Sky Pirates! (novel)

Sky Pirates!
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Benny, Roz, Chris
Featuring:	Captain Nathan li Shao, Sgloomi Po, Leetha, Kiru, Six
Main enemy:	Solan, Sekor Dom Sloathe, The Sloathes Charon
Main setting:	The System
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writer:	Dave Stone
Cover by:	Jeff Cummins
Release details
Release number:	40
Release date:	20 July 1995
Format:	Paperback Book; 34 Chapters, 337 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20446-8
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Original Sin
Next →	Zamper

Sky Pirates! or The Eyes of the Schirron is the fortieth New Adventures novel. It features the Seventh Doctor, Bernice Summerfield and new companions Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej in their first full novel as companions.

Publisher's summary

Avast, ye scurvies!

Hoist the mainbrace, splice the anchor and join the Doctor and Benny for the maiden voyage of the good ship Schirron Dream, as it ventures into the fungral dark of air spaces occupied by the Sloathes - those villainous slimy evil shapeshifting monsters of utter and unmitigated evil that have placed a system under siege!

Watch Roslyn Forrester and Chris Cwej have a rough old time of it in durance vile! Meet the intrepid Captain Li Shao, and the beautiful if somewhat single-minded Sun Samurai Leetha t'Zhan! Roast on the dunes of Prometheus, swelter in the foetid jungles of Anea, swim with the Obi-Amphibians of Elysium and freeze off inconvenient items of anatomy on the ice wastes of Reklon in an apparently doomed search for the Eyes of the Schirron, the magickal jewels that will either save the system or destroy it utterly!

Who will live? Who will die? Will the Doctor ever play the harmonium again? All these questions and many more will be answered within the coruscating, fibrillating pages of ... Sky Pirates!

Plot

Within a hermetically-sealed environment known as "the System" lies the mysterious Planet X. This planet is not a native of the System but is a wandering planet which found its way in-between the four Wanderers within the System. From out of this Planet came the Sloathes, who began to infest the System and steal all of its resources. Though this is a great threat to the System, a greater threat is a discontinuity in the orbits of the Wanderers which threatens to completely destroy the System. This greatly angers Kraator Xem, the leader of the Sloathes. After watching over the Wanderers as various lesser Sloathes consume each other, Kraator Xem's two right-"hand" Sloathes (Sekor Dom and Lokar Pan) meet with the Most Elevated and Puissant Sloathe. The three discuss the invasion of the "green planet" which has been held up by an aboriginal Sun cult which has managed to survive Sloathe bombardment for ten years. Kraator Xem demands that Lokar Pan make the members of the Sun cult "stop pretending to move". Once Lokar Pan leaves, Kraator Xem snares a lesser Sloathe and eats the creature.

Canto First: A Sudden Arrival

In Rakath (the last of the Anean Dirigible cities to survive the Sloathe invasion), the Sun-Samurai host a mock-ritual to "find" their "Chosen One". After ritualistically playing hide-and-seek, the high priest Kimon finds a young Anean Seku named Leetha t'Zhan in a chest. Leetha then drags Kimon to her space travel-capable biplane and departs Anea to start a quest for the Eyes. As they leave, the Dirigible cities are destroyed and they are watched by a mysterious figure.

Shortly after joining the TARDIS to escape the fallout of the conspiracy within the Guild of Adjudicators, Roz joins the Doctor and Benny in an expedition through the TARDIS's rooms. This eventually brings the three of them to a large jungle-like area with a ziggurat at its center. While the Doctor and Benny lounge around, Roz floats on a raft in a fish pond and thinks over recent events until she is found by a lizard creature.

Shortly after leaving Anea, Kimon and Leetha are captured by a Sloathe freighter. They are kept in a polyp for several weeks (with Kimon's will to live being essentially destroyed) before the captain of the freighter summons them and demands that they explain the Holy Book that Kimon brought with him. Unbeknownst to anyone on the freighter, they are being followed through the Ring by a freighter belonging to the infamous pirate Nathan li Shao. Before boarding the Sloathe freighter, Nathan demands that his crew do not loot the ship or murder any hostages kept within its bowels. This proclamation is made largely towards one Mr. Pelt.

