The Killertrine Storm
Page 17
'Go for the legs, at the joints, and damage the wings if you can. Even the odds,' the Captain shouted. He shook his shoulders to release some tension, checked the weight and balance of his sword, and gritted his teeth. Nothing for it, they had to bring it down.
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'Charge!' Darke roared, and stormed headlong at the beast.
Howling, it reared up on its hind legs, and flicked its muscular tail, swatting Miller and another soldier away as if they were buzzing mosquitoes. No time to worry about them. Darke leapt out of the way, as the dragon's hand-like paws pummelled into the ground, its bony fingers digging into the earth. He took a mighty swing with his sword, aiming for a fleshy area between its thumb and forefinger.
The blade sliced deep, and immediately the beast reared up again, bellowing in pain. The Captain lost grip of his sword, which remained lodged in the wound and was swept away, high out of his reach.
Darke didn't have long to worry about being defenceless, as the abomination plucked him from the ground with its good paw, lifting him towards its open mouth where row upon row of jagged teeth, dripping with saliva, were waiting to tear him to shreds.
On the ground, the remaining men fought ever harder, spurred on by the predicament of their commander, drawing the dragon's focus away from Darke and forcing it to concentrate on fending off their barrage of attacks.
The Captain gasped as the creature's grip tightened around his chest, a crushing pressure that was almost too much to bear.
Without a weapon, there was nothing he could do to help his men, and he watched in horror as another was crushed beneath the dragon's heel.
Then he remembered the small glass tube the Doctor had entrusted to him, the special liquid possessed of
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miraculous properties, which he'd placed in his belt pouch for safe keeping. What was it the Doctor had said? The oil was a poison to the Krillitane, a blessing and a curse. A curse...
Did he have enough faith left in him to trust in some superstitious notion of a curse, a magic potion? The Doctor had considered it powerful enough, and spoke of the liquid's properties as something real, tangible, lethal. With no sword, the Captain needed an alternative weapon. He would put his faith in the Doctor. He had faith in the Doctor.
Darke reached for the leather pouch on his belt, his fingertips brushing against it. The dragon was again lifting him towards its mouth.
He had but moments. Straining, his fingers finally gripped the glass tube, pulled it from the pouch. His face was so close to the yellow fangs...
He threw the tube hard, as hard as he could manage.
The test tube shattered against an enormous canine, splattering oil extract across the monster's gums and tongue, and Darke suddenly found himself falling.
For a moment he blacked out, but the freezing snow against his face brought him round with a start. Darke rolled onto his back and stared up at the dragon. It was blinking, mouth flapping as if it had a bad taste in its mouth. Then it began to twitch and stagger unnaturally, scratching wildly at its mouth, seemingly unaware that it was slashing into its own face with its claws. And all the while its body was changing, hideous, anachronous mutations rippling across its flesh, through its bones,
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as the oil extract aggressively attacked its DNA, forcing random evolutionary changes at an unsustainable rate.
The beast let out an ungodly whine, arched its back, and crashed heavily to the ground, body wracked with convulsions, pustules bubbling across its skin. With one last great shudder, it whimpered and died.
Butcher was losing blood, despite Gertrude's hastily applied dressing, and the trail of crimson they had left in the snow was drawing more Krillitanes towards them.
'Leave me here. I'll be all right,' Butcher mumbled, his voice was hoarse and cracked.
'Don't be such a turnip and carry on walking.' John wasn't having any of that kind of talk.
'I knew we should have stayed in the inn. We could've hidden in the cellar, they'd never have found us,' Gertrude complained, more to blot out the grimmer thoughts that were occupying her mind than in actual belief they would have been safe anywhere.
'We'll be at the wall soon. Someone there will help.' John was breathing heavily, supporting the injured soldier as best he could.
'Keep moving, Gert. They aren't far behind us.'
Gertrude rolled her eyes. 'Are they not? Well that is a shock and a half.
You never know, hopefully we'll bump into the Devil's Huntsman and we can all have a party.'
There was a blur of movement ahead of them, and Gertrude screamed as a Krillitane appeared out of nowhere, then another. In seconds they were surrounded,
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the beasts hissing and closing in around them. They were done for.
'Gert, old girl, I'm only going to say this the once, so don't think I'll be making a habit of it,' John said, as the three of them huddled closer, waiting for the first monster to strike.
'You don't have to say anything, John,' Gertrude interrupted. 'I know.' She smiled warmly at her husband. It didn't happen often, but it melted his old heart every time.
'S'pose not.' He smiled back, oblivious to the growl of the Krillitane nearest to them. It crouched low, ready to feast.
