Independence Day Read online

  INDEPENDENCE DAY

  PETER DARVILL-EVANS

  Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

  London W12 OTT

  First published 2000

  Copyright © Peter Darvill-Evans

  The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC

  Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

  ISBN 0 563 53804 X

  Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 2000

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton Prologue

  First of all...

  A tiny circle of colour appeared from behind the distant forest of evergreens.

  It was the signal. Madok watched the balloon, buffeted by the winds, as it rose into the pale violet sky.

  He stamped his feet, holstered his revolver, and slapped his gloved hands against his arms. Kedin Ashar’s summer workshops were to the north of the tropic, where the climate was never warm. The building Madok was guarding - the workshop without a name or number, whose location was known to no more than twenty people - was at the northernmost limit of habitation, concealed in the forests that covered the foothills of the ice mountains. He unlatched the outer door, stepped into the gloom, and struck the inner door until it reverberated in its frame. He hoped the banging could be heard inside the cavernous, noisy workshop.

  ‘Yes, Madok?’ It was the voice of Tevana Roslod, as calm and gently amused as ever, despite the distortion of the sound that brayed from the speaker of the address system.

  ‘The signal, Tevana Roslod,’ Madok said. He remembered not to shout, but he still felt ridiculous talking to the air. ‘The Duke and his party are on their way to the house.’

  ‘Come in, Madok.’ This was Kedin Ashar’s voice. ‘Come and see. It’s ready for its test flight.’

  Madok smiled. Kedin Ashar took such enthusiastic pleasure in each new piece of machinery. This, Madok knew, was the most ambitious scheme yet. He felt a bubble of excitement expand within him as he fumbled his key into the lock of the inner door.

  Madok stood in the doorway. He was motionless with wonder. Kedin, Tevana and their team of craftsmen were gathered at the winged base of the cylinder. It was thicker than the trunk of a beam-oak; it shimmered. Madok’s gaze rose up the metal spire: its nose-cone almost touched the roughly-hewn planks that supported the roof.

  ‘Well, come in, Madok,’ Kedin Ashar shouted. ‘Have you frozen solid out there, or have you been chewing on a spore-seed to alleviate the monotony of guard duty?’

  ‘My lord,’ Madok said as he approached the base of the rocket, ‘it is exactly like the photographs you showed me. It’s magnificent. But I didn’t expect it to be so tall.’

  Kedin Ashar grinned and shook his head, as if he could hardly believe it himself. ‘Neither did I, Madok, to be quite honest. But the whole thing’s packed solid with fuel, and even so Tevana assures me that there’ll be only just enough thrust to take the damned thing beyond the atmosphere. And I can’t argue with her calculations.’

  ‘That’s because they’re correct, my love,’ Tevana Roslod said. She appeared beside Kedin and twisted his ear. She was wearing craftsman’s overalls, her blonde tresses were escaping from the rag with which she had tried to tie them back, and her face was smudged with dirt. Nonetheless it was still clear to Madok why his lord, for so many years a determined bachelor and rakehell, had become enthralled by her.

  Kedin pulled away from Tevana’s grip and retaliated by tickling her midriff. She squealed with laughter and began punching his chest.

  ‘My lord,’ Madok said. ‘My lady. The Duke will be at the house within half an hour. If we leave now, and use the vehicle, we will be there when he arrives. However, there will be little time in which to prepare ourselves to welcome him. I should change out of this winter hunting gear and into a dress uniform. And I can’t imagine that Vethran would be much impressed with my lady’s oily overalls.’

  ‘Oh, Ked,’ Tevana said, ‘do I have to be there to greet him?

  You know how I hate these stuffy receptions.’

  ‘Of course you have to be there, light of my life. I know I’m brilliant, but I’m prepared to let you take some of the credit.’

  Kedin grinned as he avoided a flurry of her punches.

  ‘Vethran’s got to meet you some time. I’ve told him that you and I are - well, you know.’

