Dr. Who - BBC New Series 45

by Hunter's Moon # Paul Finch

  Hunter’s Moon

  PAUL FINCH

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Published in 2011 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company

  Copyright © Paul Finch 2011

  Paul Finch has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

  Executive producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

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  ISBN 978 1 849 90236 6

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  Mallik ran as he’d never run before. He was young and strong, and though he had been running for hours already he knew that he could keep going for a while yet.

  This didn’t mean that he wasn’t aching all over, that his throat wasn’t raw with gasping and panting. The air was foul in this place. It tasted bad, it smelled bad - it was filled with pollutants. But still Mallik ran, sucking it in in great lungfuls. He was staggering along a corrugated steel conduit. As if such a surface wasn’t difficult enough, it was streaked with oil and grease, and strewn with a rubble of broken machine parts. And of course it was dark. It was always dark here.

  Inevitably, he stumbled and fell.

  He landed face-first. A jagged edge tore his chin and lower lip, the pain lancing through him. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He spat it out as he hauled himself to his feet. His wheezing for breath was so loud that he imagined it could be heard for hundreds of metres along the conduit.

  Not that it needed to be, because now, when he listened, he heard a clank-clank of approaching feet. He turned sharply. Around the corner, some twenty metres away, a figure appeared. It was indistinguishable in the dimness - apart from its eyes, from which two red laser beams blazed. They swept from one side of the passage to the next, quickly pinpointing him. Mallik shrieked and threw himself to the ground. There was an ear-shattering CRUMP as an energy bolt struck the conduit wall close to where he’d been standing, showering him with red-hot shards.

  Though dizzied by pain and concussion, Mallik wormed his way out through the smoking aperture.

  There was a drop on the other side, which for all he knew might plummet hundreds of metres onto more piles of scrap or into a corrosive sludge of waste-chemicals. But in fact he fell no more than a metre, landing on a rickety steel catwalk, which shuddered as he stumbled along it. A ladder appeared to his left. He climbed down it, staring back up towards the punctured conduit. That tall figure was in the process of clambering out. It wore bulky coveralls, tiger-striped black and grey, and an open-faced helmet with a black visor across the eyes. Below that, an oxygen mask was clamped to its nose and mouth, a rubber pipe snaking back over the shoulder, joining a tank-type assembly on its back. Another of the most futuristic rifles Mallik had ever seen was angled back across the figure’s shoulder as it moved to the edge of the catwalk and gazed down, that burning laser vision spearing through the shadows.

  Mallik reached the ground, and went full pelt towards the nearest wall. This was about five metres tall, though a

  portion of it had been smashed down when an overhead girder had rotted from its moorings. Mallik scrambled through and then was tumbling down a slope of bricks and smashed masonry. Somewhere to his left there was a towering skeletal structure. Was it his imagination or was another figure perched on one of its high parapets, taking aim at him? A green spark answered the question.

  He knew what that weapon was. They’d referred to it as ‘the Eradicator’.

  Even over this distance - there must have been fifty metres between the two of them - Mallik heard the rising hum as the energy pack charged itself, and with a whiplash CRACK, a great zigzag of electricity sizzled towards him.

  His heels shot forward and he landed hard on his back.

  The bolt slashed through the air only inches over his head, striking the impacted rubble. The blast threw Mallik to the bottom of the slope, where he lay helpless. His exhaustion now gave way to a terrible despair. He could sense that his back was damaged. When he tried to get to his feet, pain chewed through his spine like a buzz-saw.

  With a clatter of bricks, the figure in stripes descended the slope towards him. From the other direction, the man with the Eradicator was climbing from his perch.

  ‘No…’ Mallik said under his breath. No… it wasn’t going to end like this.

  He dragged his broken body back up, and tried to run, though now it was more a comical caper. Blood filled his mouth, sweat blinded him. Another mountain of rubble rose directly in front, but there had to be a way round it. And indeed a path meandered off to his right along a ravine. He blundered along it, but he’d covered no more than twenty metres before the slope erupted beneath his feet in a welter of mud and foulness.

  The octopoid horror that engulfed Mallik was not the worst thing he’d seen since coming here, but he couldn’t imagine anything more terrible than the demise that suddenly faced him. The monster’s thick, rubbery tentacles wrapped around him with bone-crushing force, their circular sucker pads oozing a sticky pus, which was soon slathered all over him, gluing his arms to his sides, his hair to his scalp, even gluing his wounded lips shut.

  With a gargling roar, and a stench like a vomit-filled dustbin, its maw gaped, revealing teeth that were slivers of curved, needle-tipped bone.

  There was an ear-splitting CRACK as the Eradicator man spoke again.

  Lightning struck the octo-horror clean in the mouth.

