Dr. Who - BBC New Series 45

by Hunter's Moon # Paul Finch

  And where was here?

  Who are you?’ she asked again, querulously. ‘I mean, really?’

  ‘I’ve already told you. Now, this is very interesting.’

  He pointed to a crudely drawn box in the sketch’s top right-hand comer. ‘At the north end of this industrial site, there’s an abandoned rocket base, complete with its own control tower. Who are you, by the way?’

  ‘Erm…’ Initially Dora wasn’t quite sure. ‘Dora… Dora Mossop.’

  He turned back to the floor-plan. ‘What do you know about electromagnetic radiation, Dora Mossop?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, radio.’

  ‘Radio?’

  ‘Yes, radio.’ He glanced sidelong at her. ‘I’m going to save your life. And the lives of your friends. But you’ll need to do exactly as you’re told, understand?’

  She nodded dumbly.

  ‘Now, if we can get to the top of that control tower, it’s highly possible there’ll still be a functioning radio link. It’ll have been deactivated, obviously, but if I can’t reactivate it, nobody can. Why were you in that cupboard, by the way?’

  ‘I think I was hiding.’

  ‘Really. What from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dora looked shamefaced. ‘I was in a faint.’

  ‘So somebody put you in there?’

  ‘Harry and Rory.’

  ‘I see. And this thing you were hiding from - did Harry and Rory get away?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what was it?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘You don’t know much, do you, Dora Mossop?’

  Again her cheeks reddened. Memories of recent events were flooding back to her, but the most painful one was her attitude to Harry in the last couple of days. She’d been horribly selfish, she realised; so determined to punish him for his failures that she’d deliberately turned a blind eye to his attempts to put things right.

  ‘Well, if you’re going to come with me, that won’t do,’

  the Doctor said. ‘I need someone I can rely on.’

  He seemed very young to be speaking with such authority, and yet there was an aura of calm control about

  him that Dora felt she could trust.

  ‘Just tell me what you want me to do,’ she said.

  ‘Well, to start with, you can take your clothes off.’

  ‘What?’

  He indicated her laddered tights, knee-length skirt and muddied cardigan. ‘They’re not very practical. Those, however, would be.’ He pointed at the row of anti-toxin suits in the corner.

  ‘You want me to get changed?’

  ‘Ah, good point. Don’t worry, I’ll wait outside.’

  Before she could respond, the Doctor had left the locker room, moving out onto the ledge. His mind was already working through the possibles and probables.

  If Rory and this Harry person had hidden Dora, that was almost certainly because they’d concluded they had a chance to outrun their foe without the burden of a casualty - which was encouraging. He glanced down into the gorge and across to its far side. Nothing moved, which was also a positive sign. On Gorgoror, no news was good news. He switched his thoughts to the rocket base and its potential for offering them a way out. Of course, it would all depend on Amy regaining possession and control of the TARDIS, and his being able to contact her so that he could assist her in piloting it down here. First he had to find his way to the base in the quickest time possible. If he remembered rightly, he needed to veer away from the prison, and pass through the atomic power plant. They still had to locate Rory, but retrieving the TARDIS had become the imperative.

  Dora reappeared, dressed as he’d instructed, in one of the anti-toxin outfits. It was actually rather fetching.

  Tight-fitting, and made of shiny black vinyl, it accentuated

  her female form, and suited her long dark hair and pretty face.

  ‘Much better,’ the Doctor said.

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t I look a bit silly? I feel like one of those TV action girls.’

  ‘A snivelling housewife is no good to me,’ he said. ‘But an action girl I can use.’

  ‘Curiosity,’ Krauzzen said. He was still inside the Observation Booth. The screen in front of him depicted the dim shapes of the Doctor and Dora making their way together along a narrow shelf of rock. ‘Curiosity has always been a weakness of mine. The moment the Doctor threatened us with black-light, I ought to have known we weren’t dealing with some ordinary adventurer. I should have killed him on the spot.’

  ‘Shall I inform the Ellipsis?’ Zalizta asked.

