‘But let me take a look at them—’
Suddenly, from all along the wood on the Doctor’s side of the track, British soldiers emerged, closing in on the trio.
‘The machine-gun,’ said the Boer War private urgently.
‘Let’s turn it on them.’
The sergeant viewed the spectacle below. ‘We can’t,’ he said frowning. ‘We’d kill our own friends.’
In silence the little group watched as the three friends were taken prisoner and marched away.
General Smythe eyed the three prisoners standing before him in his office.
‘You have caused a great deal of trouble,’ he said. ‘But that has now come to an end.’ He banged the trestle table at which he was sitting.
‘Are we going to have another of your farcical courts martial?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Not necessary. You have already been condemned to death. As for your two colleagues, they will have a chance to make the supreme sacrifice on a very dangerous section of the front line. They can die for their king and country.’
‘You can drop all that nonsense,’ said Carstairs. ‘This isn’t the war. We’re not even on our own planet.’ He turned to the soldiers guarding them. ‘Don’t you chaps realise that? This so-called general isn’t even a human being.’
The guards looked embarrassed at the prisoner’s outburst, but said nothing.
General Smythe smiled. ‘They don’t understand what you’re talking about, Lieutenant. You’re wasting your breath.’ He turned to the sergeant of the guard. ‘Organise a firing squad.’
‘Already organised, sir,’ said the sergeant.
‘How thoughtful of you,’ said the general. ‘Well, take that one out and shoot him. Be quick about it.’
‘Yes, sir!’
The sergeant rattled off orders to two of the guards.
They grabbed the Doctor’s arms and pinioned them behind his back.
Outraged, Jamie made a grab at one of the soldiers.
Another soldier raised his rifle butt and brought it across the back of Jamie’s head. Meanwhile, two other soldiers raised their guns menacingly at Lieutenant Carstairs.
‘Out with him,’ roared General Smythe.
The Doctor was quickly bundled out of the office.
‘Keep these two prisoners here,’ said the general to the remaining guards. ‘I may want a further word with them.’
He rose and went into his bedroom, closing the door.
For some moments Jamie lay where he had fallen. The sergeant of the guard stepped forward, his boots uncomfortably near to Jamie’s face.
‘You! Upon your feet! ‘
Jamie felt the back of his head. The rifle butt had raised a lump but there was no blood. Though still dizzy from the blow, he struggled to his feet.
‘You’re all being made fools of,’ he said bitterly. ‘The Doctor is the one person who can help you. If you shoot him you’re all as good as dead.’
‘Prisoner to remain silent! ‘ barked the sergeant.
‘It’s no good, Jamie,’ said Lieutenant Carstairs. ‘We walked right into their double ambush. We only have ourselves to blame.’
From the distance they could hear a voice giving commands to the firing squad just outside the château.
‘
Firing squad, attention! Take positions... Take aim... Fire!
’
Jamie closed his eyes. A volley of shots rang out. As his mind dwelt on the death of the Doctor he could hear the shots still ringing in his ears. He could not understand why they continued to fire their rifles and thought it must be his imagination.
‘Jamie,’ Carstairs was saying, ‘listen.’
He opened his eyes. Firing was still continuing, ragged bursts of rifle and now machine-gun fire. The sergeant looked apprehensive.
‘Prisoners to lie on the floor, face down.’
The sergeant underlined his command by giving Jamie a shove. Both he and Lieutenant Carstairs lay down.
‘Keep them covered,’ ordered the sergeant. ‘Shoot to kill if necessary.’
While the guards trained their rifles on the two prostrate figures, the sergeant ran to the bedroom door.
‘General Smythe, sir! I think we’re under attack!’
Outside men were shouting and calling to each other as firing continued. A nearby burst of fire shattered most of the remaining panes of glass in the french windows. All in a moment the french windows burst open. A ragged band of resistance fighters led by Sergeant Russell swarmed in.
The guards’ guns trained on Jamie and Carstairs were raised to fend off the attackers. Jamie was deafened by the roar of rifles being fired in the enclosed space of the office.
A stray bullet hit the ornate chain of the chandelier that kept it attached to the ceiling; the chandelier crashed to the floor, narrowly missing Lieutenant Carstairs’s head.
