Doctor Who_ The Blue Angel Part 9

Me, merely gracing an endless t.i.tle sequence.

As if archived, canonised. A dead Cultural Artefact in a museum of flotsam, jetsam, trash. Unreinventable.

Stories all ravelled up and done with. As if novelty were the key! And I were not free just to rewrite, remake, replay, repeat! Ha!

Gracing an endless theme, though end credits, t.i.tle sequence never to impeach again.

impeach: to accuse of a crime to challenge or question to entangle Safe for ever!

What if that's how I've ended up?

And his companion for this seemingly last, endless, safe adventure was called Compa.s.sion. She was one of the least companionable of his many a.s.sistants. Was she called Compa.s.sion because she was abetting this stasis? The thought did flit through his troubled mind. Perhaps she was one of those saving him from himself.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Iris Made Fitz Come...

Iris made Fitz come and sit cross-legged with her around the fire she had built.

He was reluctant, still thinking the owls were going to pounce at any moment and rip the pair to shreds.

But Iris talked him round and said that nothing like that was going to happen at all. They just wanted to talk.

Under the shadow of the huge, ornate egg, Iris set to work on the fire with her pistol.

Soon it was crackling away busily and warming them through. She started to talk breezily about other occasions she had gathered round the campfire with friends, on other outings, and then she asked Fitz how many cigarettes he had left.

The sky was a broiling purple now. Night had set in with a vengeance, and the mountainous land was chilled right through.

The owls gathered once more and their leader arrived and settled before Iris and Fitz wearing a cloak which, he claimed, sported the feathers of every species of bird in the Enclave. It was this that enabled him to speak to them.

Iris shrugged. She'd heard of odder things. 'Go on, then, she urged.

The owl blinked its baleful eyes and, with everyone's eyes upon him, began.

'There are two eggs belonging to our race. The story goes that they were entrusted to us, when we were quite young, by our G.o.d. They were never to leave our grasp.'

'Your G.o.d?' asked Fitz. Iris nudged him.

'A great white bird,' said the owl solemnly, 'who, when the galaxy was half its present size, roamed everywhere looking for somewhere safe to bury his eggs. They were not to be hatched. They were simply to be watched until their time came. If they were hatched early, there would be calamity, and we were to murder the offspring.'

'That sounds a bit harsh,' said Iris worriedly.

'For generations we owls have mulled over the meaning of the white bird's instructions. Now we think, for the most part, that there was only a metaphorical truth to the warning. We were simply to look after the eggs.'

'Where did the white bird go?' asked Fitz.

'No one knows,' said the owl. 'We only know him as the great white bird who began time.'

'I see.'

Iris bit her lip. 'And someone stole one of the eggs?'

'That was the reason we left our world. We are not an aggressive race. We prefer to remain here, going about the task we were given in the first place.'

'Who stole it?'

'Daedalus,' said the owl. 'The self-styled king of Valcea.'

Iris blanched. 'Daedalus, you say? But '

'Years ago he sent out the first of his Corridors and arrived with the evil Gla.s.s Men who are under his thrall. What chance did we stand? We had to watch as he marauded on to our world and took one of the eggs. The other we hid, deep inside the volcano.'

Fitz looked at Iris. 'Do you know this Daedalus?'

She pulled a face.

'The egg has hatched,' said the owl, stirring its cloak of feathers. 'This much we know. To taunt us, soon after, Daedalus sent us the shattered remnants of the sh.e.l.l. The mucus inside was still fresh.' Then he looked at Iris, and, with only a touch of accusation, said, 'You have seen the offspring.'

'I believe I have, yes. Ian.'

'Ian?' said Fitz. 'That young lad?'

'When we attacked you in the place with the gla.s.s ceilings and the fountains, it was him we were seeking. You prevented us.'

'I thought you were going to kill all of us!' said Iris. 'You didn't exactly explain yourselves. You just attacked.'

The owl was unperturbed. 'Our real enemy, against whom we must join forces, is Daedalus.'

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I think you're right.'

'We fly to Valcea, this very night.' The owl drew itself up to its full ma.s.sive height.

