Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [36]
The High Referee‟s hands were drifting towards the guns again. „The Law of Attack requires respect,‟ he said. „The Law of Attack does not require replay confirmation.‟
„In that case,‟ the Doctor said quickly, „or in fact in this case, I shall not be presenting replay confirmation of the actions of the High Referee and Senior Umpire since it is not, of course, available and he has further ruled that it is not required for our purposes. I shall merely be stating what happened for the record.‟
Leela turned on her heel and went back to her chair. She sat down and stifled a yawn. There was a long pause. It seemed likely to the Doctor that the High Referee was having trouble deciding whether to shoot them before or after having their hands and feet chopped off. As the silence stretched on he was sure he could feel the wrist and ankle bands tightening.
„Very well,‟ the High Referee and Senior Umpire said. „You may state what happened for the record.‟
„For the record,‟ the Doctor said, „there was a cunning plan.‟
Sita Benovides knew that someone had used the snatch squads to cross the security perimeter into Aerospace Main.
She didn‟t know who or why but she intended to find out.
Strictly speaking, no part of the screw-up was down to her, but she wouldn‟t come out of it well. It would do nothing for her rep and it might just damage her career. But more important than that she felt like a fool and above all things she hated to feel like a fool. Whoever pulled this stunt was in all kinds of trouble.
When the jet-copters landed back at base and the squads had been unloaded Keefer had shed the uniform in one of the shower rooms and quickly got cleaned up. After that he had slipped out and taken the express beltway to the Lunar Flight Concourse, the busiest of the terminals in Aerospace Main.
Within the spaceport there was no sign that there had been any sort of security panic out at the perimeter. He knew it was public policy not to alarm people but Keefer was surprised and relieved that the place was a milling throng of normal travellers, the usual number of whom were routinely lost, confused, irritated, late. In the bustling confusion he should have no difficulty moving between the automatic bank tellers to use the cash plates and thumb prints he had taken from the ambushers he had killed.
At the first machine he took the transaction limit from one plate and transferred it to a second then using the second plate, but a different teller and a different brand of bank cash, he bought a standard round-trip ticket to the Lunar Gaming Resort in the name of a third. At another teller in another trademark currency, he cancelled the Lunar ticket and used the refund and that plate limit to buy a Class C
round trip to the Barionian Pioneer Experience in the name of a fourth. And so on. By the time he was finished he had a very expensive open ticket carrying Class A personal security and full seat priority, in the name of Norbert Lung, the man whose plate and limited means he started with. He knew this financial juggling would barely delay pursuit, and that there was just a chance his adversary already knew what he had done, but he still felt a small sharp elation as if he were counterattacking.
He decided to keep Lung‟s ID pack, though as support for the alias it would not bear scrutiny. The rest of the plates he dropped into the medical incinerator in the private-subscription lavatories. Then he bought an off-planet travel kit from an equipment dispenser and made his way towards the OT embarkation booth.
He intended to take the first flight out to the Orbital Transfer Station and pick up an onward connection to anywhere: a Big Wheel colony, Barion, one of the outer planet hellholes, wherever the first ship was leaving for. But that was later, his immediate problem was to get past the booking hostess without having Lung‟s ID scrutinised. He waited for a flight to be called, hung back until the