Leela tensed as the forcefield in front of her flickered. A barrage of blue beams pounded the undulating yellow barrier. How much longer would it hold?

"Shield integrity down to forty percent," said a short, lean woman with brown skin and black hair.

"Hey, Doctor," blurted a burly, craggy-faced man. "How about hurrying up with whatever sciencey thing you're doing?"

"What I'm doing cannot be hurried, Mister Tupper." Leela heard the Doctor's reply in her earpiece.

Her lips tightened. She summoned every ounce of faith she had in the Doctor. The man had never let her down in his prior incarnation, and had yet to do so in his latest one.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

The Daleks pushed past the burning wreckage of their dead comrades, lasers firing non-stop. Leela raised her shield. A green beam shot from its center. The forcefield opened and closed in a split second. The blast struck one of the Daleks. Its upper half vanished in a gusher of flames.

"Shield integrity at thirty percent." Iniya Narayan fired a bolt from her plasma pistol through the forcefield. The beam sliced through the domed top of another Dalek. As usual, the 23rd Century detective from the Mars Colony kept her face impassive, her voice calm. Leela wondered if the woman ever felt fear.

"Gotta reload." Daniel Tupper yanked the blue plastic drum magazine from his modified Thompson submachine gun. The World War II soldier inserted a new one. Proton beams streaked from its barrel and cut through two Daleks.

Dozens more rolled into the corridor, firing, screeching, "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"Shield integrity at twenty percent."

"Damn, woman," Tupper growled. "How's about keeping the bad news to yourself?" He blazed away with his Thompson. Smoke and flame poured from three Daleks. Leela blasted three more with her laser shield.

The rest did not stop. They pushed burning Daleks out of the way, or blasted them to ash. The pepper pot-shaped war machines crowded the corridor.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Dalek lasers pounded the forcefield like a deadly blue rain.

"Shield integrity at ten percent," stated Iniya.

"Do something, Doctor, or we're screwed!" yelled Tupper, proton beams from his Thompson flying through a firing port in the forcefield.

The Doctor didn't respond.

Leela fired blast after blast at the Daleks. If I die, at least I die a warrior's death.

That did not bring her much comfort when she thought of Andred and their two children back on Gallifrey, a Gallifrey hundreds of years in the past.

I will see them again. The Doctor will not –

"Shield failing," said Iniya.

The forcefield flickered. Leela glanced at her shield, a copy of the ones used by the Minyans during their adventure on P7E. Thanks to the Doctor's modifications, it could withstand two Dalek blasts, maybe three.

After that . . .

She held her breath, bracing herself for the onslaught of Dalek beams. She closed her eyes.

Goodbye Andred, Taras, Epela. I love y—

A bright swirl of aqua and magenta caught Leela's eye. The colors spun beneath the Daleks, growing by the second. The metal monsters fell into the . . . energy whirlpool, many screaming.

The colorful vortex collapsed on itself. The Daleks were gone.

Leela let out a long breath and lowered her shield.

"Damn." Tupper wiped his brow. "Why does the Doctor always cut it close like that?"

She turned to the American soldier. "You will get used to it."

"The result is the same," said Iniya. "We are alive, whether the Doctor did this five seconds or five minutes before the forcefield failed."

Tupper scoffed, "Yeah, well you're not the one who has to change their drawers."

Iniya raised an eyebrow. She looked at Tupper's trousers, then sniffed the air. "No you do not."

Leela shook her head. Iniya had not been blessed with a sense of humor.

"Everyone all right?"

Leela whirled around. The Doctor walked toward them. Even after all the missions they'd been on, she still had trouble accepting how much he had changed in the ten years since she left the TARDIS.

Ten years for her. To the Doctor, hundreds of years had passed.

The mop of curly black hair, the brownish-red overcoat, the worn brimmed hat, the colorful scarf, the smile, the kind eyes. All gone. This Doctor had a weathered, wrinkled face with gray hair and a gray beard. His clothing, shirt, trousers, waistcoat, boots, were all brown. Not a trace of any bright colors. He also didn't smile. His eyes were no longer kind. She had the sense this "War Doctor" had been weighed down by the burden of the Time War.

"You think you can do that . . ." Tupper pointed to where the Daleks had been. "Whirlpool thing before our forcefield generator goes kaput?"

The Doctor exhaled a frustrated breath. "Mister Tupper, a temporal eddy is a weapon to be used in open space, over an area hundreds of miles wide. Have you any idea how complicated it is to open one in a confined space like this without destabilizing the entire planet?"

