by Mike Tucker
‘Here.’ Bill tossed her the bundle of electronic keys. ‘Try those.’
Jo caught them. ‘Aren’t these …?’
‘Don’t ask!’
As Jo started to try the different security keys in the lock, Bill ducked down under the workbench, dragging out a couple of toolboxes that had been stashed there. They too were locked. She was about to ask for the keys, when there was a sudden cry of dismay, following by a deafening crash.
Bill scrambled to her feet. Jo had succeeded in unlocking the tool cupboard, but in doing so had dislodged the pile of tools that had obviously been precariously balanced behind the door. She’d made quite a mess, but amongst the chaos Bill could see exactly what she was after.
‘Jackpot.’
She hurried forward to grab one of the spanners that lay scattered across the floor, but in her haste, tripped on something small and metallic which sent her sprawling.
‘Ow!’
‘Are you OK?’ Jo helped her back onto her feet.
‘Yeah, just wasn’t looking where I was stepping.’
Bill looked down to see what it was that she had tripped over. As she reached out for the object, she felt a sudden chill of dread.
‘Oh no …’
‘What is it?’
Bill held out the object for Jo to see. It was a tight bundle of complex-looking electronic circuitry, the loose wires and connectors making it clear that it was a part that had been removed from some larger mechanism. Part of the metal casing was painted a vibrant cherry red. It was the pressure controller that had been removed from Baines’s suit. The two women stared at it for a moment, then turned in unison to look at the name stencilled in Cancri script on the door of the tool cupboard.
‘Jenloz,’ breathed Jo.
Bill nodded, realising that she had unwittingly managed to unmask not just one of the saboteurs, but both of them.
Jo’s eyes widened in horror as she suddenly remembered what it was that the Chief Engineer was currently doing.
‘The depressurisation chamber. Bill, he’s going to try and kill the others!’
The Doctor raced back through main corridor leading from the control cabin, his bulky spacesuit making his long-limbed gait seem even more ungainly than usual. Laura was barely able to keep pace with him.
‘This ship isn’t marooned in the rings, it’s been left here deliberately,’ he bellowed.
‘But the Ba-El Cratt said they had crashed. That they were stranded.’
‘And they lied. Just like they lied about Baines. They wanted to gain your trust. What better way than to play at being helpless refugees.’
‘But how do you know?’ yelled Laura.
‘I managed to access a navigational log. Not easy when it’s only really designed to be accessed by a sentient high-pressure, semi-gelatinous life form but, you know, genius.’
Laura could have hit him. Even at times like this he still needed to show off. ‘Will you stop being so smug and just tell me what you found!’
‘The ship was steered into Saturn. A pre-programmed trajectory that allowed the Ba-El Cratt to bail out when they were at a safe depth. The ship then regained altitude and went into orbit in the rings, powering down all its systems so that it could hide there undetected.’
‘But why strand themselves like that?’ asked Laura, as they arrived at the opening in the hull.
‘Because the atmosphere of Saturn is a close match to the natural environment these creatures need to survive. It’s impossible for you to reach without significant amounts of technology, and electrically unstable enough for them to be able to evade any sensors that might possibly be able to detect them. Plus I’m assuming that they have the ability to recall their ship at any point if they need to evacuate.’
The Doctor was already halfway out of the opening, and starting to make his descent down the hull. Realising that he had no intention of helping her through, Laura scrambled after him.
‘But why?’
‘They’ve been studying you. Waiting for the right moment to make their move. I’m guessing they’ve been there for weeks. They’ve been able to survive quite happily in Saturn’s atmosphere, and that’s given them plenty of time to work out that they could use the miners’ pressure armour to survive in your atmosphere.’
The Doctor leapt from the hull, the force field cracking ferociously as his boots made contact with it. He raced towards the TARDIS, and Laura suddenly had the horrible impression that he might not wait for her if she didn’t get a move on. Pushing off from the hull, she jumped the last metre and a half, landing on her knees with an impact that nearly winded her.
She scrambled to her feet and sprinted forwards, hurling herself through the open doors and into the control room beyond. The Doctor had already discarded his space helmet and was dancing around the console, flicking at switches like a man possessed.
As Laura struggled with the clasp on her own helmet, the doors slammed shut behind her, and that strange, rasping grind of engines reverberated around the room as the TARDIS took flight.
Gasping, Laura let the helmet drop from her fingers and it clattered across the floor. Wincing at the pain from her bruised knees, she limped across the room towards the Doctor. His face was grim.
‘OK,’ said Laura, trying to catch her breath, ‘Let’s say you’re right about all this. It still doesn’t necessarily mean that they pose any immediate threat. They’ve made no hostile action towards us.’
‘And how do you think they’ll react when they realise that the rig – your entire mining operation – is run in partnership with the Cancri, hmm? You said that you didn’t want to find yourself in the middle of a war. Well, that ship out there in the rings is an assault craft, a very sophisticated assault craft, and if the Ba-El Cratt see you as allies of the Cancri, then a war might be just what you get.’
An alarm started to sound on the console, and the Doctor turned towards it in dismay.
‘Oh no …’
‘What is it?’
