Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [55]
Tomorrow Never Lies
Malady watched the boy, Cosgrove and the other British special forces soldier fade away.
She wasn’t sure what the Doctor had done.
‘You killed them?’ she asked. But the helicopters had gone, too.
‘I moved us in time, but not in space.’
‘How far?’ The sunlight was in the same place it had just been.
‘Exactly a day.’
‘We’re in the future?’
The Doctor grinned. ‘Yeah. But here they call it “the present”.’
He handed her the gun he’d taken from the boy.
‘Cosgrove didn’t work it out,’ the Doctor said, relieved. ‘He must have thought we’d travelled in space. By the lack of helicopters, it sounds like he scaled down the search. If he’d just waited here, he’d have got us.’
The Doctor opened up the time machine again, started checking the settings.
Malady looked around. ‘OK… we made it. I really didn’t think we were going to. But we got away.’
‘I don’t think this has much charge left,’ he said, waving the time machine. ‘Two journeys at most. We should conserve energy, find some other way to get about. I need to find my companions, too. Anji’s probably with Baskerville, Fitz could be anywhere on Earth by now.’
Malady nodded. ‘And whatever it is Baskerville has planned, he’s a day closer to it, now.’
* * *
The Onihr leader studied the latest status reports.
Fitz watched him, wondering what the Doctor would do in his place. He suspected it wouldn’t be to hang around for a day and a half, hoping something would come up, but that was the best Fitz had managed so far.
‘So… what are you planning?’ he asked. There was always a chance the Onihr leader would tell him.
‘First we fire our EMP cannon, disabling all electronic devices on Earth, then we introduce the metal‐ and plastic‐eating megaviruses, that will reduce all metal alloys and plastics to biodegradable sludge. Then we will invade, dragging all their world leaders from their places of safety and decapitating them. The fifth minute of the invasion will begin with –’
‘It’s OK, I get the idea.’
The control gallery was facing the Earth, now.
Sending a message to Earth seemed entirely futile. What would Fitz say? ‘Don’t make any plans for this evening’? Locating the Doctor and getting a message to him was a possibility, but the only way Fitz could think of doing it was to ask the Onihrs – and they still thought he was the Doctor.
‘Time travel detected, leader,’ one of the Onihrs growled.
‘Where?’
‘On the surface of the Earth.’
The air filled with the smell of fresh hay. It had been a while before Fitz had realised that the Onihrs were almost blind, but had a highly developed sense of smell. He’d been quite proud when he’d worked it out. It explained the flowers growing from the walls of some of the rooms – decoration.
He was sure there was probably a way to turn their blindness to his advantage, or to cunningly contrive a disguise using different scents.
Buggered if he could think of how, though.
‘It is located here, leader.’
The leader picked up Fitz and lowered him in front of the console.
‘Explain.’
‘Er… can you show me a picture?’ he asked.
A picture of Greece from space appeared.
‘Greece,’ he explained. ‘Er… Athens?’ That was a guess, but he thought Athens was around there somewhere.
‘Human communications have used that word many times during the last day, leader. There has been a tidal wave there, and significant loss of life.’
The Onihr considered this information, clearly not sure how to proceed.
‘Rather than invade the Earth,’ Fitz suggested, ‘you should perhaps concentrate on that.’
The Onihr leader and his technician sniffed the air, curiously.
‘Explain.’
‘Well, instead of using all this technology to just conquer the Earth, why not use it to track that time machine?’
The Onihrs hesitated.
‘I mean, you can do that, can’t you?’ Fitz asked. ‘You keep going on about how advanced you are.’
The Onihr leader grabbed Fitz’s collar. ‘We can do that, Doctor. It will take time, but we can do it.’
He lowered Fitz back to the floor, checking his anger.
The technician was looking a little concerned. ‘It may take