Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [20]
‘I’d say so,’ Fermindor said. ‘Unless you like coincidence as an explanation.’
Kley ripped open her backpack, took out her voice-link coordinator and waited in silence for the aerials to deploy.
‘Is that a good idea?’ Monly asked.
Kley ignored him and set the search for Rinandor’s unit.
‘We have an agreed strategy for this mission,’ he went on.
‘Comm silence was an essential part of it.’
‘I just un-agreed the strategy,’ she said. ‘It’s my mission, my responsibility, and it’s my decision.’
‘I’ll try to remember that,’ he murmured.
‘See that you do,’ she hissed, knowing he would and knowing he didn’t mean what she meant. This would not look good on the mission report. This would look like a failure in the planning phase.
Rinandor’s unit registered the acceptance alarm but she was not reacting to it. Wherever she was, her voice unit wasn’t with her. What was she doing? Kley keyed Pertanor’s unit. He did not respond either.
‘Not a good idea, then,’ Monly said. ‘No advantage. Except to the runner. He should have spotted the signal without much problem. You might as well have stuck up a sign.’
‘We’d better eat and rest up before we start back,’
Fermindor said quietly.
Kley closed down the coordinator. ‘Very well,’ she said.
‘We’ll make camp in the trees there. Start back at first light.’
Already close to panic, Sozerdor seemed finally to realise what was happening. ‘He’s doubled back on us, hasn’t he?’ It was an accusation. ‘It’s such an obvious trap. You’ve led us into a stupid trap. I said we should have waited. I knew something was wrong. I knew it.’
Fermindor rounded on him angrily. ‘You didn’t know it, So.
None of us knew it. Now shut your mouth.’ He was slightly shorter than the older man and had not yet put on the extra bulk of age but there was no doubting which of them had the authority. ‘We need wood for a fire,’ he said and began gathering it.
Sozerdor set about gathering wood too. ‘I did say we should have waited for them to come back,’ he grumbled. ‘I was right about not splitting our force.’
The fact that they were both Senior Investigators was just an accident of rank, Kley thought. Another triumph for the Promotions Board. She wondered how it was that some had it and some didn’t, and whether she was one of the ones that didn’t. ‘Belay,’ she said, ‘will you sort out the rations?’
‘You think that’s why we can’t contact the ship? The runner got to it?’ Belay asked, picking up backpacks and taking them towards where the firewood was being stacked.
‘Allocate minimum energy requirement,’ she said briskly, then thought better of it. ‘No, make that minimum plus a half.
Allocate Rinandor’s and Pertanor’s and divide it among the others.’ Toodies were less reliable than ever if their stomachs were empty. Better to have everyone sharp now. She would worry about conserving supplies when she had a better idea of what was really happening.
‘Are you expecting to live off the land?’ Monly asked from near the centre of the blast crater where he was scraping away at the burnt topsoil. ‘Only I haven’t seen much in the way of food sources, have you? Indigenous life forms are remarkably thin on the ground. Or in it for that matter.’
Monly was dead on cue and dead where he crouched. He didn’t even have time to draw his gun.
The giant lizard had stopped riding the thermals above the jungle and gone into a long, gliding dive. At the last moment just above the clearing it folded its leg-webbing and hit the ground running upright on two of its four legs. It took Monly’s head off with one powerful bite and with its front legs ripped him apart from neck to crotch.
Kley barely had time to register how badly she hated coincidence before a second lizard landed, and then a third.
It was only a brief squabble over Monly’s remains that delayed the trio long enough to let her snatch