Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [127]
‘I can’t do it,’ he said, and tensed his neck, awaiting the claws of the bot again, but Vaughn didn’t seem to hear him.
‘Whether you believe me or not, Doctor,’ Vaughn continued as if nothing had happened, ‘my only aim has always been the protection of humanity. I believed that my affiance with the Cybermen could bring great benefits for the Earth. I was wrong, I know that now, but in the thousand years since then I have worked to ensure the success and the technological advancement of first the Alliance, then the Empire. INITEC has been in the forefront of weapons development as well as robotic and genetic research. I had to ensure that humanity was safe – safe from Daleks, Jullatii, Cybermen, Draconians, Chelonians, Ice Warriors, Sess, Kraals, Nestenes, Greld, Zygons and every other one of the many races that have tried to invade this small but oh-so-important planet of ours. Sometimes you have been here to help us, or so I have later found out from the records and the reports of those involved.
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Sometimes you haven’t, but we coped anyway. Whether you were here or not, I took it upon myself to help.’
‘Tobias Vaughn: Defender of the Earth?’ the Doctor asked, tongue very much in cheek.
‘And why not?’ Vaughn abruptly stood up and gazed out of the wall-wide window, stained crimson now by the fires outside. ‘My weapons, my spaceships, my warbots – they have all contributed to making the Empire what it is.’
‘A monolithic force for oppression and misery!’ the Doctor snarled.
‘Yes,’ Vaughn said, nodding, ‘but a stable one. A safe one.’
‘You really claim to have saved the Earth?’
‘If it wasn’t for the invention of the boson cannon – a development of the INITEC laboratories – the Jullatii would have overrun the Earth in 2350. If my researchers had not already built the first of the Vigilant laser defence satellites, then the Zygons would have melted the ice-caps and flooded the world in 2765. And who do you think designed the glitterguns that won the Second Cyberwar?’
‘You must have enjoyed that.’
‘I confess that I derived a certain pleasure from the act, but my primary aim was to ensure the safety of the Earth. After all,’ and Vaughn turned and bestowed a superior smile upon the Doctor, ‘we couldn’t always rely on you to turn up in time, could we?’
The Doctor grimaced, and Vaughn continued: ‘When the chance came to capture the new Hith battleship, I grabbed it with both hands. After all, to be able to exploit such a radically different piece of technology . . . Just think of the years of research that we could forgo!’
‘And how far have you got in five years?’
Vaughn pursed his lips into a little moue of resignation.
‘These things take time, Doctor. The Hith had developed their science along a parallel course to ours, one based on biological systems rather than mechanical ones. With that they overcame fundamental problems that we had wrestled with for years. It takes time to analyse such a radically different technology, but we are succeeding, by taking that ship apart, piece by piece, plate by plate, vein by vein, cell by cell.’
The Doctor waved a hand at the window. ‘But look at the result: riots, madness and death. Is it worth it? Is this the stability that you were so proud of achieving?’
Vaughn shook his head. ‘You don’t understand, do you Doctor? You’re stuck in the short-term view, whereas I, with the whole sweep of history behind me, can appreciate the long-term one. Yes, there are riots. Yes, there is madness.
Yes, there will be some deaths. The Empire will survive, however. Earth will 217
go on, stronger than before, backed by the knowledge of icaron manipulation.
This is just a blip in the upward graph of human progress.’
‘The end justifies the means?’ The Doctor was livid. ‘Don’t tell me it all comes down to that discredited philosophy, Vaughn? Even you cannot be so unimaginative. Icarons are fantastically dangerous.’
Vaughn shrugged, and looked away. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said finally.
‘Perhaps, as the years have passed, my moral sense