Doctor Who: Shining Darkness (15 page)

‘Crusher, Chuck – meet Mother. If you’re in any doubt about our credentials, ask her – she’ll tell you.’ The Doctor checked his wristwatch. ‘But you’re going to have to make it quick: they’re going to be here any minute,’ he said, motioning for Mother to lay the device on the ground.

‘So what’s that, then?’ asked Crusher, stomping on the last, few straggling appliances.

‘That’s what we want to find out,’ the Doctor said gleefully, bounding over to the segment.

In the dim light from the floating globes overhead, even Boonie could see that the device had received a considerable battering. The wheel-shaped casing was dented and scraped. Hardly surprising considering the mass of junk that had been piled on top of it.

‘Is it damaged?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Well, give me a chance to examine it and I’ll tell you.’ The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘Look, if you want something to do, go and check how 77141 is. He looked a tough old thing and he may well have survived the fall. If he has, he might already be telling the Cult what’s happening. They might be planning on coming down with some reinforcements. Take Mother with you – you might need her.’

Boonie was torn: he didn’t fancy leaving the Doctor here with the device, but, equally, he didn’t want to be caught by the Cultists. ‘Go on,’ said the Doctor when Boonie didn’t move. ‘Shoo! Go on!’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to see if it’s damaged – and if I can work out what it does.’

‘You’re not going to sabotage it, are you?’

The Doctor frowned.

‘Sabotage it? Why would I do that?’

‘To stop the Cultists.’

‘Oh, that. Nah. You know, you’ve piqued my curiosity, Boonie. I’m almost as curious as you are to find out what it does. And like you say, if they don’t get this one to work, they may just go to ground again. And much as I’ve loved my trip to your galaxy, I really can’t hang around for ever to help you track them down again. Now
go
!’

With a shake of the head, Boonie beckoned Mother and the two of them headed off to the monitor tower.

‘You’re sure you don’t need our help?’ asked Crusher.

‘You two have been wonderful,’ the Doctor grinned up at the machines. ‘A credit to machinekind everywhere.’

‘Hear that?’ said Chuck proudly.

‘We like to do us bit,’ Crusher added.

‘
Our
bit,’ Chuck corrected him.

‘Here we go again,’ sighed Crusher with a shake of the head.

‘Lovely couple,’ the Doctor said to himself with a smile as he watched them go, still bickering. ‘Right, you little beauty,’ he said with glee as he hunkered down next to the segment. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of, eh?’

He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, checked that it was still emitting the scrambling frequencies that he’d set it to earlier, and activated the secondary circuits. Gingerly, he began to play its blue light over the surface of the segment…

‘Doctor.’

He looked around, wondering where the voice had come from.

‘Boonie?’

‘No, Doctor.’

Cautiously, he stood up, the sonic still in his hand. There was no sign of anyone – not Boonie, not Mother. No one. And then he saw it. It had been hidden by the random piles of machinery thrown down by Mother and the broken bits of appliances left by Crusher and Chuck, but once it moved he saw it.

It was a robot, about the size of a large child. Its upper body was a scratched, pale blue cube, its lower body an inverted pyramid from which sprouted two segmented legs ending in flat, circular feet. Two similar, flexible arms
extended
from the sides of the cube. A small screen was set into the front of the body near the top, glimmering bluey-white. It had no visible head.

‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,’ he said charmingly, reaching out a hand. But the robot remained where it was, ten metres away.

‘I’m using this servitor as a conduit to speak to you,’ the voice said. It sounded surprisingly lively, but the Doctor had no idea whether that was its real voice, the voice of whoever was speaking through it, or just a disguise.

‘Who are you?’

‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘Oh. OK. What
do
I need to know?’

‘You need to know that if you attempt to interfere with the device at your feet, in any way, that you will not see Donna Noble alive again.’

The Doctor clenched his jaw.

‘I don’t take kindly to threats,’ he said sourly. ‘Particularly not ones directed against my friends.’

