Doctor Who: Combat Rock (5 page)

Victoria received the Indoni’s hand decidedly less enthusiastically, both girls exchanging mutual wary glances.

‘Well, I’m glad you’ve finally turned up, Jamie, because we’ve arranged to go on a little trip that promises to be very interesting indeed. I – ‘

‘A trip,’ interrupted Jamie, waking out of his sleepy haze rather quickly. He could tell from the Doctor’s barely subdued excitement that his companion was up to something.

Whenever the Doctor got excited about anything it invariably meant trouble. ‘What have you got us into now, Doctor?’ His exasperation was all too evident. He had been looking forward to spending a few days here in Wina’s company, now that the Doctor had actually pulled a rabbit out of the hat, or even the TARDIS, and brought them somewhere appealing.

‘I would have thought you’d show a little more interest, Jamie!’ the Doctor retorted grumpily, his face falling like a child whose party game is not being appreciated. ‘And especially after we’ve been waiting all night for you. Ah,’ he said, standing up and turning to greet a broad-featured man dressed in stained white T-shirt and jeans who was marching towards their table. ‘Here’s Wemus now.’

Jamie shook hands with the guide warily. As he did so, Wina twined one slender arm around his, which improved his mood considerably. ‘All right, Doctor. Ye’d better tell us what we’re in for now.’

While the Doctor informed the Scot of the details of their imminent expedition to Papul, Victoria watched Wina closely.

The local girl obviously noticed the scrutiny betause she flashed Victoria a ‘back off’ glare that only made Victoria more determined to interrogate her.

‘Do you work in Batu?’ she said with a tight little smile.

Wina smiled back with an exaggerated friendliness that telegraphed her refusal to be intimidated only too well. ‘Yes.’

She evidently wasn’t going to give too much away. But then, Victoria wasn’t going to give up that easily either.

‘Are you from this island?’

Wina looked decidedly wary at this question. She was quiet for a moment and then, obviously coming to a decision, replied: ‘No. From Javee. It is next island west of Batu.’ Her gaze held Victoria’s steadily and there was a defiance in the set of her jaw as if she was ready and willing to argue the point, which Victoria frankly found puzzling.

Wemus overheard the conversation. He spoke to Wina briefly in a native tongue. What he said obviously upset her because he subsequently gave her a placatory grin and held his hands up in an apologetic manner that was bordering on the obsequious.

‘What’s the matter?’ Jamie turned away from the Doctor, noticing the change in Wina’s demeanour.

‘Oh... I sorry,’ said Wemus, smiling, smiling. ‘I say wrong thing to your friend. Not all girls from Javee bad, I very sorry.’

Victoria pounced on this. ‘Girls from Javee are bad? In what way?’

Wina was furious. She turned away abruptly and when Jamie tried to put an arm on her shoulder she shook it off angrily. He pointed a finger at Wemus, angry himself now

‘What was that all about?’ he demanded.

Wemus looked as though he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘I sorry, I sorry.’ he repeated hastily.

‘Many girls from Javee come to Batu to find men with money.’

It was Wina who had spoken, still with her back to them.

‘But I never like that. I just like dancing, dancing.’

The Doctor came forward to try to alleviate the situation.

He took hold of Wina’s hand gallantly. ‘I’m sure Wemus meant no harm, my dear.’ She turned slowly, won over by his charm. His childlike smile coaxed one from her too.

‘Aye, well, he better be careful what he says next time,’

Jamie huffed, eyeing the small guide threateningly.

‘Perhaps Wina would like to accompany us on our little expedition,’ the Doctor continued, releasing her hand and clasping his own two together. The Indoni girl glanced at Jamie, then at the beaming Doctor again.

Jamie, who had still not been convinced up to this point of the need for any expedition, leapt at the idea. ‘Aye, lass.

Would ye no care to join us?’

He could see from the happy smile that flitted across her face that she was only too happy to accept the offer, but before the Indoni girl could answer, a cry interrupted them.

Jamie didn’t understand the language, but the intent was obvious, because a large rotting vegetable followed the shout, both coming from the same direction. It missed his head by inches and splattered on the stucco wall of the restaurant behind him. He gaped as the girl from the nightclub came hurtling after the vegetable, obviously intent on doing him severe harm with her long nails. He caught her by the wrists and held her away from him while Victoria watched in amazement and the Doctor hopped from one foot to another.

