Oh, Fenn. I loved you. I loved you.

'Like s.h.i.t,' she said. 'Nothing changes.'

166.

Chapter 12.

'I'm . . . ah, I'm Shythe Shahid, speaking to you live from the . . . the smouldering wreckage of the smouldering wreckage of the Empire Today Empire Today studio. Yesterday the riots that are slowly but surely engulfing the Earth claimed us: today studio. Yesterday the riots that are slowly but surely engulfing the Earth claimed us: today it might be your turn. What is happening to this planet? Sources it might be your turn. What is happening to this planet? Sources close to the Empress have told close to the Empress have told The Empire Today The Empire Today that she is close to that she is close to declaring a state of emergency. We'll keep you posted. Keep watching . . . ' declaring a state of emergency. We'll keep you posted. Keep watching . . . '

Being inside the alien ship was like being inside the stomach of a living creature.

The walls of the hangar into which the Moorglade Moorglade had been dragged seemed to have been formed from a moist, fleshlike material. As the Doctor walked down the ramp he could have sworn that they were even flexing slightly, as if the ship was breathing. The struts that supported the roof were white and bonelike, and the cables, pipes and ducts snaking around the walls looked more like a circulatory system. The floor even gave slightly beneath the Doctor's feet. had been dragged seemed to have been formed from a moist, fleshlike material. As the Doctor walked down the ramp he could have sworn that they were even flexing slightly, as if the ship was breathing. The struts that supported the roof were white and bonelike, and the cables, pipes and ducts snaking around the walls looked more like a circulatory system. The floor even gave slightly beneath the Doctor's feet.

Except . . .

Except that elements of different technologies were apparent. In places the veined network covering the walls had been supplemented with fibre-optics, corrugated quark runs and even interstat wave tubes with their distinctive cryogenic sheathing. Areas of the rounded ceiling had been reinforced with metal plates, and some of the bonelike ceiling supports had been replaced with a mixture of simple metal I-beams, intricate Gothic b.u.t.tresses and plasticrete spars.

Even the few other craft scattered around the hangar were of wildly differ-ing design. A sleek fighter with hypers.p.a.ce capability sat next to a battered old garbage scow whose engines were of almost outmoded P-shift design; two guppy-like cargo craft with bulging stomachs had been parked side by side, but the hydrogen baffles of one of them had been replaced with a quantum engine designed by a different race for a different cla.s.s of ship. There was even a long, viper-like Sess-chaser over by the wall. The entire place looked as if it had been a.s.sembled with loving care from the bric-a-brac of a thousand interstellar jumble sales.

167.Behind the Doctor, Professor Zebulon Pryce emerged, stark naked, from the Imperial naval shuttle. Pryce paused for a moment, and glanced towards the far end of the hangar the end through which the shuttle had been dragged.

The Doctor followed his gaze, and gulped in alarm. The gap had been sealed by a force field that strobed alarmingly, and the pressure of the air in the hangar was causing it to bulge out into s.p.a.ce. Around the lip of the gap, the protrusions of the gravitational beam generator stuck outwards. It was like being inside a gigantic mouth.

Glancing down at the Doctor, Pryce's lips twitched slightly, but he said nothing.

'Hardly the cutting edge of astro-engineering, is it?' the Doctor said.

Pryce looked as if he might have responded, but he suddenly stumbled forward as Provost-Major Beltempest prodded him from behind with the barrel of a screamer rifle.

'I still say we should have stayed in the ship,' Beltempest growled, glancing round the empty interior.

'To what end?' the Doctor asked. 'If they could locate us in hypers.p.a.ce, drag us into the real universe and then reel us in with a gravity beam like a gumblejack on the end of a piece of twine, I don't suppose a couple of layers of adamantium would keep them out.' He glanced around again. 'Whoever they are.'

'An interesting mix of cultures,' Pryce said from beside the Doctor. The Doctor jumped. He hadn't noticed that the professor had got that close. 'I count fifteen disparate technologies in this room alone, although biological systems predominate. Do you concur?'

'That's exactly what I thought,' the Doctor bluffed.

