Doctor Who: Combat Rock (12 page)

He was now level with the Doctor, and was staring at him intensely, his fury barely contained.

‘Diplomatically?’ the Doctor prompted.

‘Democratic referendum, yes!’ These words were obviously well known to the guerrilla. Presumably they had been rehearsed for just such an opportunity as this, when dealing with offworld parties. ‘Democratic referendum rigged! Papul leaders from many villages offered choice: vote for Indoni...”integration”... or be shot.’

Jamie was right behind them, and until now had been largely silent.

‘Och, I know what ye mean. I’ve fought against sassenachs who wanted to take my people’s land away before.

But we’re not your enemy, you know.’

The Doctor knew he was thinking constantly of Victoria, and maybe assuming that the Doctor was not doing the same.

But there was no time to explain to the Scot that in order to ever stand a chance of finding their companion, they had first of all to understand their captors, and hopefully get them on their side.

‘Colonised in the most insidious way, I see...’ he murmured, his voice almost lost under the weird ululation of an unseen jungle beast. From ahead, Wina gave an involuntary little cry of alarm at the sound. Some of the guerrillas laughed harshly.

‘A strange sort of democracy,’ the Doctor continued. ‘But surely there are more peaceful ways of securing your people’s freedom?’

‘There no other way. Violence only they understand. Only thing President Sabit understand. We take you to the Krallik and negotiate with enemy from there.’ He slashed at a vine that was blocking their way, but the Doctor could see the action was more of a demonstration to emphasise his next words: ‘If Indoni concede to our demands for an independent Papul, you released. If not, you killed.’

The Doctor uttered a little sound of alarm and threw a look of dismay over his shoulder at Jamie.

The guerrilla leader was still talking, having now well and truly got into his stride. ‘We fighting in the name of our ancestors, whatever happen. We know that now. Their ghosts have spoken and pointed the way for us to take. We must not surrender to Indoni rule. The Mumis have made the sign.’

‘Och, I don’t believe in ghosts any more, and nor should you,’ Jamie butted in. ‘Look, we’re on your side; we always fight against tyranny, don’t we Doctor?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Yes, Jamie. If we’re given the chance.’

There was a slight commotion from behind them. The strange party halted to find out the cause. Ussman had tried to make a run for it upon hearing the leader’s pronouncement over their possible fate. One of the guerrillas had caught him and the blade of the machete he was shoving under the trader’s chin was leaving a trickle of blood that was already changing the pattern on the Indoni’s florid shirt. The leader barked something in Papul, and Ussman was pushed forward. His face was contorted with fear. ‘Doctor!’ he shouted, ‘Sabit will not listen to their demands. He will never be swayed by the lives of a few tourists. He has too much stake in Papul.’ The guerrilla guarding him pulled his head back by the hair to silence him, but the leader ordered his man to let the Indoni speak.

‘Sabit not only has control of a thriving tourist industry,’

he gasped, ignoring the blood trickling freely down his neck,

‘he also knows Papul is rich in valuable minerals that are currently being mined by Indoni and even some offworld companies. He will never relinquish such financial boons.’ He turned his attention away from the Doctor and addressed the leader now, his intelligent face eloquent with the desire to impress upon him the inefficacy of the rebel’s plan. ‘Sabit will not care if we live or die. We are of no use to you as hostages.’

‘Then you will die,’ the leader said simply. ‘As we have died. Suffering is nothing new to my people.’

He had an audience now, there on the jungle trail as the leaves drip-drip-dripped away the last of the afternoon rain.

Santi and Wina were huddled together under the rustling vines purely through the need to seek out mutual female company, although still continuing their arrogant disdain for each other even in the face of such adversity; Drew, standing beside them, face bland with all the characterlessness of the morally weak; Budi, small and handsome, a fisherboy caught up in a terrible drama beyond his experience, face pale nevertheless from awareness of the seriousness of their plight; Ussman, eyes no longer dancing with their habitual mischief, but clouded by despair; Kepennis and Wemus, silenced by fear or maybe feelings of shame; Jamie, brow furrowed with concern over Victoria’s fate and their own; and then there was the Doctor, listening carefully to the man wearing the black fur balaclava as he spoke of blood, evil and tragedy on a huge scale.

