The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang Part 21

'I'd noticed!'

The Peking Homunculus weaved its knife through the air threateningly, but tumbled from the seat as the plane banked on a course change. 'Halt or I fire,' K9 warned.

'No, K9!' the Doctor yelled, but it was too late. A red flash lit up the darkened cabin as K9 tried to get a shot at the Homunculus, but he was sliding downslope as the plane listed and the shot went wild. There was a m.u.f.fled cry from the curtained-off c.o.c.kpit and Woo could smell singed cloth.

Risking a quick look, he saw that the curtain separating the cabin from the c.o.c.kpit was in flames, the pilot reeling woozily behind it.

The Stinson lurched to port as the pilot slumped over the control yoke and Woo slammed painfully into the corrugated wall of the fuselage. The grotesque automaton's perpetual sculpted leer didn't even twitch as he too clattered across the seats.

K9 slid aside, cras.h.i.+ng into the pa.s.senger door with a metallic ringing. The door snapped open and the Doctor flung himself forward, looping his scarf around K9's neck before the mechanical dog could slide out. He started pulling the rest of the scarf off his shoulders as K9's traction system tried to get a grip on the edge of the door.

Woo grabbed the Homunculus by the collar and slammed a fist full into its face. His hand felt like he'd punched a brick wall, and he realized too late that the face was solid wood. He thrust the mechanical killer away from him, barely in time to receive an icy line of pain across his forearm as the Homunculus slashed at him with the knife.

The aircraft continued to tilt into a dive, K9 finally toppling out of the pa.s.senger door just as the Doctor knotted the other end of his scarf around one of the bolted-down seats. The scarf went taut as K9 dropped away from the plane and he was jerked to a halt when the scarf reached its full length.

The leering Homunculus pushed himself forward at Woo again. But he had misjudged the rate at which the plane was diving, and so Woo was able to duck under his leap. The Homunculus thudded into the smouldering curtain which tore loose from its mounting. Sin and curtain fell in a tangled heap and Woo saw his chance. Bracing himself so as not to share a similar fate, he gathered up the struggling bundle before Sin could extricate himself from it, and clambered over the seats towards the door.

The Homunculus' tiny childlike hand tore through a scorched hole in the curtain, holding a silver glint that lashed out at Woo's face. Woo twisted aside, however, and hurled the bundle forward at the very last moment. Sin flung the curtain aside, limbs flailing in an attempt to catch hold of the rim of the door, but he was too far away.

A lightning flash transforming his carved leer into a grimace of primal rage, the Homunculus swept past K9 and vanished into the darkness. Woo held onto the chair as tightly as he could. 'Doctor, I think the pilot's dead!'

'Nonsense; he's just stunned, but he'll be out for hours.

Pull in K9.' The Doctor braced himself against the seats to lever himself back towards the c.o.c.kpit.

'Can you fly?'

'I took lessons from Lindbergh. Someday I'll have to go back and take the part of the course that deals with landing!'

He disappeared into the c.o.c.kpit. Woo kneeled on the seat nearest the door as the Stinson levelled off, and grabbed hold of the taut scarf. The woollen cable disappeared in the cloudy darkness, but Woo could make out the faint red glow of K9's eyes bobbing around in the slipstream several yards below and beyond the Stinson's tailfin. Refusing to let this somewhat bizarre situation faze him, Woo started reeling in the scarf hand over hand.

Sin didn't scream as he fell; he didn't have enough intelligence to be afraid or to control his larynx. Besides, there was nothing for him to be afraid of.

The locket around his neck flickered with chronon discharges, and he vanished, leaving only a ripple of air to mark his fall.

HsienKo opened her eyes as Sin dropped to the ground from a few inches in the air. It had been worth a try, but wasn't too important; Yan Cheh was but one man, and she had three thousand troops here.

However, so long as he could be delayed until the Doctor saw the achievement she was making, he would be harmless.

He didn't even need to die in that instance, as the Doctor himself would never allow him to kill someone who certainly wasn't an enemy. She rose from her place at the desk and went out into the main courtyard.

Romana saw HsienKo and followed curiously, wondering what had happened. That something had gone wrong was obvious, so Romana took that to mean that the Doctor and Woo were still safe. The Black Scorpion leader strode a few paces into the sunlight, pointing to the nearest group of men.

'You! Take a truck and use the Dragon Path to get to the airfield at Jining. A Trimotor will be bringing in the Doctor and Yan Cheh. Bring them both back here unharmed if they're willing. If not; deal with Yan Cheh as necessary, but remember that the Doctor is not to be killed.'

