Doctor Who_ The Devil Goblins From Neptune - Keith Topping [48]
He reached the Doctor's lab to find it in darkness.
Entering, he switched on the light and looked around for the file he had been sent to get. He spotted it on the workbench next to the TARDIS and picked it up, turning for the door. He paused for a moment as he passed the police box, looking at it with a smirk on his face as wide as the Thames estuary. If he'd told any of his mates from the 17th & 21st that he worked with a man who travelled through time and space in a police box, they'd have sent for the regimental trick cyclist and a straitjacket.
Benton reached the door and switched off the light.
Something made him turn back and look around the room. There was a tiny red light, flickering under the Doctor's workbench. Benton assumed that some of the Doctor's equipment was still switched on, and he was about to leave when a part of his subconscious decided that this was the moment to free-associate, and, in a flash of inspiration, he suddenly remembered where he'd seen Arlo. It was in the newspaper last week. The article on that pop festival. A photograph of Viscount Rose, the hippie landowner who had lent his grounds to those whacked-out freaks. Of course, Arlo's picture must have been in that article. Benton paused -
he could hear ticking. Great clocks filled his thoughts as a picture formed in his mind of Rose standing with the leader of the Venus People. Smiling.
'Connection...?'
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Benton shook his head. His brain seemed wrapped in cotton wool. 'Think,' he said angrily.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
'Of course!'
Then the room exploded, and Benton forgot all about the aristocrat and the hippie.
CHAPTER 10
Pakilev's Mi-24 gunship came up over a rise and hovered just above the trees. For a moment the young pilot could do little more than sit and stare.
What was left of Blue Flight was under attack, not from craft of any sort, but from swarming creatures with flapping bat-like wings. They ebbed and flowed as if controlled by a single mind, concentrating on one craft, then splitting in two to avoid the fire from the Mi-8's wing-mounted gun pods, then wheeling and arcing to attack another. From this distance Pakilev couldn't even see their weapons, although the effects were clear enough.' a helicopter's engine compartment glowed brightly, then exploded in a burst of silver and red light. The smoking remains of the destroyed Mi-8 plummeted towards the ground like a hurled stone. Explosive flowers blossomed across the landscape, the trees igniting despite the cold. Each glowing beacon indicated a downed helicopter; there were more of them than craft left in the sky.
The creatures themselves were greyish, child-sized, and humanoid but barely human. Their limbs were scrawny and slender, the wings dark and angular. Occasionally a creature would come under concentrated gunfire, shuddering under the impact before falling to the ground in a rush of jumbled arms and wings. Like a dead butterfly. Or a fallen angel.
But any physical weakness was more than made up for by their number and agility. Pakilev couldn't even estimate how many there were, and it was little wonder that the radar of the Mi-8s barely picked up their attackers in time.
As unusual as the menace was, Pakilev had already begun to assess the attackers from a military perspective.
Missiles were out of the question.' the creatures seemed too quick, too intuitively aware of any threat of that nature. And, anyway, the gunship's missiles were designed to work only against large ground-based targets. The rockets might just be viable, but the machine gun seemed to be the best option.
The waiting was over. Time to engage.
Pakilev swept the sight over the closest group of creatures, keeping his thumb firmly pressed against the trigger. The helicopter rocked slightly, the bullets chasing across the air towards the grey figures. He caught one or two, who clattered into each other before falling. The group as a whole turned their attention towards the hovering helicopter. As they came closer Pakilev glimpsed their