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

But the AI stretched out a hand and its metal fingers closed on his wrist. ‘Please put away your diagnostic device. No scanning of Lifeshroud technology is permitted at this time.’

‘I don’t care about your tech!’ He tried to pull free but the grip was too strong. ‘It’s Estinee I’m worried about!’

‘Please put away your diagnostic device,’ the AI repeated. Then the synthetic voice was replaced by one altogether earthier – someone real speaking over shortwave audio circuits. ‘Estinee, it’s coming quicker than we thought.’

Estinee looked suddenly terrified. ‘What?’

‘I’m moving out, activate your—’

The voice cut out as the AI’s head exploded in a shower of fierce red sparks. Estinee was knocked over backwards by the blast and the Doctor was thrown sideways. He hit the ground, ears ringing.

And through scattering Andalian crowds, he saw the impossible.

A familiar creature was striding through the melee, holding some sort of laser gun. A tall, slim figure, incongruous in black dinner suit and grey dress gloves. A white ball hung at his chest, attached to a fleshy cord that stretched past the black bow tie into the red, twitching fronds that dangled from the lower portion of his face.

It was an Ood.

Chapter Three

The Doctor’s hearts bumped faster. For a second he was back on snowy Davies Street, eyes locked with a vision of Ood Sigma, chosen of the Ood Brain, staring at him in silence. But no, he was sure now that this was a different creature; what was it doing here, billions of years before the Ood Brain even came to exist?

And was he aiming for the robot , thought the Doctor, or for me?

‘The weapon is shown to be fully functional, Mr Ball,’ the Ood announced, seemingly to no one in particular. ‘Now our private test of the Lifeshroud can begin.’

Estinee had propped herself up on one elbow. Frantically she slapped her fingers against a red marble sewn into the chainmail hem of her Lifeshroud, over and over. But the Ood fired his laser straight at her in a continuous burst. She shook in the coruscating beam as again the golden glow enveloped her: but her hair went up like gunpowder, and her exposed flesh rippled and puckered.

‘Stop it!’ the Doctor bellowed. He jammed the sonic against the nearest mobile vending machine and it went haywire, accelerating into the Ood. It smashed into him, knocking him to the ground, and left him half-buried in Lifeshrouds. Andalians completed the job, piling in to grab their goods.

Estinee was shaking on the stage, groaning. The Doctor climbed up to examine her and her wide, pale eyes met his. The ashen skin around them was already regenerating.

‘No trick, then. It really works.’ Gently he lifted her into his arms. The stage began to fold itself back again, and the Doctor leapt back down into the plaza.

The Ood pushed the vending bot away and sat up, his red eyes blazing into the Doctor’s.

‘Hold on, Estinee,’ the Doctor muttered, spitting out flies as he started away. ‘We’ve got to run.’

‘No, I don’t need a doctor!’ Estinee was still dazed. ‘Leave me on the stage.’

The Doctor glanced back as the huge metal cockroach of the closed-up stage rocked back, reassembled, and then faded in a trail of yellow light leaving only the buzzing flies. ‘Can’t. Sorry.’

‘Fallomax took it back – to the Polythrope , our ship. She must think I’m on it.’

‘Was it her voice I heard through the robot?’ The Doctor looked at Estinee as he pushed a path through the scrum of Andalians. ‘Fallomax sends you out to get half-killed while she stays safely on board?’

Estinee didn’t seem to be listening, slapping blindly again at the round buttons in her chainmail top. ‘The ’Shroud’s teleport isn’t working.’

‘Must have gone kaput in the heat of that blast. It’s a miracle you didn’t.’

Estinee grabbed hold of his lapels. ‘Doctor, what did you say? Get me to the astroport. To the Polythrope .’ Tears were welling in her big eyes, running black with ash; she shook them away crossly. ‘It hurts. I don’t die but it hurts so bad and I have to get clear …’

‘There must be a local hospital—’

‘I told you I don’t need a doctor. Get me to the Polythrope .’ She moaned, still shaking with pain. ‘We shouldn’t have done this show. I told her. Too much. Too close.’

The Doctor glanced back through the thronging crowd and the fly-swarm. He saw the Ood coming after them, translation sphere clutched in its scorched glove. The silver ball crackled with power, and Andalians in the Ood’s way went down like sacks of cracked jade.

‘Our friend’s still after us.’ The Doctor quickened his step with Estinee in his arms and managed to sonic open the doors to one of the dusty, rusty hovercars waiting at the side of the road. He bundled Estinee into the passenger seat, but she instantly rolled across to the driver’s side and shoved the Doctor back out.

‘Oi!’ the Doctor shouted, as Estinee started up the engines.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ she shouted.

The Ood was barely 20 metres away now, swinging up his gun. Sonicking open the rear door, the Doctor managed to scramble inside as a laser blast scorched across the roof and cracked the thick blue glass of the window.

‘One good lift deserves another!’ the Doctor shouted.

‘Fine. Just stop interfering.’

‘You might as well say, stop breathing.’ Another laser blast rocked the hovercar. ‘But maybe wait till I’m wearing one of your Lifeshrouds …’

Estinee wasn’t listening, her fist pressed into what looked like a box of brown custard, manipulating the controls. With a sputtering whoosh of unlikely motors, the car leapt up into the air, flying in a sickening spin. The Ood fired again and again, sizzling bolts that smashed tiles from the turrets and towers about them.

‘Aren’t you a bit young to drive?’ the Doctor called, fighting to stay upright in the rear seat.

‘Apparently I’m old enough to die in a few weeks,’ she shot back as she turned clumsily and accelerated away.

The Doctor supposed that when you were meant to live for always you could take your time growing up. The new generations’ childhoods would be fleeting and fearful. He felt a deep spark of anger for what the Kotturuh had done: taking innocent lives running to nature’s clock and imposing their own grim limits on them.

Then something like a rugby ball made from bronze suddenly swept into view alongside the driver’s door, scattering flies, ticking and crackling. A fierce blue glow formed an iris in its centre.

‘Company!’ warned the Doctor.

Estinee convulsed her fist in the interface and the hovercar dropped down and banked left. There were more Andalians in the street, staring up in horror at this noisy intrusion racing between the tightly spaced buildings. The rugby ball soon caught up with them. It was watching Estinee through the window.

The Doctor scanned the device with the sonic. ‘Powered by radioactive decay of some element I’ve never heard of,’ he reported. ‘And clockwork.’

‘It’s a tracker,’ said Estinee.

‘Andalian?’

‘Not their style. I reckon it belongs to that thing that shot me.’ Estinee looked back at him, and he saw that her face was fully healed. ‘Everyone wants to get hold of our Lifeshroud—’

As if for emphasis, the tracker hurled itself at the driver’s window, cracking the glass. Estinee swerved, and with a wrench of stone on metal the car tore the top from a tower, raining tiles like confetti in its wake. The engines’ angry flutter was trailed by a rasping whine.

‘Get us higher!’ the Doctor yelled. ‘Make for the desert.’