Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [40]
‘I needed information,’ the bot said in a surprised voice. ‘Surely you understand that? But you escaped, and I thought I’d lost you. The Undertown is a large place to search, but I managed to find you. And then, to kill the wrong Hith . . . ’ The bot spread its hands wide in a curiously human gesture of contrition. ‘Still, at least I had the good sense to know that you would attend the funeral.’
Waiting For Justice . . . Powerless Friendless felt his eyes prickle with tears.
Waiting For Justice had never said why he was on Earth, but now he was dead.
In Powerless Friendless’s place. Mistaken identity. A senseless death.
As if the bot had been listening to his thoughts, it continued with disarming bonhomie: ‘I was too eager. I admit that. Time makes us all careless, my friend, and I’ve had more time than most. It didn’t occur to me that any other of your race would be on Earth. We can’t be your favourite people, after all.’
If he closed his eyes, Powerless Friendless could almost believe that he was listening to a man, not a machine. The voice was that good.
The bot chuckled unnervingly.
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‘Still, he was only an alien without a home world, wasn’t he?’ it continued.
‘No great loss to mankind. I put him out of his misery. Such a lot of misery, but I promise I’ll make it quick for you. It’s the least I can do, after all you did for me.’
‘Murderer!’ Powerless Friendless shouted into the rain, feeling the droplets sting against his tongue.
The bot’s head turned suddenly until it was staring straight at him. Its eyes glittered with a feral green light. ‘Ah, there you are,’ it said, amused.
It walked slowly towards him.
‘Don’t worry, my boy,’ it said. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’
The room was large, plain, unfurnished and locked. It had taken the Doctor all of five seconds to exhaust all its myriad possibilities. He now stood by the window – unbreakable transparisteel – looking out at Purgatory.
An Imperial Landsknecht warbot stood in the corner, looking at him.
‘Stop glowering at me,’ he snapped.
The warbot didn’t react. It was twice as tall as he was, and three times as broad. The armoured metal of its shell was painted in yellow and red splotches – camouflage colours for some alien campaign, he assumed – and it stood on two massive legs. Two of its six arms ended in weapons, two in multi-purpose tools. The other two seemed to be designed for holding people in nasty grips, if his journey from the archives was anything to go by.
‘I don’t suppose your mother was a Swiss army knife?’ he said.
No reaction.
He hated robots. At least Daleks and Cybermen had emotions you could play on, although both races would have denied it emphatically, had they been asked. Robots, though . . . You could go through all your best routines with them and you wouldn’t even raise a giggle.
He turned his attention to the view through the window. Directly outside was a huge parade ground, miles across. As far as the eye could see, groups of Landsknechte were being marched up and down. He could see their mouths moving, but the window was hermetically sealed. He didn’t need to hear, though. They would be shouting the same sort of things that young men had shouted on parade grounds since the first button was sewn on the first uniform. ‘Kill a Dalek for the Empire!’ ‘Peace through superior firepower!’
If he craned his neck, he could just make out the corner of the archive building. Soldiers ran along paths around it, moving from one meaningless ritual to another. He was grimly amused to see that they didn’t cut corners.
No, that would be too simple. When they came to a corner they ran past it, halted, swivelled through ninety degrees and started running again. The military mentality. If it moves, salute it, if it doesn’t move, pick it up and if 70
you can’t pick it up, paint it. At least Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, bless his little tartan