Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [9]
Machinery whirred and hummed around her as sensor data was received and decoded. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gouges in the metal.
‘Jesus Christ, Holly... where are you?’
In another part of the colony a huge, lumbering figure watched with satisfaction as telemetry and pictures from the wrecked ship scrolled across a small screen. Reaching down with clumsy, club-like hands the figure pulled a squat communications relay from a case and punched a series of studs. The machine chattered into life.
Leaning close, the figure barked a short, guttural message into the machine. It chattered again then gave a series of rapid clicks.
The figure resumed watching the screen, its harsh breathing echoing around the darkened room.
The Cythosi ship hung in the asteroid field, huge and ugly. Like a great whale it drifted slowly with the thousands of tumbling rocks, its hull rough and barnacled, pitted with countless meteor scars and blaster burns. Low-power force fields flickered around it, nudging the ship clear of the larger rocks, deflecting the smaller ones, keeping the vessel moving without giving its position away.
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In the observation blister slung low under the belly of the ship, Commander Bisoncawl sat watching the huge chunks of space debris tumble gracefully past. He shifted his bulky frame in his chair, scratching idly at the hair that tufted from his neck.
Functionary Bavril stood to attention just behind him and to his left, as operational regulations required. Cythosi didn’t like to have to look at their humanoid slaves. Aesthetically unpleasing, they said. Some Cythosi had been known to execute on the spot any humanoid who had the temerity to make eye contact with them. General Mottrack was like that. He was one of the worst.
Then again, summary execution wasn’t the worst fate that life on the Cythosi ship promised for Bavril’s people...
Bisoncawl, Mottrack’s number two, wasn’t so bad. Bavril knew he was lucky to be appointed to serve him.
That having been said, it was never entirely possible to relax in the presence of any of the Cythosi – they could all be vicious and unpredictable. Particularly at the moment. For days the ship had drifted, waiting, waiting for the signal, its Cythosi crew getting bored and vindictive, its human crew suffering as a result. There was nothing they could do – not now This had been a long voyage. When they’d started out, Bavril’s people had outnumbered the Cythosi by six to one.
Now they were practically down to essential personnel only. Everyone else had been taken below...
Bisoncawl was concerned, Bavril knew. Silent running was difficult to maintain at the best of times, and was practically impossible over long periods. The ship had been in the asteroid field for nearly twelve cycles now, with no sign of the signal and no sign of the enemy. The crew were becoming complacent and General Mottrack had responded in predictable Cythosi fashion by getting brutal. Only yesterday a careless human communications operator had triggered a sonar buoy and been shot down on the spot. If the signal didn’t come soon...
Bisoncawl’s communicator blinked. He was required on the bridge.
‘Come,’ he said, heaving himself from the chair and stepping out into the corridor. The battle cruiser was typical of Cythosi design –
bleak, functional, uncomfortable. Clouds of vapour hung in oily patches down the length of the main walkway. Bisoncawl thrust his head into one of them and breathed deeply. Bavril shuddered. The smell always reminded him of rotting meat, and made him feel nauseous.
I’ve been out on frontier duty too long,’ Bisoncawl rasped. ‘I’m ready to go home.’
Bavril dropped his eyes. These little intimacies, officer to adjutant, 18
frightened him. A lesser officer would never get away with it –
although it would of course be the functionary who suffered. Bavril could never decide whether Bisoncawl was being friendly or cruel.
A cluster of growling Cythosi troopers turned