Doctor Who Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  About the Book

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

  About the Author

  Juno Dawson is the international bestselling author of ten titles for young adults. She is a columnist at Glamour UK, Attitude Magazine and a key LGBTQ activist with Stonewall.

  For Stuart, who told me all this was possible

  Chapter 1

  On the tank’s monitor, General Orryx surveyed the ruins with keen yellow eyes. Kanda was once a proud, beautiful city. Now it was little more than rubble; only the charred skeletons of homes, temples and shops still stood.

  By dawn the war would be over, and the loba would reclaim their world. “Lobos for loba,” she often told her troops.

  Kanda was the last stronghold of the rebels and Orryx had them surrounded. The tank bumped and shuddered as it ploughed over the debris. Hers was one of a fleet, all closing in on the city. For the human scum, there would be no escape.

  ‘General Orryx,’ said Captain Brun. ‘Incoming. From above.’

  Orryx checked her radar and, sure enough, a small flying object – possibly a drone of some sort – approached. ‘What is that thing? Intercept it. Blast it out of the sky.’ There was only room for two personnel in the tank, but they were flanked by hundreds of foot soldiers, ready to storm what was left of Kanda Plaza on her command.

  ‘STOP!’ The voice boomed from every speaker in the tank.

  Orryx covered her ears and Brun yanked the headphones off his head. The tank stopped rolling, its engines dead. The few lanterns that still worked on the street flickered and went out. Even her scanners dimmed until the aux batteries kicked in.

  ‘Who is that? Where is it coming from?’ Orryx snarled, her eyes almost glowing in the gloom of the tank. ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘I didn’t, General! The controls are frozen. It won’t move.’

  ‘Where are the floodlights? Get me visual!’ All she could assume was that the humans had somehow got their furless paws on alien technology. ‘And destroy that drone! Now!’

  ‘Weapons offline.’

  Orryx’s heart pounded. This wasn’t possible. The rebels didn’t have the means to …

  ‘IT’S ME. PLEASE. CEASEFIRE.’

  Orryx recognised that voice very well.

  ‘General?’ Brun said quietly. ‘It sounds like …’

  ‘Stop the assault. Now! Halt!’ She spoke into the comms system. ‘Fleet. Halt and ceasefire. That’s an order. Over.’

  The tank had enough power for her to use the visualiser. Orryx scanned the district. In the east, the suns were starting to rise, the sky almost violet-purple. With the tanks and bikes now still, the dust started to settle on Kanda Plaza. In the sky, a single light shone from a spherical drone. It hovered like it was waiting for her to make a move.

  ‘What is that device?’ Orryx growled.

  ‘Negative, general. The scanner doesn’t recognise the technology as human.’

  ‘Is it a weapon?’

  ‘I … I don’t know, General.’

  ‘MOTHER.’ His voice once more blasted all around them. ‘PLEASE. CAN WE TALK?’

  There was a sudden flurry of movement on the deserted street. A drain cover popped open, rolled across the street and came to a stop with a clang. ‘Hold fire!’ Orryx commanded, trying to keep panic out of her voice. ‘But train your guns on that storm drain.’

  ‘Someone’s coming out,’ Brun told her.

  A makeshift white flag emerged from the sewer. It appeared to be an article of clothing – a cotton shirt with the words FRANKIE SAYS RELAX in black, human script – attached to a bamboo cane.

  ‘They’re surrendering,’ Brun whispered. ‘We won.’

  ‘Wait here. Unseal the hatch.’

  ‘But General, they may have gas bombs or—’

  ‘Do it!’

  With a hiss, the hatch unlocked. Orryx twisted the handle and swung the door open. The air was gritty and dusty, tinged with acrid smoke and gunpowder. She pulled her scarf over her snout and mouth. From the drain, she saw Avi emerge, holding his flag. It took everything she had not to cry out and run to him.

  She’d long since thought him dead.

