by Doctor Who
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 juke 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.
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‘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 59
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, sing-song 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?’
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‘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.
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‘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.’
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‘That girl?’ said Doctor. He beamed. ‘Archie, you’ve met my friend Martha!’
‘Yeah,’ said Archie proudly, ‘she was good.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘She’s better than good.’
‘Yeah,’ said Archie. ‘When we killed her she knew to stay dead.’
More than three hours earlier, Martha had 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. Martha felt sick to her stomach.
‘That was murder!’ she said coldly.
‘Yeah!’ said Archibald. But he saw the horror in her eyes and looked quickly away.
‘She ’ad it coming,’ said Dashiel, gruffly. ‘Anyone else wanna be difficult?’
The alien prisoners quavered with fright, none daring to respond.
Dashiel seemed delighted. He growled at them, he jabbed his gun at them, each time getting them to scream.
‘Ha!’ he said. ‘This is good!’
‘Let me kill one, Dash,’ said Jocelyn, coming to his side. ‘Go on!
Archie got to kill one.’
‘You can’t!’ said Martha.
‘I didn’t mean to kill one,’ said Archibald quietly, still looking guilty.
‘Yeah you did!’ said Jocelyn. ‘That was good!’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Archibald, though he still didn’t seem convinced.
Martha saw how he kept glancing at her, keen for her approval.
‘All right,’ said Dashiel. ‘Which one you wanna kill?’
The aliens shrieked with terror as Jocelyn looked them over. She decided on a pale blue male, who wore several watches on his left tentacle.
‘Please,’ said Martha. ‘We’ll cooperate.’
‘There’s nothing to operate,’ said Dashiel, seeming pleased with himself at using such a long word. ‘Get on with it, Joss.’
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Jocelyn grinned as she pulled the trigger and the-pale blue alien vanished in brilliant pink light. Martha didn’t think – she just ran forward and grabbed the gun from Jocelyn’s paws. Startled, Jocelyn let go, fell back, and then quickly took cover behind Dashiel. Martha covered them both with Jocelyn’s gun.
‘What you gonna do?’ snarled Dashiel without any fear. ‘There’s a hundred of us coming.’
‘They’re not coming,’ said Martha. ‘You know you’re on your own.’
She tried to wield the gun like she knew what she was doing with it, though she really didn’t.
‘They are!’ said Dashiel, but she could see the fear in his eyes. He took a step towards her.
‘Don’t do it, Dash,’ said Archie. He stood to Martha’s left, his gun aimed at her. He didn’t look any more confident about using it than she felt about using hers.
‘I don’t want to hurt anybody,’ she said, backing away from them.
Maybe she could get behind the bar, use it as cover. Or, back to the wall, she could circle round, get over to the door in the far corner of the cocktail lounge.
‘No you don’t,’ Dashiel told her as he took another cautious step nearer. ‘Cos you hurt us an’ we ’ave to hurt you more.’
‘Keep back!’ she told him, her voice more shrill than she’d have liked it. ‘I mean it!’
Dashiel did as he was told, his gun still on her, Jocelyn still cowering on the far side of him. Archibald kept looking over at them and back at Martha, and he couldn’t keep his feet still. They were children, thought Martha. Badger-faced children dressed up as pirates. But their game had gone too far.
‘We can talk about this,’ she told them. ‘Like grown-ups.’
Dashiel considered. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and slowly lowered his gun.
And behind him Mrs Wingsworth sauntered into the cocktail lounge, waving a cheery tentacle. ‘Hello, dears!’ she cooed. Her flesh was dark and patchy, showing long-healed scars. But Martha had seen her completely consumed by the disintegrating pink light.
The badgers turned round to stare at her, just as amazed as Martha.
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‘It’s impolite to gawp at someone,’ said Mrs Wingsworth uncomfortably. ‘I expected better from you at least, Martha.’