The lizard-being is revealed to be Chris Cwej - who woke up in the body with no knowledge of how this happened. According to the Doctor, the TARDIS attempted to stop the effects of the Hithis ship from causing massive damage to Chris' body-beppled form. Though the TARDIS accidentally gave Chris this new body, the Doctor is able to return Chris to a human form (sans clothes, which greatly embarrases Chris). The Doctor then reveals that he plans to take a vacation but is interrupted by what appears to be a distress call. Once inside the TARDIS's console room, the three humans see conflicting versions of a ship under attack. The Doctor realises that it is a trap and attempts to stop the TARDIS from following the signal. Unfortunately, he is too late and the TARDIS materialises right in the center of a reality bomb.

After captain Trenkor Lep rips off one of Kimon's ears and prepares to feed him to a tub of Sloathe young, the Promethean lapses out of his metabolic dormancy and attacks Sekor. Though this gives Leetha enough time to escape Sekor with the Holy Book, the Promethean is killed and consumed by the young. While Sekor hunts down Leetha, its freighter is attacked by Nathan's ship while it is still within the Ring. This exposes Leetha to a massive amount of hallucinogenic substances before she is found by a member of Nathan's crew. Unfortunately, this is Mr. Pelt - who shoots at Leetha before asking if she "wishes to breed".

While searching through the depths of the ship, Nathan and Kiru realise that its captain - along with Mr. Pelt - has gone missing. Before Mr. Pelt can commit unspeakable horrors to Leetha, he is shot through the head by Li Shao. While Kiru gives Leetha a respirator, Nathan finds Pelt's Reklonian companion and begins choking him as punishment for not watching over Pelt. While trying to convince Nathan not to kill the Reklonian, Kiru notices an odd section of wall. This "wall" reveals itself to be Trenkor Lep - who attacks the assembled pirates.

Unbeknownst to Leetha, her quest for the Eyes has been watched over by a mysterious ancient creature which lurks at the center of the System. This creature is enraged by the possible death of Leetha at the hand of the Sloathes. Unfortunately for this creature, its powers have wained to such an extent that it has little influence over the System proper. As such, it is forced to root through the surroundings of the System and grab a creation of its species' destroyers which it finds tumbling and spinning through the void and throw it at Trenkor.

After the TARDIS is caught in the reality bomb's explosion, the console room loses all notion of gyroscopic function. While Benny, Roz, and Chris are flung about the room as it spins, the Doctor manages to cling to the console while screaming in agony. By the time Benny reaches the Doctor he stops screaming but has lapsed into a delirious state. While the Doctor is still in this delirious state, the TARDIS materialises.

Right before Trenkor (who has become nigh-animalistic after feasting on the flesh of the freighter) can kill Leetha or Nathan, the TARDIS smashes through hir body. Though this does not kill Trenkor, it does take hir out of commission for a brief moment. The TARDIS is immensely damaged - its form not even vaguely resembling a police box. First the still-delirious Doctor steps out and briefly points his umbrella at Nathan before fainting. He is closely followed by Benny - who remains lucid for a brief moment before coming under the influence of the Ring's atmosphere and fainting - before the TARDIS vanishes.

While Nathan readies his crew to leave the freighter before it vanishes, Kraator Xem notices the theft from one of hir freighters and is enraged by the mere concept of someone taking from hir. Hir is only calmed by Sekor Dom, who reveals that the crew of the ship plan to return to Sere and that hir has contacts within the asteroid. Deeper within Planet X, the TARDIS materialises - with Chris and Roz stepping outside almost immediately after this. After watching the TARDIS begin to heal itself, the two begin to explore Planet X (with Roz being disturbed by her surroundings while Chris finds Planet X "neat" and "weird").

Deep within the System, the creature which grabbed the TARDIS now begins to reflect on the immediate aftermath of this decision. Though it knew about the Time Lord within, it did not know about that Time Lord's companions. It considers this an extremely minor setback and prepares itself to begin its plans now that "its pawns" are now in place.

Canto Second: A Question of Finance

While Nathan's ship disembarks from the freighter and starts voyaging towards Sere, Six repairs the lungs of Leetha and the two TARDIS crewmembers. While Six is working on Leetha, the Anean wakes up. This leads Six to accidentally use a "sting" which makes their form resemble Leetha's worst fears. This just happens to be an extremely warped view of Nathan li Shao (whom Leetha heard extremely blood-curdling stories about when she was young). This is followed by Benny waking up and the real Nathan li Shao visiting them. Upon learning that she is in the presence of Nathan li Shao, Leetha attacks the pirate captain (making him leave the room) and attempts to inform Benny of his numerous atrocities through an Anean song (something which brings Benny to the brink of developing psychomanipulative powers). When the Doctor awakens, Leetha resumes her song to inform the Doctor about Nathan.

