by Craig Hinton
‘Anyone mind if I have a quick nap?’ asked Felice. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.’ She lay back on the bed – and that was when Chris realized what had been staring him in the face: the cots were far too small for Martian use, a clear indication that they were meant for humans.
More proof that Falaxyr had been expecting visitors – human visitors.
‘Then this is a trap,’ stated Rachel. ‘Either that, or they were pretty desperate for company.’ She shook her head. ‘Come on then, Adjudicator; what’s the plan?’
‘I need just a bit more time,’ he said evasively. He considered their options. Falaxyr wouldn’t have had them taken to quarters so far away from his chambers – or the subspace manipulator – if he had an immediate need for them, so it was fairly safe to assume that they had at least a couple of hours before they were disturbed – unless, of course, their hosts took umbrage at Chris’s jamming their surveillance devices.
He began unpacking the rucksack onto one of the beds, hoping that it contained something that might prove useful. Without their plasma rifles, they were unarmed; even Chris didn’t know how to turn a flashlight into a directed energy weapon. He pulled out a small white box: the first-aid kit that the Doctor had thrust into his hands just before the TARDIS had been destroyed. Although he couldn’t really see how dermal patches and headache tablets could help them out of this situation, he might be able to make some sort of explosive if there were any useful chemicals inside. He opened the box.
Chris whistled through his teeth as he examined the contents of the kit. If this was the Doctor’s idea of first aid, he had a very weird bedside manner. With renewed hope, he began an inventory.
Falaxyr stood in front of the holographic cylinder, waiting impatiently for his allies to respond. Despite the usefulness of the alliance, the Grand Marshal hated to be kept waiting; military success depended upon precision timing, and he found it hard to believe that the new masters of Earth had managed to carve out an empire when they couldn’t even reply to an urgent communiqué promptly.
The cylinder suddenly began to sparkle.
‘Incoming transmission from Earth, Your Excellency,’ said the technician redundantly. And then, without needing to be told, he stepped away from the control panel and left the communications suite.
The image resolved, and Falaxyr stared at the holographic form of his ally.
‘Report,’ it intoned.
Falaxyr repressed a sigh of irritation. Even when he made the first move, the invaders always took the credit. If the stakes weren’t so high, he would have dissolved the alliance months ago. Unfortunately, Falaxyr needed them – for the time being, that was.
‘My technical staff report that the Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi approaches completion, Commander.’ No such report existed; the device was little closer to becoming operational than it had been when Falaxyr had first contacted the invaders a year ago. But the Grand Marshal knew the importance of keeping his allies interested; and besides, the presence of the human scientists made true completion of the Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi a very real possibility. He decided to take a calculated risk.
‘At the current rate of progress, Commander, the Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi will be operational in less than a year.’
The Commander stared back impassively from the cylinder. ‘Progress reports are of no value, Grand Marshal. Your excuses and delays are irrelevant. Our only concern is the GodEngine. Unless you fulfil your obligations, it will be necessary for us to oversee the project directly.’
The cylinder emptied, leaving only the threat behind. Falaxyr shook his head. These invaders lacked the passion for war; they were soulless machine creatures whose conquest of the galaxy was due to nothing more than a set of logical imperatives. The GodEngine – a cold, unfeeling translation of Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi – was nothing more than a single equation in the positronic net of their battle computer. There had been no threat from the Commander, only a statement of fact. Unless Falaxyr could present them with a demonstration of the GodEngine, they would annex Mars without hesitation.
His mood growing fouler by the second, Falaxyr left the communications suite, his purple robes sweeping behind him. Until recently, he had left the day-to-day management of the technicians to his adjutant, Draan, deciding that such matters were beneath a Grand Marshal of the Eight-Point Table. But the remarkable lack of progress had finally prompted Falaxyr to take action.
