‘Not if I can help it,’ he replied.

‘Is it the Ice Warriors?’ she asked. ‘Have they begun to kill us?’

‘I think they might have,’ he said.

‘Do they intend to blow us asunder with fire from the sky?’ she asked. ‘Guide have mercy on us, I thought they would rather rip us apart with their teeth and talons first!’

‘Well, they don’t really have those, do they?’ asked Rory. ‘More sort of big green clamps for hands.’ He mimed them.

She frowned at him.

‘What big green clamps?’ she asked.

‘Like pincers.’

‘Who do?’

‘The Ice Warriors! Come on, Vesta. The big, green, scaly thing in the wood? With the red eyes?’

She stared at him, bewildered.

‘It had red eyes, right enough,’ she said slowly, ‘but the thing I saw was not green or scaly.’

‘Oh,’ said Rory, his shoulders sagging. ‘All this time, I don’t think we’ve been talking about the same thing at all.’

Chapter

14

Born to Raise the Sons of Earth

Born to Give Them Second Birth

Ssord, the Ice Lord’s axe-wielding lieutenant, handed a communicator pad to his master. Ixyldir studied its compact display.

‘Does he have an axe because his name is Ssord?’

the Doctor asked, sitting in the high-backed chair with his chin in his hand. ‘I’m just saying, it might get confusing if Ssord had a sword. Is that why you gave him an axe?’

Ixyldir tilted his head to regard the Doctor. ‘For a mammal that is about to be put down, you are remarkably talkative,’ he said.

‘Oh, but that’s precisely why!’ the Doctor enthused, jumping to his feet.

The Ice Warriors around him tensed slightly, thinking he was about to attack their clan lord. Ixyldir briskly raised an armoured hand to call them off.

‘You intend to kill me anyway, so I don’t believe it really matters what I say,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a very liberating feeling, in fact. I could insult you to your face, couldn’t I, lizard-lips? It’s not going to make a lot of difference. I mean, it’s not going to make things worse. Death is death.’

‘There are things worse than death,’ said the Ice Lord.

‘Really? Name one.’

‘Dishonour.’

The Doctor threw back his head and laughed.

‘I knew you were going to say that,’ he chuckled. ‘I love it when Ice Warriors talk about honour and dishonour. It’s all so terribly serious and profound. My old buddy Warlord Azylax was forever banging on about it, all the time. I would just roll my eyes. You Ice Warriors can be so pompous on the subject.’

‘There is no Warlord Azylax,’ said Ixyldir.

‘No, unlucky for me,’ the Doctor agreed. He sighed.

‘No, there isn’t. At least, there isn’t going to be for about another 9,000 years. I realise that now. I got my Galactic Migration Eras mixed up. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Or if you were coming or going.

Anyway, my timing’s bad, and that sucks for me, because there isn’t a single Ice Warrior on this world or any other who can vouch for my credentials.’ He looked squarely at Ixyldir. ‘But you will, by the time we’re done here,’ he said, and winked. ‘I promise. You will have acquired respect for me. As a friend, or as a foe. Which one of those it turns out to be depends entirely on you, Lord Ixyldir of the Tanssor clan.’

‘By the time we are done here,’ replied the Ice Lord,

‘this world will be an ice-locked haven, and you will be a headless corpse rotting in one of the vile meat vats in this facility. You do not impress me, or scare me, cold blue star.’

‘Then let’s talk about dishonour some more,’

suggested the Doctor. ‘I mean, it is such a popular topic with your kind. You take it so seriously, yet it is so malleable to you.’

‘Malleable?’ echoed Ixyldir.

‘It means pliable or easy to reshape.’

‘I know what it means.’

The Doctor looked at the other Ice Warriors.

‘Honour is a code you live by… until it becomes inconvenient,’ he said.

Ssord raised his axe.

‘Stop!’ the Ice Lord ordered.

‘You see?’ said the Doctor. ‘Your man here was going to chop down an unarmed prisoner, just because that unarmed prisoner happened to say something he didn’t like. How is that the action of an honour-bound warrior?’

‘We are principled,’ said Ixyldir. ‘We are also pragmatic.’

‘Yes, you are,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But isn’t it about time you started to balance those aspects of your culture? You’re searching for a new home because Mars has gone.’

‘Our home world, along with all the planets in our solar system, has been rendered uninhabitable by the maturing expansion phase of our star.’

‘The Morphans of Earth are in the same boat, so to speak,’ said the Doctor. ‘ And they got here first. And this world is more like their home world than yours.’

‘It is still generally compatible with our needs,’ said the Ice Lord.

‘So you’re just going to take their planet from them and wipe them out? How is that honourable?’

Ixyldir growled something, a hint of anger under the surface. ‘Our primary requirement is the establishment of a new home world for our clan so that we may begin rebuilding our civilisation,’ he said. ‘We have no particular issue with the human refugees. No malice. It is simply a competition for resources.’

‘Tell them that,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re killing them.’

‘At the moment,’ replied Ixyldir, ‘it appears to be a two-way process.’ He showed the display of the communicator pad to the Doctor.

The Doctor leaned forward, frowning deeply as he made sense of the data he was being shown. ‘You deployed one of your ships into a low atmospheric holding position. You’re… firing at surface targets.

Ixyldir, you’ve committed forces to an open ground offensive!’

‘And why might I have done that, cold blue star?’

The Doctor blinked. ‘I don’t… Wait, how can that be? You’re fighting something. You’re fighting something that’s fighting back!’

‘Your emotional nuance is interesting,’ said Ixyldir.

‘I am no expert in mammalian microexpression, but your surprise seems quite genuine. I imagine, however, that this is because you are a trained spy and infiltration agent. I offer you one last opportunity to cease your constant disinformation. I agree to make your death rapid and painless. Tell me the location of your ship.’

‘My ship?’

‘Where is it concealed? How many more military operatives are you carrying aboard it?’

‘Wait,’ said the Doctor. ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, waitaminute!’ He started to pace, disconcerted. ‘You said you were maintaining a watch on the planet.

You’ve been monitoring the human population on Hereafter since you arrived ten years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘Logging them all individually by their heatprints?’

‘Yes.’

‘Roughly speaking, in that time, what has the population of Hereafter been, Lord Ixyldir?’

Ixyldir paused, considering the pros and cons of tendering the information. Finally, he answered:

‘Combined, the three human settlements represents a global population of around 19,000.’

It was the Doctor’s turn to pause. His mind was racing. ‘But just recently,’ he continued, ‘the nature of the struggle has changed? It’s forced you out into the open?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve detected new arrivals, like me and my friends?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Yes,’ growled Ixyldir, growing impatient.

‘And you distinguish between the pre-existing population and the new arrivals by heatprints?’

‘Heatprints do not lie,’ said the Ice Lord.

The Doctor sighed. ‘Bear with me for one moment more, Lord Ixyldir,’ he said. ‘We’re about to have a really crucial exchange of information. Everything that happens from now may hinge upon it. I’ll start by telling you something, in the spirit of a free and frank debate. I arrived here, in my ship, with two companions. That’s it. A total of three new arrivals. We got here yesterday.’