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.You’ve got two minutes, then I come in from the front.And remember, I want them alive.For a while.’‘Sir.’‘All right!’ The under-sergeant raised his voice.‘Disembark!’Enquorian nodded to the three closest men.They moved to join him.Something came arcing through a clear space in the foliage.For a moment Enquorian thought it was a creature of some kind, and tracked it with his blaster.Under-sergeant or not, he didn’t want any alien creature chewing on his face.As it began to fall, he realized that it was some kind of sphere that wobbled as if filled with liquid.The under-sergeant saw it out of the corner of his eye, and turned to face it.His blaster was only half drawn when the object burst across his chest, splattering him and the five men closest to him with a clear liquid.They brushed at it automatically, and their hands came away sticky.Enquorian took a closer look at the thing It looked as if it had been sewn together from leaves.‘What the –?’ one of them said.‘Do you want to surrender now?’ a voice yelled from the distance.The under-sergeant’s impassive metal face had the ability to reflect a range of expressions without ever moving.At the moment, he looked angry.Very angry.Enquorian didn’t think much of the chances of the targets.‘Kill them,’ the under-sergeant growled.‘Last chance,’ the voice called from the jungle.‘Slowly,’ the under-sergeant added.Something else flew through the air towards them.‘Fire!’ the under-sergeant shouted.Enquorian’s finger tightened on the trigger just as he recognized the object as another leafy bundle which had been rolled up and tied with a length of vine.The beam from his blaster painted a line of fire across the jungle.Leaves lashed backwards, screaming The bundle exploded in flames.Cinders flew 91away from it.Cinders that turned in mid-air and flew straight for the under-sergeant and the four men who had been splashed with the liquid.Cinders that buzzed malevolently.The under-sergeant screamed as the first flying creature landed on his neck.A fountain of blood sprayed into the air, turning his scream into a choked cough.The other men were screaming as well as the creatures burrowed into their flesh, lured by the sticky bait.Without thinking, Enquorian turned his blaster on them.After a moment’s hesitation, so did the three Landsknechte standing beside him.Within moments, all that was left of the under-sergeant and the four men was a charred area of ground.‘Goddess!’ one of Enquorian’s men breathed.Enquorian looked round.‘There are still two targets out there,’ he said, his voice shaking.‘Let’s go get them.’From their position high in the branches of a tree, Bernice and the Doctor watched as the Landsknechte fanned out and moved off through the jungle.‘We’ll give them a few minutes to get going,’ the Doctor said, ‘and then we’ll go in the opposite direction.’‘Can’t we take their flitter?’ Bernice asked, crushing a leaf in her hand and wiping it across her face.The Doctor had picked a number of them from a certain shrub, sniffed them and suggested that they might cover up her scent.When she had asked him why he wasn’t doing the same, he had said that Time Lords didn’t have a scent.‘They don’t appear to have left a guard on it,’ he said after a moment.‘But they are professionals.’‘They didn’t look very professional to me.’He tutted.‘They weren’t expecting us to fight back,’ he said.‘They anticipated frightened rabbits of targets who would keep running until shot.And they didn’t expect us to make use of the local flora and fauna, either.’He craned his neck to try and get a better view of the flitter.‘No,’ he said finally, ‘either it’s booby-trapped, or it’s disabled in some way.I think my plan is better.’‘All I know about your plan,’ Bernice snapped, ‘is that it involves us moving off in another direction.Is that all there is, or do you want to elucidate?’‘Well, it occurs to me that we’re stuck on a military-controlled planet, thousands of kilometres from the nearest spaceport, with no friends and no knowledge of where the TARDIS is.’Bernice closed her eyes and rested her head against the trunk of the tree.‘So,’ he continued, regardless, ‘our first priority is to get off-planet without help.’92‘You make it sound so easy,’ she sighed.‘So we need to confuse things enough around here that they forget about us long enough for us to steal transport of some sort.’‘Of course.How?’‘We sabotage the barrier between this segment and the next.They’re bound to send out a repair team.With luck, we can hijack whatever vehicle they have.’She opened her eyes and gazed at him in wonderment.‘Never say die?’He grinned.‘Never say die.’She led the way down the nearest vine towards the ground.There was a heart-stopping moment halfway down when a moss-covered creature with a mouthful of needle-like teeth slid from a hole in the tree-trunk as she was passing by, but it ignored her and moved off up the tree.‘Can I breathe now?’ she whispered.‘I told you the leaves would work,’ he hissed back.She shook her head.He was always so irritatingly sure of himself ‘You remember that restaurant on Feiss Haven?’ she hissed.‘Yes.What about it.’‘You told me that the spiny hairballs in sour blood sauce were perfectly edible.I spent three days trying to bring up everything that I had ever eaten.’There was silence for a few moments.‘I think the sauce may have been slightly undercooked,’ he admitted finally.It took ten minutes to get down to the ground.Bernice stood there for a moment, regaining her equilibrium.A dartlike predator flickered past her ear.‘How did you know about the leaves?’ she said as the Doctor dropped lightly to the ground beside her.‘Experience,’ he said.‘I’ve spent several lifetimes escaping through forests.I’ve learned all the tricks.’‘All of them?’‘Well, most of them.’ He walked off ‘Some of them, at least,’ he added.Bernice shrugged, looked around, and followed.His voice came floating back over his shoulder [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]