She was still wearing the same revealing clothes as the night before and obviously, like Jamie and Wina, had had no sleep, which only served to intensify her rage. She screamed at him in a local tongue, writhing like a snake in his grip.

Wina snapped out of her shock. She advanced on the struggling girl, shouting back in the same dialect.

The Doctor tried to intervene. He stepped towards the furious Indoni, offering a small purple fruit from the table. She finally managed to get free from Jamie’s clutches and smacked the fruit out of the Doctor’s hands. She followed this up by smacking Jamie, hard, across the face. Jamie reeled backwards, at a loss what to do. Wina then smacked Santi, equally as hard, and the two Indoni girls launched into each other, tearing, pulling at each other’s hair, snarling, yelping.

Victoria’s mouth gaped open as she watched.

This time the Doctor was more effective. He pulled at Santi’s skirt from behind until she fell backwards into him, sending them both sprawling in the dirt. Jamie managed to grab a hold of Wina’s arms and clung on manfully until her struggles ceased. Victoria noticed with some embarrassment that a crowd of early-morning tradesmen had gathered, with no little amusement, to watch the spectacle.

The Doctor regained his feet, brushing dust off his baggy checked trousers. Then he bent and helped Santi up, wary of another burst of volatility. But the fight had gone from Santi now. She held onto the Doctor’s hand and her face crumpled.

Whining sobs emerged from her.

‘It looks like you had a very successful night indeed, Jamie.’ Victoria said rather smugly, taking a sip from her tea.

Jamie looked at her in obvious confusion. ‘I just tried to help yon wee lassie, that’s all.’ He looked to Wina for support.

She merely shrugged and turned her head away haughtily.

‘There, there, my dear.’ The Doctor was doing his best kindly uncle act. It wasn’t helping the inconsolable Santi. He frowned, and then brightened as an idea struck him. He withdrew his recorder from a pocket and began tootling imbecilically on it. At first. Santi stared at him incredulously as if he were mad. Then her face split into a broad grin and her eyes lit up with joy.

‘Aye, well, that thing obviously has its uses sometimes, I suppose.’ Jamie commented grudgingly. He approached Santi, who gave him a filthy look. The Doctor put his recorder away.

‘But why did ye attack me, lass?’

Santi looked as if she were in danger of whining again, but resisted the urge. ‘You make Santi’s boyfriend leave her,’ she hissed. ‘Now Santi all alone.’

‘Well, Jamie, it seems like you enjoyed a very busy little Highland fling last night, doesn’t it?’ Victoria was delighted at both her own wit and the look of embarrassment on her companion’s face. She was suddenly struck with inspiration –

and was even more delighted at the mischievous impulse that drove her to ask: ‘Perhaps you can make up for causing so much misery by inviting your
other
friend to accompany us to Papul?’ She resisted looking at Wina as she spoke, but knew the girl would be bristling. Which was, of course, exactly why she had made the invitation.

Jamie looked helpless; the Doctor dithered for a moment, glancing between Santi and Wina, but then his innate chivalry came to the fore and he beamed at Santi.

‘I think that’s a rather splendid idea. Would you care to join us on our little expedition?’

Santi wiped drying tears from her cheeks and looked at these strangers – this very odd bunch of people who had interrupted the flow of her life so dramatically. She thought about the offer for a moment. She thought about Pan. If she stayed here, she would see him every night, and that would only make her feel worse. She saw the amused faces of the slowly dispersing crowd. They would remind her of her humiliating outburst only too often in this small community.

Lastly she looked at Wina. The Indoni’s expression positively dared her to accept the Doctor’s offer.

She smiled.

‘Santi come.’ she said, and there it was. As simple as that.

It was so easy to change your life.

It was hot. Sweating, headache, dry-throat, no-air hot. But then it always was on Baru, apart from the rainy season, and even then the rain only lasted for approximately one hour every day.

It was so hot, he could barely think.