According to Hoorg, the lead scientist on the project, the GodEngine should have been operational six months ago. Unfortunately, he lacked the knowledge of subspace engineering necessary to locate the exact reason why this was not actually true, and Falaxyr couldn’t really blame him. Mars had only started pursuing subspace technology in earnest when they realized that their lack of it put them at a strategic disadvantage compared with the humans. As thousands of troops poured onto the surface of Mars through subspace Transit tunnels from Earth, the Eight-Point Table had sequestered the cream of the Martian intelligentsia and set them to work at the North Pole, where ancient alien technology offered a possible solution.
Unfortunately, the war had ended in defeat before the Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi could be completed – indeed, before it could really be started – and the majority of the scientific elite had subsequently been reassigned to the exodus project. When Falaxyr had gone into hiding, he had only been able to take a handful of scientists with him.
Over the last seventy years, the collection of scientists – overseen by Falaxyr and bullied by Draan – had obeyed the Eight-Point Table’s last direct order. Despite the conquest of Mars, despite the exodus to Nova Martia, the GodEngine was still to be completed. Because, once operational, it would finally give the Martians the bargaining power they had lost when humankind had raped their world.
The opportunity had finally presented itself in the form of the invaders. They were willing to pay highly for the use of the GodEngine, and that payment would justify the seven decades of isolation.
Unfortunately, they wanted a fully functional GodEngine, not the temperamental and unreliable device that was all that Falaxyr had to show for seventy years’ work. It was clear that Falaxyr needed external help; and the presence of the invaders on Earth and their subspace blockade made this somewhat problematical.
And then, some months ago, Hoorg had detected subspace emissions from the moon of distant Pluto. Falaxyr consulted his intelligence reports and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Charon housed a research base, the last bastion of subspace technology in a solar system which had all but abandoned the idea. From the readings, Hoorg suggested that the base was attempting to bore a stunnel through the invaders’ jamming field. And then Hoorg had made another suggestion. Under other circumstances, Falaxyr would have had him disciplined for not following the normal chain of command, but the suggestion was a remarkable one.
The jamming field was extremely effective, but posed no hindrance whatsoever to the unparalleled might of the GodEngine. And although the device wasn’t fully operational, it would still act as a powerful subspace attractor. And so Falaxyr had given his orders.
When the scientists had made their final – and finally successful – attempt to breach the blockade (and Falaxyr had ensured that they did by informing the invaders of the continued presence of humans on Charon; the invaders’ response had been immediate and totally predictable) the GodEngine had been more than capable of seizing the stunnel and dragging the end-point to Mars. It hadn’t taken long for the survivors of Charon to make their presence known to Falaxyr, and their obvious interest in the GodEngine was a direct vindication of his plan. His thin lips formed a cruel smile.
As the Grand Marshal entered the GodEngine Chamber, his mood was far more positive than it had been earlier. Despite the incompetence of his own scientific staff, it looked like the two Earth women would deliver the GodEngine to him. Which, considering the reason why the Daleks wanted the GodEngine, was the ultimate irony.
Chapter 7
The Abbot gestured to the face, a barrier of blurred and molten rock that was obviously artificial. It wasn’t completely unbroken: there was a large plug of the same material set into it. ‘Can any of you identify this?’ The question was obviously aimed at his pilgrims, but it was the Doctor who answered.
‘Utt-keth-Johith, perhaps?’ he said in a bored tone. Not for the first time, McGuire found himself confused by the Doctor; the man possessed an encyclopaedic familiarity of Martian culture, and yet he seemed to view them with almost as much distrust than McGuire did.
Aklaar nodded. ‘Once more, I am impressed by your knowledge, Doctor. For those unfamiliar with the High Tongue, this is a Plague Seal. The city of Sstee-ett-Haspar – the Labyrinth of False Pride – has been cut off to prevent further infection.’
Sstaal stepped forward and examined the molten rock, paying special attention to a small carved glyph in the centre. ‘Our information was correct, Lord Abbot; the city was sealed over five centuries ago,’ he explained hesitantly. ‘An outbreak of sleeping fever.’
