The Forgotten Army (17 page)

'What's got into you?' Amy asked, upset that Sam was so cross at them.

'You left me in there for ages!' Sam screamed, desperate to get his frustration off his chest.

'That's interesting.' The Doctor was talking more to Amy than to Sam. 'It's made of Vykoid technology. So it's immune to the Time Freeze.'

'You were only in there for a minute.’ Amy explained,

'but we're all being slowed down by

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the Vykoids. In there you must have been going at normal speed.'

'So this means we can fight them at their own speed!' Sam exclaimed, realising that his ordeal had not been in vain.

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed. 'But only if we all get inside the mammoth.'

'You cannot be serious?' Amy stared at the Doctor. 'You are, aren't you? I should have known!'

184

Commander Strebbins was having
a very bad night.

First, a mammoth had come alive, destroying the Grand Hall of the most famous museum in New York. Then the city had blacked out. Now she was losing units of men, all over the city. Her decision to go onto the streets herself had been popular with her officers. They had been scared by reports of an unseen enemy, and were worried for their colleagues.

But now she was at the helm they felt protected. Patrolling the streets like an American Boadicea, Strebbins had her head poking out of the top of an armoured vehicle, surveying all the damage to the streets as she went.

'Take me to City Hall.’ she hollered down to her 185

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driver. 'I want to see this for myself.'

The convoy rolled along the empty streets like an army conquering a ghost town. Strebbins had never seen the city like this, and she was determined to restore it to its roaring, all-night-long self.

On the lawns of City Hall, Lieutenant Red of the Vykoid army lowered a tiny telescope and smiled with triumph. He'd seen their main prize - the human identified as running the city, Commander Jackie Strebbins.

She was the woman who had put the city under Martial Law. If they took her, they could do what they wanted. Red signalled for his men to spread out across the road. Working at top speed, they unrolled nets across every stretch of sidewalk, and a specialised climber Vykoid ran a cord up to a pivot point on the fifth floor of City Hall. Meanwhile, a team of twenty Vykoids leapt into a human jeep and, with different teams on each pedal, manoeuvred it into position. The trap was set...

Strebbins pulled up in front of City Hall, the car jolting to a stop to avoid a water main bursting a fountain over the sidewalk. On her signal, the officers piled out of the back of the van.

Yaara seemed immediately unnerved. 'Ma'am, there's something on the road.'

Commander Strebbins was already climbing 186

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down from her vantage point. 'I'm sure I've stepped on worse in my time.’ she said drily.

But as her feet hit the ground, they stuck to it firmly. It was as if her shoes were made of Velcro. She tugged and yanked with all her might, but she couldn't move.

'Eyes all round!' Strebbins commanded, determined that she would not be ambushed like this.

Somewhere close by, an engine fired up. A jeep zoomed away from City Hall, pulling with it the cord that gathered up the huge nets that Strebbins and her officers were standing on.

The nets had been designed to subdue a Tyrannosaurus Rex, so Commander Strebbins didn't stand a chance. As either side of the nets pulled up, the entire unit of armed police officers was bundled together. Like rabbits caught in a trap, they were dragged into the air, legs and arms poking through the holes in the net. They were helpless.

Deep underground in a Subway station, General Erik inspected the work of his Vykoid scientists. He'd been forced to adapt his battle plan to the unfortunate mistiming of their arrival, and he was more than happy with what he'd come up with. His original mission had called for very few slave workers to be captured. But if his new plan worked, he'd be bringing home all of New York.

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When they'd discovered that their cryogenic sleep units had malfunctioned and they'd woken up thousands of years too late, he could have abandoned the mission and gone home.

He wouldn't have been blamed. Instead, he'd sent out a team of Vykoids with a mission: find a human and force it to take the mammoth to the greatest city on Earth. He'd faced a threat of mutiny from the disgruntled soldiers eager to go home and a vote of no confidence from the Vykoid Fleet Commanders, but he'd persisted with his plan, and it had worked. However powerful and well defended New Yorkers thought they were, Manhattan was defenceless to a hidden enemy.

He signalled to the Chief Scientist with a brief wave of his hand. 'Please begin.'

In a corner of the Subway station, the Vykoids had assembled something that looked like a shower in a hippie commune. They had constructed a man-sized chamber out of bent copper pipes and elaborate woodwork built into the wall.

Hauling on levers and pulleys, the Vykoids were lifting something large into a standing position in the chamber. On either side of the object, platforms of Vykoids waited to be called into service. Waiting like paratroopers before a drop, they had a hint of bullishness and anxiety, overridden by the sense that this was their moment. After years of waiting inside the mammoth, they were finally getting to put their technology into action. It wasn't how they 188

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had expected to use it but, deep down, they knew it was going to be a lot more fun.

Centuries of being frustrated by their size had led the Vykoid race to become experts in building larger vehicles. But even with the might of technology on their side, the universe still refused to take them seriously and so, with the logic of the conqueror, they had decided to use their machines to subdue anyone that stood taller than them.

Their perfect machines of war had run amok through solar systems and caused chaos across galaxies. All the time, the best brains of the Vykoid race had been working long and hard on a new and better solution to the problem of being tiny in a world of oafs and gangly gargantuans. They had learnt how to control the minds of larger animals, to take charge of their every action.

A bright spotlight blazed onto the object in the Vykoid conversion cubicle. It was Commander Strebbins, fast asleep and tied upright to a wooden scaffold by hundreds of tiny ropes.

Buzzing with adrenalin, Lars, a Vykoid private on his tour of duty, hopped into a minute seat and saluted his commander. The chair was packed with hundreds of controls.

