by Gary Russell
Sarah Jane glanced at her, nodding slightly. ‘Let’s see shall we.’
But something was wrong and Sarah Jane was being hesitant as she drew her sonic lipstick. ‘Sarah Jane?’ Maria asked.
The older woman took a deep breath. ‘It’s just a feeling I have,’ she said. ‘A spherical ship… not my favourite kind.’
She buzzed the sonic and the air shimmered and solidified into what looked like a giant silver golf ball, inverted triangular patterns criss-crossing it. No doors, no windows, just three stubby legs holding it in place.’
But if that was strange, Sarah Jane’s reaction was stranger.
She waved the youngsters backwards. ‘We have to get away from here. Right now,’ she snapped. No argument would be brooked, no opinions sought. It was that tone of voice. ‘Back to the car. Quickly.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Clyde, but Sarah Jane was not going to discuss it.
‘It’s too big for us. We can’t handle this — I have to contact UNIT.’
Maria was amazed. UNIT, the Unified Intelligence Task force was a global military/science establishment that specialised in alien incursions. Maria knew Sarah Jane had worked alongside them years ago, with the Doctor, but for as long as Maria could remember, Sarah Jane had resisted involving them in anything they did. She hated guns and that seemed to be UNIT’S first response. Shoot first, ask questions later.
‘This is a Sontaran space pod,’ Sarah Jane explained through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve seen ones like this before — twice in fact, and I prayed I’d never see another. Sontarans are brutal killers, bred only for war. If there are Sontarans on Earth, we are in trouble. Very big trouble. They only have one thing on their minds — conquest.’
She was interrupted by a new voice behind them, rasping but powerful.
‘Sontar-HA!’
They all swung round to see the alien. Shorter than any of them, Maria noted, but powerfully built. She could imagine this Sontaran pushing his ship into the woods with ease, he looked that strong.
He raised an arm and stabbed at it with one of his three fingers and his helmet automatically armadilloed back into his collar, revealing a dirty, leathery muscular-looking face, tiny piggy eyes burning intelligently, staring at them each in turn. A fat black tongue flickered out of his mouth before he spoke.
His right ear was ripped and shredded and a livid scar ran jaggedly down from his right eye, below his nose and to his upper lip, tugging it up slightly where the skin had regrown.
She also saw massive scarring across the back of his left hand.
‘I’m so off baked potatoes,’ Clyde breathed, and if nothing else, Maria thought it was a good description of the Sontaran’s complexion.
‘Consider yourselves prisoners of war,’ barked the Sontaran, licking his blackened lips, catching a little globule of oily black saliva that dribbled out of the scarred corner.
Sarah Jane stood in front of him, blocking his view of the rest of them slightly. ‘What do you want? Who are you?’
‘Kaagh,’ he replied. ‘Commander in the Tenth Sontaran Fleet. Kaagh the Slayer!’
‘I take it you’re responsible for the lights last night?’ Sarah Jane asked.
Kaagh nodded. ‘Simple devices to lure the primitives away from their radio telescope.’ He undipped a handgun from his belt and aimed it at Sarah Jane. ‘You are my prisoners. Move!’
And Maria had an idea. ‘Sarah Jane, look! It’s UNIT!’
And instinctively, Kaagh swung around to face the new opponents, who weren’t really there.
Maria and the others had bolted before he realised, but it wasn’t more than a few seconds before a stinging laser bolt smashed a tree to a billion wood shavings beside her as she ran.
‘By the might of Sontar,’ he bellowed from behind them and Maria felt the ground shake as he stomped after them, his powerful weight crashing through the trees and shrubs behind.
And then Maria heard what she could only guess was a battle cry from Kaagh. It sounded like the most angry deep-throated elongated shriek she had ever heard and despite how fast she was running, and how hot it was in the afternoon sun, the cry chilled her to the very core of her being — she found, inexplicably, she was crying, it scared her so much. It was the most awful, most unearthly sound she had ever heard.
And she hoped never to hear it again.
Sarah Jane and Clyde realised that they had run in a slightly different direction to that of Luke and Maria and so had lost sight of them.
They heard the noise from Kaagh. ‘A Sontaran battle cry,’ Sarah Jane said slowly. ‘He’ll never give up.’ She looked at Clyde. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just as far from that… thing as we can.’
