Sarah felt depressed.
She had good cause. The Doctor and she were stuck in the deserts of North Africa, in the middle of the desert war of 1941, with the TARDIS gone astray in time. Gone astray in space, too, once the Hostile Automatic Displacement System mechanism suddenly whisked it away from them. Not even K9 to help them.
The warring terrestrial armies were not her greatest concern No; that was reserved for the impending invasion of aliens from a dying desert world, aliens who regarded humans as mobile fodder and planet Earth as a storehouse to be plundered to exhaustion.
An alien vanguard had already arrived. Hundreds of bio-vores – so-called because they lived by directly draining the life energy of whatever living matter they encountered – had arrived in the depths of the Saharan desert via a trans-mat, sent from their barren homeworld.
Sitting in the back of their Bedford, Private Menzies boiled water for tea. The dancing cooker flames made his underlit face look demented and evil, an appearance spoiled by his asking what Sarah wanted, a mug or a cup? Did she want sugar, like normal folk, or jam like that Eyetie sergeant?
'A mug,' she replied, the right answer in Menzies's eyes, as he pursed his lips in approval and nodded. The mug of incredibly sweetened tea, heavy with condensed milk, went down like nectar. Sarah sighed in satisfaction, able to concentrate on matters other than her thirst or stomach. Over in the second Sahariana Roger, Tam and the Doctor were all in discussion, a "discussion" sounding very much like an argument.
'We have only three machine-guns, assorted small arms, a few grenades, not enough food or water and an equal split between British, Italian and civilians,' expounded Roger, being studiedly polite and hence implicitly rude.
'Them British gave the monsters a right stuffing. Blew up two of their tanks, and killed every monster in 'em. Put that in yer pipe.'
A moments silence fell before any answer came from the Doctor. Sarah winced in advance, knowing how unflattering and empirical the reply would be. The Doctor might be humane, but this wasn't one of those times.
'With respect, that is massively irrelevant. Yes, yes, I know your countrymen were brave, Private. But they are dead, and our opponents are alive. No, no, hear me out. The "black tanks" you described are principally composed of silicon dioxide, of which there is an infinite supply in the deserts surrounding us.'
Tam commented with an inaudible reply.
' "So what"? So it means the bio-vores can create an endless supply of silica machines, especially since they now have human vehicles to recycle and use for the metallic components. You may have destroyed two or three or four, but they will be replaced by fifty or a hundred others. Similarly with bio-vores. They reproduce by ingesting energy. Having drained the life energies from over a hundred – maybe a hundred and thirty? – humans, they can replace all their losses within days.'
Sarah felt as if punched. Back to square one after all the effort and sacrifice they'd endured? How could that be!
The Doctor stood in the rear compartment of the desert car, seeking to assert himself by virtue of his sheer presence.
'Mere blind bashing, weight of metal, or military application, has all so far proven useless. We need to apply intellect to the problem.'
Stunned silence fell over the small audience. Taking this as acquiesence, the Doctor carried on.
'Unfortunately we are not going to be able to get anywhere near the trans-mat platform, not since it was sabotaged. The bio-vores are present in force around it.'
'You mean we might as well have not bothered fighting them things?' asked Private Menzies. 'Now there's even more than before?'
'Hopefully not yet,' said Roger. 'These alien horrors can't simply reproduce overnight, can they? And creating more black tanks will take a while.'
'Correct. There is a window of opportunity. Narrow, but it exists.' The Doctor sipped at a mug of tea. 'And I need to find out what this depot contains.'
Once again silence fell, this time more to do with incredulity than puzzlement.
'Why! What's so important about the contents – I can tell you nine-tenths of the contents off the cuff, Doctor!' said Roger in determined fashion. 'Small arms ammunition: mostly crated and boxed .303, with belts of Vickers in boxes, ammo for two pounders, artillery shells, POL – Petrol, oil and lubricants. Plus a collection of miscellaneous bits and pieces, and some kit captured from the Italians.'
The Doctor cocked his head to one side.
