by Nick Walters
Peri could only watch as the Doctor stepped towards the two Valethske, showing them a façade of mild unconcern, his raised eyebrows and chin seeming to say, ‘And what are you doing here?’ - but Peri could see his hands clasped behind his back, fingers twisting nervously together.
The lead Valethske took a loping stride to come face to face with the Doctor. To his credit, he didn’t flinch from the beast, which was a good twelve inches taller than him.
Another Valethske moved into the chamber. This one was slightly shorter and had a flash of white fur across its left ear. It was aiming a bulky, square-ended weapon at the Doctor’s chest. Behind it, several more of the creatures fanned out around the doorway, levelling an assortment of weapons at them.
The lead Valethske licked its lips and raised a stubby silver pistol that Peri recognised all too well. She realised that this creature was the same one that had shot her, back on the planetoid. It had the same hungry gleam in its eyes. And the same musky, animal stench.
The Doctor held up his hands. ‘Don’t shoot! I have some information that is of vital importance to you.’
Every Valethske in the chamber hissed and cackled in unmistakable laughter, but kept their guns trained on their captives.
‘I have, really!’ said the Doctor, indignant. ‘You’ll have come across a blue box, somewhere on your ship.’
The Valethske snarled and shoved the Doctor in the chest.
He staggered backwards, winded.
‘Silence, prey! I know nothing of any blue box.’
Its voice was at once gruff and sibilant, dripping with evil cunning.
‘You must have found it,’ muttered the Doctor, regaining his composure. ‘Listen to me, it’s very important!’
‘Are there any more of you?’ snarled the Valethske.
The Doctor shook his head, glancing back at Peri and Taiana, without seeming to see them. ‘No, ah, this is it. We’re the only people on the planet.’
The Valethske cuffed him across the face. ‘You lie, but that does not matter. We have already found and snared two others.’ Its yellow eyes met Peri’s, burning with belligerent glee.
And then, with a casual flick of its hand, it fired. There was a sharp hiss, a soft thud, and the Doctor fell backwards, clutching his chest.
‘Doctor!’ cried Peri.
Another hiss, close to Peri’s side - and Taiana fell, sliding down the smooth surface of the pod.
The Valethske closed in upon Peri. There was recognition in its eyes. ‘You have come far, prey - through space and time.
But you will never escape us.’
Peri stood her ground as she had done in the desert.
‘Gonna try.’
Peri held its gaze, pouring all the hate and defiance she could muster from her eyes. Inside her, a small hope flickered: It’s only going to stun you and freeze you. You might be rescued again... but one look at the Doctor out cold crushed that hope. The Valethske held all the cards.
The Valethske levelled its weapon and fired. Peri felt a dull thump in her chest, a heavy feeling spread out through her body and then nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Bargain
Captain John Melrose had walked himself to the point of exhaustion, until he dropped and passed out under the unforgiving sun. He was woken by a raging thirst and by the prodding of a trio of Gardeners. He leapt to his feet, scrambling around their stilt-like legs, grabbing his gun and swinging it up to cover the towering plant-creatures. They recoiled, appendages briefly flailing, and then walked slowly and serenely away. Curious. They seemed to recognise the gun, realise that it could cause them harm.
Uninterested in the implications of this, Melrose wandered further through the gardens, dogged by his thirst, dazed by the endless uniformity of the terrain. He longed to see an untended field, undergrowth running wild, but it was all neatly tended flowerbeds and orchards, partitioned by hedges and grass avenues. He was hopelessly lost. There was nothing on which to get a bearing. He couldn’t even see the giant tree towards which they had been headed until...
Until he’d cracked.
Melrose dropped to his knees, fingers clawing at his overheated head, remembering how he had acted. He saw the Doctor’s face, serious and calm. Lt Meharg, her young face a mask of distress. The others, their appalled faces shutting him out. Controlling himself with an effort, he realised that he couldn’t go back to the others, couldn’t face Lt Meharg again.
