Part 34 (1/2)

'I'm Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today The Empire Today , on the spot, on , on the spot, on and off the Earth. The buildings are falling. Thirty towers in Overcities around the globe have fallen onto the Undertown following acts and off the Earth. The buildings are falling. Thirty towers in Overcities around the globe have fallen onto the Undertown following acts of sabotage. Insurance claims are estimated at five hundred trillion Imperial schillings, a sum which will effectively bankrupt the of sabotage. Insurance claims are estimated at five hundred trillion Imperial schillings, a sum which will effectively bankrupt the First Galactic Bank, a.s.suming that anybody remains alive to make a First Galactic Bank, a.s.suming that anybody remains alive to make a claim . . . ' claim . . . '

Forrester hit the wall twice in rapid succession on the puckered spot that had to be a door control. The door itself, an almost invisible slit, opened instantly.

Before it could close she reached through the opening, grabbed hold of Cwej's hair with her left hand and pulled him toward her.

'I can't take you anywhere,' she snapped. She caught a quick glimpse of three gleaming forms moving towards them. Her right hand came up, finger pumping the trigger of her blaster. A cone of hard radiation filled the opening: an opaque wall of light too bright to look at directly. The bots staggered back, their surfaces blistering, as the fleshy door pulled itself shut behind Cwej.

'How did you ?' he breathed.

' end up with a partner like you? G.o.ddess knows.' She scowled at him, then seemed to catch herself and ruffled his hair instead. 'The door's pressure-sensitive. I leaned against it and fell through. It must have shut behind me.

Don't worry, golden boy, I wasn't trying to escape your adolescent charms.'

She gazed at the now blank wall through which she had dragged him. 'A wide-beam blaster will blind them temporarily, but it won't stop them for long. They'll figure out the door trick pretty soon. We need to think, and quickly. I know that's not your strong suit, but give it a try, will you?'

'I don't think . . . ' he started, but trailed off as he realized where they were.

'The engine room?'

'The engine room.'

He gazed around in awe. The icaron ring at least, that's what Cwej presumed it was lay like a quiescent animal, taking up most of the s.p.a.ce in the oval room. Its smoothly contoured lines suggested tension and reined-in power. Great k.n.o.bbly cables linked it to nodes in the ceiling.

'That's what's been causing all the trouble?' Cwej breathed. 'That's what's driving people loopy with these icaron things?'

'Yep,' Forrester said. 'The icaron ring.'

214.He looked at her dubiously. 'Are we safe?' he asked.

'Are we ever?' she replied snappily, then sighed. She was riding the kid pretty hard. 'Look, if the Doc's right, then it takes a frequent exposure plus possibly body-bepple as well to make someone susceptible. So long as we don't end up living here, we should be all right.' She looked levelly at him.

'But if I see your blaster turning my way, I'll fry your head till your eyeb.a.l.l.s pop, understand?'

He swallowed. 'I understand.'

The door suddenly bulged toward them as one of the bots leaned against it.

Forrester could see its hands, fingers splayed, stretching the thin but resilient flesh. Another pair of hands appeared, then another. For a moment they hesitated, then they pulled in different directions, straining the material almost to transparency. A gap appeared between the folds of the door: small, but growing.

A metal face moved close to the door, gazing through it, its sensors meeting her eyes.

'There's no hope for you,' the bot said, its voice m.u.f.fled but still comprehensible. She recognized that voice now, although she hadn't in the flitterpark. It was the same voice that the bot in the hotel had talked in, the bot who had even now she had trouble believing it who had made her kill Martle. 'Even if you escape this s.h.i.+p,' it continued smoothly, reasonably, 'where can you go?

You must know that your Adjudicator Secular is in my pay. You're criminals now, she's made sure of that. The Order of Adjudicators will hunt you down like rabid ber hounds. There's nowhere you can run. There's nowhere you can go. Why not just give in and let me end it for you now? I'll make it easy, I promise.'

'Like you made it easy for Fenn Martle?' she yelled. 'Screw you! If you want us so bad, come in here and get us!'