  There he was. Alive. As Avi crawled out into the rubble, he was followed by a human woman. She had yellow head fur and wore a long grey coat. She didn’t look like a soldier at all; her trousers finished halfway up her legs for one thing. She too stumbled onto the plaza, her arms aloft in surrender. Behind her came an elderly human male and a face she recognised well: Alex Blaine, the resistance leader.

  Faintly, she heard snipers ready their weapons. Her soldiers had them entirely covered on all sides.

  ‘I said hold your fire or I will have your pelts!’ she yelled. She would not risk her only son, not now that she had this second chance. How? How was this possible?

  Orryx slid over the front of the tank and dropped down in the debris. She established that Blaine didn’t appear to be holding a gun, but that meant nothing. He’d killed many, many loba in his time.

  ‘Mother …’ Avi began.

  Orryx said nothing because she didn’t trust herself not to cry and that would be unforgiveable in front of her troops. Her cub was fully grown now, taller than her. They were still unmistakably mother and cub, however: same eyes, same thick, shaggy chestnut fur.

  ‘Mother … I …’

  Suddenly, the human woman interrupted him, stepping between them. Up close, she was slight, impish. ‘I’m sorry, but would you look at the state of this?’ She twirled around, waving her arms at the ruins. ‘Look at all this mess!’

  As she spun closer, Orryx drew her gun. ‘Stay where you are! Freeze!’

  ‘But look at all this mess!’ the woman said again, her eyes wide. Orryx wondered if maybe she was intoxicated.

  ‘I won’t warn you again …’

  ‘Look at it.’

  This time it was a demand. The human woman, somehow, was now almost nose to nose with her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I said. Look at the mess.’

  She snorted. For the first time, Orryx looked at her feet. Scattered around her gleaming boots was all sorts of junk from the old marketplace.

  The woman with yellow fur squatted down for a split second and bounced back up holding a chipped mug. ‘Look.’

  Orryx sighed. She didn’t have time for this. ‘It’s a cup.’

  ‘It’s a blue cup.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘Probably belonged to someone, don’t you think?’ She pointed at the ruins. ‘From one of those homes, I should think. I wonder if it was someone’s favourite mug. I wonder if every morning, without fail, they’d wake up and make a lovely cup of tea in their favourite blue mug. I can’t start the day without a cup of tea in my favourite mug, can you?’

  ‘W
hat?’

  ‘I like Yorkshire Tea the best. What about you?’

  Far away, on the other side of Kanda City, Yaz and Ryan crouched in the dark radio tower. It reeked of damp. Water ran down the black walls and wind howled through the corridors. This high up, it felt like the tower was swaying back and forth in the gusts.

  Trying to ignore seasickness, Yaz could hardly believe Edwards had got this wreck to work. The young soldier looked out of the broken window with his binoculars. He can’t have been more than fourteen years old, Yaz thought to herself. The torn camouflage he wore drowned him. ‘It’s transmitting,’ he said. ‘All over Lobos. Everyone can hear it.’

  ‘Let me see,’ Yaz said, tugging on Ryan’s arm. ‘Stop hogging it.’

  The feed from the drone was – somehow – being picked up by Ryan’s phone. ‘It’s broadcasting on every available frequency. Audio, visual … everything,’ Ryan said. The Doctor had found the drone in the TARDIS storeroom and instructed Edwards to patch it into the old radio network. But, according to Edwards, this radio tower hadn’t been used for years. The remaining equipment was rusty junk, but Edwards had managed to patch it up sufficiently to receive and transmit the signal.

  ‘Fine!’ Yaz said, ‘But let me see.’

  ‘Magic word?’

  Yaz tutted. ‘Please?’

  He tilted his screen in her direction. She saw what the drone saw. It showed the Doctor, Graham, Avi and Blaine talking to someone she guessed was this Orryx she’d heard so much about.

  Yaz frowned at Ryan. ‘What’s she doing with that mug, though?’

