System Shock Part 32

'The highway is up and running, integrity at eighty-seven per cent.'

'Then we must a.s.sume that Stabfield and his team are no longer viable.' Hanson checked the instruments. He had never seen them before, yet he understood every display, every nuance of every reading. 'Our optimum course of action is to fragment the networks physically and bug the remains. They will not be able to self-repair once broken into pieces, and the humans will be too disrupted to offer effective resistance. We can reintroduce a copy of Voractyll to the larger surviving sections.'

'But if the insertion team is non-operational, that only leaves us.'

Hanson's head felt heavy. He put his hand up to support it, rested his cold metal cheek in the fleshy palm of his hand. 'The plan is still viable. We can build more Voracians. There are enough organic components available to make that fly.'

'How do we effect physical fragmentation of the highway?'

Hanson rubbed his face, drawing his hand down his cheek.

He looked over to the Voracian pilot. 'Set the reactors to overload status. Then establish a terminal trajectory for the ship, final destination: Washington DC.'

278.

'h.e.l.lo, Sarah Jane.' The Doctor's voice was quiet, soothing.

'Oh, Doctor!' Sarah grabbed him, hugged him. She sniffed back the tears and held on to his coat.

'You're soaking my scarf.' The Doctor gently eased her away from him, keeping hold of her hands and looking into her eyes.

'I only just got it back,' he said. 'All right?'

Sarah nodded. 'Much better for seeing you, Doctor.'

'Good.' His voice was suddenly louder, and he started round the room, pulling pieces of equipment apart, hunting through personal computers and workstations. 'You haven't come across a machine with a read-write optical drive have you?' he asked. 'I was rather hoping to find one around here somewhere.'

'Doctor, I wouldn't know what a read-write thingy was if it hit me.' She followed him out into the corridor and along to the next computer room. 'In fact, one probably has.'

The Doctor frowned as he stepped over the body of a Voracian. The eyes stared sightlessly from the shattered face.

The Doctor shook his head and made for the nearest desk. He brushed broken gla.s.s off the surface and examined the machine.

'Aha,' he said. 'This looks promising.' He turned back to Sarah. 'I have a couple of things to finish up here, Sarah,' he said, 'including a little journey. Why don't you go and find Harry?'

Sarah did not move. 'Can I come too?' she asked.

'Not this time.' He returned his attention to the computer, giving it a thump on the side to jar it into life.

'Shuttle launch from Hubway,' the Voracian crewman informed Hanson.

'On screen.'

A tiny dot of light was approaching rapidly from the Earth's surface, spiralling up through the cloud layer.

'Maintain present position. We should get a status and highlights report on the operation.'

'They are maintaining communications silence.'

Hanson nodded. 'A sensible precaution.'

279.

The Doctor set the locking clamps, and opened the airlock.

Ahead of him he could see the usual featureless grey metal corridor. He paused, deciding which way to go.

A sound behind him made him turn back to the shuttle. A sc.r.a.ping, metallic sound. He ducked behind the airlock, and peeped back round the door. As he watched, the door of one of the service lockers was pushed open from the inside. A figure emerged slowly, cautiously, into the light.

'I thought I told you to find Harry,' the Doctor said.

Sarah shrugged. 'Thought he might be in there. He wasn't.'

'Hmmm.' The Doctor was not amused. He turned and strode down the corridor. 'You could at least have brought some shoes,' he called back over his shoulder.

'Sorry,' said Sarah as she padded after him in her stockinged feet. 'But my shoes are under a floor somewhere and I didn't want to miss this.'

'It could be dangerous.'

'It always is.'

They stopped outside a door. 'This is the flight deck,' the Doctor said. 'Or at least, I think it is. You should stay out here.'

Sarah nodded. 'You're probably right.'

The Doctor nodded his approval, and wound his scarf another turn round his neck.

'But I'm not going to,' Sarah said as he operated the door control.

The room was large and circular. Various curved consoles were positioned around the edge of the room. Two Voracians were manning the controls. A third figure stood in the centre of the room. It was a man, tall and broad, in a pinstripe suit.

The figure turned as the door opened, and Sarah saw his face. It was for the most part unremarkable a thin nose and dark eyes. But the man was completely bald, instead of hair the top of his head was encased in plastic. And one side of his unremarkable face had been torn off to reveal an amalgam of plastic and metal circuitry underneath. His mouth was still his own, human not Voracian, and it smiled across at them.

'Doctor,' the man said. 'How good of you to join us.'

'Not at all, Mister Hanson,' the Doctor said, 'not at all.'

280.

The Doctor plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets and started a tour of the room. Hanson watched as he inspected consoles and tapped instruments. He paused at one console, looking closely at a compact disc resting in its transparent slipcase on the side. Then he moved on without comment.

'You know your reactors are overloading,' he said at length.

Hanson nodded.

'I thought so. Plan B, by any chance?'

'You're going to blow up the ship?' Sarah asked.