  ‘Not yet. If that craft of his really is rigged to blow, it will panic them to know he’s an enemy. They might try something stupid, like attempting to detach it.’

  ‘But if that’s a deception too… ?’

  ‘We can deal with that later. Everyone, get your weapons!’

  Xaaael woke up on his cabin floor, after being doused with a pail of ice-cold water.

  ‘What the devil…!’ he spluttered, staggering to his feet.

  ‘Spare me your synthetic rage, Xaaael,’ Zarbotan said, hurling the pail aside. ‘What duty are you supposed to be on?’

  ‘None… since our lord and master saw fit to put command of this ship in the hands of a hulking, two-faced ape like you!’

  Zarbotan leaned forward dangerously. ‘Xaaael, if you have no duties at present, I will happily give you a very important one - make sure nothing else goes wrong. Nothing! You understand? Or you’ll be held personally responsible.’ And he stormed out into the companionway.

  Xaaael followed him. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s the Earth girl, you drink-addled buffoon!’

  Xaaael’s fogged memory was now clearing. He felt at his breast-pouch, which was empty. ‘Damn, I’ve been robbed! Zarbotan, that little minx has… I’ll kill her!’

  He dashed past Zarbotan, only to be grabbed and hurled against the bulkhead.

  ‘You’ve done enough damage, Xaaael,’ Zarbotan snarled. ‘Get yourself in a fit state for duty and report to the Bridge.’

  ‘But where the devil is she?’

  ‘Where do you think? In the Secure Hold, which she’s gained entry to with your access-card!’

  Xaaael was visibly shaken. ‘Well… she can’t do any harm, surely? There’s nothing of use to her in there.’

  ‘Except the property you confiscated on LP9. Do you even know what that is?’

  Xaaael remained blank-faced.

  ‘Exactly,’ Zarbotan said. ‘For all we’re aware, it could be another black-light explosive, and it’s now deep in the belly of this ship.’

  ‘I’ll come with you!’

  But Zarbotan threw him against the bulkhead again.

  ‘Do as you’re told, Xaaael! Go to the Bridge and take charge there!’

  ‘But you’re going down there alone!’

  ‘And who else do I need?’

  Xaaael didn’t argue further. Resourceful as the Earth girl was, Zarbotan was the most dangerous living creature he knew - if you could honestly describe that semi-necrotic, semi-mechanical abomination as ‘living’.

  He’d killed more men during his life than the leprous atmosphere in the mines of Gorgoror had in a hundred years.

  ‘Zarbotan!’ Xaaael shouted as the giant figure clumped away.

  Zarbotan glanced back.

  ‘Does Krauzzen know about my… indiscretion?’

  ‘No. And pray to your gods we can keep it that way.’

  In the Observation Booth, Krauzzen and his soldiers were ready to go out onto the surface.

  Krauzzen had donned a special harness, in the back section of which his hover-plate was inserted. This was a small, lightweight assault craft, a simple oval-shaped board, moulded from a silver-titanium alloy and designed to carry a single infantryman to attack targets in open space. Developing full telekinetic control over these swift
but silent devices was a prerequisite to enlisting in the Special Assault commandos, which was why so few Torodon, including experienced combat soldiers from other units, were ever deemed eligible.

  Krauzzen slung his photon-rifle alongside his hover-plate, and holstered a pistol at his hip. His men, though unequipped with hover-plates - with the exception of Zarbotan, his outfit had never been anything but grunts -

  were also heavily armed.

  ‘We’ve been infiltrated,’ he said. ‘But is this a privateer who fancies his luck, or something more sinister? I’m not sure. But we’re not taking the chance. We never take chances like this. The entire operation has been compromised, and we’ve no choice but to respond with extreme action.’

  They knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘The important thing,’ the Doctor said, ‘is that, though your husband’s made mistakes, he’s not the one who abducted you. He’s as much a victim as you are.’

