by Doctor Who
‘It seems you have a situation on your hands, Consul,’ said he Governor. His concerned look did nothing to disguise the smugness in his voice.
Issabel had to raise her voice over the racket of the siren. ‘Arrange for the girl to be sent to me here immediately.’
‘I’ll send her on the next shuttle out.’
‘I said immediately,’ Issabel snapped.
‘Very well,’ said the Governor quickly, ‘I’ll arrange a shuttle flight away.’
Issabel didn’t seem appeased.
‘This session is terminated.’ The white light illuminating the screen sputtered and died. The alarm’s insistence hushed to silence.
The Governor seemed quite baffled. ‘Extraordinary woman.’
‘They shoot, they score.’ Rose sighed happily.
Flowers had flapped into a fully fledged panic. ‘What’s happening?’
Consul Issabel crossed to the computer bank beneath the main screen. She muted the local alarm and linked through to the security processors. ‘The Slitheen. They’ve gone missing.’
‘Made a break for it?’ The Doctor looked at Flowers. ‘Thought that was impossible.’
‘They won’t get far,’ Issabel barked. She approached the Doctor.
‘You’ve shared their cell. Have you noticed anything suspicious?’
‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps they thought I smell. Do you reckon I smell?’
‘I smell a rat, Doctor,’ said Issabel. ‘But the truth will out. Globules!
Escort the Doctor back to his cell.’
The Doctor held out his arms resignedly. A crowd of globs plummeted from out of the shadowy sky and perched there like misshapen 93
pigeons. He was ushered out of the lecture theatre at the double.
‘Get to your quarters, Flowers,’ said Issabel. ‘I’ll speak to system security and issue updates as and when.’
Flowers nodded and ran off at once.
‘Well, this is excellent news,’ the Governor announced to the room at large as both the screen and the siren cut out. ‘Not only am I authorised to get rid of this Tyler troublemaker post-haste, but Issabel has a breakout to contend with.’
‘How is that excellent, sir?’ asked Jamini haltingly.
‘Use your noodle, Warder. An insurrection will make her a bigger target for an Executive inquiry than me!’
Rose frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Executive on Justice Delta. Those who study us, organise us, help determine our policies. . . ’ His big chest puffed up with pride.
‘Our prison here has maintained a clean bill of health for seven months running. Despite these spurious claims of yours.’
Seven months. . . Norris had said how the Executive had gone as suddenly silent as his covert bosses, back in their shadowy branch of Earth Government. Blanc the Slitheen had said that those bosses were dead. . .
‘Have you spoken to any of the Executive lately?’ asked Rose, wondering if they could have gone the same way.
‘They communicate their wishes to me through Consul Jakkson, Detention Centre Chief Overseer, you silly girl,’ said the Governor. ‘Now, Jamini, arrange for a shuttle to take her to Justice Prime and wait with her in the holding area till she’s ready to board. Goodbye, Rose Tyler.’ He belched. ‘I’m glad to be shot of you.’
Jamini hauled her up by the arm and led her across the office.
‘Just check on Blanc like I told you,’ Rose pleaded. ‘If you don’t then she’ll –’
‘I said, goodbye!’ the Governor snapped.
‘Why don’t you just drop that bull, Tyler?’ said Jamini gruffly once they were out of the office. ‘What use is it to you now? You’re getting out of here.’
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‘Everything I’ve told you has been totally true,’ said Rose fiercely.
Jamini shook her head wearily. ‘Sooner you’re out of here the better.’ But Rose could see the disquiet in her eyes as the two of them marched on through the darkened corridors.
The Doctor felt a wave of gloom overtake him as he reached his now-empty cell. The Slitheen must have believed he’d told Flowers and Issabel their secret about the home-made compressors after all – and put whatever plan they had into action.
Well, good luck to them. Whether they were successful or not made little difference to three fundamentals.
One, that when Rose arrived, the two of them could no longer pig-gyback the Slitheen’s escape attempt.
Two, security would doubtless now be stepped up, making it still harder to get away.
