The Doctor nodded, standing now beside the opening in the ventilation shaft through which they’d entered the studio.
‘Women and children first,’ he said, beaming.
‘You’re weird,’ said Vienna, laughing as she climbed into the vent, followed quickly by Jake and Wallace.
‘Oh yes,’ said the Doctor, checking that the coast was clear before joining them. ‘But I’m also right.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Mr Carstairs, though he realised the question was futile. They wouldn’t answer.
The others were several paces ahead, walking with such speed and purpose that he struggled to keep up.
‘I really think we should have stayed back in the Docks,’ he continued, instantly aware of how hopeless and pathetic he sounded. ‘Safety in numbers and all the rest of it.’
They came to the end of the narrow tunnel linking the Western Docks with Miramont Gardens. As they descended the metal staircase into the square itself they saw, lined up shoulder to shoulder on the other side, the Sontarans.
‘Halt!’ barked the unit’s group leader.
The small group of residents stopped in their tracks.
‘Return to the Docks at once!’ The Sontaran continued. ‘You are prisoners of the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division!’
Mr Pemberton stepped forward, walking calmly towards the Sontarans without a trace of fear.
‘Halt!’ the group leader shouted once more, but either Mr Pemberton didn’t hear him, or he didn’t care. He walked straight out into the centre of the square and stood alone before the wall of Sontaran soldiers.
‘Sontarans, prepare weapons!’ bellowed the group leader.
The long line of Sontarans lifted their rifles and took aim.
Mr Carstairs pushed past the others in the group and held his wife by the arm.
‘Bess. . . Come on, Bess, we need to go back. They have guns, Bess. . .’
Mrs Carstairs did not respond. She, and the others in the group, were staring blankly ahead at the Sontarans.
‘Sontarans. . . Fire!’
As the muzzles of the Sontaran rifles flared red, Mr Pemberton held up the palm of his hand. The laser beams came forth in an almost blinding arc but exploded in mid air before they had a chance to reach their targets.
Mr Pemberton’s hand curled up into a fist which he threw forward, as if punching an invisible foe. One by one, the Sontarans’ rifles fizzed and crackled in their hands, sparks jumping out of each weapon’s inner mechanisms.
The Sontarans dropped their guns to the ground and lifted up their batons. With an almighty battle cry they charged forward, but the residents, with the exception of Mr Carstairs, stayed exactly where they were, unflinching.
As one, they repeated Mr Pemberton’s gesture, lifting up the palms of their hands and then flinging them forward. A visible wave of energy pulsed from one side of the square to the other, knocking back the Sontarans with the force of a hurricane.
As the noise died down, the Sontarans got to their feet. They recovered their batons and once again charged forward, but had advanced by no more than three paces when a second wave of energy, more powerful than the last, struck them to the ground like skittles.
Mr Carstairs looked from the fallen Sontarans to the residents. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing, but had little time to take it in. He looked at the complete lack of emotion in his wife’s expression and knew right then that everything the Doctor had told him was true. He let out a brief and desperate gasp of horror, as sure as he could be that he’d lost his wife, his Bess, for good.
As Mr Carstairs collapsed to his knees and wept, and the Sontarans got to their feet once more, Mr Pemberton, Mrs Carstairs and the others moved forward, marching silently toward their enemy with terrifying intent.
THE SMELL OF burnt plants was overpowering. Only a few hours earlier, the Doctor, Jake and Vienna had stood in gardens extravagantly decorated for the Flower Show; the towering plants rising up from their flowerbeds, enormous banners welcoming the guests, and the stage on the far side flanked by enormous video screens.
Now they were in ruins. The video screens were shattered, the banners hanging in shreds, and the plants were scorched and pulped.
‘It stinks!’ said Jake.
‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor, sniffing the air and grimacing. ‘Looks like the Sontarans got here before us. You don’t need to worry about the dandelions after all, Jake.’
‘I told you, I’m not scared of dandelions.’
