by Steve Cole
‘I normally manage it just with my friends,’ the Doctor said.
‘But Admiral,’ said Brian, ‘we are your friends. Now, when should we expect you back on board?’
‘Soon, Commander,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘I need to finish working on something first. Out.’
Brian’s face faded from the screen.
Fallomax looked at the Doctor. ‘You know, Doctor suits you a whole lot better than Admiral.’
‘It does,’ the Doctor agreed as his machine bleeped. He pulled out a phial of crystals, which glowed dangerously as they caught the light. He considered it a moment, then reset the machine.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Second thoughts,’ the Doctor muttered, not looking Fallomax in the eye. ‘Listening to my friends, maybe.’
The machine beeped again, and the Doctor removed another phial of crystals from it. These reflected the light more dimly. ‘A taste of their own medicine but watered down. Maybe even with a spoonful of sugar.’
‘You’re showing mercy to the Kotturuh?’
‘Depends on what they fling at us,’ the Doctor said. ‘But I’m giving them more than they give anyone else – a choice.’ He held the two phials up to the light. ‘One’s a sentence of death.’ He tucked the first phial away inside his jacket. ‘This one’s a sentence of life.’ He put the second phial in his top pocket.
‘But what about your fleet?’ Fallomax said. ‘You’ve just sent them all to Mordeela. When the Kotturuh sense that Mordeela’s under threat, their ships will converge and they’ll attack.’
‘Exactly,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘And that may be to our advantage. When they converge, they’ll be close enough for our counter-wave to hit them.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Fallomax, helping herself to some crystals scattered beside the machine, ‘people will die.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘They’ll be protected by Lifeshrouds.’
‘For six hours.’ She replenished her own ’Shroud’s crystal supply; another two days’ protection from Kotturuh attack. ‘Think that’s long enough?’
‘It’ll have to be.’
‘You’re happy to sacrifice your mercenaries?’
‘Not mine. I didn’t hire them. Presumably they signed up because they’re ready to fight …’
‘They’re not yours, but you’ll use them. Just as I used Estinee. For all your furrowed brow and kind words, you’re really no better than me, are you?’ Fallomax looked down at the comforting pulse of her ’Shroud’s crystal circuit, and sighed. ‘Pity. For a time there I actually thought you were diff—’
She broke off as the floor bucked under her feet, and a great grind of engines crunched at the air. ‘What the—?’
‘Dematerialisation!’ The Doctor pushed past her and ran off down the corridor. ‘Someone’s trying to work the TARDIS. Come on!’
‘Estinee …?’ Fallomax was soon puffing as she ran after the Doctor. So many years locked up on board the Polythrope, padding round the corridors twice a day, could never have prepared her for keeping up with someone like the Doctor, who charged at open space like a toddler off the reins.
When she reached the control room, he was scanning the screens on the central console. ‘We’ve shifted forward!’
‘On the plaza?’ Fallomax panted.
‘Forward in time.’ He looked up at her, eyes wide and dark and urgent. ‘Five days.’
‘To when the Kotts said you’d come?’ A chill traced the length of her backbone. ‘Where is Estinee?’
‘Estinee.’ He stared around, like a beast scenting danger. ‘The Kotturuh must have come to her again. They’ve done this.’ He raised his voice. ‘Estinee!’
‘Doctor …’ Fallomax pointed. The police box doors were open. ‘Doctor, come on. This is their trap. You’ve got to get away from here.’
‘We can’t leave Estinee,’ the Doctor said.
‘We can come back for her. A different day. I mean, come on, they want you to do this!’
But the Doctor was already walking to the doors. Fallomax wanted to follow him out. To save Estinee. To be that brave. But her legs wouldn’t move. Come on, your Lifeshroud’s fully charged, she told herself, the Kotturuh Judgement can’t catch up with you.
‘Fallomax?’
She turned at the sound of Estinee’s voice, incredulous, delighted.
Estinee’s owl-like eyes were dark and glittered like diamonds. In her hands she held a stubby tool with a square nozzle: an energy probe, like the one that had burned the flesh from her bones at every demonstration of the Lifeshroud.
