Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 17

The Deputy swung the hoverdisc around, increased the speed.

Another neutron blast whizzed past. His opponent was a nurse, not a fighter. She'd fired a gun before, but the Deputy doubted she had ever managed to hit a target, let alone a moving one.

Nevertheless, she was the main threat at the moment: a single stray shot from her would be enough to kill either him or the Prefect.

The Deputy set a course towards the woman, steadied the disc and unslung his machine pistol.

Barry watched, helpless, as Kim Dawkins was torn apart by machine-gun fire.

He'd seen pictures, he'd heard about it from mates who'd been in the army. But this was different. One minute she was a person, a good looking woman, the next she wasn't anything.

Barry felt sick. He pulled himself upright. These people, whoever they were, wherever they got their flying machine and that walking robot thing (Barry reckoned it was probably the army they had all sorts of secret weapons), they were trying to kill a ten-yearold girl.

Barry wouldn't let them.

He tried to get up, but couldn't.

His side ached. Broken ribs he'd had a broken rib before, and recognised it.

The man who'd done it the Prefect, the Doctor had called him was striding up to his wife, who, true to form, was just cowering there. This lot were soldiers he should have realised before. As with policemen and ex-policemen, you could always tell if someone had ever been a soldier. Both were too old now, but they'd kept fit.

They had twenty years on him. The little guy on the flying thing looked old enough to be his dad.

Barry forced himself up on to his knees.

It didn't matter how good their training was. It didn't matter how fit they'd kept themselves. Barry was in good shape himself: he was thirty years old, at his peak. He lifted weights. These people knew the theory, but he'd put what he knew into practice, on the football terraces, and round the back of the Dragon. He didn't need any Bruce Lee stuff, just his fists.

He stood, took a deep breath. The rib may not be broken just bruised.

The Prefect was only a few feet from his wife.

Barry took a couple of steps forward, and, encouraged by how easy that had been, took a few steps more.

The Prefect saw Barry coming, but did nothing he underestimated his opponent.

Barry grabbed the man's shoulder barely registering that it was almost solid muscle and pulled him round, punching him just above his stomach. He was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his green jacket, but he'd still hurt him. Barry had the advantage, and used it to pull the man down, bringing his knee up to meet the man's nose. The man couldn't get much grip in the ice, and was sliding about. There wasn't much hair to grab, so Barry just balled his fist and hammered it down at the base of his skull.

Barry should have felt the man's legs give way, but the man just broke away and headb.u.t.ted him. Barry could feel his nose getting warmer. Blood.

He took a deep breath through his mouth.

The Prefect drew a pistol and pointed it at Barry's head. An automatic. A VP70.

It was the first time Barry had seen a gun. A real gun.

He recognised it from one of his magazines.

And while part of his mind was telling him that it was a Heckler & Koch 9mm semi-automatic pistol, how many rounds it carried and that it was a must-buy item in its category, he was really thinking that this man could have killed him at any time since they'd met, that his being alive was just a privilege this man had granted him.

Deborah was screaming, the stupid fat cow.

'Go,' the Prefect said to them. He had a deep voice, like an actor's. 'This isn't your fight. I'll kill you both if you stay.'

Deborah was crying, but she was also standing up, letting go of the girl.

'I'm sorry,' she said to her, and also to Barry.

Barry grabbed her hand and pulled his wife away from this madman.

The Prefect laid the girl down in the snow.

It was better, he thought, that she wouldn't wake to see this.

He unb.u.t.toned her pyjama top, trying not to think about what he was doing. He had not relished this moment, and the sight of her torso, still that of a child, did not make him proud of what he was about to do. This could be his younger brother's chest. Ferran had been born the same year as Miranda. They were both still smooth-skinned children. Then he remembered that two hearts beat there, and which blood was in her veins. She was nothing like Ferran, she mustn't be allowed to live.

He mentally rehea.r.s.ed the two swift strikes that would end this.

He raised the knife.

'Ahem, aren't you forgetting someone?'

It was the Doctor, standing firmly in the snow.

'You won't be able to stop me, Doctor,' the Prefect said wearily.

'Not with weapons or fists, no. I don't want to fight, Prefect: I want to talk.'

'This isn't your concern, Doctor,' the Prefect spat.

'It is. You want to kill an innocent '

'No!' the Prefect spat. 'If this creature lives, a lot more than one child will die. Her kind have killed untold numbers. This is not an innocent.'

'She's a girl. She's not killed anyone. Look at her, Zevron is killing a child child really the only way this can end? Is this really how the ruler of a galactic empire acts?' really the only way this can end? Is this really how the ruler of a galactic empire acts?'

The Prefect felt his arm lowering. This was madness. Miranda was just a girl.

The Deputy swept past on the hoverdisc, forcing the Doctor to take a step back.

'You know I'm right,' the Doctor shouted across.

The hoverdisc dived back towards the Doctor, who stood his ground until the last moment. The Doctor soon broke for cover when the Deputy started firing at him.

The Prefect had regrets. The universe just didn't work in the way the Doctor said it did. There had been a time when there was order in the universe, a time when not everything ended in blood and fire. That had been before the Last One's ancestors had spoiled everything. Kill her, he told himself, and those times would return.

