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

‘Do not seek to explain our mysteries with your own notions of science,’ the Kotturuh purred. ‘You are from times to come. You are not part of our Design.’

‘I’m a Time Lord.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Your so-called Design doesn’t even come close to a bloke who walks in eternity. You can’t touch me.’

‘Your lifespan has been allotted, your arrangement with Death completed.’ The Kotturuh shivered closer, the veil gusting in her cold breath. ‘You should not be here.’

‘Makes me hard to predict, doesn’t it?’ The Doctor dropped his smile. ‘There was a time when Time Lords kept away from this age. But things change, don’t they?’ He gestured round. ‘I’m here on inspection, and I don’t like what you’re doing. And that means I’m going to do something about it, and that means I’m obliged to give you due warning: stop.’

‘The knight riding to the rescue.’ The first Kotturuh had slipped nearer, icy voice mocking. ‘Is this how you see yourself?’

‘Hard not to. I’m very good at rescues.’ As the Doctor glanced between the two threatening creatures, he saw Estinee move inside the battered transporter, trying to climb quietly out through the window. He tried to keep his face neutral. ‘Now, the stories say you take a creature from each inhabited world and bring them into your Design so Judgement can be passed …’

But the Kotturuh had already turned from him. They moved and shivered as if agitated and in the blur of a second they were both beside the wreck, staring in.

‘The child who tries to hide,’ hissed the first.

‘Doctor!’ Estinee shouted, reaching out for him.

‘Leave her alone!’ The Doctor started towards them.

Without even looking, the Kotturuh gestured to him and their fingers twitched. The air about him burned bright with terrible power. The Doctor was flung to the ground, back arching, his skin scorching hot, a pressure like fingers on his throat.

The creatures gazed down at him, dispassionate.

‘He thinks he is a knight come to the rescue,’ sneered the larger of the two. ‘But I see only a fool … surrounded by the dead.’

‘Then I’d check your great Design, Kotturuh.’ Defiant, the Doctor pushed himself up on one elbow. ‘Cos I don’t think you see what’s coming.’

The two figures weren’t even listening. They shimmered and their forms blew away into the patterns of the sky and were lost from sight.

The Doctor scrambled painfully up, as the ghosts and darkness slowly faded from the heavens. All that was left was the silence and stillness of an aftermath. He got up, painfully, and again stumbled over to the wreck of the hovercar.

Estinee was gone.

The Doctor leaned heavily on the metal hulk, thought of those who had driven it in its long existence, and how now they were bones and dust. He could feel, instinctively, how everything had changed, in just a few minutes. A world and a way of life – a celebration of life – was over. His hearts felt close to breaking.

There was movement from behind one of the pyramid temples. The Doctor looked up, hopeful for more signs of life.

The Ood in the tux stepped out into the hard light of the setting suns.

‘Stop.’ The Doctor pulled out his sonic and levelled it at the advancing Ood. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I know you were trying to kill the girl. And after what’s just happened …’

‘The Kotturuh have made their Judgement.’

‘And I’m ready to make mine,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘Another step and I overload that translator sphere of yours. Boom. Make a terrible mess of that lovely dinner suit of yours.’

The Ood inclined his head politely. ‘Mr Ball would sooner avoid going boom.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘I am designated Brian.’

‘Brian!’ The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Ood Brian! I’m the Doctor.’

‘Doctor?’ Brian’s eyes seemed to flame a deeper red. ‘You know of my species?’

‘I know that you’re carrying your hindbrain – Little Brian – in the sphere. You were born into slavery. When are you from – forty-first century? Forty-second?’ The Ood didn’t answer, so the Doctor flicked the sonic to a warning whirr. ‘What are you doing here, billions of years before the Ood Brain even came to exist?’

‘Earning a living,’ said Brian.

‘You’re paid to kill?’

‘My objective was not to kill Estinee of Destran. I was testing the capabilities of the Lifeshroud.’

‘Wait …’ The Doctor lowered the sonic, felt a rush of hope. ‘The Lifeshroud! The Andalians were buying them – maybe some of them were wearing them when the Kotturuh …?’

‘There are no survivors,’ Brian said flatly.

The Doctor hesitated, swallowed hard. ‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because I told him so myself.’ A deep, plummy voice with a metallic edge oozed from the ruins of the temple pyramid. ‘Doctor, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, good Doctor, I have searched for survivors with my remote trackers … and there are none to be found.’

Another of the bronze rugby balls rose up into sight. The Doctor raised the sonic again, but it only projected a bleached-out image, faint and flickering in the fading light. It showed the plaza strewn with bones, some clutching hold of Lifeshrouds in skeletal fingers, some even wearing them.

‘It seems the Lifeshrouds will not function without certain crystals of the correct charge,’ said the voice. ‘Said crystals sold … separately.’

‘A con, then.’ The Doctor scowled. ‘Where are you? You were watching, scanning and trying to kill me. Before we get to the why, let’s start with the who …’

‘Of course …’ A 3D image shone from a lens in the cam-bot’s casing. It showed a diminutive, carbuncled being. The creature had only vestigial arms and legs but with three thick and sturdy tails working like a tripod to hold it in the air. A single yellow eye shone through the warts and hair of the face.

‘I am Verv-Hoondai Chalskal,’ the image declared. ‘High Ambassador of Skalithai and Standing Throne-Being of the Pan-Victis Defensive Alliance.’ Another tail, sinewy and prehensile, snaked out from the middle of its back, holding some sort of official seal. ‘May my diplomatic credentials entice your consideration and understanding.’

The Doctor duly glanced at the proffered documents and shrugged. ‘So basically you were trying to murder me on official business, is that what you’re saying?’

‘I blush to confess that I believed you to be a thief and a saboteur, good Doctor,’ said Chalskal. ‘When you abducted the child of Destran I believed you were attempting to steal the Lifeshroud, and I could not allow that to happen.’

Brian piped up: ‘Estinee’s surviving the crash despite extreme neck trauma would seem to be further proof of the Lifeshroud’s efficacy.’

The Doctor glared at him. ‘Not exactly a controlled experiment.’

‘In any case! Having remotely observed your altercation with the Kotturuh, I now know the truth of things. Please accept my bow of apology.’ Chalskal tilted forward on two of his tails, and remained there, staring at the floor. He kept it up for over a minute.

The Doctor cleared his throat. ‘OK, apology accepted—’

‘No, no. Please, Doctor. Allow me to conclude my bow.’

‘There’s really no need …’

‘Forgive me, I must.’ Chalskal paused. ‘Allow me to incorporate an additional bow for this inconvenience.’

The Doctor gritted his teeth and turned to Brian. ‘You work for him?’

‘On a freelance basis,’ Brian agreed.

‘A mercenary?’

‘Mr Ball prefers the term condottiere .’ Brian shrugged. ‘Truth to tell, I am primarily an assassin. Who better to test a garment that’s said to keep its wearer alive in the most … testing of circumstances.’