‘We driven away from our spiritual homes: our holy mountains raped by the invader in search of ore. Our villages bombed, our men tortured, our women raped, because we resist...’ His naked chest was rising and falling as his passion peaked, spurred on by Ussman’s admission of Sabit’s disinterest in the Papuls’ fate. His fury, building for many, many months, many, many years, had found an outlet at last, and inevitably it broke. He marched forward, snatching Wina by the arm and pulled her to him, machete blade resting under her breasts. She struggled gamely, seemingly more worried about losing her almost regal composure in front of Santi than by anything the guerrilla might do. Her face was angry and contemptuous, as if outraged at being so rudely manhandled by someone she obviously considered to be her inferior.

‘How you like to see
your
women treated like this?’ the guerrilla hissed, addressing Ussman and Budi.

The Doctor and Jamie moved forward as one to rescue the Indoni girl, and promptly moved back as one as a rifle and a machete, respectively, were thrust towards them by guerrillas.

Drew broke the tension. ‘What are you talking about?

These whores are treated like that all the time!’ He was laughing at his own seedy little joke. Wemus had seen and heard enough. He shoved Drew out of his way, and ignoring a machete that lifted to intercept him, seized Wina by her free arm and twisted the girl free of the leader’s grip. He held her to him protectively, meeting the rebel’s angry gaze with defiance.

The guerrilla raised his machete to the guide’s throat. ‘So you are not always coward, huh? There are some things you will fight for?’

‘You have no quarrel with innocent girls, my friend’ It was Kepennis who spoke, lifting a hand to gently push the blade away from his companion. And surely enough of our people have died already?’

The guerrilla sized him up as if wondering whether to plunge his machete into this new target for his aggression.

Then he was lowering the weapon, and the moment of imminent violence was gone. Weariness replaced the fury in his face.

‘It is the army we hate. They beasts, led by the biggest beast of all. But if we cannot win against them, we must strike against whatever we can to save our people’

‘Hardly a fair way of dealing with the problem, now is it”

interceded the Doctor gently. He decided to shut up again when an arrow clenched in a guerrilla’s fist prodded him meaningfully in the belly.

Jamie gave him an exasperated look. ‘We’re no gonna find Victoria with you antagonising them, are we?’

The Doctor was indignantly about to argue his case when a shout came from ahead. A guerrilla who had ventured forward to check the trail came loping back to join the group. He spoke excitedly to the leader in Papul and then the guerrilla was ushering the whole group onward again.

They soon found the reason for the guerrilla’s excitement.

A large metallic craft was embedded in the jungle undergrowth just around a bend in the trail. It was the size of a London bus, windowless apart from a forward screen in the crumpled nose, and roughly the shape of a truncated cigar. The buckled casing, once silver, was now streaked by fuel burn and jungle juice. Trees, bent and smashed by its impromptu descent, clutched at the craft like wrestlers struggling for a throw.

The guerrillas thronged eagerly around this alien intrusion into their natural habitat, although when Jamie gave the Doctor a meaningful glance, silently suggesting this might be a good opportunity to make a break for it, it was apparent from the speed with which a machete appeared under his nose that the guerrillas were never too distracted to lower their guard.

Kepennis drew the leader’s attention to some slimy trails along the bulkhead of the craft. Long green smears, thick and viscous. He spoke with the leader in Papul, but the Doctor, his curiosity aroused by the craft and by the smears that had so interested Kepennis, ignored the machete and pushed forward to find out for himself.

He touched the green ooze and lifted a trace to his nose. It stank of stale ponds.

‘Jungle Snatcher,’ Kepennis told him. ‘This Indoni military craft; maybe fly too low over tree tops, pulled down by Snatcher.’

‘Snatcher?’ The Doctor was intrigued. But Kepermis’s attention was already focusing on the guerrillas who were forcing open the dented forward port. The Doctor, ever conscious of the machete hovering next to his throat, stooped slowly to peer inside.

He could see someone sitting in the pilot’s chair. Blood slicked the interior of the cabin around him, drying tidal marks rising up the metal bulwarks. One of the rebels was prodding at the slumped pilot, an Indoni in military garb, whose left sleeve was saturated in blood. The Doctor could see by the rough way the guerrilla shook the man that the Papul didn’t really care whether the pilot was alive or dead.

