Doctor Who_ So Vile A Sin Part 43

'So we have to get through them,' she said. 'If we want to take the palace, and not simply destroy it.'

'There's a civilian population.' Vincenzi nodded. 'Twenty thousand. A lot of skilled people. Any serious damage to the dome, and they're all dead.'

'So there's no way around it,' said the colonel. 'We have to fight our way up there.'

'And without the benefit of covering mortar fire,' said Vincenzi. 'One badly aimed sh.e.l.l, and we'll puncture the dome.'

Colonel Forrester sat back in her seat, thinking. 'Our advantage is going to be numbers,' she said.

'Yes, ma'am,' said Vincenzi. 'They can't kill all of us.'

297.

'I don't want you or anyone else thinking of this as a suicide mission,' she said firmly. 'It's a particularly difficult job that needs doing.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Vincenzi, and he meant it.

'Sokolovsky,' said the colonel. 'Report.'

The captain looked over to them. 'Trouble,' he said. 'Walid's panicking, I think. He's pulled the T'ai Tsung T'ai Tsung out of the action at Phobos, and they're heading back to Callisto.' out of the action at Phobos, and they're heading back to Callisto.'

'That's crazy,' said Vincenzi. 'He doesn't need two s.h.i.+ps to defend that little moon.'

Sokolovsky shook his head. 'He's panicking,' he said again.

'He's abandoned Mars altogether.'

'This is it, then,' said Forrester. The last objective.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Vincenzi.

She blew out a breath. 'Nearly missed the d.a.m.n war,' she said.

Mimas The Nexus flared. The light filled the room for a moment, leaving a searing afterimage on Chris's eyeb.a.l.l.s..

'Look,' he told the Doctor.

Something was trying to get out of the Nexus. The s.h.i.+mmering light stretched and grew as whatever it was fought to get loose.

As one, the Grandmaster turned to look at it.

The Doctor pulled loose from Chris and ran forward, through them.

A hand reached out of the tear in the air. Another hand appeared, battling loose of the light.

The Doctor reached out and caught them and pulled pulled. It was him him, emerging head and shoulders from the Nexus. The Doctor on the outside roared and pulled the other one free.

The Nexus burst open like an overripe melon.

Callisto Two of the Drops.h.i.+ps died on the way to Callisto's surface.

Roz could still see the afterimage of the explosions as she climbed out of the vehicle, safely wrapped in her lightweight combat suit.

298.

She'd wondered why the others were all staring at the floor, instead of out of the windows. She'd a.s.sumed it was to avoid nausea, though it wasn't bothering her. It wasn't until she'd seen one of the other s.h.i.+ps burst apart in a hail of fire that she'd got the idea.

'Get clear of the vehicles!' Vincenzi was shouting. 'Well clear, well clear! Do not a.s.semble!'

They'd rehea.r.s.ed this, but he wasn't giving anyone the chance to screw up. She ran, following him, taking long, loping strides in the low gravity, trying hard not to stumble. The Ogrons were having a hard time, clumsy, but determined. The long-legged soldier making graceful, easy leaps must be a Lacaillan.

The surface was rough, pockmarked with thousands of craters, huge and small. Even without the dome, Valhalla Crater would have been unmissable, the only feature from horizon to horizon.

They'd run a klick across the flat, rough plain when the first of the Drops.h.i.+ps exploded. 'Hit the deck!' screamed Vincenzi. His voice echoed inside her helmet and right through her skull. She was hugging rock with everyone else before she had time to think about it.

She rolled over on the dark ice, looked up at the sky. The Victoria Victoria and the and the T'ai Tsung T'ai Tsung looked as big as her hand. She could see the fire they were exchanging, cutters buzzing back and forth like fireflies, flaring and dying. The looked as big as her hand. She could see the fire they were exchanging, cutters buzzing back and forth like fireflies, flaring and dying. The Ojibwa Ojibwa was even lower in the sky, ignoring the was even lower in the sky, ignoring the Victoria Victoria. It was much more interested in them.

Shrapnel spun over head in lazy patterns. Vincenzi waited for the big pieces to settle and yelled, 'Move on! Move on!'

They leapt up and ran like h.e.l.l. There was an hour's worth of running to do before they got to the rim. Sixty minutes, any of them could see you dead. The dome was like Paradise beyond it, you could see the blue sky and the greenery inside it.

The first strafing run came twenty minutes later. 'Eat dirt!' she screamed as the proximity detector on her back came on, even before Vincenzi could yell out the order.

A cutter flew in low, its targets tiny specks among the rocks. It waved X-ray lasers over them in random patterns. Roz heard 299 screams as the beam crossed legs and arms, unprotected outside the laser-reflective tunics and helmets.

She tongued a radio control and shouted at Vincenzi, 'Shouldn't we run?'

'Its computer targets movement,' he hissed back. 'We'd all be dead if we were moving. Hold on.'

There was a sudden pressure and heat on her back. She rolled into the shadow of a tilted rock, instinctively, her arms coming up to protect her face.

The cutter was gone, pieces of the s.h.i.+p raining down maybe a klick ahead of them. She saw one of their s.h.i.+ps pulling into a steep climb.

'Up! Up!' Vincenzi was screaming. 'Leave the wounded the cutter will come back and pick them up. Who've we lost?'

'Me, sir,' came the voices, weak. One just screamed and screamed.

'That's six,' Vincenzi told Roz, as they kept running.

'Is that bad?'

