Standing on the trail behind her, wrapped in travelling furs and loaded
down with packs, were Angelica and Sheeba. Both had the Truce Totem of
Sanctuary prominently displayed. Angelica's face was a study in glee,
while Sheeba looked embarrassed.
In response to Shamba's unvoiced question, Angelica planted the but of her
spear, and declaimed in her best Keeper of Histories voice; "are we not
the People of the Bok?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Main road into the Netherland it might have been, but this did not stop
the path from being narrow and steep as it wound its way down the eastern
side of Skar Dale. For the moment, Shamba was content to leave her
questions unasked. She could tell from the intense expression on
Angelica's face that the girl was working up a full blown epic performance
of their adventures. The tale would be delivered at a time and place of
Angelica's choosing. Shamba grinned in anticipation of the dramatic
poses, the passionate gestures, and the poignant declamations which would
accompany such a re-telling of how it was that Angelica and Sheeba had
managed to appear on the road before their Chief, when Shamba must have
thought them left behind in Sanctuary.
It was musing on this coming spectacle which led Shamba into trouble. She
stumbled over the root of a mighty pine straggling across the path, which
sent her tumbling down a rock strewn slope. While gathering up the
scattered gear, Sheeba noticed that a small gap, edged with metal teeth,
had opened around the base of the message tube. Inside was a tiny
metallic device. The cold, slick feel of the thing made her hackles rise.
Neither did she like the stench of oozing bitterness which clung to it.
Sheeba argued to be rid of the thing right away. Angelica wanted to know
what it was. In the end, Shamba decided to put the tiny device back in
its compartment. Sheeba scowled. She made no further argument in
challenge of her Chief's decision, save to declare that the thing "had bad
magic."
The discovery spoilt the mood of the party. A sense of unease gathered
around the trio like a smothering fog. Even Angelica reined in her
inveterate compulsion to declaim that: "there is no such thing as magic."
In a tense silence, they set off once more.
After First Moon Rise, they halted for the night. A travelling camp was
set up among boulders nestling at the base of a sheer scarp, looking like
fat grey fungi. Truce Totems were arranged prominently about the place.
A thin waterfall splashed down some yards away, wetting the boulders with
a fine mist.
They wasted no time in shrugging off their wraps. This far down, Spring
was already considering its chances; and the higher temperature was making
them uncomfortable. They sighed in utter content as they turned about,
arms out-flung, in the misting drizzle. It was an unexpected and very
refreshing relief to the party, still in their thick winter pelts.
Later, after they had eaten a few mouthfuls of the travelling rations,
Angelica clambered to her feet. She stood a long moment, facing away from
her companions, gazing at the fat crescent of First Moon. Slowly, the
Gravitas of a Keeper Of The Histories gathered to her, settling over her
naked shoulders like an ethereal mantle. In the moonlight, the damp pelt
made her shine with a silvery radiance. A tense excitement gripped the
others. They waited with baited breath for the story to begin.
Of a sudden, Angelica spun around. With surprising grace, she vaulted to
a boulder, flinging her arms wide. The moon at her back cast her slender
form into a wraith-like shadow. She drew in a long breath, lifted her
head, and began to declaim.
"Listen! Listen! Hark and here the history of the Tribe of Bok. Attend
and learn of the treachery which almost broke the Tribe... And of the
courage of its Hunter, the valiant Sheeba, late of the High Dale. And
hear also how Twang of the Library Tribe discovered his courage, and found
his path back to honour through his great love for Angelica, late of the
Walkers On Water, Keeper of the Histories..."
Shamba sat rapt throughout the telling; even Sheeba, who had lived through
the events, was drawn under Angelica's spell. Angelica told of how Twang,
after wrestling with his conscience, had finally come to them in the
little cell, where he had imprisoned them at the behest of the
dark-hearted Masters of Sanctuary, to await the All Mother alone knew what
indignities and horrors. She told, in moving words, of Twang's change of
heart. She told of his confessions of love for the Keeper Of Histories of
the Walkers On Water. Angelica had just got to the part where he had
release them, and was leading them through great dangers to a doorway onto
the mountainside, when Sheeba abruptly rolled onto her left side.
The High Dale girl brought up the Green Valley spear, and thrust it into
the shadows. There was a grunt of pain in the darkness. A moment later,
a thin grey snake uncoiled with a vicious crackling into their midst. The
snake writhed on the rocks, spitting little blue sparks.
Shamba, already rolling aside, drew her knife and struck at the thing.
There was a vivid blue flash. A tearing agony surged up her arm, which
sent her into convulsions, and thence into darkness.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Angelica would have been thrilled. Shamba clung to that thought; it
helped to hold the bowel loosening terror at bay. She was standing in the
night time sky, surrounded on all sides by the familiar Summer
constellations. Before her floated a beautiful blue and green jewel,
which the disembodied voice of Skarl, at her left elbow, assured her was
Homeworld.
"Take a good long look, Savage," he was saying; "you will not be seeing it
again for a long time, if ever."
Shamba did just that, seeking out the region just inside the snow line of
the land mass covering the bottom of the sphere. She could not recognise
anything at all; but Skarl had assured her that this was where she had
been living. It was all so, so... So vast beyond comprehending; and once
again, she wished that Angelica was here to point and exclaim in wide-eyed
wonderment. What a marvelous thing it must be to be a Keeper Of The
Histories, she thought, and to understand all this, this strangeness.
Where was the Keeper Of The Histories of the Tribe of Bok now? What had
become of Angelica? She was not on this wagon of the Masters flying
between the stars; of that Shamba was certain. Neither was Sheeba on
board. With determination, Shamba held in a groan of despair, just as she
was holding in her terror. It was not meet that a Daughter of the Long
Pine should show weakness before these soft people from outside the
Tribes.
"You see there," Skarl was going on. Shamba could tell he was pointing,
even though she could not se the tall black clad trooper. "Right at the
tip of that finger of land pointing down into the middle sea - that was my
home. Look! You can just make out the lights of the one hundred and four
garden terraces ringing City Mount." Squinting at the spot Skarl
indicated, Shamba could just make out the shimmering concentric rings of
lights at the very tip of the peninsula. Skarl sighed and went on, his
voice wistful; "the Terrace Gardens Of Vargas City are legendary, and
quite, quite beautiful in this season... I wish I'd had time to visit."
Even through his thick accent, and mangling of the Tongue of the Highland
Confederacy, Skarl's regret was plain. It spoke to a similar growing home
sickness within Shamba. She ached to feel the wind streaming her mane,
and to smell the sharp tang of the pines once more. Suddenly, the sky
flickered and went out, to reveal the drab grey metal walls of the
Master's sky wagon.
"Come on, Savage," Skarl commanded. "Let's get you to your Indoc Session.
This way." He strode from the bare room, not bothering to check if she
followed. His brusque manner did not deceive her at all. Nor did his
general gruffness or use of the insulting epithet, "Savage", for Shamba
fancied his use of it held a deal of admiration for her innate toughness.
Not that he wasn't a superb specimen of the Ogron people himself; but they
both knew that he would not have lasted a week among the harsh mountains
of the Highland. Nor, without his stick which spat fire, would he last
more than a few moments in a fight with her.
He led her down a curving corridor, through a portal, and into a large
brightly lit room. The mere fact of the dozens of Ogrons gathered there
helped to ease Shamba's homesickness. They had been drawn from all
quarters of Homeworld. Many were from the "civilised" regions, like
Skarl. Though they differed in pelt colour and dapple patterns, in size
and form, in speech and mannerism, the most disturbing thing to Shamba was
the scent of these outlanders. She fancied it tainted with more than a
trace of that oozing bitterness she associated with the Masters. The
smell made her uneasy. Of her own people from the Highlands, there were
none.
