by Doctor Who
‘By right of conquest!’ Faltato snapped, slipping the screwdriver into the pocket of his immaculate suit jacket.
‘Oh. My. God.’ Rose felt her blood run cold. A dark undulating shape had resolved itself from out of the starry indigo overhead. It was like staring up at the vast, fleshy underbelly of some huge, segmented creature that had come crawling out of the crevices of deepest space. And it was plummeting to earth at an alarming rate. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a spaceship,’ said the Doctor.
‘This ain’t even happening,’ said Basel in a small voice. ‘No way.’
Rose wished she could agree. ‘Never seen a spaceship like that before.’
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‘I have.’ The Doctor looked at Faltato, pursed his lips. ‘So they’re your sponsors? Suppose it makes sense. Not happy with wiping out the Valnaxi, they’re coming to crush whatever was left behind.’
‘Who are?’ Rose asked, frowning. But suddenly huge, puckering mouths opened up in the quivering base of the thing. They spat out thick, foul-smelling muck at an incredible rate, and Rose and Basel almost gagged. In a matter of seconds, two entire crop fields were buried beneath a mountain of the stuff. ‘The TARDIS,’ she breathed.
‘Doctor, the TARDIS is under there!’
The strange ship squelched down, using the muck mountain to cushion its impact. A shudder passed through the ranks of the golems.
Rose stared transfixed as the sides of the muck-mountain began to shake. Piles of manure were knocked clear and crumbled down the stinking slopes.
Then suddenly the mud was alive with dozens of huge, monstrous shapes, squirming, writhing, forcing their way through. Each was the size of a baby elephant, with a pale, glistening, segmented body like a giant earthworm – Rose couldn’t tell where the neck ended and the head began, there were no discernible features. They wore strange suits of crumbling white armour round their Wiggling torsos, with special attachments on their stubby arms. As they coiled and slithered down the mudslide, she could see no legs, only the fat, muscular lower body, raw pink segments rippling.
‘What are those things?’ Basel croaked.
‘They’re called Wurms,’ said the Doctor. ‘Fought the Valnaxi across seventeen star systems.’
Rose shook her head. ‘Just for that one planet?’
‘They’d already taken its neighbours. It was perfectly placed for the Wurms to expand their empire out into space – or for their opponents to land a bridgehead and expand into Wurm territory. They couldn’t just leave it alone in case someone else conquered it. . . ’ He shrugged.
‘It was something like that, anyway. They probably forgot themselves after the first few centuries of war.’
‘The Wurms forget nothing,’ said Faltato. ‘They have crushed the Valnaxi’s last efforts to resist and now they will seize the final spoils.’
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At the sight of the Wurms, the golems pressed forwards, screeching, roaring and howling towards the enormous mud pile and the writhing invaders.
‘So Africa becomes the final battleground,’ the Doctor murmured, as the carnage and chaos began.
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Adiel stared out through the dusty window of the labourers’ block, with Fynn and Guwe crouched beside her. She couldn’t believe her eyes and ears, and wished she didn’t have to believe her nose. It had been her idea to hide and shelter there, thinking they could barricade themselves inside if all else failed. But all else hadn’t just failed – it had crashed and burned and gone crazy. Spaceships? Worms as big as a jeep?
Adiel kept pinching herself, desperately hoping she would wake up back in the common room and find Kanjuchi making his usual dread-ful coffee.
But she didn’t wake up. She only bruised.
The giant worms, caked in white, sticky mud, had a number of guns affixed to a sort of stumpy shoulder. One fired clod after clod of earth from its end with a buzzing, crackling sound. Thick muck splattered over the golems in a sticky wave.
Adiel was close enough to see one of the human golems take a load in the chest. For a few moments, he ignored it and carried on walking. But there were living things in that earth. Squirming, scuttling, hungry things. They started devouring the gleaming shield of magma, along with any flesh left beneath.
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More gobs of mud fired from the giant earthworms’ stubby cannons, seething with hungry life. The man-golem stopped still, his mouth hanging open in a piercing scream as the bugs ate their fill of him. Seconds later there was nothing left but a charred, misshapen skeleton. The same thing was happening again and again, the ranks of gleaming gold giving way to ash and mangled bone as the mud splattered through the golem ranks.