After cutting down a wall, Chris and Roz find themselves face-to-face with a horde of Sloathes. The sheer inhumanity of the Sloathes causes Roz to fire on them before they are captured and brought to a cell filled with various other prisoners captured by the Sloathes. Meanwhile, as the Sloathes launch a new fleet of freighters, the remains of Trenkor Lep begin to stir.

Shortly after Nathan's crew arrive on the asteroid of Sere, they ditch Leetha, the Doctor, and Benny. While the three find employment at the brothel of one Mama Roca (with Benny becoming a cleaner and waiter while the Doctor begins playing a harmonium), Nathan (along with Six) requests an audience with the mover-and-shaker Solan. Upon getting this audience, Nathan reveals that he plans to reopen the trade routes between Sere and the Wanderers which were destroyed by the Sloathes. Though Solan believes that this is a futile expedition, he agrees to finance it. Once Nathan leaves, he asks for one "Mr. Glome" to follow Nathan around.

While Benny is somewhat happy with her job as a cleaner in Mama Roca's establishment, she is extremely worried that the society of Sere is on the cusp of collapsing into anarchic chaos. These fears are seemingly concerned when Benny is assaulted by some of the mercenaries that Nathan hired (with this assault only being broken up when Leetha kills two of the mercenaries). These fears are seemingly shared by Leetha and, shortly after this assault, Leetha reveals that she has found passage out of Sere.

At first, Roz only knows her fellow prisoners by their voices and assumes them to be roughly human. Soon, though, "night" within their cell ends and Roz finds that many of the prisoners are members of the non-human species living within the System. Due to her xenophobic tendencies, Roz is somewhat disturbed by this. Soon, she and Chris are made to sort through the various objects collected by them and find whatever suits their "daily" aesthetic tastes. During one of the prisoners' food breaks, Roz discovers a group of prisoners who are trying to escape by digging a tunnel out of their cell and (once they finish this monumental task) hijacking a Sloathe freighter. So far, the group has had very little luck with this. Despite this, Roz begins formulating a plan of escape with Chris - which involves finding the TARDIS.

Using the psychic skills of a degenomancer named Mr. Glome, Solan figures out that Nathan has other motives than rebuilding trade routes throughout the System. Meanwhile, Nathan buys a mysterious ship known as the Schirron Dream and has the feeling that the ship is subtly influencing him and his crew. He begins putting out fliers to find a new crew for the ship - which Leetha finds. Not knowing who is captaining the ship, Leetha decides to join its crew and brings Benny and the Doctor with her. Upon finding out who captains the Schirron Dream, Leetha attempts to kill him but is stopped by Benny. The Doctor convinces Nathan to let the three of them join their crew (though this is not due to his skills as a hero but due to his skills as a chef) but before they can officially joined, they are found by Solan and held hostage.

While Solan (who has secretly been communicating with Sekor Dom Sloathe) is able to hold Nathan hostage for a brief moment, the Doctor uses an extremely comedic stratagem to drive Mr. Glome into a psychotic break and stop Solan from shooting anyone while Nathan and his new crew members escape. While running down the street towards the Schirron Dream, Benny thinks over the character of the Doctor and remembers an extremely nihilistic essay on cartoons she wrote when she was 15. Soon, the new crew reaches their ship and departs Sere right before Solan's enforcers can catch up with them.

After several days plotting their escape with the group of escapees, Roz and Chris attempt to escape in a staged riot. Though they manage to escape their cell and reach the tunnels in which the TARDIS lurks in, they are stricken by an extremely debilitating illness and are captured by the Sloathes. They are brought before an administrator named An Tleki who creates a syringe from hir body and promises to do something that will make sure that Roz and Chris never attempt to escape again.

While Nathan thinks over his upcoming quest to hunt for the Eyes of the Schirron (something that he thinks will be a suicide mission), Solan calls him on the Dream's radio and reveals that a fleet of Sloathes are en route to Sere and that a Sloathe freighter is on an intercept course towards him. Shortly after this, the Doctor activates the Dream's engines fully - letting it blast through the Ring and the fleet - and its simulated gravity. Once Benny and Leetha fully recover from suddenly being smashed to the floor, the Doctor reveals that the Dream is en route to Nathan's homeworld of Prometheus and shows them the System. The clockwork nature of the System shocks Benny, who was "expecting more of the same old balls".

