by Doctor Who
‘It’s OK,’ Rose said kindly. ‘She’s your mate. You only just met me.’
‘Listen to me.’ Faltato’s five eyes narrowed at Solomon and Rose.
‘You’ve been held in a hidden Valnaxi stronghold, haven’t you? How many Valnaxi are there?’
‘I dunno,’ said Rose. ‘It all gets blurry. There were these voices in my head. . . eyes inside my body.’ She frowned, rubbing at her arm.
‘The Doctor got us back. He must still be down there. They’ve got him!’
‘Excellent,’ Faltato declared triumphantly. ‘Not just a hidden Valnaxi 168
stronghold, but a populated one! What better to get a thug-king like Ottak back onside than the chance to personally slaughter the last of his bitterest enemies?’
‘The gunfire’s stopped,’ Solomon hissed.
‘But I’m just getting started.’ Before anyone could react, Faltato jumped up, grabbed hold of Rose and half-dragged, half-carried her over towards the entrance to the Wurm-infested cavern.
‘No need to stop the chat,’ said the Doctor, springing aside as the magma form lashed out a molten tendril. ‘Tell me why you had to kidnap Solomon if you already had his genetic material from the plaque?’
No answer. The incandescent blob came rolling towards him again.
‘All right, let’s see if I can guess.’ He took a running jump up and over the guardian, felt the heat of its flickering form through the soles of his sneakers. ‘Obvious answer, you didn’t get enough material from him. He probably barely touched your silly plaque. It’s not like he was trying to deactivate anything, was it?’ He backed away through the stinging curtain of smoke, tried not to choke. ‘So you needed a proper study – it’s not ideal, but if this is the form you’re gonna be stuck in, you want to make the best of things. You don’t want to be lumbering about all misshapen like your mutant golems up there – it’s fine for the cannon fodder, but not very pretty, not very artistic. . . ’
The male and the female advanced on him.
‘But you had Solomon, so why take Rose too?’ The Doctor leapt lightly up on to one of the throne-perches, careful not to crush the ancient, burnished body underfoot. ‘And why do you want me so badly you can’t just kill me?’
‘Wurms are capable of reproducing themselves independently by the hundreds,’ said the bitter, crackling voice. ‘Solomon is a male.
Our study of male and female forms shows us that only the mature female of the species is equipped to grow offspring.’
‘ Vive la difference, eh?’ He vaulted over the high back of the throne as the blob surged up to get him. ‘Ever met the French, by the way?
Never mind. So – you tried to copy Rose, kept her and Solomon in 169
some kind of stasis so they wouldn’t mutate till you’d got your templates right. You’re getting closer, but still not quite there, are you?’
‘Human reproduction is clumsy and inefficient,’ the voice went on.
‘It would take centuries to grow enough bodies to sustain our sleeping people. But now we have a detailed genetic blueprint of the human form we can assimilate them without mutation, replace their minds with our own – in a fraction of the time.’
As the old voice spoke, the male appeared at the other end of the line of thrones, blocking the Doctor’s retreat. ‘That is why we must stop the Wurms destroying this planet. Why they must die here.’
‘We can improve humans,’ the voice went on. ‘Style them. Refashion them in this image.’
‘They’re not just bodies, clay for you to mould like you do your golems,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘They’re people. Individuals. Brilliant, wonderful individual individuals, leading lives of their own.’
‘We have sensed your intimate knowledge of this planet and its peoples,’ said the dry and dusty voice. ‘It will be of great assistance to us as we move to take control of Earth.’
‘We will rule over the surplus humans and make armies from them,’
said the male, ‘Armies that will finally drive out the Wurms from our home world.’
‘We are desperate,’ said the female softly, almost apologetic. ‘We must return. It has been so long –’
‘I’ll never help you,’ the Doctor swore. ‘I’ll stop you.’
The seething magma form billowed over the top of the throne beside him, ready to engulf him.
The Doctor flinched from the ferocity of the creature’s heat and his back slammed against the wall. With sudden inspiration he grabbed hold of one of the conduits snaking up to the machinery set high in the walls. As the male and the female rushed to get him, as the magma surged forwards, he hauled himself up and out of reach, scaling the rock like a seasoned climber.
