THE BATTLE FOR PLANET 209

PROLOGUE

The corridors were empty and silent. Mike Yates smiled to himself as he wandered down them. He had never known them to be busy, but somehow the knowledge that the whole building was empty made it seem particularly desolate. He passed the door to his bedroom and paused momentarily. There was little point in going in of course; nothing in there was his, and most of the contents had been impounded anyway. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. No surprise there.

It was already hard to believe that such a short time ago - a fortnight at most - this quiet country mansion had been anything but quiet and deserted. Mike remembered the giant spiders which had appeared as if from nowhere; the sudden disappearance of Sarah-Jane and the Doctor; and then a confused series of events... He thought he remembered being blasted by one of the spiders, but that didn't quite connect. It was almost as if he had died, or come close to dying. Then the Doctor had returned, and regenerated, and the next thing Mike Yates remembered clearly was that it was all over, and the Doctor, Benton and the others had all departed. Even the Brigadier had gone with hardly a parting word for his one-time most trusted associate. There had been debriefings of course, but then they had cut Mike loose, and he had been left to resume his meanderings. Nobody seemed to care where he went, or what happened to him. It was hard, being alone again after what had happened. It had only been for a while; one small, short while; but for a few days he had been a soldier again; a valued member of UNIT. He had been needed; relied upon. The Brigadier had been close by. Mike would never have admitted it to anybody, but it was the Brigadier that he missed almost more than anything. Anything except for Sergeant Benton's comradeship, perhaps. The Brigadier was Mike's CO; the man he emulated; the man he looked up to more than anyone else. Even the Doctor did not come quite as high on Mike Yates' list as did Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Mike would cheerfully have died for him, and in the end he had almost killed him. The Brigadier had never trusted Yates since, and Mike could hardly say that he blamed the man. After all, he had not only pulled a gun on the CO; he had joined with the other side; worked against UNIT. His intentions might have been good, but that hardly excused what he had done.

He wandered on down the corridor, trying not to see reasons for being depressed in every corner. Despite his best efforts to work up some good cheer, he felt even worse when he came to Cho-je's office, and the room beyond that where K'anpo had lived in virtual seclusion. Mike had come here to learn something, although he still wasn't sure quite what that had been. In the end all it had brought him was an increased sensation of loneliness.

Thoroughly miserable, Mike sat down on the desk, and rested his chin on his fist. He couldn't believe how badly it had all turned out. His career, his whole way of life; gone in one fell swoop. He had rested all his hopes on this place, clinging to the idea that, maybe, if he could just get everything sorted out in his head, there was a chance that the Brigadier might take him back. He had nearly got that too. There had been all the craziness that he had uncovered; the Doctor had come down to deal with it. Mike had been able to help him, and to help the Brigadier too. Then it had all gone wrong. The Doctor had been killed, more or less. He had become someone else. That warm smile, the gentle eyes; that look of sympathy and comradeship had gone, and in its place was the look of a stranger. It was as though he didn't even recognise Mike. That had hurt. After so long together, as such close colleagues. After all that the Doctor had taught Mike, and all that they had been through together; now the Doctor was somebody else entirely, and the Brigadier had been so busy with him that he hadn't even spared a second glance for his former second-in-command. The members of UNIT had packed up and gone home, and all the various pupils at the School had gone too. They had all had lives to go back to, even if they were lives that they had been trying to escape from. After all that had happened, most of them couldn't leave fast enough. But Mike had nowhere to go.

"Problems, Mr Yates?" The voice was soft and gentle, filled with a rich humour and intelligence. Mike lifted his head, confused.

"Cho-je? I mean K'anpo, I'm sorry."

"Cho-je, K'anpo - all are the same." The little man smiled, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes danced about. "I asked you if you had problems."

"Sorry. I was a little surprised to see you here, that's all. I thought everybody had gone."

"Not everybody. You are still here." K'anpo stood in front of Mike, his brow furrowed. "You are weighed down heavily, my friend. Is there something I can do for you?"

Mike smiled. "I think you've already done it," he said with feeling. "You saved my life, you saved the Doctor's..."

"But I didn't give you what you came here for originally."

"I don't even know what that was." Mike stood up. "I'm sorry, Cho-je. I shouldn't have disturbed you."