‘There are so many other ways to die, Professor,’ said Estinee.
Though she was still panting, Fallomax turned and ran, faster and harder than she ever had in her life. She reached the TARDIS doors just as Estinee switched on the probe.
As the light engulfed her, Fallomax screamed. The tears in her eyes boiled away so quickly, and her last thought was of the shame she felt that she had only ever cried for herself.
The Doctor was hunting for Estinee in the grounds of the Tombs. He watched as two Andalians circled high overhead like bloated buzzards. Then they flew away, as a strange, unearthly wind began to build across the plaza.
The Doctor heard the scream from inside the TARDIS. ‘Fallomax!’ he shouted, picking a desperate path across the plaza, jumping over bones and bodies.
Estinee stood in the TARDIS doorway. In front of her was a heap of steaming remains. It was only by the golden mail and cables over the charred jumpsuit that the Doctor knew they had been Fallomax.
‘What did you do?’ he whispered.
‘I hated her for what she did to me.’ Estinee’s dark eyes glittered. ‘The Kotturuh knew that. They used that hate to make me kill her for them.’ A single bloody tear tore its way from the blackness in her eyes. ‘I don’t want to kill anyone. But you do. They know what you are. That’s why they’re doing this.’
‘This isn’t you,’ the Doctor told her urgently. ‘It’s the Kotturuh. You were on Mordeela for so long, they owned a part of you and they’re using it—’
‘I don’t want to kill anyone.’ Estinee took a jerking step towards the Doctor. ‘You want to use me to kill …’
‘No! That’s what the Kotturuh want. They couldn’t get to Fallomax so they used you to do it. And I’m not a part of their Design – they have no right to touch me so they’re getting to me through you. They’re using your fear, your anger, your helplessness …’
‘What else drives you, little one …?’
The Kotturuh were coming as the skies darkened. Shadows and scratchings swept across the inky indigo, as thick night settled over the corpse-littered plaza. The wind grew hotter; the Doctor felt as though a furnace door had been flung open and the heat was being bellowed into his face.
Estinee took another step towards him, the energy probe clutched tight in her hands.
‘You would destroy us for a fool’s fantasy …’
‘Life doesn’t deserve the Kotturuh!’ the Doctor howled into the storm. ‘Estinee, you have to fight this. The Kotturuh are coming for you. Once you’ve killed me they’ll take you back to Mordeela, keep you there for good …’
‘No,’ Estinee whispered, as eight Kotturuh ghosted into reality, standing in a circle about the TARDIS, perhaps 50 metres wide. A faint mist seemed to blow in with them, coiling around their oily tentacles.
‘Your interference in the Design is not tolerated, little one.’ One of the Kotturuh, smaller than the others, came closer, through the mist. ‘End him, child of Destran.’
‘Estinee, don’t—!’
‘End him.’
Chapter Fifteen
Estinee felt the darkness prickling her eyes, felt the cold dank tunnels of Mordeela running through her body. Dimly, through a haze of blood and shadow, she could see the Doctor’s face.
Here she stood, ready to kill him. And even now, there was only concern and compassion in his frantic eyes. For her.
The
energy probe felt so heavy in her outstretched hands. She wanted to drop it, but she couldn’t. The Kotturuh had placed it in her hands, like they placed words in the minds of the revenants, using her like they used all life to bring more death. And death could bring her no end so she knew she would be kept in the cold and the dark for ever. Owned and alone for ever.
Estinee could feel the Kotturuh willing her to kill him. Why had she not killed him already?
‘Get into the TARDIS, Estinee!’ The Doctor tried to knock the probe from her hands. But a Kotturuh swept in front of him, a dark blur on reality. He recoiled, fell to the ground.
‘Death must be brought, little one,’ it hissed, ‘and Death must be taken.’
Estinee stared at the energy probe. It made her afraid. She remembered hiding in her room the night the Kotturuh came. Her mother turning to bones. Her father sprawling on the ground.