He recalled her eyes, wide with - with pity. He’d behaved in an unsoldierly manner in front of a subordinate. How could he ever command her respect again? By his own actions he had excommunicated himself from the way of the soldier. He was fit only for early retirement on medical grounds. As for the Doctor and the others, he didn’t care about them. Bunch of misfits, as far as he could tell. He felt a spark of lust as he remembered the curvaceous body of the girl, Peri, and her bold, spirited nature.
The kind of woman he could imagine wanting to get to know, after the end of his tour of duty.
But the certitudes of military life were shattered now. If the Doctor was right, five hundred years lay between what he used to be and what he had become. The Valethske had taken him out of his own life and now he was only a reprise, a footnote. Far better that he had fallen fighting them than to be alive now, scrambling lost around an alien world, dying of dehydration under a burning alien sun, with no plan, no chain of command, no hope.
Melrose stumbled on weakening legs through the gardens, head swimming with the delirium of thirst. By blind luck, he stumbled upon a canal, its mirror-still surface almost level with the grass banks. He slaked his thirst, splashing water over his whole body. Afterwards, he followed the canal through the endless gardens, figuring that it might lead to a centre of civilisation and therefore a way off the planet. Dusk fell as he walked, but Melrose was blind to the beauty of the starlit night and the softly glowing blooms. He walked himself into a reverie in which he dislocated himself from his actions and was born again into the garden-world, his dishonour erased. At times he would surface from this trance and face the reality, and sit sobbing for a while, clutching the Valethske weapon to his chest as if it was the thing most dear to his heart.
It was as he sat gazing mournfully at the constellations reflected in the dark surface of the water that he became aware of a sound. A distant rumble, similar to thunder but more controlled. The sound of engines.
Getting slowly to his feet, he swivelled round, peering into the night. There, on the horizon, he saw a mountain settling itself on a pillar of fire.
A ship. No, not any ship - the Valethske mothership, huge and dark and jagged, a giant inverted cone.
He smiled. Now there was hope - one hope. Revenge. What remained of his soldier’s instinct told him the Valethske would be after their stolen shuttle, despite the Doctor’s assurances that he had disabled its flight computer. He cursed as he remembered that the Doctor was still in possession of the craft’s control chip.
A small glitch in the plan that was forming slowly in the back of his mind.
Melrose felt much better. More like a soldier again, now he had something real to fight. It didn’t really bother him that he’d probably die in the attempt. It didn’t seem to matter any more.
Peri rolled nearer the warmth, not wanting to wake, wake and remember, wake and confront reality. Heat played across her body, comforting, reassuring. Like those big Thanksgiving fires back when she was a kid... don’t get too close...she could see the pulsing orange blur of flames through her eyelids, and smell oily, acrid smoke. Her eyes and mouth felt dried up and the side of her that faced away from the source of the heat felt cold and clammy. In the distance, she could hear clanking, rumbling machinery, sudden metallic crashes, and something that sounded like dogs yelping.
Beneath her, earth. Dirt and dust and grit, sticking to her stomach and thighs where sweat had broken out in response to the crackling flames.
In a surge of movement, sudden panic jerking her t
o full wakefulness, Pert sat up and opened her eyes. To her right a substantial bonfire roared, its orange brightness bruising her eyes. Fresh sweat broke out on her forehead and she scrambled away from the flames, her bare feet and buttocks scraping on the loose dirt.
She realised with a shock that she was naked.
Instinctively she drew her legs up to her breasts, wrapping her arms around her knees. She looked around for her clothes, but all she could make out was bonfires and the patches of darkness between them. She tried to work out where she was and how she had got here but her mind was a tumble of faces and places. She knew terrible things had happened to her but her mind shied away from the details. Gradually she began to make sense of her surroundings. She was in a steep-sided earth-walled pit, illuminated by bonfires in various stages of conflagration. Far above her was some sort of ceiling, criss-crossed with walkways. There were cages hanging from chains, spinning slowly in the rising heat, their bars reflecting the orange light of the fires. Where was - where was the Doctor? In a flash she remembered him confronting the Valethske, his body slumping to the floor. She remembered the Garden in all its bewildering beauty.