Without warning, a thunderclap exploded above their heads, and a shape flashed across the sky. In the same instant they found themselves drenched in a sticky, wet fluid.
'What in blazes...?' exclaimed John, tentatively examining the oily substance covering his skin. He sucked his finger. Tastes like chicken.'
He looked up to find the beast that had been poised to attack now shuddering, apparently on fire, smoke curling away from its bubbling, boiling flesh. It screamed, an agonising yelp full of fear and pain and shock, and its companions looked on, horrified.
Before John's eyes, the creature evaporated in a blaze of unnatural light, exploding like seed pods bursting open in a meadow, and the remaining beasts fled.
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That got 'em!' Emily shouted.
The Doctor banked the skiff to the left, checking to make sure the trio of humans was now safe. He could see pockets of Krillitanes in the streets below, retreating in panic towards the Cathedral, any advance outwards from the city blocked by the oil spraying furiously from the barrels on the skiff. With the perimeter walls and outlying streets bathed in the oil, they had nowhere else to go. The Doctor's plan was working.
This one's almost empty, and we've only got two more barrels. Is that going to be enough?' Emily shouted above the noise of the skiffs engines. She'd used Henk's blaster to blow a scorched hole into the side of each of the now empty tanks, forcing the pressurised Krillitane Oil to spew out and rain down on the city.
'More than enough,' the Doctor shouted back, satisfied that their task was complete. 'We've covered most of the city, and it looks like any Krillitanes we missed are heading back to their ship.'
'Are we going after them?'
'Only to make sure they leave. All of them.' The Doctor twisted the throttle. The last time he'd seen them, Toch'Lu and the Esteemed Father had been at each other's throats, and the fate of the Earth rested upon which had emerged victorious.
The Doctor set the skiff down, not far from the Chapter House. He noticed three dark shapes in the snow, surrounded by a handful of Krillitanes, who scattered at
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the noise of the approaching craft. Still more Krillitane stragglers rushed past, ignoring the bodies, desperate to reach their ship.
As Emily and the Doctor approached, it became clear that the nearest shape was the broken body of the Esteemed Father. He was dead, neck bent at a sickening angle, his back shattered in the fall. A few metres away, Broken Wing knelt in the snow, clinging t
o Toch'Lu's lifeless remains, grieving for the loss of his Brood Mother, his mate.
'I'm sorry,' said the Doctor quietly. 'I'm so sorry.'
Broken Wing lifted his head, fire in his eyes. 'Her death will not be in vain. The Esteemed Father is defeated. I shall gather my Brood, and return home. We have enough supporters at court to set the Krillitane race upon a new path. The path she wished us to take.'
'Well, so long as that path takes the Krillitanes far away from here, that would be a good start.'
The Doctor and Broken Wing stared long and hard at each other, before the Krillitane climbed painfully to his feet, lifting Toch'Lu tenderly in his arms. He limped towards the frigate's boarding ramp, and didn't look back.
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hey're gone for good, aren't they?' Emily asked, as _ the last of the TKrillitanes boarded their ship and its ramp retracted into the hull.
'Give it nine hundred years or so and they might try their luck, but no need for you to worry about that. It's already been dealt with.'
Emily frowned and glanced at the Doctor, curiously. There was so much about this man that remained unexplained, mysteries that she imagined few would ever get to the bottom of, as if he'd lived a dozen lives and would live a dozen more, finding a universe of excitement in all of them.
A sudden blast of heat broke through her reverie, accompanied by the roar of retro-thrusters. The Krillitane vessel dragged itself into the air, engaging its
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main engines and pointing its nose at the heavens. A blaze of light illuminated the thick cloud cover as the frigate broke through them, and soon the raging thunder of its engines became a distant rumble, then silence. One final sonic boom signified it had reached escape velocity.
That's that, then,' the Doctor sighed, staring into space. He sniffed, and turned to Emily. 'So, what will you do now? Go back to university? Carry on being a big-shot bounty hunter?'
Emily laughed. 'I don't think so. I'm not really cut out for this line of work. Besides, that was Dad's world. Time to make my own way. If nothing else, Henk has left behind a lot of valuable junk. I could probably make a fair bit selling it for scrap. Maybe enough to buy my way back into college.'
'Which leaves us with one knotty little problemo.' The Doctor nodded towards Henk, still bound to the skiffs loading arm, showing no sign of waking.
'Let's call him an unresolved opportunity, shall we? I've had enough of problems.' The young woman smiled, feeling happier than she had done in months.
'He had some pretty high-profile customers in there, you know, and not all of them made it out alive. I reckon he'll have made a few powerful enemies, the Calabrians, the Octulans, and they'll be looking for justice.' The Doctor had a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. 'Who knows, if someone knew where he was, well... They'd be able to demand a pretty high bounty for old Mister Henk.'
