Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [17]
‘Excellent,’ said the Doctor and marched up the steps without waiting to be shoved. Inside the vehicle, he noted the woman’s hard stare and the three stars and a crown on her epaulettes that marked out her rank.
‘Now, Brigadier, what seems to be the problem?’ he said.
The sparks looked round in astonishment. Ace smirked.
‘Excuse me?’ snapped the Brigadier.
The Doctor looked round at the banks of hissing instruments. ‘Well, a massive systems failure caused by an induced power overload. An EMP perhaps.’
‘An Electromagnetic Pulse Effect,’ said Ace.
‘Caused by?’
‘A nuclear detonation... usually.’
The Brigadier gritted her teeth. These two were like a double act. ‘I think I would have noticed a nuclear explosion.’
‘They are conspicuous,’ agreed the Doctor and handed over the two ID cards.
Ace frowned. ‘If there was no nuke where did the energy pulse come from?’
‘Exactly,’ he said and produced his tracking device again. But he could not see the lake from here.
The Brigadier looked at the cards with disbelief and then passed them to her sergeant. The intruders were causing her a lot of aggravation. She reckoned it was a press stunt and curbed in her temper with difficulty.
‘All systems were the result of a minor technical difficulty. Now I don’t know where you got these cards from, but I intend to find out!’ She nodded to the soldier by the door. ‘Escort these two outside and hold them there.’
Finding a firm hand on his shoulder, the Doctor insisted, ‘Before I go I’d just like to say three things.’
‘What!’
He was being hustled through the door. ‘Yeti, Autons, Daleks...’
He was already outside. ‘Cybermen and
Silurians!’ he shouted in vain.
Ace nearly tumbled down the steps after him. ‘That was five,’ she said.
The Doctor scowled. ‘Amongst all the varied wonders of the universe, nothing is more firmly clamped shut than the military mind!’
He looked out at the grey lake, where he reckoned the trouble was really coming from. When he glanced back at Command Vehicle, the sergeant was standing in the door.
He was holding the ID cards and looking down at the Doctor with marked curiosity.
‘Zbrigniev,’ called the Brigadier’s voice. The sergeant vanished. The Doctor smiled half-heartedly at their guard, dug into his pockets and found an individual packet of broken ginger biscuits. He tore open the top and offered the assortment of fragments to Ace.
‘Well done, Zbrigniev. Two civilians waltz up with a pair of antiquated passes and get let in. Why?’
‘Sir?’ The sergeant looked more confused than sheepish, which is not what she would have expected. Something was going on. Bambera leaned forward in her chair.
‘You know something. What is it?’
He looked more awkward than ever and fiddled nervously with the ID cards. ‘Off the record, sir.’
‘Off the record.’
‘Well, sir... When I served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, we had a scientific adviser called the Doctor.’
‘The man outside?’
‘No sir, but... ’ He looked down at the card again and shook his head.
‘But?’
Zbrigniev took the plunge. ‘He changed his appearance, sir. Twice.’
‘A disguise?’
‘No, sir. The word was that he changed his whole physical appearance and his personality too... sir.’ He saw her look of annoyance and quickly held out the ID cards again. ‘Elizabeth Shaw. She worked with the Doctor for a while.’
‘Yes,’ said Bambera.
‘And this was the Doctor. This is the first one with the white hair. Only then he changed, really changed to a man with curly brown hair. Much more eccentric too, sir. But they always said it was the same man. The same Doctor.’
Bambera had been trained to take this in her stride. She closed her eyes.
‘Go at everything with an open mind.’ Chunky Gilmore had said that repeatedly in lectures. ‘Even if it’s impossible, treat it with an open mind. If you don’t, then you’ll be in the sanatorium so fast they’ll hear the sonic boom in Coal Hill.’
Lectures at Sandhurst. Now it came back to her.
Aylesbury. UNIT’s Zen Brigade based at Aylesbury.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
‘How could he be the same man if his appearance changed?