Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [11]
‘Robots won’t do this.’ He tapped her leg with the electric prod and grinned as the muscles cramped and twisted. ‘You shouldn’t be fighting robots.’
‘I’m not,’ she gasped. ‘I’m fighting sewer-scum.’
‘Oh,’ he sniggered. ‘Sewer-scum? Is that what you think of me?’ He juiced her shoulder and chortled as she fell hard on the side of her face. ‘I’m really hurt.’ He cranked up the power on the stun-kill. ‘I think that calls for pain, don’t you? I think that calls for a lot of pain.’
Crouching against the wall, Leela had studied the man and the weapon he was using on the helpless woman. Now she had seen enough. She broke cover and stepped up behind him. ‘You are right,’ she said, ‘it does.’
As the man turned she smashed his nose with the butt-end of the handle of her knife. He was fat and out of condition and as she expected he reacted badly to pain.
‘Oh my dose,’ he sobbed and lurched backwards.
Leela chopped the blade of the knife down on to his wrist, cutting deep and paralysing the hand so that he dropped the weapon he had been using.
On the ground the young woman snatched at it and struggled to get to her feet.
Leela pivoted and kicked the beaten man between the legs and he went down and lay curled up round the pain groaning pitifully.
The young woman was standing upright, swaying. She shrugged off Leela’s attempt to steady her. Very deliberately she adjusted the weapon and pressed it against the man’s head.
‘He is beaten,’ Leela said. ‘Leave him to crawl away and hide his shame.’
The young woman fired the weapon and the man spasmed and jerked and the flesh charred and his head became a smoking ruin. ‘He didn’t know what shame was,’ she said.
Leela said, ‘He will not learn it now,’ and started to walk away. The front of the building where she had left the Doctor was locked and blocked, so she was looking for a path which would lead to the back of it.
‘Wait,’ the young woman called after her. ‘What did you think I was going to do, take him prisoner?’
‘You wanted to kill him,’ Leela said over her shoulder, ‘and you killed him.’
There was a close jumble of grey buildings, some taller than others, several of them domes exactly like the one the Doctor and the TARDIS were in. She would need to concentrate. It would be easy to get confused in this place. All the buildings were linked by narrow paths with broader tracks laid out to their front entrances. She paused to make sure of the direction.
The young woman hurried to catch up with her. ‘He would have killed me.’
She was shorter than Leela and slightly older and she had pale blue eyes and close-cropped blonde hair. The contrast between the two of them could hardly have been greater. She was wearing what Leela recognised to be combat fatigues but she did not move like a trained fighter and she certainly did not behave like a warrior. ‘I had stopped him,’ Leela told her flatly
‘For now.’
‘For now is what matters.’ Leela saw the path she wanted and moved towards it.
‘I’d do it again.’ The young woman grabbed Leela’s arm to stop her and turn her round to glare in her face. ‘ You know what he was,’ she said angrily. ‘He was the sweepings of the Sewerpits. He was just one more psycho the Company hired because it can’t get the robots to do its really dirty work. What is wrong with you? I did the world a favour.’
‘No,’ Leela said. ‘That is not what you did. A favour is personal. What I did was a favour. I did you a favour.’
The young woman snorted. ‘As opposed to what? Letting that scumsucker torture me with a stun-kill? Whose side are you on anyway?’
‘I do not know,’ Leela said. ‘ That is why I came out here.’
She could still hear some fighting round and about but they were running fights. It was a tribal skirmish, not an organised battle with a plan and a purpose. ‘How many sides are there?’
‘Where did you come from?’ A muffled explosion made the young woman