Doctor Who - Nuclear Time Page 6

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  Doctor's tirade of nonsense, pointing to the sky with urgency.

  'Oh my days, I really didn't make an effort back then, did I?' he muttered to himself.

  Luckily the next words his past self spoke were more comprehensible. 'Iirore, Yima.'

  The Doctor raised his eyes to the sky. 'Thank heavens for companions with nearly palindromic-sounding names!' he said.

  'Leave them, meathe veal, Iirore, Yima. Meet on see reathe!' Sadness crept over him then as he remembered hearing the words he was speaking now, and the false hope that they had implanted in his mind. 'You know what, past me?' he said quietly. 'The terrible thing is, despite what I'm saying, I don't know if they live or die. I have no idea what terrible things might happen to them in our future. But there's one thing I do know, and it's that we'll all die if you don't get a move on!' He yanked his sleeve down and pointed to his watch. 'Meet! Own! See! Reathe!' he yelled. 'Now go!'

  But his past self just stood there, recognition fading from his face. The Doctor looked at him and realised that his words had already conveyed their importance long before he'd even arrived.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'There's no point shouting at you now, you've done what I asked already and right now you have my entire life to live 86

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  backwards through. But I'm not sticking around to watch that all over again, I'm going. I'm going, and I'll fix this.' He paused. 'I promise, Doctor, I'll fix this.' With a curt wave, he stumbled backwards along the alleyway, away from his past self, into the shadows and out of the other Doctor's sight. He watched mournfully as he saw his past self stumble backwards and begin to circle, shouting his companions' names backwards at the top of his voice. Then he turned and walked away.

  'It was a good idea, a very good idea.' The Doctor strode back into the central square, and began to pace up and down in front of the TARDIS. 'Go back on our time line and dissipate the energy gradually rather than letting it all be released instantaneously in the future.

  Safer for you, yes, and for me, if it works.' He pointed an accusing finger at the inanimate time machine.

  'But how long does it take to diffuse an atomic explosion? Tell me that? It had better be soon enough, because look at this.' He cupped his hand and turned it upside down, flicking his gaze from the ground to the TARDIS as a small cloud of sand lifted itself from the dusty road and ascended towards his palm, spilling into his hand as he turned it, unpouring the dust that he would soon scoop from the desert floor.

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  Then time froze, and stuttered.

  For an instant the sand hung in mid air, tiny grains sparkling as they caught the sun and the Doctor crouched to inspect the shimmering trail that linked his palm and the road. 'See?' He whispered, and broke the spell. The sand flashed quickly through various states of suspension, then hissed onto the floor once more. 'The universe does not appreciate a man whose effects precede his cause.' He straightened up.

  'And it's not going to put up with it for ever.'

  The Doctor patted the side of the TARDIS and turned to leave. 'You just do the best you can,' he said.

  He turned his face to the sky, searching for the bomber as it glided backwards, retracing its approach over Appletown. The plane would've passed over the military observation tower en route to the target for a last-minute visual on the situation. He could follow the flight path.

  If the bomb wasn't going to detonate, then he'd need to warn the troops.

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  Chapter

  7

  Florida Airbase, 3 February 1980

  The grey expanse of tarmac stretched as far as the eye could see and shimmered in the pale glow of a low-slung winter sun. Albert emerged, blinking, from the shadowy confines of the hangar, scratching his eyes as they readjusted to a three-dimensional reality after his twelve-hour shift at the monitors.

  He stuffed his hands in his lab coat and strode away from the steel building. Through the haze of the horizon he could already see the black dot of the helicopter as it approached. Behind him he could hear the sound of jeeps hissing on the dewy tarmac as they approached, but he kept his gaze

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  fixed on the aircraft.

  Car doors slammed behind him. A squad of soldiers taking point around the designated landing area and suddenly Geoff was at his side.

  'Any idea what happened?' he said, wiping the condensation from his moustache.

  'Her pass wasn't cleared at the embassy and she thought her cover was blown. I don't know the exact details; it's chaos on the monitors. She just went rogue.'

  'This isn't good,' said Geoff.

  'No, it isn't.'

  The noise of the rotors drowned out the rest of their conversation, and Geoff's hat was sent skittering away across the airfield. Albert wrapped his lab coat tighter around him in the sudden chill, the hems billowing in the breeze. His wispy hair pulled away from his face as he stepped forward to greet the sergeant who was ducking out from the helicopter hatch. They shook hands briefly.

  'Is she in there?' Albert nodded towards the rear of the aircraft.

  'Yes sir. I'm hesitant to move her out of the Electro-Magnetic Field though, she's pretty badly beaten up and the civilian-reset won't work if her innards are on display. I'm not gonna mess you about, it was a nightmare getting her off-site.'

  'You did good, Sergeant,' Geoff interjected.

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  The sergeant saluted. 'Just doing my job, sir.'

  'We can take it from here,' Albert said. 'This'll sort out the reset issue.' He pulled a chunky box from his coat pocket, attached to which were a pair of headphones. The sergeant looked puzzled. 'It's a Walkman,' Albert explained. 'They're all the rage.

  Where've you been? Now, if you'll just release her.

