Notes: This story is an AU of an already-existing Big Finish audio drama – 115: Forty-Five, which is an anthology of connected short stories featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex. The final one of these stories pits them against arguably one of the best villains of Doctor Who (if not all time). I highly recommend listening to Forty-Five, or at least the final story (The Word Lord), which is available on the Big Finish website for a pretty small price, standalone. But even if you haven't, this story should (hopefully) still make sense?
This is a very self-indulgent story, by the way. I referenced a lot of other audios (nothing immensely spoilerific, don't worry) and generally didn't take myself too seriously at all.
Thanks to Mags from the Yuletide Discord for providing me with a cool history lesson on Alexandria and lynch mobs, to florencedrunk from the same place for general support and cool one-liners, and to chidiandthegoatsyay for betaing and providing a general final check-over! No thanks at all go to Ruby, who keeps enabling me to do ridiculous things and writing stuff such as this.
Introducing our intrepid adventurers in time and space!
The mysterious, enigmatic traveler only known as the Doctor! Intergalactic righter of wrongs; defender of the defenseless; also extremely accomplished (debatably) at playing the spoons. Currently in his seventh incarnation, the Doctor is shorter and even more Scottish and Machiavellian than ever before.
Ace McShane - in her own words, "I'm from a dysfunctional family and I cope by blowing things up. What's your excuse?" Righteously determined, gleeful in the presence of high explosives and bacon sandwiches, and in the habit of calling the Doctor 'Professor', Ace is possibly one of the few people in the universe who could get away with nicknaming a Time Lord and only suffering minor nose boops.
While undercover at a hospital in the year 2021, the Doctor and Ace ended up recruiting a staff nurse named Thomas Hector Schofield - or, as he prefers to be known, Hex, to help them deal with a Cyberman problem, and eventually to travel with them. Hex is more often than not a complete ball of anxiety and nerves, and his catchphrase is 'oh my god', which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about him.
Together, they fight: Aliens! Crime! Evil dictatorships! A stuffed bear, that one time! Sentient music! Marriage contracts! ...all of the above?
And now - to our story...
Prologue: What The Parrot Said
Okay, stop me if you've heard this one before.
A man buys a pet parrot and brings him home, right? But the parrot must originally have come from a bad sort of place, because it instantly starts insulting him, and gets really nasty about it, too. So the man picks up the parrot and tosses him into the freezer to teach him a lesson, see? And he hears the bird squawking for a few minutes, but all of a sudden the parrot is quiet. And the man opens the freezer door and the parrot walks out, looks up at him and says, "I apologize for offending you, and I humbly ask your forgiveness."
The man, surprised but pleased, says –
...oh! Er, sorry, Mr von Gratton, I didn't see you there. I was just – I was telling a joke, I apologize. I – I'm paying attention now.
No, nobody's inside your room. Trust me, we would have seen them come in – we were just distracted; having a laugh, you know? You're planning to retire for the evening, right?
Well, carry on.
The door to the ambassador's private room then shuts, with the ambassador himself now inside. The guards, the two of them, return to their positions just outside the door, markedly more subdued than before. And exactly four point five seconds later, the security camera inside Alexander von Gratton's private room flickers and sparks and cuts out.
And outside the room, the two guards (one of them already wondering if he should wait for a bit until telling his next joke, or just start here and now) hear a noise – or three of them, to be precise. The noises are as follows:
(1) Bang. (2) Bang. (3) Thump.
And this is the cue for the guards to meet each other's eyes, terrified and horrified, and then switch to grimly professional in an instant, working together to break down the door of the room.
And as they cross the threshold, they see what could easily be deemed the nightmare scenario – Alexander von Gratton, the ambassador that they have been tasked to protect with nothing less than their own lives, lying dead on the ground, a bullet hole through the head and the heart.
It's murder, plain and simple. The gun that did it is nowhere to be seen. The person that did it is nowhere to be seen. It's a complete catastrophe, because Alexander von Gratton was the American consul to the Far East, and as far as every major power on Earth is concerned, this is a diplomatic nightmare. The murder couldn't have come at a worse time – this is the largest gathering of diplomats in centuries, and an absolute world peace treaty was in the works.
With the death of von Gratton, all that could be over within less than a day.
But the thing is – the suite he was in was completely secure in every way, and if anybody had entered through the only door into the room, the guards (as distracted as they could be at times) would have seen them. The bunker in general is possibly the most secure place on Earth, and any outside forces would have been stopped before they got within even two-hundred metres of the border. They're in the middle of Antarctica, for god's sake, and only a select group of individuals know that the bunker even exists.
The murder is completely impossible.
Nobody could have killed him.
Five minutes later, the Ranulph Fiennes Bunker is in chaos. Accusations are flying left, right and center, and security is struggling to keep control. Security feeds are being rewound, watched, and watched again, but without any luck. The killer, whoever they are, are nowhere to be found.
Seven minutes. A transmitter has been activated – the only one on the premises. It's a distress signal, transmitting to every military force off the coast of Antarctica, and every nation in the world will be scrambling to collect their delegates at this very second. The Earth, within less than forty-five minutes, will be in a state of complete world war.
