Doctor Who: Terminus (6 page)

Tegan stopped. She turned as if he’d touched her and she stared at him.
She knows
, he thought,
somehow
she senses it
. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, backing off. She watched him all the way to the corner.

The engine sounds were much louder here, drumming their way up through the open flooring.

He didn’t think that there was much chance of finding anything that resembled a crowbar, but he had to make a show. From now on he would have to try twice as hard to convince Tegan that he was above board, or she’d be watching him so closely that he’d never have an opportunity to get near to the Doctor.

Assuming that he needed one. The more Turlough thought about it, the more it seemed that his best opportunity had already been handed to him. His controller had been so quick to order him outside that he hadn’t waited to hear the details of the situation.

Take the TARDIS away and the Doctor would be helpless, marooned, as good as dead... and it could be carried off without personal risk to Turlough.

This would be an ideal time to set the plan in motion. It was as he was reaching into his pocket for the contact cube that Turlough saw Nyssa’s book.

It was against the wall, just as the Doctor had left it -

except then it had been within a few metres of the link to the TARDIS. The door itself was gone. In its place was metal plating that showed no sign of ever having been disturbed.

‘Turlough!’ Tegan called from around the corner.

‘It’s moving!’

‘I’m on my way,’ he replied, but he made no move to return. Instead he approached the book. It might have been reasonable to suppose that a passing drone might clear it away as so much litter, but that it should be moved to some other location and placed in exactly the same way would be too bizarre to be expected.

There was only one conclusion: this was the place, but the link to the TARDIS had faded away.

‘I could use some help!’ Tegan called, and now there was an edge of real annoyance in her voice.

‘I’m coming,’ Turlough said, with as much intention of carrying this out as before. The throb of the liner’s motors had increased so much that it was now shaking the corridor floor. There was also something rather more interesting that was starting to happen.

The TARDIS was coming back.

First came the shadows, then the details. The massive door sketched itself in quickly, and then this was followed by a slower filling-out. Turlough was about to call to Tegan, but then he checked himself and smiled. Wasn’t this exactly what he’d wanted? He took a step forward, feeling the floor shiver as the liner’s engines strained and altered their pitch.

And then, the door began to die away. It was a ghost again before it had even managed to become solid, and then it was gone completely.

He’d been so close! The door had been starting to open for him! Just a couple more seconds and he’d have been inside and on his way. He made a fist and slammed it against the wall in frustration – there was no give, and he almost damaged himself.

So now it was back to the original plan, ingratiate and subvert. It would be a lot more difficult, but now he didn’t have any choice. Tegan had been silent for a while. She was probably angry at him, and his first job would be to get her confidence back. He looked at his skinned knuckles, and they gave him an idea.

He came back around the corner holding his wrist and making a good show of somebody who’s hurt but is trying to ignore the pain. What he saw made him forget the strategy.

Whatever Tegan had managed to release, it wasn’t Nyssa – and it was pinning her to the door.

A hand wrapped in bandages was over her mouth, and another had a hold on her wrist. The door had been pushed back no more than a few inches, but whatever was behind was now trying to open it further. Turlough stood with an expression of dazed wonder at the scene, but then Tegan managed to shake away the bent claw that covered her face for long enough to shout, ‘Don’t just
watch
!’

He dived forward, and grabbed the arm before it could get another grip. It quickly withdrew, leaving him with a momentary but unforgettable impression of scales and dirty linen. Tegan tried to pull herself away from the claw that was hooked around her wrist, and Turlough beat at it until it let go. It snapped back as if on a spring, and the door slammed shut.

There were scrabbling sounds for a while, but they died down. After a few moments of silence, the wailing started again; it no longer sounded anything like Nyssa. It didn’t even sound like anything human.

‘You took your time,’ Tegan said resentfully. She was rubbing at her arm, as if she’d never be able to get it clean.

‘I found the doorway to the TARDIS.’

The transformation of Tegan’s mood was immediate. ‘Where?’

