Doctor Who_ Battlefield Part 5

The Doctor aimed the tracker down the hill and squinted with one eye through a small gla.s.s sight. 'It's a nuclear missile convoy.'

'How do you know?'

'It has a graveyard stench.'

At first he aimed the tracker directly at the convoy: the source of the signal was there. But that was ridiculous.

Typical soldiers, he thought, always getting in the way. He wondered how far UNIT had come since the days of Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. Probably coldly technological and characterless without the Brigadier's inimitable personality. Yet they should certainly be above playing with out-dated nuclear missiles.

He stabbed irritably at the scanner keys and tried again: no difference. In a sudden flash, he realized that the source of the signal was located beyond the convoy. The transmissions were coming from the lake itself.

The sense of relief with which Lieutenant Richards, seconded from the Royal Welch Fusiliers, greeted the Brigadier was tainted with foreboding. Bambera had the reputation of a martinet. Twice as hard because she was a black woman with twice as much to prove. He saluted sharply, praying that his mudcaked uniform might work in his favour.

Bambera made a brief inspection of the damage, noting the smashed sign marked Carbury Trust Carbury Trust. 'That'll be trouble,' she said.

The smell of diesel was strong. Eleven of the sixteen wheels on the missile launch vehicle were buried in the mud at the lake's edge. The two rear axles were smashed.

'Oh, very good. Why not drive it right into the lake?'

Richards glanced at Sergeant Zbrigniev, who had been following in the Brigadier's tracks. He kept a fixed stare on the ground.

'All right, Richards,' said Bambera. 'Extreme circ.u.mstances. We nearly landed in a ditch too.'

'Sir,' he said with relief.

'Let's just get this thing out of here before the ratpack gets wind of it.'

She mounted the steps of the command trailer. The interior was comfortably functional. The walls lined with Panybko-Mishkin communication stations and missile control decks. A j.a.panese sparks was at work on one of the panels.

Bambera pulled off her beret and sank into a deep leather swivel chair. 'What I need, Richards, is a large shot of coffee.'

'No sugar, no milk, sir.' He nodded to the soldier on brew up duty.

Good man, she thought, he's been talking to Zbrigniev.

From overhead, there was a whoos.h.i.+ng scream of air followed by a distant explosion.

'What was that?'

'Low flying jet?' suggested Richards.

'Not unless they're looking for us. Can you check Centcomp for flightpaths yet?'

The sparks looked round and shook his head. 'Sorry sir, still can't get a signal out past a two-klick radius. It's just white noise right across the dial.'

Bambera wondered who'd started a war without telling her.

'Excuse me, sir.' Zbrigniev was standing in the door.

'There's a Doctor Warmsly out here who wants to talk to someone in charge.'

'Already? That was fast.' She turned to her lieutenant.

'You talk to him, Richards, and get him away from here.

We have enough trouble as it is.'

The storm had tangled the branches of a fallen tree with a ma.s.s of briar making the path impenetrable. The Black Knight drew the sword from his back scabbard and began to cut his way through.

He had heard the inward flight of the first scout which heralded a larger party. The signal he followed was growing weaker and he had no chart to find his way. No man had visited Avallion for generations past. But he had leapt the chasm, and the joy of that sustained him; for there was little joy here.

This place called Avallion was a fitting battlefield. It had grown neglected and cankered. Yet the homelands he had spurned prospered and bloomed full fair for those who served the tyrant queen. Even his own family at Garde-Joyeuse paid Deathless Morgaine tribute through fear. But at what price had she gained such dark power? They said her sorcery had cost her her soul. And how many other souls had she pledged in blood for the world?

The air screamed again and he saw vapour trails in the cold sky. Seconds later, he heard the impact explosions.

Time was catching him up. Positions were being staked.

The battle lines were being drawn. It would be a final glorious battle between the past and the present. The present had already arrived. But he was summoned by the past, by the oath he had inherited and sworn when he reached manhood. And he was his father and all his forebears in one.

He set his sword to the thicket afresh and hacked at a new path.

Chapter 4.

The air coming from the lake was dank. A group of squaddies had strung a tape barrier around the convoy and across the track. Ace and the Doctor watched from a distance as Peter Warmsly remonstrated vigorously with them, pointing repeatedly to the dig area seventy-five metres to the east. The phrase most frequently reiterated was 'b.l.o.o.d.y vandals!'.

The air screeched twice over and the explosions echoed round the hills that enclosed the lake.

'They're not sh.e.l.ls,' insisted Ace. 'There're more like rockets.'

'Meteorites,' said the Doctor.