"Can a pupil disturb a master? When there is still so much that they both can learn from each other?" K'anpo laid a hand on Mike's arm. "You came here to find yourself, Mr Yates. Have you done that?"

"Found myself? What's to find?" He was surprised by the Time Lord's line of questioning. The old man cocked his head on one side, looking up at Mike.

"You still have to find your direction in life, Mike. The way you have to go now."

"I have to go out of here." Frowning, and not sure that he liked the monk's familiarity, Mike headed for the door. Behind him, K'anpo moved with surprising speed, reaching the door before the younger man came close to it.

"Look inside yourself, Mike," he said, speaking gently but firmly. "Tell me what you see."

"Nothing." Mike spoke with a vehemence which surprised him. "There's nothing to see, K'anpo. Now let me pass."

"Maybe I was wrong." There was a sadness in the little man's eyes, and he didn't move aside. "When I healed you before, I reached something inside of you... An understanding, or so I thought. There is so much that I could teach you, Mike."

"Like what? Like how to get the Brigadier to speak to me again? Like how to convince my friends that I'm not a traitor? That I can be trusted? Get out of my way, K'anpo."

"Humans." The Time Lord made a disparaging face. "Always angry, always rushing about. Now I know why the Doctor has always fitted in here so well." He raised a hand, and pointed at Mike. "You want your friends to accept you again, but how can they do that when you don't even accept yourself? When you don't believe in yourself. Hmm?" He prodded the younger man in the chest. "Think. Do you trust yourself?"

"I--" Mike sighed. "You know your job, don't you."

"I came here to help people like yourself, Mr Yates. I have to know my job, or I couldn't do it." The monk smiled. "So, are you ready to learn?"

"Learn what?" Despite his frustration, Mike was intrigued. This man, unlikely though it might have seemed to look at him, was a Time Lord; a man who had all of space and Time at his fingertips. Better than that, he was one of the Doctor's own people; somebody who knew the mysterious scientist, and knew everything that the Doctor did about the universe. Everything that Mike himself had always hoped to learn one day.

"Whatever you want to know." K'anpo took Mike's arm, and led him towards the large, ornate cupboard in the corner of the room. He opened the door and gestured inside. "What do you say?"

Mike stared through the door, recognising most of the equipment that he could see, even though he had no idea what it was all for. He remembered the first time that he had gone inside the Doctor's TARDIS, and had seen all this awe-inspiring majesty for the first time. He wandered towards the central console.

"Why are you showing me this?" he asked. K'anpo shrugged rather vaguely.

"A man gets lonely, especially as he gets older. Seeing the Doctor again made me realise how much I have missed the company of a younger person; someone to talk to, someone to teach. Someone to share my travels with."

"Your travels?" Mike blinked, astonished. "K'anpo, I can't go with you. I have things to do here. I have a life to get back to."

"You have a life to mourn." K'anpo pressed a few switches on the console, making strange sounds start up from somewhere within the machine. "You can't win back what you've lost until you find what it is that you're looking for." He smiled brightly. "So what's it to be, Mike? Do you come with me, explore the universe, learn new things about a million different worlds... or do you stay on Earth, and think back to what you used to be, what you used to have?"

"I--" Mike felt confused. K'anpo had a particularly brutal way of cutting through to the bone. It hurt to admit that the strange Time Lord was right. He was doing himself no favours sitting around wishing that things had happened differently. "Do you fly this thing better than the Doctor?" he asked. K'anpo giggled merrily.

"My infant son - had I such a thing - could fly this better than the Doctor. He always did have his head in the clouds. But his heart is in the right place; as is yours. So what's it to be?"

Mike ran his eyes over the console, watching the flickering lights. He turned to look back towards the office where he had been sitting in silent contemplation of his misery such a short time before, but the doors were closed, cutting him off from the familiar sights. What would he be leaving behind, if he chose to go now? What would he be missing? More importantly, who would miss him? The Brigadier didn't seem to care, Benton had other concerns, Jo Grant had gone away, and the Doctor was not himself anymore. On the other hand, what would he be getting himself into if he left? Would he ever come back? He smiled.

