Doctor Who BBCN12 - The Price of Paradise Read online

  Laylora – the Paradise Planet. A world of breath-taking beauty, where the peace-loving inhabitants live in harmony with their environment.

  Or do they? The Doctor and Rose arrive to find that the once perfect eco-system is showing signs of failing. The Paradise Planet has become a death trap as terrifying creatures from ancient legends appear and stalk the land.

  Is there a connection between the human explorers who have crash-landed and the savage monsters? And what price might one human have to pay to save the only home he has ever known?

  The Doctor and Rose are in a race against time to find a cure for a sick planet.

  Featuring the Doctor and Rose as played by David Tennant and Billie Piper in the hit series from BBC Television.

  The Price of Paradise

  BY COLIN BRAKE

  ISBN: 0-563-48652-X

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  ONE

  5

  TWO

  19

  THREE

  31

  FOUR

  43

  FIVE

  49

  SIX

  63

  SEVEN

  71

  EIGHT

  85

  NINE

  95

  TEN

  107

  ELEVEN

  121

  TWELVE

  131

  THIRTEEN

  141

  FOURTEEN

  153

  FIFTEEN

  165

  Acknowledgements

  173

  About the Author

  175

  It was another perfect day in paradise. Sister Serenta could feel the warm golden sand between her toes as she walked barefoot along the beach, her moccasins in her hand. Saxik, the Fire Lord, was high in the sky, making the waves shimmer as they rolled gently on to the shore, sending bubbling sheets of sparkling water dancing over her feet. A gentle breeze cooled her brow, tempering the heat.

  Half a dozen cream-coloured sea birds were whirling in the sky.

  Serenta thought they looked as if they were playing some kind of game, chasing each other, zooming high and low and then floating without effort on the hot thermal currents. Sometimes, when she had been younger, Serenta had wondered how it would feel to fly like a bird, but now she was almost an adult she knew how silly that idea was.

  She glanced down at the wicker basket she was carrying. A few juicy red glasnoberries rolled around at the bottom, but only a handful. She knew she should have had a full basket by now. Laylora provides, she thought to herself with a smile, but we still have to do our bit.

  She started back into the forest to find the others. Her brother, Purin, and his friend Aerack were digging a new killing pit – the animal traps the Tribe of the Three Valleys used to catch wild pigs.

  Serenta was meant to be helping them by weaving a cover for the pit from vines and leaves, but she’d got bored and had decided to go and find them something to eat instead.

  1

  As she walked back through the trees she could feel herself tensing up. The forest was quite dense here and the thick canopy of leaves cast deep shadows. Despite the afternoon heat she started to shiver.

  Something was wrong, she could feel it in her bones; a tangible air of dread. For the first time in her life, Serenta found herself frightened by the forest that she knew so well.

  As she approached the place where the boys had been working it seemed to get even darker. She could hear something moving ahead of her, but it wasn’t the sound of digging or voices. If anything it sounded like an animal. Was it a boar? Had one stumbled into the killing pit before it was finished? And, if it had, were Purin and Aerack all right?

  Serenta called their names nervously as she got nearer, unable to hide the alarm in her voice. There was no answer. She stopped in her tracks. Something was moving towards her, something large, and it wasn’t her brother or Aerack; it was something much more frightening. Serenta turned and ran, scarcely able to believe her eyes.

  It couldn’t be. It was impossible. She must have imagined it. But there was no doubting the crashing sounds made by the thing that was now chasing her through the trees. She glanced back over her shoulder and got another fleeting impression of the creature behind her. This was no wild boar; it was a biped like herself, but much larger, hairy and bestial-looking. Vicious sharp talons at the end of each arm were slicing through the forest like machetes, cutting a direct path through the trees and bushes.

  She ran on blindly, fear driving her forward. Her heart felt as if it would burst through her chest at any moment. The undergrowth was ripping at her legs, leaving a mess of bloody scratches, but she didn’t let this slow her down. She was nearly back at the beach now, but there was no let-up in the sounds of pursuit.

  As her feet began to run on sand rather than earth, she risked another look over her shoulder and paid a terrible price – her foot caught on a piece of driftwood and suddenly she was flying through the air.

  She landed heavily on the beach in a cloud of soft sand. Coughing, she rolled over on to her back and found herself in the shadow of the 2

  beast. Staring up at it, she realised that she had been right.

  All her life Serenta had heard stories of the mythical monsters that were said to appear when her planet was in danger, but she’d always thought they were just tales to scare children. Yet now one of these legendary protectors of Laylora was right here – looming over her and blocking out Saxik’s light. Her last thought, as the beast knocked her unconscious, was that nothing would ever be the same again.

  The Witiku had risen!

  3

  ‘Mercury in the side pocket,’ announced the Doctor with confidence.

  Rose just laughed. ‘You can’t – you can’t get near Mercury without going through Jupiter.’

  The Doctor grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at her before approaching the snooker table to take his shot. Holding the cue behind his back – in his best showman style – he took careful aim. Thwack!

