Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [88]
‘But it was launched before they detected Norval,’ Larna objected.
‘Only from our perspective,’ the Doctor noted under his breath.
‘In any event, there is no such weapon,’ the Castellan snapped.
‘Not yet, Castellan,’ the Doctor said. ‘But there will be plenty of time to develop such technology. Fellow Councillors, it will only be a matter of time before whoever fired that weapon discovers the existence of the Station.’
The Magistrate rubbed his beard. ‘The Doctor is right. We can’t defend against it… if they have control of the Effect, then not even Gallifrey is safe.’
‘They don’t have control of the Effect,’ Larna repeated. ‘If they had, they wouldn’t need to use anything else.’
‘That’s only a guess,’ the Doctor warned her.
‘I have located the source of the energy ball,’ Hedin announced. ‘A structure on the surface of the Needle. We are not close enough to run a full scan, but there are energy sources there, and traces of sentience.’
The Castellan was nodding, almost distractedly. ‘We must destroy it.’
‘What?’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Destroy them before we have even found out who they are?’
‘They have killed a Time Lord,’ Hedin noted. ‘There is no greater crime. They fired without provocation.’
‘How would we destroy them?’ another Councillor asked.
‘A directed blackstar,’ the Magistrate suggested.
‘The blackstar was devised to crack open Dyson Spheres.
Using it on the Needle will annihilate an area a billion kilometres in diameter.’
‘A tiny speck on the surface.’
‘An area hundreds of times larger than the surface of Gallifrey,’ the Doctor objected, ‘an area large enough to support trillions of lifeforms.’
Voran held up his hand. ‘I am not suggesting that we use a blackstar, there are other options.’
The Magistrate and the Doctor both turned to face him.
‘You can’t mean…’
‘In the face of ultimate force, we would be justified in using the ultimate countermeasure. Show me it.’
The image in the Infinity Chamber shifted. Now it showed an apparently empty starfield. The picture panned slowly across, until a barren ice planet filled the screen. There didn’t seem to be anything else there, until a patch of blackness appeared in the bottom half of the screen, Looking closely, it was possible to discern a disc, the light sliding from the omniscate on its top surface. It passed behind the ice planet, and it became apparent that the disc was larger than the world it was passing.
‘Prime it,’ Voran ordered. ‘We must be ready to use it.’
‘Once again the glorious past raises its head,’ the Doctor said archly. ‘Even during the Vampire Wars we never had to resort to the –’
‘They fired first,’ Voran snapped, cutting him off. ‘What is done is done.’
‘Not any more,’ the Doctor whispered.
But the Councillors were already moving into new positions, like dancers preparing for a new act. The Doctor was left alone with Larna in the middle of the floor.
He grabbed her. ‘How do we stop them?’ he asked.
She bit her lip. ‘They’ll need the Great Key, they’ll need to reconfigure the phased energy conduits, they’ll need to establish a spacetime vector–’
‘That isn’t what I asked,’ the Doctor snapped.
‘I’m thinking,’ she shouted back. ‘Power room. They’ll need to channel the energy beam through the timegate.’
‘Shut down the gate and they can’t fire?’
‘Right!’
‘Come on!’
No one noticed them leave.
They hurried out of Temporal Monitoring and past a couple of gossiping Time Lord historians in the antechamber. They broke into a run, cutting across a number of quadrangles and atriums to reach the main staircase. The Doctor led the way, pounding down the steps three at a time. Lama lagged a little, until the Doctor grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him.
They swept down the main staircase, passing small groups of Watchmen and Technicians. No one challenged them as they carried on down the staircase to the power room level. They were alone down here, alone apart from the bodies of the two men that Savar had killed.
The power room door was still open, the floor was still