Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 28

I smiled at him, trying to put him at his ease. 'But if all you were doing was making fertiliser ... '

Ray became more animated. 'But we weren't. The project changed when the Martian arrived. Now we were growing some bacteriological weapon. A red gas.'

I stepped forwards again. 'This is the poison gas that the Martians used on Adisham - it's what kil ed the Doctor.'

The members of the audience that had known the Doctor shifted in their chairs, Lethbridge-Stewart included. I continued: 'Adisham was just a test. I think the gas is the weapon that the Martians will use to destroy humanity.'

Ray nodded. 'They were testing the gas on prisoners. They would turn up in Prison Service vans and be led into the - ' he broke off. 'This was happening in Berkshire. It still is. They forced us to do it, at gunpoint. I - ' he was having difficulty speaking now. I put her arm over his shoulder.

'They were ga.s.sing prisoners?' Captain Ford asked quietly.

I nodded. 'Fifteen miles away from here, and then burying the bodies in ma.s.s graves. Ray managed to escape, he's been wandering the countryside ever since.'

'But how did the Martians manage to set all this up without anyone knowing?'

'The Home Office must have helped set it up,' Bambera said. 'They must co-operating with this. People knew.'

'And now we know,' I said quietly. 'So do we stay here and let it carry on?'

There was fire in Lethbridge-Stewart's eyes. 'No. We fight it,' he said. 'We fight it and we stop it. In twenty four hours, the last Martian will have left British soil.'

'How, exactly?' Bambera asked.

The Brigadier broke into a broad smile. 'I'm glad you asked me that question ... '

98.

Chapter Thirteen.

Earth Attacks!

Friday, May 16th 1997.

'What's the latest from Portsmouth, Simon?'

'Our boys have picked up about a hundred survivors, Prime Minister. There are some photos on your desk.'

Greyhaven found the pictures next to the proposed new designs for banknotes. He stared at pictures: piles of rubble where buildings once stood, ships pitched over onto their sides, with great cracks and punctures in the metal. More victims to Xznaal's brutal efficiency. He'd never done it himself, but Greyhaven knew that some small children poured water over ant nests, to watch them suffer. The ants wouldn't be able to comprehend what was going on. Perhaps they had ant religion, with a complex set of beliefs regarding divine behaviour. Even if they found a way to communicate with their destroyer and asked him 'why?' they wouldn't get a proper answer. The best they could hope for would be 'why not?'

He hadn't been back to the Greyhaven Building overlooking the Thames since the night the Martian ship had arrived. The cleaner would have made the bed, and removed every single trace that Eve had ever been there, except perhaps for an empty jewellery box. Watching banks of red fog rage around Adisham, Greyhaven could have destroyed Xznaal then and there, but he decided to wait. The Martians still had their uses. Xznaal had told him that he would not be manufacturing any more of the Red Death - although Greyhaven suspected that the decision had more to do with the fact that the Martians couldn't predict or control the behaviour of the gas.

'Are there any of the leaders?'

Simon flipped through the report. 'None. We've found the bodies of a couple of Admirals and Generals, but no sign of the resistance command staff. They must have been in one of the other strongholds.'

'A package for you, Prime Minister,' a man announced. He had come into the room without knocking.

When the Prime Minister looked up, he saw why. It was Alexander Christian, clean-shaven in a neat blue suit, holding a smal parcel.

Simon lunged for him, and then fell back, unconscious, dragging a tea service onto the carpet with him. The sound of the crash brought a quick response, but the large man who came through the door was dealt with equally swiftly, slumping to the floor with a gruff groan.

Christian had kept the parcel in his right hand the whole time. Now he handed it over to the Prime Minister.

Greyhaven didn't even try to reach for the pistol or panic b.u.t.ton in his desk.

'Good morning, Lex. Is that an axe in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?'

'You deserve to die for what you did to my crew, and what you did to me.' Christian said curtly. 'I spent twenty years in a cell because you sold Britain out to the Martians. You're not the only one who's spent twenty years making plans.'

He pul ed out a handgun, held it up.

'Believe me, if I was going to kill you, you'd be dead by now. Open the envelope.'

Greyhaven tugged out the videotape that had been slotted snugly inside. There wasn't a label on it, or a note. It had come from Crawley, according to the postmark. The delivery address had been scrawled out, but it wouldn't take a forensics team long to uncover it.

'A picture speaks a thousand words, Prime Minister Prime Minister,' Christian said in a low voice.

Greyhaven moved over to the little television and VCR in the corner of the room. The television screen rippled with thick diagonal lines.