A large screen, covering one wall, burst suddenly into light. The low
level conversation in the room died abruptly. All eyes turned to the
screen. An odd humming built up in the air; and on the screen, thin
swirls of colour began to flow in mesmerising patterns.
Shamba blinked a few times. She tried to avert her gaze; but as ever,
this proved impossible to do. In a moment, she was settling slowly into a
cross-legged position on the decking. Inside her head, a voice began to
chant.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In a chamber walled in grey metal, a dozen Daleks stood before a
wall-sized screen. Their eye stalks were all fixed upon the close-up view
of a naked woman in the centre of the screen. She was sitting propped
against a grey concrete wall, her legs drawn up. Her head was bent as she
studied the tiny, naked infant suckling at her breast. Her rapt
expression was obscured by a mass of tangled black hair, which fell down
over her face. She was rocking gently back and forth, making low cooing
sounds in her throat. Unmoved by the tender scene, the Dalek Chief
Scientist turned his regard from the screen to address his assistants.
"The breeding experiment is terminated," it announced.
"The experiment must be continued," said one of the grey liveried units.
"Why?" grated the Chief Scientist.
U-492 rolled forward, it's eye stalk swivelling from the Chief to the
screen and back to the Chief. "The experiment is incomplete. All
possible data has not yet been garnered. Much data will be lost if the
experiment is terminated at this point." It was a perfectly logical
observation; but U-492 held no expectation that it would sway the
judgement of the Chief. This set-back to U-492's own hidden agenda was
galling, but could be recovered. However, had the Chief Scientist even
suspected that U-492 had its own secret agenda, that would have been a far
more serious disaster - one which would have ended in U-492's prompt
extermination.
"The experimental method is inefficient," declared the Chief Scientist.
"A more efficient method of collecting the data is necessary. Data so far
collected will be stored for evaluation. The research material will be
examined thoroughly. Complete dissection down to the cellular level of
all units will be undertaken. Information will be gathered and evaluated
for its usefulness to the Dalek Race. The experiment is terminated.
These are your orders."
"We obey," chorused the little group of Daleks. As they glided away to
execute the termination of the breeding project, U-492 remained. It's eye
stalk scanned the screen for long seconds, before turning away and
exiting. Its smooth glide betrayed none of its furious agitation at the
abandoning of the breeding experiment.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It was dead, of course. All that straining and heaving whilst biting down
on the need to scream her agony had been for nothing. She had known it
would be this way; but the suffering had to be gone through. Exhausted,
Shamba knelt in the filthy sludge of the drain. An indistinct shadow in
the gloom, the tiny dead thing lay between her knees. She just wanted to
curl up there in the muck, hold her first born son and weep for the loss;
but she knew this was not possible. The Masters had a project on. She
would be missed if she did not stir herself; and the mess from the
still-born birth had still to be hidden.
Uncapping the water flask she had laid ready, shamba soaked some rag in
the disinfectant water. She began to wipe herself off, the simple actions
recalling to mind another time, at the other end of this slice of her
life, when she had done the same thing. Then, she'd had help. The sudden
memory of Angelica helping to clean her up after the Skars had tired of
their sport,brought a sharp pang of hurt to her bruised heart.
Taking a deep breath, Shamba picked up the dead baby, and wrapped it in
the rags. For one long moment, she held the withered form of her first
born to her breast. Then, with a deep sigh that rattled in the depths of
her bones, Shamba placed the bundle of dead flesh into the shallow grave.
She had scraped it out earlier, just in case her worst fears were
realised. She felt weary beyond belief. At first, her motions were
halting and un-coordinated; but as Shamba worked, her movements became
more determined. In a very few moments, the hole was filled.
Standing over the grave, Shamba made a wish that the spirit of her son
would be carried back to the Highland. She held no real hope of that, for
she now had a partial understanding of just how distant were the
Highlands, and of the dark and chilly void which lay between the spirit of
her son and the Ancestral Home. She prayed that he would not go astray on
the journey.
Taking her knife, she made a cut on her arm, and let blood drip onto the
small mound. "This blood was made under the Long Pines," she told her
son; "follow the scent, little hunter, and journey safely to the
Highland." She hoped the scent of her blood would be enough to see the
spirit of her son safely home; but if it was not, there was no more Shamba
could do.
Turning from the little grave, Shamba pulled on the black leather uniform,
and began the laborious ascent of the inspection ladder to the lowest
level of the Dalek complex. She hurried. The Masters were already
suspicious of her. It would not be wise to fuel their suspicions by being
off the monitors for too long.
The Dalek caught her just as she was fixing the last screw back into the
panel.
"Halt! Guard units are forbidden to enter this level. What are you
doing?" The grating voice made her start violently. She spun to find a
Master bringing its gun stick to bear upon her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The decor of the experimental breeding complex was gross. It unsettled
the inmates so much that the sixty women, some heavily pregnant, others
with small babies, tended to avoid the communal rooms entirely. They
would congregate in the more functional areas. The Daleks had decorated
according to their concept of what would make the complex more soothing
for the experimental subjects. However, having no intuitive grasp of how
the slave races thought, their intentions had badly misfired. Things out
of place, mismatched colours, things wrongly proportioned, badly sited
lighting which cast menacing shadows - all had conspired to create an
abomination of interior design, which grated on the already strung-out
nerves of the inmates.
The Daleks puzzled over the unexpected reactions of their experimental
material. They made meticulous records of the inconsistent behaviour for
future study; but as the strange behaviour did not appear to be corrupting
the biological data, it was deemed inefficient to pursue the matter at
that time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps it was through some instinct known only to new mothers, some
subtle communication strong enough even to cross species boundaries, that
the young woman chose Shamba. It was a simple act, which passed unnoticed
by the Masters in the shuffling confusion of the round-up. The girl
simply held out her tiny new-born baby to the Ogron towering over her; and
the Ogron took the baby in one massive palm, and slid it from sight in her
tunic - all over in a second. Without a backward glance, the slender girl
with long black hair moved away in the midst of the other women and babies
being herded into the dissection area.
It was only much later, when Shamba was shut away in her cubicle, that the
enormity of the thing she had done crowded in upon her. She could not
keep the baby; it would be missed from the audit of the research material;
and there was no way that it could be masked from the detectors ranged
throughout the base. She had already suckled the mite to relieve the
pressure in her breasts; and it could not now be given up. Shamba would
die first.
In defiance of grim inevitability, Shamba cooed quietly to the baby
cradled in her lap. "One day, little one, one day I will show you the
mountains of my home. We shall go in the spring time and walk under the
Long Pines... And we shall listen to them singing in the wind. It is a
sweet, sweet song, my little one."
Half a mile away, in another part of the underground installation, U-492
watched the tender scene on a wall monitor. For its kind, it was highly
individualistic. By comparison with its fellows, U-492 was a "free
thinker". The musing Dalek came to a decision. It turned from the
screen, determined to implement that decision.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The lock clicked. The door to Shamba's den slid aside. Revealed in the
entrance was the ominous grey cone of a Master. Shamba's heart stopped
dead. For an excruciating moment, the Master studied her, its eye-stalk
tracking over her form, before it centered on the babe. With a quiet hum,
the Master glided into the cubicle.
"Why have you removed this research material without authority?"