Beltempest suddenly cried out and dropped his screamer. The barrel was glowing red-hot. Bending, he tried to pick it up, but couldn't. A pocket on his s.p.a.ce suit abruptly burst into flame. Fumbling, he managed to prise a small blaster out and let it fall to join the screamer, whose barrel was now nothing more than a puddle of molten metal. He turned and made to dash back into the shuttle, but the door slid shut in his face.

'Come out,' he shouted, blowing on his burned hands. 'Come on out and show yourselves, if you dare.'

Pryce glanced back at him. 'I would advise caution where our friend Beltempest is concerned,' he said quietly. 'He is not who he appears.'

'So you said back on Dis, but how can you tell? You last saw him years ago, and he's been through a body-bepple since then.'

Pryce shook his head. His white pony-tail waved gently behind him. 'No,'

he said firmly. 'He is not not the Provost-Major Beltempest I remember.' the Provost-Major Beltempest I remember.'

168.'He certainly remembers you,' the Doctor said grimly. 'You made quite an impression on him.'

'His voice is familiar. Perhaps he was one of the other Landsknechte with whom I had . . . contact on Purgatory.'

The Doctor frowned. 'But why would ' As he spoke, a section of the wall irised open, revealing a stretch of pristine corridor beyond. Three heavily armed creatures stood in the doorway. The Doctor recognized the columnar form, the stalked eyes, the boneless limbs, the vestigial sh.e.l.ls. They were Hith, just like Homeless Forsaken and Powerless Friendless. 'Oops,' he said. 'I think we have company.'

'Hey, slug!'

Powerless Friendless kept slithering along the corridor. 'I'm talking to you, mucus brain.'

He stopped and turned around. The uniformed man standing at the door of the room he had just pa.s.sed was glaring at him.

'Yes, sir?' he said.

'I got a mess in here. Come and clean it up. That's your job, isn't it?'

Powerless Friendless glanced down at the mop and bucket in his pseudo-limb as if he had never seen them before. He had only taken them from the janitorbot as protective coloration, enabling him to slip along the corridors of the INITEC building without being spotted, but it looked as if he should have chosen something else. Something less demeaning for a Hith warrior.

'Yes, sir,' he sighed, dreaming momentarily of ripping the man's head off.

Instead he swallowed his pride and followed the man into the room. There was nothing in it except for a desk and chair on one side, a metal vault door set into the far wall, a window beside the door that looked out across the void of the next Overcity block, and a coffee stain on the floor.

'Where's the janitorbot?' the man said, slumping into the chair and putting on a set of centcomp goggles. The desk in front of him was clear, apart from a keypad which probably controlled access to whatever was behind the door.

The INITEC building was full of sealed doors and security guards. It was making Powerless Friendless's search h.e.l.l. It was lucky he already knew a way into the building.

'Malfunction,' Powerless Friendless said. It was true. The janitorbot had malfunctioned quite dramatically when Powerless Friendless had pushed it out of the window. 'I'm filling in for it.'

'G.o.ddessd.a.m.ned slugs,' the man muttered, 'taking up good bot jobs. Well, clean the spill up if you're going to.' He pointed to it, as if he didn't expect Powerless Friendless to spot it without his help.

169.'Yes sir.' Powerless Friendless quickly ran the mop over it, hoping that the man wouldn't look too closely at the mop itself. He hadn't been able to wrench it out of the bot's shoulder without leaving trailing wires and a bulbous universal joint at the end. 'Is that okay, sir?'

The man grunted, absorbed in his centcomp goggles, and Powerless Friendless quickly slid out of the room, making an insulting gesture as he went. He added the room to his list of places to investigate if he couldn't find any trace of the man he was looking for. The man who had tortured him.

As he slithered along the corridor, he heard the door open behind him. Powerless Friendless angled an eyestalk to check whether the guard had followed him. Perhaps the mop had attracted his suspicion. There was something emerging from the room, a bot of a design that Powerless Friendless hadn't seen before: small and multi-legged. It must have been in the room behind the sealed door.

As the bot scuttled off down the corridor away from him, Powerless Friendless suddenly came to a halt. There was something bothering him. Something about that room. Something about its position. His mind had been mucked around with so much, he wasn't absolutely sure of any of his thoughts any more, but alarm bells were definitely ringing. He ran his pseudo-limbs along the corridor walls. They vibrated slightly, as if there was a power source behind them. Odd. Very odd.