At his left hand were dozens of buttons, and on his right a carved Vykoid joystick.

The scientists around him backed away, and Lars shouted out, 'Ready!'

With a dazzling manoeuvre, Lars was shot into 189

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the air to land squarely on the head of the NYP D

commander.

General Erik watched with satisfaction as Strebbins's left eye opened halfway. Then her right eye jammed wide open in a thousand-yard stare.

Lars radioed down to the command centre. 'I'm having slight ocular control difficulties, sir.'

A Vykoid scientist spoke into a communicator. 'You're doing great, just blink it out, and relax the muscles.'

Two sleepy-eyed blinks later, and Lars was back in business. He attempted a smile, and the Commander grinned dumbly around the room. Her lips trembled, and then opened in ludicrously fast speech. 'Hey, it ain't easy being this big! Talk about dumb animal...'

Down below, the Vykoid scientists were drenched in drops of spittle.

The lead scientist, spoke into the communicator again.

'Hat back on... now.'

With a skilful whirring of pulleys, the NYPD cop baseball cap was delicately lowered into position. A dangling Vykoid tided up the hair around the cap and gave a thumbs-up signal to down below. Lars was now out of sight, and totally in command of Commander Strebbins.

'I'm good to go.'

Lars marched Strebbins out awkwardly, as the Vykoid scientist called out, 'Next!'

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General Erik and his Vykoids had felt hours pass, stopping for two meal breaks and nine cups of coffee in the process. But in only thirty minutes of New York human time, the Vykoids had upgraded themselves to become controllers of hundreds of fully armed NYPD cops. They had taken the defenders of the city, and made them the attackers.

191

Leaving the Doctor and
Sam to rip more parts out of the mammoth, Amy wa ndered out to Fifth Ave nue to watch out for fireworks from Polly Vernon's class. The sun was beginning to rise above Brooklyn, sending fingers of light through the still clear sky.

Then, as the sun rose over the park, something unexpected happened. Another huge pulse of green light spread over the city. Just like before, Amy felt as if every part of her had become weightless, like she'd reached the top of a rollercoaster ride. It passed just as quickly and, all around New York, the power returned.

On the street around her, cables ripped from street lamps sparked on the tarmac, and the windows of the city flashed into light again, the blackness

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banished. It was astounding to Amy how quickly the air filled with chatter as all the televisions and radios that had been left on around the city blared noisily back to life.

Hearing the commotion, the Doctor ran out of the Zoo to where Amy was staring joyfully at the rejuvenated city, hopeful that the threat was over.

'Hey, the lights have come back on!' she cried. 'Is it over?

Maybe we've got the better of them?'

A department store window showed TV screens with news channels scrambling to get their reporters on air. The rolling headlines were calling it the Big Blackout. The sun was rising above Brooklyn, and the dark night was over. All the noises and business of an ordinary New York day began to fill the air, as if the long dark night had been an aberration or a bad dream. New York had survived a night of terror and confusion and it felt like a time to celebrate.

But the Doctor punctured Amy's feeling of elation. 'That was too easy.’ he told her grimly. "The Vykoids haven't done what they came to do. This all has to be part of their plan.

The next stage has just begun.'

As New Yorkers ventured out of their apartments, Amy could hear mobile phones ringing as people checked on their friends and families. 'Are you OK?' 'What did you see?'

'Is anyone hurt?' All around New York the same things had happened. But no one seemed to know who had done this, or why

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such mayhem had been caused.

The Doctor and Amy joined a crowd watching the television news through a cracked department-store window. Trinity Wells was broadcasting to the nation, looking immaculate as she spoke into camera.

'I'm about to bring you an exclusive for AMN news. The woman who took control of the city overnight, and has brought order back to New York, joining us live, is Commander Strebbins of the New York Emergency Crisis Taskforce.'

Strebbins walked stiffly into the studio and sat beside Trinity.

'So,' said Trinity Wells, 'Commander Strebbins, what happened last night? And what should New Yorkers be doing this morning?'

Commander Strebbins leaned into the camera, lookin g rather awkward, her make-up smudged and uneven. When she spoke, her lips dribbled spittle, but the words came out clear. 'I am keeping the curfew on Manhattan with all bridges and tunnels into the city remaining closed. Following the damage last night, we need to do structural tests before they will be safe to re-open. However, I am pleased to tell you that the City is otherwise back to normal: Metro lines will start running at 8 a.m., and schools and places of work are expected to open as usual. I'd like to reassure all small business owners that there will not be a repeat of the violence and

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looting of last night, and that there is no cause for concern.'

'How come she managed it, and we didn't?' Amy asked the Doctor. She could tell that something wasn't right. 'Maybe they've turned off, like in War of the Worlds, or the atmosphere poisoned them, or something. They should have worn little Vykoid gas masks...'

The Doctor didn't answer, and Amy was soon distracted by the television. 'What is wrong with Trinity Wells, though? Not a great day for her fashion-wise... I think her shirt is on inside out.'

The Doctor leant in close to the television.

Amy tried again for a reaction from him. 'And why is she wearing that ridiculous hat? What does she think she looks like?'

The camera cut back to Commander Strebbins. She was telling Trinity with evident pride that her team had been working throughout the night to restore power and had successfully apprehended the insurgents responsible. There was a quick shot of some tired-looking men being hurried into a police van, ragged in boiler suits and red-eyed. Then Strebbins went on to explain again that the city was safe. That it would always be safe, and New York could rely on having the biggest and best Police Department in America.