So Vile a Sin (17 page)

The human was talking to the remaining prisoner, an older man. ‘We can’t leave you here,’ he insisted.

‘Don’t be insane!’ said Martinique. ‘I can’t fight. I’m staying right where I am!’

‘Professor –’

‘I’ve had enough!’ squeaked the man. ‘Don’t you see, I can see it, I can see everything that’s going to happen! Everything, everywhere, ever!’

The blond looked at Cappiello. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The professor’s not been very well.’

The Ogrons put Cappiello on to the opposite bunk. He looked at the piles of banana skins, and the video-game terminal, the circuitry teased out of its volume control and cranked up four times as loud as it was supposed to go. Error messages were flashing on the screen, over the graphic of a big green dinosaur chasing a little human figure around.

The door slammed shut. Martinique looked at Cappiello.

Cappiello looked at the door.

‘Shit,’ he said.

Sokolovsky sat in the captain’s seat, listening to his bridge crew speaking. The initial shock was firmly under control, their voices taut but calm as they relayed orders and reports.

127

Some of them were glancing at him, wondering why he wasn’t giving more orders, doing everything he could to stop the intruders. Wondering why he seemed so very calm.

On his screen, there was an icon, just a black dot. The icon was attached to a file covertly attached to a normal console maintenance program. The file was full of pointers attached to a dozen programs in the security and life-support systems. Those programs were linked to emergency hatches and vacuum bulkheads throughout the
Victoria
.

Touch the icon, enter the security code, and the entire ship would depressurize within thirty seconds.

Sokolovsky hadn’t discussed this option with the intruders.

He’d thought of it himself, late, late one night as he watched the news from home. Before the disaster, he’d never paid much attention to the news. Now he found it necessary to view it every night. Perhaps in case another disaster befell the Empire. Perhaps hoping that it would.

Late, late one night, considering strategic options while the light from the news screen flickered over his face… Asking himself how committed he was to this mission. Sending the intruders a coded message, asking if they’d be wearing HE suits.

The intruders were gaining ground, but slowly, much too slowly. His crew were putting up one hell of a resistance. God, he was proud of them.

Sokolovsky paused for an instant, thinking about how quick it would be, so quiet, for most of them a moment’s panic and then oblivion. His finger hovering over the key, wondering how killing his entire crew served the best interests of humanity.

The male prisoner and the two Ogrons exploded on to the bridge, waving weapons. ‘Nobody move!’

Everyone stared at them in shock. The navigator at Ops ripped out his flechette thrower.

The deck was suddenly filled with light. For a moment, Sokolovsky thought the prisoners had done something, set off a bomb or a flaresnare.

A moment later, something hit the ship, something so big it was irresistible. Sokolovsky tumbled from his seat as the
Victoria
128

lurched. There were shouts and cries, he was sure, but he couldn’t hear them over the noise of the light.

‘The whole shagging fragging crukking planet blew up!’

‘Is that a report, Ensign?’

‘At this time, sir,’ said SensOps, ‘I have no further data.’

‘All right,’ said Sokolovsky. ‘Let’s get off the floor.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sokolovsky pulled himself to his feet and almost fell over.

‘We’re adrift,’ he said. ‘The stabilizers are out.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Vincenzi. ‘Was this part of the plan?’

Sokolovsky gripped a railing, looking around at his bridge, trying to smooth his white hair with his free hand. Vincenzi sat in his chair, hands on the controls, dark eyes unblinking with concentration. ‘The
Doran
is also adrift. They’re not answering my hails, so there’s some good news. The
Wilfred Owen
report that they’re still going to attempt to dock. They haven’t got much choice, they’re falling apart.’

‘What shape are we in?’ asked Sokolovsky. Around him, the bridge crew were picking themselves up, trying to get a reaction from their dead stations. He realized that Vincenzi had simply cut off their access, and was running everything from the captain’s station.

His crew were staring at him as Vincenzi’s troops led them from the bridge. Sokolovsky shook his head, suddenly glad that someone else was in his chair.

‘Sir?’ called a trooper. Vincenzi looked up. ‘What about these ones?’

The soldier had hold of the Doctor’s arm. The little man looked relatively undamaged. His yellow-haired friend looked slightly worse off, the Ogrons helping him to his feet while Vincenzi’s soldiers kept them covered.