"I suppose, all things considered... I really would rather like to go with you." He paused. "If you don't mind."

"Don't mind?" K'anpo laughed happily. "My dear boy, we've been underway for nearly five minutes. I really don't mind at all."

"We're underway?" Mike stared back at the console. There was no central column to rise and fall rhythmically when in flight, but the noises he heard were familiar. "But what if - what if I'd said no?"

"I would have said hard luck." K'anpo smiled at him, and pointed towards an inner door. "Go and look around Mike. Choose yourself a room. Later I'll show you around properly." He smirked. "You're not air-sick are you?"

"No." Filled with a sense of trepidation, Mike took a few steps towards the inner door. Before he opened it he paused, hand on the handle, and glanced back at K'anpo. The little monk grinned at him, eyes bright and teasing.

"Relax, Mike. It'll be fun. You'll see worlds no other human has ever heard of; visit cities that were destroyed centuries ago... You'll enjoy it."

"You think?" He opened the door, glancing out at the corridor beyond. It looked extremely long. He wondered if there was a map anywhere on board.

"Of course." The little man sounded delighted, like a child setting out on a long and exciting journey. "We'll have such fun, Mike. What could possibly go wrong?"

SOMEWHERE IN THE VORTEX

Mike Yates stretched slowly, and glanced at the chronometer on the nearby wall. It was a grand word, but one could hardly call such an item a clock, since it registered not only relative time within the TARDIS, but also the passage of real Time, in as much as there could be such a thing. He had set it to mark time since he had left Earth; just so that his own, much abused body-clock could have some idea of which way the universe was going. By his time, it should have been December 4th, 1975, somewhere around five in the morning. Not that that mattered in the here and now; wherever and whenever the here and now actually was. He grinned. There had been a time when he had actually believed K'anpo's claim to be able to fly the TARDIS accurately, but as it had turned out, he himself was much better at controlling the machine than was the Time Lord. Even then it seemed to have an uncanny ability to land half a galaxy away from wherever they wanted it to go. Maybe all TARDISes had some kind of a built in unreliability, just to add a little uncertainty to their owners' lives.

Mike closed his book, and yawned. He hadn't realised that it was so late. He had been reading a large book; a somewhat optimistic attempt to fit the history of an entire galaxy into one over-sized volume. It still amazed him that all of these things he read about; all the people and the places and the wars, had been going on all over the universe since before mankind had first begun to develop on Earth. Then again, most of what he was reading about in this particular history book probably hadn't even happened yet, since he had no idea when he was at that particular time. It was an interesting position to be in.

He stood up, replaced the book on the shelf, and headed off towards the console room. K'anpo would no doubt smile pleasantly at him, ask him if he had slept well, and then present him with another sheet of equations concerning Time mechanics. Either that or get him to translate some work of Shakespeare into some obscure alien tongue. He had already translated half of them into more languages than he could remember. His last task had been to copy a complicated Buddhist text into ancient High Gallifreyan. Still, at least he was never bored; and how many twentieth century human retired army officers were there who could successfully hold a conversation in Skarn, or who could sing that blessed Venusian lullaby of the Doctor's in its original language?

"Ah, Mike!" K'anpo was sitting cross legged on the floor, as always looking as though he had just awoken from a deep and refreshing sleep. Mike doubted that he had moved from his place all night.

"K'anpo." He nodded a greeting, and strode over to take a look at the Time clock. "Where are we?"

"What? Oh, no idea, no idea." The little monk leapt to his feet. "Why, have we materialised?"

"Looks like it." He ran his eyes over the instruments, wondering if he would ever learn what half of them were for. K'anpo didn't seem to know either, which was hardly reassuring. "We're about ten thousand feet up in the air."

"Oh." The Time Lord frowned, and adjusted a few switches. "We won't pop outside for a look around just yet then. Hmm... Looks nice from up here, I must say."

"The last time that you said a place looked nice, the atmosphere turned out to be ninety percent sulphur." Mike watched his companion bring the ship in for a landing. A series of peculiar noises emanated from somewhere within the central console, informing them that they had now ceased to move. Mike raised his eyebrows. If he had had a car that made noises like this machine did, he would have got rid of it a long time ago. He certainly wouldn't be driving around the roads in it. So why was he prepared to travel through Time and space in something that probably should have been delivered to the wrecker's yard years before?

