Predator and Prey

Summary: Tribute to Patrick Troughton, who has a birthday on March 25th. The Androgums were one of his favorite monsters.

This will read as much as possible the feeling of the old series. I tried to imagine Frazer Hines' voice, narrating as I wrote.


Part 1:

The Feathered Sun was a standard Third Zone utilitarian, budgetized and efficient hyperspace-drive block of Metal in Space. Outside the Zone, neighbors and detractors shared in the combined criticism of the soulless architecture that went into the work, but the Zone ignored the scoffs. They made do with what they had…or they went without. Life to them was exactly that simple, and occasionally bitter.

The Feathered Sun was a Robot Ship because the Zone had precious little surplus in the way of talented pilots and ship-captains; there had been a few too many wars, and far, far too many epic famines and loss of resources with the wearisome battering with the Dominators and other territorial giants. They owed money—and lots of it—to outside interests such as the Trated Collective, the Voraxx, the political vacuum-feeders stepping in to take the place of the War Lords, and others too shadowy and numerous to mention. They were strong enough to hold their own against the Cybermen (who currently had no interest in the region), but they would never hold up to Daleks…yet.

Most Zoners capable of flying were still training the next generation up in flight schools, or they lived shattered, retired, and wired up to cyborg augmentations. The expense of living, flawed beings at the helm was too much so Control Deck was converted into a supercooled Control Room.

The Feathered Sun was injured.

Ordinarily capable of high performance on its supply runs across Mutter's Spiral, the Feathered Sun had been sticking to its usual flight program through the Kirkwood Gap of the Minyos System. This was a commonplace flight path; since the awful business between Gallifrey and Minyos, the latter's planet had been politely left abandoned; a long-dead char of radioactive waste as a cautionary monument against Time Lord Altruism that encouraged too much technological growth, too fast, among non-Gallifreyans.

Young in her success with time travel, Gallifrey had been confident and drunk on the power of her new abilities, and arrogant from successes in the Great Vampire War. Minyans paid the price for being Gallifrey's friend: they drove out the Time Lords and burnt themselves up in nuclear fires for which they had been unprepared.

Minyos now spins alone in space, a tomb of a planet known for its amazing beauty under the telescopes of sentient beings, for her surface reflects all known spectrum of light.

She is beautiful because the nuclear bombs rendered her crust into reflective glass and her seas a permanent vapour of poison cloud.

Her planet had no visitors; there was no reason to use the planet but the empty space where thousands of ships had once sailed was still useful as a shortcut between the Charbydian and Basilian/Trician systems.

It was to employ this space as such a shortcut that an uncalculated maneuver into the ship's programmed flight plans erupted into emergency: a pulse of gravity from the dead Minyos had co-incided with the gravity pull off a passing planetestimal that ordinarily would have an easily compensated-for differential.

If it hadn't been for the excess mass tacked on to the planetestimal because it had just been struck by a passing pinhole.

A pinhole that wasn't supposed to exist.

The Feathered Sun shuddered under a chain of impacts as fragments of dirty rock and radioactive ice punched through layer after layer of safety shields. A fateful impact struck the language-relay between the ship's brain and the Hyperdrive Data input, creating a two-second time-lapse between MESSAGE SENT and MESSAGE RECIVED. She stumbled off-course for less than two seconds, but two seconds in space is enough for thirty lifetimes; before the course's corrected calculations could translate to the Hyperdrive, the craft entered a slow spin out of her original plan and tipped into the outermost gravity tides that would pull them further into the system.

The Sun's hyperdrive was a workhorse, capable of continuing without complaint. It was not capable of dancing.

The spin grew worse as the intercommunications systems onboard flew into a storm of terror. Emergency lights shut off, the compu-nervous systems attempting to conserve power and re-correct the course before all life on board could be erased.

