Planet of the Dead in Chaos (1/2)
Title - Planet of the Dead in Chaos (1/2)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Christina, OCs
Spoilers - Through PotD
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - There's a bus and an art thief and a desert planet. But a different Time Lord.
Author's Notes - This is np_complete 's Support Stacie fic. She wanted the kids to meet Lady Christina.
Thank you to jlrpuck , as ever, for the fantastic beta.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
He had thought that he was tracking a wormhole, but his wormhole-tracking device-dinged when wormhole stuff was nearby-had gone silent, so Brem was enjoying a chocolate bunny and a ride on a London bus. He’d never been on a London bus before. It was interesting. Interesting mix of people.
Like the woman who’d just got on.
She appeared to be having a minor debate with the driver, and then she removed her earrings and handed them to him. He shrugged and she moved onto the bus, settling into a seat and peering out the window. The bus merged into the traffic.
Brem broke off a chocolate bunny ear, popped it into his mouth, made up his mind, got up, and slid into the seat next to her. She looked up at him, startled.
“Hi,” he said, smiling, and then brandished the bunny. “Want some chocolate?”
She looked at the bunny. “No,” she said, and pointedly looked away from him and out the window.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He broke off the other bunny ear and chewed it, looking from the girl to the view outside the window and back again. “Sooooo,” he drawled, with exaggerated casualness. “Enjoying Easter?”
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he was still talking to her. “What?”
“Easter. It’s kind of nice. I’m seldom here for Easter, hard to get the time down right, keeps jumping all around.”
“You’re not making any sense,” she said.
“And then I thought I was tracking a wormhole,” he continued, biting off the bunny’s nose, “but my wormhole detector doesn’t seem to think there’s a wormhole anymore, but I’d already gotten on this bus and I had this chocolate bunny, so there you go.”
She was staring at him, which, in his experience, was better than her staring out the window. “There I go?”
“Wellllll. There I go, I suppose, more accurately. So what about you? What are you doing on this random London bus?”
She hesitated. “Going somewhere far away.”
“Are you? Excellent. Me, too. I’m Brem, by the way.”
“Christina,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Christina. Sure you don’t want some chocolate-”The wormhole-detector vibrated in his chest pocket. “Hang on.” Confused, he pulled it out and looked at it. It was now dinging and revolving wildly.
“What’s that thing?”
“It’s…” He trailed off, concentrating on its readings. Which were alarming. He stood up, watching its reaction as he took a few steps toward the driver. “We’re heading right for it,” he realized, then that registered with him. He turned immediately, to the other passengers on the bus. “We’re heading right toward it!” he shouted. “Brace yourselves!”
Everyone looked at him blankly for a second, and then the bus toppled over. Well, that was what it felt like. Brem, who had been warning everyone else to brace themselves, was standing in the middle of the aisle and was shaken off his feet. He grabbed at one of the seats on his way down, and it half-cushioned his fall, enough so that the wind was knocked out of him, but he was otherwise mostly fine. The bus stopped crashing around, and Brem took a second to breathe before popping back up. “Okay?” he asked. “Is everyone okay?”
They all looked back at him, breathless and shocked, a cacophony of questions raining down upon him, about what had just happened, and some vague accusations that he had caused it, and it was Christina who suddenly said, “Where are we?”
Brem turned to look out the window, which he hadn’t yet done. He was startled to find himself staring at an expanse of sand, a harsh desert landscape, no sign of London or any other humans anywhere. The bus fell silent, as everyone else stared as well. Brem jogged up to the front of the bus, where the bus driver was blinking around, stunned.
“Can you open this door for me?” asked Brem, and the bus driver nodded dazedly and opened the door. Brem stepped outside, sinking slightly into the sand, looking at the three suns. He became aware of Christina next to him, shielding her eyes against the glare of the suns against the sand.
“Wow,” she said.
“Well,” he remarked. “You wanted to go somewhere far away.”
“It’s true, I did.”
He glanced at her. “Sunglasses,” he realized, in surprise. “Where’d you get those?”
“I’m prepared for anything,” she said. “So where are we?”
“Nowhere I’ve ever been before.” He crouched down, felt the sand. It felt warm and, well, sandy. Musing, he placed a bit on his tongue. It tasted like…something he couldn’t place. But it wasn’t exactly sand. It was just terrible. He stuck out his tongue and grimaced.
“What are you doing?” Christina asked, sounding doubtful of his sanity.
“Investigating,” he said, standing up.
“And did you learn anything?”
“Not really.” He squinted around the desert and wished he’d thought to bring sunglasses. How could he not keep sunglasses in his multi-dimensional pockets?
And was that…a sandstorm out on the horizon? He lifted his hand, trying to shade some of the glare away from his eyes, and watched it. Storms were never a good sign. Why did he always seem to attract storms?
“It’s not so bad,” he heard Christina say from behind him.
He turned. She was surveying the bus, hands on her hips. The other passengers had wandered out, were also taking stock of their situation.
“How is it not so bad?” one of them demanded. “We’re buried in the sand.”
“Yeah, but…” Christina reached into her bag. “I’ve got a shovel,” she grinned, brandishing it.
Brem lifted his eyebrows. “You are showing me up,” he said.
She grinned at him. “What’d you say your name was again?”
“Brem,” he answered.
“It’s an unusual name.”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“So where are we, Brem?”
“What makes you think I know?”
“You knew we were heading for it. You warned us.”
Brem looked at her for a second. “I don’t know where we are,” he said, finally.
