Pirate Loop, The (7 page)

'We've also got sausage rolls and scotch eggs,' she told him, 'and those things like baby pizzas.'

'Cor,' said Dashiel and Jocelyn together.

'"Things like baby pizzas"!' said Mrs Wingsworth, aghast.

'What now?!' shouted Dashiel, storming over to her. Mrs Wingsworth threw her tentacles up in front of her wide and orange face. The other tentacled aliens quickly withdrew to the far side of the room, leaving Mrs Wingsworth on her own with Dashiel.

'She didn't mean it!' said Martha quickly. She wasn't sure what she could do to stop him, especially with the tray of cheese and pineapple sticks in her hands.

'You shut up,' Dashiel snapped at her. 'Now,' he said to Mrs Wingsworth, prodding her egg-shaped body with his gun, 'you tell me.
What?'

Mrs Wingsworth seemed to consider her predicament and conclude she had nothing to lose. She visibly relaxed, meeting Dashiel's gaze and holding it.

'I know you can't help it, dear,' she said. 'But you three are just an absolute shambles. Coming aboard like this, all threats and violence. And you don't even know what you're eating! My boys could tell you what made the best blinis – that is what they're called, young woman – before they were fully hatched!'

Dashiel seemed transfixed by the performance. He knew he was being insulted, Martha could see, but he didn't quite understand how. The cheese and pineapple sticks were a brief taste of a life he and his colleagues had never even known. And for all this tentacled alien prisoner taunted him, the insult also gave a tantalising glimpse of a life where you could take this luscious stuff for granted. A life where food had different names.

Martha glanced over at Jocelyn and Archibald. They too were watching avidly, hanging on what Mrs Wingsworth had to say. It was just possible, she thought, that the tentacled alien had made them rethink their pirate ways.

'Yeah,' murmured Jocelyn.

'Yeah,' agreed Archibald hungrily. 'Go on, do it, Dash.'

And Martha suddenly saw that she had got it wrong. They weren't hungry at the thought of Mrs Wingsworth's world of canapés. They were excited because she'd just given them an excuse to kill her.

'Please,' said Martha, taking the tray of cheese and pineapple sticks with her as she went over to Dashiel.

'I said
shut up!'
he snapped at her, his eyes never leaving Mrs Wingsworth.

Mrs Wingsworth did not look away from him. 'It's all right, dear,' she told Martha. 'I'd rather get it over with now than spend any more time with this
riff-raff.'
She smiled with satisfaction, like somehow she'd just won a board game.

Dashiel took a step back from her and raised his gun.

'No!' cried Martha, dropping the tray to one side as she ran forward. Dashiel swiped her away with one paw, sending her sprawling across the floor, on top of the spilt cheese and pineapple sticks. Stunned, she looked up in time to see Dashiel pulling the trigger.

Mrs Wingsworth didn't scream. She stood tall and sure and haughty as the pink light dazzled round her. Martha watched appalled until there was nothing of Mrs Wingsworth left to see.

More than three hours later, the Doctor stood in the same cocktail lounge watching the space where until a moment before Mrs Wingsworth had stood. The air was rich with a stink of roasted lemons, and wisps of ash floated from the ceiling, but only the Doctor seemed in any way bothered about what had just taken place.

'You disintegrated her!' he said, appalled.

'Yeah,' said Dash. 'S'only language these lot unnerstand.'

The Doctor blinked at him. 'You disintegrated her!' he said again.

Dashiel grinned. 'You catch on quick,' he said.

The other Balumin prisoners huddled by the bay window, though not from fear, the Doctor noticed. They really didn't seem to give a stuff that Mrs Wingsworth had just been killed and that it might be any one of them next. He ran a hand through his thick hair, not caring that it probably made it all stick up oddly.

'Right,' he said, addressing the badger pirates. 'Well maybe before anyone else gets hurt we can discuss what it is you lot want. From us, from the
Brilliant,
from life in general if you like.' He grinned at them.

Dash regarded him coolly. 'We gotta mission,' he said.

'That's good,' said the Doctor. 'Something to work towards. I like that.'

Dash nodded but said nothing further. The Doctor could see he was going to need some prompting.

'Your mission wouldn't be to pinch the Brilliant's experimental drive, would it?' he said. The badgers stared at him.

'Yeah,' said Archie.

'No,' said Dash at the same time. He glared at Archie, then said to the Doctor, 'It might be.'

