Killing Ground Part 23

The Doctor picked himself up as the Cyberleader swung to face him.

'What have you done?' it demanded.

'Disabled your gun, of course.' He grinned with pride. 'Actually, I've been quite clever.'

'Alert!' squawked a Cyberman suddenly, its tone a step away from panic. 'Radiation is seeping into this area.'

The Doctor paced the bridge, his hands behind his back, with the air of an indulgent tutor. 'You see, I had my suspicions when I saw your conversion machinery. Then I learned that one of your kind had been killed by an Overseer gun emitting microwave energy which should have been harmless to you. You're cutting corners, Leader. The war with Voga has taken its toll. Your Cybermen have more organic components than any model since the original Mondans - hence the resurgence of an old weakness.' He halted, deliberately not looking at the nearby exit, and skewered the Leader with a hateful glare. 'Your weapon of choice wouldn't have used hard radiation - but then, this isn't your ship, is it? It's not your choice. Before you caught me, I fixed the plasma beam to discharge a lethal radioactive backblast. Lethal, that is, to you!'

'And to you also, Doctor.'

'I know.' He turned and sprinted for the door, but the Cybermen were too fast and his way was blocked by two unbending arms. He was seized and hurled back across the bridge, to where the Leader fastened a hand onto each of his shoulders.

'You will reverse what you have done.'

'Impossible, I'm afraid. Even by the time I reached the maintenance level, this ship would be irrevocably contaminated. You're dead, Cyberleader!' He took great pleasure in sneering the words. 'You're being killed by a weapon you stole - and you can't even evacuate because your scout ships are all out searching for more helpless civilizations to plunder. Poetic justice, really. Not that you'd appreciate the concept!'

'One means of egress is still available: your TARDIS.' The Cyberleader increased its grip. You will be unable to save yourself without allowing me into your vehicle. Your animal sense of self-preservation will require you to do so.'

'Then I'll have to override that sense. Logic, Cyberleader!' The Doctor spoke through gritted teeth. He was short of breath, beginning to perspire and he could feel a dull ache in his stomach. He had taken an anti-radiation pill in the TARDIS, but that would only have been effective against an accidental mild exposure. He hadn't counted on being trapped like this, nor could he have guarded against the eventuality if he had.

A crash behind him told the Doctor that one of the Cybermen had fallen. Its body was splayed out on the floor and a viscous fluid oozed from its joints. 'And then there were five,' he taunted, but his throat burnt and his voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. 'Not to mention the dozens who are dying around this ship; the hundreds in suspended animation who will never wake now. What about you, Leader? How long before you succ.u.mb? Think you can outlast me?' He clung on to his enemy's arms and tried to break its hold, to no avail.

'I will not have to. This craft's weaponry may be inactive, but I can crash-dive it into the colony if you do not co-operate. Its fusion drive would create quite a magnificent explosion. You will not want to see so many humans eradicated, so you will surrender.'

'Illogical again,' the Doctor panted. Stars danced in his vision, but he cleared it to see that a Cyberman had stalked over to the navigational controls.

'Your choice,' said the Cyberleader implacably.

'Wait! Before you do that, check your instruments. The colonists have restarted the conversion process. Hundreds of your own kind are already doomed. Do you want to wipe out five hundred more in a petty act of revenge?'

'He is correct, Leader,' said the Cyberman. 'Three hundred and twelve conversions have been completed on the planet. The neo-units have left their chamber to retake... to retake...' It tottered and extended a hand to steady itself. The Doctor was relieved that Grant had evidently fooled the Cyber computer - although such detail had not been strictly necessary. He could feel the Leader's grip weakening, but only as his own strength drained too. The skin on his face was beginning to peel and every pore in his body leaked sweat. Two Cybermen sagged and hit the floor, but the Leader remained steadfast and the Doctor couldn't prise it loose. They lurched across the bridge in a macabre dance, each straining to prove their own strength the greatest; each hoping not to be the first to die.

'You have defeated this contingent,' admitted the Cyberleader, its voice slurred and indistinct, 'but our race will proliferate. Even should I expire before you, you will be unable to break the hold of my hydraulic muscles. I have destroyed the Cybermen's greatest enemy. Now nothing can prevent our rise to power!'

'Look on the bright side,' said the Doctor, eyes closed, a hammer pounding in his head. 'I can't think of anyone I'd rather share a suicide pact with.'

Their dance turned into a close-contact waltz, two bitter foes keeping each other supported although they had become barely aware of each other's presence.