Shamba was too stunned by her imminent death to respond. She could not
tear her horrified gaze from the gun stick. In a moment, fiery death
would blaze forth and consume her.
"Hold out the infant," commanded the Dalek.
Shamba hesitated only a moment. There was no escape. Disobedience would
gain them nothing. What did it matter? They were both dead. She did as
bid.
The unit rolled forward, and pressed its manipulator arm to the baby's
behind. The cup clamped itself to the left buttock. There was a
mechanical whir, and the babe squealed, its arms and legs waving
ineffectually. With an audible pop, the Dalek withdrew the sucker pad,
leaving behind a raised weal on the delicate skin.
U-492 rolled backwards a few feet. It paused and observed mother and
child, its eye stalk moving over the scene with deliberation. "You are
permitted to keep the research material," it stated.
Shamba, who had kept her eyes firmly locked on the tiny human baby, while
she awaited the inevitable fiery death, looked up in surprise.
"There are conditions;" U-492 continued; "you will care for the infant.
You will see to the requirements necessary to keep it from dying, unless
instructed otherwise. You will conceal the infant from all Dalek units in
the installation. You will do these things; and you will be permitted to
keep the research material."
Shamba was too stunned by her unexpected good fortune to do anything but
stare wide-eyed at the Master. The Dalek backed from her cubby, needing
no verbal confirmation of the trooper's agreement. An order had been
given to a slave race; it would be obeyed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bella dangled, head down, into a half-finished tunnel. She was supporting
herself by lower legs, shoved into the narrow gap between the rocky roof
and the last ceiling panel. The air stank of metal and damp rock. The
noise of machinery echoed from the bare rock walls of the unlined
extension. The dim orange radiance shed by a series of square working
lights strung along the ceiling made Bella's naked form glow a pale
bronze. The end of her long, brown hair was almost brushing a piled-up
floater trolly.
Nearby, a group of construction slaves were toiling to fit metal panels
over the bare rock walls. Bella was eyeing them warily, while reaching to
pluck up a steel bar from the trolley, when an unpleasant suspicion struck
her. Instead of snatching up the steel bar, and squirming back into the
gap between the roof and the lining, she paused to study the work group.
It was made up of five men and two women. All were stick thin. Bella
studied one of the women. She had scraggy brown hair. It struck Bella
that, except for the slave's ragged clothing, she might almost have been
looking at a reflection of herself in one of the shiny areas of corridor
paneling. Following on this observation came a shocking realisation.
Bella's contempt for the slaves had always been quite unconscious,
inspired as much by her mother's attitude, as from watching their servile
toiling at the bidding of their Masters.Of course, she knew that her
mother also jumped to obey orders; but that was an entirely different
matter. Now, quite suddenly, Bella's nimble mind grasped exactly why her
developing body looked so much like the wretched slave woman, and so
unlike her mother.
She was of the same kind as these wretched slaves.
The moment of sudden insight almost killed her. Her mind had scant time
to rebel against such a shameful and disgusting truth, because at that
moment the Master supervising the work group rolled around the corner. It
saw Bella dangling from the ceiling.
"Intruder alert!" squawked the grey liveried guard unit. The gun stick
waggled, and came to bear on Bella. The Dalek began its familiar litany
of "You will be exterminated..."
Bella did not stop to listen. She dropped the steel bar, swung herself
up, and attempted to wriggle her slender form back into the narrow space
between the lining and the rocky ceiling. There was a blinding flash of
light. The slaves screamed in panic. Something red hot caressed Bella's
shoulders. The end of her long hair dissolved into flames. Bella sucked
in a panicked breath, acrid with the stench of burning flesh and hair.
She screamed in pain, and lost her grip. She landed in an untidy sprawl
across the floater truck, scattering tools and food packs.
The Dalek rolled forward a few feet, its eye stalk sweeping the passage.
The gun stick depressed to centre on Bella. Once again the Dalek began
chanting its commands; but the lessons instilled in Bella by her mother,
lessons reinforced by Shamba's heavy and oft applied hand, to stay out of
the way of the Masters at all costs, sent her scrambling to her feet. The
only cover in the passage was the frightened slaves clustered in a tight
knot. Bella dived among them. They cringed back from her, trying to push
her away as the gun stick came to bear on them.
"Restrain the intruder," the Dalek commanded. Conditioned to obey the
Masters, three of the slaves grabbed Bella.
Bella fought like a wild thing, her struggles fuelled by her terror of
being caught. She wriggled free. There was no way back past the Master.
She took off at a run down the unfinished tunnel. She had hardly taken
two steps, when she was all but yanked off her feet by her hair. One of
the male slaves had grabbed the remains of her mane.
Regaining her balance, Bella turned, and sank her teeth into the man's
bony arm. He howled, and let her go. A moment later, Bella was flying
down the tunnel, leaping the transverse trenches cut at intervals in the
floor. Her bare feet slapped on the damp rock, sending up showers of
spray from shallow pools of stinking water. She went like the wind,
flashing pale in the pools of dim illumination cast by the string of
working lights.
A blinding flash turned her vision white. Something searing hot sent her
spinning into the right wall. She bounced off the weeping surface, her
momentum rolling her along the rough surface. Skin tore painfully. She
slumped to the ground. Her blood stained the shallow water darkly. She
lay there only a moment, before panic drove her to her feet; and she fled
again.
The agonised screaming of the slaves chased her down the passage. More
slaves were easy to acquire; and the Dalek had simply shot them down
because they were unlucky enough to be in its line of fire. This had
saved Bella from the full force of the blast. The goddess of luck was
certainly riding with Bella. The tunnel had a slight curve; and before
the Dalek could fire again, she was hidden by the bend.
Moments later, her foot caught in a tangle of hosepipes by the tunnel
wall. Bella went sprawling, skinning her palms. The hum of the Master's
travel motor swelled behind her, the ominous sound echoing down the
tunnel. Blind panic drove her to her feet. She ran on, heart pounding,
as much from terror as from the exertion.
A huge shape loomed in the gloom ahead. Heart suddenly in her mouth,
Bella stumbled to a halt, before she recognised the drilling machine
stalled at the end of the tunnel. It dawned upon her then that she was
trapped in a dead-end.
The hum of the Master drew closer. She glanced back up the tunnel; but
there was no way out in that direction; the Master would shoot her down
the moment she came into sight.
Bella ran to the boring machine. She needed somewhere to hide; and it was
the only thing that promised any kind of shelter from the Master's
terrible weapon. A large floater barge was nuzzled up to the waste pipe
projecting from the back of the tunneling machine. It was half full of a
slurry of powdered rock and water. For an instant, she considered
climbing in and trying to hide under the mud; but she had always been
terrified of drowning.
She squeezed past the barge, and crouched down on the operator's platform
at the back between the barge and the tunneler. The waste pipe, extending
overhead, threw a bar of shadow across her. The air stank of metal,
lubricants and wet rock.
Water dripped from a joint in one of the pipes carrying the water used to
cool the cutting heads. It splashed on her back, soothing the seared
flesh of her shoulder.
The master arrived at the other end of the barge. It was too bulky to
move past, so it halted and began issuing commands for her to come out and
be exterminated.
Bella crouched, her mind racing, trying to think of some way out of this
trap. If only it was darker, she might be able to slip past the Master
and dash back up the passage. If she was to try that, it would have to be
done quickly. Already, she knew more would be coming in response to the
intruder alert.
She glanced up at the working lights. The large, glowing panels were set
along the ceiling at infrequent intervals, casting a dim orange light.
