Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Dr Who – Martha and Ten The Inbetweens and Backstories ❯ Chapter Twenty Seven ( Chapter 27 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Martha wasn't sure what she had expected the Modrakanian Centralised Administrative City to look like. She always imagined cities of the future to be elegant spires and towers like she'd seen on New Earth.

What she had seen however, was a facility that looked like any large airport on her home planet. The sky was blue, the clouds were white and fluffy, and the city in the distance looked like Huston, Texas; all metal and glass skyscrapers.

The Modrakanians had been very grateful to them for returning the scientist's bodies, and asked if the Doctor and Martha would stay for funeral ceremony. The Doctor agreed, seeing it as part of his penance for not being able to save the Gappa.

The relatives of the deceased came and gave thanks to them for bringing back their loved ones, and the Minister for Off-World Affairs had awarded them the freedom of Modrakanian, making them honorary citizens of the planet.

To break the solemn mood, the Doctor said he was taking her to a place where they could have some fun. Martha opened the TARDIS door and was hit by a wall of noise. Bleeps, dings, and whistles, accompanied by screams of laughter from young children.

The TARDIS had landed in between a ghost train and a tin can alley rifle range, and seemed to blend in perfectly. Opposite the TARDIS were rows of one armed bandits, flashing their bright lights and playing happy tunes to attract the gamblers.

Martha stepped onto the wooden floor, looking around with a big grin on her face, the sadness of the last few hours forgotten. `Where is this?'

`The Grand Pier, Weston super Mare,' he said with a knowing smile. `C'mon, the Crazy House over there is brilliant.' He grabbed her hand and hurried through the crowds.

A few hours later, they were leaning on the rail that ran around the pier, eating cones of chips and looking out over the Bristol Channel towards the Atlantic Ocean.

`Chips in a paper cone, that's genius!' the Doctor said as he bit into a chip.

`And look,' Martha said, pointing with a chip. `The tides in.'

It was a standing joke with holiday makers that you never saw the sea at Weston, due to the fact that it receded so far at low tide.

`It does that twice a day you know,' he told her, as though she believed the myth. `Second fastest tide on the planet. Mind you that's nothing compared to the tides on Felspoon. There the mountains move to meet the sea half way; causes one heck of a swell, the surfers love it.'

Martha laughed, not knowing if that was true or if it was one of his tales to make her laugh. If it was the latter, it certainly worked. She finished her chips and turned to lean her back on the rail, looking up at the white building of the pavilion.

`This has been great, it reminds me of when I was a kid on holiday, and there's no snow, no aliens . . .' she saw the look he gave her. `There aren't, are there?'

`Well, not dangerous ones any way. Let's go and get an ice cream, and pay close attention to the woman in the kiosk . . . especially when she blinks.'

`No, you're kiddin' me?' she said with wide eyes. He smiled and waggled his eyebrows. `You are kidding, right?'

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'Edinburgh in 1759,' said Martha. `A bit different to Weston super Mare in 2008.'

They were standing on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle enjoying the view. The Doctor started telling her in that way he did, about how she was seeing something no one else would ever see again.

Clear countryside, all the way down to the Firth of Forth:

Edinburgh before they built the bits of Edinburgh she remembered from that film. Then he told her why they'd needed to expand, turning to point down at the 80,000 people pushing their way through a daily life on the streets of the Old Town.

'Well,' he said. 'Just "the Town" at the moment, but . . .' He halted his history lecture, as he heard the clatter of hooves and wheels on the cobbles below.

They looked over the parapet and saw a stagecoach rattling down the street, the horses apparently spooked by the presence of a highwayman on the roof.

The Doctor flashed his manic grin. `Runaway coach! C'mon.'

He grabbed her hand and set off at a run for the stone steps. He reached inside his long coat and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. `Take this and use setting three four seven.'

`Three four seven?' Martha queried as she tried to keep up with him.

`Ultrasonic modulated waveform, it'll calm the horses down. Take a short cut through Grassmarket and get in front of them. I'll run along the bank here and jump onto the roof as it goes past.'

Martha didn't even have time to give her usual reaction of disbelief. `Grassmarket, three four seven, right.'

The Doctor ran along the grassy bank at the foot of the castle, which was contained by a high stone wall, and leaped off the edge as the stagecoach careered past. He grabbed the luggage rail around the edge of the roof and crouched low as he tried to surf the stagecoach.

The longer this went on, the more likely it was that people would get hurt: the driver was doing his best to steer the horses as they bolted, but it was a losing battle. Plus he couldn't fight the natural urge to look over his shoulder at his attacker; the pale man was having as much trouble as the Doctor in keeping his balance as the stagecoach rocked, but he was still advancing.

'Hey,' the Doctor called to the man.