  There was a searing flash and a hideous stink of melting flesh.

  Mallik was tossed to the ground, as the beast wailed in nightmarish agony.

  Its ruptured bulk, still half-buried in the rubble, quivered and smoked, black ichor bursting from numerous orifices. Its limbs writhed and thrashed for minutes on end. Only when its cries subsided to a dull mewling, and its movements ceased, did the Eradicator man and the man in stripes feel it safe to approach.

  Eradicator man chuckled. He was a compact fellow, whose lack of helmet revealed a badly scarred face and white hair shaven to bristles on top of his broad, flattish skull. His body was squat and powerful, encased in fatigues made from jet-black vinyl and hung over the shoulders with a short cape of greasy, matted fur. He shouldered his primary weapon, and drew a heavy pistol. Taking aim from point-blank range, he fired two deafening rounds into the creature. Gigantic shells tore holes the size of dinner plates in it
s blistered hide. There was no further sound from it. Two of its smouldering tentacles twitched feebly, and lay still.

  Mallik could rise no further than his knees. His body was mangled, his bones multiply fractured. He was coated in gore and filth. Through his fading eyes, he saw bulkily clad figures trudging along the ravine.

  Eradicator man glanced at the man in stripes, who had removed his oxygen mask, to reveal a cruelly grinning mouth. ‘This last one’s mine, I think?’ Eradicator man said.

  Stripes nodded.

  Eradicator man placed the muzzle of his pistol to Mallik’s head. ‘Be honest,’ he chuckled, ‘you wouldn’t want to live in your condition.’

  Mallik stuttered: ‘I… never thought I’d… I’d die… in a place like this.’

  Eradicator man shrugged. ‘We like it. But as you Earth people say… home is where the heart is.’

  He fired.

  Harry Mossop was aware that he exercised almost no control in his own home. But he was aware of a great many things that now seemed beyond his capability to fix - his employment situation, for example. After two decades as a police officer in the Met, earning decent money and enjoying all the respect and perks such a position had brought him, to suddenly find himself on the pittance that was Jobseeker’s Allowance and whiling away tedious hours alternating between the mind-numbing distractions of daytime TV and the increasingly disheartening process of trying to find suitable work had been a culture shock of the first order.

  Of course, things might have been easier had he had a police pension to draw on, and a glowing reference from his former employers in his pocket. But as he had neither of these, even two years on he still felt more unprepared for the rigours of ordinary civilian life than he could ever have imagined possible. It was his own fault - he was well aware of that, but a man could only go on berating himself for so long before self-pity replaced any stoic acknowledgement that he was getting what he deserved.

  It was a dark, cold November evening when Dora returned from work looking as tired as usual. ‘I’m here,’

  she said from the hall, in a tone which seemed to imply that arriving home from the supermarket was only marginally less depressing than arriving at the supermarket first thing in the morning.

  Harry came down from the spare bedroom, where their computer was set up. As usual, he’d become so preoccupied with job-hunting that he hadn’t done any household chores.

  Dora sighed, as she dumped her bags. She tried to ignore the mass of laundry on the sofa, which he’d been supposed to iron, or the various items of Sophie’s make-up which, as always, were arrayed along the mantelpiece.

  Dora ventured into the kitchen, where, with an expression of abject defeat, she viewed the pile of dirty crockery in the sink, some of which had been there so long that the food remnants on it had caked into a hard rind.

  ‘I’ll sort this out,’ Harry said, coming in behind her.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m here now.’ She began sliding items into the dishwasher without even taking her coat off. ‘Any sign of Sophie?’

  ‘Nope,’ he replied.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  Sophie - or rather, how to deal with Sophie - was another bone of contention between them. Their daughter was now 18, and they saw so little of her that she might as well be living away. As things were that suited Harry, even though Sophie would almost certainly be with Baz, her latest ‘lounge lizard’ boyfriend, who, like all the others before him, had no car, no money and no job (not that Harry could make too much of an issue of the latter flaw, as Sophie had several times reminded him). She was a dissatisfying daughter in so many ways, but Harry and Dora differed radically in their views on how to deal with her and, as this had led to several fiery confrontations, Harry was now always glad when the source of the friction was out of sight and out of mind.

  ‘I wondered if you fancied popping out for a bite to eat tonight?’ he said.

  ‘Why… Something to celebrate?’ Dora probably didn’t mean it to sound quite so contemptuous.

  ‘No, but anything to lighten the gloom.’

  ‘That would really lighten the gloom, that would, Harry. Spending money we haven’t got. We can’t carry on like this. I’ll just have to put in for more overtime.’

  Harry shoved his hands into his pockets, and waited a couple of minutes before saying: ‘I was thinking of going back to see Grant Pangborne.’

