by Colfer, Eoin
And, while it often was the right thing to do morally, it was rarely correct from a tactical standpoint.
Just as the Doctor thought to call Susan, she must have thought to contact him as his wrist communicator vibrated to signal the arrival of a message. Surprisingly it buzzed a second time, then a third. Several more urgent buzzes followed.
The Doctor checked the small screen to see a dozen messages all from Susan coming through at the same time. How could that be? He had designed and built these communicators himself. They could broadcast through time if need be.
Then it hit him.
Stupid. Stupid. How could he not have foreseen this?
Aldridge was off-radar in this city. He would obviously have set up a series of jamming dishes. Anyone scanning the planet would find no trace of the surgeon or his gadgetry.
Susan had been trying to get through all evening, but he had been inside the jammed zone.
The Doctor scrolled to the last message, which had come through only seconds before, and clicked play.
‘Grandfather,’ said Susan’s voice, breathy and he could hear her feet pounding as she ran. ‘I can’t wait any more. The beam has hit number fourteen as you predicted. Repeat, number fourteen. I have to help those children, Grandfather. There is no one else. Please come quick. Hurry, Grandfather, hurry.’
The Doctor cursed himself for being a fool, threw some coins in the cabbie’s general direction and shouted at the man to make haste for the Kensington Gardens end of Hyde Park.
She was supposed to wait. I told her to wait. Why must she be so foolhardy?
As they neared the row of terraced townhouses at the end of the park, the Doctor played through the rest of Susan’s messages hoping for some information that might help him rescue her and the children.
From what he could gather, Susan had befriended three children in the park and managed to glean that their parents had gone to Switzerland to a revolutionary new spa because of the father’s nervous problems. Fearful of the curse, they had left one Captain Douglas, a soldier of the Queen’s own guard, in charge of the children to protect them.
The curse. The family, like many others, believed that children went missing because of a curse.
The Doctor could see the signature tawny orange light of the pirates’ beam entering the house. He jumped out of the hansom cab, then ran along a footpath lit by the firefly glow of gas lamps, and up the steps of number fourteen. The door was typically Victorian: solid and unbreakable by a shoulder charge.
How about my bio-hybrid hand? thought the Doctor, deciding to put Aldridge’s technology to the test.
With barely a pause he punched the door with his left hand, middle knuckle striking the brass-ringed keyhole, and in spite of the circumstances he felt a moment’s gratification when the metal lock crumpled beneath the blow and the surrounding wooden panel literally exploded into splinters. One of his fake glove fingers did split like an overcooked sausage but the Doctor knew that Aldridge would understand. Susan’s life was at stake after all.
He barged into the hall and straight up the stairs, looking neither right nor left. The pirates would come in on the top storey, directly into the bedroom. The Doctor knew which bedroom because of a glow emanating from under the door, and he heard a dull buzz like a far-off, agitated beehive.
The anti-gravity beam.
I am too late. Susan, my dear.
With a cry that was almost animal, the Doctor split the fake thumb smashing open the bedroom door, and what he saw in there nearly stopped both of his Time Lord hearts.
It was the type of bedroom one would expect in a normal upper-class Kensington townhouse: patterned velvet wallpaper, prints framed on the wall – and an orange beam retreating through the bay windows like a spooked snake. Perhaps in the world outside the Doctor’s, the orange beam was less than normal.
Susan was suspended in the air, floating out through the window, a dreamy smile on her lovely young face.
‘Grandfather,’ she called to him. Her movements were slow as though underwater. ‘I have found Mummy. I am going to see her now, do come with me. Take my hand, Grandfather.’
The Doctor almost took the proffered hand, but to do so would have meant entering the beam, just as Susan’s compassion for the children had caused her to do, and it was too early because the minute he took a breath in the beam the soporific agent would affect him too, and even Time Lords can only hold their breath for so long.
Beyond Susan, the Doctor saw a cluster of figures suspended by the beam.
The children and guard have been taken. I must save them all and somehow end this tonight.
