Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 18

It was like diving into a swimming pool - the air was so much colder out of the reception chamber. More than that - the amount of available oxygen had just become rather more limited. She opened her eyes to find that it was much darker, too.

The Doctor ran through the wide corridor, used to the light and thin air. She fol owed, already wheezing. He was moving with a rea.s.suring confidence.

The Martian s.h.i.+p rocked. Presumably the helicopter was beginning to loose off its air-to-air missiles.

The Doctor was clambering up a ladder, the rungs of which were almost a metre apart. She followed as best she could, her chest tight.

The Doctor pulled open a hatch above his head, and warm night air seeped in.

'We're moving!' Benny shouted. She hadn't realised until she poked her head out of the hatch.

'I know,' the Doctor replied. 'Heading towards Whitehall.' He was already outside, standing astride, like a s.h.i.+p's captain at the wheel. Benny clambered out, pul ing herself up by tugging the tails of his frock coat.

When she was out, the Doctor kicked the hatch shut and held the sonic screwdriver over it. Something fizzed and sparked. They were perched on one of the s.h.i.+p's fins.

The drive systems were silent as a hot air balloon's. Underneath them, though, the noise was horrendous. It was a chaotic mix of gunfire, artillery and screaming civilians caught in the crossfire.

The flash of gun muzzles and the crump of grenades. The Martian s.h.i.+p hadn't fired on the surface, not a single warrior had left the s.h.i.+p. The fierce fighting down there was strictly human versus human.

Benny felt safe up here, she realised. This s.h.i.+p should have been the focus for the attack, but nothing seemed to be troubling it. Benny would much rather be here, two hundred feet in the air, with a million tons of Martian armour between her and the ground, than down on the streets.

A helicopter that she hadn't even heard exploded half a mile ahead of them. Its rotor blades were backlit by the burning fuselage as it plummeted down somewhere between Horse Guards Parade and St James Park.

The Doctor stood there, watching it fall through the night sky.

'What do we do?' she called.

The Doctor began striding over to the edge, quite a distance. Benny tried to keep up and quickened her pace.

After a few moments, she caught up with him, almost going over the side in the process. For the briefest moment there was nothing beneath one of her feet but a two-hundred foot drop down to the war torn streets of SW1.

'How do we get down?'

He turned to her, a sad smile on his face. 'Ask me again in a week's time,' he replied.

The s.h.i.+p was slowing down again, turning through about thirty degrees, 'Doctor, I know everything there is to know about Martians, why don't I know about this? Even if we beat Xznaal tonight, the historical implications of this are huge. Why didn't I know? There were Martians at my wedding and no-one mentioned this, no-one at all. And I met Bambera a few years from now. That time we fought your evil duplicate at Buckingham Palace. Why didn't she recognise me then, if we'd already met?'

66.The Doctor stood for a moment, watching the fires burning in St James Park. A couple of air-to-air missiles streaked past, like fireworks. There was fresh gunfire, but from much further away, South of the river.

Benny realised that he wasn't going to answer. 'Did you know this was going to happen?'

He didn't hesitate. 'No.'

'Before you changed, you seemed to know everything about everything.'

The Doctor turned to face her, firelight reflected in his face and his hair. 'No-one knows everything there is to know about everything. No-one knows everything there is to know about even the smal est, simplest thing. '

'You always used to have something up your sleeve. There was always a plan. You used to say that you could never be too careful.'

'In the end he learnt that he was right. However much you plot, however much you try to think ahead, to second-guess, to predict what wil come, you'l never get everything exactly right. How can anyone rewrite history when no-one can even read it properly?'

Benny looked out over the city. They'd pa.s.sed the worst of the fighting, which hadn't spil ed out much further than Trafalgar Square itself. Whole sections of the city were blacked out. The power must be down. The more she saw, the more Benny wanted to stay up here above it all.

The s.h.i.+p was descending. The Doctor peered over the side. 'We're barely clearing the rooftops now. This may be our only chance - it's not too far.'