'That other tenth is what I'm interested in. I presume Captain Dobie kept an inventory of what the depot contains?'
'Yes, in his office. In the desk.'
'You could sneak in the back,' said Tam. 'We knocked a hole in the back wall.'
'Splendid!' chortled the Doctor, rubbing his hands in satisfaction, making Roger look at him with alarm.
'Hold hard, you're surely not planning on going back in there! It's swarming with those bi-vores.'
'Bio-vores. Yes it is, which is why I shall create a diversion.'
Sarah couldn't catch what they said next, as all three moved off the truck.
So! He's planning on swanning-about on his own, without anyone to watch his back. Typical! she grumbled silently. And not if I can help it! she added.
The Doctor looked across the gravel plain to the depot, where a black tank stood guard, and occasional bio-vores could be seen patrolling. They were safe in the wadi, perhaps even protected against the bio-vore's equivalent of radar.
'You can't cross that. They'd spot you and knock you flat with their ray guns before you got half-way there.'
'They are more correctly described as "neural-inhibitors" rather than ray guns, at least from the description Sergente Capriccio gave. I've no intention of crossing it before the diversion is in place. Now, Lieutenant, do you think you can find me rope or cable, a few empty bottles and a pint or two of petrol?'
Assault Leader Icono felt moderately satisfied with the progress of his detachment to date.
True, they had suffered forty losses. However, fifty Warriors were now budding a new offspring, so the losses would be made good in days.
Two Transport Cars had been badly damaged and another two destroyed by the alien's fully-covered gun vehicles. Once again an unbelievable use of metal! To have a completely enclosed war-fighting machine. His sub-leader, killed in the first Transport Car, underestimated the small aliens. Once again, with the Mobile Repair Unit the two damaged Transport Cars would be operational soon. Not only that, with all their recycled metal the Factory building could manufacture more Transport Cars, or remote sentinels.
The life-signs scanner didn't show any more viable victims. A hitch in the device's operation made it throw up a random blip a short distance from the conquered supply site. Apart from that it didn't show any more targets.
A pity! Those last humans, ninety of them, were most welcome fodder. Small yet satisfying. Once the trans-mat was sending again, he could send a tribute party to Excellency Lord Sur. In the meantime his detachment needed to put up with half a dozen Farmers, stuck on Target World Seventeen when the trans-mat failed.
He called up the HQ building at the Infiltration Complex.
'What are those wretched Farmers doing?' he barked at the technician who answered. 'They'd better not be standing around uselessly!'
'No, Assault Leader! They are removing the remaining sand from the Complex, dumping it beyond the rim of the site, sir.'
'Eviscerate one of them as an example to the others. If the trans-mat is not repaired by the time all the sand is removed, Eviscerate them all.'
'Immediately, Assault Leader!'
Ah but it was good to be the conqueror! A new world to plunder, limitless life-energy to absorb, and the local natives not powerful enough to halt the process.
At the Doctor's request, Roger had drawn from memory an outline plan of the depot, numbering the squares that represented piled crates of supplies. The Doctor's attention was on a pyramid of crates full of two-pounder anti-tank shells, the very one he had taken refuge upon. It made a good target because one crate had already been opened up by his own hands.
'Set that on fire and there'd be a pretty bonfire display, hmm?' he asked the collected soldiers. All except Doretti, the Italian radio-operator on sentry-duty, were gathered around the Doctor's Heath Robinson contraption.
'You're not kidding!' said Tam, with feeling. 'There must be ten tons of shells in that stack. If they got heated up they'd fly everywhere.'
'He's exaggerating,' said Roger, drily. 'It can't contain more than a ton. I don't see how you intend to set it alight, ten tons or one.'
Hefting the four-gallon tin full of petrol, the Doctor pointed to the container.
'With this, Lieutenant, with this!'
He tied the tin loosely to one end of a plank taken from the cargo floor of the Bedford. The plank pivoted on the machine-gun pintle of one Sahariana, the gun removed and the plank lashed in place with cable. At the other end of the plank a nail had been knocked through the wood and more cable tied to the nail. This cable led to the rear axle of the second Sahariana, both rear wheels jacked clear of the ground.
