‘THE SUNFIRE CHRONICLES: QUASAR OF SARFENIA’

By Tim Bradley and Alan Camlann

Featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown and Frobisher.

Set after ‘The Ghosts of Peladon’ and ‘The Alchemists of Fear’.

---

Prologue

Voices, harsh and uncompromising, scuttled like beetles along the edges of the flower.

“Open main circuits.”

“Cannon chamber pressure increasing.”

“All hydroelectric generators, functioning at optimal.”

“Release main safety.”

“Main safety disengaged, Field Major Bruut.”

“Cannon chamber pressure at capacity.”

“All systems verified. Supplemental safety lock removed.”

“Chamber pressure at saturation point.”

“Open target portal.”

“Confirmed. Verifying targeting solution.”

A voice, distinct and fanatical, shivered. “Kill them all.”

---

Shell 1: Stormed at with Shot and Shell

The beach was empty. Perpugilliam Brown, known as Peri to her friends, reclined her head. She’d expected the ocean to be a familiar cocktail of salt, seaweed and sand. There was something else, though. Something coming from the jungle behind her. Beyond the sponge-like roots that brushed against the feathered curls of her hair. A smell, almost like masala. Cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, fennel. Rich and potent.

It wasn’t Earth. That was certain. It lacked all the familiar sensory contours of the place.

The penguin crashing through the waves onto the beach certainly didn’t help matters. Her friend, Avan Tarklu, Frobisher to his friends, picked himself up and waddled towards her.

Another checkup.

She frowned under her sunglasses. The whifferdill, for that was what Frobisher was, was snooping again. Fitting for a private detective on sabbatical, but he’d been out-of-sorts since their departure from Mandusus. His usual slaphappy demeanour was replaced by something a great deal more pensive. It caught the Doctor’s attention and, therefore, Peri by extension.

“Didn’t waste time, did you, perp?” Frobisher remarked, wryly.

“Photosynthesis,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“Photosynthesis. It’s easier under a natural sun than a heat lamp in the TARDIS.”

Frobisher sat. “Somewhat spoiled for choice ‘round here.”

Peri slipped down her sunglasses. “Do you mind? You’re blocking the view.”

“Which view would you prefer?” He gestured, vague, with his flippers.

She leant back, again, pushing at the sunglasses. “The one you’re blocking.”

“Well, enjoy it,” the shapeshifter continued. “Knowing the Doc, we’re bound to find ourselves in another perilous spot of trouble.”

“Don’t say that,” she requested. “I’m enjoying the peace.”

“Yeah, well, it’s all fine for you to enjoy the sunshine. I’d prefer it if we were on a snowy beach where I can slide and catch trout or gumblejack in freezing water…” He suddenly gave her a peculiarly guilty expression. “Sorry, Peri, I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine, Frobisher, really.”

“It’s just…”

“Seriously, it’s okay.”

“Sure. No sweat. I…” His voice trailed away. “Sure.”

Peri’s lips thinned. Talking with Frobisher was usually so easy. Their travels were filled with ups and downs, but their recent encounter with the Daleks had left some scars for them both. Both literal and metaphorical. Peri realised that Frobisher could probably see hers on the sides of her head.

She began, “If you wanted to talk about what happened to you…”

“To me? Nope.” He stared off into the water. “I do not.”

“You’re back, again, though.”

“Thought we’d huddle together against predators.”

“Such as the dreaded pink-and-purple penguin eater?”

“They exist, y’know,” he protested.

Peri’s smile was slight. “Y’know, sometimes you seem to think more like a penguin from Earth than a whifferdill from Xenon.”

“Funny you say that. Where I come from, jack, whifferdills enjoy colder climates more than standard humanoids.” He adopted the Doctor’s voice, “Thus, forgive me if I don’t sympathise with your desire to enjoy the sunshine when it’s too much for my blood.”

“And we were getting on so well with each other,” Peri teased.

Frobisher tried to smile at her. Really tried.

“You really don’t want to talk about it?” she asked.

The whifferdill shook his head. “Not yet.”

Before she could push the point, Frobisher’s expression twisted into something quite peculiar. He shook, flailed and leapt back, a single webbed foot in the air.

“Yee-ouch!” A crab dangled from his foot’s end.

Peri yanked her toes from the wading pool. “Frobisher!”

A bright red arm with humbug-yellow cuffs shot out from Peri’s peripheral vision. It grabbed at the small decapod, yanked it clear, and set it down onto the sand some distance away. It scuttled, snapping its claws.

“Ouch.” Frobisher blew on his aching foot. “Thanks for the save, Doc.”

“Not the sociable sort.” The Doctor put a hand in his pocket. “I wonder what’s made these fellows so crabby?”

His young companions winced and issued sounds of disgust.

“Not one of your best,” Peri commented.

Frobisher shook his head. “Definitely in the bottom six.”

The Doctor tutted, “We can but try, you two.”

The errant time-traveller was pretty hard to miss, even in the florid colours of their tropical hideaway. In his sixth incarnation, the Doctor stood out as a blonde-haired man of science, temperament and passion. For his personal haute couture, his multicoloured coat swished around yellow-checked trousers. The crab pinched at the orange spats of his green shoes to no success and elected to take its grievances elsewhere.

“It’s good to see you all the same.” Peri quickly dried her feet with a towel before slipping her shoes back on. “Thanks for bringing us to wherever we are.”

“Your gratitude is appreciated, Perpugilliam,” the Doctor said solemnly, “but I’m afraid this isn’t as it appears.”

“What’s the problem, Doc?” asked Frobisher.

“I wish I could say that our visit to this planet is entirely accidental,” the Doctor replied. “That, however, would be a farrago of distortion on my part.”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” said Peri. “It’s great to be here. Sunny beach, palm trees. Almost like we’re in the Caribbean.”

“Or Wiard, again.”

“Yes, again,” the Doctor interrupted. “It seems the information I required necessitated a deeper dive than the TARDIS databanks.”

“What’s there to read when it’s not there?”

“Not read, my dear Peri, remember.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve reconnoitred the shoreline, but I haven’t seen anything familiar. We’re certain of a connection, I’m sure. Some search algorithm or similar.”

“We?”

“I, that is to say,” he corrected with a quick smirk.

The Doctor wasn’t going to elaborate. Conversations between Time Lord and TARDIS weren’t unusual, but often they were deeply private. Peri had often wondered what they talked about. The butterfly-spatter prisms of Time and Space? Gossip from other TARDISes? Old memories of the Doctor’s home?

“What was the TARDIS searching for?” asked Frobisher

“That’s the trouble, my penguin chum. I can’t remember.”

“You don’t have an index card or something to tell you what it was?”

“The telepathic circuits gave my mind a jostle, but there’s so much unwashed laundry, it’s difficult to tell the cleans from dirties.” The Doctor tutted. “I should have given myself more post-it notes on the console to remind me of these things more.”

“Didn’t the TARDIS tell you what planet this is then?” Frobisher enquired. “That could’ve given a clue.”

“Ever the detective,” the Time Lord answered happily. “We’re on the planet Sarfenia.”

“Been here before?” asked Peri

“Never set foot on this planet in all of my lives.”

“Funny,” Frobisher clicked his tongue. “‘Cause you almost gave the impression that you had.”

“Oh, the Second Outer Galaxy and I are well-acquainted, Frobisher. But Sarfenia…? It’s somewhere I recall being mentioned a few times or more long ago.”

“Deep in the Time Lord records, huh?” Peri guessed.

“Oh, simpler than that, Peri. I’ve met one of the local population. She was on the run from…someone if I recall rightly. I believe her name was…”

A scream tore a scar in the sky above. Strum on a thousand broken harps. A howling, shrieking, trembling power that shook the clouds from the sky as readily as it did the ground.

The Doctor swayed, balancing his arms, to avoid ending up face-first in the sand with his compatriots. Eddies of sand swirled around them, stinging Peri and Frobisher’s eyes. It felt like the whole world was screaming at them to get out.

Silence and sudden darkness engulfed them.

---

In the jungle, Jimrock had to see.

Every creature, great and small, held its breath in the foliage around him. The complex interplay of predator and prey in the ecosystem forgotten beneath the awesome power of the Quasar of Sarfenia.

It had happened before. It would happen again. Never, however, was it banal.

If the young agitator hadn’t been wearing his goggles, his eyes would have been seared to cataracts. He was one of the few foolish enough to be looking up; following the slash of unrelenting light across the heavens.

But Jimrock had to see.

In motion, he could see that the middle beam was accompanied by a coiling ring of alternating smaller lances. Tugged tight around this central column. Sustaining it. Fuelling it. He could picture the screams of thousands inside his head, but the whole world had gone silent for its passage. It robbed the very howl from his throat.

Its target was within Sarfenia’s own solar system. A planet called Ischiax, with a sky of charcoal-purple. Beautiful purple tufts of cloud that brought soft summer rains to the inhabitants below. Its people, the Tupcaylans, had harmed no one. Sheltered no one. Betrayed no one.

A portal opened in the atmosphere, bridging the light-years of distance between the Cannon and its target.

And the Quasar of Sarfenia was like a greatsword thrust into the heart of that sorry world.

Jimrock could picture it. The grass around the Tupcaylans’ feet would have burst into licking flames. Their bodies turned to cinders. Tongues to ash. They’d have lived, perhaps understood, just long enough to feel the beam against their skins.

He didn’t want to see. 

The light above that robbed the world of noise grew golden. Volcanic. The tectonic plates of Ischiax blistered around an overheated planetary core. Continents hurled themselves up into the broken atmosphere in a thrashing fit of wave-motion energy. Their mountains and vales, soft as freshly-blown glass.

Jimrock’s mind, in such a terrible moment, couldn’t be drawn to anything other than Becceri. He tried to picture her face. The platinum blonde hair. Her royal grace. There were flickers of movement. Precious. Her squared shoulders. That twist in the eyes where she could go from authority to inquisitiveness on a mazuma, and back again.

She was lost to him now. Ambassador to the Graecelan people and she’d left.

The agitator took in a deep breath. He sank against the nearest tree.

Light was returning, like dawn again, but he found he couldn’t bring himself to move. The sheer weight of the event above had bested him. More completely than anything Melbud could have brought to bear.

He turned on stiff legs and began a slow march back to the villa’s compound.

Jimrock had to see. He didn’t want to see, but nevertheless, he saw.

He wasn’t prepared to pay the cost.

---

On the beach, at the return of daylight, Peri yanked her towel around her shoulders. “What the hell was that?”

“Spacecraft?” Frobisher asked. “Warp matrix engines misfiring?”

“This goes far beyond a misaligned ignition coil, Frobisher,” the Doctor mused. “That looked like one of the local planets.”

“Definitely through a portal or something, though, right?”

“Correct, my penguin chum. A portal.” The Doctor squinted. “Looks to be dissipating now.”

“Every time… Every time…” The young botanist shuffled to her feet. “What do you mean?”

“That glow, there…” The Doctor’s eyes widened. “Peri, I think a whole world was just murdered in flames…”

Peri didn’t know how to respond. With anger? Horror? None of it felt big enough.

“A whole world…?” she asked.

“How? How was it done?” He pondered. “A directed beam? Based on a quasar, perhaps?”

“A whole world, Doctor?” An acid feeling crept up her throat.

“Let’s cogitate…” The Doctor clapped his hands together, as if in prayer, and focused. “Quasars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei. They’re extremely luminous where gas and dust end up falling into a supermassive black hole and they emit electromagnetic radiation across entire electromagnetic spectrums.”

“Right. And… And quasars also inhabit active galaxies. I remember Mr. Sagan’s lecture.” Peri slipped her blouse back on. “Are we talking about a natural phenomenon or…?”

“Natural or not, it seems to have come from outside this planet’s atmosphere.”

“Makes sense,” added the whifferdill. “They’re among… Wait a minute… ‘The most powerful and energetic objects in the known universe, and they contain about two hundred to four hundred billion stars’.”

“Which way did it come from?” Peri asked.

“Judging from the trajectory…” The Doctor pointed. “That, I should think. Come along.”

They began to walk along the shoreline, the jungle at their right. The beach before them curved inward towards a cove. The TARDIS became an oblong crate far behind them.

Frobisher asked, “Do you think it was a deliberate attack, Doctor?”

“A strong potentiality,” he nodded. “You both surprise me. That knowledge on quasars.”

Peri quirked an eyebrow. “How are we going to forget Carl Sagan?”

“I… ah… also once handled a case that involved me going to a science lecture,” Frobisher kicked the sand. “Most of it was natter, but I made sure I got the gist of what she said to help me solve my case.”

“Which was?” asked Peri.

“Finding a missing constellation.” He looked bashful. “I was a telescopic lens for an evening or three. Delayed shipping on replacement parts. Important conference you can’t cancel. You know how it goes. I was paid in hors d’oeuvres.”

The Doctor frowned. “I’m starting to think your career as a detective was just a series of rather civilised muggings.”

“But that was a gunshot, right?” asked Peri. “From a radiation gun?”

“Yes, an electromagnetic radiation gun,” he assented. “The damage to this planet’s atmosphere, however well-contained, must be incalculable. Someone is meddling in forces they don’t quite…”

Frobisher yelped. A flipper went to the back of his neck. Small beads of carbon dioxide bubbled on its tip. “Doc, I…!”

He pitched forward, head twisting at an unnatural angle and slapped into the beach.

A light whistle, like a burst tyre, studded the air. The Doctor leapt in front of Peri. His hands went to his throat. A hard, almost guttural choking noise and he toppled back on top of her.

The same effervescence on his windpipe. Peri put her hand to it. There was a double pulse. Quickened, but…

Something broke the surface of the water. It fought its way towards the shore. She could hear it behind her.

Can’t see…! She ripped the sunglasses from her face. Get to cover.

She couldn’t pull the Doctor off her.

The pain was sharp. Like the bite of a mosquito or the sting of a bee. Peri felt it strike the back of her collarbone. She put a finger against her skin. The botanist expected blood, but instead, that same soda fizz she’d discovered on the Doctor and Frobisher. There was something at its centre. A small pellet. Already dissolving against her fingertip.

White figures were emerging from the sea, their weapons in hand.

She turned around to jostle the Doctor.

Peri’s muscles unspooled, her limbs fumbling. The coal-red eyes of her attacker seared into her consciousness. He wasn’t like the other figures and he wasn’t their leader. There was something about… He had no neck, a domed head, and the complexion of rotten wood. She tried to reach the memory, the name in her mind, before she… she…

Peri lunged into unfamiliar darkness.

---

At the compound, the trees shivered at the overhead pass of a sickening, throbbing sound above Ayna’s head. Not the Cannon, an alien spacecraft. On its way to the submersible spaceport in the northern sea, most likely.

Surprised, she dropped her fishing net into the lintolemon pond. One of many leading from the cove deep below the ground. Ayna hissed at herself. She scratched her eyebrow, digging into the reeds to find the net’s edge again.

A man stumbled from the trees.

“Sorry, sorry.” Ayna covered her face with her hair, bowing.

It was a reflex. A necessary one for survival. The man, however, seemed not to recognise her. Indeed, her whole presence went ignored, as he stumbled, broken and defeated, through the sodden pools onto the paving stones behind her.

It never occurred to Ayna to call to him.

Instead, she studied his features. Her own honey-gold eyes seemed to glance off his glistening blue. He had crow’s feet. From wincing in the sun. His mouth was used to being taut, but open.

He didn’t look like an Ahaian, but they were the only ones permitted free reign around the villa. There was something in his face. Brutalised by the jungle, it was difficult to say what, precisely. Ayna felt as though she knew him. Not personally, but…

“Becceri…” he moaned. “Becceri…”

Ayna’s fingers squeezed tight enough around her fishing net to draw blood.

He was Jimrock. The Graecelans knew him well. Always at the side of their ambassador in the courts. His rough-hewn demeanour, an unusual addition to the immaculate posturing of Queen Melbud’s followers.

He was staggering towards the back of the villa. One of the helmeted soldiers, idly watching Ayna’s morning of catching fish, stepped in front of him. Jimrock went to push her aside, but there was so little strength left in the man. His fingers clawed, fruitlessly, against the uniform. A hand fumbling at the boomerang clipped to his belt.

Worse, the soldier looked at him with little more than pity.

She called over her fellow, disarming him. They looped their hands around each of his arms.

Jimrock tried to fight them, but it was a sluggish, spent casing jostle.

The pain in Ayna’s shod fingers caused her to look down, letting the net fall around one of her hands. It was good. It kept her warm. Distracted her from the pangs of hunger to her stomach. If she took any of the lintolemon fish for herself, they would have killed her, as doubtless they would Jimrock.

There he was. Taken to the Dungeon Complex. A small reprieve and then… Up to the villa’s orbital lift. Through to the Quasar of Sarfenia. Never to be seen again.

---

Consciousness returned stubbornly to Peri and Frobisher. Beneath all three of them – the Doctor included – was the unsteady sway of paving stones. Cracked and shattered, here and there, by the same sponge-like root from the beach. All three were being carried, bodily, towards their destination.

“Everyone alright?” called the Doctor. “Peri? Frobisher?”

“Be quiet,” snapped their leader.

Their captors, frogmen in white wetsuits, were still damp from the ocean. Peri noticed the neckless giant who had shot them down was visibly absent. The group’s apparent leader had taken over.

“S’okay, Doctor,” Peri grunted. “I broke your fall.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, genuinely.

Frobisher wriggled his beak. “Don’t worry, folks, I’m here, as well.”

“What happened to you?”

“I fell into the loving arms of a sandbag. Better question is what happened to us?”

“Chemical bullets, Frobisher.” The Doctor licked his teeth. “Colemanlucide cartridges, judging from the aftertaste. They produce a sedative effect when absorbed through the skin.”

“How long have we been out, Doc?”

“An hour or so.”

“How do you know?” Peri asked.

“I’ve been awake, Peri. Time Lord metabolism. However, I couldn’t do anything until you woke up. Therefore…”

“The morning crossword from the Time Lord of the hour.” She exhaled, teeth grinning. “As to your next, quite natural question…”

A backhand across Peri’s face brought an abrupt, but tense silence to the conversation.

The Doctor raised his chin, pursing his mouth into a thin, blisteringly angry line.

“Peri?” he mouthed.

Frobisher whispered. “Y’alright?”

She blinked the angry tears from her eyes.

The trio found themselves brought to a compound containing a tall villa. Its weather-worn stone walls looked almost medieval in design, but through the doorway, Peri could see the corridors were well-lit with a hotel’s gold-yellow.

The helmeted soldiers prodded and shoved them along inside, through a couple of huge doors, into the central court chambers. Servants moved on its fringes, carrying out their expected duties with the scant resources afforded to them.

