Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 46

'This is...' he spluttered. 'This is... incredible... this is... Ace...'

227.

Chapter Twenty-four.

Bill Collins was disorientated to say the least. Their flight from the hospital had been gut-wrenching. In the brief ten minutes of chaos wrought by the air-strike they had taken off in the helicopter' dodging down canyon-like streets, almost touching the roofs of abandoned buses' in as much danger of being shot by the RAF as by the enemy.

The a.s.sault was working enemy s.h.i.+ps were on fire.

As they flew over the river, the pilot had suddenly gone into a dive.

An RAF Lightning, its tail on fire, was bearing down on them. They were almost touching the water...

A shadow pa.s.sed overhead. London Bridge. They were going under it. The roaring of the blades was momentarily multiplied, then was drowned in an explosion that rocked the chopper as it tried to ascend.

The jet had slammed into the bridge behind them.

'That's some flyin', boy!' Crawhammer had bellowed.

Collins had struggled to hold his stomach together.

They had landed outside Drakefell's flat in Islington. The lock on the door had been broken. Drakefell and his PA were there Drakefell in pyjamas and dressing-gown. Crawhammer hadn't even waited for him to dress. He'd bundled Drakefell into the helicopter, ignoring the protests and then the blows of Sarah Eyles, and ordered them to fly like h.e.l.l for Winnerton. They'd left Sarah an angry dot on a receding cityscape.

The journey had been easy enemy s.h.i.+ps were much spa.r.s.er as they left London, and simple to avoid.

They found the men waiting for orders, cut off from communication and confused.

'I'll give you an order!' Crawhammer had barked. 'Red alert, boys!'

And he had marched into the central control room and opened a set of locked metal doors at the far end. Behind them lay the controls to the ballistic missile system they were developing.

'Major Collins, I want the missiles armed. All of 'em.'

Collins suddenly felt cold. 'Armed with what, sir?'

'Nuclear warheads, Major. It's time to kick a.s.s!'

228.

'I tell you I'm fine.' Rita scowled at the Doctor and brushed his hand away from the bruise on her forehead. 'I just fell, OK? Fell, not fainted. I'm not the type of girl who faints. Are we clear on that?'

From the other side of the room Jimmy gave a snort of contempt and lit up a cigarette.

Rita shot him a filthy look. 'Shouldn't you be dead or something?'

Jimmy scowled at her and slouched against the wall, blowing a cloud of tobacco smoke into the room.

The Doctor looked across at where George Limb his his George Limb George Limb was training a gun on his morning-coated counterpart, who seemed quite unruffled by the experience.

'I did rather imagine you might take it as a compliment, old bean.

You must understand, I wanted the best. Someone I could trust.'

And slowly the two of them began to smirk like schoolchildren.

Then one of them began to cough and wheeze. The other didn't.

'You should get that chest looked at,' he said. 'I can get someone to look at it for you. You need never be out of breath again.'

Then he turned to the Doctor.

'Is the young lady going to be all right?'

'I think so,' said the Doctor. 'A combination of malnutrition, exhaustion and shock. All obsolete in your England, no doubt.'

'Indeed...'

The prime minister paused and raised a finger to his temple. Slowly he smiled.

'This ought to be amusing... Good evening, General.'

One wall of the room holographic, it would seem melted away to reveal an enormous television screen. And on the screen was none other than General Crawhammer.

'Now listen here, you Commie English b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, or whatever the h.e.l.l you are, I got a whole bunch of nuuu-cleeeer missiles aimed right into your big s.h.i.+ny crack! Now I'm askin' you politely to get yo' forces back through that hole and close it up. You got ten minutes to decide.'

And the screen went blank.

'How'd I do, Major?'

'Very well, sir.' Bill Collins had believed Crawhammer's ultimatum.

But then he knew Crawhammer.

The general had said virtually nothing to him since they had arrived.

He had issued orders, stomped around' but explained nothing. Not that much needed explaining. Everywhere was cut off from everywhere else by the blanket communications jam. The chain of command would be screwed they'd never get the birds in the air if they waited for 229 someone to fly to Was.h.i.+ngton to consult the president.

Winnerton Flats was perhaps the only facility this side of the Pacific that had independent control of its own nuclear a.r.s.enal. For developmental purposes, of course.

The general was clearly convinced where his duty lay.

