Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [74]
Four bursts from the sonic screwdriver and the access panel to the door came loose. The Doctor lifted it down, tapped in his authorisation lode. The door unlocked itself, perfectly silently. The Doctor took a deep breath, tugging the force knife out of his pocket. Larna had given it him in the refectory. He played with the dial and formed a metre-long u-type leaf blade. He weighed it in one hand, checked and then adjusted its balance, and then swung it experimentally.
He was ready, but he didn’t open the door, not yet. He would have to choose his moment carefully.
He heard Larna.
‘The timegate is closing,’ she said. ‘The time vehicle, whatever it is, has come to rest.’
Even through a thick metal door, the Doctor could hear the fear in her voice. She was a hostage, trapped in a tiny room with a known killer. She’d have seen the Renegade kill those men, but she wouldn’t have seen the Doctor hot on their heels. She didn’t know that rescue was at hand.
‘When?’ a man’s voice said. The Doctor recognised the voice from somewhere. He spent valuable seconds trying to place it.
‘Within a few years of Event Two. It is difficult to say from here with any great certainty.’
‘Keep the timegate open… do it!’ The voice passed inches from the door. Which meant that he was on the other side of the room, now. Wasn’t he?
‘The end of the universe,’ Larna said. Left‐ hand side of the room.
‘What?’ He just moved back towards her.
‘Before, you told me that it was the end of the universe.
You we right.’ Left‐ hand side of the room.
‘Yes. Good. You have done well.’ Right in front of the door.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked. Left‐ hand side.
‘I am preparing a phased energy pulse.’ He’d paused right in front of the door. ‘I am going to channel the energy from this column and direct it to the Station.’ he said simply.
‘The Station will be destroyed,’ Larna objected.
‘Yes. But the timegate will remain open. We will travel down it in my TARDIS.’ Right‐ hand side.
There was no more time. The Doctor raised the sword in one hand, slapped the door control with the other and leapt through the door as it whooshed open.
He caught a flash of Larna to his left, the glittering of the time column to his front, but he spun to his right. The Renegade was standing over a control panel. His sword was drawn, but it was loose in his hand as he concentrated on operating the console. Not for long. The Renegade lunged, as the Doctor knew that he would. The Doctor blocked, then thrust.
The Renegade parried, trying to twist the blade out of the Doctor’s hand using brute strength, but the Doctor had already begun his countermove, and the blades just glanced off each other, giving the Doctor time to straighten and look at his opponent properly for the first time.
The grey cloak the Renegade wore was rather luxurious.
Underneath that, there seemed to be a spacesuit of some kind.
His face!
‘Savar…’ the Doctor gasped. He knew who this was… but this wasn’t his current incarnation. This was his fourth regeneration, the one that had vanished, the one whose eyes had been taken. The angular cheekbones, the curly beard, it was unmistakably Savar. And his eyes were missing. It had taken the Doctor a moment to notice what was wrong. He had thought that the face was in shadow, but the eyes were shadow; there was nothing else there. The eyes were meant to be the windows to the soul – well, true enough, without them Savar looked incomplete, more like a skull than a face.
‘Savar, it’s me…’
But the sound of his voice merely gave Savar something to aim at. He had grabbed his sword in both