Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [108]
Finally, with a protesting grinding of metal, the bony, scabrous hand had burst through the floor of the vehicle and was flailing about. Anstaar kicked at it, but it grabbed her good foot and dragged it through the jagged gash in the underside of the machine. She screamed as she tried to pull against it, but with her broken leg she could gain little leverage.
***
The Doctor's head swung round as Anstaar screamed, and he paused, torn between wanting to help her and having to save the million people he'd never know in this part of the galaxy from destruction.
He rose to his feet.'Always,' he muttered.
***
The blue-skirted Kusk approached the control chamber, choking in the gloom as it inhaled the fumes. The last remaining trooper drew up behind it.
'Only one other Kusk life-sign registering,' stated the trooper.
The other Kusk slowly considered the implications of this. Technician?' its voice rattled into the darkness.Silence.'The way is clear. Our ship is powered up for -'
'Stop the Doctor!' came the choking groan of the Leader from somewhere ahead.
***
The Doctor reacted to his name, then turned back and saw the glowing corner of the matter transmitter, the opaque vortex of light just beginning to form. 'Of course,' he muttered. 'Power drain. No matter how weak, the synapses are still diverted. My command's not getting through.'
Anstaar screamed again, the noise mingling with the retching growl of the Kusk Leader.
It was impossible to say what figure was forming in the swirl of light above the matter-transmission platform.
The Doctor couldn't bring himself to look anyway.
He looked at the image of Hirath, heard a soundtrack of screaming and roaring.
Two Kusks burst choking into the chamber and moved towards him, arms outstretched.
The Doctor re-entered the final codes. The scanner monitor went dead.
Dead. How could he get the power through?
As the blue-skirted Kusk grasped and twisted his shoulder in a vice-like grip, the Doctor reached down deep into the innards of the control desk and grabbed hold of a live conduit.
***
The Kusk stared up at the twilight sky from beside the rocky grave of its fallen comrade. The sky turned white, blank. An explosion -
***
The moon filled the ancient probe's decaying sensory horizon for a fraction of a nanosecond before it tore itself apart.
***
The Doctor's scream rose louder than any other. The computer terminal exploded outward, peppering the Doctor's face with shards of glass and plastic, the force of the blast scattering the two Kusks and knocking him against the far wall with a sickening impact. A surge of electricity crackled outward from the shattered terminal along the metal floor and through the corridors beyond.
***
The Leader stopped screaming as the current paralysed its wrecked body and the consciousness died in its huge eyes.
***
The two Kusks twitched and spasmed as they were shaken and hurled to the ground by the last effects of the lethal feedback.
The Doctor's body shook and convulsed, his eyes clamped tightly shut.
***
She wasn't dead.
Anstaar didn't know what exactly she was, but she wasn't dead. Her foot had come free. The interior of the Doctor's vehicle must have sheltered her from the blast and the power surge. The engine still chugged noisily. It was the only sound she could hear.
She moved painfully to the window set in the door, bumping her head against the metal frame. The glass had been shattered in the blast from what she guessed was power fed back to the machinery along the link between probe and computer. He'd done it. They were still here. She was still here.
Anstaar noticed a light swirling like scum on the surface of dark water, in the corner above the matter transmitter. Soon after, almost as if in sympathy with the dead control room, the milky opacity dwindled and died.
Anstaar bumped against a switch with her arm and two beams of light cut through the pitch blackness, dimly illuminating the room. She saw a slight