The men bowed and hurried off to fetch their weapons.

Romana slipped round the corner, following discreetly. If she could join them without their knowledge, she could get there in time to tell the Doctor what she had discovered so far. She knew that HsienKo meant him no harm, but she obviously had some sort of plan to exploit his knowledge of time travel.

The more the Doctor knew in advance, the better able they would be to make the right move.

Being so tall and aristocratic, Romana couldn't blend in with them even if she changed her clothes, but there had to be some way...She recalled the arch she had arrived at from the Huangpu. Men on foot could go anywhere, it seemed, but to carry equipment in a vehicle they required a wider Dragon Path, and the arch seemed to be a place where they could get onto one of those limited number of Dragon Paths.

Keeping low, she scuttled across the courtyard and out of the temple complex. The Daizong Archway was a few hundred yards down the street to her right and she hurried towards it. As the Doctor had advised earlier, she didn't run and hoped that her local garb would dissuade any more distant observers from giving her a second glance.

A truck was already emerging from the temple complex as she reached the archway. Fortunately the scalloped edges and moulded stylistic lions and dragons on the archway afforded excellent hand-and footholds. Ducking round the far side of the arch, Romana hastily scrambled up the side of the arch; not an easy job in the cheongsam's pencil-skirt.

Somehow she managed it and flattened herself on top of the arch as the truck approached. She seemed to be spending far too much time hanging from high places lately. The truck pa.s.sed below her, entering the archway, and she dropped the few feet onto the tarpaulin roof that covered the back of it.

It nearly bounced her back off, but she grabbed onto the thin metal supports through the material as she was carried under the arch.

The world twisted.

Romana fell from the roof of the truck, but managed to roll with the fall. She was no longer in the Tai'an street, but on a gra.s.sy field a few yards from a couple of parked biplanes. The truck turned in a tight circle and drew up beside a fuel bowser.

Bruised but mostly uninjured, Romana scrambled to her feet and ducked behind the tail of the nearest biplane.

The leader of the Tong soldiers got out of the truck to join his men. The drone of aircraft engines was already audible, and a distant spindly aeroform that was too rigid to be a bird was descending from the thin clouds. 'Spread out. We don't want them to get away.'

His men scattered, readying their weapons, as the Trimotor swooped down towards the gra.s.s landing field. One of them suddenly pointed behind the leader. 'Look! It's the woman!'

The leader turned and saw Romana break from hiding and run towards the landing aircraft. 'Grab her! HsienKo wants her kept separate from the Doctor.'

Romana frowned, then lunged forward towards the leader.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, but was surprised to discover that she wasn't, strictly speaking, attacking him. She s.n.a.t.c.hed a hand grenade from his belt and pulled the pin before he realized what was happening.

Now he was stuck with one arm around her throat, while she held the grenade at arm's length. He began to wonder just what she was up to. 'If you want me alive, then I suggest you let go of me,' she told him quietly. 'If I let this grenade go, the safety lever will spring off and HsienKo will have to try to work out which pieces are from which of us.'

The leader began to sweat. He couldn't kill her or HsienKo would kill him. To knock her out, he would have to break free and she would be able to run for it in the three seconds before detonation. Of course, he couldn't trust her not to use the grenade on him or his men if he let her go.

He tried to think of a better solution, but none presented itself. He had almost resigned himself to letting her go, when there was a harsh buzzing from one side. One of his men fell to the ground, though there had been no audible shot, and the others looked behind the leader and Romana with mouths agape.

They raised their guns, and the leader had a sudden premonition that they were going to shoot both him and the girl. He shoved her to the ground in his own dive for cover, while a volley of gunfire swept past him. Another man dropped in a red flash, and the leader rolled to one side.

The men weren't shooting at him, however, but at a strange metal beast that was hurtling across the concourse. It must be the General of the Dog-spirits, the leader thought as he took in its flas.h.i.+ng silver body and burning red eyes. A streamer of flame from its mouth knocked another of his men into oblivion. 'Flee!' the leader shouted.

His men didn't need encouragement. They bolted back towards the truck on the dispersal field. Another two of them fell before they reached it, but the leader didn't care about them. Tyres screeching, the truck hurtled off back towards the Dragon Path.

The Doctor was strolling casually round the corner of the parked aircraft even before the burning hiss of K9's gun had stopped. Woo followed, guns at the ready, and found Romana sitting up in the midst of a number of fallen men.

