Chapter Twelve

I slumped back. 'I've just had a dream.'

'The Doctor?'

'The Doctor.'

It was light just before six.

I was woken by the sound of the radio. The UNIT operators were collating information from the resistance cells, making a list of enemy positions and activity, just as they had been when I went to sleep. The toothpaste and soap were in the provisions box and I made my way outside. I didn't take my gun, and knew that would earn me a reprimand from Alistair when I got back.

I pulled the door open and stepped outside. The privates on guard duty saluted me, which I admit gave me a bit of a thrill. The air was chilly and there was a haze of mist still hanging around. The ground was still damp from the overnight rain.

As you can imagine, I was at a low ebb. The Doctor had come back as someone else, and then just as I was getting used to him, he’d been taken from me, and this time he wouldn’t be coming back.

This was my second morning here. It had taken us a week to edge this far around London, avoiding the main roads. We had arrived in the area yesterday afternoon, and the UNIT people had been expecting us, or Alistair at any rate. The Royalist encampment had been set up in a natural dip in the earth, a clearing surrounded by woodland deep within Windsor Forest, south of Windsor itself. In it sat a dozen tanks and as many Harrier jets, not to mention armoured cars, jeeps, trucks and motorbikes. The hardware was either tucked underneath the trees or covered in camouflaged netting. We had known where it was, but driving along the track straining to see it, the camp had been completely invisible until we were within twenty yards - by that time, a dozen snipers concealed in or among the trees could have picked us off. If that wasn’t impressive enough, the base would also be virtually invisible from the air - not that anything was flying. The Provisional Government were enforcing a strict 'no fly’ rule, at the insistence of the Martians. Bambera’s men didn't have to worry about satellites, either: the resistance movement's first action was to disable the surveillance network. This had been a disconcertingly easy task, they told us, with a little covert help from the CIA.