Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 19

'Millions will die.'

'Yes. Millions will die, and for everyone that does there will be two angry parents and two angry children and a dozen angry friends baying for revenge. And, for only a few dollars subscription, they can take that revenge. It'll be the ultimate grudge match, and the TV rights alone will be worth trillions. But what then? It's the problem for all fight promoters, all the makers of action films... what do you do after the ultimate battle, the fight to end all fights? How do you do that without killing the golden goose?'

'You stop?'

'Only if you're one of the weak.'

Anji looked at him. He was smiling.

'You have an answer to that question? Something involving this time machine of yours?'

Baskerville nodded. 'Oh yes.'

Chapter Twelve.

The Spy Who Shot Me They had men, covering all the exits, with orders to shoot anything that came through.

They couldn't land helicopters on the roof. There were three doors at ground level. The Doctor and Malady had gone in through the main entrance, one of the others was blocked by debris, the other hadn't been opened since the tidal wave had hit. The Doctor and Malady were still in the building.

Cosgrove had a limited number of men available, but he had enough. He ordered all the doors covered by teletroops, got a squad of men to set up by the main entrance, and kept two helicopters in the air, circling the museum.

The Doctor and Malady were working together, now. Cosgrove still didn't think the Doctor was CIA, though. But they must have common interests and that common interest could only be to prevent his acquiring time travel.

Anyway, there was now a fourth party involved. A middle*aged woman and a young boy, in purple uniforms which no one could identify, carrying laser handguns.

Time travellers from the future. They had to be. Penny Lik suggested they could be policemen from Baskerville's time. She read a lot of science fiction, but Cosgrove thought she was probably right the authorities of the future would be at least as concerned about the spread of time*travel technology as the twenty*first century was about ABC weapons. So they'd send people back to stop proliferation. Once you accepted the possibility of time travel, the main objection became that there just weren't enough enough time travellers. Surely they'd be all around tourists, researchers, spies, military men, businessmen, all travelling back to do their jobs? Cosgrove was glad his instincts had been proved right, that there was an time travellers. Surely they'd be all around tourists, researchers, spies, military men, businessmen, all travelling back to do their jobs? Cosgrove was glad his instincts had been proved right, that there was an unearthly unearthly component to all this. component to all this.

Cosgrove gave orders for the two newcomers to be captured, if at all possible. They had last been seen retreating back into the office block where they'd found the Doctor, but Cosgrove fully expected them to resurface.

Jaxa pressed a medi*stim to Roja's neck.

'We should sterilise the area,' Roja was saying, still wincing from the pain.

'There may not have been a crime,' Jaxa reminded him.

'The woman stole my gun. They should all be eradicated.'

'Then you have let future tech fall into primitive hands. The crime is yours. Would you like me to eradicate you you?'

Roja was sitting up, now. 'That's not fair,' he said, sounding like a spoilt brat.

Jaxa considered her options. The handgun would have to be retrieved, of course. The Doctor was a known rogue time element, and one her master was particularly interested in, but merely being present in a time zone that was not your native one wasn't a crime. Particularly in the case of elementals elementals, who didn't have a native time.

They needed to find Baskerville. He was the key to this if he was a rogue, he wasn't known to them. His death would tie up loose ends here, and would represent something that could be presented as a positive result, without causing any awkward political ramifications. But killing Baskerville and letting the Doctor go, whatever the legalities of the situation, would not please Sabbath. She could hear him talking in that slightly sarcastic tone of his, telling her that she'd caught the small fish, but let the big one go, and that she had no sense of the larger picture.

'Our priorities are clear,' she said finally. 'We must recover or destroy your handgun. We eliminate Baskerville. Then we capture the Doctor and return home with him. We deal with him there.'

'But we're not the only people after the Doctor.'

'No we aren't. But nothing else need concern us if anyone tries to prevent us achieving our objectives, then we eradicate them.'

Jaxa handed Roja her gun.

'But what will you use, Madame Jaxa?'

'I will find something,' she a.s.sured him.

She unclipped her timeporter from her belt and opened it up.

'We will teleport over to that museum. The Doctor and his companion will be on one of the upper levels.'

Roja was looking out of the window. 'There is a lot of human military activity.'

She replaced the timeporter. 'They have simple projectile weapons, they needn't concern us. She tapped her neck, and the cowl extruded over her head, covering it. Roja did the same.

She activated the timeporter.

The Doctor sat at the base of a large vase which, according to the sign, dated back to the time of Alexander the Great.

In the galleries, there was no evidence of the tidal wave. Malady had wondered if there would be any survivors huddled up here, but if anyone had been here when the wave struck, they'd since evacuated.

The Doctor was lost in thought, his eyes closed. 'Have you ever had a bar of music in your head, one that you can't place, and however hard you try you can't hum the next bit?' He asked. 'It's frustrating, isn't it? Just imagine what it's like to have nothing but that. Living a life like that.'

