Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [107]
Mariko watched the body fall to the ground as Naran withdrew. He stared at his hand for a moment and then looked over at Mariko. Then with an angry snort he picked up the body and threw it away. Mariko could understand his anger: like her Naran was a bit of a perfectionist.
She put a comforting hand on his shoulder and together they walked to the gateway. They took up a defensive position beside the control equipment and waited.
Benny walked in from the galleria through a cone of violence. Around her the canteen razvedka fought short bloody combats to buy her passage. The KGB assault team had been concentrating on getting into the station, they hadn't expected an attack from the rear. The smoke boiled to either side, lurid flashes of colour as the fighting continued.
The floor of the station proper was littered with wreckage, bodies and bits of bodies. Both sides were using explosive rounds and their remains were difficult to tell apart.
Mariko and Naran were waiting for her by the gateway. Close up to its spinning surface Benny could almost fee! reality tearing as the power poured in. Mariko had prepared the controls for her, Benny had only to tap in a single command sequence to initiate the tunnel. And then?
The future past that moment stretched away into darkness.
She punched in the sequence and the gateway began to open.
Mariko and Naran moved before she did, reacting to the gust of wind that swept through the station. She thought it was the Stunnel initiation but the wind was at her back, parting the smoke like a curtain.
Naran ran forward, both gun barrels pushing out of his palms. He came flying backwards, the metre-long ramming spike of a razvedka tunnel board protruding from his back. The board's momentum slammed him into the gateway. There was a flash of bright pink light as the torque forces ripped him limb from limb.
Through the smoking air flew a figure, arms spread as if crucified. Benny realized that the board's passenger had jumped off when it emerged from the Central Line gateway at two hundred kilometres per hour. The arms were spread to maximize wind resistance in a vain attempt to slow him down as he described a flat parabolic arc along the two hundred metre length of the station. It was an insane suicidal manoeuvre. The man was going to die for sure.
At the last moment the man snapped in his limbs and became a human cannonball tumbling as it hit the ground. For a moment Benny thought that the impact had literally exploded the man. that limbs and torso were being ripped apart. Then she saw that he was still intact, his body describing a convoluted series of twists in the air.
As she watched him twist through the air, Benny wondered whether the Doctor had any limitations at all.
The Doctor knew that the landing was crucial, you could lose a lot of points for a sloppy landing. You had to come down with your feet together and absorb the impact with your knees. It was a question of maintaining the correct line. Of course you weren't supposed to be travelling quite as fast as he was and the provision of a soft landing mat would have been nice.
In the seconds before his feet touched the ground, he heard the conductor tap his baton on the lectern three times. The sound echoed through the orchestra pit of his mind. There was the poised hush from the musicians as they gripped their instruments.
The fugue started the moment he hit the floor, apassionato - with passion and this time without the mix-up with the printers. The themes were all there but this time they worked in harmony. The flute solo that had spoken of patterns in energy was now backed by the strings, loud and grand. It had the slightly stilted artificial envelope of a synthesizer. The sampled percussion backbeat that the Doctor realized represented the cake monsters was faltering, their place in the score fading.
As he faced Benny the Doctor could hear the slow oboe wail of betrayal, but whose?
'You're too late. Doctor,' said Benny.
The Doctor ignored her for the moment and turned instead to the cake monster