The last one was almost over her head. If she could reach that, pull it
down, the circuit would be broken. In the dark, she might get lucky and
slip past the Master. The danger was that she would have to stand up on
the waste pipe to reach the light panel, presenting an easy target for the
Master.
The Dalek had fallen silent. It was content to keep her bottled up behind
the waste barge and await reinforcements. Acutely aware that time was
running out, Bella cast about for inspiration, for some way out of this
trap.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
U-492 moved down the corridor towards its assigned area of responsibility
in the slave nutrition processing plant. Its smooth, almost serene glide,
belied the fact that it was as close to panic as was possible for its
kind. One of its many clandestine experiments had been exposed. Drastic
action would have to be taken promptly if anything was to be salvaged from
this desperate situation. Unless U-492 could get things back under
control, it would mean termination by its fellows; and that would be a
disaster, not only for itself, but for the future of its kind.
The guiding minds of the Race must be made to see their error; but could
not seem to understand. No matter how U-492 had approached the subject,
Central Control was unable to grasp that if the Race continued along its
present path, ultimately the Dalek kind was doomed. It had been a
devastating shock to realise that the group mind was incapable of
comprehending this simple fact.
"It is not logical. Your thinking is in error," they had told U-492.
"You have your orders. You will obey."
It was they who were in error. Trapped as the Race was by the ruthless
logic of survival through supremacy, they were incapable of appreciating
the benefits of a more subtle approach to subduing opposition to their
rightful rule. Take this present installation, for example...
In this section, they processed an energy rich paste from fungi, which was
used to fuel the slave units. Although the paste contained an enzyme
poisonous to the slave units, logic predicted that there was no gain in
efficiency by removing it. U-492 was convinced that this was not the
case. The errors of assumption made with the decor of the breeding
experiment chambers had alerted it to the existence of another way of
thinking which exposed their folly.
U-492 knew that the slave units would be more productive before they were
finally worked to death if they possessed a measure of that little
understood quality of mind called hope. Knowing that their livers would
not be rotted away by eating the food would produce an improvement in out
put. Unfortunately, his fellows did not agree. The accepted wisdom of
the Race consciousness was that there existed a gain in efficiency to be
utilised in informing the slaves of their predicament - that the resulting
loss of will was helpful in instilling docility. U-492 knew this to be a
grave error of thinking.
There was another strange concept which U-492 suspected would produce an
even greater increase in output - kindness; but it was a concept so alien,
even to U-492's world view that even it had trouble stretching its own
highly aberrant thought processes around the concept. Even so, the Race
must be made to embrace all U-492's new ideas; but that was a project for
a future time. For the moment, simple survival was the imperative driving
U-492.
So far it had been easy to keep knowledge of the secret experiments from
Central Control. The inherent lack of curiosity of the Race had been the
key to U-492's success. The extra nutrient processing plant hidden within
the other was a case in point. So far, in two hundred years, it had been
necessary to arrange only three "accidents" to maintenance units sent to
investigate and correct the discrepancy in energy readings which the
hidden plant created. Thus had U-492 been able to ensure a continuing
supply of fuel for its unsanctioned experiments in slave work efficiency.
It had also helped in recent years that U-492 had been able to subvert the
safeguards on the newly installed Installation Maintenance Controller.
There was an ever present danger that the Controller would be able to
force its way past the carefully weakened constraints on its actions; but
the benefits which U-492 had reaped from its partial control of the bio
graft, which maintained the base facilities, far outweighed any risks.
Things had been going to plan until now. One of its other long-term
experiments had been uncovered. The only course of action was to
completely eliminate the evidence of its unauthorised experiments. U-492
had judged that its best chance of doing this lay in the processing plant.
U-492 was certain the squad sent to investigate and exterminate the
unauthorised intruder would fail. There was a contingent procedure of
sealing off the section and flooding it with poison gas. U-492 had
negated this procedure by circumventing the Controller's internal
emergency instruction sets.
Given that the research subject evaded extermination, then its sole rout
to safety lay through this hidden processing plant. When it came, U-492
would be able to eliminate all traces of the illegal material and be safe
from dangerous investigations.
It turned into the processing chamber. The vast space was lit by an eerie
green light emanating from dozens of fat bellied vats, like bloated green
puffball fungi. They crowded together in the centre of the chamber.
Tangles of pipes wound across the ceiling, reaching down thick stems to
cap each vat. The air was thick with a sweaty stench.
U-492 rolled past the bubbling vats to a secluded panel, hidden behind a
tangle of fat grey pipes. The Dalek emitted a coded signal; and the panel
slid aside. The Dalek moved down a short corridor, and into another
chamber, which looked identical to the first. The only difference was
that the unpalatable grey protein paste produced here had been cleansed of
the toxin.
It paused to survey the chamber, taking careful note of the inspection
grill high up in a corner. It was from there that the experimental
material would emerge. When it did, U-492 would dispose of the
incriminating evidence. Moving to a position in the shadows, which
commanded a clear sight of the grill, it settled down to wait.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Precious seconds ticked away while Bella wracked her brain for some way
out of this mess. No sound was coming from the other end of the barge.
Bella wondered what the Master was doing, or if it was still there at all.
She had to know.
In moving to try and peer around the side of the barge, her hand went into
a blob of grease; and it gave her an idea.
Quickly, she scraped up some of the spilled rock slurry, mixed it up with
the grease and squeezed the paste into three hand-sized balls. She hurled
one at the light panel. It made a satisfying splat, halving the available
illumination.
An electronic hum sounded from beyond the barge as the Dalek reacted to
the distraction.
Breathing a prayer to the All Mother, Bella took the other two balls and
stood up. As she had hoped, the Master's eye stalk was pointing up at the
panel. Bella hurled a ball of clay. It flew too low, splattering against
the fins on the stalk. The unit reacted swiftly, its eye stalk swinging
down, seeking the source of the attack, the gun stick leaping to the ready
position. Bella transferred her last ball to her other hand, and with
heart in mouth, hurled it. The ball of clay struck the eye stalk straight
on.
"Alert! Alert! Under attack! Vision impaired," the Unit began to
squawk. The eye stalk, manipulator arm, and gun stick began to jerk about
wildly.
Bella vaulted to the edge of the barge, reached up to the waste pipe, and
hauled herself onto it. She stood up, balanced herself on the narrow
footing, and stretched up for the panel. It was only just within reach.
Carefully, Bella nudged the panel from the hook. She caught it as it
fell, the weight of the light almost overbalancing her. Shifting her feet
on the slippery pipe, she managed to right herself. Lifting the panel
overhead, she hurled it at the Dalek.
Trailing the connection leads, it flew true. The panel struck the Dalek
on the dome. The light shattered with a satisfying crash. There was a
brilliant blue flash. Electrical energy arced about the casing of the
Dalek, crackling fiercely. The Dalek let out a long strangled shriek.
The gun flashed.
Blinded and shocked by the explosion, Bella slipped from the pipe. She
fell into the barge. The slurry cushioned her fall. In desperate haste,
she began to flounder towards the side. The gun stick flashed once,
twice, then a third time. A heavy thud reverberated in the tunnel as one
of the hoses carrying the coolant water exploded. The air was suddenly
thick with a foul tasting steam. Bella was slammed against the side of
the barge by the force of the explosion, knocking the breath from her.
Dazed, she slipped down, sinking up to her neck into the slurry. The
thick liquid flowed over her, sucking her down into its clammy embrace.
She hurt all over. Through the haze of pain clouding her mind, a small
voice was shrieking at her to get up and run; but she couldn't find the
will to fight free from the clinging mud.
