‘That’s also a kind of travel.’
‘It was, I suppose. Then one day – actually it was on my 12th birthday – my dad found the books and threw them in the bin. I was doing badly at school and he thought they were a distraction, that I was spending too much time off in my imagination. When I should have been knuckling down.’
Yates, who had not spoken for some time, said: ‘Looks like they were wrong to doubt you, Miss McCrimmon.’
‘I never forgave my dad. I only saved one of the books, the one that was under my pillow. I hadn’t filled more than half of it. But the others were gone for good. And now I can’t even remember anything that was in them. Just childish nonsense, I suppose. What’s it like, Jo? To travel? To really travel?’
‘Fun,’ Jo said. ‘Most of the time.’
Eddie coughed something from her voice. ‘How’s that transmitter, Captain? The MERMAN gear is two floors right under us. If you can’t get a signal here, we’ll need to go through C section, which’ll take us close to that fire we saw on the way up.’
‘Signal’s still flaky, but better than it was. If it doesn’t work here we’re stuffed anyway. Right below us, you say? I’m not sure I like the idea of blowing charges under my feet!’
‘The floor should hold,’ Eddie said. ‘Provided it hasn’t been compromised by fire or structural damage elsewhere.’
Jo couldn’t help laughing. ‘That’s not much of a guarantee!’
‘About as good as you’re going to get. I wouldn’t want to risk being much closer, Captain – we’ll start narrowing down our options for escape, and that helicopter of yours isn’t going to be able to hang around for ever.’
‘I agree,’ Yates said. He knelt, setting the transmitter box on the ground. ‘Things might get a bit wobbly, so make sure you’re ready.’ He flipped back the safety cover on the detonating switch. ‘Firing in three … two … one …’
He flicked the switch.
Jo held her breath, counted to three in her head. That was more than enough time.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Wait,’ Yates said. ‘I’ll try again.’
But a second and a third attempt proved no more successful than the first. ‘Too much interference, assuming the receiver hasn’t been tampered with. We’ll need to get closer.’
‘Mike, look out!’
Jo had seen it first: a door easing open in the wall along one side of the recreation room, a figure coming out of a small office or pantry beyond the door. It was a bearded man, an oil worker, wearing an orange one-piece boiler suit and a white safety helmet. Jo recognised the man: he had been the first person to speak to them when they first came to the rig.
‘Tom?’ Eddie said, questioningly. ‘How are you … I thought you were dead!’
‘He was!’ Yates said, looking up from the transmitter. ‘I stepped over his body!’
‘But the Sild … you said they’d left them. Tom – are you all right?’
‘He’s not all right,’ Jo said.
The man called Tom was pulling something out of the pocket of his boiler suit. Jo’s world seemed to slow down. Even the UNIT soldiers had not seemed to give any thought to the possibility that the hosts on the platform might have weapons of their own. The Sild could only make use of what they found, and why would there be guns on an oil rig?
Tom pulled a heavy-looking thing from his pocket. He took it in both hands and aimed it at Mike Yates.
It looked awfully like a gun.
‘Flare pistol!’ Eddie McCrimmon said. ‘Get down! He’s going to shoot!’
Yates was fast, but not quite fast enough. Tom fired the flare pistol straight at him. The gun cracked, the flare rocketing into Yates, clipping him on the side of the head, sending him tumbling away from the transmitter. The flare continued, ricocheting off a wall, rocketing back. Yates’s head hit the floor with a jolt. The flare whooshed.
Eddie McCrimmon snatched up Yates’s automatic, gripped it double-handed, echoing Tom’s stance, and fired one bullet after another into the huge man. At the fourth or fifth discharge, a silver thing detached itself from the back of his neck, fell to the ground and began to scuttle toward the open door. Eddie lowered the automatic and blasted it. The Sild twitched and was still.
Eddie went over to the shattered thing.
‘There’s something still alive in it,’ she said. ‘Squirming around in there.’
