Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [100]
The Doctor reached the cave with the first of the dust devils whirling into life and battering the sand and grit against his back. As he went in, the sound of knife blades clashing and soft grunts of effort was drowned by the sudden rush of wind and power outside. The distraction affected neither of the combatants. The knives parted. Leela stepped back slightly, allowing her opponent to overreach herself, and then dispatched her by pulling her on to an upward blow under the left fifth rib.
Behind the Doctor a voice said above the noise, ‘Stand perfectly still, please, Doctor, or I will place a large hole in your back.’
The Doctor did as he was told, and stood quite still. ‘I thought you must have made a copy of yourself, Sozerdor,’
he said loudly. ‘A camouflage decoy and an extra gun. Why only one?’
‘I only needed one,’ Sozerdor said.
‘It seems to me an egomaniacal psychopath like you would want lots of copies of himself.’
‘I prefer to be unique. That’s the way of us egomaniacal psychopaths.’
‘My mistake.’
Leela pushed the dead copy away from her and back into the narrow gap.
‘They don’t fight as well as I’d hoped they would,’ Sozerdor commented. ‘They need work. The next generation will be stronger and more aggressive.’
Leela turned and stared at him coldly. ‘Do you think we are going to let you make more of these?’
‘I think it’s out of your hands.’ He gestured with the gun.
‘Come now, we’re wasting time. Over here, please.’ Leela did not move. ‘I will kill the Doctor unless you do as I say.’
In the narrow gap a new Leela showed herself. Sozerdor fired and the shot smashed her back and brought down a fall of rocks and debris. ‘I will kill the Doctor,’ he repeated,
‘unless you do as I say.’
Outside the cave the noise was diminishing. ‘You’ve lost.
Sozerdor,’ the Doctor said calmly. ‘The ships are gone.’
‘Lost?’ Sozerdor sneered. ‘You don’t imagine that a few suicide troops, fairly primitive ones at that, were anything more than a trial run, do you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Sozerdor chortled. ‘You’ve been spending too much time with that simple-minded savage over there. You should get out more.’
The Doctor grinned at Leela. ‘I remember thinking something of the kind myself. I was wrong.’
‘Those things,’ Sozerdor said, ‘would just have been a destabilising diversion in the overall plan. We can do without them. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this place yet.’
The Doctor said, ‘I think the survivors of your investigation team are about to do that.’
‘The vengeance of search-and-retrieval?’ Sozerdor sounded positively gleeful. ‘They couldn’t put a dent in this installation no matter how much fire they bring down on it!
‘They could put a dent in us, though,’ the Doctor suggested.
‘Out-system ship-mounted gunnery is crude but it’s powerful,’ Sozerdor agreed. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Go where?’ Leela asked, still not moving.
‘Wherever I tell you to,’ Sozerdor snapped. Angrily he gestured with the gun for her to leave the cave.
‘He hasn’t given up on the TARDIS, Leela,’ the Doctor said.
‘You’re such a clever alien, aren’t you?’ Sozerdor sneered.
‘We can bargain with him later,’ the Doctor said, looking hard at Leela, ‘but right now it’s essential that we’re back in that control centre if the ships attack.’
Leela could see that the Doctor wanted her to do as this flabby-faced bully with the gun ordered but the thought of it made her angry. She was also reluctant to go back down into that underworld of magic and demons, even though she knew it was not magic and there were no demons because that was what the Doctor had told her and she knew he was right and she trusted the Doctor... So why was she hesitating? She walked to the cave entrance. The expression on the Doctor’s face said she was doing the right thing. Inside her head something was screaming.
The new access and crossover were quite close on the other side of the cave entrance. Sozerdor had no difficulty