But the flying defenders – the bats, the vultures, the sausage flies –made harder targets and enjoyed more success. They swooped down on the giant worms, greedily tearing chunks from the pink, wrinkled flesh. One of the worms started flailing about in agony, a fluid like wallpaper paste gushing from its gashes. Another sprayed jets of dark liquid from its blind, glistening head.’ venom maybe, or perhaps it was simply spitting in contempt.
‘This can’t be real,’ breathed Guwe as the noise of the conflict grew louder and louder. He turned and grabbed hold of Fynn by the throat.
‘I don’t know what stunt you’re trying to pull here, Director, or how you managed to. . . to drug me or hypnotise me or whatever you’ve done –’
‘You think you’re hallucinating all this?’ Fynn knocked his arm away.
Then go outside, don’t let me stop you.’
‘Shut up!’ Guwe shoved Fynn back against the wall, punched him in the guts, karate chopped him on the back of the neck.
‘Stop it!’ Adiel shouted.
‘I’ll teach you to mess with my head,’ Guwe hissed, raising his gun,
‘by blowing off yours.’
Rose felt her insides churn as the battle got messier, more violent, more and more desperate.
The Doctor surveyed the scene sadly. ‘So much for worms being the farmer’s friend. I know that they’re supposed to turn the soil, but this is taking things a bit too far.’
‘It’s ruined,’ breathed Basel. The whole agri-unit. Messed up for ever.’
‘What’s with the mud-guns?’ said Rose.
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‘An established Wurm method of controlling the guardians’ converted servants,’ Faltato explained. ‘The mud is teeming with insects specially reared to feed on the magma and whatever flesh it is controlling.’
‘You’ve seen battles like this before, then?’
‘He’s started them,’ said the Doctor coldly.
‘My job is simply to identify that the warren is genuine and not a booby-trapped decoy, as so many are,’ Faltato retorted. ‘The Valnaxi laid many false trails. Rumour has it that centuries into the conflict, once their race finally accepted they stood no chance of winning, the Valnaxi Council built one final stronghold to house the last and greatest of their race’s treasures. This is the place.’
‘Oh, so that’s what you are,’ the Doctor murmured, his eyes wide and dark. ‘Not a thief. An expert. An antiques expert. The David Dickinson of interstellar art.’
Faltato clacked his pincers. ‘I, sir, am a member of the Hadropilatic Fellowship, and an authority on –’
‘– hard times, I would guess, since you’ve hired yourself out to a race as pathologically unstable as the Wurms,’ the Doctor went on, casually, but Rose could see the anger creeping into his bland, boyish expression. ‘What’s your cut, then? What bunce do you get that makes slaughter like this – devastation like this – acceptable to you, Faltato?’
He bellowed with rage: ‘ What? ’
‘One per cent of the value of the haul, and the credit for identifying the final Valnaxi art warren,’ said the creature calmly. ‘Once news of that gets around, my reputation will be re-established and the phone won’t stop ringing.’
Rose stared out dismally over the fighting, then turned to the Doctor. �
��Are we just gonna stand around up here and let that happen?’
‘No,’ said Faltato, ‘you are coming with me. The beacon’s function is fulfilled. Our means of deliverance is already approaching.’
‘What’s that?’ said Basel distantly. ‘Looks like a bubble. Big white bubble.’
‘Sort of cocoon, I think, actually,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or is it an egg sac? Yeah, an air-thrust egg sac! Adaptive technology – Wurms are 109
all for adaptive technology, I read that somewhere. Well, that’s lovely, that’ll hold us good and strong.’ The Doctor looked at Rose. ‘I think we’ll be off.’
‘Stay here,’ Faltato snapped. His tongue lashed out, slapping itself around the Doctor’s neck with a horrible slurping sound.
‘You were right, Rose,’ the Doctor gasped. ‘Very gifted in the tongue department.’
‘Get off him!’ Rose shouted.
Basel cried out as another tongue, string-thin, flicked out like a fishing line to hook him round the waist.