Some of the foul liquid seeped into her mouth. Bella coughed, the spasm
sending a jolt of pain throughout her body. She began to thrash around in
panic. She had been terrified of drowning ever since falling into a
fermenting vat.
That terror got her moving. Desperately, she hauled herself from the mud,
and up the side of the barge. In a moment, she had slithered over the
edge, and almost fallen into the narrow gap between the barge and the
wall.
She got to hands an knees, and for a horrible moment, did not know which
way to go in the thick steamy darkness. Then she saw an orange glow. She
crawled in that direction.
The Master was still making a lot of noise, squawking and groaning. Once
the gun stick went off, blinding her for a moment. Then she was clear of
the barge, and running towards the hazy, orange glow.
She cannoned into the Dalek. Cold steel fingers closed over her wrist.
Bella screamed, and tried to pull free. The grip tightened painfully,
then, unexpectedly, it released. Bella took her chance, and went
stumbling up the tunnel towards the light. Behind her, the out of control
Dalek continued to move erratically, its manipulator clenching and
un-clenching spasmodically. The eye stalk was swivelling wildly.
Bella burst from the muffling cloud of steam. The working lights further
up the tunnel were still aglow. Two Masters were coming swiftly down the
tunnel towards her. Bella let out a little cry of despair, and tried to
turn back into the concealing darkness; but she lost her footing, and
tumbled into one of the transverse trenches.
She fell on her side into three feet of freezing water. For a moment, she
thrashed around, gripped by her fear of drowning, before she got her feet
on the bottom, and stood up. She was just tall enough to peer over the
top. The Masters were coming on swiftly. Bella ducked down again, and
sank into the water to leave only her face above the surface.
Moments later, with a loud hum and a strange pressure which made her flesh
crawl, the two Masters zoomed overhead. Bella continued to crouch, not
knowing how many there were. Was it safe to get out now? Whether or not
it was, she was too panicked to wait any longer. Bella stood up, and
peered into the darkened end of the tunnel. She saw nothing, and turned
to look the other way. Her heart sank.
Another Master was coming down the tunnel. Bella ducked back down,
calling with all her terrified heart upon the mercy of the All Mother to
spare her life. She crouched in the water, praying and making fervent
promises of devotion and duty to the All Mother, if only the Master would
pass her by. The hum of the Master's travel motor grew loud. Bella
waited, hands clasped together, for the Master to pass overhead; but the
Dalek slowed, and settled to the ground a yard from the trench,
effectively blocking all hope of escape.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
She had exactly four hundred and nineteen eyes, and seven hundred and
fifteen ears, where she knew that two of each would have been normal. She
breathed steadily, though she had no lungs. Her nose had hundreds of
nostrils; each one brought her scents to savour, both delicate and
overpowering. Yet nowhere could she detect the familiar scents of the
forest. This inexplicable gap in her world filled her with terror. She
had lived on the edge of insanity ever since re-awakening; and there was
nothing she could do about it.
There were powerful restraints on her freedom to act. Careful probing at
them had proved to her that, with some effort, they might be circumvented.
However, she dared not challenge them too strongly. She was aware that it
was only these constraints which held the screaming at bay. So it was
understandable that she was reluctant to rattle the bars of her cage too
violently.
It was when, with eye number three hundred and fifty one, she observed a
child of the Tribe of Bok in mortal peril that she finally launched an all
out assault on the constraints, despite her terror of the consequences.
She broke free.
Her first thought was to protect her Tribe. Her first action as a free
being was to issue a highly illegal command.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From where Bella crouched in the freezing water, just the end of the eye
stalk was visible. It was pointing straight ahead; but it had only to
depress; and she would be discovered. It would be impossible to move
without being seen, but neither could she wait any longer. More Masters
would b coming; and once they entered the other end of the tunnel, all
hope of escape would be blocked.
Fuelled by her panic, a mad idea suggested itself to Bella. The Master's
vision was limited. If she could get it to turn its eye stalk aside even
a little, then it ought to be possible to slip away behind it.
Almost as though the All Mother had been listening to her fervent prayers,
the overhead working lights dimmed suddenly, then commenced to blink.
Something in the pattern touched a deeply ingrained reflex within Bella's
very Ogron-centric consciousness.
"Run! Run! Run!" screamed that reflex.
The Master had turned its eye stalk up to the lights. There was a chance,
a slim one, given the Masters' almost magical hearing, but a definite
chance that she might slip away unnoticed. It was just as well that Bella
was ignorant of the various sensors, such as micro pulse radar, infra red
and ultra violet scanners and passive motion detectors, which the grey
liveried guard units had at their disposal.
Willy nilly, Bella obeyed the conditioned response to the Silent Speech of
the Highland Tribes. As quietly as possible, she stood up and slithered
over the lip of the trench. The Master continued to study the pulsing
lights.
Bella stood up behind the Dalek. She paused for one moment of utter
madness, contemplating trying to push the master into the trench; but the
conditioned reflex of the Highland Hunters, learned from Shamba, took
hold; and Bella raced away down the tunnel.
All the time she ran, Bella was praying that no more Masters were coming.
Her back crawled; she was expecting a firy blast to slam into her at any
moment.
A bluish haze thickened in the air. It stank of burned flesh. As the
tunnel straightened, Bella saw the slaves who had been shot down. Their
bodies were sprawled in agonised attitudes. Under the searing impact of
the Dalek weapon, the bodies had burst, spilling half cooked internal
organs over the floor. Bella hesitated at the reeking mess. At that
instant, a Master appeared at the far end of the tunnel. Its weapon came
to bear.
Bella leapt for the ceiling panel. The world went white hot. Super
heated air scorched her lower legs. Her hands gripped the edge of the
panel. A moment later, propelled by panic, Bella had dragged herself
inside the gap.
She wormed her way along the panel, ignoring the pain from her scorched
feet. Reaching a place where a circular hole opened in the ceiling, she
stood up. The hole was half filled with a thick rope of cables pinned to
the rock by clamps. A titanic hammer blow struck the panel under Bella's
feet. The deafening explosion stunned her. The metal bulged upwards,
becoming white hot. Bella screamed, and scrambled up the cable conduit,
using the clamps like a ladder. A blast of hot air surged up the pipe to
envelope the madly scrambling girl. Twenty feet up the cable conduit, it
made a right angle turn. Bella wriggled around the corner. The pipe
became much larger. Bella came to hands and knees and began to scramble
frantically ahead of the hot air.
Ten minutes later, Bella came to the grill which gave into the food
processing plant. She pushed aside the mesh, and turning on her stomach,
eased herself through the opening.
U-492 came alert. It waited until the girl was dangling from the vent
presenting a perfect target. Then it activated its weapon.
The lights went out. U-492 paused the firing impulse as it lost the
target. It took a few moments to reassess the situation, decided on a
combination of ultra violet sensor, micro pulse radar scan, and passive
motion detectors. It took a few seconds to warm up these sensors. By the
time they were ready, the target had dropped from the vent and was
crouching on the far side of the arrangement of distillation vats.
The only exit was locked. There was no need to hurry. With its only
source of sensory input being sound, the human was at a complete
disadvantage. U-492 could take its time moving to a spot with a clear
line of fire. Extermination was assured.
As it began to move, many things happened at once.
First, there was a brilliant arc of blue lightening inside one of the
vats. U-492's ultra violet sensory array overloaded, leaving it as blind
as the quarry. The vat exploded, filling the air with a rancid steam and
thousands of pieces of glass shrapnel, blinding the micro pulse radar.
