ChasNicollette
Allons-y Means Let's Go.
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2007
- Posts
- 16,135
The box was blue.
The sands were red.
Outside the wind rattled crimson dust against the navy paneling of the wooden box, rattattatting like branches against the windows.
He stood with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed. He stood in the cavernous Console Room of The TARDIS, his back resting against the Console, the Time Rotor silently waiting behind him.
Tears stained his cheeks.
It had once taken him only six words to deconstruct a Prime Minister's career. But five words...
His friend.
His friend had saved the course of history. Twice. With only five.
Out there in the frozen desert sands of The Fourth Planet, the desert island of Mars, he had walked away from Bowie Base One.
It had been destined to die, the way so very few certain things were destined. Set in stone. Nothing he could do.
Nothing.
And oh, how he'd railed against it.
('Everybody knows that everybody dies. And nobody knows it like The Doctor.')
He was a time traveller. More than that, he was a Time Lord of the fabled planet of Gallifrey. Given to him was dominion over time and of space. He could explore their furthest reaches, from Creation to Entropy, from The Medusa Cascade to The Silver Devastation.
And where he saw fit, he could stride into events and make certain that The Universe would unfold as it should.
But there were limits.
There were certain things. Certain immensely important things. That could not be changed.
Natural disasters. Chain reactions.
Death and Destruction.
('Not one line.')
Not even by him.
And he had been okay with that.
Mostly. Sometimes. From a distance.
But every so often, that sort of thing would get up close. Up so very close. And personal. He would see the eyes and hear the screams of the people he could not save for the life of him and it would spear into his twin hearts like jagged ice.
Bowie Base One had been like this.
A turning point, a crucial instant in the history of The Universe. Great and Bountiful Human Empires would spring from this. But these were living and breathing people. Real, hoping, fearing, beautiful, heroic people.
And he had had to walk away.
The comm had been open in the Sanctuary Base 6 spacesuit he'd been wearing. He'd heard them weeping and calling out to each other amidst the gathering darkness. He'd heard the chitter hiss of The Flood's inexorable descent upon those people. Russian accent, Australian, English...
He'd heard the creaking yearning reluctance to die of the steel combination domes, and he had walked away without looking back. He'd heard the explosion of the rocket, their last avenue of escape, he'd been pitched to the ground by the shockwave.
And as he'd risen to his feet, surrounded by burning shrapnel, listening to those lovely brave people perishing helplessly, then, then he'd looked back. And he'd heard other voices, too. His own.
He'd heard his own voice. Remembered his own words.
'I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the Last of The Time Lords.'
'They'll never come back. Not now.'
'I've got The TARDIS. Same old life, Last of The Time Lords.'
'When they died, they took it all with them. The walls of Reality closed, the worlds were sealed, gone forever.'
'The Time Lords kept an eye on them, but that's gone now, all of it.'
'But they died, The Time Lords, all of them, they died.'
'I'm the Last of The Time Lords.'
And in that moment had burned within him an unrighteous indignation, brighter hotter still than the scourged and blazing wreckage of the destructed shuttle, a kind of wanton resentful bitterness that had railed and wailed against the unfairness of it all.
(Why should these people die when it was in his power to save them? It was his power, no-one else's. There was no-one to exile him now, no-one to condemn him to a forced regeneration and a single century on a single planet. There was no-one now to tell him that he could not.
And why were they not there to stop him?
Because he'd let them die. The Time Lords.
He'd killed them himself. To stop them.
There was no-one left to stop him.
He could save them. He could save them. Him.
He would save them. And damn The Laws of Time that had stopped him thus far!)
The Doctor had taken one step forward. One step towards the burning leaking broken shell of Bowie Base One, and towards the human beings that still travailed within.
He had taken one step forward, fully intending to bend the so-called Laws of Time until they snapped.
And then he'd heard it.
Yet another voice.
This one hadn't been a voice from Bowie Base One. And it hadn't been an echo of his own voice in the past.
This had been his friend. His best mate.
Five words. In a still small voice.
They'd saved his life, once, those five words. Literally, had made the difference between his living and his dying. And now.
'Doctor! You can stop now.'
He had stopped, had stopped where he stood. He had hesitated.
His eyes had clenched shut.