‘That’s the alien itself,’ Jo said, kneeling down next to Mike Yates.
‘It looks totally harmless. Like a little wee seahorse or something. Almost pretty.’
Eddie laid down the heel of her shoe and moved it back and forth, putting her weight into it. Jo heard a glassy crunch.
‘I’m sorry about that man,’ Jo said. ‘I liked him, when we met. You mustn’t blame him for what happened.’
‘I don’t,’ Eddie said.
Jo returned her attention to Yates. ‘Mike’s hurt,’ she said. ‘The flare nearly hit him face-on. There’s a bad cut on the side of his head. Mike, can you hear me?’
Yates had been knocked out for a few seconds. He was coming around now, but remained groggy.
‘Jo,’ he said.
‘You’ve had a nasty knock, and you’re losing blood. Hold on.’ Jo dug into her pocket for her handkerchief and pressed it hard against the wound in the side of Yates’s head. The gash was as long as her finger, and deep enough to be almost to the bone. It could have been much more serious, of course, but Yates was clearly in no condition to continue.
‘Where are we?’
‘In the platform. We were trying to let off the charges. Do you remember that much?’
Yates was having trouble opening his eyes. ‘Where’s Benton and the Brig?’
‘Benton’s on the helicopter, waiting for us, and the Brig is a few hundred miles away.’
‘Your man’s in a spot of bother,’ Eddie said. ‘Could be some internal bleeding there, apart from the visible wound. You’d better get him back to the top – he’s a good couple of hours from the nearest hospital. Think you can manage him, Jo?’
‘I don’t know … between us, maybe.’
‘You’ll have to cope on your own. One of us still has to blow up those charges. I’m going into C section. If it doesn’t work, I’ll come straight back.’
‘I don’t know—’ Jo started.
‘No arguing – your top priority is to get the Captain off the rig.’
‘How are you going to get off, if you get stuck down there?’
‘There’s a lifeboat left, and I can easily reach it from C section.’
‘And release it?’ Jo asked.
‘Been over it about a thousand times. Wee bit of a bump when you hit the water, but it’s a lot better than drowning. Once I’m down, I’ll just sit tight until someone can come and rescue me.’
‘Might be a little while, with everyone tied up.’
‘It’ll only be me, so there’ll be no problem making the emergency rations and water last.’
‘Tell me what to do, I’ll do it,’ Yates said groggily.
‘Aye, and you’ve had all the training about how to launch a lifeboat, have you? No, didn’t think so.’
‘This is a military oper …’ Yates began, then trailed off, like a drunk man who had lost the thread of his thought.
Eddie hefted the transmitter box, no more impressed than if it contained a new pair of shoes. ‘Looks like a pretty simple piece of kit.’
‘Here,’ Jo said. ‘Take my walkie-talkie. I’ve still got Mike’s. It’s set for the right channel.’
Eddie took the walkie-talkie – it was clear she knew her way around one from the nonchalant manner in which she slipped it into her coat pocket. ‘You’d best be on your way. Watch your back on the way out.’
‘And yours,’ Jo said.
‘You know,’ Eddie said, ‘the next time you hear me complaining about not wanting a boring desk job on the mainland, do tell me to shut up.’
They were airborne
, travelling in a saucer-shaped golden flier. In outline and proportions it was similar to the queen’s own spacecraft, almost as if copied from that machine, although several times larger. They had passed through the force-field bubble protecting the capital city and were now travelling unprotected, save for the defensive shield generated by the craft itself. A landscape streaked below – mostly parched, but with the occasional dwindling lake or sea as evidence of better times. Above, the sky was a deep blue, streaked with the white cottontails of high altitude clouds. There was atmosphere here now, instead of the vacuum of ten million years ahead.
‘The Consolidator – is it up there now?’ the Doctor asked.
