Doctor Who_ Prime Time - Mike Tucker [83]
The surgeon general shuffled forward. ‘You have been an unwanted irritation, Time Lord.’
The Doctor gave a mock bow. ‘It’s a habit. You won’t be the first murderous dictator that I’ve irritated.’
‘Well, I might be the last.’
The surgeon general punched at his control box and the Doctor collapsed in agony.
Lukos backed away as Ace strode across the office. Her face was hard and grim and the muzzle of the piton gun never wavered from his forehead.
He stumbled over his chair. ‘Now, my dear, I know you’re angry...’
‘Shut up.’ Ace could hear the tremor in her voice. The anger she felt was frightening her. All she wanted to do was pull the trigger and put a piton through that fat, balding head.
She wanted to see Lukos dead. She felt sick to her stomach, could feel the gun trembling in her hand.
She reached out with her other hand to steady it.
‘How do we stop this? Where are you holding the Doctor?’
Lukos shook his head. ‘He’s not on this planet. He’s on Scrantek. There’s nothing I can do...’
Ace pressed the gun against his forehead, forcing him back in his seat. ‘You’d better be lying or they’re going to need someone else to collect the licence fee around here.’
Lukos was deathly pale, the sweat beading on his brow.
‘Believe me, if I could stop it I would, but they’re going to go live at any moment. The final episode. The death of the Doctor.’
Ace stared at the screen in horror. Saarl was flouncing around the police-box shape of the TARDIS. An announcer was counting down. The Doctor’s agonised face faded on to the screen.
‘No!’ Ace screamed.
The Doctor’s head arched back in agony as a thousand needles sank into his flesh. He was stretched out on a bed in the DNA sequencer. Pipes started to pulse with blood. The background throb of the machinery was rising in pitch.
The surgeon general stood at the balcony of the control gallery, his human eye blazing with triumph as he stared at the writhing figure before him. The Master was at his shoulder, staring impassively down at his old foe. The surgeon general turned, holding out a weeping, crusted hand, turning it over in the flickering light.
‘To have clean flesh, endlessly renewed. You cannot know what that means.’
The Master glanced at the cryogenic tube containing his new body. ‘I have more idea than you think,’ he murmured The surgeon general peered into his eyes. ‘You feel no remorse, no regret at what you have done?’
The Master leant on the balcony, staring into the forge.
‘The Doctor and I have fought for as long as I can remember.
It always had to end with one of us dead.’ He smiled. ‘I had always anticipated that it should not be me.’
The surgeon general turned. All around the gallery figures were hunched over read-outs.
‘Are our transmitters on Blinni-Orkos fully primed?’
‘Everything is at full power, Surgeon General. The Channel 400 mainframe indicates that we have achieved maximum potential!’
‘Then our time has come.’
The clawed hand slammed down on the main power button.
As Ace watched, the machinery pulsed with power. The Doctor’s back bent like a bow, his scream echoing around the office, then he slumped back into the machinery, lifeless.
Ace screwed up her eyes, trying to shut out the scene.
‘Shut it off.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Lukos scrabbled for the controls. ‘I... I...’
‘Shut up!’ Ace grasped him by the collar and hauled him away from the desk.
Lukos was pale and shaking. ‘They really didn’t leave me with any choice...’
‘I said shut up!’ Ace lashed out with the butt of her gun, sending Lukos sprawling. He crashed to the floor, whimpering, rubbing at the blood running from his cut lip.
Gatti made to move forward but Breame caught her arm, shaking his head. ‘Let this game play to its conclusion.
There’s nothing that you can do.’
Lukos was trying to haul himself away from Ace, his perfectly manicured fingernails scrabbling on the polished wood, blood from his wounded shoulder splashing on the floor. Ace raised the piton gun and thumbed a stud on its side.
The gun’s motor span into