Meanwhile, the being which was once was Trenkor Lep crashes onto Planet X after several months spent falling towards it. Despite having a large part of its body burnt in entry, the remains of Trenkor continue to twitch.

Canto Third: After the Rains

As the Sloathes invade Sere, they systematically wipe out every single inhabitant they find. Only a few people living on Sere survive this invasion. During the invasion, Solan is captured and brought before Sekor Dom. Though it seems as though the Sloathes will kill Solan, the odious kingpin is able to convince Sekor that he will bring the Sloathes the Eyes of the Schirron.

Within Planet X, as Roz and Chris adjust to having Sloathe microspores (with these slowly eating each other until one is left to eat its way out of their bodies if a Sloathe does not inject them with more microspores) within them, the Sloathes begin herding all of their prisoners onto ships leaving Planet X.

On the icy Wanderer of Reklon, an ice-worm encounters something odd and ages to death. Meanwhile, on Anea, a swampwater bloater discovers it can walk on land. Along with this, a small globe falls to the ground on the watery Wanderer of Elysium.

While the Doctor is made into the Schirron Dream's chef, Bernice becomes its master-at-arms. After showing one of the crew how a piece of weaponry works, Benny speaks with Leetha about her less-than-friendly attitude - largely due to her extreme paranoia about Captain li Shao. Meanwhile, Kiru begins to look through Kimon's notes. During this examination, he is found by the Doctor. The two discuss the Eyes (whose signifigance Kiru does not believe in) and Nathan's character. At the same time, Benny and Leetha look through the Book and come across passages detailing the "Valley of the Scorpions of Glass". This soon devolves into a discussion of the psychology of deserts and urban warfare.

On Planet X, a Sloathe named Pon Fuki Gek discovers what appears to be a cluster of enticing objects. While Pon examines the objects, hir is consumed by the remains of Trenkor Lep.

While the Sloathe freighters arrive on Reklon, they are shot at by a local revolutionary group. While their freighter is not directly hit, Roz and Chris' freighter crashes to the ground. This causes several prisoners to be crushed to death and Roz to be briefly trapped underneath some rubble before she is rescued by a prisoner. Unfortunately, she is found by a member of the extremely antagonistic revolutionaries (who have been killing the Sloathes and their prisoners) who kills the prisoner who rescued Roz. Before the revolutionary can do anything to Roz, he is killed by Cwej (who has geared up with weaponry stolen from revolutionaries). The two decide to escape and find an injured Sloathe in a pile of corpses. Roz decides to take the Sloathe due to the Sloathe microspores coursing through her and Chris' veins.

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Bernice Summerfield
• Roz Forrester
• Chris Cwej
• Nathan li Shao
• Sgloomi Po
• Leetha
• Trenkor Lep
• Kiru
• Sekor Dom Sloathe
• Six
• Solan
• Yani
• The Snata
• Pon Fuki Gek
• Kraator Xem
• Lokar Pan
• Kimon
• The eating creature
• Mr. Glome
• An Tleki
• Mr. Pelt
• Kruvars
• Smudger

Worldbuilding

Books

• Head Invaders: Asinine Quasi-Psychological Old Toot of Your Times is published in 1997 and features contributions from Bernice Summerfield.

Drugs and medicines

• Roz Forrester smokes Cuban cigars.

Food and beverages

• The Doctor once gave Li Shao a chocolate-coated liquorice that was garlic- and spam-flavoured.
• The Doctor hypothesises that the Sloathes are capable of becoming beings far more complex than he had considered after Sgloomi Po develops the ability to digest a cheese and pickle sandwich.

Individuals

• Chris Cwej is around twenty years old. He is showed to be "well endowed" and somewhat shy.
• One of the Navaho's mythical figures is a being known as "Nayenezgani". This mythical hero "protected the world from the forces of destruction".
• While in the TARDIS's ziggurat room, the Doctor listens to a recording of Mr. George Formby.
• Shortly after joining the TARDIS, Roz found the Doctor "three feet off the floor, juggling four variecoloured balls of blinding plasma and singing to himself an insane little song about a grackle, in three voices, simultaneously."
• While in the System, Benny frequently devolves into long lectures about various topics.

