Doctor Who PDA29 - Tomb of Valdemar (4th) by Simon Messingham

Author:Simon Messingham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T02:42:58+00:00

The Tempest

Chapter Ten

Robert Hopkins is in his cabin, running over the latest ship‟s-efficiency statistics when the call comes.

If any member of the crew, or anyone at all for that matter, had been unwise enough suggest that what Hopkins was doing was meditating, they would have regretted that suggestion quickly enough. Meditating, however, is essentially what he is doing.

There is something reassuring in the cold lists of percentages that run in neat orderly lines down the white pages. Hopkins finds that studying them concentrates the mind and body wonderfully, and each time he emerges from this task he feels his muscles are less stiff, his mind less cluttered than when he began.

Checking the ship‟s efficiency is as good a way of passing the time as any, and passing the time is all they are doing here for the moment.

They have been in orbit around Ashkellia for exactly twelve days, six hours and eighteen minutes. Hopkins keeps a timepiece by his cot to keep him aware of this fact.

When the alarm goes off, he is jerked out of his studies. It can only mean one thing.

He feels himself begin to shake in the flashing of the red emergency lights. His breath emerges in short jumps. Got him, he thinks. Got him!

He must compose himself. Already the boots of his crewmen are hammering along the decks of the ship. His ship.

Hopkins unfolds his leather battledress and fits it neatly over his white, hairless skin. His skin has always been utterly smooth, up to and including his head. A hereditary disease introduced accidentally into his family through genetic manipulation by those who were once his masters. He only has to look in the mirror to give himself a thousand reasons to go on, to persist in bringing them to justice. Him, the son of generations of bookkeepers and clerks to the Elite.

He closes the ship‟s log, marking the page with a thick bookmark. He will have to finish this later. The pride he is feeling is because he knows what is happening has nothing to do with fate, or destiny, or any of that phoney mysticism so beloved of the Elite. It is down to hard work and persistence. Nothing but. Groaning and straining, he pulls on his tight knee-length boots.

The footsteps have become knocks at his cabin door.

Hopkins pulls on the steel helmet. He is ready.

Once open, the doorway reveals the bare access route to the bridge. It is lined with his lieutenants. They snap to attention, saluting. He looks up at them (they are all far taller than he) and struts past, triumph unconcealed on his face.

„So, he is here, Carlin,‟ he states as the retinue follow him to the transmat-receptor room.

„It appears so, Citizen Hopkins,‟ replies the younger man, a nephew of one of his uncles, a cousin first removed or something. „Your trust in the woman was not misplaced.‟

Of course, it wasn‟t nepotism that got Hopkins‟s cousin here, oh no, it was proven ability. There is no place for nepotism in the New Protectorate.

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