‘You must scavenge. That’s what everything else down here does.’
‘Everything else?’
Zarbotan smiled - again it only affected half of his mouth. ‘My friend, you’ll be so busy trying to avoid becoming food yourself that you won’t have time to worry about eating.’
More laughter broke from the rest of the gang.
Suddenly Rory couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Why don’t you just quit this stupid game!’ he said. ‘These brainless hyenas may laugh at your every word because they’re scared to death of you. But that’s as far as it goes.
So let’s stop pretending, eh? You’re going to tell us why we’re here at some point. Why not get on with it?’
Zarbotan fixed his soulless eyes on Rory. ‘As I told you, there are seven areas in this Chase.’
‘Chase?’ Such a simple word, yet Rory felt as if it realised all his worst fears.
‘Use them well, and live,’ Zarbotan added. ‘For a time.’
The criminals now shouldered their firearms, and trooped back towards the exhaust-tower. The prisoners watched in frozen silence. None of the gang looked back.
Not even Zarbotan.
‘Well done!’ Harry said under his breath. He rounded on Rory. ‘Well done, pal! Let’s play along, you said! Let’s see how it pans out! Are you happy now?’
‘At least you’re alive,’ Rory retorted.
‘Yeah, but for how long?’
There was a grinding roar as, one by one, the drop-ship’s propulsion jets were fired, each amplified by the interior of the vast, hollow building.
Rory shook his head. ‘Looks like that’ll be up to us.’
‘My lord, we have a late entrant for tomorrow’s hunt.’
The electronic voice issued from the Bridge computer.
It echoed across the Salon via intercom. Amy glanced up - she was in the process of clearing empty beakers from a table top. As Xagra had threatened, they’d changed her appearance to suit the Torodon style. They’d spiked her hair and filled it with rainbow colours, and had given her a skintight cat-suit to wear, which she thought rather fetching. Not that anybody in the Salon appeared to be noticing her now - not even the one called Colonel, who’d shown such unhealthy interest in her earlier.
He and the other group she’d seen gambling were now being entertained by Krauzzen personally. He too was placing counters on the chequerboard marble. By the sounds of the conversation, he was discussing the odds for the following day’s big event - whatever that was going to be.
‘My lord…?’ the computer voice said again.
‘Yes, yes,’ Krauzzen replied without interest. ‘A late entrant. How unfortunate. All the slots are filled.’
‘I’ve told him that, lord. But he says he will pay a tidy sum.’
‘They all pay a tidy sum.’
Krauzzen’s guests laughed.
‘This one is quite keen. He’s outside now.’
Krauzzen looked up. ‘Outside?’
‘He’s made his own way here.’
Amy managed to suppress a surge of hope and continued to gather the empties.
‘Indeed,’ Krauzzen said. ‘Tell him that if he wishes to join the next hunt, he may, but only by approaching through correct channels. Remind him we have booking agents on all the main leisure platforms. Remind him as well that we don’t take kindly to direct approaches of this nature. If he doesn’t vacate Ellipsis space forthwith, we’ll be forced to defend ourselves - and blow him and his craft to atoms.’
‘My lord, he insists on joining the hunt.’
‘Insists?’
Amy’s heart was thudding. She placed her tray down and began to rearrange it - anything to delay having to vacate the Salon.
‘He says he will pay double the normal entry fee,’ the computer explained.
‘Who is he?’
‘He calls himself “the Doctor”.’
Amy had to bite her lip.
Krauzzen glanced around at his guests, none of whom seemed any the wiser. ‘Patch him through.’ He turned to one of the hanging screens.
The previous image was scrambled and a new one appeared. Amy almost laughed aloud at the grinning face and floppy mass of unruly hair.
‘Lord Krauzzen?’ the Doctor said. By the gadgetry crammed around him, he was in a spacecraft command chair, though his boots were up on the control block, and he held a crystal flute filled with what looked like champagne.
‘Who are you?’ Krauzzen asked.