He had still heard them screaming.
But for them to live when they should have died...
...oh...
...it had been excruciating.
He'd turned.
He'd turned away.
He had walked off into the Martian night, crossing scarlet dust towards a box of blue.
And as he'd stepped into the confines of his magical machine, there had come an enormous thunder. Another, far more final self-destruct, forever keeping The Flood from reaching Earth.
Forever annihilating what had been left of Bowie Base One.
A growing darkness had hesitated at the edges of Forever.
And history had remained intact.
The Doctor groaned, and fell to his knees there on the cold grating of The TARDIS. He had torn off his helmet and had hurled it away and its visor had shattered against one of the coral upgrowths of the Console Room.
This had felt fitting, somehow, the shattering of that helmet.
He had knelt there for a long time. Tears having run down his cheeks, he had knelt, and not moved. And eventually, eventually, trembling, he had stood. He had peeled his way out of the Sanctuary Base space-suit and had stood there against the Console.
'Doctor! You can stop now.'
He pursed his lips.
Should I?
Should I... stop? Could I?
Just make an end of it? No more no more no more...
Just leave off here. No more Time Lords at all, then. All gone. Universe can fend for itself for awhile.
He laughed faintly, a bitter laugh. I'm too old for this nonsense.
...but suddenly, there in the darkness of the Martian night, there with the sound of the Martian wind whistling outside, there with the sound of Martian sandstorms pattering against wood paneling that had never just been just wood, there came a buzzing.
Insistent.
Hungry.
Angry.
There came a buzzing.
The Doctor blinked dark, dark red-ringed tearful eyes. He blinked.
And withdrew his hand from his pocket.
With the hand, he pulled out a little black leather folder.
Psychic paper.
It buzzed in his fingers, the whole folder, and he arched an eyebrow. "Must have set it to vibrate," he muttered to himself. "Hate it when it does that in your pocket."
Hesitating, he frowned, and opened the folder.
Scrawled upon the slightly extrasensory notecard within was a short, brisk message. Repeating.
'S.O.S.'
'S.O.S.'
'S.O.S.'
He stared at it for a long, long moment. Stared at that paper.
"I should stop," he murmured. "I should really just... stop."
His brow furrowed, and his dark dark eyes scrunched tightly shut, his shoulders hunching.
A muscle in his jaw flexed.
He threw the psychic paper back in his pocket and whirled to face the Console with a blurring burst of movement, his fingers curling around the handbrake and his hand yanking downwards.
The Time Rotor groaned to life. Green light thrummed around him.
The TARDIS keened away.
"Busy life," The Doctor murmured, tightly through his teeth, unforgiving.
"Moving on."
********
PROLOGUE:
"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe."
********
PROLOGUE:
"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe."
********
VWORRRP. VWORRRP. VWORRRP.
The sound like the wind between the worlds echoed from the walls of metal halls, the churning shuddering keening sad sad sound of The Universe. And the blue box faded into place in that corridor.
With a distinctive creak-- should really oil those hinges --The Doctor swung open the door, cautiously sticking his head out before stepping fully out into the hallway and pulling the door shut behind him.
"What have you got for me this time?" he murmured.
He frowned quietly, glancing at a doorway nearby: on the wall next to the doorway, about a metre from the floor, was a spot for a handprint. Except the handprint looked like a Vulcan salute.
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Sontarans."
He turned this way, he turned that way, the coat billowing around him like a cloak as he moved, he ran his tongue around in his teeth. "Seems quiet enough, though, am I missing a meeting? Something with a balcony, lots of shouting, fists in the air, Rutans must die?"
There came, then, the sound of footfalls-- blimey, spoke too soon --a dozen tromping footfalls, and a skittering, a wild skittering, The Doctor arched an eyebrow, his hand flew to his pocket and out came the sonic--
'Round the corner came pelting something small. Something like lightning, it was a blur, small, quadrupedal, orange, its claws skittering upon the metal floor.
It shot between his legs in an eyeblink and puffed up the hem of his coat as it streaked by and it skidded to a halt at the base of The TARDIS with a thwud.
The Doctor gazed down at it with incredulity.
"Since when do Sontarans have ship's cats?" he demanded.
