Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [44]
His wife hurried over to the Doctor. He was on his side, rubbing his face. There was blood on his shirt.
‘You’re cut,’ she told him. ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t look serious. Can you move?’
The Doctor nodded, wincing a little as he sat upright. ‘The robot?’
‘In pieces.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Just as well – I’d just run out of ideas on how else I could beat it.
He stood, a little shakily at first, and Deborah helped him over to the hillside. The Doctor peered down into the gloom, watched the column of black smoke rising over the burning remains. ‘Shame. I would have liked to study it.’
‘Do you think it will be able to repair itself?’
The Doctor bit his lip and looked over the edge again. There were still small explosions starting up. Barry imagined that all the missiles and bombs the robot was armed with were going off.
‘Not in the short term,’ the Doctor assured her.
‘That Cortina was my pride and joy,’ Barry told them. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ But he wasn’t thinking about that yet: he was too busy watching the explosions.
‘There’s a queue,’ the Doctor told him. He grinned, but the effort made him wince, which saved Barry the bother of punching him.
* * *
In their chamber the Hunters squirmed as they saw Dawkins’s head lopped from his body, which just keeled over. The dark, hot blood and the cold, white snow did not go well together.
‘I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of that Deputy,’ Rum told his partner.
‘We are on the wrong side of him,’ Thélash reminded him. She pointed back into the hologlobe at a figure in a green uniform standing up. ‘I thought the Prefect was a goner.’
The Deputy was brushing off the snow and helping the Prefect on to the remaining hoverdisc. The two sped off.
‘Keep up with them, you flid!’ Rum shouted.
Thélash struggled with the controls. ‘Oh... I’ll switch to Mr Gibson for a moment, let’s see him tear that Doctor’s head off.’
The image switched to a pile of burning metal, hissing and popping in a pile of snow and churned earth.
‘When Mr Gibson gets going, he does some serious damage,’ Rum laughed. ‘It’s a real grudge match.’
‘Because the Doctor destroyed his planet?’
‘No,’ Rum laughed. ‘Mr Gibson blames the Doctor, but that’s not the same thing at all. The Doctor helped free the slaves on Mr Gibson’s planet, he ended Mr Gibson’s practice of throwing all his political opponents into the volcano he just happened to have under his palace.’
‘Why?’ Thélash asked. ‘What did the Doctor have to gain from doing that?’
Rum shrugged. ‘Mr Gibson started to panic and set the volcano off by dropping a nuke down it. But he didn’t check where Mrs Gibson was first.’
‘Mrs Gibson?’
‘She wasn’t called that, I admit. It doesn’t matter. His queen, his mate, the mother of his little metal children. She, they, all his allies were wiped out when the volcano erupted. The rebels won. It’s a story with a clear moral: don’t be such a psycho.’
Thélash nodded. ‘Or if you are, then don’t build your palace on an active volcano.’ She looked back at the hologlobe and all the scrap metal. ‘Is the Doctor under all that, do you think?’
Rum was pale. He’d just seen a pair of shattered headlights staring blindly into the camera. ‘Thélash ... that is Mr Gibson.’
Thélash looked at him. ‘This is not good,’ she concluded.
* * *
‘Sit down,’ Debbie ordered the Doctor.
The Doctor found a section of crash barrier that hadn’t been twisted out of shape or hurled off the hillside and did as he was told. Debbie leaned in alongside him. Barry was still staring down into the valley, transfixed by the rising column of black smoke.
‘It’s a cold night,’ the Doctor said, looking up at the stars. ‘A clear sky.’
‘Doctor...’ she began.
‘I can’t remember,’ he replied quickly. Then more slowly, ‘There’s obviously a lot I can’t remember.’
‘That robot said you destroyed its planet.’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t remember?’
‘No.’
Debbie sighed. ‘Does destroying planets sound like the sort of thing you do?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘How are we going to get back into town?