Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [27]
‘We have to leave, Errol. We have to leave now.’
‘How?’ he murmured. God, his face looked bad.
‘What do you mean: how? The second lifeboat, of course. Emile and Tameka have gone in the first.’
He opened his one good eye and grimaced at the mess of his leg. ‘The other pod hasn’t worked in years. There never seemed any point in getting it fixed. Bernice,’ he added, after a moment. ‘I can’t open my right eye. Feels strange.’
‘Ah,’ Bernice said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Her adrenaline-fuelled energy abandoned her. She slumped on to the floor and rested her back against the wall. Electrical fires flickered around her. Acrid smoke billowed through the cabin. It was getting hard to take a breath. She suddenly felt very tired. Exhausted.
Bloody Jason. All your fault.
They were now directly below one of the ships. Through the bubble she could see its underbelly. It was made up of irregular grey piping, which was scorched with dark streaks. It looked unfinished, as if the whole ship had been put together with little thought as to the final result.
Bernice thought she recognized parts of the design – hadn’t she seen something like that recently? It might just have been her imagination. She couldn’t be sure. Didn’t care.
For a few moments she was content to watch the ship pass over them until she began to be aware that they were moving away from it. The grey underbelly was getting further away. Bernice frowned, trying to keep her head clear. There was a lot of smoke now. She could feel it trying to clog her lungs and pull her down into unconsciousness.
Down.
The view of the huge ship began to twist in front of her. The small haulage vessel was being dragged into a spin. Dragged down. Bernice opened her eyes wide, suddenly alert. They were being dragged down by something. She leant forward and saw the huge orange disc of Ursu directly below them. It was rising to meet them like a sunrise. Gravity. The planet was reaching for them.
Bernice pulled herself up into the pilot’s chair. She glanced at the ship above them. It no longer blocked the whole of the view from the bubble, and had stopped firing at them. For now. She fastened herself into the pilot’s harness, and felt reassured by its embrace. She paused, realizing that she had no idea what she was about to do, except try to stay alive.
The navigation instruments were missing, the jump-drive monitors were melted and she had removed most of the engineering station from Errol’s thigh. The ’puter kept displaying the words, SMALL + FIRE + IN + CABIN + ONE. DESIGNATED + FIRE + OFFICER + PLEASE + ATTEND and repeating them in an infuriatingly calm feminine voice. Bernice tried to tell it to shut up but broke into fits of coughing instead.
Not a good sign, she told herself.
There was no information on three of the main cargo holds. She assumed that they had taken direct hits. Despite the ’puter’s gross underestimation of the problem, angry warnings kept flashing up on the screens in front of her, registering the sites of fires throughout the ship. The sub-light drive instruments kept displaying messages about things she didn’t understand. Most of the ship was now open to space. Only the cabin containing the living quarters and the bridge had integrity. No wonder the ships had stopped firing: the old haulage vessel was breaking up. Even if it managed to hold together, it would shortly burn up when it came into contact with the atmosphere of Ursu.
Exactly how had she got herself into this mess?
Bernice was about to curse her husband again when she was distracted by movement out of the corner of her eye. Errol was awake and had leant forward to the edge of the glass and was now staring down at the planet below. He glanced up at her, his left eye blinking rapidly to keep the blood from the cut on his forehead from running into it. He didn’t speak.
‘I’m open to suggestions,’ Bernice informed him and burst out coughing again. He said something that she couldn’t make out over the calm but loud ’puter warning. ‘You’ll have to speak up.’ Her