Doctor Who - Downtime Part 34

It shot over the convoy with only feet to spare.

Crichton turned back to view the rout and tripped over Corporal Ishani lying face down in a shroud of web. He had given the order to pull back and forgotten to do it himself.

A Yeti loomed over him. He emptied his pistol into the brute point-blank. One blood-red eye spluttered dead. The creature reeled back momentarily. Crichton rolled out of its shadow and careered for cover.

As he ran, he decided to tell his wife everything. UNIT, Yeti, bug alerts, everything. Then he could plead insanity to whatever grounds for divorce she filed against him.

He reached the shelter of the convoy and ducked behind a jeep. The Yeti were still advancing. In the distance, the helicopter, apparently back under control, was turning over the west campus.

'What's happened to that rocket launcher?' he bellowed.

There were shouts from the next jeep, where the ATR was mounted. Then a cry of pain.

One operative fell backwards from the jeep, knocked off his balance by a blow from the launcher barrel, which was swinging wilfully on its mounting.

'It's loaded! Get down!' yelled the other squaddie as he wrestled with the weapon. The machine swung again and batted him away like a tennis ball.

For a moment, Crichton was looking into the muzzle a judgemental finger singling out the blame and about to carry out execution. Then it swung away and trained itself on the distant helicopter.

Brigadier Crichton threw himself up onto the back of the jeep. He stabbed repeatedly at the ATR's manual abort b.u.t.ton.

The LCD announced that the computer sights had mapped out their target. FIRE SEQUENCE INITIATED .

Crichton slammed a fist down on the control board. No response. He saw the barrel adjust slightly. The launcher fired itself. The recoil slammed him off his feet.

A stem of smoke cut the sky and flowered in gold and vermilion on the belly of the helicopter fuselage.

The Hind tilted and lost height rapidly, vanis.h.i.+ng behind the far side of the university.

Before they heard the boom, the Yeti were attacking the convoy.

The explosion thundered back and forth between the buildings. From the square, Lethbridge-Stewart watched a tower of oily smoke rise from behind the refectory block. The helicopter had come down near the ca.n.a.l. The alarm of the battle was fading.

Travers's head turned to watch the prisoner. Travers, but not Travers. Every movement of the old man's puppet, body was awkward, overblown. Invisible hands were angling and adjusting the head and limbs. The face contorted in a grimace of triumph.

'Tell me, Brigadier,' it confided jovially, 'which part of my Great Plan do you think most strategically successful?'

'None of it,' said Lethbridge-Stewart.

'What?'

'For a so-called Intelligence, it's pretty d.a.m.n stupid.

You're still trapped.'

Travers's hand extended. Travers's head studied it. 'No!'

The whole frame shuddered. The stick stomped angrily against the ground.

'That's not a body,' scoffed the Brigadier. 'You've trapped yourself in a web of cable and silicon. All of it stolen. And you can't venture beyond it.'

Travers's shape drew itself up to its full height scarcely enough to contain the energy focused through it. The brittle bones cracked in protest. The crown of the head bulged. A tear opened up on the left side of the temple. It ran down the cheek, stopping at the base of the ear. Green light seeped out.

The old body bag was coming apart at the seams.

'I slammed the door on the darkness. I shall perpetuate myself in every machine and being in my my world.' world.'

'Balderdas.h.!.+' The Brigadier surveyed the audience of Chillys. Rows of torpid young faces, all infuriatingly impa.s.sive to the fate of their world.

A movement caught his eye. A face was staring down from a sharp concrete angle on one of the walkways. He recognized Sarah immediately. She nodded slightly.

He flung his arm wide and played to the gallery. 'Your real power goes no further than the mainframe on this campus, Great One.' He pushed the performance up a couple of notches. 'All anyone has to do is pull the plug!'

He glimpsed Sarah mouthing 'Right' to herself, before she vanished.

And for heaven's sake hurry, woman, he thought. Even an ego the size of the Intelligence must have a limit on how long it's prepared to gloat.

The steely eyes in Travers's head were watching him closely. 'Protect the generators,' ordered the voice.