'Figured,' said the Doctor. 'It's what I'd be after, if I was a pirate.'

Dash leered at him. 'We ain't pirates,' he said. 'We're entrepreneurs.'

'Oh right,' said the Doctor. 'Sorry, I always get those two the wrong way round. Pirates are the ones with the suits and pink shirts, aren't they? Anyway. I'm thirsty. Aren't you lot thirsty, what with all the entrepreneur-ing? Is there anywhere round here we can get a drink?' He looked all round him quickly and then made out like he'd only just seen the long bar that stretched down one side of the cocktail lounge. 'Ooh!' he said, making his way over to inspect the menu the machine barman offered him. 'A bar! Brilliant! Watchoo all having?'

A long mirror hung behind the bar. In the reflection, the Doctor could see the badgers watching him uncertainly. He hoped to wrong-foot them, keep their attention on him, stop them killing any more of the Balumin prisoners. 'Come on,' he said when the badgers made no move to name the drinks they wanted. 'It's my round. I'm gonna have a blue one.' He pointed to the branka juice on the menu. 'One of those, please,' he asked the barman.

The machine barman smoothly retrieved a branka fruit from a bowl, extended a shiny blade from its skinny arm and in a blur of quick, precise activity chopped the fruit into tiny pieces. 'You wanna watch this guy at work,' the Doctor told the badgers. 'It's like an art or something.'

Archie came over to join him at the bar, but rather than choosing a drink he prodded the Doctor in the arm with one of his long and jagged claws.

'Ow,' said the Doctor.

'We're
bored
of cocktails,' said Archie, making it sound like a threat. Perhaps, thought the Doctor, they weren't allowed to drink while they were out rampaging. These things had to have a certain discipline, didn't they?

'That's a point,' he said. 'I think I'm bored with them too. Hold the juice, barman.' The machine had long since stopped chopping and now stood perfectly still, poised with the glass of thick, blue liquid in its metal hand. It took the Doctor's command entirely literally, and held on to the glass until someone told it otherwise. Machines, thought the Doctor, could be dim like that.

He turned to Archie. 'So,' he said breezily. 'What else is there that isn't cocktails?'

Archie grinned at him. 'We got canapés,' he said. Sure enough, trays full of elegant finger food were laid out at the other end of the bar, by the bay window.

'Cor,' said the Doctor, 'they do look exciting, don't they?' He leant closer in to Archie for a conspiratorial whisper. 'Which ones do you recommend?'

Archie considered. 'The ones with the sticks,' he said. 'They're good.'

The Doctor scratched at his chin as he nodded, considering this advice. He made his way slowly to the other end of the bar and, looking up to make sure Archie was still watching, took one of the cheese and pineapple sticks. He then tried to put the whole thing in his mouth.

Alarmed, Archie hurried over. 'You don't eat the sticks!' he said.

The Doctor removed the cheese and pineapple stick from his mouth and scrutinised it closely, as if trying to make sense of its workings. If in doubt, he thought, always play it stupid. It put people – and, he hoped, badger-faced pirates – at their ease.

'Like this,' said Archie, grabbing his own cheese and pineapple stick. The Doctor watched him as he nimbly ate the pineapple and then the cheese from around the stick, and then did his best to copy the procedure – careful to make it look like he'd never done this before. If he could put Archie at his ease, make him drop his guard... One chunk of pineapple escaped him, slipped down his chin and slapped into the carpet between his trainers.

'Oops,' said the Doctor. 'It's pretty tricky, this.'

'Yeah,' said Archie, helping himself to another cheese and pineapple stick.

Archie!' growled Dash, still by the door back into the ballroom, still brandishing his heavy gun. 'I said no more. You'll be sick.'

'I don't feel sick,' said Archie.

'Do what Dash says,' growled Joss. The Doctor watched Archie put his cheese and pineapple stick back on the tray behind them. He turned back to say something to Dash, and then a sudden thought struck him. He looked back at the tray, on which the cheese and pineapple sticks were crowded. There was no space to fit any more on the tray. There was no empty space from the two cheese and pineapple sticks he and Archie had eaten.

He glanced up at the robot barman, still at the other end of the bar, still holding the glass of branka juice until someone told it not to. It had not nipped over to top up the cheese and pineapple sticks. The Doctor looked again at the tray and then around it at the fittings on the bar. No, he could discern no transmat technologies or any other clever doodads which might automatically replenish the tray.

'Good, innit?' said Archie.