He had stood over Drakefell while the shaking man, looking frail and frightened and clutching his dressing-gown around himself, input the authorisation codes for the usual test-firings. Only the payload was unusual.

Collins was surprised when Crawhammer fetched the camera crew in from outside the base.

'I bet this baby gets through,' he'd grunted. He'd been right.

'What now, sir?' Collins asked.

'We wait and see, Major.'

George Limb, prime minister of Britain and Empire, smiled gently to himself.

'Bluffing, of course,' said his less august double. 'The general is a death or glory man. He would simply have fired the wretched things. No... I sense your hand in this, Doctor, and you would never be so... apocalyptic.'

'Well done,' said the Doctor. 'The rather severe deadline wasn't my idea, however and it leaves our friend here with a dilemma.'

'Whether or not to trust the general's restraint,' the PM concluded.

'Quite,' said the Doctor.

Time pa.s.sed. Crawhammer was silent and grim, turning the situation over in his mind.

The Doctor had told him on no account to actually fire the missiles.

He hadn't told him what to do if that didn't work.

'Sir...' Bill Collins prompted. The deadline was almost up.

What choice did he have? They didn't know the situation out there, but it couldn't be good. They had to strike back with whatever they had at their disposal.

The Doctor had warned of the consequences. But was enslavement to a perverse and alien ideology worse?

The Doctor had said a lot. He'd talked about an old man in a wheelchair in Louisiana...

Crawhammer dismissed the image from his mind, but it popped straight back.

'Ten minutes, General,' said Collins.

At his sides, Crawhammer clenched his fists until the knuckles whitened.

230.

Inside the Ministry of Augmentation, two identical old men and a Time Lord were wasting precious minutes, while Jimmy and Rita looked on.

'Quite apart from the terrible danger involved in breaching realities.'

the Doctor pleaded, 'I can't see what you hope to achieve by this invasion.'

'Living s.p.a.ce, Doctor. This planet is now terribly overcrowded people are born, but n.o.body dies any more. Interstellar travel, sadly, is still beyond our capability, and the challenge of colonising other planets formidable.'

'So you intend to colonise another Earth. Presumably wiping out its existing population as you go.'

The old man looked sympathetic. Suddenly, in his morning coat and winged collar, he reminded the Doctor of an undertaker.

'It is regrettable,' he said, 'but we must remember that there is an infinity of Earths out there. Some will thrive, some will be obliterated.'

'And you think that excuses what you're doing?' the Doctor hissed.

'I find Liebermann's ideas cast the universe or should I say multiverse into an entirely new, much larger moral framework'

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed. 'Moral framework'

'Do I know any Liebermann?' queried the other George Limb.

'A brilliant scientist. His theories of trans-universality have made all this possible.

'Based, presumably, on our own dear Betty.'

'Indeed. Liebermann is a genius. A European Jew. Perhaps in your world he never made it through the war. Perhaps he merely wandered a different path... Look, would you mind awfully lowering the gun?'

'Yes,' the Doctor acidly cut in, 'I've heard about people threatening to kill themselves, but this is ridiculous.'

'Not as ridiculous as you might think' Doctor.' Limb smiled that log smile of his and relaxed his aim slightly. 'As I told you, I've been working towards this moment for many years, tweaking and turns the tides of time in order to avoid a rather unpleasant fate.'

'Trying to avoid your destiny.'

'Destiny seems such a final word. Something that final needs to be thought about carefully, planned for, prepared. One should always have an eye on the future.'

'And you think that this is it? You think this is your future?'

Limb gazed around the plush interior of the office. 'It all seems very nice. He's prime minister, you know. And a great one, it would seem.

He has embraced the instrument of his our doom and made it serve him and the world.

'Augmentation.'

231.

'Indeed.' Limb nodded to himself. 'As futures go, this world seems very clean and tidy.'

'Tell that to the poor coots lined up downstairs,' spat Rita.

'Oh, you have it quite wrong, my dear. Those poor people are being helped towards a better way of life.' The prime minister smiled genially. 'We're taking away their disease, their weakness, the burden of frail old age.'

'Ultimately, you risk taking away their free will, their hope, their humanity,' snapped the Doctor.

The prime minister sighed. 'So many of you misunderstand what it is we are trying to do here. Augmentation is the future, a good clean future for us all.'