ENEMY WITHIN
Chapter 9 A gun poked the Doctor in the back. "I shaid, don't move. Or I'll shot... eh, I mean, shoot you." The voice behind him said. "I'm so glad I don't have an itchy nose right now." The Doctor said whimsically, to whomever was standing behind him. "Then I'd be in real trouble." "Look, whoever you are," Donna scolded, "if you're going to put out a distress call, then shoot the people who come to help, I don't think much of your chances for being asked to join the outer-space auto club." "Shusssh!" Said the voice behind them. "My crew are all sleeping. Don' wanna' wake 'em." "Did you just shoosh me?" Donna asked indignantly. "I hate it when people do that." "Donna." The Doctor said in a cautioning tone. "Excuse me? Would you mind if I turn around?" He asked politely. "Cos', I really don't like being shot in the back. So much more personal to put a face to your executioner, I think." "Yesh. Of course. Shh-shertainly." The voice slurred. The Doctor and Donna did an about face, and got their first look at their captor. He was a tall, thin, middle aged humanoid, with blond hair and eyebrows, magenta skin and several short purple tentacles sprouting through the sleeves of his uniform. The alien was wearing a sliver space jumpsuit, with blue braid on shoulders, and a blue cap with silver trim.. A name patch on the chest of his uniform read: 'Captain Blite'. Donna immediately noticed the captain's breath. It reeked of alcohol. The man wavered on his feet, as if he were on the deck of a sailing ship in a storm-tossed sea, rather than a spacecraft. "Have you been drinking, mate?" Donna asked him. "No!" The alien replied. Then he gave a big hiccup, which almost made him fall down. "Erm—maybe jus' a wee bit." He corrected. "Are you alright?" The Doctor asked, sensing something was very wrong. "He's well enough to threaten to shoot us!" Donna snorted. "I won't kill you." The alien said. "Oh yeah?" Donna retorted. "Is that why you're holding that gun?" "I think he's telling the truth, Donna. He's not going to hurt us." The Doctor told her. "What are you now? Derren Brown?" She said to him. "Actually, I've found that sometimes drunks tend to be more truthful than sober people." the Doctor said. "Well, that and the fact that I can see that the charger pack is not attached to the gun. It can't be fired without one." "Show off." Donna sniffed. As slowly and gently as possible, the Doctor reached over and took the gun from the ship's captain. The alien stared at the weapon, as if he'd never seen it before. "Where'd that come from?" He mumbled, weaving slightly. Looking at the Doctor, he asked, "Are you whish the tour? I like giving tourssh. The kiddies love it when I show 'em my cap-cap'ns shair. Hey, ya' wanna' see my shair? I love my shair. I'm the cap-captain ya' know. I get to boss people a-around. It's like, totally aw-awsome!" "Awesome?" Donna commented, looking at the Doctor askance. "The Valaysha are really into Earth retro." The Doctor shrugged. "Sounds like he's been watching too many episodes of Baywatch." she said. "Hang ten, Donna. Surf's up! Just go with the flow, man. Can ya' dig it?" The Doctor said to her in an American accent, grinning and waggling his eyebrows. "Far-out dudes!" The captain said, giving them the peace sign. Then he passed out on to the floor. A short while later, the Doctor and Donna between them had managed to carry the captain through to the cramped cafeteria alloted to the ship's passengers. Even though they hadn't had to carry the alien very far, Donna was not happy. As usual, she let the Doctor know about it. "If I'd known I'd be carting heavy aliens about, I'd of spent more time at the health club." She complained, huffing from the exertion. "They have alien weight training now?" The Doctor quipped. "Maybe I should sign up." Using his elbow to trigger the door switch, the Doctor and Donna had carried the captain over to a cluster of black-topped dining tables. With a little careful maneuvering, they managed to get him sat—or rather, slumped, in a chair. There were a few more bodies laying prone on the floor behind one of the food serving counters. The dining hall was deserted, with a few tables and chairs tipped over near the back of the room. Like the rest of the ship, the atmosphere was dimly lit and silent. Almost ominously so. The Doctor wondered what wild optimist had decided to call it a 'dining hall'. He'd seen bigger tea stalls. Unlike the more utilitarian corridor though, the walls in here were painted bright blue. Badly painted pictures on black velvet cluttered the circumference of the room: A gyrating Elvis, a tropical beach, a leaping stag, John Wayne on a horse, the New York skyline at sunset, kittens in a basket, and a matador waving his cape at a bull. The Doctor and Donna went over to a line of drinks dispensers set into a nearby wall. To Donna's surprise, they looked much like the one's used on Earth. She decided it must be more of that retro look the Doctor kept mentioning. They didn't seem to be turned on. There was a machine displaying adverts for what appeared to be fruit juices. Next was a low self-serve counter with a coffee pot and tea Thermos alongside a built-in sink, a plate loaded with what looked like flat muffins and a serviette dispenser.. There was a row of tea mugs on a shelf above the counter. Further along, was what looked like a vending machine hawking alcopops and beer. Continuing down the line, the Doctor passed by the soda machine and opted for the one which sold bottled water and some kind of vegetable drink. "Shouldn't we be getting him coffee or something instead?" Donna