53 - Hope

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In the future the city of Hope isn’t a place for the weak.

The air is thick with fog. The sea burns. Law and order are a thing of the

past. Headless corpses are being found at the edge of the city, and the

militia can’t ﬁnd the killer. Members of a deranged cult mutilate

themselves while plotting the deaths of their enemies.

Even the Doctor can’t see any possibility of redemption for this cursed

place. All he wants to do is leave, but to do so he needs the TARDIS – and

the TARDIS is lost in the depths of a toxic sea. When the most powerful

man on the planet offers to retrieve the TARDIS – for a price – the Doctor

has no choice but to accept.

But while the Doctor is hunting a killer, another offer is being made – one

which could tear the Doctor and his companions apart.

This is another in the series of original adventures for the Eighth Doctor.

Hope

Mark Clapham

Contents

Prologue – Don’t Forget to Catch Me 4

I Headhunt 6

1 Out of the Box 7

2 The Only Way is Up 19

3 A Fistful of Fingers 30

4 Fight Pub 39

II Escalation 51

5 Fear of Flying 52

6 No More Time Outs 68

7 Secret Origins 76

8 Turning on a Dime 85

III Beyond the Sea 98

9 Downward Spirals 99

10 Human Factors 111

11 Storm Front 122

CONTENTS 2

12 Blue Sky Propositions 132

IV The Silver Age 145

13 Paranoia 146

14 Chaingun Diplomacy 154

15 Same Old Brand New You 167

16 Closure 175

Epilogue – Tonight We Fly 195

Acknowledgements 197

About the Author 198

Credits 199

Dedicated to the co-authors who got me where I am today:

Lance Parkin, Simon Bucher-Jones and Jonathan de Burgh Miller.

Prologue

Don’t Forget to Catch Me

Cool water rippled in the afternoon sun, coursing over the two ramps of

shiny black rock. The water ﬂowed smoothly down the polished twin sur-

faces, the only obstacle in its constant descent the maple-leaf motifs carved

into the rock, emblems of the country whose soldiers the memorial com-

memorated.

‘ “In two world wars, one million Canadians came to Britain and joined

the ﬁght for freedom”,’ said Dave Young, reading from the engraved disc

on the ground nearby. “From danger shared our friendship prospered.”’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Anji Kapoor. She stepped up behind Dave and gave

him a hug, standing on tiptoe to kiss the back of his neck. ‘And you always

read so nicely.’ Dave was an actor, his speaking voice one of his great assets.

‘Thanks,’ said Dave, gently turning in her arms and snaking his own

arms around her waist. He held her close, kissed her on the lips, then

pulled back.

‘Come on,’ he said, thinking of the ageing Canadian tourists nearby. ‘I

don’t think this is appropriate behaviour for a war memorial.’

Green Park in the summer was full of tourists, yellow backpacks and click-

ing cameras everywhere. From where Anji and Dave sat, in the shade of

an ancient tree, they could see summer-school students clambering over

the nearby Victoria Monument, while others peered through the railings

around Buckingham Palace. So much activity, so much eagerness to see

and to do. It was days like this Anji felt lucky to live in London, to be able

to live with its sights and sounds, get to know them in her own time rather

than rush around the place on a tour bus. To ﬁnd a tall tree in the heart of

the city, and sit beneath it in the arms of her boyfriend.

‘When I’m dead and gone,’ said Anji jokingly, pointing to the monument,

‘will you have a tacky gold statue put up in my memory?’

Dave shivered, even though it was a warm day. Anji felt him hold her

slightly tighter. ‘Don’t joke about that. I’m not letting you die any time

PROLOGUE – DON’T FORGET TO CATCH ME 5

soon.’

‘Sorry,’ Anji said quietly. ‘I haven’t got you down, have I?’ She tugged

his sleeve affectionately.

‘Nah,’ said Dave hesitantly. ‘It’s just I don’t like thinking about it. Neither

of us is going to live forever.’ He wrapped his arm around her, kissing the

back of her neck.

She wriggled in his grasp, turning around to face him. His expression

seemed haunted, far removed from the usual carefree Dave.

‘Hey,’ Anji said ﬁrmly, giving him a chastening slap on the shoulder. ‘This

is silly. It’s not like either of us is going to drop dead tomorrow.’

Dave looked about to protest, but she froze him in a glare of certainty,

and he backed down before he had begun.

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ he said.

‘Of course I’m right,’ she replied, getting to her feet. ‘Now come on.’

She tugged his arm, pulling him to his feet. ‘An ice cream will cheer you

up.’

‘Can I have a ﬂake?’ he asked, a wry smile returning.

‘If you’re good,’ she replied slyly, kissing him on the cheek.

Bleak thought dispelled, Anji and Dave wandered arm-in-arm through

the sun-drenched day.