"Well the atmosphere checks out." K'anpo smiled and nodded happily to himself. "Not so very different from Earth, in fact. Very breathable."

"Jolly good." Mike reached for the door control, but K'anpo stopped him. "What's wrong?"

"A little caution never hurt anyone." The little man frowned at a few more readouts. "I can't detect any life forms nearby, so we should be safe..."

"Good." Grinning at his friend's worries, Mike opened the doors and walked out. "If I see anybody who looks dangerous, I'll send them on in, shall I?"

"You can mock, Mike." K'anpo furrowed his brows in mock severity. "But don't say I didn't warn you. If you should happen to run into something unpleasant out there--"

"K'anpo, when did we ever not run into something unpleasant?" Mike flashed him a grin, and wandered further out into the fresh air, leaving the TARDIS behind him, well out of earshot. He smiled. There was a feeling of deep relaxation; a wonderful serenity about this place, which told his well-honed instincts that he was probably walking into something that he would much rather be walking away from. Such was life in the TARDIS. He had once thought that the Doctor's stories were rather exaggerated, but he had found that the universe was indeed filled with strange creatures and war-like dictators. What was more, K'anpo's TARDIS seemed to have the same uncanny knack for finding them as did the Doctor's own much-travelled machine.

"At least this place seems peaceful enough." Mike's voice surprised him with its volume. He wondered why this place should be so quiet. The conditions were so perfect that he did not believe that the planet could be without life; so where was it all? Images of carnivorous plants and mad, savage humanoids played about in his mind, and he smiled. He was becoming overly suspicious, just like K'anpo. Just because they usually landed in a world full of evil mad-men and hideous beasts, didn't necessarily mean that every planet housed such creatures.

The merry gurgle of a stream attracted Mike's attention, and he wandered towards the noise, smiling at the sight of the bubbling strip of water which was rushing through the trees by his feet. Flowers of every imaginable colour carpeted the edges of the stream, and he sat down beside it, enjoying the moment. It wasn't often that he got the chance to relax in this way. Moments of peace tended only to come whilst in the TARDIS, and there the effect was hardly the same. He picked a flower and dropped it into the water, watching it race off towards wherever the stream was going. He wondered where that was. Were there people there? If so what were they like? He should really have waited for K'anpo to finish his scans, but restlessness was sometimes too strong to resist.

"Mike!" He heard the Time Lord calling him, and waited for the older man to catch him up, unable to summon the energy to call back. He heard the little man's footsteps, and smiled to himself as they went right past. He caught a momentary glimpse of K'anpo's reflection in the water, and then his companion was gone. He grinned. He should probably stand up, and call the other man back.

Relaxing back against a convenient tree trunk, Mike heard a splashing of water from somewhere close by, and sighed. K'anpo had obviously spotted him, and was making his way back. He opened his eyes, turning his head towards the sound, and froze. Coming towards him, and running fast, was a woman. Her eyes were opened wide with desperation, and as she came closer, he stood. She saw him, stumbling backwards in her uncertainty, and nearly fell over as her feet lost their footing in the wet pebbles of the stream bed.

"Take it easy!" Catching her arm to help her regain her balance, Mike's practised eye swept her up and down. "You look exhausted. Are you alright?"

"They - they're after me." Gasping, she glanced back over her shoulder, looking towards the trees from which she had emerged. "Please--"

"Don't worry. I won't let anybody hurt you." Putting a guiding arm around the young woman's shoulders, Mike led her up the bank and into the cover of the trees. "Now who is after you, and why?"

"I - I mustn't stop. I can't take the chance--" She broke off, looking over her shoulder again. The sounds of pursuit were now easily heard above the stream, and Mike heard loud, heavy footsteps, and the crash of broken undergrowth.

