Doctor Who: The Devil Goblins From Neptune (15 page)

Yates stood and drained his glass. 'Come on, John,' he said. 'We'd better get back to HQ and get in a report about all this jiggery-pokery. Though what the Brigadier'll make of it, I shudder to think.'

The Doctor stared out of the side portals of the helicopter, a childlike excitement marbling his evident anxiety. The din inside their Mi-6 was such that Liz had spent almost the entire take-off with her hands over her ears. The Soviet soldiers, sitting impassively on benches, seemed less concerned.

The Doctor turned away from the window. There was little to see now, and their target - the alien mining complex, or whatever it was - was still some distance away.

'This really is the back of beyond,' observed Liz over the noise of the rotors.

It's easy to forget that hundreds of square miles of the Soviet Union are well inside the Arctic Circle.' commented the Doctor. 'And that the taiga covers nearly half of the country.

That's something like a quarter of the world's forests?

'All the same, a rather remote landing point for our not-so-friendly aliens.'

The Doctor laughed. 'You can't expect them to keep coming out of the sewers next to St Paul's! London might be the invasion capital of Earth, but it hasn't got a monopoly, you know.' He paused, rubbing his chin. 'In many ways this is an ideal location. Sparsely populated, but well within one of the world's superpowers. Or perhaps there's something very specific they want here. It is supposed to be a mine, after all.'

'You're assuming that they came here by choice.'

The Doctor nodded. 'I think it unlikely that they came here by accident. But you're right.' we shouldn't make any assumptions at this stage.'

Liz turned to Captain Shuskin, seated at their side. 'Do you have any idea what to expect?' she asked, almost daring her to come out with a stock response, full of pride and patriotism.

Instead, Shuskin shook her head honestly. 'No. I've been analysing and re-analysing the reports in my mind ever since I was briefed on the problem. The only thing I know is that whatever is there, it isn't human' She glanced out of the windows. The gunships will be approaching the target area soon.'

Benton spent most of the journey back staring blankly out of the car window, occasionally muttering aloud. He was furious with himself that his normally so reliable memory had let him down. Yates seemed absorbed in the mixture of Radio 2

muzak and the one o'clock news, with its lead story about the still-unsolved and apparently motiveless murder of two young people close to the site of the Redborough '70 pop-music festival. Meanwhile, in America, the Beatles were preparing to play the Altmount Speedway Stadium to an expected audience of half a million. As the report segued into sports news, Yates looked across at Benton.

'Arlo's worrying you, isn't he?'

'To be frank, sir, yes.'

'Very well. When we get back to HQ, check on his background. See if you can dig up anything tangible.'

'Thank you sir,' said Benton. 'I'm sure he might be important.'

Flight Lieutenant Nikolai Pakilev stared through the bulletproof perspex and saw only dark clouds merging seamlessly into the angular pine trees of the forest. The instruments showed an empty sky, bar the tiny points of light representing the Mi-8s behind them and the other gunship to Pakilev's left.

Pakilev eased the joystick to the right, the helicopter arcing away to adopt a different line of approach. Radio silence was to be maintained until an enemy target was positively identified.' for the moment, both he and Grennikov were simply following through the approach they'd agreed with their commanding officers.

Pakilev checked his wing-mounted armaments for the hundredth time, cycling through the options on the weapons display. The four pods each held thirty-two 57mm unguided rockets, and the rails carried four air-to-ground, wire-guided missiles. His orders were clear.' engage with any aerial targets, and launch strikes against the construction to ascertain its ability to resist direct attack. The complex was now only a few kilometres away.

Despite the drone of the blades and the cramped conditions in the cockpit, Pakilev remained calm and detached. He was merely the mind of his machine. The sweat running down his neck, the pins and needles tingling in his legs - none of this was important. The only senses that mattered were the external ones of the gunship, the radar signals spreading out invisibly into the darkness, the laser rangefinder that would surely see use before too long.

