Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers Part 27

'Doctor, I... ' I paused, not knowing what to say. 'I've seen something. An alien war.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Perhaps I should have warned you. It seems likely that the creature can communicate with its capsule on some sort of mental plane. The control device was clearly seeking to establish a psychic communications protocol with you!' 'But the images...'

'Random bits and pieces, as interpreted by your mind. Still, they may be useful.' The Doctor looked closely at me, and for a moment I almost expected him to pull a great watch from the pocket of his frock coat and swing it before my eyes. 'Tell me everything you saw,' he said earnestly.

The words came out in a tumble I was still struggling to make sense of what I had seen. 'It was so real,' I concluded. 'Just as real as what I see now.'

'Fascinating, quite fascinating!' said the Doctor with a chuckle. 'It confirms some details of my hypothesis, but we need more information. Come along, my boy. We must find the TARDIS!'

And, in case of another 'attack', he took the control panel from me, then set off through the seemingly deserted corridors of the residence. I glanced at the two corpses as we left the room, but even I could sense that the city was overflowing with the dead.

'What is this hypothesis of yours?' I called, struggling to keep up with the Doctor's unexpected burst of speed.

'Oh, that's not important,' he said. 'I have an idea of what drives this creature. But the important thing is to find a way of destroying it, and the technology that came with it.'

'But, Doctor,' I said, 'I doubt even I could make head or tail of that capsule. And there doesn't seem to be a weapon in it, or...' 'We cannot be sure the capsule is benign, or that the Mongols will not stumble upon some nugget of information they should not have.' The Doctor snorted. 'Unlike our friend the Monk, I must strive to keep the waters of time clear, not make them still muddier!'

The Doctor, of course, knew the route into the cellars very well. I almost expected to see a path worn into the cold flagstones, given the frequency of his trips to the TARDIS over the preceding weeks and months. He paused on the threshold of the great chamber that contained his s.h.i.+p, in case there were still guards within, but, as we had expected, they had long since been called elsewhere. The room was even darker than I remembered it and, after the unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the s.h.i.+p, the air was thick with the bitter stench of smoke and burnt wood.

The TARDIS stood implacably in the centre of the chamber, and the Doctor clapped his hands in delight when he saw that it was undamaged.

'You always said the TARDIS was indestructible,' I reminded the old man 'Did I?' bl.u.s.tered the Doctor. 'Well, shall we say, ninety per cent indestructible, hmm?'

I didn't question his nonsensical words, but instead stood behind him as he fumbled his key into the lock. He pushed open the door, and we stepped into the control room. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard the usual hum of the room become louder, and the white, circle-covered walls brighten, as if it welcomed our attention after all this time.

'My boy,' said the Doctor, 'would you mind looking under this panel for a concealed switch? It is shaped like a "T", and it needs pulling towards you.' He indicated one part of the hexagonal control desk at the heart of the room.

I rooted about under the panel and finally found what he had described. It was tiny, little bigger than a finger, but although I was worried that it would snap it was incredibly strong. I tugged it, and heard a precise 'click' over my head.

I got to my feet to find that a subsection of the panel had rotated to reveal a host of connectors and sockets that I'd never seen before. Some wires were more like high-voltage cables, and terminated in a bewildering array of connectors; others were little thicker than strands of hair and pulsed with light. The Doctor, his face a picture of concentration, was furiously inserting a handful of these threads into pores on the underside of the alien panel. I looked up at the scanner on the wall, which showed static then, gradually, shapes.

'Like so much of the TARDIS,' announced the Doctor at last, patting his machine lovingly, 'it may not be pretty, but it works!' He inserted the final wire. 'There!'

The monochrome picture on the scanner stabilised. After a little more fiddling the picture took on colours, and I saw red volcanic mountains and myriad suited aliens and brown vehicles in the midst of battle.

'That's what I saw,' I said.

'This planet is doubtless many light years from Earth,' said the Doctor, his voice sounding as cold as the great voids of s.p.a.ce. 'It might no longer support life, or it may even have been destroyed. Or perhaps other races live there now.' He turned to me gravely. 'Our enemy is a soldier, still fighting a war that ended centuries ago.'

XXII.

