She knew by the short time it ran that the hatch would open easily and she assumed this meant that there would be the same air on the other side of it.
She grasped the release bar, took a deep breath and pushed hard. As the hatch swung open she pulled herself out and dived forward. She rolled lightly onto the deck, vaulting back onto her feet and spinning round in a full circle to find and face her kidnappers. There was no one there. She was alone in what she recognised was another, much larger, airlock. She looked for the control panel. If they were not here then they must be on the other side of the next doorway. She found she was dizzy. She located the control panel and stepped towards it. She was dizzy. Why was she dizzy? She had practised in these conditions; she should not be dizzy.
She staggered a little. Had she practised the spin? She could not quite remember practising the spin. She must have practised the spin. The spin was an obvious thing to practise.
The door controls seemed to have moved further away. She reached for them. Her hand seemed to have moved further way...
When she woke up again she was facing a short, enormously fat man in a battle thong. She was still a little dizzy but there should be time enough to clear her head, she thought, because this short, enormously fat man in a battle thong looked as though he would have trouble doing anything quickly, except eat. Then he leapt at her.
Leela stood between the two squat, fat warriors without bothering to struggle. She could not unbalance them. Any movement she made was countered not by one but by both men working together. They were well trained and disciplined. There would be a time to fight back against them but this was not it. For the moment she wanted them to think she was beaten. For the moment, in fact, she was beaten but that was just for the moment. The three of them stood in a pool of harsh light, unmoving and waiting. Leela assumed they were waiting for them. She tried to peer through the cone of brightness and see into the darkness beyond but it was impossible. She closed her eyes and relaxed, letting herself go limp. She felt the two men bracing slightly to hold her in position. At least they would get tired before she did and there might be some advantage in that.
‘So you are the infamous Leela,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘You are less impressive than I had imagined.’ It was an odd voice: at once harsh and at the same time light, almost musical in tone. ‘Such are the limits of tri-dee I suppose.’
Leela opened her eyes. She stared in the direction the voice seemed to be coming from. It sounded to her as though the speaker was trying to mimic someone else. The woman, if it was a woman, was invisible in the blackness. ‘Show yourself,’
she said. ‘Or are you a sneaking coward like all the others?
Where are you hiding? Show yourself if you are not afraid.’
‘Turn her round slowly,’ the voice said. ‘Let me see her.’
Holding Leela firmly the two warriors shuffled in a ponderous, flat-footed circle. ‘Unimpressive,’ the voice said.
‘From any angle she is unimpressive. No threat that I can see. Disappointing. The agent must be skilful to have turned this one into a figure of note.’
‘Is this why I have been brought here?’ Leela demanded. ‘To be sneered at by someone who cowers in the darkness?’
‘Revive the other one,’ the voice ordered. ‘Bring him here.
Make sure he is uninjured. The fight must be fair or it is nothing.’
Chapter Sixteen
Keefer had ripped the fastenings from his pockets and flicked pieces of them in six opposite directions trying to use the faint sound reflections to build up an image in his mind of the box he assumed he was in: its size, what it was made of, whereabouts he was in relation to the surfaces. He was just beginning to get an idea of it all when the panel that he had arbitrarily designated as the top slid back and the lights came on.
The whole exercise had been a waste of time as it turned out, but he was encouraged to see through almost closed eyes that his mental mapping had been reasonably accurate.
He was being held in an empty storage silo and he had been drifting close to one end of it. He closed his eyes completely and went through his sense-sharpening preparations for combat. He smelled and heard the hakai-warriors he assumed had been sent to guard him: there were three. He smelled and heard the crewman who was operating the remote restraint clamps and he tasted the faint, metallic scent of the hydraulic drive as it snaked the forked arm with its pair of open claws towards him. He listened to the slither and creak of the device and he opened his eyes a fraction and watched as the clamps nudged closer reaching for a hold.
Slowly, imperceptibly he flexed and twisted away from them.
He could not see the crewman but he could tell from the sudden sharp smell of sweat and the convulsive closing and opening again of the clamps as they snatched at him, missed and drew back for another try, that he was not an expert at what he was doing and that he was very tense.
Keefer could only make out two Fat Boy guards looking in at him. Neither had drawn his sabre, preferring it seemed to use both hands to hold onto the edge of the open panel. It was already too late for them to correct that mistake, he thought with grim satisfaction, but the third was probably armed and ready, which would almost certainly be what was making the crewman tense. A weightless Fat Boy waving a razor sharp sabre around would be enough to make anyone nervous.
As he waited unmoving Keefer worked out from smells, sounds, the angle of movement of the remote-controlled arm, exactly where the crewman and the third guard would be positioned. And he watched the remote hydraulic arm edge the clamps closer and closer until the arm itself was finally within reach. Before the clamps could close he grabbed the main arm and heaved himself into motion, propelling his body towards the opening. Instinctively the startled hakai-warriors pushed back from the edge of the panel, at the same time reaching for their sabres. Unlike Keefer they had not planned or calculated their moves. To duck back and pull their sabres both men had to release the holds that had given them a measure of control over their weightlessness. They were immediately uncoordinated and helpless in the killing zone. They did not share Keefer’s natural talent for counterattack. Flapping and sabre waving was all they could manage for the moment and it was no more than a useless gesture of defiance.
