Chapter 2

The Voyage of the Damned Part Two

Rose led the group into the reception area, where they had first met. There were another four Host robots in the room, and Astrid activated the EMP transmitter again.

'Rickston, seal the doors, make the room secure.' Rose commanded. 'Mr. Copper, keep an eye on the Host. I need to check the computer. We need that SOS.'

Rose went over to the computer terminal and put down the sonic screwdriver, she wouldn't be opening any more doors now that they had made it to the reception room. The computer didn't seem to be working, even when she thumped it. Neither Astrid nor Mr. Copper were technically minded, so they weren't able to get it working either.

Rose was feeling frustrated. She needed the Doctor. She needed to be with him, at his side. And then she noticed the rack of teleport bracelets. 'Mr Copper. Do you know how to set a destination for these bracelets?'

'Well, yes. You use the navigation screen on the teleport console.' He showed her the graphical interface, and she was able to select deck thirty one. 'But there's no power to the system.'

Rose reached for the speaking tube she'd seen the Doctor use to contact the bridge. 'Bridge? This is Reception One.'

['Who's there?'] Midshipman Frame asked.

'Rose Lungbarrowmas. I'm the Doctor's wife. Tell me, can you divert power to the teleport system?'

['No way. I'm using everything I got to keep the engines running.']

'It's just one trip. I need to get to deck thirty one.'

['And I'm telling you, no.']

'Mr. Frame, this is for the Doctor!' Rose told him forcefully. 'He's gone down there on his own, and I . . . we can't just leave him. He's done everything he can to save us. It's time we did something to help him.'

['Giving you power.'] Frame said.

'Make that enough for two,' Astrid said, grabbing two bracelets and giving one to Rose.

'Mr. Copper, we're going to find him,' Rose said.

Mr. Copper looked up from the Host robot he was dismantling. 'Good luck.'

Rose and Astrid disappeared in a shimmering white light.

Below decks, the Doctor had made it to the galley, where he found four Host robots. He grabbed a large sauté pan to defend himself.

'Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Security protocol one. Do you hear me? One. One! Okay, that gives me three questions. Three questions to save my life, am I right?'

['Information. Correct.']

'No, that wasn't one of them. I didn't mean it. That's not fair. Can I start again?'

['Information. No.']

'No! No, no, no, no. That wasn't a question either.' Damn their limited programming. 'Blimey. One question left. One question. So, you've been given orders to kill the survivors but survivors must therefore be passengers or staff, but not me. I'm not a passenger. I'm not staff. Go on, scan me. You must have bio-records. No such person on board. I don't exist, therefore you can't kill me. Therefore, I'm a stowaway, and stowaways should be arrested and taken to the nearest figure of authority. And I reckon the nearest figure of authority is on deck thirty one. Final question. Am I right?'

['Information. Correct.']

'Brilliant. Take me to your leader. I've always wanted to say that.'

The Host robots took him to deck thirty one, to a wrecked maintenance area. 'Wow. Now that is what you call a fixer upper. Come on then, Host with the most, this ultimate authority of yours. Who is it?'

One of the Host pressed a button and a pair of doors opened.

'Oh, that's clever. That's an omnistate impact chamber. Indestructible. You can survive anything in there. Sit through a supernova. Or a shipwreck. Only one person can have the power and the money to hide themselves on board like this and I should know, because . . .'

A large, box like device with small wheels emerged through the doors. The Doctor could see a man's head in a transparent housing on the top.

'My name is Max,' the head said and his gold tooth glinted.

'It really does that,' the Doctor said in surprise. He thought it was a visual effect.

'Who the hell is this?' Max asked his Hosts.

'I'm the Doctor. Hello.'

['Information. Stowaway.']

'Wellll . . .'

'Kill him.' The Host robots grabbed him.

'Oh, no, no, no. Wait, but you can't. Not now. Come on, Max. You've given me so much good material like, how to get ahead in business. See? Head? Head in business? No?'

'Oh, ho, ho, the office joker. I like a funny man. No one's been funny with me for years.'

'I can't think why.'

'A hundred and seventy six years of running the company have taken their toll.'

'Yeah but, nice wheels.'

'No, a life support system, in a society that despises cyborgs. I've had to hide away for years, running the company by hologram,' Max told him. 'Host, situation report.'

['Information. Titanic is still in orbit.']

Max looked irritated by that report. 'Let me see. We should have crashed by now.' He rolled forward to look over the edge of the platform. 'What's gone wrong? The engines are still running! They should have stopped!'

Rose and Astrid materialised on deck thirty one, and Rose could hear her husband trying to talk circles around someone in his usual, charming style.

'When they do, the Earth gets roasted. I don't understand. What's the Earth got to do with it?'

'This interview is terminated.'

His usual, charming style didn't seem to be working. She hoped being married wasn't cramping his style.

'No. No, no, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can work it out. It's like a task. I'm your apprentice. Just watch me,' he said.

