Fanfiction: Doctor Who: The Fall 3/?
Title: The Fall 3/?
Author: Unknown Kadath, aka kadath_or_bust
Word Count: 3,900
Rating: R for language and violence
Characters: The Doctor (Eighth), Romana III, original characters
Summary: Long before Gallifrey burned, the Time War and so much more was lost in a single day-the day Arcadia fell.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Chapter One: Flight of the Wild Jailbird Chapter Two: Lords of Time
Chapter Three: Voyage to Arcadia
13. Throwback
Sometimes he had dreams that weren’t his own.
The Doctor had been birthed from a Loom-fabricated a good few steps towards the grave with no cradle to be seen, woven from ancestors and cousins, an ancient databank of genetics. He had no mother as humans understood the term. No father. A vague gesture at a childhood.
No Gallifreyan had, not since the Dark Times. All of that had been done away with, long ago.
Sometimes, though, he dreamed of such things. Memories were not supposed to come from the Loom along with the ancestral DNA, but he thought sometimes they did. The biodata was supposed to be thoroughly remixed before each birth, too, but he supposed sometimes it wasn’t. He’d known from his creation that he was different, that something had gone wrong.
He tried not to think of it too often. It was dangerous knowledge. But sometimes he dreamed of a life before these lives, of a past shadow that informed his current essence, of mother and father and wife and children. Of granddaughter.
She’d been a link between him and his haunted dreams, but a barrier, as well. Part of his current life but sprung from the deep past, but never speaking of it, letting him forget.
Perhaps it was because she was gone that the dreams came more often, now.
“Mama, look! Gorra-fruit! They have gorra-fruit here!”
He was seven years old. It was his first time on Gallifrey, and his mother and father had taken him with them to the great market. The sights and sounds and smells were overwhelming, and the telepathic chatter was a constant roar in his head.
“I don’t know how you can even think of eating,” laughed his father. “All this racket is making my stomach turn.”
His father was a tall man with kindly blue-green eyes and chestnut hair (now silver at the temples) and a neat goatee. And his name was-
“Mama, can we get some? Mama? Say yes, please, Mama?”
“Perhaps later,” said his mother. “If you are very good.”
His mother was a vague shape at his side, a face he couldn’t remember, and a name further out of reach than his father’s. But her hand was warm on his, and her voice reminded him of home, back in the mists of time when he was innocent, and knew what a home was.
14. Armed Escort
“Oooo, look at them things. They looks nifty.”
Arkeros. Not the Doctor’s first choice of things he wanted to hear when he woke up. Of course, it was better than, “EXTERMINATE!”
Probably.
He’d started to come to as he was wheeled in and transferred from a stretcher to a soft surface (delightfully soft, after the Malgeon prison and the subsequent tree). But he lay still while a medical scanner was run over him, and a hypo applied to his arm. He analyzed the contents as they entered his bloodstream. Vitamins and a mild stimulant.
“You’re not to touch them,” said an unfamiliar male voice.
“But you got one. Why does you get one, an’ Cold Iron don’t?”
“I am a Time Lord. This equipment is property of the Gallifreyan military. Access to our technology is strictly limited-and speaking of which, I’ll ask you to return the Time Ring you were issued with at the start of your mission.”
There was a pause. “Damn,” said Arkeros. “Know I had that thing when we left Malgeon … s’pose must’ve dropped it in the fight. It ain’t in the life-pod, is it?” Then, before the stranger could answer, “Oh, look. Think he’s wakin’ up.”
The Doctor let his eyelids open to half-mast and sat up with a groan-not entirely faked. Arkeros had hit him very hard. He was in a stark white room with glowing roundels in the walls and gray, functional furniture. The bunk was a retractable pallet, set into the wall. A military TARDIS. “Did we make it?” he asked.
“Yep.” The chairs weren’t designed for sprawling, but Arkeros was a past master, and managed it handily. She slouched, with one leg over the arm of the chair and the other swinging in space, arms draped over the backrest and hat pulled down low over her eyes. The brim cast her face into shadow, leaving only a crooked grin, like the Cheshire Cat’s evil twin.
Standing where he could watch both Arkeros and the Doctor was a young-ish Time Lord with dark hair and a sallow, sullen face. He wore a black uniform with a lieutenant’s stripes, and he was holding a large rifle, which he kept stroking. The Doctor guessed him to be young, first or second regeneration and only a few centuries old. He had the slightly wild eyes of someone who had been wrenched out of a life of tedious study and onto the front lines, and left there just a bit too long.
Drax was sitting in a chair off to the side, trying to make himself look smaller than he was. He seemed to be hoping everyone would forget he was there.
“Lieutenant Loryan, of the Seventh Fleet,” said the uniformed Time Lord. “Agent Theta Sigma, I have orders to accompany you to the Skylark. Lady President Romana wishes to see you.”
“Doctor,” corrected the Doctor. He swung his legs off the bunk, wincing and rubbing at them as if he had a cramp. “My, what a wonderful ship you have here! Type 90, isn’t it? Do you mind if I take a walk around? Work some of the kinks out of my legs?”
