Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [102]
‘Dad?’ said Benny.
‘Don’t stop the launch,’ Isaac told M’Kabel. He grabbed the Tzun’s hand. ‘Don’t stop it.’
‘What the —’ began Ms R.
Isaac looked at the Doctor’ who was still holding the Navarino at bay. The Time Lord nodded.
Isaac punched in a set of coordinates.
‘Everybody out!’ he yelled.
They bolted from the silo en masse, nearly running into Chris and Roz. Albinex shot past the Adjudicators in a purple blur.
‘The Daleks have a spy satellite!’ shouted Chris.
‘We know that!’ yelled the Doctor. ‘Give me a hand!’
Chris ran over to where the Doctor was struggling with an unconscious Ogron. They hefted the hairy creature between them. ‘What about the other one?’ shouted Chris, over the sound of rocket engines firing up.
‘He’s dead,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on!’
They ran after the others’ carrying the Ogron awkwardly between them.
‘Hit the dirt!’ shouted Roz.
Around the USAF base at Greenham Common, chants and songs and shouts died away into nothing as the police and the protesters and the soldiers stopped as one body, and sixty thousand eyes watched the missile climb into the sky.
The Dalek spy satellite had been idly watching the heat traces around the airforce base, wondering why there were so many humans gathered there. It saw the missile coming and woke up a bit. That was the signal. It turned lazily, its communications disc pointing outwards, aiming for the relay satellite near Barnard’s Star. The one that would contact the fleet.
It had a series of coded instructions to run. Once the nuclear weapons had done as much damage as they could, it would release cleansing biological packages into the atmosphere. Human civilization would have been completely destroyed, along with the majority of the population. The viruses would take care of anything that was left, preparing the world for its new masters.
Beyond that, the satellite didn’t know and didn’t care what the plan was. In its own dim way it was aware that the Daleks didn’t care much either. They’d been contacted, made an offer: if it didn’t come to fruition, it was no skin off their implants. Earth would keep.
The satellite knew it was invisible to the planet’s primitive sensors, the stumbling radar on the surface and the clumsy satellites in orbit.
If it had been bright enough to understand surprise, it would have been astonished when a cruise missile smacked into it from behind and ripped it to shreds.
Denouement
‘Where’s Albinex?’ said Benny.
‘I don’t know,’ said Roz. ‘Get your foot out of my mouth.’
‘Sorry,’ said Benny.
‘Last seen as a purple dot on the horizon,’ said Chris.
‘Are we still alive?’ said Joel.
‘Yeh,’ said Isaac.
Silence for a bit.
‘Don’t say it,’ said Benny.
Joel said, ‘Only way to be sure.’
Albinex pressed a lumpy fist into the remote control. A hundred feet up, the airlock cycled, and the ladder gracefully lowered itself into the forest.
He grabbed hold of it and scrambled up. He had to be out of here before they got their wits together and came after him. All of them. Isaac. The Doctor. The Daleks!
He hauled himself into the airlock. He gawped at the very dead Ogron on the floor. He snarled at Ms Randrianasolo, and reached for his gun.
‘Take this, you militaristic patriarchal bastard!’ she yelled, and knocked him flat with a telepathic stun-bolt.
‘Hmm,’ she said, looking down at the unconscious Navarino. Not very non-violent. But satisfying.’
33 Thank you for the lovely present
A messy bed in a messy bedroom.
Joel appears in front of the camera’ sitting on the bed.
‘Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. It’s New Year’s Eve, nineteen eighty-three. It’s about —’ he looks at his watch ‘— ten-fifteen p.m.
‘Okay, I’ve got to finish off this letter. Everybody’s leaving tonight, so this is my last chance to get ’em all on tape. So I’ll be going around and doing a bunch of interviews and other fun stuff.’
Joel reaches for the camera. Static for a few seconds, and then:
A café full of people, some standing, some sitting.