"That's more like it," Rose thought with a smile.

'So, business is failing and you wreck the ship so that makes things even worse. Oh, yes! No. Yes. The business isn't failing, it's failed. Past tense.'

'My own board voted me out. Stabbed me in the back.'

'If you had a back,' the Doctor quipped.

"Nah, still got his gob," Rose thought.

'So, you scupper the ship, wipe out any survivors just in case anyone's rumbled you and the board find their shares halved in value. Oh, but that's not enough. No. Because if a Max Capricorn ship hits the Earth, it destroys an entire planet. Outrage back home. Scandal! The business is wiped out.'

'And the whole board thrown in jail for mass murder.'

'While you sit there, safe inside the impact chamber.'

'I have men waiting to retrieve me from the ruins and enough off-world accounts to retire me to the beaches of Penhaxico Two, where the ladies, so I'm told, are very fond of metal.'

'So that's the plan. A retirement plan. Two thousand people on this ship, six billion underneath us, all of them slaughtered, and why? Because Max Capricorn is a loser.'

'I never lose.'

'You can't even sink the Titanic.'

'Oh, but I can, Doctor. I can cancel the engines from here.' An alarm suddenly starts wailing.

'You can't do this!' the Doctor yelled.

'Host, hold him.' Two of the robots grab the Doctor's arms.

Rose realised that things weren't going according to plan. Who was she kidding? When did the Doctor ever have a plan? She looked around the area to see if there was anything she could use to help him.

'Astrid. That forklift truck over there, reckon we can work it?'

Astrid gave her a smile. 'I'm game if you are.'

'Not so clever now, Doctor. A shame we couldn't work together. You're rather good. All that banter yet not a word wasted. Time for me to retire. The Titanic is falling. The sky will burn. Let the Christmas inferno commence. Oh. Oh, Host. Kill him.'

'OI! Max!' Rose shouted. 'Mess with my husband, yer mess with me.'

'Oh, and Mr. Capricorn!' Astrid called out. 'I resign.'

Rose put her foot on the accelerator and the truck rolled towards Capricorn's vehicle.

'Rose, Astrid, don't!' the Doctor shouted.

Rose got the forks under Capricorn's life support and the two machines battled each other for supremacy. A Host threw its halo at them, which glanced off the roll cage and made them squeal.

'He's cut the brake line!' the Doctor warned them.

Rose knew that if they didn't stop Capricorn, the Earth was doomed. 'Astrid, lift the forks. If we can't push him over, we'll carry him.'

Rose looked over to the Doctor and gave him a confident look that said "don't worry, we'll stop him". The Doctor shook his head and mouthed "no". Unfortunately, Rose hadn't taken into account that when they lifted Capricorn's vehicle, it would stop pushing against their forklift truck.

They surged forwards and toppled over the edge into the abyss. The Doctor watched in horror, as the trucks tipped over the edge. It seemed to happen in slow motion.

'ROSE!' he shouted.

With Capricorn gone, the Host reverted to their original programming and released the Doctor. He ran forward and looked over the edge, watching in disbelief as his wife, his love, fell away from him towards the nuclear furnace of the storm drive.

'NO! ROSE . . . ROSE!' he screamed into the glowing pit.

['Titanic falling. Voyage terminated . . . Voyage terminated,'] the computer announced.

His body was wracked by sobs of grief, as he tried to suck air into his lungs. 'Rose,' he whispered.

He had a flashback to Satellite 5, when she had been shot by the Ann Droid. And then van Statten's bunker, when the Dalek had said "exterminate". Each time he had been distraught with grief when he thought she had died, but she had survived and came back to him.

Not this time! There was no way she could survive that, and there was no way he could save her . . . or Astrid for that matter.

On the Bridge, Midshipman Frame was trying to steer the falling liner away from the planet, but it was futile. The engines were dead, and he had a bullet in his abdomen. He didn't have the strength left to manhandle the wheel. He slumped in the corner, exhausted.

Two Host suddenly punched their way through the wooden floor panels at the back of the Bridge. Between them, was a man with unruly hair, wearing a dinner suit.

['Deadlock broken,'] the computer told them.

'Ah, Midshipman Frame. At last,' the Doctor said. His grief filed away for the moment. It would wait until he had saved the world, until he was back in the TARDIS.

Frame struggled to his feet. 'Er, but, but the Host.'

'Controller dead, they divert to the next highest authority, and that's me.'

'There's nothing we can do. There's no power. The ship's going to fall.'

['Titanic falling,'] the computer confirmed.

'What's your first name?' the Doctor asked Frame as he started to adjust the controls.

'Alonso.'

['Titanic falling.']

'You're kidding me.'

'What?'

'That's something else I've always wanted to say. Allons-y, Alonso. Whoa!'

