Doctor Who: War Games (16 page)

The door opened and the War Chief was pushed inside.

One of the two guards stepped forward.

‘You,’ he said to the Doctor, ‘come with us.’

Villar and Sergeant Russell struck simultaneously, felling the two guards with blows to the back of the neck.

The War Chief looked round, startled.

‘Don’t harm him,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think we may need him.’

‘More we need our guns,’ said Villar. He turned on the War Chief, gripping him by the throat. ‘I strangle him, he tell us where our guns are!’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Lieutenant Carstairs, ‘do stop throttling people, old man. Will you say where our guns are hidden?’

The War Chief, his face going blue, nodded. Villar let go of his throat.

‘And will you help us gain control of the war room?’ the Doctor asked.

The War Chief gingerly fingered his neck where Villar had half strangled him. ‘That may not be easy. Our arrangement was discovered. I came here under arrest.

However, the technician in the sidrat landing bay doesn’t know that. I could stop the arrival of the sidrats bringing back the guards you so cunningly drew out to the time zones.’

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘But first, before all else, you must come with us to the war room to stop the war games.

This frightful slaughter must cease immediately.’

‘First,’ Villar insisted, ‘we get back our guns—no?’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I mean, yes. Come along,’

The Security Chief stood at the communications console speaking into a microphone. ‘This is the Security Chief.

The resistance forces, now leaderless, concentrated in the 1862 time zone, will be dealt with by armies of human specimens. Meanwhile, all security guards are to proceed to the nearest control point—’

He heard the grunt of a guard knocked out by Sergeant Russell and wheeled around. He was looking straight into the barrels of Villar’s two six-shooters.

‘Guards!’ he screamed. ‘Emergency alarm!’

The technician at the communications console just had time to press the emergency alarm button before Villar shot him in the back. Two guards the far side of the war room raised their stun-guns and were killed by rifle fire from the resistance leaders.

The Security Chief tried to unholster his own stun-gun, but the War Chief had already picked up the weapon dropped by the first guard to fall. With a single movement he adjusted the gun to ‘kill’, aimed at the Securitv Chief and fired. The zing on the stun-gun was immediately followed by the Security Chief’s death scream.

Throughout, a high-pitched blast had emitted from loudspeakers in all the walls. ‘Please turn that hideous thing off,’ shouted the Doctor. ‘I cannot think.’

The War Chief crossed to the communications console, stepping over the body of his rival, the Security Chief, and touched a control. The emergency alarm stopped.

‘We’ve won,’ said Sergeant Russell. ‘We’ve got control!’

A little jubilant cheer went up from the motley assortment of resistance leaders—French, German, American, Roman, from all periods in history. A Greek and a Turk linked arms and began to dance.

‘We haven’t won yet,’ said Zoe. ‘Doctor, how are you going to get all these people back to their own times?’

‘First things first, Zoe.’ The Doctor turned to the War Chief. ‘Stop the war games.’

All eyes were on the War Chief. ‘I am a man of my word,’ he said. He went to the microphone which the Security Chief had been using a few minutes earlier. ‘This is the War Chief speaking. All hostilities in all time zones are to cease immediately. Officers are to tell their human specimens that an armistice has been declared. Further orders will be issued to you shortly.’

‘That’s a good start,’ said Jamie. ‘Now, Doctor, about getting these people back where they came from?’

‘Can you return them the same way you brought them here?’ asked the Doctor.

The War Chief shook his head. ‘For journeys of such time and distance the life-spans of the sidrats are spent. I told you, Doctor, they are not like a real TARDIS.’

Sergeant Russell pushed forward in the crowd. ‘You can’t keep your promise, Doctor? We’re stuck here?’

‘There are people who can help us,’ said the Doctor.

‘The Time Lords.’ He turned to Jamie. ‘My own race. Now you know who I really am.’

‘No!’ said the War Chief. ‘You mustn’t call them! You know what will happen to us.’

‘There is no alternative,’ said the Doctor. ‘Who is more important? The two of us or those tens of thousands of poor soldiers stranded on this planet? Please, all of you, keep quiet.’

The Doctor sat down cross-legged on the floor, fished about in his capacious pockets and brought out six square metal plates. These he placed in a pattern on the floor before him.

