| Doctor Who Missing Internet Adventure #24 - "Endorra"
Chapter 5
"Episode Five"
by Mister Andersen
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Agent Orange
The ship is box-like and ugly, little more than a cargo hold and over-sized engines with a couple of rudimentary atmospheric control surfaces. The composite material of the hull hasn't been painted, and lacks any form of identification. Nether are there any sort of running lights or observation portals. Everything about the ship suggests it's been made strictly for a
one-way flight.
It transitions into real-space amidst a brief nebulous swirl of transluminal energy that dissipates across the envelope of the resort world's atmosphere. Almost immediately that display is replaced by a corona of fire as the ship begins to burn up.
As the flames gradually dissipate, the engines detonate in a manner that can only be deliberate, the shock-wave rupturing the hull and vomiting forth a number of spherical objects, tethered to each other.
They cluster-spiral towards the surface, moving ever faster, scorched but intact. Three kilometres up their descent begins to slow, the air around them distorting as antigravity generators kick in and the tethers gain a sudden inflexible rigidity.
Some three hours before the terminator into the new day, the spheres hit the ground dead-on at roughly sixty kilometres an hour, their formation intact; their surfaces deform and crack heavily as the soil is displaced by the impact. For a moment there is only the sound of very hot things cooling, then the broken spheres and the poles between them start to melt, boiling away into the air until 6 smaller brightly polished spheres remain.
A new sound makes itself heard, a warbling pulse that creates eddies of air current, pulling in molecules and reconfiguring them into the form of a man. Or at least something resembling one.
"What an inelegant way to travel," he comments, brushing off imaginary dust from his impeccably tailored suit before straightening the collar and stepping out of the ring. A minute later, the sound and the air currents form again, this time leaving behind a tightly grouped mound of... tumbleweeds?
The weeds growl.
"I see you agree with me," he responds. "The Lifegiver of this world will soon rise, my dears. Follow."
He walks off into the forest, heading towards the hotel. The weeds separate into eight distinct balls, geometric confusions of thorns and leaves and rippling vines encircling a dark fungal core. Growling and sniffing, they roll after him.
Another minute later and the transmat begins to evaporate. By the time the sound of the man's passage through the undergrowth has disappeared, so have all visible signs of his arrival.
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To be continued...
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