Shining Darkness Read online

  At Weiou’s words, there was a deep, electronic hum from Mother.

  ‘What?’ asked the Doctor, turning and looking up at the behemoth. She’d stopped battering the robots and they were again drawing closer. Boonie and Kellique were standing on the staircase a few steps up, looking confused.

  ‘Meeta-Corrin,’ said Boonie. ‘That’s the company that made Mother. It’s where we rescued her from.’

  The Doctor turned back to Mother as her head turned slowly, as if she were seeing the robots in a new light.

  Suddenly, in front of her – and just visible to the Doctor from where he stood – a rectangle of pink light flickered, like an old-fashioned TV set warming up. Mother had activated her projector.

  >THEY ARE RUNNING SOFTWARE CONTAINING HEURISTICS DERIVED FROM ME.

  It took the Doctor a second to realise what Mother was saying.

  ‘These are your children?’

  >GRANDCHILDREN MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE.

  The Doctor raised his eyebrows, suddenly realising that this revelation could place them in a very dangerous position: Mother was the only thing that stood between the robots and them, and now she’d discovered that they were her grandchildren.

  ‘You must be very proud,’ he said dryly, as Mother actually took a step back, away from the approaching horde of blonde hair and sharp tailoring. ‘Any chance you could, oh, I dunno, tell them to go to their rooms? Sometimes works, you know.’

  >LI’IAN ANTICIPATED SUCH A POSSIBILITY, flickered the red letters. Beyond them, the robots drew closer. HAD SHE NOT DISABLED PRIMARY AND AUDITORY INPUTS, I COULD HAVE ACCESSED ROOT COMMAND STRUCTURES.

  The robots were now moving across the platform, their steps still eerily in sync, their eyes cold and dead. Mother took a step forward and swiped another three of the robots off the platform and into their comrades. The others stepped over the fallen ones and kept on coming.

  ‘Mother’ said the Doctor quietly, putting his hand on her steel arm. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know. Not now we know…’

  >I KNOW.

  The letters winked silently for a second.

  >IF I DO NOT DEFEND US, WE WILL BE KILLED.

  ‘They’re your grandchildren,’ the Doctor reminded her, waving Boonie, Kellique and Weiou further up the staircase.

  >THEY ARE ALSO NON-SENTIENT MECHANICALS. THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF FEELING PAIN OR DISTRESS OR BETRAYAL.

  ‘I know,’ said the Doctor gently. ‘But you’re not.’

  Another robot got within reach of Mother, and with a disturbing casualness, she reached out and swatted it away: it went flying into the ones behind it, scattering them like bowling pins. Silently, they clambered back to their feet and resumed their advance. It seemed like Mother had made her decision.

  >GO, Mother flashed. STOP LI’IAN.

  ‘I’m not leaving you. There must be—’

  He stopped dead as something occurred to him – something, in hindsight, that seemed blindingly obvious. Ironically so.

  ‘Mother!’ he said urgently, his words tumbling over each other. ‘Access to their command pathways – how do you get it? I mean, what would you have to do – alpha-numerics?’

  >A 256-CHARACTER STRING TRANSMITTED TO THEM.

  ‘Ha!’ cried the Doctor triumphantly.

  ‘What’s with the “Ha!”?’ scowled Boonie from the top of the staircase. ‘They’re not accepting wireless commands and they’re as deaf as posts—’ Boonie stopped as he realised what had occurred to the Doctor. A grin broke across his face. ‘But they’re not blind!’

  ‘Correctamundo – oh…’ The Doctor’s face fell. ‘I was never going to say that again. But yes, they’re not blind. That’s one input that Li’ian couldn’t disable – not if she didn’t want them walking into walls. Mother! Is there any chance that you could have a word with the grandkids – show them the access code?’

  ‘Doctor!’ Boonie called down the staircase. ‘You realise that it won’t just send the servitors to sleep, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Mother sends the code, they’ll shut down – for good.’

  ‘Oh.’ The Doctor ran his hand through his hair and looked up at Mother. ‘Your call,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll understand if you don’t want to, you know.’

  >YOU THINK OF THIS AS MURDER?

  The Doctor didn’t know how to answer.

  >THINK OF THEM AS OUT-OF-CONTROL LAWNMOWERS.

