Part Four
The Doctor smiled gently. "You know, there really is no need for all this fuss," he said. "The militia are looking for us, it's true, but they won't find us – not until we want them to."
"And why would we want that?" Ren demanded.
The Doctor regarded her evenly for a moment and then glanced around at the motley assortment of aliens. "Oh, I think we all want much the same thing here," he said. "To be able to go about our business without hindrance: you have goods you wish to sell; Rikard here wishes to buy those goods from you, supplies that will save lives. He also wishes to free his comrades from prison, so that they can continue setting the world to rights – a noble aim, wouldn't you say, given the injustices they face. And my friends and I simply wish to find our ship so we can continue our travels. But the same obstacles stand in all of our way, so what would you say if I told you we could overcome those obstacles, right here and right now?"
You had to hand it to the man: he had a real knack for persuading people to follow his lead, no matter who they were or what they wanted. It was remarkable to watch – all the more so since Harry hadn't been entirely sure he'd ever see him again.
All that worry, and in the end he hadn't even had to search. He should have known to just look for trouble, because that's where the Doctor would be, every time, taking over and running the whole show, just as he was now, talking nineteen to the dozen and organising everyone, whether they liked it or not, in about two minutes flat.
They would infiltrate the Shad's headquarters while their defences were down, the Doctor loftily announced, in two teams: one to locate and recover Ren's stolen cargo and the other to plant a tracking device that would lure the militia to the Shad, rather than the rebels, which should get both parties off everyone's backs, for a time, at least.
It was Ren's turn to regard the Doctor evenly, weighing him up. Then she turned to Harry. "The plan seems sound. Your friend can be trusted?"
"He's never let me down yet," Harry stoutly replied. She narrowed her eyes.
"He dropped you off a building."
The fall wasn't something Harry was likely to forget in a hurry and he still wasn't entirely clear how it had happened exactly, but he was nonetheless certain that, "That was an –"
"Accident, yes, so you say." Ren stared at him for a moment longer. Then she nodded. "Well, we have a contract to fulfil and a reputation to uphold, so." She turned to her comrade. "Get the vehicle hidden, Brun, it's too visible up here. Dilly and I will go."
"You expect me to stay here while you go against the Shad?" Brunnal was all indignation and agitation, but Ren was unmoved.
"Brunnal, you spoke to this man and failed to realise it was the friend Harry was looking for."
"So? If there is one Earth man among the rebels there could be a dozen. How was I to know?" Brunnal grumbled.
"You have many fine qualities, Brun, but stealth is not one of them, and you are injured," said Ren. "You'll slow us down and we need this deal, you know we do."
"Ah, well, if you're a man short, why not take Sarah with you?" the Doctor cheerfully suggested. "She'll be able to help, I'm sure."
In fact Sarah's eyes widened slightly upon hearing this, taken by surprise at the suggestion, but she agreed at once. "Of course."
"And I'll take Harry with me," the Doctor decisively continued. "I want to get in there – I'd like to learn more about the Shad."
"What about me?" Rikard eagerly asked. "I should come too, I can help. This is my world, my people –"
"But not your mission," said the Doctor. "We'll take care of this, Rikard. The rest of you can help best by getting these vehicles out of sight before the militia arrive."
Rikard did not look convinced, but Sarah called out, "Trust us, Rikard, we won't let you down," and he brightened and smiled; that was typical Sarah, Harry thought: she could win any heart, convince anyone of anything.
"Come along, then." The Doctor casually sauntered off across the rooftop, hands stuffed into his pockets, and Harry saw Ren blinking in bewilderment, knew the feeling only too well. The Doctor did tend to have that effect, the man was a veritable whirlwind when he really got going, and it was always more startling first time round.
Catching Sarah's eye with a grin that she returned with interest, Harry shrugged and followed, prepared to let the Doctor lead where he would. After all, he generally knew what he was about.
Generally.
They reached ground level via what appeared to be some kind of fire escape, although it mostly resembled a giant slide, which took Harry right back to his childhood. He got out of the way just in time to avoid being clean bowled by Sarah coming down behind him, then reached out to pull her to her feet. "All right there, old thing?"
She smiled, squeezing his hand. "Ground level – do you know, for a while there I wasn't sure we'd ever make it this far."
"For a moment there I thought I would – the hard way," Harry retorted without thinking, and regretted it at once when Sarah shuddered.
"Don't even joke about it."
"Quite," said the Doctor. "Shall we press on?"
It took only a few minutes to reach the rear of the building occupied by the Shad, the Doctor and Ren agreeing that sneaking in at the back door would be a far better option than an attempt on the front entrance, on this occasion.
There was a guard on the door. Peering cautiously around the corner, Ren smiled that wolfish smile of hers. "Good."
"Good?" Sarah shot Harry a Look, as if holding him entirely responsible for the foibles of his allies, which he felt was hardly fair.