Nothing like this hellish place. Had to be the Valethske ship.
After the Doctor had gone to all that trouble to rescue her...
He shouldn’t have bothered. Peri got the feeling that she was always going to have ended up back here.
She stood up, swaying on unsteady legs. A short distance away she caught sight of Athon, sitting with his head in his hands. As far as she could tell he was naked too. By his side lay Taiana, flat on her back, hands lying palms upwards as if relaxing in a yoga exercise, her long body like an ebony statue in the flickering light.
Peri moved towards them, looking around fearfully for any sign of Valethske. Her foot nudged something smooth and round. A human skull, jaw hanging open in a gaping parody of a grin, eye sockets as black and deep as despair.
She grimaced and backed away, realising with revulsion that the whole area was littered with human bones and scraps of clothing. She swallowed, her dry throat rasping. So this was it. Any moment now, Valethske would leap out of the flickering shadows, bear her to the ground and sink their teeth and claws into her and it would all be over. She clenched her fists, gritted her teeth and screamed at herself mentally to get a grip. No good if she gave in to fear. No good if she stopped remembering who she was. She was Peri Brown and she would never ever be mere fodder for anything.
Athon looked up bleakly as she approached, his eyes red from weeping, trails of tears staining his face. There was no animation in his expression, not the slightest indication that he’d noticed her nudity. She almost wished he’d letch at her - at least that would mean he was himself.
She crouched down beside him, putting a hand on his broad shoulder. ‘Athon, what happened? How did you get here?’
He looked at her with blinking, defeated eyes.
‘Where’s Lornay?’
At this he looked away, mouth twisting in a grimace of pain. ‘They... they killed her.’
‘Oh,’ said Peri, trying to think of something to say. But there was nothing she could say. ‘I’m sorry.’
She didn’t ask him what the Valethske had done to Lornay.
She really didn’t want to know.
She went to move around his cowed bulk to see if Taiana had woken, but a restraining hand held her back.
Athon fixed her with a pleading, terrified stare. She was reminded of news reports of children in wartime, their faces too young to be shattered by grief, too smooth to be worn down by horror, their eyes wide and full of fearful incomprehension, and perhaps a dawning realisation of atrocity.
His big hands gripped her forearms, fingertips pressing painfully down. ‘Why? Why are they doing this to us?’ His voice was distant, child-like, as if it was coming from the point within himself to which he had retreated.
Peri licked her cracked lips. Her head was throbbing, maybe an after-effect of the sedative the Valethske had used. Or maybe they’d kicked her about a bit. Why? Because they’re gonna kill us and eat us, she wanted to yell at him. But instead she smiled as best she could, gently disengaged herself and patted his hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna find the Doctor, find the TARDIS and get out of here. We’re gonna be OK.’
Athon’s mouth twitched in a brief smile, though his eyes remained haunted beneath his tangled fringe. Not totally convinced by her words, then.
But then neither was Peri herself. For all she knew, the Doctor could already be dead. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, banishing such defeatist thoughts. Then she went over to Taiana, who was just coming round, eyes golden slits behind purple-black lids.
A sound from above distracted Peri and she peered upwards through the inverted forest of chains, cages and walkways. She could just make out two long-eared figures, staring down at them. There was something in their stance that struck Peri as odd. They weren’t regarding herself, Athon and Taiana with the usual Valethske bloodlust, but something else -
an air of expectation, almost of impatience. What did they want of them?
One of the watching hunters moved, leaning over the edge of the walkway. Its companion turned towards it, the low growling tones of its voice echoing over the pit.
Peri prepared to run - then realised the Valethske were staying put. There was no sound of running feet, no yelps of anticipation. No hunters skittered from the tunnel entrances that ringed the pit.
She turned back to Taiana, who had come fully to her senses and was looking around with a dazed expression.
‘Where are we?’ she asked. Her voice was even duller and deader than usual.
‘On the Valethske ship,’ Peri replied. ‘Don’t think much of their economy class accommodation.’