  The yellow-haired one kicked through the rubble. Her hand shot out like a dart and this time seized a photo frame. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for a photo frame,’ she said. ‘Especially after the twentieth century when everything went digital because, to print out a photo and stick it in a frame, you really, really had to care about who was in that picture, right?’

  She rubbed the shattered glass with her cuff.

  ‘I wonder who they were. I mean, if this is half buried, they’re dead, right?’ She tossed the photo at Orryx’s feet. ‘Loba family, by the way, if it matters. Maybe it doesn’t; maybe that’s the picture that came with the frame.’

  ‘Who are you? Explain yourself,’ Orryx demanded.

  ‘Mother, listen to her,’ urged Avi.

  ‘I’ve seen far too many wars,’ the woman said, still pacing in the dirt, scuffing up dust. ‘And if there’s one thing I know to be absolutely, universally true it’s this: if you stop and look in the rubble for about sixty seconds, you’ll find … this!’

  Almost out of thin air, the woman produced a filthy stuffed animal.

  ‘A teddy bear with one eye.’

  ‘Drop it!’ Orryx said. It was a reflex and she felt ridiculous at once.

  ‘It’s harmless!’ The woman now shouted, her smile, her jovial manner, all gone. ‘Just like its owner was!’

  She stepped up to Orryx, pushing her gun aside.

  ‘That thing won’t work. My little drone thingamajig up there is creating an electromagnetic wave that’s disabling all your apparatus within a one-mile radius, I’m afraid. I wanted to talk, and you can’t talk with a gun in your hand because the gun’s doing all the talking.’

  Orryx growled, baring her teeth. ‘I could kill you with my bare hands, human.’

  ‘What for? And I’m not human.’

  ‘For …’ Orryx found she had no answer.

  ‘I’ve only been here a few hours so, I wonder, if you could explain what all this is about? What are you fighting for? You’d be surprised how many soldiers forget.’

  Orryx fought an urge to plunge her fangs into this human’s scrawny neck, the way her ancient ancestors would have done. ‘The humans …’

  ‘The humans what?’

  ‘The humans stole our land.’

  Blaine took a step forward. ‘That’s a lie! We were settled here legally and fairly …’

  ‘Let’s allow the general to answer, shall we, Mr Blaine? You’ve had your turn!’ The woman turned back to Orryx, fixing her with a hard stare. ‘He’s like a broken record that one. Tell me what the humans did, General Orryx. I’m listening.’

  ‘Well.’ Orryx threw her arms up, exasperated. ‘The terms of the colonisation were agreed two generations ago. A thousand humans were allowed to settle. But they’ve grown, bred, expanded.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  Orryx couldn’t find the words. ‘This … this is our planet!’ She regretted the words as soon as she said them. She sounded like Avi when he was a cub, refusing to share his toys with his cousins.

  The human woman dared to smile a sly smile. ‘Was there enough to go around? Enough food? Enough medicine? Enough shelter? Enough kindness?’

  Orryx said nothing. She turned away.

  ‘Tell me, General Orryx, tell me, Captain Blaine: is there any good reason on this planet why all these people had to die?’ The woman crouched again and picked up a red plastic boot, a boot that would only fit a small child, from the wreckage. She waved it at both Orryx and Blaine in turn. ‘Well? I’m waiting!’

  Neither leader replied.

  ‘No one ever wins at war. Not really.’ The woman looked down at all the mess with such sadness in her eyes, Orryx could hardly bear to watch.

  Avi came to his mother’s side. ‘Mother. This has to stop.’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Orryx whispered.

  ‘Obviously not. Can you remember Cathie? From school?’ A human girl with curly black hair and dark skin crawled out of the sewer. Orryx dimly remembered her face from when the schools had still been mixed before the laws changed. ‘We’re married now.’

  It was like a punch in her gut, but before she had time to react there was a further surprise. As Cathie drew herself upright, Orryx saw she was carrying a litter. No, humans usually only birth a sole infant. In this case though, with one loba parent, who knew? This was unprecedented. ‘Avi …? How can this be?’