Escorted by their captors, the Doctor, Peri and Frobisher found themselves standing before a large throne. Seated in it was a beautiful, gold-haired woman with a crown on her head. She languished there, studying the three newcomers nonchalantly.

Hands on his hips, the Doctor cocked an eyebrow.

At that, the woman got up and re-examined her newcomers. “Captain Theizan?”

“Hello,” the Doctor said, cheerfully. “One moment.”

The time-traveller turned around to the captain as if to shake his hand. When Captain Theizan got close enough, the Doctor gave a resounding punch to the man’s chin that knocked the fellow off his feet.

From the ground, Theizan shook with rage. “You swine!”

Peri was smiling.

“Apologies for barging in like this.” The Doctor swung back to the woman, ignoring him. “But we were brought here rather roughly, as you can see.”

Captain Theizan grabbed the Doctor by the collar, shouting threats that the Doctor was more than willing to reciprocate.

“Stand down, Captain,” the woman waved her hand.

“Temper, temper. Violence is never the answer,” goaded the Doctor.

Captain Theizan’s stranglehold tightened.

“Theizan,” snapped the Queen. “Who do you serve?”

Immediately, he released his grip. Almost mechanically, he returned to the other soldiers.

“These aren’t who I was expecting, Captain.” She appraised the Time Lord up and down. “You have the wrong people.”

“Believe me, we feel like the wrong people.” Peri tried to suppress a laugh.

“These…” Captain Theizan restrained himself. “They were found trespassing on your eastern beach in Aha, my Queen. We escorted them here for you to interrogate them.”

Her majesty sighed, annoyed. “As if I didn’t have enough to deal with.” She then addressed the Doctor. “You heard what my Captain said.”

“My apologies. I find one beautiful patch of unspoilt wilderness is much the same as another.”

“You plead ignorance?”

“Confess, certainly.”

“Ignorance is no source of vindication. You shall be punished for your trespass on the Quasar of Sarfenia.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Peri protested. “We’ve only just arrived. There weren’t any prohibition signs on your beach.”

“The beach being, of course, the Quasar of Sarfenia?” verified the Doctor.

“No,” Melbud answered.

“Thought not. Interesting.”

She tilted her head. “Your point of contention is curious.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, usually, we find the dispute being more directly levelled at the where of the Quasar of Sarfenia, rather than the what.”

“Yes, I saw the orbital lift on the way in,” he waved a dismissive hand. “You might be… Whom? Project director?”

“She is Queen Melbud of Sarfenia,” redressed Captain Theizan. “First Lady of Aha.”

“Royalty. Well, suffice to say, these are my companions, Peri and Frobisher, and I am known as the Doctor.” He bowed his head, clutching his lapel. “Melbud… Sarfenia…”

“You have heard of me then?”

“Not exactly. I can’t recall how I know your name. I’m sure it’ll come to me in time.”

“Whilst you’re remembering that, I’m sure you and your entourage will enjoy spending the night in my Dungeon Complex. My soldiers are preparing your cells this minute.”

“Oh, great.” Peri raised her arms. “Tell me, at least, we can call for room service.”

Frobisher spoke up for the first time. “I’d hate to think what you and your gang do at parties. Do we get our vidphone call?”

In contrast to the Doctor and Peri, the whifferdill’s answer froze Melbud. Gradually, she pointed at him. If her jaw weren’t tight against her skull, she would have been agog.

“This… Big, talking bird?” she asked. “Is he yours?”

“Hardly,” the Doctor smiled.

“I belong to no-one, jack. The Doctor treats me as an equal, as does Peri here.” Perplexed, Frobisher added, “What’s the matter? You never seen a webbed waddler like me before?”

“It’s incredible! A big talking bird.” Melbud dropped her left hand.

Apprehensive, Frobisher turned, sotto voce, to the Doctor and Peri. “Anyone else getting a painful sense of déjà vu?”

“Anyone give me a scrubbing brush and I’ll sue,” muttered Peri.

“What’s the deal with her majesty here?”

“Maybe she fancies you?” Peri suggested.

Frobisher gasped, affectedly. “We’ve only just met.”

“Oh, great bird,” declaimed Melbud, soothingly. “It’d be an honour to have you join me at my dinner table tonight. We can discuss how you happen to be here and why you have graced your presence before the great Queen of Sarfenia.”

“The honour’s ours, I’m sure.” Frobisher indicated the Doctor and Peri. “I’m sure we’ll all enjoy being at your dinner table tonight too.”

“Oh, no,” dismissed the Queen. “Those two must be sent to the Dungeon Complex.”

“Oh, well done,” Peri sighed to the Doctor.

“If he hadn’t done it, perp, I would’ve…” Frobisher murmured.

“My friend was struck,” explained the Doctor. “I merely responded in kind. A crude retaliatory action, I’ll grant you, but suitably apposite.”

“With the element of surprise,” Theizan growled.

“And I’d do it again, Captain,” smiled the Doctor. “Be assured, I would.”

“That I grant you, but you must still answer for your trespass,” Melbud specified. “Your company is accepted, Frobisher, but theirs is not.”

Peri’s eyes danced. “Lucky, lucky, Frobisher…”

“That’s no way to speak about a chance for my company, young lady.” The Doctor feigned offence, preening with mock pomposity. “Have you not the time for a wearied old soul, such as I? A Time Lord reaching the mere prime of his lives?”

She found herself smiling, touching her dimples. “You gotta tell me how you do that.”

“Do what?” He chuckled to himself, nudging her shoulder.

A bleeping noise echoed from the throne. Turning to it, Melbud made her way over to answer the intercom. “What do you want?”

“Major Klugii here, your majesty,” answered a younger voice. “You wanted us to inform you when the prisoner was en route.”

“Finally… Soon?”

“Yes, your majesty. He’s returning with her across the villa’s grounds now.”

“Right,” said Melbud, switching off the intercom.

“Without a word of thanks,” tutted the Doctor.

“Captain,” the Queen demanded. “Go and welcome our guests.”

“At once, your majesty.” Captain Theizan bowed and summoned two of his soldiers to accompany him, as they headed off out of the court chambers.

Peri noticed her friend’s disturbed expression. “Doctor, are you alright? You’ve gone pale.”

“Peri, I’ve remembered.”

“Remembered? Remembered what?”

“I know who they are.”

“Who, Doc?” asked Frobisher.

The court chambers’ doors opened to Captain Theizan, flanked by his two subordinates.

The three guards escorted a familiar dome-headed figure. On his helmet were two massive horns that reminded Peri uncomfortably of Herne the Hunter. He unscrewed it with a pneumatic hiss.

Peri recognised him. “From the beach…”

“That’s the joker who shot us,” hissed Frobisher.

“The Sunfire Gem, Melbud,” said the Sontaran. “Here.”

He tossed it to Queen Melbud who caught it single-handed.

Dragged with him was a golden-haired woman in shackles. The Doctor’s cat-like eyes narrowed with recognition. The memory that had been so nagging him since the TARDIS had suddenly clicked into place. He knew them both. Jailor and prisoner.

“Wulfe and Becceri,” the Doctor concluded. “Home, at last.”

---

The flower at the end of the orbital lift required feeding.

The creatures around it were uncaring of its tobacco-like stench. The humid steam that prickled from its skin. Its presence, like a jagged tin stare. Overpowering to all, but a few. To others, it would have been like sitting beside a guillotine, awaiting the next head to roll into the basket. To them, it was no more distasteful than any duty in the Sontaran Empire.

The flower had no sentience. No conscious awareness. Merely… Need.

Deep and resounding. Like a rock dropped in a cave pool, the energy flowed from it with purpose, but the need in its pale-white petals remained. So much need. Aching, veined, ichor-black need.

Its black tar mind hungered for more fuel. Its instinct was clear. Purpose unwavering. It felt no emotion. It had no hopes, nor fears. Just the need.

The need.

Nothing but the need.

Yes. It would be fed soon.

---

Shell 2: Death and Fine Dining

Entering the Dungeon Complex, Captain Theizan and his helmeted soldiers took their prisoners to M-Block, Sections 42 to 58.

Taking out a keycard, he slipped it into the key-slot to open the door.

Beyond it, sat an inset cage containing an identigraph, a blood sampler and a bodyprint analyser. At the console, to the Doctor, Peri and Becceri’s left, a soldier tapped in the requisite commands to ensure they were logged in the dungeon database.

“Cutting edge of technology, this.” The Doctor jostled his manacles. “Although I suppose old habits die hard.”

“Shut up,” Captain Theizan barked.

His eyes glittered, dangerous. “Make me.”

The soldier raised his hand to strike him, but thought better of it.

“How much longer?” asked the time-traveller.

Peri knew this tactic well. The Doctor would behave not unlike an impatient child or stubborn old man. Enough to expend the energy of their jailors. Make him unappealing to their interest. It seemed to be working. The soldier at the console wanted nothing to do with him.

“Identigraph complete,” he said. “A copy will be dispatched to Dungeon Control.”

“You’ll have me on record already,” Becceri motioned.

“A course of telepathic suppressants will be administered to you over the course of your incarceration. These are mandatory. Attempt to circumvent the dosage and it will be administered without your cooperation.”

“I’m aware.”

The Doctor tapped his cat brooch as they moved to the blood sampler. “A far cry from the roar of the space racetrack, eh? Becceri?”

The tightness in the corners of her mouth seemed to soften. She used the discomfort of her hands in the sampler to flick her eyes towards him. It was clear they knew each other from somewhere. They were just having a hard time pinning it down.

“The Aepa Som Arena was a crowded place…” she began.

“Ah, but I appreciated the somnolent peace of the Neimor Reliquary.” He leant away from her, puckish. “Despite how you left James, Bazooie and myself.”

That caught her interest. “Sounds as though I was in a hurry. I should have given you a pleasant vintage.”

“Mmm… I’d have settled for 1925, but it tastes rather a lot like spilled milk.”

“Doctor…” she exhaled.

“Hello, again, Becceri.” He slipped his hands into the sampler. “We do have to stop meeting like this.”

Peri was the last to go through the blood sampler. The bodyprint analyser, afterwards, wasn’t too dissimilar to walking through airport customs. She saw Becceri’s eyes stop on the assorted inventory taken from prisoners.

Powered-down lasguns, a ball of twine from the Doctor, a hairband from herself. At the end, slid into an alcove, was what Peri could only identify as a metallic boomerang. She didn’t know it from Adam, but the golden-haired woman clearly recognised it.

“Jimrock…” she sighed. “So you are alive after all. Wulfe didn’t lie about that.”

As they stepped from the cage, the soldiers pushed the Doctor, Peri and Becceri down the corridor. They passed a handful of cells before they turned the corner to the left and found themselves in Section 43. 

“You seem to be having a prisoner shortage,” observed the Doctor.

“Ahh… Not quite,” Peri tugged at his sleeve. “Bar one.”

“A friend.” Becceri didn’t elaborate further.

“Wait,” called the soldier at the console.

Captain Theizan gripped the Doctor by the shoulder.

“We have a malfunction,” the soldier reported. “They’ll have to be reprocessed.”

“Cause?” demanded Captain Theizan.

The Doctor clasped his lapel, fingering the empty space where his cat brooch would have been. Peri caught his eye and he smiled. She tipped her head, ever so slightly, to him. He nodded in return.

“Neither this Doctor nor Peri were entered in the genetic database.”

“Dust,” the Doctor suggested. “It gets into everything. You should see my vessel.”

“Back to the cage.” Captain Theizan shoved him back.

The Doctor shouted. Flailed. Arms flapping through the air. An aggressive gesture to be sure, but not one that Peri thought warranted such a reaction from the Doctor. He flung himself, elbows akimbo, against the cage’s opening. Facing Captain Theizan.

Then, she saw what the Time Lord was really up to. Like a wrestler in a ring, he hugged the doorframe, and… “Hai!” struck his foot squarely into Captain Theizan’s stomach.

The soldier doubled over. He grappled for his gun, winded.

Peri leapt on his wrist, pulling him forward onto the ground. With a crack, against his forehead this time, he was unconscious. She held his blaster, too comfortably, in her hands.

“Chemical bullets, still?” asked Peri.

“Let’s find out.” The Doctor cleared his throat. “Open the cage or we’ll kill your captain.”

The soldier at the console raised his arms. Slowly. He removed his keycard from his tunic and swiped it against the entry coder.

“The power packs are elsewhere,” he began to protest. “You’ll never be able to… ”

“Sit just there, old chap.” The Doctor forced him down into his chair. “We shan’t be long.”

Plucking a key from the soldier’s pocket, the Doctor unlocked the manacles of himself, Peri and Becceri in quick measure.

Peri held Theizan’s blaster on the soldier. It wasn’t until now, up close, that she could see how young he really was. She swallowed, steadying herself on her two feet, like she’d seen Roger Moore do in one of the recent James Bond films. Bluff him out.

The Doctor tapped away on the console. “All independent terminals. No networking access whatsoever. Just access to the cells. A shame. I thought it might be centralised.”

Becceri crossed to the inventory and retrieved the boomerang.

“There’s someone here I’d like released, if that’s possible.” She leant towards the vidscreen.

“Prisoner in Section 43?” he guessed.

“There’s Captain Theizan’s keycard,” Peri suggested.

Becceri crossed to the unconscious body, tugged out the small rectangle of plasteel and applied it to the cell door. Peri didn’t take her eyes off the guard, but she could hear her tentative voice.

“Jimrock…?”

Silence, then a sudden flurry of movement. Animated. A shout. “No!”

The soldier tensed up, but Peri coaxed him back down.

“Jimrock, it’s me,” Becceri insisted.

“You’re dead, they killed you at the spaceport.”

Agony twisted her voice. “Is that what they told you?”

“Tell me something…” He gasped. “Something only Becceri would know. Not any telepathic rubbish. A real and genuine truth.”

“You’d never let truth get in the way of a passionate bullheaded charge.”

“Now, that sounds like Becceri, but…”

“The acoustics in this cell are dreadful. Come out here where I can talk to you plainly.”

“Yes, m’dear.”

“Don’t be stubborn,” Becceri crossed back into Peri’s field of vision. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.” The years in the man’s face and voice dropped away.

“How…?” Becceri’s mouth went dry. “How many did they take?”

“Far too many. That’s… That’s why I came back to the villa.”

“You did what?”

“I don’t know, I just…” He winced. “After the last shot from the Quasar Cannon, I thought of everyone else down here and… How few were left and I just thought…”

“It’s alright now,” she soothed. “Oh I’ve greatly missed you so much.”

Peri interjected, “I take it you two know each other well, huh?” 

Becceri reached out and embraced Jimrock in a passionate kiss.

“Well, that answers my question,” remarked Peri.

“Good friends, as the historians say,” the Doctor smiled.

Becceri released Jimrock and turned to the Doctor, nodding. “Hopefully, we’ll be married once Melbud’s reign of terror has ended.”

“Ah, young love,” Peri sighed, affectedly.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Becceri, I know how much you’re pleased to be reunited with your betrothed, but our situation is more urgent than ever.”

“You’re right, of course.” Letting go of Jimrock, Becceri answered, “Apologies, Doctor. We must return to the upper levels.”

Jimrock studied her eyes. “She’s got the Sunfire Gem back then.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologise,” Jimrock said reassuringly. “I know you did your best.”

“You,” Peri angled the weapon at the soldier at the console. “How do we get out of here?”

“The way is clear,” he spat the words.

“Oh, come now.” The Doctor stepped beside Peri. “It’s hardly that simple, surely?”

“There’s a dead man’s switch that Captain Theizan has to press every fifteen minutes,” Jimrock elaborated. “If he doesn’t, the place is put into lockdown.”

“Let’s get going then,” the Doctor suggested. “Lead the way, Jimrock, good man?”

“You’ll never get out of here,” asserted the soldier.

“Especially if you talk.” Peri raised the blaster. “Now stay put. And close your eyes.”

The soldier did as instructed.

The Doctor was unusually silent beside her. She looked at him, letting the trembling in her arms finally take over. He took the weapon from her. Together, they took several steps back into the processing area of the cage.

The soldier made his move. To charge them both. Tackle them down. The Doctor raised the gun and with alarming precision, shot out the bottom stalk of the soldier’s chair.

“The young lady told you to ‘stay put’!” he chastised. “Dear, dear me…!”

The soldier sat, eyes tight, reconsidering his decision-making processes in the wreckage.

Once they were through the cage, the Doctor tossed the gun clear. They made to leave, but he paused, considered, and leant into the blood sampler. Jammed by its pin into the machine’s workings was his cat brooch. He reattached it to his lapel, accordingly.

The Doctor took Peri with him, Becceri and Jimrock in their jailbreak.

---

In the villa above, Frobisher considered that he’d never had lintolemon fish before.

He liked how the chef prepared the meal on his dinner plate. It was shaped symmetrically from top to bottom, although the gills were far lower than where they would usually be on the Earth-dwelling fish. There were seven fish sliced and cut with three fruit slices on the side of the plate.

Like penguins, Frobisher caught each fish with his beak and swallowed it whole. He was thankful his powerful jaw was able to grip the slippery prey. The fish had a tangy and almost citrus-like flavour to them, but Frobisher didn’t mind that.

He wished the lintolemons were alive instead of being prepared for him. The experience of catching and eating his prey was far more exciting than by genial means. But he knew how to be polite. He didn’t want to offend the Queen sitting opposite him.

“Enjoying your food, I see,” said Melbud soothingly.

“Oh for sure, yeah,” Frobisher replied between mouthfuls. “Finest meal I’ve had in weeks. You really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

“No trouble at all. Anything we can do to entertain such a distinguished guest.”

Frobisher ate slowly. He eyed Melbud suspiciously. His private eye instincts couldn’t resist wondering what it was that got her interested in him instead of the Doctor and Peri. The penguin reached for a napkin and wiped his beak.

“What is it about me that’s fascinating, your majesty?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the hospitality, but there’s got to be an angle.”

For a while, Melbud didn’t say anything, as she sipped wine from her glass.

“There’s always been legends of talking birds in the Southern Mountains of Regitator between the gulfs of Aha and Graecela. I used to dream of meeting one.”

“Ever since you were a princess.”

“My parents didn’t bother. Their royal duties took precedence.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But now you’re here… Now I’ve met you and I see that you’re a talking bird, it was hard for me to resist…getting to know you.”

“Well, what can I say?” he pretended. “I’m flattered you regard me so highly, your worship.”

“You’re not from the Southern Mountains of Regitator, are you?”

“Sorry to disappoint you. I’m not of this world at all.”

“Not of this world?” She tapped her fingers together. “So, what brings you to grace our halls?”

“I’m not a saint, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m a traveller. A weary traveller who’s had a lot of adventures on his back.”

