Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 45

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Death Comes to Time 'They've started shooting in there.'

'I think the air's getting thinner, too.'

The Doctor looked up from the door control. He had a handful of wires, and had been sparking them together, but nothing had triggered the door. 'I don't have time for this, then. Graltor, old chap, can I borrow that neutron rifle?'

'It won't cut through blast shielding, there's four metres of Kladenium to get through,' the giant told him, but handed it over anyway.

The Doctor smiled and opened up a side panel. 'Oh, don't worry, I'll be adjusting the neutron flow.'

'Ah,' Miranda beamed, 'a multiphase pulse on neutron frequencies might override the security interlocks on the blast doors.'

The Doctor patted his daughter on the head. 'Actually, the modifications I've made work on a slightly different principle. Stand back.' He hefted the rifle up, pulled the bolt back and fired.

Ferran smiled at his Deputy, determined to savour her last moments.

But she was smiling. She knew something he didn't.

And behind him there was a roar like an oncoming storm, or the voice of the G.o.ds. The door on to the flight deck exploded inwards, showering the bridge officers with fine metal dust and debris.

Ferran turned, instinctively, and immediately flinched. The light was so bright, so pure.

He fell back, tried blinking the red blotches from his eyes.

He could hear the Deputy scrabbling away. He fired in her direction, heard the beam carve a scar in the deck.

She wasn't important. The door was important.

The light was fading. There was a figure clambering through the hole where the door had been, careful not to touch the thick, white-hot sides. A silhouette. A lean figure with shoulder-length hair, wearing a long black coat.

'I killed you,' Ferran screamed. 'I killed killed you.' you.'

He could see there was another one. Another one with long hair and a long coat. Back to back with the first, slightly taller.

'No,' he said. 'No! This is impossible.'

The Doctor's people were demons, he remembered. They only looked like people, but they were impossible to kill, and their cunning was unrivalled. They destroyed worlds, they destroyed universes.

'I killed you!' Ferran shouted at the shapes. 'This isn't fair: I killed you.'

As the smoke swirled away, he saw the Doctor, standing back to back with his daughter.

Miranda strode out first, the Doctor following. He dropped the smoking remains of a neutron rifle.

'I'm afraid it's good for only one shot,' the Doctor told the large man who had followed them through the remains of the door. A slave! Here on the flight deck. Ferran bristled at the thought.

The Doctor and Miranda stood shoulder to shoulder.

'h.e.l.lo, Ferran,' they said together.

'Jinx!' the Doctor giggled.

Ferran raised his pistol.

Miranda had a gun of her own, and was holding it straight out in front of her. She shot Ferran's pistol out of his hand, then aimed at his head.

The Doctor placed his hand on her shoulder, and shook his head. 'Weapons are the tool of the cruel and the cowardly. We strive to be better than that. We do not need them.'

Miranda nodded, then tossed the pistol at Ferran, who caught it.

He looked down at the gun, unsure, then aimed it at Miranda.

No. Not her.

He shifted ground slightly, got a good aim at the Doctor.

The Doctor was smiling.

'It's a trick,' Ferran said. 'You've tampered with the gun. If I fire, it'll blow my arm off. I won't fall for it.'

He started circling round them.

'You saw me fire it,' Miranda reminded him, taking another step towards him.

'That was part of the trick. You set it to fire once, then to backfire. All part of the trick.'

His bridge crew sat in their seats, reluctant to move.

The giant had helped the Deputy to her feet and she stood alongside him.

'Computer: transfer all command codes to the Doctor and Miranda,' the Doctor said, in Ferran's own voice.

'Implemented.'

Ferran spun to face Computer. 'Cancel that order!'

'Unable to comply: command codes have been transferred.

Miranda laughed. 'Computer: restore life support to all areas of the ship.'

'Implemented.'

'Is it possible to broadcast pictures and sounds from the flight deck throughout the ship?'

'It is.'

'Do so.'

'Implemented.'

Ferran turned to his bridge crew. 'What are you waiting for? Kill them!'