  ‘I know,’ Dora said. ‘I’ve been hard on Harry. It’s almost like I’ve been too obsessed with my own problems.’

  ‘Well, any problems you may have had before will have paled into insignificance by the time we get out of this. Assuming we do get out of it.’

  This stranger who called himself the Doctor, and who for some reason Dora had felt it safe to open up to as they’d walked and climbed and struggled through the wreckage and rubble cramming the endless underground caverns of this netherworld, had a disconcertingly frank way of speaking.

  ‘You think we might not make it?’ she asked.

  ‘I think the odds are against us.’ He stood up from the overturned bucket on which he’d been resting. ‘But that doesn’t mean we sit down and cry, does it?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed.

  ‘Good.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You’ll need to remember that, because we’re being hunted. And I don’t just mean by Lord Krauzzen’s weekend warriors. I mean by something significantly more proficient.’

  Dora stiffened where she sat. ‘Another of these creatures they’ve put down here?’

  ‘Don’t look round! It’s about sixty metres behind us, and it’s been following for the last five minutes.’

  ‘Oh my God…’

  ‘Relax, Dora. Remember what we’ve just said.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  The Doctor surveyed the tunnel. As far as he could tell, this was one of the connecting lines between the prison complex and the power station. It had a flat, concrete floor and a tiled arched ceiling. Parts of it had caved in and all sorts of other junk had been thrown down here, so they’d already had to negotiate heaps of shifting, razor-edged detritus. He threw another furtive glance behind them. The pursuing figure had dropped to a crouch, and was little more than a shadowy blob. From what he’d glimpsed, it was humanoid and bipedal, but covered with excessive leathery skin, which, when it moved, trailed behind it like a heavy cloak.

  ‘Come on.’ He took Dora by the arm and hauled her to her feet.

  She now walked stiffly, sensing the nameless presence close behind. ‘Why don’t you just shoot it?’ she whispered.

  ‘I can’t, and it’s as simple as that.’

  The Doctor didn’t want to send another alien monster

  back to the police holding cells on LP9 - it was anyone’s guess how much trouble the last one had caused. More importantly, he was increasingly thinking that the only way out of this mess for Dora might be to use his last transmat charge on her - to save her life if no one else’s.

  They passed under a heavy gate, before clambering upward through a mass of fallen, broken machinery festooned with loose cables. At the top of this was an entrance to a vast, complex structure, something like a three-dimensional maze of steel-mesh passages. The Doctor hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Dora asked, sweat dripping from her face.

  He didn’t bother explaining that from here on the way forward would be little more than a ‘single file’

  crawlspace, and that he didn’t want to be at the rear because he felt she would be too slow at the front, and yet didn’t want to put Dora at the rear because he suspected that whatever was following them would have marked her as the weaker prey and might then attack. A clanking from below, as something climbed in pursuit, decided it for them.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the Doctor said.

  She climbed up the narrow mesh chute first.

  ‘Hurry!’ he shouted, scrambling after her. Initially it was a vertical shaft, but soon they found themselves on the horizontal. ‘More speed!’ the Doctor urged.

  Dora crawled along as best she could, but the grilled floor and riveted joints between its sections were hard on her hands and knees.

  ‘Which way?’ she panted when they reached a junction.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

  Dora opted for the right-hand path. At the next junction she took the left one, and at the one after that she went right again. There was no rhyme or reason to it, but she could sense the Doctor’s urgency and her own fear was rising.

  ‘Go up!’ the Doctor now shouted. ‘Take the next upward shaft. We have to get to the surface.’

  She did as he said, and this was slightly easier. Climbing the steel mesh wasn’t as uncomfortable as sliding across it on all fours. But by the time she reached the top, Dora was exhausted. Only adrenalin-charged desperation allowed her to manhandle a circular steel slab out of her way and climb through the hatch above. The Doctor followed, and found himself in a low-roofed cement chamber with a slot aperture, which, though it was at eye-level for them, gave out at ground level on the moon’s surface. It was a blast shelter, the Doctor realised. They were inside the dome containing the power plant. He grabbed Dora’s hand, and they tottered up some steps to the surface.