“A traveller and an adventurer? My, my, you must have visited so many strange worlds and told many stories to your followers.”

“You could say that. Though not sure about the ‘followers’ bit.”

“Please, please, tell me. What adventures have you had lately? They must have been very exciting and dangerous.”

“Well…” He stared down at his plate. “I first met the Doc after busting an affair wide open on a surveillance jobbie…” 

---

The drip of water from the stalactites above pooled on the plasteel flooring as the quartet crept through the dungeons.

The Doctor’s face was a mask of inner thought.

“Drip,” Peri counted. “Drip… Drip… Drop… Drip…”

“She never mentioned Jimrock,” he declared, suddenly.

“Becceri, you mean?” Peri decided to broach the subject. “I take it you and Becceri are like old acquaintances or something.”

“You couldn’t be less correct than that,” he told her. “We met on the planet Neimor, then on Earth in the 1920s and then during an outer-space race in the Eniotato system.”

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“Mmm… She was secretive even then.” He smiled at her. “That was very brave of you, you know. What you did with that blaster.”

“I wasn’t going to fire,” Peri exhaled. “It… Thanks.”

“I know. I need to commend you on your unconventional thinking more often. It’s valuable.”

“Thanks,” she said, again.

“And…. I do value what you think, Peri.”

“I know.”

“No, really,” he looked at her. “I rather do. What you did on Mandusus, what you endured… ”

“I know, Doctor, I do.” All the same, she didn’t want to talk about it. “What do you already know about Becceri? Is she a very important person on Sarfenia?”

“Becceri is of a certain species that happens to be telepathic. From what I’ve gathered, Becceri and the Queen are at loggerheads with each other.”

“Wait… ” Peri stopped walking. “She’s telepathic?”

The Doctor shut his eyes, wincing. Consumed with the necessities of their escape and the implications of the Quasar Cannon, the fact had slipped his mind.

“Yes, Peri, I am,” Becceri answered, oblivious.

Peri stiffened. “Actively telepathic? Like, right now?”

Becceri turned back to face her. “And I happen to be an ambassador for the Graecelan community. Melbud tolerated my presence in her court chambers before I discovered her plan to destroy the planet Huigo. It was then I made the move to steal the Sunfire Gem.”

“Have you been eavesdropping on our conversation this whole time?”

“Only from your end, m’dear.”

Peri’s blood ran cold.

“Your mind is easy enough for me to read compared to the Doctor.” Becceri turned to the Time Lord. “I still can’t break through your telepathic barriers, you know. I hear one end of the conversation between you two, but not the other…”

Peri stormed towards her. “Never do that to me again.”

Becceri felt Jimrock’s hand tighten on her shoulder.

The botanist’s eyes locked with Becceri. “You understand me?”

“I…”

“Understand?” she snapped.

Becceri nodded, cowed. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”

“And you?” Peri turned to Jimrock. “Do I have your word?”

Jimrock answered, “I’m an Ahaian.”

“Ahaians don’t have the same telepathic abilities that Graecelans have, I gather.” Gently, the Doctor added, quietly and carefully, “She doesn’t know.”

Peri spun to him. “Then, she shouldn’t snoop around in someone else’s head, should she?”

“Alright,” he nodded, softly, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes. “You’re quite right. She shouldn’t.”

“I need some space, I…” The botanist growled at herself. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“We shall be here,” the Doctor acknowledged.

As Peri walked away, Becceri stood at the Doctor’s shoulder. “Did I do wrong?”

“Yes, you did.” The Doctor spun to her, furious. “How dare you!”

“Doctor…”

“You weren’t to know, but that gives you no right to telepathically scan my companion without her consent.” He jabbed his finger at her. “Becceri, Peri has been through an extraordinarily harsh and violating experience. She’s still recovering from Mandusus. How dare you think to walk through her mind like a…a Sunday morning in Kent!”

Becceri didn’t know how to respond. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry, Becceri? Apologise to Peri, not to me.” He turned his back to her. “It’s little wonder there’s so much strife in your solar system.”

Jimrock was about to rebut, but Becceri stopped him. “The Doctor doesn’t mean it like that.”

The Doctor tensed, anger rolling across his shoulders, then forced the energy out through his arms. “No. No, Jimrock, I do not mean it ‘like that’.”

“Unfortunately, Melbud represents the majority of Ahaians that want to see the Huigans wiped out,” Jimrock’s eyes narrowed. “Are you the same, Doctor?”

“Jimrock.” The Doctor turned back to him. “Do not chastise me for defending my friends. I’ll warn you only once.”

“Like the Doctor,” Becceri mediated between them, “the Graecelans are against the brutal carnage, and because the animosity between Aha and Graecela is based on the Ahaians being non-telepaths… ”

“It’s caused the civil war between the two communities, yes.” The Doctor nodded, impatient. “One side feels the other has an untenable advantage. A classic pattern for war.”

“Something I wished never happened,” Jimrock looked aside. “Yet, against our every effort, it eventually did.”

“War is the failure of politics, to quote Carl von Clauswitz,” the Doctor sighed. “There’s far too much of it about.”

“Politics?”

“War, Jimrock. War.”

“Melbud is determined to wipe out the Huigans, Doctor.” There was an insistent tone to Becceri’s voice. “Because of what she calls their ‘ugly ideas’ – both as humanoid Hazums and reptilian Zopians. And that they have better warriors on their planet than ours. The conflict between Sarfenia and Huigo has lasted so long that no-one can remember how it all began.”

“Perhaps it began simply, Becceri,” said the Doctor.

As all wars do, he added, unsolicited, in her mind.

“Accepted. I take your point,” she nodded, again.

Peri sniffed, returning, “Is your Queen really as you say she is?”

“It’s something Melbud inherited from her mother,” Jimrock confirmed. “I remember her. She was far worse as a Sarfenian leader.”

“And that’s the reason why you stole the Sunfire Gem, Becceri, I take it?” the Doctor pursued. “To prevent Melbud from using too much power to destroy the Huigans.”

“That, and to save Jimrock from certain death,” Becceri answered, as she embraced her lover tightly whilst they walked. “We should keep moving. Peri, I…”

“Forget it,” Peri waved a hand. “We’ve more important things to worry about.”

“Nevertheless, I am sorry. It’s different among my people, I forget that.”

Peri nodded. “You know better now.”

“Yes.” Becceri took her leave.

“We’ll join you in a moment.” The Doctor watched them go before he turned to his friend. “Peri, are you alright?”

“More angry at myself than her.” She thumbed the corner of an eye. “Thought I was over it.”

“Here.” He pulled his arm around her shoulders. “You’re allowed to feel, my girl. You’re allowed to feel.” 

---

In Dungeon Control, Wulfe drew himself up to his full height. “I am here on orders from Sontaran High Command.”

He was compact, Major Klugii observed, but something in those blazing red eyes made her stop and take warning. She had seen it in her drill instructors, daily. Those restrained decades of martial discipline that she’d only just begun to master. A single stroke of Wulfe’s arm against her neck could easily shatter her spinal column if she disobeyed.

Nevertheless, there was one crucial element he was missing.

“With the authority of Queen Melbud,” he added.

The youthful soldier nodded, swivelling on her chair to face him.

The headhunter continued, “The Dok-tor is a war criminal and a person of supreme interest to my superiors. I was to be given complete access to him and the young wo-man for standard interrogation.”

Major Klugii swivelled back and activated the nearest vidscreen. “Captain Theizan should be on his way back from them now. He has…” She eyed the dead man’s switch. “He has four minutes remaining.”

“Show me Section 43,” Wulfe ordered.

Klugii gave another appraisal of the Sontaran. Another careful nod. She searched the registry for the adjoining camera.

“The guard at their station isn’t responding,” Major Klugii reported, levelly.

“Show me.”

They switched to the processing cage leading into the section. The soldier manning the console was attempting to rouse someone else on the ground.

Major Klugii recognised him. “Captain Theizan has been incapacitated.”

Wulfe reached over the reflective-black of the desk and pressed the lockdown stud.

---

At the dinner table, Melbud’s left eye slid to a red indicator light. Hidden behind an assortment of fruit, fluorescent green and pink, from the villa hothouse.

The silent alarm for the dungeons.

“And then?” asked Melbud.

“Well, after that,” Frobisher continued. “The Doctor, Peri and I visited the planet Peladon quite recently. Trust me, you want to be careful when you visit that neck of the woods. The people there, mostly the royals and nobles, aren’t as friendly as you may think.”

“Fascinating.” Her face was bathed in the alarm’s red glow.

Frobisher noticed. “Something to worry about?”

“It’ll be dealt with, I promise.” Melbud folded her hands in front of her. “And your prior destination to Sarfenia?”

“Well… Recently, my friends and I had a run-in with the…” Something in the whifferdill’s features tightened. “The Daleks. Mobile tanks with deadly creatures inside that want to exterminate everyone. You better hope that you don’t have a Dalek invasion on your doorstep anytime soon.”

“You came to warn us?”

“We came to get away. It’s been clinging to us, this… Whatever it is. We can’t shake it.” His eyes flicked to the table and back. “Dunno why I’m telling you this.”

“Again, this is all very enlightening. You, a big talking bird, have experienced so many things and visited so many places that are far from Sarfenia.”

“Ah, but I’m not just a big talking bird. In fact, I’m not a big talking bird at all. I’m a shapeshifter, you see.”

“A what?”

“A shapeshifter. I can…” The whifferdill sat back, metamorphosing into a plush velvet-black cushion. “Change my appearance.” He relaxed back into his king penguin shape. “Sorry, your majesty, but I’m not really who you think I am. I’m not a great bird from one of your books of legend or something. I’m an anxious traveller who’s worried about his two friends.”

Frobisher then noticed the distant look Melbud had.

“Err, hello! Your majesty?” He waved his right flipper at her face to get her attention. “Are you still with us?”

Melbud snapped out of her reverie. “My apologies.” She returned her attention to Frobisher. “What you just said has been such a revelation. You. A shapeshifter.”

“A whifferdill to be precise. Shapeshifting is all the rage on Xenon.”

“You can shapeshift into anything and anyone you want?”

“Within reason and politeness.”

“That must be a truly tremendous gift for you to have.”

“Ah, well, you see, there’s the rub.”

“Oh?”

“Monomorphia. It’s a chronic illness that affects a whifferdill’s ability to change shape. I don’t…” Frobisher demurred. “Don’t like talking about it much.”

“Really? How so?”

“I can’t shapeshift as much as I would like to. I’m often stuck as a penguin, see.”

“That must be very distressing and frustrating for you.”

“People died, Melbud. I killed them. This… This thing killed them.” Frobisher couldn’t drag himself from the smell of the memory. Burning. Melting. Inescapable. “I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s not the illness, maybe I’m just…not good enough…”

“There are those that can and those who cannot, that is true.” Gradually, Melbud took out the Sunfire Gem and held it up for Frobisher to see. “I, too, have been running into issues of focus. It’s why this gemstone has been so precious to me.”

Frobisher looked up, intrigued. “It’s something to do with that pulsar that the Doc, Peri and I saw on the beach earlier, isn’t it?”

“The Sunfire Gem is very powerful. It can do whatever you wish it to. Whatever command you give to it.”

“As easy as that?”

“Believe what I say.” Melbud leant forward, stroking Frobisher’s flippers. “The Sunfire Gem can solve my problem. As it did with my…” She cleared her throat. “The Quasar of Sarfenia is an awesome weapon, but it lacks one particularly important component.”

“Which is?”

“Accuracy.”

“The difference between wiping out a population centre and wiping out a planet?”

“Your experience as an offworlder makes your perspective unique.”

“How so?”

“I believe your shapeshifting powers,” she wickered, “as unreliable as they may be, might just prevent further deaths.”

The penguin considered this offer. Tempting though it may be, there was the ring of King Peliak of Peladon in Queen Melbud’s voice. Honeyed words. A fly could drown in honey if he wasn’t too careful.

“Won’t that foul up your plans somewhat? If I can change into whatever I like, what’s to stop me from betraying our deal?”

“Ah, but you can change now. The only difference, hence, is down to whether or not you have a moral conscience.”

“But, what are you getting in return?”

“The pleasure of being kind,” she answered, coolly. “And to strike only those who have earned my wrath.”

“I’m a detective, not a mechanic. Why not use the Doctor?”

The sides of her mouth tightened. “It would be a treat for me to introduce you to those responsible for the Quasar Cannon. Originally responsible, I should say. Outside the Sontaran contingent now operating it.”

“You want me to show off?”

“On a stage… A private soirée… It doesn’t matter either way.”

“I don’t do costumes, you know.”

“The children would be delighted to see you.” That studying look, again. “They, too, would have read about talking birds living in the Southern Mountains of Regitator. It would be harmless to give the impression that you’re one of them.”

“Really?”

“And remove further unnecessary deaths from their conscience.”

His eyes flickered across the table. Uncertain.

“Think it over,” she conceded. “We haven’t had our dessert yet.”

“There’s dessert?”

“Yes! Tupcaylan ice cream.” She ignored the servants as they manoeuvred about the table. “I’ll have quarters prepared for you while we eat. I do hope you’ll like it. It’s a rarity in our troubled climes.”

Frobisher neglected to mention he’d lost his appetite.

---

“All soldiers report to Dungeon Control,” reported Major Klugii’s crisp voice. “All soldiers to Dungeon Control.”

“And ‘lo the mayhem continues.” The Doctor’s brisk walk turned into a sprint. “Come on!”

The walls of the Dungeon Complex were unusually ornate given their function. At regular intervals, in concentric patterns, were indentations that resembled the inside of a pyramid. The fashionable tiling slid away, section by section, revealing a wall of blasters.

Gunfire rattled like a cicada in a jar, biting hungrily and angrily for the ugly thud of fleeing bodies. The Doctor, Peri, Becceri and Jimrock, however, knew this game of old.

“Keep down, crawl if you have to!” The Doctor catapulted himself onward. “Jimrock, are all these systems automated?”

“Should be. Anyone caught down here would be a straggler to… Look out!” But Jimrock was too late.

The soldier pounced on Peri. She spun around, her neck caught in a headlock, gasping. Her elbows came up and down. Savage, beating cracks against the soldier’s ribs. Her opponent wheezed, her own breath growing ragged.

The Doctor applied some Martian karate to the back of the soldier’s neck. Her grip on Peri loosened. Enough to allow the botanist to crack her skull against her opponent’s chin.

The soldier howled. Becceri knocked her legs out from beneath her. The woman stumbled into the hallway, blind with pain.

“No!” The Doctor reached out to stop her.

The blasters chittered, oblivious of their target, and all that was left of the soldier was perforated rags and the click of emptied weapons.

Time left little opportunity to take stock of the accident. With the whir of motors, the very floor itself reeled away beneath them. The dead soldier’s body fell. Landing against all the gruesome eventualities that sat at the bottom of the spike pit. The smell of electricity sullied the ozone between each dagger.

Jimrock went to grab his boomerang when… “The lights!”

A whirr. Low. A panel opening somewhere at ankle height. They heard the snap of ball bearings loosed across the concrete.

Peri lost her footing. “Doctor!”

“I’ve got you!” He linked his arm under hers, pulling her back towards him.

Another hiss of motors. A wet, sturdier thud.

Becceri shouted, slammed against the floor on her back. “It’s sliding back beneath us! Jimrock? Jimrock!”

“He’s here!” The Doctor leant down. “He slipped, struck his head.” 

“Can he move?” asked Peri.

“Young fellow?” He tapped him on the chin. “Are you conscious?”

“Doc… mmrr’nnngh…”

“Take it slow, old chap. You’ve had a nasty tumble.”

Peri’s hands slapped against something hard. “New wall. We’re sealed in.”

“How did Melbud acquire a Quasar Cannon, Jimrock?” the Doctor enquired. “Tell me.”

“It was grown for her,” Becceri answered.

“No, Jimrock, you tell me.” The Doctor pulled out his penlight, shining it in the young agitator’s eyes. “I’m testing for signs of a concussion.”

“She had Ahaian scientists and engineers working on the Quasar Cannon.”

“For how long?”

“Six years. It was developed and tested to destroy Huigo and its inhabitants. The Sunfire Gem is the final component she needs to achieve total destruction.”

Peri tugged on the Doctor’s shoulder. “When this floor goes, that’ll be it for us.”

“No way forward?” asked the Doctor.

“Only down and I’m not ready for the afterlife yet.”

“What did you say just now, Jimrock?” the Doctor urged. “How long did it take for the Cannon to be built?”

“Six years to be grown, developed and tested,” said Jimrock. “It’ll be destroyed by tomorrow.”

“Good enough. Let’s get you to your feet. Peri.” The Doctor shrugged himself out of his coat. “Wipe the floor clear. Smooth as you can make it.”

“I can barely see in front of my face,” Becceri stumbled forward.

“Not that way!” Peri warned. “Over here. Towards my voice.”

Becceri pivoted. “Keep talking.”

“Okay.” A short pause. The scuffing of the coat as it was used as a broom. “What’s Melbud got against the Huigans?”

“It’s personal for her,” she affirmed. “Melbud has been bitter about the Huigans since they killed her father. I think she loved him more than she loved her mother.”

“She was a spoiled brat beforehand,” Jimrock interjected.

“And for that, her father was murdered?” asked the Doctor.

“Uh, Doctor… Doctor, the floor!” Peri jostled his shoulder, increasingly urgent. “Doctor!”

“His handiwork is all around you, Doctor.” Jimrock gestured to the labyrinth of death. “His daughter only took a passing interest at first. Since her father’s death though, Melbud has become very…” 

“Vengeful?” The Doctor quirked an eyebrow.

“It was even rumoured that she killed her mother to obtain the throne.”

“I hope you’re not one to kill on a rumour, Jimrock.”

“I had to listen to the court excuse the killings, Doctor. Give every reason, this way and that, why we should do nothing.”

The grinding of the floor was growing louder.

“Talking of which, can we force any handholds in the walls?” asked Peri.

“I’m afraid not.” The Doctor bit his lip, narrowing his eyes. “That said, you know a great deficiency in many land-based mammalian species?”

“What?”

“They spend so little time looking up.” He angled the penlight to the ceiling. “That’s natural rock, surely? Not machined at all.”

“And a…” Peri squinted. “Hey! A tuberous root system.”

“Becceri, did you say the weapon was ‘grown’?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes.”

“Six years is a fairly short time in the life of an organism. I don’t think Melbud’s father really accounted for this kind of interference. Jimrock, your boomerang. Aim for that cluster of roots. Just there.”

Unsheathing it from his tunic, the agitator pulled the arc of steel behind his head. He aimed it at a forty-five degree angle. Thirty degrees into the air. With a silent prayer, he flicked with his wrist and watched the results.

