Youth is Wasted on the Young p.20
"No offense," Tildaith said, arms crossed. "But this isn't your fight."
"Oh, but it is," the Doctor said. "They kidnapped my friend, took a bite out of her arm, and refused to play nicely. I'm making it my business," the Doctor said, crossing his arms and leaning back. "I've defeated these things before. I can do it again."
Tildaith stared at him hard for long minutes. Everyone was quiet, watching the battle of wills, only the chuffing of the chopper blades and the muffled roar of air past the doors punctuated the silence.
"Seems to me the traditional response will still work," Tildaith said. "We firebomb the hive. Burn them out. They've already killed 300 of our people. We have the right." His eyes challenged the Doctor.
"But if you firebomb them, they'll explode out of the hive and scatter to the winds. You'll never find them all. And if even one Wirrn survives, this whole business starts up again. You'll never be able to stop looking, never be sure you got them all. Never mind what fire would do to the wheat fields, potentially burning millions of acres.
"No, I have a much better idea."
Tildaith cocked his head, his intelligent, sharp eyes considered the odd grown-up. "Your records do indicate that you have considerable experience routing alien invasions, with minimal loss of life."
"Oh. Do they?" the Doctor perked up happily.
"So what is your plan?"
"We're..." the Doctor said.
"Unidentified vehicle," the radio suddenly interrupted them, "This is Kitterang Tower. Identify."
Amy looked at Rory at that crisp, military sounding voice. The pilot looked at the Colonel. Tildaith nodded.
"Kitterang Tower," the pilot replied, "This is military chopper 7862, Colonel Sethaniel Tildaith commanding."
"Confirmed, chopper 7862, you are cleared to land. Sheriff Anderson and Major Jensen are standing by for debriefing."
-----
They arrived back at the farm shortly thereafter, to find it had been transformed into an army camp.
They flew in over the farmhouse. Anti-aircraft guns tracked them from the tops of the silos.
The landing area bristled with anti-aircraft guns, choppers, attack ATVs, mortars, and dozens and dozens of tiny Kevlar-clad soldiers. A group of civilian ATVs were clustered around the control tower. The place was crawling with activity.
Colonel Tildaith turned to face them from the cockpit.
"We'll reconvene in an hour, Doctor, to consider your plan." He turned to the others in the chopper. "Security protocols are in force," Tildaith said, projecting his voice to everyone, making eye contact with civilians and soldiers alike. "No information is to be given to the media services and no one is to discuss this event among themselves where the media may overhear, understood?"
There was a chorus of, "Yes, sir."
-----
The Doctor, Amy, and Rory disembarked into a circus of diminutive reporters. Flashbulbs flashed, little whiz ball cameras swooped all around them, and a pack of reporters, held back by a cordon of soldiers, barraged them with questions.
Stanley disembarked behind them, carrying Schwillic. "Keep hold of him, Stanley," the Doctor muttered to him in an aside. "Sorry Captain," the Doctor apologized, "but you're likely to get trampled in this mob."
"I appreciate the courtesy," Schwillic vibrated back.
Ignoring the reporters, with Amy and Rory standing in front of him like giant shields among the smaller Feyanorans, the Doctor turned to Stanley, "I'm going to need some electronics equipment, where do you suggest we start?"
"What kind of equipment?"
"Sensors, force field equipment," he said.
"Then let’s start with mine." Stanley started sidling off to the side. Colonel Tildaith stepped down from the chopper behind them and the reporters attention focused on him.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," Tildaith said. "This is a military maneuver. You have been briefed on what we know by Senior Forensics Technician Clarke. We have no further comment at this time. Press releases will be circulated as soon as we have more information. For now, please disburse and allow us to continue with our job."
"And what would that job be, Colonel?" A reporter yelled from the back of the pack, undaunted.
Amy, Rory, and the Doctor slipped away.
-----
They didn't manage a clean getaway. Three giants, a tripod, and a teenager were too enticing an anomaly in a military exercise to go unnoticed. Fist-sized whiz ball cameras paced them and swirled around them at every step. Darting and swooping in for closeups and pan shots.
The Doctor ignored them, Stanley acted as if they weren't there. Amy and Rory took their cue from them.
It was a hot day. The tarmac was baking under their feet as they made their way to Stanley's sensor equipment, still set up at the corner of the airfield.
The oppressive atmosphere wasn't improved by the heavy metal of military choppers, gun placements, helmeted soldiers and the rather stifling feeling of being under siege.
Stanley set Schwillic down on the cool grass beside the sensor array. The Doctor immediately started crawling over the equipment, muttering specifications to himself and occasionally addressing a question to Stanley.
A circle of reporters stood a good distance away, keeping an avid eye on them, apparently hoping for some tidbit, and meanwhile snapping pictures and jotting notes.
Schwillic sat down on his rump in the grass, curling his one leg forward. "I could do with a beer right now," he said wearily.
The Doctor grinned up at him. "Don't worry, Captain. We'll get you back to your ship. Meanwhile, why don't you try up at the house?" the Doctor gestured with the sonic screwdriver. "They might have something."
