Doctor Who BBCN02 - The Monsters Inside

by Doctor Who

  ‘It’s OK. Must be Ecktosca and Callis stuffing up the gravity warp on the surface.’

  The smoke was starting to clear now. Both Rose and the Doctor reacted as a massive, powerful shape loomed over them.

  But it was only Dram. ‘All done,’ he reported.

  ‘Great.’ The Doctor clapped him on the arm, looked about. ‘Wait.

  Where’s Ermenshrew gone?’

  ‘Over heee-eeere. . . ’

  The Doctor stepped forward, peering through the haze. Flanked by three bewildered guards and a technician, Ermenshrew was standing beside the gravity accelerator console. Her claw was hovering over the start button.

  ‘We’re all charged up,’ she said, her voice an icy whisper. ‘Justicia’s ready to move on out.’

  ‘No,’ the Doctor said. ‘Please. Don’t do this.’

  ‘At last you respect me as you should.’ She nodded smugly. ‘Yes, it came to me in a flash. I shouldn’t just kill you. I should morally 207

  outrage you first! Murder millions of innocent lives just to test my engine’s working. Then I should kill you.’

  ‘We’ve destroyed your gravity warp on the planet surface. If you try to move Justicia through space now –’

  ‘Another pathetic bluff, Doctor?’

  ‘I thought you might think that. All right then, let’s try a threat.’ He gestured to the Slitheen. ‘Dram has rejigged the solar flare compressor. It’s now aimed at your mothership – it’ll crush it to the size of a postage stamp, and the second gravity warp with it!’

  Ermenshrew shook her head, the smoke eddying around her. ‘The compressor is in a probe in close orbit around Justicia’s suns. It doesn’t have the range.’

  ‘We’ve boosted the range – it’ll draw on the same energy you’ll release by pressing that button!’ The Doctor’s voice was hoarse, and not just with the smoke. ‘Please, Ermenshrew. When you hit that switch, the only lives you’ll be taking are those of your own people on board the mothership.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ she said, her claw outstretched.

  The Doctor raised his voice. ‘And there’ll be massive feedback into that thing! You’ll die too, Ermenshrew. I’m begging you –’

  ‘I will stand no more of these pathetic attempts to deceive me!’

  ‘In that case – everybody out!’ the Doctor roared.

  The Blathereen hit the switch.

  Rose, the Doctor and Dram hit the deck the other side of the doorway.

  Nothing happened.

  Rose stared in him in horror. ‘So it was a bluff?’

  The Doctor wouldn’t look at her, his forehead resting on his arm.

  ‘Ask Ermenshrew.’

  Rose looked back into the workshop. Ermenshrew was standing there, frozen in fury as a delicate white light started to play around her form. Her skin began to turn translucent, revealing all the mysterious alien organs that beat and pulsed beneath. A scream escaped her twitching lips. Smoke and sparks clouded all around her. Her claw was still gripping the control as both crumbled to ash.

  208

  ‘The feedback,’ Dram realised. ‘We’re not safe here. We’ve got to get that door closed!’

  ‘Wait!’ Rose produced Flowers’s white card from her pocket and slapped it in the slot.

  The doors began to slide slowly shut.

  Flowers arrived, panting like an elderly dog. ‘What happened?’

  White light had engulfed the workshop and was starting to spill out into the corridor, dissolving the floor. Rose shielded her eyes.

  As Ermenshrew’s screams reached a pitch surely high enough to break glass, the door slammed home, shutting off the light and sound.

  Seconds later, the corridor rocked as an ear-splitting explosion went off in the workshop. The door bulged outwards as if some enormous bowling ball had smashed into it. The tremors seemed to last for a whole minute, and the ringing in Rose’s ears went on for far longer.

  ‘It’s over,’ whispered Dram. He clutched his chest, staggered as if he’d been struck. ‘Ecktosca? Callis?’

  ‘What is it?’ said Flowers.