And so the Doctor skirted the beam, ignoring Susan’s pleas, though they were breaking his heart, and climbed through a side window on to the roof where there was a Soul Pirate with a large sword waiting to catch a ride back to his ship on the tail end of the anti-grav beam. The pirate was huge and bare to the waist, his skin a patchwork of grafts and scarring. His too-large head was completely shaved apart from a braided lock, which stood erect on his crown like an exclamation mark.
Mano-a-mano, thought the Doctor, grimly. And that pirate is a much bigger mano than I am.
3
The Doctor and the Soul Pirate faced each other across an expanse of slick grey slate. The wind churned the mist into maelstroms and the great expanse of space yawned overhead. The Doctor’s hat was snatched from his head and sent spinning over the hotchpotch of pitched roofs into a coal bunker thirty feet below.
Where I shall probably soon follow, the Doctor realised, but he had no alternative but to engage this pirate fellow. After all, the grotesque creature stood between him and his granddaughter.
‘Igby kill white-hair,’ said the foul creature from between clenched teeth. He was presumably referring to himself in the third person, and referring to the Doctor according to his hair colour, not randomly informing the Doctor of the existence of a man called Igby who had something against white hair.
‘Release your prisoners,’ the Doctor shouted into the wind. ‘You don’t have to live this way. You can be at peace.’
And even though the Doctor had always abhorred weapons, he wished he had something a little more substantial than a walking stick to fend off the blows that were coming his way.
‘I like white hair. He funny,’ shouted Igby, his own booming voice penetrating the elements. ‘Come die, old man.’
There is an excellent chance that I will do just that, thought the Doctor grimly. But despite the odds I simply must not lose. Sometimes there is more to life than the odds.
The orange anti-grav beam pulsed, scorching a cylinder through the London fog, silhouettes of brainwashed abductees floating in its depths, dreamily certain that they were flying to their own tailor-made heavens.
Jolly adventures, trees to climb, heroes all.
How long would that fantasy sustain them before the reality of the Soul Pirates’ ship manifested?
The Doctor advanced cautiously, picking his way along the slick ridge, keeping his cane extended all the while. As soon as he stepped out from behind the chimney, the full force of the elements battered him with sideswipes of wind and tacks of icy rain. He struggled to keep his balance on the treacherous slating, and each time a loose tile slipped from its moorings and smashed on the cobbles below the Doctor remembered the danger he was in.
Though one is hardly likely to forget.
Igby waited for him, his eyes ablaze with bloodlust, twirling his sword in complicated patterns that deflated the Doctor’s optimism with every revolution.
This alien is an expert killer. A mercenary. How can I, a pacifist with a stick, hope to defeat him?
The answer was obvious.
Igby was a beam jockey, that much was clear from the faint orange tinge to his skin, which reminded the Doctor (if one can be reminded of the future) of the pungent, toxic goo twenty-first-century ladies chose to slather on their skin in the name of tan. Beam jockeys were impervious to the soporific ag
ent inside the anti-grav beam but long-term exposure did give their IQs a bit of a battering.
So, Igby appeared to be strong and fast, but maybe a little dim.
So, thought the Doctor, I use tactics.
Do the unexpected.
Closer they drew. On the face of it, the Doctor was totally outmatched. The pirate Igby was in his prime and packed solid with muscle. Igby’s teeth were golden and the heavy slab of his naked chest bore a tattoo of the Soul Pirates’ motto: We Never Land.
The Doctor noticed Igby’s shadow flicker and shift, and realised the anti-grav beam was retracting towards the ship. If that happened, all hope would be lost. Even if Susan survived and he did find her again, she would be a different person – her wonderful spirit broken.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘I will not permit it.’
Igby laughed, jerking his head at the Doctor as if informing an invisible friend that this old man was crazy. Then he too noticed the beam retracting, and realised that he had better finish up here or he could find himself stranded on Earth.
‘Sorry, old man. No play now, just kill dead with sword.’