Perhaps there had never been order. Just the illusion of order.

Kill her.

He raised the knife again.

Someone barged into him, pus.h.i.+ng him over.

'Barry!' the Doctor's companion shouted.

It was the woman's husband, the fighter. Straddling him, pummelling him. No subtlety, no elegance. But he didn't need those things. He was strong, each punch connected. The Prefect was already blind in one eye, he already could taste his own blood on his lips. The man's fists were large, brutal weapons.

The man was shouting at the Prefect, but the words reaching him were slurred, incoherent, full of profanity. He could guess what the man was saying.

The Prefect tried to find some purchase on the icy ground, but couldn't. He felt his opponent tearing at his hand, tugging his gun away, taking it for himself. The Prefect reached down, tried to stop him, but it was too late. There was a moment of darkness and disorientation. The human had broken his neck, the Prefect thought. He was already dead.

The human loomed over him, the gun in his hand.

The Prefect tensed, his hand closing around a pouch on his belt.

The human hesitated.

And the Prefect's arm swung up, clapped the mindeater to the side of the human's head, then flopped away uselessly.

'Barry, no!' Debbie shouted, at the sound of the shot.

As she reached her husband, she saw something was wrong. He was straddling the Prefect's body, but he was swaying, as if he was the one who had been shot in the head.

Then she saw the metal glisten on his temple and she understood.

He keeled over into the snow. The mindeater fell off, its work done.

And Debbie stood there for a moment, unsure whether or not to cry.

The Doctor darted past her, past the Prefect and Barry. He knelt over Miranda, checked her pulse.

'She's alive!' he called out, lifting her out of the snow.

And the ground around him erupted into plumes of snow and mud and there was a second's delay as the sound of the bullets and the hoverdisc making its pa.s.s caught up with the bullets themselves.

The hoverdisc was already swinging around for a second pa.s.s, the snow parting like a cloud of flies. Debbie could see the Deputy, a gun in one hand, the other gripping the handrail of the hoverdisc.

The Hunters watched the events, safe in a chamber deep within the Prefect's s.h.i.+p.

'This is not going well,' Rum noted to the maidservant as she poured him another drink.

Thelash glared at him, then returned her attention to the holographic globe in the centre of the room.

'Staring at it won't make it any better,' he added. 'Our employer is dead. All we can do now is go home and put in a claim for our money.'

'Shut up. I'm thinking.' She looked up. 'There's no option: it's time to use the bomb we planted on the Doctor.'

'We planted?' the man asked archly. planted?' the man asked archly.

'All right: you you. Hurry, before the Doctor comes for us.'

'It'll kill the Deputy,' Rum objected.

His partner raised her eyebrow.

Rum took the black control box from his pocket and tapped it a couple of times. He held it up, showing his partner the spidery red display. 'OK, OK. Detonation sequence activated. Ten-second countdown. It's done.'

Thelash leaned in, until her nose was practically dipped in the hologram. 'Any second now...'

The Doctor was standing his ground, n.o.bly remaining in front of his fat little friend as the Deputy's hoverdisc swung around for a final attack run. The Doctor looked desperate. They were putting him out of his misery, really. They felt a twinge of regret anyone that had wiped out Mr Gibson and his entire race couldn't be all bad.

'Wait!' Rum squeaked. 'He's not wearing his coat!'

'Where's the coat?' Thelash demanded.

The maidservant bowed. 'Pardon me, sir and madam, but I took the Doctor's coat from him when he and the human woman came on board. I believe it is in the reception chamber. Would you like me to fetch it?'

Rum and Thelash stared at each other.

Neither the Doctor nor the Deputy was looking towards Cooper's Wood, so they didn't see the fireball blossoming. A couple of seconds later, though, they heard it: a crack, then a great rolling, rumbling sound.

The Doctor knew exactly what it was.

The hoverdisc stalled, almost throwing the Deputy. Suddenly he was using both hands to cling to the handrail, trying to keep standing. The disc was still hurling forward, but now it was merely following its momentum it had lost all power.

The Doctor pushed Debbie out of the way, then dived down. The disc sliced the air above his head, but it was falling. Now it hit the ground and tumbled over. The Deputy was flung from it.

What happened next was inevitable and inexorable. The hoverdisc came down on top of its pilot, crus.h.i.+ng him underneath it. The force of impact was enough to churn up the snow and the ground beneath it, to smash the disc in two, and mangle the handrail. Exposed circuitry plopped from the cracks, fizzing and crackling to itself.

The Doctor ran towards the wreckage, keeping back until he was sure it was safe. Something had caught fire, and there was a terrible smell of burning plastic.

The Deputy's legs lay under the pile of sc.r.a.p metal. They could have been crushed, or perhaps only pinned. Either way, the Deputy was clearly in agony, and unable to move.

'Your disc drew its power from your s.p.a.cecraft, didn't it?' the Doctor said softly. 'It's over: you're marooned here, the Prefect is dead. There's nothing left to fight over.'

The Deputy still had a knife in his hand. He waved it at the Doctor, but the effort was almost too much for him.