Doctor Who The Wages of Sin David A. McIntee

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.THE WAGES OF SINDAVID A.MCINTEEFor Gina, of coursePublished by BBC Worldwide Ltd,Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TTFirst published 1999Copyright © David A.McIntee 1999The moral right of the author has been asserted.Original series broadcast on the BBC‘Doctor Who’ and ‘TARDIS’ are trademarks of the BBCISBN 0 563 55567 XImaging by Black Sheep © BBC 1999Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton Author’s noteA word on dating: Russia used the Julian calendar until 1918, which means that all dates are twelve days behind the West.Also, there is no set historical record for the precise events of Rasputin’s murder.The main source of information about it came from Felix Yusupov’s own books on the subject, but he changed his story with every telling.Maria Rasputin’s version of her father’s fate has definite inaccuracies in it, and no version quite accords with the official police report which establishes a base timeline for who entered or left the Moika Palace at which times.So I’ve tried to use the different sources to construct the most feasible version possible, and squeezed our heroes into the gaps where the different versions don’t chime.As I write this, having finished everything, it’s October 17th.Strange, that.PrologueBurning blue-white, and too bright to be viewed with the naked eye, the cylindrical fire blazed over the village of Nizhne-Karelinsk, passing high to the northwest.Though clearly moving fast, it took a whole ten minutes to burn its way down to the horizon.As it finally neared the ground a small dark cloud appeared.This suddenly swamped the blue light, and a huge column of black smoke began to shoot up.Soon, a wave of sound rolled across the village.It was a swelling rumble, quite unlike the sharp report of an explosion.The village shook as the sound blasted through it and, in the distance, veins of fire rippled through the rising clouds.This was two hundred miles away from ground zero.Seventy miles from ground zero, the sky over Vanavara split asunder, and fire lashed out.The thunderclap knocked people off their feet in the rough streets, and earth rained from the sky as the village’s buildings shook and cracked.Thirty miles from ground zero, a wall of superheated vapour knocked the trees down like ninepins on the banks of the Chambe river.The tents of a hunter were cast, burning, into the distance, and he himself was bowled over for what felt like several hundred yards.The reindeer and dogs he had brought bolted in sheer terror, but he couldn’t hear their departure: the incredible sound had ruptured his eardrums.Ground zero.A body six hundred yards across, and massing around thirty thousand tons, burrowed into the Earth’s atmosphere at supersonic speed.Five miles above ground, the density of the atmosphere finally proved too much for it: flattened against its own shockwave the body abruptly slowed, stopped – splashed, like a lead bullet on armoured steel.It tore itself apart in a gigantic, continuing explosion.Much of the force was expended downwards as well as outwards, into the great Siberian forest.The trees for a few hundred yards directly under the explosion were stripped vertically of their branches, and charred, but remained standing as the air thickened around them.The earth at this point was slammed into a bowl-shaped depression a mile across, as the underlying permafrost and plant material were vaporised.From this point, the shockwave spread out at hundreds of miles per hour, flattening the trees as it went.In a matter of seconds, nearly eight hundred square miles of forest were stamped flat.Thousands of birds and animals were killed instantly, most smashed to a pulp by the shockwave.Every leaf in the devastated area was scorched away to nothing, leaving only hundreds of square miles of skeletal trunks lying bare under the churning smoke and dust.It was June 30th 1908.The world would not hear of this devastation for another thirteen years.Chapter OneNo birds wheeled in the sky to disturb the sovereignty of the pale yellow patch that was the winter sun.The old Stock Exchange building, an abandoned but still imposing red-roofed acropolis, loomed against the clouds.From the wide steps and promenade that encircled it, granite causeways curled down to the ice where the surface of the Neva had frozen as it split around the headland.The water that moved amidst the shattered ice was slow and dark, yet the ice also gleamed with the emerald flecks of broken champagne bottles that had become frozen into it.It was a wedding tradition that newly married couples would come here and break a bottle for good luck and, at this time of year, the fragments would be locked into place amidst the waves of ice.Between the Exchange and the causeways were four huge rostral columns.They were red pillars over sixty feet high, with representations of ships’ prows set into them.Beacons were lit atop them at holidays.Each rostral had carvings around the base representing a river: the Dnieper, the Volga, the Neva and the Volkhov.The man who had just entered the Volkhov rostral was very lean, but not actually underweight.Rather, he was simply at a point at which he had no excess fat or muscle beyond that which his body needed.His planed features surrounded piercing eyes under dark brows.Neatly trimmed and combed black hair crowned his appearance.He was clad in a nondescript dark suit and overcoat.Arkady Morovich thought the man looked like an assassin.Not that he knew any assassins, but he was always watching out for them, just in case.He tried to stay motionless in the darkness a couple of turns up the rostral’s interior staircase.The spiral staircase was used when the beacons were lit on special days, so he knew no one should be coming up here today.On the floor below, the man who looked like an assassin opened the metal door to allow another man in.This one wore a Preobrazhensky Guard officer’s greatcoat against the cold outside.He was shorter than the first man, and less fit-looking.Still, he looked fitter than Morovich felt.Morovich tried not to breathe, afraid that even that sound would give him away.‘You wanted to see me?’ the first man asked.His accent was Russian enough, but somehow odd to Morovich.It sounded artificial, and he was sure this was not the man’s native accent.The officer nodded.‘I received new orders today – I’m to leave the city.I thought I’d better get things cleared up before I go.’This was something worth reporting to Vasiliyev.Morovich could feel his leg starting to go to sleep, and shifted very slightly to try to alleviate the discomfort.The first man was replying.‘We had anticipated such a possibility.It won’t take long to activate an alternative route –in a few days your packets should reach you in the usual way [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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