This particular dispersal chamber had been modified. It did not use the temporal aspects that the ones used on the Vampires did. Instead, the molecules were collected from the chamber by extraction and then filtered into specially sealed chambers from which they could not escape. Here they would be tested and analysed.
As the Saturnyne test subject was moved forward at gunpoint, it turned and, in its drugged state, fell to its knees before Skellis.
‘Please,’ it begged him. ‘Help me.’
Skellis froze. It was as if the Vampire had read his mind. Perhaps it had – for they were known to possess psychic abilities. Whether a coincidence or not, it had used exactly the same words his friend had used all those years – and a regeneration – ago when Gith had been killed by the Macra.
Although he had seen action on many planets, Skellis was not used to being in a position of total power over a living thing. He chided himself. This was no living thing. It was dead. The Vampirism was like a parasitic disease that killed the host and simply used its body. He shook his head.
‘Get it up,’ he said. ‘Put it in the chamber.’
As the Vampire was dragged to its feet, it gave a soul-wrenching wail. Skellis had to turn away. He climbed the ladder to a walkway that ran around the second level of the lab. He walked round to an airlock door and moved through to the control room. Here a reinforced window gave onto the lab below and monitors crowded a control panel that operated the dispersal chamber itself.
Skellis watched as the guards half-dropped, half-threw the subject into the round chamber. He pressed a button and a bright pink cover came down, sealing the Saturnyne inside. Then he leaned forward and spoke into a microphone. His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat before trying again.
‘Clear the laboratory,’ he said. ‘Quarantine lockdown procedures.’
The two guards saluted and left the lab via the lower airlock. Skellis hesitated. His hypothesis. It all came down to this. Right or wrong. He would know very soon.
Behind him, the control room began to fill with junior researchers and even the guards. Everyone on the base had heard about the importance of the work even if they did not know the details of it. Skellis moved his hand across the panel, his index finger poised above the button that would kill the subject. He imagined he could hear it screaming but that was impossible: the chamber was sealed and so was the lab. He closed his eyes and slowly activated the dispersal system.
Afterwards they applauded him. Skellis did not feel like accepting plaudits so he went to the one place he was bound to be alone. At that stage, he lived in cramped quarters on the facility, but it wasn’t there. It was outside. There was an emergency exit crawlspace that led up to a door. This opened onto the desert plains of the Argolid expanse.
There was nothing living for a thousand miles in any direction. No water flowed here and no dust blew up in the winds that constantly whipped the solid stone ground. The wind made little noise for there was nothing for it to vibrate or move, and so it was as close to silence as you could get without entering a vacuum.
Skellis leant back against the low wall and exhaled deeply. Then inhaled. Each breath felt almost painful, but it was good to get the fresh air of Phonida into his lungs after the constant recycled atmosphere of the Golden Sword facility.
He was right. The way in which the Time Lords had been going about the war was completely flawed. Tens of thousands of Time Lords had died; millions of regenerations had been given. And it all counted for nothing because of a flaw no one thought was there, let alone thought to look for.
The data collected from the filtration chambers proved that by dispersing the Vampires’ molecules the Time Lords had actually spread the menace of the Vampire infection exponentially across time and space. They needed to find a different way of killing them.
Skellis cried then, for his friend’s death had been worthless after all.
Naturally, the data would have to be checked, the experiment replicated – probably many times over with different species. Eventually, they would need to test it on a Great One, but this was the first step on the journey to true victory. And, of course, Rassilon would have to be told.
Rassilon stood on the deck of the lead Bowship. It was an elegant craft with curved wings. These swept back from a blunt nose in which was housed a sharpened length of steel, pointed at the end – almost like a huge sword. The bolt itself was the same length as the main part of the ship. The Time Lord President was a man reborn – quite literally, as he had recently regenerated. In this form, he was strong and athletic, if older and with a full beard. He was pleased with his new appearance. It suited the triumphant leader returned from battle very well.
