The Pirate Loop (12 page)

It didn't hurt quite as much as he'd expected. Yes, it hurt a lot. And yes, a human being would never have survived. A transmat machine takes you apart and puts you back together again, but the whole thing is over so quickly you shouldn't even notice. This one had taken its time. The Doctor had felt himself being slowly reassembled, an agonising torture where there was not enough of him to scream. But as he emerged from the transmat booth into the dark, noisy engine rooms, he felt pretty much OK.

His legs buckled underneath him, and he fell face first onto the floor.

He struggled to get up again and found his limbs weren't quite responding. His arms and legs tingled with pins and needles, like they did when he regenerated. Perhaps that's what he'd done, his body responding automatically to being pulled apart. He struggled to reach a hand up to his face. His fingers prodded familiar
skin, tight over prominent bones. He had the same thick hair and long, furry sideburns and, though his mouth tasted all peculiar, his teeth seemed to be the same shape they'd been before. So, he was still the same man for the moment. But it said a lot about what he'd just been through that he'd not been sure.

As feeling came back to him, he heard hesitant, shuffling footsteps. It took effort to sit up, but going slowly he managed it. A group of mouthless men in leather aprons and Bermuda shorts huddled a short distance from him, in the narrow alleyway between the huge, dark machines. One mouthless man gestured and pointed to the far end of the engine rooms. The Doctor looked, squinting to make sense of what he saw. A tall, skinny man in a fetching pinstriped suit was stepping into a wall of scrambled egg.

'Huh thuh,' said the Doctor, watching him vanish. He had meant to say, 'Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?'

He sat there, recovering and, after a while, the mouthless men brought him a mug of tea with a picture of a sheep on it. His hands shook as he held the mug, but with each sip he felt better and better. The engines around him filled his head with noise and his skin felt itchy with grime. Yet the dark and solid machinery seemed immaculate, the air rich with the stink of detergent; he just imagined the dirt.

'Thank you,' he said as the mouthless men helped him up on his feet. They let him walk unaided but kept
close in case he fell. The Doctor made his way to the wall-mounted controls for the experimental drive. A small porthole let him look into the machine itself, and he gazed in on the eerie light. The light was just the same as that inside the TARDIS's central column. It swirled and murmured, restless and alive.

'OK,' said the Doctor, checking over the engine controls. He made a mental note of the readings and how they differed from those upstairs on the bridge. The trick was then to get the TARDIS to make up for the difference. That would, he hoped, break them from the loop. Adjusting dials and switching levers, he felt the old speed and dexterity returning to his fingers. His thoughts were starting to speed up, too.

He spun on his heel, surprising the mouthless men, and hurried down the alleyway between the large machines to where the TARDIS waited. It took a moment to find the key and then he was inside. As always, stepping over the threshold filled him with sudden ease. His head felt clearer, his body less sore.

The console still sparked and smoked from where the ship had crashed into the
Brilliant.
The Doctor hurried over, swatting away the smoke and working the various controls. Yes, he could see it clearly now. They'd crashed because the
Brilliant
sat just outside space and time. Like jumping onto a moving bus, only it turned out to be rushing towards you.

The gravitic anomaliser protested as he wound it round to eight. He keyed in the values of the
Brilliant's
two
different Kodicek readings, and fired up the TARDIS's temporal shields. The idea was that he could give the
Brilliant
a nudge at the right angle and the starship's own systems would do the rest. He wouldn't even need to use the TARDIS's own reality-warping talents.

And then a thought struck him. A brilliant one.

He hurried round the console, pulling up the floor grating to expose the thick black cables coiling underneath. A bit of sonic screwdriver action, and he'd separated one of the connections. Bits of what might have been scrambled egg dripped from the open ends of cable.

He hurried back out of the TARDIS, bringing the cable so that it spooled out behind him, still connected at one end to the machinery of the TARDIS. It took a bit of negotiating the cable through the alleyway between the
Brilliant's
huge and noisy engines, like getting the flex from a vacuum cleaner to fit round chairs and tables. But he reached the controls of the experimental drives, and then just had to find something that he might connect the cable to. The control desk of the experimental drive had input ports, but none quite fitted.