To prove his point, he leapt over the edge.

Benny gasped, hurrying over to where he had been.

The roof was so close, it almost caught her out - literally only three feet away. The Doctor was already on his feet, brus.h.i.+ng himself down. It was a sloped roof, but he'd landed on quite a solid-looking ledge.

The s.h.i.+p was moving at walking pace. Benny had to jog along it to get back level with the Doctor. She jumped across, trying to see the manoeuvre as a one metre hop rather than a five storey drop. This was no more dangerous than running for the bus, she told herself.

Her feet found the ledge, although the Doctor needed to steady her.

'Wel done,' the Doctor congratulated, grinning.

The Martian s.h.i.+p continued to drift past. The mortar attack and the helicopter hadn't even scratched the wax-like coating, let alone the metal beneath.

Benny realised that she'd been clinging to the Doctor rather more intently and rather longer than she felt fully comfortable with. He grinned down at her.

'How do we get down from here?'

'That's easy,' the Doctor replied, pointing over to the metal fire escape.

Benny's feet were still trying to find the ground when she felt the Doctor's hands on her hips, lifting her down.

'Come on!' the Doctor shouted, grabbing her arm and pul ing her along.

Benny looked up. The Martian s.h.i.+p was still only travelling at walking pace, but it drifted over the rooftops with the inevitability of a thundercloud. The whole sky was dark metal, twisted into alien shapes. They jogged underneath it, clearing its underside.

'Don't look back!' the Doctor yel ed at her.

Benny swung her head forwards. 'The UNIT office!' she shouted. The s.h.i.+p was heading straight for UNIT. Half a dozen troops in body armour and powder-blue helmets were coming out of the door, setting up position.

'Halt or I fire!' one shouted, until the Doctor waved a UNIT pa.s.s underneath his nose.

'Get clear, Lieutenant, there's nothing you can do,' the Doctor bellowed, still moving for the door.

The sound of hatchways retracting, metal grinding against metal.

The soldiers stood their ground, level ing their machine guns.

'They're using sonic cannons!' Benny called back. 'You haven't a chance.'

She was through the door, now, into the deserted reception. It was brightly-lit, with a reception desk that curved smoothly around. Large pot plants were placed around the area to reinforce the impression that this was just another governmental agency. The illusion was spoilt when the Doctor reached over the desk and flicked the switch that opened the entrance into the rest of the building - there weren't many quangos whose office doors were built from three-inch armour-plating.

She followed him through, trying to close the door behind her.

'There's no time,' the Doctor cried, grabbing her wrist.

There was a sound like a heavy metal band testing their amps, ready for an open air concert. Even though she had been clutching her head, it left Benny's ears bleeding and unable to hear the screaming of the guards outside.

She stumbled after the Doctor, trying to remember how long it took a sonic cannon to power up between shots.

She could hear it cycling up into audible frequencies.

The second blast smas.h.i.+ng into the front of the building, shattering not just the gla.s.s but the stone and metal supports. They were aiming low, firing diagonal y down right at the base of the building, she guessed, the place a lumberjack would aim his axe if the UNIT Building was a tree.

'Don't look back,' the Doctor screamed at her, pul ing her through the office. She barely heard him, and was dizzy now. Had her inner ear been damaged by the blast?

The office had already been evacuated, so quickly that top secret information was still displayed on computer monitors. Outside, the entire facade of the building was sliding and cras.h.i.+ng to the ground onto the bodies of those poor men on the pavement outside. It bought them a little time: the Martians would wait for the dust to settle before -.

67.The third blast removed the armoured doorway along with the wal on which it was mounted. The desk, the plant pots and everything in the four storeys above the reception exploded or crashed down onto something that had exploded. The sonic cannon was cutting through the building like a loaf - hacking off slice after slice. It was as savage as it was methodical. Clouds of dust raced past her, as though they too were trying to escape.

As they pa.s.sed through the door on the back wall, the next blast caught the office, obliterated everything within it.