Three, being stuck here, powerless, was an all-round royal pain in the. . .
The Doctor kicked his mattress in frustration. At least Rose was on her way here now. At least they would be together. But he had seen the cold, malevolent look in the eyes of that Issabel woman when she’d questioned Rose at the end. What would happen when the Consul saw that she was no genius astrophysicist? Send her back? Punish her? Worse?
And what was this about a Slitheen in Rose’s borstal? Aliens were sent here, Flowers had been adamant on that when he’d first arrived.
And yet Issabel had seemed alarmed at the possibility at first, before suddenly dismissing it out of hand. Rose was wrong, she’d said. Just wrong.
He remembered Ecktosca Fel Fotch’s words before lights-out. It is not only the globules that watch over us on Justice Prime. . .
Consul Issabel returned to her office and sat herself wearily behind the desk. A barrage of inconclusive reports scrolled across her computer screen. It seemed the Slitheen had well and truly escaped.
Loathsome creatures. Thorns in her flesh.
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Still, even at large, for all their posturing they could pose little threat to her plans. Especially now it seemed that the Doctor and his friend would be able to move things along so quickly. The datacore from the console that his mental acrobatics had scrambled lay on her desk, singed and oily. She picked it up, contemplated it for a few moments.
She pressed a button under her desk and a small screen warmed into existence on the wall beside her. A familiar figure appeared, huge and surrounded by stubby, smoking candles.
‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘I’ve met with the Doctor myself now and I’ve studied his thought impulses. His mind is undisciplined and unortho-dox, but highly advanced – he’s already worked out how the positioning of the planets in their orbits may prove significant. The girl may be valuable too – I’m less convinced by her, but a man of the Doctor’s intelligence is unlikely to associate with fools.’
‘So why are you bothering me?’ rasped the shadowy shape. ‘I think we should speed up the operation. The door’s been opened for us. We should go through it at once.’
‘About time too,’ said the figure on the screen. ‘We’ll proceed to the final phase.’
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You got so attached to people here, Flowers reflected on her way to the meeting of the Senate the next morning. Hardly surprising, when you were more or less a prisoner yourself.
Issabel had turned down her last three requests for leave on one of the local pleasure satellites, insisting that too many of her projects were at a ‘critical’ stage. She supposed she hadn’t been too bothered – you weren’t even allowed to leave the confines of Justicia in case you were trying to leak secrets or do private deals with techno-corporations. Just for a change of environs she’d asked for a brief transfer to Justice Delta. But according to Issabel, the Executive Consuls had no time to receive her. This was a story they’d stuck to for some months, and it was starting to rankle – especially given the quite excellent work Flowers had passed to them over the last seven years.
Another three years and her contract would expire. She’d be forty, then. Life begins at forty the old saying went, and in Flowers’s case it was true. For a start, by then she’d have earned an absolute mint from her ten-year attachment through wages, royalties and patents –which ought to lead to more success with men, or at the very least a
more comfortable independence. She’d have had hands-on experience 97
of state-of-the-art technology, and an enviable working knowledge of scores of alien cultures and intelligences, worth a fortune to military agencies.
Oh no, she’d never been bothered by the ethics of her employers.
Obviously, it was a shame that most funding for hard science came from weapons research, but Flowers had always liked to think she was, if nothing else, practical. If she didn’t accept the army dollar, there were a hundred others poised to take her place – all of them probably taller, better-looking and generally more glam than she was, the cows, so they could stuff it. Besides, the military might pioneer new technology, but it filtered through to everyday life in the end – so that was all right, wasn’t it?
Trouble was, ‘everyday life’ on Justicia was something that had been slowly eating away at Flowers’s resolve these last years. She had honestly thought she could crawl into Justicia as if it was a chrysalis and give up ten years of her life to become the woman she always meant to be – mature, buoyant and set up for life. Now it seemed to Flowers that the girl she’d been seven years ago was the one who’d been set up, with promises that could never be delivered.
