Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [115]
He tried moving his head. His neck didn’t seem to want to turn, but he managed to force it.
That was when he saw the rest of his body, sprawled out in front of him, the snow already starting to bury his limbs. He wanted to close his eyes, but his eyelids didn’t respond to the command. The torso of the human suit had split open, revealing the churning mass of his true body inside. One entire arm had come loose, and his biomass was spilling out of the sleeve in slicks of brilliant pink. One of the suit’s legs had been torn off, as well, but he couldn’t see whether he was leaking out of the wound there.
Every part of the suit had been armoured. Every flake of skin had been sprayed with bulletproof plasticrene. It hadn’t made one bit of difference. The sergeant had sent him out on a recon sweep, and the combat satellite had located him while he’d been away from the rest of the platoon. It had fired on him, once, from somewhere in the upper atmosphere, then it had left him alone. Perhaps it had thought he wasn’t likely to be much of a threat, with his spinal column shattered, his skin broken open, and the body inside slowly freezing.
A cluster of silhouettes appeared on the horizon in front of him, tiny smears of black against the blazing white background. He guessed, he hoped, it was the rest of the Nth Platoon, the sergeant and all her little boot-lickers. He thought of calling out to them, but he guessed there wasn’t much point.
Then everything started to fade to black. His eyelids were closing, he realised. The software controlling his face had finally figured out that his eyes needed rest, occasionally.
He wondered if he’d be able to wake up again.
Darkness.
‘...have to leave him here. OK. Get your palm-scans tuned, this is going to be the hard part.’
He was conscious again, but he didn’t have the strength to open his eyes. Besides, he knew what he’d see. The sergeant, in her head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest human suit, coated in spray-on armour from top to toe. The troops had found him, and it sounded like they weren’t thinking of taking him with them.
Military procedure. Of course. There hadn’t been space for a doctor inside the transit capsule, so the wounded could go and die on their own time, as far as the sergeant was concerned. He could hear the sounds of boots, scrunching against the ice. The other members of the platoon, obviously, getting tooled up for the big assault. They’d be checking their palm-scans, giving the terrain the once-over. They’d be looking nervous, too. Sweating deep red inside their suits.
‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s like we thought. No signs of ground-based forces. We can assume the satellites are still in effect, so don’t drop your cloaks. Looks like the enemy can bypass them anyway, but you’ve got to live in hope.’
There was a grumble of discontent from the troops. Not loud enough to be considered mutinous, naturally.
‘And you can stop that, as well,’ the sergeant growled. ‘OK. The Time Lords say the enemy installation’s over on the north side of the big ridge, and I’m not going to argue with them. It’s shielded, so we’ll need to find it for ourselves, the palm-scans aren’t going to do us a lot of good. Any questions?’
Nobody said anything.
‘Great. So let’s move. And stop staring at him like that. He’s not going anywhere.’
More grumbling. Then more scrunching. The sound of marching feet.
They were walking away from him. Well, obviously they were walking away from him, it wasn’t as if he were an indispensable part of the mission or anything. He was light infantry. Cannon fodder. Only here because he knew how to fire a staser without shaking his own arm off. One of a million stupid recruits who’d been primed to shoot at anything they were told to shoot at. The Gabrielidean military didn’t like people who asked questions, and neither did the Time Lords.
No, he thought. No, not here. I know where I want to die, and it’s not here, on some