He staggered towards a cafe where a bright-red awning promised some little relief from the evil sun. It looked private enough as well: he was the only customer. He ordered a beer from the Indoni waiter and when the little man had disappeared back inside the dark bowels of the cafe, he took a small device from his pocket and thumbed a stud on the side.

A small screen blinked up, a repeated message rolling across the surface. He grunted softly, but he had been expecting this. It had only ever been a matter of time.

Locate and terminate.

No problem, he grinned to himself and killed the message.

‘You’re late. Sabit the Rabbit’s got a brief for us.’

Pan frowned at his colleague as he entered the stationary cruiser. He swung himself into a cabin seat and lit a cigarette.

He didn’t bother answering Clown, who really didn’t care either way and merely stepped towards the cabin console and flicked the intercom on.

A monitor popped into life and the face of the Indoni President appeared. The image flicked with recorded abstractions, but the voice was clear.

‘Special operations on Papul are urgently required.’ There was no greeting, but then not one of the seven men seated in the sweaty cruiser had expected one. ‘An incident has occurred involving an expedition of tourists,’ the President continued, his moustache lifting slightly as he sniffed. His was a face you could easily dislike, and if Pan had been a stupider man, he would have wondered how such an eminently untrustworthy-looking man as Sabit could ever have been elected President of Indoni. But then Pan was certainly not stupid, and well versed in the corruption of Jenggel’s biggest superpower. Election? Democracy? Not today, thank you.

Something for which Pan was not a little grateful; it helped him fill his boots nicely.

President Sabit’s eyes were black and very small, made to look smaller by the predatory beak of a nose that hooked down towards a lizard mouth. He was every inch the picture of an evil dictator. He was a living cliché; but a very dangerous one, and one Pan and his colleagues had learned not to underestimate. Pan exhaled smoke towards the screen while the rest of his wild bunch listened with casual interest.

The Wild Bunch. The Dogs. The Kill Crew. The Pack.

They went under many names.

There was Clown: the right side of his mouth curled up into a permanent smile by the knife scar that gave him his name. The scholar of the bunch, he tended to distance himself from his colleagues by immersing himself in philosophical texts. Rimless eyeglasses gave him a distinctly demented appearance.

There was Pretty Boy: bisexual, deadly, always wore black lace over his shining black leather; eyes underscored with just a little touch of liner. But call him effeminate and it would be the last thing you ever did. And yes, he
was
pretty. Dyed black hair thick and wavy, cheekbones raw but sleek, a sensuous mouth, and not a scar on him.

There was Bass: light-brown hair slicked back with oil, cigarette tucked behind one ear, always wore dated sleeveless army shirts; quiet, polite, could take a man’s head off with one slice of his Bowie knife.

There was Twist: psychedelia and psychosis were his thang. The least stable of the bunch, thanks to his predilection for every psychoactive drug he could get his fingers on. He was a liability, and he was the only one not to know it. His hair was falling out on top, lank and long around this warning sign of baldness. When he wasn’t babbling incoherently, he took to staring vacantly. But he could kill, so he was still useful. For now.

That left Saw and Grave. Saw was a big monster of a man, bearded, face a mask of scars. One of his eyes had been dislocated by a Burster, and thanks to what was obviously the cruel humour of a plastic surgeon, it was now situated halfway down his cheek. Of course the surgeon had not lived long to enjoy his little joke. This Dog’s weapon of choice was a chainsaw.

Grave was always in black.

‘The expedition was apparently attacked while visiting Akima village,’ Sabit continued. ‘The military will be deployed to suppress any rebel activity in the area. We have heard an account of what happened from the only tourist to survive the attack. You will doubtless hear something of its content, and you will ignore it. The man is suffering from trauma and this has coloured his memory. Mummies do not come to life, and there’s an end to it. This is obviously an elaborate Papul Resistance trick to engage local and maybe offworld support. I have instigated measures to ensure word of this does not spread: I do not want lucrative Papul tourism to suffer as a result of this affair.’

Some of the Dogs sniggered. They had not heard anything about the attack. But Sabit being apparently concerned about

‘mummies coming to life’ was enough to earn him a derisive toss of a cigarette butt that bounced off his face on the screen.

Sabit was continuing to talk on the recorded message and Pan yelled at his colleagues to shut up.