by Nick Walters
Ruvis waved a hand dismissively. ‘Oh, you’ll still be able to hunt, within the ship - Azreske knows, it’s big enough.’ He leaned over the railing, jaw whirring as he spoke. ‘I have a new plan - what if, during the long sleep, we let these humans breed within a closed environment? Something more conducive to their needs than the pit in which we - or rather you -
consume their fellows.’
There was a trace of bitterness in his voice and Veek knew then that he still dreamed of the hunt, despite his old ruin of a body. ‘Then, after a century or however long it takes to reach our next destination, we’d have a couple of generations of prey ready and waiting for us.’
‘You proposed that before,’ growled Veek. ‘There are too many problems. We couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t escape and try to destroy us. Or kill themselves rather than comply.
And how many do you expect to breed from a mere two females?’
Ruvis sighed. ‘The Vale Commander has agreed.’
Veek wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘What?’
‘Look - the male and the white-skinned female are embracing!’ Ruvis leaned forwards with interest.
But Veek could hear their sobs. ‘Ruvis, they’re still in shock. Intercourse will be as far from their minds as we are from home.’
Ruvis’s ears twitched. ‘Perhaps some form of drug therapy...’ Veek decided not to comment. This was madness.
By agreeing to Ruvis’s futile experiments, the Vale Commander was losing touch. Maybe it was about time she challenged his leadership, as she almost had after the survey of the barren planet. Others had tried - and Kikker had defeated them easily. But at least it would be an honourable death.
Ruvis’s comm-unit bleeped. He listened for a while, and then looked at Veek, his damaged face alive with excitement. ‘That other prey - the one you said spoke of the blue box. It has come round at last!’
Veek couldn’t understand what he was getting worked up about. What was so important about this prey? Then she saw Ruvis’s expression; he’d averted his eyes, as if he’d given away too much.
He turned and limped along the walkway.
‘Wait, Ruvis!’
He paid no attention and carried on. With a last look at the prey in the pit - they weren’t mating, not that she’d expected them to be - she hurried after the old technician. Her instinct told her that there was something going on, something Ruvis didn’t want her to know about.
Something about this blue box...
* * *
Kikker paced up and down before the prey, tail swishing with impatience, watching its pale, fleshy face for any signs of life. He could hardly wait for it to regain consciousness - he hadn’t conducted a decent interrogation in centuries. The last had been the soldiers on Thynemnus - they had resisted well, providing him with hours of satisfaction. He remembered slicing one open and tossing its innards to some Vale Guards, who had scrambled like starving whelps for the rare treat of fresh meat. Even then the prey had not screamed
- it had died without even a whimper. This one, though, looked nothing like a soldier - its clothes were civilian, its hair fair and fine, visible flesh unmarked by battle-scars. It looked sleek and well-fed. Young and firm-limbed. Kikker couldn’t help himself from drooling, and he once again cursed his no-flesh pledge.
Behind him stood the same two Vale Guards, their eyes already glimmering in anticipation, standing to attention on either side of a trolley on which instruments of torture were laid out. Kikker was pleased to see that they had been cleaned, sharpened and polished so that they gleamed in the dank, watery light of the brig. On the vitreous walls, between the pale glowglobes, hung racks of larger equipment -
cudgels, swords, impalers, peelers, piercers, scrapers, prods and spikes. These had not been cleaned - instead, they were deliberately left crusted with the blood of previous victims, to help instil dread in the latest. The smell rising from them was old and rank, sour and tarry, but it still made Kikker’s mouth water.
In the centre of the room was the chair - a fiendish device of torture and a testament to the ingenuity of Valethske martial engineering. Once strapped in, the victim’s body could be harmed in a number of exquisitely painful and interesting ways. Needles hovered above tethered wrists ready to inject poison or drain wearying quantities of blood; electrodes waited to send arcs of agonising energy through the victim’s convulsing body; straps bound the chest, arms and legs, ready to be tightened; the whole chair could be spun on its axis, or slowly immersed in a pool of acid beneath the brig, or made to crush, twist, stretch or snap selected limbs.