The Doctor gave this some thought, before replying: ‘I’m the deadliest hunter on the Outer Rim.’
‘Are you? How impressive.’
‘Very impressive, I think. Or was that not a question?
Sorry.’
Krauzzen’s guests exchanged amused glances. Amy saw Xaaael enter the Salon. He’d clearly overheard the conversation on the intercom. He approached, intrigued.
‘Whoever you really are, Doctor, you’re clearly a fool,’ Krauzzen said. ‘That much is obvious, merely from looking at you. But to call yourself the deadliest hunter on the Outer Rim… I have some of our highest-scoring clients with me now. And none of them have ever heard of you.’
‘Well, you can hardly hold me responsible for their shortcomings, can you?’
‘But I can for your own. Might I advise that you now clear the vicinity of this vessel! Before I order my starboard batteries to do it for me.’
Krauzzen turned from the screen.
‘So it’s true what they say about you, then,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘That your hunts are fixed.’
‘Fixed?’ Krauzzen twirled back to face him.
‘Fixed. Engineered. That your select band of shooters is actually a clique of bumbling amateurs, who come to you to have their egos massaged.’
Krauzzen’s guests leaped to their feet, spluttering. The marble board crashed to the Salon floor.
The Doctor laughed. ‘Afraid of a little real competition?
Well, I guess that’s understandable.’
‘You’re quite a speaker,’ Krauzzen said, remaining calm despite his obvious fury.
‘I’m quite a marksman too.’ The Doctor leaned towards the screen. ‘I bet that I can finish this hunt with a scorecard three times higher than anyone else.’
There was an amazed silence in the Salon.
‘And how much are you prepared to wager?’ Krauzzen wondered.
‘Well… let’s see. Your normal rule is that the winner of each hunt, as well as claiming the prize, which is a quarter of each player’s entry fee, will also be refunded half his own fee. So, when I win, as well as awarding me the winning pot, you can refund my entire fee.’
‘And if you don’t win?’
‘I’ll pay you the same amount again, and a similar amount to the actual winner.’
‘Let him come aboard, my lord!’ one of the other hunters cried. ‘This boy needs a lesson in humility!’
‘We’ll take him for every penny he has!’ another shouted.
‘You must be carrying an awful lot of cash,’ Krauzzen said.
The Doctor lifted the steel briefcase into view, and opened it, revealing wads of crisp new Torodon par-creds, bound with metallic ribbons.
Amy watched Krauzzen’s face. He remained cool, superficially unruffled, but she could tell straightaway that he was hooked. It was ironic, of course. The Doctor was never motivated by money, but there were some for whom there was no other motivation - even to the point where it led them to risk everything they had.
The hunters also fell silent. They stared glassy-eyed at the screen.
‘What’s to stop us simply taking it from you?’ Krauzzen asked.
The Doctor snapped the case closed. ‘Oh, credit me with some intelligence. I haven’t come here on spec. I’ve got friends on LP9 and other leisure platforms, including legal advisers. They’re all well aware of my plans, and if I simply disappear, it won’t take long for the story to get around that you can’t be trusted and that your “fun hunts” are a f
arce.’
Amy waited nervously, wondering if the Doctor was taking his brinkmanship a little too far. Men like Krauzzen did not rule their worlds unless they were totally merciless to their opponents. And yet could the crime boss afford to have his reputation tarnished?
‘So?’ the Doctor persisted. ‘Can I come aboard?’
‘Do you have a written reference for me, Doctor? No one may join the hunt without a written reference from a former client.’
The Doctor held a leather wallet to the camera and opened it. Krauzzen gazed at the document, puzzled.
‘Xandor Konzalar? He was champion of the hunt many times. But he died several years ago. How has it taken you so long to come to us?’
‘I’ve been busy, making money.’ The Doctor pocketed
his psychic paper. ‘I’m as much a predator in the boardroom as I am on safari.’ He gave a little snarl. ‘OK, still working on that. But you get the idea.’