The Doctor stabbed at a control. As the monitor screen came to life all colour drained from Laura’s face, and she slumped back against one of the handrails that ran around the console room.
‘Oh, my God.’
On the screen, Kollo-Zarnista Mining Facility 27 was slowly sinking into the clouds of Saturn, gouts of flame and debris trailing from a dark, ragged hole in the hull.
‘I think that the war might already have started,’ said the Doctor.
Chapter
17
At any other time, the TARDIS materialising in the corner of the control room might have caused consternation, but at the moment no one even bothered to give it a second look. Even the sound of the materialisation was drowned out by the combination of screaming voices and blaring sirens. Everyone was too busy just trying to stay alive.
One person did notice its arrival, however, and dashed forward as the doors swung open and the Doctor and Laura emerged.
‘Doctor!’ Bill had never been so glad to see him in her life. To his surprise (and, she had to admit, to hers as well), she threw her arms around him and gave him a hug of relief. ‘You know, I was beginning to think you might have got lost.’
The Doctor disentangled himself from her embrace. He looked embarrassed. ‘Are you OK?’
‘What happened?’ Laura stared around the chaos of the control room in shock.
‘Jenloz.’ Jo Teske had noted their arrival too. She exchanged a momentary glance with Laura. Her eyes flicked from the security officer to the police box and back again. They were going to have a lot to discuss later. If they survived this, that was.
‘What did he do?’ asked the Doctor urgently.
‘Sabotaged the decompression chamber in the med-bay. A small explosive device, as far as we can tell.’
‘Small?’ Laura steadied herself against the TARDIS as the dull ‘crump’ of other distant explosion rocked the station.
‘Two of the Ba-El Cratt were inside the chamber at the time,’ e
xplained Jo. ‘Their suits must have been damaged by the initial blast …’
‘And there was a massive explosive decompression.’
Jo nodded. ‘Took the medical bay and a fair chunk of the outer hull with them.’ Her face was grim. ‘And about six of the crew.’
‘And you’re sure it was Jenloz?’ asked Palmer.
Bill nodded. ‘We found the missing pressure regulator from the first sabotage attempt in his locker.’
Palmer shot a glance at the Doctor. ‘That confirms that, then …’
‘We also found that secret transmitter.’
‘Secret transmitter?’ Palmer frowned. ‘What secret transmitter?’
‘We haven’t got time to worry about that now,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘I’ve got everyone on this station to save.’
Locating Delitsky amongst the chaos, the Doctor hurried to his side. The Rig Chief and his crew were working frantically at the controls, doing their best to try and stabilise the crippled mining platform and stop its doomed decent into the atmosphere. As far as the Doctor could tell, they weren’t succeeding.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Delitsky didn’t look up. ‘Nice of you to finally join us.’
‘Been busy.’ The Doctor’s eyes were roaming all across the console, taking in every setting, ever readout. ‘Can I help?’
Delitsky gave a humourless laugh. ‘Be my guest. At this point I’m open to any suggestions.’ From the tone of his voice, it was clear that he thought that they were past saving.
The Doctor glanced at the panel monitoring the gravity inverters and frowned. The Cancri machines appeared to be undamaged; they just weren’t doing their job properly.
‘Your gravity inverters are slipping out of phase. Why aren’t they synchronising?’
‘Because the explosion took out a major cable run. I’ve got a repair crew there, but …’ Delitsky shrugged. ‘It’s a lot of damage. They’ll never get it done in time.’
‘Can you reroute?’
‘That’s what we’re trying. I’ve got Robbins sending data via the internal comms system. But the network just doesn’t have the capacity to shunt the data fast enough.’
The Doctor’s mind was racing. The gravity inverters worked by keeping in sync with each other, monitoring the mass of the station millisecond-by-millisecond, and readjusting the anti-gravity settings accordingly. Breaking the connection between the four machines had caused an imbalance.
Four machines …
‘Balls …’
Delitsky stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Balls!’ The Doctor hurried across to the control room to Palmer. ‘Those robots of yours … What did you call them? The Flying Squad?’
She nodded. ‘Uh, huh.’
‘Get them up here.’
‘Now?’ Laura looked confused.
‘Now!’
Such was the urgency in the Doctor’s voice that Laura didn’t bother to argue. She turned to an emergency alarm on the wall and punched out the glass. Immediately a new siren joined the cacophony in the control room.
Pulling the sonic screwdriver from his pocket the Doctor turned, and waited. Moments later, the four silver security robots burst from their launch tubes and hovered, buzzing, in the centre of the control room.
‘Ah, there we are. John, Paul, George and Ringo. I’ve a little job for you boys.’ The Doctor turned back to Laura. ‘I need a master voice command override.’
Laura looked startled. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘You must.’
‘I can’t. It breaks every rule, every regulation. It would be the end of my career …’
‘Your career?’ The Doctor gave a sharp barking laugh. ‘Your career is going to end as a compressed speck in the centre of Saturn, and the careers of everyone else on this station are going to end the same way, unless you give me control of these robots.’
She stared at him, the conflict clear on her face.
