Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [41]
and Ace would have seen them. So they’d gone into the desert, or they’d vaporized altogether.
Bandits?
She knew it wasn’t bandits.
Sesehaten started to scream.
Ace was back in the hall in a moment. The scribe had fallen backwards over a stool, and was staring up at an enormous metal Ant. The insect turned its oval head to look at her, with complex stalked eyes or antennae whirring.
In that instant Ace’s world exploded back to its full size. A high-tech extraterrestrial in the living room. There was a numb tickling in her chest, and she realized that she ought to be laughing.
What was the damn thing packing? Didn’t matter. If the enemy is in range, so are you; which means that if you’re in range, so is the enemy!
Ace sprang over the table and smashed the thing’s face with her sword.
There was a delightful sound of metal on metal, even a few sparks, and several antennae twisted into new and interesting shapes.
The robot reared backwards. Sesehaten screamed again. Ace swung her khopesh in a beheading arc, but the Ant’s slender neck refused to give.
Now she could feel a fierce humming at the edge of her mind, and snarled, battering at the thing’s legs as it distorted subtly, like a dream monster, its bent antennae reaching for her face.
Sesehaten hit it with a stool. It turned, and the droning in Ace’s head got worse, like a headache coming on, occluding her vision. The sword trembled in her hand.
The Ant fell over.
The buzzing stopped, as though someone had thrown a switch. Sesehaten and Ace looked at one another over their fallen enemy.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ Ace asked the machine.
77
She knelt down beside the insect, put down her sword, started probing it all over. She ran her fingers over its seams, testing the swivelling joints of the antennae. It really did look like an ant, with the wasp waist and the six, jointed legs, though there were far too many things attached to its head. It was a sophisticated little bug. But it wasn’t The Enemy, it was just a lackey.
‘What happened?’ gasped Sesehaten, keeping well away from the machine.
‘Someone cut its broadcast power,’ said Ace, which really didn’t answer his question.
Perhaps when the Ant(s) hadn’t been able to find her, it had taken everyone else. Possibly as hostages. Equally likely because it didn’t want to return to its controller empty-handed, or empty-mandibled or whatever. They’d snatched the passengers from starliners, and now they were kidnapping Egyptians.
‘Right,’ she said. She stepped past Sesehaten, who was quivering with confusion. As far as he was concerned, this thing was a demon. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘The desert. Where the Ant came from.’
‘Where you came from,’ said the scribe.
They rode a chariot for two, thankful that the sun hadn’t quite gone down.
Ace knew from practice how dangerous it was to drive the things at night.
Especially when you were still half-sloshed. Though finding an alien robot in your former living room was a sobering experience.
Sesehaten grabbed her hips and held on for dear life as they hurtled over the desert rocks. She had sod-all in the way of strategy. Just rock up with one sword and a quivering ex-priest.
However she’d got here, the Ant had obviously come the same way. She should have checked the desert more carefully. Maybe there was a hidden machine or some sort of gateway. Maybe all this time she could have escaped.
Maybe she’d been supposed to work that out for herself. Maybe there was a big clever plan, and she just hadn’t seen it before now.
Or maybe not. She was so used to trying to work out what the Doctor was up to, and now he wasn’t up to anything except pushing up daisies.
The ridges became more familiar. She pulled up the chariot, Sesehaten clutching at her as they skidded to a halt.
Silence. Desert darkness. ‘You feel that?’ she said to him, invisible under the starlight.
Sesehaten shook his head.
Ace stepped down and lit up a torch. ‘Come on,’ she said.
Silence. Desert darkness. ‘You feel that?’ she said to him, invisible