Doctor Who - The 8th Doctor - 73 - The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin

Author:Lance Parkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Comics & Graphic Novels, Doctor Who (Television Program), General
ISBN: 9780563486244
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2005-07-26T07:00:00+00:00

‘Like the greenhouse effect?’

‘Yes, but much more rapid.’

He returned to his diary.

‘Who are you writing that for?’

Marnal shrugged. ‘Possibly just for posterity.’

One of the Vore was moving outside, Rachel could hear it dragging something heavy. She tried to imagine what it could be, but couldn’t think of anything but a dead body. She’d watched a couple of them devouring an Alsatian yesterday from an upstairs window.

Rachel decided to stay where she was, just for a little longer.

Many American surveillance satellites had been destroyed or disrupted. The scientists were saying it was because of the disruptions to gravity caused by the presence of the second moon, rather than direct enemy action. The Vore had apparently not noticed, or weren’t worried about, the International Space Station.

The surveillance network had been designed to function even if a substantial number of satellites were put out of action. It needed a lot of retasking, but within a day the Pentagon had good coverage. They concentrated on the main Vore swarm, which was following the computer models for it, keeping to the light and sweeping across the world. Contingency plans were being drawn up for this by the British and Chinese. The swarm wasn’t bothering the American cities, it was sticking to the plains – the red states – although this was presumably a coincidence. Planners didn’t want to provoke the Vore on American soil for fear they’d target one of the big cities in retaliation.

173

There was no nuclear option. They’d thought about bombing the swarm over the Atlantic or Pacific, but there would be nuclear fallout and plans were shelved when someone wondered aloud if it might set off a tsunami. There was no delivery system capable of getting nuclear weapons to the second moon.

Enemy numbers were stable. Estimates had it that there was one Vore for every two people on Earth – this ratio was continually changing in the enemy’s favour, but this wasn’t because there were new monsters arriving. Six out of seven of the Vore were in the main swarm, 90 per cent of human casualties were caught in the swarm.

The situation, then, was settling into a predictable pattern. The Vore were in control, systematically taking the human race apart, but now it was possible to see how they would do it, and there was plenty of time to get people evacuated or into shelters. Some people even started talking about things being ‘manageable’. None of them, when asked, was able to explain how the swarm could be stopped or even slowed down, but governments around the world were beginning to feel the worst was over.

Then an analyst saw something, right on the edge of one of the African satellite images. And, once she’d worked out what it was, she panicked.

The Doctor had read all the books he’d brought with him. He knew a little more about his home planet now, but what he knew was hardly comprehensive. If he’d grabbed an armful of random novels from a London library, would he

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