Doctor Who_ Toy Soldiers Part 10

He aimed the cross-hairs on the nearest of the enemy engines and opened fire. Bullets sparked off its armour, but it didn't stop, merely returned fire. A series of deafening impacts set the cabin ringing.

Ingrid shouted something: Josef glanced up from the periscope and saw her opening the door.

'- other side -'

'Yes!' shouted Josef, returning his eyes to the periscope.

'You go! You can be saved, if you run fast enough!' He fired another burst at the advancing enemy, smiled as they pulled up. At least they'd keep their distance now.

Until he ran out of bullets, that was. With two of them attacking, and most of his ammunition spent in the attack, he didn't stand a chance.

Ingrid's hand grabbed his arm, tugged. 'You go!' she bawled in his ear. 'I'll work the gun!'

Josef knew she was right: he was the valuable one, and anyone could work the gun. But he couldn't let her die for him. He just couldn't. He pushed her back, at the same moment as the cabin reverberated to another burst of enemy fire. He looked up, saw a bright hole in the top of the cabin.

Ingrid was gone from his side, but he could see the bottom of her legs hanging in the doorway, and the handgun was gone from the holster.

Josef wanted to shout at her that there wasn't a chance, that she'd never do any damage at this range with a revolver, that she should make a run for it; but she was too far away to hear. More bullets rang off the cabin wall, and Josef returned his attention to the periscope.

He wondered what it would be like to die, and why he didn't like the idea.

When Sergeant-Recruiter Bernice Summerfield woke up, the first thing she noticed was that she was ravenous. She couldn't remember when she'd last had a decent meal. It had probably been before - before - She shook her head, which hurt rather badly, and decided that it was no good trying to chase memories with a hangover like this. Get some breakfast first. Or supper. All according to what time of day it was.

She sat up, discovered that she was lying on a bunk.

She wasn't in uniform: she was wearing a blue striped cotton dress and rather muddy shoes with low heels. Vaguely, she wondered why this might be, but the answer seemed to have gone the way of her other memories.

She looked around her. Dim yellow light illuminated a brick wall only a few feet away. Leaning against the wall, sitting on a stool, was a man she immediately recognized as Lieutenant-Recruiter Charles Sutton.

Sergeant Summerfield struggled to make a salute, but Sutton just shook his head and smiled.

'Your head's going to be a little bit sore for a while,' he said. 'I know mine was.' He gestured at two faint scars on his forehead. Summerfield reached up, touched her own forehead, winced.

Of course. Training scars. Nothing to worry about, but inevitable on a new a.s.signment.

Sutton grinned at her pained expression. 'I did warn you.

Come on, let's get something to eat. We'll have to hurry - you're on duty in an hour.'

An hour, thought Summerfield. Only an hour? Give me a chance. Wherever I was last night, the party must've finished very late.

She staggered out of her bunk and followed Lieutenant Sutton down the drab brick-walled corridor that led to the officers' mess. Her head ached every step of the way, as if someone had kicked it. Perhaps someone had. She seemed to remember a fight - She shook her muzzy head. I'll have to ask the Doctor about this, she thought, get him to regenerate my memories, or something. They've gone completely AWOL. I must have had far too much this time. It's the Oolian brandy chasers that do it.

The smell of cooked meat lifted Summerfield out of her reverie. Food! she thought. And: must remember to ask Lieutenant Sutton what time of day it is.

The sergeants' mess was a large, brightly lit s.p.a.ce, with rows of dull brown wooden benches and tables at which sat a variety of species. Rabbit-like Ajeesks, grey-furred and long-nosed, sat with the blue-skinned Kreetas. On larger benches, a bearlike Biune in sergeant's stripes ate with a few adult humans and a single Ogron.

Summerfield frowned as she looked at the Biune. There was something about the word Biune - something about that species, now that she knew their name - She shook her head. Best not to think about it. There was a job to get on with. And besides, she was hungry hungry.

Lieutenant Sutton guided her to an empty bench, went to a serving hatch and shouted an order. Within half a minute, an Ogron in kitchen whites appeared with a steel tray and put it down on the table in front of them. Summerfield's mouth watered at the smell that rose from the plates, and she tucked in greedily. It was plain fare, a white meat rather like rabbit mixed with bits of offal and a starchy, potato-like vegetable, but Summerfield didn't care. It was food, and that was all that counted.

After she'd finished eating Sutton ordered some drinks, a disappointingly non-alcoholic slop that was served in white-painted tin mugs and tasted slightly of apples. Still, she supposed it was best not to drink alcohol if she was going on duty.

'What's my a.s.signment?' she asked Sutton.

'Emergency recruiting again. Bit of an interference problem with the new planet.' Sutton sounded casual enough, but Summerfield knew that the 'new planet' was his planet - and, for that matter, her planet. The honour of the human species depended on their getting this right: interference must not be allowed.

She nodded solemnly at the lieutenant, raised her gla.s.s in a silent toast. He smiled slightly in response.