His fleet was returning from the war victorious; bloodied but the eventual winners. He and his forces had driven the Vampire blight from the galaxy for good. Of course, there would always be vampire-type creatures, he suspected. The old dispersal chambers had seen to that. Yes. But the Great Ones. They were the ones that mattered. They had been wiped out.
It had taken almost a hundred years since Rassilon had first been told of the experiment on Phonida. New weapons had been needed and they took time to build. Then they had needed to find the Vampires and flush them out. And they had spread far and wide.
Information on enemy movements had become key. That was when the Celestial Intelligence Agency had been set up. Agents were recruited covertly from the Academies and trained in every aspect of espionage and the gathering of data. The network of Gallifreyan spies was huge now and it would be difficult to dismantle it. But that was a problem for another day.
Rassilon smiled as he recalled the first time they had forced a Great One from its nest and out into space. He couldn’t even recall what the planet had been called. It made little difference now, as the planet no longer existed. But the Vampire had tried to flee. It was fast, but the Bowships were faster. They caught up with the creature easily and, despite its laughable attempt to mesmerise the entire fleet, it had been cornered.
He was on board the lead ship when it approached the being. The Great One was a huge humanoid beast with sickly-looking grey-green skin and slightly pointed ears. Beady black eyes stared unfeelingly at the Gallifreyan vessel as it moved in for the kill. Rassilon gave every command, positioning the front of the ship just so. The weapon it was armed with was crude. It had no guidance system. Once fired, it only needed to strike home accurately. So Rassilon had manoeuvred the ship carefully. The Great One had no idea what was happening. It could not have known the Time Lords now knew how to kill it in one move.
It was still staring – almost straight at Rassilon – when the Bowship shot its bolt. The huge, iron stake sailed across the silent void and struck the Great One exactly where its heart was. There was just time for it to open its mouth in a silent scream before it crumbled away to nothingness. Using the equipment developed and refined in the Golden Sword facility, the Bowships had scanned a square astronomical unit for any trace of the Vampire. There was none.
The Great Ones soon became aware of the new weapon being used against them. They soon became more fearful of the Time Lords – the whole cosmos did. As they became more terrified, the Vampires became more desperate and far more ruthless. They thought nothing of using entire races as conscious shields against the Gallifreyans. But Rassilon knew that the price paid would never be too high to rid the universe of the Vampires. He loathed them with a pure, unsullied hate. In some cases it blinded him to things: what others called atrocities.
As the Bowships fulfilled their task in space, the Gallifreyan ground forces were now able to truly take the battle to those the Vampires had possessed. All thanks to the Skellis Gun. Named after its inventor, the weapon was multi-barrelled, firing four, eight or even twenty elongated metal shafts simultaneously, depending on whether the gun was handheld or mounted. What they did was ensure that when soldiers came across a Vampire, they could be assured of a kill as long as they aimed at the chest. Triumph followed trium
ph, and fewer soldiers were required because fewer were dying.
As Rassilon sped home to Gallifrey, he knew that from then on everyone would know how to kill a Vampire: use a simple weapon to penetrate the creature’s body and pierce its heart. He would make sure that every one of the new time ships he planned would have such information in its systems.
It would also carry an instruction, for Rassilon was not totally victorious. He had let the King Vampire escape. It was a tactical error, all due to hubris. He had had the chance to destroy the King Vampire or corner four of the Great Ones. He chose the latter because he thought it would strike fear into the King Vampire to know that he was the last of his species and that the whole Bowfleet was now coming from him. The battle with the other Vampires had given their monarch the chance to escape. This had meant that the ‘war’ had not ended because all the troops and all the CIA operatives and all the Bowships were engaged in the hunt for it.
After decades of searching and new time-space scanner development, Rassilon was at last convinced the King Vampire had disappeared; either it had died or it had fled somewhere beyond the reach of the Time Lords. Whichever the case, it was pointless to continue the search, so Rassilon had declared final victory and given the longed-for order that all forces should return home.