The pale man didn't even turn, just kept shuffling cautiously towards the driver. He was wearing the muddy long-coat of a farmer, possibly a poacher, but as yet he hadn't reached for the knife that was tucked into his belt. Instead, his pale hands were outstretched, as if the only blades he needed were his own sharp fingernails.

So far, the Doctor hadn't seen the man's face, just the lank strands of his hair flailing in the wind. He tried a different tack.

'Entschuldigen?' he called.

The pale man turned, and the Doctor got a brief flash of black marble eyes and a triumphant feeling. Then he saw a piece of the stagecoach roof splinter, and looked again: the pale man's shoulder now had a dry red tear in it where something had struck him, attracting his attention. The Doctor risked a glance behind him, and saw four red-jacketed soldiers firing from the steps down from the Castle.

'They're shooting at us!' cried a voice from below. The Doctor ducked low to avoid perforation, and stuck his head out over the edge of the stagecoach. There was a passenger sticking his head out of the window and waving wildly.

'Don't worry,' the Doctor called as the coach veered violently to the left. 'Just stay inside.'

The passenger gave him a strange look, and ducked back inside. The Doctor risked another look behind him, and saw the soldiers running after them whilst trying to reload their muskets. He was safe from that for a few moments, anyway. He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and turned back to face forwards.

The pale man seemed to have lost interest in the driver, which was something. Instead, he was making shuffling steps towards the Doctor, those sharp little fingers outstretched.

Hold on a moment. 'Aren't you—' the Doctor started to shout to the passenger.

The stagecoach hit a loose cobble, and bucked into the air. The driver let out a cry and tried to keep hold of the reins and the coach and his wits, all in one messy manoeuvre. The coach tottered left, then teetered right, before deciding that perhaps it would remain on all four wheels for a few moments longer.

The Doctor, however, didn't have much time for relief: the pale man lost his footing as the coach kicked, and ended up diving for the Doctor, talons outstretched. Instead, he allowed himself a moment to wonder how Martha was doing. Then the pale man knocked him on his back.

Martha was doing what she normally did when the Doctor got involved with something . . . she was running. 'Three,' she panted. 'Four. Seven.'

A woman dressed as a novelty toilet-roll cover stepped out of her house to Martha's right, and nearly ended up flat on her bustle as Martha barged past. Martha didn't even look behind her, but she heard the decidedly ungentlemanly shouts coming from the lady's companion.

They weren't the first to be annoyed by her: as she ran down the High Street, she had been knocking people left, right and centre. The houses that towered up three and four storeys on either side of the wide road were the town houses of the great and the good, and there hadn't been a single soul she had barged past that had had so much as a smudge of dust on their person. Until she'd sent them sprawling in the gutter.

On her right, she saw the archway. The sign above it announced it as Fishmarket Close, although it looked like it was just a tunnel that burrowed deep into the cellars of the houses. Martha turned sharply and ran into the darkness, the smell of fish rushing up to greet her as she ran.

The ground sloped away from her feet at an alarming speed, and she knew that if she lost her footing for even a moment, she'd be tumbling. It took her a moment to realise that she had passed through the archway and was out in the fresh air again: as the ground dropped away, the tops of the houses remained on a level and the sunlight found it harder and harder to reach her.

The streets were even worse now she was off the Royal

Mile, filled with more people in worse clothes and splattered with a thick brown mud that she was starting to suspect wasn't actually mud. The houses seemed little more than tiny boxes, all piled high on top of each other like the estates in Tower Hamlets. Each had a metal spiral staircase outside it, leading up to the higher levels that looked barely big enough to let a child up comfortably.

The language grew fouler as she bumped and barged, and more than one person started throwing things after her. She had a momentary image of the houses on the Royal Mile as nothing more than a flimsy rubber mask, pulled aside to reveal the monstrous decay of the real city beneath . . .

Martha burst out of the street, and suddenly found herself blinking in the sunlight for a moment. She had never really pushed through a crowd of people running in the opposite direction before she'd met the Doctor. It wasn't something she particularly enjoyed. People were losing their footing and falling all around her, and the doctor in her wanted to stop and check they were all right.

The Doctor in her made her keep moving, pushing and swerving into every space she was forcing open. The sound of their screaming was deafening. She wasn't going to make it, she knew.

'Three. Four. Seven,' she panted.

Suddenly the crowd thinned around her. At the same time, their screams got louder as they realised the danger they were in was so much more imminent. They parted like water around her; eager to fill up the small space she had left them that much further from destruction. Another moment and Martha was alone, standing gasping for breath in the middle of the cobbled road. She had to bend double just to force the air into her lungs.

