Текст книги "Doctor Who- The Pirate Loop"

Автор книги: Simon Guerrier

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FOUR

'You're not Martha Jones,' said the Doctor as he stepped out of the scrambled egg membrane that blocked the door to the engine room.

'No, Mr Doctor,' said the slender machine in the shape of a flight steward. It bowed its head politely.

'Well hello anyway,' said the Doctor, clicking off his sonic screwdriver, spinning it in the air and then deftly dropping it into the inside pocket of his suit. He then banged his head on the dark wooden ceiling. 'Cramped in here, innit?' he said. 'Reminds me a bit of the SS Great Britain. I helped lay a carpet on that. You're a Bondoux 56, aren't you?'

'Indeed, Mr Doctor,' said the machine. 'Though I have been remodelled for this voyage with the latest accoutrements.'

'Good for you,' grinned the Doctor. 'I was gonna say you were a bit old-fashioned for the fortieth century, even when it's all retro like this place. But these accoutrements of yours. They don't half look like they hurt.'

The machine bent to examine its own battered body. The once highly polished chrome of its chest was smeared purple and black where it had been charred by flame. One slender arm still retained its original, elegant shape, the other had been badly twisted by the fire. The machine hesitated, as if it couldn't think quite what to say. It'd probably have protocols that stopped it slagging off the passengers or crew, thought the Doctor. So if one of them had done this, it would find it hard to say so.

'You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,' said the Doctor kindly.

The Bondoux 56 stood stiffly upright, and was probably in need of an oil. The Doctor would just find out where Martha was, have a word with the Brilliant's captain and then maybe they could do a quick repair; he really liked to be fixing things. 'There was . . .' said the machine, and hesitated. It took a full second before it selected the right word. 'An altercation, Mr Doctor. It is of no consequence.'

'Well that's very brave of you,' said the Doctor. 'Now, you seem to know who I am, so I'm guessing you've met my friend Martha.'

'Indeed, Mr Doctor. I have had that pleasure.'

'She is nice, isn't she?' said the Doctor. 'Clever and able and she's got lovely hair. Mind you, she likes to talk back to those older and more experienced, but I was the same at her age. She'll grow out of it by the time she's 300. Where can I find her?'

'The last time I saw Ms Martha she was in the cocktail lounge, Mr Doctor,' said the machine.

The Doctor laughed. 'I might have known. "Don't wander off," I say, and the moment she's out of sight it's "I'll have a white wine spritzer!'"

'Begging your pardon, Mr Doctor, but Ms Martha ordered a measure of hydrogen hydroxide. In liquid form.'

'The scamp! I can't believe she's found a bar and got served in less than thirty seconds.'

'Begging your pardon, Mr Doctor?'

A terrible thought struck the Doctor. His eyebrows pressed together as he scrutinised the machine. 'How long's it been since you saw her?' he asked.

'Checking,' said the machine. 'It has been three hours, forty-two minutes and... eighteen seconds since I last saw Ms Martha.'

'What!' said the Doctor. 'Three hours, forty-two minutes and . . . twenty-three seconds? Really? You mean Martha was in the cocktail lounge three hours, forty-two minutes and... twenty-nine seconds ago?'

'Indeed, Mr Doctor,' said the machine.

'Well that's clever of her. It only felt like thirty seconds to me. And I'm usually very good at that sort of thing. Being the last of the—' He grinned, sheepishly. 'Oh, never mind.'

He turned to examine the membrane of scrambled egg blocking the way back into the engine room, prodding it with a finger. It felt soft and warm and rubbery, but didn't yield to him. He buzzed the sonic screwdriver at it, on setting twenty-eight. Nothing. Settings twenty-nine and forty-one did no good either.

'Hmm,' he said, turning back to the machine. That's a bother. So it only felt like thirty seconds to me since Martha stepped through, but it's really been three hours, forty-three minutes and... eleven seconds. Approximately.'