Amy and Rory looked up at the Palladian mansion, black-clad soldiers were streaming in and out on various errands.
"Good idea." Schwillic hauled himself to his feet and plodded wearily, threefooted, up to the house.
"Go with him, Stanley," the Doctor suggested. "He looks done in." He saw a couple of reporters converging on the Tripod.
"Yeah," Stanley frowned, he usually liked dealing with reporters in his work with search and rescue, but sometimes they could be a real pain. "Schwillic! Hold up." He trotted after his friend.
"A beer?" Amy said with a snerk.
Rory stared after the little pink alien in surprise. "How would he drink it?"
"They don't. They swim in it. Absorb it through their skin," the Doctor said.
Amy and Rory stared at him. Amy flashed on the image of Schwillic taking a dunk in the Wirrn horse trough.
"Beer's very nutritious," the Doctor said, seeing their looks. "The Egyptians used to feed it to their slaves.
"What did you think they did with all that wheat they buy?"
-----
Time crawled. With the reporters cameras dogging them everywhere they couldn't talk about the Wirrn. The heat of the day was becoming oppressive. Rory shrugged out of his vest and opened his shirt collar. Amy started to feel the itch of her filthy hose as she began to sweat.
The Doctor didn't seem to feel the heat. Bundled up in jacket and bow tie, he dragged them all over the farm, investigating the silos, poking into the military supplies, watching as choppers rotated in and out of the landing strip, apparently going on patrol.
The wiz ball cameras kept swooping around them. One came close enough to Amy to ruffle her hair. "Hey!" she swatted at it, but it dodged away, almost mockingly.
"Haven't they got enough pictures yet?" Rory groused.
"Freedom of the press, Rory. Very important in a democratic society," the Doctor said. "Besides we're big news. Hah!" He turned and grinned at them at his joke. "Big news." They glared at him. "No?"
"No," they both said together.
The Doctor sighed.
He took one long last look at the landing field and all the military activity going on around them. Short soldiers trotted by. Reporters craned their necks from the shadow of the traffic control tower. Ground crews loaded missiles into the nose cones of the two sleek attack ATVs. The sheriff's ATV sat huddled in the middle of the field, looking like a puppy intimidated by hunting hounds.
The wheat fields hung heavy under the hot sun, looking forlorn, as if the farm itself understood what was about to happen.
"Come on," the Doctor said. "Tildaith's had his hour. Lets finish this."
-----
They were intercepted halfway to the farmhouse by a soldier that had been sent to fetch them. He led them to the conference room off of the main hall of the mansion which the militia had apparently confiscated as its war room.
Stanley and Captain Schwillic were already there. Schwillic was sitting on the end of the table, all three legs tucked underneath him, looking slightly gray. Stanley saw the three of them arrive and poured out three huge glasses of lemonade from a sweating pitcher by his side. They were huge tumblers by Feyanoran standards but just right for giant grown-up hands.
Rory thanked him and drank greedily. Amy looked at the glass and felt herself blinking with weariness. "You got anything with caffeine?" she asked.
"I don't think so," Stanley said, "What's that?"
Amy sighed. "Never mind." She held up the glass. "Cheers." She drank it down in a gulp and immediately perked up. "Whoo! That's cold!"
The Doctor went over to talk to Schwillic with concern.
Aside from Stanley and Schwillic there were two techs in the room, and one slim young solder who looked like a clerk, who was compiling notes on an electronic pad.
Colonel Tildaith walked in, followed by three officers. One of the techs closed the door.
"Corporal, scan please," Tildaith said, holding up a hand when it looked like Amy was about to say something. She bit down on her lip and took another sip of her lemonade.
The pad-wielding clerk activated something on her pad and did a slow walk around the room. She stopped beside Rory, who was sitting at the table, reached under the table by his leg and pulled out a small electronic device. She held it up to show the Colonel and he nodded. Everyone remained silent while the corporal finished her circuit, finding another device stuck to the outside rim of the door frame. She scanned the two devices, saved the information, then set the devices in a small lead casket she had sitting by the door and shut the lid.
"Whose?" Tildaith asked.
"Daily Star Media, and Land Central News," she replied.
Colonel Tildaith nodded to one of his officers. "Take care of it."
"Yes sir," the boy saluted and left the room.
"Please, everyone take a seat." Tildaith sat at the head of the table with his senior officers beside him. "This is Major Jensen and Captain Morris," Tildaith introduced, waving at the stout Asian boy on his left and the pale, almost white-blond girl on his right. Both nodded with professional reserve. "They are my seconds for this defense force."
The door abruptly burst open and Dutch and Jeff ran in, "Sorry we're late," Dutch panted.
The Doctor noticed Captain Morris reholster her sidearm and sit slowly back down. Jeff shut the door carefully.
"Corporal, scan them," Tildaith ordered.
The Corporal ran her pad over the two civilian officers and nodded.
"Right," Tildaith said, "Take a seat, gentlemen."
