Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [110]
of Vore flew in. There was something like a stack at a major airport as the arrivals waited their turn to land.
‘We can’t negotiate, we can’t come to terms. There’s nothing in the Vore hive to negotiate with. They can’t compromise, any more than a plague of locusts can. They have a right to exist, but not here. Not at this cost.’
‘Couldn’t we just bomb it?’ Fitz asked.
‘There’s a reason why terrorist warlords and Western military commanders alike build their shelters under mountains. Conventional rockets and missiles would just bounce off. A nuclear weapon. . . Well, that would kill a lot of people too, in the short and long term, and would bury a lot of Vore underground. If they really are laying eggs, like all the insect experts seem to think, I’m not sure that’s as definite a conclusion as I’d like.’
‘I think cockroaches are meant to be able to survive a nuclear war, anyway, aren’t they?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve been to planets where that’s happened. Never had the cockroaches start the war before now, though.’
A pair of RAF planes roared overhead. Fitz swung the binoculars round and watched them go, saw the other ships of the small Royal Navy task force a little further out to sea, nearly blinded himself looking into the sun by mistake.
‘The planes are keeping their distance. Sensible.’
‘Yes,’ concluded the Doctor. ‘We’ll have to get closer.’
‘How close?’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
It is the next morning, and they are standing above the clouds on the flattened top of the Vore mountain in the Tombali region of Guinea-Bisseau. It is dry, and sand lifted up by the hot harmattan wind obscures the view to the east.
To the west is the sea, dotted with the ships of the Royal Navy task force. It is the first time Rachel or Trix has been to Africa, and they both regret dressing for a British summer.
The air is thin here, at the summit. All around the plateau are dotted great vents, fifty yards wide, chimney shafts that go straight down as far as the eye can see. Ammoniac air wafts up from depths of the mountain, thick with heat and carbon dioxide and sulphur.
‘This is how they keep the temperature and oxygen content of the hive constant,’ the Doctor explains, staring right down into the pit. ‘Cold, fresh air will be sucked in at the base of the mountain, the waste gases get expelled here.’
‘So what now?’ Trix asks.
The Doctor looks at his three companions. ‘You tell me.’
229
Rachel takes a deep breath. ‘We all die. The Vore find us here, murder us like they murdered Marnal. They go back and wait, feeding on the people they’ve already killed. They breed, safe in this mountain, able to ignore anything we throw at them, from a squad of troops to a nuclear bomb dropped straight down one of these holes. Then – probably sooner than we think possible – they fly out of these holes, kill all the people, kill all the animals, kill all the plants, kill all the other insects, until it’s just them and their mushrooms left. The whole world becomes a hive, they find a way to pilot it around like they did that moon, and the cycle starts again.’
Fitz has a lopsided grin. ‘You really haven’t been paying attention, have you, love? They’re monsters, he’s the Doctor. There’s only one way this is going to end. Look – this is a whopping great ventilation shaft. It’s a way in. The Doctor leaps down it, coat tails and hair flapping, lands, finds out what the Vore are planning, discovers their weakness, he confronts them, and then he kicks their arse. An hour from now, we’ll all be watching from a safe distance as this mountain explodes, taking every Vore with it.’
‘“Leaps down”? Falls down, more like. No one could survive that.’
‘The Doctor could.’
‘I can’t even imagine how he hopes to beat them.’
‘That, Rachel, is your problem, not his,’ Trix tells her.
‘Nothing ever ends,’ Fitz says. ‘Especially not him.’
‘He’ll die.’
‘It he does, he’ll do it saving the Earth and then he’ll come back, all-new and better than