  The cue slid forward and kissed the cue ball, which shot off in the opposite direction, flying away from the ball the Doctor had called.

  As Rose watched, open-mouthed, the white ball bounced off one cushion, then another, before heading directly towards the brown

  ‘Mercury’ ball. It completely missed the yellow ball that represented Jupiter. After a display like that, Rose wasn’t surprised when the Mercury ball responded by rolling, ever so gently, into the side pocket that the Doctor had nominated.

  ‘Right – just the Earth, then, and you’ll have to concede,’ said the Doctor, smiling, and took aim again.

  The blue-green ball representing Earth was actually a perfect model 5

  of the planet. Rose had held it up to the light and seen all the land-masses marked in miniature.

  ‘If I just hit it round about California. . . ’ The Doctor leaned over the table and lined up his shot. Click! The Earth ball went spinning into the pocket. ‘Game over! I thought you were meant to be good at this?’

  ‘I am,’ retorted Rose, annoyed. ‘But where I come from we play snooker with reds and colours, not planets.’

  The Doctor grinned his most enthusiastic grin and Rose found it difficult to be cross about losing. They were waiting for the TARDIS navigational systems to reset themselves after a wild and exciting comet chase and, to pass the time, the Doctor had produced this fold-out snooker set from somewhere.

  ‘Picked this up in the far future,’ he had explained, as he placed the small-suitcase-sized box on the floor in the console room. ‘Retro-gaming was really big in the f
ifty-eighth century.’

  And Rose had

  watched, amazed, as the Doctor had opened the case, which, impossibly, unfolded itself to become the entire snooker table, the balls and the cues.

  ‘How does it all fit in that little box?’ she had asked.

  The Doctor had just winked at her. ‘Hard light compression,’ was his baffling reply.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You really don’t want to know.’

  Rose moved to reset the planets on the table. ‘Best of three?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘That’s enough rest and relaxation, I reckon.’ He flicked a switch on the table and the entire thing folded back in on itself, returning to its suitcase form.

  ‘Why? Are we there yet?’ Rose was deliberately whining, like a back-seat child, while grinning at the same time.

  ‘The TARDIS should have had time to recalibrate by now,’ the Doctor answered in all seriousness. ‘So with a bit of luck we’ll be landing soon.’

  With a sudden burst of energy he was already at the central control 6

  console, checking the various readouts and fiddling with switches and levers.

  ‘Where are we going, then?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I don’t know actually,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘I hooked up your MP3

  player to the TARDIS controls and hit Shuffle. We’re either going to find ourselves at a totally random destination. . . ’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or we end up inside Franz Ferdinand!’ The Doctor grinned to show he was joking. ‘Let’s find out. . . ’ And he yanked one of the large levers down, sending the TARDIS towards its next port of call.

  It had been a long night for the Tribe of the Three Valleys, and it looked set to be a long morning too. For hours after the three youths had failed to appear for the evening meal search parties had scoured the forest, looking for them, but eventually it had become too dark and the search had had to be abandoned.

  Mother Jaelette washed her face in the stream at the edge of the village and wondered what more they could do. In the hours since dawn they had searched again, but there was still no sign of Aereck, Purin or Serenta. Brother Hugan had taken off for the ancient temple to ask the benevolent living planet to return their lost children, but Jaelette preferred to put her hope in more practical means. Right now it was important that life went on as usual. Panicking was not going to help. Wherever the three teenagers had got to, there had to be a rational explanation for their disappearance. Perhaps something had surprised them at the killing pit and they had escaped into the inland mountains to hide? Jaelette shook her head, causing her pitch-black ponytail to whip her neck. None of the possibilities she thought of seemed to make very much sense.

  As she walked back among the tents that made up the village she could see the various members of the tribe going about their morning routines and, for a moment, it almost felt as if the whole thing had been a terrible nightmare. Then Jaelette caught sight of her younger sister, Healis, the mother of two of the missing children, trying not to cry. Jaelette hurried over and put a reassuring arm around her sister, 7

  muttering some words of encouragement. Healis buried her head in her sister’s chest and sobbed.

  With most of the men away, moving the animals to the winter grazing lands, and most of the elders too ancient to make much sense of anything, Mother Jaelette was effectively the leader of the village.

  She knew the others would look to her for wisdom, but this time she had no idea what to tell them. All she could hope was that somehow Brother Hugan’s ritual would have the desired effect. Jaelette had precious little time for the witch doctor and his fascination with the old ways, but right now she would be happy to settle for some divine intervention.

  In the darkness of deep space, in an absolute vacuum, very little ever happens. In this particular part of space, nothing much had moved for thousands of years. Until now. Without any warning, space and time burped, warped and wibbled, and, where a moment ago there had been nothing, a spaceship appeared.

  It wasn’t the most exciting-looking deep-space craft that had ever left a space dock. Its once-gleaming silver panels were now grimy with space dust and pocked with more dents than a teenager’s face.