The feline gazed up at him with wide wide golden-brown eyes, its striped body trembling, its tail bushy and inflated and lashing, its claws out, its nostrils flaring with heavy breath.
And then a voice rang in The Doctor's head, utterly unlike listening to a comm signal on Mars or remembering his own conversations, this was telepathy, ESP projection, words deposited directly in the linguistic section of his brain the way The TARDIS autotranslated alien tongues: "Mate, you need a catflap."
The Doctor blinked. "What?"
The cat squinched his eyes at The Doctor, and that voice came again, an inexplicable Tasmanian accent: "I need to spell it out for you? They're coming, big stompy clone boots coming to step on my tail and pick my brain and I'd like to be gone when they get here."
The Doctor blinked again. "What?"
But then the Sontarans rounded the corner, feet pounding at the deckplates, there were six of them, The Doctor scowled and held his screwdriver out in front of him, pointed at them like a weapon.
They were diminutive for bipeds, but strong, with muscles designed primarily for load-bearing, they wore helmets and armoured suits and carried blast rifles and their footfalls were thunder. The blacked-out narrowed eyelets etched into the visor of the lead Sontaran's helmet locked right onto the humanoid standing there in the brown coat and the blue suit and the scarlet shoes, sonic screwdriver held before him, and there came a shout of utmost triumph. Six blast rifles leveled at The Doctor; six lethal answers to the decidedly non-lethal sonic screwdriver.
"Right," The Doctor confided in the cat, though his voice never lost a shred of confidence, "now we're for it."
"Good luck, then," came the telepathic reply, and The Doctor heard a small pocket of air rush just behind his feet and tasted the metallic tang of a teleport exchange.
The screwdriver bleated at him, The TARDIS signalling a teleport breach, and The Doctor again arched an eyebrow. "'Catflap' indeed," he muttered. "Later for you."
The lead Sontaran pulled off his helmet, glowering at The Doctor. "Your primitive sonic trickery will avail you nothing, Time Lord! We have captured you, and captured your ship, and succeeded in our mission beyond our most optimistic predictions!"
The Doctor's lip quirked. "What mission's that, then?"
"Your own people committed a grave injustice against us," the lead Sontaran glowered, "when they refused the finest soldiers in The Universe the chance to participate in The Last Great Time War. The greatest War in all of existence..."
The Doctor frowned. "You can hardly blame us, really. I mean, look at your technology. Osmic-projection time travel? You'd never've been able to keep up! That'd be like, I dunno, taking Boy Scouts on missions with The S.A.S.! Erm, no offence meant."
He paused, considered this. "Well, a little."
The Sontaran sneered. "Had you only given us the means, we would have fought alongside you to the last breath, Time Warriors, for the glory of Sontar! But this, too, was denied us. And so we must take it for ourselves! We will use it to breach The Time War, ally ourselves with The Daleks, we will fight on their side and in exchange they will make certain that once and for all the filthsome Rutans are exterminated!"
The Doctor scrunched his face up at this, an incredulous frown. "Tell me, erm--"
"Field Major Shrowl," the Sontaran replied, proudly.
"Tell me, Field Major," The Doctor mused, "big students of warfare that Sontarans are, have you ever heard of a 'Pyrrhic victory?'"
"Enough talk!" Shrowl roared, and signaled to his troops, and The Doctor made to lunge, made to dive behind The TARDIS, but then--
--there were more footfalls.
Just one pair, this time. And like the cat, like lightning, a figure blurred around the corner of the corridor.
A woman. Dressed in black. Wearing a helmet like that of a Slab, all covering her face.
She had a shotgun strapped to her back and as she ran she drew pulse pistols from holsters at her hips.
Before The Sontarans could squeeze off a single shot, she was among them, and she was firing, she was firing--
Yellow flashes of light emerged from each pistol-barrel, flashes and blurts that crackled spheroidal as they flew, and every single shot, one-two-three-four-five, gun kata, struck a Sontaran in its probic vent.
Its one weak point.
One two three four five Sontarans went down groaning and shouting and crumpling and Shrowl gave The Doctor one last bitter look before whirling away from The Doctor and facing this other foe head-on, open-skinned, "SONTAR-HA!"
For just a moment, Time seemed to freeze.
