Shakedown

by Terrance Dicks

  Steg moved on to Mari. ‘This one too is female.’ The broad three-digited hand touched her hair. ‘The hair is finer...the thorax of different construction.’

  As the hand moved over Mari’s body she looked up at the horrifying face so close to hers and gave a gasp of terror.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ shouted Nikos. He sprang forward and tried to pull Steg away. The Sontaran swatted him aside, with a casual backhanded blow that sent Nikos flying across the room. He crashed into one of the bunks and fell, and Mari ran to his side. Vorn and the trooper raised their blasters.

  Kurt stepped out in front of them. He spoke directly to Steg, using the same flat, level voice. ‘The other is a young human male, Commander. He is sexually pair-bonded to the young female. It is his instinct to protect her.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Steg. He waved Vorn and the trooper aside, and moved on to Lisa. ‘This one too is female?’

  Lisa stared back at him.

  Steg stroked her dark hair. ‘Ah yes, she is female. But she is not afraid.’ He swung round on Kurt. ‘And you are male, but you are not aggressive in her defence. Are you sexually pair-bonded?’

  Kurt glanced at the furious Lisa, and his mouth twitched. ‘No,’ he said solemnly. ‘This particular female can defend herself.’

  ‘She is female – like these others – but she is Captain?‘ asked Steg curiously.

  Kurt nodded. ‘We humans vary a great deal.’

  ‘We Sontarans do not,’ said Steg dismissively. ‘Variation is inefficient.’ He addressed the room at large. ‘Remain here, all of you, and cause no trouble.’

  Steg sprang to the metal ladder and swarmed up it, disappearing from sight. Vorn and the trooper followed.

  Kurt put a hand on Lisa’s shoulder. ‘You all right?’

  She brushed his hand aside. ‘Sexually pair-bonded! That’ll be the day!’ She paused. ‘Did you believe what he said – about letting us go?’

  Kurt glanced across the room, to where Zorelle and Mari were tending the semi-conscious Nikos. He lowered his voice.

  ‘No. When he goes, he’ll kill us all.’

  13

  Deal

  The Sontaran pocket-cruiser and the solar yacht hung together in space like mating insects, linked at the airlock tunnel.

  Inside the solar yacht, a trooper stood on guard by the airlock door.

  A second trooper approached. His face was expressionless, as Sontaran faces often are, and the faint glow about his body-armour might have come from the corridor lights.

  Without speaking, the second trooper began operating the wheel that opened the airlock door.

  The sentry trooper swung round in challenge.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the assault vessel.’

  ‘I have orders to admit no one.’ The sentry came closer. ‘I do not know you. Who are you?’

  Ignoring him, the newcomer went on opening the door.

  The sentry grabbed the trooper’s arm, attempting to pull him away. There was a crackle of power and the sentry was hurled back, collapsing against the corridor wall.

  The newcomer turned back to the door.

  Lieutenant Vorn came round the corner and saw one trooper on the floor, and another opening the airlock.

  ‘What is happening?’ he called.

  The trooper at the airlock ignored him.

  Vorn drew his blaster. ‘Stop!’

  When there was still no response Vorn fired – but his target had disappeared. The trooper dissolved into a blur of light and disappeared down the long corridor. Vorn ran to the remaining trooper and dragged him roughly to his feet. He was shocked, but apparently unharmed. ‘Are you functional?’

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Guard the airlock. Let no one pass. No one!’

  Vorn hurried away.

  Commander Steg was alone on the sail deck.

  He was studying the holograph and musing on the strange ways of humans. Choosing a slow and difficult means of propulsion, just because it was slow and difficult. He reflected on the curious differences between them.

  The two females, the young and the older one, and the young male he dismissed as insignificant. But for all his apparent calmness there was something disturbing, and somehow familiar, about the human called Kurt. And the Captain female...Steg remembered how she had met his eyes, challenging and unafraid.

  It occurred to Steg that there was something interesting about all this variety. He dismissed the thought immediately as being unsound and un-Sontaran.

  He swung round as Lieutenant Vorn hurried onto the sail deck. There was nothing strange or different about Vorn, he thought. He was utterly Sontaran, brave, loyal and stupid.