‘Well stop a minute. We have to go back to the telescope. Lucy is there — and her father, whatever Kaagh has done to him.’
‘What does an alien need a radio telescope for?’
Sarah Jane shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But Sontarans are amongst the deadliest species in the cosmos. Whatever Kaagh is up to, we have to stop him.’
Maria hit the ground at full pelt, but before she could cry out, Luke’s hand was around her mouth, cutting off the noise.
She could feel her heart pumping. Pressed against Luke in the undergrowth, she could even feel his heartbeat!
They waited until the Sontaran thing pounded away from them before both of them felt ready to breathe again. After getting their breath back, Maria sat upright. ‘What about Sarah Jane and Clyde?’
‘We’ll go back to the car,’ Luke decided. ‘Mum’ll wait for us there.’
‘Unless Kaagh finds her first,’ Maria said, then saw Luke’s reaction and apologised, wishing she’d kept her thoughts to herself.
Sarah Jane and Clyde had kept on through the woods, ignoring her car (not that either of them were entirely sure how to find it anyway) and eventually made their way back to the radio telescope.
As they entered the building, it was eerily quiet, just the big screen lit up, red dots covering a representation of Earth.
And Professor Nicholas Skinner sat at his desk, fingers tapping at keys at an almost inhuman rate, as if he wasn’t in complete control of his fingers.
Sarah Jane called to him, but he didn’t respond, he just stared as more red dots appeared on the screen.
Clyde tapped Sarah Jane’s arm and pointed to the back of the Professor’s neck, just below his collar line.
There was a tiny red light flashing, grafted into his skin.
Clyde grimaced at the slight burn marks around it, where Kaagh had presumably cauterised the wound.
‘Some sort of neurological control implant,’ Sarah Jane mused. ‘Sometimes Sontarans use hypnosis, sometimes artificial things like that.’ She shivered and Clyde guessed she was remembering something from her past. Perhaps she had been under Sontaran influence once?
He looked back at Skinner. ‘Is he dangerous?’
Sarah Jane was staring at the screen. ‘Probably not,’ she said, ‘so long as we let him get on with whatever it is he’s doing.
And Clyde realised something was missing from the room. ‘Where’s Lucy?’
Sarah Jane glanced around and sighed. She produced her sonic lipstick from her bag and prepared to aim it at the red device on the Professor’s neck. ‘Maybe I can fix what Kaagh has done to the Professor and find out.’
But as she brought the sonic up, that cold, rasping voice snarled from behind them: ‘Put it down, female.’
Kaagh stood there, blaster aimed squarely at Sarah Jane, who did as she was told.
And Kaagh smiled.
Sontar-HA!
Chapter Seven
Hostage
Maria and Luke had found their way back to the Tycho building but just as they were about to call out to Sarah Jane and Clyde, they saw Kaagh follow them in.
‘Whatever Kaagh is doing,’ Maria reasoned, ‘this place is right in the middle of it.’
‘We should go in,�
� Luke suggested, but Maria shook her head. That would just get them caught and they’d be no use to Sarah Jane then. Think, she had to think. ‘We have to find out what he’s planning. So we need to find another way in there, one where he won’t see us.’
And Luke tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the edge of the woodland. A raised manhole cover.
It’d be smelly and damp, but it just might work…
Kaagh was still grinning at Sarah Jane and Clyde. ‘The First Law of the Battlefield,’ he thundered, ‘is “Think Like Your Enemy”. You didn’t escape from me, you just saved me the trouble of your escort.’
‘What about my two friends,’ Sarah Jane asked. ‘They escaped.’
‘Half-Forms?’ Kaagh roared with laughter. ‘What trouble can they cause?’
‘You should ask my teacher,’ Clyde muttered. But Kaagh ignored him and instead took a few steps closer to Sarah Jane. ‘But you, female, you interest me. You know of Sontar.’
Sarah Jane tried not to flinch as his oily breath passed over her face, tried not to recoil from that smell of chemicals that surrounded him. ‘Oh I know Sontarans very well, Commander Kaagh. I met your people a long time ago. And some time off yet.’
