Doctor Who: Slow Empire by Dave Stone

Author:Dave Stone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538356
Publisher: BBC Worldwide Americas
Published: 2002-03-15T10:00:00+00:00

* * *

There was the vaguely fleshy-sounding crashing of fungoid undergrowth, and a crazed-looking figure burst into the clearing. Its hair was ragged, caked and matted with blood. The remains of fur clothing clung to its mean and abraded body as though it were only by the clotting of those injuries that the scraps were attached. The figure staggered forward, clutching something to its chest, before collapsing heavily, face first, halfway to the fire.

‘Now there,’ said Professor Miribilis, looking around from his veterinary ministrations to the snake woman, ‘looks like a man with an exciting tale to tell.’

‘I suspect it would have to be short.’ The Doctor ran over to the fallen man and gently turned him over. ‘Let’s see if we can’t do something about these injuries, yes?’

‘I cannot...’ The new arrival worked his ravaged face. ‘I cannot protect...’ Weakly, he lifted a hand towards the Doctor. Clutched in it was a faintly glowing shard of some material that seemed to be of the nature of crystal in the way that crystal itself might be similar to wood, in that both are solid matter but with quite different physical properties.

‘Take it...’ the fallen man rasped. ‘Must keep it safe, keep it from the...’ His mouth worked silently as his breath failed him. He fell back with exhaustion.

The Doctor regarded the unconscious form, then examined the glowing shard with a slightly critical air. ‘Well, the chap seemed very insistent on the point,’ he said to the world in general. ‘I wonder what it is.’

It was at that point that he seemed to become aware of a multiple, animal growling. He turned to face it as several men burst into the clearing. Each wore a black, monk-like habit, each had a face crudely tattooed with black lines, each was barely restraining by way of a leash a reptilian creature with three branching, vicious-looking heads. For all the quasi-ecclesiastical specifics of their garb, these men were obviously soldiers at heart, rather in the same manner as the bandsmen on Shakrath.

The largest of these men, obviously a leader of sorts, surveyed the alarmed performing troupe and several companions with cold contempt, then turned his attention to the Doctor.

‘The shard,’ he said in a gravelly tone. ‘You will give us the shard.’

‘And if I refuse?’ the Doctor said. ‘I ask purely for the purposes of information, you understand.’

‘You will die,’ the other said simply. ‘All here will die.’

The Doctor eyed the straining, snarling Cerberus-reptiles as they cast about, driven to a near frenzy by the prospect of so much available meat. ‘Well, if you put it like that,’ he said, ‘I can hardly refuse.’

He walked towards the robed men, then brought himself up short to a halt, as if something had occurred to him.

‘You know, it occurs to me,’ he said, ‘that once you have this thing, there would be nothing stopping you from killing us all in any case. I can see that you know the shard has some power – but do

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