‘Course not.’ The Doctor looked at Jake with a cheeky grin and winked.
They walked across the main chamber, doing their best to step around the vile black sludge that covered the whole floor from one end of the room to the other.
‘Looks like the Flower Show’s over, then,’ said Wallace, looking down at the smouldering flowerbeds.
‘Yeah, I reckon,’ said the Doctor. ‘Can’t say they’ll be having another one next year. . .’
When they came to the corridor on the other side of the gardens, the Doctor stopped to read a large board fixed to one of the walls.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Research centre. . . Labs. . . Ah! There it is! Climate Control. Come on, kids. Onwards and upwards.’
They walked a little further down the corridor until they came to a darkened staircase.
‘I’m not going up there,’ said Vienna.
‘Oh, all right, then,’ said the Doctor. ‘Me, Jake and Wallace here will go up, and you can stay down here with all the evil alien plants. Sound like a plan?’
‘But the plants are dead, Doctor. . .’
‘Yeah, but that’s the thing with evil alien plants, y’see. They might look dead, but. . .’
‘All right, all right, I’ll go,’ said Vienna, rolling her eyes.
General Kade and his most senior officers stood in the deserted television studio. The control room fizzed and sparked in the aftermath of an assault that had lasted seconds. The source of that terrible sound had been destroyed, but there was no sign of the Doctor.
Kade was about to order their return to the civic centre, in preparation for their next move, when the broken studio door creaked open and a soldier entered the room.
‘General Kade,’ he said. ‘The Rutans. . . They’re free, sir.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Kade. ‘Have you engaged with them, soldier? In combat?’
‘We did, sir, but they were too strong. They have their powers, sir. Our weapons are no match for them—’
‘No match?’ Kade bellowed. ‘What do you mean, no match?’
‘Our rifles, sir. They exploded in our hands. There were only a few of them, but everything we tried failed.’
‘Failure is not the way of Sontar!’ roared Kade.
‘But, sir. . .’
The General lifted up his baton, high above the soldier’s head, but did not strike. If their rifles had failed and the Rutans were now in full possession of their powers what could they do?
There was only one option left.
Mr Carstairs followed them, though for the life of him he wasn’t sure why.
He had seen his wife’s face as she marched towards the Sontarans, and he had seen her slaughter them without mercy. Any glimmer of hope he’d had was evaporated in that moment.
He had wondered whether he should return to the Docks, but he couldn’t go back. Not without her. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t her; it wasn’t his wife. But if it wasn’t his wife, who was it? What was it? If he returned to the Docks, what would he do when he got there?
There were so many questions and so few answers. Nothing made sense any more, and so he followed them. He followed them across Miramont Gardens, as the Sontarans beat a hasty retreat, and down the deserted thoroughfares towards the botanical gardens.
Why were they going there? What did they expect to find when they got there? More and more questions, with still fewer answers.
From distant pods in the colony he heard the sounds of battle: short elect
ric bursts of rifle fire often followed, very quickly, by the boom of another shockwave. His wife, Mr Pemberton and the others were not the only ones, it seemed.
A platoon of Sontarans ran past them, perhaps gathering themselves for a counter-attack, but paid them no heed. They might as well have been invisible.
When they eventually got to the Oxygen Gardens they found the entire area filled with acrid smoke. Mr Carstairs sensed that they were growing increasingly anxious. At least he took it to be anxiety; their expressions were so impassive they were almost impossible to read. They certainly seemed restless and, on entering the main chamber and discovering the plants there ruined, they collectively gasped.
‘Destroyed,’ said Mr Pemberton, his voice low and filled with threat. ‘All of them destroyed.’
‘The Sontarans. . .’ said Mrs Carstairs.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Vienna, peering over the Doctor’s shoulder.
‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor, putting on his glasses and squinting at the screen.
‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’
‘They’ve locked this thing. Some sort of code. Typical Rutans. If the Sontarans had done this their password would have been “Sontar”, I can guarantee it. But the Rutans. . . They’re crafty little gelatinous blobs when they want to be.’