  Madok shook his head. When Kedin Ashar and Tevina Roslod were together they seemed to forget that they were landholders and merchants. They acted and spoke with all the formality of farm children. And whatever the subject - the calibre of the air inlets of a carburettor, the burn rate of liquid petroleum fuel, the price per head of mountain-reared cattle or the selection of a tapestry - they could talk for hours.

  It was time to abandon newfangled protocol. ‘Kedin,’ Madok said. ‘Tevana. Put on your coats and come to the vehicle now.

  We must go to see Vethran. Forget about his bloody dukeship. Ignore the fact that he’s the leader of our nation.

  Just remember that he’s a potential customer. Let’s go and clinch a sale.’

  Outside, Madok announced that he would drive the vehicle.

  He was still more used to riding a camelope than trying to direct one of Kedin Ashar’s roaring machines, but he knew that both Kedin and Tevana loved sitting in the driver’s seat, and there wasn’t time for a discussion about which of them should drive. In any case, Kedin and Tevana were engaged in an unspoken competition to discover which of them could coax the highest speed from one of their self-propelled vehicles, and Madok desired never again to be a passenger with either of them.

  ‘It’s ready to launch,’ Kedin yelled over the noise of the exhaust. He clapped Madok on the shoulder. The vehicle bounced over the ruts of the track that wound downwards through the forest. ‘Ready to launch, Madok. I can’t wait.’

  ‘You’ll have to,’ Tevana told him. ‘I want to be sure that Vethran and everyone from the court is back in the capital before we send the rocket up.’

  Madok gripped the steering wheel tightly and risked glancing back over his shoulder at his passengers. ‘You don’t intend to make the rocket available for sale?’ he shouted.

  ‘I shudder to think what uses Vethran would find for it,’

  Tevana said. Her flawless face was marred by a frown. ‘I worry about letting him have the vehicles.’

  ‘Anyway, Madok,’ Kedin said, ‘this rocket’s merely for research. It’s a toy compared with the one we have in mind.

  We still have to reinvent the technology for steering the damned things. And I don’t want Vethran to know anything about it - at least until we’re sure we can do it.’

  Automatically, Madok looked upwards, searching in the cloudless expanse for the glint of reflected light.

  ‘There,’ Kedin yelled. His outstretched arm pointed towards the west horizon.

  Madok slowed the vehicle, pulled the goggles from his face, and concentrated on the western sky. The tiny sliver of light was just above the tree tops, hardly visible against the bright lilac of the heavens.

  It was known as the Moonstar. But Mendeb was a world without a moon, and the shining satellite did not circle the planet. Nor was it a star, being brighter and considerably less distant. Kedin Ashar had collected and studied the scraps of information about the arrival of people on Mendeb, and he knew the truth about the Moonstar. And about the Moonstar’s dimmer sister, known only as Two, which was, apart from the sun by day and the eternal glittering backdrop of the fixed stars by night, the only other body to be seen in Mendeb’s skies.

  When he had been told the story Madok had at first refused to believe it. He still fo
und that his mind reeled when he tried to imagine the distance from Mendeb to the Moonstar, and the further distance to the planet beyond it. He pictured a metallic pencil, hurtling skywards on a pillar of flame. His hands clenched on the rim of the steering wheel of the self-propelled vehicle. He restrained himself from shouting aloud with excitement. These were thrilling times indeed.

  Less than an hour later Madok was in the thick of the crowd, chatting with Vethran’s followers and summoning servants to bring mulled wine for the lords, cushions for the ladies, titbits for the fractious children. He listened to the comments of the sceptics: a self-propelled vehicle was intrinsically dangerous, would definitely explode, could not be faster than a thoroughbred camelope, and was an idea in very poor taste. Vethran, Madok noted, smiled at such comments but did not voice his own opinions; the Duke had known Kedin Ashar a long time, and knew that he was not to be underestimated.

  The chattering of the courtiers was drowned, suddenly, by a roar that sounded like an avalanche. Some of the children started to cry; the adults looked about, struck dumb. Kedin Ashar strode from Vethran’s side and stopped halfway towards the vast tent that had been erected on the lawn. He raised his arms. Servants severed ropes, and twenty balloons began to ascend, carrying with them the front panel of the tent.

