Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [40]
'It was murdered.' He looked sharply at agRaven. 'But of course you knew that.'
There was a pause.
'Yes,' said agRaven. 'That is the most likely explanation.'
'In that case,' said the Doctor, 'we accept.'
There was another pause.
'Accept what?' asked agRaven cautiously.
'The assignment of course,' said the Doctor. He jumped to his feet and beamed at the pair from IDIG. 'It's lucky for you that we happened to be here enjoying our hols when this foul deed took place, otherwise you could have been in real trouble. I and my associates have had simply masses of experience in dealing with this sort of thing. Isn't that right, Professor Summerfield?'
'Masses,' said Bernice.
'And I might add that Adjudicator Forrester has had twenty-five years' street-level experience handling suspects of all shapes and sizes. Some of them even turned out to be guilty.'
'But –' started agRaven.
The Doctor cut her off with the wave of his hand. 'How can we sacrifice our free time like this?'
he asked. 'Think nothing of it. A small repayment for the excellent hospitality we have enjoyed so far.'
'But –' started agRaven again. Bernice had to feel sorry for her.
'Now that's all settled.' The Doctor rubbed his hands together. 'Why don't you tell us more about this vi!Cari.'
Vi!Cari was, or rather had been, one of the older defensive model drones, designed and built for operation in hostile environments. It had been manufactured on the TSH J-!Xin!ca three hundred years ago, had served on a GPS (with distinction) and on the VAS S-Lioness during the war. Towards the end of the war it had opted out of active duty with XR(N)IG. 'Just like that?'
asked Roz. 'Just like that,' said kiKhali. 'We're not slaves.' Records were patchy after that, drones don't need somewhere to sleep and there was no indication that it had joined an association or an Interest Group. A year and a half ago it had registered that it considered itself resident in iSanti Jeni.
'It wasn't exactly popular around here,' said Bernice.
'How do you know that?' asked agRaven.
'Oh,' said Bernice, 'I have my sources.'
'She talked to people,' said Roz. 'It's more efficient than scanning.'
'Excellent,' said the Doctor. 'You see what a difference a bit of experience makes.'
A lightning bolt couldn't damage a drone, not even the twenty thousand plus ampere flashes that were recorded at the heart of last night's storm. Bernice knew from experience that you could fly a flitter right through a thunderstorm; it attracted the lightning but the charge went in one side and out the other. To get yourself fried you had to be grounded first. Vi!Cari hadn't been grounded. According to the partial data record it had been cruising at an altitude of eight hundred metres and a velocity of one kilometre per second, heading straight for the epicentre of the storm.
'Why?' asked Bernice.
AgRaven shrugged. 'God says it's been running behaviour models but the parameters are so broad that even it can't say what was going through vi!Cari's mind at the time.'
'About twenty thousand amperes,' said Roz.
'You,' said kiKhali, 'are a truly sick individual.'
Bernice wondered why Roz seemed to enjoy winding people up. It was getting on her nerves.
She could live with agRaven or kiKhali's bad opinion but Dep was watching the whole sorry scene.
She wished Roz would lay off, just this once; it was embarrassing.
'Assuming,' said the Doctor, 'that for some reason the lightning discharged directly against vi!Cari, how much damage should it have done?'
The answer was none at all. Even assuming that vi!Cari was out of defensive posture it still had three layers of shields in the terrawatt range and underneath that was the drone's outer shell, constructed of restructured crystalline carbon hybrids. They were, Bernice thought, tougher than Daleks, more like miniature battle cruisers than any robot or droid she'd ever heard of. She also noticed that neither kiKhali nor agRaven had said anything further about the drone's offensive capabilities. In her experience civilizations