The colony’s Climate Control Centre was a small room above the Oxygen Gardens, a room filled with buttons, blinking lights, and dozens of monitors, each showing a different view of Chelsea 426.
As the Doctor toiled at one of the computers and Vienna watched him, Jake and Wallace looked up at the large wall of video screens, wide-eyed with wonder.
‘The Sontarans are running away. . .’ said Jake. ‘What’s happening?’
‘That’ll be the Rutans,’ said the Doctor. ‘No more messing about for them. I’ve given them a golden opportunity. The Sontarans are switching to Plan B, most likely, whatever Plan B is. Now how do I unlock this thing?’
Vienna leaned in closer to the screen.
‘Have you tried bypassing the file membrane with a logan key?’
The Doctor turned to her and took off his glasses.
‘What?’
‘The file membrane. If you upload a logan key from the user matrix, you can bypass the file membrane.’
‘Are you still speaking English?’
Vienna rolled her eyes.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me do it.’
Vienna nudged the Doctor out of the way and began tapping at keys and moving objects around the touch-screen with her fingertips.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Like I said, I’m uploading a logan key so that we can bypass the file membrane.’
‘Wait,’ said the Doctor. ‘Wait a minute. How come I didn’t know how to do that?’
‘You don’t know how to do this?’
‘No!’
Vienna laughed.
‘It’s something you learn in school. When you’re, like, 8 or something. I mean, obviously I’m not meant to be doing it on this computer, and normally there’d be people here to stop me doing this sort of thing on this computer, but. . . you know. . . they’re not here. So I’m doing it.’
‘But how come I don’t know how to do that?’
‘It’s probably because you’re old. Or because you’re probably an alien. Or just because you’re weird.’
‘But I know everything!’
‘Well,’ said Vienna, ‘clearly you don’t.’
She stepped back from the computer.
‘There,’ she said. ‘All yours.’
The Doctor nodded, still frowning, and put his glasses back on. Sure enough, the Climate Control Centre was now at his command. Laughing gently to himself, he went about turning on the filtration units that were spread throughout the colony, instructing them to remove every last trace of ammonia from Chelsea 426.
‘Vienna!’ shouted Jake, still facing the wall of video screens.
Vienna turned from the Doctor and the console to her brother. He was pointing up at one particular screen showing an image of the Oxygen Gardens below.
She left the Doctor at his work and, joining her brother, saw that there were people down there. Not just people. Their parents.
‘Mum!’ she said. ‘Dad!’
Not thinking twice, Vienna and Jake ran from the Climate Control Centre, with Wallace following close behind. As the door closed behind them with a thud, the Doctor looked up from his computer and found himself alone. He looked over at the wall of monitors and saw, in the gardens, Mr and Mrs Carstairs and the other residents.
‘Oh no,’ he murmured. ‘Really bad idea.’
Hitting one last button on the console, he ran and followed them down the stairs and back into the gardens.
Jake and Vienna were already there, and they ran to their mother, heedless of the black ooze beneath their feet, their arms open and ready to embrace her.
Mrs Carstairs, in return, looked upon her children with an icy glare.
Jake and Vienna stopped running, and their arms fell to their sides.
‘Mum?’ said Jake.
Seeing his children, Mr Carstairs came forward. He smiled, but they could see a sadness in his eyes. Their father looked scared.
‘Jake, Vienna,’ he said. ‘Stay there. Please.’
‘Dad?’ said Vienna. ‘What’s happening, Dad?’
Behind them the Doctor came skidding to a halt, almost losing his balance as his feet slid in the black sludge.
‘The Doctor,’ said Mrs Carstairs with a venomous smile.
‘It’s over,’ said the Doctor. ‘You must know what happened to Wallace. He’s not one of you any more.’
‘Then we must leave,’ said Mrs Carstairs, still smiling. ‘Perhaps, Doctor, you would be so kind as to aid our escape with that TARDIS of yours.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said the Doctor.
