Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 31

Anji rolled her eyes. It was like being in primary school.

She headed down the plane, away from Dee, towards the loo, which was in a small section in the middle of the plane with the galley and some storage s.p.a.ce. The whole area was curtained off. Anji slipped behind the curtain.

'Trouble?' the Doctor asked.

Anji almost jumped out of her skin. A beautiful young Chinese woman in black leather was standing alongside him.

'Anji Kapoor, Malady Chang. Malady Chang, Anji Kapoor. Good to see you again.'

'We met at the airport,' Malady said.

Anji shrugged. 'Which one? I've been to more airports in the last couple of days than...'

Anji shut up and hugged the Doctor.

The Doctor peeked around the curtain, over at Dee. 'She looks preoccupied.'

'How did you get on board?' Anji asked.

'There's a cargo hatch open at the rear.'

'Where Cosgrove got out...' Anji realised.

'He's here, is he?'

'He was.'

'Who's on the plane?' Malady asked.

'Baskerville, the pilot, Leo, and Dee. Oh, and the President.'

Malady looked surprised.

'No one else?'

'Well, not unless you count the dead alien in the rear compartment.'

The Doctor smiled. 'My, you have been busy.'

Twenty or so metres in front of them, Baskerville emerged from the c.o.c.kpit, exchanged words with Dee, then headed towards the President. Leo was there, too. Both carried pistols, Baskerville was also carrying that carry case. The President was on his feet, arguing about something with Baskerville.

'What happened to the Fourth Prophecy?'

'There are forces acting against us,' Baskerville insisted. 'People that don't want humanity to get time travel. We have to hurry if we are going to defeat them.'

Baskerville and Leo were half*dragging the President to the door. Mather decided to co*operate. Dee recovered her rucksack. A moment later, all four had left the plane.

'We have to get after them,' Malady insisted.

Anji winced. 'Well, do you mind if I... if you just wait a minute or two? I won't be long.'

Five Onihrs in full armour stood in front of their deputy leader in a cavernous antechamber some way away from the control gallery of the s.p.a.ce craft.

Fitz stood behind the deputy, smiling in a way that he hoped would be so winsomely charming that they wouldn't use him for target practice.

'The humans are resourceful,' the Deputy Leader barked. 'They have done the Onihr race a great harm. They have killed our leader, made us doubt our own manifest superiority. We could destroy them at a distance, but if we did so, we would never destroy that doubt.'

The Onihrs s.h.i.+fted around, looking uncomfortable. Their armour rattled like a car being dropped on to a sc.r.a.pheap.

'We must avenge our leader's death in hand*to*hand combat. We must tear the human time machine from their mammal paws. Then we will return, and we will become the new Lords of Time.'

The Onihrs burst into spontaneous appreciation of this sentiment banging gloved fists against the breastplate of their armour and hooting and growling their approval.

Fitz prided himself on his laissez*faire att.i.tude to life, but that sound scared him almost witless.

The deputy leader clearly drew strength from this show of support. 'Let us go to the Earth let us go to our destiny!'

And all six of the fully armed Onihrs faded into thin air.

It was suddenly very quiet.

Fitz fished in his pockets for his cigarettes, but could only find Anji's phone and Pad, the control box.

'How can I help?'

'You can generate smells, yeah?'

'The Onihr race's primary sense is that of smell. All displays configured for '

'Can you copy smells? If so, could you copy the smell of leaf smoke. If not, could you shut up for a bit.'

To his intense relief, the smell of tobacco wafted up from the control box. Not the same as a smoke, of course, but the next best thing.

'Pad, old mate,' he said finally, 'how are you on n.o.ble self*sacrifice?'

'I am a control interface, sir, I have no sense of self. The Onihr race value the heroic loss of one life for many.'

'I don't think they'll be too hot on what I've got in mind. Could you teleport me to the Ee and Pee maintenance room, please?'

'Of course, sir.'

The Doctor examined the controls of the Concorde, Malady searched the rest of the small c.o.c.kpit. Anji watched.

'The co*pilot's controls can be reconfigured,' he said. 'Look. Do either of you recognise this setting?'

Malady leaned over. 'It's been set up as a RealWar booth.'

'He was controlling the hovertank from in here,' Anji deduced.

'And the ones in Toronto,' the Doctor added. 'This place is well defended for a factory.'