She smiled as he tried to grasp this. And Sarah Jane remembered. The first Sontaran she had ever met was on the first day she encountered the Doctor and his amazing TARDIS. They had travelled back to medieval times where a Sontaran Commander called Linx was arming the locals with futuristic (to them at least) weapons, while he tried to repair his space pod. The next time she’d seen one was thousands of years into the future, when a Field Major called Styre from the Sontaran’s G3 Intelligence unit was conducting cruel experiments on humans to test their endurance. Briefly, Sarah Jane had become one of his guinea pigs and she sometimes still had nightmares about that.
‘Yes, past and future, Kaagh. I can tell you that the Sontaran Empire is going to be around for another ten thousand years. Unfortunately, there will still be no end to your war with the Rutan host, but knowing Sontarans, that’s probably the way you like it, isn’t it?’
Kaagh smiled. A cold, heartless smile, and that thick black tongue rolled along his lips, catching more viscous drool. ‘You have encountered my kind and survived. You are indeed an extraordinary female.’
Sarah Jane looked defiantly down at him. ‘Flattery won’t get you anywhere. But you could tell me what you’re doing here. And why Professor Skinner is hacking into the access codes of satellites orbiting Earth.’ She grinned. ‘That is what he’s doing, isn’t it?’
Kaagh waited a second, and then bellowed with laughter again. ‘You’re good, female, I’ll give you that.’ Then the smile faded and his eyes actually seemed to darken. ‘I am the sole survivor of the Sontaran Tenth Fleet. Earth’s invasion force.’
Clyde shrugged. ‘You mean we’ve already beaten you? Cool.’ Then he formed an T shape with his fingers and held it towards the Sontaran. ‘Loser!’ he taunted.
As Kaagh carried on talking, Clyde suddenly noticed over the Sontaran’s shoulder, movement by a ventilation grille in the far wall. It was moving and he could see shapes behind it.
Was this some Sontaran animal?
‘The Empire infiltrated your automotive technology to introduce Caesohne gas into Earth’s atmosphere,’ Kaagh was boasting.
Sarah Jane remembered, all those months back. ‘You? The Sontarans were behind ATMOS? No wonder Mr Smith told me not to have one of those gadgets in my car.’ And she remembered how it had ended, watching from the attic in Bannerman Road. ‘The sky… it burned.
‘We were tricked,’ Kaagh said. ‘By a man called the Doctor.’
And Sarah Jane felt a huge wave of relief wash over her. ‘Of course. Oh, I’ll bet that must’ve been quite annoying. One man destroying an entire Battle Fleet. Embarrassing even.’
Clyde joined in the taunts. ‘Yeah, and I bet the Doctor could reach the top shelf, and everything.’ He glanced again at the ventilation grille. Something was behind it, trying to move it, trying to get in. He was about to warn Sarah Jane when Kaagh stamped his foot angrily, and everything in the room vibrated with the powerful reverberation.
‘He is an enemy of the Empire.’
‘The Doctor is a good friend of mine, Kaagh. So you’d better watch out.’
Kaagh pointed his blaster at her, and Sarah Jane flinched back. ‘No, it is you who are in peril. I should take you back to Sontar in his place, and you can pay for his crimes.’ Kaagh nodded towards the Professor, still working away like a puppet operated by invisible strings. ‘Here, I have all the weaponry I need to render your miserable planet a cinder floating in space.’
‘By dropping satellites out of the sky?’
Clyde glanced away from the grille. ‘Hold on, satellites come crashing down all the time, it’s no big deal. They usually drop into the sea or burn up.’
But Sarah Jane was beginning to get an idea of what Kaagh s awful plan might be. She shook her head at Clyde. ‘We guide them into the sea. I think Kaagh is planning something far more dramatic.’
‘My scans detect more than three thousand satellites orbiting your planet,’ the Sontaran explained. ‘Your primitive, but deadly nuclear reactors on Earth will make… effective targets.’
‘You’ll trigger a nuclear chain reaction that’ll wipe out all life!’
Kaagh nodded. ‘And I shall return to Sontar as the Avenging Hero. My name shall be purged of the shame of defeat and instead will echo through the Halls of the Heroes. Sontar-HA!
There was a beat before Sarah Jane said, very quietly, as the enormity of this vile plan sunk in, ‘And when does this happen?’