  Smoke billowed from within the tent. The roaring noise increased in volume. And from the swirling clouds of fog emerged five four-wheeled carriages, accelerating towards the crowd like carts careering down a hill. There was a universal gasp of surprise, and a few shrill screams. Madok tried not to smile as he saw several courtiers flinch, turn, and start to run away.

  The vehicles slid to a halt in a diagonal line, and in each one the leather-coated, goggles-wearing crew stood and saluted. ‘Hail Vethran, Duke of Gonfallon,’ they shouted in unison. The five drivers sat, and turned their vehicles to face the eastern end of the lawn, where servants were pulling upright five wood-and-paper replicas of sword-wielding cavalrymen on charging camelopes. The uniforms were those of the elite guard of the Count of Dithra, whose territory lay adjacent to Gonfallon and with whom Vethran had for some time been provoking a quarrel.

  The drivers set their machines in motion. The vehicles, spouting smoke and a fearsome amount of noise, gathered speed towards their targets. In the backs of the vehicles the gunners crouched behind their strangely shaped, unwieldy guns. Their fingers tightened on the triggers.

  As one, they opened fire. The roar of the vehicles’ engines was instantly drowned by a rattling cacophony that caused many in the crowd to cry out and cover their ears. Even Madok was stunned: he had had some part in the design of the rapid-repeating gun, but he had not previously heard five firing together. The racket was like a regiment of riflemen all shooting at once. Even the crackling boom of a field gun sounded less relentlessly offensive to the ears.

  Spent cartridges flew in arcs in the wake of the speeding vehicles.

  Madok, and those others in the crowd who had seen military service, managed to tear their gaze from the vehicles towards the targets.

  The charging cavalrymen and their mounts were no longer recognizable. All that remained were stumps of wood and tatters of paper.

  Madok shivered, and knew that his reaction had nothing to do with the icy wind blowing down from the mountains. As a cadet he had studied with men who were now officers in the Dithran army. He knew that Dithran troops were generally a disciplined lot, well led and well equipped.

  They wouldn’t stand a chance.

  The glorious Cathogh campaign had been concluded only the previous summer. Vethran had wanted the county’s coal fields, and the Count Cathogh had rashly refused the Duchy of Gonfallon’s offer of a treaty of permanent alliance. Madok had gone to the war in the entourage of Kedin Ashar, whose battlefield tactics were outshone only by his personal bravery. But Madok knew that it was the new guns, with their long, rifled barrels, that had won the war. Cathogh’s men and women were valiant, but their muskets were accurate only within twenty metres. They died without sight of their opponents.

  Kedin Ashar had devised the weapons almost as a by-product of the precise engineering he had had to develop for his secret projects, and had sold some to Vethran’s army.

  After the war, Kedin Ashar had received his reward: he had become the largest landholder in County Cathogh. He had assigned most of his new possessions to Tevana Roslod. They had brought their new lands under the efficient administration Tevana had begun to apply to all of their estates, whose revenues funded their research.

  It would be the same with Dithra. Vethran would buy as many self-propelled vehicles and rapid-repeating guns as he could afford. And he would be able to afford as many as he wanted, as Kedin Ashar could be paid in sequestered Dithran lands.

  The demonstration was over. Kedin Ashar led his guests into the reception hall of his summer residence. In his father’s day it had been a hunting lodge, and the stuffed heads of a dozen species stared glassily down at the procession of dignitaries and servants who processed through the ornately carved doors. Greatcoats and hats and scarves were discarded, and carried away in mounds by staggering servants. Pipes were lit. Glasses of sweet wine were selected from silver trays.

  All the animated talk was of the self-propelled carriages. A sixth vehicle had been installed at the centre of the hall. Like the five that had been used in the demonstration it looked rugged, and was fitted with one of the rapid-repeating guns, an ominous metal structure with a cylindrical bullet-case and a wide barrel. This one, however, had coachwork that had been polished until it sparkled; two huge electrical lamps stared like unblinking eyes from its front; and the driver’s position was protected with panels of armour.

