The Fall of Yquatine by Nick Walters

Author:Nick Walters [Walters, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Life on Other Planets, Literary, Doctor Who (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780563555940
Publisher: BBC
Published: 2000-05-14T07:00:00+00:00

She looked at him critically. ‘How about you? D’you think you could fall in love with me, the real me? I’m bossy, I’m moody. I act a bit superior. But I’m more real than I appear.’

Fitz found himself actually blushing. Fall in love? No! It was the last thing he wanted to do. ‘What about our toast?’

She took a long sip of wine. ‘That was against love at first sight. The first time I saw you, you were being throttled by an Anthaurk. All I felt for you then was pity.’

He couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t work out where she was coming from. ‘And now?’ he said hoarsely.

She flicked a strand of hair away from her face. ‘I don’t know.’

Bloody typical, thought Fitz, confusion settling on his mind. The first time he’d clapped eyes on Arielle it had certainly been lust at first sight. Oh, crikey.

‘Well, I don’t know, either,’ he babbled. ‘I mean, I don’t know you, you don’t know me: He paused, thinking back on his travels. ‘I mean, I don’t even know me. . . ’

Then he thought about Filippa.

He smiled at Arielle. She smiled back at him. ’More wine?’ he said.

Compassion, still in her Anthaurk guise, fell towards the ground, completely calm and collected as the planet hurtled towards her. Everything seemed in slo-mo, which was nice. It allowed her to focus her Artron energy, prepare for dematerialisation. The moment she’d leapt, she had reverted to her default appearance with some relief. Looking like other things unsettled her, made her doubt who she was. She only hoped her chameleon circuit didn’t get stuck like the Doctor’s old TARDIS. The prospect of looking like an Anthaurk for the rest of her existence didn’t bear thinking about and anyway she didn’t have time because here came the ground.

As the wind tore through her flapping coat, she marshalled her energies for dematerialisation.

But something was happening. Connections were being made. sinking deep into her command circuits.

She had managed to reach New Anthaur with great difficulty; the Randomiser had tried to drag her away into the spiralling whorls of the vortex.

She’d fought it, and won – just – but it had skipped her eight days into the future, like a pebble skimming across a lake.

But the Randomiser was fully connected now. She wouldn’t be able to dematerialise without it dragging her away to anywhere, anywhen, with no guarantee of ever getting back here and finishing her tampering – or of seeing the Doctor and Fitz again.

The ground filled her vision.

113

Would she die if she hit? She remembered the Doctor’s old TARDIS. That was meant to he indestructible. And it had been totally destroyed.

Then she began to panic, began to scream in anger and fear.

She had no choice.

A second from impact, Compassion focused her energies, engaged her dematerialisation circuits, pulsed pure Artron energy through her time rotor, and the Randomiser took her screaming into the vortex.

114

Interlude 1

Cloudbusting

The black cloud was very old and had travelled immeasurable distances, but it hadn’t lost sight of its objective.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.