Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 17

'Yes,' said the Doctor thoughtfully. 'So I'd noticed. I wonder how you knew?'

'Do you really believe, Doctor,' said Leibniz in his crisp voice, 'that no humans at all have extrasensory abilities?' The Doctor, for once, was lost for words.

'It's why I was a.s.signed to this mission,' Leibniz continued. 'I don't work for Cheynor, although he doesn't know it. I work for the Earth Security Council as 138 a resident intuitive.' For a moment he flicked his diamond-bright gaze towards the Doctor. 'I'm a telepath, Doctor.'

'I see.' The Doctor's uneasy eyes looked Leibniz up and down. 'And you just happen to be around when a mind-controlling alien turns up?'

Leibniz smiled grimly. 'I could say the same about you, Doctor. Didn't you come here looking for trouble?'

'I never need to,' muttered the Doctor grouchily. 'Trouble's always right there waiting for me when I get up in the morning.' He glanced at Leibniz.

'Not that I sleep. Properly,' he added.

'I see. Well, I was sent by Adjudicator Hagen. She pulled strings to get me a.s.signed to this mission, as soon as we knew Phractons were involved, so that I could have an advantage in negotiations. They're a mental collective, you see, a kind of swarm '

'I've read about them,' said the Doctor curtly.

'Hagen found out don't ask me how that Earth was sending the Phoenix Phoenix off on a suicide mission. It's all a setup. They wanted a diversion to keep the Phracs away from Earth's solar system, and we're the cat's-paw. Hagen sent me to see if anything could off on a suicide mission. It's all a setup. They wanted a diversion to keep the Phracs away from Earth's solar system, and we're the cat's-paw. Hagen sent me to see if anything could really really be done. If I could negotiate, try and commune with the Phracs more closely. And then this spanner gets thrown in the works. I didn't expect anything like it.' be done. If I could negotiate, try and commune with the Phracs more closely. And then this spanner gets thrown in the works. I didn't expect anything like it.'

'A diplomatic party's incineration is rather more than an inconvenience,'

suggested the Doctor. 'By the way, you do realize you're driving straight towards those gla.s.s doors, don't you?'

'I'm fully aware, Doctor.'

'Good, good. Just checking. Had I better, ah, duck down, or cover my eyes, for example?'

'If you like,' said Leibniz, as the vast, black-gla.s.s entrance of the Banksburgh Sports Complex loomed in the viewer.

The Doctor slid lower in his seat.

'It won't help, of course,' Leibniz added.

The skimmer hit the doors with a crash and was thrown slightly off centre.

Splinters of black gla.s.s shot past the windows. The vehicle hit the floor of the foyer, juddering furiously and shaking the Doctor and Leibniz up and down.

Then it hit the nearest wall and came to a complete stop.

To the left of her fighter, Ca.s.sie Hogarth could see distant mountains and the slim dart of one flanking s.h.i.+p. To her right, the shattered towers of Banksburgh and the other flanker. And dead ahead, a wall of Phrac units.

The enhancer over her left eye showed the landscape in textured detail.

It still failed to make more than blobs of the creatures in their sh.e.l.ls, the airborne army heading for her and the rest of the squadron.

139.

'Engage them dead centre.' She heard her own voice, robotic, crackling in the speaker inside her helmet. 'Let's show we mean business.'

'Acknowledged,' said her left flanker.

'Acknowledged,' confirmed the right flanker.

Ca.s.sie eased her s.h.i.+p down, half seeing, half feeling the others follow her lead.

She remembered other worlds, other battles. The Sontaran whose head had deflated like a balloon when she blew his probic vent open on t.i.tan. The Caxtarid who had kept her prisoner for hours in the dense swamplands of one of their moons, and who had let her escape only when it was obvious that the tanks were raging through the front lines, destroying everything. She remembered the Caxtarid every time she looked in the mirror. Preserved human eyes were highly valued trophies for them. It had been Ca.s.sie's price for her life.

Why? Why had these old memories suddenly surged, bringing fury, hatred?

There were voices, furiously demanding orders, in her ears. She realized she had missed her optimum mark by two seconds.

'Lock on and fire!' she screamed.

The sky erupted in streams of light.

A Phracton module, spinning towards her, gushed smoke and a trail of something blue before pirouetting groundwards.

Ca.s.sie banked and swerved. The Phoenix Phoenix fighters were losing formation. fighters were losing formation.

Phracs were returning the fire, and she saw three traces flare and die on her monitor. There was debris. Wheels of flame whirled in the air like angry demons.

Ca.s.sie flipped through a full circle, aware that there was now total confusion in her headphones. She snapped several orders, but doubted they got through.

And right in front of her, there was a Phracton unit, so close she could almost see the creature's eyes.

Reflexes kicked in and she fired once, twice, too many times. The creature's casing shattered and her own fighter hit the explosive backlash with an impact that threw her wildly off course, ground becoming sky.

Ca.s.sie could hear her own breath in her ears. She tried desperately to regain control of her s.h.i.+p. Banksburgh was coming up fast on the viewer, there were two Phracs on her tail, and she'd lost the squadron.

It was over.

Both of her pursuers opened fire. Her own hand clicked twice on the FIRE control. It was her last action before she died.

As Ca.s.sie and her s.h.i.+p were incinerated, the thought remained, almost as if it lingered on, somewhere, without her: What was this all for?

140.

On the tracking screen, the formation had splintered into chaos the second they hit the Phracton attack line. They had all seen Hogarth's left flanker go down, but she seemed to have abandoned the other.

'd.a.m.n! Hogarth, what are you doing?' Cheynor could not believe his eyes.