“But you know how we got here?”
He paused. “Yes.”
“And you know how we can get back.”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” She smiled again and turned around to the passengers. “Everyone? Start shoveling.”
***
Brem paused in helping to dig out the bus to regard the storm, which seemed to him to be growing closer. Much closer. Too close for comfort, really. He didn’t like the looks of that storm.
“Aren’t you hot?”
Brem looked away from the storm, at Christina. “What?”
She indicated what he was wearing, and he looked down at his coat. Yes, it was heavy, and it had a velvet collar, but he loved the coat, and, anyway, his body processed heat differently from a human’s.
“No,” he answered, and looked back toward the storm.
“Don’t you think it’s time you told me?” she asked.
“Told you what?” he responded, thoughtfully.
“What you are.”
He looked back at her, arching an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nice bloke like you? In that posh coat? On a London city bus? You look like you wandered out of a production of Dickens.”
He’d been told that, mostly by Matt, who didn’t like the coat. He was just jealous of it. “And what about you? Giving up a diamond earring for ride on a city bus? You wanted to go somewhere far away very badly.”
“So you saw that, did you?”
“Yes.” He pulled his abandoned chocolate bunny out of his pocket and nibbled at it, before saying, “Going to answer?”
“Are you?”
He considered. “I’m a lord.”
“Are you? I’m a lady.”
He barked laughter.
“Is that so unbelievable?”
“Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
She held out her hand, a dash of old-world elegance. “Lady Christina de Souza,” she proclaimed.
“Ah.” He sketched a bow over it. “At your service.”
“Where’d you learn to bow like that?” She looked amused.
“Versailles, actually, but don’t tell my mother.”
“You don’t make any sense,” she said.
“Neither do you.”
“Are you worried about the storm?” she asked, changing the subject.
He glanced back at it. It had moved even closer while they’d been speaking. “Yes,” he said, eyes on it.
“Then let’s get digging.”
***
The storm distracted him from the digging, and, anyway, if he was going to be strictly honest, they didn’t need him digging, they needed him figuring out exactly what was going on here.
Brem ducked onto the bus, out of the sun. He could feel his skin freckling. He was going to be painfully burnt by the time this excursion was over. And, truth be told, even he was getting warm. He didn’t know how the humans were doing it. He fished his mobile out of his pocket, before draping the overcoat over a seat. He sat opposite it, and dialed his father’s number.
“’Lo?” said his father’s voice.
“Is it a good time?” asked Brem.
“Of course,” came the answer.
“I’ve got a situation.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was in London, it was Easter, early twenty-first-century. I was getting wormhole readings, so I got on a city bus. And now I’m on a desert planet with three suns.”
“A desert planet with three suns?”
“Uh-huh. And there’s a storm coming.”
“What kind of a storm?”
“Not a metaphorical storm. Not a you kind of a storm. A literal storm. A sandstorm. I’m watching it right now. And it’s…shiny.”
“Shiny?”
“It…glints. Like…like…like there’s metal in it. But that doesn’t make any sense. A storm of metal?”
“I don’t think I like this world you’re on,” said his father, slowly.
“I don’t think I like it, either.”
“So what are you doing to get off of it?”
“Well, I’m going to use the bus. We’re digging it out of the sand at the moment. If I can drive it back through the wormhole, its metal frame will protect us, right?”
“Yes. But have you been measuring the power of the wormhole? You might not be able to get through just using the bus’s engine.”
“I’ve been measuring it, we should be okay.”
“But you need to measure it from Earth’s side.”
Damn. He was right. He hadn’t thought about that. “How am I going to do that?”
“I can try to get to where you were in Earth’s timeline, but it’s going to be touch-and-go. If it was early twenty-first-century, you’d better call Jack.”
“Yes. Good thinking. Thanks.”
“Ring when you’re safe, your mother will fret. I, on the other hand, will be cool, calm, and collected.”
That made Brem smile, which he knew had been his father’s intention. “Desert planet with three suns. Give it some thought, and ring me if you figure it out.”
Brem ended the call and dialed Jack’s number. What he got was Jack’s answer phone. Brem frowned in annoyance. Jack was probably off frolicking in Majorca or something. And he needed someone who would be able to measure the wormhole for him. Brem considered. He supposed, if he had to, that UNIT was the lesser of the two evils when it came to a UNIT / Torchwood choice. He dialed UNIT, nose wrinkled in displeasure. He hated talking to UNIT.
He listened to their ridiculous “Press or say 1,” “Press or say 2,” system. And then, at the end, he said, clearly, “Doctor.” Which he knew overrode everything. There were some advantages to having a famous father.
“Doctor?” said a woman’s voice. “This is Captain Magambo.”
“Captain,” he responded. “This is Brem.”
“Oh.” There was clear disappointment in her tone.
Brem rolled his eyes and said, “I need to talk to a scientist. I need someone to measure a wormhole on-“
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s where the bus went. The Metropolitan Police have been kicking up quite a fuss over it, but I thought they’d just lost it.”
“Nope. There was a wormhole. And now I’ve got a group of people to get back to Earth, and I need someone to measure the wormhole for me.”
“Stay by your mobile. We’ll ring you back,” said Captain Magambo, and hung up on him.
Stay by his mobile. “Where would I go?” he muttered, and leaned over to put it back in his pocket, catching sight of Christina’s backpack as he did so. He paused and looked out the window. Christina was directing the excavation of the right rear tire. He turned back to her bag, then pulled it over to him. It wasn’t spying, he told himself, it was investigating.
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