‘In orbit, as it has been for two million years,’ the Red Queen said, her throne now inside the flier, guarded by a small detachment of Praxilions. ‘Under Sild occupation, the fulcrum of their control of time. Our weapons are quite impotent against it.’
‘Never mind your weapons,’ the Master said. ‘I’m surprised the Sild allow you to move around at all. Why aren’t we being shot at?’
‘We’re of little concern to them,’ the queen answered. ‘Occasionally, just to remind us of their power, they will strike against us – that’s why we have force fields. But mostly we pose no threat to their ambitions. They also need the material resources of our planet – its air and water – so they cannot use heavy weapons against us, for fear of incinerating the very things they crave. More than that, my people are useful to them. I’m sure you are both familiar with Sild invasive methods?’
‘We’ve learned a thing or two,’ the Doctor said. He was standing, surveying the view through the flier’s wide sweep of a window, while the Master sat on one of the human-compatible seats that had evidently been provided for their benefit.
‘If the Sild can,’ the queen went on, ‘they would rather control a population than destroy it. It gives them an army or labour force, or both, depending on their needs. Obviously, we have resisted. But periodically Sild forces manage to capture Praxilions, sometimes in great numbers. They become Sild hosts, helping to run their machines.’
‘To what end?’ the Master enquired.
‘Before we get to that,’ the Doctor interrupted, ‘it might help if we knew a thing or two about how the Sild arrived around this planet in the first place. And while we’re at it, I might ask the same thing of you, your Majesty.’
‘What did my counterpart have to say?’
‘Very little, I’m afraid. But then again it had been ten million years.’
‘Do not expect me to much more forthcoming. I’ve already been here for two million years.’
‘But not conscious for all that time,’ the Master said.
‘No – I would be mad if that were the case. But I have lived a long life, all the same. I came to this world … you saw my vehicle, I presume?’
‘I’d like a closer look at it,’ the Doctor said, something stirring at the back of his mind again. ‘But it looked like a very small ship to me – a scout or shuttle, from a larger mother vessel.’
‘Yes, that was my conclusion. And there are times when I swear I can almost remember a mother vessel. It was a huge craft, like a city – a ship with hundreds of people on it, all busy, all doing something important. My people, then. But something was wrong with the mother vessel – it was under attack. There was a monster … I managed to escape in the pod. That’s what I called it, I think. After that, I can’t be certain. But somehow I ended up on Praxilion.’
‘Before or after the coming of the Sild?’
‘Long before, Master. There were no Sild then, and no Consolidator in orbit around Praxilion. There was just this world and its people. It was a beautiful planet, with great shimmering oceans, lush forests and lovely powder-blue skies. Its people lived simple lives, in peace and harmony with both themselves and their world.’ As she uttered these words, the flier skimmed low over the ruins of a city, blasted into a series of cratered outlines, like a blueprint for itself.
The Master smiled. ‘So where did it all go right?’
‘When I arrived, they treated me as a god, even though I was very different to them. It took me a while to understand why. The Praxilion society was a very old one. It had been through a technological golden age, perhaps more than one, then collapsed back to peaceful agrarianism. But the people remembered. Their world was littered with ancient technologies they were now too fearful to use again. And in their oldest records they carried some dim recollection of the galaxy’s history, right back to the EMTT. Their knowledge was muddled. But they remembered enough to understand that there had been a time when humanoids like me wielded immense political and economic power. Rightly or wrongly, they saw me as the key to returning Praxilion to its former magnificence.’
‘I assume you refused?’ the Doctor asked sharply.
‘I wanted to help them.’
‘You were meddling with fire!’
‘You’ll have to excuse my associate,’ the Master said. ‘He has this strange notion that it is perfectly acceptable for him to tamper in the affairs of other cultures, but utterly wrong for anyone else to do so. It’s the worst kind of moral arrogance.’