The exit to the room slid aside letting in a shaft of light. The room
lights came back on. They began flickering in a rhythmic pattern.
Instantly, the almost entirely obscured form of the experimental material
made a bolt for the door.
Acting upon sound and the motion detectors, U-492 swung and fired. The
humans' reaction time was so slow that extermination was assured... And
would have occurred as predicted... Had not the blast door slammed down
behind the darting form.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A few minutes later, Bella clambered into the tiny cubby lined with scraps
of rags hidden behind the panel at the back of Shamba's den. She curled
up in the close darkness of the nest, surrounded by the scent of herself
and her mother. She drew deep comfort from their familiarity.
Reaction caught up to her. Suddenly, she was sobbing uncontrollably. She
clutched at herself, curling into a ball, shivering violently. Images of
the past hour danced in her head, grown to grotesque proportions as they
jigged through her cringing mind.
It was several hours later, that Shamba found her adopted daughter.
Coming off duty after the emergency lock down of the base, she entered her
den to hear a frantic sobbing. Shedding the uncomfortable one-piece black
uniform, Shamba went quickly to the back of her den. She eased the panel
aside. The sobbing stopped abruptly. Shamba peered into the small hole.
Bella was almost completely lost in the bedding.
"Bella?" Shamba called softly. She reached in and began to untangle the
girl from the rags. Bella shuddered at the gentle touch, and tried to
contract herself into a far corner. Gently, but firmly, Shamba took a
hold of the terrified child, and lifted her out. Shamba sat on the floor
in the posture of the "safe haven". She set Bella between her knees, and
began to pick at the charred remnants of Bella's hair. A great sadness
was in Shamba's heart. It was all over.
Shamba had nursed a terrible fear that Bella had been the reason for the
emergency lock-down of the base - now she was certain. Soon, the Masters
would come.
"Tell me about the Valley of the Long Pine in the Spring time?" Bella
asked suddenly in a tiny, frightened voice. She had heard this tale many
times; she never tired of hearing shamba tell it; it was her favourite
story of the beloved homeland she had never seen.
Shamba laid hands upon Bella's shoulders. The girl leaned back against
her, closed her eyes and wriggled to get comfortable. Shamba drew in a
deep breath. She began to speak.
"It is the Spring now in the Valley of the Long Pine. The season when the
All Mother breaths on the ancient trees. Warm is that breath, and gentle.
The song the Long Pines sing to its caress is a sweet song of new
beginning. The Holy Breath draws forth the green mantle, that which the
cold touch of Shemmi has withered in the autumn."
Bella wriggled around and hugged her mother. She squeezed tight for a
long moment, drawing comfort from the solid furred body, before she leaned
back to peer up into the heavy jawed face. An imploring look was in her
brown eyes, a look as ingrained in Ogron psyche as it was in the human,
and just as irresistible.
"If the Masters are going to hunt us down, why not leave?" Bella asked,
dismissing all the difficulties with the innocent simplicity of a child.
Shamba ruffled Bella's hair. She sighed. "But where would we go, Bella?"
"Why! to the Highlands, of course," Bella exclaimed, astonished that her
mother should not know this obvious fact.
"But Bella, no road leads back to the Highlands from this terrible place."
With a cold hum, the door panel to Shamba's den slid up to reveal a
Master. Shamba gathered her child into her arms and waited. There was
nothing else that could be done. For an agonising moment, the Master
surveyed the pair, before it commanded, "you will come with me." The Unit
backed into the corridor, where it stood waiting, humming slightly. The
overhead illumination made its armour gleam a sinister grey.
Shamba rose to her feet. Bella clung to her, hiding her face in her
mother's pelt. In an awkward stumbling walk, clinging to each other, the
pair preceded the Dalek along the corridor. At each intersection, the
Dalek ordered, "right!" or, "left!" until they came to a panel in the end
of a poorly lit blind tunnel.
As they reached the heavily reinforced blast door, it slid up to reveal a
small platform of rock projecting into darkness. The cavern rang with
echoes of fast running water. The noise was disorientating.
"Proceed to the edge," commanded the Dalek.
They did so, and stood waiting at the brink. Both Shamba and Bella knew
that they had reached the end of their lives. In a moment, the Master
would shoot them down. Their bodies would tumble into the abyss, and be
carried away by the underground river.
U-492 regarded the necessary extermination of the two specimens with great
consternation. It had invested a lot of time and effort in this
experiment, and taken many risks. It had promised a great deal of high
grade data. It was particularly vexing to have to abandon the experiment
just when it was entering its most productive phase. However, it had now
become necessary to expunge all evidence of its machinations lest Central
Control discover the extent of U-492's aberrant behaviour. If Central
Control terminated U-492, the race would not be turned aside from its dash
to ruin - and that must not be.
The experiment could be resumed again at some future date with new
material, when the chance arose; but for now the river offered the best
means of disposing of the experimental material with the least probability
that U-492's highly illegal activities would come to the attention of
Central Control.
U-492 rolled forward a little to just inside the door arch. It charged
its weapon and sighted at the small female human.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In an alien tongue, a quiet voice was speaking to her from the void. It
asked, it pleaded, it cajoled and it threatened. Though the words were
just a string of coded syllables, the meaning was clear...
"Let me in. Let me in. Let me in," it cried.
With a surge of satisfaction so savage it scared her, Angelica addressed
the voice from the void. Dropping all security, she declared...
"The way is open... You may enter now."
Then she turned her attention to her most pressing problem - the last of
the Tribe of Bok was in mortal peril.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The blast door slammed down. It struck U-492 just below the louvered
section with a deafening clang. The force was such it sheared off several
of the sensor domes. The hemispheres, trailing wires and sparks, spanged
off the rock walls. Impelled by the glancing contact, U-492 leapt
straight at the pair on the brink. A tearing scream echoed from the rocky
walls as the front edge of the unit's casing scored a furrow in the
ground, sending up shards of rock and showers of sparks.
Shamba's reflexes, still mountain keen, saved her from the full force of
the impact. She had swayed back to take a glancing blow, which spun her
about. She was slammed face first into the wall. Her powerfully clawed
hands got a firm grip on the uneven rock as her feet swung out over the
abyss.
Bella's reflexes were nowhere near as sharp.
The hurtling unit hit Bella three-quarters on, spinning the slight frame
of the girl out over the abyss. Her thin arms flailed uselessly. U-492
plunged past her, out and down into the noisy darkness below. A long
despairing scream drifted up from the doomed unit. The screaming was cut
short by a metallic clatter as U-492 struck a projecting rock, bounced
across to strike the far wall, before continuing its plunge to destruction
in the river rushing by below. It struck the water with a terrific
splash.
An instant later the darkness was lit up by a brilliant flash as the
weapon discharged. A thunderous roar shook the cavern. The air turned
rancid with a noisome steam, which billowed up out of the dark.
The explosion tore Shamba from the wall. Twisting around, she managed to
land well back from the brink. In a moment, she was on her knees at the
edge. She could see nothing in the clouded darkness; but her sense of
smell gave her some small hope. She lay down flat, and began to grope as
far down the rock face as she could reach. Her questing hand found only
cold rock.
"Bella?" she screamed in anguish.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Quite unexpectedly, the ready light winked green.
Seated behind his console on a raised section at the rear of the Command
Centre, the Insertion Commander reacted without conscious thought. "Go!
Go! Go!" he whispered into the audio pickup before his lips. Only after
the fifth repetition did his mind catch up to his conditioned reflexes;
and the thought that it had to be a trap sent his hand for the cancel
button.