Even though it hadn’t been used for hundreds of years, it was still in excellent working condition. Kikker made sure of that.
Suddenly the prey emitted a groan. Kikker stopped pacing.
Its eyelids flickered - and then opened, revealing typically weak, milky human eyes. It strained against its bonds, looking around, eyes widening as it realised where it was.
Kikker’s lips widened in grim mirth. Now came the fear, the begging, the pleading for mercy. He stepped closer, the better to hear its pathetic mewlings.
Its tiny, weak mouth moved as it spoke. ‘Short back and sides, please.’
Kikker snarled, bending over the prey. ‘Fear me!’ he hissed, reaching out and twisting the flaps of its ears. ‘By the blood of the Great Vale, you have reason to!’
Kikker was rewarded with a grimace of agony. It would have to do for now He turned to the Vale Guards. ‘Summon Technician Ruvis.’
Then he turned back to the prey. It was regarding him levelly, without fear.
That was something new to Kikker.
‘Where are my friends?’ it said.
There was strength in its voice - how foolish. Soon Kikker would bring home the utter futility of its situation. ‘They are being - utilised.’
The prey strained against its bonds. ‘If they’re harmed in any way...’ Its voice tailed off as it realised it was in no position to threaten him.
‘Then what?’ roared Kikker.
‘Then I won’t tell you what you want to know.’ It nodded and raised its eyebrows. ‘Yes, I can see from your eyes -
you’ve found the TARDIS, haven’t you!’ It smiled - the first time Kikker had seen anyone in the chair ever do so. ‘I thought as much.’
Kikker hissed in anger. ‘Silence, or I will open your face.’
He turned to the table of torture implements.
He was interrupted by the arrival of Ruvis, who limped into the brig, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm. To Kikker’s surprise, Hunt Marshal Veek followed him.
‘Ruvis,’ said Kikker, nodding at the technician. ‘And Veek -
shouldn’t you be overseeing the survey?’
Veek saluted. ‘Vale Commander.’ Her eyes closed with his.
There was a spark of defiance in their yellow-green fire. Veek was a skilled and lethal hunter, the best Hunt Marshal that Kikker had ever worked with. She knew the ways of the hunter, her instincts were infallible and her bloodlust insatiable.
But Kikker also knew how dangerous she was. Hunt Marshals were always sniffing after promotion. Kikker had already bested the two Hunt Marshals who had challenged his authority. Veek was now the only Hunt Marshal on the mission. She carried her responsibilities well, and was always fiercely loyal, but he could see cool calculation behind her green-yellow eyes, and suspected that she was awaiting her chance to challenge his leadership. He almost relished the prospect; a close fight with a vixen as lithe and supple as Veek would be a stimulating experience.
‘I wanted to know about this strange blue box the prey babbled about when I captured it,’ said Veek. ‘I thought it was merely a ploy, but Ruvis confirmed that there is such an object.’
Ruvis cringed, then regained his composure. ‘What does it matter that the hunters know of the box?’
Kikker fumed. ‘It might endanger the Great Mission!’
Ruvis inclined his head. ‘In what way, exactly?’
/> ‘What’s this “Great Mission”?’ said the prey.
Kikker ignored it. ‘We’ll find out, when this specimen tells us exactly what it is.’
The three Valethske surrounded the chair, towering over the shackled form of their prisoner, who still appeared exasperatingly unconcerned about his plight. ‘Well, since you’re all so interested, I’ll tell you it said. ‘It’s a time machine.’
Kikker gave a curt nod of satisfaction. ‘We had already guessed as such.’
The prey looked deflated, as if it had expected Kikker to be impressed. It started blabbing again. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you you can have the time machine, if you let my friends and myself go free.’
