Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [50]
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When they'd discovered that their cryogenic sleep units had malfunctioned and they'd woken up thousands of years too late, he could have abandoned the mission and gone home.
He wouldn't have been blamed. Instead, he'd sent out a team of Vykoids with a mission: find a human and force it to take the mammoth to the greatest city on Earth. He'd faced a threat of mutiny from the disgruntled soldiers eager to go home and a vote of no confidence from the Vykoid Fleet Commanders, but he'd persisted with his plan, and it had worked. However powerful and well defended New Yorkers thought they were, Manhattan was defenceless to a hidden enemy.
He signalled to the Chief Scientist with a brief wave of his hand. 'Please begin.'
In a corner of the Subway station, the Vykoids had assembled something that looked like a shower in a hippie commune. They had constructed a man-sized chamber out of bent copper pipes and elaborate woodwork built into the wall.
Hauling on levers and pulleys, the Vykoids were lifting something large into a standing position in the chamber. On either side of the object, platforms of Vykoids waited to be called into service. Waiting like paratroopers before a drop, they had a hint of bullishness and anxiety, overridden by the sense that this was their moment. After years of waiting inside the mammoth, they were finally getting to put their technology into action. It wasn't how they 188
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had expected to use it but, deep down, they knew it was going to be a lot more fun.
Centuries of being frustrated by their size had led the Vykoid race to become experts in building larger vehicles. But even with the might of technology on their side, the universe still refused to take them seriously and so, with the logic of the conqueror, they had decided to use their machines to subdue anyone that stood taller than them.
Their perfect machines of war had run amok through solar systems and caused chaos across galaxies. All the time, the best brains of the Vykoid race had been working long and hard on a new and better solution to the problem of being tiny in a world of oafs and gangly gargantuans. They had learnt how to control the minds of larger animals, to take charge of their every action.
A bright spotlight blazed onto the object in the Vykoid conversion cubicle. It was Commander Strebbins, fast asleep and tied upright to a wooden scaffold by hundreds of tiny ropes.
Buzzing with adrenalin, Lars, a Vykoid private on his tour of duty, hopped into a minute seat and saluted his commander. The chair was packed with hundreds of controls.
At his left hand were dozens of buttons, and on his right a carved Vykoid joystick.
The scientists around him backed away, and Lars shouted out, 'Ready!'
With a dazzling manoeuvre, Lars was shot into 189
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the air to land squarely on the head of the NYP D
commander.
General Erik watched with satisfaction as Strebbins's left eye opened halfway. Then her right eye jammed wide open in a thousand-yard stare.
Lars radioed down to the command centre. 'I'm having slight ocular control difficulties, sir.'
A Vykoid scientist spoke into a communicator. 'You're doing great, just blink it out, and relax the muscles.'
Two sleepy-eyed blinks later, and Lars was back in business. He attempted a smile, and the Commander grinned dumbly around the room. Her lips trembled, and then opened in ludicrously fast speech. 'Hey, it ain't easy being this big! Talk about dumb animal...'
Down below, the Vykoid scientists were drenched in drops of spittle.
The lead scientist, spoke into the communicator again.
'Hat back on... now.'
With a skilful whirring of pulleys, the NYPD cop baseball cap was delicately lowered into position. A dangling Vykoid tided up the hair around the cap and gave a thumbs-up signal to down below. Lars was now out of sight, and totally in command of Commander Strebbins.
'I'm