Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [103]
'I'm sure Colonel Schott is exaggerating this small incident, Brigadier,' he simpered.
'I can assure you, I am not!' Schott was in no mood to play the usual game of placate the SS. 'My men have been wiped out in there. SS men, too.'
'This is madness, Schott,' Schumacher snapped. 'We'll never get a tank in there.'
'We must, General. Those monsters are invincible.' He lifted his Luger from its holster. 'Whatever happens, I'm going back in there.'
'You surprise me, Schott,' said Kraus, smirking. 'I didn't think you had so much mettle. I shall ride with you. The Reichsführer is anxious to know how the giants perform in battle.
He turned to the huge tank and mounted its front end.
'Return to your supper, General Schumacher,' he mocked. 'I shall report your gallantry to the Reichsführer in the morning.'
The Doctor was on his feet as soon as the three had regained the cover of the Cyberchamber, frantically jabbing buttons on the little control console.
'I've set this thing on a timer,' he said to Ace. 'I'd better make a few adjustments. It doesn't look as if we're going to get out of... here as quickly as I thought.'
A noise from the far end of the room made him stop. A pistol being cocked.
Hartmann, standing in the far doorway.
'Get away from that thing, Doctor.' He limped forward.
'Hartmann...' The man didn't seem to hear him. His one functioning eye seemed unfocused.
‘Why didn't they stop coming?
Only two men were left manning the Spandau gun. Four others lay dead at its base, destroyed by Cyberfire. The young medical orderly was feeding the massive belt of bullets into the belly of the gun, and an even younger private was keeping a relentless pressure on the trigger.
The Cyber ranks were being decimated.
It didn't seem to make any difference. They just walked forward, unflinching, being blown apart, returning fire with those death rays of
theirs. 'It's useless!' the private shouted. 'They're nearly on top of us!' 'We're dead anyway!' the medical orderly returned. 'Keep firing!' The first Cyberman now stood level with the gun. Almost casually it
reached up with one hydraulic hand and closed its fist over the end of the barrel. The precisionbored steel tube was crushed like tin in its grip. The gun, still trying to spew its bullets, exploded in the faces of its twoman crew, ripping itself apart.
Where was he? Why was everything so bright? Images swam in a morphine haze before Captain Hartmann. He could
hear music, distant, deep. Crashing, majestic music. He recognised it. What was this place that rose, cathedrallike, around him? The
Grail Castle. That was it! The mission! The destiny of the German people! It was him! It was him, after all! Europe was a wasteland of decadence and decay. That's what they were fighting for, wasn't it? He had ridden out with his fellow Knights. Out across the world he had faced death, he had faced danger, he had
faced Giants! And he had come to this place. And there it was before him. The Grail. 'Hartmann...' It was full. Full of a golden liquid. Colours played off its golden surface, reds, greens, winking and flashing at him. And only he... Only he was pure enough. 'Hartmann...'
The voice sounded so far away. He struggled to focus on the little man hunched over the sacred vessel.
'Amfortas...' The King. The Wounded King. Guardian of the Grail. No.
The Wagnerian chorus in his head reached a machinegun crescendo and died. He wasn't. He wasn't the King. Something was wrong.
He knew this man... 'Hartmann! Listen to me!' This man had done something to him. Visited some terrible retribution on him. This man and this... thing.
The Grail.
No. It wasn't... It...
Something was wrong.
His face burned.
The two men stood, facing each other, across the cauldron, dancing with light. Hartmann raised the pistol in his right hand, took aim along the barrel, pulled the trigger.
Elsewhere in the complex a colossus was rumbling through the earth. A Tiger tank: forty tons of steel, all but impenetrable the largest and most formidable weapon in the German Panzer fleet. Next to