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'Should have thought of that.'

He looked quickly all around for something that might help, but he knew there was little he could do. And then one of the mouthless men came forward with what looked like a squeezy bottle of ketchup. The Doctor tried plugging the TARDIS cable into each of the different ports, and once he'd identified the best fit
the mouthless man sealed it in with the jelly-like sealant that oozed from the squeezy bottle. It was the same fast-acting, impossibly strong stuff that had sealed the hole in the side of the ship when Archibald's capsule had torn through it.

'Well done you,' said the Doctor to the mouthless man as he tested the join was secure. In fact, the join was stronger than the cable was itself. The Doctor hurried back to the TARDIS.

A group of mouthless men huddled at the doorway, peering into the huge interior but not daring to venture any further.

'Well?' said the Doctor. 'Aren't you going to say how it's bigger on the inside?' The mouthless men turned to look at him. 'No, I guess not,' he said. 'Look, you can ride with me but it's going to be bumpy. Or you can stay here, which will probably be the same. Your choice.'

It was a little disappointing, but none of the mouthless men would come with him. He shrugged, ducked between them into the TARDIS and dashed over to the controls. The mouthless men watched him from the open doorway, the thick black cable snaking between their legs back to the controls of the experimental drive. He could see them wanting to ask him what he had just done. 'I've bolted your ship to mine,' he said. 'And now I can run your systems from here. But my ship can also compensate for some of the loopy stuff happening. So I might even be able to control aspects of the loop itself. And then we're laughing. Ha ha!'

The mouthless men nodded, though not as keenly as he'd have liked. Still, there was little he could do about that now.

'You probably want to stand back a bit,' he told them. They retreated in fear as he worked the controls in front of him. It had been a while since he'd last tried to take off with the doors still open, he thought. Probably because it was such a dangerous thing to do. Dangerous and reckless. Dangerous and reckless and irresponsible. Just his thing, really.

He released the TARDIS handbrake.

With the familiar low rasping, grating from deep within its own strange engines, the TARDIS began to warp the material of space-time around it. The Doctor stood resolute at the controls as what might have been a tornado tore through the open doors and sent papers, sweets and his 1966 Martin Rowlands trimphone whirling all around him. Where before the open TARDIS doors had looked out into the engine rooms, the way was now blocked by a wall of pulsing, straining scrambled egg. The tornado whirled ever faster round and round him, howling and shrieking in time to the noise of the TARDIS's engines.

And then it was suddenly over, the sweets and paper and designer telephone crashing to the floor.

'Said it was easy,' said the Doctor, though only to himself. And he bounded through the open, eggless TARDIS doors and back into the Brilliant's engine rooms. 'Oh,' he said, stopping suddenly. 'I don't think
that's quite right.'

Outside, the engine rooms lay silent. The huge machinery stood perfectly still. There was no one about.

'Hello?' called the Doctor. No one responded. 'I know you can't speak,' he called out. 'But maybe you could hit something, make some kind of noise.'

Again there was nothing but silence.

Moving slowly, warily, the Doctor followed the thick black cable from the TARDIS as it wended along the alleyway between the still machines. The cut-off end of the cable lay on the floor in front of where the controls for the experimental drive had been. It had been cut off with a knife.

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'That shouldn't have happened.'

He examined the empty space, and it was clear the experimental drive had been torn from the housing in which it had been secured. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps realigning the
Brilliant
had made the drive implode, which would be quite a neat solution to everything. But in his hearts he knew that that couldn't have been what had happened.

The walls of the engine room were a mishmash of car-sized patches of red-jelly sealant. The Doctor could see that at least six or seven pirate capsules had torn their way aboard the ship and then torn their way off again. Any of the mouthless men who'd been in the engine rooms when the pirate ships tore through the hull would have been quickly sucked out into space.

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'I must be running late again.'

Desperate to find out what had happened to Martha, he grabbed the cut-off end of the cable, and quickly gathered it back up into the TARDIS. He'd repair the link later, when he knew Martha was OK. Locking the door of the TARDIS, he made for the transmat booth. With the ship realigned it should be working properly once again.

He keyed the controls and nothing happened. Annoyed, he checked over the transmat systems. The booth he was in seemed to be in good working order, but it couldn't reach the booth upstairs.

