Doctor Who BBCN20 - The Pirate Loop

by Doctor Who

  He spun on his heel, surprising the mouthless men, and hurried down the alleyway between the large machines to where the TARDIS

  waited. It took a moment to find the key and then he was inside. As always, stepping over the threshold filled him with sudden ease. His head felt clearer, his body less sore.

  The console still sparked and smoked from where the ship had 126

  crashed into the Brilliant. The Doctor hurried over, swatting away the smoke and working the various controls. Yes, he could see it clearly now. They’d crashed because the Brilliant sat just outside space and time. Like jumping onto a moving bus, only it turned out to be rushing towards you.

  The gravitic anomaliser protested as he wound it round to eight. He keyed in the values of the Brilliant’s two different Kodicek readings, and fired up the TARDIS’s temporal shields. The idea was that he could give the Brilliant a nudge at the right angle and the starship’s own systems would do the rest. He wouldn’t even need to use the TARDIS’s own reality-warping talents.

  And then a thought struck him. A brilliant one.

  He hurried round the console, pulling up the floor grating to expose the thick black cables coiling underneath. A bit of sonic screwdriver action, and he’d separated one of the connections. Bits of what might have been scrambled egg dripped from the open ends of cable.

  He hurried back out of the TARDIS, bringing the cable so that it spooled out behind him, still connected at one end to the machinery of the TARDIS. It took a bit of negotiating the cable through the alleyway between the Brilliant’s huge and noisy engines, like getting the flex from a vacuum cleaner to fit round chairs and tables. But he reached the controls of the experimental drives, and then just had to find something that he might connect the cable to. The control desk of the experimental drive had input ports, but none quite fitted.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Should have thought of that.’ He looked quickly all around for something that might help, but he knew there was little he could do. And then one of the mouthless men came forward with what looked like a squeezy bottle of ketchup. The Doctor tried plugging the TARDIS cable into each of the different ports, and once he’d identified the best fit the mouthless man sealed it in with the jelly-like sealant that oozed from the squeezy bottle. It was the same fast-acting, impossibly strong stuff that had sealed the hole in the side of the ship when Archibald’s capsule had torn through it.

  ‘Well done you,’ said the Doctor to the mouthless man as he tested the join was secure. In fact, the join was stronger than the cable was 127

  itself. The Doctor hurried back to the TARDIS.

  A group of mouthless men huddled at the doorway, peering into the huge interior but not daring to venture any further.

  ‘Well?’ said the Doctor. ‘Aren’t you going to say how it’s bigger on the inside?’ The mouthless men turned to look at him. ‘No, I guess not,’ he said. ‘Look, you can ride with me but it’s going to be bumpy.

  Or you can stay here, which will probably be the same. Your choice.’

  It was a little disappointing, but none of the mouthless men would come with him. He shrugged, ducked between them into the TARDIS

  and dashed over to the controls. The mouthless men watched him from the open doorway, the thick black cable snaking between their legs back to the controls of the experimental drive. He could see them wanting to ask him what he had just done. ‘I’ve bolted your ship to mine,’ he said. ‘And now I can run your systems from here. But my ship can also compensate for some of the loopy stuff happening. So I might even be able to control aspects of the loop itself. And then we’re laughing. Ha ha!’

  The mouthless men nodded, though not as keenly as he’d have liked. Still, there was little he could do about that now.

  ‘You probably want to stand back a bit,’ he told them. They re-treated in fear as he worked the controls in front of him. It had been a while since he’d last tried to take off with the doors still open, he thought. Probably because it was such a dangerous thing to do. Dangerous and reckless. Dangerous and reckless and irresponsible. Just his thing, really.

  He released the TARDIS handbrake.

  With the familiar low rasping, grating from deep within its own strange engines, the TARDIS began to warp the material of space-time around it. The Doctor stood resolute at the controls as what might have been a tornado tore through the open doors and sent papers, sweets and his 1966 Martin Rowlands trimphone whirling all around him. Where before the open TARDIS doors had looked out into the engine rooms, the way was now blocked by a wall of pulsing, straining scrambled egg. The tornado whirled ever faster round and round him, howling and shrieking in time to the noise of the TARDIS’s engines.

