Amy cried out as Rory slumped down unconscious.
The officer leaned forward and flicked the screen off.
‘There!’ Amy said. ‘And you’ve got it all on film.’
The officer resumed on her keyboard. ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.’
‘What?’
‘No law has been broken.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘If you’ve nothing else, you need to vacate this office. .
We can only deal with one complainant at a time, and someone else who needs us may be waiting below.’
‘You…!’ Amy said, pointing with shaking finger.
‘You… I’ll not forget you!’
Outside, she fought her way back through the crowd to the casino. To her relief, the grey-skinned janitor was still sweeping in the entrance.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, breathless. ‘Can you tell me which way my friend went?’
The janitor glanced around, making sure no one was watching, and beckoned to her. Once inside, he led her down a side passage, at the end of which they descended a clanking steel stair into the basement area, where a conveyor belt, loaded with what looked like cargo, mostly light but sturdy aluminium crates, trundled along an arched passage of corrugated metal.
‘This leads to the port,’ he said. ‘These supplies are bound for the Ellipsis.’
‘Ellipsis?’
‘The mothership to which your friend will be taken.’
‘You knew they were going to abduct Rory?’
The janitor lowered his eyes. ‘I’ve seen this happen before with visitors to LP9.’
Amy wanted to rebuke him for not speaking up at the time. But she remembered what the Doctor had said about these people being subservient, an underclass with no voice in this society.
The janitor humped one of the crates over onto the sidewalk. He took a long tool from his belt, and applied it to the lock, which sprang open. Inside the crate there were bottles containing different coloured fluids, and what looked like sealed packets of foodstuff. ‘You’re not a large person,’ he said. ‘You should be able to conceal yourself.’
Amy was incredulous. ‘You want me to get inside this crate?’
‘It’s the only way you can help your friend.’
‘I’ll suffocate.’
‘These cartons are not airtight. However, to make you more comfortable.
He extricated another tool from his belt - a nail-gun of some sort - placed it against the underside of the crate and plunged the trigger. A hole was punched, about the size of a one-penny coin.
Amy backed away. ‘Look, I have another friend. I’ll try to find him.’
The janitor placed a hand on her harm. ‘Lord Xaaael’s Raptor-Bird will be leaving imminently. Whatever help you think you’ll find on LP9 - and there’s precious little -
it will need to arrive very quickly.’
Amy glanced into the now half-empty crate, and then along the tunnel. This would be the craziest thing she’d ever done, but Rory was somewhere at the other end, hapless and insensible - and that should be reason enough. Ordinarily, she would go and find the Doctor, and they could follow in the TARDIS - but the TARDIS
was down there as well. There was nothing else for it.
She stepped into the crate. The janitor assisted her.
‘Listen,’ Amy said, as she lay down and curled up.
‘This other friend of mine. He’s called the Doctor, and hell come looking for me. Please tell him what’s happened.’
‘I will speak to him,’ the janitor said, cramming packages around her.
‘Hey, there’s not much room in here as it is.’
‘This is for ballast. So you are not injured when they throw you into the hold.’
‘Great,’ she said as he closed the lid. ‘I’m in the ballast.’
Despite her frequent annoyance with Harry, there were times when Dora Mossop fully understood the frustrations he felt about their daughter.
Such as now.
It was the early hours of the morning, and Dora had been sound asleep when her mobile had begun chirping on the bedside cabinet. She’d known it was going to be Sophie before she’d even answered the call, but perhaps it would have been less irksome if the girl had sounded distraught that Baz had dumped her for one of her friends and marooned her in Hammersmith with no money and no way to get home, rather than imparting this info in surly fashion and, instead of asking nicely if her mother could come to pick her up in the car, had emotionally blackmailed her by saying that if she couldn’t get a lift she’d have no option but to walk home alone through the middle of London at this late hour.
Unable to find Harry, Dora had got dressed and driven
the ten miles to Hammersmith herself.
They were now on the way back. Sophie, who looked a mess - Dora thought she was way too old for spiked hair, Goth beads and black lace - made a sullen, unsympathetic figure, despite the eyeliner streaking her cheeks.
‘So what happened?’ Dora asked.
Sophie shrugged. ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’
Dora bit her lip. Thus far, her daughter’s unwillingness to talk had also extended to an unwillingness to apologise for the inconvenience or to express gratitude.
‘I’ve no idea where your father is,’ Dora eventually said.
Sophie didn’t respond to this either, as if his unexpected absence at this late hour was of no interest, which suddenly annoyed Dora no end. OK, she’d taken issue with Harry in the early days when he’d tried to put Sophie on the straight and narrow, but this was the kind of cold indifference he routinely faced from his daughter, whereas she only had to put up with it now and then because most of the time she preferred a quiet life and wouldn’t voice disapproval even if she felt it.
It wasn’t as if Harry had been totally unreasonable with Sophie. The main thing that bothered him about her was that, though she was now studying A levels, she wasn’t showing much interest in them. Life seemed to be a non-stop party, and Sophie was enjoying it by spending money that she couldn’t really afford. Perhaps he was just being a concerned father, Dora thought. But then again -
where was Harry now when she needed him? It was all very well him lecturing people, but what exactly did he bring to the family these days? It was so typical that he, who had nothing to do all day, wasn’t around to make this late-night journey, whereas she had to be up in the morning for work.