Several Chillys rose from their places and headed out of the arena.

Kate crouched back into a crevice as she heard footsteps approach. A figure rounded the corner and jumped to see her.

'For a minute I thought you'd gone,' gasped Sarah..

'Not yet.' The truth was that Kate was too confused to move. She'd walked into a war zone and had already compiled a list of questions to which she needed answers.

'Stay out of sight until I'm back,' said Sarah.

'But...'

But Sarah had already gone.

Kate felt nauseous. She didn't want to be involved and she didn't want to be left out. She wanted Gordy now. Her hands had clamped into fists clammy with the frustration of inactivity.

Her fingers were still stinging. She had been possessed by something something that she thought was in her head. But that thing had also been in her home. She had seen it for the monster it was.

She always took care of herself. No one gave her orders.

But she had lost control. She never lost control.

The gun was heavy inside her jacket. She stared up at the play of light on the inside of the sky canopy. The world was being closed in. The air had an acrid, burnt taste. Strands of web were catching in her hair. It was no good. She had to do something. Her dad was around her somewhere.

She slid from her hiding-place and started to dodge across the concrete, out along the walkway overlooking the university's central square.

She reached the stairs and glanced down. She was face to face with several Chillys on the way up.

32.

Access Denied he generator plant was built under the maintenance road.

T The air inside hummed.

Victoria clattered down three flights of metal steps to reach the control centre. She counted three security cameras on the way. Each of them had swivelled in its housing to follow her progress.

The cavernous generator chamber was like a small cathedral in size. It was deserted. A row of huge grey cylindrical turbines crouched along one side of the chamber.

Like everything else at New World, the turbines had been designed by the Chancellor, or what Victoria had believed was the Chancellor. She had tried to persuade him to invest in solar-powered generators. Now she had seen the canopy blotting out the sky, she knew why he had resisted so vehemently.

She had one chance. She was certain that her own pa.s.sword into the computer system would be deleted by now, but she still knew the Chancellor's personal access codes. She had secretly made a mental note of them long ago an act of kindness in case the old man, who never seemed to write anything down, ever forgot them. If the system still accepted the codes, she would override and shut down every function on the mainframe and see the bulldozers in on the following morning.

There was an access terminal set up beside an output guidance console at the far side of the chamber. She set to work at the keyboard, concentrating, using the disciplines she had learned from him him to stay calm and think clearly. to stay calm and think clearly.

The log-in code took a full minute to be accepted. Victoria proceeded through a maze of menus that led her eventually to select the Generator Output System.

As she waited she heard the clatter of feet on the metal stairs. The screen flickered and scrolled with checks for viruses and trojan variants.

It finally cleared and displayed its text: ACCESS DENIED

She began to try other codes. Any codes.

ACCESS DENIED.

ACCESS DENIED.

'Access denied, Victoria... my dear.'

She spun round and saw Christopher Rice watching her from the centre of the chamber. His usual cold smile had an odd warmth to it. He was levelling a gun at her. Behind him, a Yeti loomed, rocking slowly on its hind claws.

'I have to stop it,' Victoria protested.

Christopher began to advance. 'Way, way out of time.'

Plainly he was back to his normal self, turning on his oily charm at the most inappropriate moment. 'Let's see what the New World has to offer.'

Victoria knew that her ruin was the objective he had set himself. He didn't seem to have noticed that something else was now setting the agenda.

'The Intelligence doesn't care about you,' she insisted.

'I look after myself.'

The Yeti was growling softly behind him. Victoria caught a look in its eye that pierced her. She saw through the cold vice of alien hatred that gripped and drove the huge creature, glimpsed something that struggled deep inside. Another tormented will that strove just to comprehend its own existence. The Yeti seemed to have a soul.

Christopher was moving closer.

'Get away from her!'

A woman was running towards them. It was Sarah Jane Smith, unarmed and apparently unconcerned by the danger to her herself.

Christopher stepped backwards with a grin, swinging the gun back and forth to cover both women. 'Well, the press never miss a trick, do they?'