Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [86]
‘Or the grief of bereavement, the pain of terminal illness, the misery and horror of war. Who are you to prejudge what might befall them?’
‘I don’t know!’ the Doctor shouted suddenly, clenching his hands so tight that his fingernails dug into his palms. ‘I don’t know! Killing is wrong except when it’s right, and I know the difference. That’s all I can say. That’s the only answer I can give.’
He raised his hands up in front of his face. Blood welled up into the crescents left by his fingernails and trickled down his palms.
‘Yes,’ Pryce murmured, leaning back in his seat. ‘That’s the only answer I could give when they put me on trial. I hope it helps you more than it helped me.’
They entered hyperspace in silence.
∗ ∗ ∗
146
Sandri Farrance woke with blood matting her hair and sticking her eyelids together. There was noise all around, shouting and screaming, and the acrid smell of pacifier gas was mingled with the stench of cooked flesh. She tried to open her eyes, but had to stop when a sickening spike of pain lanced through her skull.
Still, at least she was still alive. That was something. Wasn’t it?
Eventually she forced her eyes open, wincing at the pain. The sun cast long shadows across the grassy parklands on top of the towers of Spaceport Nine Overcity. The riot appeared to have moved on past her. She listened for a moment, but couldn’t hear anyone nearby. Taking a deliberate risk, she rolled over.
Flashes of light on top of the next tower suggested that the riot was still going on there but, in the distance, the harsh shapes of Adjudication flitters appeared to be retreating towards her through columns of smoke. The tide had obviously turned at least once since she had been hit.
She ran a hand across her scalp gingerly. It came away covered in sticky clots of blood. She hadn’t been unconscious long, then. Looking around her immediate vicinity she couldn’t see any of her comrades, although four underdwellers and a handful of Adjudicators lay contorted in death.
She looked back at the distant battle. The flitters were swooping low now, preparing to re-enter the fray. Squinting against the sun and the pain in her head, she thought she could make out helmeted and uniformed figures retreating back towards her across the bridges that linked the tower tops, firing backwards as they came.
Farrance glanced at the nearest Adjudicator. The man was still breathing, despite a massive wound in his neck. It was Gallion, her squire. She would have recognized his red hair anywhere. She crawled over to him, wondering if there was anything she could do to ease his pain.
‘Gallion, it’s Farrance, can you hear me?’ She bent over him His eyes opened, blearily focusing on her.
‘Farra? Goddess, but it hurts.’
‘Lie quiet,’ she said. ‘I’ll call for help.’
She didn’t even see his arm as he brought it up towards the back of her neck, and the touch of the knife was just a cold breath upon her skin. It was only the spreading warmth of her blood inside her body armour that attracted her attention.
It was the last thing she felt, apart from the cold hardness of his armour as she fell across him.
Daph Yilli Gar didn’t even have enough energy to extrude his eyestalks when the cell door hissed open. They had finally come for him, and he was ready. Past 147
ready. He longed for the blessed amnesia of death, the deep and dreamless sleep which was all that could erase the humiliation he had been forced through.
‘Daph!’
A familiar voice. He raised one eyestalk a few inches and managed to rotate it. What he saw brought him to his basal foot despite the pain that throbbed through his body with the beating of his nodes.
‘You traitor!’ he hissed.
Vap Oppat Pol was standing just inside the cell door, holding a box with rough holes punched in the lid.
‘Call me all the names you wish,’ Vap said. ‘Pull my eyestalks out by the roots.
Tear my shell from my tail. You cannot do worse than I would do myself My shame could obliterate an entire Guild of sacrificial scapegoats.’