Locked into a fatal embrace, they waited for the deadly radiation to ravage their bodies and steal both their lives.

14.

Endurance

olarr was feeling useless. It had been several minutes since Grant had J announced that he wanted to try something, whereupon he had set to work at a terminal which ostensibly controlled the lab's genetic scanners, but which Henneker had earlier hooked up to Population Control's main computer. Jolarr had been left to monitor the uneven struggle upstairs and to fret about its probable outcome. He was feeling extraordinarily cold and he wished for something to keep him occupied, to take his mind off the ma.s.sacre. The sight of yet another Bronze Knight crumpling into a pool of oil and blood was not conducive to calming his nervous state.

He wondered which of the attacking creatures was Hegelia.

'That's it!' said Grant at last.

Jolarr gazed eagerly over his friend's shoulder, but the tiny screen before him showed only a string of letters and numbers, which he found incomprehensible. 'That's what?'

'I've hacked into the scout ship's systems. I've got control from here.' Grant's excitement melted into a frown as he studied the hard-won data on the screen. 'There are two hundred and eighty-six Cybermen active in the complex.'

'Oh.' Jolarr thought miserably of all the Knights he had seen killed and decided that half as many foes would have been too many. 'They outnumber us ten to one, then.'

Grant nodded distantly, his concentration reserved for his resumed work at the terminal. 'I'm trying to even the odds a bit. I've lowered the temperature as far as it'll go throughout the building.'

'I thought it was getting frosty! How's that going to help?'

'These Cybermen should have been frozen after conversion. They must have some sort of a hibernation protocol, triggered by intense cold. Since they were woken early, I'm guessing that protocol's still current. The colder it gets, the more likely they are to shut down.'

Jolarr looked doubtfully at the video picture. Obscured though his view of the battle may be, it did seem that Cybermen were felling more quickly than the Bronze Knights were disposing of them. 'I think it might be working,' he hazarded. 'Well, a little.'

'Good. The next stage is to put the conversion chamber's air-conditioning on full blast.'

Jolarr marvelled at his friend's confidence, remembering how frightened he had seemed before. With a logic problem to solve, a computer to aid him and no immediate threat to his well-being, Grant was in his element.

But could he out-think the Cybermen, all the same?

The Doctor was hardly aware that he had fallen, except in blurred s.n.a.t.c.hes of recollection as if of dreams. He forced his eyes open to see that the roof was spinning. It took him a moment to recognize the motion as illusory. He focused his vision to bring together two images of the Cyberleader. He didn't know why the creature had released him, but as he watched its thrashing and screaming, it occurred to him that even its semi-organic brain had been addled by the all-pervading radiation. He too was near death and it was difficult to concentrate, but his thoughts were sharpened by hope. He had a chance to survive.

The Doctor tried to stand, but his arms wouldn't lift him. He crawled, instead, across painful inches of dirty floor. The exit was tantalizingly close, yet it seemed to be moving from him faster than he could approach. He heard a rattling, gargling sound from behind and turned his head. The movement hurt, like he was rubbing his raw neck against sandpaper. The Cyberleader had noticed his escape attempt. It had meant to utter a threat, but its voice had failed it. Conversely, the Doctor realized, its handheld gun was fully mechanical and had no reason not to function. A section of floor exploded by his arm and, temporarily reprieved by the Leader's disorientation, he took cover behind a pulsating brown console.

It fired again and the Doctor leaned against the soft, warm surface, gasping for breath and feeling as if his face was on fire. There was no way to reach the door without making himself a target. His eyes closed and his mind drifted, but an inner sense scolded him into alertness and he saw the body of a dead Cyberman before him. Hardly daring to hope, he tipped it over. Its gun lay beneath it. Feverishly, he prised it loose from clinging fingers.

As he raised his head above the console, the Cyberleader fired again, its shot going wild and ricocheting off the wall. The Doctor's aim was almost as bad and the kick from the powerful gun both surprised and floored him. By the time he had recovered his senses, the Leader had brought the fight closer. It stood astride its foe and aimed for his head.

The Doctor didn't have time to retrieve his own weapon. Pitiful though the battle had been, he had lost. The price was to die a little earlier than the victor.

Then the Cyberleader swayed and fell against the console. The Doctor seized his advantage, went for the gun and blasted the monster four times in the back. It sank in three jerky stages and the Doctor, overcome by dizziness, was forced onto his hands and knees as he gritted his teeth and made himself keep going.