He glanced down again at the radar screen, splashes of green luminescence dappling his face. The Mi-8s had now come closer, and the target was no more than -

Wait, the signals were wrong, too small and numerous for the supporting utility helicopters. The tiny contacts were travelling towards the Mi-8s, having appeared without warning some kilometres to the rear of the gunships. How could the enemy launch so many craft when the reconnaissance photographs had shown no airfields in the area?

Pakilev established radio contact with Grennikov on an open channel, hoping to warn the other helicopters if their instruments had not yet picked up the enemy craft. 'I will move to intercept the multiple enemy targets,' he stated. 'You continue on to the destination.'

Pakilev's gunship had already come to a halt, circling around as it hovered. Soon it had turned through 180

degrees, then the nose dipped, and the blades once more began to push it through the air. The craft's maximum speed was 275 kilometres per hour; even so, Pakilev knew that the enemy targets would intercept the Mi-8s long before they would come into range of the gunship's weapons.

'Blue Flight, you have multiple targets coming towards you. They are small - very small - they might even look like a flock of birds on your equipment. But be warned. Suggest that we now keep all radio channels open. Over.'

Once back at UNIT HQ, Mike Yates checked at reception and was told that neither the Brigadier nor the Doctor had yet reported in from their various destinations. However, a hastily scribbled note from the Brigadier had been left for him. It mentioned a file on higher-than-normal radiation levels in the sea, which the Brigadier felt might have some connection with the events at the pop festival. The file, the note went on to say, had been given to the Doctor but, in his haste to leave for the Soviet Union, he'd barely glanced at it. Yates, the note concluded, should 'take appropriate action'. Whatever that meant.

'Sergeant Benton.' said Yates with irritation. 'Before you start chasing up our long-haired weirdo friend, go down to the Doctor's lab and pick up this file for me, will you?'

'Yes, sir,' said Benton, immediately turning down the corridor.

Yates watched him go, and felt like calling him back. It was a menial task and Yates was angry that he had delegated it to Benton, who was not only a friend, but also much too busy with his own work to be treated as a dogsbody. It said much for Benton's superbly developed discipline that he hadn't complained to Yates's face about being asked to do what any first-day recruit could have done.

But Yates knew that the chain of command made any sort of apology inadvisable. The infallibility of rank must be seen to be maintained.

So he turned, annoyed by his own shortcomings, and headed for the Brigadier's office and the bottle of Scotch in his filing cabinet.

The Mi-6 carrying the Doctor and Liz suddenly banked to one side. Liz could tell from the Doctor's face that this was a worrying development not envisaged in the original mission plan, but he waited patiently while Shuskin ran towards the front of the helicopter.

Moments later she returned, clearly worried. She barked out orders to the soldiers, and then turned to Liz and the Doctor. 'Blue Flight have come under attack.'

'From what?' asked the Doctor.

'We can't tell from the garbled messages. But they're small and agile.'

'So what's happening?' asked Liz.

'We're making preparations to land. Plan B. We'll have to approach the target on foot.'

'A whole regiment got wiped out,' said Liz. 'And they were better armed than we are.'

'I'm aware of that,' snapped Shuskin.

'Can't we go to the aid of the others?' asked the Doctor.

Shuskin shook her head emphatically. 'No.' She smiled one of her bitter smiles. 'You forget, Doctor. This helicopter has no offensive armament whatsoever.'

John Benton would have been surprised that Captain Yates was even beginning to regret his impatiently snapped instruction. Benton had always obeyed orders without question. As a raw eighteen-year-old, then a private in the rifle brigade of the 17th & 21st Lancers, Benton had been taught harsh lessons in the military way. If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't, whitewash it.

He reached the Doctor's lab to find it in darkness.

Entering, he switched on the light and looked around for the file he had been sent to get. He spotted it on the workbench next to the TARDIS and picked it up, turning for the door. He paused for a moment as he passed the police box, looking at it with a smirk on his face as wide as the Thames estuary. If he'd told any of his mates from the 17th & 21st that he worked with a man who travelled through time and space in a police box, they'd have sent for the regimental trick cyclist and a straitjacket.

Benton reached the door and switched off the light.

