Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [66]
‘Sorry Doctor, but I think I’m more expendable than you are.’ He ran back down the path towards the burning priory, leaving Ace alone, furiously trying to rouse her mentor.
Along the path he ran, his feet pounding and his breath short. But he had to face those cruel eyes again.
Doris was on the phone and getting angrier.
‘Yes, I am Mrs Lethbridge-Stewart... A message? Oh, I don’t know. Tell him I lo... Tell him he hasn’t finished the garden.’
Their apple tree, full grown, heavy with russet fruit; then a great wind tore at it, ripping its roots until it crashed in ruin across her lawn.
Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart reached the door of the priory. The ground trembled. Smoke was curling acridly into his lungs as he pushed his way inside.
Timbers and rafters blazed around the Destroyer like a throne of green fire. It was hunger. This world was its to devour, and then another and another. All life would not assuage the terrible famine that raged inside its heart. Its raised hands belched energy, out through the burning roof into the sky.
It exalted in its freedom and roared its agony. Hunger would prevail. ‘And today I shall feed!’
Beside its hooves, it noticed the figure of a human. With a convulsive movement, it drew its power back into itself and fixed him with its eyes. It knew him.
‘Little man, what do you want?’
The Brigadier levelled his pistol at the demon. ‘Get off my world,’ he said.
The Destroyer bared its fangs. ‘Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as a champion?’
‘Probably,’ said the Brigadier and unleashed every round he had in the gun.
Tiny impact explosions flared on the demon’s armoured hide. The monster began to laugh. A laugh that sounded the death knell of all creation.
The Brigadier lowered the gun in defeat. ‘I just do the best I can,’ he said.
The Destroyer stopped laughing.
Light flared from the bulletholes in its chest like lasers through the smoke. The glare spread and burst out, flaring into a vast, cold green sun.
The blast. caught the Doctor and Ace as they belted down the priory path. They kept running.
The building evaporated in a surge of energy that tore skywards.
‘No chance,’ yelled Ace as they ran.
Amongst the discarded burning rubble, they saw the blackened body of the Brigadier.
The Doctor knelt by him in anguish. ‘You stupid, stubborn, thick-headed, numbskull...! You were supposed to die in bed! I could’ve handled it myself. It wasn’t your job!’
Ace kept quiet. It was the first time she had seen the Doctor weeping.
‘Rubbish, Doctor,’ said the Brigadier, opening his eyes.
‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ complained the Doctor.
‘Sorry to upset the eulogy, but you don’t really think I’m so stupid as to stay inside... do you?’
‘Well...’ The Doctor was laughing now.
‘Really Doctor, have a little faith.’ He looked at his friend’s embarrassed companion. ‘Ace?’
‘Yes, Brigadier,’ she smiled.
‘I’m getting too old for this. From now on, he’s all yours.’ He clambered awkwardly to his feet. ‘I’m going home to Doris as soon as possible.’
The Doctor looked startled and delighted. ‘So, she finally got you,’ he grinned impishly.
‘Yes,’ laughed the Brigadier. ‘I suppose there’ll be clearing up to do first. There usually is with you, Doctor.’
‘Just a small nuclear missile bogged down in a nature reserve.’ The air had begun to clear. The smoke dispersed into the crystal blue sky.
‘What about this?’ asked Ace. She lifted up the sword Excalibur.
The Doctor frowned. ‘That old thing. What do you make the time, Brigadier?’
Lethbridge-Stewart consulted his precious gold watch.
‘Eight minutes to six.’
‘Ace?’
She looked at her plastic-strapped, underwater, tune-playing, digital display, computer game kilowatch. ‘I don’t know about here, Professor. On Iceworld it’s twenty past seventeen. Why?’
The Doctor lifted his own horloge de main, a unique timepiece given to him by Beaumarchais for a couple of one liners in The Marriage of Figaro, to his ear. ‘According to this, it could finally be the hour of England’s greatest need.’
Chapter 3
Ancelyn