  Vorn seemed strangely agitated. ‘Commander!’ he gasped.

  Steg pulled him up sharply. ‘Report in the proper form.’

  Vorn came to attention and flung his arm across his chest.

  ‘Lieutenant Vorn reporting, Commander.’

  ‘Has the ship’s engineer been found?’

  ‘No, Commander.’

  ‘Have the search patrols found our enemy?’

  ‘No, Commander.’

  ‘You do have something to report?’

  ‘There has been an attempt to leave the ship. The guard trooper was stunned.’

  ‘An attempt by whom?’

  ‘By what appeared to be one of our troopers. When I fired –’

  ‘It vanished in a blaze of light?’

  Vorn gasped at his Commander’s amazing prescience. ‘Yes, Commander!’

  ‘You are sure you hit it?’

  ‘Yes, Commander.’

  ‘Blaster on maximum charge?’

  ‘Yes, Commander.’

  Exultantly Steg’s fist smashed down on the holograph console.

  ‘Excellent! Our enemy is here, and it is wounded. Organize a thorough search of the power room. Rip the place to pieces if necessary.’

  Vorn hesitated. ‘If the power drive is destroyed, the ship will be unable to proceed.’

  Steg’s mouth twitched in the rare Sontaran smile. ‘Vorn, this ship isn’t going anywhere. Not any more.’

  Vorn saluted and hurried away.

  Steg stood alone on the darkened sail deck, his eyes glowing red in triumph. He had made the right deduction. The Rutan was on board Tiger Moth. It was here, and it would die here.

  Even if the ship had to die with it.

  Steg’s thick finger stabbed at a control. The glowing holograph of Tiger Moth disappeared into darkness.

  The Rutan entity that called itself Karne drifted along the dark corridors at the core of the ship, heading for the power room. Vorn’s shot had caught it unawares, before it had time to throw up an energy shield. The close-range blast had led to cellular disruption and consequent energy leak. Weak and wounded, the Rutan desperately needed more energy.

  It picked up the vibrations of heavy, booted footsteps and shrank into a side corridor, its glow dimmed, as a Sontaran trooper marched past on patrol.

  When the danger was past, it resumed its journey to the power room. It arrived at last, only to find danger waiting. The thick-set shapes of Sontaran troopers moved about the engine room, dismantling the power drives.

  The Rutan retreated into the darkness, awaiting its chance.

  Lieutenant Vorn looked on, blaster at the ready, while a trooper removed a hatch from one of the power units.

  Suddenly the trooper stepped back. ‘Lieutenant, look!’

  The trooper stepped aside and Vorn saw something dangling from the open hatchway.

  It was the arm of a dead Sontaran trooper.

  When the Sontaran sentry made his occasional checks, things seemed peaceful enough in the crewroom. The prisoners were properly subdued, talking quietly amongst themselves. Under the surface, however, quite a lot was going on.

  Mari was fussing over Nikos, now pretty much recovered, but enjoying the attention. The fall had done no real damage, but it had left him shaken and bruised. H
is ego had suffered most of all. His attempt to protect Mari had been contemptuously brushed aside, and it was Kurt who had saved the day.

  He glanced across the room to where Kurt and Lisa were deep in conversation. They seemed to be arguing.

  Zorelle was hovering between the two groups, straining to hear what Kurt and Lisa were talking about.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ Lisa was saying. ‘Steg said himself he had no reason to harm us.’

  Kurt sighed, despairing of making her realize the total ruthlessness of the Sontaran mentality.

  ‘Look at it from their point of view,’ he said quietly. ‘Suppose they don’t find this enemy they’re looking for?’

  Lisa shrugged. ‘Maybe they’ll decide it’s not here.’

  ‘Or maybe they’ll decide it is, and they missed it. If they blow up the ship, they’re covered either way.’

  Lisa was trying to figure every angle. ‘And if they do find it?’

  ‘Why leave us all alive to complain? If we just disappear...’

  ‘What about all the other ships they’ll be stopping and searching?’

  ‘Same problems, same solution.’

  She looked at him unbelievingly. ‘They’re that ruthless? How do you know so much about them anyway?’