‘Oh, great!’ snapped McGuire. ‘Your bloody traps weren’t bad enough, were they? Now we’ve got to expose ourselves to some Greenie disease.’
‘Is it catching?’ asked Carmen.
Aklaar sighed. ‘Sleeping fever is a purely Martian infection, Miss Santacosta. Even if the disease were still virulent, it would pose no threat to your kind. But fever is not the problem.’
‘After five centuries, the disease will have died out completely,’ explained Cleece. ‘Our geneticists chose sleeping fever as the basis for many bacteriological weapons because it burns itself out in less than a decade, leaving the city intact but uninhabited.’
‘Chose?’ Roz was frowning. ‘Are you saying that this city was the target of germ warfare?’
McGuire felt something hard tightening in his stomach at yet another example of the Martian obsession with death and killing. Then the female Greenie stepped forward.
‘Once again, Pilgrim Cleece’s fixation with our race’s military exploits both confuses and confounds,’ explained Esstar. ‘Cleece refers to such events as the bacteriological attack on the Dwellings of Triumphant Majesty, over a hundred thousand years ago. He wishes that he could have been there,’ she added, her tone making it quite clear that she wished he had been there as well. ‘The sleeping fever still occurs naturally, despite the Warrior caste’s attempts to subvert it for their own purposes. This benighted city is an example of the harshness of nature.’
‘You knew it was sealed, then?’ asked McGuire.
‘Naturally,’ replied Aklaar. ‘I would never have begun the pilgrimage without careful preparation.’
McGuire turned to the Doctor. ‘So why didn’t your map show it?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘It’s a very old map, Mr McGuire. Anyway, I would wager that the Abbot here has a solution. Don’t you, Aklaar?’
‘We can enter the city,’ agreed the Abbot. ‘However, although there is no risk of disease – to either of our races – there will undoubtedly be other hazards to face. After five hundred years, the city will have partially reverted to wilderness – without Martian habitation to keep it tamed, it will undoubtedly have proved an ideal location for some of the less friendly native flora and fauna.’
‘Since we are so far north,’ said Sstaal, ‘the most dangerous threat will be the rock-snakes. Our body armour will provide defence from their vicious attacks, but you do not have such protection.’
Madrigal hefted her plasma rifle. ‘Rock-snakes? No problem.’
‘And what about venom-moss?’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘Or spider-lizards’? Or those metre-wide amoebae that secrete sulphuric acid?’ He seemed to delight in pointing out how inhospitable the Martians’ home planet was, as if it were their fault.
‘Venom-moss is confined to the southern hemisphere of this planet, Doctor, and the plasma vampires are all but extinct. We may encounter the odd spider-lizard, but they are timid, reluctant creatures.’ Aklaar turned to the rock face.
McGuire watched as Cleece and Sstaal started pushing the Seal, but not inwards; they were trying to rotate it. McGuire realized that the Seal was a screw, plugging the entrance to the city. As he waited, the plug turned in its socket and retreated until it finally toppled backwards with a thump of stone on stone. Only gloom awaited them beyond the open doorway.
Cleece aimed his clamp at the doorway and clenched it. A warbling noise was followed by a dull explosion as the remains of something grey and nasty flopped from the lip of the entrance and landed on the floor. About a metre long, what was left of its body appeared to consist of spherical grey boulders linked together, with a scorpion-like sting at one end.
‘A rock-snake,’ said the Doctor, poking the smouldering remains with his umbrella. ‘How fortunate that you were armed, Pilgrim Cleece.’ The meaning behind the Doctor’s words was obvious to McGuire: these were pilgrims; so why was one of them armed with a sonic disruptor?
