Free Doctor Who: Drift by Simon A. Forward Page B

some soldiers doubled up like herself and Kristal, while the lead troops, some distance in front, rode singly.
    Kristal glanced west. The visibility was fair but Leela saw nothing.
    Kristal made a swift motion with one hand though and Leela realised they were slowing, veering around to an eventual halt. Past the trees the ground fell away fairly steeply and the open terrain below looked like a giant thumbprint stamped in the mountain. A gentler hill dropped into the bowl at the north and Kristal‟s gaze was trained there as she hopped from her seat. Leela dismounted to stand beside her.
    Her nose wrinkled and she pulled a strand of hair under her nose for a tentative sniff.
     
    „Smell like a tailpipe, huh?‟ It was the big sergeant tramping up, carrying the large gun with its jingling ribbon of bullets.
    „What is a tailpipe?‟
    „You‟re really quite a girl, you know that?‟
    Leela did not know what to say to that.
    „Ignore him,‟ Kristal advised her, still watching the far hill.
    „Hey, I love that smell of gas. Never get enough.‟
    „Marotta.‟ she spared him a fleeting scowl, „when you‟re done sweet-talking Leela here, take Landers and two of the guys a couple of hundred yards up. Move down slope and hide yourselves in the open down there. Hide yourselves good.‟
    „You got it, Kris - Lieutenant.‟
    „With any luck, we can take our man alive. I‟m sure he‟s the one blew his way out of the parlour window.‟ She closed her eyes and breathed in, long and deep. „He‟s three minutes off from that north ridge. Get moving.‟
    Sergeant Marotta headed off at a trot, collecting his chosen team. Kristal looked back and motioned the others to move up, even as she dropped to her knees. Leela followed her example, and inched closer to the scout‟s side.
    She searched along the crest of the hill. „I do not understand, Kristal. Do you see this man in your mind?‟
    „I see him. And I feel him in the pulse of the land. Besides, he has the Stormcore.‟
    Leela was wary of troubling her friend further, but felt com-pelled: „What is the Stormcore?‟
     
    Ben McKim was the new kid on the block. Just over a year with this outfit, and he‟d figured it was one of the reasons he‟d drawn guard duty on the vehicles back there.
    It was dumb speculation really, because ultimately every outfit was the same: you had to work lights and scenery if you wanted to make centre stage. Now, posted at the house, left behind again, he couldn‟t decide whether he was being given the bum‟s rush or his shot at the Oscar. On the face of it there wouldn‟t be a lot to do here besides more waiting.
     
    Unless some cultist stragglers started rolling in - which was doubtful
    McKim saw his two sharpshooters stepping through the front doorway. He‟d called them in from the perimeter and they‟d probably jogged all the way, although they both had their breathing under good control. Falvi was being funny, wiping his feet.
    Falvi and Barnes, each a head shorter than him. They took to the waiting game like they were on a diet of time and boredom. „Glad you could make it, people. Welcome to the House of the Dead. Find yourselves a room, high as you can go, one each flank of the house. I want every approach covered far as the eye can see.‟
    At least, he added with a look, as far as anyone can see in what passed for weather in the Granite State.
    „You got it, sir,‟ the young man, Falvi, acknowledged and the two of them were vanishing up those stairs like they were keen to start the next round of waiting ASAP.
    He let them go and moved on to the lounge. He‟d seen tidier craters, but his grenadier, Pelham, had shovelled enough trash off a sofa so he could lay back. Eastman kicked the guy‟s boot and stood to attention. McKim signalled her to rest easy.
    He ran through the list, checking it off: snipers up top, three-man patrol stalking the fences, two at the downstairs windows, three - including himself - grabbing some