Author's Note: Set in the early days of the Time War. Because let's face it, we didn't get nearly enough of the Eighth Doctor. I apologize in advance for the horrible mangling of established canon that will certainly occur because I have not watched the classic series.
Vital Mission
Nine hours till dawn.
The Doctor ran as hard as he could. The intelligence that had come in not an hour before was utterly useless to the War Council, but it was worth more than diamonds to him. At least he still had Romana, even if she hated him now.
A Dalek scout squadron was on the move, secure in their tank mounted on its crawler tracks. They had gotten lost and were quite clearly without communication, no threat to Gallifrey's cities.
However, they were headed straight for an Outlier village.
The Doctor was determined to stop them before they got there.
Eight hours and forty-five minutes. The Dalek transport was in sight. Ducking down, but aware that if the Daleks were bothering to look he'd show up clearly on their scanning equipment, he changed direction slightly to intercept.
Eight hours and thirty minutes. The Doctor dashed up behind the transport and leaped, catching hold of the small dents in the hull. Kicking the toes of both his ankle boots in and gripping the seam in the hull for dear life, he grabbed the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and gripped it in between his teeth, scanning the inside of the structure. The transport went over a bump and the Doctor grabbed the dent with his right hand again.
He was totally exposed, but all he could do now was wait.
Flexing his fingers slightly to maintain the feeling and blood flow, he resigned himself to a long night.
Five hours and thirty minutes until dawn.
The Daleks were all clustered in the fore section, as far as the Doctor could make out. Here, in the aft section, was the driving mechanism and other large engines. The forward section contained the drive circuit. It was as good as inaccessible. He would have to do this the hard way.
Hidden deep in one of his pockets was a packet of antimatter explosive buttons from the seventy-fifth century. He'd had them for years without knowing why he kept them, but now it was time to use them, much as he disliked the prospect.
Manipulating the sonic screwdriver with his teeth, the Doctor located the external access hatch for the maintenance grid. Not that this thing had ever had any maintenance, he thought with a grimace, thinking of the whining, clanking, groaning, grating, scraping noise he had been exposed to for the past three hours. It was pitched just wrong for a Time Lord's hearing and was very much getting on his nerves. He hadn't realized how much he missed the smooth sound of the TARDIS's hydraulics until two hours ago, when the noise had hit his limits.
The maintenance hatch was, of course, deadlocked, but the Doctor pulled a stainless steel and titanium alloy file from his pocket and jammed it into the breach, levering it open. Once he had a gap, he aimed the sonic at the internal control panel to the left of the door, which sparked and shorted out. Shoving the hatch wide open, he clambered inside and shoved it forcibly back into place. He wanted to sprawl out and heave a sigh of relief, but he didn't have any time to spare. He frowned, trying to recall the schematics for the transport that had been in that Earth museum in the year 5000. He didn't want to just scatter the antimatter buttons at random, even though that would be just as effective.
The noise and vibration, which, outside, had been somewhat muffled by the deadlock, were magnified in here—a deep throbbing which made the Doctor's head ache, and a consistent whine that set his teeth on edge. This too shall pass, he reminded himself.
These maintenance shafts were designed for nanodroids and repair spiders, but he knew he could worm through them at a pinch. His apparent youth in this body would help him with that. All he needed to do was keep a straight path around the vital parts of the machine, leaving a few buttons at the weak points—and improvise a detonator uplink somehow. He'd forgotten about that bit.
Jabbing the file into the control panel casing, he pried it off and looked at the wires. It was fortunately just shorted out, and none of the wires were severed. It didn't look like the circuit boards were fused, either, which was good; it would save him a few minutes. Wrenching the guts of the control panel out, he got to work.
Three minutes later, he had a working control matrix. Now he just had to sync it with the antimatter buttons… He reached down into his pockets again. Zeus plugs… iPod adapter… backup power cell for the sonic… oh, jelly babies, he'd forgotten about those… there it was. He pulled it out. The antimatter explosives looked like black cough drops with tiny dots of microprocessors stuck on, contained in a simple sealed plastic packet with a second packet that held adhesive putty in small dots. He didn't bother to break the sealed packet, but mentally counted the antimatter buttons. Twenty-three. That was more than enough.