He reached the door and paused on the threshold, three corridors looking like six. He tried to remember what he knew about the layout of Selachian craft, to work out which direction would take him to the TARDIS. The effort was too much.

With a sickly groan, the Doctor pa.s.sed out.

'It's working,' breathed Grant. 'They're falling.'

'How many left?' asked Jolarr.

'Two hundred and twelve.'

'Not fast enough.' He wondered how this - would work in HyperReality. He had played through numerous adventure scenarios - all chosen for their improving effects upon the mind, of course. If a software laboratory had manufactured this problem, Jolarr would have solved it thus: cold demonstrably weakens the enemy. It isn't yet cold enough to make them all dysfunctional. Ergo, within the parameters of the game, there must be a way of making it colder still. He told Grant of his thoughts, but then his attention was drawn towards the monitor, which reminded him that this adventure was far more than words on a screen or false images projected into his brain's frontal lobes. This was real life. People were dying and he might well be next.

'You're right,' said Grant unexpectedly. 'Of course, it's the logical answer!' He was working at the computer again with feverish haste and Jolarr watched him with a frown. Make it colder, he had said. How was that possible?

Logic, he reminded himself. Look for a cooling agent.

Then, with a sudden, involuntary grin, he realized where a good one had to be.

Max hadn't screamed for a long time, but she did so now as the door to her surgery was blown open and a quartet of Cybermen strode in through the smoke of their own blasts. The first of them tilted its head in her direction and tapped its chest unit, unleashing a bolt of fire which crippled the apparatus behind her. Max fell and tried to hide behind the pallets on which her latest Bronze Knights lay. To her relief, four of the six were alert enough to clamber to their feet, to stand in her defence. She heard the Cybermen firing again and watched as her creations braced themselves against the onslaught and moved to retaliate. But the Knights were at a disadvantage. Two of their number lay unconscious like useless metal sculptures - and the weapons with which they should have been fitted were still piled in the corner. Max regretted her part in designing the guns so that only a direct nerve stimulus could operate them. They were no good to her.

As in the skirmish at the bunker, all Max could do was watch and hope. This time, it was infinitely worse, as the prospect of victory seemed more remote. The Cybermen s guns were activated over and over again, and even with her face at floor level, Max felt her throat catch and her nostrils trying to close, a.s.saulted by their burning odour.

Her eyes were beginning to water, but she continued to stare, spellbound, from beneath the pallets - until her view of the partic.i.p.ants' legs was suddenly, shockingly, blocked by the head of a Bronze Knight which hit the ground and rolled towards her. Max covered her face and ears and tried to blot out the sounds of rending metal and electronic screams.

When the surgery finally ceased its upheaval about her, Max didn't move. She was praying that the Bronze Knights might have triumphed - but, weaponless, newly activated and surprised as they had been, she knew that was unlikely. She didn't dare to look. She didn't have to. She would be killed or not; she could do nothing either way. But that wasn't how she wanted to go, she scolded herself. She would confront the Reaper with all the defiance she could muster, kicking and screaming although her cause may be lost. Max Carter had never been a coward. It was too late to become one now.

The baby inside her shifted and she remembered that she had two lives to fight for.

Max opened her eyes and gingerly raised her head above the pallets, fighting the urge to sneeze as she breathed in dust and smoke. She saw the bulky, haze-shrouded form of the combat's sole survivor and squinted to make out what it was. With a dull clank of metal on metal, it took four steps towards her and she saw.

It was a Cyberman.

For a moment, the Doctor believed himself free. With a supreme effort, he had made his way across the main operations deck and climbed up to where he had left the TARDIS; a long time ago, it seemed. Then he opened his eyes and felt a rush of misery as he saw that it had all been dreams. He was lying on the floor, half on and half off the bridge. His face was flushed and blistered and his head was hurting enough to rupture the coherence of his thoughts. He lurched to his feet and rocked on his heels, not sure if the movement had been real this time or just another cruel deception. He used the wall for support in an environment which, it seemed, was bucking deliberately to steal his balance and to pitch him to the ground for the final time. He was blind, but he fumbled his way across the smooth and comfortingly upright surface. The radiation would be strongest on the bridge, he reasoned, where the leak originated. It would help him to get clear of it.

But not much. Not at this stage.

