The Doctor favoured her with a brief but brilliant smile. Part of Martha wanted to jump for joy; and at the same time, part of her was wound tight with fear, thinking of the terrible destruction the Clades were preparing to wreak on the landscape. Like an angry child in a tantrum, the Clades weren’t the type to go quietly. They’d want to destroy something, just because they could.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ said the Doctor firmly. He stepped past Martha and faced the longriders, the Clade gun gripped in his fingers. The frame of the weapon pulsed, as if the shape of the pistol could barely contain the energy inside itself. ‘You want this unit back, I want it gone,’ he told them.
‘How did you resist the imprintin’ process?’ demanded Kutter. Martha thought she detected some worry in the outlaw’s words.
A cold smile crossed the Doctor’s lips. ‘Many powerful beings have tried and failed, Clade.’ He blew out a breath. ‘I’m sick of the sight of you. Get off this planet and don’t ever come back. Humans have enough wars without you stirring up any more.’
‘This zone will be sanitised on departure,’ said Tangleleg. ‘These humans will perish.’
‘Who cares?’ the Doctor continued, drawing a shocked gasp from Martha. ‘Just as long as you’re gone.’
‘Doctor!’ Martha glared at him. ‘You can’t let them do that!’
Nathan backed away a step. ‘It’s Godlove, or that thing! He’s still got it in his head!’
The Doctor turned very deliberately to look at Martha and his frosty expression didn’t change; but ever so quickly, he winked at her. He turned back to the longriders. ‘Well? Do you want this or not?’
‘We do,’ said Kutter.
‘Then catch!’ With a sudden flash of motion, the Doctor threw the Clade weapon towards the yawning dark pit of the wrecked elevator shaft in the middle of the cavern. Panic flared on the faces of Kutter and Tangleleg. Both of the outlaws surged forward, bumping into one another in a scramble to grab the disconnected Command Unit before it fell into the bottomless hollow.
Hands reaching out, both men snatched at the Clade weapon and caught it between them. There was a glitter of blue-white electricity as their altered flesh touched the metallic frame, and, like a tidal wave of brass and steel, the Command Unit exploded open, spitting out thousands of fine wires and thick cables. The shimmering leads stabbed and curved into the outstretched arms of the longriders, penetrating cloth and skin.
The weapon itself began to throb, putting out a low, sullen pulse of noise. Kutter and Tangleleg stood on the spot, convulsing as the wires threaded into them. From their open mouths came a droning, clattering buzz that escalated in pitch. Martha realised abruptly that it was the Clade equivalent of a scream.
‘What did you do, Doc?’ said Nathan, his eyes wide.
The Doctor swept around, his coat flaring open behind him. ‘Explain later,’ he shouted, as the pulsing sound from the gun grew louder and louder. ‘Run now!’
Martha felt the noise in her bones more than she heard it. Ultrasound, she realised, as fines of grit and small pebbles began to trickle down from widening cracks in the stone ceiling.
The Doctor put the flat of his hand in the small of her back and propelled her forward. ‘Hurry up, Martha Jones, unless you want to be a permanent resident!’
They started running, as all around them the rocks began to grind against one another, filling the tunnels with coils of choking dust.
Once he had been able to touch the web of the Clade command network with his mind, the Doctor found the key to defeating them there before him. The Godlove-Clade told him that the weapons had never taken a Time Lord as a host before and, once it had merged with him, he knew why. Any member of a race as advanced as the Time Lords could instantly fathom the structure of the intricate but straightforward Clade programming – all it took was the ability to think beyond the conventional four dimensions, something as easy as breathing for the Doctor.
When the Clade looked into the Doctor, the Doctor looked into the Clade. All the time it was rummaging through the memories of his companions and past adventures, he was understanding how the weapons worked, how they thought. True, there had been a moment when he started to lose himself in there, deep in the non-space of the machine mind; but Martha, brilliant and daring Martha Jones, had brought him back.
A blank slate when it had emerged from its hard-pod after the crash, the Command Unit had slowly absorbed the pattern of its persona from Alvin Godlove. A man led by nothing but greed, that emotion imprinted on the Clade, blinding it to everything else. That greed made it want the Doctor’s flesh for itself, craving him as its new host-body without even stopping to think if it could master his mind.
