Doctor Who: Terminus by John Lydecker

Author:John Lydecker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426193852
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1983-11-15T10:00:00+00:00

‘Don’t cross him, Valgard,’ Sigurd warned as he closed the cage door on the Lazars. He and Valgard remained on the platform as the elevator dropped away.

‘He doesn’t scare me,’ Valgard said.

‘He should. He’s got too much power around here.’

‘He’s a glorified clerk, that’s all. Anybody could do what he does.’

But Sigurd shook his head. ‘One or two have tried, and it’s not so easy. Without Eirak, the Terminus won’t work.’

‘That would be the company’s problem,’ Valgard said, but even to him it sounded hollow.

An indicator light over the elevator control came on; the cage had been emptied down below. Sigurd threw the switch for its return, and said, ‘I’ll tell you what the company would do. They’d starve us out and then find some other prison willing to sell off its hard cases as forced labour. Face it, Valgard, we just don’t count.’

And the galling part about it was, as Valgard knew, that Sigurd was right. Terminus Incorporated had wanted a low-cost, trouble-free workforce, and they had it in the corps they called the Vanir. The rules were simple; work or die. And the means of control was the drug that they called Hydromel.

Valgard said, ‘So Bor dies,’ and Sigurd shrugged.

‘We’re all dying here anyway,’ he said. ‘Bor just took the easy way out.’

‘That’s what Eirak told me.’

‘Well, he knows what he’s talking about. Come on.’

It was time to check the liner, and to collect their consignment of Hydromel from the control room. It would be packed into a metal case that fitted into a slot in the automated unit by the windows. Any attempt to remove it before the brief period between disembarkation and stage-two sterlisation, and the locks would go on. They moved towards the liner, but their way was blocked.

One of the drones had managed to come up with another Lazar. It was still gripping her wrist as she stood there, wide-eyed and scared. She looked almost alert, but Valgard knew how deceptive appearances could be. The best way to keep your sanity in the Terminus was to forget that these things had ever been human. Then when the company’s radiation-resistant trained mule took them off into the zone, you were safe from any worries about what lay ahead of them.

Now time was getting short. Valgard said that he’d take care of the Lazar if Sigurd went in to get the Hydromel. Sigurd agreed, and as he disappeared through the air-seal Valgard half-dragged and half-carried the girl across to the returned elevator – there was no point in expecting a Lazar to understand you or manage for itself.

Inside the cage, Nyssa grabbed the bars to stop herself from falling. She felt as if she’d stumbled into somebody else’s nightmare without knowing the aims of the plot or the story so far. Her new jailer entered after her and stood blocking the way out, but this seemed to be incidental – he obviously didn’t expect her to run anywhere, and for Nyssa’s part she couldn’t immediately think of anywhere to run.

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