A chill ran through the Doctor.

He dashed down the alleyway between the huge machines, to the door that he'd only ever seen before blocked by scrambled egg. There was no egg now, and he ran out into the plush-carpeted passageway. The wood-panelled walls were patched with more car-sized holes where pirate capsules had punched through.

He ran left, left again and then right, and took the stairs three at a time. Halfway up the staircase to the ballroom, he saw the first dead body.

A blue Balumin man lay sprawled at the top of the stairs, a terrible, blank expression on his face. Further into the ballroom lay two more blackened bodies.

The Doctor made his way into the cocktail lounge, expecting to see more dead. But the cocktail lounge was empty, the whole bay window that looked out onto the Ogidi Galaxy now a great long patch of jelly sealant. Most
of the Balumin would have died in space, the pirates had shot the rest.

Upstairs, the walls were likewise patched with red jelly sealant. The Doctor made his way along the crew's small quarters and through to the door to the bridge. There was no wall of scrambled egg blocking his way, and he stepped through quickly. The horseshoe of computers had been smashed apart. And in the gap lay the dead body of Captain Georgina Wet-Eleven of the Second Mid Dynasty.

There were a few other corpses around, but there was nothing to be done for them now. Instead, the Doctor moved quickly past them to examine the sparking remains of the computers, but they could tell him nothing. He had no idea how long it had been since the loop had come apart, nor where the pirate ship had got to now. He had lost Martha to them again. But, as he'd promised himself before, he would do whatever it took to find her.

He rummaged in the pockets of his suit jacket for a bit of paper and a pen, and almost cut himself on the dagger he'd confiscated from the unconscious Dashiel all that time ago. When they'd still been enemies and people couldn't die.

'Doctor?'

He spun round on the heel of his trainer. The egg-shaped, orange and tentacled Mrs Wingsworth stood in the doorway of the bridge. She no longer had any of her extravagant jewellery and her flimsy dress had been
spattered with muck and blood.

'Hi,' said the Doctor.

'Whatever are you doing, dear?' she asked.

'Writing a note in case there were any survivors,' he said. He left the note on the wreck of the horseshoe of computers and hurried over to her. 'Are you all right?' he asked.

'Oh, we soldier on, dear,' she said. 'But you know there's nothing to drink downstairs.'

'Shocking,' he said. 'I'd complain.'

'I did!' said Mrs Wingsworth, laughing. 'Only there's no one here to take the slightest bit of notice!' The laugh died in her throat, but the Doctor could see her refusing to let him see how scared she'd been, how much she'd suffered.

'It's going to be all right,' he said. 'I promise you.'

Mrs Wingsworth reached out her tentacles to him. 'Martha!' she said, a tremor in her voice. 'She said I had to find you!'

'And you have,' said the Doctor kindly. 'It's going to be all right. I'm here now. You just have to tell me what I missed.'

Mrs Wingsworth, tears streaming down her egg-shaped orange body, did her best to explain.

'The pirates,' she said. 'They came. They killed
everybody.
And no one's coming back.'

'You know what?' said the Doctor, stood in the transmat booth. 'Neither do I.' He grinned. 'Ah well. Sure I'll think of something.' And with a pop he vanished.

Martha sighed. There was nothing to do but wait until he'd sorted everything out. She turned to join the party of humans and three badgers. And then she froze.

Projected on the wall, the spiky peach of the badger pirates' spaceship had begun to move. Tiny pirate capsules spewed from the back of the ship, each zipping round to attack the
Brilliant
head on. They fired their weapons, and another screen to the left blared warning signals about the
Brilliant's
shields.

Captain Georgina, Thomas and some of the other crew were racing to the horseshoe of computers. 'Get a channel open!' Captain Georgina shouted. 'Get a channel open!'

'Open, sir,' said Thomas quickly, busy at the controls.

'Archie!' said Captain Georgina. Time for you to do your stuff.'

'Oh, er, yeah,' said Archibald, hurrying to join the human crew. 'Uh, Captain Florence?' he said, and Martha could see how awkward and scared he was about just speaking to the air. 'This is, uh, Archie. There's food 'ere. Good food.'

