Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [68]
Chris settled back in his chair, looking down at her.
Nyssa pulled her dressing gown tight around her.
‘You must be tired,’ he said after a little while, clearly keen to start a conversation.
‘No. My people don’t need as much sleep as yours.’ Her fingers stroked his ankle. It was red, but no bones had been broken.
‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Traken. You won’t have heard of it.
‘I have,’ Chris told her. ‘It used to be in Mettula Orionsis but it was destroyed centuries ago. So, you must come from the Trakenite colony on Serenity?’
Nyssa’s heart quickened. She had watched on the TARDIS monitor as her entire home galaxy was blotted out, as everyone she had ever met or even heard about had been killed. But now, here of all places, she had discovered that at least some of her people had survived. Serenity had survived the destruction unleashed by the Master.
‘Tell me what you know of it,’ she insisted.
Chris recounted the sketchy details that he could remember: Serenity was the only surviving colony of the Union of Traken, a verdant garden world with advanced biotechnology, whose people lived in peace and relative isolation. They believed that at the time of the cosmic disaster that obliterated the entire rest of their galaxy, something called the Source had protected them, at the cost of its own existence.
‘The Source was first constructed there, ten thousand generations ago,’ Nyssa told him. She felt odd. It must be the wine or the oysters affecting her...
‘We Adjudicators learn about Serenity as an example of a peaceful and just society.’
Nyssa straightened. ‘You are an Adjudicator?’
Chris didn’t move. ‘Lapsed,’ he admitted.
‘What does that mean?’ she demanded.
‘The Adjudicators are meant to be impartial, committed to the law and justice. A year out of the Academy, I discovered that the Lodge was corrupt. I uncovered a conspiracy that went right to the heart of the Empire. I was forced to flee Earth. Since then, my friends and I have discovered that a handful of secret organizations have covertly been controlling human scientific research and defence policy for centuries. These are dark forces with their own agenda, and they must be fought. We have been aware of them for some time.’
Nyssa listened to him, sensed the truth in his words.
The hairs, on the back of her neck were prickling. ‘I will help you in any way that I can.’
The Doctor hadn’t said a word since they had left the station, neither had Tegan. Patience was staring ahead apparently not even, slightly curious about what had happened at the waystation, She still sat in her chair.
Tegan had preferred to squat by the heater vent rather than take the other. The Doctor took the seat, then, and continued to consult the control panel.
‘We are now at full speed,’ the synthesized voice informed them. Tegan was warm again now. Standing, she opened the side window blind.
The Adjudicator hovercopter had pulled level with them
‘Doctor!’ she warned.
He glanced in her direction, turned his attention to the instrument panel, then was staring out of the side window.
‘Relax, they don’t have any reason to think we are here.’
Pattern recognition software in the hovercopter targeting computer booted itself up and focused on the face of the woman. Within a second it had identified her. It moved on to the young man at her side. They were two fugitives who had escaped from the Scientifica earlier that morning. A warning buzzer sounded in the cockpit.
‘DOCTOR! SURRENDER. THERE IS NO ESCAPING
JUSTICE,’ a modulated voice boomed from the speaker.
‘We’ll have to outrun them.’ The Doctor turned his attention to the controls and began assessing his options.
‘You just said that we’re travelling as fast as we can, and that plane isn’t even trying,’ Tegan complained. Their room for manoeuvre was a little limited: forwards or backwards. Patience joined him at the controls, and she began studying them with a calm efficiency that Tegan found rather reassuring.
‘Cheer up, Tegan, I’ve been in worse scrapes.’ He stabbed at a control and there