Doctor Who_ Battlefield Part 3

The rush hour was at a standstill before it could even start. Warnings spread across the media - for the precious few who could still hear them.

'Stay at home. Don't even attempt to travel. There will be structural damage and flooding.'

The force-twelve hurricane clawed and howled across the countryside like an unleashed demon. Most of the G.o.d-fearing British battened down their hatches and sat tight until the storm inevitably tore off their roofs or flooded their from rooms.

The stationary UNIT command car shook under the relentless onslaught of the storm.

Bambera, dressed in DPM combat fatigues, stared at the pounding rain on the windscreen until her eyes ached. It should have been daylight, but it was black as h.e.l.l outside and visibility was down to zero. The torrential downpour was. .h.i.tting the roof like a ma.s.sed corps of drums.

After the Zambezi, England was like the Arctic. It felt like half the night since they had been forced to pull up.

They were stuck on an open Cornish road, only three klicks from the nearest village, but at the mercy of these elements, it might as well have been three hundred.

She looked at her watch. 09.21 hours. They had been there two hours and forty-eight minutes and Sergeant Zbrigniev, her driver, was no conversationalist. He had been with UNIT since the old days and had seen a few skirmishes. She knew that from his file. But experience hadn't made him a philosopher. He never talked about how they coped on Bug-Hunts, using firearms that looked like pea-shooters against today's smart strategic weaponry.

Bambera picked up the radio handset again and repeated wearily, 'Salamander Six Zero, this is Seabird One. Are you receiving me?'

A tirade of white noise swamped all frequencies. The entire sane world had shrunken to the confines of the buffeted car. A last tiny illuminated beacon in the raging maelstrom.

Eighteen years OTT, on the tarmac, and she still hated inactivity. Always on alert. Always waiting for orders to go in. She still remembered the Gulf.

Zbrigniev shifted restlessly in the driver's seat. 'We could try moving again, sir. Slowly...' His grasp of English was impeccable as ever, but his Polish accent always got thicker under stress.

'Forget it, Zbrigniev, the convoy can't be far ahead. This won't keep up much longer.'

Bambera replaced the handset. There was a heavy crash outside, followed by a dragging, rustling sound as something like a small tree travelled past the car.

The Dull Sword operation was turning into the sort of nightmare that happened to other COs. Not to her.

She had been trained for and survived worse situations than this. It was the storm that had screwed them up. The planning reports had said nothing about the weather, yet this was the great-grandfather of all storms. An inferno of cold and wet. She had never experienced anything like it.

Nor was there an explanation for the blast of unG.o.dly noise that had immediately preceeded the storm and nearly landed them in a ditch.

Outside, the rain continued to lash down as if this was its last chance before the Sahara.

She put the idea that the storm was unnatural out of her head. That was one of UNIT's occupational hazards: always imagining the weirdest. This wasn't The Tempest The Tempest, this was the night Brigadier Bambera lost a nuclear missile convoy on a peacetime manoeuvre. Shame!

The thunder had become a continuous rumble often lost under the barrage of the gale. Lightning flickered inside the clouds rather than below them, as if an immense war engine was pa.s.sing slowly overhead.

'Not yet, Zbrigniev. Any chance of coffee?'

'Sorry, sir. We finished the flask.'

She closed her eyes and wished that now and then her adjutant could be a little less formal.

Zbrigniev leaned across and fumbled in the base of the map box. 'Emergency supplies, sir,' he said and produced a large bar of chocolate.

There was a burst of static as the radio crackled back into life. '.. me in Seabird One. Thi... ...alarnander Six Zer... Are y... ...eiving, Over.'

Lightning fast, Bambera had the handset off its hook.

'Come in Salamander Six Zero. This is Seabird One.

Please clarify your position. Over.'

Through the distorted signal she could just about make out the voice of Lieutenant Richards, who was leading the missile convoy. 'Ma.. ive elec.. cal disturb... Over.'

'You're breaking up, Richards. I repeat, clarify your position. Over.'

