Doctor Who: Combat Rock (16 page)

He was dark-skinned, yes, but taller and lither of frame than the average Indoni. He was dressed in dirty overalls, and wore big, clumpy, metallic boots that made Victoria think of the Frankenstein monster. His head was shaved but for a bedraggled crest of dyed red hair down the centre; one eye was gone, replaced by a metallic probe; his left hand gone too, a glinting, beak-vicious instrument forming a sinister substitute.

Victoria could only see his profile, but that presented her with enough of a view of evil, withered features, the face hollowed by depravity or by prolonged proximity to too much suffering; probably caused by himself, judging by what he was doing to the prisoner. The prisoner was undeniably Papul, and completely naked, shackled so that his feet hung just above the ground. He was groaning quietly now, barely conscious.

Blood formed a sheen on his dark body. His torturer was poking at the Papul’s right eye with the pointed instrument, fishing around in the socket as if trying to eject a recalcitrant pearl from an oyster. Victoria looked for just a moment too long.

She fell back against the wall, sickened.

‘The Krallik... the Krallik will kill you all...’

Victoria realized the mutilated man was still conscious.

His croaked defiance was ignored by the torturer, who continued his grisly work.

He didn’t speak again

Victoria began to slide along the wall back the way she had come, barely registering as she did so that there were other cells that she had missed in the dark, and that faint pleas were issuing from more than one of them.

Shock propelled her around the angle in the corridor and then she was running, heading for the light, for fresh air.

There was the archway, framed by strong daylight – she was pelting madly for it – and there standing waiting for her, his arms stretched out to catch her – Agus.

And he was smiling.

She struggled in his grip, pummelling him frantically but the smile remained, like a fixed thing, a photograph of a smile that would never fade.

‘You think we are monsters now, I suppose?’ he said calmly, holding her still with ease. ‘But what of the man we torture? You think he is a saint? He would cut all our throats if he could. Already many of my men are dead, leaving grieving widows and children to mourn, because of his organization.

An eye for an eye, you might say.’

‘It’s obscene!’ Victoria shrieked, trying one last time to wriggle free.

‘It’s war,’ Agus said, and dragged her across the courtyard towards the officers’ mess.

And this time he locked her in.

Smoke from the burning village was curling through the jungle. Tigus halted the group. When the Doctor tried to ask what the matter was, the guerrilla leader ignored him. Then he was running, apparently forgetting his hostages, galloping along the jungle trail ahead until the foliage swallowed him.

The other guerrillas urged their captives forward from behind.

‘What’s rattled his cage?’ Drew asked. Nobody knew, and even if they did they weren’t going to bother answering the obnoxious offworlder.

The jungle fell away to reveal a large clearing. A village compound had once taken pride of place in the centre of the clearing. Now only a large bonfire and a heap of bodies stuffed in the narrow gateway of the burning wall remained.

Tigus was kneeling beside one of the blistered corpses littered around the outside of the gateway.

The Doctor turned to Wemus and Kepennis who were waiting silently at the fringe of the clearing, the guerrillas guarding them distracted and silent too.

‘What has happened here?’ he asked them. ‘Is this the work of the army again?’

Wemus shrugged unhappily. He was probably wondering what consequences this new atrocity would have for them.

Ussman and Budi were obviously thinking the same, judging from their worried expressions. Santi finally stopped cursing and grumbling. Wina rubbed her bare arms agitatedly, although this time the action had nothing to do with jungle insect irritation. Drew sighed, as if this whole scene were extremely tiresome.

Kepennis answered the Doctor, examining his hands as he did so.

“This Tigus village. This work of mercenary.’

The Doctor advanced towards the smoking, crackling compound. The smell of burning flesh made his eyes run.

He put out a hand to touch the guerrilla’s shoulder. Then turned away from the close-up he was afforded of a woman’s face, a face of ash.

The guerrilla stood, turned to face the Doctor. He was smiling. The Doctor didn’t like the look of that smile. It was a wavering, insubstantial thing that threatened to break at any moment.

Slowly, Tigus withdrew his machete, as if he were intending to clean it. He looked down at it, turned it to let the sunlight bounce from its blade. He smiled up at the Doctor.