‘I don’t need a lecture,’ the Red Queen said. ‘I know that I set these people on a path to catastrophe. But I meant well.’ She turned away as one of her Praxilion aides scuttled alongside her throne to whisper something. ‘You may find this interesting, gentlemen. The Sild have opened one of their atmospheric suction portals within the last few minutes. We’re about to skirt its margins. I’ll take us in as close as it’s safe to go.’
The Master extended his hand. ‘Doctor – might I beg your assistance?’
The Doctor helped the Master to rise. The two of them stood next to each other before the flier’s window.
‘There,’ the queen said sharply. ‘At eight o’ clock. Do you see it?’
The Doctor squinted. There was something up there, a whorl-like tightening of the clouds, like the eye of a storm. It was all purple and white spirals, whipping around at astonishing speed. A whirlpool in the sky.
No, he corrected. Not a whirlpool. A mouth. A ghastly swallowing mouth, gorging itself on what remained of Praxilion’s atmosphere.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jo and Yates staggered out onto the open deck of Mike Oscar Six. Yates was only just capable of walking, and for much of the time had to rely on Jo for balance and direction. It did not help that the angle of the rig was tilting ever more steeply away from vertical, meaning that even Jo was finding it hard to maintain her orientation. With some regularity now, booms and crashes signalled the platform’s on-going structural failure. Each lurch brought a moment of heart-stopping terror, as if it might be the last. Clearly there was not long to go.
The helipad was empty, but Jo had expected that. With all the smoke billowing up from the rig’s sides, she couldn’t see Benton’s helicopter at all.
Resting at the base of the helipad, she used their walkie-talkie. ‘Windmill 635, come in. We’re in position.’
She had to strain to hear the answer. ‘Benton here. We haven’t seen the blast!’
‘Eddie’s still getting into place – she’s got the transmitter.’
‘What about the Captain?’
‘Mike’s hurt – we need to get him off the rig immediately.’
‘Roger. We’re descending. Keep your head down!’
To Jo’s intense relief the helicopter nosed cautiously through the smoke, then started lowering back down to the pad. Though much of the rig’s superstructure had collapsed, there were still many obstacles that the pilots had to avoid. Jo could only admire their skill and courage in returning under such conditions.
The helicopter touched its skids to the ground, but kept nearly full power on the rotors. Benton slid open the door, hopped out and helped get Yates aboard.
‘What happened?’
‘Flare pistol!’ Jo said. ‘Probably worse than it looks. But we couldn’t get the charges to blow.’
/> ‘And Miss McCrimmon? Is she going to come back this way?’
‘I hope so. Can we still hover for a bit?’
‘Couple of minutes, and then you’re pushing your luck.’
Jo and Benton squeezed back into the helicopter. They pulled off the pad, then slid sideways, through the curtain of smoke. It was only when she saw it from the outside that she appreciated what a perilous state the platform was now in. It was teetering like a bar-stool with unequal legs, threatening to topple into the sea at the slightest provocation. Flames were curtaining out of the superstructure at a dozen locations. Large parts of the rig were already burned out, reduced to edifices of black char. Jo thought of Eddie still somewhere inside all that, and wondered why she had ever allowed herself to be persuaded that splitting up was a sensible idea.
‘Oh, Eddie – you didn’t have to do this …’
Her walkie-talkie squawked. She lifted it to her ear. ‘Jo?’ came the voice.
Jo had to shout over the noise of the rotor. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes! I’m in C section – ready to detonate! Thought I should let you know. With all the crashing and banging going on in here, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to tell if the charges blow!’
‘We’re in the air,’ Jo said. ‘We should be able to see something.’
‘Well, here goes.’
Jo waited a second. Nothing happened. She was starting to think that even this attempt had gone wrong, that perhaps the receiver and charges had failed, when a fireball blew out from the nearest side of the rig. The explosion was huge – much larger than she had been expecting. When the blast had cleared, she could see right through the walls, into a cross-section of floors and walls and rooms. New flames were already beginning to spread, anxious to consume.
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Page 26