'Begging your pardon, Mr Doctor,' said the machine. 'I do not understand.'

'Ah well,' said the Doctor. 'There's this experimental drive in there,' he indicated the eggy doorway with his thumb. 'And it's stalled or something, so the engine room is now cut off in a separate pocket of time. Like the engine room and the rest of the ship are running at different speeds. Which, now I think about it, is why it was so difficult to land here.'

The Bondoux 56 considered this. 'Begging your pardon, Mr Doctor,' it said. 'I do not understand.'

'Well, that's all right, it is a bit complicated,' said the Doctor. 'The engine room is running at a different speed to us out here, so when you're in there it's like everything out here is moving really, really fast. Voosh! And out here, it's like everything in there is moving really, really slowly. Like how time stretches out in that bit after lunch break and before it's home time.'

The Bondoux 56 bowed its head. 'Begging your pardon, Mr Doctor,' it began. The Doctor interrupted.

'Never mind that,' he gabbled. 'This is more for my own benefit. It's because they're moving at different speeds that you get this skin of scrambled egg between the two. And it means you can only pass one way through it. Why's that, you say? Well, because . . . um . . . I know! You can only speed up in one direction. Obvious, really, 'cos otherwise you're speeding down. And I guess that great big download waiting in the transmat machine in there is someone from this side transmatting down at normal speed.' His eyes widened in horror. 'I hope whoever's in there doesn't notice the delay. That could be pretty nasty.' He clapped his hands together. 'Never mind. Nothing we can do about it just now, is there? I'll have to work out how we get back in there somehow, but first things first I always say. So what's next? What have I missed?' He addressed the machine. 'What's Martha told you?'

'She said, "But Gabriel! The Doctor will walk right into them,'" said the Bondoux 56, doing quite a good impression of Martha's London accent. 'I volunteered to meet you.'

'Gabriel?' said the Doctor. 'She called you Gabriel?'

'Indeed, Mr Doctor.'

'That's her name for you?' he laughed.

'I regret it is my designation, Mr Doctor.'

The Doctor realised he'd been rude – which was good, as he normally needed other people to point that out to him. Probably Martha's influence, he thought. He patted the machine fondly on its less burnt shoulder. 'Oh, don't say that. It's a nice name, Gabriel. If I remember rightly, it means you're here to help us. And are you here to help us?

'Indeed, Mr Doctor,' said Gabriel. 'My function is to serve the passengers.'

'And I bet you do it brilliantly. What did Martha want you to warn me about?'

Gabriel considered. 'Ms Martha did not ask me to warn you about anything, Mr Doctor. I said I would escort you to the cocktail lounge.'

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'I'm going to walk into a "them" some time, but so long as there's nothing you should be telling me.'

'Checking,' said Gabriel. 'Might I enquire as to your berth number, Mr Doctor?'

'My what?' said the Doctor. 'Oh, I'm not a passenger. I'm just helping out.'

Gabriel considered this new fact. 'I have nothing I should be telling you, Mr Doctor,' it said.

'OK,' said the Doctor warily, sure he was missing out on something important. But he had things to be getting on with: find Martha, then find the Brilliant's captain, then work out a way of getting back into the engine rooms, and then – if the ship hadn't blown up by that point – see what he could do to fix Gabriel. 'Come on,' he said. 'You'd better take me to this cocktail lounge.'

Gabriel led the way along the corridor. They turned left, left again and then right, and up a wide staircase into a dining room where the ceiling was a little higher and the Doctor could stand up straight. Two rows of columns held up the low ceiling. An area at the far end of the room was free of columns, which probably allowed for dancing. Stood in this space, definitely not dancing, were two badger-faced people in spacesuits.

