Doctor Who_ Toy Soldiers Part 27

He heard a m.u.f.fled shout from the darkness behind the lamps, then a gunshot. Some of the soldiers turned round.

Chris saw Roz, perched on top of a wall, caught in a beam of light. Before he or anyone else could act, she'd jumped down.

Chris ducked and made a run for it, firing into the air.

'Shoot to maim!' shouted the officer. There was a single rifle shot, the thunk of a bullet hitting something near by.

Chris headed for the shadows, almost ran into a hedge. He could see a gate, the wall that Roz had been standing on.

'Behind you!' someone shouted. Chris concentrated on moving fast and dodging from side to side. A figure in a khaki uniform appeared ahead of him, blocking the way. He swerved, saw the man raise his rifle, raised his own gun.

The shot cracked out, the bullet thudded into his chest.

The underarmour absorbed the impact as it was supposed to, but none the less Chris staggered. Arms went around him from behind; he ducked, throwing his attacker to the ground.

Chris ran past the men, crossed the road, then jumped up on to the wall, scrabbling for a grip. He managed to pull himself up to the top just as another bullet thudded into the armour on his legs. He almost fell off the other side, then sprinted across the courtyard. Roz was ahead of him: he could see her climbing in through a window, high up on the factory wall.

A piece of broken gla.s.s shattered explosively on the flagstones in front of him.

A rifle cracked behind him: he heard the bullet whizz past his ear. He turned round, shouted, 'We're on your side!

Martineau sent us! I'd explain but there isn't time!' As he spoke he caught himself wondering again why there wasn't time - why was Roz in such a hurry?

There was a shout from above: Roz. 'Chris! The TARDIS is in here!' She was holding something in her hand: something with two small amber lights on it.

'Who is this Martineau?' The officer's voice, from somewhere beyond the wall. 'We really can't let you run around this place on some Frenchman's authority.'

'But it was the French who tipped you off to this, wasn't it?' asked Chris, making his way towards the drainpipe that Roz must have used to climb the wall.

'Our orders came from the Home Secretary - but yes, he did mention the French. If you'll just put down your gun and discuss the matter reasonably instead of playing the cat burglar, we can see if - '

'There isn't time!' grunted Chris. He was almost at the window now: and he was fairly sure that they wouldn't start shooting in the time it would take him to get inside.

A rifle cracked, sending chips of stone flying around his face.

Well, everyone can be wrong sometimes, thought Chris.

He swung himself on to the windowsill and through the broken pane, trusting his underarmour to protect him from the sharp edges of the gla.s.s.

As soon as he got inside, he heard Roz swearing.

There was a long corridor: he ran down it, came to the open door of a room in which the TARDIS stood between two heavily padded chairs, near a wooden desk. Roz was standing in the middle of the room, with a heavy-looking metal box in her hands. Lights flickered on the box. Chris realized that it could only be the transmat master controller. It looked like a piece of cannibalized hyperdrive: a crudely attached linear ariel vibrated like the antenna of a giant insect.

Roz spoke without looking up. 'I figured that with all those kids to transmit they'd never have the energy to send them all at once. They'd have to send in series, which means series-processing the image data. Which takes time, yeah?'

Chris frowned. 'Yes, a few - '

Roz shrugged. Not enough time. They've gone. About five seconds before I got this b.u.g.g.e.r out of the desk.'

'Oh.' Chris swallowed. 'You didn't have to hang around for me, you know.'

Roz shrugged again. 'Don't blame yourself. I'd never have got away at all without your help.' She looked at the ground.

There was a short silence; then Chris heard the clatter of footsteps crossing the yard. He looked at Roz, then at the TARDIS. She nodded, put the transmat controller down and pulled the key out from a pocket of her jacket.

'I don't suppose the Doctor's in there,' said Chris, as he picked up the heavy controller. Roz just looked at him.

The TARDIS door swung open, revealing the white light of the console room. Chris staggered in, conscious of the sound of breaking gla.s.s from behind him. Roz quickly followed him.

'Get the door shut!' she snapped.

Chris almost dropped the transmat controller, ran to the console and flicked the switch. The door hummed shut behind them.

Now,' said Roz. 'Have you got any idea how to steer this thing? 'Cos I haven't.'

'But I thought -' Chris broke off. 'I mean, the Doctor -'

'You thought he'd be sitting here, just waiting for the good news, and he'd go and put everything right?' Roz gestured around the empty white s.p.a.ce of the console room.

'Well, he isn't. Have you got any suggestions?'

Chris stared at the console. He knew something about the piloting of the TARDIS - he'd seen the Doctor do it a few times, and the basics were easy enough. He walked around to the far side of the console. 'This is the main dematerialization control,' he said.

'So? What the h.e.l.l's the use of that if we don't know where we're going?'

Chris remembered what Roz had said the previous evening, when the TARDIS had failed to turn up. 'How can you be late in a time machine?' he said.

'Huh?'

Chris looked at the coordinate display on the console, frowned. 'The last four digits must be the temporal coordinates, because they're changing as we go forward in time at the normal rate,' he said aloud.