  ‘I think. . . I think they’re. . . ’

  He thundered off down the corridor.

  The Doctor still lay face down on the floor. Rose sat beside him, placed her hand on his head, ruffled his close-cropped hair.

  ‘You did it,’ she told him.

  He rolled over and looked at her, no triumph on his face.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  209

  Robson sat in Ermenshrew’s old office, staring at the screen, willing someone to answer his signal.

  Suddenly the image of Tiller was staring at him incredulously. ‘Robsen? What the hell –’

  Jamini’s anxious face leaned into view. ‘Are you OK, John? What happened?’

  Robsen opened his mouth. Where to start?

  Where to finish was a bit sketchy, too. He’d woken in a bed of roses, to find an explosion had torn out most of the inspection shaft.

  Ecktosca and Callis must have been caught in the blast; all that was left of them and the Blathereen guard was a pile of burned remains and a badly singed compressor field. That and the terrible pain that Dram felt at their passing.

  ‘We can’t get hold of anyone in authority,’ said Tiller, jolting him back to the present.

  ‘All in mourning,’ Robsen muttered. ‘Or scarpered. Look, I’ve got so much to tell you. I’m on Justice Prime right now –’

  ‘You’re where?’

  ‘But I’m coming over. Soon. I’ll explain everything then.’

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  ‘There’ll be lots of mopping up to do,’ the Doctor told him. ‘There are still Blathereen impostors across the system. The space tunnels won’t work now, so you must hunt them down before they can find another way out. Make them tell you who they’ve hidden in EarthGov, get them rounded up.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘There won’t be much fight in those left behind. They’ll have lost so much. So many loved ones.’

  ‘Think of how many loved ones they were going to take away on the planets they were ready to burn,’ Rose told him gently. ‘You can’t feel bad about this. They did this to themselves.’

  Robsen thought about his own loved ones. Justicia never let its staff vidlink to friends or loved ones outside the system. Security risk, they said. He’d gone months without talking to his children.

  But the old Justicia was finished now. And things were going to change. He’d help see to that.

  He set Consul Issabel’s vidset to a priority channel and put through a call to his kids. To tell them he’d see them soon.

  Flowers sat in her office, working out just what it was she’d let the Doctor talk her into.

  ‘Justicia’s finished, Flowers. When the news of this scandal gets out, when the rulers of Earth’s empire realise how close they came to disaster. . . When they hear how so many people were held on trumped-up charges and what the real Executive was getting away with. . . They’ll never let that happen again.’

  He was right, of course. And he was right that someone in authority had to reveal the truth of the whole affair to the EarthGov officials, once they knew who they could trust. They would have to help assess who were the real criminals in Justicia, and who deserved freedom.

  For starters, the Doctor nominated Blista, Yahoomer, Dram Fel Fotch and Nesshalop to be freed at once for their part in saving billions of lives.

  Nesshalop had looked at him fondly, her regenerated eye doing well, and blown a sugar-frosted kiss that melted on his cheek.

  ‘All well and good,’ Flowers sighed. ‘But when will I be free?’

  It could take years to sort out this mess. And the Doctor couldn’t 212

  stay, of course, oh no. Not his style. He was already on a shuttle to Justice Alpha to pick up his ship. The overseers never had managed to get inside, or to shift it an inch.

  ‘You’ve got to make your rulers see, Flowers. Crime and punishment raise tough issues, anyone knows that. But
when people in power stop even asking the hard questions. . . When they pay someone else to make the whole thing go away. . . That’s the biggest crime of all.’

  ‘OK, getting a bit Jerry Springer now, Doctor,’ said Rose.

  He grinned at her. ‘D’you think?’

  She punched the air, started chanting, ‘Doc-tor, Doc-tor, Doc-tor. . . ’

  Flowers shook her head fondly. Those two truly baffled her.

  With sudden determination, she called up the central register of Justician inmates and started trawling through the ‘male – petty crimes’ section, sorting the best pictures into cute, fetching and drop-dead gorgeous.

