Doctor Who - New Adventures - 19 - Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore

Author:Jim Mortimore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780426203995
Publisher: London Bridge
Published: 1993-12-14T08:00:00+00:00

‘Ah, well, that was then.’

‘I see.’ The Doctor sat up and looked around. He was sitting on a padded crystal slab in a long, narrow room. The only light source was a dim glow from a corridor beyond the single door, which stood ajar at the far end of the room. There was a body lying just inside the doorway.

‘Bernice,’ he said sternly, ‘sometimes I think you’re quite as bad as Ace.’

‘Yes, well, if I’d left it to you, you’d still be off in the land of nod.’

The Doctor rubbed his head ruefully. ‘How did you get here? Do the Silurians know you’re here? Why are you –’

Bernice held a finger up to her lips and smiled. ‘Makes a change for you not to know all the answers, doesn’t it?’

‘Hm.’ The Doctor jumped abruptly to his feet and twirled his umbrella, Ripped it a couple of inches into the air and caught it again point first, still spinning, on the end of his right index finger.

Bernice frowned. ‘My father used to be able to do that with a football.’

‘It helps me to think. How long have I been unconscious?’

‘A couple of hours.’

127

‘I wonder,’ mused the Doctor, ‘how close we are to the gorge.’

A sudden violent explosion ripped through one wall. The Doctor and Bernice were blown off their feet, sliding the full length of the room to fetch up against, respectively, the door and the Silurian Bernice had rendered unconscious. Smoke and flame washed in through the hole in the wall, followed by a blast of freezing air. Faintly, they could hear the sound of screaming and the thrashing of wings.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, retrieving his hat from the unconscious Silurian’s face and placing it firmly back on his own head. ‘Quite close, then.’

The airship drifted lower, bringing psionic amplifiers to bear on the gorge itself. The Silurian gunners projected their anger into the rock and under their onslaught it began to crumble.

Inside the caves the noise of distant screaming was a disturbing backdrop to the more frightening sound of splitting rock. The medical staff, already inun-dated with more injured soldiers than they could effectively treat, were pelted with boulders as the cave systems began to collapse. In the deep shelters the children were wailing in panic and fear. Nurses did not dare sedate even the worst cases; if a total evacuation was called for, the children could never be moved. One, a tiny, fair-haired little boy, gazed around him in fear, refusing to be calmed. Eventually he ran from the shelter altogether, back into the upper levels of the Complex.

‘Right-o, Corporal. Move out!’

The anti-aircraft gun crept forward on the half-track, nosing out from beneath its camouflaged position at one end of the gorge. The Brigadier was strapped in the firing seat, with a soldier as loader beside him. Twelve high-explosive shells were uncrated beside the gun. Driving the half-track was a corporal named Vess.

The Brigadier ordered another round chambered, took careful bearing through the sighting mechanism, and fired. A thousand feet above, an explosion rippled along the superstructure of the airship.

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