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DOCTOR WHO: THE INTERNET ADVENTURES #27
THE APAN WAY
CHAPTER ONE: YOU NEVER CAN TELL WITH BEES
by Paul Gadzikowski
Greh sat in his usual dirty corner of the dirty spaceport on the dirty side
of the city and thought morosely how well he blended in. His hair and beard
needed washing - and cutting. His coat had lost most of its color and its
elbows. Time to be replacing this one, past time. Well, that'd be taken care
of by Greh's next benefactor, whenever he, she or it happened along. The
scam he'd been working didn't pay off every time, but when it did, it was a
gold strike.
There were about a dozen and a half passengers waiting at the gate, across
the spaceport corridor from him in front of the gate and the windows onto
the tarmac. You could always tell the new travelers among those waiting for
the transport when the vibration started. Old spaceport hands - such as
Greh, despite the best efforts of the local constabulary - hardly noticed
the symptoms of imminent docking, the way residents of fault zones pay no
attention to earthquakes that only rattle the light fixtures. This started
under your shoes and quickly spread to your back teeth - you learned to
stand at the gate with your jaw loose. Greh did it without thinking, noting
the docking of the 0915 Verdant-Aures shuttle less from the noise it made
than from the cries of one or two children taken by surprise.
Just before the noise and vibration settled down, Greh was taken a bit by
surprise himself. There was something new to the noise, this time, a
grinding. Greh knew transports, or had once, but he'd never heard one make
this noise before. He peered as well as he could past the people through the
terminal gate window/wall from the other side of the corridor, but he
couldn't really see the ship from this angle, certainly not with all these
obstructions milling about. Or was the sound coming from down the service
corridor on the side? Be a lot better for these people's safe trip if it
was ...
It was about a minute until the disembarking passengers began coming into
the terminal through the gate. Greh looked them over without hiding that he
was doing so - it fit in with his story and, besides, standing in a
spaceport watching for someone getting off a transport was hardly standout
behavior.
This group of arrivals seemed mostly business commuters - rushed, knowing
where they were going, likely with fat wallets but unlikely to listen to the
pitch long enough for the hook. Not that one .. not that one ...
The tall chap drew Greh's eye because he wasn't rushing. Somehow he'd made
it through the gate without Greh seeing, all the way toward that service
corridor. He wasn't rushing, and he didn't seem to know where he was going.
Greh took a second look. His suit was cut in a style that was provincial,
backward ... yet anomalously was unmistakably of some sort of advanced
manufacture. Greh took a third look. The tall chap had a sharp, aristocratic
nose and a square chin, and wore his hair at precisely the length a man wore
who didn't care how long his hair was. No money worries, this one. Greh
looked at his face. The tall chap was looking the people over, checking the
layout of the spaceport building as one who'd never seen it - he was after
getting his bearings.
Greh'd found his mark. Quick, before he got his bearings -
**
"Status of the stingers," hissed Admiral Niznuz.
"All stingers are on approach to their engagement points," responded the
signal officer. He was adjusting his antennae nervously under the
unaccustomed scrutiny of the commander-in-chief of the fleet.
"Acknowledged," said the admiral. "But next time, Signals, complete your
attentions to your personal grooming in advance of reporting for duty."
"Aye aye sir." The signal officer jerked his mandibles away from his
antennae which nevertheless continued to quiver nervously even after the
officer had shuffled on all six feet to turn in his pod back facing his
console.
Niznuz spun once slowly in his command pod, surveying the bridge of the flag
stinger. Despite the junior officers' nervousness all his officers had
bright, shiny coats, even the black alternating with the yellow reflecting
highlights as his men moved. There were workers only; you couldn't make an
officer out of a dull-colored drone. Drones were only good for one thing,
and there'd be none of that on Niznuz's bridge. On second thought, for such
to occur would require the presence of the Queen, and it certainly wasn't
the place of even the commander of the fleet to dictate what the Queen may
or may not do nor where she may or may not do it. Niznuz shook his head. His
mind was wandering. He didn't really want to be here.
Considering himself a civilized being, he regretted that it had come to
this. But people couldn't live without the Food, and these creatures lived
on a world that had it. Therefore it must be taken from them.
He wished there was another way. Somewhere inside his head he knew there
must be, if he could only open his mind to it. But the concept of 'asking,
and offering value received in return' remained well outside the grasping
range of his species' xenophobia.