He used the sonic to set both the detonator and the buttons to the same frequency, not wanting to put the sonic itself to such a destructive use.
He was going to blow large portions of the infrastructure into non-existence. He had to suppress a horribly inappropriate giggle at the thought.
Five hours until dawn.
The Doctor crawled through the wiring of the transport. He was covered in sweat, dust (did these tanks ever get vacuumed out properly?) and grease. He was a bit achy and his clothes a bit scorched from the shocks coming off of exposed wires, and bleeding from a few scrapes, but all he really needed was a bath and rest. Not that that was going to happen any time soon.
He continued to wriggle and worm his way through the innards of the machine, leaving a trail of tiny black dots behind him, poised to blow the tank into oblivion.
Fifteen minutes until dawn.
Now came the important part of the mission. In case the Daleks did have contact with their fleet, he had to leave them a red herring so that they, hopefully, would go haring off after that rather than raining fiery retribution upon the Outliers.
And then, even though he already knew they wouldn't take it—it was the Daleks, after all, and they had not changed their minds in millennia—he had to offer them a chance.
The Doctor kicked open the access hatch at the rear of the cockpit. The stench of burning oil and hot metal gave way to the reek of slime and dead grease and exhaust. Oftentimes, the Doctor thought, you could smell Daleks a mile away. At the sound of the hatch clattering to the ground, the Daleks spun around on their repulsors.
"Intruder!" one shrieked in its strident voice. The Doctor fingered the detonator in his pocket as the Daleks aimed their weapons.
"Time Lord," another squawked. "Raise your hands."
"So I'm to be taken for questioning, is that it?" the Doctor said. "I'm afraid that's not on the agenda today. You're lost and you don't know where you are, you don't know where your fleet is. Turn around now and I'll give you their coordinates, just leave this place now. I'm warning you. Leave now, or not at all."
"Daleks do not take orders from Time Lords!" the second Dalek screeched, and the Doctor winced.
"This is the only warning you're going to get. Turn back now." he said.
"Daleks, take aim!"
The tank rocked as one button blew its central drive circuit offline. Covering his head with the leather jacket, the Doctor took a running start at the forward window. It was denser than standard glass, but not nearly enough, and its integrity had already been compromised. In an explosion of stinging, glittering shards, the Doctor fell, triggering the detonator as he went. A deafening shockwave sent him tumbling through the air as the transport went up in a blast of heat and orange flame. Instinctively curling up into himself, the Doctor hit the ground a second later. Dazed, he stood and turned to look.
All that was left of the transport was a hideously pitted hulk, as if it had been destroyed by acid rain rather than sabotage, and small embers floated through the air.
Dawn.
The Doctor stumbled on with the orange blaze of sunrise behind him. As he slowly made his limping way into the village, doors cracked open and faces peeped at him through heavily shuttered windows. He made his way not quite to the center of the village before collapsing in a heap on the ground. It was almost a full minute before a door opened and someone ran to him. He could barely see her through the haze of exhaustion and his watering eyes. "I'm not hurt," he said, trying his best to speak clearly.
"What are you doing here?" asked one woman, openly hostile. He blinked at her, then shut his eyes again. The light of Gallifrey's suns was too much.
These poor people had been living in fear. The reason why was clearly written in the countryside, with the wreckage from burning ships etched into the hills. Compassion and regret tugged painfully at the strings of both his hearts.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I am so, so very sorry." He blinked away the shivering awareness of a bleak future.
"I shouldn't have thought that those hoity-toity Time Lords cared about us," said an older man. The Doctor inhaled, feeling every one of his bruised and two broken ribs.
"You're not forgotten," he said, pushing himself to his feet and forcing his meandering steps back toward the TARDIS.
There still was work to be done.