Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [104]
‘Wait!’ called the Doctor. ‘If Yong’s trying to damage the directional equipment he’ll be heading for the cathedral.’
‘I know that!’ spat De Hooch, turning to go.
‘No, listen, De Hooch. I need you to operate the machinery for me. Do what you like with Yong but make sure you follow my instructions first – otherwise it’ll all be for nothing.’
He tossed a communicator across the room and the dwarf caught it in his stunted, sausage‐fingered hand. Then, with a scowl which betrayed his resentment. De Hooch waddled from the bridge.
‘Jones, you’re in command,’ he muttered as he slipped through the iris.
The Doctor watched him go and then turned back to the console.
‘Four minutes. Ready, Bernice?’
‘When you are, Doctor.’
* * *
De Hooch ran as fast as he could towards the cathedral. He had not felt this excited since he was small. Well, since he was a boy anyway. Not since the day he had killed his parents, in fact.
He remembered it all very clearly. A high, bright summer’s day in the New Dutch Republic.
De Hooch’s early childhood had been idyllic, filled with stories about the Old Country from his indulgent grandfather. Stories of how the seas had claimed Holland, and the Dutch had become the wanderers of Europe. How his family had eventually settled in the land which had sprung up out of the Atlantic following the seismic shifts. All these tales made him achingly nostalgic for a time he had never even known.
After his grandfather’s death, however, his parents had abandoned him to the welfare agencies; unable to cope, they said, with such a violent, nasty child. Unable to cope with his genius, more like, thought De Hooch.
He had never forgiven them for their cruelty, and made it his business to track them down and kill them once he joined the Chapter. In his mind’s eye he could still see their expressions of frozen horror as he shuffled into the house, the laser‐rifle in his sweaty little hands.
And the Chapter, he reflected with a warm glow, ah, yes, the Chapter.
The vacuum in his life had to be filled somehow and, like many in those dark days, he had sought refuge in the new religion. It soon became clear that not just anyone could join, however, and it was only after long months trawling the dirtiest spaceports in the galaxy that he had been successful. After chartering a shuttle to Titan, the ship had been unexpectedly attacked by one of the Chapter’s raiding ships. De Hooch’s willingness to slaughter his fellow passengers had endeared him to the Chapter and before long he had been initiated and introduced to the Magna.
Yong was everything he had been searching for. Physically magnificent, overpoweringly beautiful and incalculably evil. Before too many years, De Hooch had become second only to the Magna himself, consulted at almost every level on the Chapter’s crusade against the heathens.
But with growing power had come growing resentment. De Hooch began to realize just how arrogant was his superior and how dismissive of his Parva’s considerable talents. The feeling had grown more and more poisonous, festering inside the dwarf like pus in the boil which De Hooch’s head so much resembled.
This current debacle had concentrated De Hooch’s wish to overthrow Yong and, at last, become Magna himself.
Now his once‐respected, now hated leader was tottering to an appointment with destiny.
De Hooch threw open the cathedral doors and stepped inside. His boots clopped on the chilly flagstones. Thoss lay where Yong had shot him, congealed blood pooling stickily around him.
De Hooch looked around. There was no sign of Yong. If he intended to sabotage the directional equipment he was too late. De Hooch would be waiting for him.
He crossed to the concealed machinery in the alcove and drew back the heavy brocade curtain. The shimmering steel lines of the directional console shone up at him.
De Hooch switched on the communicator. ‘Very well, Doctor. I’m here.’
The Doctor’s relieved sigh crackled back: ‘Good. Now, tell me what you see