Doctor Who BBCN09 - The Resurrection Casket Read online

  The Resurrection Casket

  BY JUSTIN RICHARDS

  Published by BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT

  First published 2006

  Copyright c Justin Richards 2006

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Doctor Who logo c BBC 2004

  Original series broadcast on BBC television

  Format c BBC 1963

  ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN: 0 563 48642 2

  Commissioning Editor: Stuart Cooper

  Creative Director: Justin Richards

  Consultant Editor: Helen Raynor

  Editor: Stephen Cole

  Production Controller: Peter Hunt

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC ONE

  Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Producer: Phil Collinson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Henry Steadman c BBC 2006

  Typeset in Albertina by Rocket Editorial, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH, Pößneck For more information about this and other BBC books, please visit our website at www.bbcshop.com

  For Julian and Chris,

  who like pirate stories!

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  ONE

  9

  TWO

  25

  THREE

  37

  FOUR

  53

  FIVE

  69

  SIX

  83

  SEVEN

  99

  EIGHT

  109

  NINE

  119

  TEN

  129

  ELEVEN

  145

  TWELVE

  153

  THIRTEEN

  163

  Acknowledgements

  173

  About the Author

  175

  Death was hiding in Kaspar’s pocket.

  Blurry-eyed, Kaspar slammed down the empty glass. Leaning heavily on the bar, he belched before making his uncertain voyage towards the door of the inn. He knocked against tables, jostled other drinkers, rolling and meandering on his way like a ship skirting the Outreaches.

  Laughter and abuse rang in his ears in roughly equal measure.

  Then he was outside, gulping in the chill night air. It tasted of oil and tar. The sounds of the inn were replaced by the clank and bustle of the port. The creaking of ships and shouting of stevedores. The sign above the door squealed on its hinges as it moved gently in the breeze

  – swaying back and forth with the same lazy motion as Kaspar as he swayed on his feet. He stared up at it, trying to focus on the cracked, peeling image. It didn’t help that the image itself was fractured – a painting of a telescope snapped in half.

  The main picture reflected in fragments of painted glass. The Broken Spyglass.

  Someone pushed heavily past Kaspar, elbowing him aside. He staggered away, making a tuneless attempt to whistle an old shanty he remembered from his days as a deck swabber on a freight barge on the Jathros run.

  As he turned into the alley that ran down the side of the inn, away from the main port, Kaspar realised he was still clutching the few coins Silver Sally had given him as change from his last tankard of grog.

  He stared at them for a moment, watched them catch the starlight, 1

  shining like real gold. Then he closed his hand and thrust his fist into his pocket.

  That was when he felt the scrap of paper. Curious, he pulled it out.

  A folded piece of parchment. Pale and textured in the dim light of the alley. Kaspar grunted, about to drop the paper in the narrow gutter.

  But he didn’t. Some spark of curiosity at the back of his woozy mind made him pause to open it.

  And suddenly he was sober. Suddenly he was seeing clearly. Staring at the mark on the paper – a simple black shape. A smudge of ink. A vague form that meant nothing. Except to an old pirate. And Kaspar had done his time on a rusting galleon at the edge of the Gerossic Rift.

  He had seen the shape before, knew it instantly. Understood what it meant.

  The Black Shadow.

  Someone had put the Black Shadow on him.

  Like a curse. A threat. Sentence of death.

  Getting rid of it would do no good now, so he jammed the paper back in his pocket. Already he was running. Already he was heading back towards the light, towards people and safety. Though he knew that, really, nowhere was safe. Already he could hear the thump of feet on the cobbles behind him. He could imagine the glint of the knife in the starlight. He could feel the hot breath of the killer on the back of his neck.

  His own heart thumped. His eyes watered, blurring everything. His breath rasped. He tried to tell himself it was all imagination. There was no one there. The alley had been empty. The paper – it was a joke, or a mistake. Or just a smudge of ink on a receipt from the Spyglass. . .

  Except that suddenly it was real. A dark shape was materialising out of the air in front of Kaspar. A huge, shaggy form turning towards him. As if the night had somehow coalesced into a massive version of the blotted shape on the parchment.

  Kaspar stumbled to a halt, turned, started to run the other way.

  Felt the heavy hand on his shoulder as it dragged him back, turned him again. Only it wasn’t a hand. It was a paw, covered in dark 2

  hair with fingers that ended in sharp claws. Eyes burned red out of the blackness high above him. Hot, rancid breath scalded the air and made him cough.

  And a deep voice that grated like the broken glass on the inn sign said, ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this.’

  Claws glinted like knives as they caught the starlight. ‘Really, really sorry. No, I mean it.’

  Raked down at Kaspar’s screaming face.

  ‘But, well, you know how it is.’

  Kaspar knew nothing except blackness. A body slammed to the ground. Blood ran in the gutter, washing a slip of folded paper away with it. And the smudge of darkness shook its head sadly and was gone. . .

  The only constant light was shining up from beneath the floor plates.

