Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [90]
Blood pumped through sagging arteries that were draped around human skeletons. Black nerve fibres like spiders’ webs enveloped the bodies. Eyeballs rolled in soundless agony.
He didn’t hear the sound of the stunners behind him, or realize until much, much later quite how close Professor Zebulon Pryce and his vibroknife had got to the back of his neck. All he did was scream as he realized what Professor Zebulon Pryce had done to his friends. And scream. And . . .
. . . Screaming an alert signal into his ear. Beltempest jerked awake, flailing his four arms for a moment, dropping his guns all over the floor. He whirled, expecting Pryce to be standing behind him, but the cabin was empty. The alarm shrilled on. His eyes scanned the controls, desperately searching for the problem. Life-support okay. Power levels okay. Hyperspace engines . . . off line.
He raised his eyes to the simcord screen, dreading what he would find.
Black space, and stars.
They had left hyperspace.
And directly in front of them sat an old, battered warship of very alien design.
Beltempest flicked on the switch that patched him into the ship’s communications net. ‘Doctor?’ he said. ‘Prepare yourself. We have guests.’
153
Chapter 11
‘–ease do not adjust your receiver. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Please do not adjust your receiver. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Please do not adj–’
Dantalion’s lair was a sixteenth-century church sandwiched between two late twenty-seventh-century oxygen factories. Forrester didn’t bother knocking.
Instead she just kicked the rotting wooden door in. Or, at least, she tried to kick the rotting wooden door in. The door stayed where it was, while she rebounded, swearing.
Bernice watched with something between amusement and concern.
‘Adamantium core,’ Forrester gasped between curses. Her leg felt like it was on fire. ‘He must have had it installed since the last time I was here.’
‘Indeed I have, fair maiden,’ a drink-slurred voice boomed at them from a hidden speaker. ‘Indeed I have. These premises suffer from an infestation of Adjudicators in much the same way that other places have rats or ber hounds.
Much as I enjoy watching the little creatures frolic and gambol, it does tend to be bad for business, and so I have, albeit reluctantly, been forced to take measures to prevent them from gaining access. The entire building is now sheathed in a substance that, I am assured by those in the know, will repel anything short of an attack by an Imperial Landsknechte frigate.’
‘Does he always talk like that?’ Bernice asked. She was crouched over Cwej’s body, trying to protect his extensive wounds from the ever-present rain.
‘Only when he’s drunk,’ Forrester replied.
‘How often is that?’
‘Put it this way: I’ve never seen him sober.’
‘An unfair slur,’ the voice protested. ‘I am not drunk. Merely affable. Con-genial. Cordial, if you will.’
‘As a newt,’ Bernice murmured. ‘Look, Forrester, we really need to get Cwej seen to. I’m not sure how much longer he can last.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ Forrester growled as she surveyed the crumbling brickwork of Dantalion’s domain. Now that she was looking closer, she could make out the signs of recent modification. The outer walls of the church looked like they had been stripped off and then reattached to the central adamantium box. Dantalion was right: she couldn’t get in there with brute 154
force and bludgeon him into treating Cwej. Only tact and diplomacy could save him now.
And she was honest enough to know that those weren’t exactly her strong suits. ‘Dantalion,’ she began. ‘I know we’ve never exactly seen eye to eye . . . ’
‘I seem to remember,’ he said, ‘that the last time we met, the last thing my eye saw was your fist.’
‘That’s because . . . ’ She took a deep breath. ‘Dantalion, despite our . . .
differences of opinion in the past, I need . . . ’ There was a lump in