The Doctor and the Master
Prologue: Zeta, Eta, Theta Sigma.
Sound doesn't carry in space, but it sure does in time. If there were people in the time vortex to hear it, they would have described it as a thundering sound as the monstrous behemoth of a spaceship sped through, closely followed by a blue box that tumbled from side to side to avoid fire from its target.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor watched the monitor intently and bit his lip as he waited for the opportune moment to pull the handle his right hand rested on. The ray gun on the underside of the gigantic saucer began to light up as it charged again. He pulled the handle as hard and as suddenly as he could, and the TARDIS once again lurched to the side, avoiding a devastatingly powerful blast from the alien ship.
"HA!"
He allowed himself to grin, and ran around to the other side of the console to hit some more buttons and levers, before quickly rushing back around to check the monitor again. The saucer turned around, pointing the main gun in almost the opposite direction of the TARDIS. This was because it had been travelling backwards through the vortex until this point, firing on the Doctor. Now it was done fighting, and was running away full pelt.
"No, no, no, NO!"
They weren't getting away that easily. He had promised to bring those people back safe.
"Come on, old girl. Don't give out on me now..." he muttered.
The TARDIS shot forwards through the vortex again as the Doctor stepped on the throttle. The worried inhabitants of the alien saucer began firing their smaller weapons at them as they approached, but none posed quite the same level of threat as that death ray. As they came closer, the engines of the ancient time machine began to groan, and it dematerialised near the hull of the ship.
The Doctor ran for the doors and casually threw on his brown trench coat as he swept them open and stepped outside. He then stopped abruptly as he realised that he had emerged straight onto the bridge, and found several dozen angry-looking aliens pointing guns at him. They were all yellowish green humanoids in white uniforms, with bald heads, completely black eyes, and a height roughly comparable to a sontaran's.
Actually, their unamused glares were also very sontaran-esque. They even had three-fingered hands.
One of them standing near the window of the ship approached him. His uniform was silver, unlike the regular white colouring of all the others. He was likely the one in charge of this operation, possibly the captain. Unlike the others, who were all threatening him with high tech rifles, the Doctor noted that the alien captain was just using a sidearm.
"Doctor," he hissed, with loathing, "You've wasted so much of our time."
"Yeah, well..." The Doctor shrugged. "Sorry."
"Sorry?! You've set our experiments back decades! This universe's inhabitants could have been the key to our race's survival, and you just ruined it!"
"And for that, I really am sorry, but the people of Station Gemini Fourteen are not yours to experiment on. You can find another way to survive. You don't need to do this, and I won't allow you to do this."
The captain narrowed his eyes.
"So be it."
He lowered his pistol and turned his back to the Doctor.
"Kill him."
The Doctor winced, but did not move, as the aliens discharged their energy weapons. Beams of light flew at him, but fizzled out and disappeared before they reached him. They all lowered their weapons and stared in confusion. A few took the initiative to begin checking them for sabotage, not putting it past him to have somehow tampered with their weapons before even boarding the ship.
The captain meanwhile turned around slowly, his eyes widening again as he saw that it had not worked. The Doctor simply grinned at him.
"Extrapolator shielding," he explained, "Good enough to stop daleks. Good enough to stop you."
Well, some daleks anyway, but there was no need to tell them that.
"Grrr..."
"You aren't getting past these shields, so you may as well just listen to me-"
"NO! I will NOT! Words are your weapons, Doctor, and I would never let an armed foe aboard my ship! We may not be natives to your universe, but don't make the mistake of thinking that we're ignorant to your history!"
"Well, if you know my history, then you know what you're up against, captain...?"
"Ruzzgar."
"Captain Ruzzgar. I'm giving you one chance. Just one. Stop this right now, or I'll stop it myself."
The furious alien stepped right up to the edge of the extrapolator shield and looked the Doctor in the eyes. As he did, he smiled.
"Do it then. I dare you."
The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, but then was interrupted.
"Captain, we're entering home space now," reported an alien at a control console, "Establishing contact with Zeta."
"Switching to main power!"
"Exiting vortex!"
The Doctor's expression betrayed his surprise, and Ruzzgar's sly smile grew ever wider.
"Time's up, Doctor."
The entire ship shook suddenly, as the view from the windows at the front of the bridge switched from the swirling colours of the time vortex to the blackness of space. In the corner of their view below them, an identical alien ship could be seen. It was floating above a dull looking planet with a green ocean, mostly brown landmasses and for some reason a strange circle about the size of a continent that looked like it was either reflecting light from the sun or glowing brightly.
The TARDIS shook as well, but far more violently than the ship they were both on. They had entered a whole new universe now, and she didn't like it. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as the whole Pete's world incident, but these were far from ideal circumstances.
