Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [87]
They would have starved if Hammad hadn’t found the machine. At first, Rifa had thought it was some kind of robot, but it was really only an American-style vending device, albeit one on wheels. It trundled through the corridors, looking for people to serve, and often it’d follow them around as they searched the ship. After five days in the labyrinth, Rifa still hadn’t seen any signs of life. He had the terrible feeling they’d been heading away from the control room, not towards it. Even if they found someone, what then? Their weapons had been taken while they’d been unconscious. They still had their body armour, but it hadn’t protected them so far.
‘Dealing with Devils.’ That was what Hammad had said when they’d been assigned to the special-weapons unit. Rifa hadn’t listened, of course. If the guns made them invincible, like the unit commanders said, then why worry about where they’d come from? When the unit had been ordered to make that strike on the UN base in Switzerland – the Saudi military had covert contacts in UNISYC, and one of the generals there had wanted a prisoner at the base to ‘disappear’, for some reason – it had turned out to be the easiest operation Rifa could remember. The guns, the armour, the Cold, the magic windows… the Europeans didn’t have anything to match hardware like that.
But Hammad had been right, after all. If you made alien allies, you had to expect alien enemies. It was obvious, wasn’t it? So why hadn’t the government realised it before they’d signed the contract?
Still. They had to find a way out of the labyrinth, that was their priority now. Somewhere, they were bound to find weapons. Even a penknife would be a start. They could always improvise.
So Rifa Ibn Jeman and Sati Hammad, formerly of the Saudi Special Internal Taskforce, kept moving. For the time being, they’d just have to think of the spaceship as their home. There was really nothing else they could do.
* * *
Travels with Fitz (XII)
Anathema, 1996
He was in the remembrance tank.
Kode was in the remembrance tank.
Wait.
He remembered being on board the Justinian, in orbit around the planet that had been killed off by the Time Lords. Before that, he remembered being rescued from the Cold on Ordifica, pulled out into the light by two of the Faction’s engineers. He saw it all from their point of view, and saw his own face, confused and scared, as he was dragged back into normal space.
His name was Kode…
No. His name was Fitz. He’d been remembered as Kode, because of Tobin’s stupid nickname. Distorted over the generations, turned into a cardboard cutout of himself, a character from a TV show instead of the real Fitz. So badly misremembered, even his best friends hadn’t recognised him.
He picked the most recent memory from the folds of Kode’s brain, and let it roll around his head for a while. Kode was standing in the dome, the same dome where Fitz had spoken to Compassion, two centuries earlier. No, not Compassion: Tobin. Kode was talking to… yes, to him. Him, after all these years.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Kode asked.
The Doctor looked up at the ceiling. Down at his feet. Anywhere, really, as long as he didn’t have to look Kode in the eye. ‘Not as much as you might think. The machine’s designed to shape raw biodata, but I think I’ve managed to modify it. With a little help from the locals.’
‘I’m not going to be me any more, am I?’
‘You’ll be who you were,’ the Doctor told him. ‘Who you were in the beginning. Generations ago.’
‘Will I look different?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘I’m afraid your friends exaggerated some of your worst features. You’ve put on weight, as well.’
For a while, Kode didn’t say anything. Fitz got the feeling he was staring at the glass panel of the remembrance tank, but the