Doctor Who_ Just War Part 27

Roz read from a printout. 'You're suffering from malnutrition, protein deficiency and what little blood you have left has a low iron content. I gave you a top-up - flooded your system with as many nutrients, vitamins and minerals as the machine would let me. That's after I pumped all the weird hallucinogens, amphetamines and relaxants out. I pumped your stomach. Benny, you were covered in bruises and welts, even a couple of minor burns - I've done what I can.' Roz glanced down to jog her memory. 'That dizziness you're feeling and that metallic taste at the back of your throat, well, you've got twice the recommended dose of painkillers and antibiotics in your bloodstream. I've reset your hand, and regrown your fingernails.' Benny looked down, waving the fingers of her right hand experimentally. They weren't even stiff. Ironic really, because every other part of her body ached.

'Anything permanent?'

Roz shook her head. 'It's too early to say. Some of the scars on your back and shoulder-blades are going to be there for a while. Are you ready to make a sitrep?'

Benny pretended that she was trying to remember.

's.p.a.ce In Time Relative... no, I give up.'

'You know d.a.m.n well what a sitrep is.'

Benny swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her bruises had gone a strange grey colour, presumably some side-effect of the medicine. She could feel a draught coming from somewhere. 'No, sorry, I seem to have forgotten all my inelegant cop jargon. Perhaps if you spoke English? A simple "What's happening, Professor?" would suffice. "Please"

would be even better.'

'Bernice, I don't have time, I really do have other things to be doing. Who did this to you?'

'n.a.z.is,' Benny said distractedly. She had just realized that the hospital gown she was wearing was backless. She didn't particularly want Cwej to see her like this. Luckily, he wasn't here. Hadn't Forrester said that? Roz was tapping her foot impatiently.

'Care to be more specific?'

'Standartenfuhrer Joachim Wolff, Luftwaffe zbV. I forget his serial number.' Standing up and speaking at the same time required more concentration than Benny could muster.

'We've got him.' Roz clenched her fist. 'I'll kill him this time.'

'What? Here in London? We are still in London? Where's Chris? What do you mean you've got Wolff? What do you mean this time? Have you seen the Doctor? Why haven't you got time? Hang on. Er... sitrep?'

'The Germans have launched their invasion. We've been warned that they are about to attack a city. Hartung's invisible bomber is in the air, it's sweeping aside everything in its path and I need to know anything you -'

'What do you mean the Germans are invading? How long was I out? No, cancel those questions. The Germans didn't invade. Off the top of my head - and I'll admit I'm still a bit s.p.a.ced out - the Germans never, ever invaded Britain.

Ever.'

'That's an interesting theoretical standpoint to hold. It is rather undermined by the fact that they are about to wipe out a whole city with an exotic new weapon and we can't do anything about it,' Roz said impatiently.

Benny was trying to catch up. 'Hang on, a couple of sentences ago did you say "Hartung"?'

'Yes.' Roz was clearly getting restless.

'As in "HARTUNG, E."?' Benny had found her stolen skirt and blouse in a pile on the floor. She thought about wearing them, then decided not to. She picked up the Doctor's umbrella and was too busy thinking about him to hear what Roz said next 'Emil Hartung, racing driver turned military genius.

What's your point?'

'I need to see the Doctor,' Benny said, grasping the umbrella handle resolutely.

'Bernice, no offence, but if the Doctor was around, do you think that I'd be standing here talking to you?'

'No, this is serious.' Benny began hobbling towards the exit, using the umbrella for support.

'You surprise me.' Roz hurried over to Benny, draping a silk kimono over her patient's shoulders, before opening the door.

Benny was still trying to piece together what was happening as she stepped into the corridor. 'You reek of cigarettes, you know that? Roz, hang on a moment. If the Doctor's not here, where is he?'

Forrester picked up a grey holdall that had been sitting just outside the door, and slung it over her shoulder. 'I don't know. I've not seen him since March the second. The last time I saw him, he told us to keep our eyes out for anything big, then he vanished and didn't say where he was going.

