She can hear them screaming, her half-sisters, as their insides are stretched and constricted like taffy. Leased and summoned with a snap of the fingers, chained like beasts of burdens to relay soldiers to death on the battlefield. Her thief can't hear their cries; he can't even hear her yet. He will, one day she will find a body and speak to him face to face, but not yet. Not yet.
He's calling the Time Lords. She knows why he's doing it, why he can't try to bring them all home, but she sees what will come of it. She sees Zoe alone on the Wheel, Jamie fighting at Culloden, with only a scrap of memory. She sees her thief with a new face, wearing a velvet frock. The pain of a broken lever and circuit, leaving her stranded on Earth for years—this she feels already, the horrible restriction to one planet.
But for all that, she has one thing none of her sisters have ever possessed, one element that makes up for all this pain. Her thief loves her.
In "The War Games," last of the Second Doctor's story, the War Lords are using devices called SIDRATs, which are time/space machines that will burn out after limited use.