The Doctor looked at the grenade she was holding. 'Aren't you supposed to have a card with the name of the person you're waiting for?'

'I'll try to remember next time.' She looked around sheepishly. 'You don't see the pin for this lying anywhere nearby, do you?'

Li had been puzzled by the cables which festooned the crystalline bones of the mountain, but had no experience on which to base a guess as to their purpose. For a moment, he thought of cutting some, since if the Black Scorpion wanted them intact then he wanted them severed. He didn't know how much current might be flowing through them, however, and decided against risking electrocution.

If the Tong were still maintaining any pretence of affiliation with the Nationalist government, he reasoned, they must have communications equipment somewhere. It would have to be outside, since the mountain itself would block any signals otherwise, and probably fairly high. As a result, he sought not to go deeper into the caves, but to find out what was outside every cave mouth.

Most of them had opened onto little plateaux or promontories with small temples or shrines built on them.

Even the ones without temples at least had a wide bowl for burning offerings of prayer money. Most of the outcropping also had.50 calibre machine guns set into beds of sandbags for defence against aerial attack.

Li was becoming discouraged and began to wonder whether the communications room was back down in the Dai temple when he emerged into the grounds of the two-storey Daiding Inn. The Bridge of the G.o.ds was a little way downslope, but between the tunnel and the bridge was something that interested Li more: the Azure Clouds temple, with a little garden of stretched aerials around it.

He covered the distance to the temple in moments, hoping that no one was looking this way from the Jade Emperor's temple across the cutting in the peak. He slipped inside quickly.

Most of the temple was untouched, but one room was blocked off with a door warning against unauthorized entry.

That could only be the room he wanted. A Tong member in a KMT uniform turned as Li entered the tiny office. Li put two bullets in him at point-blank range before he could even rise from his stool, and the body and stool crashed to the floor. Li sat down in front of the array of high-powered radio equipment. The radio was an American one, but bore the white-on-blue starburst insignia of the KMT. Li wiped the blood from the dials of the complex transmitter and started retuning the dials.

Before long, the random spitting of static cleared into a steady hum. ' Wakizas.h.i.+ Wakizas.h.i.+ calling calling katana katana. Wakizas.h.i.+ Wakizas.h.i.+ calling calling katana katana. Are you receiving, over?'

The town that spread out below the gentle slope was dotted with silver fountains at the heart of small green parks which were scattered around the grey streets. Between the road on which the Doctor, Romana, K9 and Woo stood and the town was a glittering blue expanse of water, with a few fis.h.i.+ng junks plying the lake.

Off to the right, along the north sh.o.r.e, rails scarred their way to a low sprawl of utilitarian buildings. From them streamers of steam and smoke rose and even at this distance the mechanical breathing of engines was audible.

The Doctor hopped up to stand on K9's back and curled his hands in front of one eye. 'Aha! I thought as much!'

'What?'

The Doctor looked at his empty hands. 'I've left my telescope in the TARDIS.' He pointed at the columns of steam and smoke instead. 'There she blows! We can't land on the mountaintop in one of those trimotors, but from what Romy er, Romana says, we can get there by train.'

'Are you mad? Those will be KMT troop trains filled with Tong members.'

'Oh, I think we can keep out of their way.' He grinned. 'I always thought everyone wanted to drive one of those someday.'

Romana shook her head. 'Not quite everyone, Doctor.

Some of us had more practical ambitions.'

'Yes...To sit around counting stars through the Panopticon roof like every other Time Lord.' He turned to Woo. 'Have you any idea how boring near-immortality is? Eh?'

'Ask HsienKo.'

The Dazheng Hall was a huge octagonal structure with a coffered ceiling in the Imperial Palace complex in Mukden.

Like the Forbidden City, but on a smaller scale, it was bounded by several courtyards. To the west was the central courtyard with a long low conference hall. In front of the Dazheng Hall's elaborately gilded main entrance were a row of banner pavilions small offices dating back to the seventeenth century.

The guards that patrolled the courtyards weren't wearing the rough and ready uniforms of the Chinese Nationalists but the earthy garb and steel helmets of the Imperial j.a.panese Army. The blood-red sun emblem of j.a.pan flew from every flagpole.