Captain Ruzzgar raised his strangely designed pistol again, and fired at the Doctor. Once more, it fizzled out on contact with the shield. That caused him to stop smiling.
"Pity," he said, "I was hoping that the cross-dimensional travel would do something about that pesky shield. Oh well. Not much you can do now, unfortunately. We're not in your universe anymore, Doctor. This is our world. Our home. You'll fight on our terms now, and if you think we gave you trouble before, now you have to deal with Zeta too."
He gestured towards the ship outside that they were rapidly descending towards. He was confident. They had the advantage here.
However, it was not to last.
"RUZZGAR!"
A huge, red, 3D hologram of another alien's face appeared by the captain's chair. It looked panicked.
"Ruzzgar, we need immediate assistance!" it pleaded, "A group of human captives escaped and have been running amok! They're using our own weapons and technology against us! They've already killed most the population of the ship! Soldiers, scientists, engineers, it didn't matter to them! They're monsters! They've even somehow set the genetic experiments loose!"
"What?!" Ruzzgar demanded, "How did this happen?! They're only a primitive species! Especially in this universe! How are they-?!"
"I don't know, but please! Send help immediately! The humans have already taken the engineering core, the hangar, the labs, and disabled our main gun! They're currently making their way through the living quarters, or one of them at least! If you don't hurry, they could be on the bridge at any-"
TSEEW!
There was a scream. The other captain's head seemed to turn around, and then it exploded in a shower of hologram gore with the sound of a second laser blast. He slumped out of sight, and then the red hologram was displaying only a partial view of an alien chair. In the background, voices could be heard.
"Yippee ki-yay, ya ugly green fucks!"
TSEEW! TSEEW!
The Doctor paused. Though the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS perfectly translated just about any language in universe for him, he was still always aware of exactly what language was being spoken. Until now, he and the aliens had been conversing in their native tongue. That however was unmistakably English.
American English.
"'Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the Earth!'" the voice crowed, "'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword!'"
TSEEW!
"AGHHHHHHHHH!" screamed an unknown alien.
"'For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land!'"
TSEEW! TSEEW!
Bible quotes. Here of all places. Being loudly shouted by a strange American man as he killed large numbers of aliens with their own weapons. The Doctor would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation, were people's lives not still at stake.
Captain Ruzzgar growled, and pointed a long finger down at the ship.
"Cut the feed and bring us around!" he barked, "I want us facing Zeta head on! Approach from above and move in backwards! I want the death ray aimed at Zeta's vitals and ready to fire!"
He marched across the bridge and jumped into his chair. The other aliens began to run for their consoles and began following their captain's commands. The ship began to twist around and drift backwards, towards the planet. The Doctor stood watching the action, transfixed by the scene as the crew seemed to forget about him entirely.
"Send a red to their bridge!"
"Ruzzgar-" the Doctor began.
"Quiet! I have matters to deal with."
He slammed a fist on the console, and began speaking into it. No hologram appeared on the bridge again this time.
"Human! You have vastly overstepped your bounds! By attacking the crew of Mothership Zeta, you have lost all right to protection by the treaty of Silarmellos, for instances of negotiations between our species! You are advised to surrender immediately, or else the full might of Mothership Eta will be brought to bear against you! This is your only warning!"
There was a temporary silence, aside from the hum of the ship and the pressing of buttons as the crew of the Eta continued their work. Still no red hologram was appearing. Presumably the red holograms were only for when sending an important message to the other ship; to grab attention, not for general communication.
The captain could still clearly see what was going on over there on his monitor display though, because he then said;
"Stop ignoring me! What are you doing to that body?! Put that down!"
"Captain!" the Doctor shouted, "They can't understand you! They probably don't have any clue what you're saying."
Ruzzgar grunted, and turned back to the computer in front of him. As he did, Zeta began to emerge into their view again as they floated down to its level. From a speaker on the computer, they could hear a human woman's voice.
"Holy shit. Where did that come-?"
At that point, the audio cut out, presumably as Ruzzgar ceased communication.
"That's it! Fire at will!"
"Sir!" one of the aliens protested, "We're to fire on Zeta?! One of our own?!"
"I'd rather see her as ashes than in the hands of a bunch of filthy humans! DESTROY HER!"
One of the aliens marched up to the captain's chair.
"Captain Ruzzgar, with all due respect, I can't abide by this order. As one of the final three motherships that remain from the old fleet, and one of the last bastions of our kind, Zeta is too important an asset for us to lose! With our race on the brink of extinction, we can't afford to leave anyone behind! There may still be survivors on board Zeta!"
Ruzzgar's head twisted around to face the other alien.