It was Dilly who explained, reaching out to tug at Sarah's sleeve with an oversized claw. "They're guarding the door – it means the automatic defences are still down."
"And perhaps everything else, too," the Doctor mused. "No lights."
"That flash bomb was more efficient than you thought, Dilly," Ren concluded, flashing a grin at her comrade.
"Then we've only to get past the guard and we're in," said the Doctor with a dazzling smile. Then he darted out a hand to catch Ren's arm as she raised her gun, switching from genial to stern in an instant. "Ah, ah. No killing."
"You are a strange sort of radical," she complained.
"I'm a strange sort of something," said the Doctor, still stern. "No killing."
Ren turned on Harry much the same sort of look Sarah had just given him, rolling her eyes in exasperation, but she complied nonetheless, putting her gun away. "Have it your way, but I make no promises if we run into trouble in there. The Shad will shoot to kill. You want us all to get out alive?"
"There are times when force is necessary, but this doesn't have to be one of them," the Doctor pointedly said, and with that he was off: striding around the corner toward the guard and pulling yet another of those ubiquitous paper bags out of his capacious pocket as he went. "Hallo there," he called, waving the bag of jelly babies like a shield, and the guard was alert at once, weapon at the ready, swinging around to keep the Doctor covered as he strolled past to lean jauntily against the wall, neatly diverting the man's attention from the rest of the group. "I wonder if you can help, I seem to be lost. I was looking for an information point…"
Once bitten, twice shy – the Shad had had a stranger approach asking for directions once already today and it hadn't gone well for them; Harry started moving the moment he realised the Doctor's ploy, got behind the guard even as he brought his weapon to bear, and hit him as hard as he could.
Bare hands versus armour and a rather thick skull wasn't his most successful ploy ever, but the Doctor settled the matter by taking advantage of the distraction to wrestle the gun from the man's hands and lay him out with it.
"Thank you, Harry," he said with a broad smile, handing Harry the gun as the others hurried to join them. "Eyes peeled, everyone, there'll be more inside."
dwdwdwdwdw
It was pitch dark inside the Shad's building and almost eerily quiet, the stillness broken only by the odd creak or thump somewhere in the distance and the faint squeak of Sarah's shoes, which she'd never noticed before this moment: sandwiched between these two aliens she'd barely met as they crept along a dark, narrow hallway after parting company with the Doctor and Harry.
There'd been a guard on the door, but there was no sign of life in here at all.
So was that a good thing or a bad thing?
"Maybe no one's home," she murmured with a nervous chuckle, a stupid joke just to break the tension because she wished they could just once be that lucky but knew that they weren't. They never were.
"No, they're here. Just not…here, here." A murky figure just ahead of her, Ren managed to make a low murmur sound both decisive and definite; if she felt any doubt at all, she wasn't showing it.
Scuttling along at Sarah's heel, Dilly seemed less confident. "Repairs won't take them forever though – they've had long enough. And everywhere won't be as empty as this section."
That was a point.
"Do we know where we're going?" Sarah enquired in a low voice, because she'd been following without really thinking about it, but this building was fairly large and they didn't have a lot of time to search it and not get caught and get back out again, hopefully with the goods, before the militia descended – how long could the Doctor's meddling hold them off?
Ren said, "Yes," in the same moment that Dilly said, "No," which wasn't exactly reassuring, but Ren carried the argument with a huff of exasperation. "Yes, we do," she insisted. "You saw the plans, Dill, same as I did – just along of where we found Brunnal, that locked store, only one way in or out, extra reinforced security doors…I had anything valuable in a dump like this, what's where I'd keep it."
"Sounds good to me," Sarah said with a nervous little chuckle: nervous because, as keen as she was to help, to actually achieve something on this rotten world and to get this over with so they could all get out of here already, she felt uneasy in a way that had nothing to do with Shad pirates or government militia in particular – she'd faced plenty worse in her time – but everything to do with this rotten world and her experience of it in general.
She usually found something to enjoy about every world she visited with the Doctor, no matter what, but she couldn't wait to get away from this one. Fat chance of that anytime soon, though.
Was that a sound, somewhere in the distance, back the way they'd come – the way the Doctor and Harry had gone? Sarah stopped and turned, squinted hopelessly, unable to see further than an arm's length ahead in the gloom of the passageway.
"Is something wrong?" Ren had seen her.
If she had heard something, the sound had stopped now. "I'm being silly," Sarah decided.
Ren and Dilly exchanged glances and peered back along the corridor, Ren's forehead furrowed and Dilly's eyestalks swivelling; Sarah wondered if – and how – their alien eyes could make out any more than hers.
"Nothing there," said Dilly at length.
"Like I said." But Sarah let out a long breath, because she couldn't shake this uneasy feeling and she knew what it was now. "I just hope they know what they're doing."
"I hope we know what we're doing," Dilly muttered.
"You mean Harry and your other friend, the Doctor?" Ren shrugged. "Theirs is the easier task."