  Kurt didn’t want to say too much about the circumstances of his meeting with the Doctor, so he changed the name and the place to protect the guilty.

  ‘I met this weird hobo once,’ he said vaguely. ‘In...in a bar on Metebelis Three. Called himself the Alchemist, or the Dentist or something.’

  ‘Frontier worlds are full of them,’ said Lisa impatiently. ‘Space-bums wandering about in battered old spaceships. So?’

  ‘He knew a lot about Sontarans. Said they live for war. Don’t value their own lives, let alone anyone else’s. Reproduce by cloning, millions of warriors at a time.’

  Lisa shuddered, thinking of the squat armoured figures taking over her ship.

  ‘You’d think the galaxy would be overrun with them.’

  ‘War with the Rutans keeps them busy.’

  ‘And they think there’s a Rutan on my ship?’

  ‘Apparently.’ Kurt paused for a moment. ‘All the same, with all these spacecraft to stop and search, the Sontarans are spread pretty thin. There can’t be more than a handful of them on this ship.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We kill them,’ said Kurt. ‘Kill them all.’

  Lisa looked at him, her eyes widening. Suddenly she saw, in this quiet man, a ruthlessness to match that of the Sontarans.

  She drew a deep breath. ‘How?’

  ‘Apparently they’ve got one weakness –’

  He broke off as the door opened, revealing not the sentry but Lieutenant Vorn.

  Vorn jabbed a finger at Lisa. ‘You. Come!’

  Lisa looked at Kurt. He shrugged imperceptibly, and she got up and followed Vorn out.

  As soon as they were gone Zorelle swung round on Mari and Nikos. ‘You heard what they were saying?’

  Nikos shook a still-aching head. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’

  Zorelle pointed a jewelled finger at Kurt. ‘He’s trying to persuade Lisa to join him in some kind of uprising.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Nikos,’ said Zorelle shrilly. ‘Our only chance of survival is to give Commander Steg our full co-operation. How far did resistance get you?’

  Mari clutched Nikos’s arm. ‘Perhaps she’s right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ said Zorelle complacently.

  ‘You’re wrong, you stupid bitch,’ said Kurt wearily. ‘They’ll kill us all.’

  ‘I warn you, Kurt,’ said Zorelle icily. ‘Unless you give up this mad plan I shall warn Commander Steg.’

  Mari gave her a shocked look. ‘You’d really betray him?’

  ‘If Kurt starts trouble, he’ll get us all killed,’ said Zorelle. ‘He can throw away his own worthless life, but he’s not going to endanger mine.’

  Kurt studied her for a moment. She was utterly sincere. ‘Survival at all costs,’ he said almost admiringly. ‘Is that it, Zorelle?’

  ‘If necessary – yes!’

  Vorn marched Lisa into the engine room. A couple of Sontaran troopers were dismantling one of the power units, supervised by Commander Steg.

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded Lisa. ‘Why are you interfering with my power drive?’

  ‘The interference was not of our doing,’ said Steg drily.

  He indicated the dead body of the Sontaran trooper laid out in a corner of the engine room. ‘Our enemy is on board this ship.’

  ‘Your enemy,’ said Lisa.

  ‘The Rutan wants two things,’ said Steg impassively. ‘Access to a power-source, and escape. To obtain them it will kill every living being on this ship, Sontaran or human.’

  They were interrupted by Vorn’s voice. ‘Commander – there is also an obstruction in this power-drive unit.’

  ‘Then remove it!’

  Between them Vorn and the trooper dragged the obstruction from the power drive and flung it at Steg’s feet.

  It was the mutilated, blood-soaked body of Robar.

  ‘No!’ said Lisa. She dropped to her knees behind the body. Robar’s eyes were open and staring, his face waxy. He had been dead for some time.

  Lisa got to her feet. She stepped close to Steg. ‘You say the Rutan did this? These – mutilations?’

  ‘Most certainly. It partially dissected the body to study its structure.’

  Lisa’s eyes held his. ‘It wasn’t you? Or one of your troopers?’