Taiana didn’t respond to the joke - or perhaps she just hadn’t understood it. ‘At least they haven’t frozen us.’ Taiana’s eyes widened as she realised she was naked, her hands running up and down her torso. ‘What’s going on?’
Several possibilities flitted through Peri’s mind, none of them particularly pleasant. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they enjoy ogling naked people.’
She turned away, eyes following the patterns of the flames.
With a pang of dismay, she saw the arm of her white shirt poking from the flames, as if flung out to save itself from immolation. The bastards had burned their clothes! Peri felt even more naked now Her clothes were the last connection with the TARDIS, with the Doctor, with her life. Without them, she was cut off, adrift - and to the Valethske, just another walking lump of meat.
Then she saw something nearby, something black and shiny. A shoe.
She scrambled over and picked it up. It was beautiful, its marbled patent-leather upper glittering in the firelight. On an impulse Peri brought it up to her nose and sniffed, getting a faint odour of perfume mingled with the biscuity tang of feet.
Much too big for her - easily a size ten or eleven, which meant that it was probably Eknuri.
Soft footfalls in the dirt behind her. She turned to see Athon standing there, the orange light from the fires making him look like a bronze statue. Her eyes flicked down, then up to his face.
His gaze was fixed on the shoe that Peri still clutched in one hand. She raised it slowly. ‘One of yours?’
He shook his head, his bottom lip beginning to tremble. He spoke, the words forcing themselves from him, each syllable a grunt of pain. ‘No - was - ser-Seryn’s.’
Peri remembered the black-haired, haughty Eknuri woman. Her vivid green eyes. Her calling the TARDIS ‘quaint’. All the other Eknuri - superior beings, every one, the pinnacle of human achievement.
Nothing but bones on the ground and torn scraps of clothing now.
Peri started to cry at the pointless loss of life. She tried to control it but she couldn’t.
Athon stumbled towards her, also weeping. He took the shoe from her and held it up to his face, muttering Seryn’s name over and over i
n a tortured lament.
Peri reached out and embraced him and they held each other, their bodies meeting, her head resting against his broad tattooed chest, his arms enfolding her. It didn’t matter now what he had done to her, it didn’t matter what she thought of him.
They were two human beings in pain and they needed each other.
Veek was beginning to lose her patience. ‘We’ve tried this before,’ she said, glaring at Ruvis, who was intent on the prey in the pit below. ‘It never works.’
Ruvis’s jaw whirred loudly, but it couldn’t hide the smugness in his voice. ‘This time, I’m more certain of success. These specimens are in their prime. Look at the pale-skinned female’s pelvis! Built for child-bearing.’
‘Look,’ said Veek, trying to sound reasonable. ‘Even if we do get Them to mate, humans gestate for nine months. And their young take well over a decade to reach maturity! It’s too slow, Ruvis - far easier to hunt mature prey? And more in keeping with our nature, she thought.
Ruvis tore his eyes away from the humans. ‘If we could establish a breeding stock, we wouldn’t need to hunt. We’d have a stable population of prey and we could devote all our energies to the Great Mission.’
That was all very well for those who couldn’t hunt any more. Ruvis, you were a hunter once - you must know that the hunt is life itself!’
Ruvis’s old eyes glittered in the light of the fires below.
‘Hunt Marshal Veek, you knew when you volunteered what this mission would entail. You knew the priorities.’
Veek tensed. She’d forgotten for a moment that Ruvis was as dedicated to the Great Mission as the Vale Commander.
She’d forgotten that as far as she knew, she was the only dissenter. She had believed in their goal, centuries ago when they had set out - but that was before she realised the futility of the Great Mission. She had never really grasped the sheer size of the galaxy before. Hard enough to find something concrete, something solid, in its infinite reaches, but they were chasing legends, hints, myths... She chose her words carefully. ‘Of course I knew And my devotion to the Great Mission is absolute. But you should also know - as the Vale Commander does - that hunters need to hunt, and if we are denied, the mission is in jeopardy. You won’t have any hunters left to do your surveys! They’ll desert, find a world rich in prey and start a new colony.’
