Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [95]
She realised now that the howls and hoots she had heard faintly in the distance were the sounds the vehicles made to warn of their approach. It struck her as senseless given the speed they were moving, but they did it anyway and at this point they seemed to be doing it continuously.
Obviously the vehicle-riders did not want her to be inside the little fence which marked the edge of the track. Leela could see the sense in that. The track was not a good place to be if you wanted to survive.
She hopped over the fence. Getting killed must be the reason she had been lured here, and she intended to make someone pay for such a cowardly ambush. The way it had been done, blinding her eyes and fooling her senses, angered her deeply and stirred her warrior instincts. It was a Tesh trick. She was a warrior of the Sevateem and she knew how to fight the Tesh. She could resist their mind control. Her survival proved it.
She was about to climb up the grass embankment and go in search of the Tesh when she remembered Chloe. Where was she? Leela had forgotten that they wanted to kill her too. In fact they wanted to kill her more. For some reason it was more important to the Tesh that they kill the student than it was that they kill her. Leela turned back to the track. They had even tried to trick her into killing Chloe with that walking-corpse ghost routine.
Where had she gone? When Leela had last seen her she was scuttling off down what they had both thought was a walkway. Where was the stupid student now? How far had she got and in what direction?
Hastily Leela scanned up and down both the tracks. It was difficult not to be distracted by the lines of bellowing vehicles charging past. Then she saw her. She had crossed through the vehicles. She was in the space between the tracks, and she was clambering uncertainly over the second of the two small fences that separated one track from the other.
'Chloe!' Leela shouted, trying to make herself heard above the noise.
'Chloe!'
From the way the girl was moving it looked to Leela as though she was still lost in the vision of walkways and glass-walled buildings. She was glancing back over her shoulder a lot, too, so the chances were the ghost was still pursuing her. It seemed the Tesh had given up on Leela but were determined to kill the student.
'Stand still!' Leela yelled as Chloe stepped down off the fence and walked out on to the track, and into the path of the onrushing cars and lorries.
Leela bounded over the fence and sprinted out on to the track. She dodged through the first line of vehicles and then realised that the second and third lines were moving faster and faster. The warning sounds were deafening and the dust and fumes caught in her throat and in her eyes.
She paused. There was an overlapping gap coming towards her in the two faster lines. It was closing up as it reached her, and she was almost hit as she lunged through it and leapt the first of the small fences.
On the other track Chloe was wandering sightlessly among the rushing lines. Leela could see the Tesh were probably using the ghost to try to manipulate her into stepping directly in front of one of the speeding vehicles.
Leela scrambled and hopped along the narrow gap between the fences until she was level with Chloe. 'Chloe!' she shouted at her. 'Chloe look at me!' But there was no attracting her attention.
Leela was about to make a rush and grab her when the student suddenly stopped walking, threw herself down on the track and lay there unmoving.
The Tesh had worked out a way to make her into a bigger target, Leela realised. This time the strategy would succeed because two huge lorries were rushing side by side towards where Chloe clearly thought she was hiding.
Leela had already made up her mind that the Tesh would not win this fight.
Without thinking about it she jumped the fence pulling her knife as she went. Running across the track she bent low and flung the knife skidding over the surface of the ground