THE SHADES OF TSAHARA
CHAPTER ONE
Author: Elanor
Beta: Patrice
Feedback - yes please. I'm begging!
Author's note: Thanks to both Patrice and Aingeal for their encouragement and assistance!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, the TARDIS and lots of other things are copyright of the BBC. I make no profit from this story.
The desert stretched in unbroken monotony for miles in the early dawn light but here, incongruously, bloomed crystal. They grew out of the sand, each coral-like formation composed of a single stem which split into hundreds of delicate branches of perfect symmetry. Their many facets caught the rays of the sun, shimmering rose and crimson and violet.
"They're called crystal trees," the Doctor murmured in a hushed voice.
"They look almost alive," Nyssa said. "Are they?"
"No-one seems to know." He smiled gently as he looked round at the oddly peaceful forest. "I'm rather glad actually – the universe should hold some mystery that science cannot explain."
"They're beautiful," Adric whispered. He reached out to touch the nearest but pulled back a second later, casting a guilty look at the Doctor. A few weeks ago the Doctor had reprimanded him (at some length) for meddling with the TSS on Deva Loka. Adric had been deeply hurt by his friend's accusatory words and wanted to prove that he had learned his lesson. "May I touch them?"
The Doctor winked at him. "Go ahead. Amazing, aren't they?"
The four roamed through the forest for some minutes, staring deep into the crystals' hearts. When Tegan flicked a branch, the whole tree resonated almost like discordant singing.
The Doctor, however, was frowning slightly. "There's something not right here," he muttered vaguely.
Tegan groaned, mumbling an "I knew it was too good to be true," under her breath. She mopped at her forehead with one of Nyssa's hankies; considering how early it was, it was getting hot very quickly. Just in the last half hour, the temperature had rocketed.
"Nyssa, Adric, what do you think? Look at the lay-out of the forest, the structure," the Doctor said like a professor addressing his star pupils who were missing the patently obvious.
"What about it?" Nyssa asked but Adric had worked it out.
"The forest is too regimented. Too symmetrical."
"Exactly!"
"But crystals form symmetrically," Nyssa objected.
"Do they?" the Doctor said eagerly. He indicated the whole forest with a sweep of his hand, warming to his subject. "Every tree is identical to its neighbour; no aberrations, no individualism."
Tegan sighed, bored with the science stuff. "I thought you said you'd been here before. Did the forest look like this then?"
He frowned, searching his memory. "I came with Jamie and Victoria. I'm sure it wasn't -" His words were cut off as an ear piercing shriek set the trees vibrating. This was followed by an explosion at the Doctor's feet. Adric pulled Tegan to safety as a second bolt hit the ground where she had been standing.
"Don't move!" came a cold voice and they looked up to see a row of armed men lined along the sand dune. Just behind them was a lumbering tractor-like vehicle. As the companions put up their hands, the leader and five of the men, dressed in purple billowy trousers and tunics, slid down the dune, their weapons at the ready. The rest, the Doctor noted automatically despite the jeopardy, remained in a defensive circle round the tractor, paying just as much attention to the surrounding desert as to their captives.
"Good morning. I'm the Doctor!" the Time Lord began, switching on his most disarming smile. It was at times like this that he wished he still carried jelly babies – nothing like a jelly baby to diffuse tension.
The leader looked him up and down with the expression of one who had stepped in something unpleasant. "Stealing crystals is a capital offence."
"Capital 'S,' I assume," the Doctor blustered, nervously twisting his hat in his hand. "I can assure you we were not stealing. Admiring."
"Oh really? We've just come from Farm C and I suppose that large blue box we passed is not a packing crate?"
"It most certainly is not," Nyssa said firmly in the interest of accuracy.
One of the men, his gaze wandering to the expanse of desert, sighed half impatiently, half nervously. "Jakeson, can we get on with this? The Shades could come at any second."
The leader waved a placating hand. "Don't sweat, Malc, this won't take long."
"Look," Tegan said, trying for a reasonable tone and failing mightily, "we're foreigners here. We've never visited your planet before, how were we supposed to know we were trespassing? You can't shoot us for transgressing a law we don't even know about!"
The leader completely ignored her and nodded to his cohorts who roughly shoved them against the dune, away from the forest. "Got any last requests?"
"That you spare us?" the Doctor suggested hopefully.
Jakeson grinned, showing uneven yellow teeth. He assumed a grave expression and began to speak in a mock-formal tone: "I, Jakeson, find the accused guilty of trespassing on restricted ground, stealing crystal, resisting arrest and wearing very unfashionable clothes. I hereby sentence the accused to having their brains blown out."
He squeezed the trigger of his gun and it emitted the high-pitched whine they had heard earlier as it charged to full power. The Doctor tried to shield his companions even as he continued to volubly object. Adric's method was more direct: he bull-dozed into the two guards in front of him, sending them flying. He wasn't quick enough, however, for their leader who fired his laser at him, point-blank. Adric collapsed immediately.
Nyssa gasped in fright. "Is he dead?"
The Doctor's face paled; he tried to go to his fallen friend but was prevented. "I don't know. The gun wasn't on full charge so there's a chance."
Jakeson levelled his gun again but a cry from one of the men by the vehicle gave him pause. He turned. "I'm rather busy."
"It's Quill on the radio."
He swore floridly. "Tell him to send me an inter-departmental e-memo."
"He says you are not to kill the foreigners," continued the tractor guard, "but are to bring them to the colony for sentencing."
"I caught 'em, I get to shoot 'em and claim the reward."
"He's very insistent," the guard said. Jakeson made a rude gesture and invited the absent Quill to attempt something biologically impossible. The guard continued: "He says if you don't do as you have been ordered, he'll revoke your crystal license."
