Series 2 is here! The first story – written by yours truly – is now here for your reading pleasure. If you need to refresh your memory by reading The Mandrasta Archive (or at least the end of it) then please do, as one element of the story continues on directly. The other bits of the cliffhanger? Well, a little more of a wait I'm afraid!
So here it is. Series 2, story 1. If you like it, please leave a nice comment back on gallifreybase, where there'll also be a poll to vote on. Enjoy!
The Death of Innocence
The UK-201 hung there in space, sleek and symmetrical, like all the ships that had left in the great embarkation of 2487. Its large size was in stark contrast to the number of occupants, each person on board having the equivalent of a whole acre to themselves should the ship be so divided. The passengers and crew could go for hours – days on occasion – without meeting another living soul. Many of them were glad of the isolation, a respite from their formerly busy lives.
Dr Pallister was one such man; a noted scientist, one who'd made huge advances in genetics, his work the one thing that had kept him focussed since the premature death of his wife. Work, and his daughter Vicki. She'd been a much needed distraction from the pressures of his job, and he'd raised her from a young age single-handedly. In fact it had been her who'd suggested they leave Earth, to head out to one of the newly colonised worlds in a neighbouring solar system.
So they'd left, a little over five months ago, heading for this new world that had been christened 'Astra'. Men of his intellect were much sought after on these planets, and it this was one of the deciding factors in his choice to leave his home behind. To be revered, as he'd always dreamed he would; to receive the recognition he knew was due to him after all this time.Despite avoiding company (save for Vicki's) throughout much of the voyage, fate had decided that he would meet a man onboard who would change his life forever. Not only his, but his daughter's too.
The man, Bennett, had escaped from his holding cell, confronting the doctor in a non-descript area of the ship. Bennett had had a weapon, and he'd used it, killing Pallister outright, and disposing of the body from a nearby airlock.
The weapon, he'd left on the floor. Underneath it on a wall were inscribed the words 'Beware Koquillion.'
All that was left to indicate Pallister had been there was a small pool of blood. His own daughter had happened to look through a window to the outside, witnessing her own father's body drift away into space. She had found the knife and the blood and the writing.
And she had wept.
*****
Ian looked around. There it was, right in front of him, but the surroundings were nothing like they should be. The Doctor and Barbara stood near to each other, the Doctor looking rather pleased with himself.
"You see Chesterton. A plan – and a rather good one at that!" He chuckled, and Ian found that it put him rather at ease, a feeling which was especially welcome after recent events.
The sight that had greeted them had astounded Ian and Barbara in the same way that it had the Doctor when he'd first set eyes on it. Yet how the Doctor had managed to make it work was beyond Ian's comprehension, and he said as much to the older man.
The Doctor tapped a finger to his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm, it's quite simple dear boy, quite simple. This here," he gestured to 'Exhibit #497', "was already linked into the Archive's system. Therefore I could, to some degree, control where we went." He clapped his hands together with a flourish.
Barbara looked at him hopefully. "Does that mean you can get us home?"
The pause before the Doctor spoke said it all. "I'm sorry my dear, my phrasing could have been better. While the navigational system on this vessel is rather primitive by my standards, it'd still take at least a month of solid study to fathom how to get to the correct planet, let alone the correct time period."
Barbara managed a weak smile.
"That's ok Doctor. But, what happened? Where are we now?"
The Doctor looked at her with wide eyes. "Well, that's the thing Miss Wright. I rather think that the black hole that the Archive was situated in has been destroyed and that we...well, we appear to be on the other side of it!"
Ian looked at the Doctor, a puzzled expression on his face. "The other side of a black hole? Well what does that mean Doctor? The other side of the galaxy?"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I'm not exactly sure. That is, I have an idea of what may have happened, where we might be, but I'm afraid only time will unravel that mystery for us." The Doctor could see that Ian was about to speak again, and so continued before the younger man had a chance to ask the inevitable question. "My best guess would be that we've travelled into another universe, one not so different from our own. Every decision we make has a number of possible outcomes, and in this universe it may be that different decisions have been made, different effects created as a result."