Look, if you're OK now, I really need to get going, the defence of the realm is at stake, and so on.'

They were in the corridor now. They were quite a way from Benny's bedroom, but one of the wardrobe rooms was just two doors down. Benny tried to remember which way.

'Us? Where is is Chris?' Chris?'

'He's gone, too. The army sent him on a suicide mission to northern France.'

'I know the feeling.' They had reached the door to the wardrobe room. Forrester pushed it open for her. Just inside was a wicker chair, and Benny took the opportunity to sit down. Roz was looking around - she almost certainly hadn't been in here before, it wasn't her sort of thing. Rows upon rows of clothes stretched out: maze-like racks of elegant dresses, exotic lingerie, daring ballgowns, frilly blouses, skirts, jackets and hats of every size, shape and colour.

Every form of female attire from the sensible to the downright saucy. Benny had often wondered when this collection had been acquired and why the Doctor had the inclination to collect women's clothing from a thousand worlds. Forrester stood by the door, uninterested. Roz was clearly a woman who wasn't in touch with her feminine side.

'What are you looking for?' Roz asked.

'I thought perhaps something like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca Casablanca.'

'What's that mean in English?'

Benny didn't attempt to explain, just to describe: 'A tailored wool suit, dusty pink. A jacket with big square pockets and round b.u.t.tons. The skirt has to be cut just beneath the knee. That's going to be the tricky bit: I doubt you've noticed this, but most of the ones in the TARDIS stores are far too short. A white cotton blouse with a' - she indicated her collar bone - 'floppy collar. A matching hat, with a broad brim. Silk stockings and cashmere scarf, both white.'

Roz nodded and set off. She would be a while, but didn't question Benny's orders, or even challenge her authority, despite all that fuss earlier about being in a hurry. Travelling with the Doctor, that sort of blind obedience would probably get her killed. Benny leant over and peeked inside Forrester's holdall.

'So that wasn't Guernsey, it was the Isle of Wight?' Chris said disbelievingly.

'Yes,' the Doctor said, s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably. Munin was shooting over Berks.h.i.+re, now, at a little under the speed of sound.

'I thought you knew the way!'

'Well, obviously I didn't,' the Doctor said irritably.

'Do we turn around and get Hartung?'

The Doctor folded his arms and refused to speak. Chris decided to change tack. 'Doctor. There's something I've been meaning to ask: you said before that Hugin blew up.

The Doctor seemed happy to explain. 'Yes. I heard a rumour that on March the first there had been a mysterious explosion above the bay at St Jaonnet. I sent Benny to investigate it. She retrieved a fragment, and I went with her to the crash site the next morning to examine the wreckage.'

'Where is she now?'

The Doctor consulted his watch. 'Benny is in Canterbury.

We got split up, but she sent me a note to say she was safe.

She's at the house in Allen Road.'

'So how did the British sabotage Hugin?'

'What?' The Doctor scowled. Something on the ground below had just caught his attention, and he was clearly annoyed to be distracted. 'The British don't know anything about Hartung's little project - that's one of the reasons I'm here. They couldn't even see it, let alone sabotage it.'

'Well, Hugin didn't blow itself up.'

The Doctor went very pale indeed, and scrabbled for his briefcase.

'What do I do?' said Chris, trying to remain calm. There were safer places to be than in an untested jet aircraft with a history of mysteriously exploding.

The Doctor was running his finger along a diagram of the fuel system. 'I don't know, it might be nothing. Oh no. Oh my giddy aunt. Oh, great jumping gobstoppers.'

That didn't sound promising.

'There's a design fault in the reserve fuel tank - in an effort to reduce hot emissions, a lot of the heat from the engine is dumped into the fuel. That can be done perfectly safely, as long as you can regulate the temperature of the fuel. Here, though, the temperature keeps building up, and as the tank empties, it reaches flashpoint.'

