Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [104]
‘If you were going to turn conscientious objector,’ cut in Fitz, ‘it’s rather a shame you didn’t do it a little bit earlier, isn’t it?’
‘It is indeed,’ Tain said, and they both had a sense of sudden heaviness and sorrow. ‘But I was created as a soldier factory. Compassion and consideration for the worlds where the Oon battled the Makers were not part of my design.
It would have been. . . counter-productive. . . to have given me a conscience.
War is not about making ethical decisions – it is about winning. There are no half-measures.’
‘Typical,’ snorted the Doctor. ‘No wonder war is such a depressing business.’
He stopped and rubbed at his bottom lip. ‘And why does the name “Maker”
sound so familiar?’ A cold shiver stroked his spine. ‘They called themselves
“Us”.’ The phrase drifted through him like a spirit seeking redemption.
‘I can’t imagine it’s particularly unique,’ Fitz commented.
‘No, no, I suppose not. But still. . . ’ He gazed around the chamber, sighing to himself.
‘So now you expect us to believe that you’ve had a change of heart, do you, Tain?’ Fitz’s voice sounded flat and dead in the chamber, soaked up by the gnarled walls. He noticed them flex and pulse slightly, bringing home to him the fact that they weren’t just underground, but were inside something alive –
something vast and alien, but alive. Something that, he imagined, could crush them at any moment. It was like being inside a heart, waiting for it to beat.
‘I do not expect you to believe anything. I simply present the facts.’
‘And what would you have us do with those facts? Your night beast out there – I take it that yours were the less aggressive ones? – was rather less than gentle with us, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.’
187
‘The Trojan is a simple mind. It has no. . . finesse. The soldiers it created when it subverted my systems were basic models, built for brute strength, not agility or speed. And I have been able, on most occasions, to interfere with their development. I know the capabilities of my units better than it does, and so I generated the more agile ones. The Trojan does not seem to have learned from its mistakes – it continues to produce the larger ones, despite the fact that they are repeatedly killed by mine.’
‘Salvador Dali,’ the Doctor said suddenly, having been silent since his comment about the Makers. ‘ Autumn Cannibalism. That’s what that was about.’
He looked wildly at Fitz as if that made it all clear. ‘Up above ground,’ the Doctor explained. ‘The maggots and the plants, the two lots of night beasts.
Tain and the Trojan – all of them attacking and devouring each other. I should have spotted it when we arrived. That’s what the painting signified, that’s why I must have shunted it aside, hoping it would jog my memory later.’
‘Well, isn’t it a good job that it did?’ Fitz said drily. ‘And just in the nick of time.’
The Doctor threw him a ha-ha look before speaking to Tain again.
‘And this wave that’s sweeping across the planet: that’s the Trojan’s work as well?’
‘No,’ replied the bioship after a pause – and in a tone that really didn’t make Fitz feel very good at all. ‘That was me.’
Trove sat back and watched the Palace Guard finish off the night beasts. Now that the car was floating a good foot above their outstretched arms, there was little to worry about. He could see how the Guard were trying to avoid looking at the trampled carcass of their Imperatrix, but they were professional enough not to be too thrown by it.
It was almost a shame that he’d had to get rid of Alinti, Trove mused, as the first of the night beasts fell. But of course he’d had no intention of honouring his deal, and without her, at least he’d been able to take the levicar up to a safe altitude.
He took the opportunity to glance around: the Oon had told him little about the modus operandi of the Maker bioships, other than that they were capable of creating soldiers