Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [130]
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Time is fragile, Vaughn. It’s a connected net of delicate threads, each one under tension, each one pulling on uncountable others. Nobody can predict the changes that they might cause if they break one of the threads.’
‘Not even you?’ Vaughn said, lightly but dangerously.
‘Not even me,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m playing with a fire so dangerous that I could scorch eternity.’
‘And what gives you the right?’ Vaughn asked.
The Doctor thought back to his conversation with Professor Zebulon Pryce.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing gives me the right, but having got it, I will not relinquish it. I am time’s champion, Vaughn, in the same way that you claim to be Earth’s champion, and it is my responsibility to protect history. Humanity doesn’t even come close to developing usable time travel until –’ He bit his tongue, thinking about the Crystal Bucephalus. Best not to give Vaughn too much help. ‘Well, for quite some time yet.’
‘Then you will not help me?’
‘I would rather die first.’ The Doctor folded his arms and tried to look firm, while wishing that his words hadn’t sounded quite so much like a dare.
Vaughn watched the Doctor for a long moment, smiling slightly.
‘I promise you,’ he said quietly, ‘by the time you have screamed out your knowledge, one agonized fact at a time, you would rather have died first.’
A gloved metal claw scratched oh-so-lightly at the Doctor’s temple.
‘Where’s the Doctor?’ Forrester shouted as they pounded through the twist-ing, turning labyrinth of corridors that made up the Skel’Ske. Hith warriors paralleled their course, sliding along the walls and the ceiling, regardless of gravity. Cwej brought up the rear.
‘We went our different ways,’ Beltempest panted. ‘Not still interested in arresting him, are you?’
A bot leaped out of a side passage and skewered three Hith on a beam of light. Even before their charred bodies had fallen to the floor, the combined firepower of four more had sent it staggering backwards in a spray of molten metal.
221
‘Not at the moment.’ Forrester gasped and wiped a quick hand across her face.
‘But I might think of something.’ Her gaze flickered over Beltempest’s face.
‘You’ve been using him, haven’t you?’
Beltempest nodded. ‘We’ve known for some time that there’s been corrup-tion in the highest levels of the Landsknechte,’ he puffed. ‘Blackmail, bribery, undue influence, you name it. What we didn’t know was who was doing the corrupting and why they were doing it. I was put in charge of a special team trying to track down the top dog.’ He broke off to fire shots down another side corridor. ‘Damn, thought I saw something. Never mind. Where was I?
Oh yes, I’d set up a special monitoring team checking all incoming messages.
When one of our provost-majors received an anonymous order to arrest and kill two people who were about to arrive on Purgatory, I got suspicious.’
‘The Doctor and Bernice?’
‘Indeed. The provost-major was arrested and I substituted for him.’ He looked down at himself. ‘This was a rush bepple job. Used a time tank. Bit of a shock when I woke up, I can tell you.’
‘So you’re not the real Provost-Major Beltempest?’
Beltempest shrugged. ‘I had a partial brainwipe. I can’t remember who I used to be. As far as I’m concerned, I am Beltempest.’
‘Why, for Goddess’ sake?’ Forrester was appalled.
‘You know. It’s in case I’m captured and interrogated. All that a mind probe session would reveal is that I am Provost-Major Beltempest. We couldn’t afford to tip off Mr Big, whoever that turned out to be.’
‘But you were going to let the Doctor and Bernice die,’ Cwej protested from behind.
‘They had to,’ Beltempest said without any hint of remorse. His trunk shook as he ran, making his voice quaver. ‘The top dog would have got suspicious otherwise, and we had to assume that he had other agents who would have notified him if their bodies didn’t turn up. The intention was to track back the movements of the Doctor and Bernice and find out who they had