Doctor Who: Ribos Operation (9 page)

They were trapped.

The Graff crunched towards them, his hard face unusually
flushed and his cheek twitching uncontrollably. ‘No one plays
games with me. No one,’ he said hoarsely, slapping one
armoured hand with the gauntlet gripped in the other as he
walked slowly round his victims.

The Doctor gestured calmly towards the bristling fates specs
levelled at them. ‘I think there is some mistake...’ he said gently.

‘There is no mistake!’ the Graff screamed at him with
blazing eyes. He turned on his heel and stamped back to where
Sholakh was standing impassively waiting. ‘Execute them.’ he
ordered.

The air was filled with a high-pitched whining as the Guards
charged their spears. Garron flung himself face down in the
snow. ‘Mercy... mercy...’ he whimpered.

Sholakh urgently murmured something to the Graff. The
Prince hesitated, then nodded: ‘I agree, Sholakh,’ he said
striding forward again and yanking Garron to his knees by the
hair. ‘Get up you cringing cur,’ he snarled, slashing Garron
viciously across the face with his gauntlet.

Garron cowered at the Prince’s feet, trying to cover his head
with his arms, and whimpering pitifully.

The Graff raised his hand to strike again, but the Doctor
strode forward and caught his arm. ‘Not a very royal gesture
your Highness...’ he cried. ‘Assuming, of course, that you are a
Highness.’

Wrenching his arm free, the Graff Vynda Ka stared at the
Doctor speechless with disbelief. His hard mouth opened and
shut but no sound came out. Slowly he backed away pointing a
rigid arm at the Doctor. When he reached Sholakh, he began to
utter incoherent guttural snarls between hysterical snatches of
breath which shook his whole body. ‘Kill... kill him...’ he
suddenly shrieked.

Once again Sholakh spoke rapidly to his master in a low
earnest voice.

‘Good advice, my faithful Sholakh,’ the Graff muttered,
growing a little calmer. ‘We shall extract the whole truth from
them, gradually and no doubt painfully, at our leisure.’ With
that he turned and stalked away towards the Citadel, closely
followed by half a dozen of his bodyguards.

Sholakh turned to his prisoners with impatient delight.
‘Take them,’ he ordered. The remaining Guards closed in
around the Doctor, Romana and Garron and prodded them into
motion with their lethal spears.

The brooding silence of the Curfew over the city of Shurr was
broken by the shriek of whistles and the thunder of hide boots as
the Shrieve garrison rallied to the alarm raised by the sentry.
The shutter was immediately lowered, confining the Shrivenzale
in its den, while Shrieves armed with pikes and short swords
searched the Relic Chamber and the Citadel.

Ashen-faced, the Captain of the Shrievalty examined the
glass panel cut out of the Relic Cabinet. Moments earlier, he had
discovered the theft of the million gold opeks from the cache in
the nearby pillar. ‘Nothing is missing from the Sacred
Reliquary—the thief was obviously disturbed,’ he murmured
with intense relief. ‘Even so he must be taken at once.’ At his
bidding, several Guards rushed from the chamber to join the
search.

At that moment the Graff Vynda Ka entered, almost
colliding with the burly Shrieves. ‘What is happening?’ he
demanded.

The Captain explained. ‘Such an act of sacrilegious
vandalism shall not go unpunished,’ he warned.

‘Indeed, Captain,’ the Graff nodded impatiently. ‘But what
of the one million opeks that I placed in your charge?’

The Captain glanced across at the pillar. ‘Your gold has
been taken sir,’ he said quietly.

‘Then you will recover it...’ the young Prince ordered in a
hushed menacing voice. ‘Otherwise, my Guards...’ The threat
died on his lips and he shoved past the frowning Captain, his
eyes darting among the sacred objects in the Relic Cabinet.

‘Where is it?’ he hissed, pointing to a small vacant area
among the glittering treasures.

The Captain stared blankly into the cabinet. The Graff
began crushing and twisting the bunched gauntlets in his hands.
‘The Jethryk... it has gone...’ he cried.

‘Nothing is missing from the chamber except your gold. sir,’
the Captain said firmly.

‘The blue stone... the Skrynge Stone... look it was there...
just there...’ the trembling Prince gasped.

‘Skrynge Stone?’ the Captain said quietly, shaking his head
and staring at the stranger as if he were a madman.

The Graff Vynda Ka suddenly became very still and calm,
and a frozen smile set his face like a mask. ‘Then it was a trick,
just as I suspected...’ he said under his breath.