'The tape's blank,' he said. Then a thought occurred to him and he flicked a little switch on the back. It was a couple of seconds before the picture flashed up. When it did, it showed a flat expanse of concrete. The tape was an NTSC recording. He didn't look back over his shoulder.

Instead, Greyhaven concentrated on the tape, trying to work out what he was watching. There was a timecode along the bottom: 5/14/97 09.05. It had been taken the day before yesterday.

The picture was jerky, the cameraman was trying to move it around in a tight circle. He was probably undercover.

There wasn't a soundtrack. The Martian ship was drifting overhead, like a storm cloud. The cameraman kept it in shot for five or six seconds, then brought the camera around. Greyhaven could see now that the ship was floating over a runway. He glanced down at the envelope again. If it was sent from Crawley, it seemed logical that this was Gatwick Airport. But Gatwick had been closed since the Martians arrived. Al the airliners had been transferred over to Heathrow to help with the repatriation of the tourists.

The picture jerked again, and there was a disorientating zoom to a row of blue Transit vans parked by a hangar building. There were policemen there, opening up the back of the vans. It was blurred, a little too far for the camera to pick out many details.

The cameraman must have realised. The picture flickered, and now the timecode read 9.12. He had moved to within a hundred yards or so. There were about a hundred men lined up, all in blue and grey overalls. There must have been two dozen policeman watching over them, all of whom carried pistols or rifles.

There was another zoom. The front of one of the Transit vans now filled the screen. The white lettering was very clear: HM PRISON SERVICE. The first two letters had actually been sc.r.a.ped away, but their outlines were stil visible.

The picture now panned back up to the underside of the Martian craft, and it took a moment for the cameraman to adjust the focus. A hatch was retracting at the front of the s.p.a.ceship. As the red light began creeping out from the 99 opening, Greyhaven could make out a dark shape the size of a large house. The shape detached itself, and began drifting downwards. It was boomerang-shaped, and built from glistening dark green metal. It was a shuttlecraft of some kind, and only took ten or fifteen seconds before it had descended the short distance to the runway. The picture panned down with it.

The policemen were ushering their prisoners forwards towards the shuttlecraft.

The picture dissolved into static. Greyhaven tried fast-forwarding the tape, to see if there were any more clips. The rest of the tape was blank.

Greyhaven's face was ashen. 'What are they doing with those prisoners?'

Alexander Christian watched him carefully. 'You don't know, do you?'

'No.'

'That shuttlecraft was destroyed shortly after those pictures were taken. You didn't know that, either, did you?'

'A Martian ship was destroyed?'

'That's the reason they attacked Portsmouth. Revenge for their loss. They are vicious, warlike. They'l destroy everything, you included.'

'I can control them.'

'You're too clever to trust Xznaal, old chap, and we know you've got something up your sleeve. Whatever it is, use it now. You won't get another chance.'

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield Much has been written about the Battle of London, very little of it by people who were actually there, as I was. The day began sitting in the officer's mess of the UNIT encampment, a map of Berkshire hanging on one wal , a map of London on the other. All of us knew that we would be writing history. We were full of that gung-ho spirit that seizes all sections of a population at time of war. Whatever your politics, whatever your thoughts about the rights and wrongs of the situation, you are always glad when "our boys" win and the enemy's boys don't. It's always been the same from the streets of ancient Uruk to the common room of a twenty-seventh century university. You forget that the enemy feels the same, you forget that every civilisation, even your own, falls in the end. I'd seen empires topple - including my own, but that's another story - yet I was swept along as much as anyone.

'This will be a two-p.r.o.nged attack,' Lethbridge-Stewart announced. He seemed ten years younger, I thought. There was a bounce in his step, determination in his voice. The other soldiers were listening to him now.

He slapped his swagger stick against the first map. 'Step One: a small a.s.sault team led by Captain Ford takes out the refinery. Ray has agreed to go along, and he'll show you where to plant explosives for maximum effect.

Primary objective is to destroy production facilities and any stocks of gas already prepared. The secondary objective is to capture the Martian scientist, Vrgnur.'

I raised my hand, and the Brigadier took my question. 'Could I go along with that group? I'm the only one who can talk to Vrgnur, and I know a little about Martian shuttlecraft.'

Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. 'That's where your expertise will be most useful,' he agreed. 'Now, we know that the warship hasn't come back to the refinery since it dropped off the shuttlecraft. That means that the warship doesn't have the gas...o...b..ard and if the Martians want to use it, they will have to go to Reading to collect it. Because the gas in crucial to their plans, it also means that when the refinery is attacked, they'l rush to defend it.'