‘Jamie, are you all right?’
Zoe was kneeling over him. He got to his feet. The sergeant who had been guarding them was dead; so was one of the soldiers. The room was full of men in all kinds of uniforms.
‘The Doctor?’ he said. ‘They were going to shoot him.’
The Doctor’s face appeared in the crowd. ‘I’m safe and sound, Jamie. Zoe and her companions met up with this group of resistance fighters. The château is in our hands now.’
‘The general,’ said Jamie. ‘He’s in that little room over there. He’ll be sending a message for help.’
‘Come on, lads,’ cried Sergeant Russell. ‘Break down that door.’
Six men picked up one of the trestle tables. Using it as a battering ram, they ran at the bedroom door. The door caved in with a crash of splintering wood. Two shots were fired from inside the bedroom—the general was shooting at his attackers. One of the men who had battered down the door fell dead. The French soldier raised his rifle and fired once into the bedroom.
‘You mustn’t kill him,’ cried the Doctor. ‘He could tell us why...’
The Doctor’s words trailed off. He stood in the shattered doorway regarding the body of General Smythe, killed outright by a single shot through the forehead. Zoe came up behind the Doctor.
‘Doctor, what’s that?’
She pointed to a panel in the wall opposite the telecommunications unit. It too had been concealed, camouflaged by a section of the wall itself, now slid to one side.
‘Some kind of control console,’ said the Doctor, regarding the neat rows of buttons and knobs. He picked up a broken chair that lay immediately below the panel. ‘I think he was trying to destroy it.’ Marks were clearly visible on the panel where General Smythe had smashed at it with the chair. ‘I wonder if it has something to do with creating the time zones?’
Zoe suddenly remembered. ‘Doctor, that video screen! ‘
She turned to look across to the other side of the room.
The picture of the Royal Family was moved to one side and the video screen was glowing. She leapt across the little room and turned it off. ‘They probably heard everything you said, Doctor.’
‘It hardly matters,’ he replied. ‘You don’t think they’re going to leave us in peace very long, do you?’
Far away in the war room the Security Chief, War Chief and the War Lord saw the monitor screen go blank.
‘Smythe was a fool,’ said the War Chief. ‘He deserved to die.’
‘The processing machine head,’ said the War Lord.
‘Does this Doctor have the knowledge and ability to use it?’.
‘Yes,’ said the War Chief. ‘I believe he has.’
‘Then the situation is urgent. Fortunately, though, they have made a very stupid mistake.’ The War Lord waited to see which of his subordinates would ask what the mistake was. Neither was foolish enough to betray his own lack of imagination, so he continued. ‘By carrying out a mass attack, they have concentrated resistance forces in one place—this château.’
‘This time we should use our own guards,’ said the Security Chief. ‘I shall mount an invasion of the château by twenty sidrats. A hundred of our guards will emerge from each, their guns set to kill.’
The War Chief was appalled. ‘You will invalidate the whole experiment! As the War Lord so wisely pointed out, they are all in one place. We can wipe them out with an artillery barrage.’
‘Which,’ said the War Lord, ‘would be just as foolhardy as using our security guards. Artillery would almost certainly destroy our control units there. Time zone barriers would vanish. In any case, let us not forget the purpose of the war games. We want battles. We need to know which of Earth’s soldiers are the fiercest and can best be relied on to fulfil our destiny.’
The War Lord rose and went to the great war map. ‘We shall order our human species to make a mass attack on the château. If they are British let them believe the Kaiser is there. If German, tell them this Doctor is the King of England. We shall mount a pincer movement with this Doctor and his group of bandits in its jaws!’
In flickering lamp-light Lieutenant Carstairs stood on a chair as he addressed the resistance fighters. In all kinds of ragged uniforms they had crowded into the château’s one-time drawing room.
‘You all know that some terrible trick is being played on us.’
The soldiers responded with an angry murmur.
‘We are an elite, because for all of us in this room the trick has stopped working.’ He paused while those who understood English translated his words into a variety of languages. ‘What we must do now is to find other groups of resistance fighters so that together we can create one big army.’
