Match of the Day

by Chris Boucher

  Find him, the Doctor thought, and it all falls into place?

  How likely is that? Again: could one not-very-well-known duellist really be what all this was about? And when had that theory stopped being thin and become the only possible explanation? Movement instead of action, is that what was happening?

  ‘We have to move,’ Finbar said, ‘if you’re going to do this.’

  The Doctor got to his feet. For the moment he couldn’t think of an alternative course of action. Movement was all that was left. ‘Is it far?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty far,’ Finbar said. ‘But it is getting closer all the time.’

  ‘I was talking about the ship,’ the Doctor said.

  Finbar gestured them to follow him. ‘So was I,’ he said.

  Once Keefer had decided on his new strategy it was a lot easier to avoid pointless fights with hakai-warriors. The Fat Boys were not tasked to protect the flight deck and he was not wandering about looking for an unidentified hiding place that could be changing as he searched. The flight deck stayed put and nobody saw any reason to hide it. To make it easier still the flight crew of the Ultraviolet Explorer wore smart, pseudo-military uniforms when they were on duty and went about their business with a brisk formality. Obviously the Lady Hakai liked the appearance of a tight ship to be maintained.

  He followed a uniform to the flight deck and stood in the shadow of a bulkhead to watch the security procedure for entering and leaving. After several members of the flight crew had come and gone through the automatic airlock he concluded that there was no security procedure. There was no print reader, no iris scanner, not even a basic keypad and a couple of surveillance cameras. The richest woman in the known worlds, with her own fanatical warrior cult to protect her, and the control centre for her space palace is left accessible to any passing chancer who happens to have got on board. Keefer was not sure that made any sense. Maybe there was something he’d missed.

  Just to be on the safe side, he withdrew into a side companionway so that he was out of the immediate line of sight of the entrance. As he waited for a member of the crew to come within reach it suddenly struck him that he was definitely losing his edge. Maybe there was something he’d missed? What was he thinking of? Just to be on the safe side he was waiting to kidnap a crew member and use him to get past some hypothetical security system? When had he started to think like that? He checked the handgun: there were four shots left. He tucked it in his belt. He hefted the short sabre: loosening his arm and wrist. Enough of this nonsense, he thought. It was time to take over the flight deck and flush out his enemy. Impatient with himself he stepped out into the main corridor and strode unhesitatingly towards the flight deck.

  * * *

  Leela hesitated. She had managed to get the breathing suit off the dead pilot but it was damaged. She could see no way to fix the break in the join between the body-covering and the helmet, and although she thought she had identified the small containers of air used to fill up the helmet she could not think of a way they could be of help to her by themselves. The breathing suit would be cumbersome to wear and difficult to move in and it would leak air, so the chances were it would be more trouble than it was worth. And it would have to be worth quite a lot to persuade her to put it on anyway. When the pilot had died his body, as usually happens, had voided itself of waste matter. The suit was in a disgusting mess. Only in an emergency would she have considered wearing it and even then the emergency would have to have been immediate and severe. Of course this was an immediate and severe emergency.

  She left the body and the soiled and broken breathing suit and went to the feeding station dispenser at the other end of the cell. She helped herself to some food tablets and some of the brackish-tasting recycled water. The pilot had thought she would be shocked to be told that they were drinking their own urine and she had enjoyed spoiling his fun by not being.

  She glanced across at his narrow body, abruptly aged and shrunk by death, and thought how petty and pointless their sparring had been as it turned out.

  She munched on the tablets. The choices she could see were limited and not what she would have chosen given a choice. Her best chance was to stay where she was: but there was no one controlling the speeder yacht; the food tablets and the water were bound to run out sooner or later; sharing a small space with a decomposing body would be very unpleasant; and she was probably going to die no matter what. Her other choice was to open the airlock: but there was no one controlling the speeder yacht; the food tablets and the water were bound to run out sooner or later; and she was probably going to die no matter what, only more quickly that way.

  Her choices came down to: sit and wait and die or get up and do something and die. She had been thinking about this for too long, she decided. She took a final drink and headed for the airlock.

  As she lay in the cramped chamber and pressed the switches in the order the control panel indicated she remembered someone saying - was it her trainer, or her father perhaps - someone saying: never hurry to death; you might want to change your mind before you get there. Too late she thought as she pressed the final switch and the air pump whispered into life.

  Keefer held the short sabre low against his side and ducked through the automatic doors before they were fully open. As he stepped out onto the wide, circular flight deck he drew the handgun and raised the sabre slightly so that it was obvious and threatening. He paused without stopping, seeing without looking, waiting for a cue to action: a flicker of movement, the leading edge of a sound, the first taste of a smell. There was nothing. He stopped and looked around him in disbelief.

  There was nobody there. The flight deck was completely deserted. The back brace leaners were empty. In front of them the neat arrays of primary control boards and main system read-outs flickered and muttered unattended as though the giant ship was routinely making conversation, unaware that no one was paying any attention to it. Above the main level a second level gallery ran round the edge of the deck. It too was deserted.

