Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [98]
‘They’re frightened of damaging the ships!’ she yelled to no one in particular.
Pertanor came slogging across the open ground and plunged into cover beside her. ‘What did you think you were doing?’ he demanded, gulping for breath. ‘If you ever take a risk like that again I’ll kill you myself.’
She smirked at him. ‘Can’t have you taking me for granted,’ she said.
The Doctor examined the rock round the narrow opening.
‘What are you looking for?’ Leela asked.
He pulled at some loose material. ‘A way to delay the copies long enough to get those ships off the ground without them.’ It didn’t look like a promising stratagem.
‘That will not work,’ Leela said flatly.
‘No, it won’t,’ he agreed, giving up on the idea.
‘I will stop them,’ she said, moving to stand in front of the opening.
‘There are fifty or more, the Doctor said. ‘But they can only come through that gap one at a time or they’ll get in each other’s way.’
Leela said, ‘I will get tired eventually.’ She was holding her knife and waiting to fight, standing uncannily like the copies had stood, waiting to fight.
‘The guns are key,’ Fermindor said to Kley, squinting into the brightness out beyond the shelter of Drop One’s main drive housing. ‘If they get to them first, we’re dead.’ The bodies of the pilot and medic from Drop Two lay in the open between the two ships. The guns they had been using had fallen near them, spilled from their hands as they were cut down by Belay’s deranged firing.
‘I don’t understand why they’ve left them lying there,’ she said, ‘when it’s get ’em and game over.’
‘They may look like us, but that doesn’t mean they’re bright.
‘You mean we are?’
The copies of Rinandor, Monly and Pertanor were standing in the mess of bodies and bits of bodies left by the fire fight that Belay had triggered. Rinandor was the one with the gun and she was watching intently for movement in and around the ship. The other two were simply standing and waiting.
‘It could be a trap,’ Fermindor conceded. ‘Or it could be that Belay confused them. Maybe they’re not sure whether we’re armed.’
‘They can’t be that stupid. I think they’re following orders.
‘Which would be?’
‘Get the ships down. Protect them at all costs.’
He smiled at her in admiration. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right.
They couldn’t have been expecting us so killing us isn’t a priority. And if we’re not armed we don’t feature. They don’t give a damn about us as long as we can’t threaten the ships.’
She peered round. ‘Where are Ri and Pe now?’
Behind them Rinandor and Pertanor were carefully crawling out into the dazzling light heading for Drop Two.
They were keeping Drop One between them and the watching Rinandor, but they would be fully visible sooner or later. It looked like sooner to Kley.
They were obviously not expecting resistance, because the first two of them came through the narrow gap together, one slightly behind the other. Leela stepped across the opening so that the lead one turned to thrust at her and impeded the attack of the second. Leela killed them both as they were struggling to get at her. The second pair were stumbling over the bodies before they realised the full danger and Leela dispatched them with equal skill. After that there was a lull.
‘They will come one at a time now,’ Leela said with grim satisfaction. ‘They do not learn quickly, but they learn.’ She glanced at the Doctor. ‘Is that how I am?’
‘No,’ the Doctor said. ‘You’re a quick study.’ The narrow gap was already partially blocked with dead versions of Leela. For a moment he wondered what these constructs would have felt before they died. How fully formed and individual were they? He put the thought out of his mind. Now was not the time for philosophising. ‘I’ll see if I can do anything to speed things up,’ the Doctor said, hurrying to the cave entrance and out into the harsh light.
‘I’ll take the pilot,