  ‘Think, Captain. I could have killed your engineer. I could have killed you all the moment I came on board this ship. But why should I trouble to hide the body and bring you here to see it discovered? Why should I kill one of my own troopers?’

  The logic was unanswerable. Lisa knelt beside the body, rested a hand on Robar’s icy forehead, gently closed the staring eyes.

  Steg watched her curiously, struggling to understand emotions he could not share. ‘You were sexually pair-bonded to this man?’

  ‘We worked together for a long time.’

  ‘You – cared for him?’ persisted Steg. ‘You want revenge?’

  Lisa sprang to her feet. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then help me find and destroy the Rutan.’

  Lisa paused for a moment, struggling to recover from the shock of Robar’s death. She’d been hoping against hope that he was still alive, hiding in the recesses of the engine room, biding his time. That hope was dead now.

  She pushed back her hair. ‘What help do you need?’

  Steg spoke to her as one commander to another. ‘The Rutan is cunning, my resources are limited. I have lost one trooper, I may lose more. I need you and your crew to help me search the ship.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lisa bitterly. ‘Cannon fodder!’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘You’d sooner this – thing killed my crew than your troopers?’

  ‘Given a choice, undoubtedly,’ said Steg in mild surprise. ‘That is not the point. We face a common enemy. Will you help me to destroy it?’

  Lisa considered. ‘What’s in it for me – apart from the sheer satisfaction of it?’

  ‘What more do you require?’

  ‘A guarantee of safety for my ship, myself and my crew.’

  ‘You have it.’

  ‘When we find this thing and kill it, you and your troopers will go, leaving the ship and the crew unharmed?’

  ‘We shall.’

  Lisa stepped closer, until they were almost nose to snout.

  ‘On your personal word of honour as a Sontaran officer?’

  ‘I give my word.’

  Lisa’s long finger jabbed him hard in the chest. ‘I warn you, Commander – if you betray me I’ll do my very best to kill you.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Steg.

  Lisa considered a moment longer, and then nodded decisively.

>   ‘Very well, I accept – but I can’t answer for the crew. We’ll have to ask them direct.’

  ‘I am sure we can convince them,’ said Steg.

  Lieutenant Vorn approached and saluted. ‘Shall I expel the bodies into space, Commander?’

  Lisa rounded on him angrily. ‘You can do what you like with your trooper. I want Robar’s body taken back to his cabin and decently laid out. I’ll have him shipped back to New America.’

  ‘But he is dead,’ said Vorn. ‘Dead bodies have no value.’

  ‘He was a human being, not a piece of garbage,’ said Lisa. ‘Don’t Sontarans respect their dead?’

  ‘We respect death itself,’ said Steg. ‘Death in battle. That which remains after death is of little value. However...’ He turned to Vorn. ‘Do as she says.’

  Lisa nodded, satisfied. ‘I’ll go and talk to the crew.’ No longer a prisoner but an ally, Lisa strode away.

  Thoughtfully Steg watched her go. Humans were undoubtedly very strange. But not uninteresting.

  ‘Do you really mean to spare her, Commander?’ asked Vorn.

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Steg almost regretfully. ‘She has the spirit of a Sontaran.’

  ‘You gave your word of honour.’

  ‘Promises made to inferior species have no validity. The honour of a Sontaran officer lies in doing his duty. When our hunt is over and the Rutan destroyed, all the humans must die.’

  14

  The Hunt

  By the time Vorn and Steg reached the crewroom, Lisa was putting Steg’s offer to an astonished crew.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ she concluded. ‘Commander Steg promises freedom and safety if we help him to destroy his enemy.’

  Kurt was frankly sceptical. ‘He’s already promised that.’

  ‘You didn’t trust him then.’

  ‘And you do now?’

  ‘He needs our help now,’ said Lisa exasperatedly. ‘We’ve got something to bargain with.’

  Before Kurt could object further, Zorelle seized her moment. Turning to Steg she said, ‘I feel I should warn you, Commander, that before you sent for the Captain, she and this ruffian were plotting to kill you.’

  Steg looked at Lisa. ‘Is this true?’

  Lisa made no reply.

  Drawing his blaster, Steg strode over to her. ‘Is this true?’