Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 27

'Of course I will.'

A couple of corporals were pulling open the door for him. Bessie shot silently out and off onto the dirt track.

Bambera was shaking his head. 'Shame.'

'That's why they call them "The Blunder Days", ma'am,' Captain Ford said. 'He thinks we can go in, al guns blazing.'

The sn.i.g.g.e.ring continued for a couple of seconds until I rounded on them. 'At least he's doing something. At least he isn't sitting in a wood, waiting for the Martians to find us.' They looked blankly at me.

'Professor Summerfield,' Bambera said sharply. 'I've read the files: back in the seventies, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart repulsed a couple of smal -scale incursions. I've read his reports, and he relied on two things: luck and the Doctor. Since we've not had any luck, and your friend turned out to be half-lemming on his mother's side - ' her voice trailed away.

'I'm going for a walk.' I announced levelly. A witticism had just occurred to me, one of those peculiar expressions Ace would come up with. 'Sod this for a game of soldiers,' I called back as I headed for the door.

I took my mug, leaving them to compile their reports and sit around on their a.s.similations. I felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the camp, to be on my own. Without thinking, I wandered out beyond the perimeter and found myself a sheltered spot facing away from the camp. I sat with my back to a tree trunk, my eyes closed. A hundred yards away, a line of black-clad Provisional Government troops with raised rifles marched forwards as if they were directed by Eistenstein himself, gunning down everything in their path. At least they could have been doing for all I cared. This wasn't my timezone, it wasn't even my own home planet.

There was a dull shape in my chest, something that a week ago had been a sense of loss. I had spent the week crying, not for one lost Doctor but two. I found it difficult to mourn for the young man who had run off into the red cloud, frock coat flailing. Although Alistair recognised his old friend, I only saw a stranger - irritating new habits and mannerisms, virtual y nothing of the old body language. Carefree instead of careful. A little brother or first boyfriend, not a father. It wasn't just him - his death had robbed the universe of all future Doctors, young and old, fat and thin, bald and hairy. Now the Doctor had gone, we would have to sort al this out on our own.

It was a daunting prospect. Where did one begin? What would the Doctor have done? He'd have tried to talk to the Martians, he'd have made them see reason. If they couldn't do that, then he'd use their own weapons against them. He'd find out what the Martians were really planning and he'd stop it, once and for all. He wouldn't use guns, he'd talk to them. And he'd have sorted it all out in about an hour and a half, two hours tops.

And he'd make it al look so easy.

A twig snapped behind me, but before I had time to turn, I was pushed down onto the floor.

'Don't move.' It was a lanky man in a tattered business suit. He was holding me down, and he had a knife. 'Stay still or I kill you. Keep quiet.'

I nodded. The man waved the knife a little closer, betraying his nervousness, rather than his resolve.

'Good morning,' I replied.

'I said shut - '

I grabbed his wrist, slammed it against a tree trunk and kicked his feet from under him. He toppled over, and I stuck my knee in the back of his neck. It had been a while since I'd had cause to use my Aikido, and so I was rather gratified that I could stil lift my leg so high.

'Let me go,' he screamed. 'Civilisation.'

'What?' I scowled.

'Civilisation. It's the end of the world. The end of everything. Ten days ago I was a civil engineer. Now look at me.'

I considered my options, then stood. 'You're talking about being civilised. So let's cut out all this knife and kung-fu c.r.a.p and talk.'

The man scrambled to his feet. I held out my hand and we introduced ourselves. The stranger said his name was Raymond Heath.

'OK, Ray. You were a civil engineer. Where?'

The sound of boots crunching through undergrowth. Soldiers from the base were hurrying to my aid, taking up positions behind me.

'Are you OK, Professor Summerfield?' one of the lads asked.

'Yes thank you, private.'

The soldiers stayed alert, scanning the wood to make sure my a.s.sailant was on his own.

'Carry on,' I told Ray quietly.

'I worked at the EG refinery, just outside Reading.'

'The what?' I asked.

'EG. You know: one of the Greyhaven companies.'

So I listened.

95.***

Lethbridge-Stewart was slotting coins into the pay-and-display machine. While the mechanism whirred, he checked the car park. No-one was watching him, except a three-year old with a bal oon.

As far as he knew, neither he nor Benny's photograph had appeared in the press or on television in the last week.

Perhaps the authorities thought that they had died in Adisham. More likely, with the Doctor dead, they weren't considered a threat any longer. The Brigadier had reached that conclusion himself, but he'd rather hoped that UNIT would pose more of a threat.