**
"Excuse me," said Greh, "I hate to bother you, but it's really frightfully
important."
The tall chap looked down at Greh and smiled. "Wonderful! I'm good at
important things."
No mark'd ever said that before. No matter. "I do mean frightfully
important," Greh continued earnestly. "Life and death, fate of the world at
stake, that sort of thing."
"Go on, please," said the tall chap. "By the way, I'm -"
It wasn't important who the mark thought he was. It was important who the
mark thought Greh was. "Have you ever heard," said Greh, "of the Doctor?"
The tall chap took a moment to get his mind around that. "The Doctor?" Good,
good; you don't want a mark who's too bright.
"Lives in a time machine?" Greh explained. "Travels about putting the
universe to rights? Steals from the rich, gives to the poor, six
megalomaniacs toppled before breakfast?"
"What about the Doctor?" The tall chap *had* heard the stories, or heard of
the stories.
Greh grabbed his own lapels - thumbs pointing up; he practiced this in
restroom mirrors - and straightened to his full height, which was about
eighty percent of the tall chap's. "I am the Doctor."
The tall chap looked at Greh stunned for a moment, then broke into the most
delighted grin. "*You* are?"
**
The fleet captain approached Niznuz' command pod and danced a two-step
salute. "All stingers are in position, Admiral," he reported. "Awaiting your
orders for final aproach."
Niznuz resisted the primitive impulse to wash his face with his front
mandibles. It was too late now for anything but the carrying out of orders,
and firm action. "All landings, proceed."
**
"It's the Apan Hive," Greh whispered to the tall chap, guiding him down the
corridor toward the main concourse, where the banking terminal was. "They're
plotting to invade Verdant!"
"But what would the Apans *want* with Verdant?" the tall chap demanded. The
left corridor wall was about fifty percent windows onto the tarmac, and the
tall chap seemed compelled to peer out every one.
"We *are* the galaxy's third-largest natural source for unrefined hydromel.
Apans can't live without the stuff. Their own system, Mellis Arbor, is
first, and when they first started expanding their empire from Apis they
conquered Yaniston because it's second." As Greh was speaking, he realized
that the tone of the tall chap's question had not been of reaction to
something he'd been surprised to hear, but of a question he had been
considering himself to no joy. "But Verdant is the other side of the
Ccar-Hac!nit Confederacy from them, too far away - or it was till they
expanded past the capacity of their existing hydromel production."
"They're desperate, you're saying," said the tall chap.
Greh nodded. He'd invented and refined this story out of actual political
treatises he'd read in the newsscreen editorials, for verisimilitude (just
as he'd put together his false identity from the astro-folklore
noticeboards); it was no surprise that the tall chap had been considering
the same questions. "At this point, the bigger risk is running out of
hydromel."
The tall chap nodded, peering out another window. He was thinking. Best put
a quick stop to that.
"So there's where I, the Doctor, come in," stressed Greh, "and there's where
you come in. You see -" he chuckled with a calculated self-depreciation.
"When I landed my time machine on Verdant, I left it in a no-parking zone.
The law has confiscated it, and at this point in my plan to foil the Apans I
need to get inside, and I haven't any local currency."
"Ah!" said the tall chap, beginning to pull the oddest assortment of objects
from his pockets. "I may not either. What do they accept here?"
Greh kept his face from falling with an effort. Then he kept his feet with
an effort. This was the noise and tremor of a transport multiplied tenfold.
"What -" Greh started, instinctively - anything Greh'd have asked at this
point would necessarily have been on a subject he knew better than any mark.
But the tall chap had gone to the window - ignoring the clutter from his
pockets that the catastrophic landing tremor had scattered from his hands
onto the floor - and Greh's gaze was drawn past him, much the way his
abnormalcy had drawn it at the gate, outside the window.
There was a huge ship setting down on the tarmac, some ten times the size of
the passenger transports this rundown spaceport was still rated for. Huge,
and bristling with weapons pointing in all directions like the spikes on a
bushpig.
**
"We're down," reported the deck officer.
"Begin the attack," ordered Niznuz.
**
"What the hell is that?!" Greh said, at the window's railing next to the
tall chap with no recollection of having traversed the distance from where
he'd been standing.
"That's an Apan warstinger," said the tall chap. "Running a little earlier
than we thought." He turned to face Greh and his grin had a new, startling
grimness. "I think we'd better be getting back to the TARDIS, don't you?"