Nine minutes. Something impossible – well, slightly less possible than you would be used to – occurs. A deceptively small blue box folds itself neatly but loudly into existence in the corner of one of the long grey hallways of the bunker, and comes to rest with a final flash of its upper light.
The door opens. A young woman in a red leather jacket pokes her head around the door-frame; frowns, asks: "Professor, were we meant to be going anywhere in particular?"
She steps out fully from the box, glancing up and down the hallway. A young man, about her age, joins her, and he's also frowning. "Wow," he says sardonically, "another empty corridor. Well," and here he heaves a theatrical sigh, "at least things don't get boring with you two."
A third person joins them – a short man with a Panama hat, twirling a black umbrella. He shuts the door of the blue box behind him, also frowning – "I admit this isn't quite where I anticipated we'd land," he says, "but we can't rule out the possibility that this is precisely where we are meant to be."
"Yeah, Hex," says the girl cheerfully. "I'm sure people'll be shooting at us any time soon. We'll feel right at home then."
"Who the hell are you three?" says a voice from down the hallway, and there is the loud and distinct sound of a gun clicking.
Jump cut to barely a minute later, and the three unexpected arrivals are backed up against the wall with their hands all raised above their heads. Captain Hurst, the man with the gun, looks terrified and intimidating and furious. But mainly those last two.
"Start talking!" he barks at them.
"See," says the young woman, seemingly unfazed by the situation that they've found themselves in. "I told you there'd be guns involved sooner or later."
"Why am I not comforted by this?" the young man wonders.
"I'll ask you again," says Captain Hurst. "This is a maximum-security military bunker, and nobody gets in without clearance. How did you do it? Who," he brandishes his gun significantly, "are you working for?"
"And I'll tell you again, Captain Hurst," says the little man with the umbrella quite furiously – apparently this conversation has been going on for a while – "I'm self-employed."
Jump forwards again, this time for just five-point-four minutes, and now the situation appears to have been resolved. A higher-up by the name of Commander Claire Spencer knows the little man – calls him the 'Doctor', says she respects his authority and work, and invites him and his friends (who he introduces as Miss Ace and Mister Hex) to help her solve a murder and what could quickly become an international incident if they're not careful.
The Doctor, of course, agrees to help, and this is where they find themselves now – in an elevator, going down to the master control center.
Commander Spencer ("call me Claire, Doctor") explains about the bunker – 50 miles from civilization, any movement in a 200 mile radius investigated via satellite, so closely monitored and tracked and checked that the only non-human living creature within its bounds is the spider in the basement that they keep as a pet. Despite all the recording and monitoring, the system is wiped and rebooted every 45 hours – no data is ever stored. It's a complete information dead zone.
And despite all of this, a murder has been committed and a man is dead and things are dangerously close to getting out of hand. And if one murder has been committed, what's there to say that another won't be soon?
So as they approach the control center, where all the recordings and monitoring equipment are kept, Ace suggests that they move everybody into their blue box, their TARDIS. It's much bigger on the inside, she says, and can easily fit everybody in. That way, everybody will be safe, leaving them free to solve the murder without worry of more incidents.
"Yes, good thinking, Ace," says the Doctor, digging around in his voluminous pockets for something and emerging with two walkie-talkies – one of which he passes to Ace. "Would you and Captain Hurst mind taking care of that? And do stay in touch."
She nods, and Claire Spencer sends out a call for everybody to gather together, and they depart to take care of the delegates, and within minutes the Doctor, Hex, and Claire are at the control center.
"They'll be fine, right?" Hex says somewhat anxiously. "I mean, if there's a murderer on the loose –"
"Indubitably," the Doctor says, and they enter the control room. "Nobody can get into the TARDIS to hurt those people, especially with Ace there."
And maybe that was his first mistake – or one of them, at least, because several minutes later, while waiting for the system to complete an analysis of everything said inside the bunker within the last forty-five hours, he is talking with Claire Spencer while Hex flips through the one piece of literature in the entire base – the Bunker Protocol Guide. And maybe he's gotten complacent in his old age, or maybe it was just a simple slip of the tongue, and not a single person could fault him for that, could they?
"Your companions," says Claire – the system is taking forty-five percent longer than usual to load, and there is nothing they can do but wait – "they seem very intelligent."
The Doctor chuckles lowly, and – fondly? – "oh, they are," he says, "they very much are."
(Hex peeks up from behind his book, curious.)
"You must worry," Claire says idly, tapping out a pattern with her fingernails on the desk she's seated at. "I've read the files, I've seen the sort of life you lead. There must always be some sort of – fear. That you'll lose them."
The Doctor's eyes go dark and other for a second, but it's so quick you might miss it and he's smiling serenely almost immediately.
"I wouldn't worry," says the Doctor. "Nobody's going to separate us anytime soon – not if I have anything to say about it."
And he says it so confidently, as if it's a solid, inarguable fact, that you might well believe him.
The system loads, and the Doctor begins combing through data patterns and word frequencies and security tapes, and no more is said on the subject.
Exactly four minutes and fifty seconds later, all hell breaks loose.