  ‘That’s why I left you, Mother. I thought you would kill my wife, my child.’

  ‘No!’ Orryx said. ‘I … Is that what you think of me?’

  The one with yellow fur spoke again. ‘People of Lobos!’ she said to the sky, her arms wide. ‘Thanks to my very clever friends Ryan and Yasmin, I know you’re all hearing this. Every last one of you, loba and human. Now listen up because I am so bored, so sick to my very back teeth, of saying this. You’ve got a choice. Peace or war? Life or death? Harmony or hate? I’ve never understood why that even needs discussion, it’s so flippin’ obvious!’

  ‘She don’t half have a way with words, don’t she?’ The older human male with grey fur finally spoke.

  ‘A lot of people have died in this war. And you and you …’ the woman pointed at Orryx and Blaine, ‘have the power to say “stop”.’

  Orryx watched as the girl, Cathie, joined Avi and took his paw in her hand.

  ‘Call it a day, yeah?’ the grey-furred one said.

  Now the woman spoke softly, just to her. ‘There is another way,’ she said. ‘Just take it.’

  From the radio tower, Ryan and Yaz watched the scene play out on Ryan’s phone. ‘What’s happening?’ Ryan said. ‘Why can’t we hear ’em?’

  ‘Um, because you won’t stop talking over them?’ Yaz said with a smile. ‘I don’t know.’

  On the tiny screen, they saw Avi fall into his mother’s arms and General Orryx held him tight. The general buried her face in her son’s shoulder.

  ‘She did it!’ Ryan exclaimed. ‘The Doctor actually did it! I don’t believe it!’

  ‘I do,’ Yaz grinned. ‘Man, she’s good.’

  There was a strong gust of wind and the entire structure leaned to the left. ‘Whoa!’ Ryan toppled into Yaz and they both slid across the floor towards the edge.

  ‘Is this safe?’ Yaz cried.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Edwards. ‘We need to get
out of this tower before the whole thing collapses.’

  Well, that answered her question. Yaz sprung up and Ryan dashed after her. ‘Wait for me!’ He didn’t fancy the stairs without having someone to grab hold of if he fell. He didn’t like stairs at the best of times.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ Yaz muttered as she started the descent.

  In their haste, neither of them noticed Ryan’s phone underneath the sound desk, where he’d dropped it.

  Chapter 2

  The big sun and the little sun were starting to sink into the sea. It was a beautiful sunset. The TARDIS stood outside a taverna in what the locals called New Town. This was loba territory, on the other side of Kanda City to where the squalid human colony camps were. The fists of civil war hadn’t pummelled this part of town half so badly. The difference from the twee little fishing town and the shacks where the humans lived was stark and left a bad taste in Graham’s mouth, even as he finished his third glass of syrupy violetta wine.

  While the Doctor was thrashing out the peace agreement, Graham, Ryan and Yaz enjoyed a platter of food and wine on the front terrace: salty meats and fish, fresh warm bread and a strange purple fruit that tasted like both limes and olives at the same time. It had been a long day, and there was still much to do, but at least Blaine and Orryx were talking without weapons in their hands. Graham felt that was a step in the right direction.

  It was time for them to go. It was almost time for Pointless. Whatever the Doctor said about time travel, in Graham’s world, five-fifteen was Pointless, six sharp was dinner, and that wasn’t going anywhere. That’s how it was when Grace was alive and keeping their little routines alive felt only correct.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Yaz said, her feet up on the chair.

  ‘Yeah. I hope it stays that way.’

  ‘It will,’ Yaz said. ‘We fixed it.’

  The doors swung outwards and everyone spilled out of the taverna, the Doctor leading the way.

  ‘All done?’ Graham asked.

  Cathie gave him a big hug. ‘Yes. And thank you, Graham. For everything.’

  ‘Oh, I ain’t done nothing.’

  Her hands rested on her bump. ‘You did! What you said about you and your wife being different species …’