Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [53]
* * *
Cosgrove moved in, two men in front of him, three behind.
They fanned out as they entered the main entrance hall. It didn’t look like the Doctor and Malady were here. It was waterlogged – in their position, Cosgrove would get across the hall and up that staircase to the first floor.
They moved forwards in a line, executing a search pattern – if the Doctor was here, they’d know about it.
There were huge statues here – Apollo, Zeus, an achingly beautiful Aphrodite. These things had endured for centuries. Millennia. They were older than his own civilisation.
Hard to think there had been a time when there wasn’t a Service. Some of the secret societies, of course, claimed to date back into antiquity. But how would you ever prove that?
What would that mean, anyway?
Cosgrove believed in tradition. He was a patriot, he fought for the United Kingdom. Great Britain. But not because it was old. Because he genuinely believed it was a way of life worth preserving and fighting for. There were fragments of a British way of life that were still worth clinging to.
He looked up at Aphrodite again. Today she really was rising from the seawater. She was perfect. Every curve, every line, every detail.
‘Sir!’ one of the men called out.
Something was happening on the staircase in front of them.
That was the best description Cosgrove could come up with for the moment: something.
The light was changing. Shapes were forming.
The time police, he realised. They were materialising – using some future technology to beam straight into the museum.
He brought his machine pistol up and fired three rounds into the nearest shape to him.
The first volley passed straight through, ricocheted off the back wall. The next did the same. The third killed the target.
It was the woman, and she was thrown back by the force of the bullets hitting her before she’d fully materialised.
* * *
Madame Jaxa looked surprised.
‘I’m dead,’ she told Roja, who was kneeling down. She could hear the human soldiers splashing across the entrance hall towards them.
‘No.’
‘The bullets… they arrived before me. They’re inside me, I can feel them. I’m dead. Don’t let them kill you, too.’
Roja stood, fired at one of the soldiers, who vanished in a burst of light. The others dived for cover behind the statues.
A moment later, one edged round the corner of his plinth. Roja could hear him doing it, see the water sloshing around as he made his move.
He disintegrated the man, and the corner of the statue, with a single shot.
Three more soldiers opened fire. Roja felt some of the bullets ricochet from his clothing.
He bent down, activated Jaxa’s timeporter.
His tutor vanished, returned to their home time.
Perhaps there the medics could save her.
Roja knew they couldn’t. But perhaps they could. Perhaps.
He was crying, the cowl he was wearing suddenly felt very hot, restrictive.
He fired at the base of another of the statues, watched it fall like a tree that had been chopped down, saw some of the soldiers dive out of the way, and some of them that didn’t.
He hurried up the stairs.
* * *
The statue of Aphrodite came crashing down, the head breaking off as the torso hit the floor, a great wave surging out.
The head was the size of a small car. Cosgrove barely avoided it, but was bowled over by the surge of water.
Two of his men had been killed before that. Another two died under the falling masonry.
Cosgrove pulled himself upright, water pouring off him. The insides of his boots were wet, he could feel cold water trickling down his back. Aphrodite stared up at him, her perfect face half submerged in the water. He felt angry at seeing her like that, violated.
‘Stevens, are you there?’
Stevens was, and came splashing over. ‘The boy went upstairs,’ he said. ‘That gun of his…’
Cosgrove nodded.
‘Where’s the one I shot?’ Cosgrove asked.
‘I didn’t see.’
‘I killed her. She’s not there.’
They did a quick visual search of the room. The waves from all the splashing