He peered down. As he’d hoped - a concrete podium was visible about three metres below, overhanging the abyss. He lowered himself towards it, only for a shape to whistle past, narrowly missing his head. Dropping the rest of the way, the Doctor landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle and knocking the wind from himself for the second time in the last few minutes.
He could only lie there, sobbing for breath. The gaping aperture where he and Dora had blown the door down earlier was still open, but suddenly he was too wearied to move. He tried to get up, but slumped down again onto his side.
Krauzzen arced around in the vast space above the crater, before racing back down until he was on the same level as his prey, whereupon he slowed to a hover.
‘A good chase, Doctor. But your success has been your
undoing.’ He levelled his photon-rifle. T now know for a fact that I could never relax if you were still alive.’
Before he could trigger the weapon, it flipped from his hands and vanished into the gulf below. He looked baffled rather than angry - a bafflement which turned swiftly to panic as he slowly began to descend. His feet slipped as he struggled to maintain balance on a hover-plate which, despite his best efforts, was turning upright.
‘Problem, my lord?’ the Doctor wondered. ‘Feeling the weight of your sins?’
With a strangled cry, Krauzzen dived from his steel plate, which nose-dived into the darkness below. He caught a jutting fragment of timber, and hung there.
After contorting into a fiendish grin a few seconds earlier, his normally expressionless face now contorted with agony. Of course, he wasn’t just hanging on for his life; suddenly he was having to resist an irresistible force.
The Doctor got up and dusted himself, though the sonic screwdriver in his jacket pocket was tugging so hard that he had to brace his legs apart to keep his stability.
‘You’ll notice, how every bit of metal round here is warping downward into this crater,’ the Doctor said.
‘That’s what’s happening to the metal components filling your body. This wasn’t what I wanted, but in the end you gave me no choice.’
‘Blast you!’ Krauzzen hissed, glutinous yellow sludge foaming from his mouth.
‘It’s a kind of solace, Krauzzen, to know that there’s at least one power out here - even if it’s only the magnetic core of a nuclear reactor - to which you are answerable.’
Krauzzen could no longer speak. His body had
noticeably elongated.
As the Doctor watched, his clothing ripping asunder, and then, beneath that, the flesh parted as his joints cracked and a rain of blood burst forth. There was a series of sickening crunches as gears and sprockets tore loose from moorings, as circuitry was rent from its boarding and sliced through organ and artery. Krauzzen mouthed a final silent scream, before dropping into the blackness, a distorted, dismembered relic.
All that remained was his left hand - completely organic, but with only a torn stump where its wrist should be, clutching a knot of timber. A testimony, the Doctor supposed, to the physical strength of the flesh and blood creature Krauzzen once had been. He kicked out, and the hand fell from sight.
Wearily, he backed across the platform and moved through the blown-open doorway, where he was thankful to be free of the magnetic field. His sonic screwdriver relented in its efforts to escape, and he was able to straighten himself, and mop back his sweaty hair. He set off walking - only to find Zarbotan in his path.
The Doctor froze. For an absurd moment he raised his fists, a pint-sized pugilist.
But Zarbotan didn’t respond. In fact, he didn’t move at all.
He’d loomed out of the gloom like some great chunk of industrial sculpture. The last vestige of his flesh had been sloughed away, and those few fleshy organs inside him had ceased to function. He was no longer a living thing; just the shell of one.
There was no life in his metallic eyes.
Cautiously, the Doctor stepped to one side of him and
around to the back. He circled the giant several times, before pushing him, and watching him topple forward and strike the ground with a hollow clang.
The Raptor-Bird was in the process of docking with the Ellipsis, but on board it every eye, those of captives and captors alike, were fixed on its main screen. They’d just watched Krauzzen meet his fate, and were now staring wide-eyed at a grainy picture of the inert junk that had once been known as Zarbotan.
From his command chair, Xaaael regarded the image with amazed fascination.
‘There!’ Amy said triumphantly. She and the other prisoners stood behind him, still under the rifles of his henchmen. ‘You have to release us. That was the deal.’
Xaaael rose slowly to his feet. ‘Any deal the Doctor made with Lord Krauzzen died with Lord Krauzzen. The Ellipsis is now mine. Along with everything and everyone on board.’
‘You’re a liar and a cheat!’ Amy shouted.
‘Finally she understands how we make our living,’ he said.
‘The Doctor will come after us again.’
‘Not without his TARDIS.’ A vibration passed through the craft as they connected with the Ellipsis. ‘Get them aboard. Put them back in the holding cells.’
With much growling and pushing, the prisoners were herded into an airlock. Beyond this lay another passage made from billowing fabric. They tumbled down it, prisoners and gangsters together. Amy was last, and hung back. One of the gangsters hung back as well. It was Zalizta. He regarded Xaaael with deep scepticism.
