Godengine Page 4

  ‘Thought he was attacking,’ the other replied curtly. ‘So I was defending myself. I’m Madrigal.’ She sat up, dislodging the silver blanket to reveal light grey fatigues and a familiar emblem to anybody who knew the history of Earth’s military forces; Madrigal was a Colonial Marine. ‘Who the cruk are you?’ Roz also remembered that the twenty-second century Marines were almost seventy per cent female, with a formidable reputation that had survived into the thirtieth century.

  Her reverie was interrupted by the introductions. ‘I’m the Doctor and this is my associate, Roslyn Forrester,’ he said, doffing his hat and making it roll up his arm until it was back on his head. ‘We found you and two of your companions unconscious in the wreckage of the ATET.’ A sudden duet of groans indicated that the others were also waking up. ‘I’m afraid one of you didn’t survive.’

  Madrigal looked at the other two survivors and shrugged. ‘Kolchak. Oh well, he can find out about God first-hand, I suppose.’

  ‘There are six of them. Six mammals. You assured us that we would be unmolested by these, these vermin, Abbot Aklaar!’ hissed Cleece, his clamps opening and closing in a gesture of irritation. ‘You claimed that the threat of aerial attack from the invaders of Earth would be sufficient to keep them in their pens.’

  ‘They are an inconvenience, Pilgrim Cleece. Nothing more.’ Aklaar gazed northwards and pointed with a bifurcated hand. ‘But be assured, my son; no one will be permitted to stand in the way of our holy crusade.’

  The three other Ice Warriors stared towards the North Pole in reverence, the setting sun reflecting crimson in the visors of their helmets.

  Chapter 2

  The Doctor picked up the china teapot that he had assembled from his survival kit and cast his gaze around the little group. Once again, fate had assembled an entourage of interesting and colourful characters against a historically significant backdrop. I really must have a word with Fate about that, he decided.

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ he asked politely, before pouring the brew into the ordered row of metal beakers in front of him. All six of them were sitting cross-legged in a circle, illuminated by ever-lasting matches and warmed by the fading heat from the shuttle, a few metres to their left. ‘Anyone take sugar? No? Well, drink up before it gets cold.’

  ‘It is cold,’ whispered Roz.

  ‘I know,’ he replied irritably. ‘Lower atmospheric pressure – lower boiling point. It will be at least a century before we can enjoy a decent cup of Earl Grey on the surface of Mars.’ He scowled at her. ‘But what did you expect? Piping hot tea and a plate of scones and french fancies? Or maybe tiffin?’

  ‘Are you both mad?’ The one called McGuire, a small, edgy man with thin, greying hair and narrow, untrusting – or were they desperate? – eyes, tried to stand, but thought better of it and slumped back to the floor. McGuire hid an inner core of distrust, tempered with hatred and bitterness, the Doctor gauged. A dangerous combination which unfortunately cropped up on his travels with alarming regularity. ‘The ATET’s a write-off and you’re making tea!’

  ‘We also saved your lives, McGuire,’ Roz added sharply. ‘If the Doctor and I hadn’t come along when we did, the four of you would have frozen to death. And the tea is to help counteract shock.’

  ‘I’m well aware of both those facts, Ms Forrester,’ said McGuire coldly. ‘But what the hell were the two of you doing, ten thousand klicks from anywhere?’

  ‘You’re hardly equipped for walkabout,’ added Madrigal tersely. Ah, yes, thought the Doctor, Madrigal. Madrigal the warrior. In many ways, she reminded the Doctor of Ace, with all her anger, all her hostility, worn like body armour to protect – or maybe hide – whatever lay beneath. Once, lifetimes ago, the Doctor might have felt threatened by someone who embraced violence so totally. Now he found such honesty refreshing; if Madrigal were going to kill you, at least you would know about it beforehand.

  ‘Our ship crashed about three kilometres from here and we baled out,’ explained Roz with barely restrained patience. ‘We’ve already told you that. If you’re that worried, we’ll show you the wreckage.’

  Good thinking, Roz, the Doctor thought. Call their bluffs Any wreckage which remained from the break-up of the TARDIS would now be tumbling through the Time Vortex, fractalled pieces of outer plasmic shell and the odd roundel, no doubt.