“Negative!” barked Loryan. “You will remain here. I have orders to accompany you at all times.”
“What, even into the lavatory?”
Loryan hesitated, brow creasing. Apparently he hadn’t thought of that. Then his jaw set more firmly than ever. “Affirmative!”
The Doctor saw that there were transparent equipment lockers full of weapons along the far wall.
“Little brother don’t wanna let me play with ‘em,” said Arkeros, following his gaze.
“They are. Not. Toys,” Loryan bit out. “They are weapons of war. They’re the product of our most advanced technology.”
“Aw, come on. I just wants t’look at ‘em. How d’they work?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Loryan, loftily. “We Time Lords have, er, powerful magic.”
The Doctor suspected that Loryan didn’t have much exposure to aliens. Well, even in midst of a war, Time Lords didn’t like to mix with what they saw as lesser species. He himself had thought that way, once, and it had taken a long time to get over. Fortunately, he was blessed with an inherently humble nature.
Arkeros cocked her head, like a curious bird. “Really? Don’t look like no magic. Thought it were tri-phased zeta-wave loopers.”
“Quad-phased,” said Drax. “With hyper-amps and feedback buffers.”
“Shut up!” barked Loryan. Drax hunched further down in his seat.
Arkeros jerked her chin in Loryan’s direction. “He’s just pissed cos we was nearly late,” she told the Doctor, in the sort of lowered voice that is meant to be overheard. “Dunno why. You lot got yerselves a time machine. You can meet up with the Skylark any ol’ time you please.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” explained Loryan, with poorly disguised impatience. “This is temporal warfare. Every time we cross our relative timelines, we leave ourselves open to attack.”
“Y’see,” said Drax, “if our time-tracks are out of sync, the differential is expressed as-“
“Shut up!” barked Loryan. Then, to Arkeros, “The Skylark can’t wait for us. If we missed the rendezvous, the Omicron would be forced to make a detour from our scheduled route to deliver the pri-Agent Theta Sigma to Arkadia ourselves.”
“Doctor,” said the Doctor. Everyone ignored him.
“Don’t make no nevermind to me,” said Arkeros. “Leave all that time mumbo-jumbo to your lot. Long’s I get paid.”
Loryan wrinkled his nose, an expression of disgust at such scientific ignorance and mercenary greed. Or maybe he just wasn’t used to the smell of aliens. Arkeros gave off a distinct aroma, though not offensively strong, of cinnamon and cats. With, to sensitive Gallifreyan noses, subtle undertones of exotic flowers and old blood, like the crypt of someone who has died by violence.
“You will be paid, don’t worry.”
“Do I get a gun?” asked the Doctor.
“No, you don’t,” said Loryan.
“Why not? I’m a Time Lord, after all. Or are you afraid I’ll use it to escape?”
Loryan sneered down his nose at the Doctor. His face seemed to be specially adapted for sneering-perhaps his genetics had been engineered for it. “Everyone knows Theta Sigma doesn’t use a gun. They say you’re a pacifist. Don’t have the backbone to do any of the real fighting, so you sneak and spy while the rest of us put our necks on the lines.”
“Is that what they say,” said the Doctor. Suddenly, he felt very tired.
15. Twenty Minutes
Arkeros fidgeted. “How much longer?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes. The Doctor considered his options. If he waited until after he was handed over to Romana, he would at least be rid of Arkeros-or would he? If she stayed, he would have both of them to contend with. And Romana was sure to have other guards on him. Here, he only had Arkeros and Loryan. Well, maybe there were a few outside the door, but no doubt he could handle them.
Still, twenty minutes wasn’t much time.
“Twenty minutes?” said Arkeros. “That’s long ‘nuff t’show me yer gun.”
“Oh, just give it to her,” said the Doctor. He got up and stretched, pacing slowly around the corner of the room. “Lauren or whatever your name was. She’s going to end up with one sooner or later. You’re far less likely to get hurt if you just give in.”
“Get hurt? Get hurt?” sputtered Loryan. “I’m a Time Lord, a soldier of Gallifrey! I’m the product of millions of years of careful genetic selection, fifty years of training, and over two hundred years of combat experience. And I’ve got a series-four blaster, along with thirteen other weapons concealed about my person.”
“She’s got claws,” said the Doctor, just to help things along.
Loryan looked from him to Arkeros. “No, she doesn’t,” he pointed out.
Arkeros examined her fingernails, which were short and stained rusty-brown. Then she shrugged. “Got me a magic sword,” she said. “An’ some limes. An’ hexes. An’ pixie dust-“
“Don’t even think about it!” snapped the Doctor. He didn’t want things going too far. “Remember what happened last time?”
Arkeros made a face at him. Then she shrugged and turned back to Loryan. “So … you got, what? Bit over two an’ a half centuries experience, one way or t’other?”
“Yes,” said Loryan. “I’m just under three hundred years old. We’re a long-lived people.”
The Doctor repressed a smile.
“Yer still mortal,” scoffed Arkeros. “You looks older’n I, an’ y’ain’t an eighth my age. I was scrappin’ an’ brawlin’ two thousand years ‘fore you got born. Or spawned, or whatever.”
