Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [92]
She was gaining valuable time, but he was going to be able to corner her in the end. If they had waited a couple of years there would be no problem - Ace had spent a lot of time here in the early twenty-first century. Her bedroom combined the ambience of a student room with the sheer practicality of the Royal Armouries, filled as it was with posters of pop bands and nasty-looking military hardware. There would be all sorts of big guns Benny could have used. Ten years before all that, and the room-that-would-be-Ace's contained nothing but a wardrobe full of fur coats and the most dangerous thing in there was the dead bluebottle on the window sill.
Benny kept running upstairs, hoping to think of a plan before she ran out of floors.
***
The Ice Warrior was advancing across the patio towards them, pushing aside the garden furniture. It moved around the pool of light from the kitchen window. Its eyes burned red in the shadows. The Brigadier and the Doctor backed away from it. Every so often, Lethbridge-Stewart would fire off a shot at it, in the vain hope of slowing it down or hitting a vital spot. The Martian spacecraft hovered over them like a vulture, its gunports gaping open.
The Brigadier looked across to the Doctor for guidance. His friend was playing around with the sonic screwdriver.
'I thought that thing was a tool, not a weapon?'
The Doctor looked up. 'If you'd ever been hit over the head with a wrench, you'd know that the one can often be the other.'
He held the screwdriver aloft.
'Halt!' he ordered the Ice Warrior. To the Brigadier's amazement it did. A moment later he realised why: there was a gun of some sort on its wrist and now, for the first time, it had a clear line of sight.
84
'Listen to me,' the Doctor insisted, squeezing the sonic screwdriver. An ultrasonic whine filled the air. 'Your weapon fires waves of sonic energy. This device works on the same principle. Not only will it counteract your shots, it will return them to their source. You.'
The Ice Warrior moved its arm a little, adjusting its aim.
'If you fire that weapon the only thing you'l destroy is yourself,' the Doctor warned.
The Martian must have heard him, but it gave no indication that it had done so. Instead the tube on the Martian's wrist lit up, and the air was filled with a hissing noise like air escaping from a burst tyre.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the Martian contorted as if it was its own reflection in a fairground mirror. It tried to grab its head, but couldn't control its limbs. Final y there was a great crack, and the Martian's shell burst open in a single line from shoulder to pelvis. It fell to the floor, al the light gone from its eyes. Martian blood and tissue was gushing from the wound.
'Wel done, Doctor!' the Brigadier congratulated him. 'Now we can rescue Bernice.'
The Doctor nodded, horrified by what he had done. 'I can't guarantee that the power supply will deflect another blast,' he said absent-mindedly.
'Still,' the Brigadier said, 'it wil give the gunners up in that ship pause for thought before they loose off any shots.'
***
There was silence in the C Cube.
'What happened?' Greyhaven asked.
'The Time Lord is operating a sonic jamming field. Our energy weapons will be reflected if we use them.'
'And one of your warriors has just been killed?' Staines whimpered.
'Yes. The Doctor wil die for that action.'
***
Benny had ended up in her room, right at the top of the house. There was nothing up here but memories and alcohol.
She closed the door, and tiptoed across the room trying not to make a sound. She'd managed to lose the Ice Warrior for the moment: she could hear him crashing around on the floor below, looking for her in the bathroom. It wouldn't take him long to work out where she had gone.
The attic room. "The honeymoon suite". She and Jason had taken this room, made it their