Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [97]
The Doctor followed him. Huttle crawled behind the Doctor, whimpering. The others followed, one by one, tense, silent. They crawled in a straight line, no one saying anything, for about ten minutes, then Peck turned to the left. His human train followed.
Beyond the walls they could still hear heavy weapons exploding and the cries of combat.
The Doctor’s mind was wandering. ‘Tunnels,’ he muttered, ‘always tunnels...’
In front of him, Peck stopped.
‘What is it?’ whispered the Doctor.
‘The passage is blocked,’ said Peck.
In the gloom in front of Peck the Doctor could see a tangle of metal and severed cables. Peck was trying to pick his way past the damage; as he did so a severed Cythosi head rolled down the twisted mass of debris and came to rest next to the Doctor’s head. Its eyes stared up at him, fierce and dead.
‘It’s no good,’ said Peck. ‘We’ll have to go another way.’
‘Quiet.’ The Doctor held up a finger. ‘Listen.’
A few seconds passed, punctuated by the cries of the dying and the rattle and hiss of high-energy weapons. ‘There’s nothing,’ Peck said.
‘We’ve got to go back.’
The Doctor reached out and clasped his leg. ‘No,’ he whispered urgently, then hissed over his shoulder, ‘Still! Everyone!’
A high-pitched whispering came from one of the side passages, and for a moment the Doctor entertained the hope that another group of weary refugees was creeping through the ducting towards them. But there was an eerie metallic quality to the sound.
‘I hear it,’ said Peck.
‘Quiet,’ the Doctor hissed.
Down the side passage he could see the distant movement of service robots. There was no chance of outrunning them in these passages and he hoped the robots hadn’t detected them.
188
They had. Within a moment they were scuttling towards the stranded convoy, straight towards the Doctor. There was only one thing he could do.
‘Peck,’ he said quietly, ‘could I borrow your laser-cutter?’
He took the cutter from Peck and stationed himself in the side passage, braced for the assault by the little robots. He could hear their lethal tools extending from their casings, powering up.
All of a sudden the wall between the Doctor and the robots bulged, buckled. The lethal arc of a Krill’s claw sliced through the metal. A Krill arm burst through the wall.
The little robots turned as one, their sensors bleeping and flickering.
They closed on the Krill arm, drills and lasers engaging with its armoured flesh.
The Doctor moved hastily back into the main passageway, mopping his brow with a large paisley handkerchief. ‘Peck – we’ve got to get through, somehow,’ he said. ‘Put that blockage between them and us.’
‘Tricky’ said Peck. ‘Too many exposed cables.’
‘We’ve got to try,’ said the Doctor. ‘Here.’
He thrust the laser-cutter towards Peck, who took it with a doubting smile. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here goes.’ He moved slowly forward. ‘I’ll have to cut this strut.’
‘Quickly, said the Doctor. The Krill was inside the tunnel, up to its waist now. Robots milled around it and it slashed at them with fury.
Peck’s legs disappeared into the mass of metal that twisted across the shattered tunnel. The Doctor crawled quickly after him. Peck was right – the debris was a jungle of deadly, severed cables, inches from their bodies, and unstable metal spurs and splinters that creaked and groaned and threatened to collapse beneath their weight.
The Doctor hauled himself out on the other side of the blockage with a sigh of relief.
‘Come on,’ he called back into the ragged hole that Peck had made in the barrier. ‘Be careful – don’t touch any of the cables.’
With agonising slowness the column ahead of Bavril moved forward, snaking its way through the metal. Down a side passage he saw a Krill tearing service robots apart as if they were made of cardboard.
He clutched at his plasma gun, knowing he couldn’t use it in the tunnel. It was the only weapon he had. He was at the back of the column. If the robots – or the Krill – came