“’Scrapping?’” said Loryan, his indignation. “’Brawling?’ I was at the battle of Yestat. Five times! We fought with N-Forms and particle imploders and gravity traps! Don’t talk to me about …”
The Doctor left them to it and resumed pacing. Quite by chance, this took him to a computer terminal set in the wall by the equipment lockers. Loryan and Arkeros were to absorbed in each other to notice.
“What species are you, anyway?” asked Loryan.
“Ra’puuka,” said Arkeros.
“Never heard of them.”
“Oh, they’re not local,” said Drax. “They evolved in dimensional rifts between universes with opposing entropy gradients-“
“Shut up!” barked Loryan.
The Omicron, the Doctor noted, had a crew compliment of twenty, not including Loryan. He was a special agent, a bit loopy from too many missions, sent especially to prevent the Doctor’s escape. He had a very high mission success rate.
Too bad, really, that it was about to drop.
Course correction. The Doctor’s presidential codes were old, but still serviceable. The TARDIS knew that he wasn’t supposed to be altering their course, and it struggled against accepting them, but a swipe of his thumb over the biodata scanner put a stop to that. A few more keystrokes ensured that the bridge crew wouldn’t be alerted.
“I’ve been dead over a hundred times,” said Loryan. “Command brought me back using temporal manipulators, but I remember every second of it. It’s cold, and dark, and the silence is terrible.” He sounded proud of this.
“Got me beat there,” said Arkeros. “Smacks of carelessness, that. Then, my kind don’t die easy. I can tell ye that for sure. Ain’t much but cold iron bothers us, an’ don’t bother me.”
The Doctor risked a glance round as he sent the Omicron several centuries off-course. Arkeros had rolled up one sleeve, showing Loryan one of the iron manacles on her wrist-and how the metal had corroded the flesh beneath. She grinned.
“My people are hunters,” she said. “But I specialize in huntin’ my own kind. The name of Cold Iron an’ the name of Death are the same in our language, an’ they’re both Arkeros.”
Loryan undid the top buttons of his uniform and pulled it aside to reveal a web of circuitry embedded in his skin. “Trionic implants. I have an artificial third heart to keep me going even if the other two fail, artron loopers to bypass regeneration, and a chronon-shielded memory-chip backing up my cerebral cortex. My speed and reflexes have been artificially enhanced even beyond that of a normal Gallifreyan.”
As the Doctor calculated the best route to the emergency lifepods, Loryan picked up a chair and started bending the legs.
“Duralloy,” he sneered.
Arkeros tried it with her own chair, and found it somewhat more difficult. “So. Bit stronger than me,” she conceded, still not terribly impressed. “Don’t matter, it’s speed what really counts.” She pulled a small green object from her pocket. “Catch!”
The Doctor flinched, but Loryan caught it easily. “What is it?” he asked. “Some sort of fruit?”
“Yep. ‘S a lime.” Arkeros caught it again when Loryan tossed it to her, and pitched it back.
Drax got up and started edging further away. The problem was, he didn’t have much of anywhere to go.
“Why’s it got writing on it?” Loryan wanted to know.
“Magic spell.”
“Ah,” said Loryan, with a patronizing little sniff. He was humoring her, and making sure she knew it. “And what’s the purpose of the spell?”
“Gives it a bit a extra kick. Ye gives it th’ right flick of the wrist, an’ …”
She snapped her arm forward. The lime was barely visible even as a green blur as it rocketed across the room, hit Loryan between the eyes with a meaty ‘thunk!’ and knocked him off his feet.
The Doctor slapped the control panel of the nearest weapons locker and grabbed a pulse-rifle when the door slid up. It was a nasty, ugly thing, big and black, powerful enough to take down a Special Weapons Dalek and designed to work even in a state of temporal grace, in case a TARDIS were breached.
“Ha hah!” crowed Arkeros. “Gotcha, suckaaaah! FUCK!”
The Doctor had aimed at her midsection. The first shot knocked the wind out of her, and he followed up with two more before she went down. Then another, as she rolled back to her feet and sprang at him.
He swung the stock of the rifle into her chin, putting all of his considerable strength into it, and heard something crack. Arkeros flew backward into her chair, which tipped over, leaving only her booted feet sticking up into view.
“Ow,” she said, momentarily.
The Doctor spun around to cover Loryan. “Drop it!” he snapped, as Loryan started to raise his own gun.
“You wouldn’t,” said Loryan. But now the contempt in his eyes had been replaced with wariness. He looked at the Doctor like he’d never seen him before.
“A few years ago, perhaps,” agreed the Doctor. He felt himself grinning, a humorless, wild expression that verged on madness, and wondered what he looked like. He found he didn’t much care. “But I would now. I have no intention of going to Arcadia, with you or Romana or anyone else. I think you’re the one who won’t shoot-you have orders to bring me in alive, don’t you? Now drop it!”
“Go on, then,” said Loryan. The Doctor noted that he had a green smudge on his forehead. “Go on and shoot, if you dare. It won’t do you any good. I’ve got a class-three energy buffer.”
“No, you don’t,” said Drax, from underneath a chair. “Arkeros picked your pocket when we came on board.”
“I hardly think-“ began Loryan, his hand going to his pocket. Then his eyes went wide, and he lowered his rifle very, very carefully to the ground. “Is that why she took so long to die?”
“Oh, she’s not dead,” said the Doctor, grinning even more widely. “She’s just … resting. And no. As she told you, her people don’t die easily. I suspect that if she’d still had the energy buffer, I would be the one with the head injury. Or worse. But shortly after I woke up, I picked her pocket. I have the buffer now-so you see, that gun really wouldn’t have done you any good.”
“Fuck,” muttered Arkeros, with some feeling.
“You can’t stop me,” said the Doctor. “I’ll be taking my leave of you now. I wish, I really wish, that I could say it’s been a pleasure, but-”
At that moment, the hexed lime Arkeros had slipped into his pocket while he’d been unconscious detonated, and he knew no more.
16. A Slight Delay
Loryan manhandled the would-be deserter back onto the bunk. He had a large green stain spreading across the front of his vest, and he was out cold. But Loryan was taking no chances. He gave his prisoner a shot of tranquilizer. He’d be unconscious when Loryan handed him over to the President, but that suited Loryan just fine.
Miserable bastard. Loryan wasn’t sure if he was a traitor or merely a coward. Theta Sigma-the man who refused to go armed, refused to kill, refused to follow any sort of military discipline. He wore eccentric clothes and grew his hair long, and he fraternized with lesser species. He seemed half-alien himself. Loryan had heard rumors that Theta Sigma was actually Arcadian, not Gallifreyan, and now he almost believed it.
Maybe he had some sort of past on Arcadia. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to go back.
More likely he was just a lily-livered, spineless, bleeding-hearts pacifist. Loryan could never understand them. They didn’t want to kill, but they could stand by and watch other people die. He suspected that they were all cowards, really, using their ‘morality’ as an excuse not to risk their own lives in combat. Whatever they were, they were soft. Squeamish. Useless.
And then Theta Sigma had shot the little alien bounty hunter. Not that Loryan wouldn’t have done the same in an instant, if she’d given him half an excuse. But Theta Sigma had shot her without hesitation, his face twisted into a snarl like some sort of … animal, struck her down without hesitation. Loryan knew from experience that it took time to learn that sort of violence. He wondered what else Theta Sigma had done in his lives.
He’d been grinning when he pointed the gun at Loryan, and there’d been something wild in his eyes, like a combat veteran who’d seen too much horror and forgotten how to stop killing. For a moment, Loryan had wondered if he’d actually do it.
“Arrrgh,” said the little alien. Loryan turned and saw her getting to her feet. Her head hung at an odd angle, and she moved jerkily, like she didn’t quite have control of her limbs, but Loryan fingered the safety of his rifle nonetheless. He’d thought she would be dead by now. Probably Theta Sigma had lowered the power of his weapon before he shot her-just another trick. But it was always best to be careful with unknown aliens.
He picked up Theta Sigma’s gun, intending to get it out of her reach. It was set on maximum, and it had a crack in the duralinium stock where it had impacted with the bounty hunter’s jaw.
Loryan looked up in disbelief.
“Ooo,” she said. She put one hand to her left temple and the other to the right of her chin, and gave her head a sharp twist. Her neck straightened with an audible crunch. “Broke my fuckin’ neck,” she explained, scowling at Theta Sigma’s unconscious form.
“Don’t kill him,” warned Loryan, giving her a wide berth as she stalked forward.
“Ain’t gonna kill him,” she growled. She pulled rope from her pocket and tied Theta Sigma’s hands. Then she opened his shirt, took a small black bottle out of her pocket, and began writing arcane symbols on the bare skin of his chest. “Bindin’ spell. Cold Iron is patient, but not that patient. Wanna get him to her Ladyship without any more drama.”
“Quite,” said Loryan. “But I’ve given him a sedative, er, sleeping potion.” Best put it in terms a primitive could understand. “I’m sure it will keep him quiet.”
“Huh,” sniffed the little alien, unconvinced. Even if someone had taught her to use high-tech weaponry, they’d evidently neglected to cover modern medicine. “Ain’t takin’ no chances. Say, we almost there yet?”
Loryan opened his mouth to tell her that of course they were. Then he stopped. He had a perfect time sense, and it was telling him that they should, in fact, have reached the rendezvous point some five minutes ago.
The comm unit on his wrist beeped. It was the bridge. They had just discovered that not only were they off course, they weren’t sure where they were. But it appeared that someone had used presidential override codes to access the flight controls.
Loryan looked at the prisoner in disbelief.
“Otherfucking son of a Stitch,” he swore.
“Oh, dear,” said the little alien. Loryan wasn’t good at judging alien expressions, and this one’s undersized height and oversized headgear made him feel like he was conversing with a perambulating hat, but he somehow got the feeling that she was laughing at him.
“We’re going to have to take him to Arcadia ourselves,” he snapped. “Three hours. At least.”
“Cold Iron don’t mind,” said the alien. “Hey, that gives ye time t’show me yer gun."
Coming Soon: Convergence
Author: Unknown Kadath, aka kadath_or_bust
Word Count: 3,900
Rating: R for language and violence
Characters: The Doctor (Eighth), Romana III, original characters
Summary: Long before Gallifrey burned, the Time War and so much more was lost in a single day-the day Arcadia fell.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Chapter One: Flight of the Wild Jailbird Chapter Two: Lords of Time
Chapter Three: Voyage to Arcadia
13. Throwback
Sometimes he had dreams that weren’t his own.
The Doctor had been birthed from a Loom-fabricated a good few steps towards the grave with no cradle to be seen, woven from ancestors and cousins, an ancient databank of genetics. He had no mother as humans understood the term. No father. A vague gesture at a childhood.
No Gallifreyan had, not since the Dark Times. All of that had been done away with, long ago.
Sometimes, though, he dreamed of such things. Memories were not supposed to come from the Loom along with the ancestral DNA, but he thought sometimes they did. The biodata was supposed to be thoroughly remixed before each birth, too, but he supposed sometimes it wasn’t. He’d known from his creation that he was different, that something had gone wrong.
He tried not to think of it too often. It was dangerous knowledge. But sometimes he dreamed of a life before these lives, of a past shadow that informed his current essence, of mother and father and wife and children. Of granddaughter.
She’d been a link between him and his haunted dreams, but a barrier, as well. Part of his current life but sprung from the deep past, but never speaking of it, letting him forget.
Perhaps it was because she was gone that the dreams came more often, now.
“Mama, look! Gorra-fruit! They have gorra-fruit here!”
He was seven years old. It was his first time on Gallifrey, and his mother and father had taken him with them to the great market. The sights and sounds and smells were overwhelming, and the telepathic chatter was a constant roar in his head.
“I don’t know how you can even think of eating,” laughed his father. “All this racket is making my stomach turn.”
His father was a tall man with kindly blue-green eyes and chestnut hair (now silver at the temples) and a neat goatee. And his name was-
“Mama, can we get some? Mama? Say yes, please, Mama?”
“Perhaps later,” said his mother. “If you are very good.”
His mother was a vague shape at his side, a face he couldn’t remember, and a name further out of reach than his father’s. But her hand was warm on his, and her voice reminded him of home, back in the mists of time when he was innocent, and knew what a home was.
14. Armed Escort
“Oooo, look at them things. They looks nifty.”
Arkeros. Not the Doctor’s first choice of things he wanted to hear when he woke up. Of course, it was better than, “EXTERMINATE!”
Probably.
He’d started to come to as he was wheeled in and transferred from a stretcher to a soft surface (delightfully soft, after the Malgeon prison and the subsequent tree). But he lay still while a medical scanner was run over him, and a hypo applied to his arm. He analyzed the contents as they entered his bloodstream. Vitamins and a mild stimulant.
“You’re not to touch them,” said an unfamiliar male voice.
“But you got one. Why does you get one, an’ Cold Iron don’t?”
“I am a Time Lord. This equipment is property of the Gallifreyan military. Access to our technology is strictly limited-and speaking of which, I’ll ask you to return the Time Ring you were issued with at the start of your mission.”
There was a pause. “Damn,” said Arkeros. “Know I had that thing when we left Malgeon … s’pose must’ve dropped it in the fight. It ain’t in the life-pod, is it?” Then, before the stranger could answer, “Oh, look. Think he’s wakin’ up.”
The Doctor let his eyelids open to half-mast and sat up with a groan-not entirely faked. Arkeros had hit him very hard. He was in a stark white room with glowing roundels in the walls and gray, functional furniture. The bunk was a retractable pallet, set into the wall. A military TARDIS. “Did we make it?” he asked.
“Yep.” The chairs weren’t designed for sprawling, but Arkeros was a past master, and managed it handily. She slouched, with one leg over the arm of the chair and the other swinging in space, arms draped over the backrest and hat pulled down low over her eyes. The brim cast her face into shadow, leaving only a crooked grin, like the Cheshire Cat’s evil twin.
Standing where he could watch both Arkeros and the Doctor was a young-ish Time Lord with dark hair and a sallow, sullen face. He wore a black uniform with a lieutenant’s stripes, and he was holding a large rifle, which he kept stroking. The Doctor guessed him to be young, first or second regeneration and only a few centuries old. He had the slightly wild eyes of someone who had been wrenched out of a life of tedious study and onto the front lines, and left there just a bit too long.
Drax was sitting in a chair off to the side, trying to make himself look smaller than he was. He seemed to be hoping everyone would forget he was there.
“Lieutenant Loryan, of the Seventh Fleet,” said the uniformed Time Lord. “Agent Theta Sigma, I have orders to accompany you to the Skylark. Lady President Romana wishes to see you.”
“Doctor,” corrected the Doctor. He swung his legs off the bunk, wincing and rubbing at them as if he had a cramp. “My, what a wonderful ship you have here! Type 90, isn’t it? Do you mind if I take a walk around? Work some of the kinks out of my legs?”
“Negative!” barked Loryan. “You will remain here. I have orders to accompany you at all times.”
“What, even into the lavatory?”
Loryan hesitated, brow creasing. Apparently he hadn’t thought of that. Then his jaw set more firmly than ever. “Affirmative!”
The Doctor saw that there were transparent equipment lockers full of weapons along the far wall.
“Little brother don’t wanna let me play with ‘em,” said Arkeros, following his gaze.
“They are. Not. Toys,” Loryan bit out. “They are weapons of war. They’re the product of our most advanced technology.”
“Aw, come on. I just wants t’look at ‘em. How d’they work?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Loryan, loftily. “We Time Lords have, er, powerful magic.”
The Doctor suspected that Loryan didn’t have much exposure to aliens. Well, even in midst of a war, Time Lords didn’t like to mix with what they saw as lesser species. He himself had thought that way, once, and it had taken a long time to get over. Fortunately, he was blessed with an inherently humble nature.
Arkeros cocked her head, like a curious bird. “Really? Don’t look like no magic. Thought it were tri-phased zeta-wave loopers.”
“Quad-phased,” said Drax. “With hyper-amps and feedback buffers.”
“Shut up!” barked Loryan. Drax hunched further down in his seat.
Arkeros jerked her chin in Loryan’s direction. “He’s just pissed cos we was nearly late,” she told the Doctor, in the sort of lowered voice that is meant to be overheard. “Dunno why. You lot got yerselves a time machine. You can meet up with the Skylark any ol’ time you please.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” explained Loryan, with poorly disguised impatience. “This is temporal warfare. Every time we cross our relative timelines, we leave ourselves open to attack.”
“Y’see,” said Drax, “if our time-tracks are out of sync, the differential is expressed as-“
“Shut up!” barked Loryan. Then, to Arkeros, “The Skylark can’t wait for us. If we missed the rendezvous, the Omicron would be forced to make a detour from our scheduled route to deliver the pri-Agent Theta Sigma to Arkadia ourselves.”
“Doctor,” said the Doctor. Everyone ignored him.
“Don’t make no nevermind to me,” said Arkeros. “Leave all that time mumbo-jumbo to your lot. Long’s I get paid.”
Loryan wrinkled his nose, an expression of disgust at such scientific ignorance and mercenary greed. Or maybe he just wasn’t used to the smell of aliens. Arkeros gave off a distinct aroma, though not offensively strong, of cinnamon and cats. With, to sensitive Gallifreyan noses, subtle undertones of exotic flowers and old blood, like the crypt of someone who has died by violence.
“You will be paid, don’t worry.”
“Do I get a gun?” asked the Doctor.
“No, you don’t,” said Loryan.
“Why not? I’m a Time Lord, after all. Or are you afraid I’ll use it to escape?”
Loryan sneered down his nose at the Doctor. His face seemed to be specially adapted for sneering-perhaps his genetics had been engineered for it. “Everyone knows Theta Sigma doesn’t use a gun. They say you’re a pacifist. Don’t have the backbone to do any of the real fighting, so you sneak and spy while the rest of us put our necks on the lines.”
“Is that what they say,” said the Doctor. Suddenly, he felt very tired.
15. Twenty Minutes
Arkeros fidgeted. “How much longer?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes. The Doctor considered his options. If he waited until after he was handed over to Romana, he would at least be rid of Arkeros-or would he? If she stayed, he would have both of them to contend with. And Romana was sure to have other guards on him. Here, he only had Arkeros and Loryan. Well, maybe there were a few outside the door, but no doubt he could handle them.
Still, twenty minutes wasn’t much time.
“Twenty minutes?” said Arkeros. “That’s long ‘nuff t’show me yer gun.”
“Oh, just give it to her,” said the Doctor. He got up and stretched, pacing slowly around the corner of the room. “Lauren or whatever your name was. She’s going to end up with one sooner or later. You’re far less likely to get hurt if you just give in.”
“Get hurt? Get hurt?” sputtered Loryan. “I’m a Time Lord, a soldier of Gallifrey! I’m the product of millions of years of careful genetic selection, fifty years of training, and over two hundred years of combat experience. And I’ve got a series-four blaster, along with thirteen other weapons concealed about my person.”
“She’s got claws,” said the Doctor, just to help things along.
Loryan looked from him to Arkeros. “No, she doesn’t,” he pointed out.
Arkeros examined her fingernails, which were short and stained rusty-brown. Then she shrugged. “Got me a magic sword,” she said. “An’ some limes. An’ hexes. An’ pixie dust-“
“Don’t even think about it!” snapped the Doctor. He didn’t want things going too far. “Remember what happened last time?”
Arkeros made a face at him. Then she shrugged and turned back to Loryan. “So … you got, what? Bit over two an’ a half centuries experience, one way or t’other?”
“Yes,” said Loryan. “I’m just under three hundred years old. We’re a long-lived people.”
The Doctor repressed a smile.
“Yer still mortal,” scoffed Arkeros. “You looks older’n I, an’ y’ain’t an eighth my age. I was scrappin’ an’ brawlin’ two thousand years ‘fore you got born. Or spawned, or whatever.”