"I know – I know I'm being silly, it's just…" She found herself chuckling all of a sudden. "You know, I'm sure the Doctor wanted Harry with him just so he could keep an eye on him, in case he got mislaid again."
"Does that seem likely?" Ren led the way onward again.
"Well, it's been that sort of a day," Sarah admitted, and if she was honest she felt much the same way herself, that was the real trouble here: reluctant to let either one of them out of her sight, because, "We only just found each other again."
"It's been that sort of day for us all," said Ren, not unkindly, while Dilly's oversized claw patted at Sarah's arm in something like sympathy, and then they reached a T-junction and saw a light, somewhere around the corner but moving closer, bobbing up and down – a torch, because the lights were still out – and then voices, too, and the tramp-tramp of footsteps, heading their way.
There was nowhere to hide, nothing to do but duck back, press tight against the wall and hope for the best.
Sarah held her breath and wondered what they would do if they were spotted, waited as the footsteps and voices drew nearer and nearer, the bobbing torchlight growing brighter and brighter – would whoever it was turn when they reached this corner? She felt Dilly's claw clutching at her sleeve, in the shadowy half-light of that approaching torch beam saw Ren tense, hand dropping to the gun holstered at her hip – she was planning to fight it out, then…
A moment later the Shad whoever had gone, two or three of them arguing heatedly about ongoing emergency repairs, by the sound of it; someone was getting a dressing down for not having the power back on already, they were almost to the point of exchanging blows over it, and passed by the junction without so much as a glance.
Sarah started breathing again.
"Oh, I never should have left the hive," Dilly's rueful voice muttered from somewhere at her heel.
"You always say that." Ren cautiously led the way onward once more, in the opposite direction than the Shad had gone.
"I mean it this time."
"No you don't." Ren signalled for them both to wait as she opened a door and poked her head around it for a quick peek before giving the all clear to continue up a flight of stairs.
"Well, I will next time," Dilly grumbled, and Sarah found herself smiling, in spite of it all.
dwdwdwdwdw
"So where are we going, exactly?" Harry wondered as he crept along a murky hallway beside the Doctor, and was entirely unprepared for the response.
"I thought you knew."
"What?"
"Well, you've been here before, haven't you?" The Doctor's eyes were wide and innocent, and it was impossible to tell whether or not the man was serious.
"Not this part of the building, no," Harry spluttered.
"Oh?" The Doctor still looked suspiciously innocent. Harry gave in and wracked his brains for the plan of the building's layout he'd seen on Dilly's holographic projector.
"Well, where are we trying to go, then?" he asked. "Was there somewhere particular you wanted to plant that tracking device?"
"What? Oh no, we could leave that anywhere," the Doctor airily dismissed. "But I rather feel we should give the others a little time to carry out their part before we reactivate it, don't you think?"
This rather brought them back to Harry's original question, he felt. "So where are we going?"
"I'd like to know more about the Shad," the Doctor thoughtfully mused. "Well, before we set the militia onto them, it might be a good idea to find out more, wouldn't you say?"
"They abducted Brunnal and killed three of your rebels, just to get their hands on Ren's cargo," said Harry, remembering how suspicious the Shad guards he'd met had been, how quick they'd been to turn on him with guns blazing at the first sign of trouble, the way they'd locked up a wounded man without even the rudiments of first aid.
"So I hear," said the Doctor. "And I'd like to know more."
The Doctor generally had a good reason for most things that he did. Harry thought about it, pictured in his head that holographic plan he'd seen and the moving blobs that had indicated life-forms, tried to work out where they had been in relation to where he was just now.
"Er…this way," he ventured. "I think."
dwdwdwdwdw
"Something puzzles me," said Ren, glancing back at Sarah with sharp, searching eyes.
Before Sarah could reply they had to duck into a handy alcove for cover to avoid a passing Shad – a technician of some kind, by the looks of him, stomping along so furiously that he failed to notice them despite how poorly they were hidden. She waited till he was gone, kept her voice low. "Yes?"
"Harry knows nothing of this world – less than nothing – yet here are you, his friends, working with the dissident movement."
"Well, I wasn't exactly expecting to find him in league with smugglers, either," Sarah retorted, they were about the least likely company she could ever have imagined for straight-laced Naval officer Harry Sullivan, and the other woman snorted, conceding the point.
"We were brought together by circumstance," she said, the corners of her mouth quirking in what looked like amusement.
"The same for us," Sarah told her. "Sometimes you encounter people – situations – and you have to make a choice. Walk away or stay and help. We chose to help."
Saying it out loud like that really drove the point home. For all her doubts and concerns, for all the murkiness of the situation they'd found on this world, politics and economics and shades of grey, no invader to tear down and no clear-cut enemy to oppose…they'd made a choice to support Rikard and his allies in their struggle to forge a better world, and she couldn't regret that, no matter what, because she believed in freedom and equality, and in the right of these people to fight for those ideals.
Even if she did also believe that their strategic thinking could use some work.
