Godengine

by Craig Hinton

  Sstaal reached out and gingerly laid his clamp on McGuire’s shoulder, and was pleased that the human didn’t flinch. ‘Not all Greenies are the same, Antony.’ And then he remembered some of what he had overheard between McGuire and the Abbot. ‘Please, tell me about your family.’

  McGuire looked at him, his eyes like glittering trisilicate. Sstaal realized that the human was crying. ‘All right. But afterwards, I’d like you to tell me about you and Esstar.’

  Sstaal was taken aback – was it that obvious? But he was also reassured: talking of such personal matters was a first step to true understanding between their peoples. Whether Esstar was proud of him or not, he was proud of himself, and that was unprecedented. So it was a very big first step.

  ‘Alone at last, Esstar.’ Cleece dropped his rucksack on the floor, and urgently started feeling for the hidden catches which would release his carapace. Even through the red tint of his visor, Esstar could see the avarice in Cleece’s eyes. It repelled her. ‘I have waited a long time for this. Despite the tenets of Abbot Aklaar, I am only Martian.’ Hurling the carapace onto the bed, he pulled off his clamped gloves and reached for her.

  Esstar drew away in disgust. ‘What sort of an animal are you, Cleece? I am with child, but all you can think of is sexual congress?’ His reaction wasn’t unexpected, but it was definitely unwelcome – and not just because of her condition.

  Bereft of carapace, helmet and gloves, Cleece stood before her and smiled cruelly. She could see that his genitalia were descending from their protective internal sac, and she felt sick at the prospect of him taking her as if she were some mindless creature whose sole reason for existence was to please him.

  ‘Why, what are you thinking of?’ he asked. And then his eyes narrowed. ‘Sex with Sstaal, perhaps?’

  Esstar had been prepared for this insult; it was one of Cleece’s favourites, always hurled as a last resort when reasoned argument failed; with Cleece, that was always rather quickly. During the year-long pilgrimage, she had held her tongue and put up with his foul attacks; Abbot Aklaar wouldn’t have stood for such behaviour. But here, now...

  Her own insult had been honed and polished over the last year, and she loaded, aimed and fired it with relish. ‘At least he is true to his caste, Cleece, and not a changeling like you.’

  Totally prepared for his reaction, she moved to one side as Cleece lunged at her, but she had the advantage; although he was male, and naturally stronger, she was still dressed in her armour. With her cybernetically amplified musculature, she grabbed his arm and flung him to the floor. As he lay there, dazed and prone, she grasped his neck with her clamp; for a second, she wondered whether the slight effort needed to snap his neck would be worth it, but decided that there were other, less final ways of teaching her mate a lesson.

  Cleece looked up at her, his expression one of disbelief mixed with confusion. But he was powerless, and Esstar liked that.

  She smiled down at him. ‘It is time we talked of the future, Cleece.’

  Chris checked his watch. Only seconds remained before his preparations came to fruition, and he knew that he had to be ready. He had planned the route from his cubby-hole to the manipulator chamber with calculated precision over and over again in his mind; he could get there in a matter of minutes. He just hoped that that was where Felice and Rachel had been stationed by the Ice Warriors. He had already decided that searching for them was fruitless; they could be anywhere in the base. If they weren’t where he expected them to be, his only option was to make a break for it and get back to the survivors.

  Assuming that they hadn’t been slaughtered by the Ice Warriors, of course. Falaxyr had been expecting them to arrive; was it too much to hope that he wouldn’t have sent a search party to the parliament building? Chris’s watch suddenly bleeped at him. And sent a blanket pulse across the complex.

  His little hidy-hole shuddered as fifty separate explosions rocked the Martian base, each of them carefully placed to cause the maximum amount of confusion. And that was only the start.

  Chris smiled.

  It was time to begin.

  Chapter 10

  Falaxyr looked up from Hoorg’s latest report on the status of the GodEngine, aware that he had been disturbed, but not quite sure by what. But the next disturbance was clearly recognizable: it was an explosion, just outside the doors of Falaxyr’s chambers. Through the circuitry built into his helmet, he patched into the base communications suite.

  ‘Report!’ he demanded.