Part I

Headhunt

Chapter 1

Out of the Box

That last card might as well have been from the tarot pack, thought Kyrro as

he was hastily ejected from the Silver Palace. A low four, when he needed

at least a seven. The card should have had ‘Death’ written across it, an

etching of the grim reaper looking out from it, that would have been ap-

propriate for the gravity of the situation. Kyrro’s credit limit was up, his

account at the Palace dry until he could prove himself solvent once more.

The croupier had looked up from the card with an expression close to pity,

clearly knowing Kyrro was a dead man walking. Out of luck, out of cash,

and soon after out in the cold. Kyrro had protested slightly, but the head

of security, Myra-whatever, only needed to suggest that Kyrro take up his

grievance with the Palace’s owner for him to shut up and accept his expul-

sion.

Kyrro slid his breath ﬁlter over his mouth and nose. He may be broke

but he at least had a couple of the basics covered. Breather, decent clothes,

a place to stay – even if that place was on the other side of Hope, requiring

an unenviable night-time walk. At least he had those few things, more than

the real derelicts, the ‘swingers’ who lived between the city’s stilts, hanging

from girders and living on scraps, their unprotected lungs raw from the

fumes rising from the waters beneath. At least Kyrro had some dignity left,

some small way to go before he sank to the level of those poor wretches.

The caustic smog and the effects of alcohol were blurring Kyrro’s vision,

so he was especially careful as he stumbled down the rusty metal steps to

the lower levels, the dim glow from tenement windows lighting his way as

the steps weaved around the towers. The steps led to a walkway towards

the edge of the city, hidden in the lower levels with only the ﬂare of the

occasional gaslight to illuminate the concourse. The boards creaked as

Kyrro walked, peering downwards to make sure there weren’t any missing

slats. If he fell now, down into the toxic soup below, there would be no

CHAPTER 1. OUT OF THE BOX 8

witnesses, no evidence of his passing. Kyrro knew he was going to die one

day. He just couldn’t stand the idea of going unnoticed.

A vicious sea breeze stung Kyrro’s eyes as he reached the edge, where

a pierledge would lead him around to his lodgings in one of the bloated

habi-clusters that clung to the edge of the town. At least this area was

better lit, the watchtowers dotted around Hope’s ‘coastline’ casting a ﬁerce

sodium glare over everything around them. Kyrro could hear the raucous

conversation of militia members patrolling the upper levels, close enough

to be audible but too far up for Kyrro to make out any words.

And then there was something else, another sound somewhere nearby.

Kyrro stopped dead in his tracks – if it were the creaking of a girder about to

snap, or the bubbling prelude to a gas explosion, he would need to get away

fast. He listened carefully, backing away slightly as he realised there was a

scratchy, scrabbling noise coming from somewhere nearby, somewhere just

ahead and slightly below where he was. It was only when the hand gripped

the railing and the white ﬁgure dragged itself over on to the path that Kyrro

realised what that implied. And by then he was already running.

In the spaces between space itself, in the timeless region outside time, a

blue box spins through the void. Both creature and machine, yet strangely

neither, this blue box is a TARDIS, a travelling machine skimming across

the surface of space-time, occasionally dipping below the surface to spend a

while in the murky depths of reality, where days pass in order and the laws

of science stay constant. This TARDIS disguises itself as a police box, an

old communications device from a planet called Earth, a thing of wood and

blue paint with a ﬂashing light on top. Inside, the TARDIS – which, what

with the rules of physics having no bearing outside conventional space-

time, is bigger inside than out – adopts a different guise, that of a tech-

nological marvel, gleaming white futurism decorated in a reﬁned Victorian

manner.

In the ship’s console room, its apparent centre, stands the ship’s captain,

a man called the Doctor who is more of a ‘man’ than he once was. While

once two hearts pumped within the Doctor’s chest, now only a single pulse

beats beneath his ribs. Fortunately for the Doctor, his second heart allows

him to survive the death of the ﬁrst. Less fortunately, much of what sepa-

rated him from the common humans around him seems to have gone with

his now cold heart. Though he would never admit it, considering himself

something of a libertarian, he has always felt like a lord, walking amongst

lesser beings for a hundred years. Now he is just another man. His appear-

ance belies this humbled status – an aristocratic ﬁgure with a noble bearing,

sharp blue eyes and ﬂowing chestnut curls, the Doctor wears ﬁnely pressed

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摘要：

InthefuturethecityofHopeisn'taplacefortheweak.Theairisthickwithfog.Theseaburns.Lawandorderareathingofthepast.Headlesscorpsesarebeingfoundattheedgeofthecity,andthemilitiacan'tndthekiller.Membersofaderangedcultmutilatethemselveswhileplottingthedeathsoftheirenemies.EventheDoctorcan'tseeanypossibilityo...

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53 - Hope

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