Ren lifted an eyebrow. "And here we all are."
"Here we are," Sarah softly agreed, and then let out a wry chuckle, because here they were: "Stealing smuggled goods from a bunch of pirates to give to a band of rebels who want to change the world." Put like that, it sounded absurd – but she'd seen and done far stranger things, in her time.
"To sell," Dilly primly corrected. "We do sympathise with the rebels' cause but we have needs also. This is business. Our goods are to be sold, not given."
"If we can find them." Ren hesitated as they reached another junction, her brow furrowing as she glanced furtively along the corridor in each direction, squinting in the murky half-light.
Sarah knew that look; she'd seen it many times on many faces. "Are we lost?"
"It looks different in the dark." Ren turned to her comrade. "You were here with me before, Dilly. You don't remember the way? It can't be much further now."
Dilly's eye stalks swivelled around, accompanied by a curious sniffing gesture of the antennae. "It was this way."
"You're sure?"
Another swivel of the eye stalks was followed by a full body nod. "I'm sure."
"On we go, then," Sarah murmured.
They rounded the corner just as the lights came back on, almost blindingly brilliant after the murky gloom.
A moment later a Shad stepped out of a concealed doorway and his jaw dropped with surprise when he saw the three intruders.
dwdwdwdwdw
Harry and the Doctor had to scramble when the lights came back on, to avoid unexpected approaching guards, or some such, and then realised they'd somehow ended up more or less where they wanted to go.
Where the Doctor wanted to go, at any rate.
It was an office suite, the business end of the Shad's headquarters, and someone, behind a closed door at the far end of the vestibule area, was not happy.
"This is a farce!" that someone was shouting. "First you let them infiltrate, then you let them escape! You let them take down every system we have –"
"We have lights now, Lathor…" another voice sullenly argued as Harry followed the Doctor's lead, cautiously creeping toward the closed door to peek through the viewing pane at what was going on inside: an argument between two aliens – the same sort of heavy-set, red-eyed and be-fanged creatures he'd seen earlier, belligerent and angry and armed.
"Oh, we have lights. We have lights! After how long? And we have lights – at last, we're saved!" The mocking became a menacing growl. "We got the Vox-Leon rep due in under an hour – he sees this mess, the whole deal's off, everything we've worked toward. Tell the fools if full systems aren't restored before then, I'll have them all shot. Go!"
The order was abrupt, took a moment to sink in, but then the Doctor whispered, "Uh oh," and they had about three seconds to get out of sight before the door flew open.
Harry wheeled away, scanning the room in panic for a hiding place, and found a tall upright cabinet to dash behind. He saw the Doctor throw himself to the floor behind a low bench nearby just in time as the beleaguered Shad underling stalked out and away at speed, huffing and puffing and angrily muttering to himself.
The outer door slammed shut behind him. Harry ventured out of his hiding place to find the Doctor picking himself up off the floor, eyeing the inner door with a thoughtful expression.
"What a charming fellow. Let's pop in and say hello," he suggested in a low voice, to Harry's alarm.
"What? I don't think that's such a good idea, Doctor."
"Nonsense, Harry, it's a splendid idea – straight to the horse's mouth," the Doctor insisted. "Come on."
He flung open the door and strode in.
dwdwdwdwdw
"Oh dear," said Dilly as the startled Shad stared at the trio of intruders, reaching for a weapon with an angry shout…
A second later he was on the ground, shot down by the gun that was suddenly in Ren's hand, and it was Sarah's turn to stare. It had happened so fast, and as always in these circumstances she wondered whether she should feel glad that an enemy had been taken down so easily or appalled by such casual extinction of life, when so many had already died and so senselessly. This wasn't a mindless monster, after all, but a person doing a job; an illegal, immoral and violent job, perhaps, but could these smugglers – could any of them – really claim to be any better if they took life so readily?
Ren had already started to move again, cautiously opening the door the man had come out of and then gesturing for Dilly to help her pull the body into the empty room beyond. "We must be quick," she urged. "Brunnal was held along here, so the store room should be…there."
They hurried to it.
"No guard," Sarah observed. "Is that good or bad?"
Ren shrugged. "Busy with repairs, perhaps, and they believe the room is secure. We shall see. Extra reinforced security doors, but without power to that system…"
Dilly had already moved to start working at the lock. It had a keypad requiring input of a combination code, but Ren was right: the system was powered down.
"Looks like it overloaded when the flash bomb went off, and without power the lock seals tight by default – but I can trip it," said Dilly with a note of triumph, producing a small device that affixed to the lock and began to whirr slightly, for a number of painstakingly slow seconds that felt more like hours, someone could be along at any moment…but at last the tiniest of clicks signalled the unlocking of the door and they were in.
dwdwdwdwdw
There were days, Harry told himself, when to all intents and purposes the Doctor appeared to have something of a death wish – he would blithely stroll into the deadliest of situations with his hands in his pockets and a whistle on his lips, and no more protection than that, and yet. And yet somehow it worked, every time.
