by Dan Abnett
Light levels in the assembly had shifted. The shimmering effect of the holographic telepresence field was rising like mist from the metal circle patterns inlaid in the old wooden floor. The Doctor was in their midst, sitting in a high-backed chair, facing a white control console. He got up and walked over to face the beast.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. I was trying to tune in,’ he said. ‘Very difficult, when you haven’t got a reliable Guide.’ He glanced at Rory. ‘Everything OK, Rory?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know, Doctor,’ Rory shrugged. ‘Apart from the Ice Warriors, and the spaceship shooting the place up, and that thing there, everything’s dandy.’
The Doctor nodded and looked back at ‘that thing there’. It growled softly.
‘A Transhuman construct,’ he said. ‘Advanced martial model. Part of an emergency protocol. A last resort. If the terraformers are threatened. The plantnations don’t have any actual weapons. They don’t have guns or anything. This is what the system manufactures if a weapon’s really needed.’
‘If the Morphans are threatened,’ said Winnowner.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Sorry, no, actually. They don’t really care about you. You’re just… the help. In the long run, you’re expendable.’
‘Winnowner said she had a secret,’ said Rory.
‘I’m sure she does. Last of her generation. The dark and murky legacy. The sort of secret that would make life unbearable for the Morphans if they knew about it. The sort of secret that makes you oh-so protective of your Guide Emanual. You had to pass the secret on eventually. Who were you going to tell, Winnowner? Bill Groan?’
‘Mind your own business, you unguidely—’
‘Listen to me, Winnowner Cropper,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’ve figured it out. It took me a while, because I didn’t have a Guide to show me the shortcuts, but I figured it out.’
He wandered back to the console.
‘The Morphans don’t matter,’ he said sadly. ‘They are not building Hereafter for their descendants. They’re building it for their ancestors. There are around a thousand human beings sleeping here in the mountain, in suspended animation.’
‘What?’ asked Vesta.
‘It’s been misremembered over the years,’ said the Doctor. ‘Patience is such an important virtue to you Morphans. “Those who are patient will provide for all of the plantnation.” Well, “the patient” are right here. Patients. Lined up in hibernetic capsules under the Firmer. I’m pretty sure they represent the elite of Earth before. The most powerful and influential people. People who were convinced that they deserved to live. People who believed they were so special they had to have a brand new world made just for them.’
He looked at the lurking shadow of the Transhuman.
‘People, in fact, who weren’t prepared to toil away their lives building a new world. They just expected the boring work to be done for them by common and disposable labourers.’
‘Th-that’s not how Guide explains it!’ cried Winnowner.
‘I’m sure Guide puts it a great deal more delicately,’ said the Doctor. ‘But that’s the size of it. And only this, only the interference of the Ice Warriors, rival colonists, is a crisis major enough to force the system to wake some of them up. A Catagory A crisis. It was enough to wake them up, and arm them for war.’
He stared at the Transhuman.
‘You’re a frightening thing,’ he said. ‘And I thought Ice Warriors were dangerous. It takes a lot of fuel to keep a metabolism like that going, doesn’t it? You’re essentially a carnivore. I thought the transrat swarms were getting out and killing the livestock, but it was you lot, wasn’t it? The first of you to be woken and released?’
‘There was… a fuel requirement,’ it growled.
‘Because the Ice Warriors had disabled most of the flesh farms that were designed to feed you during their cull of the transrats,’ replied the Doctor. ‘You and your kind needed huge hits of high calorific intake to get going.’
The Transhuman walked back into the light of the hologram field and faced the Doctor.
‘You have… no authority,’ it said. ‘The system… does not recognise you. This crisis… is almost resolved. The alien enemy… is virtually routed. Equilibrium will be… restored.’
‘Good, good,’ said the Doctor. ‘But why don’t you tell the nice Morphans what will happen to them when you finally wake up for good? Even Winnowner doesn’t know that, does she? Tell them. In a few years’ time, another generation or two, when the terraforming is finally finished, and Hereafter is properly Earth-like, the Patients will finally wake up.’
