Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [18]
‘It’s the TARDIS, isn’t it?’ said Kode.
Sarah nodded, very slowly. ‘What’s it doing here, though? All right, maybe the Doctor left it in a condemned building so nobody would notice. But that was a police cordon stuck to the side of the building.’
‘You can read the local language?’
‘I can now.’ The woman risked another step towards the box. ‘If the authorities have got their hands on the Doctor, why not take the TARDIS into custody as well? Or, if they’re going to leave it here, why not guard it? They must have some idea what it is.’
Something suddenly occurred to Kode. His hand shot up to his ear, and he ordered his receiver to filter out the background scream of the TARDIS.
‘There’s another transmission,’ he snapped.
Sarah spun around to face him. ‘What?’
Kode tuned in to the transmitter. Video pictures, that was what he was getting. He saw the TARDIS, from a slightly different angle. He saw Sarah, and the Ogrons, and… and there he was, standing in the middle of the room, a stupid look on his face.
He pointed into the corner. The image of himself raised its hand, too. ‘There’s a camera. Hidden Surveillance. There.’
Then there was static. Filling up the camera image, pumping random signals through the receiver. Another doorway was opening, right in front of him, but when the half-dozen armed and armoured figures poured out of the static and into the room, Kode saw them as the camera saw them. He saw the first of the men raise his gun, and aim it at the image-Kode’s face. He saw the expression image-Kode adopted, a look of sheer panic, with maybe a hint of dopey-eyed confusion. He saw Sarah, diving towards the TARDIS machine. Another of the armed men raised his weapon. So did the Ogron guard.
There was gunfire. A crackling of electricity. Then the camera image started to break up, until all Kode could see was interference, and all he could hear was the sound of angry men shouting.
* * *
16
Sacrifices, Episode One
(what the aliens learned from Sam)
Scene 35. Space
[We pan across the void, eventually focusing on two nearby objects. The first is a planet; it seems to be about the same size as Earth, but its surface is almost entirely made up of water, with one or two strips of grey-brown land at the equator. Every now and then, we see tiny specks of light glimmering across the oceans, though there’s no indication of what may be causing this.
[The second object, in the foreground, is a spaceship. The ship is small, squat and black, apparently of human manufacture. In fact, it’s a standard twenty-sixth‐century vessel, all economy and no style.]
* * *
Scene 36. The Control Section of the Ship
[The interior of the ship, like the exterior, is pure black. This makes the control section look much smaller and much more claustrophobic than it actually is. A display screen takes up most of the far wall, and there are several control panels set beneath it, covered in exactly the kind of oversized levers, switches and readout panels you’d expect from a retro-futurist imperial society.
[The DOCTOR sits in the pilot’s seat, fiddling with the controls for no good reason. The copilot’s seat is empty, but SAM stands by the open hatchway that leads to the rest of the ship, looking bored. The DOCTOR glances up at the screen.]
DOCTOR: Ordifica. The oldest colony planet in this part of the galaxy. Your descendants have got a lot to answer for, Sam.
SAM [squinting at the screen]: What are those lights?
DOCTOR: Cities. Hydrodome communities. Each of those little dots must house a good million people, I should think. The humans have been doing quite a lot of breeding, these last three hundred years.
SAM: Lucky them. So how are the aliens going to try taking the place over if the cities are so far apart? Is there some kind of public transmat network or something?
DOCTOR: As a matter of fact, there is. But the aliens are going to be a bit more subtle than that, I’d say. The only way this society can hold itself together is with its media network. The