It probably helped, of course, when he had someone like Harry on hand to provide back-up with a stolen gun.
To say that the Shad called Lathor was surprised when they walked in would be putting it mildly, to say the least. He leapt to his feet with a shout and went straight for his gun, so Harry also went for his – rather wishing the Brigadier was here to see this swift reaction time – and the Doctor smiled as if he hadn't a care in the world. "Stalemate," he brightly observed of the resultant standoff. "It's Lathor, isn't it? May we have a word?"
Lathor boggled. "Who are you?" he demanded, when he'd recovered his voice, the question aimed at the Doctor although his attention remained focused on the gun in Harry's hand, and Harry knew if his own attention or aim wavered even for a moment he'd had it – they both had. "How did you get in here?"
"Well, I opened the door and I walked in," the Doctor oh-so innocently replied. "I was expecting rather more security, I will admit. You don't mind, do you?"
"Yes," snapped Lathor. "Who sent you?"
"You think someone sent us?"
"It was him, wasn't it? How did he find me?" Lathor had begun to edge his way sideways toward a kind of desk nearby, which appeared to have some kind of computer console built into it; Harry watched him warily, wondering if he should do something, and glanced toward the Doctor to see if he'd noticed. He had.
"Well, I didn't realise you thought you were lost," the Doctor replied in his most amiable tone. "But I'd advise you not to take another step toward that alarm I presume you were hoping to operate, you see my friend here has rather a twitchy trigger finger, isn't that right, Harry? Your finger is on the trigger, isn't it, Harry?" he added as a murmured aside.
"Er, yes, Doctor," Harry replied, hoping it was true since this Shad weapon was nothing like the one Ren had given him earlier. People would insist on handing him these alien guns, assuming he'd know how to operate them, yet the function really wasn't always as obvious as one might expect. He adjusted his grip on the weapon slightly and hoped he wouldn't have to use it.
"What do you want?" Lathor snarled, the angle of his gun shifting to cover the unarmed Doctor instead of Harry now, not that the Doctor seemed to notice. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
"Oh dear, dear, Lathor, your memory is almost as bad as your security. I've already explained. I'd like to talk to you."
"About?"
"About your operation here, of course," said the Doctor, now strolling around the room seemingly at random, poking at the fixtures and fittings.
Lathor's suspicious expression hardened into anger. "Then he did send you, I knew it. He must be scraping the barrel to send two Earth men to spy on me! Could he do no better than that?"
"Well, I'm not an Earth man, in fact, but it's a very common mistake." The Doctor had reached the desk and was peering curiously at the computer console. "And if I were spying, I like to think I'd be rather more discreet than this. I really do just want to talk to you, Lathor. I'm interested to know what you're doing here."
"Making a point – stay away from there!" the Shad angrily replied, switching his aim back and fore between the two of them, now pointing the gun at Harry, now at the Doctor, now at Harry again, to and fro like that yo-yo the Doctor liked to play with. Harry tried not to let himself be distracted by all this, kept his eyes and his stolen gun firmly trained on the enemy to maintain the standoff.
The Doctor lifted his hands from the computer, but did not step away from it. "Well, if I may say, you're not making it terribly well. This place is a shambles!"
"A temporary set-back!"
"If you insist," the Doctor shrugged, his tone laced with scepticism, and Lathor exploded.
"I will have respect! I will not be disinherited!"
The Doctor lifted an eyebrow. "Disinherited, is it?"
"To promote Garob over me – me!" raged Lathor. "Did he tell you that when he sent you here to spy on me, did he tell you he'd pushed me aside for an outsider? Do you understand what that means?"
"Well, I think I'm beginning to. You see, Harry," the Doctor began, adopting a scholarly air and leaning against the desk as if preparing to deliver a lecture. "Sarah likened the Shad to the Mafia, and I don't think she was so very far out. The Shad hegemony is something of a family business, is that right, Lathor?"
"It was," Lathor sullenly replied. "Don't you even know who you're working for?"
"Well, I do sometimes wonder." The Doctor turned back to Harry, as if he thought he might not be keeping up. "Organised crime on an interplanetary scale, Harry – piracy, money-lending, racketeering and the like – and Lathor here has been disinherited."
"Yes, Doctor," said Harry, since he appeared to be expecting some kind of response and what else was there to say?
"Haven't got what it takes," Lathor spat. "That's what he said. Did he tell you that?"
"So you persuaded – or perhaps bribed – a squad or two of company men to follow you out here to…what, set up a rival operation?"
"I found this opening – he barely even knows this outpost exists, said it wasn't worth bothering with." Lathor began to pace agitatedly, waving his hands in fury, and seemed almost to have forgotten that Harry still had a gun on him – and that he was still holding his own.
"So you're out to prove him wrong, are you?" the Doctor pressed.
"This world is perfect, ripe for the squeeze."
