Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [57]
She thought of her parents, relatives, the people she used to know at school. Wondered if her vanishing would ever make headlines. How quickly would she be forgotten? No funeral, no last respects, and no imagination in the world would guess how Samantha Jones had ended up as dogmeat on a big pink planet light years from anywhere.
But in spite of her mind trying to distract her with these pointless questions, despite the freezing fists of fear pummelling the inside of her stomach and her head, Sangton's rifle was still being presented to her, the guns were on her, it was all going to be over, all over, all over...
Sam took the gun offered to her and nothing happened. The day was as still and hot as ever, and her spectators were as still as statues. She realised she was crying.
Then Sangton smiled at her again. 'You kill two men and all these poor, browbeaten penitents get to keep their heads. It's up to you. I shall of course kill those two misfits myself if you do not, but those poor men. Can you imagine how each of them feels, waiting in line for the protracted end?
Oh, it will be a long, bloodthirsty business, and you'll be made to watch, my dear.'
Sam felt her arms move as if of their own accord. The rifle she'd been given had turned in her hands, and she realised she was pointing it at Sangton. The silence went on. She waited for the gunfire to hit her, to tear her apart, but it didn't, and she found herself shouting as hot tears poured down her face.
'You can tell your men to shoot if you like. But I'll bloody well take you with me.' She sneered, and took a step towards him.'Come on then!' she bawled at the guards.'What are you waiting for?' She turned her head briefly to check on Fettal. 'Move round here where I can see you.' The adrenalin was surging through her now - it was almost as if someone else was acting for her. 'Come on, do it!' she yelled, shaking the rifle in Sangton's direction.
Then she realised he was smiling at her again, a smile shared by Fettal, the woman's grey freckles beginning to turn black like little melanomas in the sunshine.
Sangton chuckled. "The reason you haven't been shot like the dirty little animal you are is because I know, and my men know, that that weapon -'
he pushed a bony finger into the end of the barrel of Sam's rifle - 'is not loaded.'
Sam felt her heroic self-sacrificial high evaporating. The sickness returned, cold and tight in her stomach. She sniffed noisily, and her voice was small and fragile when she spoke. 'What?'
'It's not loaded.'
She turned round to look at the sobbing Yast and at Tanhith, stony-faced, still staring at the ground. Sangton's words sounded behind her but her senses were almost too numbed to fully understand their meaning.
'You must use the weapon to bludgeon them to death.'
Chapter 8
The Sky Could Fall In
The newly revived Kusks shambled and ambled down the corridors of the base. The clean metal of the walls, floor and ceiling of the areas appropriated by Temporal Commercial Concerns -were already beginning to show signs of the brown deposits that caked all Kusk vessels.
Each of these recently thawed Kusks wore the yellow sash of combat duty, and each six-fingered hand held a tiny, delicate weapon. They kept up their loping march all the way into the control chamber.
The Leader stared at his troops with large, proud eyes. The information assimilated from the humanoid ruling here showed the habitable areas of Hirath to be occupied by puny creatures. Old people, the sick, the insane.
Easy targets.
His troops would not distinguish between the humanoids. Humanoids were all the same.
The first Kusk in line saluted with both arms and stepped eagerly into the pale luminescence of the modified matter transmitter.
***
Having recovered from the shock of the violence in the rocky plain, Anstaar was brimming with questions. The Doctor walked a little way ahead of her, but the deepening