The Doctor had met a lot of different species, but he couldn't remember any that looked quite so like humans with badger faces. Which meant, what with the mouthless men downstairs and all, that he could make some educated guesses about what sorts of creature they must be. It helped in working out what they might be doing aboard the Brilliant that the badgers each wore a thick gold earring in their left ears, both had a skull and crossbones crudely painted on the chests of their battered spacesuits and both brandished heavy space guns. The fortieth century had quite a vogue for old-school piracy in space, recalled the Doctor. Badger-faced ones were just a bit more distinctive than the ones he'd encountered before.

'Hiyah!' he said to them, keen to appear friendly. 'Have I missed tea?'

'Thought Dash'd done for this one already, Archie,' said one of the badgers. She had a gruff but female voice, and a noticeable accent. Maybe Home Counties. Maybe even Hampshire. Perhaps just down the road from Romsey. The Doctor realised she wore pastel pink lipstick around her hairy, snarly mouth.

'Thought Dash'd done for it an' all, Joss,' said the other badger, raising his heavy space gun. He had the same accent, more broad Southampton than like pirates in old movies.

'Hang on a tick—' began the Doctor. But he was too late. Archie shot Gabriel squarely in the chest, and Gabriel disappeared in a ball of pink light. When the light died away, there was nothing left to see of Gabriel, just a metallic tang in the air – he had been completely obliterated. 'That was a bit . . .' began the Doctor, tailing off as the two badgers pointed their heavy space guns at him. He tried a disarming, goofy smile. 'Wasn't it?'

'What are you, then?' said Archie the badger space pirate.

'Me?' said the Doctor. 'Oh, I'm no one important.' He grinned. 'Well, we're all important, aren't we? But I mean, I'm nobody you want to worry about.'

'Can I kill 'im?' Archie asked Joss gruffly. His wet, black nose twitched with excitement.

'He doesn't have to, you know,' the Doctor told her. 'I might have skills. Or know stuff.'

'What sort of stuff?' said Joss. The Doctor wondered what that name was short for. He'd once been good friends with a Josephine.

'Oh, you know,' he said. 'I can do tricks. Make stuff. I know a few jokes.'

Aw,' said Archie excitedly. 'Go on, tell us a joke!'

'OK,' said the Doctor.

A clean one,' warned Joss.

'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'OK. Um . . .' He racked his brains. 'Ha! Got one. Why are pirates called pirates?'

Archie and Joss conferred in whispers before they both shrugged at each other. 'We don't know,' said Joss. 'Why are pirates called pirates?'

The Doctor beamed. 'Because they ahhhhr!' he said.

The two badgers stared at him. 'I don't get it,' said Archie, scratching his head with a hairy paw. 'Can I kill 'im yet?'

'I've got other jokes,' said the Doctor quickly. 'Funny ones.'

'Not jus' yet, Archie,' said Joss. 'We wanna know where 'e's come from, don't we?'

'Yeah,' leered Archie. 'Where'd ya come from?'

'Just, er, back there,' said the Doctor, pointing to the stairs.

'There wasn't no one down there when we looked before,' said Joss.

'I was sort of hiding,' said the Doctor. 'I thought it was a game.'

'It weren't no game!' snarled Archie. Then he turned back to Joss. 'Was it?'

Joss considered. 'I reckon,' she said, 'this gent shows us where 'e was hiding. And if we don't like what 'e's got to show us, then you get to kill him.'

'Yeah!' said Archie eagerly.

'Yes, that does seem entirely fair, doesn't it?' said the Doctor. He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets. 'Well you might as well follow me, then.'

Ignoring the way they prodded him with their guns, the Doctor led them back down the stairs, left, right and right again into the passageway that ran past the door to the engine rooms. He had to stoop because of the low ceiling, and his mind was a whirl of thoughts and stratagems. He'd already worked out a couple of ways by which he might escape, but he needed to know what these pirates were after. So it was time to test a theory. 'Here we are,' he said.

'What's this?' asked Joss warily as she looked at the membrane that blocked the doorway.

'It feels like scrambled egg, doesn't it?' said the Doctor.