The damage was less extreme the deeper into the Valcean city they travelled.

Here there were only pillars fallen, walls hanging in shards, metal grilles fallen in.

There wasn't a single Gla.s.s Man to be seen. They had all retrenched somewhere, left to lick their wounds.

The Steigertrude tank rolled on through the shards and debris.

When they came to the roomfuls of gla.s.s statues and objets d'art objets d'art they stopped. A kind of primal instinct overtook the women. they stopped. A kind of primal instinct overtook the women.

They clambered out of their engine and unspooled the hoses. They couldn't move on till they had reduced the precious gla.s.s objects to molten pools.

Maddy witched in dismay from inside.

Big Sue was saying, 'It's barbaric.'

'This is your city, then... Icarus?' said Maddy.

'All of it ruined,' said Ian. He gathered his wings about him. He looked at the controls of the engine.

A slow smile, one Maddy had never seen before, stretched across his face.

'We can leave them,' he said suddenly, realising that Emba and the others had left them unguarded.

'Help us out of these chains and things!' Big Sue commanded, but Ian didn't have time.

He leapt at the controls he had watched the Steigertrude women operate so skilfully and the engine burst into life.

Outside, Emba felt the hose jerk and pull and she turned with a roar.

'Those idiots!'

The engine was starting to rumble towards the wall.

The other women shook themselves out of their reverie of righteous art censors.h.i.+p, and turned to look in horror as the gla.s.s wall collapsed and the tank rolled through.

The roof began to cave in. Chunks of masonry and gla.s.s dropped into the hall.

Emba shrieked at them to fall back, to drop the hoses and run. She saw two of her fellows fall under the weight of debris before she, too, fled.

And then the tank was gone.

Remorseless, Icarus headed deeper and deeper into the Gla.s.s City.

Behind one wall were paralysed Gla.s.s Men, waiting for the power to come back on. They let out barely a cry as the tank rolled over them, and stamped them into shards.

The supreme commander of the Sahmbekarts looked out on his fleet with some satisfaction.

Behind him he knew the Federation crew were watching nervously, knowing that he held all the cards.

His was the power to call off all hostilities now.

He could pacify his fleet and his people; he could tell them the Federation meant no harm.

He could explain that the whole situation was, as Blandish had told him, and as he believed it to be, due to the machinations of Daedalus of Valcea.

But he wasn't going to.

This was his chance.

For years the Sahmbekart people had been aware of the worlds beyond their Enclave.

And the Enclave was much too small for the Sahmbekarts.

For years they had monitored the radio transmissions from beyond their s.p.a.ce and gradually they had become aware of what a big place waited out there. Somewhere they could go to plunder, one day.

And now it had come to them.

Here was a chance to take on the representatives of the wide universe beyond with impunity. And these representatives were no match for the Sahmbekart fleet.

It was delicious.

'Will you talk with them?' Blandish asked quietly. He was sweating. Beads stuck out on his forehead. He was a repellent creature, decided the Sahmbekart commander. Hardly a worthy opponent. But he would be the first of many.

'I promised no such thing,' he told Blandish.

And then he did an astonis.h.i.+ng thing.

He yawned. Right in front of the captain he opened his ma.s.sive jaws and yawned.

But he was gargling at the same time, and flames burst from his mouth and with a kind of sneeze he spat them into the air before him.

He generated a column of vicious flame before the startled eyes of the bridge crew.

Then he did another and another.

And within the brief columns of flaming light materialised Sahmbekart warriors, in full dress armour, armed with lasers.

By the time Timon and the Federation guards could even gather what was going on, six of the lizards had appeared. They in turn began spitting flame around the place, so that the number of creatures increased exponentially by the second.

The commander laughed. 'Do you mind, Captain, if I invite my friends along? And then you can tell them yourself?'

There was a squawk of the intercom then.

The chief engineer's voice managed to squeal something about Sahmbekart docking on to the Nepotist Nepotist, the s.h.i.+p was being boarded and invaded.

And then his voice cut out.

The commander clashed his jaws with glee and told his minions to round up the bridge crew.