asked, watching the Doctor put on his eyeglasses. "Nah. That's a myth." The Doctor told her, as he dug out his sonic screwdriver. "Consuming large quantities of alcohol makes your body dehydrated. Best thing is lots of water or caffeine free beverages. Coffee comes later. Er—so I've heard. Not that I, you know, do any pub crawling myself. Too dull. I prefer to get high on life. That's why I travel." Flaring out his coat tails, the Doctor squatted down on the floor in front of the machine. Pointing the sonic at the front access panel, he pressed down on the control. The tip lit up blue and the device gave off a low whirring noise. Abruptly, the machine's front suddenly lit up, and its motor hummed into life. He aimed the sonic again at the access panel. With a loud clatter, a fountain of alien coins suddenly cascaded to the floor. "What do you know? A 5p Ogron head coin. I've not seen one of those in years." The Doctor said fondly, looking down at the floor. Trying again, he managed to get the machine to spit out a couple of bottles of water. A half hour on, and they'd changed from water to ordinary black coffee. Later, at the captain's request, he was brought another hot beverage, which smelled to Donna like a cross between turpentine and road kill. The Doctor told her it was a favorite drink of the Valaysha, called khatwhiz tea. The name alone made her not want to go anywhere near the stuff. The captain was now awake, if still not entirely sober. He gripped the ceramic tea mug as if his life depended on it. Donna noticed with a start that the mug was nearly identical to the one Wilf had given her last Christmas. It had printed on it, a retro WWII poster, with the legend 'Keep Calm And Carry On.' Pocketing his glasses, the Doctor sat on the edge of the table. Donna was seated in a chair near the alien. But not too close. She thought he smelled a little minging. "Tell me what happened." He said, looking intently at Captain Blite. "We're a combination freighter and passenger ship." The captain said, massaging his temples with two of his tentacles. "We haul goods pretty much wherever they need to go. But, it's the passenger fares which are our bread and butter, though. It's where the company makes its greatest profit margin. We go to planets and space stations frequently off the regular passenger routes. And then there's passengers going to more popular destinations, who don't like to travel by your standard cruise ship. We charge an enormous fare for that, let me tell you!" "Right. Profits. Yeah. Got that. Can we skip the PR presentation now, and get to what happened in the past day?" The Doctor interrupted impatiently. "That's just it, you see?" The captain said angrily. "All this is all my fault! We only had two passengers on this run, when we usually carry at least eight or ten. A huge loss at the end of our forth quarter, and we'd of been doomed. The owners wouldn't hesitate to give us all the sack and sell out. So, I decided to do something to er—balance the books, so to speak." "You mean you did something illegal?" Donna asked. "To my everlasting regret, yes." The captain nodded sadly. "I did something truly stupid, and made a deal with the Toxil-Maacht." "I'm starting to form a very ugly picture in my mind of what is going on." The Doctor said, his face clouding with anger. "Why? What do you mean? You think these toxic monks are responsible for what's happening on Earth? Donna asked him. "Toxil-Maacht. With a hyphen." The Doctor corrected her. "Bunch of arrogant snobs, I always thought. Basically like giant mosquitoes. They are totally ruthless, with virtually no moral compass when it comes to getting what they want. Shape changers, as well. They'll eat anything, but prefer blooded creatures. Even their own kind, if they get desperate enough. Which, if the war isn't going so well, may be what has brought them here. I'll wager something's happened to their food supply. Won't do to have their own soldiers eating each other. Even a quarter of the population of Great Britain could probably supply their army for the equivalent of six months. Maybe a whole year." "They're using my country as some sort of alien Tesco's?." Donna said incredulously. "There's hundreds of thousands of people in those cities. And they're all going to be turned into army grub! How are these mosquito things going to get away with that? "Probably very easily." Captain Blite told her, taking another sip of his tea. "The Toxil-Maacht are experts at underhanded dealings. They're obsessive about it. Have many thousands of staffers who do nothing but work to undermine the competition. Spend every waking hour planning every move, making sure they leave nothing to chance. They live for getting the upper hand in a deal and keeping it that way. They'll lie to you to your face and make you believe it. Make you think they're on your side, and then kill you the minute you're no longer of any use to them. Trust me miss, I found that out the hard way." "And that's what happened here." The Doctor surmised. "You agreed to work for them and when things didn't go as planned, they ended your contract. Permanently." "I made a deal with them." Captain Blite nodded. "We were to ship their new food supplies directly to the front lines. Ten million credits when I departed from Sol Three—what you humans call Earth, another twenty mil' when I delivered the supplies. The most we make on an average run, even with a full cargo hold and all the passenger cabins booked, is around five million. This would've put us well into the profit margin for both this quarter and the next. How could I pass that up?" Captain