  The reply was distorted by static and barely decipherable. ‘... multip... explos... througho... complex... casualties...’ Falaxyr closed the useless connection and stood up. He attempted to summon Draan, but there was even more interference across that channel. He had no choice: he would have to find out what was going on for himself. Hissing with anger at the situation, he strode over to the main doors of his room and pulled the handle.

  Nothing happened. He examined the doors and immediately saw the reason why: the door frame was buckled at the top, jamming the doors and making them totally immovable, despite Falaxyr’s enhanced strength. Without hesitation, he raised his arm, aimed his clamp at the line where the doors met, and then sent the necessary signals to his inbuilt weapon.

  The sonic disruptor mounted on his wrist gave a sustained, shrill warble, and the surface of the metal began to ripple as if seen through a heat haze. Unfortunately for Falaxyr, the doors were heavily reinforced, a legacy of an earlier time where even a base commander had to protect himself from ambitious underlings and internecine struggles. It would take at least ten minutes at full force for the doors to give way under the sonic barrage.

  Trying to feel the patience that had kept him sane over his long years of isolation, Falaxyr started waiting for the rippling metal to melt.

  Chris hauled his backside out of the cubby-hole and dropped to the ground two metres below. The string of explosions was still continuing, and should carry on for another two minutes if he’d wired everything up properly. Some of the bombs had been nothing more than smoke and noise, akin to the ones he had used to elude the Ice Warriors earlier. But the others had been far more destructive.

  The Doctor had thoughtfully included a handwritten inventory in the kit, including instructions on the usage of the various phials and bottles that it contained – like the late, lamented TARDIS, the kit seemed to be bigger on the inside than out. Two of the phials contained chemicals called nitro-twelve and nitro-thirteen, which the Doctor’s spidery handwriting described as ‘rich, full-bodied and fruity vintages a thousand times as powerful as nitro-glycerine’; sadly, Chris hadn’t ever heard of nitro-glycerine, but he had used the chemicals sparingly. From the sound of the continued explosions, even those single drops had been overkill.

  Ripping handfuls of insulation from his atmosphere jacket, he had dripped various chemicals into the hanks of white fibres and attached short lengths of filament to the impregnated areas. And then he had wired the filaments into tiny, pinhead-sized detonators which were apparently controlled by the watch that was coiled up in the kit.

  He had made other preparations: small collections of circuitry which would act as milder versions of his cyberscrambler, placed at strategic points and effectively blocking the Ice Warriors’ communication net; ultrasonic squealers which would completely disorientate any Ice Warriors in the vicinity, and one, last, special surprise for his hosts. He checked his watch once more; according to the timing sequence, that should be going off about -

  He had to steady himself against the smooth stone wall as the ground bucked beneath him, while an echoing roar came from deep in the complex. One last bomb, soaked with the remainder of nitros twelve and thirteen, had been placed right next to what Chris believed to be some sort of auxiliary generator.

  And from the way the lights were flickering up and down the service corridor he was in, he had guessed correctly. Now should be the time of maximum disruption – Chris’s opportunity to mount his white charger and rescu
e the fair damsels from their distress. Smiling at the thought of Rachel as a damsel, he set off down the corridor, following the route that he had etched into his mind.

  As the series of explosions continued, Aklaar instinctively tried to tap into the base communication net, before realizing that his helmet lacked the necessary security protocols. He looked up at the Doctor. ‘The base is under attack.’

  Aklaar prided himself on his ability to read human expressions and emotions, but the smile on the Doctor’s face was inexplicable. ‘Doctor?’

  ‘That isn’t an attack, Abbot. It’s a distraction, and – if the culprit is who I think he is – a very, very welcome one. I suggest we sit tight and await developments.’

  Aklaar was puzzled, but he could see that this Doctor was like the plasma vampires of the great southern plains; for centuries, they would wait just beneath the surface, on the borders of life and death. But as soon as their unfortunate prey stepped onto it, they would rise from the sand and engulf its victim. The Doctor would act; but only when it suited him to do so. Aklaar just hoped that the Doctor wasn’t quite as lethal as the plasma vampires.

  ‘Why did you stay on Mars?’ asked the Doctor suddenly. ‘Why didn’t you join the majority of your race and leave?’

