Part 8 (1/2)

The catering lady's route had taken Romana, the Doctor and K9 through yet more expanses of grey, barren wasteland. The dullness of the landscape was starting to get on Romana's nerves. 'I suppose,' she said to the Doctor, 'that if this really is the end of history we shouldn't have expected anything spectacular.'

The Doctor replied without taking his eye from their quarry, whose bright white suit made her clearly visible a few hundred yards ahead of them.

'Hardly the very end. There are a good few aeons left in the universe even if she is in her dotage.'

Romana pondered. 'What happens at the very end, I wonder?'

The Doctor's eyes flicked to meet hers momentarily, and there was a look almost of worry in them. 'You're getting very curious all of a sudden.'

'It must be the company I keep.'

'Yes, well.' He seemed suddenly sombre, at a loss for words for once, and it was as if he was looking into the future. 'Everything must come to an end at some point, Romana. Nothing's irreplaceable, not even the universe.' He turned his gaze up to the metallic clouds. 'This close to the final dissolution there's bound to be a tangible sense of unravelling.'

Romana snorted. The last thing she needed was for him to slip into one of these moods. 'You're being insufferably -' she searched for the right word '-extispicious.'

'Am I? What does that mean?'

K9 took this as a cue. 'Extispicion: foreboding based on illogical fears.'

'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'That. Well, you can't present a generally cheery face to the cosmos without being extispicious every now and again.' He nodded to the catering lady, who was disappearing between two large outcrops of rock between which ran a narrow, dried-out gulley. 'Come on, or we'll lose her.'

Suddenly K9 beeped loudly and ground to a halt. 'Master, Mistress, danger!' he bleated. 'Take immediate cover!'

The Doctor groaned. 'What is it this time?'

'Imminent attack,' said K9, already darting towards a small hole in the ground not far away. 'Danger! Take cover!'

Romana looked to the skies. But they remained as clear as ever. 'What sort of attack?'

'Plasma missile approaching!' K9 squeaked. 'Danger, danger! '

Romana made to join K9 in his hidey-hole but the Doctor gripped her arm and held her back. 'Ignore him. He's just being extispicious.' A second, later the unmistakable whine of a descending missile, this time directly above them, split the air. 'Of course, I might be wrong about that. Run!'

Romana was already running. K9 whirred and clicked frantically at her to guide her as a shadow fell over the area. It was as if night had fallen in a second. She didn't dare look up. The whine of the missile became a flat, deadly drone. 'Hurry, Mistress!' the dog called. She threw herself forward the last few inches, and crawled in a snakelike motion over the sharp stones to reach her friend's side. Despite the urgency of the situation a section of her trained logical mind warned her that if the explosion struck nearby she and K9 were likely to be trapped if not killed. She a.s.sumed that the dog had chosen this shelter wisely.

As soon as she was over the lip of the hole she stuck her fingers in her ears and crouched down into a crash position, curled up and face down.

The shadow, it seemed, was now almost on top of them. She heard K9 say, 'Prepare for impact!'

The blast was shattering and rattled every bone in her body. The ground shook. She felt a wave of burning air moving over her back, and heard K9 gurgle and croak. A scattering of small stones and pebbles rained down, making a tinny percussion on K9's metallic surfaces.

But the noise was the worst thing, a giant's roar that reverberated fiercely inside her head. She waited for it to subside, counted slowly to a hundred, felt the heat dissipate, and gently raised her head. Gingerly she looked over the lip of the crater.

The missile had been a clean one, and struck about half a mile in front of them. The devastation began a few metres ahead. Of the two outcrops of rock, the gulley and the trolley woman there was no trace but heavy palls of drifting, glittering dust hanging in strange designs.

Romana coughed and turned to K9. 'Status, K9.'

His eyescreen flashed beneath a coating of the grey dust. 'Motor functions and data core preserved, Mistress. However, my offensive laser and several minor back-up systems have been damaged. Sensor capacity is also impeded.'

She bent over and used her gloved hand to wipe away some of the dust clogging his ear sensors. 'You poor thing. We'll have to get you cleaned up.' She turned around. 'Doctor, I -' She broke off. He was nowhere to be seen. 'K9, where is he? Didn't he follow us?' She trailed off and put a hand to her mouth. 'Oh no. He wouldn't have tried to. . .' She looked across at where the catering woman had been merrily pus.h.i.+ng her trolley minutes before. 'Rescue her,' she completed dully.

K9's head dropped. 'Likely, Mistress. Doctor Master's personality contains high level of altruism.'

Romana stared grimly at the hanging clouds of plasma. Perhaps the Doctor's illogical fears had been borne out after all.

Chapter Three - A Very Long Story.

The command post's alarms, untested and unneeded for over a hundred years, responded admirably to the shockwave of the explosion. Less than a second after the plasma core of the missile impacted with the surface at grid-cell 51 Y, the remote satellite sensors registered the energy release and triggered an automatic sequence wired into the post's defence network by hands long dead. As soon as the lighting flashed red, the air was invaded by a high-pitched howl of an alert, and the blast doors on the post's southern perimeter (the only ones that were still working) slid into position with a screech of unoiled machinery.

What let this effort down was the human part of the equation. Untested and unneeded, the majority of the staff, ambling about the corridors on their various businesses, stopped, turned their heads to each other, scratched their brows, tutted, and waited for somebody else to sort it all out. Just another component failure, no doubt.

Dolne, however, could tell something was wrong. Really wrong. The timing was too exact for this to be anything but a genuine alert.

He dabbed his tears dry, threw on his tabard with a groan of effort and hurried from his quarters, heading up to the Strat Room. The alarm blared in his ears, a constant escalating spiral of electronic noise. He loathed these loud noises and sudden frights. Was everything - the Phibbs Report, the election, the mechanical failures, the loss of Kelton's patrol - conspiring against him? Thirty years in the top job and he'd never before been called upon to act decisively. He tasted for the first time the responsibility of command, and it was bitter.

In the Strat Room hands were flying over consoles, screens were displaying unfamiliar patterns, voices were raised in near panic. Dolne's entry was greeted by several audible sighs of relief which he tried to put to the back of his mind. 'Don't the idiots realize?' he thought. 'I'm more scared than any of them. Just because I wear an outfit with more gold bits on doesn't mean I have the slightest idea how to handle this.'

'Captain.' He nodded as gruffly as his mood allowed to young Viddeas, who was hunched over the war map, his fingers curled over the edges, the knuckles whitened. 'What the h.e.l.l's -' He broke off, aware that his voice was a full octave higher than usual. 'Ahem; Status report, Captain.'

Viddeas lifted his head at an odd angle. 'Admiral?' he said slowly.

Dolne felt like hopping up and down. 'Status report!' He sided closer and hissed, 'For heaven's sake, Viddeas, you've been praying for this for years.

You've finally got the chance to astound us all with your tactical ability.'