Like the Doctor, now, helpless on his knees, staring into the nozzle of the energy probe. ‘Let go of her mind!’ he shouted.
You’ve made me angry, she thought. You’ve made me afraid.
‘All life is ours to twist to our design,’ said the Kotturuh.
You’ve made me hope.
‘Estinee, please—’
You’ve made me run.
‘You and the child are the last of your kind. You have flown so far. But your flight has ended, now.’
You’ve made me feel.
She closed her eyes. Angry and in control.
Estinee pushed the energy probe against the crystals in her Lifeshroud, and fired.
‘No!’ The Doctor saw what Estinee was doing a fraction before the blast. It sent him flying backwards, rolling and tumbling over Andalian bodies. The Kotturuh reeled back too in confusion. One of the creatures fell against him, cold, squat and heavy, and for a split second he saw under her veil.
He saw her face.
The Doctor glimpsed graveyard eyes oozing rot. A black grimace framing teeth like broken bones. Deep-etched symbols bleeding and stinking across the skin. A primal horror filled the Doctor’s mind, and he covered his face, crawling blindly on hands and knees to get away. Over the blood-rush in his ears he heard a crackle of power and stared, panting for breath.
Estinee was gone. Vaporised in the blast. But the Lifeshroud that held the last of Fallomax together was glowing now. The fresh crystals had absorbed the blast and were radiating energy.
The Doctor got painfully to his feet. His suit was in tatters, his shirt stained with blood and dirt. Numbly, he felt in his top pocket for the phial he’d prepared.
It had fallen out. He’d lost it.
The Kotturuh were rising from the ground like vampires climbing from their graves.
‘Two more people dead,’ said the Doctor, coldly furious. ‘Dead because you scribbled dates and diagrams on a wall and you think they give you the right to do anything.’
The largest Kotturuh pushed forward. ‘Betel four-seron-four kaffa—’
‘Yeah, yeah, four-four-sky betel, I know what time it is. You told me I would know death.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘But not mine. Not just Fallomax and Estinee. Yours.’
He reached inside his jacket. Found the other phial. Pulled it out.
The Sentence of Death.
For a second he hesitated. Then he tossed it to the ground beside Fallomax’s body, and it cracked open.
‘You don’t get to decide who dies any more,’ the Doctor said.
The Kotturuh barely even noticed it. What was a small glass phial when they had shaped the future of eternity?
‘You will not interfere with our Design.’
‘Think you can stop me?’
‘Why should we stop you –’ the Kotturuh leaned in, veil shifting in the breeze – ‘when we can simply stop your entire species?’
You could not see them smile, you could never see a Kotturuh smile, but the Doctor knew she was smiling now.
‘A small planet, not very far away. A race that will one day become Time Lords. We had always considered they had much to offer the universe. But I think, once we are finished here, we shall revisit that opinion.’
The Kotturuh turned to each other, clearly approving of the gesture. Only they could find humour in the dooming of a whole species. And yet …
The Doctor smiled too. You could always see when the Doctor smiled. But you never quite knew what he was laughing at.
‘You know, it’s interesting,’ he said, as ebony flakes began to drift from beneath the Kotturuh veils and their hides grew waxy. ‘Someone once told me that if I could decide who lives and who dies, that would make me a monster. But there are worse monsters than me in this universe.’
The Kotturuh sank down as if bowing. ‘What … is happening?’
‘There’s a chance, now, that from here on, everyone lives. And I’m not passing that up for your sakes.’
‘What have you done?’
‘Simulated your gift and flung it back in your faces.’
‘We are … infected?’
‘You’re changing.’ The Doctor held up a hand. ‘Wave goodbye to immortality, Kotturuh. Say hello to Fifteen Minutes of Fame!’
‘You … cannot interfere …’ The Kotturuh was sinking to its knees, rippling like laundry on a line. ‘This is … sacrilege …’
‘This is victory,’ said the Doctor. ‘How long have you got, Kotturuh? Can you work it out? Tell the others, tell the rest of your species to run. Because your death has been decided and it’s coming.’
