something, or it could have plugged up, or snagged somewhere deep in the mechanism. Regardless of the Lord's soft reassurances, there would be unpleasant infections to check for, expected and unexpected injuries to note, let amounts to be gauged and leaks to be patched.

Yahs shivered as he clasped his one remaining abdominal limb around the Lord's waist and heaved, pulling his charge into a sitting position long enough to survey the damage done by all those little invasions.

His Lord was thin, perhaps too thin, but then the Scaffold was meant for someone younger… of the same race, but not so. The rigging of the Scaffold had been created in desperation, a passing Time Lord's brilliant attempt to stabilize the corroded drive when the last Xja telepath had fallen victim to the Sleeping Rot. But that Time Lord had died in the crèche. And, at the last, in nature's own desperation, the Remaining had eaten her.

But not before many of them starved to death in refusal to do so.

The starfaring vessels of the Xja traversed the cosmos by refining the mental radiation of the Xja themselves, which during a certain span of time within the stellar year -when their collective minds rose up from their flesh and became a river of song- was rich in Artron energy. But the Time Lords… they lived with it inside them… the blood of the Xja fleet saturated the nerve fibres of their brains. Indeed, the saturation penetrated everything about a Time Lord.

And cannibalism was expected, even encouraged in Xja society. But there were stiff rules about piracy and consumption without consent, especially when the victim or criminal were Off-Shippers like the Lord and his Boekind companion, Harkness.

Strange that the Sleepers in the Holds had never thought to guard against pirates cropping up amongst their own kind. And stranger still that the Sleepers had not been touched.

Then the strangest thing of all had transpired, Yahs thought to himself about what the Lord had asked him earlier, just as the pirates were being… disposed of. The Lord had asked him to wake the Sleepers, which, once the Lord had forced ejection from the Scaffold, would eventually have taken the entire ship offline, not just the auxiliaries… and unless the Lord's friend could somehow perform miracles, those Sleepers and their dreams were the only thing powering the rest of the ship. Yahs had long since lost contact with the other three flyers. The last transmissions had been joint, a shared signal originating from the Observatory Flyer Murshelk and the Stores Ship Alphidy, almost three pulsar-blinks in the past.

Still, though Yahs trusted the Lord implicitly, there was a small niggle of worry that refused evacuation from his sense of self.

Why had the Pirates appeared in the first place?

Pronunciations:

Xja: shj-yaa

Yahs… yiliyk na'tui, huasuh na'hiit.:

YAAS… yih-LEEK NAA tuu-ii; HU-ah-SUU na-HEET

Yahs… please trust him, just as you trust me.