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor, not at all convinced. ‘When you put it like that…’

  Mother gave a satisfied little hum – as she felled another couple of the blonde robots – and suddenly a great long string of numbers and letters flickered across her holographic screen, faster than the eye could follow.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the Doctor called up to the others. ‘They’re fast readers.’

  The code continued to scroll along the screen, the characters just a blur now, as Mother turned on the spot, at the very foot of the staircase, to make sure all the supermodel robots had seen it.

  In waves, the robots just stopped.

  No fuss, no noise, they just stopped.

  First the ones at the front, the ones who had the best view of Mother’s projection. And as she turned, more and more of them saw the command string. Silently, and instantly, Mother’s code infiltrated the robots’ processor cores, and turned them off for good.

  The silence was deafening.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to do that,’ the Doctor said, looking up at Mother. ‘But thank you. Who better than a grandmother to know what buttons to press to shut the grandchildren up, eh?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Weiou, peering out from behind Kellique.

  ‘Yes!’

  He punched the air.

  * * *

  ‘You know what really gets me,’ said Donna as Li’ian pushed her through the door into a room, ‘is that I fell for it.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ Li’ian said with a cold smile, motioning with the gun for Donna to move away. They were in a brightly lit room, more like an operating theatre than the grungy industrial theme that the rest of the station seemed to have been decorated in. It lay off a long corridor at the top of the staircase. From down below, Donna could still hear the sound of the robots, stomping and crashing. So far she’d heard no screams or sounds that anyone had been hurt – anyone organic. But with the sheer numbers of supermodels, that could only be a matter of time.

  ‘And what’s worse,’ she added, fixing the surprised Mesanth with a hard glare, ‘is that the Doctor did too.’

  ‘Which only proves my point,’ Li’ian said. ‘If it’s that easy to make you think that I believe that mechanicals are sentient, why is it so hard for you to believe that they’ve pulled the same trick with organics. I fooled you; they are fooling everyone. Well,’ she added with a smug smile. ‘Not everyone. Mesanth – how’re you doing?’

  The lizard was standing at a complex-looking console, all three of his hands moving over the controls. Donna could see the striped cylinder of the activator, looking like a cross between a wasp and a particularly large sausage, on the console in front of him.

  ‘I’m not happy,’ he said, his normally animated voice flat and controlled.

  ‘You don’t have to be happy,’ Li’ian said, waving the gun casually, making a point. ‘You just have to do the job.’

  ‘No, Mesanth, you don’t,’ cut in Donna. ‘You don’t have to do what this mad cow says at all. Come on! Think about it – think of all the death—’

  There was a sharp, high-pitched buzz and a section of the wall alongside Donna exploded in tiny sparks, leaving an acrid smell in the air and a wisp of smoke.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Li’ian, waving the gun that had just almost killed her. ‘Mesanth might have scruples about killing you, but I don’t.’

  Donna glared at her, and then looked back at Mesanth, imploring him with her eyes not to continue.

  ‘Where’s Garaman?’ asked Mesanth, casting his eyes to the window that ran a
long the length of the laboratory.

  ‘He got cold feet,’ Li’ian said, holding Donna’s gaze as she spoke, unspoken threat in her eyes.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now – he’s no longer part of the plan. And the plan’s… changed.’

  ‘How?’ Mesanth’s voice was getting higher in pitch. Donna could tell he was on the edge of being hysterical again. His hands trembled as he operated the controls in front of him.

  ‘We’re not just going to turn off the mechanicals,’ she said, keeping her eyes steady on his. ‘We’re going to take control of them.’

  ‘What? Why? What was wrong with Khnu’s original plan?’ Mesanth’s voice shot up half an octave.

  ‘Oh, you idiot, Mesanth,’ sighed Li’ian. ‘That was Khnu’s original plan.’

  ‘What?’ Mesanth’s voice jumped up another half an octave.

  ‘Well, our plan. She thought it through: turn off all the mechanicals and before you know it, someone would come up with a workaround. Days, weeks – and we’d have a whole new load of mechanicals immune to the activator. We’d be back where we started. Khnu knew that this was the one chance to gain control – and keep control.’