CONTINUED
THE APAN WAY
CHAPTER ONE: YOU NEVER CAN TELL WITH BEES
by Paul Gadzikowski
Greh sat in his usual dirty corner of the dirty spaceport on the dirty side
of the city and thought morosely how well he blended in. His hair and beard
needed washing - and cutting. His coat had lost most of its color and its
elbows. Time to be replacing this one, past time. Well, that'd be taken care
of by Greh's next benefactor, whenever he, she or it happened along. The
scam he'd been working didn't pay off every time, but when it did, it was a
gold strike.
There were about a dozen and a half passengers waiting at the gate, across
the spaceport corridor from him in front of the gate and the windows onto
the tarmac. You could always tell the new travelers among those waiting for
the transport when the vibration started. Old spaceport hands - such as
Greh, despite the best efforts of the local constabulary - hardly noticed
the symptoms of imminent docking, the way residents of fault zones pay no
attention to earthquakes that only rattle the light fixtures. This started
under your shoes and quickly spread to your back teeth - you learned to
stand at the gate with your jaw loose. Greh did it without thinking, noting
the docking of the 0915 Verdant-Aures shuttle less from the noise it made
than from the cries of one or two children taken by surprise.
Just before the noise and vibration settled down, Greh was taken a bit by
surprise himself. There was something new to the noise, this time, a
grinding. Greh knew transports, or had once, but he'd never heard one make
this noise before. He peered as well as he could past the people through the
terminal gate window/wall from the other side of the corridor, but he
couldn't really see the ship from this angle, certainly not with all these
obstructions milling about. Or was the sound coming from down the service
corridor on the side? Be a lot better for these people's safe trip if it
was ...
It was about a minute until the disembarking passengers began coming into
the terminal through the gate. Greh looked them over without hiding that he
was doing so - it fit in with his story and, besides, standing in a
spaceport watching for someone getting off a transport was hardly standout
behavior.
This group of arrivals seemed mostly business commuters - rushed, knowing
where they were going, likely with fat wallets but unlikely to listen to the
pitch long enough for the hook. Not that one .. not that one ...
The tall chap drew Greh's eye because he wasn't rushing. Somehow he'd made
it through the gate without Greh seeing, all the way toward that service
corridor. He wasn't rushing, and he didn't seem to know where he was going.
Greh took a second look. His suit was cut in a style that was provincial,
backward ... yet anomalously was unmistakably of some sort of advanced
manufacture. Greh took a third look. The tall chap had a sharp, aristocratic
nose and a square chin, and wore his hair at precisely the length a man wore
who didn't care how long his hair was. No money worries, this one. Greh
looked at his face. The tall chap was looking the people over, checking the
layout of the spaceport building as one who'd never seen it - he was after
getting his bearings.
Greh'd found his mark. Quick, before he got his bearings -
**
"Status of the stingers," hissed Admiral Niznuz.
"All stingers are on approach to their engagement points," responded the
signal officer. He was adjusting his antennae nervously under the
unaccustomed scrutiny of the commander-in-chief of the fleet.
"Acknowledged," said the admiral. "But next time, Signals, complete your
attentions to your personal grooming in advance of reporting for duty."
"Aye aye sir." The signal officer jerked his mandibles away from his
antennae which nevertheless continued to quiver nervously even after the
officer had shuffled on all six feet to turn in his pod back facing his
console.
Niznuz spun once slowly in his command pod, surveying the bridge of the flag
stinger. Despite the junior officers' nervousness all his officers had
bright, shiny coats, even the black alternating with the yellow reflecting
highlights as his men moved. There were workers only; you couldn't make an
officer out of a dull-colored drone. Drones were only good for one thing,
and there'd be none of that on Niznuz's bridge. On second thought, for such
to occur would require the presence of the Queen, and it certainly wasn't
the place of even the commander of the fleet to dictate what the Queen may
or may not do nor where she may or may not do it. Niznuz shook his head. His
mind was wandering. He didn't really want to be here.
Considering himself a civilized being, he regretted that it had come to
this. But people couldn't live without the Food, and these creatures lived
on a world that had it. Therefore it must be taken from them.
He wished there was another way. Somewhere inside his head he knew there
must be, if he could only open his mind to it. But the concept of 'asking,
and offering value received in return' remained well outside the grasping
range of his species' xenophobia.