After making pages of pencilled calculations in his diary, the Doctor had fussed and shifted the vehicle orientation several times, to the exhaustion and bad temper of all involved.
'That tin won't smash when it lands, not like a bottle,' pointed out Davey. 'The stack won't catch fire.'
'That's why I need a Lee-Enfield and a tracer bullet from one of your Bren magazines, Lieutenant.'
Relishing his audience's curiosity, the Doctor loaded a single tracer round into the rifle Tam passed to him.
'Okay, Sergente Capriccio. When I tell you, and not before, you start the engine of your vehicle. Get the revs up as high as possible, into the red if you can, and only then put the clutch in.'
Shrugging, the Sergente took his seat.
'If this works as I want it to, we may get patrols of bio-vores coming to investigate. Once that crate catches fire, you all need to mount up and disperse.'
'Definitely!' agreed Dominione. 'How and where will you meet us?'
Slightly more difficult, that one.
'Say one mile due west of here. If the bio-vores keep following you, fall back another mile.'
Sarah, listening from the cab of the Bedford, pretending to sleep, wondered how the Doctor was going to manage travelling that far on his own, in the dark.
Except it wouldn't be solo, not if she could help it.
'Now!' snapped the Doctor. Capriccio revved the engine up to a metallic scream as the dubious soldiers stood watching.
Making a nasty scrunch in the process, Capriccio engaged first gear. The rear axle instantly accelerated from zero to twenty miles per hour, snatching the cable taut, catapulting the plank over the pintle and hurling the petrol tin in a high arc over the desert.
Splinters flew from the abused plank when the cable pulled it apart and Capriccio hastily turned the engine off.
Tam's comments were unprintable. Lieutenant Llewellyn stood open- mouthed at the tin soaring into the dusky sky. Dominione pinched his forearm, just to make sure.
'Not high enough,' said Davey, turning to glare at the Doctor, who merely winked and shouldered his rifle.
'You'll never hit it!' said Davey, bluntly.
Calmly taking aim, adjusting for windage, deflection and heat haze, the Doctor squeezed the trigger and hit the tin at the top of it's arc, the glowing tracer round knocking a plume of ignited petrol into the air. The additional energy of the bullet's impact tumbled the tin further out and downwards, landing on the crates of shells in a glare of burning petrol.
'I didn't just see that, did I?' asked Tam. 'I mean, that's just not possible, is it?'
This time Davey's comments were unprintable.
Roger stared at the fire, then back at the Doctor.
'Where – where the hell did you learn to shoot like that! People at Bisley would kill to be that accurate.'
The Doctor made an expansive gesture of false modesty.
'Oh, Sergeant Lucy. Royal Irish Rifles. The retreat from Mons.'
There wasn't time for Roger to argue that the retreat from Mons occurred a good twenty-seven years previously. Instead they dispersed the vehicles, knowing that to leave the wadi they must travel north to begin with.
Already, whilst they moved, shells in the burning stack of crates were beginning to "cook off" under the heat. Bangs and whines echoed across the desert. The two pounder rounds were solid armour-piercing ones, and wouldn't explode when they hit the ground, but they would make a nasty mess of anyone hit, as would shrapnel from their shell casings.
They dropped the Doctor off at the point where the wadi reached ground level. He kept low for several anxious minutes, Dominione's parting words "I hope a simple list is worth risking your life for" resonating. Yes, he hoped the list was worth it too.
After moving west he turned south and headed towards the depot, which loomed unmissably in the dark, illuminated flash-bulb style by explosions that wracked the western edge. There were no sentries, nor black tanks on watch duty. A particularly large explosion sent bits of shrapnel zipping and bouncing around him.
Darting from stack to stack, the Time Lord felt uneasily aware of another presence. Stalking him. Or was he imagining it? He paused to look around, not being able to check properly because time was tight. No, nothing there. A bio-vore wouldn't bother to sneak about.