"Quickly." Pushing her under the cover of a nearby bush, Mike dashed behind a tree trunk, watching for a sign of this pretty young woman's pursuers. They broke out of the woodland before him, tearing the branches from the trees in their hurry. Mike swallowed hard. The new arrivals were far from being humanoid in appearance. Large and reptilian, they were grotesque to his Earth-trained eyes. He stared at their green, scaled skin, and at the long, forked tongues which darted from their mouths to flicker about in the air. They jerked to a halt, speaking together in a harsh language which he did not understand. Long yellow teeth caught the sunlight as they spoke, and Mike watched their clawed, powerful hands clench and unclench, showing their rage and frustration. He took a deep breath. Whatever these creatures were, they obviously had something planned for the young woman, and it was something which had reduced her to a terrified, desperate wreck. He bent towards her now, seeing the way that her eyes darted about. She looked up at him, and her lips mouthed desperate words.

"Take it steady." Keeping his voice as low as he could, Mike slipped down to crouch beside her. He pulled the laser gun from his belt, holding one eye on the reptiles and one on the girl. "Do you think you can still run?" She stared at him for a moment, then nodded. He grinned. "Good. Follow my lead, alright? When I open fire, make a run for the next group of trees."

"O-okay." She nodded hard, and tensed herself. He gripped the handle of his weapon tightly, counting under his breath. He stood.

The reptile creatures swung towards him as he rose into view, and he saw them reach for whatever weapons they wore at their waists. Face set hard, Mike fired, obliterating one reptile in a flash of laser fire. The others scrambled for cover, and he caught a momentary glimpse of their dead comrade's body, before it disintegrated in a mass of jelly-like gore. His stomach turned. Everything about these creatures was revolting, even down to the way that they died, and he had no desire to stand and watch them any longer. Sending a couple more shots in the direction of the creatures, he dashed after the girl. He saw her vanish amongst the trees up ahead and with a sudden burst of speed, he skidded after her, dodging the thick foliage which the reptiles had so easily smashed. She slowed to a halt as he drew nearer, and he saw that she was exhausted. His protective instincts grew stronger, and he moved towards her.

"Are you okay?" he asked. She stared at him, or rather at the laser gun in his hand, and then nodded slowly.

"Yes. I think so." She frowned, her eyes showing uncertainty. "You - you're not from around here, are you?"

"No." He offered her a grin, which he hoped might help to reassure her. "My name is Captain Yates, United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. I'm from Earth." He had never become used to introducing himself in a civilian capacity, and still tended to use his old title. Not that that amounted to much here. "You can call me Mike."

"Mike?" She sounded as though the word was unfamiliar. "Earth?"

"Yes, it's..." he shrugged. "Well it's a planet, but I don't suppose you would have heard of it. It's rather a long way away. I think."

"You mean you don't know?" She was looking more confused by the minute, which reminded him that he was supposed to be putting her at her ease. He didn't seem to be succeeding so far.

"Sorry. We've been having a few problems with our ship, that's all." He put the gun away, noting how her eyes kept returning to it. She was probably scared, after all that she had been through. "Are you sure that you're okay?"

"Yes." She sounded distant, than smiled at him. "Sorry. My name is Sudra." She gestured about with an arm. "This is my planet. We call it 209."

Mike frowned. "That's a little impersonal."

She shrugged. "It's a planet. My people are not poets, we're farmers. Or were, until the Chand'raa came."

"Chand'raa? Those are the... the big lizard things?"

"Yes. They took over the planet. We had no defences, and many of us were killed. The others were enslaved." She shuddered. "I escaped from a holding centre, about two days ago, but they caught up with me. If it hadn't been for you..." She took a deep breath. "Earlier, you said 'we'. Does that mean that you don't travel alone?"

"That's right." He was a little surprised by her sudden change of direction, but put it down to confusion. "I travel with a friend of mine. A... scientist. Of sorts."

"Also from... from Earth?"

"No, from another planet." He decided not to mention the Time Lords, knowing how they liked to travel incognito. "I can take you to meet him, show you our ship. If you'd like. I, er... I really feel that you ought to relax for a while. Take it easy. Maybe later we can talk."

"Yes." She smiled, making him feel suddenly self-conscious. There was something odd about the way she looked at him, almost as if he amused her. His old friend Jo Grant had looked at him in much the same way, usually when she was teasing him about his accent, and the way that he was always so stiff and correct. "Thankyou Mike. I'd like to... take it easy."