  She smiled. Yes, this would be a long and drawn-out business. And she would need at least twenty or thirty very dedicated personal assistants to help her through each day. . .

  Rose stood beside the TARDIS, back on Justice Alpha after what felt like a lifetime away. The ground had been well churned up by the silver ship that had come for the Doctor. But somehow, though the area around it looked like something out of the Battle of the Somme, the spindly red flower still stood.

  She smiled. ‘Reckon we’re two of a kind.’ And she could see there would be others. The tips of green shoots were pushing through the rucked-up soil. New life was well on the way.

  Dennel stood at the precipice, looking out over the unfinished pyramid below. A massive funeral pyre had been erected at its tip. He was watching the preparations, restless, edgy. ‘This is going to be some fire.’

  She joined him, the lighter gravity putting an extra spring in her step. ‘Aren’t you flamed out yet, after razing every Executive building down to the ground?’

  ‘This is different.’ He sniffed. ‘Sort of spiritual.’

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  ‘Uh-huh. Right.’

  ‘Reckon the Doctor thinks so too.’

  ‘He just wants to be sure Don Arco gets off without a hitch.’

  Rose remembered them finding the sole surviving Blathereen technician, weeping as he roamed the SCAT-house corridors, all the fight knocked from him. He’d fled the wrecked workshop, his hide blackened with burns and scalded by wax. He’d been lucky: it was a very different place in the aftermath, scorched almost bare. Of Ermenshrew there was no trace at all, nor of those who’d been standing beside her. But somehow, slumped in a far corner, the big, bloated corpse of Don Arco had been left more or less untouched by the incredible energies that flooded the chamber.

  The technician had asked to cremate his dead Patriarch in a sacred place before submitting to imprisonment. He had suggested one of the pyramids here, and the Doctor agreed.

  Aware there could be desperate Blathereen stranded on Justice Alpha, Rose had persuaded him to stop off at Delta to pick up the borstal mob for protection. Kazta, Riz and about a hundred others were now gathered on the pyramid, keeping an eye out for trouble – on the understanding that the shuttle was theirs for the taking afterwards. And the Doctor agreed they had earned their freedom.

  ‘Then again,’ he said, smiling, ‘by the time they’ve worked out how to fly it, their sentences might be over in any case.’

  As it happened, Rose needn’t have worried about finding trouble.

  The valley was eerily deserted, the scattered pyramids standing like sentinels in silent majesty. The slave-labourers had taken their chance and scarpered when their overseers failed to show, but Flowers and the authorities would catch up with them all before too long.

  She saw the Doctor and Dram Fel Fotch, standing a pace behind the creature as he set the pyre alight. The flames roared into fierce red life.

  ‘Awesome,’ breathed Dennel.

  ‘I hate funerals,’ Rose muttered.

  ‘Nah. You’re just sad cos you’re saying goodbye to me.’

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  She looked at him with his dopey haircut. Smiled at the humour in his eyes. ‘Come here,’ she said, and gave him a hug.

  ‘Ugh!’ cried Dennel. ‘God, no!’

  Rose jumped away, confused. ‘What is it, what did I –’

  Then she realised he was looking past her at the pyramid, heard the gasps and shouts of the onlookers far below, and turned to see.

  The Blathereen guard had thrown himself on the fire, to embrace his great father one final time. The flames blasted vengefully into the air.

  Rose saw Riz and Kazta lead the others away. She saw the Doctor turn his back on the flames and walk away too. Only Dram kept staring into them, as if searching for something inside.

  Dennel placed a hand on her arm. ‘You’ll be leaving soon, won’t you?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Wanna come?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wanna find my dad. I wanna set him free.’

  ‘Flowers will help you,’ said Rose, smiling.

  He nodded, grinned back at her bashfully. ‘I’d better get back to the shuttle. Don’t want Kazta taking off without me.’

  ‘Good luck, yeah?’

