Doctor Who: Molten Heart Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A new adventure featuring the Thirteenth Doctor as played by Jodie Whittaker.

  About the Author

  Una McCormack is a New York Times bestselling author. She has written two Doctor Who novels featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory: The King’s Dragon and The Way through the Woods, as well as several audio dramas for Big Finish. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, Matthew, and their daughter, Verity.

  One

  On the surface, this world seemed nothing special. One more rock, pocked and pitted, spinning slowly through the void of space. Empty.

  The earliest voyagers to this part of space took one look at this world and passed by. Nothing to see here, they thought. Move along. Plenty more planets out there. A few hardier adventurers, or completists, took the time to land. They took a quick look around, satisfied their wanderlust or their need for a tick in a box, and then went on their way. When it came down to it, there really wasn’t much to see. No curiously formed cities, no striking land formations or scarlet oceans, no indigenous sentient life, it seemed. The moors were nice enough (if you liked that sort of thing), and even the hardest of heart would have to admit that the flowers were pretty (who doesn’t like that sort of thing?), and the seas held quite a few fish and made some pleasant beaches, some sandy, some with charming pebbles (if you collected that kind of thing) – but the truth was you could see everything like this somewhere else, and you didn’t have to travel anywhere near as far to see it. People came and said, “Oh, that’s nice,” and then left and more or less forgot they’d ever been there. Every now and then an empire would come past and claim the planet for its own: someone would nip down to the surface and plant a flag, or maybe even put a satellite in orbit. Sometimes someone else nipped down and planted a different kind of flag a few miles away, just to make a point. The flags didn’t last, not in the great scheme of things. The orbits of the satellites would decay, and the little machines would come crashing to the ground, making one more hole in the surface of this unobtrusive world. The empires would decay too, in time, and for a few thousand years or so the planet would be left to its own devices once again, patiently weathering the meteors and asteroids that occasionally dropped by, getting on quietly with its business.

  No, on the surface there really wasn’t much to see. Rocks. Grass. More rocks. Some water. Sand (or pebbles). Back to rocks and grass again. The average traveller would take one look and move along. Nothing to see.

  So much for the average traveller. But the best travellers – the very best – aren’t fooled by surfaces. The best travellers know that if they want to find treasures, they must dig, dig deep, below the surface, down to the heart. And below the surface this world – Adamantine – indeed has many treasures to show. Many treasures, and some terrors, and always, always adventure. The best travellers always find adventure.

  And the very best travellers in the whole of time and space are heading this way.

  It hadn’t taken Yaz long to notice that it was never completely quiet on the TARDIS. No, it was never that, not even when nobody was dashing around being excited. Even at the quietest moments, there was always a faint hum, reminding you that the ship was alive, sort of (she certainly wouldn’t chance saying it wasn’t alive, and certainly not when the TARDIS could hear) and that at any moment, something wonderful and marvellous and quite probably madly dangerous might suddenly start happening.

  And Yaz loved it, loved every single second of it. The marvellous travelling, the wondrous marvels, and the marvellous wonders. And the danger: yes, she would have to admit that she liked that too. It was one of the reasons that she’d picked her career. Not because she thrived on danger, or got a kick from taking risks. Those people didn’t get far. No, Yaz was the kind of person who stayed cool when other people panicked. That made her feel useful, helpful, and in control. Yaz knew that when things were going wrong, she was the kind of person who could make a difference. What her time on the TARDIS was teaching her was on what scale she could make that difference.

  She spent her “off-duty” time, as she sometimes thought of it, wandering this amazing ship: exploring, checking for exits (Yaz was practical and sensible too), and trying to understand something of the nature of her new digs. Eventually, she would come back to the console room, and there, inevitably, she would find the Doctor, this most wonderful and marvellous of all the wonders and marvels that Yaz had recently seen; this incredible traveller and adventurer; source of fun; force for good; friend and mentor. Yaz had wondered a couple of times what she would do when her time with the Doctor was over. Would she be able to go back to her job, her old life? Would anything ever seem as brilliant and exciting again? She would put these thoughts aside. Time to worry later about the future. For now, enjoy the present – or whatever time it was when the TARDIS happened to land.

  Coming into the console room, Yaz found the Doctor all by herself. She was unusually quiet too – for the Doctor – but still plainly busy. The Doctor was gripping the console with both hands, murmuring something… Coordinates? Some new language? A recipe? A spell? French verbs? You never quite knew. But there was always something. Yaz got the feeling that the Doctor didn’t rest – not really – and that her mind was always ticking away, absorbing some new piece of information. Learning, discovering, connecting, thinking…

  Yaz, watching her, thought, I want to be like that…

  The Doctor saw her and smiled. “Hullo,” she said. “Still looking round?”

  “I was wondering about emergency exits,” said Yaz. “You never know when you’ll need them.”

  “Tell me about it,” said the Doctor, and turned back to the console.

  “Is it OK?” said Yaz. “Me looking round?”