It was a horrible, humbling crashdown. On days like yesterday, with major breakthroughs on two projects, she’d felt as if graceful wings could strike out from this ungainly, lumpy body she’d been saddled with. But then, nights like last night made her realise that the SCAT-house was not so much a cocoon as a tomb. A place that saw new arrivals now and again, but never new life.
At least, not until the Doctor had turned up.
Someone passed her swiftly in the corridor. A stooped black man, smartly dressed and with a pointed, greying beard, passed by without comment. Flowers thought she recognised him as one of the Executive’s senior diagnostic chiefs. He must be here for the meeting of the Senate.
‘Dr Meldow,’ she called after him. ‘Dr Meldow, I, er, think you’ll find the meeting is this way. . . ’
He didn’t turn or acknowledge her in any way. He just shuffled into the aquaculture compound, the main door sliding smoothly open and 98
closed to accommodate him – which was weird, since Issabel had ordered the hydroponics experiments postponed while they prioritised the gravity projects. Still, he was a VIP. Perhaps he wanted a quick look round at them before the meeting began.
For a moment, she wondered if she should warn him about the Slitheen. They had not been found anywhere in the SCAT-house, though their means of escape and how they overpowered their implants remained a mystery. Flowers knew she would miss them. Their banter, their strange grace, their ferocious intellects. . . She felt a little warm ache in her ribs. At least they’d perfected control of the solar flares before they’d gone – as a thank-you to her, perhaps, for all she had tried to do for them on the inside? It was a pleasing thought, and she dwelled on it all the way to the Senate meeting.
Only when she got there, she found the meeting room was empty.
Puzzled, she contacted Issabel on the video link. Issabel appeared on the glowing screen and almost bit her head off. ‘I cancelled the meeting! Didn’t you check your mail?’
‘No, I –’
‘We’re on a state of maximum emergency, I’ve got escaped prisoners on the loose – and you expect me to play show and tell?’
‘But I’ve just passed Dr Meldow in the corridor, surely if he’s here –’
‘He’s not here. You are mistaken, Flowers.’
‘Excuse me, Consul, but with respect, I know what I –’
‘You are mistaken.’ An icy smile passed over Issabel’s face. ‘You may check the shuttle logs if you do not believe me. No shuttle has arrived, nor is any due to arrive until that which is carrying the Doctor’s prisoner friend.’
‘I. . . I’m sorry, Consul. Do please forgive my incompetence.’
‘That’s better. Now, I want you to arrange a secure cell for her.
Put her to work with the Doctor on the gravity wave amplifiers the moment she arrives.’
‘Of course, Consul Issabel,’ said Flowers, scarlet-cheeked, a tingle of fear travelling down her spine.
It was an unpleasant reminder that somewhere deep inside she must have a backbone after all.
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∗ ∗ ∗
The sitting around, the pacing, the endless waiting were over. Now Rose sat in a shuttle cabin identical to the one she’d arrived in, only this time her mood was one of cautious optimism. On her journey to Justice Beta, only the unknown had awaited her. Now, the Doctor was waiting at the other end of the journey, and together the two of them might just stand a chance of striking out for the TARDIS
Always assuming she got there. Her nose was twitching. Smoke.
It was seeping out from under a bulkhead door in the centre of the far wall, clouding the air in sinister spirals.
Rose marched up to the other end of the cabin and started banging on the door that led to what she assumed was the cockpit. ‘Hey!
Anyone in there? I think something’s on fire.’
There was silence.
‘Look, I don’t blame you for thinking this could be a trick or whatever, but it’s not!’ The smoke was getting thicker, darker, and Rose beat on the door more urgently. ‘And I don’t know what you keep the other side of that door, but something’s definitely caught fire, OK? I mean, if you only had smoke detectors on this crummy ship you’d –’ A high-pitched beeping started up at ear-splitting volume. ‘OK, so you do. Now will you listen?’
The door abruptly opened to reveal a male, swarthy pilot the other side. ‘Back up,’ he snarled, jabbing a small, nasty-looking gun in her face.