Lethbridge-Stewart quickened his pace a little, pa.s.sing through a row of trees to the main street. He used to live in Gerrard's Cross, so he'd been to Windsor his fair share of times over the years. The streets were as busy as he remembered, there was even a school party making its way over to the Castle. London was less than an hour away, just along the M4. The population of that city was living in fear, under curfew, with a kilometre long warship hovering over them. Here, people were going about their daily business. A quartet of Etonians pa.s.sed him, moaning that the BBC had cancelled last night's episode of The X Files The X Files 'due to recent events'. 'due to recent events'.

Lethbridge-Stewart could see the WH Smiths sign now. He continued towards it, pausing every so often to look into other shop windows. This was a simple technique. If anyone was fol owing you, they'd have to stop as well, or walk straight past you. You could also check the reflected image of the other side of the street, without having to look directly at a potential tail. As part of his basic espionage training, he'd walked down Oxford Street, from one end to the other. Half a dozen MI5 man were trailing him. His primary goal was to shake them off, the second was to identify as many of them as he could at the debrief afterwards.

The point was, of course, that he couldn't do either. If you walk down a street, people look at you. If you are going to Smiths, chances are a dozen others are too, so they'll be walking down the same pavements. At the debrief, he'd been honest enough to admit that he couldn't spot anyone who was definitely following him. He described a couple of the people he thought might have been MI5 agents, al of whom had been innocent pa.s.sers-by. He got points for honesty, and realism. Despite all his weaving in and out of shops, he doubted that he'd shaken off the men following him. He had managed to drop out of sight for almost a full minute, more than enough to pa.s.s over or drop off any doc.u.ments he might have been carrying. He'd pa.s.sed that part of his training.

He walked into Smiths, checking the dozen or so shoppers. He paused at an empty newspaper rack.

'Excuse me,' he asked the nearest a.s.sistant, 'but - '

'Oh there aren't any,' she said in a sing-song voice.

'The government have banned them?'

'S'pose.'

'You don't seem terribly interested,' he informed her.

'Don't take much interest in it. Politics,' she explained. 'You know "beef's safe to eat", '"no it isn't". It's all made up.

Everyone eats beef again now, don't they?'

'I never stopped,' Lethbridge-Stewart informed her.

'Even though it might turn your brain into a sponge? A load of people stopped eating it for a couple of weeks, but only when it was in the news. It'll be the same with the Martians. Already is. I'm used to them now, and they ain't that bad.'

Lethbridge-Stewart continued on to the 'local interest' section. There was a shelf there full of Ordnance Survey maps. He picked up a couple for north of here. If they wanted to prevent being captured, they needed the best knowledge of the terrain available. With the right intel igence, they could evade the Martians and the Provisional Government forces for months. The resistance would be able to collect intelligence data and keep one step ahead of the enemy.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart frowned. And then what would they do? Wait for the Americans or the United Nations to bail them out? It wasn't going to happen. With every pa.s.sing day, the international situation was more stable - the governments of the world were finding it easy to accommodate the Martian presence. The resistance needed to strike, to hit right at the centre of the Provisional Government. But with London under martial law, how could they? And how could they do that without provoking Martian retaliation? Britain wasn't just at war with itself, it was at war with another planet. No wonder no other countries were going to get involved.

The Doctor had been right: the Martians wouldn't stop at Britain. They had to be beaten back. But he was just one old man, standing in a newsagents worrying that someone would recognise him. He didn't even have enough money to buy all the maps he wanted to. What could he do on his own?

He could fight.

The Brigadier realised that he wasn't on his own. He had UNIT, he had half the British army and, despite what that girl had just said, he was sure he had virtually al the British people.

He could lead.

Oswald and Dave had been staring at the packet for almost the whole hour since the postman had delivered it.

There was a rather odd instruction on the back: DO NOT OPEN - WAIT ONE HOUR. The mystery had intrigued Oswald, and fifty nine minutes later the padded envelope was still sealed. Early on, they'd established that it contained a videotape.

96.'It's probably from a charity for menks traumatised by having their entire video collection wiped by a giant Martian UFO.'

Oswald was weighing the packet in his hands. 'The ship clearly generates an intense magnetic field.'

'Clearly.'

They turned. A tall man in a neat blue suit had just come through the doorway. He looked like a pilot or a soldier, but he was old - fifty-five at least. He had a peculiar angular face. Dave was sure that he recognised the man from somewhere.

The man took his pipe from his mouth. 'Good morning, lads. I believe that you have a package for me.'

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield 'We have to stop them.'

Lethbridge-Stewart was shouting so loud we could hear him from outside the mess. The soldiers on the door were a little more hesitant with their salutes, and they were clearly embarra.s.sed by the noise.

We stepped into the old barn. Bambera and Ford were glaring at Alistair.