'So the plane we've stolen, and are now flying over the outskirts of London, is essentially an undetectable, very large, very fast giant bomb and there's nothing we can do about it?'

The Doctor was banging the palm of his hand against his forehead, as if he might dislodge the solution to their predicament. Finally, he looked up. 'Essentially, yes.'

Chris regarded himself as a polite person, so the volume and scatalogical precision of the expletive he shrieked out came as quite a surprise to him.

Even the Doctor blushed, and Chris apologized.

'I think I may have miscalculated,' said the Doctor, blinking.

The crosshairs appeared right between the cat's eyes, the gunsight framed his fluffy little face. Oblivious, he padded across the control room towards his basket, completely unaware that he was being tracked across the room by a trained killer.

Roz stopped pointing the stungun at Wolsey and checked the powerpack. Fully charged: enough for about a dozen shots at maximum intensity. She tucked the gun into her uniform jacket. Not even she could miss with a weapon that fired in a fortyfive-degree arc. The lightweight pistol was meant for riot control; it could bring down a small crowd of gravball hooligans with a single shot. 'Stungun', of course, was something of a euphemism - the citizens of s.p.a.ceport Overcity Five had always been wary of arming their police, and much preferred them to carry 'stunguns' than 'neural paralysis inducers'. This weapon was keyed to her thumbprint, which meant that it had a rather awkward firing position. More awkward for anyone else who tried to use it.

Forrester watched Benny tapping experimentally at the console.

'Are you sure that you can fly this thing?' Roz asked nervously. Every time Benny hit a b.u.t.ton there was a disconcerting electronic squeak or buzz. They were probably already on the other side of the galaxy. Benny was dressed up now as Ingmar Knopf, or whoever. She was again wearing her sungla.s.ses to disguise the bruising around her eyes, and looked very elegant for someone who ought to be in intensive care.

'To be honest, no. If I work out how to fly it, that'll be a bonus. I do know that the Doctor is linked to the TARDIS, somehow. I'm trying to see if the s.h.i.+p can home in on him. If we can't get to him, at least we'll know where he is.'

It was a good plan, in theory at least.

'Could we find Chris the same way?' Roz asked tentatively, not wanting to get her hopes up.

'I've been thinking about that. It might be possible to search northern France for someone with beppled genetic material. d.a.m.n - it's overriding me!'

Benny slammed her fist down on the console. Just as Roz was opening her mouth to speak, the scanner shutters opened and the screen flickered into life. It was a map of the south coast, running up to London. A green dot was hurtling across the image. A single word flashed red at the bottom of the screen.

INCOMING.

Benny's jaw had dropped.

'It's travelling at just over seven hundred miles an hour.'

That was roughly twice as fast as the typical aircraft of the period. A stream of weird alien script ran across the screen, and the scale of the map increased. Now they were looking at southern England, northern France and the Channel Islands. Benny could read the symbols.

'The incoming object was launched from a site just outside Granville.' As she said the name, the town's location flashed on the map and a flightpath began filling itself in. 'An extrapolation of its current trajectory suggests that it will hit Whitehall in about sixteen minutes.'

Roz remained calm. 'Why is the TARDIS telling us all this?'

'I think she's trying to warn us about the bomber.' Benny reached across and flicked a switch. I've set it to automatic flight and put the s.h.i.+p on second-stage defensive alert. If the TARDIS is about to be destroyed she'll dematerialize and land somewhere safe.' Roz looked worried until Benny a.s.sured her, 'The s.h.i.+p returns when the danger has pa.s.sed.'

Forrester had pulled down the door lever and hoisted the holdall over her shoulder.

'Where are you going?' Benny demanded.

'We've got a quarter of an hour. I've got to warn them.'

'If that's what it looks like... Stay here - you'll be safe.'

But Roz didn't look back and the door closed behind her, shutting her out. It was dark outside, colder than she had been expecting. Church bells were ringing all over London: the signal that the invasion had begun. She needed to find a phone.

There was an unearthly grinding, surging sound behind her. Roz turned.