The Doctor shook his head. 'You have lost, Ferran. You've got the gun. You're at the heart of your empire: the flight deck of the most powerful ship in the universe. You have your Deputy, your most loyal crew. I... I am not carrying a weapon. My daughter is a nineteen-yearold girl, and she's also unarmed. And even here you can't win? Even here you can't command loyalty?'

Ferran turned to face Miranda. 'The gun has been tampered with. It's a trick.'

'No, it hasn't,' the Doctor said softly. 'The gun works... but it is is useless.' useless.'

'If you want to rule the universe,' Miranda said, 'start here: order your bridge crew to stop us.'

Ferran glanced over. His men were sitting at their stations, not moving, not daring to look at him.

'Cowards!' he shouted.

They could hear cheering, coming up through the deckplates, from the rest of the ship they could hear singing and shouting and laughter.

'It's over,' the Doctor said simply. 'The violence, the killing. It's not needed any more.'

Ferran stared at him.

Fire.

His mother, lying dead on the Senate steps, gunned down.

He'd never known her, not really. From before he could remember, his brother had told him about his destiny, told him of revenge. His future was in his past, locked in his genes, flowing through his blood. Miranda and her kind must be destroyed. If he had killed her from orbit, then this would be over, he would still have his ship. His mistake was thinking that he could harness this power.

'Never,' he shouted, reaching for his wrist.

'No!' Miranda leapt at him.

But Ferran was already fading out of existence.

Miranda stood where the Prefect had been just moments before.

'That wasn't time travel,' she announced.

The Doctor shook his head. 'No. Computer: where is Ferran?'

'He has transmatted to the main time-engine chamber.'

'The other end of the ship,' Cate said, 'the only area still held by his men. It's behind heavy blast doors ten times thicker than the ones for the flight deck, with independent force screens, too.'

The Doctor drummed his fingers against his lips. 'He's not just gone in there to hide. Presumably he can exert some control over the ship from there?'

The pilot, Mordak, nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

The Doctor smiled. 'I'm no one's sir,' he told him gently. 'What's your name?'

's.p.a.ce Pilot Sub-Captain Mordak, of the Twelfth Galactic Fleet.' Mordak started to salute, but a bout of self-consciousness turned the gesture into a vague wave of his hand.

'And you know everything there is to know about the ship?'

'Everything that is known, Doctor, not everything there is to know.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Excellent answer. Come with us. Miranda, we need to get to the engine room.'

Miranda nodded. 'Graltor, Cate stay here. Liaise with Captain Mather: make sure the rest of the ship is secure, make sure no one gets carried away.'

She followed her father and Mordak up towards the doorway. The Doctor had his arm confidingly over Mordak's shoulder. 'What's the Prefect doing?'

Mordak gulped. 'Well, he won't have complete control of the ship from there but he could try to shut down power distribution. That would have the same effect your own tactics had make us blind and defenceless.'

The Doctor looked thoughtful.

Miranda wasn't convinced. 'Then what? We took over the ship with sheer force of numbers. He's got a few technicians and anyone else who was in the engine room.'

They reached the travel-tube door, which opened automatically. The travel car was empty. A holographic screen on one wall continued to relay pictures from the flight deck, just as she'd ordered.

'Ferran knows we're coming,' she realised. 'He would have seen that.'

The Doctor gave an exasperated gasp. 'Well... he doesn't know what we're planning. How could he, when even we don't?'

Mordak grinned at that, and Miranda found herself smiling.

The door was a vast thing, like the drawbridge of a fortress, cast from solid steel.

The slaves and other men and women in front of it looked tiny. Half a dozen of them had opened up the control panel and were trying to rewire it. A larger team had a less subtle approach they were setting up a laser cannon, moving it into position and trying to agree among themselves where to aim it. There were shallow, futile burn marks on the door where they'd tried using smaller weapons to do the job.

The Doctor wasn't at all surprised to see Captain Mather in charge of that operation.

'No peeking,' he warned.

'Doctor!' The astronaut grabbed him and gave him a bear hug, lifting him off the ground. 'I've had a look under the hood of this thing already and I'm none the wiser.'

'That's as it should be.'