The journey seemed to take hours, the distance between him and the TARDIS growing steadily more vast until it felt insurmountable. Still, the Doctor staggered on, the muted inner voice of his own strong instinct for self-preservation driving him to greater efforts of will to keep the ransacked sh.e.l.l of his body going. As he pa.s.sed along the corridors of the Selachian vessel, he encountered isolated groups of Cybermen. Exposed to less radiation than those on the bridge, they still stood, albeit without prospect of continuing to do so for long. He ignored them, knowing that he was in no condition to fight; that he had to take his chances with what perils they could pose. Fortunately, they could do little. A spattering of blaster fire sizzled by, but nothing came close - at least, not that he was aware of. The Doctor's concentration was reserved for one thing only.

He remembered lying on the TARDIS floor, paralysed by the extensive damage done to his third form in the Great One's radioactive caves on Metebelis. The regeneration had been long in coming, quite agonizing and made possible only by the healing, timeless coc.o.o.n of his craft. Without it, there would be no such options. He might well be granted a new body, but the cellular degradation of this one could not be totally undone. The seventh Doctor would perish minutes after his birth, in the same excruciating pain as the sixth. The eighth would follow. And so on, until final darkness.

At last, he reached the access point to the hospitality level and saw, with dull grat.i.tude, that his rope had not been removed. He knew that, if he hesitated, his muscles would betray him. He summoned what strength he had and leapt for it, almost crying out with the pain of clinging to the slender lifeline with sore, peeling hands and knees. His arms screamed and locked, refusing to allow him to climb. The rope swung and circled and he felt liquids sloshing in his stomach and head.

When he dared to look, he saw only the glittering surface of the water, lapping gently at the rim of the downward-leading hatch below. If he lost his grip and plunged into that aqueous grave, there would be no leaving it. He strained to look up instead, but the dizzying height of the topmost level only fuelled his sense of futility. The TARDIS was two metres above, but it might as well have been on the second moon of Thoros Beta.

Perhaps it would be best to surrender; just let go of the rope and allow cold water to soothe him, to take his troubled consciousness away. He had discharged his responsibilities, after all. Peri was gone, Grant was back on his homeworld - and both had justification for wishing that they'd never met him. The Doctor's death could work to the good of so many. He wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. Like Angela...

He had only ever wanted to do right, to help people. But such simple days were long gone. He had allowed so many deaths on the Network.

He had been outwitted by the Cybermen here, so that all he had been able to do was to throw his life away or watch a planet die. What use had he been to the five hundred Agorans in the conversion chamber?

To the boy who had begged him for a release that he had been too late to provide? He had been right to cease his interference, to settle on Torrok. His sin had been in not making that retirement a permanent one. There was one way left to do so. A way to ensure that the Valeyard, his premonition of an evil future self, never came to pa.s.s.

One way to end it for good; quite possibly for everybody's good.

Just let go of the rope.

The Cybermen were gaining the upper hand. They were making the most of their biggest advantage - numbers - by dragging their foes away from each other and surrounding them in groups of nine or ten.

Unable, for the most part, to aid their fellows, the Bronze Knights were forced to fight defensively to keep their own lives.

'They've got two of ours in the ship!' cried Jolarr, startled by the new picture on the screen in the laboratory. 'They're tearing them apart! I think one of them's Henneker. Can't you do something?'

Grant moved to his side, his work apparently finished, and they stared together. The scene was relayed to them by a camera near the conversion chamber's ceiling, which offered a rigid and rather forced perspective. 'I've done all I can. It's up to the pipes now; how much they can take. They might not blow.'

'They've got to!'

'Let's hope so. There was more freon than I expected, that's something. The Cybermen used it as an engine coolant, as well for the hibernation stuff' Grant frowned. 'Wait a minute, what's going on down there?'

Jolarr saw it. The cl.u.s.ter of Cybermen which had gathered around Henneker was dissipating, abandoning him (alive, it appeared) to head for the exits. Their comrades joined them in short order, though they left behind what looked like a red metal-plated corpse. 'They're evacuating!'

'They won't get far,' said Grant with grim satisfaction. 'There's only room for one at a time on each ladder.'

'But they know what you've done!'

'And they're expecting it to harm them. That's good!' Grant clenched his fists and quietly urged the laws of physics to take their toll. 'I've backed up so much freon in that cubicle... it can't hold out. It can't!'

And then the nearest conversion compartment to the ladder on the topmost balcony exploded. A torrent of white liquid, so cold as to trail vapour, cascaded over the railing and scattered the hapless Cybermen with the force of its deluge. The last thing Jolarr and Grant saw, before the camera itself was knocked out of alignment, was a sea of thrashing, useless silver hands. Then Jolarr gave a whoop of victory as Grant, more practically, hurried to his terminal and checked its display.