The war was over. All thanks to one man.
Of course, most historians would say that one man was he, Rassilon, President of the Time Lords, defender of Gallifrey. And he was happy for that to be the acknowledged version of events. Deep down, though, he knew the credit belonged to Skellis. He was a genius. Of that there could be no doubt. Without him, the Time Lords might even have succumbed to the Vampires themselves.
General Skellis now lived in splendour in Arcadia. He had even become friends with Rassilon, and they dined whenever the President retuned to Gallifrey. Of course, the breakthrough with the dispersal chamber and the knowledge it was spreading the Vampire curse rather than destroying it was well documented – even if it wasn’t public knowledge. But in all the hundreds of years the two of them had now known each other, Skellis had never told Rassilon how he discovered the Vampire’s fatal weakness.
Gith had gone first. She was like that. It was not bravado. Not as far as Skellis was concerned. It was a confidence that was needed to get the job done: a soldier’s self-assurance. Skellis had to admit she looked up to Gith. There was no way she would have gone in first. No way.
Gith had entered the chamber and checked the corners with the torch mounted on her staser rifle – just as they had been taught on Squad. She gave a curt nod, and Skellis clambered through the tunnel exit herself, sweeping her weapon ahead as she did, covering Gith’s flanks and rear. Then she moved past her, shining her own flashlight further into the gloom. She could see a ledge ahead of her about 60 metres. Her torch did not reach that far. The reason she could see it was because of a flickering light from beneath the ledge that cast odd shadows on the wall.
‘Do you see that?’ she hissed to Gith. As she turned to see if her partner had heard, she saw the thing on the ceiling above them. A huge, black crab: a Macra. It was already reaching down to Gith with one vast pincered claw.
Skellis opened fire and time seemed to slow, so that what must have taken milliseconds seemed to take a minute. Her staser bolts raked the ceiling and hit the Macra across its armoured exoskeleton. These hardly seemed to affect the monster at all. Its claw was already around Gith’s neck. She was staring, terrified up at the beast, her face illuminated by the flash-flash-flash of staser fire from Skellis’s rifle.
Gith looked back at her sister in arms. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Help me.’
With sickening slowness, the Macra squeezed its pincers together and Gith stiffened in its grip. Skellis was still firing and screaming now, although her ears were so full of her own double heartbeat she could hear nothing else.
In the next flash she saw Gith’s head fall to the ground. Skellis actually stopped firing for a moment and her torch found her friend’s face on the darkened floor. Her expression was too terrible, too agonised, too despondent for Skellis to take. The Macra was now on the ground, coming towards her.
Then Skellis heard a low otherworldly moan from behind her, where the ledge was. Something was stirring in the depth of the nest and she knew what it was. She had to get out of there. Fast. To do that she had to deal with the Macra and only one target seemed apt.
The monster crab lunged for her, but Skellis ducked out of the way, watching the claw intensely as it hit the earth wall where she had been standing a second before. Then, with a banshee scream of anger and sorrow, she plunged the jagged combat knife she carried on her leg deep into the soft joint between the Macra’s pincer and the main part of its claw.
The Macra let out a high-pitched scream and backed away. It thrashed against the sides of the chamber in a desperate attempt to dislodge the knife but Skellis held on, driving the blade deeper, gouging as she went. Blood pumped from the wound and Skellis could feel it on her face, hot and thick and smelling like a sewer. Now she let go and stood back, taking careful aim with the staser rifle. But this time she did not strafe the Macra; she made each shot count, hitting the wound right on target. She kept firing until the power pack was exhausted and the Macra lay still.
Now Skellis could run. But she didn’t. She heard the moan again, and turned to face the flickering lights. She walked steadily to the ledge and looked down. Some ten feet below her was a Great One. It was on its back as if lying in state. It was unconscious although the sounds of the battle did seem to be rousing it. Skellis raised her weapon. She would kill it. For Gith. For every Gallifreyan who had been fighting in this bloody and bitter war far too long.