The Captain watched the silent stranger for a moment,
trying to fathom his extraordinary behaviour. ‘I have summoned
the Seeker, sir,’ he ventured.

‘Seeker?’ the Graf muttered, preoccupied with the deception
Garron had tried to pull off at his expense.

‘An ancient visionary, sir,’ the Captain explained. ‘No
wrong-doer can escape the Seeker’s eye. Rest assured, sir, the
thief will be taken before daybreak.’

In the Graf Vynda Ka’s quarters the Doctor, Romana and
Garron stood with their backs up against the blazing fire in the
centre of the chamber. They were completely surrounded by
Levithian Guards whose expressionless slived helmets and
armour-plated bodies formed an impregnable wall around the
helpless trio while they were searched. Sholakh had been
methodically emptying the Doctor’s many cluttered pockets, and
the table was crowded with an assortment of strange objects—an
ear trumpet. a corkscrew, string, marbles, a magnifying glass, a
paper bag with a few jelly babies melted into a lump...

Suddenly one of the Guards held up the Locatormutor Core
which Romana had vainly tried to conceal in her robe. Sholakh
handled the unfamiliar device cautiously. ‘What is this?’ he
demanded.

Romana glanced at the Doctor and shrugged in resignation:
‘It’s an instrument which...’

‘Does all kinds of tricks,’ the Doctor butted in with a stern
look at his frightened assistant. ‘Like producing rabbits out of
hats... tracing underground streams...’

‘Let the female answer,’ Sholakh snapped.

‘You can even play a hornpipe on it,’ the Doctor went on
good-humouredly. ‘Would you like me to show you?’ He was
viciously prodded back into place by a Guard.

‘Do not bluff,’ Sholakh retorted contemptuously. ‘It is quite
obviously some kind of weapon.’

The Doctor shrugged and stared at his feet in
embarrassment like a scolded child. ‘I can see you are no fool,’
he mumbled, ‘you are obviously an expert in weaponry.’

Sholakh allowed himself a faint smile of triumph as he stuck
the Locatormutor Core into his belt.

‘But mind it doesn’t go off!’ the Doctor suddenly cried
covering his ears, ‘I do so hate loud bangs.’ Sholakh laughed in
the Doctor’s face. ‘Enjoy your childish fun while you can,’ he
sneered. ‘The Graff Vynda Ka will soon wring the truth from
you... all of you.’

At that moment a loud warbling suddenly burst from
Garron’s sleeve. Panic-stricken, he flung his hands behind him
desperately trying to wrench the radio from his wrist and drop it
unnoticed into the fire. The brief signal ceased and there was
silence. Garron stared innocently round at the others and gave
an exaggerated shrug. Immediately the shrill warbling began
again. Garron smashed his arm brutally against the edge of the
chimney opening and the noise stopped abruptly.

Sholakh strode forward and ripped back the fur cuff of
Garron’s sleeve. As he pushed past, the Doctor slipped the
Locatormutor out of Sholakh’s belt with lightning fingers and
thrust it up the arm of his overcoat.

Of course.. Sholakh smiled grimly, looking down at the
crumpled mass of metal and twisted wire clamped to Garron’s
trembling wrist. ‘More childish games.’ He motioned the Guards
out of the chamber and clattered after them, snatching up his
massive helmet from the table.

‘Your accomplice will not escape,’ he flung at the silent trio
from the doorway. ‘When he is caught you will all perish—
together.’ With that, Sholakh put on his helmet and stared at
them for a few seconds, his cruel laughter horribly muffled
behind the angular metal mask.

The moment Sholakh left the chamber, the Doctor seized his
ear trumpet from the cluttered table and leaped across to listen
at the door.

Romana led the almost fainting Garron to a bench, sat him
gently down and began delicately picking the slivers of metal
and plastic out of his lacerated wrist.

‘You’re too kind, my dear,’ he muttered, wincing and
gritting his teeth. I never could stand the sight of blood—
especially my own.’

The Doctor padded quietly over and sat hunched at the
table. ‘We’re safer in here than we’d be in Fort Knox...’ he
murmured gloomily to himself, half-heartedly gathering up his
possessions and stuffing them haphazardly into his coat.

Romana took a tiny vaporiser from her robe and sprayed
Garron’s cleaned wound with sealant. ‘Your communicator
would have been useful,’ she sighed.

Garron shrugged. ‘It can’t be helped. Unstoffe might have
given away his position,’ he said.