'There's nothing I would like more than to "stop them",' Bambera said curtly. 'But I will not send my men on a suicide mission. If you've a.s.sembled the command staff simply to - '

'The Martians won't stop at Dover, you know. The world is at stake here.'

Captain Ford pointed to his charts. 'Brigadier, as soon as we know the full extent of the Martian plan, we can begin to sabotage it. Guerrilla tactics: block their convoys, blow up their factories. Ferment civil unrest ... '

'Until?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Why are we playing at being the French Resistance? Who are our allies, who will help us?'

'No-one is happy with the Martian presence,' Bambera reminded him. 'The EU imposed trade sanctions to prevent the export of Martian technology. The UN would have pa.s.sed that Alien Non-Proliferation Resolution if it wasn't for the Chinese veto.' With only six weeks to go before the British were due to leave Hong Kong, the Chinese were going out of their way to stay on good terms with the Martians. The United Kingdom's membership of the UN was officially 'under review', but in reality little had changed. They hadn't even lost their seat on the Security Council.

'The government-in-exile are rallying support for us. The Queen is in Washington at - '

'The US Congress has already agreed not to interfere in Britain's "internal affairs". They want the Martian technology. The EU members haven't withdrawn their emba.s.sy staff. Bambera, we are on our own. We have to take the lead.'

'How?' she said scornful y.

Lethbridge-Stewart began to explain the plan that he had formulated on the way back from town. 'The Provisional Government is based in London, but we know that their military forces are al in the north, or heading up there.

They are going to secure the northern cities - Manchester, Leeds and York are all Royalist strongholds. At the moment, the Provisionals can't even think of moving north of there, and so Scotland's almost untouched, apart from the air-raid on Edinburgh.'

'One snag here, Brigadier,' Bambera reminded him. 'The Martian ship is hanging over London. It would make short work of anyone that tried to attack the capital. That's why we've not moved before now.'

'We're not just at war with one ship, Brigadier, we're at war against an entire planet,' Captain Ford reminded everyone.

'Not the whole of Mars,' I corrected. 'Just one clan: the Argyre.' They noticed me for the first time.

Lethbridge-Stewart hadn't finished with Bambera. 'The lads in Portsmouth damaged the Martian ship. It can be done, with surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery. They are not invincible.'

Bambera straightened and faced me. 'You know your Martians, Professor. Did we really manage to sting them?'

I thought about the question for a moment, realising that the lives of all the men in the camp depended on my answer. 'Yes,' I said finally, 'They don't have forcefields or anything like that.'

'So an air strike could knock the Martian ship out of the sky?' Ford asked.

'In theory, if they could get close enough. The Martian gunners wil know the planes are in the air before your own radar operators and they'll be able to keep better track of them once they are flying. If you could get around that somehow, the big problem would be the magnetic engines: they don't emit heat, so heatseekers wouldn't work, they do generate magnetic flux, which would play merry h.e.l.l with your guidance systems.'

'What about a nuclear strike?' the Brigadier asked.

I grimaced. 'Thinking of calling your old friends on the Revenge? Hobson, wasn't it?'

He narrowed his eyes. 'How the devil did you know about that?'

I smiled. 'It's a long story. Yes, a nuclear strike would work, and I doubt the Martians would have any more of a defence against an ICBM than you have. It would also kill about a million Londoners straight away and another two or three million over the next ten years.'

'I was only speaking hypothetically,' Lethbridge-Stewart told me.

'Glad to hear it.'

'We won't have to fight the Martian ship,' Lethbridge-Stewart announced. 'Not until we've re-taken London.'

Bambera was rubbing her forehead. 'How are we going to do that?' she asked wearily. 'No. Cancel that. Alistair, I appreciate that you're trying to help, but throwing ourselves at the Martians like the Charge of the Light Brigade won't help anyone. We sit tight.'

97.'No we won't,' I said firmly.

The officers were all glaring at me. I motioned for my companion to come forwards. It looked like he had been crying.

'This is Raymond Heath. He's got a story for us.'

'H-h.e.l.lo. I was a civil engineer at the EG Plant just outside Reading. We were making a fertiliser, al very hush-hush. Lord Greyhaven was in personal charge of the project, and he told us that what we were doing would eventual y be used on Mars. We a.s.sumed he meant when the humans colonised it.' he paused. 'Real y it was for the Martians themselves. On that first Friday morning, a Martian shuttlecraft arrived at the plant. A Martian scientist, Vrgnur took over, and anyone who objected was kil ed. Vrgnur stays in his shuttle, but the whole refinery is patrol ed by Government troops with machine guns. No-one's allowed to leave - we had to sleep in the canteen.'

The a.s.sembled officers were al staring at him, making him even more nervous than he natural y was.