Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Daleks (2 page)

'Don't be such a baby,' said Stella. Scrum tried to pull his arm away, but Stella had a good grip on it.

'Ow! I'm not a baby! Ow! Ow! Ow!'

She dabbed the antiseptic wipe against the wound and then smiled brightly at him. 'There you are – all done.'

Scrum withdrew his hand slowly, almost disbelievingly. The gash on his forearm looked sore but clean. 'Isn't there anything else you can do?'

'Amputation?' Stella suggested archly.

'I mean
really
. It hurts, you know...'

Stella rolled her eyes.

'How about a cryo-charge?'

'What does that do?'

'Lowers your body temperature to absolute zero in about half a second. Literally freezes you on the spot. We take you back to a planet where there are proper hospital facilities and they thaw you out and treat you.' She smiled. 'Don't look so worried, Scrum, I'm only kidding. I wouldn't waste a cryo-charge on a great oaf like you. They're for emergencies only.'

'OK. You win.'

'Here.' Stella tossed a plastic-wrapped bandage at him and it bounced off his head. 'Last of the field dressings. All yours, big boy.'

'Don't make fun of me,' Scrum said. 'I'm not combat trained. I don't even like fighting. I'm a computer technician, not a soldier.'

They were sitting in the tiny medical compartment of the ship – it was too small to call it a sickbay. It was just big enough to hold a narrow bunk, some computers, stores, and a swivel chair for Stella. She spun round and picked up her bottle of water. 'You were lucky not to lose your arm,' she told him, taking a drink. 'A couple of centimetres either way and you'd be doing your computer programming one handed.'

Scrum looked forlornly at his arm and then tore open the field dressing with his teeth. He seemed to have shrunk even more than usual. He was short, a bit overweight, with sad eyes and lank, prematurely grey hair tied back in a stubby ponytail. The tip was dyed green, the only remnant of an effort, long ago, to make himself look more 'interesting' to women.

Stella put her water down. 'What's up? C'mon, you can tell me.'

'I nearly got us all killed back there,' he said quietly. He looked up at her. 'It wasn't even a proper mission. It was just a stupid bandit trap and I nearly got us all killed.'

'Forget it. You're alive and we're alive and that's all that counts. Like I said, you were lucky. We're always lucky.'

He sighed. 'Some day our luck will run out.'

'We can make our own luck. Come on, let's get something to eat.'

She led the way down the narrow passageway to the galley. Scrum followed, pressing the bandage into position. 'Bowman doesn't believe in luck. He won't see it that way.'

'Leave Bowman to me,' Stella advised.

A tall, dark, muscular man in combat fatigues was doing pull-ups in the galley, hanging from a duct running across the ceiling that bent and creaked under his weight. He broke into a wide grin when he saw Stella and Scrum.

'Hey! How goes it, my friends? How's the walkin' wounded?'

'I'll live,' said Scrum, forcing a smile. 'Apparently.'

Stella slumped into another chair and scooped her black hair up into a scruffy topknot, tying it off with a rubber band. 'We're seriously low on stores, Cuttin' Edge. I'm down to using some old antiseptic wipes because I haven't even got any bactoray. We're going to have to stop soon and pick up some provisions.'

Cuttin' Edge dropped lightly to the deck. 'Man, that ain't gonna be easy. We're in deep space, right near the border.'

'I'm going to have to put it to the captain.'

Cuttin' Edge wiped his neck with a towel and grinned. 'Hey, rather you than me, babe.'

Stella paused outside the entrance to Bowman's cabin. It wasn't very often the crew called on the captain. She took a deep breath and opened the door. 'Sorry to disturb you, skipper...'

Jon Bowman dismissed the apology with a single movement of one finger. He was a big man in every sense of the word: tall, broad shouldered, a body toned and hardened by decades of combat. His face looked as though it had been hewn from a single piece of granite, deep-set eyes burning beneath a jutting brow, a slightly broken nose above thin, straight lips. His dark hair was unkempt, streaked with grey now, tied back with an old, blood-red bandana.

'Ship's damaged,' he said without preamble. His voice was a deep, masculine growl. He never had to raise it to be heard and he never wasted a word. 'Pirates blew a hole in one of the aft fuel tanks. We're going to have to stop for repairs.'

Stella breathed a quiet sigh of relief. What was it she had told Scrum about being lucky? 'Any suggestions on where?' she asked.

Bowman sat forward in his chair. He had a small desk, cluttered with old pieces of equipment, weapons, monitors, charts. There was a small 3D holopicture of a young man and a woman, grinning at the camera, their arms wrapped around a lanky, dark-haired teenager with a broken nose. He was smiling too. Stella liked to think this was the young Jon Bowman, a lifetime ago, with his parents. But had he ever smiled? Stella never dared to ask.

Bowman tapped one of the chart screens on his desk. He moved the holopicture aside to give him more room. 'We're in the Kappa Galanga sector. There's nothing here – except pirates – and the very edge of Earth space. We're twenty light years from the nearest habitable star system, forty from what you might call civilisation. We don't have enough fuel left for either.'

