Disclaimer - Doctor Who belongs to Stephen Moffat and the BBC and probably a bunch of other people who aren't me; Space Cases belongs to Peter David, Bill Mumy, Nickelodeon, and probably a bunch of different other people who also aren't me. This story is purely for entertainment (mostly mine) and is not intended for sale or profit.

A/n: This story is a dream I had. Seriously, except for where I fleshed out a few bits of exposition, and the fact that the Doctor's face kept switching between Ten, Eleven, Twelve and Four, what you're about to read is at least 99% verbatim from my dreaming mind. That will teach me to read Ghosts of India while watching Space Cases - Runaway before bed.

Yes, I am writing fanfiction in my sleep now – should I be worried?

~ Doctor Who and the Space Cases ~

Chapter 1

.

It was just another day aboard the Christa as she soared through space on her long journey back towards the Starcademy. Harlan and Radu were at their stations in the Compost on monitor duty. Not that there was anything to monitor.

"Man, why are we even up here?" Harlan complained. "Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's happened for weeks. Nothing everhappens."

"That's good, isn't it?" Radu said absently. He'd been sort of staring off into space for a while now, paying an uncharacteristic lack of attention to the navigational controls in front of him. Must be as bored as I am, Harlan thought.

"I guess so," Harlan replied grudgingly. Then he shrugged irritably. "No! It's not! Man, when I was a kid, my dad had all these amazing Stardog stories about flying through the galaxy, meeting danger head on, fighting in death defying battles, narrow escapes from impossible situations…" He sighed. "He never mentioned three week stretches of mind-numbing boredom."

Expecting either a predictably reassuring platitude or a disapproving admonishment, Harlan quickly thought up a few cutting comebacks, in vague hopes of picking a fight. Anything to fend off the tedium for a minute or two.

So he was disappointed when all Radu offered was a noncommittal "hmm…" and lapsed back into silence.

Frowning with affront, Harlan turned to see Radu once more staring off into space, an unfocused quality to his eyes.

"Hey! I'm talking here! Jeez, I thought Andromedans were supposed to be good listeners! With those ears, you shouldn't be able to help it."

"Huh?" Radu replied, turning as though startled to see that Harlan was still there.

Harlan's frown deepened.

"What's with you, Hairdu," he jibed. "You've been really spaced out lately." He almost added 'that's not like you', but it sounded too much like a compliment in his head, so he kept it to himself.

Radu shook his head, brow furrowing. "I've just been… sort of… distracted… I'm having trouble focusing on…" he pursed his lips, glanced up at Harlan, then away. "Suzee's coming," he said quietly, effectively changing the subject. Harlan noticed a faint tinge of pink in the Andromedan's pale cheeks and pulled a face.

Suzee had been a bone of contention between them almost since the moment she arrived aboard, but lately it was turning into a real sore spot for Harlan. He knew that Suzee really enjoyed his attention (hey, what girl wouldn't?) and she always flirted back. But it had become all too clear to him that (for reasons completely beyond his comprehension) she really preferred Radu.

Harlan didn't understand why a great guy like him couldn't catch a break with the ladies. Losing Catalina before he could tell her how he felt had been bad enough. Terrible. Devastating even. (Sometimes he still had nightmares about her cries of fear as the airlock closed, mixing chillingly with the muted roar of the Christa's sister ship exploding. Harlan shivered and pushed those awful memories aside in favor of the sour grapes in front of him.) Now Suzee, despite his clearly superior looks, skills, charm, heroism and general dashing boldness, kept turning away from him to make eyes at the clumsy, tongue-tied, terminally dense Andromedan.

On some level Harlan was man enough to admit that part of the reason he liked Suzee was simply because Radu had liked her first; that there was a petty, angry, naturally competitive streak in him that still despised all Andromedans on principle, and couldn't bear to stand by and let Radu be the guy who got the girl.

Unfortunately, that level was buried deep, deep down in his subconscious, way underneath said petty, angry, naturally competitive streak.

Consequently, he couldn't quite figure out why it bugged him so much that Radu, who was almost hopelessly smitten with Suzee, never did anything about it. What was his problem? Did that superhuman hearing make him selectively blind or something? How could he not see his own good luck that a gorgeous exotic girl somehow, against all sense and sanity, liked him best? He's doing it to annoy me, I just know it!

Harlan opened his mouth to voice the accusation aloud, when he was interrupted by the forecasted arrival of Suzee through the Compost door.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with the engines," she announced, walking over to lean against the helm. "Nothing at all. I checked. Several times," she enunciated with a disappointed sigh. "Never thought I'd see the day I wantedto find a misalignment in the prism or an imbalance in the protomix. I've still got two inducers to reassemble, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that. I can only beat Rosie so many times at Minbar chess."

She was addressing herself almost pointedly to Harlan and all but ignoring Radu, who had all of a sudden taken a keenly renewed interest in the readouts on the navigation station. She's as bad as he is. Harlan wanted to roll his eyes at both of them.

Then he had a better idea. Smirking slyly to himself, he reached over the helm station and wound a lock of her rainbow-colored hair playfully around one finger. Cat's red was redder… he shook off the thought, and the regret it carried.

"Hey, if you're bored, maybe you and I could find something fun to do," he suggested warmly, leaning closer over the helm so that they were nearly nose to nose. "Maybe something involving a repeat of that kiss the other day."