A thought suddenly struck Barbara. "So, in this different universe would be different versions of us, all of us?"
The Doctor rubbed his hands together as the realisation hit him too. "Indeed, indeed. It would most certainly explain the other Barbara that we saw and the other..." He stopped, aware that he hadn't told the two of them of the occurrence which had taken place earlier in the Archive.
"The other 'what', Doctor?" Ian narrowed his eyes, though no matter how hard he tried to understand what the Doctor was thinking he was never any the wiser.
The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. "Never mind Chesterton, there are far more pressing matters, far more pressing. I must do something about this ship, wired up to my TARDIS console. Now, if I just..." The Doctor began flicking switches and pressing innumerable buttons, his hands a blur as Ian and Barbara watched them dance about the controls.
With a final button pressed, the Doctor stood back and chuckled in triumph. "There we are! All very simple." Both Ian and Barbara looked to him, waiting for an answer. The Doctor held up a hand. "Patience both of you! You shall soon see. But first, we must take a look outside!"
Barbara looked around the area they were in. It looked nothing like the TARDIS control room, and she was certain that a particularly important element was lacking. "But how do we know if it's safe? There's no scanner."
The Doctor turned to face her. "The instruments here, "he gestured to the console, "are working perfectly and they are telling us that there is no danger of radiation and the air is quite breathable. Other than that...well we shall found out for ourselves. Now, let us proceed!"
The Doctor began walking, but he was unsure exactly where he was walking to. He stopped, turned, and began walking in the other direction.
"Should we...?" Barbara whispered to Ian.
Ian shrugged. "Probably best just to follow him," he concluded, and the pair of them set off after him.
*****
Bennett looked at his hands, at the blood of the man he'd murdered. It was nothing unusual to him, but it felt as if this time had been different. He'd forgotten all about the weapon he'd left there and had headed straight for Dr Pallister's laboratory. Bennett knew all about the work Pallister had been doing: attempting to completely alter an individual's DNA, to give a new life but still retain vestiges of the old one. It was a breakthrough unprecedented in Terran science, and wasn't something that Bennett should even have been aware of.
But he was, and killing the man who had discovered how to do it was, to his mind, so much better than the other kills he'd made in the past. Drunks and women, none able to fight back against him. Now he'd killed a true genius, and that made him feel good.
There was that one woman, so long ago...his first. He'd almost forgotten, but it stuck in his mind now. Why, he wasn't sure, but it lingered for a while. He paused for a moment, then continued on his search. What he was searching for he couldn't properly ascertain, but he'd know when he found it.
*****
Vicki had pressed the alarm button near the airlock, though only after tearfully overcoming her own urge to throw herself out of it. Her father, her last living relative, was now gone. It was the emptiness inside that overtook her first, consuming her very being. One of her first thoughts was that this was all her fault. If she hadn't persuaded her father to take the job on Astra, to leave Earth behind, then he'd still be alive.
It was this thought that had made her want to end her own life until rationality had kicked in and she realised that it would solve nothing. The one thing she wanted now was for justice to be done, for her father's murderer to be found and convicted of the crime.
Within minutes, Officer Grant (head of security) had arrived on the scene and was looking over what little evidence there was, using his palm scanner to register the findings he made. Vicki knew that he had to do it, to uncover the mystery shrouding her father's murder, but all she wanted was a shoulder to cry on.
Grant could see the upset in her eyes, and his lined features were not without compassion. He embraced Vicki, and she let forth more tears, droplets soaking in to the fabric of Grant's uniform. "I know I can't bring him back, but I'm going to find whoever killed him. I have some nasty suspicions about who might have done it too." Grant looked Vicki in the eyes, reassuring her with his tone. "One thing in particular puzzles me though. Have you any idea who or what 'Koquillion' is?"
Vicki's expression changed immediately, a look of fear crossing her face. "Koquillion? My father used to frighten me with stories of him. He told me that he'd come and get me if I didn't behave. 'Eat your food Vicki, or Koquillion will get you!' 'Go to sleep Vicki or Koquillion will snatch you away.' Those sorts of things. He had to stop though. I had nightmares. Terrible nightmares..." It took all of her willpower to stop herself crying at the memory – both of her father and of the fear that the name of 'Koquillion' induced.