Mrs Carstairs’ expression changed quite suddenly from a smile to a bestial grimace and she lunged forward, seizing Vienna by the throat.
‘Really, Doctor?’ she sneered. ‘Even if there is a human life at stake?’
‘Let her go,’ said the Doctor. ‘Let her go now.’
Mr Carstairs leapt forward, reaching out towards his wife and daughter in anguish, but was knocked back as if he had run into a force field.
‘This, then, is the weakness of the Time Lord,’ said Mrs Carstairs, the menacing smile returning to her lips. ‘For all your cunning, you cannot bear to see another living creature suffer. A saving grace to some species, Doctor, but not to us. Take us to the TARDIS and away from this colony and we may just spare your life and the lives of the humans.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said the Doctor, only now it was he who smiled.
‘Really, Doctor?’ said Mrs Carstairs. ‘You seem very sure of yourself.’
The Doctor craned his head back and breathed in deeply through his nose.
‘Ah,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Nothing like the sweet smell of fresh air, is there?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Mrs Carstairs.
‘Smell it,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nitrogen, oxygen, a pinch of argon, a soupçon of carbon dioxide and a squeeze of H2O. But no ammonia. Mmm. . . Lovely, isn’t it?’
Mrs Carstairs tightened her grip on Vienna’s throat.
‘No,’ she snarled. ‘You can’t have. The system was locked.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘It was. And to be honest, if I’d been here on my own I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Thankfully that daughter of yours has a brain the size of Jupiter.’
He looked at Vienna, and winked, before returning his gaze to Mrs Carstairs. His smile now faded.
‘Only she’s not your daughter,’ he continued. ‘She’s Mrs Carstairs’ daughter. It’s over.’
Mrs Carstairs let go of the young girl and threw her forward, staggering back towards the rest of the group. Her movements were clumsy and awkward, her hands bunching up like talons.
The others were now doubled over, each of them gasping for air as if there were none to breathe, clutching at their throats and their chests.
‘What’s happening?’ said Mr Carstairs, looking up at the Doctor. ‘What have you done to them?’
Vienna and Jake ran to their father’s side.
‘It’s OK, Dad,’ said Vienna. ‘Trust me. It’s OK.’
One by one, Mrs Carstairs, Mr Pemberton and the others fell to the ground, rolling around in the dark slime, twitching and shuddering until all at once they were silent and still.
‘You’ve killed them!’ said Mr Carstairs, falling at his wife’s side, stricken with grief. ‘You’ve killed my wife. . .’
The Doctor waited. Though he would never say as much, a small part of him was worried that Mr Carstairs might be right. What if the Rutan spores were so enmeshed with the humans’ DNA that the sudden starvation of ammonia could kill them? What if he had made a mistake? What if, right now, there were humans collapsing and dying all around the colony? His two hearts began to beat a little faster, and he closed his eyes, fearing the very worst.
‘Brian?’
The Doctor opened his eyes once more to see Mrs Carstairs, sitting upright, cradled in her husband’s arms.
‘What happened?’ asked Mrs Carstairs, bewildered. ‘Where are we?’
All around them the other residents were now waking, many of them looking at the vile sediment covering their clothes with disgust.
Mr Carstairs helped his wife to her feet and then threw his arms around her, kissing her and stroking her hair and holding her as tightly as he could. Jake and Vienna embraced their parents, so that the four of them now stood together, laughing and crying.
Their moment of joy and relief was interrupted, very suddenly, by the sound of marching feet.
The Doctor turned and saw General Kade emerging from the darkness of one of the corridors, flanked by two of his soldiers. The General marched out into the gardens, a glass dome containing a single bright blue flower under one arm, and approached the Doctor.
‘Ah,’ said Kade. ‘The Doctor. I suppose you are happy that you have jeopardised our mission and handed victory to the Rutans? Was that all a part of your plan?’
‘Actually,’ said the Doctor, ‘far from it. You see—’
The Taking of Chelsea 426 Page 13