Blite's hands started trembling, and abruptly, he dropped his tea mug. It landed on the floor, sounding like a gunshot in a cemetery crypt, breaking on impact. "Then what?" The Doctor prompted, more gently this time. "Right after we entered into orbit around this moon, one of the crew, the ship's engineer, found out about the deal. He told other crew members about it before I could stop him. It seems my crew had a conscious. The idea of the mass murder of innocent humans down below was abhorrent to them. They threatened to mutiny. I couldn't have that, could I?" The captain said, matter-of-factly. "You could have, but I won't debate that now." The Doctor said shortly. "I decided to contact the Special Procurer of the Toxil-Maacht." The captain continued, "He's masqerading as a Human named Huxley." "What!" Donna said. "You don't me that man who says he's got a cure for the London Flu and all that? That doesn't make sense." "Oh. I think it makes perfect sense." The Doctor said, getting up and beginning to pace the floor. "Too much sense. Why didn't I see it? Toxilco Pharmaceuticals! They're so arrogant, they just couldn't keep from stamping their name on their own cover story. And I missed it! How thick am I?" "But...why say they have a cure, when they plan on killing everyone?" Donna asked him. "It's not a cure, my dear." Captain Blite replied. "The so-called vaccine is really a acidic dissolution reduction agent." "A what?" Donna said, suddenly afraid for her family. "They're going to turn human beings into an easily transportable liquid protein." The Doctor snarled, pacing the floor now like a caged tiger. "They have at least one other cargo ship that I know of in this sector, equipped with special tanks in the hold." The captain explained. "I was supposed to receive the first shipment in..." He consulted an alien-looking clock on the cafeteria wall, "...in about four hours from now. Then, the mutiny happened. So, I contacted their Special Procurer to tell him what happened. To see if he could send some assistance." The captain barked a hoarse laugh. "Oh, he assisted me alright. Right into an early grave." The Doctor gave the captain a sharp look, then sat down again. "Exactly what did this Special Procurer do?" He asked, though he had already guessed at least part of the answer. "They released their virus into the ship, killing the whole crew and both passengers. I sensed something was amiss when I saw a canister of some sort materialize on the bridge. There were reports of other canisters all over the ship. Then, the gas was released. The crew began to sicken and die. Well, they deserved it, the dishonourable wretches. I am sorry about the passengers. I wear a heavy guilt on my conscious for that, believe you me." "You're still here though." The Doctor said shortly. He was forming the opinion that the captain was either no better than the Toxil-Maacht, was completely insane, or was fifty-seven varieties of stupid. Possibly a bit of all three. He leaned forward and asked, "How did you survive?" "First thing I did was lock myself in my cabin." The captain shrugged. "Have a gas mask there, you see. Saved me. For a while, anyway." "What do you mean, for a while?" Donna wondered, suddenly suspicious. She began looking around the room nervously. Donna could see by the Doctor's face, that he too, seemed a bit jittery. His angry look was being replaced by worry. "After the gas did its thing, the Toxil-Maact came on board to finish the job they began. They disabled all of the communications equipment and escape pods. Then, for good measure, took out the main power drive. That's why everything is set at the minimum levels." The captain said with an air of defeat, "I'm never gonna' see my wife Trixie, ever again." He sighed sadly. "She's the most lovely shade of teal you'd ever want to see. And fit. Hubba-hubba! I painted her on the side of the ship. Just like the old Earth pilots used to do, during their Second Great War. Or was that the Third? I never cared for intergalatic history when I was in school, I'm afraid. Though I liked looking at the pictures in the holo-texts. It was Trixie who inspired me to fly out to the stars...dear, dear Trixie. Right now, I wish I'd never met her. But my gods, she has the body that just won't quit...gorgeous flowing hair, well rounded bottom, tentacles down to there and the size of her chest..." "Erm-yeah. That's very nice" The Doctor said trying to put a stop to that line of conversation. He was sure now that the captain's mind had gone for a little stroll down nutjob lane. "Did you see her picture when you flew in here? Doesn't half do her justice." Captain Blite asked. "Yes. Right. Of course we did. Donna was saying that Trixie had nice...tentacles." The Doctor replied, "But, getting back to the damage to the ship, the escape pods can probably be repaired. At least enough to get you out of here. Why don't you simply do that? I could help." "Ah. But the Toxil-Maacht never do anything by half-measures. They like to have insurance. One of their people also planted a neutron-destabilizer bomb. Quite probably in the power feed room down below. That's where it'd do the most damage. Vaporize everything instantly for miles around. Even with a working escape pod, I'm as good as dead." The captain sighed, clearly feeling sorry for himself. "We're all going to die here sometime in the next few minutes, and no one the wiser. Except maybe the folks on Sol Three might wonder where their moon had got too. I suppose the explosion will destroy that too. Pity. It's such a pretty moon."
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