‘Doctor, please, I implore you,’ said the War Chief.

‘He told us to keep quiet,’ said Jamie. ‘That includes you!’

As the Doctor passed into a deep trance, the on-lookers could hear a babble of whispering voices coming from the little squares of metal. Then, to their amazement, the squares began to move. They raised themselves from the floor and formed a perfect little box.

‘Doctor,’ said Zoe, ‘are you all right? What’s that thing?’

‘A very special box,’ said the Doctor. ‘From my mind I have passed into it information about what has been going on here, and an appeal for help.’

‘You’ve never asked for help before,’ Jamie reminded him.

‘The task of returning these men to their own time is too great for me.’ The Doctor looked up. ‘Believe me, War Chief, what we are doing is right—’

But there was only a gap where the War Chief had been standing, in the ring of people around the Doctor.

‘He must have slipped out,’ said Sergeant Russell, ‘while we were all watching your magic tricks.’

‘I don’t blame him,’ said the Doctor. ‘I suggest we do exactly the same thing.’ He got to his feet, picked, up the box and popped it into his pocket. ‘The sooner we get away from here the better.’

The War Chief approached the sidrat materialisation area cautiously. No one was about. He adjusted the controls of the console; instantly the area was filled with the sound of a sidrat arriving. When it finally appeared, he touched the control for its door to open.

‘One moment,’ said the voice.

He spun round. He was facing the War Lord and two armed guards who had quietly come down the corridor.

His mouth suddenly went dry as he tried to think how to explain himself.

‘War Lord, sir,’ he said. ‘I thought...’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s been a revolt. Prisoners escaped. I thought you’d been murdered in your private chamber.’

‘Really?’ said the War Lord. ‘Then you should be pleased to see me alive. If so much is going on here, why are you making off in a sidrat?’

The War Chief thought quickly. ‘To return to our home planet and bring back reinforcements. I intended to crush the revolt.’

‘I see. How commendable. Where is the Security Chief?’

‘The prisoners killed him. I tried to stop them. I’m lucky to have got away with my own life.’ The War Chief edged towards the waiting sidrat.

‘You are lying,’ said the War Lord. ‘He played to me the recording of your intended treachery. You killed him, but you killed him too late.’

‘That recording was a forgery,’ the War Chief spluttered.

‘I can explain everything.’

The War Lord pointed his finger directly at the War Chief. ‘Kill!’

Both guards fired together. Screaming, the War Chief fell at the open door of the sidrat.

‘Remove that traitor’s carcass,’ the War Lord ordered.

‘We shall return to our home planet and bring back sufficient of our own guards to quell this uprising once and for all!’

As the guards put down their stun-guns to deal with the War Chief’s body, the War Lord went to the console to set the sidrat on a course to his home planet.

The resistance leaders crept quietly down the corridor leading into the sidrat area. Their stealth was broken by a sudden cry from the Mexican.

‘Viva Villar!’ he cried, brandishing his two revolvers.

Both guards dived for their abandoned stun-guns, and were cut down in a hail of revolver and rifle bullets. Villar rushed up to the War Lord, grabbed him by the throat and pushed the muzzle of a gun in his mouth.

‘I squeeze the trigger?’ he asked. ‘Blow his head off?’

‘Leave him for the Time Lords,’ said the Doctor.

‘They’ll dispose of him.’

‘I could break his neck with my two hands,’ said Villar.

‘Save a bullet, no?’

‘Please be a good chap,’ said Carstairs, ‘and do as the Doctor suggests.’

Villar reluctantly released his choking prisoner.

‘I am afraid,’ said the Doctor, ‘this is when I must leave you. The Time Lords have been summoned and will be here soon. They will return you all to your times in Earth’s history.’

‘Nice to have met you all,’ said Jamie, standing now at the open door of the sidrat. ‘Come on Zoe, it’s back to the TARDIS.’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘You don’t understand. You two must return to your right times in the past and the future.’

‘But why, Doctor?’ said Zoe. ‘We’re your friends. We want to stay with you.’

‘From now on,’ said the Doctor, ‘I must travel alone. I may have to go to the farthest reaches of the universe. You two belong where I found you.’

‘He is afraid,’ said the War Lord. ‘Afraid of the vengeance of his own people!’