Grant pointed to the message on the wall. "Well that would imply that whoever killed your father knew him, and knew him well." He paused. "Which means this isn't going to be as straight-forward as I thought."
Before either of them could comment further, a cacophony of noise alerted them to the sudden presence of a blue box on the other side of the corridor.
Grant spoke into his wrist communicator. "I need some men up here fast. I'm not entirely sure how, but we've got intruders."
*****
As they reached him Ian spoke up. "Doctor what is it? What have you found? You've barely told us anything since we escaped that black hole."
The Doctor pointed his cane in front of him. "This is the exit. And the entrance. We can see where we've arrived!"
It was Barbara who asked the question before Ian could. "But this craft – it's so much bigger than TARDIS. Aren't we going to be noticed?"
The Doctor chuckled. "Oh Miss Wright, this is why we need to step outside! Now, through this door..."
Ian went first followed by Barbara and the Doctor. "I don't believe it! How is it possible?" Ian stared incredulously at the craft they'd arrived in. From the outside it looked just like a Police Box.
"Familiar isn't it? I found that the TARDIS controls being linked to the other ship meant that I could use the features of the TARDIS. I've managed to get the dimensional stabiliser to settle the ship, and it's locked in this form for now. Nothing changes! Now, if only I could do something about the interior..." The Doctor drifted off, musing on the possibilities.
Barbara looked around. "Well, we appear to be on another ship. And...oh." She stopped, the five armed guards that had surrounded them causing her to stop.
The others noticed at the same time and put their hands in the air.
Ian looked to the Doctor. "You were right – nothing changes!"
*****
Bennett walked over to it, sensing that this was the device he'd been looking for. It appeared to be some kind of body scanner, probably used to force the DNA changes. He walked around it, looking to see if there was any obvious way of operating the machine.
Next to the controls appeared to be a retinal scan, and Bennett cursed himself for not realising it before he dispatched Pallister. Then a thought struck him. He was sure that there had to be a back-up, a fail-safe. The work would be too important to be completely deadlocked. There had to be another way in.
Another retinal print perhaps.
A smile played across his face as Bennett realised who Pallister would have set as the back-up. Now all he had to do was find her.
*****
Vicki stood with Grant and four other men as they surrounded the new arrivals. She looked at them curiously, knowing within herself that none of them could have been responsible for her father's death.
"Who are you?" barked Grant at the newcomers.
The elderly man lowered his arms, gently moving the gun muzzle away from him with his walking stick. "Young man, kindly refrain from pointing weapons at my person!"
Vicki could see that Grant was unusually calmed by the older man's actions. She knew that he couldn't possibly think these newcomers were guilty of the crime either, yet protocol had to be observed. These people were technically invaders, and as such had to be treated as 'hostiles'.
The gun was lowered, Grant urging his colleagues to do the same. He looked the three of them over, scrutinising them for what seemed like an age.
Vicki looked at them, unsure exactly what to make of them. The older man seemed full of authority, though there appeared to be a gentleness to his eyes as he glanced in Vicki's direction. The other man was younger though certainly not hostile. He reminded Vicki of her father, a man of learning. The female could have almost been her mother; not in looks, but the way she held herself, the slight smile that she directed at Vicki.
"Mr Grant, they've done nothing. Can you release them into my care? I need to feel useful to take my mind off..."
Grant normally would have dismissed such a request, but Vicki was almost certain he wouldn't deny her this small intervention. Not now.
He mused for a few moments, talking briefly with the strangers, explaining the choices they had: go with her or be taken for interrogation and be locked in a holding area for the remainder of the flight.
The younger man spoke up. "Well you haven't really given us much choice!"
Vicki watched Grant nod to his men who saluted and filed out of the room. Grant whispered a few words to Vicki, offering to leave a weapon which she immediately refused. She watched him leave the room, then walked forward to introduce herself properly to her 'charges'.