Stella frowned, peering at the charts. 'So...?'

Bowman pointed to a single point of light on the map with one thick finger. 'There's only one option. This place. Small, forgotten, not even listed on some recent charts, but it's within range. Used to be a frontier staging world, so it's probably got what we need.'

'It's right on the border,' noted Stella cautiously.

Bowman looked up at her. His grey eyes were as cold as steel. 'I didn't say it wasn't risky.'

'But you did say it's our only option.'

'That's right.'

Stella looked closer, reading the name attached to the tiny planet. 'Hurala. Sounds lovely.'

'It won't be.'

The
Wayfarer
was a converted naval patrol ship that had been rescued from scrap twenty years before Bowman got hold of it. It had been refitted more times than any one of its current crew could guess, and certainly more times than the entries in its log book showed. The interior of the ship had evolved in accordance with the needs of its various crews over the years, but it remained cramped and claustrophobic. As the
Wayfarer
came in to land on the planet Hurala, Stella grew ever more desperate to get out and get some fresh air. She was starting to feel trapped. She leant over the back of the pilot's seat, peering over Cuttin' Edge's shoulder at the craggy, brown surface of the planet as it sped beneath.

'Spaceport,' said Scrum, tapping one of the displays on the flight console. 'Twenty kliks north-west.'

Cuttin' Edge brought the ship down on one of the small landing pads situated on the perimeter. The buildings were little more than rusting hulks, and there were no other ships in sight.

'It's actually an old refuelling station,' Scrum explained. 'This kind of place was fully automated anyway. As long as there's still some juice in the tanks we can fill up and be on our way.'

'OK,' said Bowman. His voice rumbled quietly from the rear of the flight cabin. 'Let's get this done. I don't have to remind you guys that we're right on the edge of human space. There's nothing and no one here, but I don't want to hang around and risk attracting any unnecessary attention. One hour's shore leave and then we go.'

They filed out of the ship, stretching and yawning.

Scrum was holding a portable scanner. 'Let's see if this thing can find the nearest astronic fuel terminal.'

'Oh, man,' said Cuttin' Edge. 'It feels good to just
walk
.' He strode purposefully to the rim of the landing pad. 'Reckon we can get anything to eat around here?'

'Depends on whether they left food behind when they abandoned the place,' said Scrum, concentrating on his scanner. 'And whether they left it in a stasis field. They probably switched them all off, and that accounts for the pong.'

'Nuts,' said Cuttin' Edge. 'I'm gonna take a look. Comin', bro?'

Scrum nodded, still looking down at the scanner display, and set off after his friend.

Stella watched them go with a smile. They made an unusual pair, complete opposites but the best of mates. Stella wondered what it must be like to have a good friend, someone you could rely on, share secrets with, even share a life with. The crew of the
Wayfarer
were her friends, but they were also colleagues. Something inside her longed for more, for a better life. She just didn't know how to find it.

'Doesn't do to think,' growled Bowman.

'It's this place,' Stella said. 'So silent and forgotten. It reeks of death.'

'What put you in such a good mood?'

She sighed. 'Maybe I need a break.'

'You sure that's all you need?' Bowman asked. 'I know you only joined up short term. If you want to go, then go.'

'Why, captain, I do believe you have a heart after all.'

'Who, me? Forget it.'

Someone moved into view behind Bowman, stalking across the concrete from the
Wayfarer
like a panther. Koral was tall, tawny like a lioness with bright, burning eyes. She wore supple, natural buckskins and leather boots. She was humanoid, but sometimes seemed more like an animal – powerful, predatory, slightly aloof. Stella still wasn't certain exactly what Koral's relationship was with Bowman, but she seemed to act like some sort of personal bodyguard.

Koral whispered something to Bowman. When she spoke, Stella glimpsed sharp, white fangs.

'It's OK,' Bowman said quietly. He always spoke softly to Koral. 'We're only staying for a short time.'

Koral nodded and moved away, as indifferent to Stella and the rest of her surroundings as a cat.

'What's up with her?' Stella asked.

'She wants to know why everyone's so nervous,' Bowman said. 'Says she can smell the sweat.'

'It's the life we lead, I suppose.'

'That, and the fact that this place is so ... wrong.'

'Wrong?'

Bowman nodded. 'It's empty. Abandoned. A corpse of a world. Like you said, it reeks of death.'

Stella shivered. And then they both heard a cry – Cuttin' Edge's voice, calling them from some way off. 'Hey! Dudes, over here. You gotta see this!'

They found Cuttin' Edge at a small intersection between the old prefab buildings. Scrum was standing to one side, busy taking readings with his scanner, moving the device around for a better signal. Koral paced the area, looking this way and that for any sign of danger.

Cuttin' Edge was excited. 'Well? What do ya think?'

He gestured theatrically at a tall blue box with panelled sides and small, frosted windows set high up on a pair of double doors. A sign across the top read:

POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX

'What is it?' asked Stella, unimpressed. It was odd, but not spectacular.