  The Doctor looked up and gave that wide, welcoming smile. “Of course! My place is your place, or whatever they say. Just, er, don’t press every button you find.” The Doctor thought about that. “Actually, don’t press any button you find.”

  As if, thought Yaz. She wasn’t daft. Who knew what might happen? She might find herself catapulted somewhere she wasn’t entirely sure about. Or some-when. “I wasn’t planning to!”

  “If you could mention that to Ryan,” the Doctor said. “And to Graham, actually. Honestly, you’d think they were old enough to know better, but some people have sticky fingers. You put a button in front of them, and they have to press it. It’s like there are two types of people in the world, those who’ll press any passing button, and those who take a moment to think, ‘Now, I wonder what might happen if I press this button…’ Now, I’m not saying that either one is wrong, I’m just saying that as a general rule, pressing every button that presents itself isn’t always the best button-pressing strategy, and that a little common-sense in the face of buttons can go a long way…” She stopped, mid-flow. “Buttons? What am I talking about now? How did I get onto buttons? Wasn’t I doing something?” She stared at her hands. “Oh yeah, that was it!”

  The Doctor’s attention went back to the controls. Yaz watched her concentrate: this amazing, exciting, wonderful, marvellous, and – yes, all right – sometimes incomprehensible stranger who had landed in their lives and shaken them up beyond anything Yaz would have imagined possible. She felt a thrill down her spine, and was just about to ask
that most magical of questions, Where now, Doctor?, when the Doctor pointed to an image that had appeared on the wall.

  “Have a look at that.”

  Yaz looked. It was a rock. Planet-sized, mind you, but definitely a rock. “Um, I see a rock? A big rock?”

  “Alien planet, Yaz!” The Doctor laughed. “I’ve got a feeling about it.”

  “A feeling?” Yaz’s spine tingled again. She peered at the rock. The Doctor adjusted the image. Yaz saw grass, a pebbled beach, the sea gently lapping at the shore… She thought of a bank holiday the family had once had at Scarborough. “Doctor, what do you see? What am I missing?”

  “Not sure yet,” the Doctor said. “All I know is – we need to look below the surface of things.” She grinned. “Shall we go out and have a look?”

  “Of course!” Yaz laughed. “What are we waiting for?”

  “All right then,” said the Doctor. “Let’s try parking this thing.”

  She pulled and twisted at some levers. There was a huge thump, big enough to make Yaz grab for the console and hold on. Another thump. Then a bump. Some more thumping. Then everything went quiet.

  “Oops,” said the Doctor.

  “How many points have you got on your licence?” said Yaz.

  “Lost count.” The Doctor pushed some buttons. “Now where are those boys? Don’t they know there’s a whole new great big rock out there?”

  Once upon a time there were three friends. They came into the world together, and they grew together, and they knew each other very well. But each one was very different – hewn from their own stone, as the saying goes. The first was friendly and generous; the second was careful and industrious; and the last of the three was curious about – well, everything really. He liked to explore, and to find out new things, and he liked to look at the world around him and think about what everything meant, and whether he could understand things better.

  The world in which these three lived was very beautiful and people were, on the whole, very happy. There weren’t all that many of them, and they all knew each other well, and they all looked out for each other. It was a safe and happy world for these three friends to grow up in. The first did very well in life. He made friends easily, and was good company. Best of all, he had a lucky touch. Silver flowed from his hand, as the saying goes, and his expansive nature meant he did not hoard. He discovered that he liked to be generous, and he liked to be able to do favours for people, to be the one they called on when they needed help. He enjoyed life, and he prospered.

  The second friend found life harder. She was serious-minded, given to working hard and fretting. When she looked around her, she did not see beauty, but saw tasks to be done, people to be cared for. She saw the world around her and the people around her as charges, as responsibilities, all of which were hers – and that is a big task for anyone. She worried a great deal, and more and more she felt as if the whole world depended on her, and she was not sure that she was enough for the task. And that made her lonely and, sometimes, angry.

  As for the third – always looking upwards and outwards – he acquired a reputation as something of an oddity. People put up with him because he was one of their Great Family, and Family is all there is, but the truth was he didn’t really fit in. In his youth, he didn’t notice much, he was so busy. But as time passed, our friend also became less and less happy. The more he looked at the world around him, the more he understood it, the more he was sure that things weren’t right. From watching, and studying, and thinking, he became sure that something was going wrong, badly wrong. So he tried to tell people what he was thinking, and what he was seeing. At first they laughed at him, but, later, they started to become angry with him. Why was he always trying to spoil things? Why was he always talking about how bad things were? Did he want people to be unhappy? He found that even his oldest friends stopped listening. One said that she thought that he should stop, that he was harming the Great Family by insisting on his strange ideas. They quarrelled, and didn’t talk to each other again. The other friend offered consolation, and tried to help as much as he could.