"Knocking off a few underground traders? Robbing the poor to sell to the rich? It's hardly the stuff on which empires are built."
Lathor's fierce red eyes flashed angrily. "So that's your report, is it? You'll go back and tell him I've failed? Ha! This is only the beginning. I have backers, influential."
"Oh yes, I'm sure you're very capable, given half a chance," said the Doctor in that gentle, encouraging tone he used so often to lull opponents into a false sense of security, practically inviting them to confide their dastardly plans in him. "You have big plans, I can tell."
"Big plans? Have you seen this world? I could rule this world!"
"Well, that certainly is a big plan," the Doctor mildly agreed. "Tell me more about these backers of yours?"
"Why, so you can report back to him, let him take this from me and claim the success as his? It's not going to happen, you know? You'll never get a report out – you'll never leave this place alive."
"Well, in that case, you may as well explain what you're planning anyway, make a clean breast of it," the Doctor wheedled. "We won't tell anyone, will we, Harry?"
"Doesn't sound as if we'll get the chance, Doctor," Harry agreed in the mildest tone he could muster while wondering just how the Doctor thought they actually were going to get out of here.
"Start small, build high, that's the family motto, you know," Lathor boasted. "So I am. Oh, this is a small operation now, but we're growing. Can't move without a power base, you see, but I know what I'm doing, I can find an opening anywhere, as many as it takes. I'll get there in the end."
"Power base…? Ah, so that's what this is all about," the Doctor realised. "Disinheritance – you're planning a coup."
dwdwdwdwdw
The storeroom was large, only dimly lit and smelled musty, piled high with crates and boxes and high racks of equipment in no apparent order; the pirates' loot, apparently.
Ren and Dilly seemed impressed. "They've been busy."
"Well, so should we be," Sarah reminded them. "Can you see your cargo?"
"Our crates were marked…there." Ren strode over, Dilly scuttling at her heel, and quickly set about opening up the crates in question, just two of them, to check on the goods.
"So that's it?" Sarah wrinkled her nose. She'd expected something more…more, somehow.
"This is it: weapons, mineral supplements." Ren gestured to each in turn.
"It doesn't seem much." Especially compared to the amount of stuff the Shad had stashed away in here.
"We don't pretend to compete with the likes of the Shad," Ren scornfully replied. "A little goes a long way, and the weapons were only an initial consignment. It was hoped there would be more to follow. If we pull this off, perhaps there still will be." She turned to look around again. "I wonder – would the payload also be in here, or is there another…ah."
Dilly had already spotted the same thing, some kind of safe set into the far wall, and scuttled across to poke at it with deft, purposeful movements of nimble antennae. "Coskitano 4900 – give me a moment."
"There may not be many moments to spare," Sarah murmured, feeling rather like a spare part. There didn't seem to be anything much she could do to help, these two certainly knew what they were doing – a reminder that they weren't exactly the good guys even if they were allies in this situation.
Still, it was far from the first time she'd found herself on the wrong side of the law in pursuit of a worthy cause.
The door to the safe swung open and Ren laughed out loud in delight. "Look at that, Dill – we can refuel and repair after all."
Dilly's bulbous eyes shone brightly "So much. Do we take ours or all?"
"All, of course…no, wait." Ren checked herself. "Blast my eyes. We can't – can't steal the evidence if that Doctor really is bringing the militia on the Shad, we want them taken down. Do you see what else I see?"
Dilly had stilled. "I see it."
"What is it?" Intrigued, Sarah peered over the shoulders of the aliens to see what they'd found.
"A problem this world could do without." Ren pulled out a package about the size of a bag of sugar, securely wrapped – just one of about a dozen neatly stacked at the back of the safe – and something about it pinged a memory, something Sarah had seen on television, perhaps, on the news.
"Drugs?" She wasn't sure why she was surprised.
Ren pushed the package back into the safe in disgust. "Let the militia take them all. Just so long as they don't take us, also. Grab what's ours, Dill, a fair share and we'll away – what's that you've found?"
Dilly had pulled out a stack of thin sheets of flexible plastic, rather like paper, covered with neatly printed notations, nimble antennae delicately sifting through them. "Documentation – accounts, reports…"
"Don't move!"
It was more a snarl than a shout and came from behind them. Sarah span around just in time to see a Shad guard hitting a button on the wall, triggering some kind of alarm, and felt her mouth drop open in exasperated shock, because, "Oh, of all the things to get working again!"
She dived for cover as shots began to fly.
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The Doctor had just persuaded Lathor to put his gun away for a proper conversation – which meant, in turn, that Harry could also lower his weapon at last – when an alarm began to sound, somewhere deep within the building. And that was the end of that. In the space of a heartbeat, Lathor went from malicious pleasure at unveiling to the 'spies' full details of his plan to make his fortune bleeding this world dry and then launch a bid for Shad leadership – a plan they would never, he took great delight in repeatedly informing them, get the chance to relay to the current Shad leadership – to full-blown ballistic fury.