The woman stepped forward and then shook hands. "I'm Barbara, this is Ian and that," she pointed to the elderly man who was examining the message inscribed on the wall, "is the Doctor."
"Vicki," she said, shaking first Ian and then Barbara's hand. "I'm sorry about the welcome, it's just that...that..." She couldn't hold in her grief any longer, tears rolling silently down her cheek. It was the Doctor who noticed and stepped forward to give Vicki a comforting hug. "There there child. It's alright, quite alright. I can tell from the clues left here that something very serious had occurred. A murder. Yes, that's right isn't it?" He watched as Vicki weakly nodded her head.
At first, no sound came from her throat, but Vicki just managed a faint, "My father," before the tears began falling once more.
The Doctor patted her affectionately on the back, memories of Susan at the forefront of his mind. If this had been her he knew exactly what he would do, and he knew immediately that he had to take the same course of action. He drew himself up to his full height. "Ian, Barbara, we now have a duty to perform. We must find the perpetrator of this crime and bring them to justice!"
Ian nodded. "Of course Doctor. But where can we start? We don't have much to go on!"
Vicki's tears were slowing now, the Doctor extricating himself while still placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He raised his other hand to his face, tapping a finger against his lips in concentration. "The immediate area is, by my estimation, reasonably confined. There are guards seemingly posted all around the nearest exits are there not?" He raised an eyebrow. Barbara nodded, but wasn't really sure if he required an answer. "Yes, well guarded, so there are very few exits left available to the felon." He quickly scanned the area they were in. "Now by my reckoning it's merely two which means..."
"I'll go with Vicki Doctor. You and Ian can try the other room." Barbara thought that perhaps she'd be the bigger help for Vicki at this moment, and the Doctor appeared to agree, clasping Barbara's hand. Ian looked set to protest, but a sympathetic look from Barbara silenced his words before they could be spoken.
The Doctor was moving before Ian had realised, and he hurried after him, just having time to whisper "Be careful" to Barbara in passing. She found the sentiment touching and gave him a smile.
"We'll try my father's laboratory then." Vicki's words woke Barbara from her daze, and she followed Vicki's lead, neither having any inclination of what they might find.
*****
Bennett could hear noises coming from the main entrance to the room. He looked around for a weapon, something to at least knock whoever it was unconscious. Lying on the bench was a thermo-wrench. At the top heat setting it wouldn't kill, but he'd have to settle for less this time.
He stole away behind the machine, concealing himself until the appropriate moment. He watched as two figures entered the room. Neither were guards and both were female. One of them he'd never seen before, but the other...he couldn't believe his luck.
*****
It was something else that caused her to pause. On the wall, carved into the very metal of the surface were two words that Barbara had seen mere minutes before: 'Beware Koquillion'. She turned to Vicki. "What does this mean? We saw it in the corridor too? Who's Koquillion?"
Vicki kept her gaze on the words, not looking at Barbara as she spoke for fear of emotion overcoming her once more. "A name. A name my father used to frighten me with. But I've no idea how anyone else would know of it, why it would be here on the wall."
With her back to Barbara, she didn't see the thermo-spanner knock the other woman to the floor, nor who had dealt the blow. It was only once Barbara had fallen that she turned around and saw him for the first time.
She knew at once that Bennett was the man who'd killed her father. A criminal who'd already committed murder on this ship. The ship's psychoanalysts said that long space flights could change people; all that time in confined quarters, no way out. Others thought he'd been wanted on Earth and had left on the ship to escape justice. No one knew for sure which was true, but here he stood in front of Vicki having knocked Barbara to the ground.
"She'll live, unfortunately," he sneered at Vicki.
Vicki thought she'd be scared, but the man didn't frighten her. "You murdered my father." She stated it as fact, she didn't need to question it.
Bennett was impassive, no emotion evident on his face. He stood, staring at Vicki. He watched as she closed her eyes, presumably expecting him to do the worst. Then they opened again, but glazed over, the same lack of emotion in them as there had been on Bennett's face, but for a different reason. Now he looked perplexed, unsure what was happening.
