Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [99]
Huttle began slowly pulling himself up the shaft, his feet scrabbling between the metal teeth. The Doctor followed behind him.
Huttle was unfit. After two decks he was already breathless and flagging. He stopped.
‘Come on, Mr Huttle,’ the Doctor said slowly.
‘I don’t think I can,’ said Huttle.
‘You’re doing well, said the Doctor. ‘We’ve come this far... we can’t let the others down now.’
He looked below him. The shaft was crowded.
Huttle began to climb again. At last he swung himself clumsily from the shaft into a passageway. The Doctor scrambled after him.
‘The command deck’s through there, Huttle said, indicating an access panel at the end of the short passage. ‘The shuttle bay’s further 191
on.’
‘You’re a very brave man, Mr Huttle,’ said the Doctor. ‘Get your people into a shuttle. Get down to Coralee. I’ll do my best to contain the situation here.’
Huttle nodded and began to crawl away. The human train followed him.
‘Good luck to you all,’ the Doctor muttered under his breath.
Lights flickered on in the control centre. There was a sporadic round of applause.
Brenda looked up as Holly appeared, tired and dirty, in the doorway of the office.
‘Finished. Holly shrugged, ‘Well, as much as I can be finished.’
‘You’ve got the force field up?’ Brenda poured a shot of brandy into a glass.
Holly reached for the brandy. ‘No, but you’ve got power to the surveillance grid, so you can see if the Krill are coming. And you’ve got partial use of the repulsor field. It won’t stop them, but it’s something.’
Brenda sat back, nursing her own drink. ‘Right then. Let’s see what’s out there.’
She snapped on the communications console on her desk, cycling through the security channels.
‘Good God!’ She suddenly sat bolt upright in her chair.
‘What? What is it?’ Holly scrambled round the desk.
Brenda pointed at the screen.
‘It’s Ace, the Doctor’s friend, and Rajiid. What the devil are...?’
‘Well, they’re not going to last long out there!’ Holly dashed from the room. ‘R’tk’tk! Come on.’
Dolphin in tow she bounded from the control room.
Ace’s grip on the wall was slipping when the hatch slid open and she tumbled inside. She was suddenly aware of hands pulling her to her feet, of blankets being thrown over her. She reached back weakly for Rajiid, only to see R’tk’tk gathering him up in the metallic arms of his spider-like transporter and scurrying off with him. Then she stopped trying and let herself be carried away.
The command deck, the centre of shipboard operations, was for once almost deserted. Mottrack’s command chair was empty. Three Cythosi lumbered from console to console, struggling to stabilise the ship’s failing systems.
192
Garrett took a deep breath and concentrated. He felt the familiar pain of metamorphosis – it was as if his entire body was being pierced by a multitude of needle-beams of laser light – and sensed his skin rippling and folding, flowing, contracting.
He was Cythosi once again. He stepped on to the command deck.
One of the troopers turned his head and regarded him briefly, before returning to his desperate task. Garrett raised his plasma gun and felled all three Cythosi before any of them had a chance to react.
He climbed on to the low dais in the centre of the room and sat in Mottrack’s chair, the ancient weapon from the oceans of Coralee draped across his lap.
‘Mr Garrett. I expected to find you here.’
Garrett spun round in his chair. The Doctor stepped through a service hatch and dusted himself down.
‘Or is it Skuarte?’ he continued. ‘When you decide which of those you’d like to be, please let me know.’ He smiled. ‘I am here to destroy the Krill.’
Garrett laughed.
‘Only I have the power to destroy them,’ he said. ‘And I choose not to use it. The Krill are my loyal servants. My bringers of death.’
‘What do you hope to achieve by this slaughter?’ the Doctor snapped.
‘Purification,’ whispered Garrett. ‘Liberation. An end to the wars and the politics, an end to the spying and the subterfuge. A new beginning.’
‘Listen to me,’ said the Doctor.