Locations

The System

• The System is a "perfect gaseous globe, encapsulated by an electrostatic Möbeus bubble-shell, through which the four high-density Wanderers spin around the Sun". The intrusion of Planet X has caused the System's bubble-shell to "thrash and flare about it".
• Between the orbits of Aneas and Elysium is a massive Ring of extremely small silicate fragments and hallucinogenic gas.

ANEAs

• Aneas is a jungle-world with one massive river (known as the Anacon River) which splits into a "almost vascular maze". The Anacon River has long gone stagnant and the jungles of Anea formed from this.
• Rakath is one of the Dirigible cities of Anea. It is home to a group known (roughly) as the Sun-Samurai, who were the last Anean survivors of the Sloathe assaults.

Planet X

• The homeworld of the Sloathes, Planet X is not native to the System but is a wandering planet which entered into the System "millennia ago [due to] some long-forgotten catastrophe". Its surface is made of basalt and pockmarked with volcanic craters. Extremely strong winds constantly blow on its surface.

Occupations

• Bernice works as a waitress and cleaner at Mama Roca's establishment while stranded on Sere.

Species

• Snatas feed on fear and terror.
• The inhabitants of the System are hybrids of humans, Silurians, Sasquatches, Draconians, Solarians and various other species.
• The eating creature is an alien creature (presumably related to the Charons) that crashed onto Anea.

The Sloathes

• Sloathes are a hermaphroditic race native to Planet X. Their main goal in life is to collect various objects from other planets. They have the ability to warp their own bodies and take on extremely surreal forms. Despite this, they are said to lack generative creativity and their forms almost always are based around objects or beings that they have seen before.
• The Sloathes believe that most (if not all) other life is simply pretending to move around and show signs of life.
• When not morphing their body, Sloathes resemble soft and scaly obloids.
• Only Sloathes larger or the same size as a large dog are sentient. Those below this size spend their days consuming each other in the depths of Planet X.
• Sloathe ships are built from the bodies of the few Sloathes with mental deformities after these Sloathes are grown to massive proportions.
• While within their freighters, the prisoners of the Sloathes are kept in polyps.

The TARDIS

• The TARDIS's "ziggurat room" is a reconstruction of a jungle with a ziggurat and a fish pond within it. It is most likely part of its memory-banks.
• The TARDIS is able to "edit" the biologies of the beings within it (though it is possibly only able to do this if they have gone through something like body beppling). To stop Chris from dying due to the effects of the Hithis ship, it edits his biology to stop these effects. This briefly leads to Chris becoming a large humanoid lizard-creature.

Time Lords

• Following (one of) the Time Wars, the Time Lords pattern encoded their unborn with a multi-dimensional response to kill their ancient enemies.

Time wars

• The Time Wars mentioned in this novel relate to when the Time Lords first achieved time travel. These wars were to eliminate potential threats.
• The reality bomb that nearly destroyed the TARDIS was the remnant of one of the species retroactively eliminated from the timeline during the Time Wars. This is possibly the Charons.

Vehicles

• While battling the Sloathes, the Sun-Samurai use biplanes.

Notes

• According to author Dave Stone, this story is part of a trilogy consisting of Sky Pirates!, Death and Diplomacy and the Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures novel Oblivion.

Continuity

• Sgloomi Po compares controlling a Sloathe ship to having and flying an enormous body, and suggests that Chris would enjoy it. Chris would eventually be given the biological advantages of the House Military, meaning that having a ship for a body would be a possibility for him. (PROSE: Dead Romance, The Book of the War)
• The "reality bomb" makes Chris see footage of a ship under attack by the Daleks. Though Chris never encountered the Daleks before this, he watched reconstructions of the Third Dalek War as a child.
• The Doctor is shown to be able to levitate. He was first shown using this gift in COMIC: Levitation.
• It is implied that the Time Lords wiped out a race that could achieve a similar mastery of space and time; a similar idea is considered in AUDIO: Zagreus.
• The crew of the Schirron Dream reappear in PROSE: Oblivion.

Illustrations

• Includes four illustrations by Roger Langridge.

• 

  Canto illustration

• 

  Aneas

• 

  The Temple of Ankara-Ha-Ha

• 

  The 45-Second Piglet

External links

• Sky Pirates! at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Sky Pirates at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Sky Pirates!
• Interview with Dave Stone, interview conducted on November 6 1996, it appeared in issue 11 of Broadsword