The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [83]
"And you're running for it?" Vicki sniffed and turned ostentatiously away. "I don't know why you ever thought you had a chance with me. You"re just a coward."
"You little fool," Albrellian laughed. "With you in love was never I -
just to get you to the island wanted I so that, when the time came, easier to kidnap you it would be. With my friends, dying gloriously at the culmination of twenty-year plan our, would rather be I, but the chance to bring one of the fabled Doctor's companions back to the Greld Commonwealth is too good to miss!"
"Even if your companions think you're scared?" Vicki asked.
Albrellian did not reply. As the skiff settled to rest in the dark curves of the Greld ship"s bay, Vicki thought over what Albrellian had said. "Does this mean you don't like me?" she said in a plaintive voice.
"Vicki," Albrellian said, "how to break this to you know do not I, but a naive and rather stupid brat are you. To mate with you would not I if the last sentient creature left in the fourth galaxy were you."
"Oh." It took a moment for that to sink in, and it hurt. "So - so why are you kidnapping me? You said you were under orders."
A clang from outside and a flashing pink light presumably indicated that the hatch had sealed shut again, and that the atmosphere was breathable. Albrellian released the safety catches, and the skiff's door rose up revealing the bay outside. Vicki could smell a strange, alien smell, like a cross between cinnamon and tar.
Albrellian scuttled for the doorway. "Just think," he said, "what for our business could do you. With knowledge of which wars will be fought when, and between whom, possessed by you, expand our market share immensely could we. Suppliers of quality weapons to people who be needing them realize do not we could be."
"That's sick," Vicki snapped.
"That's business," Albrellian said. "Come on, or the toxin again use I will."
Vicki exited the skiff and looked around the bay. Like Albrellian, it was a combination of bowed surfaces and sudden spiky bits.
Various bits of high-tech equipment ranging in size from a hand-held multi-quantiscope to a zeus plug five times the size of the TARDIS. Other small ships - Greld shuttles and one-arthropod fighters, she assumed - were lined up along the sides, and three more of Braxiatel's discus-like skiffs were sitting in a cluster in the centre. Albrellian gave them a curious glance as he passed by.
"I won't cooperate," Vicki said.
"Will you," Albrellian replied, heading towards a hatch in one wall.
"Promise I." He stopped beside a large multi-tubed device that was lying on the gently sloping floor. It was about fifteen metres long and three metres high, and one end looked like it had been wrenched from a socket of some sort, complete with trailing wires and pipes. The other end terminated in a series of parabolic dishes. "That is not right," Albrellian muttered. "This thing was not here when left we, swear would I."
"What is it?"
"A terrawatt beam generator - one of products our." Albrellian ran a claw along the device's surface. "It is used for short range ship to ship battles. Fitted to the ship's exterior them have we."
"So it's a weapon?" Vicki said.
"Yes," he hooted, "it's a weapon. And still fitted in the weapon bays it should be, not here in bits where just walk off with it could anybody."
"Not anybody," said a thin, vicious voice from the doorway. The open doorway, Vicki realized with some dismay. Five thin figures were standing in it, their horns almost brushing the ceiling. The look in their eyes was one of unalloyed triumph. "This ship, and all its weapon systems - especially its weapon systems - have been appropriated by the Jamarian Empire."
"The what?" Albrellian growled, rising up on his front walking claws. "An Empire have not got the Jamarians."
"We have now," the leading Jamarian said.
The long narthex of the Church of St Trovaso stretched away from the group of men