"Jolly good." He gestured ahead. "This way. I'll introduce you to K'anpo, if I can find him. He's gone off somewhere. I'm rather afraid he could get lost in his own back garden." She laughed at that, and he found himself relaxing a little. She was very pretty, and more or less his own age, as far as he could tell. He liked the fact that he had probably saved her life, and he liked the thought that there might be something he could do to help more of her people. He let his hand rest on the butt of his gun, and strode ahead through the trees.

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K'anpo wandered through the forest, wondering where in Rassilon's name Mike could have got to this time. The human had an uncanny knack for disappearing, usually when he knew that the Time Lord wanted to run some scans, or complete some scientific experiments. New worlds had to be studied, examined, tested. Mike just wanted to explore. An old Earth proverb about curiosity and cats came to mind, and K'anpo smiled. The problem with his young friend wanting to explore was that he didn't stop just with exploring things, but tended to become involved in things as well; usually local wars, or on one memorable occasion, a full-scale inter-planetary conflict.

"Mike?" Calling louder as he wandered further from the TARDIS, K'anpo hesitated, and looked around. Just which way was it back to the ship, anyway? Had he really gone that far? He sighed. "Blast. I should have stayed inside..." He wandered on, never one to worry for long, and soon came to the edge of the forest. A pleasant view awaited him, of distant hills and sloping meadows filled with a profusion of brightly coloured plant life. He sighed. Life in the TARDIS was all very well, but it was sights like this that tended to remind a man of the garden and the house he had left behind.

"You're getting soft, old man." The Time Lord smiled to himself as he drank in the scene beneath him. If only the sky had been scarlet, he would almost have felt at home here, lost in the peace and quiet. He was almost glad that he had lost Mike.

"Don't move." The voice came from somewhere off to his right, and rather than obey it, K'anpo turned to see who had spoken. A man stood nearby, just in the shadows of the trees at the edge of the forest. He was clearly humanoid, with a well-muscled torso and a clean shaven face. His hair was blond and straight, reaching to his shoulders, and he was dressed in a short tunic and trousers of a matching metallic grey colour. He held a gun in one hand, pointed unswervingly at K'anpo.

"Good morning! Or afternoon, or whatever." Stepping forward, the gun not even of minor concern, the Time Lord extended his hand in greeting. "I am K'anpo, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance, young man. I'm a visitor here, and I do hope that I'm not trespassing, but I seem to have lost my young friend. Tall chap, not a local. Wearing a blue shirt..."

"Silence." His voice sharp, the man approached K'anpo, gun still raised. "I don't know you."

"No, exactly. I just said that--"

"I told you to be quiet." The young man looked him up and down, clearly not impressed by the small stranger, with his rumpled clothing and innocent eyes. "What unit are you from?"

"I'm not from any unit. My name is K'anpo, and I landed here a short time ago." The Time Lord sighed, recognising the signs of military stubbornness in this man. He would not be easy to talk to.

"Why are you here?" There was a clear note of unpleasantness in the man's voice now. K'anpo sighed. It looked as thought the TARDIS had done it again. He only hoped that someone, somewhere thought that this was funny.

"I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere. I was coming from the Ellyon system. There's a black hole near there, tends to play havoc with navigation..." He tried a smile. "If you must know, I was aiming for a little place called Earth, 1817 local time. I promised to introduce Mike to a friend of mine named Shelley..." He frowned. "I'm sorry, am I keeping you?"

"You're either very strange, or a very clever actor." His captor scowled at him, his brow creased with deep furrows of thought. K'anpo got the impression that thoughts didn't come easily to this man. "I think you'd better come with me."

"I really don't have the time." The Time Lord sighed, a feeling of resignation settling on his shoulders. "Look I didn't mean to come here. I'll just find my friend and we'll leave straight away. No need to bother you any longer."

"I don't think so." Smiling nastily, the man took a few steps forward, towering over K'anpo at such close range. "You're coming with me."

"Yes, I suppose I shall have to." Offering the man another smile, in the vague hope that it might soften the other's harsh expression, K'anpo tried raising his hands in surrender. The man stared back at him, his face showing cold disregard. He fired one shot, and K'anpo felt a ray of light envelop him. He lost consciousness, and the ground came up to meet him.

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