'Don't worry, we're bound to be successful,' he said.

'Right inevitably triumphs in the end.'

Even from a hundred and fifty metres, the ground-engines were clearly visible, two of them in their ugly, enemy yellow-and-red, stalking across the trenches. Gabrielle could see the bright flicker of their heavy-calibre guns as they fired: she couldn't see much evidence of return fire from the crippled engine painted in the colours of her own side, certainly not anything heavy enough to be effective. There was a figure on the canted roof of the cabin, but whether it was dead or alive, Gabrielle couldn't tell from this height. She glanced forward, over the ridge of hills above the trenches, to where her own side's artillery lay, the guns scattered like toys across the mud. Most of them were firing, but the sh.e.l.ls were landing well behind the ground-engines, regular explosions pounding an empty tract of mud some way behind her. Unless someone destroyed the enemy ground-engines, the damaged engine would be lost. And ground-engines, Gabrielle knew, were even more valuable than aeroplanes.

Gabrielle thought about that for a moment, then nodded to herself. Yes. This had to be the best use of her bomb.

The decision made, Gabrielle eased back on the stick, banked, then began a slow turn. She wiped her goggles with her free hand as the landscape whirled below, suppressed the urge to scratch the training scars on her forehead which were itching as usual under her leather mask. She briefly checked the sky around her for enemy planes.

All clear. Good.

She leaned over the side again. She'd made a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and the enemy ground-engines were straight ahead of her. She straightened out, raised the flaps, opened the throttle. The engine revved up sweetly, without any trace of roughness or knocking: Freeneek had done his job well. As the airspeed increased, wind buffeted Gabrielle's body and the plane began to rock slightly. She tramped the rudder pedals, pulled at the stick, got the plane balanced again. At fifty metres, she made a last check over her shoulder, to make sure that no enemy plane had crept up behind her, then put her eyes to the bomb-sight and her hand on the trigger that would release the bomb.

The bomb-sight showed a distorted view of the ground, making it appear to be a huge bowl-shaped valley of mud.

The ground-engines, tiny now, crawled across the bowl. The cross-hairs in the bomb-sight supposedly showed the place where the bomb would land, but Gabrielle was experienced enough to know better. It depended on the wind. It depended on the weight of the bomb, your airspeed when you dropped it. It depended, in the end, on how low and how slow you were prepared to go to make an accurate job of it.

She licked her lips, tasted petrol fumes, salt sweat, the leather of her flying mask. The ground crawled past, the two striding engines pa.s.sed the cross-hairs, got closer, and closer, and closer - less than thirty metres - she could see the identification letters on their sides, the pistons moving, the guns turning to get a bead on the damaged engine and finish it off - Now! She pulled the trigger, felt the bomb unlatch. The plane, relieved of the load, jumped upwards. Gabrielle looked up from the sight, yanked back on the stick, watched the ground tilt away and the grey sky fall across the nose of the plane. The acceleration of the climb pressed her into her seat, but even so she checked again over her shoulder to make sure that there was no enemy plane on her tail.

Still clear. She was lucky today.

The roar of the bomb exploding almost drowned the sound of the engine for a moment, and a second later the plane rocked under her. Gabrielle eased the throttle a little, came out of the climb and banked to one side, then looked over the edge of the c.o.c.kpit to see how much damage she'd done.

Lots. The bomb must have hit the nearest ground-engine square on the boiler, exactly as she'd intended it to. Gabrielle could see only a few pieces of metal scattered around a smoking crater. Better still, the second engine was on its side, flames licking over the cab and the twisted remains of the legs. A tiny figure waved from the roof of the friendly engine: Gabrielle realized with a start that it was human. She grinned and waved back, then straightened out and pulled back on the stick again.

As the ground dropped away, she caught a glimpse of a dark speck to her left, quickly eclipsed by the wing. She ignored it, as far as the movements of her plane were concerned - he was still well out of range, so let him think she hadn't seen him. But mentally, she prepared herself for the fight.

At the top of her climb, she banked again. She was too far up now to see much detail on the ground, but she could see the blue specks of friendly uniforms - Ogrons, she hoped - advancing towards the destroyed engines. Behind them, the ridge that hid the artillery rose sharply.

A plan came into her mind. It might not work, but it was neat, it was clever, and it was virtually risk-free. She twitched the rudder, banking the plane slightly, as if she were looking for something on her right. At the same time she looked over her left shoulder.

There he was, just above the wing and closing fast.

Gabrielle felt a surge of pure exhilaration. Bombing might be important from a military point of view, but it was boring. This was what she lived for.

She yanked the stick forward and nosedived for the ground. If her pursuer thought she was panicking, if he thought she was inexperienced, then he was more likely to make the mistake she was hoping he would make.