Xaaael leaned towards his master’s ear. ‘If Konzalar vouched for this fellow…’
Krauzzen waved him to silence, before turning to the rest of his clients. ‘It’s your call, gentlemen. If this contestant is as good as he says he is, you will have to up your game to have a chance of winning tomorrow.’
‘Let him come aboard,’ Colonel Krelbin replied. ‘I always relish a challenge.’
One by one, the others grunted their acknowledgement.
They might not have liked it, but with prize money of this sort at stake, it was not an opportunity to miss.
‘Permission granted, Doctor,’ Krauzzen said. ‘There are empty docking bays on the port side of the vessel.’
The Doctor smiled, and cut the communication.
Krauzzen took Xaaael to one side. ‘LP9 is your responsibility. Did you see this fellow when you were last down there?’
‘Humanoids are not too common out here,’ Xaaael said. ‘I’d have noticed him.’
‘He wasn’t with these other Earthlings you brought here?’
‘Definitely not.’
Krauzzen paused to think. ‘Then we extend him the usual courtesy. Whoever he is, he’s clearly a rich bird.
We don’t want to frighten him away before we pluck his plumage.’
Unnerved by the blighted landscape around them, Rory and the other prisoners’ initial response was to camp close to the spot where they had been dumped, right alongside the exhaust tower, though the drop-ship had long flown from the top of this, drawing a green plasma flare behind it. Once the ship had departed, the aura of their new desolate environment seemed even bleaker. The cold felt colder. The stench of chemical decay intensified. It wasn’t even possible to say that their eyes had adjusted to the feeble daylight, because it was actually more like twilight, a deep ‘undersea’ gloom to which human eyes could never adjust.
Harry was still trying to take charge, but the others were increasingly unresponsive to him, and it was plain to Rory that Harry himself didn’t realise just how out of his depth he was. Everyone had accepted that they’d been abducted by aliens, but Harry was under the impression that, at the worst, this was a short-term deal and that in two days their captors would return for them, as they had supposedly promised.
‘They never promised any such thing,’ Rory said, exasperated.
‘Look,’ Harry retorted, ‘what would be the point in abandoning us here? They must have something else in mind.’
Rory had no doubt about that, but didn’t see grounds for optimism in it.
‘The other thing is,’ Harry said, ‘they’re obviously more technologically advanced than we are.’
‘So?’
‘So the more advanced you are, the more civilised you are.’
‘You’re an ex-cop, did you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Forgive me for saying this, but you seem a bit naive.’
‘Hey!’ Harry’s smile faded. ‘Maybe I can just see the good in people?’
Rory almost gave up talking to him at that point, but resisted the temptation to walk away. If nothing else, they had to stick together for safety and work as a team.
The first thing they did was cast around for pieces of rubbish with which to make a fire. They finally got a small blaze going, which wouldn’t last long. Rory surveyed the scene as the small group huddled around the flames. It was like the worst kind of squatter camp: wasteland on all sides, everyone ragged and hungry. He’d now got to know the rest of his companions. Harry was here with his wife and daughter, Dora and Sophie, though in some ways he was estranged from them, particularly Sophie, who was currently clinging to this other guy, Andrei.
Andrei appeared to be the spokesman for the other half of the group. This included two Albanian brothers called Miklos and Grigor; neither of them was more than 20 years old, and neither of them could speak English. The other members comprised an older Iraqi man named Yasin, who was clearly ill, and his younger sister, Rukia, who was university educated and spoke reasonable English, but who was using all her energy and intellect trying to assist and placate her older sibling.
‘What are we going to do for food?’ Harry asked Rory.
‘Has anyone got any food with them?’
Harry shrugged. ‘These foreigners apparently brought some, but they’ve been prisoners for days now and there’s nothing left. Zarbotan mentioned there was wildlife, didn’t he? Maybe we should set some traps, get some spears together?’