'Scrambled what?' said Joss.

'Egg,' said the Doctor. 'It's what chickens come in.'

'He means packaging,' Joss explained to Archie as they both sniffed and pawed the eggy material. 'Yeah, I guess it is like that.'

'And I was in there,' said the Doctor. 'Hiding. Like I said.'

'Huh,' said Joss. Anyone else in there?'

'Just some engineers. It is the engine rooms. They won't give you any trouble.'

The badgers' eyes lit up at this, just as he thought they might if they were here to pinch the experimental drive. Joss thumped the skin of scrambled egg with the end of her gun, a blow that should have done real damage. She might be a lady badger, thought the Doctor, but she could hold her own with the boys. Yet despite the force of the blow, the skin of scrambled egg did not yield.

'How'd you get through it?' she said.

'Er, you don't,' said the Doctor. 'You can only go through one way. From that side to this.'

'Hmm,' said Joss. 'It's got to be some kind of barricade. We'd better tell Dash about this,' she told Archie.

'Yeah,' said Archie. He aimed his gun at the scrambled egg and fired two blasts. The skin fizzed with pink light for barely an instant, but was otherwise completely unharmed. 'Bah,' said Archie. 'That's no fun.'

'So we should tell Dash, then?' suggested the Doctor, just to get things moving.

'Yeah,' said Joss. 'Good idea.' These badgers, thought the Doctor, weren't exactly the brightest species he'd ever encountered on his travels. Yet Joss was eyeing him warily, her dark eyes hidden by the twin black stripes down her face. It made her expression difficult to read, but the Doctor could see a wily, predatory cunning. She might not be an intellectual, but Joss could well mean trouble.

'What?' he said, as innocently as he could.

'There's people still in there,' she said.

'Yeah,' said the Doctor.

An' they can get out an' we can't get in.'

'Yeah.'

'S'not fair,' she said.

The Doctor nodded kindly. 'Life often isn't,' he said. 'It's one of those things.'

'What we gonna do, Joss?' asked Archie.

Joss considered, scratching her hairy chin with a paw. 'We gotta even things up a bit,' she said. She ushered Archie and the Doctor back along the passageway towards the ballroom. Then she turned and fired her gun at the ceiling above the door to the engine room. She kept her claws on the trigger, so that a sustained burst of pink energy crashed into the woodwork. Wisps of smoke began to curl from the ceiling. Then there was a flicker of bright flame –

And shumm!

A heavy metal fire door crashed down in front of them, blocking their view of the corridor.

'Ooh, clever,' cooed the Doctor. He wrapped at the fire door with a knuckle. It bonged with a low, heavy note. 'The fire doors have locked off the corridor, so no one can get through.'

'None can get in,' agreed Joss. And none can get out. S'fair that way.'

A stalemate,' said the Doctor.

'Speak for yourself,' warned Archie, prodding him with his gun.

'Them engineers will 'ave to eat some time,' said Joss. 'We'll let 'em get 'ungry and then we talk terms.'

The Doctor thought it best not to explain about the time difference in the engine room; the badger pirates could starve the engineers for days and days, but to the engineers themselves it would only seem like a few hours. He also wondered if the engineers ate food, what with their having no mouths. Perhaps they just plugged themselves into the mains, so that blocking the door wouldn't bother them.

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Well that was fun. Now I was going to have a word with the captain, and then I thought I'd—'

Joss poked him with her gun. 'You're not leaving my sight, starshine,' she told him.

'OK,' said the Doctor, gently moving the gun aside so that it didn't point right at him. 'You drive. So where are we going?'

'You're gonna sit in the bar wiv' all the uvva prisoners,' said Joss.

'That sounds very sociable,' said the Doctor. He was itching to find out if Martha was OK, so there didn't seem much point in protesting.