The crew of the Sun knew it was hopeless, but they also knew life was never a guarantee anyway; they hastened to their pre-assigned posts and manually overrode electrical safeties and locks. The effect was instantaneous: Storage holds devoid of life were instantly turned off; their power and atmosphere was siphoned into the living portions of the decks. Trained crewmen in pressure suits dove into the claustrophobic spaces between the skin of the hull and the outermost rooms, using brute muscles to lock down chamber after chamber. Like most cargo ships, the Sun had her most expendable cargo in the rooms closest to vacuum: at the slightest breach the less-profitable cargo would spill out. It also had the added advantage of distracting any potential attacking pirates who might be the cause of the hull breach.

The Sun's extraneous power reserves fluttered once, as another pulse racketed through the craft's skeleton. The Control Room appeared to gasp onscreen, as normal atmosphere began to leak through the weakening seals.


Amidst the flurry, a second ship slipped through the ancient warzone, heading straight for the foundering Sun as it death-throed its way to an agonizing meltdown against the surface of the still-radioactive Minyos. It was so much smaller than the Feathered Sun it was ridiculous; a tiny terrier trying to save a drowning ox. Under most scanners it barely showed at all. It was a deep blue, box-shaped, with a strange glowing light on its top with even stranger-looking alien letters writ across its front. It glowed under the long-wave scanners that employed some of the more obscure radiation-patterns.

At close range the tiny ship spun, dipped, and wheeled with a peculiar if inexplicable grace through a deadly arcade of orbiting mass in the Kirkwood Gap. Anyone witnessing this ethereal dance would be hard-pressed to decide if the ship was driven by a madman, a fool, a genius, a maestro musician or all of the above; some of the maneuvers went against the grain of common sense—or perhaps transcended ordinary dull arithmetic. She seemed to anticipate impacts before they came—twice in the blizzard of rock and metal and space-junk she vanished altogether only to appear on the other side of her attacking object. And with the briefest pause, which could be a dancer stopping only to draw in a fresh breath, she was off, spinning again in her most dangerous game.

Like the Feathered Sun she was trapped in an Event that must play out to the end—be it freedom or the freedom of death.

Unlike the Feathered Sun, this craft was alive. So was her pilot.

Boom. A chunk of iron magnetite struck the side of the toy-craft and went spinning off, doubtless causing its own problems with navigation for future travelers.

If audial scanners worked anything like the visuals, they would have picked up startling scraps and fragments of some sort of screaming match going on whilst the craft playing footloose in the arena of space.

["I told you I saw it with my own eyes!"]

["The TSD is more reliable than that, Doctor."]

["I don't care what those unintelligent computers said! Dull, soulless, unimaginative things with no appreciation for possibility! It's clearly—"]

!BOOM!


The TARDIS rocked like a wet-navy ship; the Doctor clutched frantically at his control console even as he silently cursed at the stupid technicians who had repaired his precious ship according to their specifications—most especially, along the proportions to someone who was much larger than himself.

Gallifreyans had been smaller in the old days; Giants like Omega and Rassilon almost revered for their god-like proportions. The ancient craft had appealed to the Doctor in part because he felt perfectly sized within her walls. And now what? They'd done her up into something more modern and less…cozy. And unless his ear had failed him (which it never did) his poor TARDIS was just as unhappy about the change as he. Together they were struggling to re-integrate the new and unfamiliar into the old and comfortable, desperate to repair the old bond between ship and pilot.

!BOOM!

The thinning leather soles of his scruffed shoes slipped on the gleaming floor. A gout of sparking wires tumbled out of the ceiling and draped over his small body like so many Christmas garlands.

Long used to the problems of flying a ship older than some of Gallifrey's tectonic plates, the little man blew a ghost wire away from his face and shook his tousled mop of just-greying hair, hoping to clear it of cables. Eyes as electric as the wires glittered green and frantic as they narrowed, concentrating on his craft's needs. As usual, the telepathic circuits protested; no modern patch job had ever worked with her and she was trying her best to communicate with him. The Doctor (stubborn and resolute creative thinker that he was), answered the courtesy by trying to adapt his mind to her Temporal Grace.

["Doctor! Get out of there before it's too late!"]