That reminded Anji. 'The USAF is on its way. Mather was being tracked. But there are anti*aircraft defences here. We were going to try to deactivate them.'

The Doctor and Malady looked at each other. 'The tower,' they said together.

Malady peered out of the c.o.c.kpit windows. 'Doesn't look that well defended. But we should really rescue the President first.'

The Doctor put his arm round Anji. 'Miss Kapoor and myself will do that. You sort out the tower and meet up with us inside.'

Malady clearly wasn't sure, but after a few seconds agreed to the plan.

She slipped away. A moment later, they saw her scurrying across the runway to the control tower.

The Doctor clapped his hands together. 'Right... What do you want to do first rescue the President, negotiate a ceasefire with the remaining mercenaries, locate Baskerville's time machine, capture Baskerville himself or find Cosgrove and see what he's up to?'

Anji hesitated. 'Actually... I'd really like to find out what Baskerville wants access to ULTRA for. You wouldn't know what IFEC is, would you?'

Outside, the control tower exploded.

'Any sign of Fitz, by the way?' the Doctor asked.

Anji shook her head. 'Not since you dropped him off in America.'

'I'm sure he's out of harm's way.'

Cosgrove heard the explosion through the headphones of the RealWar goggles.

He turned his hovertank around. The runway control tower was now a pile of rubble. The cameras on RealWar robots were very low resolution, and couldn't pan without moving the whole unit.

He saw a dark shape on the edge of his vision, and instinctively fired at it with the robot's machine guns.

Malady Chang, he decided, a moment or two later.

He hadn't hit her. But she was here, which meant the Doctor almost certainly was, which meant that he needed more than one hovertank.

Cosgrove activated the other three cla.s.s twos, the ones in the hangar.

After a moment, he decided to look around and see what other a.s.sets there were. It was a RealWar factory, after all.

He was pleasantly surprised to discover there were three dozen more cla.s.s twos available, in a warehouse, earmarked for delivery to the EZ in the morning. It wasn't even stealing.

The twenty cla.s.s threes in the same warehouse, bound for the American fleet in the Gulf... well, it would be treachery not to acquire those for the Eurozone, too.

He selected them all, and activated them.

Cosgrove had a couple of objectives he had to clear the buildings of hostiles and potential hostiles, of course. But most of all, he wanted that time machine. It was here somewhere, he knew it. Baskerville had been panicked by the aliens, and he'd bolted here, to his stronghold. And this was the perfect place to build a time machine and defend it.

The RealWar booth had an extensive map of this complex.

Cosgrove preferred the tanks to the humanoid robots, but they were too big to operate indoors. He sent four cla.s.s threes to the research labs. There were scientists there in white coats, half of them sitting at computers, the others standing around a cla.s.s three which lay in bits on the floor. Eleven of them in total.

They looked up at the new arrivals, but didn't seem worried. Why would they, when they worked with RealWar robots all day?

Cosgrove flicked a switch, activated the loudhailer.

'I'm looking for the time machine,' he told them. The speaker was set a little more loudly than he'd antic.i.p.ated, and the words echoed from the walls.

He used all four of the robots to look around the room at the scientists. Their expressions ranged from puzzled to bemused. It was obvious that none of them knew anything about it. This was a robotics lab, nothing more.

It only needed one of the cla.s.s threes to finish them off. The other three robots gave him complete camera coverage of the room, as the men and women died.

He marked the research labs off the map. The time machine wasn't there.

The Doctor was about to charge into the hangar, but at the last moment he ducked behind a wall, keeping Anji from entering.

Something was moving around in there.

'One of those robots,' he explained. 'The tanks.'

'Cla.s.s two,' Anji said. 'The humanoid ones are cla.s.s threes.'

'What do the cla.s.s ones look like?'

'No idea I've not seen one so far. Who's controlling them?'

'Not Baskerville.' They'd seen Baskerville and his party scurry across the runway to one of the support buildings.

'Cosgrove?'

'That would be my guess. Right... it's facing the other way.'

They hurried through the hangar, to the door in the far wall.

'I went back to Baskerville's office in Athens,' the Doctor told Anji. 'Baskerville had removed the time machine or the vital components from it, at any rate.'

'I think it's got something to do with his coffee machine.'

'Yes, he removed that, too. I was wondering about that.'

'It's in a silver case.'