‘You see what they do to our people?’ he said quietly. And the Doctor didn’t like the quietness of his voice either. He hung his head in sympathy and feebly tapped the knuckles of both hands together.

‘You see what they
do
?’

Then the Doctor was down on his knees, shoved there by the guerrilla leader, and the machete was sliding under his throat. The Doctor emitted a series of woeful sounds and his eyes rolled, but the blade pressed tighter.

‘Perhaps I kill you all now. We can pretend to Indoni you still live. What we have to lose?’ The crazy smile was still there.

‘Leave him!’ Willa called, and Kepennis was stepping forward, hands raised in an attempt at mediation.

‘Sabit will never believe you – he will want proof they live!’ the guide insisted bravely.

Tigus didn’t even answer. He raised the machete over his head.

‘Why are we back here?’

The Dogs’ cruiser was banking over familiar territory. The smoke from the village they had burned earlier hung in the sky, confusing their view of the ground below.

Pretty Boy repeated his question when Twist failed to respond.

‘Signal came then; weak, but it’s our man.’ The balding, long-haired pilot hunched over an instrument bank, a spliff drooping from his lips, nodding at a faint blip on a radar. ‘He hasn’t sent the positive frequency yet though so...’

‘So we’re wasting our time,’ Pan cut in. It was the first time he had spoken in hours.

‘Course, he could be dead,’ Bass offered, pulling a cigarette from its perch behind one ear and lighting it with a battered Zippo. He crashed the Zippo shut again dramatically.

Pan glared at him with irritation.
You’re too cool for your own
good, maaan.

‘He ain’t dead, Clown was sure. ‘He just ain’t found the target yet.’

Twist flung the cruiser into a sharp loop and they all cursed as personal items dropped and rolled. Smoke filled the view port.

Tigus raised his head as he heard the buzz of the cruiser overhead. The machete paused before its ultimate downward chop. The smile was still there on his face, the lips curling back crazily from his teeth.

The Doctor closed his eyes and hunched his head back into his shoulders. ‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ he moaned and waited for the blow to fall.

A cry came from one of the guerrillas.

Budi was making a break for it.

He had seized the moment, as the guerrillas froze in confusion, their attention distracted by both their leader’s fury and the cruiser in the sky above. The Indoni trader dashed forward, zigzagging across the grass in case one of the guerrillas took a shot at him with a rifle. He was small and thin, and not that substantial a target. If he could make for a clear spot free of smoke maybe he could signal for the cruiser.

It had to belong to the Indoni army, and they were probably searching for them, he thought with shaky logic as he ran, smoke spiralling around him, flames rushing up into the sky ahead, a fierce orange wall of heat.

He was thinking of his old father, back in Batu, probably mithering about his waster of a son to his mother, as he dropped that morning’s load of fish down on the rickety table before settling himself in his favourite chair, while the chickens clucked and squawked outside the little but by the sea and his mother with her wrinkled prune face said nothing, rolling up her sleeves to strip the fish, and Budi could actually
smell
those fish – and he could smell his old father’s feet too as he stretched them out with a satisfied sigh after his long morning out on the choppy sea.

Something ploughed into him from behind. He hit the turf with everything knocked out of him. He forgot his father, his mother, the chickens, even the damn
fish
in sickened despair.

Hands seized his hair from behind, dragged him up in a kneeling position.

He looked up, blinking in fear, and saw Tigus’s face framed against the blue sky, a blue sky momentarily free of smoke, and surely the cruiser which Budi could still hear would appear in the clear space any minute now and would see them all down below.

‘You want this?’ Tigus roared in English so that everyone could understand. ‘Is
this
what you want?’

The machete chopped down at the back of Budi’s exposed neck. The blow left a raw pink slice inches deep that immediately welled with blood. The machete went up again.

Down, with tremendous force. The thunk of flesh giving way to steel.

There was a stunned silence from the group of hostages.

The Doctor, still on his knees, could only stare, appalled, as Budi’s body toppled face forwards into the grass, twitched and was still.

Tigus stood above the corpse, panting.

Santi began to sob.