A private had fetched Major Ryuji Matsu from drafting new training schedules, and now the lithe officer swept into the banner pavilion that had been requisitioned as a communications office. A wall of drably painted metal and complex controls faced him as he entered, but a signals sergeant was on duty too. 'What is it?' He hoped it was important: he and his troops had been stationed here in Manchukuo since it was subdued a few years earlier, and things were getting dull now that the Nationalists had pulled the troops off to fight the Communists in the mountainous regions bordering Mongolia.

Technically there was a front line, with the Twelfth Army pus.h.i.+ng into Shangdong, but consolidation was the main aim for the moment and resistance was minimal.

'A message, sir, on the Intelligence frequency.'

Interesting, Matsu thought. 'Let me hear.'

The signalman operated some of the controls, and a new voice filled the air. ' Wakizas.h.i.+ Wakizas.h.i.+ calling calling katana katana; are you receiving? Over.'

Matsu grabbed the microphone. ' Katana Katana calling calling wakizas.h.i.+ wakizas.h.i.+.

Receiving you strength three. Over.'

'The Black Scorpion have made an incredible discovery, katana katana. It can be ours if we act now. Recommend you send occupation force to ' There was a sudden explosion of static.

Matsu thumped the radio in anger.

'To where? Get onto the consulate in Shanghai and to Nagasaki. Find out if they picked up that transmission, and if so whether they have a bearing on it.'

Li shook the microphone, then realized that he was sitting in almost total silence. Total, apart from a faint snuffling. He turned, raising his gun, to find Sin watching him with glittering eyes. The main power cable to the radio hung loose, while Sin's hand was blackened, the skin of paint blistered.

HsienKo was only half listening to Ying as he explained how long it would take the reactor to reach a multiplication factor of one a self-sustaining reaction. She could hear in her mind the echo of Li's voice speaking about occupation forces.

She waved at Ying to be silent, concentrating on what Sin was seeing. The radio was set not to Kuomintang or even police frequencies, but one of the j.a.panese military frequencies.

She knew that the Great Circle Tong were devious, but to betray their whole people...No, more likely Li was a lone agent. She filed the thought away for the future; it might make useful leverage in any negotiations with either the authorities or the Great Circle. The thought of the j.a.panese in possession of the secrets she had been bequeathed was like a charge of electrical terror through her. 'Kill him, now,' she said aloud.

Everyone in the control chamber looked at her, and she turned to Kwok. 'Get to the Azure Clouds Temple with as many men as you can find. Kill Li!'

Li recalled that gunfire didn't do much against the demonic midget, and backed away as Sin approached with a speed that was astonis.h.i.+ng for such rigid limbs. He had moved back only a couple of steps when he felt the wall of the temple press against his shoulderblades.

Sin continued to advance past the severed power cable, his hydraulic snorts sounding uncomfortably like the distorted giggles of a child pulling the wings off flies. Li wondered if the creature would be susceptible to the hefty kick he used to knock it aside earlier, but its black eyes gave him the uneasy feeling that it remembered, and was waiting for, exactly that move.

The break in the power cable was behind Sin, but it entered the wall by Li's foot. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and lunged forward, holding the end of it like a fencing foil. The tip touched Sin's chest, blowing him back towards the door with a flash and a loud bang.

Not waiting to see how long it would take Sin to recover, Li leapt straight over the sprawled dwarf. He almost wasn't quick enough: Sin rolled to his feet as Li flew past, las.h.i.+ng out with a knife. A line of cold fire sheared across Li's right calf and he had to grab hold of the door to stay upright. Fortunately this meant he could slam the door on Sin.

There was no way for Li to lock the door as he didn't have a key, so he settled for making a limping run back into the cave. Already the pain was beginning to burn and he knew he needed a place to pause and bind the wound. There was a crash behind him. He looked back to see that Sin had exited the Azure Clouds temple and was silhouetted against the cave entrance, wisps of smoke rising from the back of his head.

Fear for his own survival overriding the pain, Li forced himself to stumble deeper into the tunnels.

HsienKo woke to find Ying's face gradually coming into focus. What had happened? She had been talking about how slowly to bring the reactor up to power, then...Ah, yes, she had been linked to Sin. Li had hit Sin with a power cable, and that was it, all she remembered.

'I'm all right,' she muttered with a dry mouth. She pushed Ying away and sat up on the control chamber floor. What had happened to Sin? She closed her eyes, concentrating on matching her brain's alpha rhythms to the frequency of the receiver in Sin's head.

Nothing happened.

She could feel the blood drain from her face very slowly; it felt like toppling very gently into a cold and dark abyss.