‘You have a problem with me, Zalizta?’ Xaaael asked.
‘This takeover should be put to the syndicate,’ Zalizta replied. ‘It should be voted on.’
Xaaael’s lips tightened until they were livid white lines, but he nodded. ‘I understand that. And we will vote.
But later. For now I’m assuming emergency command.
Agreed?’
Zalizta still seemed unsure.
‘Now do as I say, and put her aboard.’
Reluctantly, Zalizta turned to Amy and grabbed her by the scuff of the neck - and was promptly shot in the back by Xaaael’s photon-pistol. The blast hurled him clean across the airlock, fusing him into its far bulkhead.
Amy gazed at Xaaael, stunned.
He levelled his pistol at her. ‘And I thought you people were slow on the uptake.’
With no choice, she allowed him to usher her along the gravity-free gangway.
‘I’ll tell your men what you’ve just done,’ she said over her shoulder.
‘You think they’ll care once they get their hands on the plunder I’ll secure with your teleportation machine?’
‘You are evil.’
Xaaael laughed. ‘There’s no such thing as evil on the Outer Rim. Just “winner takes all”.’
They alighted together in the Ellipsis airlock, which slammed behind them.
‘That means I take everything,’ Xaaael said. ‘This mothership, its crew, full control, full power, full responsibility for what was once called “the Krauzzen Syndicate”.’
‘Excellent news, Xaaael,’ a bass voice declared, as the muzzle of a photon-pistol was pressed into his right temple. ‘On the basis of which confession, I am arresting you for kidnapping and conspiring to murder Kalik Xorax.’
Xaaael was too stunned to respond. He watched dully as his own weapon was wrested from his grasp.
His captives now stood to one side, rubbing at their hurts, while all across the boarding area police officers in combat armour had their guns drawn. Most of his own men were already handcuffed and lying on the floor.
Others were in the process of being cuffed. Xaaael glanced sideways - into a face that criminals of his ilk had once feared, and perhaps would learn to do so again: Kobal Zalu.
‘We can do this the easy way,’ Zalu said, digging the muzzle of his weapon into the back of Xaaael’s neck and forcing him across the deck to join his comrades. ‘Or we can do it the hard way. Something inside me hopes you opt for the latter.’
&nbs
p; Xaaael still couldn’t quite believe what had happened.
Through a viewing port he was astounded to see dozens of police cruisers in position around the Ellipsis. He and his men had been so busy watching the events on Gorgoror, they hadn’t noticed them as they’d approached.
‘Are you mad?’ he stuttered. ‘You know you can’t do this!’
‘Can’t I?’ Zalu holstered his weapon, and clapped one hand on the shoulder of Kalik Xorax, who treated Xaaael to a reptilian smile. ‘We have all the evidence we need right here. And before you say anything else, Xorax is about to disappear into a witness protection programme.
So you and all your powerful political friends - assuming you have any left now Krauzzen has gone - will never hear from him again until he’s testifying against you in court.’
‘Xorax, you traitor!’ Xaaael spat, as his hands were twisted behind his back. ‘You were one of us! You swore an oath to Lord Krauzzen!’
Xorax shrugged. ‘Any oath I swore to Lord Krauzzen…
died with Lord Krauzzen.’
Xaaael choked to hear his own weasel words used against him.
‘Take him away!’ Zalu roared. ‘Take them all!’
With much shouting, the mobsters were removed from the boarding area. Zalu turned towards the human prisoners, who still huddled together uncertainly.
‘You people must have put up quite a battle to have survived,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner.
Did you incur many losses?’
Amy glanced at Sophie and Dora. Their eyes were still red-rimmed, still downcast.
‘Just one,’ Rory said stepping forward. ‘This is his family.’
Zalu regarded the women sympathetically.
‘I’ll miss him too,’ Rory added. ‘Harry was one of the best.’
Zalu’s expression changed. ‘Harry… Mossop?’
Rory was surprised. ‘You knew him?’
‘An ex-policeman,’ Zalu said, ‘who, even if he wasn’t armed, could probably talk a criminal gang into submission? In fact, he could talk anyone into submission?’
Rory and the Mossop girls glanced at each other, mystified.
‘Wouldn’t you say that was true?’ Zalu asked them.
‘It’s very true,’ Dora replied, ‘but I don’t understand…’
Zalu pointed along a connecting companionway.
Rory wasn’t sure whether he or the two women were the most stunned to see who was now coming along it, dressed in Torodon police armour and in company with a tall female officer.
‘Bridge secured, Chief,’ Harry said, throwing up a salute.
Dora and Sophie screamed in unison.
They hared across the boarding area together and leapt onto Harry, who almost collapsed beneath their combined weight and his own bellowing laughter.
