17 - Beltempest.pdf - Doctor Who novels - KotwGlanach

DOCTOR WHO

Beltempest

An Eighth Doctor Ebook

By Jim Mortimore

Contents

Prologue

Part 1:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Interlude

Part 2:

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

for

Steve

'Because I draw on the temporal psychic energy of all spankings through the ages '

Cole

- definitely

one of the good guys

Prologue

Even stars die.

They may grow old, they may seem inconceivable when held against the flickering candle of our own

existence, yet they too have lives that are shaped by the same universe, the same immutable laws as are our

own lives.

In the measure of Deep Time the brief moment of existence of all the stars in the universe is as the moment a

butterfly lives compared with all the summers that will ever be. for the red giant, galactic summer is over and

winter is approaching. Its hydrogen fuel long since exhausted, this old, mad sun has consumed its inner

worlds and barely noticed their absence. Burning helium now as a lingering precursor to death, the red giant

prepares to shrug off its outer mantle of remaining hydrogen and take its remaining family of planets with it

into oblivion.

Within the star, a schism: its core shrinking and growing ever hotter even as its outer layers expand and cool.

Soon now will come the moment of death, of explosion - the surviving solar matter burning in a tiny

incandescent lump at the heart of a nebula composed of the tattered shreds of its own corpse.

Still from death comes life. A truth unchanging while there is yet energy in the universe.

While the red giant continues slowly to die, life on its many worlds continues to grow and evolve.

It was an old world, one from which the fire had gone. A dark backwater, an eddy in the current of life, with no

bright future or

destiny, forgotten by any who might once have observed it or experienced it for however brief a moment.

Its chill plains and freezing mountains, its sparse black vegetation and cold-sculpted animal life were left to

just one pair of eyes to study: a single mind to look up at the sky and wonder if it would kill those who lived

beneath it today, or play with them a while longer before dismissing them from this life.

Skywatcher glanced at the iron-grey clouds that scraped the tops of the White Mountains and tried to work

out how long it would be before the snow on the ground covered the tracks of the fast-moving herd of

hornrunners. Skywatcher and his brother, Fastblade, had been tracking the herd for three days. It was his

responsibility to make sure the sky would allow this kill. If Fastblade did not find the hornrunners' winter nest

before the snow concealed it from view, then many would die from starvation in the coming months, and the

hornrunners would emerge from their hibernation to a world cleansed by cold of all but the most isolated -

probably cannibalistic - pockets of human life.

Skywatcher pulled his furs more tightly around his chapped face, his nose clogged with the greasy stink of

animal fat smeared upon his skin to protect it from the biting cold. Fastblade had no such protection.

Fastblade needed every sense clear and unclouded. Whereas this weather was, for Skywatcher, the fear and

wonder of a cruel friend, the same weather for Fastblade was little more than a tool with which he focused his

mind acutely on the task at hand. The tracking of the nest.

Two very different men, then, Skywatcher and Fastblade. Yet, though the sky affected them in different ways,

it made them brothers, too. For without the sky to determine their actions they would surely be little more

than mindless animals living easily from an endless bounty of summer food. Skywatcher had heard many of

the village curse the sky, the space above, the endless night drawing close about their world. He had heard

the prayers to a dying sun, swollen with cold crimson light, whose nearness brought little comfort beyond the

beauty of dawn and sunset across the frost-laden plains. But, unlike his fellow men, Skywatcher was not

afraid. Not of the sky. How could he be? The sky was his friend and loved him. The sky brought him life in the

form of birds too cold to fly, of snow to make water, of berries and meat preserved in the frost from one

season to the next. Skywatcher knew where life came from on this world. And he loved the sky in turn for

making every day a challenge, for making every hour and every moment linked and full of meaning, like the

crystal spokes of a single snowflake.

Fastblade thought it was all birdlime, of course.

Fastblade hated the cold. Hated having to hunt. He took no pleasure in experience. He seemed little able to

observe and think, and make connections, and totally unable to wonder about anything beyond where the

next meal would come from to fill his belly. It had been many seasons since the moment when Skywatcher

first realised that the number of people who thought like Fastblade was increasing with every generation,

whereas the number of people like himself was growing smaller. It was a moment that had shaped his life.

But it was also one of which he had told nobody - for who would understand his view, or care?

In that moment of realisation, Skywatcher knew his people were dying. Not as individuals but as a species,

unable to adapt to the conditions prevalent on their world, conditions that grew harsher every desiccated

season. Sometimes he wondered what would follow after they had all died - whether there would simply be

nothing at all, or whether some other form of life would take their place to hunt the hornrunners beneath an

ever more swollen sun.

It was a question to which Skywatcher knew he would never have an answer. But that did not matter. For the

question itself was simply one more experience, one more crystal spoke on the snowflake that was his world

and his life.

Hunting food was, too - as Skywatcher was reminded when a young hornrunner erupted from an early nest a

man's length from him and, defending that nest, charged him with all seven horns articulated into the position

of attack.

***

Fastblade saw the movement of snow a heartbeat too late. Veiling a warning to Skywatcher, he launched

himself across the snow, dagger drawn, teeth exposed in a furious scream.

Skywatcher was frozen in place before the animal bursting from the snow in front of him. Fool. Dreamer. If he

died the tribe died with him. Did he not know this? Did he not care?

Wasting no time on recriminations, Fastblade lurched across packed snow, his furs a cumbersome demand

on his reserves of energy, even while protecting him from the killing cold. Above, the iron-grey clouds were

moving ever closer, bringing a murky crimson darkness with the promise of more snow. Closer, the

hornrunner had now emerged from its burrow and was skimming the ground on six triple-jointed legs, the

pads that served for feet slapping almost silently against the snow and sending swirls of white powder into the

heavy air.

Quick as Fastblade was, his eyes were quicker. Even as he ran they were searching the tableau for an

advantage. There was none.

The hornrunner reached Skywatcher, who now tried to hurl himself clear of the enraged animal. All seven

horns had locked forward into the attack position. The hornrunner was a young

animal, massing barely twice as much as Skywatcher - but still it would be enough to kill him should even

one of those horns bite home into his body.

Skywatcher dived - and the hornmnner caught him with three horns while still in midair.

A moment later Fastblade leapt clumsily on to the animal's back and drove his dagger into the furred gap

between the bony plates at the base of the animal's skull. The hornrunner reared and Fastblade found himself

flying through the air. The ground punched the breath from his body. He looked up to find himself eye to

compound eye with the hornrunner. It was dead of course. He knew that from the lustre of the many lenses in

the eye, the coating of frost already forming there as the animal's body heat was leached away by the wind

and the storm of snow its own death had thrown into the air.

Fastblade retrieved his dagger, cleaned it, then staggered to where Skywatcher lay moaning on the ground.

One of the runner's horns had snapped cleanly off and emerged from the bloodstained furs cladding

Skywatcher's thigh. More blood leaked from wounds in his shoulder and arm. But the worst wound was in his

chest. Blood pumped sluggishly, staining the furs there, showing no sign of abating.

Skywatcher blinked, his face pale even beneath the layer of animal fat. More blood flecked his lips. He tried

17 - Beltempest.pdf

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