Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [102]
Miranda pointed up at the pyramid. ‘That was speaking?’
‘That’s Computer,’ Ferran told her. ‘It controls the ship. And I control it.’
‘Where did you find the ship?’ Miranda asked.
Ferran turned, looked at Cate carefully. ‘How did you know?’
Cate’s face gave nothing away.
Miranda had no intention of betraying a confidence or losing a valuable source of information. ‘If you had built this ship, it wouldn’t look like this. You’d have your own chair, for a start, and it would be in the middle of the room.’
Ferran narrowed his eyes, but broke into a grin. ‘It crashed near the Librarinth, a very long time ago. One of my teams there recovered it.’
‘Who are the original owners? My people?’
He shook his head. ‘People who have long since gone. Nothing to do with you. This is a relic of an earlier time. A time that may not even have happened.’
She looked down at the activity. The people looked out of place here, like schoolboys allowed to drive their dad’s company Merc.
‘It’s impressive.’
‘Supremacy is beyond the state of the art. Its weapons, its defences, its time travel. It’s the advantage I need to win the war.’
‘The war?’
Ferran turned to her. ‘The Factions and Houses are at open war with each other, now. No one is strong enough to take it too far. The whole system is on the brink of collapse – everything from the economy, the military, communications, transport... But during my long years at the Archive I discovered far more than how you spent your teenage years. I’ve found maps, histories, secrets. Enough to unite the Factions under me, and the force to impose my will.’
Miranda looked him in the eye. ‘All the things you called “atrocities” when my family did them to you.’
Ferran gave a cruel smile. ‘But then, my dear, the Imperial Family had the biggest guns. Now I do. That’s all there is: power. Have that, and ethics and morality bend to your will.’
‘ “Might makes right”,’ Miranda said, disgusted.
‘That’s all there is. Justice will be my justice, law will be my law. When I’ve uncovered all the secrets of this ship I’ll build a fleet of them. Nothing will stand against me.’ He paused, enjoying the theatricality of it all. ‘And you have your part to play.’
Miranda laughed out loud. ‘If you think I will do anything to help your –’
‘You will,’ Ferran said with absolute certainty. ‘You will, because I have all this, and you have nothing except that which I grant you.’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-three
Escape Velocity
A pair of white-suited technicians, the pad team, checked Commander Fairchild, and one led him inside. The other crewmen remained waiting in the White Room, the area hundreds of metres up the launch gantry that was level with the entry hatch on the side of Atlantis.
It was a laborious process. Each astronaut in turn would be taken to their seat, manoeuvred into it, facing up, then packed and strapped into place. Fairchild, the commander, went in first. He’d be followed by Beale, who’d be sitting to the commander’s right and would act as pilot. Then Kim Sawyer, the flight engineer, who’d go in behind the commander. Then, set back a little, Mather, the mission specialist, would go in last.
All following procedure, laid down years ago, with little significant variation. There were no short cuts here. Before every launch, every single component was checked and rechecked. The shuttle was taken apart and rebuilt – making a mockery of the claim that it was reusable, of course. Below them, at Mission Control, hundreds of techies and scientists were running diagnostics, monitoring everything to the slightest degree.
And despite all that, seventy-three seconds after take-off, on 28 January 1986, a shuttle had exploded. That thought was all around them. No one ever quite admitted it, but the loss of Challenger informed everything that was said and done, even for Mather, a military man only seconded to NASA.
It was clearly uppermost on the mind of the female technician