  But after a while, our friend stopped trying to talk to people, stopped trying to explain. He realised that they didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But he didn’t give up on his ideas, and he didn’t give up believing that someone had to do something. He decided to go travelling, go adventuring, out beyond the beautiful City in which he lived, and up and up, until he found the answers to all his questions. It was a wrench. He was leaving friends and family behind. But he knew he had to go… because somebody had to, before everything was lost… And off he went, very quietly, one day, with a handful of people that he trusted absolutely, and the people he left behind waited and waited, hoping beyond hope that one day he would return safely, and bring answers to all their questions…

  The TARDIS doors opened. Yaz held her breath. She loved this moment before a whole new world opened in front of her. She liked the anticipation, the not-knowing, and the endless possibilities. The Doctor went outside, and Yaz followed as quickly as she could. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. At first everything seemed dark, as if she’d walked into a cave, but then Yaz realised that there were lights everywhere, sparkling in the rocks around the group of friends.

  Yaz took stock of their surroundings. The TARDIS had come to land in a narrow cleft between two sheer rocky cliffs. There was space in the gap for the TARDIS, and just enough on either side for the friends to get past, one-by-one. The Doctor was already off, and as Yaz made her way round to join the Doctor, she ran her hand along the rock. This close, she could see that it was encrusted with gems and crystals and precious stones, and that these gave off a soft and glimmering light. Yaz looked up again. Far above, the roof of the world was shimmering in the same way, a faint and distant haze.

  Behind her, Graham spoke. He sounded very uncertain. “Is it night? Or are we in a cave? I can’t tell.”

  The Doctor led the other three along the cleft and, after a little way, the cliffs parted, allowing them to come out onto a wide flat rocky space. Then they were able to get their first proper look at this new world on which they had landed.

  Yaz felt dizzy for a moment, as if everything had tilted slightly. She had to rub her eyes before looking round again. She had a clear view over the rocky plain. Far in the distance, the horizon seemed to curve oddly. Trick of the light? She rubbed her eyes again. She wasn’t sure.

  “Am I gonna have to get my eyes tested?” Graham said, plaintively.

  Yaz nodded her understanding. There was an eerie haze around them, and she couldn’t work out where it was coming from. She couldn’t see the sun anywhere, or a moon, or anything that might be a source of light.

  “Doctor,” Ryan called out, from behind. “Are those stars or what?”

  He was standing with his hands in pockets, staring upwards at the… sky? Yaz wasn’t sure if that was exactly the word. Something didn’t seem quite right. She had the oddest feeling that she was looking at a ceiling rather than out into a limitless expanse. But at the same time, there were little glimmers of light speckling overhead. For a moment, Yaz fancied that these were distant lanterns. That couldn’t be right. She shook her head and looked again at the lights. Between these the sky seemed to ripple, and here and there she saw longer strands of light, threads linking the points to each other.

  “They don’t look much like stars,” Ryan said.

  “What else could they be?” said Graham.

  “Let’s find out.” The Doctor took the sonic out again, and for once didn’t wave it around, but stood still, arm outstretched, the sonic pointing upwards. She looked like the conductor of some celestial orchestra, directing the music of the heavens, coaxing sweet music from the ether.

  “Huh,” she said, at last. “Interesting set of measurements. No, they’re not stars. They’re lights. Crystalline.” She had her thinking face on, eyes screwed up, chewing her bottom lip.

  “Doc, when you say lights,” said
Graham, “what do you mean? Like those precious stones?” He pointed back to the shimmering rock face.

  “I don’t know,” said the Doctor. She grinned and bounced off, calling back over her shoulder, “Shall we put that on our list of things to find out?”

  Graham’s shoulders slumped. “And we’re off.”

  Ryan patted his arm. “You know you love it really,” he said. He nodded ahead, where the Doctor was already striding off, Yaz keeping pace at her side. “Come on, we can’t let them get too far ahead. Family honour and all that.”

  They followed the ridge as it bent round. Yaz couldn’t keep her eyes off the shimmering jewels encrusting the rock. They were almost like directions, she thought; signposts, encouraging the friends to follow the path laid out. She thought again about what the Doctor had said, that the stones were partly natural, partly fashioned and shaped in some way. Whose hands had done this, she wondered. What was their purpose?

  Suddenly, Ryan stumbled and nearly fell over. Graham was beside him in a shot. “All right, mate?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, no problem.” Ryan blinked and shook his head. “Is it just me, or does anyone else feel dizzy? Like everything’s bending in the wrong direction?”

  “It’s not just you,” said Yaz. “Ever since I got here, I’ve felt like things aren’t right. My foot goes down and the ground is closer than I expected. It’s weird.”

  “Me too,” said Graham, and patted Ryan’s arm. “It’s not just you. I wonder what it is though. I read about this museum once. They’d built all the walls at a tilt, at weird angles, so that when people came in, they’d get vertigo. Some people would reel about, some people even fall over when they go in.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” said Ryan.

  “I dunno,” said Graham. “I think it was to make people think about life in the War. Anyway, this is how it felt, I bet. Like the walls are just at the wrong angle.”

  Throughout all this, the Doctor had been standing roughly on the same spot, slowly shuffling round, holding the sonic above her head as she went.