Rory couldn’t put into words what he felt about this suggestion. Even on Earth, in the middle of a game reserve, he doubted this worn-out ragbag of humanity could successfully hunt. Here, they didn’t even know if the fauna was edible. Glancing at the cindery plain, at the piles of scorched metal, and tors of twisted, tormented rock, it seemed impossible that a fruitful ecosystem could exist. Anything roaming this dreary vista had most likely been imported, and Rory didn’t like to imagine why.
Before he could give voice to this doubt, there was a long, eerie call from somewhere across the wasteland.
‘Look,’ Sophie said, standing up and pointing.
Perhaps a hundred metres away, a figure was approaching. Rory squinted, trying to see properly in the gloom. The figure was bipedal, but of heavy build and covered with a shaggy pelt. It cried out again - a ghostly, , ululating howl. It was coming towards them, and with increasing speed. What was more, the closer it drew the larger it looked - soon it was the size of a bear. Rory saw clouds of breath issuing from its tusk-filled snout. He saw gleaming green jewels where its eyes should be, a great, curved horn in the middle of its forehead.
‘I think we should get out of here,’ he said, backing away.
The creature gave another ear-shattering howl.
‘Quickly!’ Rory shouted. ‘Run!’
‘Back inside the landing base!’ Harry cried.
‘No!’ Rory argued. ‘Those doors are jammed open -
it’ll comer us in there. Just run!’
I thought I knew every piece of artillery in the galaxy,’
Krauzzen said. ‘But this is something new.’
The Doctor was standing in the Salon, surrounded by mobsters. ‘Lord’ Xorg Krauzzen had introduced himself, and was now examining the transmat-rifle.
‘It’s my own design,’ the Doctor explained modestly.
Krauzzen handed the rifle back. His eyes looked real enough, even if they did glint like blades, but his silver face, though superficially smooth and handsome, was so evidently synthetic that no emotion could easily be read from it.
‘So you’re an inventor as well as a businessman?’
Krauzzen posed it as a question, but scepticism was implicit.
‘I’m all sorts of things.’
‘Well, so long as your money checks out, you can be anything you wish.’
At a table nearby, Xaaael and two others had opened
the briefcase and were counting the Torodon tender into neat piles.
‘Of course,’ Krauzzen added, ‘having an impressive gun is one thing. Th
e question is, can you use it?’
The Doctor tensed; he’d been expecting something like this.
‘Xalva!’ Krauzzen called, looking to the far side of the Salon, where another of his lackeys - a big, powerful gangster, whose comfortable robes did little to conceal his muscle-packed frame - was standing with arms folded.
‘Xalva, you’ve carried out more hits for me than most this last year. Kill this fellow.’
Xalva looked puzzled. ‘My lord?’
‘Kill him. He’s come here to destroy us, so I want him dead!’
There was a clattering of chairs and tables as those gathered around the Doctor scattered in various directions.
Xalva thrust a hand into a holster and pulled out a pistol, priming it and taking aim in one fluid movement. But the Doctor had already put the transmat-rifle to his shoulder, and hit the trigger. A pulse of blue energy crossed the room in a clean, straight line, and struck Xalva dead on.
There was a glaring flash, and he vanished.
One of Krauzzen’s other henchmen scuttled over.
When he returned, all he held in his hand was a pile of charred dust. The Doctor deactivated the rifle, and slung it over his shoulder. The gangsters wouldn’t know it, but that dust represented the air molecules in the target’s immediate vicinity, carbonised by the transmat flash.
There were awed murmurs.
Krauzzen said nothing as he gazed down at the handful of ash.
The Doctor ran a finger around the inside of his collar.
‘Sorry about that. But at least I saved you the cost of the crematorium.’
Krauzzen appraised him coolly. Still he said nothing.
Amy now entered, carrying a tray of drinks. She approached Krauzzen’s group. The Doctor regarded her as if she was no one, though her skintight cat-suit and multicoloured hair was a bit of a shock. Likewise, she gave no indication that she knew him. Krauzzen watched their interaction carefully.
The Doctor took a drink from the tray. As Amy moved away, he sipped delicately. That was another test hopefully passed. However, a more difficult one was yet to come. On cue, Xaaael rose to his feet.
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