  Please,' he added.

  The sergeant turned and gestured to the pilot to shut off the spinning blades before approaching the helicopter once more. He opened the rear hatch and turned to look over his shoulder at the two men. 'The EM field extends nearly to your feet, so be ready with the headphones.'

  Albert nodded.

  A figure stepped out of the hatch: a young female with a sandy bob and freckled nose.

  Geoff turned to Albert and raised an eyebrow. 'You didn't tell me you sent Isley in,' he murmured.

  Albert ignored him.

  The sergeant offered the woman a hand as she stepped down to the concrete, but she brushed it away, stumbling as her feet touched the ground and her legs struggled to bear her weight. It was plain to see why.

  He legs were in tatters, swathes of plastic hanging limply from the dented exoskeleton beneath, and her shorts were filled

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  with bullet holes. The sergeant had draped his regulation jacket over her shoulders and Albert was relieved at that. He had no wish to see the damage underneath.

  Isley looked around uncertainly for a second. Only one gel-pupil had adjusted to the light; the other was clouded over. She spotted the men and gave an awkward

  smile

  of

  recognition.

  Wresting

  her

  twitching hand from the hatch-frame she started towards the pair, her left leg wobbling strangely with every step.

  The soldiers on point tracked the limping figure slowly and silently as she crossed the tarmac towards her creator. Nobody made a sound, nobody breathed.

  Albert smiled encouragingly. 'Welcome home, darling,' he said.

  Her legs gave out two metres before she could reach the pair, and she dropped to her hands and knees with a crunch of metal.

  Albert ran forward to help her, holding the back of her head with his hand and tilting it so that he could look into her face.

  'She's outside the EM field, Albert, be careful,' Geoff called out.

  'She won't switch to military mode if you don't mention that she's a rob
ot,' Albert called back. There was an abrupt rattle as every soldier 92

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  cocked his weapon. The deadly word had been uttered.

  'It's all right, it's all right! I've got it.' Gently, Albert slipped the headphones over the woman's ears before she could trigger and clicked the play button on the Walkman. 'I was just testing you.' He winked at the stony faces around him.

  Geoff's body blocked the light as he peered over Albert's shoulder. 'What's that then?'

  'The Isley Brothers. Puts her in a neutral state so I can interface with the military and civilian programs without her trying to kill me.'

  'Any particular reason it has to be the Isley Brothers?'

  Albert sighed. 'Because I like them and I'd rather listen to them than modulated static whilst I'm working. Get some imagination, Geoff.' He pushed a finger behind the woman's ear and her maintenance hatch popped open. From his other pocket he produced a tiny microphone and slipped the plug into a socket on her skull before tapping her head sharply as if testing a sound system. 'Isley? Isley, sweetheart, can you hear me?'

  Isley's mouth moved silently for a second before her voice box synced up. 'Yes, Albert, I can.'

  'Good stuff, well done, girl. Now me and the colonel need to ask you a few questions. Is that OK?'

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  'Yes, of course,' she responded.

  'Good.' Albert handed the microphone to his partner, feeding the wire over his shoulder.

  'Isley,' said Geoff. 'Tell me what happened in Cuba.

  Our information is scrambled.'

  Isley turned her head to look at Geoff with a puzzled frown on her face. 'I did as requested. I located the target, but my cover was compromised and I switched to military mode as per my programming.'

  'Yes, yes, we know all that. But did you kill the target?'

  'The target was one of the people I executed.' Albert and Geoff swapped an uneasy glance. 'One of the people?' Geoff asked.

  'I executed all witnesses that were aware of my...

  nature.'

  Albert snatched the microphone back, Isley's impassive face turning to follow it.

  'Wait, wait,' he said. 'Those weren't your orders. We were standing by to airlift you out once you destroyed the target — it didn't matter if your cover was blown after that. Why didn't you just destroy the target?'

  'I was not aware that only the target was specifically designated for execution. I was programmed to locate the target and switch to military mode, that is all.'

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  'What?' Geoff was shocked. 'Albert, why didn't you specifically program her to kill the target?'

  'Because we didn't know what the target looked like at that time! I had no information to give her that would isolate him amongst the other victims.'

  Geoff stepped backwards and began pacing back and forth in front of the android. 'Oh, this is brilliant, just brilliant. Our heads are going to be on the block for this, you know that? We're going to be burned at the stake.'

  Albert ignored him and leaned in towards Isley, speaking hurriedly. 'Isley, you need to tell me how many people you executed. It's very important.' He looked at Geoff. 'Look, if it's one or two, we'll be fine; it's not a big deal.'

  'It's still one or two more people than we should've killed!' Geoff snapped. He put his hand to his forehead. 'Dear Lord, think of the paperwork,'

  he muttered.

  'Fifty.'

  The pair swung their heads to look at the android.

  'Wait, what was that?' Albert's voice trembled into the microphone.

  'Fifty. I terminated fifty witnesses,' Isley repeated impassively.

  The microphone shattered as it was thrown to 95

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  the tarmac with the full force of Albert's strength. He swore, he swore long and hard and loud, and he didn't stop swearing for a good two hours after that.