The Clade had, quite literally, bitten off more than it could chew. And now it would pay the price.
Locked in a feedback loop, programs cycling endlessly, spouting gibberish and frozen in place, the Clades inhabiting the bodies of Kutter and Tangleleg could do nothing but follow the Command Unit into a spiral of repeating negative orders as a dangerous overload loomed.
Through the storm of chattering, colliding programs, the Clades united to force out one final word from their lips. They could do nothing else, all of them out-thought and beaten by one unassuming man who had turned their own violence against them.
It was a curse on their enemy, a furious shout of anger and despair at their own defeat.
‘Doc-tor!!!’
TWENTY
MARTHA COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she’d been so pleased to see the sunlight. After the deep gloom of the mine, the bright day of the desert beyond was a stark change and her eyes watered as she struggled out of the narrow vent chimney and on to the hillside.
Sprawled on the stone and sparse scrub, she felt the low rumbling pulse of the building overload through her clothes, deep into her bones. With every passing second, the pulses were getting faster, closer together, and the ground trembled.
Nathan, coughing and wheezing, came after her, hands flailing as he reached the top of the channel. Martha’s hands were cut and rough from climbing up the rocky chimney, but she ignored the stinging and grabbed the teenage boy’s wrists, bracing her feet against a rock to help him up the last few metres. He rolled out over the top like a cork popping from a bottle, tearing his jacket in the process.
Martha went to the edge of the vent and shouted down it. ‘Doctor! Quickly!’ She saw movement in the dark, but it was hard to see how near her friend was to the surface. All the way through the tunnels, he’d been pressing them along, directing them this way and that, sniffing at the air for a way out as if he was a hunting dog after a fox.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ he called, ‘just keep going!’
She pulled a face. She hadn’t come this far just to abandon him at the last second.
‘Whoa!’ Nathan stumbled as the hillside shivered, sending rocks rolling away and down towards the derelict mine works below. ‘Earthquake!’
Martha gaped as the ground actually rippled, with a sound like a million jackhammers pounding at the rocky surface. Huge cracks fanned out over the hillside, spitting out fat puffs of red dust. Nathan’s hand clamped on her arm.
‘We gotta—’
He had no chance to finish his sentence. Another ripple hit in synch with the loudest pulse yet and it threw Martha and Nathan into the air. Both of them came down hard and tumbled, rolling out of control over rocks and dry brush, skidding and falling toward the base of the hill.
They landed in a dusty, untidy heap, panting and scratched. Martha felt dizzy where her head had smacked a stone outcrop, and she probed the skin there. Ouch. That would be a lovely bruise in a few hours.
Nathan staggered to his feet and offered her his hand, ever the young gentleman. Martha scrambled up, listening to the pulsing thrum of sound.
‘Sounds like a wailing banshee!’ said the youth. ‘Can’t barely stand up!’
Martha wasn’t listening. She stared up along the hill, searching for the
vent mouth – and she found it, just as the Doctor came spinning from the hole, blown out by a brown cloud of dust and rock chips.
The cloud rumbled down the hill, becoming a landslide that enclosed the running figure as he sprinted toward them. The Doctor was enveloped by the gritty haze and she lost sight of him.
Then there was a sound like the world breaking open, and the whole hill collapsed.
In the cavern, as the cascading overload reached the point of critical resonance, the screaming Clades were crushed beneath hundreds of tons of iron-heavy red stone, shattering the host-bodies they had claimed and the mecha-organic mesh of the weapons modules.
A final pulse of energy, one tuned to very specific telepathic frequency, flashed out from the linked war machines, sending a shockwave out through the rock strata.
The mine buried itself in a thundering crash of sound.
It happened so fast that Martha thought she had imagined it; an emerald bubble of light, like a dome made of green lightning. It expanded out of the dust-filled crater that had been a hill only moments before and washed out over the land in all directions. Caught in the path of it, Martha and Nathan had no time to react, not even enough time to cry out – but it passed over them and through them without any ill effect.
She went to the boy, who stood panting and doubled over. ‘Are you OK?’
