Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [6]
It had been hit, Malady realised. As she struggled with the wheel, she could tell the axle had been sliced apart. She couldn’t think of a weapon that could do that, and she was damn sure it wasn’t something she’d hit on the road.
She also knew that she had other priorities.
She quickly brought the car under control, slowing it, managing to swerve it so that the rear driver door was facing the Saab. There wasn’t time to get out, though.
Malady braced herself, turned to watch the Saab hit her. The driver and passenger sat impassive, letting it happen.
Her car was shunted along, spun a couple of degrees.
Garvin had hit his head on the dashboard. He was unconscious, possibly worse.
Malady grabbed his laptop, and was out of the driver’s door. She kept low, using the car as cover. The computer was the important thing here.
She heard the Saab’s doors open. Both doors – she’d hoped one of them would have been incapacitated, or at least trapped in the car.
One of them pulled open the passenger door, she heard him moving in to get a look at Garvin.
Her pistol was in her hand. She popped up, fired two shots, dropped back to a crouch. The larger man fell, blood sprayed from his head, he twisted slightly, looked surprised.
And then there was the light.
A pencil‐thin beam of light sizzled past her. A thin white line, perfectly straight.
The other one was firing some sort of ray gun.
She barely registered the sound of the felled tree behind her. The second beam was even closer, it scored a line in the tarmac of the road.
Her side had nothing like that – nothing handheld, anyway.
A cutting beam. Something that could slice through anything. It must have been what had smashed her axle. A deadly weapon.
But it had a disadvantage. With a bullet, you could get only a rough bearing on the man firing on you from the sound, or you might spot the muzzle flashing. This weapon drew a straight line back to the person holding it, and even lit up the surroundings. Every time he fired, it was as if he was pointing a giant luminous arrow at himself.
Malady stood, fired three shots, watched one of them catch his shoulder, one catch his chest, the last catch the gun itself.
He didn’t make a sound.
The gun exploded, a burst of white light, like it had been loaded full of rays. She saw him in silhouette, pure black against pure white. The blast took his arm off, at the elbow. As he fell, he seemed to grow larger, became twisted. His head seemed to grow longer.
He grew horns.
Malady watched, as he fell apart.
A moment later, it was dark again. And there was no sign of either of the bodies.
Malady picked up the laptop, silently scolding herself for dropping it in the first place. She stepped hack over to the cars. The men had disintegrated, there was no trace of them.
And so had their Saab. There was the wreck of her Panther, Garvin was dead, but there was no sign of the car that had hit it.
Those people weren’t EZ.
Malady wasn’t convinced they’d been people.
The laptop bleeped at her. She looked at the display. The computer had finished enhancing the image of the man who’d blown up the EZ Manta, and possibly assassinated the head of the EZ secret service.
His long face was oval, with an aristocratic nose and a full mouth. He had a high forehead, framed with long brown hair. He wore a long, dark coat. He had blue eyes, with traces of crow’s‐feet around them.
Malady had no idea who he was, but he’d triggered a diplomatic incident, possibly a World War.
She couldn’t wait to meet him.
* * *
The morning before, it had become obvious that the TARDIS was up to something.
The air was full of bad mood. At first, Fitz assumed the Doctor and Anji had had a row. He’d heard them together in the control room, discussing something, and had stayed out of their way for an hour or two. In the end, he’d gone in – and was bemused to find them smiling, puzzling over some problem. The Doctor was standing over the control console, tapping his lip thoughtfully. Anji stood opposite, studying his expression. Neither of them had noticed