  Over the years makeshift repairs had changed the original sleek lines of the craft until not even its own designer would have recognised it now. The hyperspace engines, salvaged from a wrecked freighter, were bolted on with no regard for aesthetics and an entire section of the hull near the rear had been recycled from a disused navigational beacon.

  The SS Humphrey Bogart had started life as a rich man’s toy – a sleek speedster for nipping around the owner’s home system between the numerous houses he had on different planets. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the man’s fortune had not been entirely the result of honest endeavour, and when the authorities finally caught up with him, the spaceship had been one of the first of his assets to be repossessed. The tax authorities had used it for a while, but then it had been commandeered and pressed into military service in a nasty and protracted space war. Finally, many years later and almost a wreck, 8

  it had come into the possession of its present owner. Professor Petra Shulough, the academic and explorer, had decided that it would be the perfect vehicle for her explorations. In truth, the only perfect thing about it was the price.

  Designed originally for a crew of thirty, the manuals claimed that it could fly with a bare minimum manning level of twelve. The professor wasn’t keen on technicalities like safe manning levels. Her crew numbered just four: her captain, Major Kendle, and three youngsters

  – two fresh out of the Space Naval Academy and one bored rich kid with a history of space-yacht racing and an adrenalin addiction.

  In space, as the old saying has it, no one can hear you yawn, thought Trainee Pilot Jonn Hespell as he sat watching the read-outs on his screen cycle through yet another automated sequence. Once again the ship’s AI ran the standard scans, testing the results against the incomplete data Professor Shulough had provided.

  Hespell, a thin, nervous-looking young man with spiky red hair, glanced over at the academic who had recruited him and the rest of the crew, and set them on this apparently endless mission. Shulough must have been the same age as his mother, but with her short white hair and lined face she looked older. Her sharp features were always fixed in an expression without any hint of softness. In the eighteen months he had served on the Humphrey Bogart, Hespell didn’t think he had ever seen her smile.

  A flashing green light from his screen caught his eye – something new at last! He took in the information and immediately ran a manual check on the data. To his surprise, it tallied. The scans had made a match. Surely this would bring a smile to the professor’s face? He spun around in his seat and cleared his throat to attract her attention.

  ‘Professor?’ he began, but he got no further as she was already up and out of her seat.

  ‘You have something?’ she demanded, but he didn’t need to answer as she had already started to take in the information on his display.

  If Hespell had really expected a smile he was to be disappointed.

  There was barely a shift in the tone of her voice; perhaps just the 9

  slightest hint of excitement. ‘Plot a new course, Mr Hespell. If this scan is right. . . we’re about to finally reach the Paradise Planet!’

  Hespell made the adjustments and, with only a little grumbling and complaining, the spaceship’s engines responded. The Humphrey Bogart moved forward through the inky depths of space.

  Brother Rez and Sister Kaylen knelt quietly in front of the Table of Gifts. The big stone altar was the centrepiece of the huge main chamber of the ancient temple. In front of them the shaman himself was walking back and forth, muttering a ritual chant and scattering jinnen powder on the floor. Kaylen glanced sideways at Rez, catching his eye. She had to bite her lip to stop herself from bursting out laughing, despite the seriousness of the situation. Rez narrowed h
is eyes, urging her to get a grip.

  Kaylen looked at him and smiled. How he had changed since she had found him all those years ago! She had been only a child herself, but she could remember the day they met as clearly as if it were yesterday.

  It had been the sound that she heard first. A sharp cracking retort like a massive tree being split by a giant’s axe, then a rumble like her father’s snoring but much, much louder. Kaylen, just six years old and bright as a button, had been on the beach. She was meant to be collecting firewood but was picking up shells instead.

  Kaylen remembered hearing a pair of mylan birds calling to each other. Even as a small child, that melodic trilling had always made her heart sing in harmony. She had decided to spend just five more minutes on the sand, even though she knew it meant Mother Jaelette would be cross with her again.

  ‘Everyone has to do their bit,’ Mother Jaelette used to tell her every morning. ‘The tribe is your family and everyone has their part to play.’

  Which meant doing chores: finding firewood, or harvesting the jinnen crop, or sweeping out the tents. Kaylen never really understood why it all involved such hard work. Laylora provided for them, didn’t she?

  Why did anyone have to do chores? Just ten more minutes, she said 10

  to herself, revising her previous promise. And she got comfortable on the warm sand and closed her eyes.

  That’s when she heard the sound, ripping the peace of the late afternoon into shreds. At first she couldn’t work out where it was coming from. She sat up, startled. What was it? Was Laylora angry with her for not doing her chores? The noise grew even louder and it seemed to be coming from above. Shielding her eyes from the full glare of Saxik with her arm, Kaylen looked up and was shocked to see a plume of black smoke stretching across the sky, as if someone had scratched a dirty line through the heavens. Something was falling.

  She followed the smoke with her eyes and saw a dark object at the front of the plume. As she watched, it plummeted into the forest with a final scream of sound and suddenly there was silence.