**
"Excuse me," said Greh, "I hate to bother you, but it's really frightfully
important."
The tall chap looked down at Greh and smiled. "Wonderful! I'm good at
important things."
No mark'd ever said that before. No matter. "I do mean frightfully
important," Greh continued earnestly. "Life and death, fate of the world at
stake, that sort of thing."
"Go on, please," said the tall chap. "By the way, I'm -"
It wasn't important who the mark thought he was. It was important who the
mark thought Greh was. "Have you ever heard," said Greh, "of the Doctor?"
The tall chap took a moment to get his mind around that. "The Doctor?" Good,
good; you don't want a mark who's too bright.
"Lives in a time machine?" Greh explained. "Travels about putting the
universe to rights? Steals from the rich, gives to the poor, six
megalomaniacs toppled before breakfast?"
"What about the Doctor?" The tall chap *had* heard the stories, or heard of
the stories.
Greh grabbed his own lapels - thumbs pointing up; he practiced this in
restroom mirrors - and straightened to his full height, which was about
eighty percent of the tall chap's. "I am the Doctor."
The tall chap looked at Greh stunned for a moment, then broke into the most
delighted grin. "*You* are?"
**
The fleet captain approached Niznuz' command pod and danced a two-step
salute. "All stingers are in position, Admiral," he reported. "Awaiting your
orders for final aproach."
Niznuz resisted the primitive impulse to wash his face with his front
mandibles. It was too late now for anything but the carrying out of orders,
and firm action. "All landings, proceed."
**
"It's the Apan Hive," Greh whispered to the tall chap, guiding him down the
corridor toward the main concourse, where the banking terminal was. "They're
plotting to invade Verdant!"
"But what would the Apans *want* with Verdant?" the tall chap demanded. The
left corridor wall was about fifty percent windows onto the tarmac, and the
tall chap seemed compelled to peer out every one.
"We *are* the galaxy's third-largest natural source for unrefined hydromel.
Apans can't live without the stuff. Their own system, Mellis Arbor, is
first, and when they first started expanding their empire from Apis they
conquered Yaniston because it's second." As Greh was speaking, he realized
that the tone of the tall chap's question had not been of reaction to
something he'd been surprised to hear, but of a question he had been
considering himself to no joy. "But Verdant is the other side of the
Ccar-Hac!nit Confederacy from them, too far away - or it was till they
expanded past the capacity of their existing hydromel production."
"They're desperate, you're saying," said the tall chap.
Greh nodded. He'd invented and refined this story out of actual political
treatises he'd read in the newsscreen editorials, for verisimilitude (just
as he'd put together his false identity from the astro-folklore
noticeboards); it was no surprise that the tall chap had been considering
the same questions. "At this point, the bigger risk is running out of
hydromel."
The tall chap nodded, peering out another window. He was thinking. Best put
a quick stop to that.
"So there's where I, the Doctor, come in," stressed Greh, "and there's where
you come in. You see -" he chuckled with a calculated self-depreciation.
"When I landed my time machine on Verdant, I left it in a no-parking zone.
The law has confiscated it, and at this point in my plan to foil the Apans I
need to get inside, and I haven't any local currency."
"Ah!" said the tall chap, beginning to pull the oddest assortment of objects
from his pockets. "I may not either. What do they accept here?"
Greh kept his face from falling with an effort. Then he kept his feet with
an effort. This was the noise and tremor of a transport multiplied tenfold.
"What -" Greh started, instinctively - anything Greh'd have asked at this
point would necessarily have been on a subject he knew better than any mark.
But the tall chap had gone to the window - ignoring the clutter from his
pockets that the catastrophic landing tremor had scattered from his hands
onto the floor - and Greh's gaze was drawn past him, much the way his
abnormalcy had drawn it at the gate, outside the window.
There was a huge ship setting down on the tarmac, some ten times the size of
the passenger transports this rundown spaceport was still rated for. Huge,
and bristling with weapons pointing in all directions like the spikes on a
bushpig.
**
"We're down," reported the deck officer.
"Begin the attack," ordered Niznuz.
**
"What the hell is that?!" Greh said, at the window's railing next to the
tall chap with no recollection of having traversed the distance from where
he'd been standing.
"That's an Apan warstinger," said the tall chap. "Running a little earlier
than we thought." He turned to face Greh and his grin had a new, startling
grimness. "I think we'd better be getting back to the TARDIS, don't you?"
CONTINUED
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