Doctor Who_ Companion Piece - Mike Tucker [13]
A weak smile flickered across the Doctor's face. After all the complex technological prisons he had escaped from, after all the alien aggressors he had outsmarted, it was all to end here. A backward agricultural world. An angry mob. Burnt as a witch.
He gave a coughing laugh.
A ripple of concern ran through the sea of faces that watched him. A flurry of hands made crosses in the air. The leader of the mob stepped forward, blazing torch held high.
`You would mock us?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'I wouldn't dream of it.'
`Then make your peace with whatever demons you serve. Your time has come:
`Are you sure about that?' The Doctor narrowed his eyes.
The man gave a wicked smile, revealed broken yellow teeth. 'W hat do you think can save you now, witch?'
`That,' said the Doctor, nodding at the sky.
Cat had stood on the fringes of the crowd, watching as the Doctor was dragged from the cart and manhandled over towards the stake. Everything had started to become dreamlike for her, unreal somehow. The noise of the mob had faded to a low, distant roar, while the pale morning sun bleached everything to muted whites and yellows. It had been as if time was slowing down as the Doctor's death approached.
She had felt the cold metal blades in her belt, and there had been a sudden moment of total calm as she had steeled herself for her last, doomed attempt to rescue the little Time Lord.
Slowly she had started across the scrub, pushing people to one side, ignoring their cries of protest. Gradually her pace had increased as she had reached for her weapons. Hands had started to grasp at her. Head down, Cat had barrelled forwards.
And then the cross had appeared in the sky.
It burst through the hazy morning cloud with a deafening, screaming roar, a vast, impossible mass of gleaming gold and silver, sunlight making its surface blaze like fire.
There was a moment of stunned, unbelieving silence. Cat watched open-mouthed as the huge cross wheeled in the sky, engines thundering. It was a ship. A vast spacecraft, but unlike any she had ever seen before. It was the size of a tower block, a vast column of metal and plastic, the stubby arms blazing with thrusters. No attempt had been made to give it an aerodynamic shape; pure, thunderous energy kept this thing aloft. Its surface was a twisting gothic mass of decorative swirls, buttresses and gargoyles, picked out in gleaming gold and silver. Searchlights blazed from its belly, sweeping across the terrified crowd. Above the roar of the afterburners, Cat thought she could hear music — deep, sonorous organ notes and soaring angelic voices.
W ith a scream of engines that rattled Cat's teeth, the ship began to drop, huge clawed feet unfurling from heavily sculpted hatchways.
The stunned crowd suddenly erupted into life, exploding in all directions as the downdraft from the ship tore at their clothing. Mothers clawed desperately for their children, men tried to calm terrified animals. Cat could see the stake holding the Doctor start to quiver as the turbulence from the engines engulfed it. She struggled towards him, but the surge of bodies carried her backwards. She was screaming at the Doctor, but the typhoon created by the spacecraft whipped the words from her mouth. Remorselessly the crowd carried her back towards the city.
Cat caught hold of one of the frantic shapes scrabbling past her.
`W hat is it, what is going on?'
The young girl in her grasp shook her head in fear. 'Mother of God, we are all damned now.'
`W hy?' Cat demanded. 'W ho is in that ship?'
Three words made her blood run cold.
`The Holy Inquisition.'
that stretched out ahead of him. Pulling his sumptuous robes tighter, he paced slowly down