The woman had her left-hand pulse pistol leveled at Shrowl's face, right between his eyes, and Shrowl's blast rifle was pointed at the centre of the woman's chest, momentary momentary Mexican stand-off.
The Doctor's hand shot into his pocket. Came back out again.
"Cheers," he shouted to the woman, and then returned the favour.
His hand held a satsuma and he brought the heat, bowling the little orange globe hard against the exposed probic vent at the back of Shrowl's neck.
Shrowl's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he folded to the floor.
Twirling the sonic screwdriver in his other hand, The Doctor smiled thinly at this newcomer.
"Bit bloodthirsty, ennit?" he murmured.
"First of all," the woman replied, hauling her helmet off of her head, and holding up a pulse pistol for his consideration, "they're locked on stun."
The Doctor stiffened. Disbelieving. At the sight of her.
Long blonde hair fell from the back of her head, up in a pony tail, and she smirked at him softly. She was beautiful.
And he knew her. "But that's... impossible."
"Second of all," she chuckled, waggling her eyebrows, "gratitude."
The screwdriver vanished into his pocket, and he clasped her by her black-clad shoulders and gazed incredulous into her eyes. "But... but I saw you die."
"I got better," she pointed out, then: "Third of all: hello, Dad."
Gently and apologetically smiled The Doctor's Daughter.
Paf, a rush of an air-pocket by his foot, another metallic tang in the air, the cat reappeared, seeming far more relaxed, now. He licked his lips and gazed up at the two of them. "'Another family reunited.'"
"Yes, but," The Doctor glanced at the cat, back up at his daughter's face, "Jenny, how--? You're-- you're alive, and (this is yours?) you've got a cat?"
"Time for that later," Jenny promised, and she threw aside her helmet, and she holstered a pistol, and shoved her hand into his.
She grinned at him, she grinned, her eyes danced, full of promise. "Right now? We've got an awful lot of running to do."
The Doctor squeezed her hand. And grinned a fierce, puckish grin. "Yeah, that's my girl."
And off she ran, sprinting away, and with red Chuck Taylors pounding the deckplates, beside her ran The Doctor.
The cat sat there for a moment, eyes half-lidded, utterly cynical and dismal. "Yeah, no, I'll... I'll wait in the car, shall I?"
And paf, he was gone.
********
"They've been kidnapping them," Jenny called to him as they ran. "Time-travellers, great thinkers, child geniuses, victims of temporal rift displacement. Anyone that might have access to chrono-shift technology, or anyone who might understand principles that The Sontarans could engineer to their advantage. It's like-- it's like a harvest."
She glanced at him, her ponytail lashing a bit with the quickness of her movements, the corridors were screaming by-- "They tried to get me, too. I came here through a time fissure, flew my shuttle through it from The 61st Century, they were on me in no time. I fought them off, got away. But not everyone else was so lucky.
"I traced them back here, was just gathering intel," she continued, "getting ready to either go for help or make my move, when--"
They pounded around the corner.
Saw a huge figure, helmeted, armoured. Like The Sontarans, only in black. And huge.
It whirled to face them. "Halt!"
The Doctor scowled. "Judoon."
Jenny grabbed his arm and pulled: "Move!"
Red light scorched the air behind them as the two of them dove back around that corner, hitting the floor hard, The Doctor barely getting his hands under him in time, Jenny slapping the deckplates with one hand like a martial artist, absorbing the impact.
"Identified," that Judoon voice boomed, "person of interest in current investigation, resisted questioning."
The Doctor frowned. "'Person of interest,'" he muttered. "They think you're a part of this?"
Jenny shook her head, tugging a combat knife out of her boot. "They detected background temporal radiation in my biological make-up. As the only time-traveller in the vicinity not imprisoned by The Sontarans, well, obviously I must be aiding and abetting."
"Obviously," The Doctor nodded, his scowl deepening.
"Identified," the Judoon continued, "'The Doctor,' 'Time Lord,' warrant issued for arrest in matter of The Medusa Cascade Incident. Charges: interfering with investigation, refusal to cooperate with legal authority, refusal to surrender commandeered civilian vehicle."
Jenny arched an eyebrow at The Doctor.
The Doctor arched an eyebrow back. "Burned a bridge there, didn't I? Next they're going to start harassing me about those library books..."
