Doctor Who: Combat Rock (29 page)

...

Then: ‘Maybe I take your face... sew it to the head of the God-liar... or just your hair. Certainly your heart, and your soul.’

The Doctor blanched in the face of such terrifying insanity, and put his hands over his cheeks to calm himself, but there was nowhere for him to go now. This was truly the end of the river. He had to find light and reason amidst all this blackness. ‘Your people may have a just cause, but you are a sickness within their body Krallik. A cancer eating them from within. And you are wrong about one more thing: how can I be a warning to others, if I am unknown to them. I am just a wanderer, and of no importance to any outer system alliance. I cannot help your cause by dying for you, you see.’

The Krallik was silent, a dead thing. Had he... it... even heard the Doctor? But the time and space traveller wasn’t finished yet.

‘You said something else, Krallik you said you detected some time ago that I was an offworlder of some eminence.’

He stuck his chin out and glared defiantly at the figure in the chair. ‘
But you’ve only just met me
!’

There was the whine of engines decelerating outside, and the first crackle and burn of pulse weapons being discharged.

The Doctor turned to face the direction of the noise, but there were no windows to see out of.

‘Sounds like the army have arrived, Krallik. Your little reign of terror has ended!’

The Krallik continued to rock back and forth, as if nothing mattered but his own madness.

‘Time to burn their minds and fry their eyes,’ Twist said, cutting the engines as the cruiser dropped clumsily onto the wooden dock.

‘Twist,’ Pan said as he checked the power pack on his rifle, ‘if you ever live through this it’ll be a miracle.’

‘But they got monkeys inside ‘em,’ Twist spat. ‘I see the bad monkeys in their souls.’

Pan ignored him, and thumbed the hatch mechanism. Then he reached for Victoria. She pulled away from him, but he snatched her anyway with a casual laugh. ‘Come to Pan, baby.’

Bass and Pretty Boy popped through the hatch first, pulse rifles ready. Pan heard one of their weapons discharge and a scream kicked in. Right, battle commenced then... He checked his Luger next. He was slipping: the pack was nearly empty.

It would do.

Saw was lumbering to the port, heavy gleaming rifle in one hand, chainsaw clenched in the other, although the big lug had not switched it on yet. Grave was behind him, and Pan couldn’t help noticing he was playing a movie on his wrist disc player. On the small screen someone’s head was being buzzed with Saw’s favourite weapon, the upper part of the skull lifting like the top of an egg teased away by a spoon.

Grave paused in the doorway to catch the scene.

‘Move, you sick freak.’

‘That’s right. We got to give them purple time.’ Twist was up from the pilot seat, and creeping down the cabin towards Pan, his fingers curled into claws, eyes rolling back in his head. Pan let him come. Twist tilted his head back as he drew close to Pan, stared first at Pan’s saturnine eyes, then down at the tattoo on his bare left bicep.

‘Anyone ever tell you, you look just like your tattoo?’

‘You just saved your life. Well done.’ Pan shoved him out the hatch. The freak wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Pan didn’t care. The pilot was obviously suffering some psychic overload brought on by too many bad drugs. Let him deal with it. Combat was always good for curing self-indulgence.

He clenched Victoria’s left hand securely in his right, the bulky rifle cradled in the crook of his other arm and leapt out of the port, pulling Victoria with him.

She landed clumsily, and would have sprawled on the planks of the dock had he not yanked her brutally upright.

The cruiser was on the wide wooden dock, the fringe of palms ahead, the long pier behind. Twist was leaning against the side of the cruiser, staring at his own fingers. A dead OPG

guard lay in the grass just beyond the dock. Bass and Pretty Boy were sheltering behind the bulky flank of the cruiser which was parked at an off-kilter angle, and chucking blaster fire towards the trees. Saw was zigzagging through the undergrowth to the left of the half-glimpsed building beyond the trees, and there was Grave, completing the flanking manoeuvre to the right. Now Pan could hear the buzz of Saw’s tool, a harsh shriek layered over the sizzle of energy weapons.

Pan heard answering fire in the form of old-fashioned projectile rifle shots and the twang of bows. Bass and Pretty Boy didn’t look bothered as bullets and arrows screamed and bounced off the bulkhead around them.

