From: bradkwillis@aol.com (BKWillis)
Date: 03 Mar 2003 03:21:42 GMT
Subject: Desert of Fear, Part 35


DESERT OF FEAR

Part 35


Copyright Notes: 'Doctor Who' belongs to the BBC.  'Desert of Fear' and the
original characters therein created by Brad Filippone, Clive May, Ken Young,
and BKWillis.

The story thus far and the 'Desert of Fear' FAQ are archived at Clive May's
website, here:

http://www.cj4386.demon.co.uk/desert/index.htm


----

The blaster muzzle never wavered from the bridge of Siharal's nose as
Rhanda's gaze, flint-hard, bored into his own.  Looking at her, he tried to
square this cold and deadly traitor with his past perception of her -- just
another green subaltern, a junior officer notable mainly for her lack of
distinction.  She was one of those faces that was always just at the edge of
his notice, a tentative young woman neither fair enough of face nor willful
enough to draw the eye of a man in his position, nor apparently possessed of
the skill, drive, or connections to ever be anything more than she was.

It seemed he'd misjudged this young nobody.  It seemed they all had.

"I can't help but notice," Rhanda remarked, "that you seem fully as upset by
my 'unnatural lusts' as by my supposed treason.  Does it worry the cock when
the hens make do without him?"

"It only goes to show the depths of your degradation, subaltern!" the former
Commander spat, drawing himself up in his seat.

"My, aren't we self-righteous?" Her lips parted in an expression that was not
quite a smile, nor fully a sneer as she took the chair across from him.  "But
now let's find out whether your promotion to Commander was based on merit.
If you have any sense at all, there should be two questions uppermost in your
mind right now." The blaster moved closer to his face.  "Ask them, Commander
Siharal, and impress your poor subordinate."

Siharal just stared coolly back at her, pulling the tattered remains of his
dignity about him like an old cloak.  After a moment, his eyes fell to the
silver recorder disk in his hand.  "Why didn't you destroy this?"

Rhanda's brows arched as she nodded, conceding him a point.  "Very good,
Commander.  You asked the second question first.  Now the other."

"Why haven't you killed me yet?"

She leaned back slightly, drawing the blaster with her, though its point of
aim never altered.  "Excellent.  You're a bit more than a social-climbing
drone after all, aren't you?  Since you've performed so well, I'm going to
reward you by giving you answers, Commander.  First, that disk needs to be
kept safe for now.  Now is not the time for Her Majesty to learn of such
things, not yet.  But later, such proof may be of great use to us."

"What 'use'?  What are you playing at, woman?"

"I'm not 'playing' at anything," she snapped back.  "If this is a game to
you, or if you think it is to me, then you're as useless as Her Majesty
thinks you are.  Which brings me to your second question.  You are alive,
dear Commander, because you may yet have some value to Avis City.  You still
command certain loyalties among the Temple Guard, in spite of your disgrace.
That could be most useful to us...  as a foil to the faction subverted by the
Lady Kali, if nothing else..."

----

Babydoll looked up from loading her shotgun drum.  "Can I ask you something,
Cain?"

The Time Lord shrugged, still hunched over the nuke's fuse panel.  "Ask what
you like, babe.  The worst I'll do is lie to you."

That was one of Cain's little catch-phrases, a well-worn cliche that he threw
out all the time.  It was just like him calling all women 'babe', a habit of
speech that didn't usually mean anything.  Except now, something about the
way he said it bothered her, as if he were claiming the right to deceive her.
She frowned at his back, her eyes on the sliver of his neck exposed between
the collar of his trenchcoat and his gray-blond ponytail.  "That crazy bitch
up in Avis City, the redhead," she said, watching the sudden tension in his
muscles.  "Who is she?"

Cain was silent for a long moment.  "Nobody," he said at last, voice little
more than a whisper.  "She's nobody at all."