  ‘But we could do something,’ he said plaintively. ‘Work something out…’ He tailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

  ‘You’re starting to think like the promechanicals,’ said Li’ian tiredly. ‘Before you know it you’ll be starting to doubt your own convictions. This is how they work, Mesanth.’ She tapped the gun against her own temple. ‘They get in here, start making you doubt what you believe.’ She waved the gun at the console and the activator. ‘Just finish, Mesanth, and then we can leave here – go out into the galaxy, heads held high. Liberators.’

  Donna opened her mouth to say something, hoping that the embers of decency that she’d seen in Mesanth could be fanned into a flame; but Li’ian saw her and aimed the gun fair and square at her head.

  ‘One more word,’ she said softly.

  The Doctor shooed Kellique, Boonie and Weiou up the stairs ahead of them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Mother, surveying the chamber full of fallen and frozen robots. ‘If there had been another way…’

  >NO APOLOGIES NECESSARY, flashed Mother. THEY WERE NOT SENTIENT AND THERE IS MORE AT STAKE THAN MY FEELINGS.

  The Doctor shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand the machine mind.’

  >I KNOW, replied Mother. WE ARE MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU ORGANICS.

  The Doctor narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You have a very dry sense of humour, you know that?’ He reached up high and slapped her on the back. ‘Come on – let’s go and sort Li’ian out before she plunges your galaxy into a somewhat less-than-shining darkness!’

  The others were waiting for them when they arrived: Mother had found it easier to clamber up the outside of the spiral staircase because of her bulk. The corridor, though, was high enough for her to stand upright.

  It didn’t take them long to find Li’ian, Donna and Mesanth: they were in a brightly lit room, a laboratory, with a huge window facing out onto the corridor. Li’ian gave a start when she saw them, and the Doctor could see the fury flare in her eyes.

  ‘Mother didn’t take kindly to her grandchildren running amok,’ the Doctor called through the intercom set into the doorframe. ‘Had to have a quiet word with them. They’re taking a nap.’

  ‘Doctor!’ called Donna, waving.

  ‘Destiny seems to want to keep us apart,’ said the Doctor. ‘Like Romeo and Juliet.’

  Donna flashed a none-too-convincing smile.

  ‘Don’t push it,’ she said.

  ‘Fair enough. Anyway, Li’ian, I take it you’re holding Donna at gunpoint and will threaten to shoot her if we don’t go away and leave you in peace. That about sum it up?’

  ‘It’ll do,’ agreed Li’ian, showing the Doctor her gun.

  A few metres away, Mesanth busied himself with the activator, risking a nervous glance over his shoulder. He was visibly shaking.

  ‘You don’t have to do this—’ the Doctor started to say.

  ‘Been there,’ Donna cut in. ‘Done that. Got the brush-off.’

  ‘And in case you’re thinking of getting Mother to smash her way in,’ called Li’ian, ‘I should point out the reinforcement that’s gone into this room’s construction. Nothing short of a bomb will get you in here. And in, ooh, about ten minutes, the activator will be ready and it’ll be too late.’ She smiled, almost sadly.

  The Doctor shoved his hands deep in his pockets and shrugged.

  ‘Well it’s a good job that we’ve got a bomb, then, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ve got a bomb?’ said Weiou, who kept jumping up and down in order to see what was going on in the activator room. ‘Where?’

  The Doctor looked at Boonie.

  ‘Are you going to tell them, or shall I?’

  ‘What?’ Boonie suddenly looked very evasive. ‘What bomb?’

  ‘A bomb?’ echoed Kellique.

  ‘And not just any bomb,’ said the Doctor. ‘An antimatter bomb. An antimatter bomb that will take out this whole station.’ He paused, his eyes wide. ‘That’s a big bomb.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ laughed Li’ian. ‘And not very well.’

  ‘A bomb?’ repeated Kellique pointedly.

  ‘Tell her, Boonie,’ said the Doctor.

  Boonie just looked from the Doctor to Kellique – and then to Mother, where his gaze stayed.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ countered the Doctor. ‘I think you know exactly what I mean. Go on, Boonie – tell us all about the bomb. The one that you hid inside Mother.’

  There was a stunned silence: everyone’s eyes flicked to Mother and then back to Boonie.

  ‘What? I don’t know what he’s talking about. He’s mad.’

  But there was a tremor, an uncertainty in his voice that kept everyone’s eyes on him.