The ground got closer, fast. Gabrielle saw churned mud, broken by winding trenches. She could smell it through the fumes of the engine, the sewage and rot and death of the battlefield below. At about thirty metres - low enough to panic a novice - she pulled back on the stick and at the same moment swerved violently, almost staffing - but not quite. She hoped her opponent wouldn't notice how finely judged it had been.

He didn't. His plane vanished below hers, ready to open fire. Ahead, the ridge was getting closer.

Gabrielle swerved, heard a clatter of gunfire. She could almost see the bullets streaking upwards past her wing tip.

She swerved again, to the right as before, was rewarded by a further clatter of firing that missed her altogether. She imagined the pilot of the other plane, keen for a kill, swinging the gun around to follow her, his eyes on the gun-sight and not on the lie of the ground ahead.

The ridge was very close now, a sloping wall of mud.

She could see a single Ogron footsoldier, staring up at her in amazement.

The roar of an engine, a bulky shadow appearing to her left. The enemy. Less than twelve metres. Their wingtips almost touching. The propeller biting the air, the engine cowling slightly dented, red and yellow paint flaking.

The pilot in brown leathers, seeing the approaching ground, and pulling frantically at the controls.

Gabrielle pulled her sidearm from her flying leathers, took aim at his head as his plane slowly pulled past hers. He turned and looked at her: white eyes in a dark-skinned face stared at her through huge goggles. Human, she realized with a shock. A dark-skinned human, like Oni. She hadn't realized that there were humans fighting for the enemy.

Not that it mattered.

She fired.

The goggles shattered.

The pilot dropped, his plane tilted to one side. Gabrielle grinned to herself, opened the throttle very slightly, and soared over the barbed wire at the top of the ridge with a dozen feet to spare, as she'd known she would. She heard the dull thud of her opponent's plane exploding as it hit the ground behind her and nodded to herself in satisfaction.

She'd won. She'd made a kill.

She banked sharply, pulling her plane right through the field of fire of the artillery below the ridge. It was a risk, but a calculated one: there weren't that many sh.e.l.ls, and they weren't actually aiming at her. Within a few seconds she was above the range of the sh.e.l.ls again and soaring back out across the battlefield.

She glanced down, saw the burning wreck of the other plane ahead of her, surrounded by Ogrons in blue and brown uniforms. She grinned to herself: they'd come out of their holes quickly enough at the prospect of bounty.

Ogrons were all the same.

When she was close enough to get a good look, she slowed the plane almost to stalling speed and cruised above.

One of the Ogrons had the body of the pilot in his arms. He looked up at her and waved, mimed biting into a chop.

Gabrielle waved back, but then quickly turned away, feeling slightly sick. She knew that enemy flesh couldn't be wasted, but there was something about them eating eating human flesh - human flesh - something she didn't like - She shook her head. It was silly to think about things like that. It had to be this way: this was war. This was the way it was meant to be. She automatically looked around the sky for enemy planes.

All clear. Time to go home then.

She climbed, perhaps a little higher than she should have done, briefly lost herself in the base of the clouds.

She wondered what human flesh tasted like.

Sergeant Summerfield was ready for her mission. She was standing in a small, circular, stone-walled room, with Lieutenant-Recruiter Sutton and Sergeant-Recruiter Betts.

Both men were in full uniform, and carried rifles. Sergeant Betts also held the Recruiter field activator, a small fluffy toy that looked like a model of a Biune. Summerfield was still wearing the striped cotton dress: Lieutenant-Recruiter Sutton had explained that it was necessary for this particular a.s.signment. He hadn't gone into further details, just told her that she would know what to do when the time arrived.

They would go, of course, when the Recruiter decided that they should go. When it detected the signature of the interference they were trying to suppress.

Summerfield's heart beat uncomfortably. She didn't like not being sure of what to do, even though she knew that the Recruiter would release necessary information in her mind as soon as it was needed. She fingered the holster of the sidearm they'd given her, fitted to a leather belt, incongruous around the waist of the dress, and looked around at the bare grey walls of the room.

'A bit dull in here, isn't it?' she said.

Sutton and Betts both stared at her.

'The walls. They could do with decorating. A little purple paint, a few Pica.s.sos, and they'd be fine.'

The men glanced at each other. Sutton frowned. 'I don't quite understand -' he began.

'Or perhaps a yellow colour scheme, to make the most of the ambient light.' She grinned and gestured at the single dim globe in the middle of the ceiling. 'And some pictures of the sea - you know, little yachts sailing off into the sunset, dolphins leaping in formation, that sort of thing.'

'This is war, you know,' said Sutton mildly. 'There's no time for luxuries like that.'

Summerfield bit her lips She knew he was right. But surely there was no harm in talking about it?

'Sorry, sir,' she said, suppressing her annoyance. He was after all her superior officer. 'Just trying to pa.s.s the time.'

Sutton shrugged. 'It shouldn't be long now.'

The minutes crawled by. Summerfield stared at the ground, waited in silence like the others, trying not to think of anything. At last she saw the eyes of the Recruiter field activator light up, saw colours seep into the walls of the room.