There was Dobie's office! A great black hole with rubble around the wall underneath. Sarah and the other captives certainly made an effective escape route. Or, in this case, an ingress route.
Zing! went a hot piece of metal, inches from his head.
'Discretion is called for, I rather think!' he muttered.
Following not far behind, Sarah clutched her weapon and tried to catch up with the Time Lord, who had outpaced her across the desert without trying. Plus she had a stitch, and he didn't bother much about keeping an eye on the bio-vores, whereas she did.
Her heart flew into her throat in fright as a great black shadow detached itself from behind a pyramid of crates with Italian writing stencilled on them. Seven feet tall, with pillar-like legs and arms splaying out directly from the torso: a bio-vore. It seemed to have been sheltering in the lee of the crate, and caught sight of the Doctor without him seeing it.
The jam-jar full of petrol felt childish and silly compared to a dirty great monster like the one in front of her, but Sarah unscrewed the lid and threw most of the contents at the bio-vore, which turned at the sound of the lid grating free.
Before Sarah could light a match to ignite the petrol, her victim shrieked repeatedly in fear or pain or both, running blindly into the night and across the beaten route between the mud huts. A fragment of shell or another missile hit it in the side and it collapsed instantly, dead or incapacitated.
Diving into the hole, the Doctor banged his head painfully on the hefty wooden desk positioned only a couple of feet from the entrance. He froze before making an exclamation of pain and annoyance, hearing a noise outside and recognising the pitch of the footfall.
'Sarah!' he said, with quiet anger.
'Fancy meeting you here!' whispered the young journalist, sticking her head into the hut, then climbing in.
'I deliberately came here alone, and you still followed me!'
'You didn't say not to come.' She added a few details about the bio-vore for good measure.
With an exasperated tut, the Doctor turned huffily and began to look in the desk drawers, sliding them out carefully in order to avoid making noise. Suddenly he turned to Sarah and his eyes twinkled with mischief.
'Thank you!' he whispered.
His caution seemed to be redundant. The bangs, whines and occasional much larger explosions outside drowned anything less than extremely noisy. Still looking, he saw nothing that resembled what Roger described – a thick wad of flimsies on a clipboard.
'Is this it?' asked Sarah, lifting a uniform jacket from a wall peg and discovering the clipboard.
'Excellent!' and the Doctor recovered his good spirits straight away. 'Now, let's conduct a little effective theft and sabotage, shall we?'
"Theft" involved a Bedford truck. "Sabotage" was opening the stopcock on a petrol bowser and throwing a lit match into the puddle resulting.
With a violent final bang, the explosions ceased. Devoid of the covering noise, the Doctor didn't bother with subtlety, driving out of the depot westwards at breakneck speed. He guessed any bio-vores in the depot would have made themselves scarce during the explosions and that this side of Mersa Martuba would be free from sentries. Just to be on the safe side, he told Sarah to hide on the floor of the cab, and hunched down himself to present as small a target as possible. He trusted to luck and the flat desert floor and simply drove for over a minute without looking outside.
When Sarah sat up to look in the rear-view mirror, the most obvious aspect of the supply depot was a pillar of flame blazing thirty feet into the air, from the petrol bowser. Later, while they were en route to the rendezvous, a colossal fireball soared into the night, the rolling boom coming to them after many seconds delay.
'Must have set off another fire,' said the Doctor, sombrely.
Twenty: Cutting LossesWhen the sun rose over Mersa Martuba, it did so over a haze that reeked of petrol and cordite, and a supply depot disordered and in places shattered by explosions.
Assault Leader Icono felt considerably disattisfied with the night's events, all his complacency of yesterday vanished. He cast suspicious glances at staff working on the consoles dismounted from his own Transport Car. Nobody met his gaze, or seemed likely to challenge him, at least not yet.
Over a dozen of his Warrior detachment were dead, and another half dozen injured, which meant Evisceration of course. Another Transport Car destroyed by the first series of explosions.
