Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [10]
A tirade of white noise swamped all frequencies. The entire sane world had shrunken to the confines of the buffeted car. A last tiny illuminated beacon in the raging maelstrom.
Eighteen years OTT, on the tarmac, and she still hated inactivity. Always on alert. Always waiting for orders to go in. She still remembered the Gulf.
Zbrigniev shifted restlessly in the driver’s seat. ‘We could try moving again, sir. Slowly...’ His grasp of English was impeccable as ever, but his Polish accent always got thicker under stress.
‘Forget it, Zbrigniev, the convoy can’t be far ahead. This won’t keep up much longer.’
Bambera replaced the handset. There was a heavy crash outside, followed by a dragging, rustling sound as something like a small tree travelled past the car.
The Dull Sword operation was turning into the sort of nightmare that happened to other COs. Not to her.
She had been trained for and survived worse situations than this. It was the storm that had screwed them up. The planning reports had said nothing about the weather, yet this was the great-grandfather of all storms. An inferno of cold and wet. She had never experienced anything like it.
Nor was there an explanation for the blast of ungodly noise that had immediately preceeded the storm and nearly landed them in a ditch.
Outside, the rain continued to lash down as if this was its last chance before the Sahara.
She put the idea that the storm was unnatural out of her head. That was one of UNIT’s occupational hazards: always imagining the weirdest. This wasn’t The Tempest, this was the night Brigadier Bambera lost a nuclear missile convoy on a peacetime manoeuvre. Shame!
The thunder had become a continuous rumble often lost under the barrage of the gale. Lightning flickered inside the clouds rather than below them, as if an immense war engine was passing slowly overhead.
‘Not yet, Zbrigniev. Any chance of coffee?’
‘Sorry, sir. We finished the flask.’
She closed her eyes and wished that now and then her adjutant could be a little less formal.
Zbrigniev leaned across and fumbled in the base of the map box. ‘Emergency supplies, sir,’ he said and produced a large bar of chocolate.
There was a burst of static as the radio crackled back into life. ‘.. me in Seabird One. Thi... ...alarnander Six Zer... Are y... ...eiving, Over.’
Lightning fast, Bambera had the handset off its hook.
‘Come in Salamander Six Zero. This is Seabird One.
Please clarify your position. Over.’
Through the distorted signal she could just about make out the voice of Lieutenant Richards, who was leading the missile convoy. ‘Ma.. ive elec.. cal disturb... Over.’
‘You’re breaking up, Richards. I repeat, clarify your position. Over.’
‘Must ...ave ...ken a wrong turning ...mewhere.
NAVSAT is nonoperational. Ov...’
The rain and wind seemed to relent a little. Bambera and Zbrigniev glanced at each other.
‘Well, get outside, Richards. and look for a road sign.
Use your initiative. Over.’
‘Will do, s...’
A massive squawk of interference blanked out the transmission completely. Bambera set down the handset again. ‘All right Sergeant, let’s move.’
The lightning still arced across the great rift between the universes. It flickered above the low cloudbase that lashed rain in sheets upon Avallion. The thunder was only an echo from another existence.
For a moment the racing wolfclouds tore apart and an eye of infinite blue sky stared through.
‘ Soon dominion over all things shall be mine... ’
The storm surged around the TARDIS as it hovered between realities. Its sensors sought out the instigator of the signal. Alternatives. Possibilities. The way was no longer clear.
Which way? Which universe?
The surging blanket of cloud tore against the massive edifice of the High Tagel. White-walled buttresses rose like snow sculptures in the moonlight. Ancient and enduring, vaulted and carved with the shapes of a thousand wings.
Ancient halls and galleries of power and council, the bastion of the High