‘Sorry,’ said Martha. She took a step back, bumped her bum into the bar and stumbled forward. Before she could do anything Archibald had rushed forward and snatched Jocelyn’s gun from her hands.
Martha tried to snatch it back but Archibald moved quickly out of reach. She looked round, but the only thing to hand was the tray of cheese and pineapple sticks.
‘Well,’ grinned Dashiel, raising his gun at her.
‘Wait!’ said Martha, desperate.
‘Yeah, wait,’ said Archibald loyally.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, dear,’ said Mrs Wingsworth. ‘It’s over very quickly.’
‘Shut up!’ said Dashiel. ‘I’m gonna do this.’
‘But I surrender!’ said Martha.
‘Yeah,’ said Archibald.
‘You got to kill someone,’ Dashiel told him. ‘And Joss did that blue one. It’s my turn, innit?’ He aimed the gun.
‘All this bother,’ tutted Mrs Wingsworth.
Martha grabbed the tray behind her, hurled all the cheese and pineapple on sticks at Dashiel and made a break for the door. But as Dashiel swatted at the descending nibbles, Jocelyn pounced from behind him, wrestling Martha to the ground. Martha fought back, biting and kicking where she could, but Jocelyn was tougher and more vicious. Her hairy face was coarse like an old toothbrush as she pinned Martha to the floor.
‘All right!’ admitted Martha, winded.
Jocelyn nodded, smiled and clambered off her.
Martha, prone on the plush carpet, the empty silver tray face down beside her, looked up into Dashiel’s eyes as he stood over her. The gun was pointed in her face. He hesitated, savouring the moment. Martha sat up, leaning on her elbows, refusing to show fear.
‘Go on then,’ she said bitterly.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
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‘Don’t!’ cried Archibald. But Dashiel had already squeezed the trigger.
And Martha grabbed the empty silver tray and held it between her and the gun. Furious pink light hit the tray so hard she nearly let it go, but, despite the heat searing her fingers, she hung on for dear life.
And then the blast of light was over.
She lowered the tray, her hands shaking
from the onslaught, her fingers raw with pain.
‘Drat,’ said Dashiel and raised his gun again. Jocelyn seemed to reach out a paw to stop him, a strange look on her face. He swatted her paw away and Jocelyn lost her balance, toppling over and hitting the floor hard. Steam curled up from her unmoving body.
‘Huh?’ said Dashiel.
‘Your shot, dear,’ said Mrs Wingsworth from over by the door. ‘It bounced off Martha’s shield and hit your friend.’ She tutted again. ‘It was only a glancing blow, but I think it was enough.’
Martha stared at Jocelyn’s dead body, aware now of an acrid, bonfire stink. She looked up at Dashiel. He seemed frozen where he stood. She felt awful for him. She knew she couldn’t wait.
As Dashiel fell to his knees beside Jocelyn’s body, Martha got quickly to her feet and made a dash for the door. She still had the tray in her raw and throbbing hands.
‘Dash,’ she heard Archibald say behind her.
‘Get after ’er,’ said Dashiel quietly.
‘Is Joss –’
‘Get after ’er!’ Dashiel yelled.
Not thinking where she was going or what she had just done, Martha raced through the ballroom towards the staircase. She took the stairs two at a time, but she knew she couldn’t outrun Archibald.
The pirates were wiry, tough and strong, and she had nowhere to escape to. She ran down the corridor knowing it was useless. The door to the engine room was still blocked with the cold scrambled egg, and there was no sign of the Doctor.
She turned round.
Archibald stood at the end of the corridor,
cradling his gun. He pointed it at her, then lowered it again.
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‘Don’t like this,’ he told her.
‘You don’t have to do what he tells you,’ said Martha.
‘They do stuff if I don’t,’ he said, making his way slowly towards her.
‘But you know it isn’t right,’ said Martha. She glanced back at the doorway of cold scrambled egg, hoping against hope that the Doctor would step through it. When she turned to Archibald again he was stood right up close to her, his cat-food breath hot and stinky in her face.