‘What destroyed Cassandra, Doctor?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘You must know,’ said Sokolovsky. ‘One moment you’re insisting I let you take a shuttle down there, the next the planet’s an expanding cloud of vapour and rubble. It’s just possible, you know, that there’s a connection.’

129

‘I honestly don’t know what happened, Captain.’ The Doctor glanced at the screen, where the frigate hung at an awkward angle against a backdrop of glittering fragments. ‘I wish I did.’

Vincenzi got up from the captain’s chair. After a moment, Sokolovsky realized the man was waiting for him to sit down.

‘What was it you were planning to do down there, anyway?’

said Sokolovsky, taking his position.

‘Blow up the planet, of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘And someone’s gone and done it first.’

One of Vincenzi’s troopers handed Sokolovsky a clipboard as the captain strode towards the meeting room. The Doctor trailed along behind them, scowling and still looking puzzled. The ship still had a noticeable tilt; Sokolovsky steadied himself with a hand against the wall as he walked on, reading. The sooner they got the internal gravity sorted out, the better.

‘It’s a status report, sir,’ said the trooper, unnecessarily. ‘The most important problem is that the warp drive is down. It’s not the drive itself, but all the control connections that have been damaged. We could start it up, but we’d have no way to tell the thing what to do.’

Sokolovsky could see all of that from the report. But the trooper was just trying to be helpful.

Besides, thought the captain, if he wanted trained staff he could always let someone out of the brig.

The ship lurched as the repair team tried once again to get the stabilizers to work properly. Now the floor was sloping in the other direction. Sokolovsky sighed and went into the meeting room.

There was a podium at the front, neatly arranged rows of chairs, enough to accommodate the entire off-duty crew if necessary. The chairs had been dragged into a circle, as though this was a big friendly community meeting, instead of a what’sgoing-on, what-the-hell-do-we-do-now meeting.

Everyone from the Hopper and the
Wilfred Owen
was there, guarded by a couple of Vincenzi’s troopers. Cwej and the two Ogrons; an academic and his student, both looking bewildered; an aristocratic-looking woman; and –

130

Sokolovsky turned to look at the Doctor, who had somehow appropriated his clipboard. ‘Very nasty, this. If you switched on the warp drive now, the uncontrolled gravitic curve would probably catapult you straight into the nearest massive object.’

He looked up. ‘Oh,’ he said.

A second Doctor was sitting in one of the chairs, gravely eyeing his counterpart. Now everyone was looking back and forth between them. Same man, identical clothes, identical grim expression.

‘It’s the result of tampering with… what’s on Iphigenia,’ said the Doctor from the
Wilfred Owen
. ‘Nonsense like this is probably happening over half the galaxy.’

The Doctor standing next to Sokolovsky nodded. ‘One of us is a copy.’

‘Which one?’ said the aristo.

‘Me,’ said the Doctor standing next to Sokolovsky.

The Captain realized he’d just taken a step back from the little man. ‘What the hell is this?’ he said.

‘Now you begin to see why I said history hung in the balance,’

said the copy Doctor. ‘Reality itself is being affected by these events.’ He looked at his counterpart. ‘At least now I know who destroyed Cassandra.’

‘Just what I would have done,’ deadpanned the original Doctor.

Sokolovsky decided to deal with the whole thing later. ‘What condition is the
Wilfred Owen
in?’

Kidjo stared straight ahead, jaw set. The shorter woman from the shuttle sighed and said, ‘It’s scrap metal. I can’t believe we managed to limp back here.’

Sokolovsky leant on the back of a chair, looking down at the Doctor from the
Wilfred Owen
. ‘When you decided to blow up an entire planet –’

‘Just a comet,’ said the Doctor.

‘– and I don’t want to hear about
how
you did it just yet –’

‘It was only a little comet.’

‘– did it occur to you what might happen to any nearby ships?’

‘What happens to this ship,’ said the Doctor, ‘or to any of the others, is nothing compared to what would have happened if I hadn’t destroyed Cassandra. Captain, I’ve just saved you the 131

nasty decision of what to do with an ultimate weapon. Keep it, and let every power in the galaxy come in search of what you’ve got? Or destroy it?’

Sokolovsky stared at the Doctor. Vincenzi said, ‘Sir, this is turning sour very fast. We counted on a quick getaway, not a month’s worth of repair work. Half the ships in the Task Force will be on their way here by now, and we don’t even have a warp drive.’