  It looked like a big, elaborate set-up to Keefer; not one designed to be programmed and left to get on with it. Either these people were lax to the point of negligence or something else was going on. He tucked the gun back in his belt. His plan had been to threaten the safety of the ship by taking over the flight deck and forcing its working crew to do what he wanted. Without the crew he needed to find some more direct leverage and he needed to find it quickly. He went to look at the nearest control console. It would take time to work out exactly what he could damage to get everyone’s attention without actually killing himself. It was time he probably didn’t have. Jerro always said you could get it done without ever doing it just so long as they thought you could and were about to. He had been drunk at the time but even drunk Jerro always knew what he was talking about. Ideally what he needed was a damage alarm. Speculatively he flicked a couple of switches. Two of the read-out screens put up new data streams but apart from that nothing changed. Looking for some more distinctive switches he checked another console.

  Behind him a voice said, ‘You reached this point with gratifying skill and determination. They even lost track of you there for a while.’

  Keefer raised the short sabre to distract attention from his move to take the gun from his belt with his other hand and cock it as he turned to face the speaker. How had he missed them coming onto the deck? He kept his movements slow and turned deliberately slowly to avoid pushing whoever it was into immediate action.

  ‘They underestimated you,’ the voice said, sounding relaxed and confident.

  So far, Keefer felt, he was coming a poor second in this fight and his chances of pulling it back depended on the next move. Almost belatedly he was filled again by the icy elation of combat. He knew his opponent was standing still and too far away for the sabre or anything like it so they must have a gun of some sort and his only option was to outshoot them.

  Keep turning slowly, listening for the target, feeling for the target, aiming for the target
and hitting the target before you raise the gun...

  ‘Before you do anything rash,’ his opponent said. ‘You should know that you are not threatened by a weapon.’

  ...raising the gun, hitting the target.

  ‘And that you are not threatened by a human being.’

  Keefer finished the turn and lowered the gun. There was no doubt in his mind that the man standing by the partially open doors was telling the truth. There had been no sound, no smell, no natural link between them. Shooting him would be a pointless waste of ammunition. ‘You’re an android,’ he said. That was how I missed you.’ As always the elation had turned to chilly nausea.

  ‘Your senses are finely tuned,’ the android said.

  They used to be, Keefer thought. There was a time when I wouldn’t have missed the doors opening.

  The android said, ‘You assumed they worked only one way and at one speed.’ It pointed a remote controller at the doors and the narrow gap through which it had come crept closed almost silently and almost without disturbing the air. ‘You were tuned for what you expected.’

  Keefer realised the thing had caught his look and interpreted it correctly. That was a dangerous talent. That was a dangerous fighter’s talent. ‘Are you able to kill?’ he asked.

  ‘Unable to die,’ the android said. ‘Unlike you.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘It is a fact.’

  Keefer said, ‘That depends on how you define die. I’ve destroyed one of your kind already.’

  ‘It did not die since it was not alive,’ the android said.

  ‘Where is she?’ Keefer demanded, knowing he had lost the initiative and it was unlikely that the Lady Hakai would show herself now.

  ‘She?’ the android asked. ‘To which she do you refer?’

  ‘You know everything else,’ Keefer said, ‘you must know why I’m here. Who I’m here to see.’

  The android remained calm and expressionless. ‘You are here to confront the Lady Hakai. No one is allowed to confront the Lady Hakai.’

  ‘No one?’ Keefer said. ‘Not ever?’ When the android didn’t answer he smiled and tapped a control console with the tip of the sabre. ‘I can destroy all this you know. If I’m going to die I might as well take her and the rest of you with me. What do you say to that?’

  The android did not smile. ‘That will not happen,’ it said.

  Maybe it couldn’t smile, Keefer thought. Or maybe it could but never did. Perhaps it always remained expressionless no matter what happened. That was a dangerous talent. It was a dangerous fighter who never gave anything away. But were all androids fighters? He didn’t know enough about androids.

  How would you find out about androids? He’d only come across two and he’d... what was it he had done about it...

  bounced a runner on it that was it... and what had Jerro said about that... what was it you said Jerro... where was Jerro when he needed him? ‘Jerro?’ he asked.

  The android remained silent and unmoving. Keefer dropped the sabre and the gun and heard them clatter onto the deck at his feet. There was something wrong. He tried to discipline himself. A moment’s concentration on each sense. A moment on sight alone; a moment on hearing alone... a moment on hearing alone hearing, touch, taste, smell sight...

  It was just before he lost consciousness that Keefer realised he had been overcome by anaesthetic gas and the android was moving towards him now. He realised that the android was not affected by the gas and his last thought before his consciousness fell apart was that it was a dangerous talent...

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Doctor was not comfortable.