Thomas fussed with the controls, getting only static in response. And then a voice was heard loud and clear. 'Archie?' said a vicious-sounding badger woman. 'You're in
big
trouble, y'swab!'

For a moment they stared at Archibald, who could only shrug. Then something smashed into the
Brilliant
and the impact knocked them all off their feet.

'Keep trying!' shouted Captain Georgina as she scrambled back to the controls. 'You've got to convince them!'

'Yeah,' said Archie. Dashiel and Jocelyn, holding hands, joined him at the horseshoe of computers and they all tried appealing to their former comrades.

Captain Georgina signalled the rest of the human crew. 'We're going to have boarders,' she told them. 'You'll take your positions and hold them from the engine rooms.'

'Sir,' said the brunette. 'The Doctor took our guns.' It was true: a mess of broken weapons lay littered on the floor, their innards used to build an almost working Teasmade.

'Hell,' said Captain Georgina. She shoved Archibald
aside and took his place next to Thomas. 'This is Captain Georgina Wet-Eleven of the Starship
Brilliant,'
she told the attacking badgers. 'You are in violation of intergalactic transit codes six, fourteen and twenty. You will desist your attack
at once,
or we will blast you from the sky.'

There was a pause, and just for a moment Martha thought the defiance in the captain's tone might have made the pirates reconsider.

'Ha!' said the gruff female voice they'd heard before. 'Bring it on!'

Again they were thrown from their feet as something smashed into the ship. And again. 'They're 'ere!' said Jocelyn, from the ground beside Martha.

'S'OK,' said Dashiel. 'We'll tell 'em.' He led Jocelyn quickly out of the bridge, through the door which was no longer blocked by scrambled egg. They passed a flustered Mrs Wingsworth as they went.

'Get that passenger out of here!' shouted Captain Georgina. A couple of the human crew ran to bustle Mrs Wingsworth off the bridge, but Martha hurried over.

'She's with me,' she said. Again the ship buckled as something smashed into it. The human crew obviously decided that they had better things to do than worry about the passengers. Martha led Mrs Wingsworth out into the crew's quarters, away from all the panic.

'More haste, less speed, I always say, dear,' Mrs Wingsworth said, rolling her eyes. 'What
has
been going on?'

'The Doctor let us out of the time loop,' Martha explained. 'But now the pirates are attacking.'

'What, like those three dears?' said Mrs Wingsworth.

'Remember what they were like when they first got here?' said Martha.

Before Mrs Wingsworth could reply, the wall exploded just ahead of them. Martha barely registered the Smart car-sized capsule that had crashed aboard before she was lifted off her feet. A capsule-sized gash in the side of the ship gaped out onto open space. Martha tried to scream but the air was being sucked out into space just as she was. She flailed her arms and legs as she fell towards the hole, but there was nothing to grab on to...

Something yanked her ankle hard and this time she managed to cry out. Twisting back, she found Mrs Wingsworth clutching her with one tentacle, the other gripping round the bunk of one of the human crew's beds. They both hung in mid air, Mrs Wingsworth's tentacles taut and skinny with the strain. Her glittering, golden jewellery buckled and broke, each piece dancing in the air as it tumbled into space.

'Oh really!' muttered Mrs Wingsworth, her teeth clenched as she fought to keep her grip. 'That used to be my mother's.'

Martha struggled for breath as the hole in the side of the ship tried to swallow her. A human crewmember – the pretty brunette – tried to reach for Martha's hand. They brushed fingers, didn't quite catch hold, and then the brunette tumbled out into the dark, starry vacuum.
As she fell out, she was hit by flecks of the red, jelly-like substance fast sealing the hole behind her.

Martha and Mrs Wingsworth crashed down onto the hard floor the moment the hole had been sealed. They lay there panting, then Mrs Wingsworth grabbed Martha's ankle again and dragged her into the small room with the bed in it she'd clung to. She slammed the small door just at the same time as another capsule burst through the far wall. Martha hugged her tight as, beyond the closed door, they heard the screams of yet more human crewmembers being sucked out into space.

