Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [93]
‘You mean, you’re going to steal the Relic?’
‘Hell, yeah.’ The image of Manjuele extended an arm. Bregman thought he was reaching out to touch her, until she saw the knife in his other hand. ‘You ready to give up now?’
‘I’m ready,’ said Bregman. Manjuele cut three lines across his arm, and let his blood fall to the ground, out of the frame of the hologram.
Then the Spirits came knocking. Bregman let them into her skull without a fight.
E-Kobalt rotated its cranial section fifteen degrees counter-clockwise, realigning its torso-centred sensory systems to cover the area to the polar south-south-west. There, on the other side of the table, the carbon-core organic unit identified as Cousin Justine was speaking.
‘Our bid is essentially the same as that of the Time Lords,’ the unit said. ‘In return for the Relic, we’re prepared to supply you with the technical secrets of the Faction. We’re a spiritual organisation, of course, but our methods do have military applications.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said the Qixotl unit. ‘Are you saying you’re going to tell me how to do those, er, those blood rite things of yours?’
‘Not all of them. Only those with destructive capability. I believe that’s the field you’re interested in. We don’t give up our secrets easily, Mr Qixotl. We hope this offer will reflect the value we attach to the Relic.’
Qixotl raised an appendage. ‘Well, y’know, I’m flattered. But I was hoping maybe for something a bit more... corporeal?’
‘You consider our rites to be unreliable?’
‘No, no. Not all all. Look, can we discuss this later? We can figure out details once we’ve heard what everyone’s got to say.’ Qixotl turned his exterior sensory apparatus towards the noticeboard next to him. ‘Mr Shift? You haven’t said much, so far.’
NO. IF YOU’LL PARDON ME, MR QIXOTL, I’D LIKE TO SEETHE NATURE OF THE OTHER BIDS BEFORE I MAKE MY OWN OFFER. WHAT I HAVE IN MIND IS, SHALL WE SAY, A LITTLE DELICATE.
E-Kobalt spun its cranial unit in a broad-band sensor sweep. It usually did that, when it was irritated.
It was being ignored. The Qixotl unit had heard E-Kobalt’s offer, and cast it aside without a second thought. Now nobody was paying attention to the Kroton commander, however much it rotated its cranial unit or extended its frontal appendages.
This was an insult. Not just to E-Kobalt personally, but to the loomkeepers of Quartzel-88, and – ultimately – to the First Lattice of the Kroton Absolute itself. E-Kobalt had come for the Relic, and it considered this treatment to be a form of defeat. Needless to say, E-Kobalt-Prime of the Kroton Fifth Lattice didn’t take kindly to defeat.
In the deepest crystalline connections of its brain, E-Kobalt began to put together contingency plans. It wasn’t planning on going back to the Front empty-pincered.
E-KOBALT’S STORY
The Quartzline Front, campaign year F83
The planet had been classified as Qu2296, although the Metatraxi, in their own ridiculous language, called it SkSki%ro+tho+ha=ve>n. Through the senses of its dynatrope, E-Kobalt could see the Metatraxi ships floating on the surface of the upper atmosphere. There were billions of them, literally billions, more than the dynatrope’s tactical systems could comfortably count. The craft were arranged in a precise grid formation, each one exactly the same distance from its four neighbours, each one hovering at exactly the same height above ground level. E-Kobalt could only see the northern hemisphere from the dynatrope, but it knew the southern hemisphere would be the same. Not a single break in the pattern. In a way, it was admirable.
Only a handful of the Metatraxi ships would be occupied, E-Kobalt knew that much. The rest were dronehusks, hollow shells constructed on the Metatraxi nesting-worlds, unintelligent semi-organics that relied on orders from the swarmleader to function. E-Kobalt shifted the dynatrope’s sensors from one ship to the next, searching for the swarmleader’s own vessel.
There; that was