The only other presence in the room was that of the scanner directly facing him on the opposite wall. It wore a tight-faced visage of a sallow, lean man with grey hair, grey eyes and dull grey robes.

["Your TARDIS cannot continue on this flight, Doctor!"] The face was insisting.

"Only a little longer!" The Doctor protested, his voice pitching high from the stress of the moment. "I'm almost there and I almost had a fix on the coordinates!"

["Doctor, may I remind you—"]

BOOM.

The Doctor yelped, his arm flying forward into space just in time to grip the Rotor. His feet left the floor and the roundels went dull. With a face white with tension and fear he faced the angry one on the other side of the screen.

["That your—"]

CRUNK.

[-Derelict of a TARDIS—"]

*BOOM.*

["For the love of Rassilon! Will you just switch to Automatic before you knock yourself into next week?!"]

Grim as the situation was, the Doctor had to grin tightly at the unexpected break in the other's countenance.

"Next week?" He panted even as he struggled to hang on to a control he was also trying to dial down. "When did you start picking up Earth phrases, Sardon?"

["I'm not picking up Tellurian phrases, Doctor! I'm being literal! The wave-momentum is going to send you a full month into the future if you make even the slightest miscalculation!"] The Time Lord's composure finally cracked and gave up any chance of poise. ["Doctor, you can't manually pilot a TARDIS through an active orbit! You'd have to be a genius!"]

"Tch." The Doctor answered in that calm, just-slightly-smug way that infuriated everyone on Gallifrey—especially the ones who had scored his academic grades to such abysmal levels. "And what was your point? I'm afraid I missed it."

["If you don't stop this at once and head right back to Xenobia, I will personally activate your Last Resort Bomb!"]

"Not if you want this pinhole." The Doctor snapped back. "And it needs to be traced, Sardon. Not if we want to risk further lives and further mischief in the Continuum." A wire snaked lazily across his nose; he risked freeing one hand long enough to brush it away.

Behind Sardon, the tiny images in the background froze, temporarily stunned at the way their newest recruit was speaking to his superior officer.

Sardon was ever a man of iron control and was not going to name his first temper tantrum after the Doctor.

"You are putting yourself under undue risk, Doctor." He opted to use his Condescending, I am in Control voice. That voice reminded the Doctor that his life was securely in the hands of the CIA—and Sardon's more than anyone else. "Piloting in your head is not a recommended activity."

"Then please don't distract me!" The Doctor retorted. "I tried the Automatic program, Sardon! Don't you think I know that much about my own TARDIS? This pinhole detected me whenever I got within a single parsec! It's charged full of artron! I've no choice but to go in blind!"

BOOM.


Back on Xenobia, the CIA was staring at the remnants of images filtering back from space and time. The Doctor had (wisely) turned off the sound and was now keying a maneuver into the console that looked more like a game of The Mad God's Chess.

"'know that much about my own TARDIS?'" Arcalian Het'laup repeated blankly. "I don't think anyone knows anything about that TARDIS!"

"From your mouth to the Ears of the Mad God." His companion sighed. "You know, I don't remember him being quite like this back at the Academy."

"He was still being good. Er, trying to be good. He was never that good at it."

"I hate that I know what you mean."

A very quiet, calm, pent-up exhalation of resignation distracted the Council. Everyone glanced uneasily to Sardon, who was sitting quite still at his portion of the table, long, lean fingers laced neatly over the polished fossilwood. Despite the pyroclastic temper of his recent words, the Grey Man, whom even the Traditionalists thought "strange," was composed and remote.

"Shouldn't we at least activate the Recall?" The Advocate for the Chair proposed timidly.

"No." Sardon said firmly. "The Doctor is right." He ignored the askance expressions breezing across the room like so many leaves, and poured himself a glass of water. "The data backs up what he is saying. That pinhole is…impossible as it sounds…temporally aware of our attempts to track it; he has no choice but to trace it by manual flight."