Pan walked casually past them, swinging Victoria round to act as a human shield.

He stepped off the dock, depressing the trigger of his pulse rifle with his left hand, the weapon heating up fast and burning into Victoria’s side as it discharged shot after shot into the trees.

The palms were alight, flames boiling up into the sky. The guerrillas were flushed out by the intense heat and Pan picked them off as they ran.

Wemus clutched Wina protectively to him. Drew was sitting on the floor, tapping his hands complacently on his calves.

Kepennis was slumped on a mat, head resting on his knees. He looked worn out, without hope, eyes closed.

Tigus had dropped back down the ladder leading to the Krallik’s chamber as soon as the cruiser’s engines screamed overhead. He’d deployed the majority of his men to greet the attack, leaving four to guard the hostages and protect the temple, and most importantly, the Krallik.

He hadn’t spoken to the hostages. He led his men out in silence, checking his old rifle quickly before he left the temple. His men looked scared, and unprepared for this unforeseen attack. They’d believed the location of the Krallik’s base a secret, the temple inviolable.

Drew laughed in their faces as they chattered excitedly, milling around checking weapons before Tigus snapped them into some form of ragged order. There weren’t even enough guns to go round. Some of them had to resort to bows and arrows.

‘Sounds like you’ve got trouble, Tigus...’ Drew shouted after the leader as he ducked out of the temple.

‘We be freed now, Wina,’ Wemus said comfortingly, stroking her head as the sounds of uneven battle picked up outside.

‘You gotta be joking, Papul man,’ Drew told him. ‘You think the Dogs gonna care about a monkey boy like you?

They’ll burn you along with the rest of your kind.’

Wemus’s eyes opened wide. ‘What you mean... Dogs?’

‘Of War, monkey. They comin at ya!’

One of the guerrillas deployed to guard them advanced on the blond offworlder, his rifle muzzle pointing at him menacingly.

‘You want speak?’ the guerrilla asked him quietly. Drew shut up. For a moment, at least; until the guerrilla returned to the hole in the thatched wall that was his window position.

Then he couldn’t resist adding: ‘Course, they’ll rape your girl there first. Before putting
you
down.’

Wemus had heard enough. He slowly pried Wina’s hands off him and advanced on Drew. The offworlder had never seen the usually docile and amiable Papul guide angry before.

Wemus’s eyes were narrowed, his large nostrils fluttering, his teeth showing in a grimace. Drew began to regret – not for the first time in his ratlike existence – having such a loose mouth.

He nudged Kepennis next to him, but the other guide was either asleep or dead, because he gave no answer.

‘Hey! Guard! Help m-,’ his pleas were cut off as Wemus snatched him by the throat and pulled him off his mat, his large hands clamped around Drew’s scrawny neck, squeezing hard.

Saw and Grave were waiting for the main force of rebels to leave the temple, and then duly closed their pincer movement.

Grave walked slowly through the bushes, pulse rifle level with his belt, squeezing off lances of energy that touched guerrillas, turned them into pillars of screaming fire. The rebels were scattering into the undergrowth and trees outside the building seeking cover, but they had made their most foolish mistake leaving the temple in the first place. Saw had already dropped three outside the doorway, and now Grave could see him grappling hand to hand with another – a big, muscle-bound, half-naked Papul, who, despite his size, still looked like a woman in comparison with the big, man-mountain pork lug that was Saw.

Grave snapped off one last shot, sending a pole of energy into a guerrilla who was not very well hidden behind an exotic bush. Guerrilla and bush ignited, the crackle of burning twigs and the scream of roasting Papul a duet of pleasing harmony.

Grave knew his power pack was exhausted, and didn’t care.

He’d actually purposefully not recharged it in the cruiser. He’d known right from the moment they got the word from Sabit that this would be his last mission. And guess what? He didn’t care.

He pressed the rewind button on his wrist video. He’d missed the best part of the movie, the bit when Leatherface saws through the wall of the radio station in an explosion of sound and the girlie screams and Chop Top screams and... he reached the required chapter stop and let the movie roll again.

Leatherface burst through, chainsaw wailing.

