Doctor Who_ Remembrance of the Daleks - Ben Aaronovitch [30]
With a small part of its mind it adjusted the nutrient drip in the birthing creche, balancing the protein levels in the feed tubes that led to the gestation capsules. Inside each duralloy bubble a perfect Dalek foetus contentedly gurgled to the soft whine of the indoctrination tapes.
The systems co-ordinator monitored a servo-robot as it scuttled across the vast port flank of the ship, quickly sealing meteorite punctures with tiny squirts of gel.
A hull-mounted missile launcher twitched in its socket testing its orientation.
Radiation sensors inside the burning heart of the fusion generator spiked twice and then subsided.
All this barely broke the surface of the co-ordinator’s consciousness, as subliminal to it as breathing was once to its humanoid ancestors.
The focus of its attention lay two hundred kilometres below, priority red, watching for the sign.
Waiting.
‘I don’t think Group Captain Gilmore is very happy,’ said Ace.
‘He’s a military man,’ said the Doctor. ‘Lack of action makes his brain seize up.’
Ace looked over at the other table where Gilmore was sitting with Rachel and Allison. Harry’s best effort lay uneaten in front of him. She caught Rachel staring at the Doctor again; the scientist quickly looked away when she noticed Ace.
Mike laughed, the sound muffled by the sausage he was eating. His fork stabbed at the air, punctuation for his humour. He saw Ace watching and covered his mouth with his hand. Ace looked down at her mixed grill. What she needed was some toast.
The Doctor was staring ahead, his brow creased. Ace had seen this look before.
The Doctor was waiting for something to happen.
George Ratcliffe was good at waiting.
He learned to be patient in prison while the rest of England waged senseless war against the one nation that should have been its ally. He had been reviled by the very people he’d been fighting to save.
They had called him a traitor.
Men that had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the 1930s – good men who had marched down Cable Street, proud to be English, proud to fight against the jew and the Bolshevik, proud to stand up for their race – even they had rejected him, blinded by the Zionist propaganda.
Ratcliffe found himself alone, a single voice against the madness.
And so he had gone to prison under Regulation 18b and learned patience; he had been rewarded.
A few spots of drizzle fell on his face. Around him gravestones marked generations of dead Englishmen. In the distance, birds sang. Ratcliffe walked slowly down the main path. The sky threatened rain.
Third on the left, thought Ratcliffe, and stopped.
The grave was unremarkable. The headstone bore a single mark – the Greek symbol for Omega.
The Hand of Omega, thought Ratcliffe, destiny and power.
Ratcliffe’s business as a building merchant prospered in the 1950s. The East End had been mauled during the Blitz.
There was a lot of work and Ratcliffe still had his contacts.
Rebuilding the Association proved harder. The influx of new immigrants helped. They were easy targets, more obvious than the Jews, more different. Yet it was not like the 1930s – there was affluence now. People didn’t need scapegoats like they used to. Ratcliffe knew in his heart that the Association would never amount to more than a rabble driven by hatred.
But that was before they arrived. Then everything had changed.
Rachel sipped her coffee: it was cold.
‘I just feel we should be doing something,’ said Gilmore.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re in way over our heads already.’
‘You were designated chief scientific adviser – one tends to expect some advice from one’s advisers.’
Oh really? she thought.
‘For one thing, Group Captain, I was not hired, I was drafted. And for another, do you think I’m enjoying having some space vagrant come along and tell me that the painstaking research I’ve devoted my life to has been superseded by a bunch of tin-plated pepperpots.’
‘Steady on, Professor.’
‘Steady on?’ Rachel had trouble keeping her voice down.
‘You drag me down from Cambridge,