  ‘Open ground,’ the Doctor said. ‘Now we really run for it.’

  Dora nodded wearily, and they stumbled forward.

  Ahead of them, across the black plain, there towered another immense, ghostly structure: a row of colossal cones, like industrial cooling towers. Again, it was far from simple reaching them. The ground was burned and barren, and crumbled beneath their feet. The litter of refuse - everything from demolition rubble, to fallen pylons, to the smoke-blackened relics of diggers, lifters and other corroded mechanical leviathans - sent them scurrying in every direction as they tried to make progress.

  Halfway across, the Doctor glanced over his shoulder.

  Their stalker, which had given up attempting to conceal its presence, was closing the gap between them with a series of prodigious leaps, aided by a black, leathery, parachute-like canopy. Recognising what it was, he now drove Dora mercilessly. Even when they entered the main power plant buildings, and ran down a broad concourse, he urged her on, telling her not to look back.

  ‘What… what is that thing?’ she stammered.

  ‘An Air-Walker.’

  ‘Air-Walker?’

  ‘It walks on air. Well, sort of. But never mind that now!’

  The next thing, they were descending to the plant’s sublevels, taking a spiral stair which dropped between more layers of corroded apparatus, and running along a catwalk hemmed in by rows of vertical plastic tubes down which a glowing, yellowish glop was streaked.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Dora wailed.

  The Doctor was about to reply, but just ahead one of the tubes had collapsed across the catwalk and broken.

  Whatever the substance in the tube was, it had melted the metal, leaving a gap of maybe two and a half metres.

  ‘OK,’ the Doctor said. ‘OK, we have to jump.’

  ‘Jump?’ Dora looked at him, incredulous.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch that yellow muck - it’ll turn your flesh to slurry.’

  Dora shook her head as she backed away. ‘I can’t jump that far. Well go back.’

  The Doctor took her wrist with a hand like a talon.

  ‘Dora, we can’t go back
! The Air-Walker is already focused

  on sucking the marrow from our bones.’

  Dora glanced over her shoulder. The catwalk led into pitch darkness. She hated herself for the weakness she was again showing, but she was so tired, and so terrified.

  Her next words were distraught, thickened by tears.

  ‘There’s no end to the horror in this place - it’s like Hell, and there are devils round every corner.’

  ‘What happened to the action girl I was promised?’

  ‘That’s not me.’

  ‘Sure it is. Look… let’s hold hands. So if you go, I go too. OK?’

  Before she could argue, they ran forward. Dora screeched as they leapt out over what looked like a bottomless chasm. Rather to her surprise, they landed cleanly and continued running. There was an aperture ahead; they had the impression of open space, but when they scrambled through it, they found themselves on the brink of another terrifying drop.

  They’d emerged into a huge chamber, which seemed to have collapsed in on itself. It was impossible to see where the roof should be. All manner of crushed, tangled wreckage had deluged down into it from overhead, and had become lodged at various levels, though the chamber’s floor was actually a vast, crater-like hole, maybe eighty metres in diameter, which seemed to plummet into infinite blackness. Further avalanches, mainly consisting of concrete and shattered masonry, had spilled down the sides of it, but looked perilously steep and unstable. Other items - mainly sections from the floors above, wooden beams, warped panelling and so on - lay across one side of the hole, forming a flimsy bridge.

  The Doctor started across this before Dora even had a

  chance to protest.

  She followed, arms outstretched for balance, trying not to think how narrow and creaky the makeshift causeway was beneath her feet. Halfway across, there were stinging pains in both earlobes as her studs were snatched out.

  She yelped in pain. The Doctor, who had reached a central point, glanced back. He was in the process of adjusting the transmat-rifle at his shoulder, only to see it catapult out of his hands and go twirling downward for several metres, until its strap caught on a twisted fragment of metal jutting from the crater’s side. It hung there, but turned and rotated, as if actively seeking a way to descend.