"Amy, I'm pleased to see you're okay," Dutch said as he sat down at the table opposite her.
Amy grinned at him, "Takes more than a few bugs to keep me down."
Rory snorted.
"Right, yes," the Doctor said. "If we can get down to business now? Those Wirrn aren't going to wait forever. What have you discovered, Colonel?" the Doctor said, taking charge.
Tildaith nodded. "I've set up defensive patrols around the farm and started surveillance on the hive. I've also alerted all the local authorities to be on the lookout. Fortunately, there is, as yet, no response from the Wirrn. No increased patrols, no unexpected flights. They appear to think they frightened us off. Or they're laying low for their own reasons. We're still trying to map the locations of any Wirrn outside the hive, but it will take time."
The Doctor nodded, "They're likely scattered far and wide, foraging."
Tildaith nodded. He turned to Amy and Stanley. "Amy, how many Wirrn would you estimate were in the hive?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. We saw about two or three dozen, but I don't know if they were all different ones or the same ones over and over. I couldn't tell them apart except for the big ones. But the hive is vast, there could have been hundreds we never saw. And there were thousands of egg cells." She saw the worried looks on the Feyanoran's faces. "They weren't all full of eggs," she tried to reassure them. "They probably didn't have more than the few hundred from the farmers here and from the herd animals they used." She grimaced, realizing that wasn't much comfort.
"How big were the grubs?" the Doctor asked.
"Bigger than me. I didn't see any hatched, but those light tubes had to be dug by something, and it wasn't the adult Wirrn," she said. Stanley nodded.
"Captain Schwillic," Tildaith asked, addressing the Tripod sitting on the end of the table. "What was your estimation of the population and size of the hive?"
"As Amy said, the hive is vast. There's a huge central atrium, where the main opening forms the top of the dome as seen from outside, but the majority of the hive is underground, burrowed in. I spent hours wandering the corridors, virtually all of them lined with egg cells just waiting for occupants. I saw a few more Wirrn than Amy or Stanley, but they were spread out over the whole hive. By the vibration I'd say a population of two to three hundred is reasonable."
"And that central hole is the only exit?" Tildaith asked.
"The only one I was able to find, yes. However, I wouldn't put it past them to be able to burrow out quickly if need be."
The Doctor nodded, "Remember they buried themselves to escape your scans, that would only have taken seconds. And they managed to build that hive without anyone noticing. I doubt they've actually been here that long. It doesn't take Wirrn larvae long to grow."
"So how much time do you estimate we have?" Major Jensen asked.
"From egg, to larva, to pupated adult, going by the time the farmers were taken, I'd estimate less than 3 days before we have a new batch of several hundred fully pupated Wirrn. And it will only get exponentially larger from there, especially if they manage to deploy that satellite."
There was a tightening of features all around the table.
"So what is this plan of yours, Doctor?" Tildaith asked, leaning forward, bracing his arms on the table.
-----
"The first thing we need to do is isolate the Wirrn - get them all back into the hive," the Doctor said.
"How?" Rory said.
"With an electric fence," the Doctor said.
"Are you serious?" Amy asked, Dutch and Tildaith looked like she beat them to the question.
"Completely," the Doctor said. "We'll build an electric force bubble all around the hive, " he said, gesturing with his hands. "The Wirrn will be able to get in but not get out. We'll use an inverse polarized field based on the local ambient energy field." the Doctor said.
"In English, Doctor," Amy reminded him in a long-suffering tone.
"Oh, right, think of it as a two-way mirror. Those inside won't be able to get out, but those outside it will only detect the normal background radiation. They'll fly right through it and," he clapped. "Trapped!"
"So how do you make that work?" Tildaith asked, interested.
-----
The Doctor walked around the table to the portable tech station. He waved at it in question and the chopper technician, used to it by now, got up and let him have it.
"In order for the field to project inwards but not outwards," the Doctor said, speaking to the whole room, "the force field projectors have to be inside the field."
"But that's not how force field projectors work," protested the Marine technician.
"That's not how your field projectors work -- but then, yours aren't permeable from one side."
The Doctor squashed himself down into the child-sized tech station.
"What we're going to need is this..." his fingers blurred over the keys -- a three-dimensional schematic built up under his fingers. The pieces constructed themselves on the screen, then assemble themselves into a single unit.
He sat back like a magician who had just conjured up an elephant. The two techs leaned forward in fascination. Rory noticed Tildaith was craning his head to see too -- but without being obvious about it.
"Hansen?" Tildaith asked.
The ginger haired chopper tech was staring over the Doctor's shoulder, pulling on her lip as she studied his schematics. She looked up. "It could work, sir."
Tildaith looked at his two second in commands, they looked dubious about trusting this odd grown-up, but they nodded.
"Very well, Doctor," Tildaith said. "What do you need?"
The Doctor swiveled around in the tech chair in delight. His fingers pointed in the air for emphasis. "I'll need three force field projectors, three hoverbikes, some wire mesh, and your daughter, Dutch."
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter