Doctor Who Tales of the Before
By Jay Schmidt
There are many tales of the famous man known simply as the Doctor. His exploits are known throughout the universe. While he is perhaps the most famous of the Time Lords, he is not the only renegade. Long before the verging days of the Last Great Time War there were more heretical Time Lords besides the Doctor or the Master. This is the story of the Time Lord called the Mentor.
Rated Mature
Chapter One
"Has he spoken?" the thin golden encrusted politician asked the guard stationed to the prison cell.
"No sir," the guard snappily responded. "He's been…"
"Been what, soldier?"
"Singing, Lord President." The guard wasn't sure what it meant or why Lord President of Gallifrey took this message with great horror. The dimly lit corridor of the prison became even darker that day and the President took long purposeful strides away from the cell and the battered prisoner within.
Outside of the brig inside of the Citadel of Arcadia the president was met by his entourage of loyal senators and body guards. The soldiers surrounding them bore no markings, no rankings or unit identification. To the average citizen they were ghosts. To the most veteran soldier on Gallifrey they were either a part of this mysterious squad or heard the rumors of the Ardha Unit. In the blackest history of Gallifrey, these select Time Lords are the ones pulling the trigger. They were never used except for the most dire of circumstances, and the Lord President believed that the worst was coming.
The sun was setting and the hills of orange beyond the glass dome shone like fire. This time tomorrow the president would be back in the Capitol where he, and his loyal entourage, would plan their next steps carefully in the Panopticon.
"Lord President!" one of the following members of the senate spoke up, clearly panicking over the potential news. "What happened in there, Lord President Baru-"
"Quiet you fool!" another senator snapped, wishing to not upset the president. The metal streets and pathways were vacant and the air hung heavily in between the politicians and the soldiers. The large ornate head pieces that each senator wore bobbed ferociously in silence while covert conversations took place entirely in trading glances.
"The prisoner," the Lord President spoke, his teeth gritting intensely. "is singing." The head bobbing became still and the senators became taciturn with total fear. With this knowledge, their world had come to an end.
"We will reconvene in the Panopticon this time tomorrow." The Lord President ordered. "Until then we shall not be seen with each other. You will each have a member of Ardha with you at all times and we will consort with the one who knows what to do." Taking a breath proved a burden to the frailty of the president. "Return to the Capitol separately and without raising any fuss. We knew this day would come. We've prepared. Let us not waste any more time over prattling in fear or regrets."
The senators each passing stares of agreement and the entourage disbanded without another word, each politician with a soldier and the president with the commander of the unit. When the street became devoid of all but those two the president turned to his protector and spoke.
"We must find him." The president spoke harshly, spit flying in between his teeth as he hissed.
"We have the best men on the job, Lord President." The commander spoke calmly and with the utmost confidence in his words and in his soldiers. "He will not evade for much longer. Sooner or later, he will slip up, and we will have the Eye back where it belongs."
"This is stupid." The grumbling short man muttered to himself as he took careful steps down the corridor. "This is completely moronic. Five hundred years, if I'm lucky. Life in prison maybe. If the Executor is feeling generous." Pressing himself up against the wall, the man took a cautious peek around the corner. "Where is everyone?"
The repair bay was seemingly abandoned. Surely the curfew hadn't been pushed so far ahead that the employees of the repair bay beneath the Capitol were forced home for the night? The man slinked across the corridor, being careful to remain in any security blind spots.
"Okay," the man whispered to himself. "Where is the one?" Arriving at a lonely row of computer banks, the man made careful sure that no one was watching and began pressing buttons. He may have not known which buttons to press but that was the fun of it for him.
He was in a security room of some kind. The monitors displayed internal camera images from within the complex and the man took careful steps to make sure the system didn't detect him. According to all the monitors there was no one else in the building. Wait, what was that?
Focusing his attention on a certain screen, the man discovered someone walking passed a camera. The screen became distorted and fuzzy as the figure crossed the path of the screen. Whoever it was, they were interfering with the security somehow.
"Not good." The man gritted his teeth. He wasn't the only intruder here tonight. Wiping the local footage of the security cameras, the man quickly made his way out of the room and began heading towards the main repair bay. His plans had to change with the addition of the extra company.
Watching his corners and making sure whoever was out there didn't detect him, he found himself in the grand wide open room of repair bay 6. The whole repair building near the base of the Capitol was modularly designed, allowing for individual bays to be moved and relocated around each other like sliding puzzle pieces.
This wasn't the bay that the man needed to be in. If he started moving the bays around it would attract attention and surely whoever was stalking around out there would come to investigate. He would have to be quick. It's not going to be easy or clean but he would have to make it work. Preparing for the worst that could come, the man took a deep breath and used a nearby panel to move the modules.
A deafening gear clank boomed out into the emptiness and for a second the mechanism was silent. After briefly warming up, the mechanisms whirred to life and the rooms began to shift. Safely outside of repair bay 6 the man watched the rooms whiz by and waited for the one he needed. Pressing the panel button once more, the modules came to a halt and the room he was looking for was in front of him. Repair bay 1.
Looking around before entering, the man saw that whoever was out there hadn't shown up yet. He wasn't about to wait around for whoever that was. Quickly rushing in to the bay, he looked desperately for what he needed. But something was odd. Something that shouldn't have been there was in the repair bay. A tall cylindrical pillar was sitting in the repair slot. The man immediately recognized it as the base outward appearance of a type 607 TARDIS.
"What are you doing here?" the man asked himself more rather than TARDIS. The type 607 was a fairly standard unit of TARDIS back in the day. While it wasn't obsolete there have certainly been better models since. The type 607 model was designed by the joint effort between the current Lord President of Gallifrey and the scientific team of the Lungbarrow house at the Academy. This model of TARDIS was probably best known for it being said to have a unique personality of that to other TARDISes.
The man approached the steel pillar and ran his hand down the slit in between the doors. The cool touch of it sent shivers down his spine and a shock in his finger tip. The sleek blemish free surface hid a universe behind it and the man sighed, melancholy for the days he used to work on these classic machines. Watching them grow and adjusting their instruments late into the nights of his younger years. It was a dalliance that preoccupied his time happily and he learned the ins and outs of all that these later generation TARDISs had to offer.
For whatever reason this TARDIS was here the man thought that he might have use of it if worse came to worst. He was still alone in the repair bay and if that other intruder was on his way, he would have to work fast. He didn't take the chance and began immediately typing away at the system monitor that was each bay was equipped with. Working his way through the security measures of repair bay 1 he found subroutines that made no sense to him.
Scrambles partitions of useless data. This was what was called a drowning. Filling up a system with petebytes worth of data that it was rendered unusable. This wasn't good. If the man here was going to find what he was looking for he would have to develop away to sift through all this junk data in order to find what he needed. These systems weren't mean to exceed certain capacities and whoever did this, overclocked the terminal.
This stank of something much bigger to the man breaking his way through endless codes. Frustrated, he began to tear away at the terminal's under paneling to reveal loose wirings and circuit boards. This proved to be a mistake.
Alarms began ringing
The man had even less time now. Some detection system set off the whole repair bay's security system. In less than a minute the whole Under-Capitol would shut down and an anti-dematerialization field would be in effect. He had to think fast.
Tearing away the whole terminal from its bolted position the man dragged it over to the anomalous TARDIS parked in the center of the bay. He wasn't going to leave without the data on that terminal. He knew what he could do and it sent violating shivers down his spine. Hating the very thought of doing this went against everything he valued. To steal a TARDIS was more than simply high-jacking some space freighter, it was pilfering a home.
Pulling a small device from his rear pocket, the man placed a small keypad against the sliding doors of the TARDIS. Pressing a small button, numbers began racing across the miniature screen at impossible speeds. In a matter of 30 seconds the doors slid open and the TARDIS led out a painful chime of its own alarms.
Ignoring the painful throbbing of two security alarms going off at the same time into his ears, the man lifted the torn up terminal and heaved it over his shoulder. Taking a quick glance around to make sure he was clear he stepped over the threshold and through into another transdimensional layer of reality.
That was how the TARDISes worked. The inside was remarkably larger than its exterior and thanks to the brilliant minds of the original founders/creators of the first TARDIS, this technology has only improved since its inception. This type 607 model had enhanced matrixes and a fabrication unit that could make complex models of fourth dimensional space for navigation. To anyone that never passed their flight test, this was complete gibberish. The more intelligent and refined Time Lord knew that models of fourth dimensional space is a key ingredient of what the Time Vortex moves around and if a TARDIS can accurately predict such models ahead of time the pilot will technically arrive before he or she has actually dematerialized.
