Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [34]
The door chimed softly. He didn’t jump, because what was left of his conscience was inured to deceit by now, but his mind quickly ran over prepared explanations, excuses and lies. Just in case.
‘Come,’ he said. The door slid open. Two silhouetted figures were stood just outside it. ‘Yes? What is it, man?’
The figures raised their hands, revealing stunners. They wanted him alive, then. ‘Provost-Major Beltempest?’ one of them asked calmly.
So. The time had come. So soon. They must have intercepted the fastline call.
Beltempest stepped sideways and reached for the blaster at his side. His hand moved so slowly that it was as if he were standing up to his neck in one of the swampy Landsknechte training grounds, or moving through an alien atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife. One of the Landsknechte at the door fired, but Beltempest hadn’t just spent his money on fripperies. The stun beam reflected from the wire sheathing he’d had implanted beneath his skin, catching both of them. They slumped to the floor, dropping their weapons.
They could have tried anything up to plasma rifles, and he would still have been standing. Money could buy anything.
He fried both men with two careful bursts from his blaster. Beltempest was nothing if not careful. With luck, a gun and sufficient bribes, he could get to his private ship and off-planet within an hour. He took two steps towards the door . . .
And stopped. Cursing, he tried to force his legs to move, but they wouldn’t 59
obey him. What was this, some kind of new weapon? He slapped his thighs desperately. He could feel the impacts, but nothing was happening. It was as if someone else had taken control. Fear flooded his mind. If he couldn’t get out – if he was found there, with the two bodies – then he would be finished.
Entirely without volition, the hand holding the blaster began to rise towards his face.
He didn’t scream. There was a way out. There had to be a way out. Money could buy anything.
He could feel his finger tighten on the trigger as his lips kissed the hot metal of the barrel.
He tried to scream then, but it was too late. There was no time, there was no money, and there was nothing left of his head.
‘Are you going to tell me how we bluff our way off the end of this ramp or not?’
Bernice hissed as she and the Doctor made their way, ahead of the tourists and the Landsknechte, down the ramp of the Arachnae onto Purgatory. Her breath billowed out before her in the cold, thin atmosphere.
The spaceport was a huge plasticrete plain: one of the many and various hexagon-bounded areas that made up the planet’s surface. As the ship descended towards it, Bernice had tried counting the number of lighters, corvettes, frigates, cruisers, Dalekbusters and battleships that sat divided into squadrons, flights and wings, on the hard pink surface. Some were gleaming and pristine in the hard, cold light of Purgatory’s sun, sitting alertly upon insectile legs, but the majority were scarred and singed, old and tired.
‘Well, I haven’t quite sorted out the details yet,’ the Doctor said, not meeting Benny’s gaze.
Blaster batteries in fortified pits had tracked the Arachnae as it descended, and were still trained upon it. The burnt expanse of plasticrete stretched to the horizon, and beyond. A squad of Imperial Landsknechte, immaculate in black and orange dress uniforms, waited at the bottom of the ramp, holding their plasma rifles at the ready.
‘What do you mean, “haven’t quite sorted out the details yet”?’
‘They look very fierce, don’t they?’ he said, indicating the Landsknechte guard.
Bernice felt a rising hysteria. ‘I’d hoped that you might have come up with some sort of plan during the journey,’ she snapped.
‘Of course, you know what they say.’
‘I mean, it’s not like we can just wander in and ask to look at their records, is it?’
‘If it’s a yellow alert, they issue them with plasma rifles . . . ’
60
‘Some sort of cover story is probably required, and I’d like to know what it is!’
‘. . . And if