‘If you’re in trouble,’ said Jamie, ‘I’m going to be there to help you.’ He stepped past the Doctor into the sidrat.

‘Me too,’ said Zoe, following Jamie inside. ‘If you don’t want us you’ll have to throw us out of this thing!’

The Doctor looked at their set, earnest faces. ‘All right.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’ll return to the 1917

zone where we left the TARDIS.’

Lieutenant Carstairs stepped forward. ‘May I come along, too? It’s my time zone and I’d like to try and find Lady Jennifer if I can.’

‘Very well.’ The Doctor stepped into the sidrat.

‘Goodbye, gentlemen. You will all be home soon.’

The door of the sidrat snapped shut. The dematerialisation took only moments.

‘I hope he was telling the truth,’ said Sergeant Russell.

‘We’ll be in a fine mess if these Time Lords don’t turn up.’

A sudden cold wind rushed through the corridors, subsiding as quickly as it came. The War Lord shivered.

‘Have no fear,’ he said. ‘The Time Lords are on their way.’

Lieutenant Carstairs looked around the desolation of mud, barbed wire and waterlogged shell holes. ‘It’s so quiet.’

‘The fighting has stopped,’ said the Doctor.

Carstairs grabbed the Doctor’s arm. ‘Quick, into a shell hole!’

About two kilometres away the Doctor saw two men in grey uniforms with spiked helmets. ‘No, Lieutenant, the fighting is over. You’re not fighting Germans and they are not fighting you.’

‘I’m sorry. How stupid of me.’ Carstairs hesitated before putting his question. ‘Doctor, did my war really end in 1917?’

‘You mustn’t ask me that, Lieutenant.’

‘Then I can’t ask whether my side won, or if I was killed?’

From a hillock of mud some distance away Jamie waved excitedly. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called across the wasteland. ‘Over here, Doctor! I can just see it.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the Doctor, offering his hand. ‘They have found my TARDIS. I must hurry.’

‘Did my side win?’ asked Carstairs, gripping the Doctor’s hand. ‘Was all the death and misery for nothing?’

‘You have answered your own question, Lieutenant.

War is always death and misery, and both sides lose. I hope that one day you humans will find another way to settle your arguments.’

The Doctor released his hand, and with a wave sped across the mud towards Jamie. A cold breeze suddenly whined across No Man’s Land, chilling him to the bone.

He put on greater speed to reach the top of the hillock where Jamie was waiting. Zoe was down the other side, urging them on.

‘This way,’ she called up to them. ‘Not far to go.’

The TARDIS stood exactly where the Doctor had left it.

The sight of it urged him on. Soon all three were racing across flat open land and the Doctor was already fishing in his pockets for the key.

Zoe, running ahead, was the first to hit the force field.

All at once she was struggling against something unseen, like a swimmer in thick treacle.

‘Doctor,’ she called back, ‘what’s happening?’

‘We must concentrate,’ the Doctor gasped. ‘Help me with the key.’

With a combined effort they managed to put the key in the lock of the TARDIS.

‘We’ll be all right now,’ said Jamie.

But Zoe had already gone inside. ‘No, it’s in here. I can hardly breathe. It’s... it’s drowning us.’

Outside another sudden gust of cold wind whipped across the land, and this time it kept blowing.

11

The Doctor struggled towards the control column and managed to pull the door lever. Once the door had closed their sense of drowning eased a little. The Doctor went to the dematerialisation controls.

‘Let’s see if I can boost enough power to break out of this force field. Hold on!’

The TARDIS shuddered, the sensation they were accustomed to when it took flight. All three sank to the floor, exhausted.

‘We’ve made it,’ said Jamie. ‘We’re on our way to—

somewhere.’ He knew from past experience the Doctor’s inability to direct the TARDIS.

Zoe asked, ‘Doctor, why are you trying to get away from the Time Lords? Why did you leave them in the first place?’

‘I was bored. They’re very dull. They have immense powers, their life spans are infinite. Yet all they do is to observe and gather knowledge. As for myself, I like to get involved in things.’

‘You certainly do,’ said Jamie with feeling.

Zoe said, ‘Does the TARDIS belong to them?’

‘What? Oh, I suppose it does in a sense.’

‘You mean you stole it?’