Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [119]
Kortez turned. He was far enough away from the ziggurat to be able to see the roof, plus the ugly black shape hovering over it. The humming, Kortez realised, was the ship’s drive mechanism. A tiny point of green light opened up on the underside of the vessel, then widened. Much like the third annihilating eye of Shiva, in the Colonel’s view.
Another explosion. Kortez raised his arms to his face, to protect his eyes from the blast. Only then did he notice that his hands were burning.
The black ship had opened fire, scorching the ground from its vantage point above the ziggurat. Kortez had been on the edge of the blast. He would have called himself lucky, if he hadn’t known it was nothing to do with luck and everything to do with the natural balance of karmic law. The fire had seared his hands, but there hadn’t been any pain. The swords used by the warrior-philosophers of ancient Japan had been sharp enough to amputate a man’s leg without him feeling a thing, Kortez had heard. The ship’s weapons were just as efficient, just as painless. The skin on his hands was charred, the flesh underneath sizzling, the nerves entirely burned out. The fire seemed to be spreading, working its way up his veins like a spark on a fusewire.
Overhead, the ship opened up its annihilating eye again. What passes must pass, Kortez told himself, but now wasn’t the time of his passing. There was no way he could make it to the City gates without being taken out by hostile fire – his karma wasn’t that good – so the only way was back, into the shelter of the ziggurat. He made a run for it. The fire burst across the ground where he’d been standing, then spread, so he could feel the heat licking at his back.
He was beginning to feel pain, at last. A slow, uneasy throbbing in his arms. But pain, he reminded himself, was not an issue. In the grand karmic scheme of things, he was a soldier, and a soldier understood nothing but his duty. He leapt towards the ziggurat entrance.
The Doctor practically bounced back into the hall, as did his little companion. Qixotl felt like giving both of them a good slap.
‘It’s no use,’ the Doctor told the bidders. ‘E-Kobalt’s blocked off the stairway. The air’s full of Kroton supercorrosive. Is there another way up?’
All eyes turned on Qixotl. That had been happening a lot recently, and Qixotl was getting fed up with it. ‘Uh, no. Can’t we clear this corrosive stuff away or anything?’
‘Well, I could use an EHF variable phase signal to readjust its cellular structure.’ The Doctor patted his pockets. ‘Unfortunately, my sonic screwdriver seems to have deserted me again. It can be a bit temperamental, sometimes.’
‘Again, I’m not sure I understand our situation,’ said Cousin Justine. ‘Are we to believe the Shift intends to attack us? If so, does the Kroton vessel have sufficient power to damage the ziggurat?’
Qixotl tried to skulk off into the shadows, before anyone started asking him how tough the building was. Technically, the place was built out of block transfer calculations; local space-time had been remodelled using sheer mathematics, no actual physical materials had been used. In theory, mundane weapons weren’t supposed to be able to do any damage to the City. In practice, Qixotl hadn’t had time to check his maths, and he suspected his calculations might have been slightly off-centre. The way things stood, he doubted it’d take much force to make the City come apart at the seams. Really, he’d been counting on the defensive systems to stop that kind of thing happening.
Fortunately, nobody was paying him the slightest bit of attention. ‘I’m not sure,’ the Doctor mused. ‘But even if the ziggurat’s safe, there’s a chance that –’
‘The Shift won’t let us out,’ reported Colonel Kortez.
The Colonel stood in the main archway of the conference hall, his hands stretched out in front of him, as if he wanted to keep a close eye on what they were doing. Qixotl winced when he saw the injuries.
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