Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [73]
Although not as swiftly as the Doctor, the Brigadier had been able to do nothing but react to it. To him the sound denoted action and danger, but most especially duty. Duty to his men, to his country, to his world.
The fog receded a little. Now that the Doctor was gone, duty was the Brigadier’s torch, lighting his way. Hoping that the light would stay with him for as long as he needed it, he set off at a shambling lurch, ignoring limbs that felt stiff and awkward. His heart was heavy as a rock in his chest, and within seconds he was drenched in sweat, gasping for breath.
However, he forced himself on through sheer, bloody-minded willpower.
And then the shooting stopped.
The sudden silence threw the Brigadier into a momentary state of exhausted confusion that almost caused him to blunder off the path, straight into the fog. He thumped to a halt, heart labouring, head pounding.
Then, faintly and hesitantly at first, he heard a voice in his mind, and he realised that his sense of duty; his driving force, had not deserted him, after all.
There might be men dead or injured, the voice told him; men who needed his help, his guidance. He couldn’t abandon his duty; he had to lead by example, had to be seen to be counted.
‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘yes.’ He set off again, duty lighting his way once more. When he was almost at his goal he slowed down, allowed his soldier’s instincts to take over. His semi-automatic clutched in his hand, he crept along, his back to the wall, towards the place where the track took an abrupt left turn. He wanted a vantage point where he could recce the situation, but before he could do that two further shots rang out, followed by a vast inhuman bellow of rage and pain.
It provoked a deep, almost primeval response in him. For a moment the fog swirled and eddied around him again, threatening to extinguish the light...
Then the enraged roar faded and another sound replaced it
- a further cry of pain, from a smaller pair of lungs, but no less agonized.
‘Doctor!’ the Brigadier yelled. He ran around the corner, gun raised.
The scene before him had frozen into a kind of tableau, lit by a spotlight of torch-beams. Taking centre-stage was a creature from a nightmare, a hideous, giganticised conglomeration of bull, spider, crab and scorpion. Standing rigid before this creature, skewered by its great, ridged arc of a tail, was the Doctor, blood shockingly red on his cream coat, face twisted in agony. Between the Brigadier and the Doctor stood Mike Yates, frozen with horror, mouth agape, gun forgotten in his hand.
Without hesitation, the Brigadier marched forward, barged Yates out of the way and fired six shots point-blank into the creature’s face.
Its head disintegrated, spattering the Brigadier with warm, brown fluid. The Xaranti’s legs gave way beneath it and its body slumped like a deflating hot-air balloon. Its tail drooped aside as it collapsed, dragging the Doctor over with it. The creature’s body twitched and jittered for a few seconds with involuntary muscle spasms and then became still. For a moment all was silent.
Then the Brigadier began to sob.
He couldn’t help it. He had killed before, many times, but this time, even as he had pulled the trigger to fire his final shot, an overwhelming wave of horror, revulsion, shame and, yes, even grief, had swept through him, sapping his strength, forcing him to his knees. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, but now he couldn’t stop. A few feet away from him the Doctor was lying unconscious, the Xaranti sting still buried in his flesh.
Then someone moved into the Brigadier’s line of sight and crouched over the Doctor. Mike Yates. Yates glanced at him, and in a split second, even through his tears, the Brigadier was able to read so much in his captain’s face. He saw Yates’s shock and confusion at his superior officer’s display of emotion. And he saw Yates’s own mental anguish at having failed to take action, even though one of his friends and colleagues was in deadly peril. Then Yates looked away and turned his attention to the Doctor once