Fortunately the Repair Unit hadn't suffered any damage, so the damaged Transport Cars could be made mobile again shortly. The Life Signs scanner wasn't showing much of interest. There had been a few fleeting traces last night, erratic and distant.
What next? he wondered. They had drained the life-energy from the last prisoners earlier that morning. No other sources of energy were located nearby. In fact the budding Warriors had been put at risk by the explosions last night.
Time to move back to the Infiltration Complex, then. They would leave only a few sentries on guard.
'Pass the order along to store equipment and supplies and get ready to leave this position. I have decided that the alien's storage is too primitive and dangerous to risk staying any longer,' he instructed the communicator technician.
Five minutes later, the Life Signs Scanner began to ping, registering a big location of biomorphic energy, moving slowly from west to east about ten minutes travel from the depot.
'Excellent!' enthused Icono. 'Finish packing and plot an intercept.' His proboscis twitched in anticipation. More fodder!
Dawn allowed the humans camped out to the west of the depot to see each other easily, and to read the endless flimsies on Captain Dobie's clipboard. A sombre breakfast was eaten in silence, whilst the Doctor perused the notes.
'Was it worth it, then?' asked Dominione. The Doctor carried on reading before Sarah coughed and drew his attention to the question.
'Oh – sorry. Was it worth it? Yes, I think so.' He riffled back across various notes. 'Here – see this.'
"CAPTURED ITALIAN STOCK
FROM: TWENTIETH CORPS HQ
INITIAL LOCATION: APPROX. 20 MILES SSE OF POINT 206
NOW HELD: FSD MERSA MARTUBA
DESCRIPTION: WOODEN CRATED SUPPLIES
NOMENCLATURE: PROPRIETA XX CORPO
CAPO MEDICO OFFIZIERE
APPARATI UNITA MOBILE PER RAGGI X
ATTENZIONE! ESILE APPARATI!
At the bottom of the carefully inked-in notations was a scribbled note in pencil:
"It. medical kit no obvious use"
'What's all the mystery about?' asked Roger. The Italian officer looked puzzled at what the Doctor deemed interesting. Sarah translated for him, the Time Lord once again being engrossed in his collection of notes.
'It's a mobile x-ray unit, which should have been with the headquarters of Twentieth Corps and the medical staff there.'
Dominione added that the crate must have been abandoned during the retreat of January, then discovered and salvaged by the British.
'Oh, I know where it's located,' said Roger off-handedly. He indicated a stack on the sketch of Mersa Martuba.
'Here's another useful item,' said the Doctor, showing another note, duplicating most of the previous one. The difference was that this one had "L3/35 LANCE FIAMME" in the Nomenclature box. Another pencil note at the bottom said "Tin-can spare parts?"
'Aha, that's one of them Eyetie – er, Italian – tankettes, an L3,' said Tam, proud that he could recall the details.
'What does it need a lance for?' asked Albert, spreading jam on a slice of stale cracker.
'It means "flame thrower",' translated Sarah.
The Doctor looked at everyone, who looked back at him.
'Useful and important because the bio-vores have no knowledge or experience of liquid fuel or it's use as a weapon. Nor do they know anything about x-ray equipment, because their world lacks the trans-uranic elements that produce radiation.'
Most of the audience looked blank, though Sarah nodded and tried to seem knowledgeable.
'A person with sufficient background knowledge and experience could use the radiation source in that x-ray machine to construct an atomic bomb, for example,' said the Doctor in a blasé tone.
'What!' exclaimed most of the listeners at once.
'You sound like something from H G Wells,' snorted Roger. Then, struck by a sudden inspiration, his face broke into an expression of surprise and excitement. 'I say! You don't think these aliens might get laid low like the Martians - '
'No!' The Doctor's tone was forceful. 'Insufficient genetic similarity. There won't be any such deus ex machina here, Lieutenant. This is your world and you will have to fight for it.'
Tenente Dominione and the Italians had most of the conversation explained to them by Sarah, who stumbled a little when translating "atomic bomb".