That did it.  Babydoll slammed down the drum full of 12-gauge shredder rounds
and stomped over beside him, atom bomb or no atom bomb.  "Damn it, Cain,
don't blow me off like that!  I heard you call her by crukking name and I
want to know who the smegging Hell she is!  She damn near killed us all and
now you're acting like even more of an obsessed bastard than usual and both
of those things really gripe my ass!  Now, me and Bella put our butts on the
line for you up there and we're about to go off into God only knows what kind
of Hellhole for you.  For _you_, you cold-blooded prick." She snatched a
handful of trenchcoat and balled it in her fist.  "Don't you understand?
We're gonna go spill our blood and others', maybe die, all for _you_.  You
_owe_ us better than this."

Cain's hands, which had continued their deft wiring adjustments all the
while, went very still.  He drew them out of the bomb's fuse panel and stared
at their backs.  Babydoll found her eyes drawn to them, too, to the almost
imperceptible tremor in the right.  The hand clenched into a white-knuckled
fist, then straightened again, the tremble gone.

"Well?" she demanded, not willing to be put off.

Now he turned to face her, an ancient weariness in his eye that disturbed
Babydoll more than his wild obsessiveness ever had.  "I told you the truth,
babe," he sighed.  "She's literally nobody." Before Babydoll could explode
again over that, he went on, "She's not a real person, but she thinks she's a
Regulator.  She thinks her name is Kali." He spat the name as though
misliking the taste of it on his lips.  "She ain't Kali, though.  She's just
a tawdry copy of a tawdry original."

Babydoll, mostly at sea but glad to be getting an answer of some sort, went
with the first question that came to mind.  "So, she's a clone, or something?
How do you know she's not really this Kali person?"

Cain stood slowly, reaching into his coat and drawing out a cheap- looking
percussion revolver.  He held it up for her to see, smiling.  It wasn't one
of his 'real smiles', those rare and strangely beautiful expressions that
made her want to follow him right up to Satan's throne and help him give the
horny old bastard a kick in the ass.  Nor was it one of the smirky grins he
threw out to show people how seriously he didn't take them.  It was an ugly,
hurtful twist of the lips, an open wound with teeth.  "I know," he said
softly, "because 218 years ago, I took this pistol and shot her in the guts
with it, then blew out the back of her Gods-damned head." The scar-smile
twisted further, turning its hateful bile on itself.  He stuck the pistol
back in his pocket.  "She didn't die easy, though.  In between, she managed
to give me _this_, with a staser pistol." He ran a finger along the scar that
crossed the bridge of his nose, to where it disappeared under his eyepatch.
Hooking his thumb under the stiff black cloth, he flipped the patch up,
revealing an empty socket, mangled eyelids fused together by a knot of scar
tissue.

"Kali's dead as dogshit," he continued, pulling the patch back down, "but
Gallifrey has ways around that.  That bent-brained bitch Shanka has built
them a new Kali, it seems.  Well, well.  They've run out of living agents
that are worth a damn, so they've taken to pestering the dead." He laughed a
dark, scornful chuckle and bent low over her, Babydoll forcing herself not to
give ground.  "But I'll tell you what, babe.  The original Kali couldn't beat
me, not on her best day, and she was the best they had.  Shanka's cheap
zombie knockoff doesn't have a prayer against me.  I'm sending her to join
the original in Hell, and her masters won't be far behind!"

Now Babydoll did give back a little before the wild fire in his eye.  Cain
didn't get like this often, this openly emotional.  To Babydoll the
professional killer and doer of dirty deeds, it was deeply disturbing;
people, particularly people in charge, who let their feelings dictate their
actions tended to have truncated lifespans.  Or, as a privateer she'd once
worked with put it, 'If they burn hot, they'll go down in flames.' Babydoll
the woman, on the other hand, couldn't help but feel a certain thrill at the
dark passion, the wrath and power in his words and expression.  But there was
something else there, something deeper than just his poisonous hatred for the
Regulators.

"Kali," she said, barely more than a whisper.  "She was...  You had something
with her, didn't you?"

The sudden faltering of his expression answered her question more succinctly
than any words could.

"You and she..."

"There was nothing there," he rasped.  "I might have thought differently once
-- I might have been made to think differently -- but there was nothing.
Nothing at all."