They were fortunate. Jimrock’s target was malleable clay. Dried out by the air-conditioning system used to keep the floor trap in working order. Clumps of soil fell with a snake-like hiss, but they did fall. He caught the boomerang in both hands.

The Doctor reached up, on his toes, digging into the clay around the roots. “Pull! Come along, pull!”

The roots were liquid warm to the touch. Uncomfortably soft. But sturdy as the trunk of a baobab tree. Despite its silent protests, the four of them succeeded in untangling enough to tie a series of hanging beds from the loam.

“Up!” ordered the Doctor.

And when the last few centimetres of the floor vanished beneath them, they were still alive. Held. Tight. In the roots’ embrace.

The Doctor sighed. “Into the loving arms of Mother Nature.”

---

On the Dungeon Control’s vidscreen, Jimrock muttered, “There’s a wicked irony that the monstrosity that dooms us is the one that’s just saved us.”

“God has a twisted sense of humour,” Peri added.

“Not nearly as twisted as me, primitive.” Wulfe stalked to the assembled soldiers. “I trust you are all recovered?”

“We do not take orders from you,” advised Captain Theizan, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You are relieved, Major Klugii.”

The young soldier clicked her heels together and marched towards the nearest lift.

“Now hear this.” Wulfe slapped his rheon carbine under his arm. “According to your Queen, Becceri’s containment is your top priority. Sontaran tactics will aid you to this end.”

“Will they?”

The headhunter forced Captain Theizan to his feet, spitting, “I have not traced this fe-male across countless spans of space to be humbled on her own homeworld.”

Another soldier tried to intercede. “Captain… ”

Wulfe struck him in the throat. He stumbled, squeaking, and collapsed against the desk.

“It is your command, Captain,” cautioned the Sontaran.

Captain Theizan bowed his head, deliberately and assuredly. “What would you have us do, Headhunter Wulfe?”

“Honour the glory of Sarfenia.” He punched a stud beneath the vidscreen, switching their attention from the escaping prisoners to a computer layout of the complex. “She is a telepath, yes? The battlefield is not the corridors you see before you. It is waged in the mind itself. Know your enemy.”

“And this ‘Doctor’?”

Wulfe’s tongue licked the air. “Kill him and his fe-male quickly.”

---

Shell 3: Peasants and Queens

“Y’know, I think I recognise these from the beach,” Peri ran her hands against the nearest root. “And I was twiddling my toes while leaning against an interstellar weapon.”

“A common complaint on her planet,” the Doctor quipped.

Jimrock’s face was clouded with concentration. “If the Quasar Cannon’s roots have already reached the beach…”

Becceri assured him, “Melbud won’t get away with what she’s done.”

“Hey, you said you stole the Sunfire Gem to save Jimrock from certain death,” Peri jerked her head towards the spikes below. “Irony, thy name is Becceri.”

“This cannot be worse than my intended fate,” said Jimrock. “I was intended to be used as fuel for Melbud’s weapon.”

“Come again?” Peri’s brow furrowed.

“The Cannon is a living thing,” Jimrock squeezed one of the sponge-like roots. “Like a carnivorous flower. We don’t understand the technology, exactly, but it grows. It adapts. It requires a source of…”

“Wait a minute.” Peri swallowed. “You mean like…?”

“Nourishment, Peri,” confirmed the Doctor. “Food.”

“Melbud’s doing,” Becceri took over. “However many are needed to stave off the Quasar of Sarfenia’s hunger. Melbud replaces it with another person to have their lifeforce drained.”

“Where does she get her victims?”

“Servants and prisoners,” Becceri replied. “She considers them of non-value, even when they serve her obediently.”

“And the dungeons, you’ll note, were empty…” the Doctor murmured. “Preparations for use of the Sunfire Gem?”

“It’s a focus, right?” suggested Peri. “Something to channel and amplify the Cannon?”

“Like the optical laser lens in your Walkman.”

“Recently,” Jimrock butted in, “the Queen had her husband sacrificed as a fuel source to the Cannon. They’d only been married for eighteen months.”

“How does she get away with it?” Peri demanded, aghast.

“Melbud has many trusted followers in her court chambers.”

“More’s the pity,'” Jimrock grunted.

“Most of them are Ahaians of course,” Becceri continued. “Graecelans have tried to infiltrate the villa to disable the Cannon, but they’ve been…”

“Eaten.” Peri felt sick. “They’ve been eaten. No, worse, fed to it. It’s horrible.”

“What’s that noise?” asked Becceri.

Jimrock observed, “The lights are back.”

“I do believe…” The Doctor cocked his head. “The trap is resetting for the next poor unfortunate victims to stumble in. We’ll have a cooldown time before it all kicks off again.”

“There’s the floor.” Peri gestured to the rolling concrete. “Pressure sensitive, you think?”

“If we’re lucky, an invisible light beam somewhere.” The Doctor swung ponderously on his hanging bed of roots. His feet alighted on the floor, catching his coat from Peri. “We need to get to Frobisher, find a way up that orbital lift and deal with the Quasar Cannon. Before it can destroy another world.”

“‘Can’?” Jimrock looked at him. “Doctor… The last planet was only the latest. It has already destroyed another world. Many other worlds.”

---

Frobisher, meanwhile, was wondering just how to get to the Doctor and Peri. The villa’s free-flowing interiors offered a lot of natural light. Ordinarily, it would have felt spacious, but given his escort, he simply felt… Exposed. The balcony was a reprieve of sorts.

Sat on an upturned basket on a table, he leant his beak against his flipper on the balustrade.

A whifferdill in Sarfenia…

His eyes traced the roots of the Quasar of Sarfenia through the tropical trees and underbrush. From the tips at the beach through the jungle. Up, across unnatural wireframe supports into the compound, until they reached the unseen Cannon at the peak of the villa’s orbital lift itself.

Could he climb out? Cross the compound? Brave the jungle’s wildlife, as a fly or small lizard? Make his way back to the TARDIS on the beach?

“Cameras…” he murmured to himself.

Even without the soldiers studying him, they had to have been watching them when they arrived. If he made his move, successful or not, it would doom his friends to a long walk off a short plank. He couldn’t do that. Not again.

As the door creaked open, the sound of carousing from the court slapped from the corridor.

“Please,” a small voice nodded, bowing.

The soldiers nodded, soundlessly, and allowed her through them. She went to remake the bed in what Frobisher had grudgingly assented to being his quarters.

He turned to her, “Hey, it’s really not necessary, I’m… ”

He stopped. Everyone he’d met so far, had been either like Melbud or the soldiers. Immaculately dressed. Crisp and clean in every line and expression. The tyranny of wealth and uniformity together. It was a world where every blade of grass was cut to measure.

That was what struck him about the servant.

She only had one eye. Her left eye. There was a gash where the other should have been.

Her clothes were torn rags. Stained, but it looked as though they’d been laundered to prevent any tarnish to the villa’s adornments. She had no shoes, her feet were shod like a horse, but wrapped in plastic for that self-same ‘clean’ purpose.

The girl covered her face. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey,” Frobisher slipped down from his perch. “Who’s sorry? I’m the one who should apologise. It’s rude to stare.”

She looked to the floor, feeling the soldiers’ attentions on her back.

Frobisher persisted. “What’s your name, kid?”

She mumbled something.

“Didn’t catch that. What?” he asked again, softer.

“Ayna,” she repeated.

Frobisher deliberately interposed himself between the servant girl and his minders. They were roughly the same height. Her experiences would have doubled, trebled her age, but she couldn’t have been very much older than a kid.

He nodded to her. “Ayna. Me, Frobisher.”

“Frobisher.” It sounded like a tumble of syllables in her mouth. “Sorry… Sorry…”

“Can I help out?” he gestured to the sheets.

Ayna wasn’t the kind of person who’d been allowed the basic right of the word ‘no’. She shrank from him. Gently, and slowly, Frobisher took one end of the fitted sheet and tucked in its lower-most corners. The closest to the door. This allowed Ayna to address the section furthest from the soldiers.

“Do you live here, Ayna?” asked Frobisher.

She shook her head, grabbing the first of the flat sheets. “Ayna is Graecelan, Ayna is not allowed here.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“In the jungle. With the others.”

“Are you…comfortable there?” asked Frobisher.

“Oh, yes,” she froze, agreeing too quickly. “W-We’re always comfortable. We never want for anything. The Queen gives us everything, everything, every… ”

“Alright, alright. I wanted to ask ‘cause, see…I’m a visitor here,” he murmured, dangerously. “I actually came to the villa from the beach. My friends and I were brought here.”

She stooped her head, curious. “Brought?”

“Yeah. Likely through that jungle of yours.” Frobisher tucked in one of the corners. “I was thinking I’d try something a bit more rustic. All this luxury soap is playing havoc on my feathers. I’ll be moulting by the end of the day.”

Ayna stifled a laugh, as though her life depended on it. It came as a quick chipmunk-like giggle. She blocked it beneath her hands like a sneeze.

“Ayna likes you,” she smiled.

“Me? I’m nothing. You should see my friends.”

“Pillowcases,” she pointed. He handed them over to her as she said, “Ayna could use more friends. The last were…” Her smile faded, agonisingly slow. “We gave them to the sea. As they would have wanted.”

Frobisher’s face pinched. “I’m sorry, Ayna.”

“Ayna misses their voices in her mind.” Her face ticked a smile, far sadder. “You don’t know what it was like being able to finish each other’s thoughts as much as Ayna’s…”

“Sentences?” Frobisher sighed. “Do you know someone called Becceri?”

She nodded. “Ayna was allowed to serve because Ayna cannot read minds that aren’t telepathic themselves. Becceri is different, she is…” Her lips curled into a smile or snarl, Frobisher couldn’t tell. “Dangerous.”

“My friend, the Doc, seemed to know her.”

“She has been gone too long from us. Much too long.” She shook her head. “Her thoughts no longer colour our psyche. If she…goes…we…Ayna cannot remember.”

A soldier’s hand seized Ayna under her forearm. “That’s enough.”

“We’re not finished,” Frobisher argued.

“Yes, you are.” The soldier led her, forcefully, to the door.

“Sorry. I’m sorry…” Ayna’s eyes flicked to the floor, then to Frobisher. “Your bed is prepared.”

Frobisher nodded, “Thank you, Ayna,” as she was led outside. The door locked behind her.

The soldier continued to stare at the whifferdill.

Frobisher made up his mind. “Tell your boss, I agree. I’ll play show pony for the day.” 

The whifferdill turned to the queen-sized bed and exhaled through his beak. They’d made his bed. Now, he had to lie in it.

---

Continuing their journey, the Doctor’s party continued their hurried, if wary pace down a slight incline. Down. The tunnel was getting thinner. The natural formations, more readily obvious. There was no sign of natural sunlight, but there was something in the time-traveller’s demeanour that pointed to the fact it wasn’t too far off.

“I can hear the ocean,” noticed Peri. “Above or below sea level?”

“Have your ears popped?” the Doctor inquired.

“Not yet.”

“Above,” he concluded, pleased. “The question is how far. Depending on our chosen exeunt, that would be the difference between…”

“Falling and…?” Becceri suggested.

“Drowning?” added Jimrock.

“And here I thought that I, the visitor, would be the most pessimistic.”

“Was this place always a prison?” Peri asked.

Becceri shook her head. “It was a hurricane shelter, originally.”

“And the traps?”

“An inheritance from Melbud’s father,” Jimrock answered.

“It’s remarkable we didn’t stumble into more of this outside. Becceri, tell me,” the Doctor turned to her, “how did you steal the Sunfire Gem in the first place?”

“The answer, Dok-tor, is simple,” crackled the tannoy.

“Wulfe.” The Doctor held his hands to his hips. “Figured it out at last, did you?”

“We are familiar with your activities, Time Lord. But you, evidently, are still unaware of hers.”

Peri whispered in the Doctor’s ear, “Why now?”

“We must be close to the lifts,” Jimrock observed, quietly.

“Becceri,” the Doctor tapped his nose. “We need to keep him distracted.”

The graceful Graecelan did her best to be brief. “When Melbud was about to sacrifice Jimrock as a fuel source for her Cannon…”

“Louder. No, don’t stop walking.” The Doctor waved a hand.

Becceri’s footsteps grew heavier. “I snatched the gemstone and fled her court chambers.”

“She acquired a shuttle in Aha’s spaceport and retreated,” Wulfe interrupted. “A coward. Jimrock was put in the Dungeon Complex once Becceri was out of firing range from Sarfenia’s outer space defences.”

Becceri flinched, stopping in her tracks.

Jimrock squeezed Becceri’s hand, “It was a painful day when you left, but you did right. Don’t let him make you think otherwise.”

“It’s not that…” Gradually, she replied, “Soldiers! I sense them in my mind.”

“Where did you end up, Becceri? Into which lap of luxury did you fall?”

“The…”

“Keep talking, Becceri.” The Doctor searched the corridor behind them.

“The Garazone system. I sought a trader to help me safeguard the Sunfire Gem,” Becceri continued. “I found one and he seemed sympathetic about my plight. As we negotiated, I thought things were going to be alright.”

Peri looked up. “But this trader turned traitor, didn’t he?”

“The first of many headhunters.”

“Jimrock, is it far to the lifts from here?” the Doctor murmured.

“Shouldn’t be, no,” he answered. “If we head down that way and turn right, we should come to the lifts almost immediately.”

“Lead on, Jimrock,” the Doctor hurried. “Come what may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. Go on, Becceri.”

Raising her voice, Becceri replied to the Sontaran, “He had the Sunfire Gem locked away on another world where no-one could find it. I pleaded and begged, but he wouldn’t reveal its location to me.”

“An ingenious snare, if she bartered willingly.”

“Little did he know I could, well….read his mind.” She glanced, shame-faced, to Peri. “I found out the gemstone was kept in a repository tower on Neimor.”

“Where better? The place had already been ransacked by those seeking to return their stolen artefacts back home. An ideal locale for concealment.” The Doctor’s gait slowed. “There’s something I don’t quite understand, Wulfe.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you holding back?”

“I don’t get you,” blinked Jimrock.

“In this part of the Galaxy, the Sontaran Empire is more than capable of dispatching an assault force to conquer Sarfenia. Their contingents are positively overflowing with…”

“Superior warriors?”

“Overenthused martial henpeckers,” the Doctor smirked. “Why send one Sontaran when a whole battalion would do? Well?”

“We are engaged elsewhere.”

“It’s the Quasar Cannon, isn’t it? This Quasar of Sarfenia. Up atop the orbital lift. The rest of this world can go hang. You’re only interested in their military hardware.”

Almost absently, Wulfe replied, “Sarfenia is ideally located for a definitive strike against a prominent Rutan shipyard.”

“Where?” The Doctor flicked through his atlas-like memory. “Tuqisia?”

“Near enough. Our scouts have reported they are incubating warships, four-hundred strong, to rout an offensive column breaching interstellar space for our continued push towards the planet Ruta III.”

“Home of the Rutan Queen,” the Doctor clarified to a quizzical Peri. “The Sontarans have been carving their way through for centuries.”

The botanist quirked an eyebrow. “Not exactly the Charge of the Light Brigade, huh?”

“Sontaran determination will win the day. Our might is indefatigable.”

“But far too important to waste on a wild Graecelan chase.”

“On the contrary,” Wulfe audibly bristled. “It was determined that Becceri only required one loyal Sontaran officer to repatriate her to Sarfenia.”

“After proxies wouldn’t do,” Becceri bit back, angrily.

“They say if you want a job done right, foul it up yourself,” growled Jimrock.

“Glib talk, for those so expendable.”

“Expendable?” countered the Doctor. “Alive, Becceri and Jimrock can expose their compatriots on Sarfenia. Alive, they can renounce their beliefs and swear fealty to Queen Melbud’s throne. Alive, they are, dare I say, indispensable to expediting your war effort. Dead, they’re just another pair of corpses.”

“The rough sands of battle gutter with the bodies of the indispensable, Dok-tor. You forget. You speak with a Sontaran.”

“Face us then,” he challenged.

“There is no need.”

“Hey, I can smell salt… Sea water! I can hear ocean waves!” Peri grinned, tilting her head to the wondrous sound. “I think we’re almost out!”

Sure enough, the junction peeled out from dried-out cave walls to small pools and eddies in the open mouth of a cove. It arched above them. A rocky saddle straddling the crash of blue-white waves below.

Far below.

Peri was appalled.

The Doctor scratched behind his ear. “Well, that’s what erosion does for you.”

“This doesn’t make any sense…” Becceri’s eyes searched the sea. “The soldiers’ thoughts, I can hear them from…”

“Don’t tell me.” The Doctor’s head, like a cat up a tree, arched down towards the sheer rock face below them. A series of sealed transparent tubes to their far left, reaching down into the water and up into the ceiling above. There was only a foot or so of space for them to stand.

The word, Back! was already at the base of his throat when the door sealed behind them.

Jimrock started for it. “Maybe we can…”

Becceri jerked him back as spikes, as thick as her forearm, shot outward from its perforated surface. Peri winced at memories of slicing her hands open on a cheese grater.

Jimrock looked at Becceri.

“Fit the pattern,” she answered, coolly.

“I’m afraid the door is the least of our worries.” The Doctor pointed down.

Crawling up the length of the wall from the crashing waves below was Captain Theizan and the Sarfenian soldiers.

---

From the lift hoistway, secured by a line of rope, Wulfe could see the spectacle unfold below. The Sontaran headhunter unholstered his rheon carbine in one hand, hearing the fizz of its power-pack echo down the translucent tubing.

In the other, he unclipped his communicator once again, switching it on. It buzzed loudly. “Headhunter Wulfe to Field Major Bruut.”

“Sir?” came the reply.

“The Time Lord has reminded me of our duty to the Sontaran Empire.” He drew it to his thin lips. “No one is indispensable.”

A short pause as his underling caught his meaning. “Sir.”

“Carry on, Field Major Bruut.” He returned the communicator to his belt.

Wulfe engaged his rope line’s auto-belay, reeling him down the hoistway.

---

Ayna squeezed into the curve of the hallway with the visitors’ laundry, as Field Major Bruut reclipped his communicator.

The Sontarans made her nervous, as expected for any child faced with killers. Their entire lives, she knew, were dedicated to nothing but their empire. They took little satisfaction in anything else. Their morning shoe shine, the volatiser target practice on the westward wall, every moment of their lives was fashioned for combat.

It was strange to her, therefore, that a sudden caution overcame the red-eyed golems. They, unlike those in the court, seemed to take notice of her. Guardedly, Field Major Bruut gestured to his men with a three-fingered hand. She’d seen something similar done with paper fans in the court. A sort of secret language.

Bruut turned to her, pointed. “Did you understand that?”

Ayna frantically shook her head.