'The enemy's headquarters site will be very well guarded. How can anyone get there with a bomb of any description?' asked Dominione.
'By air or a Trojan Horse,' replied the Doctor. Probably the latter method; the nearest airfield was over a hundred miles away to the west in Italian-occupied Libya. The bio-vores might well drag those abandoned Sahariana's back to their complex for recycling. They'd never notice a little additional present aboard …
The concept of killing several hundred intelligent beings took some internal wrestling for the Doctor to justify to himself. Sarah also felt uneasy.
'So you're going to blow them up with an atom bomb? Not like you, Doctor.'
He sighed.
'I know, Sarah, I know. Negotiation, however, has not worked. We're fighting an evil system as much as it's manifestation here. Now, if I destroy that trans-mat platform, it means Earth is safe from invasion and occupation at the cost of several hundred bio-vores. The longer it takes me to construct a weapon, the more bio-vores will come through that gateway and the greater the consequent death toll. A weapon of last resort.'
Sarah could see that the decision wasn't an easy one. She looked over the other members of the party, none of whom believed the Doctor could create such a device. Even if they did believe they would inevitably insist it be used, the instant it was ready.
'Couldn't you bluff them? Say you have a bomb when you haven't? or just threaten to use it unless they leave?'
With a sad shake of the head, the Doctor disagreed.
'You haven't encountered these creatures face-to-face, Sarah. Brutal application of force is how their civilisation runs. Mere threats are not sufficient to cow them.'
The big question, ultimately, was how to gain access to the various equipments stored at Mersa Martuba. A raid into the base whilst a diversion was mounted might work – or it might not, since that was how the Doctor had gotten in there the previous night. Once-bitten, twice shy.
Torrevechio, on sentry duty, noted an absence that he mentioned to Tam, when the British NCO came to take over.
'Nil Carro Armato Negre. Black Tank, none,' he pantomimed.
Tam, silently cursing the inability of other nationalities to speak English, scanned the depot and began to wonder about what he couldn't see.
'None of them black buggers, anyroad. No sign anywheres.' For at least half an hour he scanned the site, the beaten paths within and the barely-trodden border without. Unlike previous day's sentry duty, he didn't see anything moving at all.
'Nothing moving at all. I have to tell about this!'
Forty minutes later, Tam ground his teeth together and condemned himself for ever considering the mention of their enemy abandoning the depot. He condemned himself, and the bio-vores, the bio-vores most of all.
He was the driver, in one of the Saharianas, ferrying the Doctor, Lieutenant Llewllyn and Capriccio north of Mersa Martuba. Far, far north of the depot. The idea was to move back in from the north and determine if any of what Davey called the "nose-goblins" were still lurking around.
Instead the car came across a series of tracks, long ploughed slots in the sands running from west to east, made by a caravan of animals. The Sahariana ran parallel to the tracks for almost a mile, before they suddenly turned south and then abruptly ended in a confusion of debris. At first no-one realised what they were looking at, until the Doctor dismounted and picked up a semi-cylindrical mass of dehydrated paper, as it seemed, which crumbled in his hands.
'A saddle,' he stated, in a flat and emotionless voice. 'For a camel.' He toed a mass of withered fibres at his feet. 'And this was the camel.'
Tam looked over stringy, dessicated remnants spread over the desert for yards and yards. Hideously similar to the remnants left after the killer tanks attacked Mersa Martuba the first time.
Sergente Capriccio joined the Doctor, picking up a long metal tube that dangled a trigger mechanism. A rifle, with all the wooden fittings destroyed. Next were a pair of toy-like slippers, rotted and decayed by centuries of wear.
A shiver utterly out of place in the baking mid-day heat ran down Tam's back. He watched the burly Italian sergeant pick up a child's toy, stare at it for a second and then drop the item, wiping his hands against his tunic. Lieutenant Llewellyn's foot stirred tiny clinking beads strung together, which he recognised as ear-rings, hastily moving off the sands.
'I would guess that the bio-vores carried out an interception here,' stated the Doctor.