  128

  And then it was suddenly over, the sweets and paper and designer telephone crashing to the floor.

  ‘Said it was easy,’ said the Doctor, though only to himself. And he bounded through the open, eggless TARDIS doors and back into the Brilliant’s engine rooms. ‘Oh,’ he said, stopping suddenly. ‘I don’t think that’s quite right.’

  Outside, the engine rooms lay silent. The huge machinery stood perfectly still. There was no one about.

  ‘Hello?’ called the Doctor. No one responded. ‘I know you can’t speak,’ he called out. ‘But maybe you could hit something, make some kind of noise.’

  Again there was nothing but silence.

  Moving slowly, warily, the Doctor followed the thick black cable from the TARDIS as it wended along the alleyway between the still machines. The cut-off end of the cable lay on the floor in front of where the controls for the experimental drive had been. It had been cut off with a knife.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’ He examined the empty space, and it was clear the experimental drive had been torn from the housing in which it had been secured. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps realigning the Brilliant had made the drive implode, which would be quite a neat solution to everything. But in his hearts he knew that that couldn’t have been what had happened.

  The walls of the engine room were a mishmash of car-sized patches of red-jelly sealant. The Doctor could see that at least six or seven pirate capsules had torn their way aboard the ship and then torn their way off again. Any of the mouthless men who’d been in the engine rooms when the pirate ships tore through the hull would have been quickly sucked out into space.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘I must be running late again.’ Desperate to find out what had happened to Martha, he grabbed the cut-off end of the cable, and quickly gathered it back up into the TARDIS. He’d repair the link later, when he knew Martha was OK. Locking the door of the TARDIS, he made for the transmat booth. With the ship realigned it should be working properly once again.

  129

  He keyed the controls and nothing happened. Annoyed, he checked over the transmat systems. The booth he was in seemed to be in good working order, but it couldn’t reach the booth upstairs.

  A chill ran through the Doctor.

  He dashed down the alleyway between the huge machines, to the door that he’d only ever seen before blocked by scrambled egg. There was no egg now, and he ran out into the plush-carpeted passageway.

  The wood-panelled walls were patched with more car-sized holes where pirate capsules had punched through.

  He ran left, left again and then right, and took the stairs three at a time. Halfway up the staircase to the ballroom, he saw the first dead body.

  A blue Balumin man lay sprawled at the top of the stairs, a terrible, blank expression on his face. Further into the ballroom lay two more blackened bodies.

  The Doctor made his way into the cocktail lounge, expecting to see more dead. But the cocktail lounge was empty, the whole bay window that looked out onto the Ogidi Galaxy now a great long patch of jelly sealant. Most of the Balumin would have died in space, the pirates had shot the rest.

  Upstairs, the walls were likewise patched with red jelly sealant. The Doctor made his way along the cr
ew’s small quarters and through to the door to the bridge. There was no wall of scrambled egg blocking his way, and he stepped through quickly. The horseshoe of computers had been smashed apart. And in the gap lay the dead body of Captain Georgina Wet-Eleven of the Second Mid Dynasty.

  There were a few other corpses around, but there was nothing to be done for them now. Instead, the Doctor moved quickly past them to examine the sparking remains of the computers, but they could tell him nothing. He had no idea how long it had been since the loop had come apart, nor where the pirate ship had got to now. He had lost Martha to them again. But, as he’d promised himself before, he would do whatever it took to find her.

  He rummaged in the pockets of his suit jacket for a bit of paper and a pen, and almost cut himself on the dagger he’d confiscated from the 130

  unconscious Dashiel all that time ago. When they’d still been enemies and people couldn’t die.

  ‘Doctor?’

  He spun round on the heel of his trainer. The egg-shaped, orange and tentacled Mrs Wingsworth stood in the doorway of the bridge.

  She no longer had any of her extravagant jewellery and her flimsy dress had been spattered with muck and blood.

