Doctor Who: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch Read Free Book Online Page A

up a ramp. At the door a joyboy in leather skintights stood in their way. 'Buying or selling?' he asked.
    'What do you think?'
    The joyboy nodded at the Doctor. 'What about Daddy?'
    'Who knows?' said Kadiatu and walked past.
    The original Ice Maiden had been an R&R stop in Jacksonville - halfway up Olympus Mons. A good place for the grunts to chill out after their duty tours in the chaotic terrain and shrieking winds of the Valles Marineris. And Francine, who'd done two and a half tours with the 31st, had recreated it under the ocean, right down to the puff concrete walls and rusty blast doors.
    'Interesting place for a drink,' said the Doctor.
    'Not here,' said Kadiatu, 'Drinks later, business first.'
    Behind the bar was a big woman, almost as tall as Kadiatu and dressed in the same stylized Ice-Warrior gear as the joyboy outside. 'Tasteless,' said the Doctor.
    'Where's Francine?' Kadiatu asked the woman.
    'Who wants to know?'
    'A friend of the family.'
    'I didn't know that Francine had a family.'
    'That's why you're working the bar,' said Kadiatu, 'and I'm asking the questions.'
    The antechamber round the back had a gun hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier. It was an electric autogun, a cluster of rotating barrels suspended on a gimbled stanchion. An unnecessary mass of pressure leads at the top hissed as the gun tracked Kadiatu and the Doctor around the room. Francine could have installed hidden lasers in the light fittings, but she wanted her visitors to know that they were under her sights. The gun was a fashion statement.
    A door opened in the far wall.
    Kadiatu told the Doctor to stay where he was and went in. Francine was lying with her eyes closed on a divan in the centre of the room.
    'Hallo, Aunty,' said Kadiatu.
    The mobile half of Francine's face formed into a smile.
    'Kadiatu,' she said, 'you got big.'
    Kadiatu knelt down by the divan and put her arms around the old woman. Francine caught hold other braids and playfully shook her head. 'I suppose it was bound to happen,' her hand traced the contours of Kadiatu's face, 'still got your daddy's nose though.'
    The angel Francine.
    Falling from orbit with the thin Martian air screaming across her wings. Terminal dives into the twisting canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthus with a bellyful of tactical nukes. Knitted into the cockpit, her mind blitzed on Dobennan and Heinkel the air turbulence lit up like neon, doing the missions too dumb for the smart weapons.
    Lost it in the east over the Gangis Chasma, shaking apart in the grip of a pop-up cannon - one of those little oversights by military intelligence. Francine fighting all the way down to the dunes, the violet sky whirling around her. Dying amidst her broken wings of carbon fibre.
    It was Kadiatu's father that pulled her out, holding the LZ clear for a swift medevac back to the world. Riding up on the running board, so the story went, bagging Greenies all the way.
    Francine opened white marble eyes and looked at Kadiatu.
    'Who's the man?'
    Rumour said that Francine's eyes were coded into the high ultraviolet and low infrared, nothing in the visible spectrum at all. Kadiatu wondered what it was like living in the world of the invisible.
    'Calls himself the Doctor,' said Kadiatu.
    'He the problem?'
    'No.'
    'Money trouble?'
    Kadiatu told Francine about the deal with Max, about the moneypen gone missing in a park outside the Forbidden City. 'You want this Blondie bagged?' asked Francine. Kadiatu hoped she was joking and said no, she'd take care of that herself. Francine offered some walking-around money and promised to put a trace on the moneypen.
    As Kadiatu was leaving Francine said one more thing. 'You might ask your friend what he needs two hearts for?'

    The Stop
    I'm not going to do that again, thought Benny, whatever it was that I did. She was unwilling to move her head just yet, above her a shaft three metres across vanished upwards into the gloom. It was lit by a single strip of xenon lighting that tinted