Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [82]
‘And the ones in Toronto,’ the Doctor added. ‘This place is well defended for a factory.’
That reminded Anji. ‘The USAF is on its way. Mather was being tracked. But there are anti‐aircraft defences here. We were going to try to deactivate them.’
The Doctor and Malady looked at each other. ‘The tower,’ they said together.
Malady peered out of the cockpit windows. ‘Doesn’t look that well defended. But we should really rescue the President first.’
The Doctor put his arm round Anji. ‘Miss Kapoor and myself will do that. You sort out the tower and meet up with us inside.’
Malady clearly wasn’t sure, but after a few seconds agreed to the plan.
She slipped away. A moment later, they saw her scurrying across the runway to the control tower.
The Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘Right… What do you want to do first – rescue the President, negotiate a ceasefire with the remaining mercenaries, locate Baskerville’s time machine, capture Baskerville himself or find Cosgrove and see what he’s up to?’
Anji hesitated. ‘Actually… I’d really like to find out what Baskerville wants access to ULTRA for. You wouldn’t know what IFEC is, would you?’
Outside, the control tower exploded.
‘Any sign of Fitz, by the way?’ the Doctor asked.
Anji shook her head. ‘Not since you dropped him off in America.’
‘I’m sure he’s out of harm’s way.’
* * *
Cosgrove heard the explosion through the headphones of the RealWar goggles.
He turned his hovertank around. The runway control tower was now a pile of rubble. The cameras on RealWar robots were very low resolution, and couldn’t pan without moving the whole unit.
He saw a dark shape on the edge of his vision, and instinctively fired at it with the robot’s machine guns.
Malady Chang, he decided, a moment or two later.
He hadn’t hit her. But she was here, which meant the Doctor almost certainly was, which meant that he needed more than one hovertank.
Cosgrove activated the other three class twos, the ones in the hangar.
After a moment, he decided to look around and see what other assets there were. It was a RealWar factory, after all.
He was pleasantly surprised to discover there were three dozen more class twos available, in a warehouse, earmarked for delivery to the EZ in the morning. It wasn’t even stealing.
The twenty class threes in the same warehouse, bound for the American fleet in the Gulf… well, it would be treachery not to acquire those for the Eurozone, too.
He selected them all, and activated them.
Cosgrove had a couple of objectives – he had to clear the buildings of hostiles and potential hostiles, of course. But most of all, he wanted that time machine. It was here somewhere, he knew it. Baskerville had been panicked by the aliens, and he’d bolted here, to his stronghold. And this was the perfect place to build a time machine and defend it.
The RealWar booth had an extensive map of this complex.
Cosgrove preferred the tanks to the humanoid robots, but they were too big to operate indoors. He sent four class threes to the research labs. There were scientists there in white coats, half of them sitting at computers, the others standing around a class three which lay in bits on the floor. Eleven of them in total.
They looked up at the new arrivals, but didn’t seem worried. Why would they, when they worked with RealWar robots all day?
Cosgrove flicked a switch, activated the loudhailer.
‘I’m looking for the time machine,’ he told them. The speaker was set a little more loudly than he’d anticipated, and the words echoed from the walls.
He used all four of the robots to look around the room at the scientists. Their expressions ranged from puzzled to bemused. It was obvious that none of them knew anything about it. This was a robotics lab, nothing more.
It only needed one of the class threes to finish them off. The other three robots gave him complete camera coverage of the room, as the men and women died.
He marked the research labs off the map. The time machine wasn’t there.
* * *
The Doctor was about to charge into the hangar, but at the last moment