Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [67]
The robot had manage to grab the door handle.
‘It’s remote‐controlled, isn’t it?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Is there any way of telling who’s operating it, where they are?’
Malady shook her head. ‘Absolutely impossible. It could be from anywhere in the world.’
‘Judging by what they’re planning to do, it’s someone a long way away.’
They’d made their way down narrow metal steps to the warehouse floor. In that time, the robot had got the door of the lorry open.
They could see into the trailer. The atomic device sat in the middle of the container, looking fairly innocuous.
Malady raised her arm, pointed the energy pistol at the robot, and fired.
The shot hit it square in the back, and the robot went down, its limbs sprawling.
‘No!’ the Doctor shouted.
Malady shrugged. He must have been worried she’d hit the nuke. ‘I didn’t miss,’ she told him.
The other three RealWar robots stood to attention.
‘Ah.’
The robots raised their arms in unison, the sound of the machine guns loading up filled the air.
The Doctor started running for the lorry.
‘Keep them busy!’ he called back, over his shoulder.
Malady dived for cover, as the robots started firing at her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Doctor clambering up over the fallen robot to get into the truck.
One of the machines was heading that way, the other two were heading for her.
She ducked behind the metal screen that hid the truck from view, deciding it was the best cover. It was half‐inch steel plate. As the robots started firing, she was relieved that it could stop the bullets.
They were marching towards her position – another drawback of the robots was that they weren’t built for covert ops: they hissed and clanked. No more than a tank or armoured car, according to the manufacturers, who had a point.
And the fact robots couldn’t do everything kept her in a job, so who was she to complain?
She straightened up, raised her gun, spun round the corner to face the robots.
Then dived back for cover as they opened fire.
The bullets streaked past her, scorching the air.
* * *
The Doctor climbed into the trailer of the articulated lorry, and hurried over to the bomb. The gunfire outside echoed and echoed off the corrugated metal walls of the container, and it was almost enough to deafen someone.
The bomb, though, looked refreshingly simple to defuse.
He took the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, and removed a piece of the casing.
The Doctor was always faintly disappointed that real nuclear bombs didn’t have digital countdown clocks on them. It would add to the sense of urgency if numbers were ticking down.
This bomb wasn’t even armed. That must have been what the robot – or rather its operator – was trying to do. At the moment, this was just a metal box with a quantity of plutonium in it. His job was to make sure it stayed that way.
‘Ten… nine…’ the Doctor began, trying to inject some tension. ‘Eight… seven…’ The casing was off, now, revealing the arming mechanism surrounded by the usual scribble of wiring.
‘Six… five…’ Now, what would he the best way of doing this?
‘Four… three…’
He squeezed the sonic screwdriver, releasing the arming mechanism. He caught it, drew it out, gently.
‘Two…’ All he had to do was snip the wire, now. No chance of setting it off accidentally – not unless it had been armed first.
He reached into his pocket for his wirecutters.
‘One…’ He slid the wirecutters around the cable. Oh Doctor, he told himself, you’ve done it, and with less than a second to –
A robot arm grabbed his leg, pulled him off his feet and dragged him halfway to the back of the truck.
The Doctor grabbed the bomb’s casing. It was securely attached to the floor of the trailer, and holding on would keep him inside, close to the bomb.
The robot kept pulling, unconcerned by the prospect of tearing the Doctor in half.
The Doctor glanced back over his shoulder. The robot was hunching in the doorway, almost too