‘Then don’t take it as a threat, Doctor,’ the voice said, its bouncy nature sinisterly at odds with its words. ‘Take it as a promise. Interfere with the segment and Donna dies.’

‘HOW DO I
know you’ll honour your word?’ asked the Doctor.

‘You don’t. But if you do anything to the segment then you can be sure that we
will
. This is not your fight, Doctor.’

The Doctor sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets, kicking at a bit of scrap on the ground.

‘Now, y’see, threatening Donna is the fastest way to make sure it
is
my fight. You really haven’t thought this one through, have you? If you’d just given Donna back to me, then things might have been different.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘But you had to go and do the threatening bully-boy bit, didn’t you? I mean, assuming you are a bully-boy and not a bully-girl. There’re plenty of those around. It’s not big and it’s not clever.’

The Doctor stopped as he caught a brief flare of white light from one of the side aisles.

‘The recovery party beaming down, eh? Hope Donna’s
amongst
them. I want to make sure she’s OK before I agree to anything.’

And to hammer home his point a little more, he took a step up onto the segment and began jumping up and down on it.

‘Hello!’ he said cheerily as two figures – a muscled black man with a grim, angry face and a thin, blonde, humaniform robot – stepped into the light. He looked around in mock puzzlement. ‘No Donna?’

As if in answer, there was another flash of light and a slightly bemused Donna materialised a few metres to the side of the new arrivals. She squinted in the darkness, getting her bearings, before she spotted him.

‘Doctor!’

‘Hello again!’ he grinned, hands in pockets, still jumping up and down on the segment like a child full of tartrazine. ‘We’re really going to have to stop meeting like this. People’ll begin to talk. Especially with you being a goddess an’ all! “Too good for him!” they’ll be saying.’

‘They wouldn’t dare,’ laughed Donna.

Donna started to head towards him, but the man stepped forward with an outstretched hand to stop her. She pulled an apologetic face at the Doctor.

‘Looks like I can’t come out and play just yet,’ she said.

The man indicated that Donna should stay where she was, and then he and the blonde robot crossed to the Doctor and stood a few feet from where he’d finally stopped his bouncing.

‘You’ve set up some sort of interference field, haven’t you?’ asked the little, boxy robot chirpily.

The Doctor smiled and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, the tip of which was glowing a gentle blue.

‘Turn it off and step off the segment.’

Keeping an eye on Donna, the Doctor jumped down; the man and the robot came and stood right next to the battered artefact.

‘The interference field, Doctor,’ the little robot reminded him.

‘Oh yes.’ He fiddled with the screwdriver for a moment.

‘Good,’ said the robot. ‘Thank you. Goodbye, Doctor. Let’s hope our paths don’t cross for a while. I’d hate to have to be the one to inform you of Donna’s death. One never knows what flowers to send, does one?’

‘What?’ called Donna, not understanding what the little robot was on about.

‘Donna!’ called the Doctor, stepping back from the segment as he felt the hairs stand up on the backs of his hands.

‘What?’

‘Catch!’

And with that, he flicked the slider on the side of the sonic and sent it spinning through the air in Donna’s direction. As he did so, he waved cheerily – and jumped back up onto the segment, just as the snowy glow of the transmat enveloped it, the muscle man and the blonde robot.

And him.

Reflexively, Donna caught the sonic – in time to see the Doctor and the rest of them vanish.

‘Oh,’ said the little blue robot, surprised. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘What happened?’ came a voice – it was a young white kid with a nose-stud, sprinting towards them, and a massive great robot, thundering along behind him.

‘The Doctor – he’s gone,’ said Donna, still trying to work it all out.

‘Gone?’ said the boy. ‘Where?’

‘Garaman’s ship. They’ve beamed him up.’

Suddenly, there was a clattering noise, and the little robot fell over, its arms and legs flailing about all over the place.