Lux aeterna luceat eis Dodo was bored.

At first she had stared at the skeletal creature with wide-eyed loathing, remembering the horrific tales of its attacks and her own encounter with it when she was in Lesia's room. She found it difficult to believe that the thing could so perfectly mimic someone she had grown to know so well; she had watched over what she thought was Lesia's sleeping body for hours, and not once had she suspected it was not her.

She stared at the needles that extended from the creature's claws and face, and was grateful beyond words that she had been luckier than so many others. But the Doctor seemed to be right the creature seemed to have a limited number of targets in mind.

It stood motionless, seemingly unconcerned by their presence. Only when the human s.h.i.+eld that protected Dmitri moved a little, allowing the creature a glimpse of him, did its claws twitch as its gaze rested on him for a moment.

But it made no attempt to attack, and so Dodo was bored.

As long as she stayed in position, alongside Lesia, Nahum and Isaac, Dmitri was quite safe. He seemed not to know what was going on; he sat on the floor, facing away from the creature, whispering into his upturned palms.

Soon after the Doctor and Steven had left, the group had helped Dmitri to his feet and started to walk away from the crypt but the monster had shadowed them obediently, stopping when they stopped and keeping pace with them as they moved. They had concluded that flight was impossible, and returned to the casket to await the Doctor's return.

Dodo turned to Lesia. 'Are you all right?'

'I am cold,' her friend said with a thin smile. 'But I am glad to be alive. When I think of the others, who have died...' Dodo could see tears gathering in the corners of Lesia's eyes. 'Do you know, Elisabet used to save the finest sweetmeats for me. She was never blessed with a daughter of her own. And after my mother died...' Lesia pulled the cloak tighter around herself.

'I hope the Doctor returns soon,' said Dodo, trying to cast a more positive light on their grim situation.

'You feel more comfortable when he is with you, do you not?'

Dodo nodded. 'With him around, everything is OK.

Somehow, he sorts things out.'

'And yet he has failed the people of Kiev. If what you all tell me is true, we could be the only ones alive!'

Dodo was about to reply when Isaac suddenly exclaimed 'I've got it!' They all turned to the old man, prompting the creature to stare in their direction, its claws twitching.

'Sorry?' said Dodo.

'I was mulling over what the Doctor said,' Isaac continued.

'Why does this beast not attack Dmitri when we stand in the way?'

Dodo paused, trying to remember the creature's words. 'I suppose it wants to keep us alive.'

'But what do we all have in common? Or, what do all the victims have in common?'

'The builder, various soldiers, the cook...' Nahum counted the deaths out on his fingers. 'They're all...' But his face was blank; he still did not understand.

Isaac turned to Dodo. 'It's as plain as the nose on your face!'

he said, with a smile.

'They're all Russians!' exclaimed Nahum at last. 'That's why we're able to protect Dmitri, why Steven was not attacked, why ' 'Yes, yes!' exclaimed Isaac. 'It fits, does it not?'

Dodo mulled this over. 'No, hang on a minute. What about Lesia?'

'Ah,' said Isaac, gravely. 'Ah. I hadn't thought of that.'

Lesia nodded. 'My family has lived in the Russian princ.i.p.alities for centuries!' she said. 'We're of pure stock.'

'Let us talk of people as people, and not as cattle,' said Isaac, shaking his head. 'No, my idea is wrong. There must be something else.'

'But would it not be ironic,' said Nahum, 'if the "saviour" of the city desired to kill only its citizens!'

Dodo sighed. 'As for it being used as a weapon against the Tartars... Well, I can think of better!'

'I wonder what is going on, up there,' said Lesia, glancing towards the ceiling.

As if in answer, faint noises came from the tunnels noises accompanied by a hint of torchlight.

'The Doctor?' she queried.

'It is too soon,' said Isaac.

'And coming from the wrong direction,' observed Nahum, pointing towards the pa.s.sageways that led towards the cathedral.

The sound solidified, became more insistent the noise of many feet, marching to a regular rhythm. The light grew brighter still. 'Mongols!' exclaimed Dodo.

XXIII.