When Vicki spoke, her voice was harsher than before, slighter lower in tone. "I warned you. Not that there was ever anything you could do. You took his life, and hers."
Bennett's voice belied his inward feeling. He was being wrong-footed and he wasn't quite sure what to do. "Yes, I killed him. The only remorse I have is that he didn't leave instructions on how to operate that machine." He pointed to the construction behind him. "And she's not dead as I've already said. Though I could arrange it very easily." The menace creeping back into his tone reassured him slightly.
"Not her. Vicki's mother, all those years ago. It was you. She saw you, with blood on your hands. So young. No child should have to see that."
Now Bennett was shaken slightly. "You don't make sense. Talking about yourself in the third person. So I killed her. Now I've killed him. They can be together again."
It was the sickening smile that caused it to happen.
Vicki shouldn't have been able to lift the metal case that lay next to the DNA samples on the work bench. Bennett should have seen it coming, but he realised too late what the warnings were that she'd been talking about.
As the metal case collided with his head, Bennett realised the truth as he sank to the floor.
*****
He felt the injection as the needle plunged into the nape of his neck, felt the tubes attaching themselves to the various parts of his body. He couldn't speak now, no matter how hard he tried.
"Beware Koquillion," said her voice. "The warnings were left for you. Not that there was anything you could have done. Koquillion would always have found you, and exacted revenge on what you did to Vicki's parents." She pressed more buttons on the outside of the machine. "She knows how this machine works, and because she knows, so do I."
Sinister noises started around Bennett's body, noises he had no way of blocking out. His body was starting to convulse under the bindings, elements shifting and reforming.
"And because we share a body, we share the same retinal print." She looked into the scanner, a light beside it clicking to green. She looked down at Bennett's constricted form. "And don't worry, innocent little Vicki will have no memory of this. Koquillion is responsible, Koquillion has your blood on her hands!"
With that, Vicki's body fell to the floor.
*****
Barbara had been coming to as the Doctor and Ian had entered the room after having no luck on their own search. She was nursing a sore head, but "nothing more than a bump and a slight bruise," the Doctor had said.
The Doctor was now looking at the figure strapped to the machine in the corner. "This, I would assume is our perpetrator. Or rather what's left of him."
Vicki looked at Bennett's body, raising a hand to her mouth in shock. "He must have tried to use my father's device, but he didn't know how to work it. It's horrible!"
Barbara ushered Vicki away from the scene. Bennett's body was covered in cracked skin and lesions, his desiccated face a shadow of its former self.
Ian turned to the Doctor. "What device could have done that Doctor? It's as if his whole body chemistry has been undone!"
"Hmm, yes quite Chesterton, quite. Though I rather think we should concern ourselves with leaving this place as quickly as possible." The Doctor began walking towards the two women, looking first to Vicki. "Now my dear, we are going to leave this ship before becoming entangled in any more mysteries. I don't suppose...but then..." The Doctor couldn't say what he meant, but Vicki understood.
"Yes, I would very much like to come with you. There's no one left on the ship for me now. The only reason father and I were travelling to Astra was to start a new life. And now he's gone...yes, why not." She managed a small smile at the Doctor, who put his arm around her.
"Splendid, splendid. Though there's one thing I should warn you about the ship..."
As they walked towards the ship, Barbara turned to Ian. "I think it'll do him good, having another young person on board."
Ian smiled. "I think it'll do us all good." Then he realised what Barbara had said. "What do you mean another 'young person'? We're not exactly drawing our pensions you know!"
They both laughed, and followed the Doctor and Vicki into the ship, forgetting for now the mystery that had got them here, and unaware of the many more to come.
*****
The culprit was being removed from the late Dr Pallister's device. Justice seemed to have found its own way, thought Grant.
The one thing that puzzled him though was the writing on the body, and what precisely it meant. The skin itself seemed to have cracked in such a way as to form two words:
Koquillion Lives.
Grant shook his head and walked away. Sometimes there were never any straightforward answers.
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