  ‘I am not happy being so exposed. At least the ATET offered some protection from the electromagnetic build-up,’ said Esteban, the next piece on the board.

  Professor Vincente Esteban was apparently a physicist, a large, bear-like man with a wonderfully childlike innocence and fascination. He impressed the Doctor: a scientist who hadn’t yet lost his sense of awe at the universe’s mysteries. Too many scientists of the Doctor’s acquaintance had either become cynical and jaded, or drunk on the power that their discoveries offered; he thought of Maxtible, Kettlewell; even Greel and Davros had once been simple seekers of knowledge. But Esteban was the kind of person who still wanted to know where God had thrown his dice, constantly peering into irrelevant nooks and crannies for the universal truths. Of course, the Doctor could have told him exactly where the dice were, but where would the fun have been in that?

  He realized what Esteban had said.

  ‘What electromagnetic build-up?’ Mars didn’t have a magnetic field, a fact that the Osirians had taken advantage of seven thousand years ago – when they had enslaved Sutekh in Egypt, the stellar power relay had been placed on Mars. So how could there be a build-up? But if there was one... Once, in earlier incarnations, cogs would have turned. Now things simply sparked.

  Esteban, warming to both the Doctor and his subject, produced a slim black notebook computer – a tablette, the Doctor recognized – and flipped it open. A small holo-field began to form above it.

  ‘Not again,’ complained Madrigal. ‘Stranded in the Red Outback and the rocket scientist wants to start a lecture tour.’ The Doctor repressed a smile; an honorary descendant of Ace, definitely. Then again, given the vagaries of time travel – both his and Dorothée’s – it might not be so honorary.

  ‘Look.’ Esteban thrust the holographic simularity under the Doctor’s nose. The three-dimensional animated display which hovered about ten centimetres above the tablette showed an extremely high magnetic flux density across the entire northern hemisphere of Mars. And if the readings were to be believed, the flux density was increasing at an alarming rate. It was almost as if someone were trying to give Mars the magnetic field that it lacked. Except that field which was blossoming across the planet was totally unnatural. It was monopolar.

  ‘If it increases at this rate, Doctor, it will start to cause physiological damage within six days.’ The Doctor nodded; the human brain was a complex electro-neurochemical sponge. Ramp up the ambient magnetic field, and very unpleasant things started to happen. Headaches were the first sign, death the last. With madness in between, of course. At least Esteban hadn’t noticed the unique nature of the artificial magnetic field; the Doctor really did not feel up to explaining that magnetic monopoles – a scientific impossibility – were the province of a science far more advanced than mankind’s. Currently. He frowned; shuttles crashing, buggies exploding, TARDISes falling apart and Mars suddenly deciding that it needed a monopolar magnetic field. Mix thoroughly and bake in a hot oven, then garnish liberally with Daleks. The level of coincidence was far too high, even for his liking. Then something else occurred to him.

  ‘May I?’ he asked politely, grabbing the tablette from Esteban before the physicist could respond.

  McGuire stood up. ‘This is getting us nowhere. The heat from the wreck’s not going to last much longer, and most of the ATET’s survival gear was lost when the generator blew. And you and Vince are prattling on about -’

  ‘Wait a moment!’ barked the Doctor, holding up his hand. He could sense their growing impatience, but he also sensed a major clue, something just beyond his reach. Tapping away at the tablette, he shifted the readings from magnetic flux to
the third derivative of gravimetric intensity, a sure pointer to any subspace activity which might have explained the infarction he had detected in the TARDIS.

  ‘Interesting, is it?’ said McGuire sarcastically.

  Ignoring him, the Doctor continued. His search for the source of the infarction fruitless, he tried another tack. Although the computer was primitive, it could still pick up the by-products of a Vortex rupture, the other disaster that had cost him his TARDIS. He started looking for reverse-spin tau-mesons with a vengeance.

  ‘How’s your comm-set?’ Roz asked McGuire. The Doctor couldn’t help smiling; one of Roz’s greatest assets was her practicality. Reassured that she could deal with the trivia and minutiae, he returned his attention to the tablette and continued, running his analyses at speeds which left its processor gasping for breath.