Igby rushed the Doctor, covering the space between them in two strides. The Doctor held his cane in front of him protectively, but Igby bashed it away with his silver wrist-guard.
‘Fool,’ spat Igby, spittle spattering through layers of teeth, craggy as a mountain range.
He lifted his blade high and brought it down with terrific force towards the Doctor’s head. No time for subtleties. The pirate obviously intended to cleave one of the greatest frontal lobes in the universe with an almighty blow. Though the Doctor could not know it, this particular move was a favourite of Igby’s, and the tattooed lines on his arms did not represent a record of days spent in prison, but rather the number of heads he had split, properly witnessed by a minimum of two crewmates.
As he swung, it occurred to Igby that none of his mates was present to credit the killing, so he turned his head towards the ship just to check if any of the camera stalks at the ship’s front were focused on him, and to give the camera a clear shot of his face so there would be no cause for debate.
‘Look,’ he shouted in the direction of the camera stalks. ‘I kill white hair. No problem.’
Igby felt a thunk as expected, but it was somehow different from the signature skull-splitting thunk that generally followed a fatal blow to the noggin.
Igby turned his gaze to the Doctor, and was more than surprised to find that the old man had caught Igby’s sword in his left hand.
‘Igby,’ said Igby. It was the only word that would come to him.
The pirate yanked the sword, but it was trapped in the grip of the Doctor’s bio-hybrid hand, so Igby tugged again, this time with all of his considerable strength. The Doctor was lifted off the ground for a moment, then the temporary binding polymer, which secured the bio-hybrid glove to the Doctor’s wrist and was never meant for rooftop shenanigans, simply split with a noise like the twang of a rubber band. Igby’s yank sent him past the point of correction and over backwards.
The Doctor reached out the exposed curved ceramic digits to save the pirate, but Igby was beyond his reach. All he could do was blink at the appendage stretched out towards him and utter the last word of his despicable life.
‘Hook,’ he groaned and slid on all fours down the roof and tumbled into the darkness below.
The Doctor regretted the loss of any life, however vile, but there was no time to mourn Igby’s death. The orange tractor beam was withdrawing into the cloud and in mere seconds it would be beyond his reach. Perhaps it already was.
Oh, how I wish I had already regenerated to become the tall one with the dicky bow, thought the Doctor, who occasionally had visions of his future selves. He is always so fit and agile. I suppose all that incessant running down corridors that he does . . . will do . . . may do, in one of my possible futures . . . is good for something.
‘Stupid blasted sequence of events,’ he shouted at the heartless elements. ‘Isn’t a person supposed to have a reasonable option?’
If the elements did have the answer, they kept it to themselves.
‘S’pose not,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Better take the unreasonable option then.’
He trotted along the ridge to the nearest chimney, going as quickly as he could before his subconscious caught on to his lunatic plan and tried to stop him. Up on to the chimney he scrambled, dislodging two clay pots and a bird’s nest from its perch. And from there he dived out and was lifted up into the fading glow of the pirates’ tractor beam.
4
The anti-gravity beam sucked the Doctor into its belly and he supposed that this was how being eaten must feel. Indeed it was more than mere supposition. He had been eaten twice before, on the same holiday, by blarph whales in Lake Rhonda who thought it was hilarious to gulp down bathers then pop them out through their blowholes. Then all the whales would surface-high-five each other and have a good old laugh at the bather’s expense. The bather would generally take the whole thing in good spirits – after all, who’s going to take issue with a twenty-tonne blarph whale?
The Doctor banished these memories because they were for another time when he was not suspended in the anti-grav beam of a Soul Pirate frigate.
The Doctor knew he had only moments of total consciousness left before the beam’s soporific agent lulled him into a peaceful sleep, when it would seem as though all his dreams were on the verge of coming to pass. The Doctor shook himself vigorously to stay awake, while at the same time holding his breath.
Suddenly he was back on Gallifrey, with his family, safe at last.