Keefer flew through the open panel. A second touch and tug on the hydraulic arm altered his trajectory so that it was directly at the crewman, who was already panicking as he crouched, clutching the grab handles of the machine as if his life depended on it. As Keefer had expected, the third Fat Boy was beside him. He had his sabre drawn and he was using his free hand to brace himself against a bulkhead stanchion.
Bearing down on the crewman Keefer let out a sudden bloodcurdling whoop and then yelled at the top of his lungs,
‘You’re dead you little scuffler!’ The shock of the sudden noise drove the man’s panic to a climax and he let go of the machine and tried to dodge away. Inevitably he got into a struggling tangle with the Fat Boy. The man was flapping and kicking in a vain attempt to escape, and the hakai-warrior had to push him out of the way so that he could get a clear strike at Keefer. The push cost him the control he needed. He had let go of the stanchion. The wild sabre slash cut the crewman almost in half. While the hakai-warrior was trying, through a cloud of blinding blood, to wrench the sabre free of the twitching body, Keefer took a firm grasp of the bulkhead stanchion with his legs and one arm and wrapped the other arm tightly round the struggling Fat Boy’s throat and strangled him.
In the meantime the other two would-be guards had drifted to where they could touch firm surfaces and they were beginning to get themselves under control. Keefer extracted the sabre and launched himself from the bulkhead, pushing off hard with his legs. This trajectory blind-sided one of them and he killed him as he passed with a cut to the throat.
Keefer reached the surface he was aiming for and used it to turn and kick off again. While the remaining hakai-warrior was still trying to turn towards him he severed the man’s
spinal cord with a cut to the base of his neck.
Blood-soaked and abruptly nauseous, Keefer pushed himself back to the control unit of the hydraulic arm. As the clammy feeling of sickness passed he set about detaching the machine from the brackets that had temporarily anchored it in position.
It had all been ridiculously easy, the Doctor thought as he strode through the passageways of the Ultraviolet Explorer, following the scurrying figure of Melly Finbar. They had docked, disembarked and set off to reconnoitre, and so far no one had so much as noticed them never mind challenged them. He was fairly sure he had glimpsed movement ahead at junctions in the passageways but by the time they reached them everything was deserted. Finbar would pause dramatically at such crossing points, peering this way and that before gesturing them forward. To add to the Doctor’s discomfort he found that his normal stride was lengthened and made slightly haphazard by the reduced gravity. He was finding it difficult to match his pace to the smaller man, who was clearly more adept at coping with this pseudo-grav nonsense. A little way behind, Ronick and Sita were having even more difficulty.
‘If you could have whatever you wanted,’ Ronick was grumbling, ‘why would you choose this?’
‘You can get used to anything,’ Sita said.
‘But if you’ve got more money than the gods, you don’t have to. You don’t adapt to the world, the world adapts to you.’
‘You always adapt,’ the Doctor said. ‘You may not realise it’s happening but everyone always adapts. No one person has ever been powerful enough to have any world adapt to them.’ He stopped walking. ‘Finbar?’ he called and the pilot turned. ‘I’m bored with these charades. Let’s get to the gore shall we?’
Finbar hurried back. ‘Get to the gore?’ He looked puzzled.
‘Where are you taking us?’
‘To find this Keefer character you’re looking for.’
‘And how are you doing that exactly? Extra sensory perception? Muddy footprints? A very acute sense of smell perhaps?’
‘I don’t understand.’ Finbar’s puzzled frown deepened and became even less convincing.
The Doctor smiled broadly. ‘I think you do.’ He was tempted to pat the young man on the shoulder and advise him against giving up the day job. ‘Take me to your leader.’
‘My leader?’
‘Your employer, your sponsor, your pay mistress, whatever you want to call her. The woman obviously has some reason for wanting us here so take us to her. Only without all the histrionics, there’s a good chap. They’re not really very convincing.’
‘You still don’t trust me.’ Finbar had changed his expression from puzzlement and now he was doing his best to look hurt and dignified. ‘I might as well leave you to it then.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ronick growled and stumbled over himself to grab Finbar by the front of his coveralls.
‘I can’t think of a single reason why I should try and help someone who doesn’t trust me,’ Finbar said.
‘Yes you can.’ Ronick pulled the skinny pilot close. ‘Now do as the nice man says.’
‘Or what?’ Finbar demanded.
‘Or we’ll ask the naked fat man,’ Sita said, nodding towards the hakai-warrior who was standing at the junction of the passageways.
As they all turned to look the Fat Boy was joined by two more. They all drew their sabres.
Leela looked at the knife they had given her. It looked a lot like the knife that had been taken from her when she was captured but it was not the same. It was exactly the same size and shape, with the same hilt, but it only made it more obvious that: ‘This is not my knife,’ she said.
‘It is an improved version,’ the man with the expressionless face told her. ‘It is lighter, stronger, sharper. You will find it much better to fight with.’
Leela threw it down onto the deck. ‘I have no use for it.’