  McGuire shrugged at Roz’s question. ‘Between Vince’s beloved electromagnetism and the fall-out from the shuttle, what do you think? The aerial practically lights up in the dark.’

  ‘Of course!’ Everyone looked at the Doctor, and he instantly regretted his outburst. What he had discovered was of no interest to anyone apart from himself and Roz. So it was time to improvise.

  ‘More tea, anyone?’

  Felice stared through the open door at the prisoner, watching him sitting on the chair with his square jaw resting on his palms. For all his size and physique, his expression reminded Felice of a little boy who had lost his mother, with his big teddy-bear eyes looking up at her imploringly.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me?’ she asked, walking into the room.

  He stood up and frowned. It only made him look even sweeter. ‘You’ve got a big problem, Dr Delacroix.’

  ‘Me personally? And call me Felice. Dr Delacroix makes me feel like I’m ancient.’

  ‘Only if you call me Chris.’ He smiled, but she could see that something was really worrying him. ‘I know how ridiculous this sounds, but you’re all in terrible danger.’

  Felice sat on the bed and crossed her legs, appreciating Chris’s bashful look as she did so. ‘Chris, the entire solar system is in terrible danger – you should know that. The creatures who destroyed your ship have invaded Earth, bombarded this planet – not to mention Callisto, Tethys and Nereid – with proton bombs, and blockaded the entire system, both physically and across subspace. What could be worse than that?’ Felice deliberately neglected to add the rationale behind the invaders’ actions; Callisto, Tethys, Nereid and Charon were the four moons – of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto respectively – dedicated to weapons research, if you could consider stunnels as weapons. The invaders had definitely known what they were doing.

  ‘Surface bombardment’s one thing, Felice, but I’m talking about something much worse. The Da-, the invaders have weapons of mass destruction which make proton bombs look like light artillery. They just haven’t used them yet.’

  Felice was confused. Who the hell was this Chris Cwej, a man claiming to know more about the invaders than Solar Security had discovered in the last eight months? ‘Such as?’

  Chris crinkled his nose as if weighing up whether to tell her or not.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, I thought it was a matter of life or death?’ she urged.

  He sighed. ‘Okay. Deep penetration ion cannons. Antimatter drills. Pulsed photon impellers. Is that enough mass destruction for you?’ His voice rose. ‘The invasion of Earth is only the beginning, Felice. Those bastards don’t stop until the entire solar system is defeated...’ He trailed off, shaking his head. ‘They’re on their way. You – we’ve only got a few hours at most.’

  Felice leant forward and grabbed his hand. ‘Please, go on.’ There wasn’t really any harm in hearing him out. And it kept her away from Rachel for a while.

  Chris hesitated. In the last few seconds, he had succeeded in breaking one of the few rules that the Doctor had specifically laid down after he and Roz had joined the TARDIS crew: never, never try to alter your own history. With its unspoken corollary, of course: leave that to me. Charon, the oversized moon of Pluto, would become a charred lump of oxidized metals within the next twelve hours, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do to stop it. And, even if there were, did he have the right to do so?

  Then again, from his brief look at the base, it didn’t seem capable of defending itself anyway; even if they could have outrun the real-space blockade, they didn’t have a single spaceship. The initial bombardment had seen to that. Then again, given the nature of their research on Charon...

  It was time to break the rules.

  ‘Look, I know that you’ve got no reason to trust me -’

  Felice chuckled. ‘You can say that again. Rachel was all for carrying out a summary execution when you came out of the stunnel.’

  Chris had to admit that he was on very shaky ground where his credentials were concerned. Still, it was worth a try.

  ‘I’m an Adjudicator, Felice. Adjudication Intelligence.’ At least he could be certain that Adjudication Intelligence had been around in the twenty-second century; his ancestor, Nate Cwej, was proof of that.

  She frowned. ‘Can you prove that?’