'Women and kids, mind,' added Tam. Then he added a great deal of cursing.
Femme et bambini,' agreed Capriccio, gnashing his teeth. A stream of voluble and emphatic Italian followed.
The Doctor felt any doubts concerning the imminent destruction of the bio-vores receding. To attack and kill soldiers was one thing, to attack unarmed civilian non-combatants and slaughter them en masse, that was another thing entirely.
'So you think the wogs ran into the nose-goblins?' asked Tam of the Doctor. 'And got killed for their pains?'
Roger saw an emotional shutter fall over the Doctor's face.
'That's quite enough of terms like "wog", Corporal. They were human beings. Human beings, and they suffered a dreadful death for no good reason.'
'Yeah – well – everyone call's 'em – well, anyway,' replied Tam weakly. That Doctor Smith didn't raise his voice yet it still felt like being slapped about the face with a cactus. A blush brighter and hotter than the mid-day sun came to the stolid soldiers' face.
'What were they going south for?' he asked, trying to change the subject. 'That'd take them near the depot.'
'Tam's right,' added Roger. 'The Arabs have enough sense to keep well away from any soldiers.'
The Doctor stared at the sand and gravel beyond the massacre scene and wondered, too. Out there, a hundred yards away, an object had stood in the sand, he could just discern the outline -
'No sign of any beasties from the north, either,' said Roger, scanning the depot with his binoculars. 'I can't believe they left the whole site unguarded.'
'There are probably sentries posted further inside,' warned the Doctor.
'Good!' said Tam, patting a liberated tommy-gun.
'Be careful,' said the Doctor with emphasis. 'They carry hand-held stun guns and a dart-throwing gun every bit as deadly at short range as your firearms.'
After what Sarah explained about the bio-vore's reaction when she threw petrol over it, the Doctor had armed himself with a jam-jar full of petrol, turning down the offer of a rifle or pistol or a Bren gun.
Roger decided that the so-called aliens really were monsters. Only a bunch of monsters could kill a score of civvies like that, even if they were only Arabs. He didn't trust the nomadic tribes, who stole anything not watched or nailed down and who supported whichever side was nearest. Still and all, as Doctor Smith pointed out, they had been humans.
Leaving the Sahariana behind, they approached the depot on foot, unhappily aware that the sands might turn to molten glass at any second. The Doctor considered it unlikely, given that they were such a small group. He made a small detour to investigate an unpleasant suspicion, before being hissed back into the line by Roger.
Creeping slowly closer, they smelt the stink of petrol and diesel fumes. A haze obscured the marching stacks of piled supplies, the results of last night's fires.
Sergente Capriccio encountered a sentry first. The Italian, with long experience of Spain and Libya behind him, remained crouched behind a crate when Tam moved forward and into the open lane between stacks.
A great towering alien broke from cover ahead of the Sergente, who nearly exclaimed in surprise. The ungainly monster levelled a weapon at the back of Tam Mickleborough. Sergente Capriccio levelled his own weapon, a Beretta sub-machine gun, and fired first, three bursts.
Tam whirled around, dropping to one knee, and emtpied a whole magazine into the bio-vore. The massive creature reeled under the impact of dozens of bullets, dropping it's gun, finally crashing to the ground.
Silently witnessing the death of the bio-vore, the Doctor looked around but failed to see Lieutenant Llewellyn. Tam and Sergente Capriccio were reloading and taking cover.
'Any others will come to investigate!' warned the Doctor.Zing! went a missile by his head, close enough to make his curls shake. The object thudded into a crate nearby, leaving no doubt that it possessed enough velocity to kill.
Pretending to be hit, the Doctor dropped limply to the ground, suffering uncomfortable bruising from the stones lying there. His plan was to allow the bio-vore to get close enough –
'It's killed Doctor Smith!' shouted Tam. A scrunching footstep warned the possum-playing Doctor that his assailant was nearly upon him. Peering beneath half-closed eyelids, he saw the torso of a bio-vore loom close. Sitting up, he threw the contents of his jam-jar at the alien.