  ‘Hi,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Whatever are you doing, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘Writing a note in case there were any survivors,’ he said. He left the note on the wreck of the horseshoe of computers and hurried over to her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, we soldier on, dear,’ she said. ‘But you know there’s nothing to drink downstairs.’

  ‘Shocking,’ he said. ‘I’d complain.’

  ‘I did!’ said Mrs Wingsworth, laughing. ‘Only there’s no one here to take the slightest bit of notice!’ The laugh died in her throat, but the Doctor could see her refusing to let him see how scared she’d been, how much she’d suffered.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said. ‘I promise you.’

  Mrs Wingsworth reached out her tentacles to him. ‘Martha!’ she said, a tremor in her voice. ‘She said I had to find you!’

  ‘And you have,’ said the Doctor kindly. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m here now. You just have to tell me what I missed.’

  Mrs Wingsworth, tears streaming down her egg-shaped orange body, did her best to explain.

  ‘The pirates,’ she said. ‘They came. They killed everybody. And no one’s coming back.’

  131

  ‘You know what?’ said the Doctor, stood in the transmat booth.

  ‘Neither do I.’ He grinned. ‘Ah well. Sure I’ll think of something.’

  And with a pop he vanished.

  Martha sighed. There was nothing to do but wait until he’d sorted everything out. She turned to join the party of humans and three badgers. And then she froze.

  Projected on the wall, the spiky peach of the badger pirates’ spaceship had begun to move. Tiny pirate capsules spewed from the back of the ship, each zipping round to attack the Brilliant head on. They fired their weapons, and another screen to the left blared warning signals about the Brilliant’s shields.

  Captain Georgina, Thomas and some of the other crew were racing to the horseshoe of computers. ‘Get a channel open!’ Captain Georgina shouted. ‘Get a channel open!’

  ‘Open, sir,’ said Thomas quickly, busy at the controls.

  ‘Archie!’ said Captain Georgina. ‘Time for you to do your stuff.’

  ‘Oh, er, yeah,’ said Archibald, hurrying to join the human crew. ‘Uh, Captain Florence?’ he said, and Martha could see how awkward and scared he was about just speaking to the air. ‘This is, uh, Archie.

  133

  There’s food ’ere. Good food.’

  Thomas fussed with the controls, getting only static in response.

  And then a voice was heard loud and clear. ‘Archie?’ said a vicious-sounding badger woman. ‘You’re in big trouble, y’swab!’

  For a moment they stared at Archibald, who could only shrug. Then something smashed into the Brilliant and the impact knocked them all off their feet.

  ‘Keep trying!’ shouted Captain Georgina as she scrambled back to the controls. ‘You’ve got to convince them!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Archie. Dashiel and Jocelyn, holding hands, joined him at the horseshoe of computers and they all tried appealing to their former comrades.

  Captain Georgina signalled the rest of the human crew. ‘We’re going to have boarders,’ she told them. ‘You’ll take your positions and hold them from the engine rooms.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the brunette. ‘The Doctor took our guns.’ It was true: a mess of broken weapons lay littered on the floor, their innards used to build an almost working Teasmade.

  ‘Hell,’ said Captain Georgina. She shoved Archibald aside and took his place next to Thomas. ‘This is Captain Georgina Wet-Eleven of the Starship Brilliant,’ she told the attacking badgers. ‘You are in violation of intergalactic transit codes six, fourteen and twenty. You will desist your attack at once, or we will blast you from the sky.’

  There was a pause, and just for a moment Martha thought the defiance in the captain’s tone might have made the pirates reconsider.

  ‘Ha!’ said the gruff female voice they’d heard before. ‘Bring it on!’

  Again they were thrown from their feet as something smashed into the ship. And again. ‘They’re ’ere!’ said Jocelyn, from the ground beside Martha.

  ‘S’OK,’ said Dashiel. ‘We’ll tell ’em.’ He led Jocelyn quickly out of the bridge, through the door which was no longer blocked by scrambled egg. They passed a flustered Mrs Wingsworth as they went.