Nathan looked up at her and nodded. ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ A smile crossed his face. ‘That flash of light . . . it made me . . . feel better.’
Martha paused, thinking. She had to admit, she felt it too. As if some dark shadow playing at the back of her mind had been blown away by the wind.
‘They ain’t there no more,’ Nathan continued, musing. ‘Miss Martha, the bad dreams, the things I remembered. It’s like they’re gone.’
She didn’t answer him. Her gaze was stuck on a shape moving through the clouds of red dust, coming towards them with careful, loping steps, intent and with purpose. Martha’s heart leapt as the Doctor trudged out of the crumpled crater and came to a halt before them. Like Nathan and Martha, he was caked in dirt.
‘Look at me!’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘Twice in the same day.’ He blew grit from his lips. ‘Bleah. That’s it, from now on I am staying out of caves.’
Martha’s eyes prickled, and it wasn’t from the dust. ‘You had me worried for a minute, there.’
‘Who, me?’ He gave her a lop-sided grin. ‘Nick-of-time escapes are my speciality.’ She punched him on the arm and he made a face. ‘Ow! What was that for?’
‘For scaring us like that. Next time, don’t cut it so fine.’ She frowned. ‘Or let yourself get taken over by a mad alien super weapon.’
‘OK,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll try not to let it happen again. No promises, though.’
Martha turned to study the crater and the pillar of dust that was all that remained of the old iron mine. ‘You don’t mess about, do you? Dropping a hill on someone.’
The Doctor frowned. ‘They didn’t leave me with any other option.’
‘How did you do that?’
He patted his pockets, sending up fresh puffs of dust. ‘When we ran into the mine and I collapsed the entrance, I scanned the resonant frequency of the rock formations . . .’ He pulled handfuls of dust and small stones from the crevices of the coat, his frown deepening. ‘I set the Clade power matrix to overload at the same sonic interval . . .’ The Doctor paused, and fumbled at his holster, only to find it had been ripped open in the escape. ‘I’ve lost it. My sonic screwdriver, I had it right here. Oh, not again.’
Nathan stooped and dug something long and silver out of the rockslide. ‘Looking for this?’ He offered the wand-like device to the Doctor.
His face lit up. ‘Oh, yes! Nathan Blaine, eyes like an eagle!’ The Doctor ruffled the boy’s hair.
Nathan looked up at the clear blue sky. ‘Doc, just now, that flash of light—’
‘That was my handiwork, yes,’ he admitted, leading them back down toward the tumbledown remains of the old mine head. ‘I inserted a program meme into the Clade systems just before I disconnected myself from it to neutralise the memory transfer from—’ The Doctor glanced at Nathan and saw that the boy hadn’t understood a word he was saying. ‘I made the bad dreams vanish,’ he continued. ‘If I did it right, the pulse will reach for miles in every direction, and hopefully touch everyone that Alvin Godlove healed. No more nightmares . . .’ He blew out a breath. ‘Well, at least no more alien ones. Can’t really help you with the normal human kind.’
Nathan smiled. ‘Oh, I reckon you have, Doc. I get the feelin’ as long as you’re around, nothing will ever seem scary again.’
As the evening drew in, they buried Walking Crow by the mine and Martha shed a few tears for him as the Doctor spoke in the Pawnee’s tribal language, calling for the Great Spirit to watch over him and thank him for his sacrifice.
Then, with Nathan guiding them once more, they made their way back to Ironhill where a wary citizenry were waiting for them. The Doctor organised hotel rooms for the three of them and, more importantly, a bath. Nathan later remarked that he’d washed off enough mud to coat the roof of the schoolhouse, and Martha had to admit she hadn’t been that grubby since Leo had pushed her in the river when they were kids.
The Doctor sat out on the balcony of the hotel where they stayed, watching the stars all night long. Martha and Nathan slept, and they did not dream at all.
TWENTY-ONE
JENNY FORREST AND the recently appointed Sheriff Loomis Teague greeted them a day later, the three of them back in Redwater to a hero’s welcome.
‘I knew you were coming back,’ Jenny explained, as they walked toward the alley where the TARDIS stood. ‘There was this strange summer lightning in the sky, and after it passed . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I knew you had saved us.’