Something bent deep inside Babydoll, bent hard and snapped at the balance.
'My people aren't moved that way', in Cain's voice rattled through her
memory.  A lie, it seemed.  Just another smegging Time Lord lie.  One more
out of how many now?  She took a step back, some part of her telling her she
should run, but pride keeping her in place.

"Hey, babe."

She met his eye, feeling the sulky pursing of her mouth without knowing why.

His voice was gentle, calmer than usual, a little sad.  "Seraph's sent food
to the parlor.  Go meet Bella there.  Eat, drink, clean up, unwind some." He
smiled and clapped a hand to her shoulder, her body going rigid under his
touch.  But she didn't pull away.  "If I'm gonna get you killed in my
senseless vendetta, you should at least have clean clothes and a full stomach
first, right?" His expression said that he knew the words were falling flat
even as they came out.

She just kept staring at him.

Sigh.  "Seriously, babe.  You and Bella go chill for a little while.  I've
still got some work to do here and in the lab before we make our move.  Go
on.  Scat."

Deliberately and without taking her eyes from his face, she brushed his hand
off her shoulder, then turned and strode to the door.  She stopped there for
a moment, halfway out, then turned back to him, her face serious.  He was
still watching her.

"Cain?"

"Yeah?"

"Just what am I to you?  A hireling?  Hatchet-girl?  Pawn?"

He was quiet for a few seconds.  "Objectively, I guess you're my
partner-in-crime.  Personally, I'd like to think you're my friend." He
shrugged.  "And what am I to you?"

"We'll see," she said as she closed the door behind her.

----

Siharal leaned back from the table, completely at sea now.  "Just whose side
are you on?" he demanded.  He felt as though he'd been staring at one of
those abstract paintings in the Temple of Remembrance, finally deciding that
the swoops and swirls were meant to be a mountain, only to have the caretaker
tell him it was the second moon.

Rhanda smirked, letting the blaster droop just a little from its point of
aim.  "I'm on Avis City's side, the same as I've always been.  What about
you, Commander?  Where do your loyalties lie?  Right now, there are more
options open to you than you know.  You could have power and wealth again,
your honored rank restored.  Would you like that?"

"For what price?  My treason?" He drew himself up, sneering.  "If that's your
offer, shoot me now and be done."

She didn't.  Instead, the smirk lost a bit of its disdainful edge and she
pulled the blaster back to her lap, though her finger stayed on the firing
stud.  "That's one of the options open to you, one that will probably be
offered to you soon, and you are quite correct about the price.  And if you
accepted at that price, I should have no choice to but to arrange your tragic
demise." Her expression showed that the idea was not one that bothered her.
"On the other hand, you could always just live out your days in safe
obscurity, disgraced but unmolested, making your way as best you can while
your city fights for its very life and soul.  Or, you might keep to the
course you're on, bulling about on your own and meddling in things you don't
begin to understand until you become enough of a pest for someone to kill
you.  Again, probably me.  Or..."

"Or?"

"Or you can serve Avis City as a true Skyborn noble should and help your
people get through this turbulent time.  And that means cooperating with me."
The steel in her, that steel he'd never known was there, took on an even
keener edge.  "You'd have to trust me, to do what I say without question,
even when it doesn't seem right to you.  And I can't promise you any reward,
either.  I can't even guarantee I'll get out alive, much less you.  All I can
promise is that success for us will mean the restoration of Avis City to its
rightful place and the survival of our people."

"Under whose rule?"

She shrugged.  "Does that matter?  High Priestesses come and go, but the
Skyborn remain.  Who sits on the Blue Sky Throne when the dust settles is
less important than making sure that there's still a Throne to sit on."

Siharal frowned, considering, flipping the disk over and over in his fingers.
"And what is it you'd have me do if I agreed?" he asked at last.