  ‘You might as well tell them, Boonie,’ said the Doctor. ‘In a few minutes, Li’ian’s going to turn that thing on and millions and billions of the machines that you’ve devoted the last few years of your life to protecting are going to die. It might be the only way to stop her, mightn’t it? That’s why you put it there, after all. No need to be a retiring bride on the day of your wedding.’ He glanced through the window at Donna and pulled a face. ‘Not my best metaphor, but still…’

  Boonie looked at them all, and his shoulders sagged. ‘I was going to tell you,’ he said awkwardly, looking up at Mother.

  ‘What?’ twittered Weiou, turning this way and that to try to follow the conversation. ‘Tell who what?’

  ‘Were you?’ asked the Doctor of Boonie. ‘When were you going to find the right time to tell Mother that you’d hidden a bomb inside her? Not the kind of thing you can just throw into the conversation, is it? “Oooh, look at that beautiful nebula – oh, and by the way, there are a few grams of antimatter tucked away inside you waiting for me to detonate them.” Bit of a showstopper, that one, isn’t it?’

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Boonie, his eyes narrow and suspicious.

  ‘When I was aboard your ship, me and Mother had a bit of a chat – and I happened to notice it.’

  Boonie looked shocked – understandably, thought the Doctor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, falteringly, to Mother. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever have to… use it.’

  >THAT IS HARD TO BELIEVE, Mother flashed in crimson letters. YOU MUST HAVE CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY THAT YOU WOULD HAVE TO USE IT.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Boonie said, clasping his head in frustration. ‘It was just an insurance policy. I didn’t know what the Cultists were up to – I had no idea what was going to happen. I had to…’ He shook his head, realising how weak his own arguments sounded. ‘I had to be able to stop them.’
/>   >WE WERE FRIENDS.

  ‘We were – we are.’ Boonie shook his head, unable to make eye contact with Mother.

  >FRIENDS DO NOT TURN EACH OTHER INTO BOMBS.

  ‘If I could have implanted it in myself, I would have done.’

  >THAT MAY BE TRUE. BUT YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME.

  ‘I was scared you’d say no,’ Boonie said. He blinked away the beginnings of tears and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

  >THAT IS A RISK WITH TELLING THE TRUTH. BUT IT IS ALWAYS PREFERABLE TO A LIE. THAT YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO KILL ME, EVEN IN THE PURSUIT OF PREVENTING THE CULT FROM ACHIEVING THEIR ENDS, IS A DISTURBING THOUGHT. PERHAPS YOU ARE CLOSER TO THE CULT OF SHINING DARKNESS THAN YOU BELIEVE.

  ‘No, no. I’m nothing like them.’

  >WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN SO WILLING TO IMPLANT THE BOMB IN AN ORGANIC? MY MACHINE NATURE MAKES ME DIFFERENT. DISPOSABLE?

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Boonie pleaded again. ‘If I’d ever had to use it, I would have been there by your side, right at the end. I couldn’t have put it in myself – it would have shown up on all sorts of scanners. Inside you, no one would have been able to tell that it wasn’t part of you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ called Li’ian, and the Doctor realised that from where she stood she wouldn’t be able to see Mother’s display screen: all she would have heard would have been Boonie’s side of the conversation, relayed through the intercom.

  ‘Oh, just talking amongst ourselves,’ the Doctor said airily. ‘Antimatter bombs, friendship, that sort of thing. Getting a bit soapy to be quite honest, but hey, what can you do? With you in a mo.’

  ‘Explosions always make me feel bilious,’ muttered Weiou. ‘There’s not going to be one, is there?’

  >THAT IS BOONIE’S DECISION, Mother said. HE HAS THE ACTIVATION CODE FOR THE BOMB. IF HE CHOOSES TO USE IT, I CANNOT STOP HIM.

  Boonie looked from Mother to the Doctor.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked, almost in a whisper. His face was blank, streaked with tears that cut pale tracks through the dirt and grime of their escape from The Sword of Justice.

  ‘Dunno,’ said the Doctor casually, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘You’re the one with the code for the bomb.’ He rapped on the window. ‘Mesanth – sorry to bother you, but how long have we got left before your little Armageddon-o-matic kicks in?’