Teague nodded. ‘Doc, I won’t pretend to know what kinda mumbo-jumbo took place hereabouts, but I’d be a fool if I said we didn’t all owe you our lives.’
The Doctor gave a wan smile. ‘You know, Nathan’s the real hero here.’ He gestured to where the teenager was talking animatedly to Zachariah Hawkes and Joe Pitt. ‘That young man faced a very difficult choice . . . and he made the right one.’
‘I’ll see to him,’ promised Jenny. ‘He has no blood relatives still living, but the townsfolk will treat him like family.’
Martha nodded. ‘That’s good to know. And how about you?’
Jenny gave a sideways glance to Teague that was loaded with subtle signals, and Martha had to bite her lip.
‘I have . . . friends,’ said the schoolteacher. ‘For all the horrors of the past days, the experience has brought us all closer together. Redwater is more a community now than it ever was.’
Teague nodded. ‘You were right, Doc. We stood together.’ He extended a hand and the Doctor shook it. ‘You and Miss Jones, you’re welcome in this town anytime the winds blow you back this way.’ He tapped a finger to the brim of his hat and then walked away, his spurs clicking behind him.
The Doctor chuckled. ‘Hard to believe he’s the same guy who was cheating at cards and skimming off the ante a few days ago.’
‘But you saw the potential in him,’ said Jenny. ‘I think you do that with everyone you meet, Doctor.’ Martha saw the teacher watching her, and the other woman looked sad. ‘And now you’re both going to leave us,’ she said.
Martha nodded, trying to keep a light tone to her voice. ‘Places to go, people to see.’
‘Best this way,’ said the Doctor. ‘I hate long goodbyes, don’t you?’
‘Hey, Doc!’ As the three of them approached the police box, Nathan came bounding up to them. ‘Hey, uh, listen. Mr Hawkes tells me my pa left the house to me and all . . .’ He chewed his lip. ‘I was thinkin’, you and Miss Martha might want to stay a while?’ He nodded at the TARDIS. ‘A lot more room than in there, I’d reckon.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Martha smiled.
‘That’s a kind offer, but we’ve got to mo
ve on.’ The Doctor had the hat that Mr Vogel had given him in his hand, and he flipped it around his wrist and placed it on Nathan’s head. ‘Look after this for me, will you?’
‘Sure,’ said the youth, nodding reluctantly.
As Martha unlocked the TARDIS door, the Doctor gave Jenny a hopeful look. ‘One last thing. Just for the sake of propriety, could you do me a favour and make sure Mr Hawkes back there keeps us out of his newspaper? I think history can roll on just fine without us cropping up where we shouldn’t be.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Jenny promised, ‘but I’d beg to differ. History needs all the help it can get.’
The Doctor gave her a final nod and followed Martha into the TARDIS and shut the door behind him, closing off an all-too-brief glimpse of a strange, impossible room ranged inside.
For a long moment, Jenny and Nathan stood watching in silence; then the youth spoke. ‘So, uh, what happens now? Is that shack there gonna sprout wheels and roll away?’
Jenny smiled ruefully. ‘Given what I’ve seen of the Doctor, anything is possible.’
Abruptly the door opened a crack and the Doctor leaned out with a book in his hand. ‘Jenny! Almost forgot, I have something for you. You liked Jules Verne, right? You’re going to love this guy, then. Bit political at times, but some brilliant stories.’
He pressed the book into her hand and the teacher opened it at the first page. ‘The Time Machine,’ she read aloud, ‘An Invention. By H.G. Wells.’ Jenny saw something in the text and frowned. ‘How odd. That must be a misprint. The publication date is ten years hence.’
‘Yes, must be,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘I wouldn’t go lending it to anyone else, though. Well, maybe Nathan . . . But when you’ve read it, things will make a bit more sense, I promise.’ He smiled again. ‘Bye!’
He left them there in silence; then the sound of mighty engines of infinity wheezed into action, and the TARDIS vanished into the fading light of the sunset.
Inside the time ship, the Doctor circled the central console and fiddled with the controls, patting and tapping the machine as one might stroke a cat, while the central column rose and fell, rose and fell.
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