  ‘As you say, Doctor: the majority. There are still hundreds of thousands of my people on Mars: pilgrims, warriors, artificers... This is our home.’

  ‘I meant on a personal level, Aklaar. Why did you stay? Or was the Blessed Order of Oras barred from New Mars?’

  ‘I stayed because there is still much work to do among my people. The Thousand Day War, and the skirmishes that preceded it, were the last throes of a weak and desperate military. The Eight-Point Table longed for one last triumph, one last war that would re-establish their authority over this planet and show your Alliance that we were still a force to be feared.’

  ‘So you invaded T-Mat Central on the Moon, and followed up that little débâcle by dropping an asteroid on Paris. Did you really think that Earth wouldn’t retaliate?’

  Aklaar held up his clamp. ‘The Eight-Point Table was desperate, Doctor. There was a serious possibility of a coup -’

  ‘You seem to be very familiar with the workings of the military mind for a wise old Abbot. Is military history a hobby of yours?’

  Aklaar smiled, but he didn’t mean it, and wondered whether the Doctor could tell. Probably, he decided. ‘Know thine enemy, Doctor. The retaliation from Earth was swift and unexpected, and tore the heart out of the military. The aftermath was far less bloody, but even more devastating; the collective soul of the Martian people was tainted, stained by the actions of their rulers. Most of my people chose to make a new start on Nova Martia, where they could learn from the painful lessons of their ancestors and leaders -’

  ‘Is that the destiny of the Ice Warriors, Aklaar?’ the Doctor interrupted. ‘To run from planet to planet, afraid to face their true nature?’ He smiled sadly. ‘The galaxy is very large, Abbot, but even you’ll run out of homes eventually. You don’t exactly make the best neighbours, do you?’

  The Abbot stood up and faced him. ‘You asked me why I had stayed on Mars, Doctor. That is the reason why: because I am prepared to face that true nature – to face it and to conquer it. Both here and on Nova Martia, there are Martians whose very beliefs have been violated, whose spirits scream for absolution from their crimes. The Order of Oras will counsel and guide them, and point them in the new direction of peaceful coexistence.’

  The Doctor cocked an eyebrow. ‘So, you’re galactic social workers now? I’m sorry, Aklaar, but I can’t believe that the Ice Warriors have changed so much, so quickly.’

  ‘Then you are no better than the people you mistrust, Doctor. How pure is your soul?’

  The Doctor frowned. ‘That’s the problem, Aklaar. I’m not sure I know any more.’

  Aklaar placed his clamp on the Doctor’s hand. ‘Then perhaps, through the wisdom of Oras, we could find out together.’

  ‘What the hell was that?’ yelled Roz. The explosion sounded like it had come from just outside, and she moved sharply to one side to avoid a lump of ceiling that dropped to the floor with a dull thud.

  ‘Come on, Roz!’ snapped Santacosta. ‘Even in your time, they must have taught you to recognize a terrorist attack?’

  Terrorist? Roz realized that Santacosta was right; it bore all the hallmarks of a standard Adjudicator raid. ‘Your backup?’

  ‘I doubt it, unless Ketch has found a way of breaking through the barrier. And if he could do that, the Bureau would have come in force, not like this. This is the McClane Approach, by the textbook – a one-person raid.’

  Roz was puzzled; if Santacosta’s colleagues weren’t responsible, who was? It had to be an Adjudicator. One particular Adjudicator came to mind, one who had once spoken wistfully of his lectures on subversive warfare on Ponten IV, and of a heartfelt wish to put his education into action.

  Chris.

  ‘I’ve got an idea of the guilty party, Carmen, and that’s our cue to get out of here.’ She looked around the plain white walls, hoping that the ceiling wasn’t the only part of the room to sustain damage. It wasn’t. Just next to the toilet, a jagged vertical crack had appeared. She went over to it and shoved the wall between the crack and the toilet, and was gratified to feel it give slightly. ‘Over here,’ she called, requisitioning Santacosta’s aid.