"For now, nothing.  Stay here in the undercity, out of sight for a while."
She pointed to the disk.  "And keep that safe.  Don't let anyone know you've
got it.  _Anyone_.  Soon, Lady Kali will send for you, I suspect.  Agree to
whatever she asks, but remember where your allegiance lies.  If you are put
in a position to do so, try to gather others among the Temple Guard who share
your loyalty as a counter to those units that have fallen under the
Overworlders' influence.  Do this, and your continued existence will serve
some useful purpose."

The former Commander gave a slow, wary nod.  "All right.  I'm prepared to go
along with you that far." He met her eye, then added, "For now."

"Very well.  Then I shan't have to eliminate you." She offered him a frigid
smile.  "For now."

----

"The more I learn about him, the more I find to not like."

Babydoll sat with her feet propped carelessly on the cherrywood table,
tilting her chair back.  A shower had given her a few minutes to think, and
thought had not improved her mood.  She popped another slice of cheese into
her mouth and chewed it meditatively.

Bella sat across from her, sipping from a goblet of dark, sluggish medical
blood.  The sun-sores were gone from her alabaster skin and she'd changed
into another of those long, outdated velvet dresses she favored, this one in
a dark forest green.  She gave Babydoll a look of melancholy sympathy over
the rim of her cup.  "You aren't the first person to say that about him,
Piggy," she sighed.  "We've all done things we aren't proud of, but Cain...
I could tell you things about him that would give you nightmares."

Babydoll shook her head.  "That's not it, Fangs.  I've done awful things
myself.  It's not the _whats_ about him as much as the _whys_, I think."

"He told you about Kali."

The mercenary looked up at her, shaken.  "You knew?"

Bella's face was neutral, unreadable, her voice blandly light.  "The woman he
loved turned out to be spying on him for the Regulator High Command.  When he
tried to avoid carrying out an assignment, she led a team to arrest him." She
paused to sip at her goblet.  "And he killed her." The vampire's eyes bored
steadily into Babydoll's own.  "Would you have done differently?"

"Hell no.  I can see why anybody'd want that crazy bitch dead.  It ain't
that." She let her eyes wander around the 'parlor', as Cain called the TARDIS
sitting-room.  The omnipresent hex-panels were lighter here, giving the room
a less-heavy atmosphere in spite of the clunky gravity of the massive
cherrywood furniture.  A smattering of framed artwork, an eclectic mix of
Surrealist, Impressionist, and art-deco, had been hung up with no eye to
either order or visual balance.  In one corner sat a smaller, blockier table
with a chessboard inlaid into its top, but all the marble pieces lay in a
heap to one side and someone had gouged the words 'Dakota cheats!' into its
side with a pocketknife.  "It ain't that," she repeated.  "It just seems...
I think I liked it better when I thought there was some grand reason behind
all the crap we do.  Being part of some kind of wild-ass cosmic design is a
lot easier to swallow than being part of a grudge that started because
somebody was thinking with his prick."

"That's not how it was," Bella said sharply.

"Sounds like it to me." Babydoll shrugged.  "Cain's little night- nudge sold
him out, so now he's on the warpath.  Typical man, if you ask me." She sucked
down a gulp from her wineglass.

"You don't understand him at all."

"And you do?" That came out more harshly than Babydoll had intended, but she
went where the moment took her.  "You know, I wonder about you, Bell.  You
always have to jump in there and defend him.  You always have to take his
side.  Why is that, hmmm?"

The vampire's answer was little more than a whisper.  "Because no one else
will..."

----

A little crowd of underdwellers was waiting outside the door of Vanir's room
when Rhanda stepped out.  Snile, of course, rat-faced and arguing with a
weary-looking Vanir, plus a few other ragged, scabby types, grimy fingers
running over rust-clotted pipe cudgels and scrap-steel knives as they sent
dark looks her way.  These the young subaltern ignored, her eyes picking out
a tall, stooped figure lurking at the rear, a cloak made from hacking up a
section of plastic sheeting hanging off his bony shoulders.  Their eyes met
and Rhanda gave an almost imperceptible nod, the man slinking instantly off
into the shadows.

"We can takes 'em!" Snile was expostulating.  "We's a dozen to them two.
Robs 'em and pitch 'em down the shit-pipe.  None's the wiser and we's the
richer!" He saw Rhanda looking and gave a nasty, gap-toothed grin.  "Or maybe
haves some fun wi' this bit of crumpet first, say?"