"Duly noted, lieutenant," he said through gritted teeth.
He then immediately raised his sidearm and shot him in the head, causing the lieutenant to disintegrate in seconds.
"NOW FIRE!"
There was a loud blaring sound, and through the windows, the Doctor saw the blast of Mothership Eta's death ray striking its opposite number. The beam appeared to be blocked by some kind of energy shield, which could be observed as a ripple of blue light that flickered across the point where the laser impacted.
"FIRE AGAIN! FULL POWER!"
"We need time to charge, captain!"
In that time, Zeta took the initiative to fire instead.
BOOM!
Sparks erupted from panels and machinery. A klaxon alarm began blaring. Everything shook, and the Doctor fell onto his knees briefly before scrambling up again.
"WE'VE BEEN HIT!"
"NO!"
"HOW DO THE HUMANS KNOW HOW TO OPERATE ZETA'S WEAPONS?!"
The Doctor was momentarily paralyzed, until he shook himself out of his stupor and remembered what he was here for in the first place.
The captives.
He turned back to the TARDIS and ripped the doors open. The moment he did, the sound of klaxons was complemented by the ringing of the cloister bell. Inside, everything was dark, except a red glow coming from all around. He spared a look back at the alien captain, who suddenly looked terrified, before rushing in and closing the door behind him.
"Not now! Any time but now!"
He reached into a pocket and withdrew his sonic screwdriver. Pointing it at the console, he changed to the TARDIS maintenance setting and activated it, but instead of fixing anything he just caused a small explosion of sparks and smoke to start pouring out. The cloister bell sounded ever louder.
"Come onnnn..." he whined.
The TARDIS shook again. There was the sound of another explosion outside. Zeta was hitting back and hitting hard.
"Doctor!"
That was the sound of Ruzzgar, pleading as he pounded on the wooden doors.
"Let me in, Doctor! I don't want to die!"
For a second, the time lord just looked at the door, before immediately returning his attention to the console.
"You had your chance."
There was another explosion and a scream. The TARDIS began to wheeze with life once more, and the lights came back on. The monitor began to display a view of the bridge of the Eta, just in time for the Doctor to see it engulfed in flames. The explosions continued. The shaking continued. The crashing and burning and rattling, the screams of dying aliens and the sound flying metal all filled the air.
The TARDIS dematerialised as the ship exploded, but it wasn't too late for the captured humans. All he had to do was go back a few minutes, land in the holding cells after Eta entered this universe but before it was destroyed...
CRASH!
"What?!" the Doctor exclaimed in surprise.
He pulled the view monitor over to him and saw that the TARDIS had impacted a piece of flying debris.
"Impossible!"
They were supposed to be travelling back already. Instead, the TARDIS had dematerialised in the ship as it exploded, and materialised outside it again during the same explosion. How could the TARDIS have failed something as simple as jumping into the time vortex?
It must be this new universe...
Not a good sign. And now it appeared they were riding the explosion, and hurtling down towards the planet.
"Hang on, old girl!"
The TARDIS couldn't decide if it wanted to dematerialise or fall, so it was instead opting to do both. It sailed down through the atmosphere of the planet, thrashing about in the air wildly. It was literally on fire, and left a trail of orange behind it. Every so often though, the light would cut out. The blue box vanished for several seconds at a time, before appearing further along the same course, as if it had never stopped falling but had become invisible for just a few moments.
Inside, its pilot was madly trying to contain the situation with a fire extinguisher, spraying it all over the control console while the fires raged around him. Smoke filled the innards of the TARDIS, and that cloister bell just would not shut up.
The Doctor coughed and tried to wave the smoke away. He threw the fire extinguisher aside and grabbed a handle attached to a small wheel, which he began to spin rapidly. To someone observing, it would have seemed like he had no idea what he was doing at all, and was just trying anything to get things under control.
The view monitor began making an obnoxious beeping of its own, independent of the equally obnoxious cloister bell, and forcing the Doctor to take time between his manic scrambling and wiping the sweat from his forehead to pull it over again and see what it wanted.
It appeared to be warning him that they were about to impact with the surface of the planet.
"Brilliant..."
Somewhere in California, in the year 2162 around the month of January, a man in a blue jumpsuit worn underneath a suit of metal armour looked up at the night sky. As he saw the trail of light, he thought that it must surely have been shooting star, like the old science textbooks in his vault talked about.
He briefly considered making a wish, before dismissing the notion as childish folly, and continuing through the desert.
END.
A/N: This crossover story is a companion piece to my other Fallout stories, Wanderer's Diary and Vault Dweller's Log. Neither of them are necessary reads to understand anything here, and neither will spoil anything from this story. That said, the latter will give minor hints. Give them a look if you're interested though.