‘There can be no escape, Doctor,’ said the female.
He glared down at the creatures gathering to get him, pressed his 170
head against the hot, barren rock-face and did his best to convince himself she wasn’t right.
Rose struggled desperately in Faltato’s grip. Her body felt like it had been put through a blender, every nerve and muscle was frayed, but no way was she giving up and hanging limp in the grip of the tongue-meister’s pincers.
‘Get off her!’ Basel shouted, and he, Adiel and Solomon began to follow.
But Faltato cracked out five tongues at once like whips. ‘Keep back!’
he warned them.
As he pushed Rose up against the split in the rock, she guessed by the smoking bones lying around that the Wurms had come out victorious against Golden Bambi’s evil animal army. The big Wurm wearing a crown had to be their king, and the others were gathered round him as he operated a data-get with the help of some robotic probes sticking out of his stumpy shoulders.
‘Hear me, Ottak!’ Faltato shouted. ‘There is a secret Valnaxi lair hidden somewhere close by, reachable only by teleport. That’s where you’ll find the masterworks – and the last of the Valnaxi!’
King Ottak casually fired a laser bolt in their direction and Rose flinched as her face was peppered with shrapnel. ‘I witnessed the warp-hole opening with my own senses.’
‘They’ve been living on in secret all this time!’ Faltato cried desperately. ‘I can help you get to them.’
‘I shall investigate without your aid.’ A large blue centipede crawled up the Wurrn’s muddy body and clung to the side of his head, as if it was whispering in an invisible ear. ‘My tech-bugs have recorded the warp-hole’s energy signature.’
‘But –’
‘Korr, with your stretcher’s motive systems damaged, you cannot accompany us,’ said Ottak. ‘Be revenged on Faltato and all his blithering bipeds instead, and welcome us upon our return.’
‘May your victory be wondrous, King Ottak,’ grunted Korr. Then he turned his attention to Faltato and Rose.
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Rose felt sick as she watched him struggle towards them. He was only half the Wurm the others were, but no less terrifying – like an enormous maggot whose body ended in an open wound, mechanical innards trailing from the severed flesh.
As Korr fired his gun at them, Faltato quickly ducked away from the split in the rock.
‘Couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?’ said Rose crossly, pulling herself free of his grip.
‘There’s no way out,’ hissed Adiel. ‘Faltato blocked it off.’
‘How was I to know?’ the monster moaned.
Rose crept back to the hole in the wall, peered out.
‘Squad!’ Ottak was commanding. ‘Set all comm-link implants to frequency seven-zero-nine-gamma and broadcast at volume ten. We will force the warp-hole to reopen.’
Then she saw Korr slither back into view from behind the Wurm transporter. He fired his weapon and she ducked back inside as a bolt of energy missed her head by millimetres.
‘It’s just him we’ve got to deal with,’ she said. ‘The others are gonna go through that teleport thing. I’ve got to get after them.’
Basel frowned. ‘You’re crazy!’
�
�I told you, the Doctor must still be down there. He needs our help!
So we’re gonna need a plan. . . ’ Rose looked up at the spindly stalactites in the cavern roof and then smiled at Faltato. ‘And someone who’s good with his tongue.’
The Doctor clung on to his conduit while the Valnaxi debated below.
‘Our final attempt to destroy the Wurms has failed,’ hissed the disembodied Valnaxi voice. ‘Sending through the human male and female failed to distract King Ottak. The last of the drones has been destroyed.’
‘Alert!’ croaked a new voice, wavering and grave. ‘Teleport is activating. The Wurms have found the trigger frequency.’
‘They have found us,’ cried the female.
A horrible squelching, squashing noise carried from outside the throne room as the Wurms moved forwards.
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‘Attack!’ bellowed the familiar voice of King Ottak. ‘Kill everyone.
Destroy everything. Attack!’
‘Everyone set?’ Rose hissed, clutching the sonic screwdriver tight in her hand.
‘This is taking liberties,’ Faltato complained.