The Sontaran exhaled, humid and harried.

Before he could continue, the servant hurried along with her armfuls of guests’ bed linen. Those in question were making their way out the front doors. She turned, silent, to the laundry. A poorly-lit kiosk of a room where she rested against the tumbling machines.

Ayna could see the children cross the paving stones from the old arrowslit in the room.

They weren’t much older than she was, but there was an undeniable difference between Graecelans and Ahaians. Not so much in physicality, but opportunity. Where Ayna worked in rags, the Ahaians played in gold-leaf uniforms. They hadn’t the calluses on her hands, the peeling sunburn on her nose and forehead, the shod soles of the feet.

Frobisher and Melbud were walking between the jungle buggies and the lidar tower.

“The beach from whence you came is over there.” Melbud was watching Frobisher’s expressions. Studying them. The smile that cracked her features looked genuine. “And here they come now. Our finest minds and so young.”

“Graecelans? Ahaians?”

“I thought, given your companion’s past with Becceri, it would make sense to introduce you to her brood.” Melbud smiled and turned. “Children, this is Frobisher, from the Southern Mountains. He’ll be providing some much needed guidance on the Quasar of Sarfenia.”

“It’s our honour to acknowledge your presence in the court.” One of the girls bowed, a hand on her collarbone. “We, Graecelans, face an abundance of learning opportunities. It’s a delight to have you as our latest.”

Frobisher looked disinterestedly up to the sky, hands on his hips. “No kidding…”

“This is Major Klugii,” added Melbud. “Serving under Captain Theizan.”

“Didn’t see you in the Queen’s court.”

“I was performing my duties in Dungeon Control,” she reported, matter-of-factly. “I was responsible for the development of the Quasar Cannon’s assembly on the orbital lift.”

“An architect’s dream is an engineer’s nightmare,” hummed Frobisher.

“We were able to overcome both.”

“You can see the immediate benefits of uplifting the Graecelans from their environment.”

Frobisher’s expression soured as he turned to the Queen. “Where would the world be without people who could follow orders?”

“I knew. I knew you’d see,” Melbud laughed. “Frobisher has come to us today to honour his legendary heritage.”

“And provide some useful information on how to more accurately use the Quasar Cannon,” he added.

Melbud’s face quivered in a conciliatory grin. It was not, by all appearances, what he had been summoned for today.

“Will you race for us?” asked Major Klugii.

“Don’t think it would really be fair, Major, you’d have the home field advantage over me.”

“Sir?” she asked.

Frobisher pointed. “Out on the dirt tracks through the jungle there.”

Ayna felt a thrill from the base of her heels to the tip of her spine.

“We’re not too familiar with the jungle,” Major Klugii asserted.

“Funny, I was wondering where the Graecelans all slept.”

“In the villa.”

“All of them?” Frobisher swept his head from the top of the orbital lift to the villa’s foundations. “Thought all that was beneath the building were the dungeons?”

Ayna heartened. The visitor had been listening to her. Genuinely. She’d expected their conversation to disappear into the minutiae of the court. As many scant encounters for the Graecelans had. Outside of Becceri, she could only remember one other – Jimrock – who had done the same in the distant past.

“You’re mistaken,” added Melbud. “We have Graecelan living quarters on the sublevels.”

Her stomach churned. In hindsight, Ayna wished she’d told Frobisher more.

Frobisher shrugged his shoulders. “I am a stranger here.”

“Would you, then? Be interested?” Major Klugii persisted.

“In the race?” he asked.

“With your powers of flight,” diverted Melbud, “how could they stand a chance?”

“Truth enough, there. How’s about we even the score? A hearty meal of meat and potatoes.”

“We’re not hungry,” motioned one of the other children.

“Well, that’s…” Frobisher chuckled, half-insincere. “Not a surprise, I should say.”

Queen Melbud’s eyes glittered, dangerous. “How do you mean?” 

“By that…” The whifferdill looked over the assembled gaggle. “You keep ‘em well-fed, Melbud. Hardy meals for hardy bodies and hardy minds. Hardly seems like they suffer at all.”

“You see Becceri’s issue. Creating problems where there aren’t any.”

“What about telepathy, huh?” Frobisher turned to the children. “Can you read my mind?” 

Major Klugii shook her head. “I can only read the minds of other telepaths.”

Frobisher did something rather remarkable. He changed. Metamorphosed into a species that Ayna didn’t recognise. His bone-white head was bulbous, with an enlarged cranium tapering down to a small V-shaped chin covered with wisps of snow-white whiskers.

“The Sensorites,” he rasped, “are very telepathic. Try.”

Klugii looked to the Queen. “I have not been ordered to do so. Uncontrolled and ungoverned telepathy is dangerous. We don’t share with outsiders.”

“Sorry.” Frobisher shifted back. “You were expecting me here to play a few tricks, but…ah…seems I’m the one who’s asking for all the spectacle. Not surprising from a ‘legend’, if you think about it.”

Major Klugii’s Ahaian face remained a mask of careful neutrality. “You’re very quick.”

“Isn’t he, just?” The Queen’s less so. “If our circumstances were different, Frobisher, I might call you suspicious.”

“Healthy caution from a creature of the Southern Mountains, jack.” He smirked with his beak. “You can understand that.”

“He’s been talking with someone,” Major Klugii murmured.

The Queen concurred. “These really are the best of our best.”

“I’ve no doubts on that, but is anyone here really a Graecelan? Or are you all Ahaians?”

Ayna knew the answer. She could recognise no one from the jungle out there. Not anyone.

“Poor Frobisher,” tutted Melbud. “I’m afraid travelling with your friends has warped your sensibilities. Filled it with ugly ideas. These are good, honest people.”

“Nuts to ‘good’ or ‘honest’. I saw that oversized heater of yours blow out an entire world.” He turned to her. “When you said, ‘on a stage’, I didn’t think I’d be part of the audience.”

“And you made a poor participant, great one.” The Queen’s voice darkened in a way that made Ayna shiver. “All you had to do was play along.”

“Follow the leader? I’ve never been good at that.” Frobisher leant back against one of the Quasar Cannon’s roots. “Besides, you kind of tipped your hand when you threw my friends in the dungeons.”

“You’re quite right, I’ve been remiss as a host. You haven’t all the facts.” Queen Melbud snapped her fingers and the pretence in Major Klugii evaporated. “Why don’t you take a closer look at the Quasar of Sarfenia?”

Frobisher rolled his shoulders. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“I insist.” Queen Melbud looked directly at her.

At Ayna.

A soldier’s hand grasped tight to the back of her neck. The servant felt the acid drip of dread uncoil down her throat. Her lungs burnt with anxiety. She knew what came next.

A small reprieve and then… Up to the villa’s orbital lift. Through to the Quasar of Sarfenia. Never to be seen again.

---

Shell 4: Sontaran Showdown

Jimrock led the Doctor, Peri and Becceri along the face of the cliff. The peril below should have forced them into a cold sprint. There was so little space, however, to manoeuvre. They had no choice but to sidle, carefully, along the thin strip of wetted rock at their feet.

Peri’s face hugged the wall, avoiding the sea spray. “Jimrock, is it far?”

“Shouldn’t be, no,” Jimrock answered. “If we head down that way and turn right, we should come to the lifts almost immediately. I can hear them.”

“Okay…” She took another dizzying step. “Okay, I choose to believe you.”

“Come what may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day,” championed the Doctor, breathless. “Keep that in mind, Peri!”

“Oh, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Peri scolded.

The Doctor’s hand was on her back. “I won’t let you fall, dear girl. Promise.”

“I know, I know.” She wasn’t sure if she was reassuring him or herself.

Peri could hear the scrape of their climbing pursuers below them. Orders were being barked angrily nearby. Far closer than before.

“Ohh…” she stopped.

“What is it?” asked Becceri.

“Trouble,” muttered Peri. “I want to look, but I’m worried the shift in balance will throw me off the wall.”

“Your keen hearing is impeccable, Peri,” said the Doctor. “I imagine this was Wulfe’s plan all along. Hard to outwit an opponent when you haven’t the room to defend yourself.”

“Hope he steps on a landmine,” cursed Peri.

Becceri swayed. “The soldiers’ thoughts… They’re coming through clear now. Too many…”

“Becceri?” the Doctor leant towards her. “Becceri, how did they get below us?”

“Too… There are…airlocks to allow for submarine vessels. In case the…too many…the shelter was compromised.”

“Must have been how they got to us at the beach,” said Peri.

“It was Wulfe’s aim…” Becceri tilted her head, squinting. “His aim…too many… To drive us towards the lifts.”

“Where our frogmen below can pick us off at their leisure.” The Doctor pursed his lips, furrowing his brow. “Peculiar notion, though.”

“What?”

“Well, leading us towards our only means of getting out of this…”

Becceri’s eyes suddenly widened, “Doctor!” She grabbed him by his forearm and shoved him along the wall.

A flash. Intense white-dwarf light. An explosion. Shards of rock sliced and scratched at the forearm of his coat. There was a skull-sized hole in the strata of the wall where his head had been. Peri and Jimrock, at either side of him, were covered in stinging dust. Their eyes, red.

“Becceri?” He coughed.

Jimrock sounded far more panicked. “Becceri?”

“She’s still here,” Peri reassured. “Just a little…”

A purple beam. They caught the whine of the rheon carbine that second time. Another explosion. This time, a little further above their heads. Lumps of stalactites thudded down on their heads and shoulders.

Becceri knew it could only be one person. “Wulfe!”

“Where is he? Below?”

Jimrock pointed to the translucent tubes. “In there! The lift shaft!”

“An abseiling fox hunt.” The Doctor clicked his tongue. “Now that’s a first.”

Another shot. Another puncture in the tube. Like melting snowflakes.

“Crouch down! Make yourselves smaller targets.” The Doctor moved along the ridge with the grace of an alleycat on a high fence. “Jimrock, I’ll need your assistance.”

“With what?”

“Well, incidentally, getting out of my way, as you are in front.” The Doctor jostled his shoulder to move him on. “But, also, in turning Wulfe’s advantage to ours. How far does the Dungeon Complex go?”

“Forty floors.”

“Let’s… Excuse me.” The Doctor slid around him. “That cable of Wulfe’s must extend to the top of the hoistway. At the villa before the separate section for the orbital lift. Right. Let’s assume that we, noble prisoners, are on the topmost level.”

“We’re not.”

“But let’s say we are and we’re attempting to catch the lift from there.” The time-traveller’s eyes danced with mischief. “You understand my meaning?”

Jimrock followed the Doctor’s gaze from Wulfe, still suspended in the hoistway, to the lift that likely lay below. The Sontaran’s efforts to shoot would be significantly worsened if that tube were suddenly to come alive with activity.

“Yes, Doctor,” he smiled, edging forward past the Time Lord. “I get your meaning.”

“One thing.” The Doctor placed the back of his hand on Jimrock’s chest. “Our end is to ruin Wulfe. Wreck him, defeat him, best him. Not kill him, if we can help it.”

“I’ll defend Becceri with my life, Doctor, if I must.”

The time-traveller reached into his coat pocket and produced his penlight. “How long have you been apart?”

“Too long.” Jimrock’s features tightened. “Far too long.”

“Wulfe, and others like him, made sure that she was never safe, never secure, never among friends. Always, always watching over her shoulder.”

“I know.”

“We need to get close to the lifts. I’m hoping to find a junction box, but to do that, we have to ensure that Wulfe cannot harm us or the girls.” He offered the penlight to the young agitator. “Care for some satisfaction?”

Jimrock’s fingers closed around the penlight and nodded.

“Good.” The Doctor tapped him on the shoulder. “Come along, come along.”

---

To Frobisher, the Quasar of Sarfenia resembled a flower in spring. Its petals were a pale-white veined with an ichor-black that twisted like hot blood vessels through solid ice. It looked soft like an elephant’s hide. Warm. Leathery. The hairs on its skin, not unlike nubs of a fishing line.

Where they extended to bulbs, sat Sontaran troopers in full armour. Each monitoring a vital aspect of the weapon. Its targeting array, capacitors, even ammunition. There was one bulb. Distinctive from the others by its fleshy thickness, but Frobisher couldn’t determine its purpose as yet.

The whifferdill frowned. That was a point. The Quasar of Sarfenia’s function was only discernible by the tight whorls of flesh that pressed together the nozzle at its summit. Ram’s horns of… Of what? He couldn’t actually tell their function. Some kind of focus? Like sights on a blaster?

It was difficult to tell. From where he was. Bound in chains and left on the floor.

“So…err…tell me.” He tried rolling himself towards the Cannon. “How exactly does it work?”

“Oh, this contraption.” He heard the door to the orbital lift lock behind him. “Magnificent craftsmanship, isn’t it? It came from a seed no larger than my palm.”

“That’s a heck of a gardener, jack.”

“They called themselves the Germaine.” A boot on his chained back kept him quite still. “They were interested in trade with my father. They left with the best of our soldiers and, in return, we received…” she smiled, abruptly, “these.”

“You mean there’s more than one?”

The Queen laughed. “My gracious bird, as long as the weapon is effective in destroying my enemies, I only need one.”

“Can’t imagine the difficulty you had getting it up into orbit.” 

“We manage.”

“Must be handy, though.” His shape-shifting powers were failing him at the moment. “Surely this thing’s bound to pack up someday. Believe me, I can relate.”

“The Quasar of Sarfenia never lets me down.” The Queen’s foot pressed down. “You’ve all the scrutiny of a telepath.”

“I’m just making a point. Should the Cannon ever break down, you’ll need all the backups required. Including how to fix and repair the weapon.”

Her foot lifted. “So you’ve agreed?”

“I’ve dabbled.” Or, more accurately, the Doctor had.

“Well, no fear,” the Queen smirked. “I have plenty of technical servants at my disposal to heal the Cannon. But the question of it ever ‘breaking down’, as you say, is impossible. You understand me?”

“Yeah.” He could hear it growling. “I understand, alright.”

Queen Melbud gestured towards the nearest viewport. “You’re privileged, you’ve been permitted a view of the planet from orbit.”

“Nope, sorry, I get vertigo.”

“The problem in question is over here.” She crossed to one of the Quasar Cannon’s bulbs. “It requires a frame of reference that neither Sontarans, nor Graecelans can provide.”

“Nor Ahaians?”

She struggled to admit, “No.”

“Was that so hard?”

It had been excruciating. “All you have to do is to step inside. I’ll insert the Sunfire Gem into this socket here.” She indicated the control console. “Give the command…”

“And I’ll be able to bonsai your blaster into something less lethal, right?” He tried wriggling his flippers. “I mean, it might be that the circulation has been cut to my brain, but… It’s all a little too good to be true, isn’t it?”

“I just want to please one of the birds that I’ve worshipped all my life.”

“Why go to so much effort? I told you before, I’m not one of your talking birds from the Southern Mountains of… Rega-taka-tor or whatever it was you called it.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re one of them or not. You’re the closest thing I consider to be akin to them noble creatures. Anything I can do to serve and please you, great bird, would be a tremendous honour.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then, you’ll be free to leave.” She beckoned to the door. “As you choose.”

“Like this?” He rollicked back and forth in his chains.

The Queen removed the keycard from her sleeve, knelt down to the lock on the chains and swiped the entry coder. The mechanism that had wound them so tight around the whifferdill loosened like wet vines.

“Better?” she asked.

“And the door.” Frobisher cracked his back. “You locked it, remember?”

“So you heard.” Melbud smiled, again.

Another keycard swipe. Another lock. The door opened with a pneumatic hiss. She crossed back to the bulb. Careful to place Frobisher between herself and the way out.

“The way is clear.” She gestured. “Leave. As you like.”

Frobisher took one step. Melbud didn’t move. Then another. She folded her arms at him. A further one. She settled on her back foot. The whifferdill’s webbed feet echoed on the tiled floor, but Melbud remained perfectly still. Idle.

Even the Sontarans were disinterested. Absorbed in their duties.

Frobisher turned back to her. “Doesn’t seem like I have much choice, do I?”

“There are always choices, Frobisher.” 

“My friends?”

She shook her head. “Honour half the agreement and you only yield half the results.”

“I know…” he said, carefully, “that this is a trap, your majesty.”

“Which you are, nevertheless, going to walk into for the sake of your friends.”

Frobisher’s chest tightened at the memory of Mandusus. “No… Somehow, I think they’ll manage alright.”

“Or Ayna?”

The shape-shifting penguin froze to the spot.

“You really think my soldiers don’t talk to one another? She’s a servant girl. Little consequence, but your conversation with Major Klugii upset my play.” She tapped her fingers together. “What are we to do with her?”

“Not a thing. Y’hear me? If you…”

“Finish that threat and you finish her life.”

The whifferdill snubbed himself into an angry silence.

“You will do what I want.” Her fingers kept tapping. “And who knows? Despite all the theatre, I may be right. What have I to gain from destroying a legend? Real or otherwise? Just because you won’t play along, doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“Alright,” he exhaled.

“Excellent! Excellent! I knew you would.” With that, Melbud pressed a button on the side of the bulb, and the door slid open. She gestured at the open hollow, inviting Frobisher to enter. “All yours, Great One.”

He stepped inside. It was translucent, like the inside of a honey jar.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“I didn’t lie to you. I believe this could increase the accuracy of the weapon.”

“And prevent more deaths?”

“Yes.”

“If?”

“If the Quasar of Sarfenia responds well to you,” she answered. “As it did me.”

Melbud held the Sunfire Gem between her fingers one tantalisingly long, last time before she inserted it into the weapon’s control console.

She smiled, “And the target is…”

---

Purple beams clawed and struck at the cove’s wall. The rock saturated with the red glow of every dissatisfied shot.

Wulfe tried to clear his mind. A blank slate. Nothing but the rigours of combat.

The debris gave Peri and Becceri enough ammunition to kick several of the larger boulders down onto the soldiers below. It slowed them, but there was little to stop their ascent. Good. Much would be gained from that added pressure.

Becceri…

Wulfe’s attention would have been on his long-time quarry, if not for the persistent pestering of the Doctor’s penlight in Jimrock’s grip. The last of the glass cracked and fell away. The Sontaran was now free in the wind.

No longer concerned for ricochets, he switched his carbine to automatic and sprayed the ridge with gunfire.

---

The Doctor and Jimrock slammed their bodies against the wall. The shelf of rock above them splintered, fracturing under its own fraying weight.

“That’s not going to hold,” observed the Doctor, mildly.

They were, at last, close enough to the tubing to survey it in depth.

At a distance, it looked sleek and seamless. However, it was easy to overlook the series of rungs that stapled the lift hoistway between the ocean and the ceiling. The Doctor gripped the nearest crossbeam of the support and threw himself across. Into the hissing spray of the crashing sea. He held tight for a few moments, letting the tide roar outward, before climbing out towards the junction box.