  Some sniffed and complained about the machine’s vulgar appearance; others peered at the engine, exposed beneath panels of cowling lifted like a gull’s wings, and tried to fathom the workings of the maze of rods, wires and cylinders.

  Standing apart from the throng, Kedin Ashar and Duke Vethran were talking terms. Madok was at his lord’s side, memorising the details of the discussion so that he could draw up the contract of sale.

  ‘We can build twenty a week,’ Kedin said. ‘Complete with weapons and armour plating. You could have two divisions by mid-year,’ he added shrewdly, ‘which would leave enough time for a campaign before the rains.’

  The Duke smiled and scratched his beard. ‘But what about the drivers, eh?’ he said. ‘The sappers are only just getting used to the steam tractors you sold us two years ago, and anyway you can’t send sappers into battle.’

  Madok was ready with the answer. ‘I’m an army man, as you know, my lord,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of volunteers to drive these machines. We can train drivers and gunners, on the prototypes you’ve seen today, while we’re building the rest of the vehicles. If your lordship is disposed to grant us an order, of course.’

  The Duke grunted. ‘Well, Kedin,’ he said, ‘if I take these machines off your hands - say, a hundred and twenty of them - what do you want?’

  Kedin Ashar grinned. ‘I could do with a deep-water port near my grain lands in Harran,’ he said. ‘I wondered whether your lordship would consider granting me the town and province of Bilton.’

  Vethran’s smile remained fixed on his face. Madok was sure that Kedin had gone too far this time.

  ‘Bilton is one of the five Duchy ports,’ Vethran rumbled, ‘as you know very well. I had it from my mother. And it’s worth eight hundred thousand marks a year.’

  Kedin Ashar shook his head in pretend frustration. ‘It’s a small price to pay, Vethran,’ he said. ‘The Dithrans will pay that a hundredfold in taxes and reparations - once you’ve conquered them.’

  ‘I can take Dithra without your machines, Kedin,’ the Duke said.

  Kedin shrugged. ‘Yes, of course. But not this year, my lord.

  Not in a single campaign. And if you take Dithra this year, and grant us the stewardship and revenues of Bilton, I’m confident that b
y this time next year we’ll be able to demonstrate something even more remarkable than these vehicles.’

  The Duke was clearly on the point of agreeing. ‘You sold rifles to Dithra,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’m a businessman, my lord,’ Kedin said. ‘But I’m also a patriot and an old friend. You can be sure I’ll supply these vehicles to no one but you until next year at the earliest.

  Madok will insert the usual exclusivity clause in our agreement.’

  ‘I’m not happy,’ the Duke said. ‘You’re getting too wealthy, Kedin.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ It was Tevana Roslod’s voice. She curtsied in front of the Duke. ‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ she went on, ‘but I cannot allow that it is possible for Kedin Ashar to be too wealthy. Why, he has to keep me in gowns like this.’ She stood on her toes and twirled, so that the skirt of her dress fanned out into a spinning circle of jewelled silk.

  Madok suppressed a smile. He had had to threaten to administer a spanking before Tevana had agreed to wear the dress: she hated dressing up and had never been presented at court. The green silk clung to her slender figure. She was vivacious, angelic, desirable. Vethran’s eyes followed her every movement. She stood beside Kedin Ashar and tried to look demure.

  ‘My lord,’ Kedin said. ‘May I introduce Tevana Roslod? She is my partner in - just about everything I do.’

  ‘Tevana,’ the Duke said, and lifted her hand to his lips.

  ‘Delighted.’ His gaze lingered on her pale shoulders before he turned again to Kedin. ‘You haven’t married, then?’

  ‘No, my lord.’ It was Tevana who replied. ‘We’re rather old-fashioned in that way. I hope you’re not offended.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Vethran assured her. ‘Quite the reverse. Kedin’s told you, I’m sure, that he and I were at school together. Did he tell you that I was always ahead of him? Ah! I thought not.

  Well, Kedin has told me much about you, Tevana Roslod.