Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [0]
As the millennium draws to a close, the future of humankind hinges on the activities of one multimedia company, InterCom. Suspecting that old mistakes are being repeated, the Brigadier asks the Doctor and his companions to investigate the company’s Los Angeles headquarters. But their infiltration is disrupted by the murderous games of terrorists seeking the fulfilment of age-old prophecies.
While the Doctor and UNIT encounter aliens in the boardroom, Tegan meets a pop star, Turlough finds himself a victim of his own desires and Los Angeles becomes a war zone in which humanity is merely a helpless bystander.
Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, the Brigadier and UNIT, this adventure takes place between the TV stories THE AWAKENING and FRONTIOS.
THE KING OF TERROR
KEITH TOPPING
Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,
Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT
First published 2000
Copyright © Keith Topping 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format © BBC 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC
ISBN 0 563 53802 3
Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 2000
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton Dedication
For the Divine Audra McHugh.
And Graeme Topping.
‘The music of our heart is roots music. Music which recalls history, because without knowledge of your history you cannot determine your destiny. Music of the present, because if you are not aware of the present then you are like a cabbage in this society. Music which tells of the future, and the judgement to come.’
The stage introduction to the 1979 Counter-Eurovision Music Festival Contents
Start!
1
Prologue: Toy Soldier
3
Second Prologue: Time as an Abstract
7
Part One: All the King’s Men
11
1: Yesterday’s Men
13
2: Safe European Home
21
3: Kill Surf City
29
4: California
39
5: Turn Left at the Rising Sun
45
6: Bittersweet Symphony
53
7: UNIT Cutaway
61
8: Semantic Spaces
71
Part Two: King for a Day
83
9: A Man Out of Time
85
10: Bring on the Dancing Horses
97
11: The Girl Looked at Johnny
103
12: Beyond Belief
113
13: Strange Town
121
14: Treason (It’s Just a Story)
129
15: Surfing Blind
135
16: Naked Eye
147
Part three: O, King of Chaos!
159
17: Submission
161
18: Destiny Calling
167
19: Bring It On Down
175
20: Screen Kiss
183
21: Fear of a Dead Planet
193
22: Holes
201
23: Waiting for Today to Happen
209
24: Maybe Tomorrow
219
Coded Messages
221
Epilogue: Time’s Up
223
Second Epilogue: Complete Control
225
Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
227
About the Author
229
Start!
4 December 1981: San Joaquin Valley, California Word up.
The silence was deafening.
A still pool of loneliness. Solid and tangible.
Then they came.
And when they came, the sky ripped itself apart. Huge and sick. Colos-sal. White-hot through the ionosphere, burning a trailing plume, a thrashing snake’s tail of particles and fine matter.
An arrow through the sacred heart of the heavens.
The clouds were singed and torn. Violated, they parted for the penetration.
The sky bled, the horizon splatter-coloured like a smear of blood. A mute witness to the coming, the sky threw back its head (and wept at the sight).
Torrential rain fell like an ocean of bitter tears on the parched earth, churning it to thick, viscous, yellow sludge.
The wind howled and the sun withdrew and hid itself behind a cotton-wool blanket of cloud. And blackness was upon the face of the desert.
The elements knew of the coming rape of the Earth.
They couldn’t stop it (no one could). The only protest they could make was to scream out loud to anyone capable of listening. Including the rapists themselves.
Jagged lightning flashed and thunder roared and the dust of the barren, choking ground was whipped by the winds from the west