'Run, girl!' someone shouted, but she didn't see who. She stood up straight and composed herself. As she turned, she saw the stagecoach careering down the road towards her, the driver having given up all pretence at control and just looking for the right moment to jump.

She couldn't see the Doctor or the highwayman he'd been chasing. Perhaps they'd both fallen, and were lying broken further up the road. The streets were empty. After the press of the crowd, it felt more alien than any planet she'd set foot on. The horses were heading straight for her, teeth bared. She held up a hand, and didn't flinch. 'Three four seven,' she said.

In some ways, the Doctor supposed, it could be considered quite restful. OK, so he was in very real danger of getting a terminal haircut from the buildings lining the Cowgate, but at least he was lying down. And he had the wind blowing through his hair, an advantage that the stagecoach's bald driver was completely missing out on.

All he needed was the certainty of being alive when the coach stopped, and it would be a very jolly afternoon's ride. The pale man was kneeling over the Doctor, having seemingly no interest in picking himself up and resuming his attack on the driver. Nor was he attacking the Doctor, as such.

Yes, he was flailing those sharp fingernails around, but if it was an attack it was a particularly unfocused one. An unbiased observer might be hard pushed to decide if the nails were aimed at the Doctor, or merely trying to claw their way through the stagecoach roof.

Certainly the pale man wasn't looking at him as the blows fell: he stared glassily into space, one pupil larger than the other. The Doctor filed the information in case it was important later.

The Doctor looked at the driver, who glanced back apologetically. 'Don't worry,' the Doctor shouted. 'I've got a friend.'

The stagecoach bounced again, and the Doctor's pale attacker rolled across the roof. For a moment, he looked as if he might fall, but at the last minute he twisted and somehow ended up back on his feet. As the pale man rolled his glassy eyes in the Doctor's vague direction, a thin sliver of drool ran down his chin.

'I can help you,' the Doctor told him.

A musket shot rang out.

Martha swallowed hard, and closed her eyes.

'Three four seven,' she said.

The sonic screwdriver felt heavy in her hand, but she held it high. Her thumb found the switch without her having to look, and she pressed it down. She couldn't help flinching, even though she knew it wasn't going to explode in her hand.

Probably wasn't going to explode in her hand. It wasn't making any sound, or at least none that she could hear. She risked a peek through one squinting eye.

The horses were nearly on top of her. Her mouth fell open and her eyes opened wide. The stagecoach was hurtling towards her, the driver crossing himself and jumping from his perch to land awkwardly on the cobbles below. But she could see the highwayman and the Doctor, standing on the roof of the coach as if they were meeting in a bar for the first time.

The Doctor was holding his hand out to the highwayman, saying something the clatter of hoof-beats was drowning out.

He was incredible.

There was the faint sound of a car backfiring that

Martha barely noticed, until she remembered that this was a good couple of hundred years before internal combustion. The highwayman on the roof twitched and tumbled from the stagecoach roof.

Martha barely had the time to register that he'd been shot before her heart leapt at the sight of the Doctor launching himself after him. The two met in mid-air, as the Doctor spun to protect the highwayman from the stone cobbles.

Just incredible.

Martha realised she was still standing in the path of the stagecoach. It was too late, far too late. Martha could see those who had managed to get themselves out of the exact place she was standing looking back at her with a mixture of sympathy and excitement. This would be one to tell the grandchildren about, no doubt. All Martha could do was worry about whether the Doctor had hurt himself in the fall.

The horses let out a strange noise and slowed. It was so odd to see: one moment, the horses were charging foam-mouthed towards her and she had no chance of survival; the next, they were starting to slow, flicking their manes about as if they were in an equine shampoo advert. Martha felt a moment of elation, before she realised that the stagecoach itself wasn't slowing down.

As the horses both moved to the left, suddenly interested in the buildings lining the street, the stagecoach sped on at top speed. The gathered crowd didn't know what to do, and neither did the horses. They dug their feet in indignantly as the coach pulled them backwards down the road, their hooves grinding sparks from the rough stone.

Martha let her hand drop and made a run for the dubious protection of a pub. She felt a rush of wind try to pull her jacket from her back, but didn't stop. As she jumped, she ended up clutching the hand of a young, red haired boy, who was himself hanging precariously from the jacket of a heavy-set man who didn't look much like he wanted to be hung from.

Other hands came down to sweep her up, and for a moment she let herself fall into them. It felt like having her mother hug her after a nasty tumble. When she looked behind her, the stagecoach had spun to a halt ten yards down the road. The cobblestones were scuffed, and the coach was sideways on to the road, but otherwise you'd be hard pushed to guess that anything was wrong.

The horses pawed at the ground skittishly, and tried hard not to catch each other's eye. Martha had the strangest feeling that they were embarrassed. She smiled, and took her thumb from the sonic screwdriver.