‘
Garaman
?’ said the boy, ignoring it. ‘Garaman Havati?’

‘You know him?’ asked Donna, still trying to work out what had just happened. It was all going too fast for her to keep up. But the boy didn’t answer. He touched something on his lapel and then pulled a face.

‘Kellique says there’s some sort of interference field here, stopping us from beaming up.’

Donna held up the sonic screwdriver.

‘This?’

‘The Doctor’s device? That’ll be it – turn it off, quick, otherwise they’ll be long gone. We need to beam up to our ship, quickly!’

Confused and dazed – but still a little suspicious – Donna slid the slider on the sonic and the glow faded. The boy touched his lapel again.

‘What about that one?’ Donna asked, pointing to the robot that had spoken to the Doctor earlier. ‘It was having some sort of argument with the Doctor. I think it might
be
one of theirs.’ It still lay motionless, looking just like another piece of the scattered debris that surrounded them.

‘Fine,’ the boy said. ‘Come on – oh,’ he added to the robot looming over him. ‘Mother, can you…’ He pointed to the little robot.

Silently, the giant robot strode over and picked it up in its hand. It looked like a doll. The two of them stood alongside Donna, and the boy tapped his lapel again.

‘You know something,’ said Donna with a sigh as she felt the familiar tingle of the transmat. ‘I’m getting bl—’

‘What’s
he
doing here?’ shouted the muscled guy once the disorientation of the transmat journey had passed.

The Doctor had already jumped off the segment and was peering around the purple room aboard the ship.

‘You should let Boonie have the number of your interior designer,’ he said. ‘Very chic!’

‘Hold him!’

Realising that resistance would probably just get him injured – or worse – he let the blonde robot grab his wrists and restrain him.

‘Ow!’ he yelped. ‘You don’t know your own strength, you don’t. Problem with your feedback receptors?’

The man didn’t answer, but caught sight of something bulging in the Doctor’s pocket. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he reached in and plucked it out.

‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, holding up a shiny red sphere, the size of a tangerine.

‘Oh…’ said the Doctor casually. ‘That. You wouldn’t be
interested
in that. Trust me. If you just let me have it back, we’ll say no more about—’

‘This is not your ship, Doctor,’ Ogmunee interrupted him. ‘Don’t presume to lecture me on what I would and wouldn’t be interested in here.’

He examined the sphere, turning it over in his hands as he tried to make sense of the blocky black markings on its surface.

‘What is it?’

‘Something bad, I imagine,’ replied the Doctor, hoping that Ogmunee wouldn’t try to open it. He’d fail, of course – the Doctor had tried himself until he’d realised what it was. ‘I mean, it’s not likely to be a Christmas bauble is it, looking like that?’

Ogmunee just raised an eyebrow and tucked the sphere awkwardly into his own pocket.

‘I’ll have a look at it later.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘So you’re the Doctor, are you?’ asked the man, looking the Doctor up and down with distaste. ‘Donna’s friend.’

‘And you would be…?’

‘Ogmunee,’ answered the man. He looked around the room, suddenly realising that something was missing. ‘Where
is
Donna?’

‘Ahh,’ said the Doctor a little sheepishly. ‘That would be me. I lent her the sonic screwdriver. Hope she looks after it. Doesn’t start using it to clean her teeth or anything. It’s got three settings for—’

The door hissed open and a short, officious man with blond curls trotted in. His mouth dropped open, literally, when he saw the Doctor. He bounded over, looking the
Doctor
up and down as if were about to eat him – or have him shot.

‘This is the Doctor,’ said Ogmunee.

‘What’s he doing on board?’

‘It didn’t seem fair that Donna should have all the fun,’ the Doctor said, wriggling in the grasp of the robot. ‘So I thought we’d do a bit of a
Wife Swap
. I must say, you’ve got a much snazzier ship – but don’t expect me to do cleaning.
Hate
cleaning. Not too bad with the ironing, though.’

The little man’s eyes narrowed.