The kiss in question had taken place three weeks back, after they had escaped from the crazed space station Pezu and a vengeful Warlord Shank. In the adrenaline rush of the moment, he had kissed Suzee, Suzee had kissed Radu (and Bova had kissed nobody, as he had grumbled about under his breath for several days, until Harlan had suggested he go kiss Rosie – that had shut him up!) That had been the last excitement any of them had seen since the inception of the three boring weeks of doom. Maybe a little reminder of the stakes would finally rattle Radu into action. If this doesn't get a rise out of him…

"Sorry, Harlan," Suzee replied with a coquettish smile, still overtly not looking in Radu's direction, "I don't think I've ever been that bored."

Harlan pouted and pressed a hand to his chest as though she'd mortally wounded him, then glanced slyly over to see how dismayed his navigator must be by now. His eyes widened.

"Hey! Radu!" he exclaimed, all thoughts of flirtations and fighting forgotten.

He leapt down from the helm and he and Suzee rushed over to where Radu lay slumped over the navigation station, completely unconscious, a few wisps of steam curling worryingly from his ears.

.

Radu wouldn't wake. Stimulants had no effect. Shouting had no effect. Neither did shaking, pinching or smacking – Harlan made thoroughly sure of that, and felt unjustly persecuted when Suzee shouted at him for it. No matter what they tried, Radu's eyes remained obstinately closed, his brow furrowed slightly as though he were concentrating furiously on something, even in his sleep. At a loss, they finally took him to the medlab (or rather, Thelma took him to the medlab, and they trailed after her, looking worried and still bickering half-heartedly over Harlan's brand of TLC).

Consequently, no one noticed when, several minutes later, a little red warning light began blinking insistently on the tactical scanner.

.

"How is he?" asked Suzee as she stepped through the door to the medlab. "Any change?"

"No, nothing," Rosie said, her voice edged with distress.

Bova stood beside her, frowning at the readouts on his compupad. "This would be a lot easier if we didn't have to cross reference every biochemical readout with a meteorological chart," he grumbled.

Suzee approached the exam bed slowly, lip caught worriedly between her teeth, and sighed heavily down at its occupant.

It was hours since Radu had suddenly collapsed at his station. He hadn't woken up since. The steam had stopped venting from his ears, but his skin had taken on a cold, clammy quality that almost made her wish the steam would come back. Scans showed the cause quite clearly – his biostats were dangerously out of balance, and getting worse by the minute – but so far none of the tests they had run could explain the cause of the cause. There was no infection, no injury, no disorder of any kind, nothing they could treat or cure; his body had just suddenly gone haywire, and not even Andromedan strength and endurance would hold up forever under these conditions.

If they couldn't find a way to fix him, and soon, he was going to die.

"I just don't get it!" Rosie exclaimed, her shoulders slumping as the microscanner hummed over Radu's still form and then chirped a cheerful little 'all clear' at her. "It still says there isn't anything wrong with him!"

"With all due respect to your budding medical skills, Rosie, this is no time for you to be playing doctor!" Miss Davenport interjected from where she was pacing ineffectually behind them, ostensibly supervising, and all but vibrating with the suppressed need to micromanage. Her voice was edged with a prim and deliberate veneer of calm stretched paper thin over her overriding instinct to panic. "This is clearly beyond any of us. What we need is a trained and qualified physician! A real doctor!"

"We've transmitted a general distress signal," Suzee reminded her, lacing her fingers together in an unconscious gesture; it kept her from reaching out and laying her hand over Radu's. She really should be in the engine room. She could have called the medlab over the com for an update… but… "With all this down time, I've got the engines running at peak efficiency," she offered a bit lamely, proud of how strong and even her voice sounded; she cleared her throat anyway, "so we're moving at optimum sublight speed. Once I get the protomix inducers reinitialized I can bring the hyperdrive back online. Hopefully…"

"Compost to medlab!" Harlan's voice called through the com system.

"What is it, Mr. Band?" Miss Davenport responded.

"Thelma says we're getting a response to the distress signal!"Harlan said.

"That's great!" Rosie exclaimed.

"Don't get your hopes up," Bova warned glumly. "Whoever they are, I bet they've never even seen an Andromedan before."

"Yeah, it's great, but…"

"What's the problem, Harlan?"

"The response isn't coming from a ship."

"A planet then?" Miss Davenport demanded. "Space station? Interstellar probe? Star whale? What?"

"Thelma says it's a… telephone box."

"What's a telephone?" Rosie wondered.

"I don't know, but the visual is… hey, wait a minute, it's…!"

Harlan's exclamation was cut off by the sudden, deafening intrusion of a wheezing, groaning roar. It was almost loud enough to drown out Miss Davenport's shriek of alarm and the metallic thud from the deck plates as she fainted with fear. A stupendously swirling draft of displaced air and a pulsing flash of light made them shield their eyes. When the wind died down, they lowered their hands to find the corner of the medlab now occupied.

It was a strange blue box. The words "Police Public Call Box" were written at the top.

"What's a police?" Rosie wondered.

Before anyone could speculate, the front of the box swung inward.

"Hello," came a voice from within. "I hear you're looking for a doctor!"

TBC

A/n: Apparently I'm one of about three people that ever shipped Suzee and Radu. Thug life! Er... maybe not. But seriously, Space Cases and Doctor Who! What could go wrong... (review and find out!)