It was a pitiful, miserable sound, and it carried with it all the meaningless horror of the act the group had witnessed.

Wina had her hands over her mouth as if she would sob too, if she only could remember how... Ussman wobbled forwards a few steps, reaching out for his lost friend, then fell to his knees in grief, closing his eyes, awaiting the same fate to befall him too. Tigus was marching towards the Doctor, the bloodied machete held out as if its appetite was still not sated. Wina’s mouth dropped open in horror, waiting for the Doctor to join Budi outstretched in the grass, leaking red blood into green.

Tigus stood over the Doctor again, breathing hard and fast.

He looked elated, mortified, crazy and sad all at once. He glared at the Doctor as if not sure who or what he was. Then he looked at the red machete, and his hand shook slightly. He wiped it in the grass, suddenly disgusted.

‘You see what they make us do?’ he hissed at the Doctor as he straightened up, his lip trembling. ‘We just want live simple life. Happy life. We spiritual people, want live in peace, have family, grow food.’ His voice was dissolving into shaking rage. He shuddered and wiped his brow, the machete lifting with the action, catching sunlight. The buzz of the circling cruiser became a little louder. He tilted his head to shout at the sky. ‘This is what they have made us! We carry their murder fever in us now. Now we
all
killers.’ He looked down at the Doctor again, and he was crying.

The Doctor stood up. Santi and Wina needed consoling.

Wemus moved to do the honours with Wina as the Doctor had felt sure he would. He himself put an arm around Santi who continued to sob. She pushed him away, and he shrugged helplessly. Behind them, a dull thud.

Kepennis was lying stretched out in the grass. For a sickened moment the Doctor thought one of the guerrillas had chopped him too, but then realized the man was simply in a faint. Tigus prodded him distrustfully with his machete, then gestured to two of his men to drag him back into the jungle.

He gestured at the hostages to move ahead of him, and not one felt like resisting. He turned to look back at the body of his wife, bits of her blowing in the wind, and then followed his captives into the undergrowth.

‘Nothing. I don’t see our man down there.’ Clown was leaning forward to peer through the front view port. The bells on his jester’s hat jingled slightly as he shook his head in irritation.

‘Signal’s dead again,’ Twist said, prodding the radar scanner with his finger, as if that would make it blip into life.

‘S’like he’s playin’ with us. Don’t wanna be found yet.’

‘He’s having that much fun?’ asked Bass.

‘I could have told Sabit this search was useless,’ Clown said, moving back to take his seat again as Twist flipped the fuel boost and tipped the craft westwards. ‘We might as well wait until we hear something concrete. Besides, I’ve got something to attend to in Agat.’

‘What’s that?’ Pretty Boy wanted to know.

‘Just a little chore for Sabit. Something that’ll make him a very happy bunny. You lot can wait for me in Jayapul.’

‘Jayapul!’ Saw said with disgust. ‘We gotta spend the night in that shithole?’ He scratched his beard, dislodging pieces of a fish he’d been eating earlier.

‘Yeah, the whores ain’t so good in Jayapul: said Pan.

‘And you’d know,’ said Clown without smiling.

‘That’s right,’ Pan said, giving the man a broad, broad grin for his part, just to show that he couldn’t be riled. Not by a man, anyway.

Saw was interested. ‘What’s wrong with Jayapul whores?’

‘The Indoni ones look good, but they’re imports, so they cost more,’ he answered, like he was explaining the rules to some card game. ‘They also got lots of diseases. Whereas the Papul women – forget it: they stink. And they ain’t exactly hospitable, either. I mean, you can
make
‘em be friendly, which can be quite interesting, but if you use force you usually got to dispose of ‘em afterwards. Sabit don’t like us leaving messes behind.’

‘You really are disgusting, aren’t you?’ Clown said.

Pan spread his hands in mock indignation. The cruiser was heading north now, buzzing the interminable tree tops, heading for Jayapul. Not one of the Dogs had seen the tragedy unfolding beneath them beside the burning village.

‘Let’s go use some women: Pan said, and lit another cigarette.

He’d been frozen there, unable to pull the curtain.

Had some power exuded by the Krallik locked him there, or was it just his own terror? His own cowardice?