She pursed her lips. "I can take out his weapon. Can you unseal his helmet?"
The Doctor nodded, and held up the sonic. "Sontarans are clever enough to deadlock their helmets. Judoon? Well, not to seem prejudiced, but they're pachyderms."
"Surrender immediately or be subject to summary sentencing," the Judoon demanded, from down in that hallway.
Jenny chuckled faintly, and tossed the knife to herself such that she was holding it by the tip. "They're a bit thick. Right, then."
"On three," The Doctor nodded, taking a deep breath.
"One," he exhaled...
...and as one, not waiting for three, both The Doctor and his daughter dove back 'round the corner.
The Doctor ran, sprinting for that huge figure in black, the walls again a blur...
...the Judoon stood its ground, leveled its energy weapon...
...The Doctor heard Jenny hiss behind him, kiai, and the knife whicked past his right ear, end over end over end over end...
...it sunk deep into the muzzle of the Judoon's energy weapon. Sparks flew, the Judoon roared...
...The Doctor hurtled towards the looming beast-man, running just about as fast as his considerable legs would carry him...
...and then moved sideways, darted, the Judoon reached for him, tried to club him with the useless gun, but The Doctor accelerated, sprinted...
...up the wall...
...the Judoon roared in startlement, reaching upwards now, too slow, too slow...
...up the wall, across the ceiling, ne'er slowing, and as he moved he reached beneath his downturned head, reached towards the floor, towards the helmet of his stymied foe...
...screwdriver outstretched...
...the light shone, the whistle sounded, and the locks 'round the rim of the helmet shuddered and gave way.
The Doctor scampered down the wall on the opposite side of the hall and landed in a crouch, his coat puffing dramatically around his feet.
"Hats off indoors, mate," The Doctor smiled faintly, breathing hard, "be a gentleman."
The Judoon reached up, reached up to cap its helmet, to try and restore the seals, but Jenny was already moving, fast as her father and maybe faster, she ran up the front of that beast and backflipped when she hit the whereabouts of his chin, kicking his helmet off over the top of his head as she passed with a flick of the toe of her boot.
The Doctor caught the helmet neatly with one hand as he straightened.
Jenny landed deftly, facing the Judoon, fists up.
She smirked at him. "And you thought I was interesting before."
The Judoon's voice was a roar, he didn't stick to protocol, he didn't call for back-up, he was infuriated, he ducked his head, he squared his shoulders, he charged...
...and she stood to meet him, The Doctor's dark eyes widened...
...and then she, too, sidestepped, reached up with one hand to grab his primary horn as he passed, planted her other hand on his shoulder, and she--
--she bent and she flowed--
--Venusian aikido--
--and with a thwoom that caused the deckplates to tremble, that Judoon was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, subject to every bit of the force he'd been about to impart to that frail little humanoid.
"Mo tro dro bo," it rumbled, astonished.
The Doctor leaned over it, still holding that helmet, and shook his head. "So po ho jo."
And then Jenny drew a pulse pistol and shot it in the face with a stunbolt at point-blank range. Out it went. And, simple as that, Jenny holstered her gun again.
The Doctor tossed the helmet aside with a grunt. "Yeah, no, let me guess, you were taking a gander at the place, getting the proper lay of the land, when these Judoon buffoons made a pig's ear of everything."
Yanking her knife free of the Judoon's weapon and sheathing it in her belt, Jenny nodded grimly. "The Sontarans had dozens, dozens of captives. They were working their way through all of them, evaluating their potential, but when The Judoon initiated their raid..."
She started off at a run, again, and The Doctor followed.
"...they vented those cells into space," Jenny winced. "I tried to. I tried to save them. But they were deemed unimportant to the greater goal and were reduced to--"
"--collateral damage," The Doctor murmured, his eyes reflecting Jenny's pain. She'd come so far; she was treating that phrase like a vulgarity instead of a fact of life.
"There's three more," Jenny informed him, shaking her head. "Highest-potential. And The Sontarans're fighting The Judoon tooth and nail to keep them."
"Which is where we come in," The Doctor nodded. "Rather save a handful, than none at all."
Jenny's eyes hardened, and she ran harder. "Especially this handful."
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