He started moving again, making for the little cupboard he had discovered earlier on. Looking both ways along the corridor to check that the bot had gone, he slipped inside. He consulted the map he had detached from the wall by the null-grav shaft. Extruding a pseudo-limb, he traced his path along the corridor. Yes, there was the corner, there was the cupboard, there was the room, but there was no door marked on the other side of it, no sign of any generators or power conduits. Whatever was going on in that area, it was secret.

A shiver ran through him. Not only was the door not marked, but all of the rooms on that side of the corridor were on the outside of the building. If that sealed metal door led anywhere, it should be into empty air. Thousands of metres above the Undertown.

That window. He hadn't really taken it in at the time, but the window showed a view across to the next block. And yet there was a door beside it . . .

And why have a guard on it?

Powerless Friendless ran his pseudo-limb up his eyestalks in confusion. He knew enough about the INITEC building to know that the map wasn't wrong.

From the outside it was a smooth, featureless block with no protrusions and no flitter access ports. He couldn't understand where that door might lead.

Perhaps . . .

170.Perhaps it led to the man. The man with the soft, smooth voice.

The man with the knife.

He had to get inside.

Powerless Friendless rummaged amongst the shelves of the cupboard until he found the rucksack that he had left there earlier, and slid a pseudo-limb into it. Something sharp closed on his fingers, and he quickly jerked the limb out.

'Ungrateful little b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he hissed at the gelatinous creature that was attached to the end of his limb, its eyestalks glowering sulkily at him. 'I've got a job for you.'

Krohg relinquished its grip and allowed Powerless Friendless to stroke its back.

'You're going to distract somebody's attention,' Powerless Friendless cooed to it, 'while I creep in somewhere. It'll be just like old times.'

The door suddenly crashed open, flooding the tiny cupboard with light.

Powerless Friendless whirled around, pseudo-limbs extruded for action.

A shadow fell over him.

'Well,' said a familiar voice, 'so we meet again.'

Rachel Trethewi, Surgeon Imperialis, leaned against the control console and stared through the transparisteel barrier at her latest subject. He was suspended like a puppet from the ceiling of the chamber by a complicated web of monofilaments. He was awake, of course, but immobilized. The room was illuminated by the light from Rachel's side of the barrier and by the winking green and red tell-tale lights of the medical machines.

And by the vein of fire that throbbed in the tissue of the subject's exposed brain.

As far as Rachel could see, he was doing fine. His vital signs hung in the air beside him: pulse rate, blood pressure, various neurological traces, a complete kirilian scan. Just above them was his name. Some of her staff didn't like names, saying that they detracted from the professionalism of the job, but Rachel felt more comfortable using them. The subjects needed rea.s.surance, and using their names seemed to help.

'Well, Terg McConnel,' she said, emphasizing her lip movements so that the subject could lip-read. His eyes wide with panic and with pain flickered slightly, and his neurological traces peaked. Yes, he was rea.s.sured. 'Terg, we're going to do some more tests. Do you understand? I know they hurt, but we need to know the answers. We need to know why you went mad and killed your student. You do remember doing that, don't you?'

The skin around the subject's eyes tightened, as if he was trying to close them. It did him no good his eyelids and tear-ducts had been removed to 171facilitate observations of his pupillary reactions at the same time the top of his head had been removed to expedite access to his brain but Rachel had noticed that autonomic reactions such as blinking couldn't be suppressed very easily. Perhaps she should extend the level of immobilization to minor as well as major muscle groups. The results of her tests might be affected otherwise.

It was so difficult to tell what might be important.

Rachel's gaze was drawn back to the line of brightness that throbbed within the subject's naked cerebellum: a physical change in the soft tissue, cause unknown. Always the same place, subject after subject. Always giving off the same spectra. Always indicative of sudden, unpredictable fits of psychosis followed by instant remission. Always unrelated to any physical changes that the Surgeon Imperialis and her staff could find.

Still, they kept trying.

'Try to relax, Terg,' she mouthed as she manipulated the control board, manoeuvring skeletal metal arms with laser scalpel tips down from their nest in the ceiling. 'We're only going to remove a small sample this time.'