'She was late with the initial run. Of all the people to miss the optimum '

'If they attack the s.h.i.+p,' Bernice asked quietly, 'have we got sufficient defences to keep them back?'

The look which Cheynor gave her was a mixture of pity and despair.

And on the screen, Hogarth's own trace flared and died.

Livewire's eyes opened.

Trinket jumped to his feet, dropping his video game to the floor with a clatter.

She sat up, blinking, and in one sudden, decisive movement she pulled the sensor-pads from her temples. The screens above her couch began to flash and emit a trilling alarm.

'No!' Trinket shouted. He had never been so frightened. 'Nurse! Nurse, quickly!'

'I can hear the sound of death,' said Livewire gently. Her expression was one of bafflement.

'They're fighting.' Trinket was backing away from her slowly.

'Fighting?'

'The Earth s.h.i.+p and the Phracs. They think they're going to battle it out over this lump of rock.' Trinket surprised himself with his vehemence.

Livewire swayed back and forth for a second or two, and then looked up at her brother with a bright, clear gaze.

'Who are you?' she asked.

The Doctor flung open the doors to the arena and was thrown back almost immediately by the harshest wind, like fire and ice combined.

Behind him, Leibniz clung to the door, s.h.i.+elding his eyes as if from light.

Through Kelzen, the Doctor could just about feel Leibniz's mind, bobbing like a surfboard on the Sensopath's tidal wave.

There, before them, was Shanstra, the queen of ice and darkness. She stood up from her throne, arms held high, hair rippling behind her in the wind, her eyes bright green with power and desire. Coronas of fire, like spiked whips of green light, flowed from her outstretched fingers as she burnt off the excess energy. Behind her, the huge screens were flas.h.i.+ng up the briefest images of fighters, both human and Phracton, blazing from the sky.

The Doctor, battling fiercely, held on to his hat and staggered forward to the very edge of the ice-rink. He did not dare to meet those terrible eyes.

141.

'Shanstra!' His voice, above the tumult, was that of a drowning man.

'Shanstra, you must stop this. You don't know what chaos your powers are causing in the physical world!'

She threw back her head and laughed. The sound became light, formed swirling patterns in the air above her.

But I do, I do, Time Lord, said her mocking voice as it rifled the filing cabinets of the Doctor's thoughts. said her mocking voice as it rifled the filing cabinets of the Doctor's thoughts.

The Doctor closed his eyes and began to picture, one by one, the companions he had gained and lost. He was remembering it had worked with the Haemovores. He hoped it would work again now.

'Doctor!' Leibniz was at his side. 'Doctor, she's got into the Phracton collective. She's somehow managing to guide them, direct their hatred against us '

'I know!' snarled the Doctor, with his eyes still tightly shut. 'Keep quiet!'

And last of all he came to the memory of Ace, the girl, the woman, the warrior, now gone for ever and the thought, with all its strength, was lobbed warrior, now gone for ever and the thought, with all its strength, was lobbed at Shanstra, like meat to a ferocious dog. at Shanstra, like meat to a ferocious dog.

For a fleeting moment, she was distracted, reaching with a tentacle of thought to grab this new morsel of emotional intensity and her link to the Phracton collective weakened.

The Doctor pressed the advantage. Something else, something unusual, pulsed down Shanstra's channel to the Phracton Swarm.

The Phracton Secondary screamed as channels of fire coursed through his circuitry.

There was a mind, cutting into his. A sharp, devious mind skewering that of his new mistress and sending counter-impulses into the Swarm.

His module banked and swerved, spinning out of control like a ball thrown by an angry child.

The Doctor had taken a risk. He felt her sensing Kelzen's touch in his mind.

And now, realizing how she had been deceived, she let out an unearthly shriek and shattered the roof of the arena. Down it fell, in a torrent of molten gla.s.s and metal, like deadly, slow-motion rain. Fragments began to hit the ice, destroying it.

'Get out,' the Doctor told Leibniz. 'Now!'

'You're coming too,' he muttered, and grabbed the Doctor's arm.

Life awakening Life returning.

With control, with new, fresh power, comes life.

142.

The Phracton Commandant's mind had been riveted down as securely as a door in a gale. Now, it broke free, shattered its bonds, smashed through the controlling influences of the treacherous Secondary and back into the Swarm.

His mind glittered in the web, touched every Swarm-brother with the same tendrils of calmness.

Stop this madness, it said. it said. Stop it at once. Stop it at once.

The Battle of Banksburgh, which decided, eventually, the fate of Gadrell Major, was fought entirely in the air and was later reckoned to have lasted approximately sixteen Earth minutes.

At the end of this time, the Phractons whose attack force leader (Phracton 4Z-88*, Secondary to the Commandant) had been among the casualties grouped above the city and, at the Commandant's instruction, ceased hostil-ities. The Swarm, for the most part, remained unclear about how the Commandant had regained control. External influence was suspected.

When the attack was called off, the Phracton Commandant opened a channel from the web to Captain Darius Cheynor of the Phoenix Phoenix, requesting that he personally be allowed to board the Earth s.h.i.+p to negotiate.

At around the same time, Ca.s.sie Hogarth's fighter, together with that of the Phracton she had taken with her, hit the river bridge, slicing it in two.

Gla.s.s, metal and smoke shot upwards in a coc.o.o.n of mud and water, echoing through the ruins of Banksburgh.

A kilometre away, in a different but related incident, Banksburgh's sports centre turned into a giant Roman candle, whose dazzling light faded as soon as it had shone.

143.

18.

Wake Up, Little Suzi