Doctor Who: Big Finish - Bernice Summerfield [019] - Nobody's Children (3 Novellas) by Kate Orman & Jonathan Blum & Philip Purser-Hallard

Author:Kate Orman & Jonathan Blum & Philip Purser-Hallard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9781844352814
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2007-08-25T06:09:18+00:00

6

Peter’s screaming and wailing, pulling her towards his dead friends. She’s holding him on her hips, he’s trying to crawl away straight through the air. Every time he gets a look in their direction he curls up again. He wants to see. He doesn’t want to see.

‘No, Peter, you’re not ready for this, this is scary enough as it is and that’ll only make it more scary…’

She’s holding him as he struggles, as she circles the remains of the camp. Every muscle creaking and dried out, sweat caked on, aching from thigh to shoulder on the side carrying Peter. But she’s still moving, somehow, when everyone else has fallen, ‘– gotta help’m –’

‘– no, Peter, it’s too late, they’re like Wolsey, you remember fluffy little Wolsey? But it’s okay, Mummy’s here…’ And why is Mummy here, she asks herself.

The droth have fallen too, their throats slashed where they stood tethered. Now that’s just cruel, cries some hidden part of her, what did they ever do to you? What did any of them ever do? Then she remembers what they’d been feeding them for the past two days, the flesh of their fallen herdmate, and nearly retches. Yesterday she’d given it a passing wry thought about mad droth disease. Today it’s all hitting her, and the whole world feels obscene.

Distance down to zero.

She’s holding Peter tighter than ever, and he’s holding her back now. It’s the one thing more real than the blood surrounding her. There’s no sign of the men who did this. All the way to the horizon no one to be seen. Their camp is out of view, and the dugout hidden round the back of the mesa, they could be hiding anywhere but they’re not showing their faces. They don’t dare.

A sudden high, gasping cry from nowhere in sight. From up top of the mesa. From a woman. Ithva, in grief and shock.

They must have come for Rathklin and spared her too.

‘Ithva!’ shouts Benny, hugging Peter tighter when he flinches at her noise. ‘Down here!’

In an instant the thought bites into her bones, and she’s running towards the bodies even before Ithva can ask.

There’s no sign of Sharintha. They call out, all three of them, in case she’s hiding nearby, but there isn’t even a wind to answer them.

‘Why were we spared?’ Ithva asks hollowly. Her arms hang in the air, reaching reflexively for someone at child-height but finding nothing but empty space, her mind groping blindly the same way.

‘Why were we spared?’

They stand amidst the slaughtered droth, their blood soaked deep into the sand. Not one has been spared.

‘Here,’ says Ithva, finding the small ringed puncture mark below a throat wound. Her training keeping her going. ‘Tranquilliser injection. They sedated them first, then slaughtered them.’

‘Which means they must have brought the tranks here with them.’

Ithva nods. ‘This was planned.’ She leans heavily on the fresh carcass, her free hand holding her head like she’s got to keep it from falling off. ‘In the middle of a nikhol vakarshta.

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