Aklaar raised a clamp. ‘We are all pilgrims in the sight of Oras, but it would be a foolish pilgrim who set off into hostile territory unarmed,’ he explained, clearly understanding the Doctor’s tone. ‘Given the warrior heritage that Cleece embraces, he was chosen to bear weapons.’ He pointed towards Madrigal. ‘You have your own warrior, do you not?’
McGuire wasn’t happy, but he saw the reasoning behind it. ‘Madrigal, Cleece; you lead. Blast anything that moves.’ His only information about rock-snakes came from holovid documentaries, but he knew that they were vicious – one blast could take out a man’s chest. ‘I’ll follow behind, if you’ll be so kind as to reach into your bag of weapons and get one for me.’
Madrigal grunted, and pulled out a plasma repeater. ‘You’ll need this, McGuire; a thousand pulses per second. You’ll hardly need to aim it.’ She thrust the heavy black gun into his hands. He hefted it, trying to get the balance right.
Aklaar folded his arms across his chest in prayer. ‘The Labyrinth of Lost Pride is the last obstacle before we reach the holy ground of G’chun duss Ssethiissi; may the beneficence of Oras guide the weapons of Cleece, Madrigal and McGuire as we approach our destination.’
As the Abbot continued to pray, McGuire felt a small tremor of unease. A childhood of strict Catholicism under the Order of Saint Anthony had moulded him into a proper God-fearing adult, giving him a moral framework and a knowledge of right and wrong that had directed him through adolescence, marriage and parenthood. But then the Greenies had struck, ripping his soul apart as easily as they had ripped apart the rail network. The resulting emptiness had eventually become endurable, but it was still there. A void.
And yet, as McGuire listened to the old Martian praying to his god, his cracked voice strident with belief, he found himself tentatively reaching into himself, probing for that void.
Somehow, for some reason... it was smaller.
Rachel wandered round the perimeter of their room, exhausted but afraid to stand still. Perhaps a moving target would prove more difficult to hit. It was obvious that the Ice Warriors were keeping them for a purpose; from what Michael had told her, military nests tended to react towards trespassers with brutal efficiency. They didn’t put them up for the night in guest quarters. Until now.
One didn’t have to be a genius to work out what was going on, even though she was. She and Felice were subspace engineers, and the Martians had a subspace manipulator in the basement. Logic suggested that it wasn’t fully operational, otherwise they wouldn’t have
shown such obvious avarice towards her and Felice’s talents – indeed, they would have used it against Earth or the invaders before now. Even without knowing its full capabilities, Rachel could envisage the effects of wide-scale subspace manipulation: grabbing a ship and changing its course would be easy – it was simply a matter of twisting the subspace striations into another direction; that same ship hitting Earth at lightspeed would be as devastating as the asteroid which had wiped out the dinosaurs.
So the Martians needed Rachel and Felice’s assistance, and she doubted that they would have much choice in the matter. She looked at the others: Felice was helping Chris with what looked like a map of the base. What was Rachel doing to assist in their escape attempt? She was making herself extremely useful by pacing around the room. Hmmm. She began to smile at the absurdity of the situation, but a noise behind her made her turn. The door was swinging inwards.
She swallowed; somehow, she had thought that they would have had a little more time. And then she frowned; the Ice Warrior that walked into the room wasn’t empty-handed, but he wasn’t wielding a sonic disruptor in their direction, either. He was carrying a large tray of food.
‘The Grand Marshal hopes you are comfortable,’ he said, obviously not at all comfortable with being so – so pleasant to humans. ‘He asks that you eat, sleep and rest.’ With that, he deposited the tray on a side table and lumbered out of the door, which started to close behind him.
‘Room service? It gets worse,’ said Felice as the door clanged shut.
Chris got up and examined the food. There were twelve small bowls, three for each of them: four bowls contained a mushy, green, rice-like substance mixed with some grey herb; another four held some sort of braised root vegetable, gnarled orange stumps with white blotches; and the others were full of a thick yellow broth full of disturbing brown lumps.