'Must ...ave ...ken a wrong turning ...mewhere.

NAVSAT is nonoperational. Ov...'

The rain and wind seemed to relent a little. Bambera and Zbrigniev glanced at each other.

'Well, get outside, Richards. and look for a road sign.

Use your initiative. Over.'

'Will do, s...'

A ma.s.sive squawk of interference blanked out the transmission completely. Bambera set down the handset again. 'All right Sergeant, let's move.'

The lightning still arced across the great rift between the universes. It flickered above the low cloudbase that lashed rain in sheets upon Avallion. The thunder was only an echo from another existence.

For a moment the racing wolfclouds tore apart and an eye of infinite blue sky stared through.

' Soon dominion over all things shall be mine... Soon dominion over all things shall be mine... ' '

The storm surged around the TARDIS as it hovered between realities. Its sensors sought out the instigator of the signal. Alternatives. Possibilities. The way was no longer clear.

Which way? Which universe?

The surging blanket of cloud tore against the ma.s.sive edifice of the High Tagel. White-walled b.u.t.tresses rose like snow sculptures in the moonlight. Ancient and enduring, vaulted and carved with the shapes of a thousand wings.

Ancient halls and galleries of power and council, the bastion of the High King, crowned by a soaring forest of towers and turrets, some bridged by walkways and terraces, all topped with spires of silvered ice.

At its heart stood the symbol of its birth. Carved from a fallen bough of Yggdras, the world tree, ringed by a single bench with room enough to seat one hundred and fifty knights. Arthur's table, at which all men were honoured and equal. Where even the king had no throne.

Still standing after an age, a deep crack ran from the table's heart to its edge, where in later days, the single bench had been cut away to allow for the inclusion of a throne carved from a single block of obsidian. Rank after rank of S'rax battle standards hung from the vaulted ceiling, a tapestry of conquest in azure and scarlet. On the marble wall behind the throne, a map of the heavens was picked out in sapphires and platinum wire.

In this chamber, the council of state a.s.sembled at places once reserved fror Arthur's knights. Men and women who had grown old in the service of Deathless Morgaine, as had their forebears, generation after generation for twelve centuries. An alliance of thirteen worlds without end.

A sudden gust of wind stirred the banners. From a region unknown echoed a distant growl that was not thunder.

To the castle's leeward side, through the rent torn like a black banner in the clouds, lay the dark world, beset by storm, lit only by the play of the lightning below.

Lights burned at every window of the High Tagel like the torches of the holy vigil. The castle was awake. It awaited news from the one chamber where no light dared flicker.

Darkness burned in the lowest turret under the Tagel and above the world. Every shadow was summoned and cl.u.s.tered there. Forced and refined by ancient sorcery into a pool of pitch so black that it reflected other worlds for its mistress.

'How long? How long have you kept me in waiting? But I have never relented in my watch. And at last we shall have one final meeting!'

A gateway that overlooked the curving world slid open.

Out of the under vaults of the Tagel swooped a flying machine. It cut an uncertain path, squealing at the inky storm into which it had launched. Finally its Flightsman kerbed the ornithopter's terror and forced its unruly wings to spread with a steady beat.

On a mission of the utmost urgency, the machine sped away across the night.

The Doctor sifted through the heap of books that lay tumbled on the floor of the TARDIS's library. The longevity of the pile was uncertain. The TARDIS had lurched so often lately that it had hardly seemed worth the effort to replace the books on the shelves, especially when another trip to the floor might be imminent at any time.

With a cry of triumph, he extracted a copy of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur Le Morte D'Arthur from the heap. He blew off the dust. It was Volume 1: Books I to IX. Exactly what he wanted. He pocketed the book and headed back to the console room. from the heap. He blew off the dust. It was Volume 1: Books I to IX. Exactly what he wanted. He pocketed the book and headed back to the console room.

As Ace worked amid the debris of the TARDIS laboratory, she heard the note of the ship's engines alter.

The Doctor must have finally decided where to take them.