  A pale yellow glow that tinged the air like faint mist and made the Doctor’s face look shadowed and angular as the main lights flickered and flashed apparently at random.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Going on?

  It’s all going completely mad.

  Every sprocket and

  wocket and mergin-nut. Mad, mad, mad.’ He slammed a lever across as if to show how it made no sense at all.

  The light was fading, the Doctor’s face getting darker.

  Then,

  abruptly, it glared into brilliance, making both the Doctor and Rose screw up their eyes.

  ‘Time for a service?’ Rose suggested. She wasn’t worried. Not really. Not yet. Whatever the problem was, the Doctor would fix it soon enough. Probably. ‘Should have got a ten-million-mile service back on New Earth.’

  ‘I dunno, you materialise for a split second in real space-time to take a bearing and see what hap
pens?’ The Doctor was shaking his head, clicking his tongue, moving quickly round the console. ‘What’s the scanner say?’

  Rose glanced at the screen. ‘Sort of whirly stuff.’

  3

  The Doctor paused, hand over a control. ‘Whirly stuff? That could be bad. How much whirly stuff? I mean, a few whirls or the inside of a clock?’

  ‘You know that screensaver Mickey has on his computer with pipes that keep growing till they fill the screen?’

  He sucked in a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s not good. Here, let’s have a look.’ The Doctor was leaning over Rose’s shoulder, his fingers tapping out a rhythm she could feel through her jacket.

  ‘Problem?’

  He nodded. ‘EMP signature. Electromagnetic pulse. Like you get in a nuclear. . . whatsit.’ He waved his hands to demonstrate. ‘Whoosh.

  You know.’

  ‘I know. Cities getting cooked.’

  ‘Sort of thing,’ he agreed. ‘Only it just goes on and on. Look at it. Whirly stuff. Like there’s a thousand bombs going off one after another. With no let-up. Must be hell out there.’

  ‘Then let’s stay in here,’ Rose suggested. ‘Where it’s safe.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It is safe?’ She peered at him through the flickering light. ‘Tell me it’s safe.’

  ‘Er.’

  Then the console exploded.

  ‘Stay exactly where you are, all right?’

  ‘Er, why?’

  ‘Wiring’s gone a bit crazy. Anything could be live, anything could go wrong, anything could explode or collapse or. . . something.’

  ‘Something bad I’m guessing, right?’ Rose sighed. ‘OK, not going anywhere,’ she said, and was surprised that her voice was shaking.

  The light was strobing and flashing like a demented disco. ‘Can’t we stop the lights doing that?’

  ‘Working on it. Not a problem. All under control.’ His voice broke off with a cry of pain. The Doctor’s face was suddenly white in a flash of sparks. ‘Right,’ he went on after a moment, ‘that’ll be the live one then. Nearly there now.’

  Rose waited as the lights continued to flash and flicker.

  4

  ‘OK, lied about that, sorry,’ the Doctor said. He was sucking his fingers. ‘Not even close. The whole thing’s gone barmy. That’s a technical term, by the way. Barmy – means, well, barmy really. Tell you what. . . ’ His head ducked down behind the console and there was a scraping sound – a drawer opening perhaps? Then a rasping Rose recognised as the tear of a match head across the rough side of the box. A tiny flare of light as the Doctor stood up again, holding a match. ‘Got it!’

  ‘A match? All right, a whole box of matches. That’s not very high-tech.’

  ‘Works, though. No moving parts, no electrical circuits to be affected by the EMP. In case the lights go out and so I can see to work properly without the flickery do-dahs.’

  ‘Right. So how long’s that match going to last?’

  ‘For ever.’ He picked his way carefully across to her like he was dancing over stepping stones and held the match up close to her face so she could get a good look at it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everlasting match. Look – not burning down.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  He grinned at her through the flame. ‘Can’t have had breakfast yet, then. It’s made of Umbeka wood. From the Umbeka trees that grow on the planet. . . ’ He sucked in his cheeks as he tried to remember.

  ‘The planet. . . The planet Umbeka. It has a long, cold, wet winter, lasts for centuries. But the summer’s only a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Sounds like England.’

  ‘Much the same. Only the summer, when it does come, is hot. Really hot. The heat stimulates the wood and it grows.’

  She understood now. ‘So the wood of the match is still growing?’

  ‘Yeah, stimulated by the heat of the flames, it grows at just the same rate as it’s consumed by the fire. Neat, huh?’

  ‘Yeah. Neat.’

  ‘Good system. Just what you need on a planet with a long winter –everlasting firewood. Ecologically pretty sound too.’

  ‘Just one question,’ Rose told him.

  5

  ‘Anything – ask me anything. I’m an Umbeka expert. Got top grade in Umbeka, me.’

  ‘How’s it help us get the TARDIS working properly again?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah,’ she echoed.

  ‘Er.’

  ‘Er? Is “er” good? Doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘Well, no, not completely good. Good-ish. We either need to wait for the EMP to stop, which it doesn’t seem is going to happen any time soon. Or we need to move the TARDIS out of its influence.’

  ‘And how do we do that?’

