Part 32 (1/2)

He glanced over to where Hater Of Humans sat in its Sshaped chair. The Gatherer of the Scattered Shards of Hithis was poised eagerly, watching with bright eyes and erect eyestalks as they drew alongside the sleek, spiked s.h.i.+p.

'Glorious,' it murmured. 'Absolutely glorious.'

'The weapon bays have been removed,' the Doctor murmured.

'We can replace them,' Hater Of Humans said.

Its eyestalks suddenly whipped around towards the Doctor. 'Not that we want to,' it added. 'We're merely trying to turn the icaron ring off.'

'Of course,' the Doctor said. 'I believe you.'

'Look!' a Hith shouted. On the screen a squad of ten tall, angular robots were running along it towards the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske. As they watched, the bots disappeared inside the hatchway at the front of the s.h.i.+p.

'So,' the Doctor mused, 'that part of Powerless Friendless's story was true, at least.'

'Bring us alongside that walkway,' Hater Of Humans ordered. 'Order a squad of my personal honour guard to prevent further incursions through the doorway. Two more squads to enter the s.h.i.+p and find Daph Yilli Gar!'

The s.h.i.+p slowed to a halt under the expert pseudo-limb of the pilot, and rotated until it lay parallel to the walkway. A tube extruded from the s.h.i.+p's side towards the walkway. Lasers flared as the tubes joined. Robotic grapples pulled them close, to form an airtight seal.

'Doctor,' Hater Of Humans snapped, 'you will aid me in . . . Doctor?'

But neither the Doctor nor Provost-Major Beltempest were there.

Adjudicator in Extremis Bij Kakrell stood on the highest point of the Adjudication lodge, watching the towers burn.

'I can't believe it,' she said, the flames casting her shadow back across the roof like a huge, flapping cape. 'After all we worked for. To see it all like this.

In flames . . . ' Lost for words, she just shook her head.

'The Divine Empress has declared martial law,' Duke Marmion, Lord Protector of the Solar System, murmured. His thin, emaciated face seemed to glow in the light from below. Behind him, a small knot of peers the Marquesa of Earth and her retinue of counts and countesses, viscounts and vis-200countesses, barons and baronesses milled in a panic. 'Crowds are gathering on the approaches to the lodge. Under the authority vested in me by the Divine Empress's proclamation, I've taken the precaution of ordering all of your Adjudicators to shoot to kill.'

Kakrell whirled around.

'Shoot to kill?' she snapped. 'Isn't that a little . . . premature?'

Marmion's face was slicked with sweat, and there was a wild, uncontrolled look in his eyes that Kakrell didn't like one bit.

'It seemed a prudent course of action,' he said, ignoring her accusing gaze.

'The Surgeon Imperialis is no nearer discovering the cause of this plague of violence. She believes that it might only affect those people who have seen the inside of a body-bepple tank, but . . . '

Kakrell could have finished the sentence for him. Over sixty per cent of humans on Earth had beppled themselves in major or minor ways. This could mean the apocalypse had finally arrived.

A distant explosion distracted her. She turned her head towards the source of the sound. For a moment the world was as it had been, as it had always been, with the tops of the towers stretched out below the lodge, the forests, lakes and sculpted gardens linked by walkways and bridges.

And then one of the towers slowly sank from view, pulling its bridges after it. She could clearly hear the terrible tearing noise as they snapped, one by one, echoing like the crack of doom across the burning cityscape.

'I don't I don't believe it!' she sobbed, as the slow, remorseless crash of the tower hitting the Undertown reached her ears. 'The null-grav engines are failing!'

'Not failing,' Marmion murmured. 'They're being sabotaged.'

'Then this is the end,' she breathed. 'The end for the Earth Empire.'

'Yes,' he breathed, and she glanced over at him, unwilling to believe that she could hear excitement in his voice.

'How did you do that?' Beltempest asked as the airlock of the Hith s.h.i.+p opened to the Doctor's touch, revealing the translucent tunnel of the boarding tube extending ahead of them.

'It's a gift,' the Doctor said. 'We'd better move fast. Hater Of Humans's troops will be right behind us.'

'Remind me,' Beltempest said as they ran along towards the walkway that linked the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske to Earth. 'Why exactly are we in the vanguard of an alien invasion, rather than bringing up the rear?' to Earth. 'Why exactly are we in the vanguard of an alien invasion, rather than bringing up the rear?'

'If Powerless Friendless is aboard that craft,' the Doctor panted, 'then Bernice is probably with him. Knowing Bernice, there's no knowing what trouble she's getting herself into.'

201.'Fair enough,' Beltempest said, his trunk swinging as he ran. 'Just so I know.'

They reached the end of the boarding tube, where it had been melted into the substance of the walkway. The Doctor's head turned right, as if he intended to swing into the walkway and run on towards the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske, but his entire body turned left and took him off towards the doorway to Earth. An expression of comical amazement twisted his features.

'Doctor?' Beltempest shouted, coming to a halt. 'I thought . . . ?'

The Doctor slowed to a halt just inside the doorway, and frowned. 'The TARDIS?' he said in puzzlement and dawning joy. 'The TARDIS! I've found her!'

'What's a TARDIS?' Beltempest asked.

'She's . . . Never mind. Go and find Bernice. Keep her out of trouble. Tell her tell her I have another engagement. Tell her . . . ' he paused, thinking.

How to pa.s.s a message on without attracting suspicion? Pig Latin, perhaps?

He knew that Bernice was familiar with it. The question was, was Beltempest?

'Tell her, ”Ashtray the ipshay,”' he said finally.

Beltempest frowned.

'Ashtray the ipshay? Will she understand that?'

'It's vital to us all that she does,' the Doctor said, and with that he was gone.

Beltempest glanced back along the boarding tube. A solid phalanx of Hith warriors was sliding towards him.

'Come on, lads,' he yelled, and ran towards the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske.

'Yes,' the man behind the desk said. 'Come to me, Doctor. I've opened the way for you. I've made it easy. Don't disappoint me now.'

Through the eyes of a security camera above the door to hypers.p.a.ce, he watched the Doctor's hesitant footsteps, and whispered: 'Come into my par-lour.'

'Said the spider to the fly,' the Doctor said and wondered why the thought had popped into his head. Then again, this had all the signs of a cla.s.sic trap.