In the flurry of shocked protests, the Arcalian Voice of Reason floated above the chaos:

"Sardon, no one's attempted to fly any timeship on manual since the Dark Days! We've lost that…that primitive skill thousands of years ago!"

"Well he's flying a ship from the Dark Days, so that gives him as much help as he'll ever get!" Sardon sipped his water with appropriate dignity and calm, but his compatriots were careful to ignore the muscle trying to jump in his cheek. "And if anyone can fly at TARDIS with nothing more than the calculations in his head, it would be that Rumpled Rouge."

"Sardon, have you seen his grades?" Jokul's eyebrows had lifted to the highest point on his high forehead. "He flunked Basic Square-free Algorithms! He got higher marks for turning the perigosto stick into a musical instrument!"

"Yes, I have seen his grades. I also noticed his low grades were in direct correspondence to classes taught by Prydonian Elders who'd had the delight of his father." Sardon had found a nutricube and with frozen dignity popped it in his mouth, washing it down with more water. As usual, even the least incidental reference to the two Time Lords that had given life to The Doctor lifted chills up his flesh. He took a deep breath. "At any rate, if we are to track this dangerous anomaly, we will have to use new methods—the other ones weren't working at all."

"But…If you agreed with him, why didn't you just say so?"

"When controlling a free thinker like the Doctor, the best thing you can do is make certain he never knows you approve of his actions." Sardon said firmly.

"What's he doing now?"

Sardon glanced at the screen. Through the Continuum-warped imagery they could just make out a blurred shape: the small, battered figure of the Doctor pressing his ear against the console of his embarrassingly out of date TARDIS, his lips moving as if in paying reverence to unseen forces. "Listening." He said helpfully. "One of his odd little tricks, or proof of his madness, I've never been sure which."

"Is he talking to that thing?" Someone asked uneasily

"Believe me, that's not the worst thing I've seen him talk to." Sardon paused, thinking.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait." Sardon said firmly. "The Doctor has chosen the moral high ground—an altruistic direction that will, if he survives, condemn him to further punishment and parole term with us. If he dies in the line of duty, that is his choice. If he survives, he will return to us, and we will re-write the specific terms of his terms of service. But either way…"

The Grey Man's voice faltered only briefly. He was never indecisive, just calculating.

"Either way we must watch and take what we see into personal account."

There. He'd said it.

Outwardly he was the epitome of calm, proper Time Lordian detachment.

Inwardly he was wondering if he'd pushed too far.


Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor was not bothering with the ridiculousness that passed for decision-making amongst the CIA. He had other things to worry about—getting through the field of active plantestimals for one, and keeping his bead on that infuriating little pinhole while he did so! Being the hired gun of the Time Lord Secret Police actually paled in comparison to the troubles of chasing after that horrid little mathom.

Especially considering this nasty little beast had been the object of his chase across this side of the Galaxy for at least three gigaanuums!

Pinholes were every bit as bad as wormholes…but they were much, much smaller.

The Doctor flinched as his Timeship pitched forward, yawed like Lord Nelson's ship under storm, and finally went right. When it finished its navigational gyrations, he was trembling and gasping for breath. His hands had frozen to the console in a grip an Ice Warrior would have saluted. When he managed to unlock them from the second and fourth panels, he looked hard for a moment to see if he'd dented the metal.

Steering his TARDIS through bad space was problematic in the best of times; he missed Jamie and Zoe acutely. Zoe could have manned the Environmental Controls whilst Jamie had proven adaptable to Panel Six's power units and shunting tricks. But no, no Companions yet. That was a privilege he had yet to earn, as they loved to remind him over and over and over.

He suspected that his Minders were doing it on purpose, to make sure his loneliness in isolation would make him more agreeable to accepting atrociously dangerous jobs—like this one, for example.

So he was literally flying solo with one hand on the second panel (Extreme Navigational Circumstance and Defensive Maneuvers) and the fourth (Computer Access and Databanks).

BOOM!