'Very good,' said the Doctor. 'And no matter what you eat, the food just keeps coming?'

'Yeah,' said Archie. An' we eat a lot.'

'It's true, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth as she walked into the cocktail lounge, brushing past Dash and Joss. 'They've been gorging themselves for hours!'

'You,' snarled Dash, 'get wiv the others.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth in a mocking, singsong voice. Dash and Joss kept their guns trained on her, but didn't seem surprised to see her. Neither, noted the Doctor, did the other Balumin prisoners.

'Er,' said the Doctor. 'I don't mean to be rude, but didn't I see you die?'

'Oh
that,'
said Mrs Wingsworth, batting a tentacle at him like his question were some irksome insect.

'It's annoying,' growled Archie.

'Yes, it is a bit of a nuisance, isn't it?' agreed Mrs Wingsworth. 'Every time they shoot one of us down, we just wake up in our berths. It's an outrage, you know.'

'I can imagine,' said the Doctor, baffled.

'They're really not what we were promised,' Mrs Wingsworth continued. 'We're meant to be first class. And they've given us tiny spaces!' She was talking about the berths, the Doctor realised, not about having been killed.

'She's gotta point,' said Archie. 'I 'ave more room to myself on my ship!'

'Well, it's part of the experience,' said the Doctor. 'Bit of discomfort to sharpen the senses. I'm sorry, it's Mrs Wingsworth isn't it? I didn't know the Balumin had regenerative powers like that.'

'No?' asked Mrs Wingsworth. 'Well, they do say schools are dumbing down, don't they?'

'S'a bit of a swizz, you ask me,' said Archie. 'You kill someone, they should stay killed.'

'Yeah,' agreed Dash, from over by the door.

'That's more a reason why you
shouldn't
kill anyone,' chided the Doctor. 'Isn't it?'

'I'd like to know what my Uncle Cecil would have made of it,' said Mrs Wingsworth airily. 'He was a famous consultant, you know. Treated the Yemayan Ambassador, Mr Sutton. Was quite something at the time. And he was very interested in this sort of thing. I think he even wrote about it.'

'I'll have to look that up,' said the Doctor. 'When I've a spare moment. Though I can probably guess what he concluded.' He looked Mrs Wingsworth up and down quickly, and again she batted him away with a tentacle. 'Speed of recovery like that, you've probably got a nifty gift for remyelinating nerve fibres at a rate of knots. Obvious really, isn't it?'

'If you say so, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth.

'You disintegrate them,' said Archibald slowly. 'And they get better.'

The Doctor grinned. 'That's the gist of it, yeah. Glad you're keeping up. Must be a characteristic of the Balumin. But I hadn't heard of it before.'

'Is there ways to kill them?' asked Joss. 'So they don't come back?'

'No idea,' said the Doctor. 'And I'm not sure I want to find out.'

'You're boring,' said Archie.

'Well maybe I am. But at least I don't go round killing people for no very good reason.'

'They're quite indescribably brutish,' agreed Mrs Wingsworth. 'No manners whatsoever!'

'I'm warning you,' began Dash, angrily.

'Oh, what are you possibly going to threaten me with next, dear?' asked Mrs Wingsworth lightly. 'You stand there with your great big gun and yet we both know you're completely impotent.'

'Hang on, hang on,' said the Doctor, quickly putting himself between Dash and Mrs Wingsworth before things turned ugly again. 'Mrs Wingsworth, with all due respect, that's not really helping. And Dash, you know it does no good to kill her, so let's not waste everyone's time.'

Dash and the other two badgers glowered at him, but since they did not say anything it looked like they took his point. Mrs Wingsworth clearly wasn't used to being talked to like that either, but she too yielded with wounded grace.

'Good,' said the Doctor. 'Now, we're in a bit of a pickle, aren't we?'

He would have elaborated further, got the pirates and the prisoners working together to work out what had happened to the
Brilliant.
But Archie interrupted, muttering something gruffly under his breath.

The Doctor turned to him wearily. 'What is it?' he asked.

'Nothing,' said Archie.

'No, it was definitely something,' said the Doctor. 'Spit it out so everyone can hear.'

Archie glanced at his badger comrades, but they weren't going to help him with this. 'Well,' he told the Doctor, in an embarrassed tone. 'It was jus' different with that girl.'

'That girl?' said Doctor. He beamed. 'Archie, you've met my friend Martha!'

'Yeah,' said Archie proudly. 'She was good.'