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  Chapter

  8

  Colorado, 28 August 1981, 5.38 p.m.

  Amy didn't breathe and, apart from the occasional grunt as he shuffled across the lawn beneath the garden hedge, neither did Rory. Their initial hopes that the androids might have forgotten about them had been dashed almost immediately as they attempted to re-enter Appletown, discovering almost too late that the residents had fanned out with military precision and were sweeping across the village with relentless ease. Rory had grabbed her and pulled her to the ground in someone's back garden as he saw Isley's sinister outline staring out from an upstairs window, and they had proceeded to shuffle flat on their stomachs

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  through the terraced hedges and lawns from then on.

  'These stains will never, ever come out,' Rory hissed as he looked mournfully down at his pale blue shirt, which was now streaked a dirty green and brown.

  'Is that all you can think of right now? I'll buy you a new one if we get out of this alive, how about that?'

  'Sounds fair,' Rory muttered.

  They reached the corner of the next hedge, and Amy curled up as small as possible in the nook, out of sight of anyone passing by on the road that lay on the other side of the greenery. She encouraged Rory to do the same. They'd run out of back garden.

  'We're going to have to cross the road.' Rory's face fell.

  'Give us a second,' Amy whispered back. 'I need to catch my breath.'

  Rory reached out and touched her shoulder comfortingly. 'Take your time,' he said.

  Amy tilted her head back and edged it up in an attempt to see over the top of the hedge, before yanking it back down again, just in case. 'What I don't understand,' she said, 'is how we outran them before

  - they're machines for God's sake, we should have been murdered the moment we

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  stopped to look for the TARDIS. And then it's like, the moment we started to move back inside the village, they were swarming all over the place again.'

  Rory rubbed his chin. 'Yeah, I was thinking about that,' he answered. 'And you know what? I think they wanted us to escape.' Amy gave him a withering glare. He held up a placating hand. 'Bear with me.

  Look, they were reset when we got here, right?

  Well, now they're awake they probably have even less of an idea where we are than we do. I think they were testing us, trying to see if we would lead them to civilisation - it must be a nightmare for a bunch of robot spies to be without the full information.'

  Amy rested her head against the hedge behind her and sighed as its leaves bowed comfortably around her. 'So I guess now that we've proved we have absolutely nothing to offer them, they won't be so lenient next time.'

  'Well, it's just a theory.' Rory shrugged.

  Amy was silent for a second, gathering her thoughts. 'OK, enough. We're freaking ourselves out here. Let's just get somewhere safe until the Doctor arrives. I don't want to think about anything else right now.'

  It was Rory's turn to peer over the hedge now. The faint smell of leaves and general atmosphere 99

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  of freshly cut grass seemed oddly comforting considering

  the

  circumstances.

  He'd

  never

  encountered danger in an environment that reminded him so much of home before, and it was a chilling thought to consider that such things could happen on any street - even his.

  'Let's go,' he muttered, and they did, dashing over to the gate, fingers holding the catch so as not to make a noise then ducking out across the junction towards the opposite block of houses. Rory snapped his head back the way they had come as Amy struggled with the catch on the next gate. He looked around: more houses, the warehouse, garden after identical front garden and, standing motionless in the middle of the road, Isley - two blocks away and looking straight at him. He did a double take, not quite certain whether he was seeing things, and in that moment she flashed him a smile.

&
nbsp; 'Gotcha,' she mouthed and suddenly she was in motion, sprinting at full pelt towards them, no acceleration, no build-up, zero to twenty miles per hour in the time it took for Rory to blink.

  He threw himself after Amy, a sliding tackle into the gate as she moved to hide behind the hedge, grabbing her sleeve as his legs scraped across the ground, grit scratching at his calves.

  'She's found us. Get inside the house!' Rory 100

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  yelled. Amy dithered. 'Now!'

  He ran to the nearest bay window, turning his head away and flinching even before his elbow hit the polished pane. There was a thud and tinkle of glass that sounded far too gentle for the pain Rory experienced as the impact shot up his arm. Then he was bundling Amy in through the splintered window frame as fast as he could.

  'What about the front door?' Amy squealed as she tumbled onto a bare wooden floor.

  'If it was locked, we'd have been dead before I broke it down,' Rory responded as his hefty body was cushioned by hers.

  She heaved him off her and jumped to look out of the window as a ripple of noise spread across the village.

  Front doors slammed across Appletown, a silent alarm had been raised and the villagers were descending on their prey.

  Rory scanned the room for anything useful but, like the Sandersons' house, the lounge was furnished only with an awful beige sofa and a modest television set.

  'What if someone had been in here?' Amy shouted. 'We could've been walking into a trap!'

  Rory threw up his hands in exasperation. 'Now is not the time to be talking, dear! Just get out of the back door now!'

  They ran across the hallway towards the rear 101

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  of the house, through the open-plan kitchen and towards the large glass double doors that led out into the back garden.

  One of the doors was ajar.

  The pair halted at the sound of a voice.

  'You didn't tell me we had guests dear.'

  'I didn't?' another voice replied from the garden. 'Well, that must have been because I wasn't expecting any.'