Part 31 (1/2)

E-Kobalt regained control of its sensory systems, and began to a.n.a.lyse the data the growth was feeding it. The dynatropes were trapped inside a box. The box was approximately two hundred metres along each side; the growth claimed that the surfaces were made out of an unidentified, and unidentifiable, material. E-Kobalt s.h.i.+fted its sensory apparatus a little, demanding a visual scan of the nearest wall.

It was decorated with humanoid remains. Skulls, they were called. There were thousands upon thousands of them, set into the wall at regular intervals, their faces painted with black dust and rotting bioma.s.s.

'Commander?'

E-Kobalt spun its head. A shape had materialised by its side, a blue smudge, hovering above the floor of the control section. It was the face of one of the bipeds, the one with the blue visual apparatus and the excessive cranial fur. E-Kobalt vaguely remembered that it had discovered the unit's ident.i.ty, before it had left the ziggurat, but something seemed to be blotting the information out of its mind. The face was a hologram, according to the control growth, though the growth had no idea where it was being projected from.

'I-den-ti-fy-yourself,' E-Kobalt demanded, somewhat weakly.

The man in the hologram shook his head. 'There's no time, commander. You have to listen to me. I don't want to have to hurt you.'

E-Kobalt wasn't sure how to respond to that. 'You-have-no-pow-er-to-harm-the-Kro-ton-Ab-so-lute.'

'E-Kobalt, please. You're not thinking. It's the s.h.i.+ft. It's in your head, it's urging you to do things you shouldn't be doing. Try to concentrate. You know I'm telling the truth.'

The s.h.i.+ft? Suddenly, there was a brand-new thought in E-Kobalt's head. A realisation...

The central idea the concept of absolute destruction, absolute aggression rolled forward, thoroughly squas.h.i.+ng the new notion. 'You-are-ly-ing,' E-Kobalt announced. 'You-will-explain-what-has-happ-ened-to-the-War-spear. You-will-tell-me-where-we-are.'

The man's eyes were tight shut, E-Kobalt saw, and small bubbles of salt-water were trickling down his upper cranial unit. It recognised these symptoms. The humanoid was under stress, possibly in a state of exhaustion. 'You're in the Faction's shrine. I've materialised it around you. E-Kobalt, I don't have time to argue. I can't hold on to the control systems much longer. You have to listen to me.'

'I-do-not-un-derstand.'

'I told you. This is the shrine's cargo hold. It's like being inside a TAR... well, never mind.' A hand appeared, and wiped the hologram's brow. 'You can't attack the ziggurat as long as you're here. You might as well listen. The s.h.i.+ft wants you to destroy us. It's using you, commander.'

More new ideas popped up in the Kroton's forebrain, but the aggressive instinct flattened all of them. 'The-Kro-ton-Ab-solute-will-not-be-de-fea-ted!' E-Kobalt roared. 'You-will-release-the-dy-natropes!'

The man on the hologram let out a deep, sorrowful breath. 'Very well. You leave me no choice.'

'You-will-release-us!'

'No I won't, E-Kobalt. There's no way out for you. You're trapped.'

'We-will-pre-vail!'

'How? How are you going to get out? How are you going to destroy the ziggurat when you're stuck in here?'

'We-will-succeed!'

'How, E-Kobalt? How?'

How?

E-Kobalt searched for an answer, but there was so little in its mind. In fact, it only had two ideas left to work with. One of them, the smaller of the two, was ”get the Relic”, but that was hardly appropriate now.

The other, the thought that occupied almost every part of whatever E-Kobalt had for a soul, was ”destroy”.

'Destroy!' E-Kobalt shrieked.

The vibration rippled through the nervous systems of every Kroton in the Warspear. One idea, one simple command, more powerful than any other. From dynatrope to dynatrope, E-Kobalt felt the pilots reaching deep into their control cores, activating their weapons. The solution was simple, after all. They would blast their way out of the box. The prison would break open. The City would, ultimately, be destroyed.

The thought was a pure one, more satisfying than any other E-Kobalt could remember having. Strange, then, that even as it gave the firing order, a new idea began to blossom at the back of its mind. An idea that said, in a voice the commander didn't quite recognise: ”stop”.

But the weapons systems had already been engaged. E-Kobalt saw a look of relief cross the biped's face. Then the hologram faded into nothingness.

Of course, E-Kobalt was dead before it realised anything was wrong.

In less than a second, the Warspear's hyperbolic resonators cycled through their entire repertoire, slamming signals ranging from the ultrasonic to the infra-normal against the walls of the shrine, searching for the frequency that would tear the prison open. Of course, any known form of matter would have been susceptible to the vibrations. The loomkeepers of Quartzel-88 had been quite thorough when the weapons had been designed.

Unfortunately for the Krotons, the shrine wasn't made of matter. At least, not in the conventional sense. Like the ziggurat, it had been built out of sheer mathematics, the complex architectures of block transfer computation. Unlike the ziggurat, the people who'd made the shrine had got their sums right.

The cargo hold rang with a sound that was like all the other sounds in creation added together and amplified. The air was shaken apart by echoes on every conceivable frequency, including the ones to which the Warspear was susceptible, and the ones to which E-Kobalt's s.p.a.cecraft was susceptible, and the ones to which the Krotons themselves were susceptible.

Moments later, the floor of the hold was carpeted with a layer of fine white frost. The skulls weren't even scratched.

The Doctor piloted the shrine back to the ziggurat before he let go of the control systems. Then he relaxed, remembering slightly too late that the intense concentration had been the only thing keeping him upright. His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground, although he liked to think he did it with some degree of style and elegance.

He lay there a while, staring up at the ceiling. Eventually, Sam's face appeared overhead.

'What happened?' she said.

'We won,' the Doctor told her. He squinted, as if that would make it easier to concentrate. There was something he was forgetting... oh yes. 'How's the Kroton? The one in the doorway?'

Sam glanced towards the corridor. 'You know what coleslaw looks like?'

'Yes.'

'That's how the Kroton is.'

'Good. The units in the ziggurat were in resonance with E-Kobalt, then. I thought as much. When the commander got shaken apart, all its friends got shaken apart, too.'

'You mean, like Bagpuss?'

The Doctor frowned. 'Obscure post-modern youth-culture reference. Ace would have been proud of you.'

Sam moved her lips to say something else, but the voice that came out of her mouth wasn't quite her own. 'YOU'RE BECOMING AN IRRITATION,' she seemed to say.