Doctor Who: Wannabes by Dave Rudden

Author:Dave Rudden [Rudden, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Space Exploration, Alien Contact, Performing Arts, Music, General, Juvenile Nonfiction, Popular
ISBN: 9781405957021
Google: 7PmyEAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 123215576
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2023-10-25T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Griona had them.’

Therida didn’t shout. Shouting would have been preferable. Celeda had seen Therida’s voice tear through the enemy like artillery – turning soldiers to torn ragdolls, crushing tanks like tin cans and leaving them guttering wrecks. A shout from Therida wouldn’t kill Celeda. It would atomise her. Leave her as dust, floating on the breeze.

It would be infinitely preferable to her disappointment.

They had retreated to McMillan’s office – a meagre location in which to hold a war council, but the closest thing to a safe place they had. The retreat from Tripod had been especially shameful – huddled in the back of a van like livestock, Celeda trying to keep her grip on the girls and Henry at once.

How far they had fallen.

‘Cheap tricks,’ Griona canted. ‘We will not be caught so unawares again.’

The girls were stacked like cordwood on the couch, slumped over each other in a limp tangle. McMillan sat on his chair, hand still outstretched holding the office key he had used to let them back in.

‘He resisted,’ Therida canted, frustration in each gesture. ‘He spoke of our species. Our homeworld. How could he know these things?’

‘They weren’t harming us,’ Celeda canted. ‘They offered to help.’

‘We have no allies but ourselves,’ Therida canted bluntly. ‘Even our own kind have deserted us.’

‘He knew who we were,’ Celeda pleaded. ‘He could see we were alone. He said he knew what that was like.’

Simple words, but Celeda could not get them out of her head. To see Celeda and her sisters bend a crowd of unwitting humans to their control, and to offer empathy. Empathy, instead of control, or violence.

How simple, and how astonishing.

What do I have to do? Therida said quietly.

She spoke aloud, so quiet it barely rippled the air in the room, and yet both Griona and Celeda jerked at the sound. Celeda dared to meet Therida’s eyes. There was a single tear welling there, the same translucent uncolour as the pale skin beneath.

What must I do, the eldest of the Daughters said, to make you fight with us, instead of fighting against us? To make you understand that we are all you have? That you are all we have too?

‘I understand that,’ Celeda canted, her psi-song still chaining the humans in the room to a dreamy sort of lassitude. ‘I understand that we are vulnerable. I understand that they were my choices, not yours, that brought us here.’

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

‘But we do not have to be monsters,’ Celeda said. ‘We could come to this world as friends. There’s much they could learn from us, and much we could learn from them, if we just let them in –’

She stopped canting. Her fingers were shaking too much to frame the words.

Therida looked at her for a long moment.

You truly believe that.

It had been a very long time since Celeda had sung for herself. Distantly though, somewhere beneath the endless psi-drills and brutal cant-tutelage, she struggled to remember what it was like not just to sing …

But to be heard.

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