“Ha!” he cried, self-satisfied. “Instinct.”

The sea slammed against the struts below.

“Doctor?” called Jimrock, angling the penlight.

The Doctor swung the box’s lid open. Sealed, but corroded by the salt air. Fortunately, the control console within was alive and well. For a construction as large as this, it made sense to station a few auxiliary controls linked to the machine room doubtless at the lift’s top.

He twisted the security dial with one hand, disarming the anti-tamper mechanism, and tapped the controls with another. The dashboard within was a liquid crystal display. The lift being summoned was coming up from LEVEL 15. They were aiming for LEVEL 32.

“It’s on its way!” called the Doctor.

Jimrock answered “We’ll probably be dead by the time it arrives!”

“Good, good!” he nodded, absently.

The lift was now on LEVEL 17, going up to LEVEL 18.

“There they are!” snapped Captain Theizan. “Our fugitives…! Don’t let them escape!”

The Doctor turned, growled at himself and shouted to Jimrock. “I can’t move my hands or the anti-tampering mechanism will re-engage.”

“Which means?”

“The lift will stop.”

The Doctor spun back to the dashboard. Now at LEVEL 20.

“Becceri; Peri!” Jimrock shouted. “Duck!”

The young American and the agitator’s lover responded. Wulfe hadn’t relented. His assault continued as keenly from the lift, as the soldiers below them.

LEVEL 22.

Becceri searched around, as close as she came to frantic. “Jimrock, there’s nowhere to go!”

“There’s no need to be downhearted,” Jimrock said. “We’ve been lucky so far!”

“Doctor; Jimrock, to your right!” Becceri cried, urgently.

Becceri pushed Peri to their left whilst the Doctor and Jimrock flung themselves to their right. They avoided the second wave of shots fired upon them from Wulfe and the soldiers.

LEVEL 24.

“Becceri!” The Doctor paused, concentrating on his thoughts. “Becceri, can you hear me?”

Becceri looked to the Doctor. She realised he was communicating telepathically.

“Yes! Yes, Doctor, I can hear you. But how come…?”

“Big Ben to a doorbell. One can be heard clearly above all others, if you listen for it. I’ve experience with telepathic projection.”

LEVEL 26.

Becceri’s mind shifted. “I can’t hear your thoughts.”

“They’re mine alone, Becceri.” The Doctor shook his head. “Can you and Peri make your way over to me?”

“No, not without a clear path.”

“The rock shelf above you is about to give way. When it does, it will come crashing down onto the ridge.”

She and Peri squeezed into a pothole in the rock. “Well, we can’t stay here.”

“There is a way,” thought the Doctor.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I want you to get Wulfe to remove his own people. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

He could see her nod, climb alongside the ridge. “Yes…”

LEVEL 28.

Becceri and Peri crouched together. Conspiratorial. There was a brief debate. Some argument. Then, consensus and the two women separated with a sudden flourish.

Peri shouted, “Climb up the wall!”

“What?” Becceri gasped, affectedly.

“The wall! Climb it!”

Despite Jimrock’s continued dazzling, Wulfe’s shots struck true. The shelf, puckered and cracking with white heat, came down on the ridge in a bone-shaking hail of thunder. The soldiers shouted and screamed, as their bodies thudded from the side of the cliff into the ocean below.

Becceri and Peri were protected from the bombardment by their newfound hollow. Their arms up, shielding their faces. All they would suffer from were a few cuts and bruises. Ricocheting rock.

“Ah, that old American holler,” the Doctor sighed, wistful.

The pair climbed from their protective bolthole. The slick rock had become salted with sand and debris. 

LEVEL 30.

Peri and Becceri reached Jimrock, protected by the persistent flicker of the penlight. Unfortunately, that also meant that all of Wulfe’s targets were huddled together under a single point of focus. His shooting became far more accurate.

The Doctor watched, still forced to stand by the junction box, as the three climbed across the gap to the support.

He leant out from behind the box’s support pylon, taunting the Sontaran headhunter. “Not exactly a model demonstration of military strategy, Wulfe!”

Wulfe aimed his weapon precisely. Too precisely. The Doctor jerked backward, back behind relative safety, feeling the singing hot sparks of weapons’ fire curl across his cheekbones.

It was enough. Peri, Becceri and Jimrock were across. In a few moments, they’d be with the Doctor. As Wulfe’s assault redirected to him, he focused on the dashboard.

“Now…” he murmured to himself. “Relative to our position, here, the lift must arrive on…”

LEVEL 32.

The Doctor yanked his hands from the anti-tampering mechanism. The lift pinged and its doors slid open. Just a floor below them.

Wulfe’s rheon carbine clicked. Empty.

“Now, Peri; Becceri; Jimrock!” the Doctor called. “Hurry!”

---

It was only now, encased in the oxygen-rich fluid of the Quasar of Sarfenia’s bulb, that Frobisher realised just how frangible this whole operation really was.

For one thing, the orbital lift was a thick weave of carbon nanotubes that allowed the Quasar Cannon’s roots to reach down, like an enormous beanstalk, to the roof of the villa and out across Sarfenia’s landscape. Power, he’d gathered, came from hydroelectric generators beneath the surface. Likely where the Doc and Peri resided.

The technology was vast, intimidating… And highly coveted.

For another, there was no ruling intelligence behind the Quasar Cannon. Not like the Central Mentality on Natasia Tor or the scavenger robots on Zazz. He couldn’t sense anything prodding at his mind. Every ounce of agency, every scrap of decision-making was down to the people outside. It had no loyalties. No discernment of its own.

That made the Quasar of Sarfenia alarmingly suggestable.

Something pinched against Frobisher’s skin. A prickling pain. Slight, but noticeable.

As Melbud busied at the console, her soldiers were situated by the unlocked doorway. Away from the vital machinery of the Cannon. A fact and a flaw which they had not considered in their station.

The Quasar Cannon was intended to be manned by Ahaians. People like Major Klugii and her peers. Just children. The presence of the Sontarans must have been forced by Sontaran High Command to maintain their alliance with the planet Sarfenia.

It was enough to maybe fool them into thinking they had an advantage.

Even with the faceless masks of their armour, Frobisher could recognise a conspiracy.

Frobisher started, “Melbud…”

“They intend to kill me.” She looked up at him. “On orders from Wulfe. I’ve known for some time now.”

“You’re calmer than I’d be.”

Melbud’s face gently shook, chiding. “Great bird, to whom was the seed of the Quasar of Sarfenia first given?”

The Queen pressed her hands to the Sunfire Gem, still glowing in its socket in the console. Her face shrouded in an impossible shadow, and the skin of the Quasar Cannon began to shift. Distort.

Its pattern changed from leopard spots, to a tiger print, to scales like a dragon’s hide. 

From behind one of its scales, Frobisher recognised the snout of a Gauss turret. Its coils looked no sturdier than bamboo.

“Kill them!” shouted Field Major Bruut.

The soldiers at the doorway twisted beneath the intense heat of the Sontarans’ rheon carbines. Their skin caught aflame. Hair melted against their faces. Screams blending with the whine of the sidearms.

The Gauss turret returned the Sontarans’ slaughter in kind.

Bruut clamped his hands to his helmet. Smoke poured from beneath. Too much for the hermetic seals to contain. Those six fingers began to run like wax. Frobisher recognised, with horror, it was some kind of x-ray radiation. Softening bone and muscle to a clay-like paste. Brutt’s hand fused on the metal of his belt.

His compatriot remained true to his objective. He raised his weapon and fired at Melbud. She flicked her head, wincing at the noise of the fizzing bolts.

“Field Major!” he gurgled.

Even through the bulb, Frobisher could smell his lungs liquefying in his chest.

Queen Melbud fingered her ear and watched as, one by one, the Cannon’s firing team melted in their armour. Their lime-green blood sizzling, acrid, into the grout of the tiled floor. Snowmen in the spring.

His hand still fastened to his waist, Field Major Bruut’s pustulous green body staggered to the doors. It wouldn’t matter. His trunk-like legs sagged beneath him. Thigh over kneecap. As if someone had torn pumice stone dust from within a boxing bag.

Oily vapour issued from his mouth.

Melbud took her hand off the Sunfire Gem and continued operating the console. No explanation. No gloating. Nothing.

Frobisher dared a question, “What did you just do?”

“Spring cleaning. If the Quasar Cannon can grow, it makes sense that it would grow a means to defend itself, surely?”

“I understood that, but what you did… How you went about it…” Frobisher felt a prickling at the back of the neck. “That was telepathy, wasn’t it?”

“Dear Frobisher. Dear, sweet bird…” The grin on Melbud’s features was wider than her face. “I decide who is and isn’t a telepath on Sarfenia.”

Cancerous smoke billowed from the melted pile of bodies. The wobbling folds of lipless jaws carved open like stone gargoyles in agony.

Of all the horrific distortions, Frobisher couldn’t take his eyes off Bruut. His body contorted beyond all recognition of Sontaran or slave. Just a glassy lump of ash and sinew.

Through the bulb, it took a few moments for his mind to register why he was so entranced. The mesmeric flash of a crimson light at Bruut’s hip. The hollow tock of a volatiser.

The explosion ripped into the orbital lift.

---

Ordinarily, entry into the lift’s hoistway from the rung outside would have been impossible. Thanks to Wulfe’s determination to see Becceri dead, however, there was a large gash in the tube now large enough to climb through.

A shudder from above nearly sent them all plummeting to their deaths.

“More bad news?” Peri gripped the frame tight.

The Doctor dared a look above. Wulfe, understandably, was seething with anger. He removed the rheon carbine’s empty magazine, reaching for a substitute on his belt.

“The lift seems stable for now,” ushered the time-traveller. “Go on, I’ll join you.”

As his three friends slid in through the emergency hatch in its roof, the Doctor waited just long enough to see the Sontaran begin cutting at the lift cable.

He closed the hatchway, locking it from the inside, and punched the button for LEVEL 40.

“Back to the surface,” the Time Lord exhaled.

The shunt of power to the lift was almost deafening.

Peri worked her jaw. “My ears are ringing.”

“We have another problem…” began the Doctor.

“Wulfe.” Becceri must have heard the Sontaran’s thoughts. “If that cable is cut…”

A hollow clump-da-da-brump resounded through the ceiling of the lift.

The Doctor placed his arm across Peri’s shoulders and eased her back against the wall. 

“That’s not going to stop him,” Peri advised.

The hatchway above began to glow with a pinpoint of white-blue light.

“Eyes!” bellowed the Doctor.

The hatch burst like an aluminium can. The first of Wulfe’s shots struck the empty floor. The second, the doors. The headhunter closed in. His single-minded focus distracted him from the belay line. Now wrapping itself around his arms and shoulders. The tangle of cable delayed him for only a few seconds.

Long enough for his quarry to take action. Led by the Doctor, they yanked on Wulfe’s wrist, sending him careening into the lift. A shout. Jimrock went for his head. The headhunter batted him aside with the back of his hand.

“Otiose weakling.” Wulfe stood on his feet.

His hand was empty.

“My weapon.”

Becceri was holding it. “How many worlds has it been, Wulfe?”

“Give it to me,” he demanded.

“How many planets? How many people? How much of Sarfenia and Huigo was lost while you were chasing me? How much?”

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Becceri,” said the Doctor, level.

“It’s the only way.”

“It is only a way.” The Doctor leant across and pressed a button on the lift. “His way. Must we stoop to his level?”

“I’m tired of being hunted, Doctor. Of being shunned. Of pretending to be something I’m not. Wulfe won’t ever stop.”

“He’s destroyed enough lives already, don’t let him destroy yours as well.”

“People have died already today. What’s one more?”

“And that, Becceri,” he pointed. “That is a line you cannot cross. When ‘one more’ becomes just a number.”

“I cannot believe you’re defending him.”

Wulfe cracked a grotesque, sneering smirk, oily mucus at his lips.

“Him? Nonsense!” The Doctor shook his head. “He has enough blood to measure. I’m championing you.”

She aimed the rheon carbine. “I’m content to be a killer, Doctor.”

“No… You’re not.” The Doctor shook his head. “Believe me, I know. I know that path and I know that I will pay for it in the end. Hear me. Know this. From someone who defends others unto death…” He placed his hand on her forearm. “This time, it isn’t necessary.”

“You are a fool.” Wulfe slammed his elbow into Peri’s stomach.

The botanist’s inventive curse was lost in a gasping wheeze.

In the ensuing anarchy, Wulfe put the Doctor between himself and Becceri’s stolen rheon carbine. Hardly bested. Hardly defeated. Enraged, as only a Sontaran could be.

The headhunter unclipped his belay line and wrapped it around the Time Lord’s neck. A thick quicksilver cable. Suitable for a hangman’s noose. The headhunter’s three fingers went to the remote for the auto-belay.

A Martian karate chop from the Doctor snapped at Wulfe’s wrist. The Sontaran’s hand flapped in the open air. Precious seconds delayed the Doctor’s decapitation. The Time Lord’s front kick, aided by the cable, sent Wulfe stumbling into the opposite wall. Becceri in his way.

As Wulfe fell against her, Becceri fired the Sontaran’s rheon carbine. She missed. Her target, too near. The deafening whine of energy reduced the lift’s controls to blistered chrome. Sparks, cables and a now confused clunk from the mechanisms that elevated them outside.

The Doctor unwrapped his noose. “Door!”

Peri, clutching her stomach, pressed her fingers into the shattered fascia of the emergency door release. They opened somewhere between floors.

“Got him!” Jimrock secured Wulfe’s arms from behind.

Wulfe kicked the Doctor and Becceri from his path. One. Two. Both landed on the lip of the open doorway. The Doctor on his back. Becceri on her side.

The lift was still climbing.

“Peri, get Becceri!” ordered the Doctor.

Winded, Becceri curled in on herself. Foetal. Peri’s inelegant tug of her body, back into the wall, did the rest.

For the Doctor himself, the challenge proved more difficult. He tried to tug himself across the carpeted floor, sliding on his coat’s back, but Wulfe had his foot firmly planted on the Time Lord’s chest. Just under his chin.

The Sontaran’s opponents were three. Peri, Jimrock and Becceri. None could shift him.

The Doctor could see his own end coming along quite well. The translucent guillotine’s edge of the connecting door-frame in the lift’s tube. A single white arc of alloy that would come straight down on top of the Time Lord’s eyes.

Death raced towards him like a Tokyo monorail.

---

The sky above Sarfenia bristled in a lethal gold.

Under its cloudburst of fire, Ayna fought her captor through the villa with every fibre of her being. Kicking and thrashing, the soldier could still hold her under his arm. A flailing mass of defiance. Her teeth sunk deep into his gauntlet. It forced no consequence.

She could hear thunder. It rippled down from somewhere high above them.

The soldier swiped his keycard for the orbital lift, the doors opened and… 

The shockwave sent the servant girl, who tended the lintolemon pond and did the laundry, flying into the villa’s wall. An arm between her and its surface. The soldier wasn’t so lucky. His head connected with a corner of the corridor. A snap. He and his neck were no longer on agreeable terms.

Against the flat cream-white, Ayna’s body slumped to the floor. Still.

But breathing.

---

“Caution to the wind.” The Doctor swung his boot into Wulfe’s belt.

A click. The auto-belay’s remote activated.

With a whizzing whine, the cable pulled the half-mummified Doctor back into the lift.

The cutting-edge of the door-frame sliced through the empty air outside.

Without a Time Lord to stand on, Jimrock and Peri shoved Wulfe forward. The headhunter stumbled. Fell. Like a clockwork soldier. The neck of his armour connected sharply with the lip of the doorway. Wulfe landed on the floor against his auto-belay remote. Face down.

The cable halted before it could rip the Doctor through the roof above. He disentangled himself. Unbound as quickly as Houdini. He straightened his cravat for good measure.

It was a far worse circumstance for Wulfe. The horns on the headhunter were sheared clear in the gap. His scream sounded like a steam locomotive, derailed around a precarious bend. Low, huffed, indignant growls.

The lift’s ping was almost impossible to hear. LEVEL 38. Only two short of their destination. 

The exterior doors, leading back into the Dungeon Complex, opened to an uncaring silence.

Taking their advantage, the Doctor, Peri, Becceri and Jimrock lifted the Sontaran towards the doorway and heaved him into the corridor.

Wulfe climbed to his feet, red eyes burning. He clenched his fists.

“Ah-ah!” The Doctor gestured to Becceri. “Remember your sidearm.”

Despite everything that had occurred to him, Wulfe stopped. More than that, he took the warning as an opportunity to appraise his opponents. Scrutinise them.

The headhunter exhaled, straightening his back. “No matter…T’ah… It does not matter.” Wulfe waved a hand. “You can-not succeed, you know.”

The Doctor indulged him. “Oh? Why is that?”

Wulfe had been a plodder in his long-continued pursuit of Becceri, but there was one element that had always kept him on her trail. He was a Sontaran conscript with an unusual degree of imagination. Wulfe possessed a tactical intuition that turned him from a monstrous golem into an officer of one of the deadliest military empires in the Galaxy.

“Power is the only reality.” Wulfe jabbed a finger at Becceri, speaking with an unnerving authority. “And she is weak.”

Resting against the lift’s wall, Peri’s features rankled. “So, what? Killing is power?”

Jimrock looked away. A small detail the Doctor found curious.

“Conquest, fe-male,” Wulfe corrected. “Everything I have done has been in service to the Sontaran Empire.”

“No regrets, Wulfe?” asked the Doctor.

He stood proud. “My empire, Dok-tor. Right or wrong.”

Becceri still had the rheon carbine. “I don’t need an empire, Wulfe. None of us do.”

“And that is why your people will never follow you,” said Wulfe, without malice.

“A leader needs strength, not power.”

“Where lies the difference?”

“In this.” Becceri squeezed the trigger of the rheon carbine.

The weapon struck Wulfe between the eyes, a searing blot on the Sontaran’s features that blossomed into a corona of white fire. He twisted, hatred rippling across his wuthering jowl, and sunk to his knees.

By the time that Becceri had released the trigger, Wulfe had withered to the ground.

Without a word, she pressed the button for the top floor. The lift doors closed.

Peri was the first to ask, “Did you…?”

“How did it feel, Becceri?” the Doctor asked.

“Empty.” Becceri turned to him. “You were right, Doctor. Killing Wulfe… That wouldn’t have changed anything. Not for me.”

He nodded, satisfied. “And of all the faces to be haunted by…”

“Wulfe does seem the least picturesque.” The Gracelean turned to her lover. “The Doctor… He has reminded me of something rather important, Jimrock m’dear.”

“Which was?” he asked.

“I knew that, as a telepath, taking a life up-close would be…” Her voice trailed away.

