Steve Cole - Doctor Who - The Knight, The Fool and The Dead

Estinee could feel the Kotturuh willing her to kill him. Why had she not killed him already?

‘Get into the TARDIS, Estinee!’ The Doctor tried to knock the probe from her hands. But a Kotturuh swept in front of him, a dark blur on reality. He recoiled, fell to the ground.

‘Death must be brought, little one,’ it hissed, ‘and Death must be taken.’

Estinee stared at the energy probe. It made her afraid. She remembered hiding in her room the night the Kotturuh came. Her mother turning to bones. Her father sprawling on the ground.

Like the Doctor, now, helpless on his knees, staring into the nozzle of the energy probe. ‘Let go of her mind!’ he shouted.

You’ve made me angry , she thought. You’ve made me afraid .

‘All life is ours to twist to our design,’ said the Kotturuh.

You’ve made me hope .

‘Estinee, please—’

You’ve made me run .

‘You and the child are the last of your kind. You have flown so far. But your flight has ended, now.’

You’ve made me feel .

She closed her eyes. Angry and in control.

Estinee pushed the energy probe against the crystals in her Lifeshroud, and fired.

‘No!’ The Doctor saw what Estinee was doing a fraction before the blast. It sent him flying backwards, rolling and tumbling over Andalian bodies. The Kotturuh reeled back too in confusion. One of the creatures fell against him, cold, squat and heavy, and for a split second he saw under her veil.

He saw her face.

The Doctor glimpsed graveyard eyes oozing rot. A black grimace framing teeth like broken bones. Deep-etched symbols bleeding and stinking across the skin. A primal horror filled the Doctor’s mind, and he covered his face, crawling blindly on hands and knees to get away. Over the blood-rush in his ears he heard a crackle of power and stared, panting for breath.

Estinee was gone. Vaporised in the blast. But the Lifeshroud that held the last of Fallomax together was glowing now. The fresh crystals had absorbed the blast and were radiating energy.

The Doctor got painfully to his feet. His suit was in tatters, his shirt stained with blood and dirt. Numbly, he felt in his top pocket for the phial he’d prepared.

It had fallen out. He’d lost it.

The Kotturuh were rising from the ground like vampires climbing from their graves.

‘Two more people dead,’ said the Doctor, coldly furious. ‘Dead because you scribbled dates and diagrams on a wall and you think they give you the right to do anything.’

The largest Kotturuh pushed forward. ‘ Betel four-seron-four kaffa— ’

‘Yeah, yeah, four-four-sky betel , I know what time it is. You told me I would know death.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘But not mine. Not just Fallomax and Estinee. Yours .’

He reached inside his jacket. Found the other phial. Pulled it out.

The Sentence of Death.

For a second he hesitated. Then he tossed it to the ground beside Fallomax’s body, and it cracked open.

‘You don’t get to decide who dies any more,’ the Doctor said.

The Kotturuh barely even noticed it. What was a small glass phial when they had shaped the future of eternity?

‘You will not interfere with our Design.’

‘Think you can stop me?’

‘Why should we stop you –’ the Kotturuh leaned in, veil shifting in the breeze – ‘when we can simply stop your entire species?’

You could not see them smile, you could never see a Kotturuh smile, but the Doctor knew she was smiling now.

‘A small planet, not very far away. A race that will one day become Time Lords. We had always considered they had much to offer the universe. But I think, once we are finished here, we shall revisit that opinion.’

The Kotturuh turned to each other, clearly approving of the gesture. Only they could find humour in the dooming of a whole species. And yet …

The Doctor smiled too. You could always see when the Doctor smiled. But you never quite knew what he was laughing at.

‘You know, it’s interesting,’ he said, as ebony flakes began to drift from beneath the Kotturuh veils and their hides grew waxy. ‘Someone once told me that if I could decide who lives and who dies, that would make me a monster. But there are worse monsters than me in this universe.’

The Kotturuh sank down as if bowing. ‘What … is happening?’

‘There’s a chance, now, that from here on, everyone lives. And I’m not passing that up for your sakes.’

‘What have you done?’

‘Simulated your gift and flung it back in your faces.’

‘We are … infected?’

‘You’re changing.’ The Doctor held up a hand. ‘Wave goodbye to immortality, Kotturuh. Say hello to Fifteen Minutes of Fame!’

‘You … cannot interfere …’ The Kotturuh was sinking to its knees, rippling like laundry on a line. ‘This is … sacrilege …’

‘This is victory,’ said the Doctor. ‘How long have you got, Kotturuh? Can you work it out? Tell the others, tell the rest of your species to run. Because your death has been decided and it’s coming.’

The creatures were moaning, writhing now.

‘I warned you to stop. All you showed the universe was cruelty. But all flesh is grass, Kotturuh – even yours. The grass withers, but the word of the Time Lord Victorious? That endures for ever!’

And as the skies bled black overhead, and the Kotturuh howled, he stepped into the TARDIS and left.

Estinee watched the Doctor go from high up in the sky. She saw what was left of the Kotturuh rise into the air and fade like phantoms. She could see whatever she wanted now, because she was filling the sky, out of reach.

Set free from a body that had known so much pain, Estinee spun with the new-born Andalians in their mindless joy of flight. She thought of the Doctor one last time and wished him the luck and strength that he was bound to need. Then she let him go, and his anger and his sadness, and soared towards the suns before they set.

Chapter Sixteen

The Doctor was going back to Chalskal’s flagship and he had dressed for the occasion.

He wore his Time Lord robes, the scarlet and orange of his chapter folded like a sunrise around him. Well, wasn’t he ringing in the dawn of a new era?

Here he was, survivor of a universe in which Gallifrey fell, staking everything in these ancient times that he could show his world a better way, a way that would lead away from war.

They were in orbit around Mordeela. And he could finish what he’d started on Andalia.

The Doctor closed his eyes. ‘Do I have the right?’

You can’t doubt it , he told himself. The war of Life and Death: over in a single battle. And then …

Then, things will be different .

They have to be .

The Doctor straightened. It would be a clean start. No more abuses of power.

Not after today.

‘I approve of your uniform, Admiral,’ Brian said as the Doctor swept onto the Bridge.

‘In my time it was ceremonial,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it’s what we used when we went into battle, and that’s what we’re doing now.’

‘Of course,’ Brian accepted this with a sommelier’s approval of a delightful choice from the wine list. He issued a series of urgent gestures to the mercenaries scattered across the flight deck and the Doctor had the absurd feeling that Brian was running the ship like an expensive restaurant.

Beneath them was the planet Mordeela. Clustered under its shield were a dozen Kotturuh ships. Sheltering from the storm.

But, the Doctor knew, the die was cast. He still didn’t understand where their ancient science ended and magic began, and perhaps it was best that he didn’t. You could call it an enzymatic retrovirus, a genetic nanovore, or just an ancient curse. Names didn’t matter – sentence was passed and there was no stopping it. Like Fallomax, the Kotturuh would have to try and outrun it as best they could.