Kikker snarled. ‘Valethske do not make bargains with prey!’
He picked up the chair’s control panel, itching to hear the human scream in agony. Now they had its machine, it could die.
Ruvis snatched the control panel away. ‘Listen, Vale Commander. Listen to what the prey is saying.’
Fighting down a wave of anger, Kikker forced himself to listen. It was talking quickly, breathlessly - talking for its life.
‘Now this may sound like I’m playing my get out of jail free card, but I’m the only one who can operate this time machine. Kill me and you’ll he forever denied its powers.’
Veek was staring at the prey, her mouth hanging open. She licked her lips. ‘I suggest we kill it now,’ she growled. ‘It’s only trying to save its own worthless life.’
Kikker agreed - prey, if it could talk, would say anything to postpone death.
‘Let me take it to the hunters,’ said Veek. ‘Let them tear it to pieces!’
‘No, no, no!’ groaned Ruvis. ‘What if it speaks the truth?’
‘You’ve got nothing to lose,’ said the prey. It smiled up at Kikker. ‘You can always kill me later.’
Kikker bunched his fists, but restrained himself. He mustn’t let his anger get in the way of the prize of time travel.
‘Let me show you the time machine,’ said the prey. ‘And then you can decide.’
‘Agreed,’ said Kikker, beckoning the Vale Guards. Free him
- but keep him closely guarded. Also, free the other prey. Put them to good use - they can assist with the excavation.’
Kikker noticed Veek’s eyes on him.
The guards did as they were instructed. To Kikker’s irritation Ruvis started chattering to the prey almost as an equal, asking questions about the machine. He felt sick as the prey shook hands with the old technician and introduced itself as ‘the Doctor’.
Ruvis saw Kikker’s disapproval and met it with a glare of defiance.
Veek drew him to one side. With respect, Vale Commander, this seems like a trick of the most obvious kind.
Kikker nodded. ‘Good counsel, Hunt Marshal Veek. But we must take the risk. A time machine would set us up among the Gods.’ He could see in her eyes that she knew it too.
Nevertheless, she persisted. ‘Let me go into this TARDIS
with him. We cannot risk the life of our Vale Commander.’
Kikker shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. What was she planning? ‘You are needed to oversee the excavation. Make sure the Doctor’s companions come to no harm.’
Veek’s eyes widened and her tail thrashed about like a trapped animal. ‘You are letting prey go free?’
Kikker grinned at her. He felt a glow of shameful, perverse pleasure in denying the hunter the meat that he himself had not tasted for centuries. ‘Only until we have learned the secrets of its time machine. Then you can do what you like with it.’
Veek’s eyes held his for a moment, and then, with the tiniest tilt of her head, she moved away and out of the brig.
Kikker watched her go, doubts surfacing in his mind. Had he gone too far from the way of the hunter? Was this time machine really a trap?
He walked over to where Ruvis stood with the Doctor, flanked by two Vale Guards. The human had a strange, sterile smell, totally devoid of fear. Kikker had to admit to himself that he was finding it hard to deal with prey that just wasn’t scared of him.
He turned to the Vale Guards, giving instructions to bring in the orbiting skirmisher that contained the strange blue box.
Now he knew it posed no threat, it could be brought into the ship.
Kikker began to feel a thrill of excitement. His destiny was moving ever closer, he was sure of it. His destiny - and his apotheosis.
Chapter Sixteen
Contact
Deep inside the Valethske ship, a vast machine worked, boring down into the earth of the Garden. A gigantic cylindrical column of machinery over a hundred feet high, its surface was streaked and scarred with the dirt of countless worlds.
Clouds of coolant steam obscured its heights, and its bulbous metal torso dwarfed the figures working at its base. Over all rose a continual, calm thrumming sound, like the meditation of a machine god.