Tupper worked his stubbly jaw to the left, then the right. "Nope. I don't, and if you try and explain it to me, I probably still won't understand it."

"You are correct there." The Doctor took a step forward, then stopped, gaze still on Tupper. "By the way, you're welcome."

Tupper groaned and looked to the floor.

The Doctor led them down the corridor. Leela constantly glanced around for any stray Daleks. She saw none as they strode into the control room of this temporal transit base. The Doctor looked over the console, then touched a few of the ball-shaped controls. Streams of data flowed across the screen. He took out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the screen. The device buzzed, sucking in every bit of information from the Dalek computers.

Leela watched in amazement. The sonic screwdriver her Doctor had couldn't do half the things that the War Doctor's could. She was glad for it. This new and improved sonic screwdrvier had saved all their lives more times than she could count.

She turned to Iniya. The Indian woman's eyes flickered as she stared at the screen.

"You can read that?"

"You know I can." Iniya's gaze never wavered from the screen.

Yes, Leela knew about Iniya's mind-boggling reading skills. She knew of no one who could read so fast, not even the Doctor. Her Doctor or the War Doctor. Still, it astounded her.

"Stop," Iniya blurted.

"What is it?" The Doctor looked over his shoulder.

"Go back." She moved closer to the screen.

The Doctor did as told.

"There. Stop. Highlight the twelfth line."

The Doctor flicked his sonic screwdriver. The line turned red.

"I take it that's something important?"

Iniya spoke as though Tupper hadn't asked the question. "The Daleks have a time operation underway. A planet called Tara."

The Doctor turned fully around. "Did you say Tara?"

"Yes. Tara, Galactic Time Period Six Eight One Two One Nine Seven N Five Hundred."

The Doctor's mouth slowly opened. His face grew pale.

"Doctor?" Leela approached him, head tilted, face scrunched in concern. "Are you all right?"

"No," he replied in a hoarse whisper. "No. No, no, no, no, no."

"Doctor." Leela reached out for him. "What is it?"

"We need to get to the TARDIS. Now." He sprinted out of the control room, faster than she thought possible for that old body.

Iniya ran past her and Tupper. She halted and turned to them. "You heard the Doctor. Back to the TARDIS."

She continued without waiting for them.

Leela looked at Tupper. The soldier shrugged. The pair hurried out the control room and down the corridor. Leela wondered if the Doctor had retrieved all the data from the Dalek computers. That was the objective for this mission. What would make the Doctor leave before the task was finished? And why would he react the way he did when Iniya mentioned Tara?

Tupper raced through the TARDIS doors, Leela just a few steps behind. The Doctor was already punching buttons and twisting dials on the console.

"Doctor, what's going on?" asked Leela.

"We're going to Tara."

"Why?"

"Why?" The Doctor's head snapped up. "Because the Daleks are going there. They're probably there already. Oh, pray we're not too late."

"Too late for what?" asked Iniya. "Why is Tara so important?"

A protracted groan filled the control room as the TARDIS dematerialized and sped through the time vortex. The Doctor stepped away from the console, eyeing his companions.

"Not long after you stayed behind on Gallifrey, Leela, I journeyed to Tara with my new companion Romana, another Time Lord. A being called the White Guardian had tasked us with finding the pieces to an artifact called the Key to Time."

"So what does it do?" asked Tupper.

"It maintains the balance of the universe. The White Guardian feared that balance was coming undone, and needed the Key to set it right. We landed on Tara to recover the fourth piece."

"Do you think the Daleks want to steal the Key to Time?" asked Leela.

"It appears so."

"Then why not travel to the point where you and Romana had collected all the pieces?" Iniya walked around the console. "Which I assume you did."

"We did, and the Guardian restored the balance. But at that point, we had five of the six pieces in the TARDIS, which the Daleks would find near impossible to break into. Tara, though, Romana located the piece easily enough, but she was captured by a royal by the name of Count Grendel. The Key was locked away in his castle, which is a place the Daleks will have no problem breaking into."

"I take it if the Daleks snatch this Key to Time," said Tupper, "it would be very bad."

"Bad, Mister Tupper?" the Doctor blurted. "Bad does not begin to cover it. Even with one piece of the Key to Time, they have the technology to manipulate it into a weapon of unimaginable power. And if they manage to reassemble the entire Key to Time, they would become masters of all creation."

TO BE CONTINUED

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of my new fanfic. Feel free to check out some of my original novels published under John J. Rust; my sea monster thriller "Sea Raptor," my invasion of America novel "Fallen Eagle: Alaska Front," and my alien invasion novel "Dark Wings," all available on Amazon.