Frustrated, she fiddled with the heating. It was unresponsive and, in her rush to get out, Dora had neglected to put a coat on. Being late autumn, the air was frigid.
‘Don’t put the heating on,’ Sophie said. ‘I’m getting a headache, you’ll just make it worse.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Dora retorted. ‘I—’
‘MUM!’ Sophie screamed, grabbing at the wheel.
They’d been cruising through Kensington, which at three in the morning was all but deserted, but now a glaring light filled the windscreen.
Dora grabbed the wheel back and tried to spin it. The car went into a sideways skid. It careered across the road, jolting to a halt on the opposite kerb. Intense light was still shining into the vehicle, but now from all sides.
‘W-what is this?’ Dora stammered.
When someone attempted to open her driver’s door she clung on to it, but the strength on the other side was irresistible - in fact, the door was literally torn out of the frame of the car. A hand appeared, on the end of an arm made from articulated steel rods. As it grabbed the collar of her cardigan, Dora and her daughter shrieked.
‘Zalu!’ the Doctor bellowed, barging back into the Police Chief’s office. ‘Fancy sharing what’s happening on this space platform of yours?’
Zalu looked uncomfortable as he sat behind his desk.
He’d been expecting this for the last few minutes - ever since he’d read a report from one of the point-sergeants on the day-shift, and had then spotted the Doctor on a surveillance monitor, speaking animatedly with o
ne of.
the service personnel.
‘Doctor,!…’
‘Cowering under your desks may be the new style of policing on LP9, but now my friends have gone missing, that’s not going to cut it!’
Zalu’s hackles rose. ‘No one is cowering under their desk, Doctor.’
‘Tell that to Point-Sergeant 8379 Xelos. She watched on television while my property was stolen and one of my friends got kidnapped.’
‘I’ve already received Xelos’s report. She’s inquired into the incident. It seems your property was won fairly and squarely in a game of Dead Man’s Duel.’
The Doctor leaned forward, and stared into Zalu’s deep blue eyes. ‘How can that possibly be true? I’ve never played Dead Man’s Duel, so I can’t have lost, can I? That doesn’t excuse what happened next. Rory - abducted.
Amy - forced to stow away on the ship where he was taken, so she’s gone too.’
‘You need to understand… This is a complex issue.’
‘Zalu, you need to understand that these are my friends, and I want them back!’
‘I have friends too, Doctor! And family!’ Zalu stood up. ‘You and your people can just disappear, but mine have to live here… do you see what I’m saying?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Are you really the man I once knew?’
‘Of course I’m not.’ Zalu thumped his desk. ‘How can I be? I’m not like you. I can’t stay young and brave for ever.’
‘You’re the Chief of Police here!’
‘Haven’t you realised what we’re dealing with, Doctor? This is organised crime. Of the most dangerous sort. You’ve seen where we are. Teh billion clicks outside the Inner Rim, and another twenty billion from Torodon itself. You know how it is with these Outer Rim platforms.
They’re infested with gangsters and racketeers. Half the casinos and nightclubs here are owned by them. Those they don’t own, they skim. Their claws are sunk so deeply into local commerce that we couldn’t eject them even if we had the authority to.’
‘You don’t have the authority?’
Zalu made a helpless gesture. ‘They’re everywhere.
All around us. Involved at every level. If the various syndicates combined their powers, they’d outnumber my frontier police force a hundred to one.’
‘So get reinforcements.’
‘That would be expensive.’
‘And the rule of crime isn’t?’
‘No!’ Zalu seemed embarrassed by what he was now admitting. He strode around his office like a caged tiger, though a tiger minus teeth and claws. Beyond his window, the usual hordes of pleasure seekers thronged the colourful, rain-soaked streets. ‘Look at this place. It’s rough and ready, but, in relative terms it’s pretty law-abiding.’
‘I see,’ the Doctor said. ‘The mob polices it too. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘The mob - as you call them, are first and foremost businessmen. It’s not in their interest for there to be serious trouble here.’
The Doctor pondered this, before smiling coldly.
‘Then they made a big mistake taking one of my friends.’
He stormed out into the next office, only to find several younger police officers already waiting for him, pistols drawn.
‘It’s all right,’ Zalu said, appearing behind him.
‘Doctor, come with me.’
‘Where to now?’ the Doctor said suspiciously.
‘The Intelligence Room.’
‘Sounds like my sort of place.’
Zalu nodded. ‘There are things you need to know.’
When Dora and Sophie were dropped into the hold alongside Harry, they were numbed with shock.
It was a padded chamber, lit by a faint reddish glow. There were several people in there already, mostly foreigners, and they were just as frightened and disoriented as the Mossops. Only one of them seemed to speak English well. His name was Andrei, and he said he was from Romania.
‘I’m afraid we’ve all been kidnapped,’ he told them.
