Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [133]
only one bot at a time?
Hmm . . .
A flare of white light beside him made the Doctor turn, and quickly turn away as the cold light from the plasma scalpel seared at his eyes. The butlerbot’s claw held it steady a few inches away from the side of the Doctor’s head.
‘I will ask you one last time,’ Vaughn said in the same tone of voice with which he had offered the Doctor a cigar earlier on, ‘and then I shall start causing permanent damage. A heart, I think. After all, you have two of them, or so my infrared eyesight tells me. Given your amazing physiological capabilities, you may even be able to regrow it, but I suspect that the process will hurt more than a little.’
Vaughn’s sleepy eyes continued to stare at the Doctor while the bot moved the plasma blade closer. On a hunch, he shifted sideways in the chair, wincing at the pain in his limbs. Vaughn’s eyes didn’t track him; they stared at the position he had been sitting in. Point proven.
The plasma blade was so close that he could see it as a bright pink glow if he closed his eyes.
‘You win, Vaughn,’ he said, trying to put as much defeated resignation into his voice as possible. ‘I’ll let you into the TARDIS.’
‘No, Doctor,’ Vaughn purred. ‘Your treachery is legendary. Tell me how to get in.’
‘Isomorphic controls,’ the Doctor sighed, hanging his head in an attempt to convey utter humiliation. ‘Only I can operate them.’
Vaughn was silent for a moment. Casting a glance at him from the corner of his eyes, the Doctor assumed that he was scanning his database of knowledge about the Doctor’s various adventures on Earth in the past thousand years, looking for confirmation of the statement. The Doctor did the same, hoping that he hadn’t actually contradicted them himself. The controls were isomor-phic, but only when he bothered setting them up that way.
‘Very well,’ Vaughn said. ‘But remember, the pain you have endured so far has been a mere headache compared to what I can put you through. I’ve learned a great deal in the past thousand years.’
The clamps on the Doctor’s shoulders released. He staggered upright using the arms of the chair as support, unsure if his legs would take his weight. The butlerbot waved the plasma blade towards him, and he retreated towards the comforting blue shape of the TARDIS. The surface was cool, and he rested his cheek against it for a moment.
‘I’m waiting,’ Vaughn prompted.
226
Chapter 17
‘I’m Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today , on the spot, on and off the Earth. Spaceports around the planet are being besieged by people desperate to leave the planet, despite the fact that no ships have landed since last night. The skies above the Earth are reported to be full of ships whose captains are unwilling to attempt a landing in case somebody shoots them down . . . ’
The bot had ripped the muscular door into shreds of bloody flesh and was reaching towards Bernice’s face with its gun arms when its head exploded.
To Bernice, crouching in the control cell, it seemed that a great number of things suddenly happened at once, and most of them were noisy. The cacophony lasted for what seemed like hours, but could only have been a few minutes. Thinking about it later, over a drink in a seedy bar on a backwater planet, she found that her memory was good enough for her to be able to classify the noise into various categories: blaster fire of three different types, explosions, screams, war cries, shouts of ‘Damn you, Cwej, get out of the way!’
and ‘Look, if you were shooting straight, I wouldn’t be in the way!’ – but at the time it was just noise.
At one point she looked down, to find that Krohg was cowering in her arms, its eyestalks retracted so far into its slimy body that they made three dimples in its head. She looked around for Powerless Friendless, worried that if Krohg was seeking