Kaagh pressed a button on his arm control unit and the big screen before them lit up, the graphic of Earth and red dots now being connected by harsh red lines, turning the picture into something that looked like a red ball of wool, so many lines crossed it.
But this was nothing soft or comforting. This was doomsday.
‘When the satellites are in the primary position of alignment,’ Kaagh said, ‘a signal from this telescope will bounce across the satellite network and trigger their fall.’ He leaned over the Professor’s shoulder and then threw a sideways look at Sarah Jane, amusement etched into his face. ‘In forty-five of your Earth minutes.’
Clyde was still keeping one eye on the grille in the corner, and the other on Kaagh’s blaster. If he could get that… ‘Forget it mate,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to happen. We’ve seen off all sorts of aliens, so no way is Earth going down to the baked spud from outer space.’
Kaagh reached forward and grabbed Clyde’s chin, holding it in a grip like a vice.
‘Your defiance is good, Half-Form. I like it. Our battle intelligence on semi-developed organisms is incomplete. The countdown will give me time to expand it with the experiments I shall perform on you. But as your biology is so primitive, I will use the laboratory analysis devices in my pod to dissect you. Such information could be valuable for Sontaran High Command.’
‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on him,’ Sarah Jane yelled, but Kaagh just swung Clyde round and held him across his armoured body, round the neck. Despite the alien’s diminutive size, Clyde couldn’t escape his grip.
‘Defiance shall be eliminated,’ Kaagh said simply and shot Sarah Jane with his blaster.
Clyde wouldn’t quickly forget the look of surprise and shock on Sarah Jane’s face as she dropped to the floor, and he struggled even more furiously, but that just made Kaagh’s hold on him stronger.
‘Don’t worry, Half-Form. She is merely stunned. She is my prize to take back to Sontar. Besides, why would I rob her of witnessing Earth destroyed? Of seeing you die along with this pathetic world?’ Kaagh turned to Professor Skinner and told him to secure Sarah Jane with ‘the other female’.
As he turned, his grip on Clyde faltered a little and Clyde tensed, ready to escape.
But his real chance came from a surprising turn of events. The grille in the corner suddenly flew
off its hinges and Clyde saw that it had been Maria and Luke hiding there. Luke’s face twisted in fury at what Kaagh had done to his mum. It was taking all Maria’s strength to hold Luke back, and instead she yelled, ‘Clyde, here, now!’
Kaagh was so shocked by this that he accidentally released Clyde. Although he immediately tried to grab the boy again, Clyde managed to get far enough away from Kaagh.
Clyde jumped into the ventilation duct, dragging Maria and Luke backwards with him. They tumbled out into a low, long and thin concrete tunnel.
‘We came in that way,’ Maria gasped, pointing towards a ladder leading to the manhole but Clyde was already running in the opposite direction. ‘Come on, he’ll catch us if we climb up that,’ he cried, so Maria and Luke followed.
Then they heard that terrible war cry of Kaagh’s, and felt the concrete tunnel floor beneath them shudder.
Kaagh had presumably jumped down after them and was in furious pursuit.
As if to confirm this, a sudden laser blast took a sizeable chunk out of a wall near Luke’s head and so the three kids ran even faster.
The tunnel just went on and on, a few twists and turns, but it was long and featureless, with no side doors, nothing.
‘I will fry your blood, Half-Forms,’ they heard Kaagh yell from some way behind them.
‘That guy has a big case of little man complex,’ Clyde shouted. He could hear the blood thundering in his head as he ran, and the heavy and powerful footsteps of Kaagh as he pursued them.
There was another laser blast, which left a huge gaping hole in the wall. Maria wiped dust and plaster out of her hair. ‘Which way now?’ she cried as they emerged into a T-junction. Left or right? Good question, Clyde thought. ‘How far does this bunker go?’ he wondered aloud.
‘Miles,’ Luke answered breathlessly, skidding to a halt beside him. ‘Remember the Tycho building was converted from a Cold War Listening station. This is the bunker beneath. In case there was a nuclear war, they thought people would be safe down here.’
Clyde shrugged. When those satellites came crashing down… ‘In forty-five minutes, this place could come in very handy!’