  ‘Oh, loads of possibilities there. Spaceship, lorry, fork-lift truck.

  Maybe a team of highly trained squirrels. We’d need a lot of them, mind.’

  Rose was watching the match as it didn’t burn down. ‘Doesn’t that mean going outside?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Through the doors that aren’t opening because all the controls are knackered?’

  ‘Mmm. Another technical term there, like it.’

  ‘Into a nuclear. . . whatsit.’

  The Doctor’s head bobbed about as he considered this, then settled into a nodding motion. ‘Exciting, isn’t it? I’d better find some anti-radiation pills. Wonder where I put those. Under A for Anti-radiation

  – maybe. Or R for Radiation.’ He clicked his tongue loudly and rapidly before hurrying back to the console across the imaginary stepping stones.

  ‘Could be P for Pills,’ Rose suggested.

  ‘T for Tablets,’ he countered.

  ‘W for Whatsit.’

  He sighed. ‘Blast.’

  ‘Yeah, could be under B,’ Rose agreed.

  ‘No, I meant blast. As in, they could be anywhere.’ He pulled open a little drawer on the console, apparently at random. ‘Yep – here they are.’ He took out what looked suspiciously like a plastic box of Tic 6

  Tac mints. ‘Right, next it’s D for doors,’ he decided as he passed her a small pale pill. ‘Since the door control now seems to turn the scanner on and off. Or possibly it’s C for Crank.’

  There was a crank handle in a cupboard close to the main doors.

  Rose watched with a mixture of amusement and apprehension as the Doctor fitted it into a small socket under the telephone and began to turn. She was holding the match so he could see what he was doing as the lights continued to flicker and fade and flash around them. The pill the Doctor had given her was bitter and chewy – like a small, lemon-flavoured fruit gum. It seemed to take for ever to get rid of it – everlasting tablet, maybe. The doors creaked and groaned as he turned the handle.

  ‘So what else can cause this EMP thing, apart from a nuclear explosion?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things. Like, you know. . . ’ He continued to turn the handle and the doors juddered and began to move. ‘Could be. . . well, anything really. Like I said. Lots of things.’

  ‘Give me a for-instance.’

  ‘What, off the top of my head?’

  ‘Off anywhere you like.’

  There was a gap between the doors now. Outside looked dark, but not as dark as in the TARDIS.

  The Doctor paused to get his breath back. ‘Can you get through there?’ he asked, meaning the narrow gap between the doors.

  ‘Only in my dreams,’ Rose told him.

  ‘I probably can,’ he said. ‘Only teasing.’ He set back to work. ‘Out-side,’ he went on, more seriously, ‘is probably a wasteland. Be prepared for that. Aftermath of a war on this scale isn’t much fun. People suffering dreadfully, if they’ve even survived. Death, destruction, dev-astation. Lots of “D” words really. Bit of a disaster.’

  The gap was wide enough now and Rose squeezed through. She stood just outside the door and stared at the scene in front of her. It was night, stars shining bri
ghtly above her, and the scene illuminated by what looked like gas lamps. She blew out the match.

  ‘I can see something,’ Rose said loudly, ‘that doesn’t begin with D.’

  7

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s a pub.’ She gingerly touched the business end of the Doctor’s everlasting match. It was cool, so she pushed it into her jacket pocket.

  A shadowy figure was heading their way. The TARDIS was in a narrow street with high brick walls on either side. There was just about room for the figure to get past.

  There was a lamp on a bracket high on the wall and, as the man stepped under it, Rose expected to see signs of the terrible mutilation or burns from the explosion. The man hesitated, looked up, and stared straight at Rose. His face was weathered and old, his beard grey and matted, and what hair he had left was in tufts round the edge of his balding head.

  ‘Good grog, that,’ he rasped. ‘Do a good pint in the Spyglass, they do.’ Then he gave her a short wave and carried on down the street.

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect this,’ came the Doctor’s enthusiastic voice from beside her. ‘Pleasant surprise, isn’t it?’ Rose watched as the Doctor’s grin slowly changed to a puzzled frown. ‘So I wonder what’s up with the TARDIS,’ he said.

  8

  RosewassavedfromhavingtoanswertheDoctorbytheclickofthe TARDIS’s doors closing behind him.

  ‘Safety measure,’ the Doctor said sadly. ‘Keeps the interior in stasis till she gets back to normal.’

  ‘So they close themselves till you open them again?’ That seemed sensible.

  ‘Yes, well. Not quite.’ The Doctor peered into the distance, avoiding Rose’s gaze. ‘Absolutely correct, right up to the bit about opening them again.’ His voice was fading as he walked briskly away and Rose ran to catch up with him – in time to hear him say, ‘Once the doors are shut, they stay shut.’

  ‘Stay shut? What, for ever, like the match?’

  ‘No. That would be daft. Just till she can repair her systems and get everything working properly again.’

  ‘And let me guess, we can’t open them with that starting-handle thing either. Because that would be daft.’

  ‘No, completely wrong.

  We can’t open them with the starting-