"This was a trick, a distraction, what have you done?" he roared, reaching for his gun…which was no longer in the holster at his hip.
The Doctor had snuck it out while he wasn't looking and waved it at him. "Plan B, Harry – run!"
As with most things where the Doctor was concerned, this was easier said than done, Lathor blocking the exit and charging at them not unlike a raging bull, but the Doctor dodged him as easily as a child playing games in the yard, and if this were the equivalent of a playground game then Harry was far more familiar with the rules than he'd once been. The Doctor zigged, Harry zagged, and between them they evaded Lathor's attacks and ducked past and out of the door, which the Doctor promptly locked behind them with his sonic screwdriver.
"The tracker?" Harry remembered to ask.
The Doctor grinned. "It seemed a fair exchange for this," he said, handing the purloined weapon to Harry to add to the one he already had.
They ran for it.
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Sarah cringed as another shot whistled over her head, close enough to singe her hair, and tried to duck lower, but it was no good: this crate she'd dived behind simply wasn't big enough to provide proper cover.
Nearby, Ren was pressed against a slightly larger stack of crates, gun in hand, trying to get a better look at their attacker. Sarah caught her eye in an attempt to wordlessly signal her predicament and Ren offered the tiniest of nods in reply – message received and understood. She leaned around the crates to return fire, and that was Sarah's cue to move.
She went for it, half-crawling, half-dashing on legs filled with jelly from behind her own meagre hiding place to Ren's slightly more secure position. She just barely made it and skidded to an ungainly halt, gasping for breath. No matter how many times she did this, being shot at never got any easier.
Just behind them, Dilly was still at the safe, quivering and twitching with alarm but nonetheless doggedly scanning through the documentation they'd found item by item. Sarah allowed herself just a moment to re-gather her nerves before crawling closer, curious to know what was so important about the paperwork. "What are you looking for?"
"Anything that incriminates us!"
She hadn't thought of that, remembered that the Shad had attacked the smugglers when they met with the rebels to trade, and if there was documentation of that mission it might also point back to Rikard and his people, which was just what they were trying to avoid.
"Here, let me help." She took some of the documents from Dilly and started to scan through them as quickly as she could, trying hard not to think about the gunfight still going on just behind her, every muscle in her body taut with anticipation of a stray shot finding its target – she wouldn't even see it coming with her back to the door like this, and how much protection could those crates truly provide?
"Company's here." Ren dropped back behind the crates to catch breath. "I think I got one, but I can't get a clear shot, they keep moving, too much cover."
Sarah risked a glance. She couldn't see much from here, but Ren was right: more Shad guards had arrived to join the fight – bulky shapes with glowing red eyes, lurking in the shadows. From what she could tell they had good defensive positions and probably armour, plus, obviously, control of the only exit, not to mention goodness only knew how many reinforcements elsewhere in the building. Ren had her gun and wasn't afraid to use it, but they were hopelessly pinned down in here. There seemed to be no way to escape.
"Nothing, nothing, I think we might be clear – anything?" Dilly's urgent voice brought Sarah back to the task at hand. She glanced through the last few papers.
"No, no, no…" A line caught her eye. "Wait – yes, here's something." No time to read it properly now though. She stuffed the offending document into a pocket and shoved the rest back into the safe. "But if there's more somewhere else, I don't like our chances of finding it. How are we going to get out of here?"
It was hard to read expression on that oh-so alien face, but the fear in the wide, bulbous eyes was unmistakeable. "I don't know." Dilly's voice quavered. "I don't know, they have us pinned, perhaps if we…no, wait!" An oversized claw snapped at Sarah's arm in sudden excitement. "The crate, can you reach the crate?"
Claws and antennae all stabbed furiously toward the crates Dilly and Ren had pulled aside as their stolen cargo…their stolen cargo containing weapons.
Of course.
Was there any chance they might fight their way out of this? Sarah thought of Rikard and his people, so unwavering in their determination to fight for a better world against overwhelming odds, no matter what the cost, and knew they had to try.
"Can you reach? I can't…" Dilly repeated, arms waving in agitation: too short, too awkwardly positioned on that oddly shaped body for the manoeuvre that would be necessary to grab the thing.
"And make it fast, I'm almost out," Ren snapped, ducking back down to catch her breath as another barrage of shots rained down. How much longer would these crates hold out?
"All right, here goes." Down on all fours and keeping low, Sarah nervously edged toward the box of weapons, nearer and nearer until she reached the limit of the meagre protection afforded by the crates and had to stretch a tentative arm out into the space beyond.
She heard gunfire once more – Ren, using up the last of her ammunition to provide cover – but couldn't allow herself to look, had to focus on the task at hand.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the crate, found a handhold and hauled it back, breathless with the effort. "Got it!"