'So?' asked Roz again.

'So if I reset the coordinates for a couple of hours ago -'

He broke off, studied the changing figures, trying to judge the rate of change. The units didn't make any sense, but the rate of change seemed fairly constant. He counted seconds, made some calculations.

There was a m.u.f.fled thud from outside the TARDIS.

'Open up!' called the officer's voice from the speakers of the scanner. 'Open up or we fire!'

Chris punched in a series of coordinates that he hoped were in the past, and pressed the dematerialization control.

Now wait a minute,' said Roz. 'We're not in any danger from them in here. What're you trying to do?'

'Go back in time. Stop it from happening. Save the kids.'

The time rotor began to rise and fall in the middle of the console. The scanner blanked out. Chris heard a faint crackling sound that might have been gunfire.

Roz stared, shook her head. 'Chris, you can't do that - '

'It's the only thing we can do!'

'It's sodding impossible! The TARDIS will materialize inside itself!' She ran up to the console, stared at the controls. 'You've got to cancel - '

She broke off as somewhere, deep within the TARDIS, a bell began to ring. Chris looked up, met Roz's stare.

'The cloister bell,' she said softly after a moment. 'Chris, there was only one possible thing that could've made this mess worse. And you've just done it.'

Lieutenant Sutton kept his gun aimed at the Doctor as the little man pulled at the cabling inside the open flank of the Recruiter. True, he had changed his mind and decided to help, after the girl had been shot: but he might change his mind again, or attempt sabotage. Anything was possible.

Thinking about the girl disturbed Sutton. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, lying in a pool of blood with the Doctor's jacket over her body. Her face was exposed: she was still alive, as far as Sutton could tell, though her injury was clearly such that she would have to be rea.s.signed to the kitchens.

That, surprisingly, was the thought that disturbed him.

She was dying. She was dying because he had shot her.

Why was that bad? He had been obeying orders. The girl had become a nuisance -possibly a danger. She had had to be destroyed.

But she had said she was his sister. That word meant something. Something to do with home.

But what was home? It felt warm, comfortable. It felt as though he should be there, rather than here, aiming a gun at a strange man in the guts of a vast machine.

But this was what he had had to do. Wasn't it? to do. Wasn't it?

Can't find my way, he thought. Can't find my way home.

The Recruiter's huge voice broke into his thoughts.

'TRANSMAT FIELD REACTIVATED.'

The Doctor stood up, dusted off his hands. Charles carefully kept him covered with the gun. 'And your side of the bargain?' said the little man. 'My ship, so that I can save Manda's life?'

Yes, thought Charles, yes. Save her life. Get the Doctor's ship.

Please save her life. I didn't mean to kill her. I want to take her home.

'DOCTOR,' boomed the Recruiter. 'I CAN'T LOCATE THE ARTON ENERGY SIGNATURE WHICH YOU.

DESCRIBED. IT ISN'T ANYWHERE IN THIS REGION OF s.p.a.cE. IT LOOKS AS IF YOUR SHIP'S BEEN DESTROYED.'

Chapter 16.

Josef kept his hands on the steering control, felt the warm metal under his hands, the shifting floor of the cab under his feet. It was familiar, it was good.

Ahead, the hallway he had driven into sloped steadily downwards. It was just big enough to accommodate the frame of the huge ground-engine: from the way the feet rang on the floor, he guessed it was solid stone.

He didn't know where the hallway was leading, but he knew there would be killing at the end of it.

The controls hadn't been too difficult to get used to. They were on a larger scale than the ground-engines that Josef had driven before, and he'd had to struggle to reach them, but he'd managed. Fortunately the boiler had been at full pressure, so he didn't need a stoker.

As soon as he'd started to unfold the legs, he'd heard the clang of bullets on the cabin armour. But the insect-thing had made the mistake of standing in front of the ground-engine, and Josef had simply gunned it down with the machine-gun.

Then he'd taken the big machine into the building.

Inside, more of the insect-things, and more satisfyingly, an Ogron, had fired at him and been dispatched in their turn.

After that Josef had used the turret gun to demolish the wall at the back of the parking bay and had barged the ground-engine through the gap, careless of minor damage.

That didn't matter now. All that mattered was killing.

Josef watched the walls of the hallway, steered with care so as to keep the ground-engine between them. Ahead there was light, white electric light, steadily growing brighter. Josef smiled. It wouldn't be long now.

Soon he would come to the place where the killing was needed.

Benny heard the voice at about the same time as she saw the light. The light was silvery, but filled with changing hints of colour. She couldn't hear exactly what the voice was saying - the sheer volume of it echoing along the corridors reduced it to an almost meaningless booming - but she was sure she'd caught the word 'Doctor'.

She quickened her pace. Behind her, the Q'ell rustled and clicked, like an army of locusts. Which is what they are, she thought: vaguely human-shaped and apparently intelligent, but locusts, none the less. An amoral swarm, eating anything they see.

Not for the first time, she wondered about the wisdom of bringing them with her. But then, she supposed, she could hardly have stopped them. They had the guns.