Doctor Who: Imperial Moon by Christopher Bulis

Author:Christopher Bulis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538011
Publisher: BBC Worldwide Americas
Published: 2000-08-06T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The Survivor

The lookout stationed at the Draco’s upper porthole saw the ragged figure break out from under the trees and head for the ship, moving in leaps and bounds that only Earthly muscles were capable of on the Moon. With a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, the man fell upon the ring of creatures that surrounded the ship.

He’d emptied his revolver into the nameless things before they could react to this unexpected onslaught, and then began to hack and slash those that still stood before him. Talon and tentacle alike fell before those great double-handed swings driven by that wild excess of energy that comes to those utterly determined to prevail.

The astonished lookout found his voice and shouted down the speaking tube: ‘Open the hatch – it’s Stanton!’

The Draco’s lower hatch cranked open. Two men crouched in the airlock began firing into the horde that surrounded them.

Under cover of their fire Stanton made a final leap, scrambled up the ramp and tumbled into the ship.

The hatch clanged shut and the guards stared down in amazement at the figure of their shipmate as he lay gasping for breath on the deck. It hardly seemed possible that it could be the same man who had set out for the central mountains barely two days earlier. His hair was matted and his clothes hung in tatters about him, ingrained with dirt and stained with the fresh blood and sap of the things he had killed.

‘What happened to you, mate?’ one asked, as they tried to help him to his feet. ‘Where the others?’

Stanton shrugged off their hands and hauled himself upright so that they saw his face for the first time. It was Henry Stanton’s, more haggard but unmistakable, yet it was also changed. It had the mask-like quality that lingers after every shade of terror has been played across a face so many times that the muscles have been numbed. But in stark contrast to this blankness were his eyes. There was a fire within them that had never been there before.

‘The others...’ he said, but his voice was no more than a dry rasp and his words broke into a hacking cough.

He hauled his way up the ladder to the hold, and the bay where the rum cask was kept in its locked frame. With the butt of his rifle he smashed the lock, turned on the tap and sucked the spirit straight from the spigot. Only when he had had his fill did he turn to the two men who had followed him. ‘They’re dead.’ he said.

‘Green, the bosun, all of them?’

‘You heard! And unless you want to end up like ’em, you’ll tell Cartwright to ready the ship. There are things out there that can eat us whole. But I can fly us out.’

‘It ain’t as easy as that, Henry. Like for a start, Cartwright’s dead... and the lieutenant, and the surgeon and navigator.

Maitland’s in charge.’

‘An engineer?’

‘He’s all that’s left.’

Henry shook his head and for a moment a terrible smile played about his lips.

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