‘This is… the plan,’ the Transhuman said. ‘The colonial scheme.’
The Doctor looked at Vesta and Jack and Winnowner. ‘When the Pilgrim Fathers went across to the New World, they took livestock with them. That’s all you are. Livestock. Doing all the hard work in the meantime, so they don’t have to. And when they wake up in Eden, you know what? They’re going to be really hungry. Really, really hungry.’
‘No!’ cried Winnowner.
‘Meat is meat,’ said the Doctor. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Transhuman?’
‘Survival requires… certain practicalities,’ it growled.
‘Oh, everyone’s saying that today!’ the Doctor grinned.
The Transhuman lashed out. Its claws passed through the holographic Doctor.
‘Temper, temper,’ the Doctor chided. ‘You can’t touch me. I’m not really there at all.’
‘You have spoken… too much and for too long,’ said the Transhuman. It purred a grotesque approximation of a laugh. ‘Your location has been traced and identified. Terraformer Two, operations management command C, level six.’
The Doctor turned from his console in the gleaming command chamber, ignoring the hologram figures being generated around him. He’d seen something reflecting in the vast plate-glass viewport in front of him.
Behind him, three Transhuman killers were padding towards him from the hatchway on all fours, smiling their eternal smiles. A fourth followed, walking upright, herding three, rigidly frightened captives ahead of it.
Amy, Samewell and Bel.
‘You will cease… your interference,’ it snarled.
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor.
‘Don’t do it!’ Amy said, as bravely as she could manage.
‘If I don’t, Pond, it will kill you,’ replied the Doctor sadly.
‘It’s going… to kill you all anyway,’ it growled.
CHAPTER 16
GUIDE US TO THY PERFECT LIGHT
‘Oh well,’ said the Doctor, ‘if you’re going to be like that. I think it’s time to act with a little honour.’
‘What?’ asked the upright Transhuman.
‘He was talking to me,’ hissed Lord Ixyldir.
The Ice Lord leapt out of hiding and swung his war sword at the towering cyborg beast. The stupendous blow hit it in the neck and it lurched sideways. The Transhuman uttered a strangled, drawn-out gurgle of pain and outrage as it toppled.
Bel screamed.
Before Ixyldir’s blow had even landed, his squad of Warriors had joined the assault, lumbering like tanks from their concealment behind pipework and workstations. Ssord led the charge, swinging his barbed axe wide.
The Transhumans howled and sprang forward to meet the attack, claws and fangs bared.
‘Amy!’ the Doctor yelled, beckoning to Amy, Samewell and Bel. ‘Get out of the way!’
The cyborg monsters were too busy with the Martian assault to bother about the three humans. Amy, Samewell and Bel rushed over to the Doctor at the workstation.
‘Get down!’ the Doctor cried. ‘Get into cover!’
‘I thought we were dead in all sorts of different ways then!’ Amy cried.
‘We still could be!’ the Doctor replied. ‘Get behind the console! This is going to get nasty!’
The battle was already a savage and hideously brutal mêlée. The Ice Warriors put all their cold-blooded fury into eve
ry strike and hack of their blades.
The Transhumans ripped back with claws that sliced through scaled plating. They possessed extraordinarily robust physiques. They had been built to be proof against the lethal sonic disruptors that the Ice Warriors had used against the transrats. They shrugged off all but the deepest and most savage cuts of the wicked Martian blades.
Ixyldir withdrew his sword after his first blistering attack to find that his target was already back up and attacking him. Talons lacerated his cape and punctured his pectoral and shoulder guards. Fangs bared, the Transhuman went for his face. Ixyldir smashed the creature in the side of its reinforced skull with his war sword and knocked it onto the floor. It rolled, rising again.
One of the Ice Warriors was already down, dead or dying on the floor. Another was torn and wounded. Despite being driven, determined and possessing greater numbers, the Ice Warriors were still not going to win the fight.
The Doctor turned back to the hologram.
‘Rory Williams Pond!’ he yelled. ‘Do it now if you’re going to do it at all!’