  After less than a minute of sustained shoving, the whole section of wall fell inwards, revealing a gap of about a metre between the prefabricated polymer walls and the rock face of the cave: the Ice Warriors had simply erected the room in a convenient cavern. Roz stepped through the hole first, with Santacosta right behind.

  ‘Since I seem to be squiring you, what’s the plan?’ asked Santacosta.

  Roz shrugged. ‘We get out of here, find my partner, and release the others.’

  ‘Your partner?’

  Roz was suddenly aware of a warm feeling of completeness inside her. Although she would never admit it, she was extremely fond of Chris; the idea that he had died when the TARDIS had been destroyed had been like a cold black hole in her stomach, a twisted knot that she had ignored with fierce determination. For a moment, she thought about Fenn Martle; had he ever felt like that about her, or had it all been an act for his paymasters? When she finally returned to Earth – as she knew she had to, one day – she would start digging, and carry on until the corruption at the core of the Empire was revealed as the rotting canker that it was.

  She realized that Santacosta was talking to her. ‘Are you telling me that your partner decided to take on an entire military nest single-handed?’

  Roz grinned. ‘That’s the type of guy he is. Irresponsible and sometimes downright stupid. All part of his charm.’ At that point, they reached the front of the cave, where the prefabricated wall was partially welded to the cave mouth. But there was a thin crevice between the polymer slab and the rock; it was less than half a metre wide, but it opened directly onto the corridor beyond. Not that they could see much of the corridor: a drifting cloud of some foul-smelling gas obscured almost everything, and what they could see was gloomy due to the lack of illumination. Smoke, power cuts; Chris has been busy, thought Roz.

  Squeezing through the crevice with some difficulty, she looked up and down the corridor – although she would only have seen an Ice Warrior if one was right on top of her – before helping Santacosta through.

  ‘Do we find your partner first, or release the others?’

  Roz shook her head. ‘Releasing them wouldn’t be a good move; they’d only slow us down. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Doctor, though -’

  That plan was strangled at birth by the sound of at least two Ice Warriors coming towards them, their heavy steps too close for comfort. Roz knew that the reduced visibility wouldn’t prove much of a problem to the imaging systems of an Ice Warrior helmet, so she set off down the corridor in the opposite direction, as quickly but as quietly as possible. As expected, Santacosta
followed without needing to be told.

  They reached a junction after a few minutes. The air was clearer, but Roz still had no idea where to go. In order to accomplish such a bombing campaign, Chris must have had a fairly good idea of the layout of the base; something that Roz and Santacosta lacked. But Roz felt sure that the chaos that resulted from the explosions must have been for a reason; a cover for something else. Chris was using it as camouflage, and it was up to her and Santacosta to find out exactly what was going on.

  This time, she saw it at the far end of the left-hand corridor. Translucent, blue and floating, another phantom TARDIS, bobbing away from them. Roz’s instincts kicked in, and she gestured to the manifestation, saying words which she never thought she would utter.

  ‘Follow that TARDIS!’

  Well, it seemed like a good idea. And Roz needed all the good ideas she could get at the moment.

  As the TARDIS sailed across a junction, Roz ran after it, Santacosta close behind. Reading between the lines, the phantom vessel was homing in on something, waiting for something to happen; what were the chances that that was where everything was going on? If so, it stood to reason that Chris would be heading in the same direction.

  Roz hurtled round the junction, trying to keep the TARDIS in view – and ran head first into a tall broad figure. Before she could retreat, it reached out and grabbed her in an unbreakable hold.

  Falaxyr had soon realized that the reinforced metal of the doors was disintegrating far faster than he had expected, indicating that others were trying to get in – at least somebody in the base had bothered to think about him. After only a few minutes, the metal crumpled like wet paper, revealing the corridor beyond – and Draan, flanked by two guards.

  Falaxyr stepped through the hole, making sure as he did so that his purple cloak didn’t catch the red-hot edges. ‘What is happening, Draan? Why is the base in uproar?’

  His subordinate looked distinctly uncomfortable, and so he might. From the scene of carnage behind him, the situation was even more critical than Falaxyr had expected. There had been a rock fall in the corridor, and the Grand Marshal could see at least two casualties partially buried under the rubble. To his left, the corridor was all but blocked where the ceiling had caved in.