'We were lucky,' he said. 'If our cutters can stay in position, we won't have to worry about any more of theirs. All we'll have to worry about are the Rim defences.'

'Oh great,' said Roz.

Mimas In a human life, there are an enormous number of possibilities that didn't happen, paths not taken. Theoretically, that number is infinite. Practically, the number is finite, though enormous. Some possibilities, such as spontaneously turning into a fish, are so unlikely as to have a negligible probability.

Take that number, and multiply it by seven lives and an uncountable number of times and places.

Chris didn't bother to try to protect himself. He let the lives strike him, slide over him, fly away.

One of the the other Doctors had picked up the gla.s.s he needed for his reticular vector gauge at a market on Heaven, and had never visited Androzani. One had ruled the Earth with a tyrant's hand for centuries, posters of his face everywhere. One 300 was wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d on Lalande 21185, and had to settle there to stop the incessant religious wars.

The dead ones were the worst. They sought out the Grandmaster like Valkyries. One had stuck to his principles and had his throat cut by a hungry alien. One had had his brain fried by a computer, subst.i.tuting for a dead synch-op. One had been beheaded by an Ice Warrior, a hideous moment of blood and bone before it vanished, embracing a small dark woman. A champagne gla.s.s dropped out of her hand and broke apart on the floor.

Chris concentrated on the sound.

Twenty deaths out of thousands.

Crack clink crack.

Hundreds of happy endings.

One had gone home to Gallifrey and was organizing the first bloodless revolution in Time Lord history. One lived in another dimension and visited Earth from time to time, sparking rumours that King Arthur was about to return. One had been stranded in the Eocene era and was happily tinkering in an Earth Reptile laboratory. One was alive and well and living in San Francisco with his wife.

They poured out of the Nexus. Everyone the Doctor could have been at that moment in time.

Crack clink crack.

Chris put his face in his hands. It was all a bit much.

When the storm was over, he looked up again.

Just the one Doctor was standing in the middle of the room.

The Grandmaster were gone, along with their tables and their fingerfoods.

The Doctor wore a Paisley waistcoat. He was looking at his pocket watch.

'Is it you?' breathed Chris. 'It is you. The real you.'

'Yes,' he said, staring at the watch. 'The alternative Chris helped me hide in there.'

'Hide in there?' Chris stared at where the Nexus had been. 'So who was that?'

'That,' said the Doctor, 'was a Doctor who hadn't worked out what to do. Luckily, he had me up his sleeve.'

301.

'Come on,' said Chris. 'We've got to get back.'

The Doctor closed the pocket watch with hands that Chris suddenly could see were shaking. 'In there,' he said. 'From that vantage point. From inside the Nexus, you can see everything.

Every possibility, each choice that's made, every outcome.'

'We need to get back,' said Chris. 'We'd better go give Roz a hand.'

The Doctor just tucked his pocket watch away. His eyes had a terrible, blank look. He didn't move.

'Oh no,' said Chris, in a tiny voice.

He ran for the lift, but he knew it was already too late.

Valhalla The dome loomed above them. Walid's cutters were leaving them the h.e.l.l alone, this close to his private ecosystem. All the fire was coming from the Rim.

Vincenzi was screaming at them to lie down every dozen steps.

The sh.e.l.ls and smart bombs whistled overhead, looking for their head signatures, confused by the mimetic armour. Usually.

In the shelter of a small crater's rim, Roz asked Vincenzi, 'This isn't b.l.o.o.d.y working, is it?'

He was pulling together a throwaway grenade launcher, hands moving in a blur over the parts. 'No it b.l.o.o.d.y isn't,' he said.

'We've lost half the company. We can't fight our way in with this few soldiers.'

Roz peered over the rim of the crater. The fire was blossoming out of a single point on the Rim. Another missile launched silently into the air. She traced its course with her eyes, heading for the Victoria Victoria. So far she'd taken three hits from the ground-to-orbit defences.

'I've got an idea,' she told Vincenzi.

'I'm open to suggestions, ma'am,' he said.

'We don't fight our way inside. We change objectives. That GTO station.'

'Keep talking,' he said, sliding the grenade into the launcher.

'Advantages,' said Roz. 'Surprise. They're expecting us to get into the dome, not to try and grab a heavily armoured outpost.

Munitions. If we gain control of the post, we can attack their 302 s.h.i.+ps with their own weapons, give the Victoria Victoria a fighting chance.' a fighting chance.'

'Better than that,' Vincenzi said. 'We can bring in the rest of the troops under cover of fire from the Rim. We'll have the numbers we need. Big problem is, we'll probably all be killed getting up the Rim to the station.'

'We'll be under their line of fire.'

'True, but their foot soldiers will have the advantage.'

'All right,' she said. 'Either we all get killed trying to break in through an airlock, or we all get killed trying to hit that GTO station.'

'You lead,' said Vincenzi.

Roz switched her comlink back to broadcast. 'Listen up!' she said. 'We're going to switch objectives. Repeat, we're going to change objectives. We're going to take the GTO station at the top of the hill. You can't miss it. Do not attempt to penetrate the dome. Do not take any additional risks. Do not attempt to draw fire. The aim of the game is to get to the top alive.' She took a deep breath. 'Acknowledge.'

'Yes, ma'am!' came the voices, one after the other. 'Yes, ma'am! Yes, ma'am!'

Roz glanced back at Vincenzi. He nodded, bulky helmet tipping as though he was bowing.

'Follow me,' said Roz. She jumped over the rim and started running.

And went up the hill into history.