Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, and I only get to borrow their things. Sadly.
Author's Note.
This is my very first complete work of fanfiction. It's been a long, frustrating (at times) and definitely educational experience, andI'm really hoping that you lot, the readers, are going to make it worth it. Certainly I'm not getting paid for any of this.
And though every author begs for this, PLEASE review. Not just so that I can have (hopefully, fingers crossed) glowing reports turning up in my inbox, but also for the constructive criticism. This is my first story, so I'm not expecting it to be perfect, and I'm still working on my writing style, which makes every opinion useful.
So feel free to tell me if you think I'm not writing the characters properly, etc. Just tell me; though no flames, please.
Enjoy!
Sometimes Amy really hated the Doctor.
Amy knew that Rory thought she was a bad driver, but to her mind she was nothing compared to the Doctor. The worst she had done was crash into a house and put a small (small, Rory!) dent in the Mini – the worst the Doctor could do was crash into a planet. Or blow them up. Or implode reality/the universe/time itself.
And just because that hadn't happened quite yet, that didn't mean she was grateful for being thrown about like she was then.
"Doctorrr!" she yelled, holding onto the railing desperately as the room swayed and rolled. She saw Rory tumble past her into the console, as the Doctor, laughing manically, pounded a panel with a mallet.
With a final muffled boom, the TARDIS landed, slamming them all to the floor. Amy let out a long breath. "I really hate your driving." She groaned. She saw shoes appear beside her, and Rory helped her to her feet, apparently having managed to survive without breaking any bones.
"That was a rough landing." Her husband said. "Are you all right, Amy?"
"I think so." She replied, pouting and rubbing her arm. "Hey, where's the Doctor?"
"Over here!" called a voice. "Safe and sound, not that anybody's asking." He popped out from around the console, and Amy and Rory gave him identical dirty looks, to which he simply treated them to his most innocent, boyish grin.
"Oh – it's more fun this way, and you know it." He clapped his hands together, and with a shout of "Come along, Ponds!" bounded out of the TARDIS doors.
Gedric grinned at the readings on the monitor. Pulling out his communicator, he set it to an open broadcast.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have excavation in 10...9...8...7...6...5..." He looked over the railing into the mine shaft, the cable stretching away into darkness, but slowly, inexorably, pulling something up...
4...Gedric could see the top of something now, the face of a huge cylinder, more than the length of two people across...
3...an enormous chuck of ice, smooth-edged from the drill, taller than it is wide...
2...solid and blue as a sapphire, bound by the black cable, but still frosted and sparkling...
1...and now Gedric could see it, right at the heart, suspended in the ice like a fly trapped in amber...
0.
With a whir and a boom the drum finished winding up the cable and came to a stop. The vast block of ice hung suspended over the mine shaft.
"Tam," he said. "I think you should get up here."
By the time Tamman (Tam for short) reached the drill room, Gedric was almost beside himself with excitement. "Look at it!" He couldn't help but grin – a wide gleeful smile. "Biggest one yet! A record, maybe – oh, think how much we'll get for this one, Tam!"
Tamman just rolled his eyes in his customary way, walking around in a circle underneath the ice; observing it from all angles. Stopping directly under the centre, he craned his neck to look up and frowned at it.
"How come it's so big, Ged?" Gedric sighed.
"Because it is. A whopper." Tam narrowed his eyes at him, and walked over to stand next to him.
"I don't mean the ore. I mean the ice. How come the laser cut it so big? Usually it cuts it much closer to the ore to save energy in the melt room. And look," he gestured to the ice "it's still frosted over. That should have melted on the way up."
Gedric pursed his lips, unwilling to let Tam pick fault with what could be a record-breaking find. A little extra money spent in the melt room will be more than made up for later.
"It's nothing to worry about. Probably a blip in the laser program – this is the deepest we've ever extracted from. I'll check it over, make sure there's nothing wrong."
Tamman didn't look exactly satisfied with this, but then when did he ever look satisfied with anything? Tam might have been his friend, but he couldn't half be pessimistic sometimes. Once they'd got the ore out and had a celebratory glass of civi he'd cheer up. Gedric didn't get the chance to voice this thought, though, because just then Amer and Guro joined them.
Amer, black-and-silver haired and with lines in his face like a cliff face, let out a low whistle.
"Come on then," he ordered, jerking his head at the block of ice. "let's get this thing moving." Guro laughed and let out a little whoop of excitement.
"To the melt chamber!"
Amy poked her head out and looked around at the small space the TARDIS had landed in. It was dimly lit, but she could see metallic walls and small, blinking lights about a foot in front of her.
