Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [93]
Outside, the air was thick and oppressive. He could scarcely see the perimeter of the jungle for the yellow, smoke‐like excrescence hovering in the atmosphere.
He might once have sunk to his knees in the presence of the Keth but now he knew the full truth. The polygon had given up all its secrets to him at last and it had been worse than he could ever have imagined.
He had sat in the padded chair, weeping uncontrollably as the story unfolded before his exhausted eyes. After all this time, his precious Faith was based on nothing but a disastrous scientific experiment.
Thoss turned away angrily from the livid sky. This was not how it was meant to be. Had he laboured long years in training in the Temple to have this as his ultimate reward? Yet personal aggrandizement was anathema to the first principles of the Faith. Perhaps, after all, this was the ultimate test. Thoss could no longer tell anything for sure. It was all so mixed up, so strange…
He stared upwards until his neck ached. The sky was swirling round and round, a miasma of cannibalized matter pouring into its impossibly dark heart. Fire bloomed in the jungle but this too was absorbed into the yellow whirlwind as though it were able to make use of everything and draw strength from it.
Thoss looked down at his bare, clawed feet and the mud which covered them. The ground was shaking violently and great fissures had opened up in the surface. Steam billowed out in enormous hot fonts.
He eyed the two vast black ships warily. Perhaps these were the Keth and the polygon had lied. Would they forgive his faithlessness? What if they were new Gods who had overthrown the power of the Keth in some unimaginable struggle of the titans? What was there left to him but his faith?
He gathered up his robes and stumbled towards the mothership, the ground oscillating beneath him.
* * *
The Doctor got up from the bridge console. The huge round screen now showed a three‐dimensional image of Betrushia and the rings which surrounded it, tiny winking points of light studding their immensity.
‘Those are the satellites still functioning?’ asked Liso.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. They’re our last hope.’
He dashed across the room towards Grek. ‘Has the other ship surrendered?’
‘Yes. It seems that just a threat to the Magna was enough. And it only has a skeleton crew. I’ve got most of my men over there now.’
‘Where have you put Yong and the others?’
Grek smiled. ‘Your friend, Ace, suggested a place.’
* * *
William Hon Yuen Yong did not take kindly to sharing a cage with anyone but was gratified that, dutiful to the last, the Chaptermen at least gave him a little space in the cramped prison. The cages stood where they had been abandoned in the cathedral, all three full to bursting with the captured zealots.
De Hooch was nursing his broken nose in fury. ‘Look where your incompetence has got us, Yong. Prisoners of those heathen reptiles!’
Yong passed a hand over his smooth, composed features. ‘Do keep your voice down, De Hooch. I can’t hear myself think.’
The dwarf scowled at him and picked a bloodied fragment of bone from his nostril. ‘Think? You? I should have overthrown you years ago. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
Yong glared at him. ‘May I remind you De Hooch, that you have not succeeded in overthrowing me. You had a gun at my head when the animals took over the bridge but that was all. My loyal acolytes would have disarmed and executed you.’
De Hooch laughed. ‘You really believe that? You’re even more insane than –’
‘Oh shut up! Both of you!’
Yong and De Hooch turned in surprise to Chapterman Jones who was glaring at them from the side of the cage. Not long before, Jones would have faced instant death for such impudence. The weary strain behind his large, bloodshot eyes showed that he was beyond such fear now.
‘Face facts,’ he continued. ‘We’re in a hole. And the first thing you do when you’re in a hole is stop digging!’
He frowned at his superiors. ‘We have to get off this planet before it blows