Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [50]
The Doctor was still unsure of the protocol of greetings: in this case was he supposed to shake her hand, kiss her on the cheek, or bow perhaps? He decided to take his cue from the minister and make no physical contact with the young woman. He merely doffed his hat and beamed at her. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Sita Benovides. I’m the Doctor.’
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘I imagine most people do, don’t they?’
‘Was the case really that high profile?’ the Doctor said. ‘If I’d realised how many people were watching I might have been nervous.’
‘You don’t strike me as the nervous type,’ she said.
‘The Doctor has plans to dominate the noble contest,’ the minister smiled. ‘I admire that sort of ambition in a man. I think he and I are going to be the best of friends.’
‘He is a good friend to have,’ the young woman said to the Doctor, though she was looking directly at the minister. ‘Like his taste in wine, his loyalty can always be relied upon.’
Once again the Doctor was aware of how threatening people seemed to find this man. Even the daughters of old friends were careful in his presence. That’s certainly one definition of a friend; he said.
‘Is there another?’ the minister asked.
‘There are many others,’ the Doctor said. ‘Nothing is absolute. Only nothing is absolute.’
Leela who had been completely absorbed in watching the duels and was paying no attention to the comings and goings in the viewing suite interrupted the conversation abruptly.
‘Look, Doctor,’ she said, ‘the next challenger is a woman.’
In the arena a bloodied bundle of flapping tissue and flopping entrails was removed from the fighting surface and a pale woman with short-cropped red hair stepped forward to face the maniacally gleeful Baloch.
Chapter Nine
Sita set out to find whoever-it-was and she was fairly sure she had found the track and traced them back: from the ersatz battle zone of the „Space Main security perimeter, to the burned corpses in the wood, to the downed gun-ship and the general destruction on the motorway. But there the trail stopped.
She had risked her cover to check with sources in the police and in the security services and find out what the story was: only to be told that there was no story. The incidents were just incidents, random and unconnected.
Stuff happens. Look for causes and you‟ll go crazy. Look for links and you are crazy. She couldn‟t believe that was what they believed, except that they wouldn‟t lie to her, not all of them anyway, not all at the same time. Different departments,
different
investigation
teams,
different
computers, same conclusions: file under accidental scuffle-up, and forget it.
Now while Major Sita Benovides was decidedly annoyed by what had happened, and she was given to bearing grudges, still she might have let it end there, left it and got on with her career. But then Lars „Driftkiller‟ Ronick laughed at her.
No one had ever been sure whether Driftkiller got his nickname because of his sea hunter ancestry or simply because he was a lame-brained throwback with all the subtle wit of an explosive harpoon. „Let me explain some things to you, girlie,‟ he said. „One,‟ he held up a chubby finger. „Fart at one of those security „copters and it‟ll go down in flames.
Two,‟ a second finger waved at her. „Get a half-baked gun club round the old camp fire with enough booze and as much explosive ammo as they can carry, and what you end up with is a fully-baked gun club. And,‟ he waggled a short fat-rolled thumb, this time without bothering with the count, „as for that bunch at Aerospace Main - one got wiped? Scuff me, I‟m amazed they could count well enough to figure that out.
Gods-in-a-runner you officer-class types are a laugh riot.‟
And then he shook his head and laughed riotously.
„Is that three things or four, Driftblubber?‟ Sita asked coldly, but it was too late for effective counter-punching. She hated to be laughed at, but what really got to her was that
„girlie‟.