‘It’s gone again.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The bridge is only temporary. We’re in worse trouble than we thought.’

Tegan eyed the sliding panel, with the horror-show behind it. How many similar doors had they passed in their wandering through the liner? She said, ‘You’re saying that we can’t go back.’

Turlough considered for a moment. ‘It seems that way,’ he said. ‘So I think the most important thing for us to do now is to find the Doctor, don’t you?’

Find the Doctor. Then wait for the right moment.

‘But why run out?’ Olvir said for the second time. It went against everything he’d been taught.

Kari had been given the opportunity to see rather more of the Chief’s tactics in the field. ‘We won’t be the first party he’s dumped,’ she said. ‘He’s found out something he didn’t know before, and suddenly we’re expendable.’

Olvir looked towards the Doctor and Nyssa. His burner was still trained in their direction, and he’d made them both spread their hands on the console before them so he’d have warning of any attempts to move. The Doctor seemed to be taking an interest in the console read-outs. Olvir said, ‘And what about them? Where do they fit in?’

Kari dismissed them with a glance. ‘They’re harmless,’ she said. ‘But we can use their ship.’

Nyssa was keeping her voice almost to a whisper, so that their captors wouldn’t hear. ‘Where do you think
they
fit in?’ she said.

‘Raiders, by the sound of it,’ he said. ‘You know, kind of high-technology pirates. They’ll be a small advance party sent in to open the airlocks for the main forces.’

‘But raiding what?’

Nyssa was right. There seemed to be nothing about the liner that was worth a raider’s attention. Olvir and Kari were obviously as surprised by this as anyone.

The Doctor said, ‘Perhaps they were misinformed.’

The two of them were now on their way over. Kari hefted her burner, just in case it needed bringing to the Doctor’s attention again, and said, ‘You’re taking us away from here.’

The Doctor’s reply was fast and firm. ‘Not at the point of a gun.’

‘I’m not giving you a choice.’

‘And I’m not giving you a lift.’

Kari took a step closer. ‘I don’t have to kill you. I could hurt one of you very badly.’

‘And blow the last chance you’ve got.’ The Doctor indicated the range of information displays before him. ‘You don’t have to be a genius to understand what these things are saying, just listen to the engines.

Those are alignment manoeuvres. We’re docking with something.’

Olvir came to stand behind Kari’s shoulder. ‘It could be what scared the Chief away,’ he said.

The Doctor pressed his opportunity. ‘We’ll take you,’ he said. ‘But it’s a truce or nothing.’

Olvir was looking at Kari. After a moment, she nodded. They turned their weapons aside.

From now on, the Doctor believed, it ought to be easy.

He told himself afterwards that he should have known better.

He was sure that his earlier ideas on how to find the way home had been correct. The discovery of the raiders’ entry point had made him think otherwise, but now it should simply be a case of back-tracking to some recognisable stage of the journey, and then proceeding as before. Kari seemed wary about this, but Nyssa reassured her. ‘The Doctor knows what he’s doing,’ she said, and then she turned away quickly.

She didn’t want any of her own doubts to show – after all, he
had
just rescued her, but she knew of old that the Doctor tended to sail into the darkest situations with a seamless display of confidence.

The first recognisable stage of the journey turned out to be the stairs to the lower deck where he’d found Nyssa – at least, they looked like the stairs, even though to the others they seemed no different to any of three that they’d already passed.

‘We can’t go wrong from here,’ the Doctor said after he’d descended a couple of steps to check around, and it was as he turned back to rejoin the others that the lights came on.

Olvir and Kari immediately reached for their weapons. The night-time levels of both decks were turning into an artificial dawn, and the change had come without any warning. The effect was almost painful to their darkness-tuned eyes, and by some strange inversion the liner had suddenly become more threatening. The ship no longer slept.

There was more. It spoke to them.

Concealed speakers down the length of every corridor crackled and came alive. The voice that boomed around them was slurred and inhuman.