The alien was perched on a high ledge opposite the entrance to the Wurm cavern. He had played out a record-breaking six of his tongues, wrapping them round stalactites poking down from the dark ceiling, and Solomon and Adiel were standing right behind him, holding him in position. In turn, Faltato was using all four pincers to hold on to Basel, clutching him like a dad might hold on to his son on a roller-coaster ride.
Rose checked Korr was on course. ‘He’s almost here,’ she reported, tensing herself to give the signal.
‘Submit!’ Korr gurgled, wriggling closer and closer to the split in the rock. ‘Submit and I shall kill you quickly. There is nothing you can do to stop me.’
‘Yeah?’ murmured Rose, pressing herself back against the cave wall as she signalled across to the others – now!
Solomon and Adiel launched Faltato from the ledge.
He swung from his tongues, slackening some while tightening up others, guiding himself through the air. Basel stayed snug in the grip of Faltato’s pincers, holding both his legs out in front of him.
The moment Korr pushed his armoured head in through the entrance to the cavern, Rose hit the screwdriver. Distracted by the blue light, the Wurm turned – and was kicked so hard in the face by Basel’s big clodhoppers, his truncated body did somersaults through the air.
He landed with a wet, greasy splat on his back on a rocky slope and lay still.
Faltato released his tongues and flolloped down in the middle of the cavern, his dainty legs splaying everywhere.
‘We did it!’ Basel shouted, rolling away from him.
‘How undignified,’ Faltato complained.
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‘Now get out of here, all of you!’ Rose shouted at them. She was already sprinting towards the pall of golden smoke, which still lingered in mid-air in the centre of the cavern.
‘You can’t just run in there,’ Adiel shouted after her.
‘You’ve got no cover, no protection,’ Basel added. Rose skidded to a halt beside the floating egg-shaped transporter. He was right. What the hell could she do? Then, mind racing, she took in the assortment of canvases and statues piled up inside the transport.
And a slow smile spread over her face.
Still clinging on, the Doctor watched helplessly as Ottak led a squad of twenty Wurms straight into the throne room.
‘Fight!’ the ancient voice crackled round the room. ‘Or all is lost.’
At once, the magma guardian split itself into four smaller blobs and rolled forwards to attack. Three Wurms were turned into golden statues – only to be blasted by their fellow troopers a moment later.
One of the magma blobs wasn’t quite swift enough on the attack and found itself half-buried in clods of thick mud, then devoured by the teeming insects.
The male and the female were crouching behind the thrones out of sight, looking terrified. And with good reason. Ottak was pushing through his writhing warriors, transfixed by the bodies on the thrones.
‘Valnaxi!’ the king roared. ‘Surrender your treasures to me!’
Then one of the Wurms reared up, saw the Doctor hanging there, shot a laser bolt in his direction.
‘Oi!’ the Doctor complained, ducking aside. ‘I’m neutral in all this.’
The Wurm fired again and burned through the conduit beneath the Doctor’s foot. Thick, white-hot magma spurted from the hole in the pipe, spattering down on the battling throng. Wurms screamed as their soil sizzled, while the guardians seemed to revel in the downpour.
Grimly, the Doctor climbed higher up the damaged conduit towards the rocky roof, past various panels in the wall. ‘Guidance and cruise systems,’ he noted, interested despite himself. ‘Not just a throne room, then – a flight deck!’ He glanced behind him – and saw on the wall 174
directly opposite, above the entrance to the throne room, that one gleaming panel was hugging the stone. ‘Must be the propulsion systems.’ Another bolt of laser fire buzzed past him and the Doctor looked down at the Wurms crossly. ‘Don’t you ever learn?’
Clearly they didn’t, as two of them fired again, nearly taking his head off. Perhaps he could put their single-minded belligerence down to their not having had a positive role model. For beneath them, boiling lava was raining down on King Ottak, scorching skin and soil alike, but he seemed oblivious to anything except crowing over the remains of the Valnaxi Council.
‘Beg for your lives!’ he commanded, spitting jet after jet of black bile at the bodies. ‘In the name of the five curves of the Wurm Empire, I kill you!’