“Traumatic,” the Doctor finished.

“You’d feel him, wouldn’t you?” asked Peri. “As part of your telepathy.”

Becceri nodded. “His dying thoughts.”

“They’ve a tendency to linger.” The Doctor didn’t elaborate.

“You stunned Wulfe, didn’t you?” Jimrock verified. “Rather than take his life? That is what happened, isn’t it?”

“This is a prison. In lockdown. With no prisoners.” Becceri lowered her weapon. “When Wulfe wakes up, he’ll face the same traps intended for us.”

“Only unlike us, he’ll have to face them alone,” the Doctor smiled.

“If he remains where he is, our people can come and collect him later,” nodded Jimrock. “And if he chooses to roam…”

“His death is on him.” Becceri examined him. “You don’t agree?”

Jimrock cleared his throat. “I agree. His death is on him.”

“Not to be the bearer of unpleasant thoughts,” Peri interjected. “But, what’s to stop the soldiers or the Sontarans from finding him?”

“We’re lucky,” answered Becceri. “The soldiers aren’t loyal to Wulfe, they’re loyal to Melbud.”

“As for the Sontarans…” The Doctor examined her with the concern of a teacher watching out for his favourite student. “If all they want is the Quasar Cannon, Wulfe may just qualify as acceptable losses.” He turned to Becceri and Jimrock. “Do you two know where Queen Melbud is now?”

“She’ll be attending the Quasar of Sarfenia,” answered Becceri. “There’s nothing else in her mind but death to the people of Huigo.”

The lift arrived at LEVEL 40, the doors opening to a wall of smoke and the scent of fire. The Doctor sprinted across the terrace to the nearest arrowslit.

“Great Gallifrey…” the Time Lord inhaled. “I was wondering when the Sontarans would make their move.”

He moved to allow Becceri to see. “The orbital lift, Doctor… It’s gone.”

“Blown to pieces, I see,” the Doctor answered, shrugging his eyebrows. “That makes circumstances rather obstreperous.”

A little voice in the grey began, “Are you…?”

The one-eyed servant girl jumped as the calico visitant turned to her.

“Steady. Steady…” soothed the Doctor. “You needn’t be afraid. I’m known as the Doctor.”

“The Doc…?” she asked.

“And ‘tor’, young lady. Each syllable is as precious as the other,” he smiled. “What’s your name? How can we help?”

“Ayna. The soldier guarding Ayna is dead…” The blood on her tunic was fortunately not her own. “Frobisher… He said you were good friends of his.”

He could see her arm was broken. How far had she been from the orbital lift when it exploded? She must have thrown up her hands to defend herself.

The Doctor undid his cravat, picking up two pieces of broken woodwork to form a splint. Gently, he tended to her. “He’s a dear friend. We’d like to rescue him, if we may.”

“How?” asked Becceri. “Without the orbital lift, our only option is the spaceport.”

Jimrock shook his head. “There’s no way we’ll reach it by land. Not in time.”

“We’ve got a ship off near the beach,” Peri corrected. “The TARDIS.”

The Doctor turned back to Ayna. “Can you take us to an aircar? A buggy? Anything that could get us through the jungle? Back to where we were?”

Ayna nodded. “By the lidar tower. This way.”

As they ran into the devastation of the compound, only Jimrock noticed Becceri was still holding the defeated Sontaran’s rheon carbine. Their eyes met. Decades of understanding flowed between them.

And neither said a word.

---

Shell 5: Volleyed and Thundered

With the decapitation of the orbital lift, the roots of the Quasar Cannon tantrumed in Sarfenia’s atmosphere. Writhing, wriggling, oily fingers, like talons snatching at their fast receding prey.

---

In the Quasar Cannon’s bulb, Frobisher contorted with pain.

The doors had sealed at the moment of breach. Saving both the lives of Frobisher and Melbud, but the Queen was on her knees. Hair loose across her face. A claw-like hand clasping at her burn-salted features.

“Melbud?” Frobisher beat his flipper against the bulb. “Melbud, can you hear me?”

“Father…” Her eyes were glazed over. “It’s alright, it’s quite alright… Don’t cry… ” she cooed. “It was just an accident. I loved the cake… You’ll be fine… You’ll see. You’ll be fine and… I… I won’t be ungrateful again… You… You’ll be… I…”

Queen Melbud was in another time, another place. Far away from here.

But not Frobisher. The whifferdill could feel it. Something gnawing at his body in a membrane of digestive acids. He shut his eyes. Tried to shapeshift his body into a smooth crystalline form. Impervious to attack. Rather than hearing the sizzling through the oxygen-rich fluid, he felt it. Gnawing. Layer after layer. It was boiling him away.

The shapeshifter fashioned his left flipper into a scissor-like blade and began cutting through the bulb’s membrane. It twitched. Flinched.

Its grip tightened on him.

He cut harder.

---

The buggy slammed to a halt beside the familiar blue silhouette of the TARDIS. Its lamplight flashed, a lighthouse in the growing dark.

“Doctor,” Becceri twisted around him. “We could use your TARDIS to deflect the beam.”

“Hey, not a bad idea,” Peri commended.

“Elementary physics. The beam may not hit its target, but it will continue through space until it hits something. Maybe another inhabited world.” He shook his head. “No, once the Cannon is fired, there’s no going back.”

The botanist ticked her face. “So, no banana in the tailpipe?”

The Doctor looked at her peculiarly. “Banana in…? We’ll try something more direct.”

He leapt from the driver’s seat with a thoughtful look. He  thumbed his key into the Ship’s external lock. In quick order, he urged everyone into the TARDIS.

“One…!” Peri. “Two…!” Becceri. “Three…!” Jimrock. “Four…!” Ayna.

He slid in behind them, kicking the doors shut with his foot.

---

Frobisher swallowed the stale air outside the bulb. It was a common mistake made by those who’d never left their planet that space was silent. That wasn’t true. Space stations, spaceports, satellites, they all had their own distinctive sound.

Air conditioning, checkpoints, Telefax terminals, busy patrons, bustling space truckers, the hubbub of a hub of life. That went true for small outposts too. The little pinpricks in the dark. Always a constant hum.

The deafening silence of space beyond was countered only by the growl of the Quasar Cannon. It was like being locked in a small cage with a large lion. The animal stench of something which didn’t look at you, as much as through you.

Frobisher turned back to the bulb.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know if the Doctor and Peri had been fed to this thing. Was that all they were now? Up from the dungeons and turned into paste to feel this…this…monster?

The whifferdill tried to walk. It was hard. His feathers melted to his skin. Like wax and clay.

“Melbud…” He could see her, still on the ground.

What was the point? The purpose? Use him as livestock to feed the Quasar Cannon forever? A shapeshifter, therefore a creature of infinite dimension, infinite mass, infinite food? It didn’t work that way.

Frobisher didn’t notice the TARDIS materialise. Nor the Doctor and his assembled party emerge from the doors.

“Doctor!” Peri retched at the smell. “That looks like…”

“I told you to stay in the TARDIS,” he chastised.

“Melbud.” Becceri’s voice was so light, so cold-bloodedly reasonable. She raised the rheon carbine in her hand. “It’s over. It’s time to end this and let the Huigans live. It’s gone too far.”

“You helped them kill him.” Melbud’s eyes were as steel. “My father deserved better than the end you and the Huigans gave him.”

“Remove the Sunfire Gem! I don’t want to argue, but…”

“But you will. Because you know I’m right.”

“How…” Ayna was a squeak. “How did he die?”

“You don’t know?” asked the Doctor.

She shook  her head. “Ayna never knew. The Graecelans were never told.”

Becceri stiffened, tears in the corners of her eyes.

“It was my birthday,” Melbud swayed her head, like a cobra. “I wanted a cake made by the chocolatiers in the Southern Mountains of Regitator. Nothing… Nothing was impossible for my father. He did it.”

“Even if it came to violence,” said Becceri.

“Even if he had to burn the town to the ground…” The Queen marvelled at the thought. “He would get his little girl the most beautiful cake she had ever seen.”

“I remember it.”

“Pink. Like the sky at twilight. White frosting like clouds. It was taller than he was.” Something cold washed over her. “He’d been in a hurry that day. Wouldn’t have missed my birthday for the world…”

Peri squeezed the Doctor’s arm. She didn’t like where this was going.

Melbud looked at him. “He was murdered, my father. I would’ve had a perfectly adequate birthday. Perfectly adequate. We weren’t even afforded that. The bullet…” She stood to her feet, half of her face blackened by third-degree burns. “Came from the jungle. My mother knew that for certain. Soldiers were dispatched, but by the time they arrived… Whoever had done it was long gone.”

Jimrock became not unlike his namesake. Perfect stone. To Frobisher, that said everything.

“Your father was a monster, Melbud.” Becceri stated it as a fact. “He’d lock people in their homes while they burned.”

“No,” said Melbud.

“He would lock them in,” the Ahaian repeated, “and set them alight, and let the children outside listen to their parents scream and burn.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“I saw what he did in the Southern Mountains, Melbud. I saw.”

“She couldn’t unsee it,” added Jimrock. “We had to do something.”

“I can still remember the smell, by the gods…” Becceri took a step forward. “That image you have in your head of my uncle, your father… It’s not real.”

“Get out.” She clamped her hands over her temples.

“Your mother carried on his legacy, taught you how to hate everyone who wasn’t an Ahaian, and your father was a monster.”

The space between Melbud and Becceri should have been an eternity to cross. Somehow, the twisted grief and rage of the woman propelled her like a rocket into the Graecelan ambassador. The rheon carbine, readied and aimed, fired above their heads. The Queen had been too quick. Too savage.

Melbud roared, screamed and tore into Becceri. “Killyoukillyoukillyoukillyouliarliarliarliar!”

The Doctor and Jimrock got to her first. They ripped her away. With her, came her fingernails. Torn from Becceri’s face. Dark-orange clefts on her skin. The rest of the assembled group grappled her back.

“Becceri!” Jimrock held her.

Blood welled beneath her hand. “It hurts… ”

“Anyone see the gun?” struggled Frobisher.

An amethyst whip crack forced Jimrock back, dark-orange trailing from the glancing wound to his eyebrow. Automatically, the group parted, allowing Melbud enough room to angle the rheon carbine and fire at Becceri.

“Down!” shouted the Doctor.

Ayna shoved the Graecelan aside. She landed on her broken arm with a shout. Peri sprinted to her to check the Doctor’s tourniquet.

Unfortunately, no one was fast enough to prevent Melbud from getting behind the Doctor himself. He was halfway through a Venusian kick before he felt the nozzle of the weapon against his neck.

“Anyone intervenes and this man dies,” she snapped.

Becceri attempted to jump her from behind. Melbud tilted her head, a glazed look in her eyes. The ambassador’s face twisted in morbid discomfort. Wrists at her temples.

“Becceri!” Jimrock held her. “Was that what I think it was?”

She nodded.

“You’re not surprised.” His brow furrowed. “How long have you known?”

“Not until I left, but I suspected… Ever since she was young, there was a chance. She’s a telepath, Jimrock, she’s always been a telepath.”

“You… And Becceri… ” The agitator was trying to unravel it.

“Why the hostility? Surely it’s a widely-acknowledged state of living?” asked the Doctor. “The Second Outer Galaxy is filled with telepathic species…”

“Shut up,” snarled Melbud.

“I see. There isn’t a…” The Doctor felt the rheon carbine jab harder, but he persisted, “A diagnostician’s book somewhere that classifies telepathy as a mental illness, is there?”

“It is a disease. An illness of the mind.”

“Ah… Is that what you believe?”

“It’s a well-known fact.”

“No, just a well-known opinion. That’s how it begins, you know.” The Doctor gritted his teeth. “Very simply. Someone, somewhere, decides that something they cannot and will not understand is dangerous to their way of life. They invent rules, regulations, doctrines to justify their prejudices and, eventually, you have those with sway believing the lie.”

“You’re going to activate the Quasar Cannon, Doctor,” she ordered, “then you’re going to take me back to Sarfenia aboard your ship.”

“Weighed against the lives of the Second Outer Galaxy? I’m a paltry offering, Melbud. Kill me. You’ll achieve nothing bargaining with my lives.”

Tending to Ayna, Peri realised she was within a hair’s breadth of one of the fallen soldiers.

And his blaster.

With care, she slipped her fingers around its gunstock, black in her grip, and swung it towards Melbud. Its power-pack fired up. “Let him go.”

“Chemical bullets?” asked the Doctor.

Peri’s hand tightened. “Well, let’s find out.”

“You value his life.” Melbud was unperturbed. “You won’t shoot me, girl.”

“Lady,” Her grip tightened on the blaster. “I have no more idea what I’ll do than you.”

“Really?” she smirked, chidingly at her.

“I’ve had things crawling around in my head which haven’t left.” She stood. “I’ll feel hurt about it, sure. It’ll sting for a while. But, you know what? I’ll get over it. Let him go.”

“Peri.” The Doctor’s voice was suddenly singular in the room. Like he was standing at a lectern in a lecturing hall. “Whatever else happens, I forgave you. Remember that, h’mm?”

“Doctor…”

“They’re not chemical cartridges, girl,” Melbud asserted. “You’ll have to shoot your friend to get to me.”

“Shoot her, Peri,” said the Doctor

He knew how bad of a shot she was. “For real?”

“The bullets for my father were real, Peri,” Melbud warned.

“Mmm. Shoot her.”

“He died slowly.”

“Peri, shoot.”

“Keeled in his own blood.”

“Peri, I trust you, shoot!”

The Queen’s grip tightened with a snarling, “I’ll kill… !”

It was a bang that silenced the Galaxy.

Frobisher had been watching Peri’s hand, intently, but the shot still came as a surprise. No smaller a surprise than to the botanist herself. The projectile flashed, wildly, into the Doctor’s side. It perforated the fabric of his waistcoat.

He doubled forward, a rictus of pain and triumph.

And slumped to the floor torn from Melbud’s grip.

Using the Time Lord as a sandbag, the Queen thrust the rheon carbine towards Peri and Ayna. Peri fired again, bullets cracking against the hateful tyrant’s bodice. Her body twisted, a sine wave of percussive force, the stolen Sontaran’s weapon still held tight in her filament-like hands. A dozen, what felt like a hundred, zip-fasteners tore open in her skin. She draped across the floor onto her back.

It took Becceri and Jimrock to pry the rheon carbine from Melbud’s fingers and toss it away.

“Ohhh…” Peri was in tears. “Oh, how could he do something so stupid!”

Frobisher went to her. “Peri…”

“And I listened!” She threw the gun away. “Why the hell did I listen to him?!”

“Because you trusted him.”

“Oh God…!”

She rushed over to the Doctor, kneeling by their friend’s multicoloured side. She knelt her head against his torn waistcoat and cried. Just cried.

Frobisher was with her. “Check his hearts.”

“His what?” she sniffed.

“Hearts, perp.” He gestured with a flipper. “Check his pulses. Go on.”

In all that flurry of activity, Frobisher had been unable to do anything. Anything at all. He’d simply sat. A whifferdill sans shapeshifter, drenched in his own him, and been forced to watch the whole thing unfold. Not so differently than if he’d been still caught in the bulb.

Peri’s fingers felt at the Doctor’s neck. Her body shook as if a sudden breeze had wound through the Quasar Cannon assembly.

“He’s alive…” The tears came freely now. Relieved and angry. “Ohh… He can’t keep doing this to us!”

“He trusted you,” Frobisher asserted.

“Yeah, sure, and his own arrogance,” she spat it like an expletive. 

“Y’know that’s not true.”

“No… It’s not true. But I’ve got to be angry at someone. He’s not here right now.” Peri turned to Becceri, wiping her eyes. “How long…nn’gh…until these things wear off? An hour?” 

“Potentially an hour,” she answered. “Maybe less, depending on…”

The whole world around them creaked and sundered.

---

The black hole need of the Quasar of Sarfenia had gone beyond all tolerances.

It was like a starving elephant, desperate for succour. The whifferdill, from his taste, would have fed it for what felt like an eternity. Enough to satisfy the need. Now, cut off from both the soft loam of the land below and the ambrosia of above…

It had no alternative.

The warmth of the Sunfire Gem.

That would sate its hunger enough for its next kill.

---

Becceri tried to pry the Sunfire Gem from the Quasar Cannon’s console, but it was stuck fast. Not fused, as it would have been in metal, but gripped as if in an oversized fist.

“Jimrock.” She shook her head. “We haven’t stopped it.”

He stepped next to her. “What’s the next target?”

The Graecelan ambassador checked. “Huigo.”

“By the gods…”

“And it’ll go straight through the Aepa Som Arena on the way.”

“How many is that?”

“Millions of lives, my love,” she squeezed his hand. “Millions.”

Jimrock’s mind was racing, desperate. “How long do we have?”

“Less than we’d like. More than we think.”

Becceri placed her hands atop it, focussing her mind deep into its striations. The Gem itself was more than a simple gemstone. It was an energy source in its own right. One that could be shaped and moulded with psychofaceting.

She concentrated. “Jimrock, I…”

Becceri could feel it pulling her mind into the Gem. Jimrock’s cut-blue eyes measured the discomfort in her face and pulled her hands from the console.

“You alright?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to stop it.”

Frobisher waddled up to them. “Blow it up?”

“Question is how.” Jimrock rubbed his throat. “If we don’t do it correctly, there would be enough debris here to turn Sarfenia into a molten gravel pit.”

“The Doc would know how…” The whifferdill cut himself off.

“The Doctor would know,” Becceri nodded. “But we must figure this out for ourselves.”

Frobisher stared up at the growing blossom of the flower. “I didn’t feel an intelligence in this thing when I was in that bulb.” He turned around. “What if we gave it one?”

“How do you mean?” asked Jimrock.

“Melbud was able to affect it by telepathy through the Sunfire Gem. That means, so long as that’s stuck in there, it’s vulnerable to telepathic thought.”

Becceri had reached the same conclusion. “We could think it into disarming.”

Frobisher’s flippers went up. “It’s worth a shot, surely?” 

“No,” Jimrock shook his head. “If you put your mind into the Quasar Cannon, there’s every chance it will never come out again.”

“What other choice do we have, m’dear?” asked Becceri. “Honestly?”

“The TARDIS.” Peri’s voice. From the floor, next to the unconscious Doctor. “It has telepathic circuits. I’ve caught the Doctor talking with her through them.”

“There’s an onboard transceiver,” Frobisher added.

“Help me with him, Frobisher.” Peri hefted up the Doctor.

Between the five of them, including the one-armed Ayna, they were able to push their way through the external doors towards the pewter-grey main console inside.

“What about Melbud?” asked Ayna.

“Leave her,” Jimrock answered, automatically.