One of the squat, fat warriors retrieved the knife and offered it to her hilt first. Leela folded her arms and waited to see if her guards would grab her again and force her to stand between them as before.
‘You are a knife fighter,’ the voice from the darkness said.
“That is the best knife you could ever have.’
‘I am a warrior,’ Leela said. ‘I am not a knife fighter.’
‘You fight with a knife.’
‘I fight with my knife. That is not my knife.’
‘If you would prefer another weapon you have only to say what,’ the voice said. ‘I want a good contest, nothing more.’
Leela thought she had more or less located whereabouts the voice was coming from. The position was directly in front of her but higher up, as though the person speaking was on a raised platform. She peered into the darkness, hoping to see some movement that would confirm her guess. ‘What will you be using?’ she asked, taking the proffered knife and hefting it in her hands.
‘Don’t be insolent.’
‘I am not being insolent’ Leela said flatly. ‘I am offering you a duel.’ She tried to remember the exact form of words that were supposed to be used for a challenge. What was it that security man she had not killed had said to the Doctor? Yes, that was it. ‘I am declaring a spot challenge. I name and claim the ground. Right here, right now.’
‘Ridiculous creature,’ the voice said icily. ‘You do not presume to challenge me.’
Leela was sure she saw some alteration, some flicker in the blackness beyond the cone of blinding light. ‘Yes I do,’ she said and flipped the knife over in her hand and threw it at the movement. The knife vanished from her sight and there was a grunt of pain. Around Leela warriors reacted, drawing their sabres and starting towards her from out of the darkness.
‘Stop!’ The woman’s voice was shrill and commanding. ‘Do not touch her!’ The warriors froze in mid-lunge and lowered their sabres.
The harsh cone of light that had isolated Leela lifted and spread, and for the first time she could see her surroundings.
She was bewildered. She was standing in the same Court of Attack where she and the Doctor had faced the High Referee.
It was the same semicircular chamber under a lofty, opaque-glass half dome. The only differences were that in the tall-backed centre seat of the elevated curved tier of nine seats, instead of the High Referee, there was a thin, plainly dressed young woman. She was flanked on either side, not by the Panel of Fight Replay but by fat half-naked warriors. One of the seats was empty and a warrior lay dead in front of her.
Leela could see that her throw had been accurate and only the rapid reflexes and willing sacrifice of her bodyguard had saved the woman from the knife.
‘Impressive,’ the woman said. ‘Perhaps I underestimated you.’
‘How long was I asleep?’ Leela asked.
The man with the expressionless face, who had not moved at all during the brief flurry of action, said, ‘A short time only.’
Leela gestured around. ‘Then this is a copy of the other place.’
‘It is a duplicate.’
‘Why?’
‘That is not a question for you to ask,’ the man said.
Leela scowled at him. ‘There are no questions that are not for me to ask. If a question can be thought of then it can be asked.’ She strode forward and glared up at the woman.
‘What is this for?’
‘It amuses me,’ the woman said. Two squat warriors were struggling to remove the bulky body, manoeuvring it with difficulty along the narrow tier. She paid them no attention at all.
‘Who are you?’ Leela demanded.
The woman ignored the question. She stared into the middle distance. ‘I am waiting,’ she remarked to no one in particular, and the man with the expressionless face hurried towards the door in the flat wall at the back of the semicircular copy courtroom.
As she turned and watched him go Leela was struck by his speed and grace. There was no wasted energy in his actions.
He moved perfectly and precisely and there was something not quite human about it. But
before Leela could think any more about what she was seeing, the man had disappeared through the doorway to be replaced by a familiar figure who had come striding in looking as though this was all familiar and expected. ‘Doctor,’ she exclaimed.
‘Ah, there you are,’ the Doctor said and beamed at her.
Resisting the urge to rush over and embrace him, Leela said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and thought even as she said it that it was a silly question.
‘That would be a silly question,’ the Doctor said, ‘but for the fact that I don’t know.’ He looked up at the woman in the High Referee’s chair. ‘I think I’m here because you sent for me. You are the Lady Hakai I assume?’
‘I am Hakai,’ she said.
‘You have been interfering in my life,’ the Doctor said. ‘And the life of my young companion. Normally I would require an apology but I’m prepared to overlook it this time. Leela? Shall we go?’ He turned towards the doorway, which was immediately blocked by sabre-wielding hakai-warriors.
‘You are here,’ the woman said, ‘to negotiate formal terms for the duel between your fighter and a fighter I control.’
‘I negotiate with you?’
Yes.’
‘Are you a member in good standing of the Guild of Agents?
Only I am a member you see and our policy is to discourage freelance operations. Are you freelance?’
There was a pause. ‘What do you want for your fighter?’
‘What are you offering?’
The woman sighed. Sounding bored she said, ‘Whatever you wish. You have only to name it.’
‘The voice and the hands and the mind. It’s difficult to pretend they are young when they’re not, isn’t it?’ the Doctor said amiably.
‘What are you offering again?’
‘Name it.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you but I’m afraid we just can’t agree. Fight’s off. Perhaps another day, who knows?’ He gestured towards the doorway. ‘Leela? Shall we go?’
Match of the Day Page 25
