Doctor Who_ Silver Nemesis - Kevin Clarke [37]
Ace was trapped. She heard the kitchen door behind her splintering as the Cyberman at the back of the house entered. Jumping on to the ruins of the staircase, she made her way upstairs as the Cybermen entered the building.
She reached the top of the stairs as the first one came through the front door. Another laser blast blew a hole through the wall to her right as she swung out of sight on the landing.
Ace squatted down, facing the top of the stairs. From below came crashing and more splintering sounds as the nearest Cyberman stepped into the ruins of the bottom of the staircase, but this was followed by a solid step, as menacing as a single drumbeat, as his weight was taken by the first step which had not been damaged in the onslaught.
There was another step, followed by another, and another. The heavy, sinister, and purposeful footsteps of the Cyberman were followed by more. There were evidently two Cybermen now climbing the short staircase towards her. Ace’s heart was pounding deafeningly, it seemed to her. She brushed at what felt like a cobweb on the side of her forehead and was surprised to see blood on her hand. She felt again and realized the brickwork blown off the wall as she reached her present position had shattered over the side of her face.
The footsteps were now almost at the top of the stairs, and the leading Cyberman about to step into view. Ace pulled back the elastic on the catapult and a third gold coin glinted in the unlit gloom of the landing.
The Cyberman saw Ace at the moment she saw him, but Ace had already fired. The gold coin once again stuck neatly into the chest panel and the now familiar rattle of death sounded immediately. The Cyberman she had struck fell backwards, tumbling down the stairs and taking down the one behind him.
Quietly, she began picking her way through the rooms towards the rear of the house. It was essential that the Cybermen were not able to track her movements by being able to hear her. Fortunately, the new floorboards beneath her shoes were stiff and well laid, and she crept into the main bedroom without any reaction from below. Distantly, she could hear the Cyberman at the foot of the stairs disentangling himself from the one she had destroyed.
Reaching the window, she carefully looked outside and saw to her satisfaction that there was, as she had expected, a drainpipe nearby. She reached through the glassless window-frame and took hold of the pipe. She was just about to pull herself through prior to using the drainpipe to lower herself to the ground when a laser blast struck several feet below her, shattering the metal in her hand and scorching her arm. Ace drew in her breath in a gulp, silencing the cry of pain. She pulled back instinctively, catching as she did so a glimpse of a silver figure beneath her. A Cyberman was guarding the back of the house.
’Getting the idea, are we?’ she whispered to it grimly. As if in reply, a second blast from below roared through the empty window and took out most of the ceiling above her head. There was an immediate rain of plaster, and the room suddenly acquired the appearance of being filled with dense fog. Given the glassless window, Ace knew it could remain so for only a few seconds, but that might be long enough to give her the time she needed. Loading the catapult, she crept through the opaque white dust to the window.
To the Cyberman below, she must have appeared like the apparition of death itself, she thought. Her face and hands appeared out of the white cloud suddenly, so that even before he had focused his weapon on her, the gold coin was lodged in his chest panel and the deadly rattle was sounding. For an instant the image of the statue of Nemesis crossed her mind... but at that moment she became aware of tramping steps coming up the stairs. ‘Now what?’ she wondered.
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs. Two Cybermen could be heard entering each of the upper rooms in succession, preceded by laser blasts.