Doctor Who_ Peacemaker - James Swallow [3]
Celeste gaped. The man should have been dead, or at the very least at the door to it. Instead, Kutter behaved as if she’d hit him with nothing more than a wet rag.
‘You are a waste of our time,’ said Tangleleg.
The rider’s pronouncement was pitiless. Matthew saw Kutter move again, this time a blur of dark clothing, and then a bolt of lightning flew from the muzzle of his weapon into the wooden walls of the house. The blast knocked both the Belfields off their feet as a ripple of fire flashed out across the cabin, shattering the windows and setting everything alight. Matthew struggled to get back to his feet, lurching 5
toward the porch where his wife had collapsed in an untidy heap.
On his horse, Tangleleg mirrored his companion’s actions and drew a pistol, fired a spread of shots into the house. Unlike the flat crack of a bullet, each discharge came with a tortured scream of sound and the tang of hot ozone, acrid like the air before a storm rr nt. Blazing blue-white beams stabbed out, ripping t he house into pieces.
Matthew gathered his wife to him as both longriders round their marks. His last thoughts were of Celeste and of how much she meant to him; and of the man who had saved her, if only to give him these few more days in her company.
White fire ripped into them, turning their flesh into ashes.
The long riders remained for a while, enough to give the flames time to take purchase and ensure that nothing would remain of the Belfield homestead. The horses grew skittish and whined at being so close to the fires, but the men did not move at all. They stood, their heads tilted back slightly so that their mouths were open, allowing the fly-buzz sounds from deep in their throats to resonate through the air.
It was a quicker and far more expedient manner of communication than the more clumsy use of teeth and lips and tongue. Together, they consulted maps made inside their heads, looking for new signs, for likely bolt-holes and targets of opportunity.
When their next destination was decided, Kutter went to get fresh horses from the stables beyond the ruined Belfield household, while Tangleleg killed their old mounts. After a meal of raw meat, the longriders rode on, heading westwards.
6
As they walked down the neon-lit boulevard, Martha Jones looked up to see the hazy, glowing arc that bisected the night sky over their heads, twinkling against the alien starscape beyond it. It reminded her of a snowfall, but suspended in the air like a freeze-frame image. She blinked and laughed in delight as she realised that there were actually letters imposed on the shimmering band. She picked out a ‘W’, an ‘O’ and then another.
‘ Woo! ’ she said, reading it aloud. ‘Ha! Doctor, look! It says “woo”
up there! That’s funny.’
The Doctor halted and gave her a lightly mocking can’t-I-take-you-anywhere? sort of look. ‘Actually, we’re only just seeing the end bit of it. The whole thing says “Hollywood”, but the letters are a hundred-odd kilometres high and you have to be in polar orbit to read it all at once.’ He made a circling gesture with his index finger. ‘Rings, you know? Like Saturn has in your solar system. Made of ice and rock dust. The owners use photomolecular field generators to hold the letters in place. It certainly makes the planet easier to find.’
She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. ‘There’s a planet called Hollywood? Planet Hollywood?’
‘Yup,’ He started walking again, hands in the pockets of his big 7
brown coat, skirting through the thronging mass of variant life forms who were also out enjoying the warm evening.
Martha was still looking upwards. ‘Oh yeah, the letters are moving, I can see it. Now it says ‘Ood”.’
‘That’s an entirely different planet,’ he said offhandedly. ‘This one was terra formed in the late twenty-fifth century by a consortium of entertainment businesses,