He didn't elaborate. Malady wasn't entirely sure he was talking to her.

'Cosgrove's men will be here in a minute,' she told him gently.

'Plenty of time to come up with something,' he a.s.sured her.

Malady returned her attention to her new raygun. There were a variety of dials and switches on the top of the weapon. She decided not to play with them the setting it was on was effective, and she didn't want to accidentally put the safety catch on. She wondered how many shots she'd get before it ran out of power.

Cosgrove moved in, two men in front of him, three behind.

They fanned out as they entered the main entrance hall. It didn't look like the Doctor and Malady were here. It was waterlogged in their position, Cosgrove would get across the hall and up that staircase to the first floor.

They moved forwards in a line, executing a search pattern if the Doctor was here, they'd know about it.

There were huge statues here Apollo, Zeus, an achingly beautiful Aphrodite. These things had endured for centuries. Millennia. They were older than his own civilisation.

Hard to think there had been a time when there wasn't a Service. Some of the secret societies, of course, claimed to date back into antiquity. But how would you ever prove that?

What would that mean, anyway?

Cosgrove believed in tradition. He was a patriot, he fought for the United Kingdom. Great Britain. But not because it was old. Because he genuinely believed it was a way of life worth preserving and fighting for. There were fragments of a British way of life that were still worth clinging to.

He looked up at Aphrodite again. Today she really was rising from the seawater. She was perfect. Every curve, every line, every detail.

'Sir!' one of the men called out.

Something was happening on the staircase in front of them.

That was the best description Cosgrove could come up with for the moment: something.

The light was changing. Shapes were forming.

The time police, he realised. They were materialising using some future technology to beam straight into the museum.

He brought his machine pistol up and fired three rounds into the nearest shape to him.

The first volley pa.s.sed straight through, ricocheted off the back wall. The next did the same. The third killed the target.

It was the woman, and she was thrown back by the force of the bullets. .h.i.tting her before she'd fully materialised.

Madame Jaxa looked surprised.

'I'm dead,' she told Roja, who was kneeling down. She could hear the human soldiers splas.h.i.+ng across the entrance hall towards them.

'No.'

'The bullets... they arrived before me. They're inside me, I can feel them. I'm dead. Don't let them kill you, too.'

Roja stood, fired at one of the soldiers, who vanished in a burst of light. The others dived for cover behind the statues.

A moment later, one edged round the corner of his plinth. Roja could hear him doing it, see the water slos.h.i.+ng around as he made his move.

He disintegrated the man, and the corner of the statue, with a single shot.

Three more soldiers opened fire. Roja felt some of the bullets ricochet from his clothing.

He bent down, activated Jaxa's timeporter.

His tutor vanished, returned to their home time.

Perhaps there the medics could save her.

Roja knew they couldn't. But perhaps they could. Perhaps.

He was crying, the cowl he was wearing suddenly felt very hot, restrictive.

He fired at the base of another of the statues, watched it fall like a tree that had been chopped down, saw some of the soldiers dive out of the way, and some of them that didn't.

He hurried up the stairs.

The statue of Aphrodite came cras.h.i.+ng down, the head breaking off as the torso hit the floor, a great wave surging out.

The head was the size of a small car. Cosgrove barely avoided it, but was bowled over by the surge of water.

Two of his men had been killed before that. Another two died under the falling masonry.

Cosgrove pulled himself upright, water pouring off him. The insides of his boots were wet, he could feel cold water trickling down his back. Aphrodite stared up at him, her perfect face half submerged in the water. He felt angry at seeing her like that, violated.

'Stevens, are you there?'

Stevens was, and came splas.h.i.+ng over. 'The boy went upstairs,' he said. 'That gun of his...'

Cosgrove nodded.

'Where's the one I shot?' Cosgrove asked.

'I didn't see.'

'I killed her. She's not there.'

They did a quick visual search of the room. The waves from all the splas.h.i.+ng about were already beginning to subside, but the light was good, there was no sign of the woman.

'You got her, sir. Perhaps the boy used that gun on her, to stop us getting hold of the body.'

Cosgrove nodded. 'Good thinking.'

'Sir, the kit the boy was wearing was bullet proof. He took four rounds, didn't even knock him off his feet.'

The technology was impressive, Cosgrove thought. He'd once been hit while wearing a Kevlar vest. The bullet didn't kill you, but you knew you'd been hit. You got pushed over, you had a bad bruise for a month.

'I killed the woman, I can kill the boy.'

Malady and the Doctor looked to the top of the staircase at the sound of the first shot.

A moment later, it was clear there was a firefight going on downstairs, between Jaxa and Roja and the British special forces.

It wasn't so clear who was winning.