‘I can help there,’ said both Doctors. Sokolovsky glared at them. The original Doctor stood up and said, ‘I’ll make you an offer, Captain. I’ll repair your warp-drive system for you – if you’ll release your prisoners. All of us. Let the original crew use the lifeboats.’

Vincenzi said, ‘They could be useful as hostages.’

Sokolovsky shook his head. ‘The Task Force won’t show us the slightest mercy. Get right on to it. Both of you,’ he told the Doctors. ‘We’ll worry about this particular piece of bizarreness later. Vincenzi, get my crew off this ship.’

The prisoners found themselves shuffled around a lot in the next couple of hours. There weren’t enough people to interrogate them properly. Chris ended up by himself in a cabin with the door locked, but no guard.

It was a nice cabin, probably a lieutenant’s, with a soft bed and a fresher. He spent a while trying to get the terminal to work. It probably hadn’t even been disabled – a lot of the ship’s computers had been knocked out when the comet blew up.

The fresher was still working. He had a shower and put on half a navy uniform, just the white pants and T-shirt – he didn’t want them thinking he was trying to impersonate an officer or anything.

He lay on the bed, trying to get some sleep. You never knew when you’d need it.

The ultimate weapon, the Doctor had said. Wonder what it was? No wonder he’d been in a hurry to get there. Both of him.

He hoped the Ogrons were OK.

The cabin door opened. He rolled on to his elbow. ‘Oh, hi!’

132

Roz came in. One of the new soldiers locked the door behind her. ‘The Doctor sent me down to see you.’

‘Justice,’ said Chris.

‘Fairness,’ said Roz.

They traded a high-five. Chris beamed. ‘Good to see you again,’ he said. ‘How’s Fury? Cleaned the place up?’

‘You could say that,’ said Roz. She turned the lieutenant’s chair around and sat on it, leaning over the back. ‘I trashed an N-form.’

‘Awesome,’ said Chris. ‘So, uh,
which
Doctor sent you to see me?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me what was going on there. I can’t get anything out of either Doctor – they’re up to their identical hats in the warp drive.’

‘Well, if he hasn’t told you, he sure won’t have told me,’ said Chris. ‘He usually briefs you better.’

‘Jealous.’

Chris shrugged. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

‘He’d better, if he’s going to go round blowing up planets.

What do you know about the guys who took over the ship?’

‘Not much. I don’t recognize their uniform. They’re obviously not pirates – too disciplined.’

‘Mmm. Someone’s private army, maybe.’

‘That’s one heck of a bold move,’ said Chris. ‘Knocking over an Imperial carrier!’

‘Maybe there’s some cargo we don’t know about. Whatever.

We’ve still got a mission to complete. We don’t have time to get caught up in some petty local war.’ Roz drummed her fingers on the back of the chair. ‘There’s a carrier on the way.’

‘Which ship?’

‘The
Pequot
.’

‘Indigenous Class,’ said Chris. ‘That’s not so bad. They predate the Wars of Acquisition. They don’t have any big weapons – there’ll be a couple of squadrons of fighters aboard.

We’ll have to counter with ours.’

‘Yeah,’ said Roz, ‘but Sokolovsky’s just put his crew off the ship in lifepods. Who’s going to fly them?’

133

‘Are you guys sure about this?’

Son of My Father didn’t answer, squeezing himself deeper into the fighter’s cabin. It was meant for an average-sized human body, just too small to comfortably accommodate an Ogron’s wide shoulders.

Chris reached in and tugged the straps into place. ‘Secure,’ he said. Son of My Father still didn’t say anything. After a moment, the fighter’s canopy began to lower with a hiss.

Chris jumped down from the ladder, rolled it over to Sister’s Son, sitting in the other fighter. ‘Are you really sure?’ he said, reaching in to fasten the straps.

‘You heard,’ said Sister’s Son. ‘The
Pequot
will catch up with us too soon. Me and him will go and make them busy, make them slow.’

‘They’ve got two squadrons of fighters aboard,’ said Chris.

‘This really isn’t such a good idea.’

‘Chris,’ said Sister’s Son. ‘You regular guy. Listen, me and him, we decide what to do. We decide.’

Chris just looked at the Ogron, mouth tugging down at the corners.