  ‘Get that passenger out of here!’ shouted Captain Georgina. A couple of the human crew ran to bustle Mrs Wingsworth off the bridge, but Martha hurried over.

  134

  ‘She’s with me,’ she said. Again the ship buckled as something smashed into it. The human crew obviously decided that they had better things to do than worry about the passengers. Martha led Mrs Wingsworth out into the crew’s quarters, away from all the panic.

  ‘More haste, less speed, I always say, dear,’ Mrs Wingsworth said, rolling her eyes. ‘What has been going on?’

  ‘The Doctor let us out of the time loop,’ Martha explained. ‘But now the pirates are attacking.’

  ‘What, like those three dears?’ said Mrs Wingsworth.

  ‘Remember what they were like when they first got here?’ said Martha.

  Before Mrs Wingsworth could reply, the wall exploded just ahead of them. Martha barely registered the Smart car-sized capsule that had crashed aboard before she was lifted off her feet. A capsule-sized gash in the side of the ship gaped out onto open space. Martha tried to scream but the air was being sucked out into space just as she was.

  She flailed her arms and legs as she fell towards the hole, but there was nothing to grab on to. . .

  Something yanked her ankle hard and this time she managed to cry out. Twisting back, she found Mrs Wingsworth clutching her with one tentacle, the other gripping round the bunk of one of the human crew’s beds. They both hung in mid air, Mrs Wingsworth’s tentacles taut and skinny with the strain. Her glittering, golden jewellery buckled and broke, each piece dancing in the air as it tumbled into space.

  ‘Oh really!’ muttered Mrs Wingsworth, her teeth clenched as she fought to keep her grip. ‘That used to be my mother’s.’

  Martha struggled for breath as the hole in the side of the ship tried to swallow her. A human crewmember – the pretty brunette – tried to reach for Martha’s hand. They brushed fingers, didn’t quite catch hold, and then the brunette tumbled out into the dark, starry vacuum.

  As she fell out, she was hit by flecks of the red, jelly-like substance fast sealing the hole behind her.

  Martha and Mrs Wingsworth crashed down onto the hard floor the moment the hole had been sealed. They lay there panting, then Mrs Wingsworth grabbed Martha’s ankle again and dragged her into the 135

  small room with the bed in it she’d
clung to. She slammed the small door just at the same time as another capsule burst through the far wall. Martha hugged her tight as, beyond the closed door, they heard the screams of yet more human crewmembers being sucked out into space.

  The Brilliant lurched again and again as the pirate capsules smashed into it. Martha felt sick and terrified. But it seemed to be quiet now, on the far side of the door. She put her ear to the door, and heard muffled shouts and shooting. The badger pirates were pillaging the ship.

  She desperately needed to know where the Doctor had got to. He wouldn’t leave them to die like this. She knew he’d come for her somehow.

  ‘You can’t go out there, dear!’ squealed Mrs Wingsworth. Martha hadn’t even been aware of her hands working to unlock the door.

  ‘I’ve got to find the Doctor,’ she said.

  ‘No you don’t!’ insisted Mrs Wingsworth, and swiped Martha away from the door with a tentacle like a tree trunk. ‘You’re not going to do anything silly. We both have to –’

  The door disintegrated in a sudden ball of pink light. Had Martha still been in front of it, she would have been obliterated herself. Mrs Wingsworth whimpered as a helmeted badger pirate stormed into the small room, prodding her with his gun.

  ‘You Marfa?’ the badger said bluntly, with a gruff female voice.

  ‘Er,’ said Mrs Wingsworth. ‘I might be, dear.’

  The badger pirate raised his gun at her. ‘No wait!’ cried Martha from where she lay on the floor. ‘I’m Martha. Just leave this one alone.’

  ‘Huh,’ said the badger pirate. She reached down, grabbed Martha’s arm in her hairy paw and started dragging her out into the passageway.

  ‘Now really!’ Mrs Wingsworth began to protest.

  ‘Please!’ Martha told her as she was taken roughly away. ‘Stay there, stay safe. You have to find the Doctor!’ And then she was round 136

  the side of one of the capsules and could not see Mrs Wingsworth any more.