Dilly dived for the crate and hauled the lid off, and Sarah tried to steel herself for the inevitable. Could she really shoot someone, even in the not-so-cold blood of pitched battle? She'd never killed anyone, never, felt sick at the thought, but there were times when force was necessary and perhaps this was one of them because surrender didn't look like an option. She didn't want to hurt anyone but she also didn't want to die, wondered frantically what else they could do…but then instead of guns Dilly pulled out an odd pole with a strange kind of attachment at one end.
A moment later it was thrust into Sarah's hands with an urgent explanation. "You have longer reach than I do. This end to the floor like so, hold it upright, vertical – head below the bulb, that's important – then press here."
"I'm out." Ren dropped back from firing position, voice sharp with alarm. "They're coming, do it now!"
Sarah didn't even know what the device did, but there was no choice and there was no time. All she could do was trust. As the others dropped flat, she gripped the pole tight, ducked below the business end and pressed the button.
The effect was instantaneous: a powerful burst of energy that surged out from the bulbous attachment at the top of the device, pulsing across the room in a flat horizontal wave, just inches above Sarah's head.
A second later there was a series of thuds and she saw Ren and Dilly jump up again at once, tucking away the pouch of money they'd taken from the safe and reaching for the crates that held their stolen cargo.
Unsure what had just happened, Sarah ventured upright and saw several Shad sprawled ignominiously across the floor, unmoving. What had she done?
"Are they dead?"
"Of a stun-pulse? Hardly." Ren shook her head and a wave of relief washed over Sarah. Maybe they'd die anyway when the militia came, if they chose to fight it out, but not by my hand. "They're stunned – but the effect won't last long, so we have to move, fast."
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The Doctor shouted something indistinct over his shoulder, the words completely lost in the muffling folds of his voluminous scarf.
Harry couldn't spare any breath to ask him to repeat the statement, running full tilt through too-bright hallways he could only hope would lead them back to the exit; he'd long since lost all sense of direction. He realised too late that the Doctor had skidded to a halt, rounded a corner and barrelled straight into an oncoming Shad – who, fortunately, was every bit as startled as he was.
They both went flying in a tangle of flailing limbs. The sharp edge of a gun barrel clutched tight in a fist caught Harry a glancing blow across the temple as he fell, and he thrashed wildly to wrench it from the other man's hand and return the favour with rather more force – wincing slightly, because he knew the damage a blow to the head could cause, but needs must.
The Shad stopped struggling and fell back. Breathing hard, Harry dabbed a hand at the side of his head and found it tender but no blood, then bent to check on his opponent. Out for the count but breathing steadily; he'd live to fight another day. And Harry now had a third Shad weapon to add to his collection.
A hand entered his field of vision and he took it, was pulled to his feet with remarkable ease to find the Doctor looking amused. "Unorthodox but effective," he boomed. "Come on, keep moving."
They were within sight of the exit at last when the sound of heavy footfalls and laboured breathing signalled multiple someones approaching from the other direction. The Doctor promptly skidded to a halt and flung an arm across Harry's chest, but the warning wasn't needed this time. Harry raised one of his stolen guns knowing it couldn't possibly save them, expecting a squad of armed Shad to come into sight at any moment…but instead Sarah, Ren and Dilly came into view, equally apprehensive and weighed down by the heavy crates they were hauling between them.
"Sarah!" Harry ran forward to take an end of one of the crates to ease the load and Sarah didn't protest in the slightest, a sure sign of how serious the situation was. The Doctor urged them on, Ren gasped that she thought they were being followed, and they ran for the exit.
Outside, in the poorly-lit murk of night, a new problem immediately arose. "The vehicles," Dilly squeaked. "Where'd Brunnal hide the vehicles?"
There was shouting from within the building now; the Shad were definitely in hot pursuit.
"This way!" an urgent call beckoned. It was Rikard, running toward them from around the corner of a neighbouring building. "You did it, you've got it, let me help!"
They kept moving, meeting Rikard halfway, and he eagerly reached out to help carry the crates, the Doctor still urging them on, "Quickly, quickly," and then the shooting started.
A lot of things seemed to happen all in the same moment as a hail of bullets flew all around. Rikard was hit, flew backward with the impact and lay still, thick dark blood pooling around him. The crate he'd just taken the strain of fell sideways as Dilly and Ren staggered at the sudden loss of support, and Ren whipped around, reaching for her gun – only to curse that she had no ammunition. Harry dropped his own crate, dimly aware that Sarah had done the same with her end; she and the Doctor were rushing to Rikard, and every instinct he had as a medical professional told him to do likewise, but he couldn't because defence had to come first, there were too many lives at stake. He pulled out the weapons he'd acquired from the Shad and tossed one to Ren, another to Dilly, began to return fire himself, distantly noting that the unfamiliar trigger mechanism was actually remarkably easy to use, he didn't know what he'd been worried about – but the Shad had them outnumbered and outgunned and they had no place to hide, there was no way out of this…
Then he felt his heart leap into his throat as Sarah let out a strangled cry and dropped across Rikard's body like a puppet with its strings cut.
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