‘That’s right,’ said his mother and she smiled down at him, her long hair brushing his forehead. ‘Stay here, my little Doctor. Stay here with me and you can tell tales of the worlds you have visited. I so want to hear your stories.’
She is so pretty, he thought. Just as I remember her.
‘D’Arvit!’ swore the Doctor aloud. ‘I am being drugged.’ He began to describe what was happening around him just to stay alert.
‘There are half a dozen souls trapped in the beam. Three children and three adults, counting Susan as an adult, which I am not sure I should considering the fact that she wilfully disobeyed my instructions. All able-bodied. The pirates need youth and strength to power their ship. I cannot see Susan’s face, though I can feel her joy. I wonder what she sees in her dreams?’
The beam was more than light. It offered resistance when touched and was heavily charged to allow suspension of dense matter.
‘I know we are moving,’ continued the Doctor, narrating his journey. ‘Yet there is no sensation of movement. No friction whatsoever. I can honestly say that in spite of the ominous circumstances, I have never been so comfortable.’
A slender shape flitted past and the Doctor knew, even from the briefest glimpse, that it was Susan. He recognised her as surely as an infant recognises the voice of its mother.
‘Susan, my dear!’ he cried, releasing more precious breath, but Susan’s smile never wavered, and she did not answer.
The Doctor saw in her expression how optimistic about the universe Susan was and he realised how utterly she would collapse in the Soul Pirates’ hands. That could not be allowed to happen.
They passed through the folded-pastry layers of a puffed-up cumulus and emerged looking at the stars. The second star on the left winked and crackled suddenly as its cloaking shield was powered down, and where sky had been now hovered the hulking pirate factory ship.
The beam drew them towards the specially modified bay of the mid-size interplanetary-class frigate. The underside was scored from many close calls with asteroids and weapon fire. The Doctor could clearly see the spot welds where a new plate had recently been attached.
Space gates were cranked open and the Doctor saw that the anti-grav beam had been modified to fire from inside the ship itself, which was incredibly dangerous if not properly calibrated, but it did allow the Soul Pirates to draw th
eir victims directly into the hold for processing.
‘The anti-grav cannon fires from within the hold,’ said the Doctor, but he could feel himself losing the battle to stay alert. ‘The subjects are drawn inside and often spontaneously and in perfect synchronisation sing every word of the Monzorian opera “Grunt the Naysayer”.’
Stop it! The Doctor chided himself. Draw your wits about you. Say what you see.
‘The Soul Pirates’ ship works on the same principle as those despicable Orthonian whaling factories,’ he said, feeling a numbness buzz along his arms. ‘Once the subjects have been deposited inside the Soul Pirate ship, they are scanned by computer and the ship decides how best to use each one. Most are hooked up to battery rigs and drained of their electricity, but some are sent directly to dissection for their parts. Soul Pirates are humanoids, mostly but not exclusively from the planet Ryger. Their systems are extremely robust and can accept all manner of transplants, even ones from different species, such as Earthlings. With timely transplants a pirate can reasonably expect to live three to four hundred Earth years.’
The giant gates yawned wide and sucked the subjects into a vast abattoir. Rows of meat hooks hung from the metal ceiling and a couple of pirates stood in rubber aprons ready to hose down the new arrivals with water cannons. They wore curved heat blades attached to battery packs on their belts in case the computer recommended an instant amputation.
The beam was powered down and its cargo dropped with a thump into a pit on the deck. The Doctor confirmed that there were four others besides Susan and himself.
Six to save, he thought. And those pirates have the high ground.
As soon as the last gloopy globs of the anti-grav beam had faded, the Soul Pirates cranked up their hoses and turned them on their latest victims, blasting Susan, the Doctor and the four others into a heaped hotchpotch of limbs and torsos in the corner of the pit.
The pirates laughed. ‘They so stupid,’ said one. ‘Look, I spray them again.’
Pummelled by water on two sides, the Doctor could barely breathe. He was effectively blind and couldn’t have fought back if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. When your enemy believes you to be unconscious, let them continue to do so until you gain a tactical advantage.