Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [82]
„Nothing‟s wrong.‟ The Doctor tried to sound reassuring.
„It‟s taking a bit longer that‟s all.‟
„It can‟t take longer we haven‟t got any longer. They‟re back on. They‟ve switched them back on.‟
„I know,‟ the Doctor said.
Sita was not really listening. Are you lying to me?‟ she demanded.
„No,‟ he said.
She had closed her eyes. She was breathing faster. „Has it already happened?‟ Her voice was rising. There was a scream coiled in it, waiting. „It‟s already happened hasn‟t it? You are lying to me. I can‟t feel my foot. I can‟t feel my foot.‟ And then she opened her eyes and said more quietly, „I‟m sorry. That was thoroughly feeble of me. It‟s just that I was so close to getting away with it...‟
„You still are,‟ the Doctor said. The discarded band on the seat beside him had stopped contracting. There was a design limit. The band on her ankle had stopped contracting too. It had also stopped expanding under the influence of the sonic screwdriver. He switched off the screwdriver and waited for a moment to make sure the expanded section did not go into reverse once the power was withdrawn. But nothing changed.
It seemed that the bands stopped functioning altogether once they had performed fully and finally. I‟ll need the cutter,‟ he said.
There was thirty seconds of air left in the breather by the time Keefer worked his way to the top of the lecea hopper and scrambled out onto the darkened provisions deck of the Ultraviolet Explorer. Lights came on almost immediately. He ducked for the cover of a gap between two of the storage bins, pulling the pistol as he moved. It took him several seconds to realise that motion detectors had responded to him and triggered the working lights automatically. He waited several more seconds and when he was sure no one was coming he stepped out of concealment and walked quickly towards the continuous elevators. These open-fronted tubes in which rising and descending platforms constantly moved had no access doors or indicators. This was the reason the hakai-warrior, on his way down to investigate the security warning, saw Keefer fractionally before Keefer saw him. Either that or the Fat Boys were faster in every respect than Finbar had suggested.
The huge figure, naked except for a sword belt and a scarlet battle thong, launched himself at Keefer drawing a razor-sharp short sabre as he came. With pseudo-grav about forty per cent of standard, the man‟s body-fat mattered a lot less than the reflexes and balance that were the basics of his hakai fighting discipline. This was a killing advantage and the Fat Boy knew it. Easy confidence took the edge off his immediate technique. His initial blade work was casual. It was all Keefer needed. With furiously icy precision he leaned just outside the first slashing arc of the sword and shot the hakai-warrior squarely between the eyes. The huge corpse flopped and slid across the deck. By the time it came to rest against a storage hopper Keefer was already on an elevator platform rising towards the accommodation level.
The Ultraviolet Explorer had been constructed from the inside out. Apart from the standard requirements for radiation shields, micro-meteorite protection systems and the heavy-duty pseudo-grav spin generators the design engineers had not been concerned about outer shell shape or build-strength. The space-yacht was an inter-orbital cruiser with no capacity for the structural strains or the power drains of planet-fall. It was a sprawling construct whose basic purpose, as it drifted on its way, was to satisfy one woman‟s desire for comfort, pleasure and absolute privacy.
Somewhere at its heart the cabin and staterooms of the Lady Hakai lay behind security barriers so subtle that most of the crew had no idea where they began, let alone how to penetrate them. When the whim took their mistress, favoured individuals, including the most talented of the Fat Boys, were summoned to the inner