Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [133]
The thought was a pure one, more satisfying than any other E-Kobalt could remember having. Strange, then, that even as it gave the firing order, a new idea began to blossom at the back of its mind. An idea that said, in a voice the commander didn’t quite recognise: “stop”.
But the weapons systems had already been engaged. E-Kobalt saw a look of relief cross the biped’s face. Then the hologram faded into nothingness.
Of course, E-Kobalt was dead before it realised anything was wrong.
In less than a second, the Warspear’s hyperbolic resonators cycled through their entire repertoire, slamming signals ranging from the ultrasonic to the infra-normal against the walls of the shrine, searching for the frequency that would tear the prison open. Of course, any known form of matter would have been susceptible to the vibrations. The loomkeepers of Quartzel-88 had been quite thorough when the weapons had been designed.
Unfortunately for the Krotons, the shrine wasn’t made of matter. At least, not in the conventional sense. Like the ziggurat, it had been built out of sheer mathematics, the complex architectures of block transfer computation. Unlike the ziggurat, the people who’d made the shrine had got their sums right.
The cargo hold rang with a sound that was like all the other sounds in creation added together and amplified. The air was shaken apart by echoes on every conceivable frequency, including the ones to which the Warspear was susceptible, and the ones to which E-Kobalt’s spacecraft was susceptible, and the ones to which the Krotons themselves were susceptible.
Moments later, the floor of the hold was carpeted with a layer of fine white frost. The skulls weren’t even scratched.
The Doctor piloted the shrine back to the ziggurat before he let go of the control systems. Then he relaxed, remembering slightly too late that the intense concentration had been the only thing keeping him upright. His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground, although he liked to think he did it with some degree of style and elegance.
He lay there a while, staring up at the ceiling. Eventually, Sam’s face appeared overhead.
‘What happened?’ she said.
‘We won,’ the Doctor told her. He squinted, as if that would make it easier to concentrate. There was something he was forgetting... oh yes. ‘How’s the Kroton? The one in the doorway?’
Sam glanced towards the corridor. ‘You know what coleslaw looks like?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s how the Kroton is.’
‘Good. The units in the ziggurat were in resonance with E-Kobalt, then. I thought as much. When the commander got shaken apart, all its friends got shaken apart, too.’
‘You mean, like Bagpuss?’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Obscure post-modern youth-culture reference. Ace would have been proud of you.’
Sam moved her lips to say something else, but the voice that came out of her mouth wasn’t quite her own. ‘YOU’RE BECOMING AN IRRITATION,’ she seemed to say.
Ah. The Shift. It wasn’t a physical entity, so it had survived the demise of the Warspear. Kroton weapons don’t cycle through conceptual frequencies, the Doctor concluded. Now, there was a piece of information that would almost certainly never come in useful ever again. ‘Ready to admit defeat yet?’ he asked, pleasantly.
‘NOT AT ALL. HOWEVER, I SUPPOSE I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THAN TO USE KROTONS AS CAT’S-PAWS. THEY’RE NOT VERY INTELLIGENT, ARE THEY?’
‘It’s your fault. If you hadn’t spent so much time pumping up E-Kobalt’s aggressive side, he wouldn’t have opened fire.’
Sam looked puzzled by what the Doctor had said. Clearly, she had no idea the Shift was using her as a mouthpiece. Well, of course she hadn’t, the Doctor reminded himself. The Shift was in his head, not hers. It wasn’t changing her words, it was changing the way he heard her words. ‘NEVERTHELESS, I’M AFRAID IT’S NOT OVER YET,’ the Shift went on. ‘THERE ARE OTHERS