Doctor Who_ Hope - Mark Clapham [99]
But programming can lie, and absolute certainty is the biggest lie of all.
Kent and the fellow Silverati beside him were prepared for any human attack. They were strong, they were fast. But they were not stronger than fragments of torn metal. They were not faster than shrapnel propelled by high explosive. And their instructions, to stay close to the chamber where the prisoners were kept, to remain ever vigilant, left them vulnerable.
The explosion ripped the bolted steel door to pieces, digging chunks out of the wall around it as its limited but powerful impact blasted outwards, shredding metal like tissue paper. The Silverati, who were only a couple of feet away from the door, only caught the edge of the blast, enough to knock them off their feet. But it wasnt the explosives that did the damage it was the debris. Razorsharp pieces of redhot metal flew through the air, cutting and burning everything they touched. They didnt stand a chance.
Kent lay on his back, a fragment of the destroyed door embedded in his eye socket. A sheet of splintered metal had embedded itself in his gut. He couldnt feel his legs, and from the waist up all he could feel was pain. Smoke billowed out over him, and his surviving eye watered, blurring what was left of his vision. He had been a man once. Since waking as a Silverati, these things had been forgotten, but now they came flooding back. It was the sensory overload, the pain interfering and conflicting with his programming, causing logic errors and failures, allowing him to have thoughts he should never have had. The walls of certainty had fallen, and all Kent could think of was chaos. Confusion crippled him as much as his wounds. Human being or Silverati? The certainty of invulnerability versus the cold reality of the pain in his guts. He looked into the smoke, trying to discern meaning in the haze. He tried to pull himself on to his elbows, saw shapes moving in the smoke. Maybe it was his loss of vision, but these dark figures seemed to tower over him, gods drifting through the wreckage, untouched by the carnage.
The shapes coalesced into three human figures, two men and a woman. They walked out of the smoke with purpose, side by side, without fear. Kent, or whoever he was now, was in awe. He had thought himself invulnerable, but he had been wrong. These towering people had shown him different. He was at their feet, where he belonged.
The man with the longer, curlier hair turned to Kent, and in his eyes there was a sense of purpose. Where he went there would be more explosions. Nothing would stand in his way.
Wheres Silver? asked the Doctor.
Chapter Sixteen
Closure
The heart of the empire lay in the great furnace cities of the southern region, read Silver, a history book open in his steel palm. His audience was the Silverati working on the Hypertunnel. They showed no visible signs of listening, but he knew their multitasked sensors would be absorbing his words. The great smoke stacks of these cities were visible from hundreds of miles away, and the factories in the cities produced weaponry and vital supplies not just for the Imperial Throneworld, but for all the colonies and outposts touched by the empires lash.
Silver closed the book, and began to pace in front of the Hypertunnel.
The largest of these furnace cities must be the first point of our attack, he said, as much to himself as to the Silverati. With all those industrial resources converted by Kallisti...
Silver trailed off in midsentence, absorbed in visions of his own power. He stood, still and silent, the work progressing around him, enraptured in his own ambition.
Hypertunnel, said the wounded Silverati through bloodflecked lips. Fitz felt ill watching the dying man struggle with his words.
The Doctor was aghast. Silver has a Hypertunnel?
The one eyed Silverati nodded.
Thank you, said the Doctor grimly. He reached down, and with one swift tug, extracted the fragment of metal from the Silveratis eye socket. The Silverati wailed