'And a sizeable chunk of the state of Maryland, judging by the course settings,' the Doctor said. 'I take it you will not be on board when it impacts?'

'Indeed not. We shall wait in a shuttle and organize follow-on activities.'

'Ah.' The Doctor sprang into life, quickly completing a circuit of the room. 'You mean, redeploying Voractyll,' he said.

Apparently by accident he was beside the console where the CD rested as he spoke. He scooped up the slipcase, flipped it open and removed the CD.

The Voracians moved forward as the Doctor held up the disc. But Hanson was unimpressed. 'We can create another copy quite easily, Doctor.'

The Doctor agreed. 'Oh I know that. In fact, if you did we could use one as a frisbee.' The disc disappeared behind his back for a moment, then spun across the room towards Sarah.

'Catch,' the Doctor called out.

It took Sarah by surprise and she missed the disc as it skimmed past. It hit the wall behind her and clattered to the floor.

'b.u.t.terfingers,' the Doctor chided. 'Remarkably resilient, aren't they?' the Doctor observed as Hanson retrieved the CD.

'I do hope it's not damaged. After all, I'd hate to put you to any trouble.'

Hanson ignored him. He handed the CD to one of the crew.

'Check it's still readable,' he said, glaring at the Doctor.

As the Voracian took the disc over to a reader, the Doctor edged towards the door. 'Come along, Sarah, I think we've outstayed our welcome,' he whispered.

281.

The Voracian was working at the console. 'File integrity is unimpeded,' it observed. 'Opening the Voractyll file to check internal integrity.' It watched the screen for a while. Then it looked across at Hanson.

'What is it?'

'The Voractyll formats are changed.'

'You mean the data's been corrupted?' Hanson went to the console.

'No, the data is intact. But different.'

The Doctor pulled Sarah towards the door. 'Time to leave,'

he said.

The door slid open as they approached. And the ship lurched suddenly to one side. The Doctor grabbed at the door frame, but Sarah found herself toppling, falling back into the room.

The Voracians grabbed the consoles for support, and Sarah crashed to the floor.

'Sarah, come on!' the Doctor shouted as the deck shifted again underneath them.

Sarah picked herself up and tried to head for the door. But the floor was still moving beneath her and the Doctor was standing in an open doorway at the top of a steep hill. She staggered and stumbled towards him, her stockinged feet slipping on the metal surface. Then the door started to close.

Emergency klaxons were sounding and the lights dimmed to a red glow. The Doctor reached down and managed to grab Sarah's hand, pulling her out of the room before the door slid shut.

As she fell into the corridor, the door closed behind her.

Sarah's last glimpse of the flight deck was of Hanson and the Voracians battling to stay in position as they wrestled with the ship's controls.

'What happened?'

'I switched the disc. What they got was a copy of my version of Voractyll. Now it's trying to convert the ship's systems to human technology.'

'What does that mean?'

The floor lurched again, and the m.u.f.fled sound of an explosion came from behind the flight deck door. 'It means they've lost all automatic control. Everything a.s.sumes there's a 282 person operating it rather than the machinery taking decisions on its own.' The Doctor grabbed Sarah's arm. 'It also means we should get out of here,' he said as he dragged her up the corridor.

Hanson was operating about six systems at once. He struggled to keep the life support operational and within parameters at the same time as he rebalanced the engine ports, fed coolant to the reactors, kept the gyros in synch, and monitored hull pressure. The two crew-members were just as occupied.

'We have to re-establish the control systems,' hissed one of the Voracians as the deck shifted again. The emergency lights were flashing in time to the klaxons now, making the crew's movements ragged and disjointed.

'The Voractyll variant is corrupting our systems.' The second crew-member was inonitoring systems integrity.

'If we load a copy of Voractyll from back-up, it can self-repair.' Hanson tried to hold the life support systems in check as he accessed the data archives. He searched through, looking for the Voractyll executable code.

The console next to Hanson exploded in a cascade of sparks and smoke. The Voracian on duty there took the full force of the blow. It threw the creature backwards, rupturing its chest and ripping its face to shreds.

The surviving Voracian rerouted its colleague's workflow and tried to compensate. 'Total systems failure in eleven seconds,' it reported.

'Let's hope the shuttle systems aren't affected yet.' The Doctor strapped himself in and started the pre-flight sequence.

Sarah was in the co-pilot's chair. 'Do you think they will be?'

'Inevitably. Eventually. It's an open system.'

The airlock door hissed in protest, wobbled half shut, then stopped.

'Not a very promising start,' the Doctor muttered.

'Total systems failure in eight seconds.'

283.

Hanson had found the file. It started to load into the main computer's memory.

The Doctor tried the airlock control again. And again the door hissed in protest. Then, slowly, it heaved itself shut. It closed with a metal clang that echoed rea.s.suringly through the shuttle.

'Technology,' said the Doctor, 'I love it.' He started the undocking procedure.

'Total systems failure in three seconds.' Hanson stared at the screen.

>> Load complete He reached for the execute execute b.u.t.ton. b.u.t.ton.