Lethbridge-Stewart crossed the room, pa.s.sing the rows of officers. 'And that leads us to stage two. Al Royalist units will converge on London. We'll move in along al major routes - our forces will head straight down the M4 and at the moment the bombs go off destroying the refinery, we'l be in Westminster.'

Bambera had kept quiet ever since she'd handed over command to Lethbridge-Stewart, but now she was speaking. 'The Martian ship might stay behind to guard London, even if the refinery is threatened.'

I shook my head. I'd talked this through with Alistair, and we had agreed what would happen. 'The Martians are interested in themselves, not humans. When the refinery is threatened, they'll move.'

'And when that happens,' Lethbridge-Stewart said, 'our aircraft wil attack it. They'll try to box it in, and bring it down. If that doesn't work, they should at least delay its return to London.'

'That still leaves the Provisional Government,' Bambera said. 'A lot of their forces are committed in the north, I know, but there are plenty left behind. They'll know we are coming - we can't keep half a dozen military convoys a secret.'

Lethbridge-Stewart smiled. 'They wil know we are coming, Brigadier Bambera, because we will tell them. We wil tell the world.'

End of extract ***

Xztaynz was showing Xznaal some 'medieval' art. The religious subject matter and naive rendering failed to interest him. One more day, and they would have visited every room in the National Gallery, and seen every painting that was not publicly displayed. The National Portrait Gallery sounded unpromising - all those rows upon rows of ugly primate faces - and so they'd skip that. Next week, they would scour the British Museum.

The large fossils and Egyptian exhibits were going to be of particular interest, Xznaal could see that just from the catalogues that Staines had supplied. The walls of his palace on Earth, the White Tower, were now lined with human art from this place.

100.A human came towards them, with that nervous scuttling motion that they had. Xznaal recognised that this was a female. They were smal er than the males on the whole, and wore brighter cloth. This one had red talons, and they were sharpened. No doubt this was to protect her offspring from predators until they had finished dropping from her mammal body and were able to defend themselves. It seemed a most unhygenic arrangement. She was holding a communicator in her paw.

'Good morning, Home Secretary. Er... Your Majesty.' Whenever he left the confines of his ship, Xznaal was always careful to wear the Imperial State Crown, as now, yet for some reason the humans failed to accept this symbol of authority. The human race lacked the discipline and respect for their leaders of a civilised people.

He waved a claw. 'Good morning.'

'This is Miss Helmond,' Xztaynz explained. 'What do you have to tell us?'

'The Royalist terrorists have launched an attack on London, Home Secretary. Our spotters report that they have blocked off the M25 and they are moving in on most of the major routes.'

'That's suicide,' Xztaynz objected. 'It's a co-ordinated a.s.sault?'

'They've taken over local radio stations, there's going to be a broadcast at mid-day. That's the same time that the Queen... the, er, ex-Queen,' she corrected herself quickly, 'wil address the UN General a.s.sembly.'

Xznaal hissed. 'What iss happening?'

'They can't possibly succeed, your majesty. We outnumber them, we are holding a string of defensive positions, we have the warship, we - '

'Enough. We wil return to the ssafety of the Tower. Have Gerayhayvun join uss there.'

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield Bessie streaked through the countryside at an implausible speed. The UNIT Land Rover following them was struggling to keep up.

I tried to dredge up what I could remember of the local traffic laws. None of the careful y-designed, non-cultural y specific road signs that lined the route made the slightest bit of sense to me.

Beside me, Ray was hanging on for dear life, unable to put his trust in the sophisticated inertial maintenance system that the Doctor had installed. The two soldiers in the back - Captain Ford and Sergeant Jenkins - were also looking a bit green.

'Professor,' Ray whimpered, 'I'd feel safer if there was a seat belt.'

'Are we nearly there?' I asked. We'd been on the road for twenty minutes so we ought to have been by now.

'Nearly.' Ray seemed subdued.

'Are you OK?' I asked. We were al nervous - even the trained fighters. Combat was like public speaking or acting - if you aren't nervous, you're not only doing something wrong, you're too stupid to realise.

'Benny,' Ray asked, 'Are you real y from the future?'

'Yes,' I replied.

'So we make it? Humanity survives? We are your ancestors, and this is all ancient history to you.'

'It doesn't work like that,' I said.

'But it must do.'

'No.'

'So what happens if this doesn't work?' Ray asked.

I thought about the question and tried to remember what the Doctor had told me about such things. The trouble was, he had said something slightly different every time I had asked. 'I don't know,' I admitted. 'I'll just be an anomaly, a glitch in the system. Something for future historians to ignore or come up with wild theories to explain away. I guess I'll just be retconned.'

Ray paused for a moment. 'I don't mean just for us. We'll die, I know that. But what about my kids?'