An arrow pecked the tree trunk beside Grave’s face. He –

gave it an absent glance, almost offended at the interruption to his viewing. Leatherface had the girl pinned up against the coke cans, was popping them open with his vibrating weapon, was homing the tool in toward her groin...

Yeah, mum. I was a real disappointment to you.

The next arrow took him in the forehead.

Saw, still wrestling with the big guerrilla, watched Grave drop.

He grunted. He didn’t care about the geezer in black, but the Dog’s death reminded him of his own mortality. He punched the guerrilla in the nose. The blow would have snapped the neck of any normal man, but this Papul was a big bastard. He recovered from the blow and came at Saw again. But Saw had gained himself the extra second or two he needed to pick up his beloved tool from the grass where he’d dropped it to wrestle. He fired the engine and revved the beauty up. He placed the whining teeth of the ‘saw against the man’s head and let her rip.

Pan was advancing through the trees with Victoria still held like a shield in front of him. He clocked Saw buzz his opponent, watched the upper part of the guerrilla’s skull lift up

– and wondered, if only for a second, where he’d seen that before. A bullet nicked his arm, returning his thoughts to the matter in hand, which was killing all the OPG.

Not that there were many left. A guerrilla broke cover to his left, dashing towards him, firing a rifle. He spun, flung out a spear of energy that flicked the rebel smoking against a palm. Another rustle directly ahead of him. This time it was a big freak of a beast, low to the ground but muscular, flat pancake head twisting from side to side. Pan let it lumber away. He sort of liked animals, even freakish ones. Hell, especially the freaks...

Bass and Pretty Boy were back to back on the dock, guarding the cruiser, blasting down any guerrilla that tried to make it out of the trees. Arrows clattered against the metal of the port hatch, one thunked deep into Bass’s thigh. He went down on one knee, still firing, and a bullet crashed through Pretty Boy’s shoulder, sending him spinning around to face the other way, blood spiralling down onto the wooden planks of the dock. Another bullet ploughed through his right arm. He turned around to face the trees again, transferred the pulse rifle from his wounded arm to his good hand, depressed the energy release button. Again. Again. Again.

The jungle around the temple was burning wildly now.

The surviving guerrillas, those who had been lucky enough to escape Pan, Saw and Grave, emerged from the inferno, intent on taking the cruiser, spurred on by Tigus. Twist walked through them, not seeing them, holding his hands before his face, as if he could not understand what they were. A guerrilla took a shot at him, but the bullet missed. He advanced into the smoke, was gone.

Pan had not let them escape. He had merely let them past him so he could emerge and blast them down from behind. He didn’t notice Saw collapse into a bush not ten yards from him, his throat cut with three rapid slices from behind. The guerrilla who had done it didn’t waste time watching him fall, but came on after Pan, tucking the bloody machete back into his belt and picking up Saw’s pulse rifle.

Pretty Boy was on both knees, head hanging forward over his breast. Arrows decorated his body. He was still pressing the button on his empty weapon. Click. Click. Click. Bass was draped over the edge of the dock, head and arms hanging down towards the water.

Pan wasn’t interested. He emptied his power pack and let the jungle burn around him, Victoria still struggling in his right hand. ‘All right,’ he said, tossing the rifle and pulling his Luger, tapping the barrel on her forehead. ‘Let’s go find your friends.

The back of the evil white man’s head was targeted perfectly in the sights of the pulse rifle. Tigus was on one knee, taking his time drawing a bead. His hand didn’t shake. It would be a clean shot.

His men were dead or dying all around him. The rest had fled, giving up on the idea of taking the cruiser – there was no-one who could fly it anyway. That left four men loyal to the cause still guarding the Krallik’s temple – that is, if they had not downed arms and run too.

They had been taken by surprise. That was the only answer to this craziness. Six men – with admittedly superior firearms – had massacred fifteen or so rebels. So much for a crack troop of survivalists highly trained in guerrilla warfare.

The OPG had been made to look like children playing at war.

And this man...

He eased down on the pulse button.

This man was walking casually around like he was on an afternoon stroll.

The woman was struggling gamely with him. Tigus watched the Dog pat her forehead with his Luger warningly, and she relented somewhat. They were turning back this way now, heading for the temple. Smoke tumbled in, obscuring his vision.

A crackle of burning leaves to his left. A thrashing sound.