In the assembly hall, the Transhuman turned with a snarl. One of the humans, the smaller male, had slipped away while it had been occupied with the holographic interloper.
It sniffed, tracking him.
‘Run, Rory!’ Vesta screamed.
Rory was doing more than running. The key that Winnowner had slipped him while the Doctor was distracting the red-eyed beast had opened the padlock of the rear doors. He rushed towards the Incrypt hatch and pressed his palm on the checker.
The hatch opened. He ran into a vault lit by blue neon light. It reminded him of a really naff nightclub. There was a raised console in the centre of the floor, a white dais.
He ran to it. His palm-print woke it up.
The Guide opened. A column of digitised information erupted like a fountain from the middle of the dais. It just kept going, generating layer after layer of shimmering holograms: diagrams, data blocks, code sequences, text and picture information.
‘Oh my god,’ Rory mumbled, pressing keys and buttons at random. ‘There’s so much stuff! There’s too much stuff! I don’t even begin to know where to look!’
He thought hard, frantically. The hologram of the Doctor was back in the hall, too far away to consult. How was he going to find anything? How was he—
He thought hard. He tried to stay calm. How hard could it be? Though the Morphans had forgotten the technical aspects of the system, it was probably designed to be a user-friendly, multi-purpose device. It shouldn’t be any more tricky than figuring out the basic functions of a new laptop, or the apps on a smartphone. He had a fundamental advantage over all the Morphans: he was accustomed to basic interactive technology.
He looked at the streams of overlapping data pouring out in front of him. Amongst it all, he saw a single, small icon:
?
He touched it.
It dissolved. Virtually incomprehensible 3D data continued to blossom around him, but the ? was replaced by two more simple icons: a human hand and a human mouth.
Did he want to enter his question manually, or by voice?
He touched the mouth.
‘Speak request,’ said the voice of Guide.
‘I need you to open access to the entire Guide database via…’ Rory hesitated. Where the hell was it? What had the red-eyed thing said?
‘… Terraformer Two, operations management command C, level six!’ he yelled, remembering.
The Transhuman, snarling like a rabid dog, exploded through the Incrypt door behind him.
The console in front of the Doctor lit up. It made the Doctor jump. Deliciously comprehensive quantities of information were uploading into the workstation display.
‘Good boy, Rory!’ the Doctor cried.
‘Did he do it?’ asked Amy, peering out from behind the workstation. ‘Did he? Did he do it?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘he jolly well did. I never doubted him for a moment. I have direct access to our Guide e-manual.’
‘So what’s the matter?’ Amy asked.
‘Gosh,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s quite a lot of it. Enough information to… to build a world, in fact. It’s a lot to take in.’
‘Can you do anything with it?’ she asked.
‘It would probably take a normal human days just to browse this, even with a decent search tool…’
‘Doctor! We don’t have days!’ Amy yelled.
Proving her point, one of the battling Ice Warriors flew overhead, hurled headlong by a snarling Transhuman. The Ice Warrior smashed into the plate-glass screen, cracked it, bounced off, and fell onto the deck. Lord Ixyldir had several deep notches in the blade of his war sword, and the monster he was battling was showing no signs of weakening.
‘We certainly don’t,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But fortunately, I’m not a normal human.’
Rory yelped and tried to put the dais between him and the slavering, grinning predator that was coming for him.
It snarled, head low, back arched, ready to spring. Of all the possible deaths he’d faced in the last day or so, Rory was pretty sure this was going to be the least pleasant by quite a margin.
Vesta appeared behind it and hit it on the back of the head with a mallet. The creature roared and turned away from Rory for a moment.
‘You’ve still got that mallet?’ Rory said in surprise.
‘I thought it might come in useful!’ Vesta replied.
The monster, uttering a deep, throbbing growl, was now circling them both. It tensed to spring.
Roaring, Jack Duggat charged into the Incrypt and drove the blade of his hoe into the Transhuman’s side. The impact smashed the Transhuman into the wall. Straining hard, the biggest of the Morphans leaned on the shaft of his implement and pinned the writhing, howling beast in place.
