Doctor Who: Combat Rock by Mick Lewis

an affluent Indoni businessman’s house.’
    ‘If you not get eaten first.’ This came from Santi. She was sitting next to Victoria and as far away from Wina as the canoe would allow.
    ‘So we have voracious wildlife to look forward to, do we?’
    smiled the Doctor, almost eagerly.
    ‘Not just animal,’ the girl replied. Her eyes were wide in her broad but attractive face – broader than most of the Indoni people the travellers had met, although she actually came from Javee, albeit a different part of the long island to Wina. Her shoulders, well muscled from much exercising, hunched up into her small frame. ‘Cannibal...’ she added.
    Wina stared at her fearfully. Jamie, ever the protective male, put a hand on Wina’s.
    ‘What do you mean, cannibal?’ asked Victoria timorously.
    The Doctor leaned forward. ‘There are anthropophagous tribes inhabiting Papul?’ His eyes narrowed and his brows climbed into dark arches. Jamie noticed the give-away signs immediately.
    ‘Och, there’ll be no stopping him now.’
    ‘There are reports of man-eating natives, yes,’ Ussman admitted. Before he could say anything else, Wemus interrupted quickly, obviously fearful that his expedition would be frightened off before they’d even arrived on the island.
    ‘Only on south coast,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and grinning in what he obviously hoped was a cheery and encouraging manner. ‘And we go to north coast. Many, many miles apart.’
    Santi narrowed her eyes into slits and directed her next words to Wina purposefully. ‘Cannibal... eat only nice little girls who think they beautiful...’
    Wina wasn’t having any of it. ‘You OK then. You not nice or little. You have face of servant and body of babi.’
    Wemus sniggered. Santi went for Wina. Luckily, Jamie managed to catch her midway and hauled her back into her seat. ‘What’s a babi?’ he asked as Santi spat in Wina’s direction.
    Wina was laughing, haughtily defiant of this further demonstration of Santi’s low upbringing. ‘Pig! Babi is pig!’
    ‘Um, yes, well, if we could all try to get along,’ said the Doctor appeasingly, rubbing his hands together as he turned from one Indoni girl to the other. He frowned at Victoria who was positively beaming. Budi chuckled.
    ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think you look like a pig,’ Drew slimed, putting a hand on Santi’s bare thigh. She removed it instantly and pulled her leather mini-skirt as far down over her legs as the brief garment would allow. Drew smiled at the rebuff and shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Just remember I tried to help when the cannibals are coming for you.’
    ‘We soon there,’ Wemus announced, effectively ending the bickering. The Doctor looked up and the coastline was indeed tantalisingly nearer. He could see a long white beach dotted with what looked like fallen coconuts, caressed by the dark red surf.
    Distant jungle birds called from the seemingly impenetrable wall of vegetation behind the beach. Eerie, vibrant, alien sounds. Every one of the mixed group of travellers heard the calls and felt the same beat of what could have been excitement, but could just as easily have been fear.
    The usually bustling Jayapul market square was now almost completely hushed. Save for the subdued sobbing of a few women and children, the throng of traders, customers and general townspeople was bullied into silence. Everyone’s attention was on the line of Papul men standing against a bullet-pocked wall, smeared with market vegetables and darker stains.
    The men waited, as if indifferent to their fate. A woman started to cry more loudly in the crowd, her voice lifting into defiant fury, and an Indoni soldier barked out a harsh command in the Papul language. The woman was plucked from the crowd and positioned next to the husband whose imminent fate she had been bewailing. Now too shocked to cry again, she shivered against the wall and waited alongside her man.
    The leader of the Indoni squad gestured to