Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [112]
‘We will stay here and get ready for a quick getaway,’ the commander told him, beginning to unstrap himself. ‘Mather is going with you.’
The Doctor was waving his hands at them. ‘That isn’t necessary, I –’
‘You don’t have time to argue. Doctor: you need a combat specialist, and Mather is a member of Delta Force.’
‘That’s like the SAS, isn’t it?’ Debbie asked, dim memories of Barry’s military magazines coming back. ‘What are you doing in space?’
‘That’s classified,’ Mather said, curtly.
‘He’s launching a military satellite,’ the Doctor said. ‘A prototype deuterium-fluorine laser weapon connected with an SDI programme the American public thinks has been cancelled.’
The commander and Mather looked at each other and then at the Doctor.
‘I saw your mission objectives,’ he explained.
‘A laser? Could we use it against Ferran?’ Debbie asked.
The Doctor gave a sly laugh. ‘No, won’t work properly.’
‘That’s what we came up here to test,’ Mather said curtly.
‘Oh, any fool can see the mirror on it’s all wrong. You should have asked me before you launched it off into space – you’d have saved yourself some money. Eighteen minutes. Are you coming or not?’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-five
Power to the People
Cate sat silently opposite Miranda, staring ahead.
Miranda wondered what thoughts were going through the woman’s head. It was clear that whatever a ‘micro-relay’ was and however many Cate had in her head, the effect was to create something indistinguishable from the workings of an organic brain. Miranda found it easier to understand Cate’s thought processes than those of Ferran.
They were the only two passengers in the travel tube. The hangars were about halfway along the ship, so the journey should take only a couple of minutes. Those minutes were a long time coming.
‘Ferran has the interests of his people at heart,’ Cate insisted.
Miranda must have had the oddest expression on her face, because Cate immediately followed it up with, ‘He wants to keep the Empire together; he wants to maintain the rule of law.’
‘He just said he was the law,’ Miranda reminded her. ‘He tortured you, abused you. He treats you like his property.’
‘There is no other way. Think about it, Miranda – think of the difficulties there are of maintaining such a vast empire. Do you know how much power is needed for intergalactic travel? Even using dimension drives, it needs the rarest fuel sources, the most skilled technicians.’
‘Perhaps the Empire is too large, then.’
‘You would split it up, break it down into administrative areas? A recipe for rivalry and conflict. Above all, there must be one leader, one authority.’
‘Or no leaders at all,’ Miranda said. ‘Do you know what gramdan is?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve just been to India. It’s a scheme that Gandhi thought up.’
‘Those names mean nothing to me.’
‘No, I’m sure they don’t. But their ideas – perhaps you don’t need an empire at all. You need local communities, ones that run themselves. India’s a large country, with all sorts of religions and races, but it’s also a democracy. It’s not perfect. But nowhere is, I don’t think.’
Cate watched her carefully.
Was she doing the right thing? Miranda wondered what she could do other than escape – find a self-destruct mechanism, go after Ferran himself? She’d run through a couple of scenarios, but couldn’t see how she could do anything constructive here. It wasn’t heroic to run away and leave Ferran to it, preferring to go home and forget all about it. Was it really that cowardly to calculate the odds of survival and realise that she stood no chance against a legion of soldiers?
About eighty seconds into the journey, the lights dimmed, then the tube slowed and stopped.
‘What’s going on?’ Miranda asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Cate confessed.
‘They’re on to us.’
Miranda tensed. She would go down fighting, take a few of them with her. She got ready, pumping adrenaline into her system, clearing her mind, prioritising her visual acuity and reflexes.
Beside her, Cate was doing the same. She had the same body, of course, an older version,