Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [47]
Beltempest smiled. ‘We’ll stretch a point,’ he said.
The Doctor cocked his head to one side and gazed shrewdly at Beltempest.
‘Whose orders are you following?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Somebody has told you to get rid of us, haven’t they? Somebody alerted you to the fact that we were arriving and told you to – what was that phrase they used to use back on Earth? Terminate us with extreme prejudice.’
‘Interesting,’ Beltempest said. ‘Why should anybody want to eradicate two minor troublemakers like yourselves?’ He seemed genuinely curious. ‘If you can tell me that, I might be able to spare your lives.’
‘If we knew that,’ the Doctor murmured, ‘we probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.’
‘In that case . . . ’
Beltempest looked at his watch, then stood slightly straighter and pulled his uniform into some sort of order. ‘Under the powers vested in me,’ he said formally, ‘and in line with Landsknecht practice, you are sentenced to act as targets during a Landsknecht training session.’ He relaxed. ‘Start running,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’
‘What happens if we survive?’ Bernice asked. ‘Do we go free?’
‘No,’ he replied.
‘No, we don’t go free?’
‘No, you don’t survive,’ he explained. ‘It’s a death sentence.’ He stepped into the flitter. ‘I’d wish you luck,’ he said, ‘but you’d have no use for it. The best you can hope for is a quick shot in the back of the head.’
The flitter rose, humming, into the scarlet sky, scattering flocks of reptiles in all directions. Within seconds, it was gone. The background noises of the 81
jungle, the hisses and clatters, the cries and the rustles, slowly filled in the silence left behind.
Spaceport Five was suspended on the tops of five huge towers. They reared above the parkland of the Overcity, casting a disc of shadow on the towers beneath that gave the Overcity dwellers a taste of what the Undertown must be like.
Cwej stood at the edge of the spaceport, watching the ships come and go.
A Draconian warship was just taking off, its turquoise fins unfurling as it rose, the sun glinting from the inlaid insignia that decorated its flanks. The space that it left was only empty for a few seconds before a Thanatosian freighter lurched unsteadily in to land, venting coolant fumes from its engines. Two Antonine Assassins sat, side by side, on the edge of the field, their sharp lines and impressive armaments drawing an admiring crowd of ship-spotters. Craft of a thousand different designs and types of propulsion jostled for position in the skies above, turning the air into a rainbow haze of warped space and shifted probabilities.
‘Got it!’ Forrester trotted up to his side, waving a centcomp printout. ‘The scheduler didn’t want to give it over, so I had to threaten to fine him for being uncooperative.’
‘You can’t do that,’ he said, wondering how she could get away with flouting the rules so flagrantly, time and time again. ‘We’re on leave.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, not in the least defensive, ‘but he didn’t know that.’
Cwej sighed, and ran his tongue across his sharp predator’s teeth. ‘So what’s the story then?’
‘According to centcomp, they bought tickets to Purgatory.’
He blinked in surprise. ‘Purgatory? But that’s –’
‘The Landsknecht planet. I know.’
He gazed out across the field again. He’d always wanted to leave the Earth, but this . . .
‘So we follow them?’ he whispered.
‘They’re our prime suspects,’ Forrester said. ‘Of course we follow them. I booked two tickets on a Falardi passenger liner. They can drop us off at Goreki X. We pick up a supply shuttle from there. It’s the quickest way, and its also the least likely. If Adjudicator Secular Rashid wants to recall us, she’ll have to find us first, and she’ll be expecting us to take the tourist shuttle.’
‘She’ll just ask centcomp where we are,’ Cwej murmured, trying to convince himself that this was a bad idea.
‘I thought of that.’ Forrester was short-tempered. ‘I pulled in a favour: got my sister to book the tickets. Difficult to trace.’
Cwej frowned, and ran a paw through the fur on his