This programing technique eventually became outlawed by Gallifrey rule. Simply put, this method of flying a TARDIS and this enhanced style of matrix and rotor system rendered even the most complex anti-dematerialization field ineffective.
The man deadlocked the doors and worked quickly to shut down the alarms inside. The desktop setting of the interior looked seemed to be a forest underwater. Glittering blue tree trunks wrapped and coiled around the main time rotor in the center of the control console and it extended beyond the ceiling up into the rooms above. Elegant glass designs made transparent cases for the controls and made up the five individual console faces of the control mechanisms.
Once successfully working his way through the rather innocently written code that protected the security of the TARDIS, the man took a proper look around him and witnessed all of the illegal tech that surrounded him. "Oh boy," he breathed in deeply and accepted the painful truth. He would have to run away and never stop. When you walking in on something of the caliber, you're in for life.
"Okay then," he sighed and placed himself in front of the gravity clamps that held the TARDIS parked in its place. "I'm really sorry to do this to you, gorgeous girl. You're the only one that can help me here, and I really do need help." His words fell on deaf ears and only the whirring pieces of the complex organic machine was there for him.
Releasing the gravity clamps the type 607 TARDIS was emancipated from its place. Activating the geometric constancy aligners, the pilot and the ship knew where they were in three dimensional space. The atom accelerator told where/when the ship would move to, and last but not least, the gas pedal. Throwing the final switch of the recompensator into place the fourth dimensional model had been calculated and the type 607 TARDIS evaporated from repair bay 1 and made its way into the universe.
The man inside that TARDIS was very much unaware of the looming figure that stood just beyond those doors. Back I repair bay 1, the man that was seen in the cameras as floating pixels watched as the sound of the time rotor slowly came to a silence and the unknown figure was alone.
"I'm really sorry about this." The man in the TARDIS said pacing around the console, his eyes tracing the semi-bioluminescent tree trunks up and down. "I messed up back there and I just took you! I'm sorry about the door by the way. It must have hurt to be forced in like that." The engine of the ship made a slow grinding noise as he spoke seemingly to himself. The nervous paces on the marble platforms around the controls echoed shoe taps up towards the ceiling.
"It was lucky that you had that matrix to get out of there faster." The man thankfully said and stiffly patted the edge of the control console. "I promise that I won't let anything hurt you. After all this whole thing is my fault." He cast a sullen glance at the torn out repair bay terminal lying on the marble floor near the doors. "Everything has been my fault."
Silence cast its awkward presence over the man and he struggled to deal with the situation at hand. He had worked on type 607s before, but this particular TARDIS was on a different scale all together. There were clear signs of alterations and modifications. Like someone had been carving it apart and replacing the original pieces with overly simplistic components that even a first year at the academy could understand. This TARDIS had its fair share of scars. That was clear to the man.
This level of pain was difficult to be near. It made everything around it feel sick and uncomfortable like a relative with a terminal illness.
"Shadows rain…"
The man heard a voice. His head swiveled around and saw no one. The voice was close and… singing.
"Breathless night…"
It was coming from the speakers on the console. The man leaned his head in closer to listen.
"Payla's reign. Caroline waits for her shining hero. Chasms break those who hear the cry and soon she will bring fear and never die. Lady, goddess, divine creation. Wrap your light around me and bring salvation to those who cling to light and obligation… BZZZT!" the speaker went dead. Fiddling with the controls for a brief moment revealed to the man that this sound didn't originate from inside the TARDIS. It was some kind of stray transmission that had been picked up by the automatic systems and then quickly lost.
"What was that?" the man stroked the edge of his chin in contemplation. "This day." He shook his head. "Anyway. I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is the Mentor, and I hope to get along with you until we sort this mess out."
His smile, while sincere, was heavy with melancholy. His journey has begun.
Thank you for reading the first chapter of the Tales of the Before. I made a note at the beginning that this will be a mature story and while it doesn't seem that way, it will soon be. I plan on graphic violence appearing in future chapters and I hope that doesn't dissuade any readers, but I understand if it does. Thank you so much and I crave feedback!