“’Scrapping?’” said Loryan, his indignation. “’Brawling?’ I was at the battle of Yestat. Five times! We fought with N-Forms and particle imploders and gravity traps! Don’t talk to me about …”
The Doctor left them to it and resumed pacing. Quite by chance, this took him to a computer terminal set in the wall by the equipment lockers. Loryan and Arkeros were to absorbed in each other to notice.
“What species are you, anyway?” asked Loryan.
“Ra’puuka,” said Arkeros.
“Never heard of them.”
“Oh, they’re not local,” said Drax. “They evolved in dimensional rifts between universes with opposing entropy gradients-“
“Shut up!” barked Loryan.
The Omicron, the Doctor noted, had a crew compliment of twenty, not including Loryan. He was a special agent, a bit loopy from too many missions, sent especially to prevent the Doctor’s escape. He had a very high mission success rate.
Too bad, really, that it was about to drop.
Course correction. The Doctor’s presidential codes were old, but still serviceable. The TARDIS knew that he wasn’t supposed to be altering their course, and it struggled against accepting them, but a swipe of his thumb over the biodata scanner put a stop to that. A few more keystrokes ensured that the bridge crew wouldn’t be alerted.
“I’ve been dead over a hundred times,” said Loryan. “Command brought me back using temporal manipulators, but I remember every second of it. It’s cold, and dark, and the silence is terrible.” He sounded proud of this.
“Got me beat there,” said Arkeros. “Smacks of carelessness, that. Then, my kind don’t die easy. I can tell ye that for sure. Ain’t much but cold iron bothers us, an’ don’t bother me.”
The Doctor risked a glance round as he sent the Omicron several centuries off-course. Arkeros had rolled up one sleeve, showing Loryan one of the iron manacles on her wrist-and how the metal had corroded the flesh beneath. She grinned.
“My people are hunters,” she said. “But I specialize in huntin’ my own kind. The name of Cold Iron an’ the name of Death are the same in our language, an’ they’re both Arkeros.”
Loryan undid the top buttons of his uniform and pulled it aside to reveal a web of circuitry embedded in his skin. “Trionic implants. I have an artificial third heart to keep me going even if the other two fail, artron loopers to bypass regeneration, and a chronon-shielded memory-chip backing up my cerebral cortex. My speed and reflexes have been artificially enhanced even beyond that of a normal Gallifreyan.”
As the Doctor calculated the best route to the emergency lifepods, Loryan picked up a chair and started bending the legs.
“Duralloy,” he sneered.
Arkeros tried it with her own chair, and found it somewhat more difficult. “So. Bit stronger than me,” she conceded, still not terribly impressed. “Don’t matter, it’s speed what really counts.” She pulled a small green object from her pocket. “Catch!”
The Doctor flinched, but Loryan caught it easily. “What is it?” he asked. “Some sort of fruit?”
“Yep. ‘S a lime.” Arkeros caught it again when Loryan tossed it to her, and pitched it back.
Drax got up and started edging further away. The problem was, he didn’t have much of anywhere to go.
“Why’s it got writing on it?” Loryan wanted to know.
“Magic spell.”
“Ah,” said Loryan, with a patronizing little sniff. He was humoring her, and making sure she knew it. “And what’s the purpose of the spell?”
“Gives it a bit a extra kick. Ye gives it th’ right flick of the wrist, an’ …”
She snapped her arm forward. The lime was barely visible even as a green blur as it rocketed across the room, hit Loryan between the eyes with a meaty ‘thunk!’ and knocked him off his feet.
The Doctor slapped the control panel of the nearest weapons locker and grabbed a pulse-rifle when the door slid up. It was a nasty, ugly thing, big and black, powerful enough to take down a Special Weapons Dalek and designed to work even in a state of temporal grace, in case a TARDIS were breached.
“Ha hah!” crowed Arkeros. “Gotcha, suckaaaah! FUCK!”
The Doctor had aimed at her midsection. The first shot knocked the wind out of her, and he followed up with two more before she went down. Then another, as she rolled back to her feet and sprang at him.
He swung the stock of the rifle into her chin, putting all of his considerable strength into it, and heard something crack. Arkeros flew backward into her chair, which tipped over, leaving only her booted feet sticking up into view.
“Ow,” she said, momentarily.
The Doctor spun around to cover Loryan. “Drop it!” he snapped, as Loryan started to raise his own gun.
“You wouldn’t,” said Loryan. But now the contempt in his eyes had been replaced with wariness. He looked at the Doctor like he’d never seen him before.
“A few years ago, perhaps,” agreed the Doctor. He felt himself grinning, a humorless, wild expression that verged on madness, and wondered what he looked like. He found he didn’t much care. “But I would now. I have no intention of going to Arcadia, with you or Romana or anyone else. I think you’re the one who won’t shoot-you have orders to bring me in alive, don’t you? Now drop it!”
“Go on, then,” said Loryan. The Doctor noted that he had a green smudge on his forehead. “Go on and shoot, if you dare. It won’t do you any good. I’ve got a class-three energy buffer.”
“No, you don’t,” said Drax, from underneath a chair. “Arkeros picked your pocket when we came on board.”