Archie and Joss escorted him back up the corridor, left, left again and then right, and up the wide staircase into the dining room. They passed through the door at the back of the room into the small cocktail lounge. Another gruff-looking badger pirate guarded about a dozen egg-shaped, tentacled Balumin prisoners, who huddled in front of the great bay window that looked out on to the Ogidi Galaxy. Martha was nowhere to be seen. The Doctor bit his lip. If the badgers didn't hold her prisoner, she might still be hiding somewhere. He didn't want to get her in trouble by asking if they'd seen her.

'This is cosy,' he said. 'You must be Dash. Joss and Archie have been telling me all about you.'

The third badger pirate leered at him. He had the same gold earring in his left ear, and the same skull and crossbones on the chest of his spacesuit. He seemed older and surlier than his two comrades.

'Aye,' he leered, with the same gruff Hampshire accent. 'And who are you?'

Archie nudged Joss in the ribs. 'We never asked his name!' he said.

'That's OK,' said the Doctor. 'You had more important things to worry about. Hello. I'm the Doctor. I'm not important. Not in that way, anyway. How's everybody here?'

The Balumin murmured quietly that they were mostly fine. For all they were being held prisoner, they looked rather at home. They wore the latest fashions and held pretty drinks in their tentacles. If anything, it was the three badger pirates who looked totally out of place. The cocktail lounge was a place for wearing ties.

Joss explained to Dash about the door to the engine room. Dash listened keenly, all the time watching the Doctor. The Doctor tried not to notice; Dash seemed the brightest of this bunch. While the badgers talked about him, the Doctor wandered over to the Balumin prisoners.

'You're sure everyone is all right?' he said. They tutted and said they were fine, rather rudely. All right, thought the Doctor, you can rescue yourselves.

A bright orange Balumin woman of late middle age came over, offering him a plate of cheese and pineapple on sticks.

'Thanks very much,' he said, taking two sticks at once. 'Can't remember the last time I had these.'

'I'm Mrs Wingsworth,' the Balumin lady explained, not nearly as rudely as the other passengers. 'You'll be Martha's friend the Doctor.'

'Silence!' roared Dash from across the room.

The Doctor said nothing but nodded at Mrs Wingsworth. She only laughed and rolled her large eyes.

'Oh, don't worry yourself about these poor lambs, dear,' she said, fluttering a tentacle at the badgers. 'They're just a bit of a nuisance.'

'I'm warning you,' growled Dash, pointing his gun at her.

'See what I mean, dear?' said Mrs Wingsworth lightly, again offering the plate of cheese and pineapple sticks to the Doctor. 'Have another of these. You look like you need filling up.'

'I really don't think you should antagonise them,' the Doctor told her. 'They've got big guns and stuff like that.'

'Oh, I know!' she said. 'It really is such a bore.'

Dash stalked over to prod Mrs Wingsworth with a hairy paw.

'What you call me?' he seethed.

'I'm sure she didn't mean it,' said the Doctor gently. Dash turned to him angrily, but the Doctor held his gaze. After a moment, Dash's shoulders sagged.

'We're not boars, we're badgers,' he said.

'I know that,' said the Doctor. 'I'll tell her.'

'Good.' Dash glared at Mrs Wingsworth, then shuffled back to his comrades.

'You need to be careful,' the Doctor told Mrs Wingsworth quietly. And she laughed, loudly so the badgers would hear. The Doctor thought she might even have done it on purpose.

'But they really are such bores!' she said.

'What!?' roared Dash.

'Now wait—' said the Doctor.

'Oh they are,' said Mrs Wingsworth. 'You know they are.'

'Right,' said Dash, raising his heavy gun at her.

'She didn't mean it,' said the Doctor.

'Oh, I did, dear!' laughed Mrs Wingsworth.

'No, don't!' said the Doctor.

Too late. Dash fired the heavy gun and Mrs Wingsworth was soon engulfed in the dazzling pink light. She just had time to roll her eyes wearily at the Doctor and say, 'You see?'

Then the light consumed her utterly.