‘
All decks stand by,
’ it echoed. Olvir and Kari were scanning around in every direction, tensed for any attack. ‘
All decks stand by. This is a special announcement
from Terminus Incorporated. Primary docking alignment
procedures are now complete. Passengers with mobility should
prepare to disembark...
’

Some distance away and heading in completely the wrong direction, Tegan and Turlough stopped to listen in awe.

‘
Anyone failing to disembark will be removed. Sterilisation
procedures will follow. Chances of surviving the sterilisation
procedures are low.
’

They looked at one another. It sounded grim, and they’d already thought that matters were as bad as they could get, but still there was more.

Tegan put her hand on Turlough’s arm. He didn’t need her to direct his attention, because he could see for himself: all around them, doors were beginning to slide.

They’d already seen as much as they ever wanted to see of what lay behind. Their shared urge was to run...

but where? There were doors in every corridor, and corridors on every deck, and no way of knowing for sure how many decks there were. As they backed away the entire liner seemed to have become a single, living entity, and the blistering heat of its attention was being brought around to bear on them.

Kari didn’t like it any better. If she was going to have an enemy, she also wanted a target. ‘Who
is
that?’ she said.

‘Recorded message,’ the Doctor guessed.

‘Automated, like everything else.’

The automated voice ground on. ‘
There is no return.

This is your Terminus.
’

In case anybody had missed it, an electronic repeat picked up the message.
Terminus
, Terminus
,
it droned, over and over.

It meant nothing to the Doctor, and it didn’t seem to mean anything to Nyssa. It certainly didn’t mean anything to Kari... but Olvir’s jaw dropped in sudden understanding.

Terminus
, the repeat said as Olvir shifted his uneasy grip on his burner and took a couple of steps back.

Terminus
, as he turned away.
Terminus
, as he broke into a panicky, desperate run back in the direction of the liner control room.

‘Olvir!’ Kali shouted, but despite the edge of command in her voice he didn’t stop.

‘I think I know what’s happening here!’ he called back over his shoulder, and a moment later he was out of sight.

The Doctor looked at the others. ‘That’s knowledge that ought to be shared,’ he said, and without any need for discussion the group set off after him.

They’d barely covered half the distance, when the doors around them began to open.

The Doctor saw this first, and he halted the party.

There was no way of knowing what lay ahead, but he had a feeling that they were about to find out.

The electronic voice droned on. After a few moments, the first of the figures emerged. Then came another. Then came a hundred.

They flooded out, shuffling and swaying and filling the corridor like a sudden tide. They were bent and lame and mostly in rags, and most of the rags were filthy. Many faces were covered, some by muslin hoods through which only a dim shadow of features could be seen. Others were bareheaded, with bone-white skin that contrasted with dark eyes and lips. They moved in silence, pressing and crowding and jostling towards the three, some groping blindly and some leaning on those next to them – an army of the living dead.

The Doctor held out his arms to motion the others back. Nobody argued, but when he looked over his shoulder he could see that the corridor behind them offered no chance of passage. It was filled wall to wall with the half-decayed and the dying, a mighty sea of unspeaking disease that was even now on the move to close in around them. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run, and as they pressed into one of the recesses formed by the shape of the corridor they knew that it was no cover at all.

And over the heads of this army of the lost came Olvir’s voice, echoing through the ship. ‘
Well
,’ he was shouting, ‘
now we know, don’t we
?’

In the doorway to the control room, he gripped the frame and bellowed as loudly as he could. Behind him the automated systems of the liner ticked on without noticing. ‘We know what scared the Chief away,’ he yelled, and then he looked over his shoulder. The vista that had been rising across the panoramic window as the liner coasted in for its final docking now filled it from side to side. ‘We’re at the Terminus, where all the Lazars come to die.’ Spotlights from the liner played over the passing sides of the Terminus ship, huge, dark and forbidding. Slowly, through one of the beams passed an immense rendering of a screaming skull, one of the most potent warnings to be found in any sector.