Rose quickly did as he ordered. Once the pilot had stepped through to the cabin, the door closed behind him. He crossed to the bulkhead.
‘Something in the hold,’ he muttered, and placed his palm on a metal square beside the broad doorway. The door hummed open. A load more smoke belched out from the hold.
While the pilot was dragged into it.
Rose heard his frantic shout – then silence. She backed away to the cockpit door, but she had no way to open it. She started to choke on the smoke now filling the cabin.
There was a clattering noise from inside the hold.
A rushing,
whooshing noise – a fire extinguisher maybe.
The alarm cut off
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abruptly.
‘Who’s there?’ Rose said in alarm, looking around with streaming eyes for something she could use to defend herself. There was nothing. ‘I said, who’s there?’
Then a dark figure loomed out through the smoke.
‘Just your friendly neighbourhood block-walker,’ said Dennel with a bashful grin.
‘Dennel!’ Rose stared at him in horror. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
He frowned. ‘Duh! Rescuing you! I had to hide when Norris came for you. I overheard what he said, and I saw what that creature inside Blanc did to him. Saw her chase after you. . . ’
‘Oh, terrific.’ She threw up her hands in the air. ‘I didn’t need rescuing from this ship, thanks very much! It’s taking me where I want to go!’ She choked again on the smoke. ‘Justice Prime, where the Doctor is!’
Dennel looked crestfallen. ‘But. . . I thought you’d be pleased. We can get away now!’
‘I can’t go anywhere without the Doctor or the TARDIS.’ She peered past him into the smoky hold. ‘Now, what have you done to that pilot?’
‘Hit him on the head with an extinguisher. He’s out cold.’ Rose held her breath, ducked into the hold and re-emerged, pulling on the pilot’s prone body. ‘Help me, then!’
Dennel saw what she was doing and together they raised the pilot’s hand up to the touch pad beside the cockpit door. It buzzed open smoothly and they collapsed inside the small control room, breathing the clear air gratefully. Through the wraparound window, she looked out over the star-speckled blackness of space and t
he bright baubles of nearby planets. The vista was a lot easier on the eye than the cockpit controls – all nameless clumps of lights and switches and blinking screens, gaudy and incomprehensible.
‘Cheer me up,’ said Rose. ‘Tell me you can fly this thing.’
Dennel looked at the controls. ‘Most of it will be automatic. When the pilot wakes up we can force him to give us control.’
‘I don’t want control! I want to go where I was going!’
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‘But – they’ll throw away the key if they catch me now.’ Dennel looked crumpled and miserable, a big smear of soot on one cheek. ‘I thought you were in danger. Thought you’d be pleased to see me.’
Rose sighed and patted his leg. ‘Look, I am glad to see you, OK?’
She smiled despite herself. ‘You Muppet! How’d you even get on-board here?’
‘When Blanc chased after you, I saw Norris was dead. So I took his ID-scan from his body before she could get rid of it.’ He grinned at her despite himself. ‘And suddenly it’s, like, access all areas. So when I heard Robsen would be setting up the shuttle for you, I hid myself on-board.’
‘To rescue me. . . and to get right away from that big ugly monster you saw, right?’
There was a guilty look in Dennel’s eyes. ‘What was it?’
‘I’ve seen things like it before. They were called Slitheen.’ She shuddered. ‘They’re killers. Speaking of which, you could have killed us with that dumb fire!’
‘Nah. I’m good with flames.’ Dennel produced a slim silver lighter from his pocket. ‘Fire’s what I do, see?’ He scraped the flints and a small flame flickered up, its dance holding him transfixed. ‘I was an arsonist, Rose. That’s why they put me inside.’
Rose watched him studying the flame and felt suddenly cold. She remembered Riz teasing her back in the borstal, knowing what she didn’t – He’s hot all right. You’re playing with fire there, Rose.
‘Did you hurt anyone?’
‘No. I only torched empty places.’ He flicked off the flame and flicked it on again. ‘A distraction, for my dad, see? While I sent somewhere up in smoke and caused a fuss, he was knocking off the bank round the corner or whatever.’