‘My flossing tongue,’ Faltato explained, baring a set of unexpectedly sharp and dazzling teeth as a third tongue splashed out like a long grey eel. ‘And this is the tongue I eat with. . . ’
It came within a centimetre of touching her arm – but the Doctor dived to the ground, yanking on the tongue so hard it spoiled Faltato’s aim. The monster hissed and tightened its slobbering grip on his neck.
‘Run – for – it – Rose!’ the Doctor panted.
‘What about you?’ she shouted. But Faltato’s tongue was already snaking towards her and while she was free, at least there was a chance that she could do something. Something apart from slipping and falling to her death down the steep foothills, she reflected, and staggered and stumbled down as fast as she could. Her bad ankle burned, like a warning to slow down. Yesterday when she’d done this there had been only a glowing blob to outrun, and for a moment she actually felt nostalgic at the thought.
Because now she was heading down into a war zone. And the fighting was coming her way.
Adiel watched Guwe standing over Fynn’s body, frightened, fuming, one finger curled round the trigger of his gun. ‘You can’t trick me,’ he snarled, gold teeth glinting in his grimace.
‘He’s unconscious, can’t you see that?’ she told him. ‘What good will killing him do?’
Guwe turned on her, a murderous look in his dark eyes. ‘Maybe you can explain for him.’
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She felt tears rising. ‘I can’t explain a damn thing.’
He advanced on her, started to smile. Then the smile froze. He jerked up the gun so it pointed at her head.
Before Adiel could react, there was a loud slamming sound behind her, the sound of cracking glass. She whirled round, saw a bat-creature twitching, pressed up against the fractured pane. As she watched, tiny red and white millipedes squirmed over it, reducing it to a tiny, smoking corpse in just a matter of seconds. Adiel pressed her knuckles against her mouth as the skull stayed lodged gruesomely in the centre of the radial cracks while the rest of the body fell away.
Guwe stared through the window, clutching hold of the gun as if he was afraid it might flyaway, shaking his head in disbelief. Then, silently, he stormed over to the door.
‘Go out there and you’re dead,’ Adiel warned him.
‘I’m not dying here so he can run his sick experiments on my corpse,’
Guwe snarled.
She stared. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’ll find a way out. I always do.’ He slammed the door shut behind him.
Trembling, Adiel stared down at Fynn. He looked like he was sleeping, looked peaceful and innocent.
Experiments. Corpse. Regards from Isako.
She got to her feet, threw open the door. ‘I said, what did you say!’ Blood roaring through her temples, she chased after him. ‘Wait!’
she shouted, throwing open the door to the prefab building. But she could barely hear herself over the crackle of the worms’ cannons, the screeching of the bats and birds, the yells and whines of dying golems.
‘What experiments? Answer me!’
Guwe spared her the briefest of glances back. ‘Let me put you out of your misery,’ he said casually, raising his gun to shoot her.
‘Look out!’ screamed a voice from the darkness, as if Adiel hadn’t noticed the danger. The same second she ducked down behind the door, she heard a loud, sizzling crackle. Then something kicked the door open, knocked her flying backwards and dived for cover beside her.
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It was Rose Tyler.
Adiel’s jaw dropped. ‘You. . . ’
‘Me,’ she agreed, a hard look in her eyes. ‘Sorry about your friend out there.’
‘He wasn’t my friend.’
‘I’m still sorry.’
Adiel scrambled up, looked out through the dusty glass. Guwe’s jaw had dropped too – but there was no skin left to catch it. Millipedes squirmed over the bare skull and there were gaps in its grin where the gold teeth had once been. She looked away, revolted, willing herself not to be sick.
‘There was this mud-gun thing,’ Rose began awkwardly.
Adiel nodded and pointed to where a couple of the red and white millipedes were wriggling under the door. ‘We’d better get out of here,’ she croaked, heading back towards the shabby dorm building, her mind turning in ten different dazed directions but feeling weirdly calm. An old boyfriend back in Moundou, one who’d seen action –he’d told her that the more terrifying the situation, the less frightened you felt. There was just no time to be afraid. Now she was starting to understand what he’d meant.
