Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [58]
‘You can’t kill us because – because . . . ’
‘Because we’ve been testing you, and the test’s over now,’ the woman said, stepping forward. Fazakerli remembered her from the Arachnae; he’d been returning from leave and looking for some final action, and she’d turned him down in the bar. It hadn’t bothered him that much at the time, but now . . .
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He kept the sights of his blaster firmly fixed upon her loins. He was going to cut her in two whatever happened.
‘Test?’ Enquorian queried uncertainly.
‘Of course.’ Her confidence fazed Enquorian, and even the little man with her looked askance, but Fazakerli could hear the shake in her voice. She was terrified. He looked sideways at his comrades. Couldn’t they hear it too?
Didn’t they want to see her hot blood steaming in the sunshine as much as he did?
No, they were just as uncertain as Enquorian. With the under-sergeant dead, they hadn’t got a clue what to do. Weaklings! Why couldn’t they just surrender themselves to madness?
‘You don’t think we could have wiped out four of you so quickly if we were just simple targets, do you?’ the woman continued.
‘That’s right,’ the man agreed, ‘we’re a special, ah . . . ’
‘Special task force,’ she said.
‘Yes, a special task force sent to test your reflexes.’ The man pulled himself up to his full height. ‘And we’re not impressed, are we Provost-Major Summerfield?’
‘Indeed we aren’t, Provost-Major, er, Provost-Major. Not very impressed at all.’
Whatever was happening to Fazakerli was getting worse. His pulse was hammering in his ears so furiously that he had to strain to make out what was being said, and his finger kept flexing against the trigger, taking up the slack and releasing it slowly, coming within a millimetre of releasing the pent-up energy of the weapon.
‘P-P-Provost-Major . . . ?’ Enquorian stammered. ‘I . . . we . . . didn’t realize . . . ’
‘No harm done,’ the man said genially. ‘Well, not to us at any rate. Least said, soonest mended. Just take us back to the spaceport and put us on the first spaceship out of here and we’ll say no more about it, there’s good chaps.’
Fazakerli looked around. The other guys – Enquorian, Smitts, Fenian –
they were all buying it! He saw them through a red haze: blurred figures, moving in slow motion, relaxing and lowering their weapons. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip their complacent heads from the necks and drink the spurting blood.
With a sense of vast relief, he gave in to the death-thirst.
Fazakerli raised his blaster and fired at the first target he saw. Enquorian’s head exploded with a satisfying splat, spraying bone, brain and blood over everyone. The woman dived for cover as he turned the weapon on her, and all he managed to do was splash the energy harmlessly across the force wall.
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Grunting in frustration, he tried to burn the little man, but he seemed to have vanished into the jungle.
A blaster beam seared across his shoulder. He whirled, catching Smitts across the legs. Smitts – screamed shrilly and dropped his gun, the stumps of his legs spraying blood into the air. Fazakerli laughed. Brilliant! He couldn’t ever remember enjoying himself so much!
A movement to one side attracted his attention. He tracked it with his weapon. It was Fellian, trying to crawl away. Fazakerli burned through his spine, and watched him thrash around in agony on the blood-splattered ground.
Oh yes! Oh yes!
The thudding in his head was the beat of some primal drum, calling for sacrifice. He wanted to dance, to laugh, to scream, to fall to his knees and praise some indefinable god of pain and degradation, but most of all he wanted to bathe in the sticky rich warmth of blood.
He had never felt so alive before.
A sound behind him. He turned. The woman was crouched beside the small man, who was trying to stem the flow of blood from what was left of Smitts’s legs.
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘ Why?’
‘Why not?’ he giggled, and