Provost-Major Beltempest stared at the flap of the tent. Through it he could see a wide expanse of blue gra.s.sland and a green sky, and the bulky shape of the Hith ship, draped now in camouflage netting. Freedom, just a few steps away.

'Release us immediately,' he growled at the two slugs who stood upright by the open flap of the tent. They were standing about as far apart as they could while still guarding the opening. 'Abduction of a Landsknechte provost-major is an act of war. The Empress will take a dim view of your actions.'

The left-hand slug a muscular female jerked her weapon towards him.

'Shut up,' she said. 'You're unimportant.'

Beltempest felt a surge of anger and resentment. How dare these jumped up invertebrates talk to him that way, a man who had personally seen the Empress five times! His fingers tightened on the edge of the table as he tried to control himself. Mind racing, he considered and rejected plan after plan of escape. It was no good. The Hith had them cold, and had done for the five hours between their capture and their landing some ten minutes ago on the blue savannah of this unidentified and yet oddly familiar planet. He wished he'd been able to see it from s.p.a.ce as they landed. There was something about its smell, and the colour of its sky, that he recognized.

Slumping back as best he could into the Sshaped chair, he turned to see how the other two were taking the humiliation. The Doctor was sniffing at the cool, scented air, while Professor Zebulon Pryce was sitting calmly with his eyes closed and his hands folded on the table. d.a.m.ned civilians. Didn't they realize what a disgrace it was for a Landsknecht to be captured in battle?

172.'Kill them,' Pryce whispered.

Beltempest tried not to jerk in his seat. 'What?' he said.

'Kill them.' Pryce's eyes were still closed, but his fingernails were tapping lightly on the wooden table. 'Ripping off the small vestigial sh.e.l.ls on their tails will cause systemic nervous shock and kill them or send them into an irreversible coma. A blow to the base of their eyestalks will make them writhe in agony for hours before expiring. Kill them, Provost-Major. It's your duty as a human.'

'Why not just sprinkle salt on their tails?' the Doctor asked sourly. 'Alternatively, why not just leave them alone until we find out what they want with us?'

'Why don't the two of you just shut up while I work out a means of escape?'

Beltempest hissed. 'We're dead meat here. We destroyed their home world during the Wars of Acquisition, remember? The Hith have no reason to love the Empire.'

'Yes, and whose fault is that?' the Doctor asked with a petulant tone in his voice.

Beltempest rubbed his hands over his eyes. The waiting was getting to him. He was just about to leap to his feet and protest at their treatment again when the tent flap was pulled open and two more slugs slid into the room, leaving a trail of mucus on the blue sward. One of them was old: wrinkled and pink. It seemed to be in the androgynous transition between male and female stages, if the lectures on enemy physiology that he'd attended during the Wars of Acquisition were anything to go by. Some kind of metal symbol had been implanted into its head between its eyestalks. The Hith beside it was a smaller male with moist, unlined flesh. He carried a metal box in a pseudo-limb. As he put the box down, Beltempest noticed that air holes had been punched in the lid.

The elder Hith surveyed them for a moment.

'Which human is the important one?' it asked in a wavery voice.

Beltempest stood up. 'Beltempest, Montmorency,' he snapped. 'Provost-Major third cla.s.s, nine oh one five five seven. And that's all you're getting.'

'Sit down.' The female Hith with the gun squelched forward. 'I told you before: you're unimportant.'

The Doctor put a hand on Beltempest's arm. 'I think it's me they want,'

he said quietly, standing as Beltempest slumped back into his seat. 'I am the Doctor,' he announced to the elderly Hith. 'You've gone to a lot of trouble to find me. I hope it's worth your while.'

The female Hith guard sighed. 'The arrogance of you humans appals us,'

she said. 'Sit down, will you?'

173.The elderly Hith turned to Pryce. 'Then you must be Professor Zebulon Pryce,' it said.

He nodded slightly. 'I am.'

'I am Hater of Humans And Leader Of Hith. This unworthy one ' It indicated the younger male Hith by its side, the one that stood beside the box.

' is my scapegoat, Hopeless Itinerant Taking The Blame. May we talk?'