  Of course I can, Felice, he thought. Just send a message to Oberon. Just ask for Nathaniel Cwej and ask him about his great-to-the-nth grandson. And wait for the Daleks to intercept the signal. Reason quickly took hold. ‘No ID – just in case I was captured. AI’s got reason to believe that the invaders are going to strike within the next twelve hours – another bombardment, this time with photon impellers. I was en route from Oberon to here when my ship was attacked.’ In Chris’s time, Oberon – a moon of Uranus – was second only to Ponten IV as a shining example of the Guild, but its origins were as an underground base during the blockade. ‘I came here to warn you!’ That’s it, Chris; just shatter the laws of cause and effect to save your own neck.

  ‘And we just happened to be around with our stunnel safety net,’ said Felice, one eyebrow arched in suspicion. ‘Can’t you see how improbable this all sounds?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he shrugged. Then it occurred to him. ‘Have you got a deep-scan tachyon telescope on the base?’ he asked, hoping desperately that the damned things had been invented by now. Optical or radio telescopes would only tell them when the Daleks were right on top of them, given that their battle saucers travelled only a fraction slower than light.

  ‘Of course we have. But we don’t use it much now – there isn’t a great deal to look at any more, and the energy it requires is needed for the stunnel experiments.’

  A hope, thought Chris. A faint hope that he might be able to convince the doomed colonists of their fate, his credentials, and the need to get off Charon as soon as possible. ‘Then train it in the direction of Venus. That’s where the invaders are going to attack from.’

  Felice rose from the bed and shook her head. ‘I’m not sure -’

  ‘They could already be on their way!’ he yelled. Chris could remember the date of the attack, but not the time. Chances were, the Dalek ships had already left their orbital station around Venus; they might even be swooping down as they spoke. ‘Please, Felice,’ he begged. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  She sighed. ‘We haven’t had much time since the blockade started, Chris.’ Then she ran her fingers through her blonde bob. ‘What have we got to lose?’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and butter up Rachel.’

  She reached the door and then turned back. ‘I really hope you’re telling the truth, Chris. I’d hate to find out you’re lying.’ And then she left, locking the door behind her.

  Chris sat back in his chair and sighed. Proving that the Daleks were on their way was one thing; getting off Charon was another matter entirely.

  ‘It’s going to get bloody cold,’ stated McGuire. Not that he really needed to remind them; the wreckage of the shuttle had been guttering for the last twenty minutes, its heat output dropping rapidly. He just felt like exerting his leadership. Two hours ago, he’d been the leader of a survey
expedition to the North Pole; now he was in second place to this Doctor, this stranger who had taken over the entire thing. Then again, McGuire had to admit that he was slightly relieved; the whole operation had gone belly-up, and the Doctor did seem to know what he was talking about.

  ‘Indeed, Mr McGuire. Bitterly cold. If we remain on the surface, you will all die of hypothermia within a couple of hours.’ McGuire didn’t miss the fact that the Doctor didn’t include himself in the death sentence.

  Then he noticed the Doctor nodding towards his friend, the hard-faced black woman, Roslyn Forrester. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but there was definitely a military bearing to her.

  ‘Another hundred years and this would have been a balmy summer’s night, Roz,’ said the Doctor.

  Ignoring the comment, McGuire suddenly realized the meaning of the Doctor’s first statement.

  ‘Are you suggesting that we go underground?’

  ‘Most perspicacious of you, Mr McGuire.’ The Doctor thumped his umbrella – what the hell was he doing with an umbrella on Mars? – on the ground, causing a small puff of dust that sparkled crimson in the dying light of the fire. ‘Unless I am very much mistaken – and the chances of that are quite remote – we are about sixteen kilometres from a fairly sizeable Martian settlement.’

  McGuire frowned; how did the Doctor know that? ‘But the Greenies -’

  ‘Indigenous Martians or Ice Warriors, Mr McGuire. “Greenies” is a little... crude.’ The Doctor stepped forward and reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled and yellowing piece of paper which he proceeded to unfold. ‘This is a map of the major Martian cities in this region of Mars. If we start at Ikk-ett-Saleth, and head towards Sstee-ett-Haspar -’ He looked up. ‘In plain English, that’s from the City of the Sad Ones to the Labyrinth of False Pride; the Labyrinth then leads directly to Vastitas Borealis. Aka the North Pole, aka -’ He peered at the map. ‘G’chun duss Ssethiissi – the Cauldron of Sutekh. Now there’s a frightening thought.’