She aimed at the creature’s head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Skellis cursed. She had expended the power pack. She looked around for the combat knife and found it with her torch. It looked too meagre to do any damage to the Great One. But, lying beside it was the Macra’s pincer. It had been severed by her weapon’s repeated fire.
It was almost as big as Skellis herself, razor sharp along one edge and pointed – albeit bluntly – at the end. She grimaced. It would do. She hefted it into her hands and walked back to the ledge. Now she saw the tubes that fed the horrific being lying beneath her. They were delivering fresh blood to the creature – both via its mouth and intravenously. Skellis looked at the Great One as it began to wake. She could see raised veins on its body and see the blood all pulsing one way …
Suddenly she knew what she needed to do. She lifted the Macra’s severed pincer above her head and leapt forward into mid air, screaming as she came down on the Great One’s chest and plunged the sharpened limb in the Vampire’s sluggishly beating heart …
THE ENIGMA OF SISTERHOOD
I WEPT WHEN he destroyed Phaester Osiris. My sister also, for she loved our home world as I did. We comforted each other for a period. And then we sought revenge. Sutekh had killed many of the court and numerous members of our family. Yet Horus, our noble leader, told us that we would not seek revenge; we would seek justice. At that point, I did not care what he called it, I just wanted to see the foul creature drowned in the same annihilation he had poured on our home. How could I have guessed at that juncture that this desire for his death would lead to my own destruction?
Horus led the remaining 740 Osirans on a quest to pursue the coward across the galaxy and punish him. We were all related, and as such we were a family fuelled by anger and remorse. Our one huge ship combed the stars, seeking the bringer of darkness and his footprints were not hard to find. He fashioned a path of mayhem and death across half the cosmos, leaving nothing but dust and darkness in his wake.
We could have captured Sutekh several times, but it would have meant the loss of sapient life. Horus would not allow it. He thought the small creatures to be not only our responsibility but also – somehow – our kith. He was determined to show himself better than his brother. We, too, had to be seen in that light. There were
many, however, who would have gladly sacrificed entire systems to face the one who had put Phaester Osiris to the torch.
After many years’ pursuit, the gathered forces of the Osirans at last came close to capturing Sutekh. He was cornered on a distant world where the natives had mastered geodesic principles and had become adept at manipulating space-time into singularities. We did not know what had drawn the evil one there, but when we found him he had manipulated their science to serve his own purposes and absconded.
Due to the proximity of our pursuit we were able to follow him closely and despite using a lodestone to travel forward in the time-space continuum again we tracked his movement to a vast, blue giant with clouds of swirling poisons. The so-called Cubil Terriors – a local species of dog-faced warriors that occupied the system’s outer rim – had dubbed the world Zuliter. This was to be the last resting place of Sutekh. Or so my sister and I believed.
‘Hathor! Khonsu!’ boomed Horus in greeting.
All the Osirans had been summoned to his audience chamber in the fore part of the ship. It was a palatial triangle of floor, lined with cushioned seats. Already many of our noble cousins were there, each one wearing a different visage to the next and each bearing the robes of physiognomy; clothing that belied our true nature and powers. Horus the falcon-headed naturally wore white robes trimmed in gold, for his power was like that of the sun and stars combined. Only Sutekh matched him.
My sister, Hathor, wore a beautiful dress the colour of ancient red stars that clung to her figure, exaggerating every curve. Her domed head was a golden yellow and today she wore a humanoid face with long, flowing hair of deep blue and her eyes glowed a deep, garnet red. She had dressed for the occasion for she and Horus had once been lovers.
For myself, I had selected a similarly cut outfit of darkest cobalt silk with white piping at the wrist, shoulder and around the plunging neckline. Like my sister, I had chosen a human face, too, but green not yellow and instead of hair, my dome was the same deep blue as my robe. Hathor and Horus might have been lovers, but I knew the fascination I held for him.
Doctor Who: Myths and Legends Page 19
