Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani by Pip Baker, Jane Baker Read Free Book Online

rosy hue on the scanner, the Master could be seen exploring the eerie disused mine. Shale scrunched beneath his polished shoes. The rotting pit props supporting the uneven roof were meshed with cobwebs that adhered to his gloves.
    ‘A rat hole,’ he muttered in disgust.
    ‘Then you should be at home!’ thought his unseen observer as she realigned the contrast.
    He moved cautiously... alert... listening. He had no desire to come upon the aggressive miners unawares.
    The scuff of a foot on rubble from deeper within. The Master paused... felt for the TCE.
    ‘I told you to wait, you cretins!’ murmured the Rani.
    ‘Wait until he’s nearer. He’s armed!’
    The steely command revealed that the Master had underestimated the Rani. When she had plundered the miners’ brains, she had also made them her vassals.
    Through an implant in their necks, she could communicate instructions. Her erstwhile partner was walking into an ambush.
    All was quiet. He ventured on.
    ‘ Now! ’ hissed the Rani.
    In sudden, simultaneous action, Jack Ward leapt from his hiding place, cutting off the rear, and Edwin Green dropped from a ledge. He landed on top of the Master, howling him over. Before he could recover, the agile Green pounced again, locking his opponent in a grip that prevented him from using the TCE. Frantically, the Master wrestled to get free. The writhing bodies scrunched into the rough shale.
    But the Rani, too, had miscalculated. Instead of succumbing swiftly, the Master was giving an able account of himself. Her all-important phial was in danger of being crushed between the combined weights. The brain fluid would be spilt!
    Yanking a mini-transmitter from her skirt pouch, she hurriedly tapped out a code. A micro-second later, breaking from the clinch, Green clutched at his neck.
    Choked. Tore at the crimson mark.
     
    To no avail.
    The crimson spread... slowly... remorselessly... painfully strangling Green to death...
    ‘"The Mark of the Rani.’ The Master had correctly surmised that the fatal crimson mark was the Rani’s deadly signature. Her obscene ingenuity made him more determined than ever to conscript her talents.
    ‘Is he dead?’ Jack Ward broke in on his thoughts.
    The Master nodded. Already he was devising a scheme to turn the situation to his own advantage. If he could persuade these homicidal idiots that the Doctor had caused their companion to die... ‘I warned you that inventor was treacherous. I told you to get rid of him.’
    Jack Ward was perplexed. ‘But he’s not nowhere near.’
    ‘He doesn’t have to be. He’s got a machine that does his foul work for him.’ Prepared for Ward’s answer, he pulled out paper and pen.
    ‘A machine?’
    ‘I’ll show you.’ He began to draw on the paper.
    The Rani adjusted the controls, but was unable to bring the sketch into focus. ‘What’s he up to now?’
    A loud hammering on the street door.
    ‘It’ll be something devious and overcomplicated.’
    Switching off the scanner, she quit the laboratory. ‘He’d get dizzy if he tried to walk a straight line!’
    But in the gloom of the old mine, the Master knew exactly what he was doing. He had drawn a sketch of the Doctor’s TARDIS.
    ‘What’s that?’ Ward snatched the paper. ‘A coffin?’
    ‘A coffin?’ The appropriate description amused the Master. ‘It’s the machine that killed your friend.’
    ‘That thing?’
    ‘Can you offer a better explanation?’
    ‘Nay.’ Ward’s inner turmoil welled into anger again.
    ‘Nay, I can’t.’
    ‘Then be guided by me. Take that box and bury it in the deepest shaft!’
    ‘Can’t see no point in burying a box!’ Ward was a practical man. ‘Better to bury him !’
    The others nodded in agreement. Not the reaction the Master wanted at all. No wonder he had such contempt for the beings on this planet! Contrary creatures! In fact, if it weren’t that he would derive pleasure from seeing the Doctor butchered by these very humans he so favoured,