Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [80]
The floor was already ankle deep in it.
She was about to call back to Rajiid when she saw a figure loom in the tunnel mouth, and her heart sank.
MacKenzie staggered from the tunnel into the cave, his jacket torn, his eyes wild.
‘MacKenzie!’ Ace hissed. ‘Get back!’
Rajiid reached out and tried to haul the professor back into the shadows, but Ace knew it was already too late. The drums stopped and cries echoed across the cave. The cultists swarmed forward.
Ace swore and launched herself into the open, catching one of the Dreekans in the small of the back, sending him crashing into the floor.
She grasped MacKenzie by the collar and propelled him towards the 153
tunnel entrance. Rajiid was on her heels. The tunnel mouth loomed before her, and then something sent her sprawling.
She crashed backwards, the breath punched from her. A huge figure towered over her. It was Garrett, a hideous blend of human and alien, the flesh flowing across his face in waves. Wild eyes stared down at her, and Ace felt herself being hauled upright, many arms tightening around her. She could see MacKenzie and Rajiid held fast by the Dreekans. Garrett pulled the machete from her hand and held it up. He began to pace before them, the blade held aloft.
The Dreekans began to moan softly, swaying. Ace struggled, but the blue flesh of her captors was like steel. She bit and kicked them but their glazed eyes showed no pain.
Garrett suddenly held both arms out, and silence fell over the cave.
He pulled the mighty weapon from his shoulder. The sea sent us a saviour from the creatures of the deep,’ he intoned, ‘and now the land has sent us a fitting tribute.’
He placed the weapon on the ground reverently.
‘We must honour the saviour with blood.’
He raised the machete.
‘And the Treeka’dwra must spill it.’
Ace closed her eyes as the blade sliced down.
154
Chapter Seventeen
The Doctor stood with Mottrack in the observation dome at the top of the Cythosi command shuttle, watching the hurricane rage outside the storm shutters.
‘Why, General? What was all this for?’
Mottrack was silent for a moment, watching the rain shimmer and boil on the force fields. When he spoke his voice was low and vicious.
‘Victory, Doctor. Victory over the Zithra.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘Ah. War. Nothing else.’
‘There is nothing else!’ Mottrack hissed. ‘The beings in this galaxy know nothing of conflict. Your petty wars are like children’s games beside the battles we have fought. His voice dropped to a low growl.
The Zithra came without warning and tore an entire galaxy apart. But we fought them. Strike and counter-strike, battle upon battle.
Generation upon generation of watching them decimate our worlds.
Holding them at bay – but only holding them, never driving them back.
And then the legends reached us. Intelligence reports about a world whose people had developed war into a sublime art, who had developed a creature that was the perfect weapon.
‘The Krill.’
‘Yes, Doctor! The Krill!’ Mottrack’s eyes were shining. ‘The Zithra know nothing about this world. Through our operatives we have let these puny humans do all the work for us, our hand unseen. No risks.
No possibility of discovery. Generations working towards this moment, when we can harvest our prize and unleash them in their millions upon the worlds that the Zithra have taken from us.’
‘And then use the weapon to sterilise those worlds.’
‘Exactly. Take back what was stolen from us. Rebuild a galaxy free from the tyranny of the Zithra.’
‘But it’s gone wrong, hasn’t it, General?’ said the Doctor, sadly
‘Without the weapon, without the means of destroying the Krill, you can never use those worlds, never regain them.’ He stared out of the dome again. ‘Garrett... Skuarte is unstable, isn’t he? The strain of twenty years undercover.’
155
Mottrack nodded. ‘Our psi-evaluators indicated that schizophrenia was a theoretically possible, if unlikely, side effect.’
The Doctor smiled faintly ‘I rather think your psi-evaluators owe him – them – an apology, don’t you?’
Mottrack’s