‘Run away, Elect Rory!’ he bellowed. ‘Take Vesta with you! In Guide’s name, run away now!’
Rory wasn’t having that. Jack Duggat had just saved his life. He ran to Jack’s side, adding his own strength to the labourer’s brawn. They leaned on the hoe, spearing the raging, thrashing Transhuman to the wall. Vesta joined them, lending her effort too.
‘We can hold it!’ Rory cried. ‘We can hold it!’
The sturdy shaft of the farm implement gave out under the force involved and splintered.
‘Or maybe not,’ Rory said, as he, Vesta and Jack backed away.
‘Doctor!’ Amy yelled.
With a vast, two-handed blow, Ssord had just managed to bury the blade of his axe in the skull of one of the Transhumans, killing it, but it was too small a victory, too late. Lord Ixyldir had been knocked over and wounded. The three remaining Transhumans were about to make short work of the Ice Warrior cohort.
And others – several others – had just appeared in the chamber doorway behind them. Their eyes shone red. Their smiles were steel.
The Doctor had selected a section of the Guide database and centred it on his desk display. His Time Lord mind had picked it out of the mass of data, like a needle in the proverbial haystack. Well, pretty much. He didn’t want to admit to Amy that he was only fifty per cent sure it was actually the section he needed.
‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Amy yelled.
‘Yes!’ he shouted back.
‘Do you, or are you just making it up as you go along?’ she demanded.
‘It’s called business as usual!’ he replied.
He took a deep breath, reached into his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He blew on it and rubbed it briskly between his hands as though he was warming up a set of roulette dice.
‘Come on,’ he pleaded, ‘you’ve had quite enough rest for one day! Come on, daddy needs a brand new planet!’
He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the display and pressed the activator.
CHAPTER 17
CLOSE BY ME FOREVER
Nothing happened.
It only didn’t happen for few seconds, but it felt to everyon
e concerned like an eternity. They teetered on the very edge of life or death.
Then the Transhumans stopped in their tracks. They stopped fighting. They retracted their claws. The red light in their eyes grew dim. They turned their backs on the battered, bemused Ice Warriors, and slunk away, as aloof and disinterested as cats.
In the Incrypt, the Transhuman pounced and crashed into Rory, Vesta and Jack, and knocked them flat on their backs, but it didn’t kill them. They looked up to see it padding over them and walking away. It prowled out through the assembly hall, through the outer doors beyond, and began to bound away across the snow until it was lost in the darkness.
‘Are you two all right?’ asked Rory, getting up. Winnowner was peering in at them through the Incrypt hatch anxiously.
‘I thought we were dead,’ said Jack.
‘Get used to it,’ said Rory, ‘that’s how we roll.’
They walked back into the hall together. In the hologram field, the Doctor was beaming at them. Amy, Bel and Samewell were with him.
So were a surprising number of battle-damaged Ice Warriors.
‘I reset their sanction,’ the Doctor said. ‘The Transhumans, I mean. It turned out to be quite a simple instruction in the end. You just had to find the right override.’
‘You did what?’ asked Rory.
‘I countermanded their orders. I sent them back to deactivation. Back to hibernetic suspension. Back to sleep.’
‘All of them?’ asked Amy.
‘All of them,’ the Doctor confirmed, ‘and I hope they’ll stay there for a long time.’
He looked back at Rory.
‘Rory, get your friends to go and tell the other Morphans that the crisis is over. I’ve got to have a little tête-a-tête with Lord Ixyldir here, but that should be a formality. Then we’ll come down to Beside and find you. All right?’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ said Rory.
‘And it is safe,’ said the Doctor. ‘Lord Ixyldir won’t be doing any more attacking, will you, Lord Ixyldir?’
The Ice Lord took a moment to reply, but it was a regular Ice Warrior pause.
‘No, cold blue star,’ he replied.
The wounded Ice Warriors began to patch themselves up. Amy, Bel and Samewell tried to offer some help, but they didn’t really know enough about Martian physiology, and they were also a little freaked out to be so close to giant green aliens who had spent most of the previous day chasing them with murderous intent.