The leader pushed past the Doctor and hauled himself into the cabin. The Doctor could still see the pilot’s face, however, and that now the man’s eyes were fluttering glazedly open, as though he was awakening from a long and particularly bloody wet dream.

He looked as if he really wished he could return to it when the leader started shaking him brutally. The pilot groaned in pain; it was obvious he would not last much longer. Yet the leader was adamant he would make him speak and began cuffing the side of the Indoni’s head.

‘That man will die if you don’t give him some aid soon!’

the Doctor called angrily. The leader ignored him, bending low over the pilot.

‘He is asking about one of the OPG guerrillas,’ Kepennis explained:He was taken prisoner by the army a few months ago.

All the pilot could offer his tormentors, however, was a flower of blood that bloomed on his lips. The leader’s patience was running out. He drew his machete.

‘Give him water and he might be able to tell you what you want!’ the Doctor shouted in exasperation at their stupidity.

‘Can’t you see this is what hatred reduces you to? You’re no longer even thinking rationally. How do you expect to win your war if you’re as brutal as they are?’ He lapsed into grumpy silence. The leader glared at him from the port, then gestured to one of his men. A canteen was thrust into the Doctor’s hands and he was nudged forward into the cabin of the craft.

While the Doctor poured a trickle of water over the dying man’s lips, one of the guerrillas examined the cabin flight controls, testing power relays and booting the ignition system to see if it was still operable. A weak thrum of enginies loading filled the cabin, wavered, died completely, then boosted again before finally holding. The guerrilla gave his leader a complacent smile.

The pilot was talking at last, and the leader turned from his smug lieuenant to confront the dying man again. He listened to a few spluttered words in Indoni, then put the edge of his machete against the man’s throat and spoke briefly and menacingly.

The pilot answered, in between a bout of coughing that caused more flowers of blood to grow from his lips. The Doctor pushed the machete away and gave him more water.

On the third gulp, the man died.

Two guerrillas unfastened him from his pilot harness and slung the body unceremoniously into the bushes. The leader looked grimly satisfied. He climbed down from the cruiser and beckoned to Jamie.

‘You say you fight against oppressor before?’ he asked, measuring the Scot, his gaze faltering slightly as he took in the tartan kilt.

‘Oh aye.’ Jamie responded stalwartly, ‘I fought against the English at Culloden.’

‘So you can fight with us now. Or die. You go to Wameen with some of my men. You try escape, they tell me, and your friend here,’ he indicated an apprehensive-looking Doctor,

‘lose his head. He try escape and you lose
yours
.’

Jamie was looking a little less stalwart now. The Doctor was caressing his neck nervously. ‘Why do you want to take Jamie?’

‘We need all warriors to fight at Wameen. Our brother is there. Prisoner of army. This Indoni tell me. You stay with us, continue to south swamps.’

‘No!’ the Doctor protested. ‘We’ve lost one of our party already. Jamie stays with us or we go no further.’ His cheeks billowed with his passion.

The leader actually smiled. ‘You welcome stay here if you want. Snatcher maybe still here too. Indoni pilot tell me Snatcher pull cruiser from sky and devour all crew. They try run in jungle, but cannot run fast
enough
. You think you can run fast enough?’

The Doctor huffed in consternation but didn’t respond, looking around warily for any signs of a beast capable of sucking a large craft from above the trees and decimating its crew. The pilot’s chair harness had obviously saved him from being pulled out to join their fate; that and the fact that he was too injured to attempt fleeing into the trees.

‘You’ll never get that thing to move again,’ Jamie said hopefully, indicating the cruiser nestled in its cradle of trees.

The man who tested the controls smirked. He shook his head at the guerrilla leader. ‘We can leave in five minutes, after build-up of power.’ he said in good English, apparently for Jamie’s benefit.

The Doctor was searching for something optimistic in their predicament. ‘Wameen is a large town?’ he asked the leader.

‘After Jayapul, largest in Papul,’ the rebel answered. ‘With army post. We must strike carefully.’

But the Doctor wasn’t interested in that. He turned to Jamie. ‘Then maybe Victoria has been found by the Indoni army and taken there: he said brightly.