  ‘You too,’ he said. ‘Wherever you end up next.’

  And this time they hugged with no interruptions.

  The funeral fire was all but spent by the time the Doctor appeared, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, barely out of breath from the long journey. He joined Rose, standing on her own at the edge of the rise.

  ‘Dram stayed watching for ages,’ she said. ‘Gloating?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or perhaps he just wanted to be sure nothing was left of the creatures who killed his family.’ He nodded. ‘I can understand that.’

  The suns were starting to set, stretching the pyramids’ crimson shadows.

  ‘Will the TARDIS take off OK? If it was grounded here –’

  215

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem since we’ve knackered the space tunnels.

  The gravity warp the Blathereen hid here is useless now – except to Flowers as evidence of what was going on. She’ll find it. And make sure the right people get to see it.’

  ‘Then it’s really over,’ Rose murmured.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘It is.’

  They watched the funeral ashes carry on the warm breeze, fluttering over the valley.

  Some hours later, Dram Fel Fotch stood beside a huge doorway set into the base of one of the great pyramids. All around was deserted.

  The human children were all busy trying to start their shuttle.

  So he sneaked quickly inside.

  Inside, Don Arco’s corpse and the Blathereen guard were balancing at the top of the enormous chrome tower that housed the gravity warp.

  ‘About time you showed up, you skiver,’ called Don Arco.

  In the blink of an eye he had appeared in front of Dram. With a leering grin, he unzipped his head. . .

  To reveal Ecktosca, quite unharmed.

  The two Slitheen giggled and gave each other a huge hug.

  ‘Stroke of luck you found Don Arco’s corpse intact,’ Dram tittered.

  ‘Perfect way to sneak off without arousing suspicion!’

  ‘Can you believe I pinched the skin of the Blathereen Patriarch?’

  Tears of laughter were rolling down Ecktosca’s face. ‘And did you hear the crowd when your auntie jumped on me in the flames? I was almost sorry when she zapped us away with her teleport, we couldn’t hear them down here.’

  ‘They went on about it for ages,’ roared Dram. ‘Shock! Horror!

  Practically wet their pants over it!’

  ‘Oi!’ Callis was shrugging off the last of her burnt Blathereen flesh-suit. ‘Get busy, you two! It’ll take us a good day or two to strip this warp thing down and learn how it works. . . ’

  ‘What’ll we do with it?’ wondered Dram. ‘Flog it on, or use it ourselves?’

  216

  ‘Plenty of time to figure that out.’ Ecktosca grinned at him. ‘All that matters right now is that the Blathereen are finished – and the Slitheen are back in business.’

  Callis belched happily. ‘Here’s to a new golden age of crime!’

  217

  Ackn
owledgements

  This adventure was shaped and shared by many. I am grateful to them all. But extra, planet-sized thank-yous are due to. . .

  Russell T Davies – so generous with his time, enthusiasm and Slitheen, and who let me take Rose to her first alien planet.

  TV series script editors Helen Raynor and Elwen Rowlands – who gave encouragement and brilliant notes when they were both so busy themselves.

  Justin Richards, the indefatigable driving force of the Doctor Who books – for inviting me on board in the first place, for friendship and support, and for all that he does unsung behind the scenes.

  And to Mike Tucker as always – provider of good nights out and Daleks.

  219

  About the author

  Stephen Cole used to edit magazines and books, and in the late 1990s looked after the BBC’s range of Doctor Who novels, videos and audio adventures. Now he spends most of his time writing, chiefly books for children of all ages.

  Recent projects include The Wereling, a trilogy of horror thrillers for young adults, the ongoing fantasy series Astrosaurs for younger children, and the surreal school mystery series One Weird Day at Freekham High. His wife, Jill, and baby, Tobey, suspect he may be the real Monster Inside, especially when he has a book to finish and is running out of time. . .

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  Document Outline

  Cover

  Contents

  Prologue

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  Acknowledgements

  About the author