In its initial survey, the ship had detected a network of artificial underground chambers, a mile or so beneath the surface of the planet. It had located the point where the crust was at its weakest and had settled itself there, extruding the excavator into the surface of the planet like an enormous mechanical parasite. While he hunters in their copter-packs drifted across the surface of the Garden, the excavator churned its way slowly through the earth, raring out a section wide enough to take an army through. The process was largely mechanical, and mostly automatic. A drill-head worked down through the loam and earth, while a series of powerful pumps removed the excess material, sucking it up through the skin of the excavator and ejecting it into waiting hoppers that whisked it away along a mechanised monorail to dump it outside the ship in a growing mound. But the excavator was centuries old, and often the excess material would be spilled on the enclosed area of ground within the ship, or on to the monorail, or even inside the workings of the machine itself. To prevent the whole thing from clogging up and stalling, an organic element had to be introduced into the process - the Valethske themselves. Hunters and Vale Guards alike worked to keep the excavator going, keeping the monorail free from mud, lubricating the machine’s many moving parts, maintaining the flow of coolant, scooping up the copious excess of spilled material. None complained, as the work was all to the good of the Great Mission. There was a palpable excitement in the air, for many believed that this time, the legends were true and the Gods slept below the surface of this world.
And this time, the Valethske had a little help. Three human prey, which the Vale Commander had spared in exchange for the secrets of the blue box, about which rumour was rife, toiled alongside them.
Peri’s arms felt as if they were going to fall off. She dug the shovel in, heaved out a chunk of wet mud and staggered with her load over to a rattling conveyor-belt that took clanking buckets up from the pit towards the waiting hopper above.
Gasping, she upended the shovel so that the mud slid with a wet slap into the bucket, and then staggered backwards, glad to be free of the weight. Then it was back to the mounds of crud that were dotted like molehills around the looming presence of the machine, another shovelful, back to the conveyor-belt...
Athon and Taiana worked nearby, seemingly without complaint.
Athon still wore his expression of distraction, which made Peri worry that something had gone seriously wrong with his head.
Peri hefted the shovel again and set to work, gritting her teeth against the pain, against the fetid odour, against the indignity, against the futility. She didn’t even know why they were doing this.
They’d been given uniforms to wear, one-piece garments of a dark-brown suede-like material that buttoned up the sides.
Nothing like the gleaming black close-fitting uniforms the Valethske themselves wore. The fabric was repulsively greasy to the touch, cold and clammy against the skin. They fitted the two Eknuri well, but even the smallest they’d been able to find hung loosely on Peri, the ends of the sleeves coming way past her fingertips, the legs ruckin
g up against the clumpy boots they’d given her. She felt like a bizarre clown, condemned to perform the same actions over and over for the amusement of some cruel king. And the smell - it was so bad, Peri could almost chew it. It -and now, she herself - smelt like the contents of a dumpster that had been open all day in the sun.
She’d gleaned the reason why they had been spared, from the Valethske that had thrown the uniforms at them and gruffly ordered them to dress. Apparently, the Doctor had bought their lives at the cost of the TARDIS. She knew, however, that he wouldn’t give up the TARDIS so easily, and hoped that this was all part of some grand plan of escape.
So while she waited for that to kick in, Peri worked on, aware that all around her hungry eyes watched, pink tongues sliding over sharp teeth. She dared not stop working, dared not give them any excuse. She was under no illusion that the Valethske would keep their side of the bargain. They didn’t look like the sort of creatures to keep their word - at least not with the likes of mere ‘prey’. A mental image of the Valethske gunning the Doctor down and stepping over his body into the TARDIS kept playing in Peri’s mind. With the Doctor gone, the TARDIS theirs, what was her life worth, or Taiana’s, or Athon’s?
The one that had shot her, some sort of senior Valethske as far as Peri could work out, was overseeing the excavation. Now and then Pees gaze fell on the hunter’s eyes, and hatred flashed between them, hot as fire.
The young Vale Guard stepped out of the blue box, whiskers twitching, eyes alight with wonder.