It was during his second pause for translations that Sergeant Russell came hurrying through the shattered french windows. He pushed his way through the crowd to speak to Carstairs.
‘Time’s up for speech-making, sir. There’s a whole British regiment coming up the road towards us. Our patrol has just spotted them.’
He had hardly finished giving his message when the French soldier came running in. In his excitement he cried out in French: ‘
M’sieur lieutenant, les boches avancent là-derrière vers le château!
’ (‘Lieutenant, the Germans are advancing towards the back of the château!’) A multilingual hubbub broke out among the soldiers. A young Russian officer of 1812 wielded his sword above the heads of those around him, causing most of them to duck.
‘We must fight for our honour! We must die like heroes at the battle for Moscow!’
‘
You
die like a hero,’ growled a New Yorker from Abraham Lincoln’s Unionist Army of the American Civil War. ‘Lootenant, whyn’t we get the hell out of here under the cover of darkness and re-group someplace else? That’s make sense to me.’
‘It does not make sense to me.’ The Doctor spoke from the open door of the little room that had been General Smythe’s bedroom. Heads turned towards him. ‘We need to hold a firm base. There is important equipment here that may solve some of our problems.’
Carstairs looked down to Sergeant Russell. ‘Do you think we could defend this place?’
‘We can have a good try. What about it, lads?’ the sergeant called to the crowd of soldiers.
‘Ve have the advantage of darkness,’ a German called back.
‘I shall go into their ranks,’ cried the 1812 Russian officer, ‘slashing them to pieces with my sword. Only the dead will know that Boris Ivanovich Petrovich of the House of Trebetskoy has been among them.’
‘Good on you, sport,’ said an Australian infantry-man wearing a slouch hat. ‘Let’s get out of this room before they arrive. Otherwise we’re sitting ducks.’
As Lieutenant Carstairs went into a strategy discussion with the sergeant and leaders of other resistance groups, the Doctor turned back into the little bedroom.
Zoe said, ‘Do you really think you can make this gadget work, Doctor?’ She sat on the edge of the camp bed looking at the control console in the wall.
‘I can try,’ he said. ‘It’s a question of how much time I’ve got before the château is overrun.’
The War Lord looked down at the war map. ‘How are we progressing?’
The War Chief pointed to illuminated colours appearing on the map. ‘British troops advancing here and here, converging with French troops. The Germans are pressing in on the rear of the château.’
‘Good, good,’ said the War Lord. ‘A splendid manoeuvre.’
The War Chief smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘But taking rather a long time,’ said the Security Chief.
‘Either our processed specimens aren’t trying or these bandits are putting up a good fight.’
‘They cannot win,’ said the War Chief, still glowing from the War Lord’s compliment. ‘They will be crushed.’
‘They’ve escaped before,’ snarled the Security Chief.
‘They could do it again. Do you intend the Doctor to die with the rest?’
‘Why not?’ asked the War Chief. ‘He is now the main cause of our troubles.’
The Security Chief did not answer.
‘Well?’ said the War Lord. ‘What did you mean by your question, Security Chief?’
The Security Chief could not evade answering the War Lord. ‘The Doctor seems to have a charmed life, that’s all I meant.’ He gave a respectful bow to the War Lord and moved away from the war map on the pretext of conferring with one of his security guards.
The War Lord waited until the Security Chief was out of earshot. ‘What was really behind his question about the fate of this Doctor?’
‘He doesn’t trust me,’ the War Chief replied honestly.
‘But I can assure you, War Lord, the Doctor will be killed.
You have my word on it.’ He glanced down at the war map where the illuminated colours had expanded. ‘Look, your pincer movement has the château in its jaws! Time is running out for all those who resist us.’
The battle was raging all around the château now. Under pressure from the British regiment at the front of the building, resistance fighters had pulled back and were defending from the windows. Jamie and Sergeant Russell were crouched at a window, each with a rifle, firing whenever they could see a British steel helmet in the flash of explosions in the grounds.
‘We should have done what that Yank said.’ The sergeant aimed his rifle and fired. ‘We should have pulled out of here and re-grouped somewhere else. Now it’s too late.’ He fired again.
From where Lieutenant Carstairs was firing his revolver he called, ‘Watch that french window!’