Part 24 (2/2)

'Picks me up! Like a piece of luggage, he picks me up and throws me throws me, he does, throws me down the Pit!' Teal and Bernice exchanged grins. 'Teal, you tell him. I'm important, me. I should not be thrown around like luggage!'

'Okay, Bishop. What have you been doing with Tiw?'

The Adjudicator did not smile. 'I saw it again. We both did. The light. He He wanted to stay.' wanted to stay.'

Teal's smile faded. Are you sure?'

Bishop crossed his arms. 'As an Adjudicator, I am a trained, completely impartial, observer.'

'Yes, and I'm a Martian Queen,' Bernice snorted. 'We'd better get back to the Operations Room.' Spinning on her heel, she led the way back along the corridor.

Christine ran.

Somewhere behind her, Atrimonides was screaming in pain above a babble of voices.

' this mess cleared '

' wait a minute, can you smell '

' Earth Mother preserve us! We've got a fire '

' an extinguisher! Somebody get '

' no good, I can't hold them '

' what? How many systems? b.l.o.o.d.y '

Christine slapped her palm against the lockplate of the door. Behind her, Atrimonides lurched clear of a rising pall of smoke. She dashed clear of the control room and on to the second half of the observation gallery, thirty metres above the main executive transporter bay. Sirens blared across the chamber. Technicians dropped their tools and ran for the interior of the s.h.i.+p.

The control room door slammed shut behind Atrimonides as he ran on to the gallery and hurled himself at Christine. His face was blistered from the hot coffee and one eye was closed. The other glared malevolently. Christine turned to run, but there was a m.u.f.fled thud in the control room. The observation windows blew out in a shower of gla.s.s. The shock rocked the gallery and sent her sprawling back into Atrimonides.

There was another concussion. Atrimonides snarled. Christine fought for her balance as he grasped her with hooked fingers. The guard rail twisted beneath her hands, and they fell backwards into empty s.p.a.ce.

Cheryl moved towards the airlock. She stood at the door, the Doctor's name poised on her lips, but just before she called out, something made her hesitate. There were soft voices coming from inside. The Doctor... and Piper! She crept closer, straining to hear what was being said.

' and the Project had been going for so long, you see. So long, with no results. The situation on Earth was desperate, we all knew that. We had to succeed.'

The Doctor's voice said, 'And so you infected the starsuits with a software virus.'

'That's right.' Was that a note of desperation in Piper's voice? 'Earth needed results and we couldn't get them. IMC could, but there was no legal way to transfer information so they gave me a virus and I implanted it into the starsuits. The virus travelled into the neural net during a regular systems update and began to transmit information to IMC. To facilitate their takeover.'

The Doctor sighed. 'But the virus was cheap. Cheap and nasty, like everything about IMC. It caused system malfunctions. Suit malfunctions.'

Cheryl felt a cold fist clench around her heart.

'Like the one that killed Paula.'

'Yes. But I '

'You b.i.t.c.h! It was you all the time. You killed her!' Cheryl ran into the airlock chamber and grabbed Piper by the throat, jerking the woman harshly to her feet.

The Doctor stood as well. 'Cheryl, please, I hardly think this is the right moment for '

'Shut up!' Her eyes narrowed and she drew back her fist. 'I'm going to kill her!'

She slammed her clenched fist into Piper's face.

Time seemed to slow down as Christine fell into the executive transporter bay. She could see a row of tiny faces gaping from the balcony before being engulfed by a huge sheet of flame. The smell of Atrimonides' burning face and hair was thick in her nostrils. She gagged. And then the floor of the bay was rus.h.i.+ng up towards them.

Atrimonides was grabbing wildly at her, desperately flailing his hands and feet, and Cheryl realized he was trying to use her as a reaction ma.s.s to slow his own fall. Unaware that she was screaming, Christine reached towards his face with her one good arm and hooked her fingers into the burns which crusted his cheek. He screamed and jerked. Christine whirled out of control.

There was another explosion. Christine felt her stomach lurch as the executive transporter bay gravity generator fluctuated, flinging her and Atrimonides into a spiralling loop, then failed completely, leaving her weightless. Foam began to spread through the air as the fire*fighting systems reacted automatically to the emergency. Half blinded by the foam, Christine scrambled for something to grab on to to break her fall.

Bernice, Bishop and Tiw Heimdall entered the Operations Room. Julie Ndobe, Shmuel Zehavi and Teal Green were talking in low voices. Craig Richards was standing alone, some distance away. a.n.u.shkia Smyslov had bandaged Alex Bannen's head, and the physicist was propped in a sitting position against a workstation.

He looked up eagerly as Bernice walked over to him. 'How are you feeling?'

'Well enough to reboot this pile of rust.'

a.n.u.shkia said, 'I've told you, Alex. Not until the Doctor says. We still don't know why Piper crashed the system. Until we do, it would be foolhardy to even consider '

She stopped.

'Did anyone hear '

There was an explosion of light.

Someone was yelling, but Christine couldn't make out the words. The executive transporter bay was a chaos of foam And whirling shapes which might or might not have been armed troopers. A fist lashed out at her from the whiteness. Christine gasped. Her lungs burned as she inhaled foam; she vomited.

Small*arms fire scorched a web of gaps through the foam.

'Who's the idiot still firing? Huang? If that executive transporter goes up, I'll personally eat your kidneys, capishe? capishe? Now get her!' Now get her!'

Atrimonides.

Something huge and black loomed out of the mist of foam. Christine slammed shoulders first into one of the slab*like metal sides of a long*range executive transporter. She gasped. Her head banged against the surface. Momentum carried her down the hull into the deads.p.a.ce between the executive transporter and the bay wall.

She shook her head to clear it. The foam was not so dense down here, and the recyclers were beginning to suck away what little there was.

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