Downtime - Marc Platt [95]
That made his own family, for what it was, so much more precious. Now Kate was threatened, he saw it all from the other side. He wanted there still to be a world for his grandson to inherit. People had died today who were not even under his command, yet their deaths felt like sacrifices enabling him to go on. He was supported by people that society had rejected.
He coped with that burden the only way he knew how: the fight he undertook was for them.
Hinton et Harrods requiescat in pace.
Their loss must not be in vain.
As he was marched along the endless corridors, a monster’s claw on his throat like a vice, his thoughts turned inevitably to the Doctor. Facing the Great Intelligence was, after all, where it had all started.
What would the Doctor do?
Why wasn’t the Doctor here?
Inevitably, the Doctor would do the one thing that was least expected. Frequently aggravating, but generally splendid stuff The Brigadier had infinite respect and admiration for the Doctor, but the man could be impossible. The Brigadier always had to fight not to play second fiddle to the Doctor’s whims and Machiavellian leaps of imagination. He was rarely even granted the status of magician’s assistant – a position usually already taken. He generally felt more like the unsuspecting volunteer from the audience. It could have been worse – he could have been the rabbit.
But when he got something right, why did the Doctor always look surprised?
Well, this old buffer wasn’t going to be outdone by an alien who changed his face as often as normal people changed their socks.
‘My dear Brigadier, there are no normal people here.’ He heard the Doctor’s irritated response.
Faced with his imminent retirement, the second time he had retired, he decided that if necessary, he would go out in a blaze of heroic glory. Anything rather than dwindle away organizing fetes and flower shows.
He watched the woman who was being escorted by Chillys in front of him. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he was damned if he could think what. Perhaps he had seen her at one of those interminable parents’ evenings, where he repeated the same deadly joke to every mother and father about leading a platoon being no different from getting his maths class through their GCSEs.
As the party emerged into the open air, they heard a not-so-distant explosion and the clatter of gunfire. The Brigadier guessed that it should be dark by now, but the web canopy in the sky was casting a sickly phosphorescent glow over the buildings. The web crackled overhead. The beams directed up from the roof pyramid played over its surface like spotlights.
They were on a square bordered by steps on three sides like an amphitheatre. Row upon row of Chillys sat transfixed there, awaiting the start of some unspecified spectacle in the arena.
The Brigadier expected gladiators or lions to arrive at any moment. Only recently Celia had related some firstformer’s joke to him.
Monsieur, Monsieur. I want to see Madame Guillotine.
You can’t. She’s out chopping!
At the centre of the square stood a plinth on which was set a pyramid of silver globes. Two figures waited there. A heavily built man in a frantic pullover and a Captain in full uniform. The Brigadier recognized Cavendish immediately and despised him.
With another boom, a fresh bolt of gold light shot up from the roof pyramid and punched through the canopy.
The party stopped abruptly as they all stared upwards.
Turning her head slightly, the woman whispered, ‘Distract them, Brigadier. This is my fault. If I can shut down the mainframe...’
‘I’m sure we’ve met before,’ he murmured.
She paused for a moment and then said quickly, ‘I doubt it.’
The new bolt of light shot up from the curve of the Earth.
Reaching an altitude of 67.08 miles, it struck the UNIT
NAVSAT 61 in geo-stationary orbit over north-west Europe.
The beam refracted in a dozen new directions across the globe. A dozen new canopies of web began to branch out like giant snowflakes in the upper atmosphere.
The line of Yeti seemed unbreathable, but Crichton’s determination