Dora and Sophie eyed Andrei uncertainly. He was tall and black-haired, and though tired and haggard, he was dark-eyed and rather handsome. He’d been wearing a fur-lined jacket, but had now taken it off because it was intensely warm. He wore a thin T-shirt beneath, which revealed a strong physique and muscular arms.
Dora turned to Harry, who’d been so relieved that his wife and daughter, though abducted, were safe, that he’d been unable to say anything and had wept as he’d cuddled them.
‘Harry!’ Dora said, extricating herself from his grasp.
‘What’s happening?’
Harry struggled to explain. ‘Like this chap says…
we’ve been kidnapped.’
‘Who by?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But why have they taken us?’ Sophie demanded shrilly.
‘Sophie, you’ve got to calm down, OK?’
‘Who are these people? What do they want with us?’
Harry shook his head.
Dora stared him in the eye. She could always tell when people were being evasive with her. In the early days of their marriage, her husband had often said that she’d make a better cop than him. ‘Harry Mossop… what are you not telling us?’
He shrugged. ‘I think it’s some kind of people-trafficking operation.’
‘So you do know what’s going on?’
‘I had no idea it would be like this.’
‘Please don’t tell me you were investigating these people.’
‘No… Well, not really.’
‘Harry Mossop! You are not a policeman any more! I appreciate you want to show your old colleagues that they made a mistake, but please don’t tell me that you’ve got us involved with gangsters!’
Andrei butted in again. ‘I think it may be worse than that.’
Dora and Sophie gazed at him, bewildered.
‘How did these people abduct you?’ he asked.
Dora shook her head. ‘It’s hard to be sure.’
‘Powerful lights? Men with mechanical limbs? These are no ordinary criminals.’
‘Well this is just great!’ Sophie screamed at her father.
‘You’ve really gone and done it this time, haven’t you? You’ve got us all killed!’
‘Now listen,’ Harry said, trying to sound firm. ‘We have to stick together if we want to get through this.’
‘Yeah, because sticking together has solved all our problems in the past.’
‘Sophie, calm down!’ Dora said.
Before more words could be exchanged, there was a thunderous vibration through the floor. It sounded like a rocket-booster had ignited beneath their feet.
The prisoners wailed and huddled together.
There was a further explosion of energy, and a tremendous g-force battered them to the floor. Their cries were lost in a storm of propulsion. Sophie sought comfort in the arms of her mother, but Dora was equally frightened. When Harry crawled towards them, Dora reluctantly let him take hold of her, but Sophie pushed him away, and, more by luck than instinct, finished up with Andrei, who wrapped her in a brawny bear-hug.
Harry knew at that moment that he’d made the worst mistake of his life. It had long been the case that almost everything he did backfired; that whenever he tried to resolve problems, he made things worse. But heaven knew what awaited them now.
‘This is the offender in question,’ Zalu said.
He and the Doctor were in the Intelligence Room, on a raised steel catwalk surrounded by three-dimensional
screens on which visual imagery was flickering past. On the screen in front, they viewed an excerpt from police surveillance footage. It had been taken in an eatery, and it showed a lean, handsome Torodon, wearing his white hair in a topknot, seated among other diners whose faces had been blurred out.
‘His name’s Zagardoz Xaaael,’ Zalu said. ‘He’s a senior lieutenant in the Xorg Krauzzen cartel.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Never heard of them.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. The code of silence between these fellows is so strict they’d kill their own mothers rather than breach a confidence. The Krauzzen outfit is the most dangerous in Torodon space. It’s controlled by this man…’
Another image appeared, displaying a clutch of Torodon emerging from what looked like a conference chamber. All wore lengthy Japanese-type robes, and again had their long white hair tied in topknots. The central figure had a broad, solid physique and an aristocratic bearing. His face was handsome, if rather cruel.
‘Xorg Krauzzen,’ Zalu said. ‘He’s ex-military. He may look normal, but much of his body was destroyed in combat. Most of what you see here is synthetic.’
‘Go on.’
‘That was years ago. Afterwards, Krauzzen became a mercenary soldier and finally a gun-for-hire in the underworld. With his experience, and his right-hand man - a former fellow commando called Zarbotan, who boasted the highest kill-rate in the entire Special Assault Brigade - it wasn’t long before he’d taken over the operation and projected it into the premier league. His outfit became synonymous with extreme ruthlessness.
Now he rules the roost He’s almost untouchable, despite regular involvement in murder, extortion, smuggling…’
‘No one’s untouchable,’ the Doctor said. ‘You ought to know that.’
‘Just to give you an idea what Krauzzen is like, Doctor… One of his most lucrative income streams comes from organising “fun hunts”.’
‘Why do I get the impression it’s going to be more “hunt” and less “fun”?’
‘You know Gorgoror, the moon of Zigriz?’
‘Of course. Wouldn’t recommend it for a holiday though.’
Another image appeared: it showed a tiny, green planetoid suspended against the much larger, eggshell-patterned surface of Zigriz, a gas giant on the farthest point of the Torodon star system. The sight of the menials working the streets of LP9 had already reminded the Doctor about Gorgoror’s one-time role as a work camp for convicts; he tried to recall what else he knew about it. It had a breathable atmosphere, and, warmed by its proximity to Zigriz, it had been extensively excavated.
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