'So,' it said, 'you have regained your memory, Ms Forrester. How very unpleasant it must be, knowing that you killed your friend, your partner and, had he lived, perhaps even your lover.'

Cwej glanced over at Forrester, frowning. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering, then took a deep breath and consigned her newly recovered memories to the large area of her mind labelled JUST TOO BAD.

'Not as unpleasant as what I'm going to do to you,' she snapped.

'What's it talking about?' Cwej asked, looking at her but keeping his blaster trained on the door.

'Dunno.' She grimaced. 'But I think this is the end, kid.'

He smiled. 'Couldn't be in better company.'

Didn't the kid ever give up? Forrester tried to come up with a snappy come-back, but there was nothing left to say. She had run out of words, run out of 215time, run out of life.

The bot hands pulled at the flesh of the wall. The gap in the door gaped wide. A metal arm reached into the engine room towards them, its hand a multi-barrelled plasma cannon.

She took up first pressure on the trigger. Make every shot count.

A series of explosions rent the air beyond the doorwall, coming so close together that they almost sounded like one long detonation. Quiet reigned for a second or two.

And then the door irised open.

Forrester's blaster was up and tracking before Cwej could even blink. She had time to take in the entire panorama outside the door the bots sprawled on the floor with huge, smoking holes in their backs, the group of aliens who looked like Powerless Friendless but wore blast-resistant battle armour and were attached to floor, walls and ceiling, and the guns that were pointed at her and Cwej. Especially the guns.

She saw Cwej's knuckle whiten on his trigger.

A blue, four-armed shape with big ears moved behind the Hith warriors.

The next thing Forrester knew she was standing beside Cwej and knocking the barrel of his blaster upwards. It discharged into the ceiling, just missing a Hith warrior. Cwej's expression was confused as he turned towards her.

'It's all right,' Roslyn Forrester and Provost-Major Montmorency Beltempest said in unison to their respective companions, 'I think they're on our side.'

The pain in the Doctor's shoulder suddenly ceased. He gasped great ragged breaths as the butlerbot's pincers withdrew and Tobias Vaughn suddenly jerked in his seat.

'I can't do it,' he said, and tensed his neck, awaiting the claws of the bot again, but Vaughn didn't seem to hear him.

'Whether you believe me or not, Doctor,' Vaughn continued as if nothing had happened, 'my only aim has always been the protection of humanity. I believed that my affiance with the Cybermen could bring great benefits for the Earth. I was wrong, I know that now, but in the thousand years since then I have worked to ensure the success and the technological advancement of first the Alliance, then the Empire. INITEC has been in the forefront of weapons development as well as robotic and genetic research. I had to ensure that humanity was safe safe from Daleks, Jullatii, Cybermen, Draconians, Chelonians, Ice Warriors, Sess, Kraals, Nestenes, Greld, Zygons and every other one of the many races that have tried to invade this small but oh-so-important planet of ours. Sometimes you have been here to help us, or so I have later found out from the records and the reports of those involved.

216.Sometimes you haven't, but we coped anyway. Whether you were here or not, I took it upon myself to help.'

'Tobias Vaughn: Defender of the Earth?' the Doctor asked, tongue very much in cheek.

'And why not?' Vaughn abruptly stood up and gazed out of the wall-wide window, stained crimson now by the fires outside. 'My weapons, my s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, my warbots they have all contributed to making the Empire what it is.'

'A monolithic force for oppression and misery!' the Doctor snarled.

'Yes,' Vaughn said, nodding, 'but a stable one. A safe one.'

'You really claim to have saved the Earth?'

'If it wasn't for the invention of the boson cannon a development of the INITEC laboratories the Jullatii would have overrun the Earth in 2350. If my researchers had not already built the first of the Vigilant laser defence satellites, then the Zygons would have melted the ice-caps and flooded the world in 2765. And who do you think designed the glitterguns that won the Second Cyberwar?'

'You must have enjoyed that.'