The creatures were moaning, writhing now.
‘I warned you to stop. All you showed the universe was cruelty. But all flesh is grass, Kotturuh – even yours. The grass withers, but the word of the Time Lord Victorious? That endures for ever!’
And as the skies bled black overhead, and the Kotturuh howled, he stepped into the TARDIS and left.
Estinee watched the Doctor go from high up in the sky. She saw what was left of the Kotturuh rise into the air and fade like phantoms. She could see whatever she wanted now, because she was filling the sky, out of reach.
Set free from a body that had known so much pain, Estinee spun with the new-born Andalians in their mindless joy of flight. She thought of the Doctor one last time and wished him the luck and strength that he was bound to need. Then she let him go, and his anger and his sadness, and soared towards the suns before they set.
Chapter Sixteen
The Doctor was going back to Chalskal’s flagship and he had dressed for the occasion.
He wore his Time Lord robes, the scarlet and orange of his chapter folded like a sunrise around him. Well, wasn’t he ringing in the dawn of a new era?
Here he was, survivor of a universe in which Gallifrey fell, staking everything in these ancient times that he could show his world a better way, a way that would lead away from war.
They were in orbit around Mordeela. And he could finish what he’d started on Andalia.
The Doctor closed his eyes. ‘Do I have the right?’
You can’t doubt it, he told himself. The war of Life and Death: over in a single battle. And then …
Then, things will be different.
They have to be.
The Doctor straightened. It would be a clean start. No more abuses of power.
Not after today.
‘I approve of your uniform, Admiral,’ Brian said as the Doctor swept onto the Bridge.
‘In my time it was ceremonial,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it’s what we used when we went into battle, and that’s what we’re doing now.’
‘Of course,’ Brian accepted this with a sommelier’s approval of a delightful choice from the wine list. He issued a series of urgent gestures to the mercenaries scattered across the flight deck and the Doctor had the absurd feeling that Brian was running the ship like an expensive restaurant.
Beneath them was the planet Mordeela. Clustered under its shield were a dozen Kotturuh ships. Sheltering from the storm.
But, the Doctor knew, the die was cast.
He still didn’t understand where their ancient science ended and magic began, and perhaps it was best that he didn’t. You could call it an enzymatic retrovirus, a genetic nanovore, or just an ancient curse. Names didn’t matter – sentence was passed and there was no stopping it. Like Fallomax, the Kotturuh would have to try and outrun it as best they could.
‘More Kotturuh ships are approaching,’ said Brian.
Tension spread across the bridge. The creatures’ name was still to be feared. Weapons were manned, and the ship bucked beneath him as the systems powered up. The Doctor gave himself just a moment to appreciate the outré and ornate nature of so much technology here in the Dark Times: if they could have carved a spaceship out of marble and run its engines on coal, then doubtless they would have.
‘Here they come,’ Brian said, as the screen began to fill with dark, glittering craft of flexible glass and metal, undulating like creatures dredged from deepest, darkest seas. More and more of the weird ships appeared, flexing and spreading, trailing eerie tendrils in an intimidating display.
‘I thought they’d open fire at once,’ Brian admitted.
‘They want us blocked in first,’ the Doctor said calmly. ‘No way for us to run.’
‘The entire fleet could be destroyed!’
‘No,’ the Doctor said. ‘I don’t think they care about the fleet. They just want to get past us and under the protective shield. Maybe it’ll save them.’
‘Will it?’
The Doctor crossed to a control panel, and inserted some of the crystals into a device. ‘Brian,’ he said, ‘I’m going to bore you about Mordeela.’
‘Please do.’
‘These crystals –’ he slotted a few more crystals inside the machine, with the intensity of a child at the penny arcade – ‘can reflect whatever energy the Kotturuh have channelled down on Mordeela back in on itself. The Kotturuh may be history’s problem now, but if all that weaponised energy they draw upon still exists …’ Three more crystals went inside. ‘I owe it to the future to seal off their power source so no other race with a death wish can pick up where they left off.’
‘We are dying.’