'Really?'

He had been conducting an extended pocket-slapping session which had dislodged a jumble of gadgets and oddments from his deceptively lightweight jacket.

Eventually, in his hat, he found a pair of plastic-coated cards.

'I never thought I'd need these again.' He offered one to Ace. 'This should remove a few obstacles.'

She looked at the ID. It was stamped UNIT with a logo different to the signs painted on the vehicles. The photo showed a woman aged about thirty with shoulder-length honey-coloured hair.

The Doctor had set off along the track.

'Who's Elizabeth Shaw?' called Ace, hurrying to keep up. 'She doesn't look anything like me!'

The card's expiry date was 31.12.75.

'Never mind that. Just act like a physicist.'

'But...'

To her astonishment, they marched purposefully past the guards who were dealing with Dr Warmsly, through the scattered convoy vehicles and had almost reached the command vehicle before anyone even noticed.

The next thing she knew, they were surrounded by a group of large and bolshy-looking soldiers.

The Doctor smiled, raised his hat and proffered the ID cards. 'Take me to your commanding officer,' he said.

'Bring them up here,' called a woman's voice.

Ace saw a woman with African features disappear inside the door of the command vehicle. She had been carrying a foam cup which probably contained hot coffee.

'Excellent,' said the Doctor and marched up the steps without waiting to be shoved. Inside the vehicle, he noted the woman's hard stare and the three stars and a crown on her epaulettes that marked out her rank.

'Now, Brigadier, what seems to be the problem?' he said.

The sparks looked round in astonishment. Ace smirked.

'Excuse me?' snapped the Brigadier.

The Doctor looked round at the banks of hissing instruments. 'Well, a ma.s.sive systems failure caused by an induced power overload. An EMP perhaps.'

'An Electromagnetic Pulse Effect,' said Ace.

'Caused by?'

'A nuclear detonation... usually.'

The Brigadier gritted her teeth. These two were like a double act. 'I think I would have noticed a nuclear explosion.'

'They are conspicuous,' agreed the Doctor and handed over the two ID cards.

Ace frowned. 'If there was no nuke where did the energy pulse come from?'

'Exactly,' he said and produced his tracking device again. But he could not see the lake from here.

The Brigadier looked at the cards with disbelief and then pa.s.sed them to her sergeant. The intruders were causing her a lot of aggravation. She reckoned it was a press stunt and curbed in her temper with difficulty.

'All systems were the result of a minor technical difficulty. Now I don't know where you got these cards from, but I intend to find out!' She nodded to the soldier by the door. 'Escort these two outside and hold them there.'

Finding a firm hand on his shoulder, the Doctor insisted, 'Before I go I'd just like to say three things.'

'What!'

He was being hustled through the door. 'Yeti, Autons, Daleks...'

He was already outside. 'Cybermen and Silurians!' he shouted in vain.

Ace nearly tumbled down the steps after him. 'That was five,' she said.

The Doctor scowled. 'Amongst all the varied wonders of the universe, nothing is more firmly clamped shut than the military mind!'

He looked out at the grey lake, where he reckoned the trouble was really coming from. When he glanced back at Command Vehicle, the sergeant was standing in the door.

He was holding the ID cards and looking down at the Doctor with marked curiosity.

'Zbrigniev,' called the Brigadier's voice. The sergeant vanished. The Doctor smiled half-heartedly at their guard, dug into his pockets and found an individual packet of broken ginger biscuits. He tore open the top and offered the a.s.sortment of fragments to Ace.

'Well done, Zbrigniev. Two civilians waltz up with a pair of antiquated pa.s.ses and get let in. Why?'

'Sir?' The sergeant looked more confused than sheepish, which is not what she would have expected. Something was going on. Bambera leaned forward in her chair.

'You know something. What is it?'

He looked more awkward than ever and fiddled nervously with the ID cards. 'Off the record, sir.'

'Off the record.'

'Well, sir... When I served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, we had a scientific adviser called the Doctor.'

'The man outside?'

'No sir, but... ' He looked down at the card again and shook his head.

'But?'

Zbrigniev took the plunge. 'He changed his appearance, sir. Twice.'

'A disguise?'

'No, sir. The word was that he changed his whole physical appearance and his personality too... sir.' He saw her look of annoyance and quickly held out the ID cards again. 'Elizabeth Shaw. She worked with the Doctor for a while.'

'Yes,' said Bambera.

'And this was the Doctor. This is the first one with the white hair. Only then he changed, really changed to a man with curly brown hair. Much more eccentric too, sir. But they always said it was the same man. The same Doctor.'