Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [13]
‘You’d take too long, you greedy little pervert,’ Hudge said.
‘Look what happened last time.’ He held the murderous baton out in front of him and advanced on Leela. ‘Kill her and be done with it.’
Leela lowered her knife slightly and took a half-step backwards. She swayed slightly to the outside of the stun-kill’s angle of attack as if she was trying to dodge away.
‘Easy money,’ Hudge sneered and lunged forward at her.
Leela allowed the momentum of the thrust to carry Hudge off-balance and at the last moment she stepped inside his extended arm. Bracing the wrist and the stun-kill away from her she slammed the knife up through his rib cage. The man hardly had time to be surprised before he died.
‘Hold on to her, Hudge!’ The smaller man rushed at them, stabbing wildly with the stun-kill, desperate to burn Leela down before she could get herself free. As he slashed about indiscriminately it was difficult to tell whether he knew that Hudge was already dead. He would happily have killed him, it seemed, to get at Leela. Almost casually she twisted the dead man’s weapon arm outwards and the smaller man ducked into the primed stun-kill. Leela felt the jolt of the power arcing through him. He was smashed back in a shower of smoky sparks to lay twisting and twitching on the ground. Leela pulled the knife from the bigger man and allowed him to fall.
‘I thought you were against killing,’ Padil said behind her.
‘Not that I’m criticising.’ She smiled with open admiration. ‘That was impressive.’
‘It was their choice,’ Leela said.
‘They chose dying?’
‘They chose killing.’ She was uncomfortable with Padil’s praise for something she was not herself proud of. It had been a crude fight, unnecessary and without skill.
Padil nodded grimly. ‘Killing was just one of their small delights. Are we going now?’
Leela turned back to the dome. ‘I am going back in there now.’
‘Not without major explosives,’ Padil said. ‘Once the alarms go off you can’t get into any of the domes. It’s part of what we’ve been trying to find out. That and how good the security people are.’ She glanced round nervously. ‘And how many.’
Leela nodded at the two men she had killed. ‘They are the security people?’
‘The scum of the Sewerpits.’
‘What is their purpose?’ She crouched down to get a better look at the tribal signs on their tunics. From the picture of lightning bolts they looked to be calling themselves the tribe of the storm cloud. Maybe it was something to do with the stun-kill weapons they carried. Or it could just be that they were hopeless fighters. It had struck Leela before that the less effective a warrior caste was the gaudier and more boastful their signs became. The Doctor called it the inverse law of advertising. He said it meant that the less important something was, the more important bragging about it became.
‘They’re supposed to protect this place,’ Padil said, frowning.
Leela stood up again. ‘From you?’ she asked.
Padil said, ‘From anyone. Why don’t you know this stuff?
Everyone knows this stuff. It’s obvious.’
‘If it was obvious,’ Leela said mildly, ‘I would not need to ask you.’ Padil was getting suspicious. ‘Have you escaped from somewhere? Some institution? Are you being treated for something?’ And then suddenly she was very alarmed. ‘You’re not a robot, are you?’ She took a step back. ‘Are you a robot?’
Leela could see that she was genuinely terrified. ‘Those creepy metal men?’ she said. ‘You have those creepy metal men here?’
‘Are you a robot?’ Padil repeated.
‘Of course I am not a robot,’ Leela said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Do I look like a robot?’
‘Not a conventional one.’ Padil moved closer to peer searchingly into Leela’s eyes. ‘But there have been rumours of a new class...’ her voice trailed off.
Leela turned away to look at the dome. ‘Where can I get major explosives?’ she asked.
‘You are weird.’
‘Answer my question.’
‘You can’t,’ Padil said. ‘Come on, we have to leave. We have to