‘You can never kill us,’ boomed the disembodied voice.
But the king had already opened fire with his laser, blasting bolt after bolt into the great bronzed bodies, scorching them, destroying them. ‘Die!’ he wailed madly, in the downpour of lava. ‘I shall ingest your blood, excrete it into my finest soil and ingest it again! Diiiiiiie!’
‘Stop this!’ the Doctor shouted down, over the pandemonium. ‘Ot-tak, you don’t need to. . . ’
But as if fired up by the lava, two of the guardians were flowing towards him. Blasted full of mud and maggots, one broke into smaller balls to minimise the damage. But the other hurled itself on to Ottak’s back.
The Wurm king howled with pain as the plating spread over his segmented skin. But like a monster possessed he kept beating his blackened head down upon the remnants of the bodies again and again, swiping scraps of their ancient flesh to the floor and grinding them against his belly. The Doctor looked away as the Wurm’s screams stopped dead. The magma might have consumed his body, but Ottak’s mind had been consumed by his blind hatred long ago.
The other Wurms were fighting on, the male and the female their targets now. The Doctor stared down helplessly – then suddenly remembered the explosive phial he’d cooked up back in Fynn’s lab. He reached in his pocket, pulled it out.
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He only had the one shot – what to do with it?
Then suddenly a Wurm transporter came racing through the throne room’s entrance like a bat into hell. It sent Wurms scattering like skittles, squashing a magma form as it landed square on top of it.
Then the hatch sprang open to reveal a very familiar pilot.
‘Rose!’ the Doctor yelled, and he laughed with delight. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’
‘Rescuing you,’ she shouted back, kicking a Wurm cannon aside and hurling the sonic screwdriver up to him. ‘Someone’s got to save the day!’
‘How right you are.’ He stuck the phial between his teeth, caught the sonic in his left hand, pulled free a conduit snaking up to the roof with his right.
Then he leaned back, spat the phial at the guidance controls and launched himself into space, gripping the thick cable. The control panel exploded noisily as he swung out over the smoking chaos of battle below, clear across the throne room, before throwing himself at the golden panel. H
e gasped, clinging on with one hand to a large gleaming lever. ‘Propulsion units, propulsion units. . . ’ He started tracing the circuit – through a sudden golden smokescreen.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed the accusing, crackling voice in his ears.
‘As a matter of fact. . . ’ The Doctor grinned wildly, gave two short bursts on the sonic and triggered the controls. ‘I’m taking off.’
Then he dropped down below, landing squarely on top of the hovering transporter which Rose had steered beneath him.
‘Out of here!’ he shouted, dodging the mud-splat of a Wurm cannon as the throne room started to shake. The bubble lurched off and he clutched hold of the translucent shell to stop himself slipping.
Golden shapes were flitting beneath the surface.
‘Rose?’ the Doctor yelled in alarm. The bubble came to a halt in the middle of the arena he’d first arrived in – and as the hatch swung open, he saw that the male and the female were curled up inside, together with Rose.
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The Doctor jumped down and grabbed her, pulled her away from the golden couple. ‘You OK?’
She nodded shakily. ‘Couldn’t stop them dumping the artwork and coming aboard.’ She lowered her voice. ‘That one looks like me.’
‘You reckon?’ He slipped a protective arm round her. ‘Not a patch.’
A vibration had started up. Through the cushion of air they stood on, the Doctor could see the lava churning and slopping far below.
‘You have activated the drive systems,’ said the male calmly. ‘Initiated launch sequence.’
‘I had to,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is your war. Not Earth’s. Whoever wins or loses, this planet’s people will be destroyed.’
Rose smiled at him. ‘So you’re forcing a draw?’
He nodded as the arena shook with the blast of some colossal explosion deep beneath them. ‘The ship’s gonna take off. And it’ll take a fair-sized chunk of this volcano with it.’
‘Then we’ve got to get out of here,’ said Rose. ‘Where’s the teleport?’
‘Non-functioning,’ the male responded. ‘The power feeds were damaged in the fighting.’