"Fun indeed," Rhanda said coldly, letting her hand drop to the blaster in her
pocket.  "A few of you might even live to talk about it, but I promise you
won't be one of them."

"Stow it, Snile," Vanir snarled at him, half-lifting her crude sword.  "This
is a big chance, and I'm not letting you spoil it for me."

"Ah, Vanny," he chuckled, sliding back a bit, "don't take on so.  I's just
offerin' a spot of advisement, is all.  If yer don't wants to take it, yer
don't.  We all knows that what Vanny says goes, say?" His beady eyes gave lie
to his placating tone.

Vanir disdained to even keep an eye on him as he and the others crept back
toward the shadows, just beyond the reach of a sword- lunge.  "Well?" she
asked Rhanda.  "What do you want us to do?  Kill him?"

Rhanda shook her head, drawing a small handful of coins out of her other
pocket.  Eyes lit greedily in a rat-ring around them at the glitter of gold
as Rhanda picked out five of the heavy, unevenly- stamped Servii coins and
passed them to Vanir's waiting palm.  "I want him kept under wraps here for a
while.  Keep him safe and under watch until you hear differently." She raised
her voice slightly, letting the watching rabble hear her as well.  "Do that,
and there will be plenty more gold for you.  But if any harm should come to
him, I'll bring a Temple Guard troop down here and have this vermin-hole
disinfested.  Am I quite clear?"

Vanir's mouth puckered as though she'd bitten into an unripe fruit, but she
snatched the coins with alacrity.  "How long will we have to keep that
bastard?" she spat.

"Until you hear otherwise," Rhanda replied with airy indifference.  And then,
simply because she couldn't resist twisting the knife a little, she added,
"Why, I'd think you would jump at the chance to rekindle your relationship
with the good Commander.  I'm sure you two have a lot of catching-up to do."

Whatever curse Vanir muttered, she hid by a timely turn of her head.  She
stood that way for a moment, then straightened her back and stalked into her
room without another word.

Rhanda shrugged.  Commander Siharal should be doubly eager to rejoin the
ranks of Skyborn society after a few days with Vanir and her newfound
friends.  Somehow, the words 'just deserts' seemed to fit the occasion.  She
couldn't help but smile as she made her way back through the network of
tunnels and passages that led back to the city surface.

She was just at the edge of the underdwellers' territory when she found him
waiting for her at the usual place.

"Rhanda," his sepulchral voice intoned.

"Skave."

He detached himself from the shadows beneath the sewage-flow pipe, tattered
plastic cloak rustling against the wall.  He loomed over her, a quarter-meter
taller even with his hunched stance.  She could just make out the glitter of
a dagger thrust bare-bladed through his belt.  "You wished a meeting?" he
rumbled.

"I did."

"You have word from Lady Kali?  Is about the man Siharal?"

"It is.  And secrecy is of the utmost.  Did anyone see you leave?"

"Skave comes and goes as he wishes," the big man said around a nasty,
twist-lipped smile.  "None know of Skave's passing.  That is why the Lady
Kali pays him for what he hears and sees."

"Wonderful," Rhanda said, and shot him in the chest.

Skave slid down the wall, a hole melted through his plastic mantle just over
the heart, his mouth hanging open as one hand clawed feebly at his dagger
hilt.  He looked at her with reproachful eyes, lips twitching to make some
last remark, then toppled forward and went still.

There was a sewage pipe access hatch just a few meters away.  With a sigh and
a quick look around for witnesses, Rhanda grabbed the late Skave under the
armpits and set about dragging him over to it for disposal.  "Sorry," she
mumbled, "but there are certain things Kali doesn't need to know about."

It was the work of a moment to get the sewer hatch open, but rather more than
that to stuff Skave's lanky corpse into it.  When she was done, she closed
the hatch and wiped her hands on her ragged coveralls, a wry smirk on her
face.  "And still none know of Skave's passing."

----