Jakeson finally admitted defeat, albeit with ill grace. "Just great! Okay, people, let's load them in the tractor before the sun climbs any higher. Do you want me to draw you pictures? Someone carry the stiff. Let's move it – we don't want to keep the Tetrarch waiting, now do we?!"
With no ceremony they had been chivvied up the dune towards the waiting tractor. The Doctor noted that the vehicle had the caterpillar treads of a tank and was pitted and old. He could understand the treads - they would navigate the shifting sand much more efficiently than wheels - but wondered why the vehicle was so heavily armoured. He had no more time to cogitate because he was grabbed roughly and shoved into the rear with his friends amongst empty packing crates, ropes, the spare tyre and a few other odds and ends. One of the men sat on the other side of the grille, ostensibly watching them but he spent most of the time staring out of his window, nervously fingering his weapon.
The Doctor wasted no time in checking Adric. The younger man had not regained consciousness but his vital signs were strong. He rolled him over into the recovery position, patting his shoulder absently. "He'll be fine."
Now that she knew Adric was out of danger, Tegan turned to their present predicament. "Shouldn't we try to escape?" She inconspicuously indicated a few likely tools that could be used as weapons.
Nyssa shook her russet curls. "Escape where? At our present speed we must be five miles from the TARDIS with no means of navigation. It would be very dangerous."
"The alternative, if you recall, is being barbecued. I'd rather take my chances in the desert."
The Doctor appeared unfazed by the seriousness of their situation and had manoeuvred in the cramped space to squint through the grille at the bank of high tech consoles he could see ranged along the wall in the main compartment. He shone his torch, trying to see the read-outs in the poor light until the nervous guard tore his eyes away from the desert and shook the grille in warning. The Doctor waved cheerily to him, deliberately misunderstanding the gesture. "Interesting," he muttered. "Very advanced technology. I am definitely looking forward to meeting this Tetrarch chap."
"I'm not," Tegan muttered.
Adric gave a groan and began to stir, rolling onto his back. Tegan crouched next to him, offering a bottle of water. Adric smiled up at her and Nyssa with relief. "You're safe," he murmured.
"Thanks to you," Nyssa beamed and squeezed his hand. The Doctor, however, did not share her gratitude: he was glaring at Adric, his usually gentle eyes sparking with anger.
"What exactly did you think you were playing at, you young idiot?"
"I was trying to escape!"
"You seem to have an unerring talent for choosing the most foolish method imaginable – first the TSS, now charging two heavily armed men. Have you any idea how dangerous that was? You could have been killed."
Adric stared at him. "They were going to kill us anyway – "
"That's not a good enough excuse, Adric!"
Adric flinched, confused and hurt by his friend's reaction. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. Avoiding the Doctor's gaze, he pulled himself into a sitting position and perched on a crate, wincing as nearly every muscle in his body – including some he didn't know he had – protested. He flexed his leg until the tingle, half way between pins and needles and cramp, began to ease.
"That, my boy, is what comes of trying to rush a high energy weapon," the Doctor lectured. He prodded the Alzarian until Adric met his gaze; he smiled with affectionate exasperation and the boy returned the smile, beginning to relax. The Doctor massaged Adric's tense shoulder muscles as he addressed their nervous guard, "Tell me," he said, "how far is the colony?"
"It's 25 miles from Farm B where we caught you."
"Ah," the Doctor said, then frowned. "Farm B? You mean the forest is cultivated?" Although the details of his last visit were sketchy – it had been a few centuries after all – he was fairly sure the trees he had seen then were wild. The crystal trees were beautiful, a miracle of evolution; the notion that they had been plucked from their natural habitat to be cultivated was abhorrent to him. It did, however, explain why the trees all looked so uniform and symmetrical.
The guard cast another furtive glance out of his window and flicked his fingers in some sort of ritual gesture. "Of course. Why else would the Administration of Homeworld set up a colony on a desert world?"
"Homeworld?" Nyssa asked.
"Earth," the Doctor supplied absently. "In her Colonial Empire days she set up colonies all over this sector." He turned back to their informant. "Tell me more about these crystals."
"The harvested crystals have many applications: anti-matter drive systems, mining; but I suppose the main application is as an energy source. Our whole economy is based on them."
Tegan, uninterested in the economics lecture, had used a rag to scrub a clean spot in the filthy dirty rear window. "Doctor, look!"
"That is amazing!" the now recovered Adric said as he and Nyssa clustered close. The tractor was trundling along a large dune and the huge colony of Tsahara could be seen below. It was as large and complex as a small city. Most of the houses seemed to be constructed of rough white stone; they were low and squat with flat roofs. At the colony's centre they could see a large landscaped garden and an imposing building that was immediately recognisable as a temple. Constructed of austere white marble and something that looked like frosted glass, it had five tiers like a wedding cake. Its impressive spire rose in a delicate spiral and was topped by azure crystal. The temple easily dwarfed every other structure in the colony.
But that was not what fascinated the companions. Hovering over the entire colony was a shimmering haze, like a rainbow force field. It bathed the buildings in an ever-changing, iridescent light.
"What is it?" Tegan asked.
"Amazing," the Doctor exulted, "the engineering skill, the talent! Breath-taking!"
"Yes," Tegan said patiently, "but what is it?"
"An atmosphere Shield of some kind," Nyssa replied.
"Exactly," the Doctor enthused. "I've seen them used on some of the agricultural planets on the Outer Rim to ensure controlled growing conditions. Think of it as a giant greenhouse, Tegan, ensuring steady temperatures but also filtering out harmful atmospheric conditions." He tapped his rolled hat against his chin thoughtfully. "I have to admit I have never seen one quite as large or complex as this."
They were all suddenly thrown forward as the tractor ground to an abrupt halt.
"I'd say we have arrived," the Doctor proclaimed with gusto.