Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [101]
Still, they kept trying.
‘Try to relax, Terg,’ she mouthed as she manipulated the control board, manoeuvring skeletal metal arms with laser scalpel tips down from their nest in the ceiling. ‘We’re only going to remove a small sample this time.’
Provost-Major Beltempest stared at the flap of the tent. Through it he could see a wide expanse of blue grassland and a green sky, and the bulky shape of the Hith ship, draped now in camouflage netting. Freedom, just a few steps away.
‘Release us immediately,’ he growled at the two slugs who stood upright by the open flap of the tent. They were standing about as far apart as they could while still guarding the opening. ‘Abduction of a Landsknechte provost-major is an act of war. The Empress will take a dim view of your actions.’
The left-hand slug – a muscular female – jerked her weapon towards him.
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You’re unimportant.’
Beltempest felt a surge of anger and resentment. How dare these jumped up invertebrates talk to him that way, a man who had personally seen the Empress five times! His fingers tightened on the edge of the table as he tried to control himself. Mind racing, he considered and rejected plan after plan of escape. It was no good. The Hith had them cold, and had done for the five hours between their capture and their landing some ten minutes ago on the blue savannah of this unidentified and yet oddly familiar planet. He wished he’d been able to see it from space as they landed. There was something about its smell, and the colour of its sky, that he recognized.
Slumping back as best he could into the Sshaped chair, he turned to see how the other two were taking the humiliation. The Doctor was sniffing at the cool, scented air, while Professor Zebulon Pryce was sitting calmly with his eyes closed and his hands folded on the table. Damned civilians. Didn’t they realize what a disgrace it was for a Landsknecht to be captured in battle?
172
‘Kill them,’ Pryce whispered.
Beltempest tried not to jerk in his seat. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Kill them.’ Pryce’s eyes were still closed, but his fingernails were tapping lightly on the wooden table. ‘Ripping off the small vestigial shells on their tails will cause systemic nervous shock and kill them or send them into an irreversible coma. A blow to the base of their eyestalks will make them writhe in agony for hours before expiring. Kill them, Provost-Major. It’s your duty as a human.’
‘Why not just sprinkle salt on their tails?’ the Doctor asked sourly. ‘Alternatively, why not just leave them alone until we find out what they want with us?’
‘Why don’t the two of you just shut up while I work out a means of escape?’
Beltempest hissed. ‘We’re dead meat here. We destroyed their home world during the Wars of Acquisition, remember? The Hith have no reason to love the Empire.’
‘Yes, and whose fault is that?’ the Doctor asked with a petulant tone in his voice.
Beltempest rubbed his hands over his eyes. The waiting was getting to him. He was just about to leap to his feet and protest at their treatment again when the tent flap was pulled open and two more slugs slid into the room, leaving a trail of mucus on the blue sward. One of them was old: wrinkled and pink. It seemed to be in the androgynous transition between male and female stages, if the lectures on enemy physiology that he’d attended during the Wars of Acquisition were anything to go by. Some kind of metal symbol had been implanted into its head between its eyestalks. The Hith beside it was a smaller male with moist, unlined flesh. He carried a metal box in a pseudo-limb. As he put the box down, Beltempest noticed that air holes had been punched in the lid.
The elder Hith surveyed them for a moment.