Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 34

The Doctor looked amused. 'Possibly. Either that, or you just had a bad reaction to the chemicals, or the conditioning went wrong.'

Anji preferred her explanation.

'So... Baskerville isn't a time traveller?'

'No.'

'He doesn't have a time machine?'

'No.'

'He's a local arms dealer on the verge of pulling off the biggest confidence trick in history?'

'Yes.'

Fitz looked back at the building. 'But there's an alien invasion force and a British secret agent in command of a robot army who are both after the time machine.'

'Yes.'

'They're not going to be happy when they find out there isn't one, are they?'

'No, they aren't.'

Baskerville bundled President Mather into a chair.

Dee tried to barricade the door, but couldn't find anything to use. This was a small first floor reception office the place where the paperwork for the airstrip was stored.

'What is going on, Baskerville?' the President demanded. 'This is the "place of safety" you were talking about? It's a war zone. I have to get back to Istanbul.'

'With all due respect, Mr President, shut up.' He turned to Dee. 'The aliens have tracked us here. You said they couldn't do that.'

'I said they couldn't track the Concorde.'

'This base is meant to be data*invisible. The whole point is that it doesn't have a data presence.'

'Perhaps the aliens can smell it,' Mather suggested.

Dee was switching on her laptop, checking its datanet connections.

'Come on, Baskerville. We can do what we came to do.' She turned to Mather. 'You remember your ULTRA codes?'

'I beg your '

Baskerville rammed his gun into Mather's cheek. 'You heard. Now, please say "yes", or your country will go into a World War without its leader.'

'You don't scare me, Baskerville.'

Baskerville c.o.c.ked his pistol.

'I don't care whether I scare you or not. Do you know the ULTRA code?'

'Yes. Some of it.'

'He'll know enough,' Dee a.s.sured him. The computer was up and running, connected to the datanet.

'Ready?'

Dee slipped a couple of VSCDs into the drive. 'Two seconds. Get the DNA scanner.'

Mather felt a jab at the back of his neck.

'Blood sample,' Leo said.

Baskerville held up what looked like a medical instrument to Mather's eye. There was a flash, which made Mather blink.

'Retinal scan. Say something, Mather. Say your name.'

'I am Felix Mather, President of the United States of America.'

'Voice pattern match,' Dee said. 'It's scanning to make sure it's not a recording or a sample.'

The screen flashed green.

Dee turned to Mather. 'Give me your ULTRA code.'

'There are safeguards.'

'Come on.'

He did, and a moment later, the screen showed a map of the world, with arrows of various sizes and colours swirling around the continents.

Mather looked Baskerville in the eye. 'Is this all this has been? A bank raid?'

Baskerville smiled. 'The IFEC. The International Financial Exchange Computer.'

'I know what the IFEC is. I was Vice President when the IFEC Accord was signed.'

'One protocol, one system that controls every single electronic financial transaction. Everywhere in the world. Everywhere that counts, anyway.'

Dee was tapping away, running programs from those discs of hers.

'You want to tap into it. Steal some money?'

'I have plenty of money, and the capacity to make plenty more. There's a World War brewing, Mr President. Your government has already paid me billions for RealWar hardware, and so have the Eurozone.'

Mather glanced back at the screen.

'The flow of capital,' Baskerville said, thumbing back at the screen. 'That is capitalism. It's what made America great. Until IFEC, it was pretty difficult to see it spread out quite so boldly.' is capitalism. It's what made America great. Until IFEC, it was pretty difficult to see it spread out quite so boldly.'

'It's beautiful,' Mather said. It sounded silly, but it was. It was like looking at a living organism, and the closer he looked, the more and more details he saw.

'It is. And who owns it?'

'No one.'

'Exactly. And that's what I'm going to change. Miss Kapoor said it before I'm going to steal money. All of it.'

Mather laughed out loud. 'All the money in the world?'

'Yes.'

'But that's mad. The authorities...'

' won't know,' Dee finished for him.

'You intend to kill me?' Mather said, apparently resigned to it.

'No. I intend to cut you in.'

'You're mad.'

'You really should be careful what names you call your bank manager,' Dee chuckled.

Mather stood. 'I don't understand what I'm being offered here. You're still going to give the Americans time travel?'

The door exploded, and before the dust had settled, Malady Chang was in the room, an alien ray gun in each hand both pointing at Baskerville.

'Don't move,' she said quietly. 'Mr President? You OK?'

'I'm fine, Malady.' He stepped behind her, towards the door.

Baskerville and Dee were both pointing guns at her.

'You won't make it through that door.'

Malady smiled, backing towards it.

She felt a gun in her back.

'Who are you?' Relker asked. 'What the h.e.l.l is going on?'

Baskerville beamed. 'Finally. Relker, I presume? This is a CIA agent, that is the President of the United States, and I am your employer.'

'You're Baskerville?'

Baskerville sighed. 'Yes. Now, step out the way so I can kill these two.'

Malady lowered her guns, until they were pointing at the floor.

Baskerville chuckled. 'Not going down fighting, Lieutenant Commander Chang? How disappointing.'

Malady fired.

The floor beneath her feet, and the President's, disintegrated, and they dropped through the hole.

Relker fired, instinctively, almost hitting Baskerville.

Baskerville glared at him, then shot him with the gyrojet pistol. Relker exploded, a little messily.

'We really should get out of here,' Dee told him.

'Is it done?'

'Let's get to safety, then find out,' she suggested.

Cosgrove watched another sub*screen go blank as another robot was destroyed by the alien creatures.

There were six aliens in total, each in armour, each with those cutting beams. If he could just have one of his RealWar machines get one of the alien guns, he could even the odds a little.

Every RealWar machine in the factory was now active he'd pulled them off the a.s.sembly lines, he'd pulled a couple from the repair shop.

The cla.s.s twos could patrol outside, they could operate in the hangar and on the factory floor. But nowhere else. And they were slow and couldn't get adequate cover.

At one point he'd had twenty cla.s.s threes. But they were big targets, a little too c.u.mbersome to be practical indoors, they lost their balance too easily.

They were lasting longer than twenty human troops would have done, and putting up a better fight, but Cosgrove had less than ten of them left, and as far as he could tell hadn't even injured one of the aliens.

The aliens hadn't located him in his control centre they hadn't come within a hundred feet of him. But they were keeping him from the main order of business: finding the time machine. Meanwhile, Mather and Malady Chang were loose, somewhere (it had been a while since they'd flitted past one of his cameras after escaping from Baskerville); Baskerville and Dee Gordon were still at large, and most worryingly, there was the Doctor. Not only was the resourceful Miss Kapoor with him, they'd been joined by the man Cosgrove had met in California. Cosgrove was worried that he couldn't even begin to work out how the lad had got here. It was possible to get from California to here in the time (he'd managed it, after all), but the lad must have been right on his tail the whole time or known to head here.

All he had to do was find that time machine...

The Doctor sat in front of the laptop they'd found in a first floor reception room.

'An incredibly clever piece of programming.'

Anji was willing him on. 'Never mind that can we find out what Baskerville's up to?'

'Or control those robots?' Fitz asked.

'The program's not about robots.'

Fitz looked disappointed. 'What is it about?'