“I hardly think-“ began Loryan, his hand going to his pocket. Then his eyes went wide, and he lowered his rifle very, very carefully to the ground. “Is that why she took so long to die?”
“Oh, she’s not dead,” said the Doctor, grinning even more widely. “She’s just … resting. And no. As she told you, her people don’t die easily. I suspect that if she’d still had the energy buffer, I would be the one with the head injury. Or worse. But shortly after I woke up, I picked her pocket. I have the buffer now-so you see, that gun really wouldn’t have done you any good.”
“Fuck,” muttered Arkeros, with some feeling.
“You can’t stop me,” said the Doctor. “I’ll be taking my leave of you now. I wish, I really wish, that I could say it’s been a pleasure, but-”
At that moment, the hexed lime Arkeros had slipped into his pocket while he’d been unconscious detonated, and he knew no more.
16. A Slight Delay
Loryan manhandled the would-be deserter back onto the bunk. He had a large green stain spreading across the front of his vest, and he was out cold. But Loryan was taking no chances. He gave his prisoner a shot of tranquilizer. He’d be unconscious when Loryan handed him over to the President, but that suited Loryan just fine.
Miserable bastard. Loryan wasn’t sure if he was a traitor or merely a coward. Theta Sigma-the man who refused to go armed, refused to kill, refused to follow any sort of military discipline. He wore eccentric clothes and grew his hair long, and he fraternized with lesser species. He seemed half-alien himself. Loryan had heard rumors that Theta Sigma was actually Arcadian, not Gallifreyan, and now he almost believed it.
Maybe he had some sort of past on Arcadia. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to go back.
More likely he was just a lily-livered, spineless, bleeding-hearts pacifist. Loryan could never understand them. They didn’t want to kill, but they could stand by and watch other people die. He suspected that they were all cowards, really, using their ‘morality’ as an excuse not to risk their own lives in combat. Whatever they were, they were soft. Squeamish. Useless.
And then Theta Sigma had shot the little alien bounty hunter. Not that Loryan wouldn’t have done the same in an instant, if she’d given him half an excuse. But Theta Sigma had shot her without hesitation, his face twisted into a snarl like some sort of … animal, struck her down without hesitation. Loryan knew from experience that it took time to learn that sort of violence. He wondered what else Theta Sigma had done in his lives.
He’d been grinning when he pointed the gun at Loryan, and there’d been something wild in his eyes, like a combat veteran who’d seen too much horror and forgotten how to stop killing. For a moment, Loryan had wondered if he’d actually do it.
“Arrrgh,” said the little alien. Loryan turned and saw her getting to her feet. Her head hung at an odd angle, and she moved jerkily, like she didn’t quite have control of her limbs, but Loryan fingered the safety of his rifle nonetheless. He’d thought she would be dead by now. Probably Theta Sigma had lowered the power of his weapon before he shot her-just another trick. But it was always best to be careful with unknown aliens.
He picked up Theta Sigma’s gun, intending to get it out of her reach. It was set on maximum, and it had a crack in the duralinium stock where it had impacted with the bounty hunter’s jaw.
Loryan looked up in disbelief.
“Ooo,” she said. She put one hand to her left temple and the other to the right of her chin, and gave her head a sharp twist. Her neck straightened with an audible crunch. “Broke my fuckin’ neck,” she explained, scowling at Theta Sigma’s unconscious form.
“Don’t kill him,” warned Loryan, giving her a wide berth as she stalked forward.
“Ain’t gonna kill him,” she growled. She pulled rope from her pocket and tied Theta Sigma’s hands. Then she opened his shirt, took a small black bottle out of her pocket, and began writing arcane symbols on the bare skin of his chest. “Bindin’ spell. Cold Iron is patient, but not that patient. Wanna get him to her Ladyship without any more drama.”
“Quite,” said Loryan. “But I’ve given him a sedative, er, sleeping potion.” Best put it in terms a primitive could understand. “I’m sure it will keep him quiet.”
“Huh,” sniffed the little alien, unconvinced. Even if someone had taught her to use high-tech weaponry, they’d evidently neglected to cover modern medicine. “Ain’t takin’ no chances. Say, we almost there yet?”
Loryan opened his mouth to tell her that of course they were. Then he stopped. He had a perfect time sense, and it was telling him that they should, in fact, have reached the rendezvous point some five minutes ago.
The comm unit on his wrist beeped. It was the bridge. They had just discovered that not only were they off course, they weren’t sure where they were. But it appeared that someone had used presidential override codes to access the flight controls.
Loryan looked at the prisoner in disbelief.
“Otherfucking son of a Stitch,” he swore.
“Oh, dear,” said the little alien. Loryan wasn’t good at judging alien expressions, and this one’s undersized height and oversized headgear made him feel like he was conversing with a perambulating hat, but he somehow got the feeling that she was laughing at him.
“We’re going to have to take him to Arcadia ourselves,” he snapped. “Three hours. At least.”
“Cold Iron don’t mind,” said the alien. “Hey, that gives ye time t’show me yer gun."
Coming Soon: Convergence