"Oh, bother." He muttered and tucked his head into his shoulders just before a waterfall of couplings tumbled over his body like so much clastic fill into a sinkhole. Wires trickled down his back. He had the faint impression this would look utterly absurd if it wasn't so terrifying—modern TARDIS models had killed more than one hapless pilot in similar accidents, State of Grace unable to compensate for a TARDIS' own mishaps.

He grimly plugged on, banishing from his head the unpleasant memories of old school training films showing the end result of foolish young pilots: very dead pilots, gift-wrapped like so many mummies by their own equipment. His Girl wasn't like that. He knew it; and he really and truly hoped she wasn't picking up his thoughts right now because she wasn't above a bit of a—

SSSSSSSSCCCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Tears filled the Doctor's eyes. His protective lenses shut down all the way, but he didn't need to see so much anyway. Even stone blind he knew every inch of her.

"There you are!" He crowed, and slapped his hand down on one of the less-used controls. "Got you now, you little—"


Even on the other side of the Five Galaxies, the CIA council heard what happened next:

The explosion of over-stressed temporal flares hit Xenobia's sensors like a firestorm across a dry steppe under high winds. It blew out half the screens, drained the power off the Station's Solar Sails, clogged the Fugit Relays which sent the feeding lines to the Eye of Harmony on the fritz, and made firecrackers out of the Transduction Barriers. Even the Dominators picked up the pyrotechnic display from their side of the Universe, and the TSS departments all over Gallifreyan Territory would be scrubbing white noise out of the input plugs for weeks. It would have been a splendid time for the Daleks to stage an intelligence coup; if their sensors hadn't suffered the same damages. As it were, Skaro's mutations assessed the situation in their unnerving blackout, and made the correct decision to blame it on the next version of the Doctor they encountered.


Sardon sat, wondering if he'd been accidentally temporally frozen to his chair in the wake of the hot, reeking wind of exploded scanner on the wall. His ears rang like the Holy History Bells on Founding Father's Feast Day.

Then the rest of his hearing recovered; most of his mates were either gasping in shock or failing to hold on to their concept of 'dignified hysterics.'

Someone tugged on his sleeve. Again.

"Yes?" Sardon croaked, couldn't hear himself, and tried again. "Yes?"

"Sir!" A fresh-faced Technician with wide blue eyes was shaking. "We've got a problem!"

"We've got several problems, I believe." Sardon struggled to keep from yelling, but his ears were still adjusting to his personal volume. He cleared his throat. "What is it?"

"The Doctor…" The trembling youth wiped his sweating face. "Sent us a message cube."

"He did?" Sardon couldn't have kept the shock out of his voice if he'd tried. "He's alive?"

"I-I-I don't know about that, sir. It's the message cube he sent that's the trouble." The boy gulped hard, finally aware that everyone had piped down to stare at him. "The Cube, sir! It showed up in the docking bay. There's…" Another gulp. "The scanners say there's a pinhole inside it! We've got all our shields up around it…

"But we don't know what to do!" The tech wailed. "No one's ever mailed us a pinhole before!"

"Be calm, boy." A chilly voice soothed the frantic youngster. It was Goth, who rarely spoke at meetings unless he had something obscure to say. The lean Prydonian was brushing bits of disaster off his fine Coquelicot robes with cool disdain. "Transmat the Cube directly to one of those Pocket Dimensions we keep on standby for emergencies, and keep the containing shields around it. If it's as volatile as we fear, it will require extreme containment methods. Our scientists can take the problem from there."

"Sir! Yes!"

The still-dazed Interventionists watched him go.

"Still alive." Jokul muttered blankly.

Sardon was impressed himself, but kept the situation relative. "At least he was when he mailed us our little culprit."

"Now all we have to do is find him." Goth was stroking his cheek thoughtfully. "Locking a rouge pinhole into a message cube? Unexpected but a stroke of genius."

Sardon would never dream to get into a battle of social graces with a Pryodonion, but the temptation to make a clever but sarcastic comment about working with the Doctor was exceptionally strong today.


To be continued...