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you come up with?
In less than an hour, I imagine the Phractons will attack us, said Darius
Cheynor. His voice carried surprising calmness. After all, the way they see it,
we massacred their diplomatic party.
Only it wasn t us, said Bernice. It was the woman Trinket saw earlier. The
one who had a blazing row with a chum of his. She shuddered.
Hmm. The hologram-Doctor appeared to be examining the wood of the
table for flaws. Well, if I were you I d hope your opponents have noticed
the presence of something more powerful than all of you. Because if they
haven t . . . He straightened and smiled up at the ceiling, before deactivating
gently into a four-foot globule of silver light, which rushed back down into
the pyramid.
Oh, great, Benny said angrily. I bet he programmed it like that deliberately,
too. No one gets to interrupt him, and he always has the last word.
The door slid open, and Hogarth strode in. After looking Bernice up and
down in a decidedly hostile manner, the communications officer addressed
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Cheynor. It was not quite the exchange Bernice had been expecting.
You wouldn t listen, would you? she said, black-gloved palms flat on the
table. Her tone held grim resolution, but also a hint of gloating. Give the
colony to the Phractons? Peaceful settlement? No, Captain. War is what we
came here for, and war is all that s going to happen.
Cheynor turned away from her in anger. So what would you have done,
Cassie? Blasted the Phracs the second they appeared under truce?
Taken armaments with us. At least we could have defended ourselves
against that girl! Hogarth s visible eye was open wide, unnaturally so, show-
ing stark egg-whiteness.
And what would that have achieved? Apart from killing an innocent party?
Cheynor s righteous anger gave him new strength as he rounded on Hogarth.
Bernice remembered seeing him like this in their previous encounter: a man
with something shattered but strangely noble about him.
Hogarth was undeterred. That girl is uncanny. That stunt with the Phracs,
it was just to gain our confidence. She s like them. Twisted. And in case you d
forgotten, sir, she s currently sitting in our medlab, waiting for the moment
when she can pull her next trick!
No, said Bernice, stepping forward. I don t believe she ll do anything.
Hogarth barely spared her a glance. I don t listen to civilians.
That s a shame. Because they often talk sense. Bernice strode up to the
woman, deliberately making herself closer than was comfortable for either of
them. She got the impression of something knotted up inside Cassie Hogarth,
physically and mentally. I don t think for a moment that Trinket s sister is the
evil here, and nor did Captain Cheynor. We know there s something evil out
there, and the girl was just the channel for some . . . Bernice shrugged. Some
force that seemed to tear her apart. You saw her after the Phractons died. As
if she d been burned out too, inside.
Bernice stopped, aware that her voice was louder than she would have liked
and her throat was very dry. She was taking something of a risk; after all, her
knowledge of what was happening was based on the Doctor s theories about
Tilusha Meswani, and she did not see Hogarth responding favourably to the
idea that she had come forward in time to prevent a tragedy.
This woman s talking rubbish, Captain, Hogarth said coolly, apparently
unshaken. I just hope you ve got that medlab well guarded. She turned on
her heel and strode out of the room typically, for the Phoenix crew, without
waiting to be dismissed.
Cheynor looked back at Bernice. I ll be needed on the bridge, he said. I ve
beamed requests for assistance through the comsat, obviously, but I can t see
anyone bothering with us in time. He sighed deeply and, just for a second,
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closed his eyes against the world. It did not go away. That s not the idea, you
see. We weren t sent here to win.
What do you mean? Bernice poured them both another glass of the fruit
cordial.
Well, I suppose I have to tell someone. And it can t be Leibniz or Hogarth.
Cheynor sat down, and scratched his beard with one hand while tapping the
arm of his chair with the other. We were sent here to defend Gadrell Major s
porizium deposits. By the time we got here, most of the city was in ruins.
Defence became skirmishes, and we got most of the civilians out. And now
we re not allowed to leave. It got me wondering, you see, Bernice. Wondering
about how valuable this lump of rock really is to Earth Council.
I don t see what you re saying.
Cheynor sighed. This conflict is not about porizium or any other min-
eral deposit. There hasn t been porizium in abundance here since . . . He
shrugged, waved a hand. Way back. But the Phracs don t know that, do
they?
Bernice met his gaze. And if there s one way to keep your enemies out of
your hair . . .
Exactly. The largest military deployment ever seen by the Phracton Swarm
has been arriving on this planet for weeks now. They re prepared to colonize
it once they ve destroyed and rebuilt it, and my guess is they re ready to start
digging. For a valuable mineral that doesn t exist. Cheynor smiled grimly,
just on one side of his face. And Earth Council sends a disposable ship that s
been out on patrol for too long, with a commander who doesn t quite fit in
because he hasn t made a great success of anything much. It s all rather neat,
isn t it? I imagine the intention is for us all to rot here.
Benny s mind was racing. If what Cheynor was saying was true, and the
whole human Phracton conflict on Gadrell Major was just a diversion de-
signed to keep the Phracton fleet away from Earth s solar system, then it was
the most staggeringly audacious betrayal she had ever known the Earth ad-
ministration to be capable of.
But, even more importantly for their current situation, it meant that the
human and Phracton forces stood a chance of being brought together to fight
the true enemy in their midst. An enemy who could burn people to death with
a single thought.
Benny s mind drifted back to the Doctor the real Doctor. What was he
doing or rather, what had he done, five hundred years in the past? (That
sort of thinking always set her head reeling, so she preferred to think of their
activities as simultaneous. In terms of the timeline she and the Doctor lived
on, they were.) If he had contacted the Sensopath inside Tilusha s child, then
he would be arriving in the recalled TARDIS at any moment. She just hoped
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the creaky time machine was being reliable.
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