Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [88]
Tegan closed her eyes. Ecstasy.
Über-ecstasy.
She tried to say something but Paynter placed a finger over her lips and shushed her from even trying.
‘The best-looking woman I was ever with, long ago this was, she was a peach. Her name was Rachel Wheeler and I’d loved her since I was in short pants. She used to live around the corner from me. She was two years older and had done it by the time she was fifteen, and all that crap that seems important to people when they’re that age.’ Paynter kissed Tegan again, their teeth clashing briefly as they parted. ‘Finally,’ he said, catching his breath, ‘I had her. She was my first. I was her . . . I dunno, twenty-ninth or something.
It didn’t matter. She made me a man.’
‘Is this leading anywhere in particular?’ asked Tegan, breaking her self-imposed silence.
‘Only that she couldn’t hold a candle to you,’ Paynter concluded.
‘You know how to say the right thing,’ she murmured.
‘Me?’ Paynter seemed surprised that it had taken her so long to spot one of his better qualities. ‘Oh aye, I’m the Frank Sinatra of Second Battalion, didn’t you know? Well sussed, I am!’
Truth was that Tegan was only just starting to discover this. And she liked it.
‘Don’t be a poseur,’ she told Paynter, with a humour that just a couple of hours before would have been impossible. ‘We’re still in a right kettle of fish out here. And it’ll be dark soon. What was that you were telling me about how cold it gets at night in the desert? ‘
Paynter accepted her wisdom with a raffish smile and a wink. ‘Then it’s time we got a move on. I’ll race you!’
169
‘You can’t run on that leg,’ Tegan squawked. ‘You can barely walk.’
‘It’ll hurt,’ admitted Paynter, ‘but it’s only a scratch. Come on, you and me need to get back to civilisation pronto.’
‘Still no word from them I’m afraid sir,’ Natalie told an irritated Lethbridge-Stewart. ‘The recovery team found two bodies at the garage one of which was . . . ’ She stopped, and sniffed loudly. ‘. . . Sergeant Milligan.’
The Brigadier nodded without articulating the pain he, again, felt. Another phone call to another newly childless mother. He glanced across to the Doctor who seemed as though he were about say something. The moment passed.
‘Any details?’
‘I’m sorry no,’ replied Natalie. She was clearly upset. ‘Poor David. This happens all the time to me. Every time I smile at a man, he dies. It was the same with kittens when I was small.’
‘Private Wooldridge,’ snapped the Brigadier. ‘Pull yourself together!’
‘Yes sir,’ she said, coming quickly to attention. ‘There was no sign of either Captain Paynter, or of Miss Jovanka, though the early indications are that the other man who was shot had been killed with Captain Paynter’s gun. The crew did a thorough recce of the immediate surrounding area, but they left the site after twenty minutes fearing they might be a target for attack themselves.’
Lethbridge-Stewart accepted the strategic manoeuvre. ‘I’d have done the same thing, I suppose,’ he said. ‘All we can do now is wait and hope they contact us.’ He turned to the Doctor and asked, ‘So, do we continue with this meeting?’
If the Doctor harboured any doubts about the validity of what he was doing, now was most definitely not the time to show it. ‘Under no circumstances do we fail to show up at InterCom. That would be a sign of weakness, Brigadier.
Do you want to see your planet grovelling on its hands and knees to aliens?’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me that they’re misunderstood? That they’ve really come in peace? Isn’t that the way it usually works?’ asked Lethbridge-Stewart, bitterly remembering countless occasions when he had been on the receiving end of the wrath of the Doctor’s bombast.
The Doctor simply shook his head. ‘Not this time.’
Natalie Wooldridge