‘Unstoffe... your nimble apprentice no doubt,’ the Doctor
remarked. ‘Yes, I almost bumped into him in the Relic
Chamber—he’s very light on his feet’

Garron suddenly let out a guffaw of wry amusement. ‘How
ironic this all is,’ he giggled. ‘You and your charming colleague
had just made a most elegant and efficient arrest... and all to no
good. Now we shall all die together.’

‘I have absolutely no intention of dying just at present,’ the
Doctor retorted. ‘It’s quite definitely the very last thing I’m
going to do.’

Garron shook his head knowingly: ‘You won’t have any
choice—the Graff is a cold-blooded maniac.’

‘Then you were rather foolish to try and sell him a non-existent mine,’ the Doctor grinned.

Garron shrugged and glanced at his injured wrist which had
now stopped bleeding. ‘Well, the least I can do is to tell the Graff
that you were nothing to do with my little scheme,’ he smiled.
‘Though I doubt whether he...’ Garron trailed off into silence
and stared open-mouthed from the Doctor to Romana and back
again. ‘You... you aren’t Alliance Security Agents at all!’ he cried,
his cheeks wobbling with indignation as he lurched to his feet.
‘Just what is your game?’

Before Romana could reply, the Doctor leaped up.
‘Escapology,’ he cried ‘I’m going to send an SOS.’ And taking
the silver dog whistle from behind his ear, he blew a series of
inaudible blasts—alternately long and short.

The door of the silent and darkened TARDIS creaked slowly
open and with agitatedly whirring antennae and brightly
glowing eyes K9 emerged. He paused an the threshold, busily
fixing a bearing on the Doctor’s urgent signals. After a great deal
of buzzing and clicking in his internal circuity, he suddenly fell
silent.

‘Your position is established, master,’ he announced loudly
to no one in particular after several seconds pause. Then with
occasional short blasts of his infra-red radiaprobe to clear a path
through the rapidly hardening snow, he set off into the night.

Reaching the arched gateway he stopped briefly to check his
bearings and then buzzed quietly into the city, constantly
weaving and rerouting himself in order to dodge the Shrieve
patrols which were scouring the dark narrow alleyways in search
of the thief.

K9 trundled rapidly through the deserted passageways of
the Citadel busily searching for his master. Eventually he
reached the bottom of the long flight of steep steps leading from
the Relic Chamber to the upper storeys. There he stopped: the
steps were impassable. For a few minutes he was motionless
while his circuits hummed and his antennae waved about as he
computed an alternative route.

Just as he was about to move off along a narrow gallery at
the side of the steps, there was a gasp of amazement from the
shadow’s by the doors to the Relic Chamber. K9 spun round.
The massive young Shrieve Guard was staring in wide-eyed
terror at the whirring alien object, his pike raised but his arms
seemingly paralysed.

‘No defensive action is necessary,’ K9 rasped. ‘My current
programme is not hostile.’

For a moment the Shrieve did not more. Then he suddenly
lunged forward, the pike aimed between the robot’s glowing
eyes. There was a brief flash which stopped him in his tracks,
and then he sank to his knees and toppled over—stunned.

K9 swung round and buzzed away along the gallery, his
radiaprobe primed and at the ready. Every so often he stopped
as his receptors picked up another urgent signal from the
Doctor, and each time he set off again with increased speed
chattering quietly away to himself...

In the colonnaded Concourse at the centre of the city, Unstoffe
himself was darting through the shadows desperately trying to
evade the Shrieves. The nugget of Jethryk and the purse full of
gold opeks hung heavily at his side as he ran, stopping now and
then to whisper urgently into his wrist radio: ‘Garron... Come in,
Garron... Come in...’ But whenever he put the tiny device to his
ear all he heard was the mush of static, Anxiously he would click
the transmit/receive button but it made no difference.

‘Whatever’s wrong with the old fool?’ he muttered, hurling
himself into a huge stack of firewood piled round one of the
columns as a loud burst of whistling suddenly sounded nearby.
‘Surely he hasn’t gone to sleep up there in this weather...’ He lay
motionless listening to the echoing whistles as the Shrieve patrols
signalled to one another, and to the shrieking wind which
hurtled through the colonnade throwing up uncannily life-like
swirls of snow in the shape of ghostly creatures rising out of the
shadows.

He knew that the longer he stayed in the city, the greater
was the danger of being trapped. He decided that his only hope
was to make a dash for the city wall and try to reach the small
shuttle-craft which Garron had hired and which lay a couple of
kilometres out in the tundra.