  Dora turned and faced him. ‘Why?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘As far as I know, he’s still got a vacancy for a security officer.’

  ‘Maybe, but if he isn’t prepared to pay…?’

  ‘Well, he’s had a couple of months with no one on site.

  It’s not too far off Christmas - lots of burglaries at this time of year. Maybe he’s starting to realise that he needs someone after all?’

  She shook her head, as always so dismissive of her husband’s latest bright idea that he felt slighted by her

  mere presence. ‘Pangborne doesn’t strike me as the sort .

  of bloke who spooks easily,’ she said.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Harry, he’s a wide boy. You said that yourself, after he sacked you.’

  ‘It was just a thought.

  She continued loading the dishwasher. ‘I think you’d be better applying the grey matter elsewhere. How’d you feel about what I suggested last night?’

  ‘What… re-training? At my age?’

  ‘You’re only 43.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything going at your place?’

  ‘Yes… if you’re happy stacking shelves all day. But that’s not going to help us pay the mortgage any more than you collecting benefits, is it? You’ve got to get yourself a new career. Something lucrative.’

  Harry stumped up and down the kitchen. He was a big, burly man - too burly really; he’d allowed himself to go to seed in the last couple of years. His belly hung over his jeans waistband. His beard and moustache were grey and scraggy.

  ‘You’d think there’d be some security work out there in this day and age, wouldn’t you?’ he complained.

  ‘There probably is… for ex-coppers who didn’t leave the job under a cloud.’

  Harry frowned helplessly. There was no argument with that.

  ‘Harry… if you want to do something useful, go and tidy the living room. It looks like a bomb’s hit it.’

  ‘I’ll just go up and check my emails first. See if anyone’s got back to me.’

  ‘No one will have got back to you,’ she called after him. ‘It’s past six.’

  Harry knew that would be true even before he flopped down in front of his computer screen, wherein his inbox still read ‘Empty’. It always read ‘Empty’ unless someone was spamming him. He hit one of his bookmarks. A colourful image unfolded onscreen. It was a collage of different pictures, each one portraying a man or woman, of varied age and ethnicity, and all in the throes of happiness as they got on with whatever job they’d been photographed doing: from laying bricks to inputting data, from serving food to driving wagons.

  Emblazoned across the top was the legend: PEOPLEFIND

  Filling London’s job needs Supplying labour where you need it, when you need it In the top right-hand comer, one picture depicted an improbably handsome guy in his early thirties. His crisp blond locks were crammed under a PVC hardhat, and he was carrying a clipboard. He was on a building site somewhere, and was gazing upward, laughing, showing a row of perfect, pearly white teeth.

  ‘One of these days, Pangborne,’ Harry said under his breath. ‘Who knows? Maybe even today.’

  ‘Now that’s impressive,’ Rory said.

  The space platform was about fifteen miles in diameter. It was an immense floating citadel covered by a translucent shield-dome. Its myriad buildings were towering crystalline structures, each one tapering to a needle point. They’d have looked like natural formations had it not been for the
arrays of glittering, multicoloured lights running through their interiors: neon blue, Day-Glo orange, aqua-green. On the platform’s surface, narrow passages wound between the high-rise edifices; these too were a mass of colours and glaring light, tiny matchstick figures thronging along them. Gigantic, glyph-like lettering was everywhere, pulsating with colour: on hoardings and overarching walkways, on the sides of buildings, on egg-shaped, aerial craft - dirigibles possibly - moving lazily back and forth through the dome’s high spaces.

  ‘And that’s only one of them,’ the Doctor said, joining

  Amy and Rory in front of the TARDIS monitor screen.

  ‘There are fifty like that on the Outer Rim.’

  ‘And what did you call it?’ Amy said, fascinated. A “leisure platform” ?’

  ‘That’s right. There are forty on the Inner Rim as well.

  But out here is where it really gets wild and woolly.’

  She glanced at him. ‘They throw a good party?’

  ‘They throw nothing but parties.’ The Doctor pursed his lips. ‘Of course, when you say “good”, it all depends whether you mean “good” as in morally acceptable, or as in unrelenting, intense and everyone getting their money’s worth.’

  Amy shrugged, as if either would work for her.

  ‘Ninety non-stop parties,’ Rory said. ‘Sounds like overkill to me.’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Work hard, play hard. That’s the Torodon motto. We’re all owed our chill-out time. Chilling out is… cool.’

  ‘So, are we going there?’ Amy asked, trying to sound as if she wasn’t excited by the prospect.

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘But there’s a slight proviso. A condition-ette.’

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ she grumbled.

  ‘The Torodon are not very modern in their outlook.

  The men do all the industrial work, and nearly all the Torodon females you’ll find down there…’ and he raised and wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully, ‘will be working in the entertainment business.’