Now that they were in real flight again, she didn't have long if the Doctor wasn't to catch her. But he did need someone to watch his back.

She prayed that the TARDIS wouldn't give another of its habitual lurches. This was the delicate bit. Using only her fingertips, she began to ease the tops on to the canisters that contained her latest and most wickedly-volatile-so-far batch of nitro-nine.

Lightning flickered through the windows of the Gating Pard, the furthermost inn of Gore. But the thunder never came. The storm was elsewhere.

'Landlord!' yelled Sir Dornard de Breunis. 'Where's the Prince's ale?'

Mordred stared sullenly into his empty tankard. 'You have no need to shout,' he said. 'You remind me of my mother.'

He always wore a plain jesseraunte on these trips, because even the most daffish peasant would recognize the Prince's armour. But what did that matter now Dornard had given his rank away?

He had spent most of the night drinking and he was still not drunk. But it was better to be in an empty inn on the windswept Westermost marches, than to endure the daily duty of Morgaine's courtly receptions at the High Tagel.

Let her put the fear of G.o.d into the n.o.bles who paid her fealty if that was what she desired. In the meantime, since she was always too much engaged to talk to him, he would beat the fear of G.o.d out of the peasants instead.

'The ale in this inn wouldn't get a fish drunk,' sneered Dornard as the landlord hurried up with another jug.

'Dishwater!' He s.n.a.t.c.hed the vessel out of their host's grasp and hurled it across the room. It smashed to pieces against the fire-mantel.

Dornard roared with laughter as the landlord trembled before them. 'Bring us something better!'

Mordred just snorted. He was growing weary of Sir Dornard de Breunis. They had drunken and wenched together since Dornard had first become a bachelor knight, but the Prince's latest crony was getting old. Dornard was growing a girth like a larded pig with too little adventure and too much ale. His mind had turned sluggish amongst the stews around the Tagel barracks. He no longer made Mordred laugh. His wild behaviour, once a foil to Mordred's own, was now vulgar and gross in one of advancing age.

Dornard was nearing thirty.

It was time for Mordred to find new drinking companions. This was no new thing for the Prince.

Nothing was new. The thirteen worlds prospered and changed little under the rule of Deathless Morgaine.

Nor did they change for her son.

Mordred, Crown Prince-in-waiting to an immortal mother. But he was immortal too, with appet.i.tes that were always young. The Battle Queen's gift to her son.

Always in waiting. Always bored. Thirteen worlds without end.

He needed young heads around him with the new amus.e.m.e.nts they might bring. But drinking companions came and grew old as quick as summer flies. Nothing ever changed.

'Yes, fetch me something better, landlord.' The Prince held up a single gold bezant.

The host's eyes widened. 'What can I bring, my lord?'

'I hear you have a daughter...'

'Lord Prince...' he stuttered. 'She's my only child!'

'Have a care, landlord, or I'll have you fetch her mother for my fat friend here!'

But my lord...' The little man tried to meet the prince's dark eyes, but his will was broken. He scuttled for his kitchen.

'And more ale. Proper ale!' yelled Mordred. He was cold tonight. Something like the choleric bile dulled his soul.

For no apparent reason, an old memory of Merlin repeatedly mocked at his thoughts.

Dornard waited for his Prince to laugh, but there was not so much as a sneer. The drunken knight leant forward and laid his head on the table amid the empty mugs.

A low trill sounded from Mordred's discarded helmet.

The Grade 2 summon/warning alarum that he had ignored all night had moved up to Grade 1.

He struggled to his feet, sword in hand. He was drunker than he had thought. Beside him, Dornard lay face down, grumbling in his stupor.

The inn door swung open and a figure in the livery of a Royal Flightsman pushed inside. When she saw the swaying prince, she came smartly to attention and saluted.

'Your highness, I have sealed orders from the queen.'

The relay capsule she took from her jerkin was imprinted with Morgaine's seal. Mordred pulled on his armoured helmet and fumbled to fit the relay into the receptor plate.

The incantation was simple. It needed only his name spoken in his voice to break the seal.