"Why do we always land in cupboards?" she questioned to no-one in particular.
"Oh, that's not true," said Rory, joining her. "sometimes if we're lucky we land in an alleyway instead."
"What is taking you so long?" The Doctor appeared suddenly, opening a sliding door in the wall in front of them. "You're not," - he made a face – "kissing again, are you? I told, you, none of that in the control room-"
"Oh, stop being such a prude." Amy said, pushing past him. She entered a larger, better lit room, with the same metal walls and flickering neon lights. Combined with what looks like a bank of instruments across from her, it all reminded her distinctly of a submarine.
"So," she heard her husband say from somewhere behind her. "where are we?"
"I don't know." The Doctor answered cheerfully. "More fun this way. Just let the old girl take us where she wants to."
"So we could be anywhere?"
"Yep. We could be in the palace of the Confederate King of Pandar IV."
"Are we?"
"Well, no. I hope not. Last time I was there I almost got executed for sedition. Still on the list, actually."
"Do you even have any idea? Look on the scanner before we left, maybe."
"Why would I do that? That would be boring. Anyway, since when did you care so much about the date?"
"Well, you're always saying how you're going to take us round time and space, and this time I want to be sure you've, you know, actually taken us to the future." The Doctor humphed.
Amy rolled her eyes and decided to interrupt.
"Boys!" she could practically hear their heads turn towards her. They broke from their bickering – the Doctor still eyeing Rory mutinously - and joined her. She'd managed to find a computer in the bank of instruments, but couldn't access it because it was all password-ed.
"We can find out where we are," she shot Rory a look, "from this, yeah? Look at the manufacturing date or something?"
"Have you been watching my Star Trek DVD again?" asked Rory, mildly annoyed.
"What can I say? Felt like I should know some sci-fi, now that I'm in one."
"Well," the Doctor answered eventually, "we should be able to, but," he spun in a circle, gesturing around him, "it wouldn't answer the other question."
"Which is?" Amy asked.
"Where is everybody?" Rory supplied, slightly unsurely.
"Well done Rory!" the Doctor grinned in an about-turn of his earlier mood. "we'll make a proper adventurer of you yet." He started tapping instructions into the screen Amy had found. "No life signs apart from us onboard this...ship – no, this mole, sorry."
"Mole?"asked Rory. "What, like the Thunderbirds or something?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Well, not really. This is a mining mole."
"Which is..." Amy made an exasperated 'go on' gesture with her hand. The Doctor narrowed his eyes at her, straightened and twiddled his bowtie.
"It basically drives around underground scanning for anything worth mining. They're not very big – this is probably the only room – but if it's stationary, which it is – "
"Then some kind of, um, mining...station is nearby?"
"Brilliant, Rory! You're on a roll."
"So how do we get to it?" asked Amy, excited. "Space lift? Short-range teleport?"
The Doctor just pointed his sonic screwdriver behind her, and with a small hissing noise and a clunk, a door slid up.
"Stairs." Said Amy, disappointed.
The wait outside the melt chamber seemed interminable. The entire crew – those that were awake, anyway – were gathered outside, some chatting excitedly, some pacing. Amer, perhaps in the spirit of mischief, Gedric supposed, had refused to scan the ore and tell its exact weight until it was finished being melted, and they could look at it properly. A bit like not knowing the gender of a baby, he thought dryly, or not opening your presents until Christmas.
Right then he was sitting alone on a bench opposite the door, anxiously tapping his fingers against his thigh. The melt chamber was still whirring away noisily behind the decompression chamber, with Amer sitting on the other side waiting to take the ore away for processing.
Suddenly a loud siren went off, signalling the end of the process. Everyone went very quiet.
Then the door to the chamber opened, and Amer poked his head out. His face was pale.
"Gedric. You need to see this." He looked past him to another member of the crew. "Banto, go and get Mari for me will you?" Banto, the youngest member of the crew, frowned but nodded and turned away. "Quickly!" Amer called after him, then stepped aside to let Gedric pass.
The decompression chamber was deactivated now melting had finished, and they went though the doorway into the control room.
"What's going on, Amer?" Gedric was worried now – he didn't think anything had gone wrong with the extraction, everything had looked normal; it was just that...well, what did Tamman know? He didn't even work on the drill.
Amer didn't reply, just led him to the end of the control room and gestured at the viewing panel. It was a small, round porthole, though which Gedric could see inside the melt chamber. He looked and what he saw made all the blood in his body feel like ice.
"Oh my God."
Lying on the floor of the chamber, completely still, was a woman.