Something made him turn back and look around the room. There was a tiny red light, flickering under the Doctor's workbench. Benton assumed that some of the Doctor's equipment was still switched on, and he was about to leave when a part of his subconscious decided that this was the moment to free-associate, and, in a flash of inspiration, he suddenly remembered where he'd seen Arlo. It was in the newspaper last week. The article on that pop festival. A photograph of Viscount Rose, the hippie landowner who had lent his grounds to those whacked-out freaks. Of course, Arlo's picture must have been in that article. Benton paused -

he could hear ticking. Great clocks filled his thoughts as a picture formed in his mind of Rose standing with the leader of the Venus People. Smiling.

'Connection...?'

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Benton shook his head. His brain seemed wrapped in cotton wool. 'Think,' he said angrily.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

'Of course!'

Then the room exploded, and Benton forgot all about the aristocrat and the hippie.

Pakilev's Mi-24 gunship came up over a rise and hovered just above the trees. For a moment the young pilot could do little more than sit and stare.

What was left of Blue Flight was under attack, not from craft of any sort, but from swarming creatures with flapping bat-like wings. They ebbed and flowed as if controlled by a single mind, concentrating on one craft, then splitting in two to avoid the fire from the Mi-8's wing-mounted gun pods, then wheeling and arcing to attack another. From this distance Pakilev couldn't even see their weapons, although the effects were clear enough.' a helicopter's engine compartment glowed brightly, then exploded in a burst of silver and red light. The smoking remains of the destroyed Mi-8 plummeted towards the ground like a hurled stone. Explosive flowers blossomed across the landscape, the trees igniting despite the cold. Each glowing beacon indicated a downed helicopter; there were more of them than craft left in the sky.

The creatures themselves were greyish, child-sized, and humanoid but barely human. Their limbs were scrawny and slender, the wings dark and angular. Occasionally a creature would come under concentrated gunfire, shuddering under the impact before falling to the ground in a rush of jumbled arms and wings. Like a dead butterfly. Or a fallen angel.

But any physical weakness was more than made up for by their number and agility. Pakilev couldn't even estimate how many there were, and it was little wonder that the radar of the Mi-8s barely picked up their attackers in time.

As unusual as the menace was, Pakilev had already begun to assess the attackers from a military perspective.

Missiles were out of the question.' the creatures seemed too quick, too intuitively aware of any threat of that nature. And, anyway, the gunship's missiles were designed to work only against large ground-based targets. The rockets might just be viable, but the machine gun seemed to be the best option.

The waiting was over. Time to engage.

Pakilev swept the sight over the closest group of creatures, keeping his thumb firmly pressed against the trigger. The helicopter rocked slightly, the bullets chasing across the air towards the grey figures. He caught one or two, who clattered into each other before falling. The group as a whole turned their attention towards the hovering helicopter. As they came closer Pakilev glimpsed their eyes glowing brightly, faces locked in savage sneers.

Pakilev eased the gunship backward, striving to maintain the distance between him and the creatures. All the while he kept firing. An increasing number of doll-like figures writhed under the hail of bullets and then tumbled down, but the onrushing group never seemed to dwindle in number. Pakilev could have sworn he heard them giggling like children.

A handful of the imp-like things broke off from the main mass and darted towards him, wings a blur of motion. Pakilev twisted the machine gun towards them, then released a clutch of rockets towards the others. Most missed, but some of the rockets clipped the small targets, exploding and sending limbs and wings flying in all directions.

A pair of Mi-8s had silently assumed a position behind the group that was menacing Pakilev's gunship, and moments later they opened fire with cannons and rockets.

Pakilev hoped that the missiles wouldn't see him as a much larger and therefore more inviting target than the diminutive creatures. No wonder the MiGs had found it difficult.' heat-seeking missiles are designed to lock on to the warmth of a jet engine, not the minute patterns of living things.

One of the monsters clattered against the gunship's cockpit, its claws scrabbling against the transparent shield as Pakilev instinctively pushed the helicopter into a downward spiral in an attempt to shake off the creature. Only then did the young pilot realise that he'd now moved away from the covering fire of the Mi-8s and into a ravine where a group of dark flapping figures seemed to be waiting for him, just above the trees. It was a trap - they barely registered on the radar.