Superior Beings by Nick Walters

Author:Nick Walters [Walters, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Adventure, Juvenile Fiction, Life on Other Planets, Doctor Who (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780563538301
Google: yXkAAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0563538309
Publisher: BBC Pubns
Published: 2001-06-03T07:00:00+00:00

Until he‟d cracked.

Melrose dropped to his knees, fingers clawing at his overheated head, remembering how he had acted. He saw the Doctor‟s face, serious and calm. Lt Meharg, her young face a mask of distress. The others, their appalled faces shutting him out. Controlling himself with an effort, he realised that he couldn‟t go back to the others, couldn‟t face Lt Meharg again.

He recalled her eyes, wide with - with pity. He‟d behaved in an unsoldierly manner in front of a subordinate. How could he ever command her respect again? By his own actions he had excommunicated himself from the way of the soldier. He was fit only for early retirement on medical grounds. As for the Doctor and the others, he didn‟t care about them. Bunch of misfits, as far as he could tell. He felt a spark of lust as he remembered the curvaceous body of the girl, Peri, and her bold, spirited nature.

The kind of woman he could imagine wanting to get to know, after the end of his tour of duty.

But the certitudes of military life were shattered now. If the Doctor was right, five hundred years lay between what he used to be and what he had become. The Valethske had taken him out of his own life and now he was only a reprise, a footnote. Far better that he had fallen fighting them than to be alive now, scrambling lost around an alien world, dying of dehydration under a burning alien sun, with no plan, no chain of command, no hope.

Melrose stumbled on weakening legs through the gardens, head swimming with the delirium of thirst. By blind luck, he stumbled upon a canal, its mirror-still surface almost level with the grass banks. He slaked his thirst, splashing water over his whole body. Afterwards, he followed the canal through the endless gardens, figuring that it might lead to a centre of civilisation and therefore a way off the planet. Dusk fell as he walked, but Melrose was blind to the beauty of the starlit night and the softly glowing blooms. He walked himself into a reverie in which he dislocated himself from his actions and was born again into the garden-world, his dishonour erased. At times he would surface from this trance and face the reality, and sit sobbing for a while, clutching the Valethske weapon to his chest as if it was the thing most dear to his heart.

It was as he sat gazing mournfully at the constellations reflected in the dark surface of the water that he became aware of a sound. A distant rumble, similar to thunder but more controlled. The sound of engines.

Getting slowly to his feet, he swivelled round, peering into the night. There, on the horizon, he saw a mountain settling itself on a pillar of fire.

A ship. No, not any ship - the Valethske mothership, huge and dark and jagged, a giant inverted cone.

He smiled. Now there was hope - one hope. Revenge. What remained of his

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