The
Brilliant
lurched again and again as the pirate capsules smashed into it. Martha felt sick and terrified. But it seemed to be quiet now, on the far side of the door. She put her ear to the door, and heard muffled shouts and shooting. The badger pirates were pillaging the ship.

She desperately needed to know where the Doctor had got to. He wouldn't leave them to die like this. She knew he'd come for her somehow.

'You can't go out there, dear!' squealed Mrs Wingsworth. Martha hadn't even been aware of her hands working to unlock the door.

'I've got to find the Doctor,' she said.

'No you don't!' insisted Mrs Wingsworth, and swiped Martha away from the door with a tentacle like a tree trunk. 'You're not going to do anything silly. We both have to—'

The door disintegrated in a sudden ball of pink light.
Had Martha still been in front of it, she would have been obliterated herself. Mrs Wingsworth whimpered as a helmeted badger pirate stormed into the small room, prodding her with his gun.

'You Marfa?' the badger said bluntly, with a gruff female voice.

'Er,' said Mrs Wingsworth. 'I might be, dear.'

The badger pirate raised his gun at her. 'No wait!' cried Martha from where she lay on the floor. 'I'm Martha. Just leave this one alone.'

'Huh,' said the badger pirate. She reached down, grabbed Martha's arm in her hairy paw and started dragging her out into the passageway.

'Now really!' Mrs Wingsworth began to protest.

'Please!' Martha told her as she was taken roughly away. 'Stay there, stay safe. You have to find the Doctor!' And then she was round the side of one of the capsules and could not see Mrs Wingsworth any more.

The badger pirate dragged her back onto the Brilliant's bridge. A whole gang of badger pirates awaited them, the last three of the human crew kneeling in front of them, their hands clasped to their heads. Thomas, Captain Georgina and a pretty, red-haired girl were all that had survived. The rest, Martha realised, must have been shot or sucked out into space. With these last three survivors were Archibald, Jocelyn and Dashiel. A male badger was shouting at them, brandishing a bent silver tray.

'But Stanley,' Dashiel tried to explain. 'It happened. We ate the food and then it was there again!'

Stanley was about to say something when he saw Martha being brought in. 'Good one, Zuzia,' he told the badger gripping Martha's arm. 'Put her with the rest.'

'But she's good,' said Archibald quietly.

'Shaddap!' snapped Stanley. Zuzia led Martha over to the three human crew, and gestured with her gun for Martha to kneel in the same way that they did. Martha did as she was bidden, taking her place between Captain Georgina and Thomas. Blood dripped from Thomas's handlebar moustache and he wouldn't meet her eye.

'You don't have to hurt us,' said Martha calmly.

'Nah,' said Stanley, coming over. 'But we wanta.' To prove his point, he cuffed Thomas across the face with the back of his paw. He leered at Martha, his breath hot and stinky in her face. But before he could hit her or hurt her, another badger came running in.

'Yeah, Toby?' said Stanley.

'We got the drive,' said the newcomer.

'Hah!' said Stanley. 'Get it back to the captain. We just gotta finish up 'ere.'

'Aw,' said Toby. 'Can I watch?'

'Get off!' snapped Stanley. 'S'more important.'

'Right,' said Toby, and he hurried away. Stanley turned back to his prisoners.

'Don't do this,' Martha told him.

'I got orders, ain't I?' said Stanley.

'Yeah, but no one owns anyone.' said Dashiel.

'Hah!' laughed Stanley. But there was a murmur from some of the other badgers. Martha dared to glance round
at them. No, she could see they weren't happy with three of their prisoners being badgers from their own ship. 'You reckon?' Stanley leered at Dashiel.

'Yeah,' said Dashiel, daring to get to his feet. The other pirates still kept their guns on him. 'We don't 'ave to be slaves alla time.'

Stanley snorted at him, but clearly had no answer to this. He wrinkled his wet, black badger nose, and Martha could see him thinking this proposition over. Then, without any fuss, he raised his gun and shot Dashiel squarely in the chest. Dashiel screamed as the pink light engulfed him.

'Dash!' cried Jocelyn, but before she could move, Archibald had grabbed her, stopping her from getting shot herself.

The pink light died away and Dashiel's dead body toppled over onto the floor.

'Hah,' said Stanley.