His eyes searched the white floor of the TARDIS. Becceri knew it of old. He was an honest, dignified man that she’d brought to the Sarfenian court for one reason and one reason only. She felt he belonged there.

His harried gaze was of a man who felt he removed one of the worst dictators of their world.

In a single fell swoop. No casualties. No innocents. That had been the promise.

They hadn’t told him that it was to be at a little girl’s birthday party. Tyrant’s daughter or no, she had still been a child. He’d lived with it by learning to hate her. Watching her grow into every inch the monster that her father was.

It was a terrible thing for him. To see life unfold and know his worst expectations had been confirmed. That was what drove them so readily to try for a better world. A more connected one. Reaching out to the Second Outer Galaxy with friendship than the barrel of a gun.

Becceri squeezed his arm. “We cannot do that.”

To his credit, whatever bitter arguments fumed beneath the surface, he stalked out of the Ship and dragged Melbud in, singlehanded, himself.

“I believe in you,” Jimrock murmured.

“And we’ll make it right,” Becceri answered.

The clack-clack of toggles and switches drew their attention to the console.

“You ready?” asked Peri.

Becceri and Jimrock stood beside the botanist and the penguin.

The Graecelan ambassador pinched her brow. “How does this work?”

“Like a Ouji board.” Peri registered their blank faces. “Sorry. After opening the circuits, it’s all a question of intent. At least, that’s how the Doctor describes it.”

“Ask the TARDIS what you want to do and she’ll…” Frobisher didn’t quite have the words. “Guide your hand, I guess.”

“I’ll be monitoring,” said Peri. “Frobisher will be your medium.”

“You can hold my hand if you…oh.” The whifferdill wasn’t expecting Becceri to take him seriously. He cleared his throat. “Right. Ready to go.”

The botanist nodded, grave, and flicked the final switch.

“Frobisher,” Becceri began. “Frobisher, can you hear me?”

The whifferdill nodded.

Maintaining her hold on the console in her hands, Becceri continued, “TARDIS, listen. We need to stop the Cannon’s charge system. You need to help us calm it down. Don’t worry, you’re quite safe.”

Voices, harsh and uncompromising, scuttled like beetles along the edges of the flower.

Becceri tried again with the Sunfire Gem, holding it high in her hands. “Quasar of Sarfenia, please listen to me. You must stop. If you fire, another world full of millions will be annihilated.”

Open main circuits, the telepathic circuits interpreted for the Quasar Cannon.

“Let me try,” Frobisher suggested. “The TARDIS and I have an understanding.”

It continued, relentless, Cannon chamber pressure increasing.

“Frobisher, are you sure about this?” Peri enquired, concerned.

All hydroelectric generators, functioning at optimal.

“We don’t have a choice. Trust me.”

“There’s that word again.” Peri nodded, hunching over the console’s visual display unit.

Release main safety.

“TARDIS! Hey, can you hear me? It’s Frobisher! You know me, don’t ya? You keep cheating me at chess.”

Main safety disengaged.

“TARDIS?”

Cannon chamber pressure at capacity.

“TARDIS,” Frobisher continued. “Can you say my name? You know my name, don’t ya? You’re the TARDIS. Who am I?”

All systems verified. Supplemental safety lock removed.

“She’s not responding.” Panic cut Frobisher’s voice. “Why isn’t she listening?”

Chamber pressure at saturation point.

“It’s the Doctor,” Peri realised. “He’s still unconscious.”

Open target portal.

“C’mon, Doc, wake up…!” She tapped his face. “C’mon!”

Confirmed. Verifying targeting solution.

The Time Lord groaned, but couldn’t stir.

Targeting solution confirmed. Huigo.

“Do you have any stimulants?” asked Jimrock. “Adrenalin?”

Countdown. Ten seconds before firing. Prepare for recoil shock.

“There’s a medical kit over here!” Frobisher powered across to the roundel. “Help me up!”

Ten.

They yanked the kit down, scattering its contents. Peri shook her head. “Not enough time. C’mon, Doctor! I need you! A whole world’s going to die! C’mon!”

Nine.

Becceri leant down to the Doctor, as Peri shook him by the lapels of his coat.

Eight.

Becceri placed her hands on his temples, concentrating her telepathic thought into the arroyos of his mental defences. He’d never allowed her through, but she only needed to give him one command.

Seven.

“Help,” asked Becceri.

Six.

The Doctor’s cat-like eyes snapped open, alert.

Five.

“The Quasar Cannon’s about to fire!” Peri and Ayna shouted.

Four.

The Doctor pounced on the console, his mind absorbing the minutiae of the given moment. Toggles adjusted. Studs pressed.

Three.

The TARDIS console’s red-gold column rose and fell at its centre. He crossed his fingers. Becceri caught him muttering, “Firing chamber… Firing chamber…”

Two.

A wheep. They’d arrived. The Doctor froze. A flash of panic leapt onto his features. At the console, he stood before the strange, inorganic powerhouse of machinery like a skier at the crest of an oncoming avalanche.

One.

White-blue light blazed from the console. An excruciating shout tore from the Doctor’s lips. His body coiled in pain.

Fire.

---

The flawless core of the Sunfire Gem… 

Cracked.

The final stages of stabilising the beam in the firing chamber had been…disrupted. Something… There was… An obstruction… Pain!

The Quasar of Sarfenia convulsed. There was something inside it. Inside the firing chamber. An oblong crate whose very presence distorted the carefully balanced energies within the Quasar Cannon.

Its need… Its hunger… It had all been building to this point. The itching, scratching, frenetic pulse of energy. To be divested. Ejected. Expelled. Out. Through the portal.

With this crate blocking the way, it had nowhere to go now. No arrowhead shape. No certain trajectory. The energies were simply a cat’s cradle of self-cannibalising energy. The Cannon couldn’t absorb it. It was far beyond that point of recovery now. What could it do?

It had one option left.

One, alone.

---

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor activated the scanner just in time to see the Quasar of Sarfenia’s manifest its decision.

Within the firing chamber, situated at its heart, they could see a growing sun of golden energy. Brighter and brighter. It consumed the vidscreen.

Becceri’s mouth gaped. “We’re inside the Quasar of Sarfenia?”

“Yes,” answered the Doctor.

“That energy…” murmured Peri.

Frobisher asked, “It won’t take the strain, surely?”

The Doctor held his tongue, simply pointed.

In the intense light, they could see reflections of the Quasar Cannon’s barrel.

The inside of the barrel.

They could hear the bulbs on the Quasar Cannon’s outer layer burst, each in turn, as a vital aspect was lost. Its targeting array, capacitors, even ammunition. Frobisher could hear that one bulb. Distinctive from the others by its fleshy thickness. Used to murder and destroy so many Graecelan and Ahaian lives.

Outside, the ceiling above them collapsed. They shouldn’t have been able to see them from the firing chamber. Those ram’s horns of devastation. It had caved inwards.

Like its exterior, the Cannon resembled a flower. Now in winter. Petals, a fireplace-grey. Bloodied with a staining-white, twisting like burst hot blood vessels. Its hairs, not unlike fishing hooks caught in the skin.

The sagging whorls of flesh that pressed together to form the nozzle at the Quasar of Sarfenia’s summit were the last to destabilise. It looked distressed. Ebbing. Dying.

The Quasar Cannon. Devoured by its own beam of devastation.

“Peri,” voiced the Doctor, almost timid. “The door.”

In all the excitement, they’d forgotten. Peri moved to the red lever and pressed it down.

As the TARDIS’s external doors closed, there was a flash. At the epicentre of the explosion, the party aboard the Ship clung to anything. The console, the walls, each other, it didn’t matter. Someone was screaming, no one could determine who.

The orbital lift’s terminus vaporised. Light poured into the console room.

“It’s safe!” reassured the Doctor. “Quite safe! That’s the portal destabilising!”

Dazzled, the scanner filled with shrieking static. The bright white replaced by grey snow.

In its wake, some semblance of substance returned to the room. The group turned, guided by the multicoloured patchwork of the Doctor’s coat. He was watching the exterior. Very intently. The vidscreen’s optic relay took a few moments to adjust and filter out the ambient radiation outside.

As pale oblivion faded, there was nothing left.

The Doctor sighed. “Thought so.”

Nothing but the surface of Sarfenia. Safe and well.

He turned to his friends and the planet’s assembled peoples and smiled. Peri caught a gleam of impatient expectation in his eye. Puckish and self-delighted.

“Wait…” She understood. “The banana in the tailpipe?”

“I thought it was quite a novel concept. Stall an automobile by blocking its exhaust…”

“Block the Cannon by putting us where the beam stabilises,” Frobisher realised. “Swell notion, Doc.”

“I thought so.” His cheer dimmed slightly. “I’m sorry about the Sunfire Gem, Becceri. In all the excitement, I’m rather afraid we’ve destroyed it.”

The golden-haired woman smiled back and shrugged.

“It’s just an object, Doctor. You’ve saved an entire people. For that, I’m forever grateful.”

“We,” added Jimrock, “are forever grateful. Thank you.”

The Doctor nodded, sagely. “Well, now that’s sorted, it’s time for us to attend to other important matters.”

“Hey…” Peri realised. “There’s a queen-sized gap on our floor.”

“By the gods, she slipped away unnoticed!” Angrily, Jimrock made for the interior door.

“I shouldn’t worry…” The Doctor scanned the surrounding faces. “She’s not the only one.”

A hollow clang, shortly followed by a stifled cry, ricocheted from the TARDIS corridor outside the console room.

The Doctor sighed, shook his head, and swung the door to reveal Ayna. Holding a surgical mallet from the scattered remnants of the TARDIS medical kit. At her feet, the one-eyed servant girl had the dishevelled, humiliated and unconscious queen.

Ayna used it to scratch her tourniquet. “Can we go home now?”

---

Epilogue

The next day or so passed uneventfully, thanks to an unexpected but welcome bout of rain on Sarfenia. Whatever jungle fires that could have begun from the fall of the orbital lift were quickly put to rest by nature herself.

Many Graecelans, sensing Ayna’s return from the TARDIS, came to examine the devastation. She told her story well, based on a chat with the Doctor himself. By the time that Becceri felt courage enough to see her people, they knew her again. For what she’d done on Sarfenia, Neimor, Earth and in the wider Second Outer Galaxy.

The Doctor, Peri and Frobisher had remained to give the TARDIS a much needed rest.

Emerging after a meagre breakfast, the Time Lord had taken it upon himself to sit in the former Queen’s throne. Peri and Frobisher, meanwhile, sat in adjoining chairs on each side reserved for Sarfenian ambassadors.

“This feels good,” Peri said, biting into her toast.

The Doctor quirked an eyebrow. “Does it?”

“Mmm…” She nodded. “Feels like things have balanced out for Peladon.”

His lips pressed tight, eyes dancing with amusement.

“Oh…” She realised.

“He thought you meant the food,” Frobisher chuckled to himself.

“Food’s fine,” Peri ran longing fingers along the stone armrest. “But the chair…”

“Becceri! Jimrock!” The Doctor greeted them as they approached. “I take it you’ve put things in order?”

“A promising start, yes, Doctor,” Becceri replied. “We’ve managed to put an end to the conflict between us and Huigo, and Sarfenian ships are providing a perimeter in outer space to prevent any Sontarans attacking should they come.

“Melbud has been stripped of her powers,” Jimrock confirmed.

“As a distant cousin of hers, with the backing of many witnesses, including Jimrock and Ayna, I decreed the Queen unfit for royal duty and had her abdicated.”

“She wasn’t happy about that.”

“Y’know, I’m starting to think that politics is just an overblown family clash at Christmas time,” Peri hypothesised.

The Doctor looked at her. “Did I ever take you and Frobisher to meet Eleanor of Aquitaine?”

Jimrock took the opportunity to show off. “One of Melbud’s great aunts married a Graecelan nobleman, but he had an affair with a Graecelan woman, who also married into the royal family. She was… Another of Melbud’s great aunts, I believe.”

Becceri smiled at him. “You remembered.”

She flinched, slightly. At a memory of pain.

“How are your features?” the Doctor gestured. “No lasting damage, I hope?”

Becceri caressed the scars on her cheek. “They’ll heal.”

“So, your great grandparents are of Melbud’s family… but of different couples… And both are Graecelan?” Peri clarified.

“Complex, isn’t it?”

Frobisher put down his jar of pilchards. “Talk about soap opera drama.”

“So, what punishment have you deemed for Melbud?” asked the Doctor. “She still has her followers, remember. I’d hate to see a bold new world of peace and cooperation scuppered because of rats in the walls.”

“Jimrock and I concurred that transferring her to a penal colony in the Second Outer Galaxy would be for the best,” said Becceri.

“How long?” Peri asked.

“Long enough to repay the worlds she destroyed.” She took a step closer. “On that subject, I have an offer.”

“Yes?” Peri blinked.

“You spoke of things in your mind. I thought… If you were willing…”

She tapped her temple. “You’d scan me?”

“Yes.”

Peri paused, then, “Sure.”

Becceri closed her eyes, exhaling, “You know what I can see?”

“Tell me.”

She opened them again. “I see you, Peri. Nothing else, but you.”

Peri’s eyes shone, any tears hidden by the bite of her fingernail. “Seems…ah…” She tried to change the subject, smiling weakly. “Seems like you do have everything in order on Sarfenia. Congrats, you two.”

“Well…” Becceri smiled, conceding. “We don’t have an official ruler on Sarfenia now that Melbud has been deposed. Jimrock and I are temporary, but it won’t last long.”

“May I make a suggestion?” offered the Doctor.

“Yes?”

“Yourself,” proclaimed the Doctor.

“What? Me?” Beceeri blinked. “Me be the next Queen? I don’t see that as being straightforward, Doctor.”

“Don’t see why you should doubt it. You’ve already demonstrated how far you’re willing to go for your people.” The Doctor tapped the side of his nose. “Without compromising your principles either.”

“Yeah, and I don’t see any other candidates going for the position yet,” Frobisher added. “I’d vote for you. At least you don’t have any homicidal tendencies.”

“Thank you,” Becceri bowed. “It’s very nice of you all. I’m afraid the other candidates will come forth sooner than you’d expect. My chances in becoming the next Queen of Sarfenia aren’t that high.”

“I’ll support you, m’dear,” said Jimrock, placing a hand on her left shoulder. “And I’ll be very happy to be your husband and Prince once you start ruling Sarfenia.”

Becceri smiled. “Thank you, Jimrock. I’m very happy to have you at my side.”

“You have Princes as your husbands?” Peri enquired, puzzled. “They don’t become kings?”

“‘K’ing? What word is that?” asked Jimrock, puzzled.

“It’s the Queens that decide who to propose to and who to marry,” Becceri explained. “Sometimes it’s Princes or Princesses that become their husbands and wives. The Queen is the superior overruling title in the royal family.”

“Queen Victoria would concur, I’d wager,” said an amused Doctor.

“It’d be interesting to see her and Becceri comparing notes,” Peri joined in, cheekily.

“Are you staying for the celebrations, Doctor?” invited Becceri. “It’d be an honour to have you, Peri and Frobisher join us…”

“Thank you, Becceri, but no,” the Doctor replied. “We three have a lot to do and we’d better get going.”

“Oh, come on, Doc,” Frobisher moaned. “Why can’t we stay a bit longer? They’re bound to have a nice buffet.”

Peri added, “And I’m sure the hospitality will be terrific compared to what the Queen gave us.”

“No, we’ve far overstayed our welcome,” the Time Lord said, firmly.

“You make it sound like you’re a bad influence wherever you go, Doctor,” Jimrock remarked.

“Constantly,” Peri teased.

“Definitely,” Frobisher joined in.

“I shall ignore those jibes, you two.” A twinkle of amused mischief caught in his eye. He extended his hand to Becceri. “This is a delicate time for your world. You shan’t need us to rebuild. It’s better if you stand on your own two feet.”

“I’m very happy you came, Doctor,” she grasped it. “Thank you and your friends for helping Jimrock and I to save Sarfenia.”

“Happy to have obliged,” the Time Lord replied.

“And not just you, Peri and Frobisher. Thanks also to your friends who aren’t here today. The ones who helped you in our previous meetings.”

“Yes, indeed,” nodded the Doctor. “James and Bazooie… ”

“Nyssa and Billy… ” she added.

“Tegan and Michael… ” he returned.

“Do you think they’d be pleased?” Becceri asked.

The Doctor looked at her. “To know that you won the day in overthrowing your distant relation. I have no doubt.”

“I wish things could have turned out differently between me and her,” reflected Becceri, sadly. “I often wanted to be close, but Melbud wouldn’t permit it. A shame that can’t happen now.”

“The cycle of violence can only be ended by peace, Becceri,” the Doctor encouraged. “Wulfe in the dungeons, Melbud off to the very Second Outer Galaxy she despised… You’ve an opportunity for something better. For a world forged by empathy, compassion and cooperation. There are no guarantees in this cosmos of ours. Don’t squander this chance.”

“We won’t,” said Becceri.

“You’ll promise me?” he asked.

She nodded. “We promise.”

With a decisive nod, he beckoned his companions into the TARDIS and closed the door behind him.

The indomitable Space and Time machine’s engines thudded, beginning its dematerialisation sequence. Off into the vast coral Galaxies of Space and the wending hourglass of Time. To search again for another wondrous horizon.

---

---

Click here to check out the ‘Quasar of Sarfenia’ page on the Divergent Wordsmiths website, containing the blurb and extras, including author commentaries, clean cover art and line art.

---

‘Peri Brown’ created by John Nathan-Turner and Peter Grimwade
‘Frobisher’ created by Steve Parkhouse and John Ridgway
‘Sontarans’ created by Robert Holmes

---

Special thanks to Simon Rogers, Xavier Downey, Alan Camlann and AFJ Kernow.

---

 © Tim Bradley and Alan Camlaan, 2024

---

The previous story For ‘The Sunfire Chronicles’ was ‘The Race of Endurance’ (TSC) For the Sixth Doctor was ‘The Alchemists of Fear’ (Book) For Peri was ‘The Alchemists of Fear’ (Book) For Frobisher was ‘The Alchemists of Fear’ (Book)	The next story For the Sixth Doctor is ‘The More Things Change’ (YB) For Peri is ‘The More Things Change’ (YB) For Frobisher is ‘Mission: Impractical’ (Book)
Return to The Sixth Doctor’s Timeline
Return to Peri’s Timeline
Return to Frobisher’s Timeline
Return to The Doctors’ Timelines Index
Return to The Companions’ Timelines Index
Return to Doctor Who Timelines
Return to Short Trips by Tim Bradley
Return to The Sixth Doctor by Tim Bradley
Return to Doctor Who by Tim Bradley
Return to Doctor Who
Return to Sci-Fi