‘I thought you and Basel would still be safely out the way of all this in the lava tubes,’ she told Rose.
‘“Safely” didn’t come into it much,’ Rose replied coldly. ‘Solomon’s dead, the Doctor and Basel are being held by some alien thing with too many of everything who’s gonna take them to see these giant Wurms, who are blasting the hell out of the golems with killer mud so they can pinch their art treasures.’ She stopped for a breath. ‘We’ve got to find a way of getting them out and –’
But Adiel had burst into tears, eyes screwed up tight, fists clenched, trembling.
‘Hey.’ Rose put her arms round the girl. ‘Look, it’s all right –’
‘I think Director Fynn has been using dead human bodies as part of his research here,’ Adiel sobbed. ‘My mum and dad among them.’
‘Oh. . . ’ Rose stared at her, flummoxed. ‘OK. Maybe it’s not all right.’
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Adiel stared at her through her tears, the sounds of the nightmare battle outside growing louder, harsher. ‘This could be my last night on Earth,’ she said, sniffing loudly. ‘So I need to find out fast. Don’t I?’
Slowly, Rose nodded and reached out for Adiel’s hand. ‘Um, yeah.
Yeah, s’pose you do.’
‘I’m sorry, Adiel.’ Fynn’s voice made her spin round. ‘Life doesn’t always come with neat edges.’
He was looking down at the floor, shamefaced and fearful. Flanking him were two of the giant earthworm monsters, rearing up like inflated king cobras. Their tapering, segmented heads peered round blindly beneath their silver helmets, and now she discovered how badly they stank inside their muddy armour. And at this range, Adiel could see that their stubby arms were encased in electronics, enhanced by robotic parts. Their cannons were somehow grafted on to the pale flesh; the combat helmet was almost a part of them.
‘Techno-worms,’ Rose cringed. ‘Triffic.’
One of the creatures reared up over them and Adiel recoiled in horror. ‘You are prisoners of war,’ it said in a strained monotone, shuffling forwards on its tail, or its belly, or whatever it was. ‘Ambulate ahead of us. Now.’
Rose shrugged helplessly at Adiel. ‘At least they’re not shooting on sight.’
‘Attempt to escape and you will be eaten alive,’ the other Wurm informed them, wiggling its cannon.
Numb with fear, Adiel kept he
r eyes on Fynn, made him her focus as she and Rose were herded ahead of the slithering Wurms and back out into the stifling heat of the noisy night. Don’t let me die, she prayed to the God she wished she still believed in, not yet. Not till I know for sure.
Basel peeped out at the crazy world below through his fingers, as the crusty bubble floated high over the battlefield. This had to be the longest, nastiest night of his life. His senses were spinning from all that he’d seen and done; it was impossible to take in, like stumbling through some hideous nightmare.
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The Doctor just sat there, grinning beside Faltato. ‘I’ve never flown by egg sac before,’ he confessed cheerily, peering out through the opaque sides. ‘How does it work, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ yawned Faltato.
‘I reckon it’s powered by breaking down bacteria in the lining to create a propulsion jet of gas,’ the Doctor went on. ‘What do you reckon, Basel?’
‘Solomon is dead.’ Basel glared at him, massaging his bruised waist from where Faltato had tongue-lashed him. ‘He had two kids, and they’re gonna want to know what happened and I’m gonna have to tell them. . . what?’ The Doctor said nothing, gazing out over the chaos down below. ‘You don’t even care, do you?’
‘I care about a lot of things,’ the Doctor informed him. ‘And I’ve got a lot of questions I want answered. Like, who’s in charge round here, Faltato?’
‘King Ottak presides over this clew of Wurms,’ said Faltato, ‘with the assistance of his Knight-Major, Korr.’
The bubble suddenly changed course, dropped sharply from the sky.
Basel’s heart sank in sympathy. He realised that they were now directly over the Wurm ship. The ship’s hull was gently pulsating, almost as if it was breathing.
Somehow the bubble seemed to pass straight through the hull and sank down into a transparent tube. Then suddenly the skin shrank back, like a gum-bubble punctured. The tube melted away and Faltato shoved the Doctor and Basel forwards with his mean little pincers.