'Tha's
bad,
Stanley,' said Archibald, hugging Jocelyn as she sobbed into his shoulder.

'Yeah?' said Stanley. 'Captain Florence ain't 'appy wiv 'im. You flew off before you was told.' So, thought Martha, that explained why only the three badger pirates had got aboard the
Brilliant
at first. Dashiel hadn't been able to wait.

'Dash said we'd get the spoils,' said Archibald quietly.

'I know that!' said Stanley. 'He's a cheater. We all 'ave to wait till she says we can go. Uvverwise it ain't fair.'

'Yeah,' said Archibald. 'But...'

'No but!' snapped Stanley. 'Captain Florence wants ta see you and Joss. Tell you off 'erself.' Martha saw Archibald and Jocelyn both shiver with terror at the thought of whatever punishment their captain might have in store for them. 'And you can take 'er that one, too,' added Stanley, waggling his gun in the direction of Martha.

'Me?' she said, horrified. 'Why me?'

'Archie's been tellin' us all about ya,' said Stanley. 'You put stuff in his 'ead.'

'What, the canapés?' she said, trying to sound surprised and innocent. 'That's just a bit of food.'

'Yeah!' nodded Stanley. 'An' now look what 'e's like!'

Martha looked over at Archibald. He grinned and waved at her. Then seemed to remember where he was, and put his paws slowly back on the top of his head.

'See?' said Stanley. He waved his gun at the rest of the prisoners, teasing them as to who he'd kill next. Then he shrugged. 'Get 'em up.'

The other badgers came forward and the prisoners – Martha, the human crew, Archibald and Jocelyn – got slowly to their feet. The three other humans were bruised and bloody where they'd been knocked about. Captain Georgina still looked like she'd been modelling for some glossy magazine, though. She stood taller than the badgers, and the look in her eye showed she would not be intimidated.

'Take your own lot,' she said. 'But you'll leave Martha here with me.'

'Yeah?' said Stanley. 'But you're all gonna die, ain't ya?' He turned and shot at the horseshoe of computers, which exploded in pink flame.

'No!' shouted Captain Georgina and, ignoring the other badgers and their guns, ran over to the blazing, bright pink bonfire that had once been her command. When she turned to face the badgers again, her eyes were terrible to see. Stanley grinned at her, like she'd just given him permission to kill her.

'Captain,' said Martha carefully. 'You should come back over here. You're still a prisoner. Stanley will show you mercy.'

'Hah!' said Stanley. 'Mercy!' He raised his gun.

'You're not going to get away with this,' said Captain Georgina with majestic calm.

'Yeah I am,' said Stanley, and he shot her. Captain Georgina didn't cry out as the pink light engulfed her. Martha, horrified, thought she might even have provoked her own death, rather than be taken prisoner. Everyone else seemed utterly terrified of what might happen to them at the hands of Captain Florence.

'Right,' said Stanley. And he led the badgers and their prisoners off the bridge and back to their capsules. Martha was forced into the back of one capsule, squeezed in between Stanley and another badger called Kitty Rose. It was like being in the back of her brother's car, her knees up by her elbows and no room to even breathe. Through the window, she saw Archibald being squashed into the back of another capsule further along
the passageway, and Jocelyn escorted to another.

Thomas and the pretty, red-haired girl remained standing in the passageway, looking unsure what to do.

'You're not taking them with us?' asked Martha as the capsule door closed.

In front of her, Stanley checked the readings on the dashboard in front of him, checking that all the other pirate capsules were ready to go. 'Nah,' he said. A thought struck him, and he leaned round in his seat to leer at her again. 'Gonna show 'em mercy.'

He stabbed a button on the controls in front of him with his hairy paw. The capsule lurched backwards, smashing out of the side of the
Brilliant
and out into the vacuum of space. Martha smacked her head on the back of the capsule, and as she recovered herself saw the starship falling away from her, a weird steel sailing ship with glittering solar sails. Its hull was blotchy with red patches where the badgers' capsules had torn through it. Martha watched the other capsules tearing out from the
Brilliant.
From the hole her own capsule had just made, she saw Thomas and the red-haired girl, clutching each other tightly as they tumbled into space.