Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [4]
Woman overboard.
God, that was a long time ago.
Her life had had such a muddled beginning. What was it like, to just grow up and go to school and get a job, like those kids? Not to be orphaned at seven? Not to run away from school and live in a forest? Not to be shanghaied into military service? Not to fake your academic credentials?
Not to meet the Doctor?
She smiled to herself. She wouldn’t have given any of it up. Not even the moments of horror, the brushes with death.
Not even the doubts and betrayals and the heart-thumping moments when she remembered that she was travelling through space and through time with a man who only looked like a man. Human on the outside, alien to the core.
Through space, and through time. The TARDIS could go anywhere, anywhen. And somehow they’d never landed anywhere near her father, never made a concerted effort to look for him. Somehow, they’d just never got around to it.
Because, of course, he was just dead.
The students were laughing now, at some joke the Admiral had cracked, their young voices echoing across the mossy plaza. Youkali had been colonized centuries ago, though only a couple of bases had been built. When they’d realized that you couldn’t throw a stone in a Youkalian jungle without hitting ruins, someone had slapped a protection order on the place. They were still sending teams here; budding archaeologists inevitably did a Youkali tour. And so did haggard old ones who were working on their ‘second’
doctorate.
Why did she want to find Dad? Who was this man? She could remember the sound of his voice, but the photo had shocked her. It didn’t match her blurred, child’s memories.
For one thing, he was a lot shorter than she remembered.
She put down her bits and pieces and strode across the clearing, her hands in her pockets. The Admiral looked up.
‘Good morning, my dear!’ she said. ‘These young people have just been telling me about the ghost that’s following you around.’
Right on cue, a chilly wind blew through the clearing. It’s supposed to be the phantom of a trainee who disappeared here about five years ago,’ said Benny. ‘No one knows what happened to her, but they say she haunts this site, trying to complete her honours project. Personally, I think the mutant flying funnel-web spiders probably got her.’ A couple of the students bought that, eyebrows raised and mouths opened.
Mwa ha ha. ‘Admiral,’ she said, ‘I need a word.’
Groenewegen detached herself from her audience. She followed Benny to one of the little catering tents at the southern edge of the clearing. ‘What can I do for you, my dear?’
‘I need to extract the exact coordinates of that last battle from your flight recorder,’ said Benny. ‘The precise time and place. I didn’t want to start messing around with your only copy.’
The Admiral nodded seriously. ‘I’m still very sorry about the shock I gave you. Two teas, please,’ she told the Caxtarid in the tent. If you want to know the mathematics, I can easily sort the numbers out for you. But I’m a little worried...’
‘I want to reconstruct the battle. Let’s say I want to clear the family name.’
‘Fair enough.’
Benny had brought the flight recorder; she handed it to the Admiral, who started up the hologram. The tiny ships flew around her head as she folded down the miniature keyboard and tapped in some instructions. ‘There,’ she said, after a moment. Benny’s hands were filled by the cups. Her father’s ship had frozen in place at the very edge of the field, the moment before it disappeared from the recording. Numbers appeared over it.
‘That’s the last recorded position of the ship.’
Groenewegen shut down the hologram and folded the flight recorder back up. She swapped it for her tea. ‘I want you to keep that,’ she said. ‘You might be tilting at windmills trying to actually find Isaac, but it’d be worth it just to prove that he wasn’t running away.’
‘I have to know,’ said Benny, surprised at the intensity in her voice. ‘I really have to know.’
The Admiral patted her arm. ‘There’s precious little honour in being a soldier, love,’ she said. ‘That