Only with difficulty did he manage to explain about the transportation device the Doctor had disguised as a deadly weapon.
Amy gave Rory a knowing wink.
‘Hello on the Ellipsis!’ came a familiar voice. ‘More to the point, I suspect… hello Kobal Zalu!’
They moved into an adjoining security cell, where a bank of monitors gave various views of the Gorgoror
surface. One of these portrayed the viewing deck at the top of the control tower, where the Doctor stood looking up at them.
‘Can anyone hear me?’ he called.
Sergeant Xelos made contact with the Bridge, and the ship’s computer patched them through to the surface.
‘Hello Doctor,’ Zalu replied. ‘Good to see you’ve survived. Again.’
‘Ah, Zalu. I was hoping you’d get around to doing your job at some point.’
‘I’ve only half done it. Obtaining convictions on this space rabble will be a sight more difficult than arresting them.’
‘If anyone can do it, Zalu, you’re the man. Is everybody else safe and sound?’
‘We are, Doctor,’ Dora shouted. ‘Thank you so much.
We owe you everything.’
‘Well…’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘Actually you owe it to your husband. I provided Zalu with the necessary legality to intercede on your behalf. But I suspect it was Harry who applied most of the pressure.’
Dora hugged her husband all the harder.
Harry smiled at Zalu. ‘I didn’t have to apply too much.’
‘I’ll send a shuttle down to pick you up,’ Zalu said.
‘No need. Amy flew the TARDIS before. I’m sure she can do it again. You all right with that, Amy? Same as last time?’
‘After what we’ve been through, it’ll be a doddle,’ Amy replied.
‘Just don’t forget your passengers. We’ve a few people to take home.’
When the TARDIS materialised on the control tower, the Doctor was standing by the safety barrier. Amy went out to him first.
‘Well!’ she said, striking a pose made all the more dramatic by her snazzy retro outfit. ‘We did it!’
‘Yes, we did,’ he replied, though for some reason he wasn’t quite as euphoric as she’d expected.
The others now spilled from the TARDIS. Rory, who looked worn out by his exertions, stood back while the one-time prisoners flocked to their saviour, so glad they’d been rescued that they barely mentioned the anomaly of having travelled in a craft that was bigger inside than outside. One by one, they pumped the Doctor’s hand. In Dora and Sophie’s case, they hugged him and kissed him on the cheeks.
Harry came last; he looked as tired as Rory, but seemed a little more relaxed. He was still wearing the police armour.
‘Suits you,’ the Doctor commented.
‘Chief Zalu offered me a job,’ Harry said.
‘Wow!’
‘As a fully fledged LP9 cop.’ Harry shrugged. ‘I was tempted. Very. But Earth is our home… Things are pretty rough down there at present, but now the Mossops are back together, I reckon we can tackle anything.’ He spoke with strength and confidence. His wife and daughter stood one to either side, their arms around him. ‘When we’re solid like this, we fear nothing.’
‘Excellent,’ the Doctor replied. ‘That’s how it should be.’ ‘The first thing we’re doing is going on holiday,’
Dora said. ‘Just a cheap package deal. So we can get reacquainted.’
The family laughed together as she led them back to the TARDIS.
‘I wouldn’t mind going on holiday,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Holidays are cool.’
The other passengers now filed into the TARDIS
as well. Eventually, only the Doctor, Amy and Rory remained on the deck.
The Doctor smiled, though again it lacked triumphalism. ‘Rory, we’ve got plenty of room. Do you want to get them all settled? So they’re not fiddling with things they shouldn’t.’
For once too tired to be worried about leaving the Doctor and Amy alone, Rory nodded and stepped back inside. When he’d gone, the Doctor turned to the barrier.
The ruined landscape below was silent and empty.
Sensing what the problem was, Amy went and stood beside him.
‘I wonder how many have died here?’ she said. ‘In total.’
‘Oh… too many.’
‘We could go back and save more of them.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘Same old conundrum, Amy.’
‘But we could?’
‘Yes, we could.’ He glanced round at her. ‘But I’ll be honest with you. I’m not sure I want to go back to a time when Xorg Krauzzen is still alive. Meeting him once was quite enough for me. Now, why don’t you go and get changed, eh? That punk rock thing… seems a bit old hat.’
She nodded and smiled - and went back into the TARDIS.
The Doctor peered again at the surface of Gorgoror, and remembered the scattered bones he’d seen in its old machine hall.
He never liked thinking about the endless possibilities his ability to travel in time created. So mostly, he didn’t.
But sometimes - as now - it wasn’t easy. In a minute, he’d go back inside the TARDI
S, hit the dematerialisation control and watch through the console monitor as this hellish wasteland faded into static.
If only he could do that with the thoughts inside his head.
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