Petrol splashed everywhere, including back onto the Doctor. Most of the liquid assault ended up on the bio-vore, which froze in horrified astonishment for a moment before shrieking loudly, running in a circle and collapsing like a toppled tree.
'Lord alive, I thought you'd copped it!' exclaimed a surprised and pleased Tam.
'Attenzione!' warned Capriccio, pointing down the lane between the supply stacks. 'Doctor Smith, get under cover immediately!'
Having used up his petrol, the Doctor had little choice. He feinted to the left, then dived to the right, a dart plucking at his sleeve as he did so. Hiding behind a collection of oil drums, he ducked as the sound of gunfire bounced around the pyramids of supplies. Tam and the Sergente seemed to be having trouble keeping their enemy at bay, until a deeper weapon began firing, going through dozens of rounds. It seemed to be coming from further to the east, behind the attacking bio-vores. A Bren gun, the type of light machine gun that Lieutenant Llewellyn carried.
'Ahoy! Enemy dealt with!' came the young officer's voice.
All three men emerged from cover, to see Roger standing atop a pyramid of crates, switching magazines on the machine gun he cradled. He waved and pointed to the bodies of three bio-vores below his perch, riddled by gunfire.
'Thought I could gain a better perspective and look down on them,' he said. 'I kept a sharp eye out, up on that pile, and there don't seem to be any more of them.'
'That one, the one that took a petrol bath, it's still alive,' said Tam, pointing with the muzzle of his tommy-gun.
'Not for long,' muttered Capriccio under his breath, cocking his gun.
'Allow me to interrogate,' requested the Doctor, standing in front of the bio-vore to prevent any "accidents" with gunfire. He kicked the unfortunate creature on it's webbed foot, eliciting a jerk in response.
'Don't! Don't touch me!' the alien babbled. It's skin where petrol had fallen was turning white and blotchy, blistering whilst they watched.
'Are there any survivors of the caravan you attacked?'
The bio-vore made several gestures, none of which the humans recognised. Eventually it realised they didn't realise.
'No, none. We Eviscerated them all on the spot. Time was a factor. We needed to be quick.'
Loathsome creature! thought the Doctor, not feeling at all sympathetic.
'Why? Why the need for urgency?'
'Because of the Artefact! It appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of the sands whilst we approached the fodder.'
All three soldiers bristled with annoyance, visibly. Even Capriccio got the gist of what their captive said.
'Assault Detachment Leader Icono decided to take the object back to the Infiltration Complex, for further study.'
Roger looked closely at Doctor Smith, who appeared to be peculiarly concerned with the mysterious "artefact". So the monsters took another piece of kit from the caravan. So what! The Doctor pursed his lips, looking down at his scuffed, dusty boots. Tam considered whether to ask what the Arty Fact might be, then decided not to, not wanting to look silly.
'Look out!' shouted Sergente Capriccio, knocking the Doctor aside bodily, having seen the alien pull out a blade and prepare to throw it whilst attention was elsewhere.
The Doctor landed badly, the wind knocked out of him. Capriccio lay over him, as protection from the bio-vore – no, that wasn't right, the Sergente wasn't moving. What felt wet?
Tam cocked his tommy-gun too late and too slow, as the bio-vore surged to it's feet, knocking the corporal flat with one blow of it's brawny arm. The alien took a single step towards the helpless Doctor before Roger put the Bren gun to his shoulder and began to fire, bursts of three rounds, the bullets making a hideous smacking sound when they hit home. The impact knocked the alien backwards, throwing it against the rough wooden crates of a supply stack, then carried on knocking it backwards until it fell bloodily to the desert sands, shot apart.
The Doctor managed to roll out from underneath the Sergente. A long glass dagger protruded from the Italian's sternum, around which blood leaked slowly.
'Killed instantly, I'm afraid,' said the Doctor, standing up to look at the other two of his party. 'Pierced his heart, poor fellow.'
Another reason to hate these alien parasites!