‘Listen.’ The Doctor’s voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘I can save the lives of everyone here. Every. Single. One. I know how to get the gravity inverters back on line, I know how to get this rig back into its correct orbit, but I need those robots to do it. If you won’t help, then …’
As if to confirm what he was saying, the rig gave an ominous creak as the hull was squeezed ever tighter by Saturn’s crushing grip. Whether it was because of the Doctor’s words, or the noise from outside, Laura took a deep breath, and looked up at the hovering robots.
‘This is Captain Laura J. Palmer, Federation Security Officer for Kollo-Zarnista Mining Facility 27, badge number 047-K1Z. Verify voice print.’
There was a series of electronic burbles from each of the robots.
‘Initiate command override. Confirm.’
The robots gave another burble of confirmation, and a green light lit up on each of their casings.
Laura stepped back and raised an arm towards the hovering spheres. ‘They’re all yours.’
Rubbing his hands together in eagerness, the Doctor bustled forward. ‘Right, lads. First thing I need to you to do is locate all that boring criminal law in your data banks and delete it. Every last piece. You’re going to need the memory space.’
Laura Palmer had to bite her lip.
‘I’m assuming that each of these robots is capable of interfacing with other terminals on the station?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Standard positronic adaptor.’
‘Right.’ The Doctor scampered back to the main control console and started making adjustments with his sonic screwdriver. He was still giving instructions to the robots. ‘As soon as you’ve done that, clear your communications channels and stand by for priority command. I’m going to give you some proper work to do!’ He spun to face Delitsky. ‘Now, I need Jenloz down here.’
The Rig Chief opened his mouth to complain, but before he could utter a word the Doctor held up a spindly finger to silence him.
‘The gravitic calculations that are needed to bring the inverters back into phase are incredibly complex. I am more than capable of doing them but, much as it pains me to admit it, Jenloz will be much, much faster. Now, do I need to give you the same speech that I just gave Officer Palmer or will you just trust me and do what I ask?’
Delitsky reached up and tapped his ear bud. ‘Sergeant Harrison, will you please bring the Chief Engineer down to main control. On the double.’
Bill watched the Doctor as he worked at incredible speed. It looked to her as if he was completely rebuilding the computer, darting from console to console, stopping for a moment to peer at a bewildering selection of complicated schematics on various screens before returning to the main control panel and delving inside it, pulling out wires and replacing circuitry. All the while he kept issuing a stream of precise instructions to the waiting robots.
He didn’t even look up from his work when Jenloz was marched into the control room and pushed into the chair alongside him.
‘He can’t do the work in handcuffs,’ snapped the Doctor, using his sonic screwdriver to make yet another delicate adjustment.
At a nod from Delitsky, Harrison reached down and released the restraints from the little Cancri’s wrists.
The Doctor slid a keyboard in front of him. ‘I need you to upload the gravitic equations to the security robots,’ he explained calmly. ‘Their emergency command structure is more than capable of handling the data stream needed to bring the inverters back into sync and stabilise this rig.’
Jenloz didn’t move. Bill held her breath, waiting to see what the Doctor would do.
‘My guess is that you didn’t intend for the explosion to be as big as it was. Your plan was to destroy the pressure chamber and kill as many of the Ba-El Cratt as you could. But you didn’t account for the effect of their explosive decompression, did you?’
Still the engineer said nothing.
‘I know that you consider yourself to be a soldier, and that the action you took was somehow justified, but your war is not with the people here i
n this room, the crew that you have worked with on this rig. I don’t really know if it matters to you whether I think you are a soldier or not. But I don’t think you’re a murderer.’
Bill let out her breath in a gasp as Jenloz reached for the keyboard, and began to type. As calculations began to cascade across the monitor screens, the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver like a conductor about to begin a concerto.
A horrible wrenching screech suddenly shattered the petrified silence in the control room, forcing Bill to clap her hands over her ears. There were screams of terror as the crew and she realised, with a sudden moment of helpless resignation, that the rig was finally at the point where it could no longer resist the grip that Saturn had on it.
At the very same moment Jenloz finished his calculations and, as Bill watched, he turned to the Doctor and gave him a solemn nod.
‘All right, fellas. Let’s go!’ shouted the Doctor.
There was an electronic burble from the screwdriver, and Bill ducked as each of the robots shot off in a different direction at incredible speed.
The Doctor hunched down over the monitor screen. Craning her neck, Bill could see the schematic of the station showing the progress of the robots as they raced through the infrastructure of station towards the four gravity inverters on its outer edge.
She gritted her teeth as another protesting groan came from the hull and the entire station shuddered.
‘She’s going to break up!’ gasped Delitsky, watching over the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘Doctor, she’s going to break up!’
Bill’s heart was pounding
‘Come on, come on …’
She could hear the Doctor’s voice as he willed the robots onwards. Each of them was closing rapidly on its destination, but was it too late?
‘Almost there … Almost …’
A look of triumph flashed across the Doctor’s face as, across the board, indicator lights went green as the robots reached the gravity inverters and interfaced with the system controls. The Doctor stabbed at a control and there was a sudden whine of power as the systems started to reintegrate.