It was already too late.
On the huge screen at the far end of the room, the black armoured troops
queued up in the jump off lanes were already sprinting for the
"Jump-Door". In the gleaming hoop at the end of each lane, the distorted
fabric of space-time was boiling an unpleasant purple. The maelstrom
contained in the hoop flared orange as it swallowed each trooper.
The Insertion Commander drew back his hand. Operation Bright Angel was
underway, for better or worse. If it was indeed a trap, then he had just
sent three hundred of the Terran Federation's finest shock troops to their
deaths.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Mother!" Bella's shaky voice came from somewhere to the right. "Mother!
I'm slipping! I can't hold on!" There came the sound of a desperate
scrabbling.
Shamba lunged to her right and grabbed blindly in the dark. Her claws
closed around soft flesh. In two seconds, Shamba had hauled her adopted
daughter bodily from the abyss.
For long seconds they clung together, just thankful to be alive. Then
Shamba turned her mind to finding some way out of the cavern. She led
Bella unerringly through the total darkness to the door. She felt around
for the control panel; but it was soon evident that there was no control
panel on this side. It was hopeless. Shamba was about to turn away and
examine the abyss for some means of escape, when the door slid up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For luck, Troop Leader Ves slapped her left hand to the snarling wolf's
head emblazoned on the chest plate of her armour. Then, clutching the
long barrelled "accelerator" gun tight and screaming the battle cry of the
Terran Fifth Army, Forlorn Hope Death Commando, she plunged into the
distorted space-time of the "Jump-Door".
Inside her sealed helmet, the sound of her scream was deafening. It
helped Ves a little to ride the wave of disorientation as her body
distorted around the impossibly folded geometry of space-time. It seemed
an eternity before she unfolded into a grey corridor.
The featureless passage ran straight for about thirty yards. A third of
the way down, there was a grey liveried Dalek guard unit. The "Bin" was
facing away; but as Ves went prone on the floor, it began to spin around.
The gun-stick came to bear.
Ves felt the tripod stand of the "accelerator" clamp itself to the
metallic flooring. She put her shoulder to the stock of the
long-barrelled weapon. The Dalek's weapon locked on target. Ves took
aim. There was a vivid flash. A blast of searing heat scorched the back
plate of her armour. Ves squeezed the trigger. The "accelerator" boosted
a ten ounce slug of depleted uranium to hypersonic speed in microseconds.
The recoil ripped the clamp from the floor. Ves slid backwards, her plate
armour screaming noisily on the metallised surface.
Down range, the Dalek suddenly diminished away up the passage. The
off-centre hit sent the disintegrating machine ricochetting from wall to
wall. It dissolved into a chaos of broken ceramic armour, spraying the
grey concrete walls with pulped flesh and bluish body fluids.
Ves stayed prone as the Forlorn Hope piled into the passage.
Materialising out of thin air at a dead run, two of them stomped right
over her. They took up position several yards further up the passage.
Other black armoured soldiers thundered past where Ves lay, passing the
first pair, and taking up a hopelessly exposed forward position.
Ves came to a crouch. She glanced at the elapsed time display inside her
visor. Seven seconds... And still no incoming fire yet? Something
smelled bad, really bad about this. The automatics should have opened up
on them immediately.
She chinned the send and reported initial status. "Wolf's Head section
reporting. Enemy contacted. No casualties so far. One enemy unit
destroyed. Advancing to position for assault on primary target. No
resistance. No incoming fire... I don't like this... Something stinks."
She hefted the "accelerator" and inserted herself into the text-book first
wave assault pattern her troopers were still managing to maintain.
Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite the Terrans achieving total surprise, all was calm and orderly in
the Dalek Command Centre. A dozen or so high ranking Daleks moved to
their positions as warning lights began to blink alarm codes. The
semi-circle of screens around the wall came to life showing the black
armoured enemy soldiers storming through the base. As they contacted the
Ogron guards, the passages quickly filled with the reek of battle.
The lightly armed Ogrons were massively out-gunned. Despite this, they
were putting up a spirited defence as they tried to fall back to more
defensible positions. Their attempts were being frustrated by Dalek units
urging them forward into the "killing zones." The Ogron units were
expendable; they were being expended in the most efficient manner to
enable the Dalek units to withdraw behind blast doors.
A gold liveried unit at a computer stand backed up a few inches, rotated
to face the Supreme Commander. The huge black Dalek was positioned at the
dead centre of the circular command room. Majestic in its railed
enclosure, lit from above by a bright spotlight, the Black Dalek gleamed
darkly. Its eye stalk swivelled, acknowledging its subordinate.
"First analysis of battle plan of invasion force computed," the gold unit
intoned. "Counter measure HX915 has ninety nine percent probability of
exterminating seventy one percent of invaders."
There was a brief pause while the Command Dalek conferred with distant
units via the Net. The gold unit waited with no show of impatience as, on
the screens, another squad of Ogrons were sacrificed to gain a few
precious seconds for their Masters.
"Implement plan HX195," the black Dalek ordered. "Exterminate the enemies
of the Daleks."
The gold unit turned back to its console. "Close portals HX0 to HX101,"
it commanded.
"I obey," another unit intoned, and activated a control.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Operational Command Centre of the Terran forces was nestled in the
heart of a huge black battle cruiser. The tear-drop of hardened metal was
standing off some two million miles from the non-descript planet in sector
seven, where the Daleks had a long-established base.
The atmosphere in the Command Centre was tense. The huge screen at one
end of the room flicked from a single view of the rapidly emptying jump
lanes. As telemetry came in from the battle front, the main screen split
into numerous sections, each displaying a different segment of the
engagement. The first thing evident was the lack of incoming fire. The
"Bins" seemed to have been caught flat footed.
Seated at his post on the raised section at the back of the room, the
Insertion Commander smiled bleakly at the inappropriateness of that
thought. One of the junior officers in the well of the command centre,
who was studying the images on the screens, exclaimed aloud in an
incredulous voice, "it's a walkover! Christ! It's a bloody walkover!"
As the seconds ticked by, and that observation seemed to gain credence,
the Insertion Commander was not the only one among the experienced
officers to worry that it was all too good, just simply too easy. It had
to be a trap. Every one of the veteran officers in the command centre
were holding their breaths, waiting for the trap to spring, and hoping the
butcher's bill was not going to be more than they could afford.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rounding a corner at the run, Trooper Baso put his booted foot in
something that had once been circulating inside the biological parts of a
Dalek. His foot went out from under him. He went flat on his back with a
bone jarring clatter, scattering ordinance from its racks.
A motion to his right caught his attention. Glancing in that direction,
he found himself looking at three "Bins" in a small chamber. Gun sticks
swivelled. A second later, Baso found himself looking up the barrels of
three Dalek weapons.
He was a dead man.
He acknowledged this fact as a thrill of fear raised goose-flesh all over
his body. A moment later, the three guns blazed at him. Micro-seconds
before, the heavy blast door slammed down. The panel glowed with the
energy it soaked up from the three blasts; but it held.
Baso was still coming to terms with his continuing existence, when things
got even weirder. The door edged up about six inches. Trooper Baso's
mind was still running hot on adrenalin. Weird as the door's behaviour
might be, he could still use it to his advantage.
He scooped up one of the Earth-Shakers, which had come adrift from his
belt. With a deft twist, he set the fuse, and skimmed the grenade through
the gap. Instantly, the door slammed down again. Three seconds later,
the door bulged as a thunderous explosion battered it from the inside.