Bellum gerens in caelo The Doctor's voice was grave and I struggled to hear him above the hum of the control room. Having downloaded a vast amount of information from the controlling device, and crosschecked it against whatever data the TARDIS had access to, he stood by the scanner, his head turned away from me, gripping his lapels tightly.

'Can you imagine, my boy, a war fought between people that you and I would not be able to tell apart? A war of genetic purity, based on age-old hatreds and a coexistence that shattered in an explosion of violence? A conflict where only a blood test can tell if your neighbour is friend or foe!' He shook his head slowly, as if he could scarcely countenance such atrocities. 'This creature, which has moved with stealth and guile through the hierarchy of this city, is in effect only obeying its orders. It is soldier, a.s.sa.s.sin and spy rolled into one, with limited chameleonic and psychic abilities. Launched into the heart of enemy territory, it would target one particular ethnic group. It would kill but, more importantly, it would seek out the leaders, the authority structures, and attack them with something far more subtle.'

'Madness?' I suggested.

The Doctor nodded. 'As we have seen. The most awful destruction comes from within. The battlegrounds of this alien world were littered with impregnable city-sized fortresses, or bunkers. One soldier of this type could infiltrate and destroy an entire bunker much more efficient than sending an army, or raining down useless sh.e.l.ls.'

'If it's as difficult as you say to tell these ethnic groups apart,'

I said, 'how did this creature do it?'

'The information is not clear, but I have an idea,' said the Doctor. 'Those spines that extend from its head and hands. Do they remind you of something?'

'I suppose... needles?' I suggested tentatively.

'Yes. Needles! Hollow tubes with which one can infect an enemy but first they can be used to draw up a little blood from the victim. The genetic material can then be processed and checked against the expected enemy.'

'That's what happened when it attacked me,' I said. 'It obviously came to the conclusion that I was different from the Russians it had attacked. So it didn't kill me.'

'Fascinating, hmm?' said the Doctor. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend!'

'And it's that fear of harming a potential ally that allows the others to keep Dmitri safe?'

'Exactly, my boy! Exactly.'

'But why is this...' I struggled for a name 'Why is this bunker soldier attacking the people of Kiev? Surely it must realise they're all completely alien to it?'

'To understand that, we need to consider how it came here.'

'By accident?'

'Indeed. By accident. The bunker soldier, as you call it, has no business here. Such creatures were simply fired towards enemy positions in these special capsules. Clearly this one missed!'

'I should say so!'

'Somehow it overshot its target,' said the Doctor, whose hands were blurring over the controls. 'Indeed, it had sufficient acceleration to penetrate the atmosphere of its planet and remove itself from its gravitational pull. It must have drifted through the cosmos, possibly already damaged, for many thousands of years.'

'But eventually it was pulled towards the Earth?'

'That's right,' said the Doctor, reconnecting the controlling device. 'Completely by chance! It must have made quite an impact on the people who saw it land!'

'And they brought it to the cathedral, thinking it was some sort of religious icon.'

'Yes. A survivor of a heavenly war which, I suppose, is not too inaccurate a way of putting it. In any event, to answer your question at last, it seems likely that either the creature, or the casket that controls it, were damaged. It resorted to an earlier, and much more basic, way of establis.h.i.+ng the ethnic nature of its enemy.'

The Doctor looked at me keenly, as if expecting me to have followed a logic. But, just for a moment, he had left me behind.

'Sorry, I don't understand.'

'Think about it. If you're shot into enemy territory, who's the first person you're likely to see?'

'An enemy?'

The Doctor nodded. 'And it seems clear that it was Yevhen and his friends who opened the casket.'

'So the creature thinks the people of Kiev are its enemies.'

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'I suppose Yevhen's plan was not without merit if only he could have found a way of getting the Mongols to be the first to open the casket!'

'Now that would would have changed history,' I said, for once catching a glimpse of the Doctor's dilemma. have changed history,' I said, for once catching a glimpse of the Doctor's dilemma.

'Yes, yes, my boy. Now, enough of this chitchat. I need to find some way of telling this creature...'

'Doctor...'

'Please let me finish. We must tell this creature that the "bunker" of Kiev has now been destroyed and, in essence, its mission is over.'

'Doctor!'

'What is it?' he snapped.