There was a terrible wrenching sound as tonnes upon tonnes of cracked and brittle masonry plummeted through the ceiling. Benny's back was pelted by tiny pieces of rubble.

The next blast would catch up with them. That was Benny's first thought. The second was that the room they were in now was a landing, with a broad stairway and a lift shaft. The Doctor was brandis.h.i.+ng the sonic screwdriver. The thick lift doors slid open.

'Down!' he ordered.

'What do you mean dow-'

He shoved her through the doorway.

There wasn't a lift car. Benny was falling through the dark. She pulled her feet together and kept her hands at her sides, trying not to tense up. What sort of lifestyle was it where you instinctively knew what to do if you find yourself in freefall without a parachute?

She hit the top of the lift car a little awkwardly. The Doctor joined her a second or so later. They'd only fallen twenty feet or so. It was enough to escape the next blast, which roared overhead in a hurricane of rubble. The force of the blast kept the debris in the air, rather than letting it drop down the shaft after them. It also caught the lift cable, making the car they were on rock as if it was on a rough sea.

The Doctor had adjusted the sonic screwdriver to make it into a cutting tool and was burning through the roof of the lift.

Above them there was a series of explosive bursts, like grenades.

'The gas main ...' she whispered.

There was a rus.h.i.+ng noise, a flash of light. She could picture the wall of flame rolling across the landing towards them.

'Excel ent,' the Doctor exclaimed, glancing up. 'Quickly,' and together they dropped into the lift car. Almost as they hit the floor, the doors slid open with a chime. The Doctor ushered her out.

It was the UNIT underground car park. They'd come in this way, and Bessie would be down here somewhere. The power was down, and the room was lit by dul pools of emergency lighting. For the first time, Benny looked back, and her face was caught by the rush of hot air coming down the lift shaft.

A burst from the sonic screwdriver and the doors slid shut as the first flames rolled down past them.

The Doctor and Benny stood in silence, catching their breath as the fire raged safely behind the thick metal doors.

The metal warped, the paint blistered, the doors rattled on their runners, but they held. The Doctor pa.s.sed her his handkerchief, and she wiped the blood from her ears.

'What a stroke of luck,' said the Doctor. 'That fire means that the Ice Warriors won't be making any little visits down here in person.'

Twenty feet above them, another section of the building collapsed. And another.

'It also means that we are trapped down here.'

Powerful lights snapped on, twin beams fixing them from the other side of the low-vaulted car park.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mrs Summerfield,' a familiar voice cal ed.

Benny squinted past the source of the sound. The Brigadier was sitting in the driver's seat of Bessie. The light came from the car's headlamps.

They hurried over. 'They wouldn't let me go with the a.s.sault team, so I stayed down here. This level was designed to withstand a nuclear blast - judging by the tactics of that s.p.a.ce rocket the gunnery officer doesn't even know we have a bas.e.m.e.nt.'

'He's covered us with tonnes of rubble, but that just means we're even better s.h.i.+elded,' the Doctor informed her with a grin.

'And buried in,' Benny repeated.

It was the Brigadier's turn to smile. 'Mrs Summerfield, when we built this place twenty-five years ago, we didn't forget to build a door. There's a way down to the Northern Line so wide you can drive a tank through it.'

He glanced over at the pair of Chieftains lurking in the corner, then back at the Doctor.

'In the circ.u.mstances, I think that Bessie here might be a better choice. We need speed. '

'Where's everyone else?' the Doctor asked him.

'Those not involved with the a.s.sault moved out: they've gone to safe houses. Bambera is heading for Windsor with her staff.'

The Doctor was puzzled. 'They left you behind?'

'I stayed,' the Brigadier said simply. 'For you.'

'But the risk -'

'Doctor, Bambera might not realise it, but you are the only person on this planet that can stop those things. That makes you our most valuable a.s.set. And, of course, you're a friend. The enemy have secured the capital. There's nothing more that we can do here for the moment. Let's get out of London, to safety and you can work out how to stop this without any more loss of life.'

68.

Chapter Nine

Our Friends From Mars