Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [136]
Pulling them out like an elephant’s ears to check their depths, he shrugged.
Next he checked his jacket pockets, one by one, but they were empty too.
230
‘Doctor, your juvenile sense of humour is proving to be a little wearing.’
‘You’ve waited this long,’ the Doctor snapped, slipping his shoe off and up-ending it. ‘Impatience doesn’t suit you.’ The key dropped into his palm, and he grinned. ‘Obvious place!’ he cried, and slipped it into the lock. The TARDIS
door swung open, revealing a dark interior.
‘Follow me,’ the Doctor said, limping towards the darkness.
Vaughn hesitated for a moment, then reached out with a chunky metal hand and took the Doctor by the scruff of the neck. The Doctor winced as the fingers tore open one of his rapidly healing wounds.
‘I’ll keep you by my side, I think,’ he said. ‘I am not unaware of the trick you pulled on Planet 14.’ Dragging the Doctor along beside him, he stepped through the vulnerably open door and into the sterile white light of the console room. His gaze passed across the roundelled walls, the central console, the scanner screen and the enormous object embedded in the ceiling. ‘Doctor,’
he said, gazing around in avuncular fashion, ‘you have no idea how impressed I am by the achievements of your race. Even the Cybermen could not construct a vessel such as this.’ He tightened his grip on the Doctor’s neck.
‘Thanks a bunch,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘As I recall, they once stole one from us.’ He squirmed slightly, trying to ease his way out of Vaughn’s grip. He had hoped to shut the huge time doors, cutting Vaughn off from the outside world, but he hadn’t anticipated Vaughn wanting to keep him quite so close.
‘Doctor?’
Vaughn’s voice was sharp, as if he could read the Doctor’s thoughts. ‘Don’t think you can betray me. I can kill you faster than you can move!’
Judging by the way that Vaughn’s metal fingers cut into the tender flesh of his neck, the Doctor believed him.
The high-pitched scream of the Skel’Ske’s engines powering up followed Bernice and the others as they pounded and slithered their way along the twist-ing, turning corridors of the Hith ship. The Hith troops were sliding along the walls and ceiling in Powerless Friendless’s wake, blasting any bot that dared show its face. Provost-Major Beltempest had retrieved two laser cannons from fallen Hith and was cheerfully laying down covering fire with one cannon in each pair of arms. They’d left quite a trail of wrecked metal behind them, but they’d lost a lot of troops in the process.
Chris Cwej suddenly appeared beside Bernice. His arm slid around her back and beneath her arm, taking some of her weight. She rested gratefully against the mass of his body. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he said, grinning.
Forrester, who was running beside Cwej, growled, ‘Nothing personal, we just don’t want you holding us up.’
231
Bernice turned to make sure that Powerless Friendless was keeping up with them, and felt a sudden pain stab through her. Powerless Friendless wasn’t with them. Powerless Friendless had stayed behind.
He had tried to explain, in what little time they had before the Hith commander would have got suspicious.
‘There’s no remote timer,’ he had said. ‘And besides, Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone and I caused the problem. He’s dead, and so it’s up to me to sort it out once and for all.’
‘But . . . ’ Bernice had stammered, desperately trying to think of ways out of the situation.
‘No buts,’ Powerless Friendless had said gently. ‘I don’t want to survive. I can’t live with the memories of what was done to me by INITEC, and I can’t live without them either. I hid in the Undertown for too long. I have to . . . to atone for my cowardice.’
And he had pushed her gently towards the doorway with a pseudo-limb.
Impulsively, she had returned and embraced him. ‘Goodbye,’ she had said, kissing him softly between his eyestalks.
And she had left, taking Cwej and Forrester with her.
Bernice’s mind suddenly jerked back