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Now they both smiled. She'd be all right, he decided, as they made their way to the city side of the Cathedral.
As they wandered out of the main entrance, they immediately saw the remains of the Krillitane Storm, now little more than a pile of smoking bones.
'Doctor. Emily.'
They both looked towards a voice they recognised.
'Captain Darke!' exclaimed the Doctor, joyfully grabbing the soldier's hand. 'Brilliant. Oh, it's brilliant to see you. Was it you finished off this big fella?'
'Not just me, sir. A lot of good men gave their lives in the battle.
Mind you, some of the men have already started calling me Saint George.' Darke looked embarrassed. 'Doctor, I'm afraid I broke your glass bottle. Was it terribly valuable?'
'Priceless. To the likes of Mister Henk, anyway.' The Doctor replied, looking serious for a moment, but he couldn't keep it up for long and winked at Darke. 'But if it hasn't got a price then how can it be worth anything, eh?'
By late morning, people had begun streaming through the city gates, going back to their homes and businesses. Already some sense of normality had returned. Henk was now safely locked away in the holding cell on Emily's ship, and contact had been made with the Calabrian government, who were understandably very keen to get their hands on him.
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who turned out to be a very nice man after all, and would be perfectly fine in time, despite the months spent under Henk's mental control.
Finally, the Doctor, Emily and Captain Darke arrived in an otherwise deserted alley, ignoring the stinking heap of rubbish nearby.
That's a coincidence. This is exactly the spot one of my Bio-locator Pods malfunctioned. Right where this little blue shed is.'
Emily walked up to the tall blue box with the 'Police' sign across the top.
'Really? Sorry about that. Probably my fault,' said the Doctor, reaching past Emily and unlocking the TARDIS door.
Emily looked on in amazement. 'Don't tell me this box is your ship?'
'What? Leave it alone. It's a lovely old thing.' The Doctor pretended to be hurt. He hated goodbyes, and would have much rather taken his leave when they weren't looking. 'Right, time I was off. Captain, it's been an honour. You're a good man, but take it easy for a bit, yeah? Kick back and put your feet up.'
'Whatever you say. Doctor. Not that I ever understand a word you say, but yes, whatever you say.' Darke bowed and stepped discreetly away as the Doctor turned to Emily.
'And as for you, just get yourself back to that university and learn stuff, and pass your exams and have a brilliant life, and...'
Thanks for everything, Doctor. I'll never forget you,'
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Emily said and, before she could stop herself, she held his face and kissed him tenderly. Darke found he was suddenly fascinated by the rats and their pile of rubbish.
'Yes, and... and that too. Well then, bye then." The Doctor looked flustered, ruffled his hair and grinned broadly. He opened the TARDIS door and ducked inside. A moment later and the lamp on the police box roof began to flash, accompanied by a straining, thumping, thunderous echo, and the strange blue box faded impossibly into nothingness.
'I don't believe it,' Emily whispered.
Darke blinked in astonishment. 'Neither do I. The Doctor's little blue house just disappeared into thin air.'
'No, not that. Look.'
Emily crouched down and picked up a flattened metal disc, all that remained of her malfunctioning Bio-locator Pod, crushed into the ground where the blue box had been standing. She smiled.
Typical.'
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A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
I promised I wouldn't cry, but... Oh, hang on, this isn't an awards ceremony, is it? I mean, who do I think I am, Kate Winslet? Anyway...
Huge thanks to Justin Richards, for giving me this chance to take a spin in the Vortex.
Special mention also to Nicholas Payne, my Historical Adviser, without whose input this novel wouldn't have a shred of historical authenticity. Not that there's a great deal of actual history in it, but what little there is is bang on the money.
I'm also grateful to those whose names I've borrowed to populate this tale. Thanks to Richard Darke for providing the Captain with his very cool surname, and to my good friend Charlie Gee, whose online pseudonym 'Henk Toeclaw' gave me two for the price of one. Anyone 241
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else whose name crops up in the text, you know who you are and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Thanks to Moray, Annie, Paul and everyone else at DWA.
Without you chaps, where would I be now, eh? Keep being brilliant.
To Mum, Dad, Steve, Lisa, Holly, Megan, Rosie, Jack and (at the time of writing) the as yet unnamed fifth element, thanks so much for your love and support.
Finally, and most especially, this book is for my beautif
ul daughter, Emily. (Come on, you didn't think I'd name my guest companion at random, did you? Imagine the brownie points I'll score once Emily is old enough to read this!)
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