  The seat he was in was small even though it was designed to contain him rather than support him. He had checked the so-called equipment lockers and found they contained very little in the way of useful equipment. The whole ship was a lot cruder and more cramped than it had appeared on the docking bay viewscreen. Of course it was not the first time that he had come across the bigger on the outside than on the inside concept. It was, after all, the basis of every sales pitch and advertising campaign on every world he had ever visited that had such things. The outside always promised more than the inside delivered.

  At times like this he did miss the TARDIS. Bigger on the inside than on the outside was a basically modest approach and so much more civilised in his considered opinion. And he didn’t enjoy not being in control under any circumstances, but if you were not going to be in control it was much better not to be in control of something reasonably comfortable with plenty of room to move about; something that didn’t smell quite this bad.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to get a full ship purge and flush through,’ Finbar was saying. ‘But if we’re to make the rendezvous we have to kick on.’

  ‘Nice to know there’s a reason for this stink,’ Sita said,

  ‘other than a lifestyle choice or a long-dead crew member.’

  ‘It’s the smell of space travel,’ Finbar said cheerfully. ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘I don’t want to get used to it,’ she said. ‘Personally I could have waited the extra few hours for the clean-up.’

  Finbar said, ‘Not really. We’re shaving the one-point as it is.

  Any more delay and we’d have missed a full rotation.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Ronick said.

  Finbar grinned. ‘It means if there’s a god you’re on good terms with, now’s the time for a word.’

  The Doctor had found some passenger information displays while they were waiting for the docking bay formalities to be completed and had taken hard copies. To pass the time since they set out he had been studying these and watching Finbar work. His guess was that they must be approaching the first navigation point, where ships that had left the OTS were allocated a space-time location from which they took over responsibility for their own onward progress. Logic, experience and reading between the lines, put together with Finbar’s air of suppressed excitement, suggested to the Doctor that probably the highest risk of catastrophic accident on these trips would be at the first navigation point. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘the Hakai Orbital Transfer Station take no responsibility for what happens once the first navigation point, presumably the one-point in pilot’s jargon, is passed.

  And unless you’re accurate to the nanosecond they don’t take responsibility for what happens before you get to it either. I imagine all this translates as: you’re on your own, good luck and I hope you’ve got a good pilot.’

  ‘You have got a good pilot,’ Finbar said. ‘The nav programme is top of the range,’ he flicked a switch, ‘and is laid in,’ he peered at the screen read-out, ‘and we’ll have full main engine burn in twenty.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’ Ronick was clearly not enjoying the ride.

  ‘Pray we’ve picked a quiet time on the rotation,’ Finbar said. ‘Light traffic is what we could do with.’

  ‘What is the rate of collision?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘About twice what they say it is,’ Finbar said.

  ‘Collisions?’ Ronick grunted. ‘No one mentioned collisions.’

  ‘Not worth worrying about.’ Finbar appeared to be enjoying his discomfort. ‘You’ll be dead before you hear your ears explode.’

  The Doctor could see the countdown reading out in front of Finbar. He wondered if top of the range meant that he actually had little or nothing to do as a pilot. In which case he was really only functioning as a guide. If that’s what he was: the Doctor was beginning to have his doubts...

  ‘And we are out of here,’ Finbar intoned, ‘in three, two, one, we have burn, we have full acceleration.’

  The Doctor felt the soft vibration whispering through everything. He didn’t find the sensation reassuring. This was a primitive and fundamentally dangerous vehicle, he thought, unsound in principle and presumably unreliable in operation. For the umpteenth time since he and Leela had stumbled into this society he found himself regretting that he had allowed the
m to become more involved in it. This was all a minor matter, involving a minor aspect of an unimportant civilisation that was going nowhere and that was beginning to bore him. It seemed almost ungrateful, when they treated him as a celebrity, but all he could think was that they needed to get out of here.

  ‘And we are on our way at last,’ Finbar declared. ‘Melly Finbar is the name and first rate piloting is the game. Feel free to recommend me to your friends.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Usual offices are as previously described but should be marginally more comfortable with pseudo-grav on line. You will be living on concentrates and water but it won’t be for long.’

  ‘I’ve done a rough calculation,’ the Doctor said. It was in fact a wild guess but that was technically a rough calculation and he wanted to sound authoritative to this cocky young man. There was something about Melly Finbar’s confidence he didn’t entirely trust. ‘To get to the nearest habitable planet, apart from the one we recently left, would take a very long time indeed.’

  ‘Did I say we were headed for a planet?’

  ‘You didn’t say where we were headed,’ Sita said. ‘You’ve ducked the specifics every time.’

  Finbar shrugged. ‘Commercially sensitive information. If I told you where your man was you could have hired anybody to get you there. I’ve lost work that way before.’

  ‘Consider this commercially sensitive information,’ Ronick said, his voice menacingly soft. ‘Unless you stop scuffling us about I guarantee you will be alive to hear your ears explode.

  What you won’t hear is yourself screaming but don’t let that fool you. You will be screaming.’

  Finbar looked singularly unimpressed. ‘Ooh scary,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve gone all shivery.’ He snorted with derision. ‘How stupid do you think I am?’