Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [59]
He doubled back towards the landing field. In the distance he heard the security alarms begin to howl.
Unlike most of the people who rode the storm mines, Toos had always kept in shape. Partly it was because she liked her shape, so she worked out in the downtime calms between the storms.
But as much as vanity it was her refusal to have the robots tend to her every need, or her any need come to that, which drove her attitude and her physical sharpness.
She was fast, she thought she was probably as fast as the thing that was chasing her - maybe faster - but she could never outrun it. It would keep on coming and she would have to slow down. If she tried to keep running it would get to her and it would kill her.
She was pleased with how calmly she could reason it out.
She was very frightened but she wasn’t terrified. She still had her wits. Witless terror had been in the waiting. She might have a chance, she thought, if she could get far enough ahead to throw it off and hide. Luckily her party shoes were styled slippers in the current robot-influenced high fashion and they could have been made for sprinting. Ahead of her in the deserted street there was a blind bend. That could be what she needed. She increased her speed.
Skittering round the sharp corner, she found herself in darkness. The street lighting did not go any further. The sky was gradually getting paler but it was not bright enough to illuminate anything much. This was no good. The robot could probably see better than she could in low light. She ran on.
She was breathing hard now, too hard to be able to hear whether it was close behind her. The new-found calmness and reason began to desert her. She couldn’t hide because she couldn’t see. It was catching up. It was reaching out. She stumbled and almost fell. There was a noise ahead of her. A figure loomed out of the darkness. With a giddy shock she realised it had taken a short cut. It was coming at her from the front. There was no escape. She was lost. She was dead. A hopeless rage brought her to a shambling standstill.
The figure grabbed her arm and pulled her forward. ‘Don’t stop now, Captain!’ Mor Tani urged. ‘Come on, come on!’
Toos stumbled on. ‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.
‘Saving your arse,’ Tani said. ‘I’ve always liked your arse.’
Ahead of them the robot-pull buggy stood waiting. Toos could just make out the Voc standing between the shafts. She almost panicked. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
‘I do,’ Tani said, pushing her. ‘Get in! Get in or you’ll kill us both!’
Toos scrambled in and flopped down. She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the Voc. ‘Forward!’ she heard Tani yell and she felt the buggy jerked into motion as the Voc said, ‘Very well.’
‘Faster!’ Tani ordered and Toos heard the Voc’s acknowledgement, ‘Very well,’ as its footfalls speeded up.
Without opening her eyes Toos said, ‘This is not going to outrun it, you know.’
Tani said, ‘It doesn’t have to. Not where we’re going. All it has to do is stay ahead long enough to get us there.’
Toos opened her eyes. ‘What do you mean? Where are you taking me?’ Staring beyond the Voc and trying to ignore the rhythmically unvarying movement of its running, she saw the lights and fires and haphazard buildings of what could only be the Sewerpits. She wasn’t just going to die. She was going to die and be eaten. And not necessarily in that order. ‘We can’t go there,’ she said.
‘They can’t go there,’ Tani said. ‘That’s the point.’
‘Maybe they’ve got more sense,’ Toos said and then added, ‘I don’t believe I said that.’
Tani’s wide, mirthless smile was just visible in the gloom.
‘You’ll have to trust me. This is our best option.’
‘The Sewerpits are our best option?’ Toos would have laughed if there had been anything left in her but exhausted fear.
‘Relax,’ Tani said. ‘The more you know about something the less frightening it is.’
Toos snorted. ‘And you know a lot about the ’pits, do you?’
‘Everybody has to come from somewhere,’ Tani said.
The Doctor