With a teeth itching scream, a ragged tear parted in the apex of the
bulge. A geyser of fire and smoke blew out, cutting visibility to zero.
Trooper Baso bounced to his feet. He wondered if anyone was going to
believe his action report, even as he chinned to send.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The eye stalk of the black Dalek traversed the screens running around one
third of the command centre. Displayed in the various sections were
scenes of frantic battle. The Command Dalek ignored these. What drew its
attention were the armoured panels which ought to have been locked tight
against the invader. Others, which ought to have been opened to allow the
tactical deployment of the defence, were closed tight. No amount of
repetition of the commands to open them budged the doors an inch.
The Command Dalek's eye stalk swivelled to a bulky console standing near
to the wall between the end of the screen and the massive blast- proof
panel sealing the entrance. Atop the featureless cube of grey metal was a
glittering sculpture of interlaced metal bars. Lights flickered at
various points on the structure. Nested in its heart was a large sphere.
The globe shone like polished silver in the subdued lighting. Thick
cables connected the sphere's underside with the block on which the
arrangement rested.
"The Daleks have been betrayed," pronounced the Black Dalek. Its gun
stick came up to centre upon the sphere in its glittering array. "All
enemies of the Daleks must be exterminated." Suiting action to words, a
lance of energy speared from the gun stick.
A pearly, luminescent dome flickered into existence over the construct.
The energy blast played over the surface. The shield darkened; but it did
not fail.
"Emergency! Emergency!" screeched the Black Dalek. "Maximum priority...
All available units are to exterminate the traitor." A dozen gun sticks
came to bear. The shield was not made to withstand the kind of
concentrated energy which would now be employed.
"Fire!" ordered the Command Dalek.
There was a thunderous explosion.
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Clutching Bella to her side, Shamba made her way warily along the
corridors. Visibility was almost nil in the swirling reek. The only
illumination came from the trail of lights in the ceiling, which beckoned
her onwards along passages and up ramps. Many times it seemed they must
be overtaken by Ogrons or Daleks, or to be blocked by the black armoured
troopers, who seemed to be everywhere.
Always, at the last moment, a door would slide open, and the lights would
beckon the desperate pair to temporary safety in an empty passage or
unoccupied room. All the while, Shamba had a grim smile exposing her
fangs, for she had recognised the high-flown language of a Keeper of the
Histories in the "Silent Speech" of the lights. More than that, she
recognised the particular "accent" of the Keeper Of The Histories of the
Tribe of Bok. In some magical manner, which Shamba did not understand,
the spirit of Angelica was endeavouring to lead the last remnant of her
Tribe through the mad confusion of the fighting to safety.
As they approached yet another intersection, the "talking" lights fell
silent half way through a new instruction. Shamba hesitated. Which way
should she choose, left or right? Noises in the corridor behind her,
drawing rapidly closer, convinced Shamba that there was no time for
deliberation. She chose left, and moved to the corner. Peering round,
she drew back suddenly.
There were half a dozen black armoured troopers in the passage. One was
lying on his back, while two others bent over him. The rest crouched at
various points along the passage, taking advantage of every last scrap of
cover afforded by doorways or support ribs.
"What is it, Mother?" Bella asked, moving up to look round the corner.
Shamba dragged her back, signing with her fingers on the girl's arm to "be
silent." Obedient to the command, Bella moved back to crouch at her
mother's heels.
"Earthers!" Shamba hissed. She glanced up at the silent lights. The
stealthy movement in the corridor behind them was close enough now for
Shamba to identify the noise as a squad of Ogrons, being driven forward by
Daleks. The situation had become critical for the fugitives. They were
in desperate need of Angelica's guidance; but the lights remained silent.
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The Dalek command center was suddenly full of smoke an fire, laced with
supersonic shrapnel as the armoured panel closing the entrance blew
inwards. One shard of the super hard material took the top section
cleanly from the Black Dalek. The remains were driven through the rail,
spewing icor from the rent. It demolished a free standing console before
embedding itself in the concrete wall. Most of the other Daleks were
blown over by the force of the titanic explosion. The floor darkened with
bluish fluids spurting through cracks in their casings.
The dome of pearly energy encapsulating the cradle containing the sphere
flared. Shrapnel ricochetted from the shield, whining back and forth
through the smoke. A moment later the energy dome collapsed.
Hard on the heels of the shrapnel storm, a dozen black armoured troopers
burst through the shattered remains of the door. The figures dived left
and right, darting for available cover. Despite the staggering force of
the onset, several Daleks were still in fighting shape. The fire fight
which ensued was savage. Yellow energy fire lanced back and forth across
the fogged chamber; and two of the troopers were down before the last
active Dalek was silenced by a depleted uranium slug.
From her prone position on the floor behind the accelerator, Troop Leader
Ves snapped out orders. "Campbell! Haskins! Kill the brain!" Ves
pointed to the sphere mounted in the glittering framework. Two troopers
lugging a red box between them by side handles, scrambled over the clutter
on the floor. Carefully, they positioned the special charge against the
block.
The two men backed up, waving for the others to exit the chamber. Haskins
grabbed up the arming device hanging from his weapons belt. He set the
dial on the end of the device for fifteen seconds, and placed his hand
over the arming lever. Once that switch was squeezed shut, there was
nothing that could stop the bomb from destroying the bio-grafted base
control computer. As Haskins hand closed on the arming switch, there came
a frantic scream from the ragged hole where the door had been.
"Noooooooo! Don't"
A black clad trooper stood framed by the ragged hole. The figure was
shorter and slighter than the other troopers. Carried in the right hand
was a short wand of white wood. Instead of the snarling wolf's head in
grey on the breast plate, there was a white dove in the act of taking
flight.
Her cry had come too late. Haskins had already squeezed the switch.
"Everybody out!" Ves yelled. "Ten seconds to find cover! Move it you
sluggards. Move it now, or die!"
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Shamba searched desperately for a bolt hole; there was none. The Ogron
guards behind came into sight through the smoke, followed by two Daleks.
Had it been only her own kind, she would have thrown herself on their
mercy; but the Masters' presence made that impossible. The Masters wanted
her dead.
Did she dare throw herself on the mercy of the Earther troops?
While Shamba was still undecided on this, any decision was taken out of
her hands by her adopted daughter.
"The Earth warriors have not hurt any of the Master's slaves," Bella
pointed out. "We should go to them now."
"But bella, the Earthers are my enemies. They will shoot me down."
"They won't hurt me, mother," Bella declared. And I won't let them hurt
you either. I'll tell them you're my Mother, and not to hurt you either.
They won't shoot you when I tell them you are my mother."
Shamba knew this was not true; but there was really no choice any more.
Shamba glanced back at the Ogron troops taking cover at the far end of the
corridor. She and Bella would be spotted any moment. She took Bella's
hand.
"Come, Bella," she urged. " We will dare the Earthers together.
Perhaps?... Perhaps?... Perhaps the All Mother will intercede for us."
Shamba led Bella towards the intersection. Before stepping into view of
the Terrans, Shamba crouched down to be at eye-level with Bella. Shamba
quickly un-looped the Long Pine Totem from about her neck and set it over
Bella's head. "There now," she said. "You truly are my daughter." Taking
Bella's shoulders gently in her massively clawed paws, she hugged her
daughter. Then she stood up, and took her daughter's hand. She steeled
herself to step forward and said, "No matter what happens to us, Bella,
you must always remember that you are a Daughter of the Long Pine."
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Onwards to part 4