He started to spin the ship's wheel, tacking the ship through the atmosphere. Alarms sounded as they descended lower and lower through the atmosphere, the air in front of the ship became superheated plasma. Once into the cloud layer, the Doctor turned on a scanner with his foot to see that their impact area was in west Central London. "Oh typical. Bloody typical," he thought to himself.

He grabbed an old fashioned, gold telephone off the console. 'Oh. Hello, yes. Could you get me Buckingham Palace?' He waited whilst the connection was made, and one of the Queen's telephony staff answered the phone.

['Buckingham Palace. How may I help you?']

'Listen to me. Security code seven seven one. Now get out of there!'

['Engines active. Engines active.']

"Yes!" There was a chance he could do this.

The Doctor pulled back on the wheel with all his strength, trying to get the ship's nose up. He braced himself for the impact, and Frame closed his eyes in anticipation. But instead of an explosion, they felt the ship level off as it missed the Palace by inches and then felt the surge of acceleration as they flew back up into the sky.

'Whoo hoo!' Frame shouted in a mixture of joy and relief.

'Whoo hoo hoo!' The Doctor exclaimed.

Frame slid down a support strut at the back of the room, as the Doctor sent the ship over the North Pole, and then curved around into an equatorial orbit.

He went over and sat next to Frame. 'Used the heat of re-entry to fire up the secondary storm drive . . . Unsinkable, that's me.' He stared out of the windows, silently remembering that he had lost Rose.

'We made it,' Frame said, trying to bolster his sense of achievement.

'Not all of us.'

He could see every detail of Rose and Astrid as they fell. Rose in her torn, burgundy dress. She loved that dress, it was the first one she had ever dressed up in. Astrid, in her maids outfit. Rose had worn one like that when they had been in Pete's World.

That got him thinking about Jackie. She would never know that Rose had died saving the Earth. She would be as mad as hell at him for letting it happen, but she would have been so proud of her daughter.

Tears stung his eyes as he saw Rose and Astrid reaching up to him with their outstretched arms with bracelets on their wrists . . .

'TELEPORT!' he shouted out, making Frame jump. 'They were wearing teleport bracelets.' Of course! That's how they had gotten to deck thirty one so quickly; they'd teleported.

He ran out of the Bridge and along the debris strewn passageways as fast as he could. Oh please let this be one of those days.

He ran into the reception area and reached inside his jacket pocket for his sonic screwdriver. He skidded to a halt. Rose had his sonic!

He saw Slade and Copper standing at the bar, as though they were waiting for a bartender to serve them a drink. 'Mr. Copper. Have you seen the device I gave Rose to open the doors with? You remember, silvery pen type thing. Made a warbling noise.'

'Is that it over by the computer terminal?' asked Slade?

'Where are the ladies?' Copper asked him. 'They went to find you . . . did they find you ?'

Copper knew from the look that the Doctor gave him that they had found him, and wished that they hadn't.

He grabbed his sonic and ran over to the teleport control console. 'Mr. Copper, the teleports, have they got emergency settings?'

'I don't know. They should have.'

The Doctor knew that the bracelets were just a transponder for the teleport to lock on to. The real teleport equipment was in the ship itself, and he knew a lot of commercial teleport devices had to pass health and safety inspections. One safety feature was a matter data backup in case of an accident. The user's configuration was stored so that it could be reconstructed.

'They fell, Mr. Copper. They fell. What's the emergency code?'

'Er, let me see.' Copper went to the controls and set the code.

'What the hell are you doing?' Frame asked as he shuffled into the room.

'We can bring them back,' the Doctor told them as he worked on a bundle of wires in the back of the console.

Mr. Copper explained the principle as the Doctor worked furiously. 'If a passenger has an accident on shore leave and they're still wearing their teleport, their molecules are automatically suspended and held in stasis, so that we can just trigger the shift.'

The Doctor hit a button on the console. 'There!'

Two blue, shimmering, semi transparent bodies appeared in the room.

'Doctor? Where are you?' the image of Rose said in a ghostly voice.

'I'm falling,' the image of Astrid said.

'Only halfway there,' the Doctor said. 'Come on.' He started working on the equipment again.

'Doctor? Save me,' the image of Rose pleaded.

'Working on it Sweetheart.'

'I keep falling,' the image of Astrid told them.

'Feed back the molecule grid. Boost it with the restoration matrix.' There was a bang and a puff of smoke from the console. 'No, no, no, no, no! Need more phase containment.'

He looked at the readings on the console and froze. 'Oh no . . . oh no, not that. Please.'

'Doctor? What's wrong?' Copper asked.

'The restoration matrix buffer has been damaged. I can only link up the surface suspension on one of them . . . I have to choose who lives and who dies.'

'I keep falling,' the image of Astrid called out to him.

'Doctor? Where are you?' the image of Rose asked again.

'Oh dear,' Copper said sadly, realising the weight of decision that rested on the Doctor's shoulders.

Tears ran down the Doctor's cheeks. Why did it always come down to choices like this? 'I know what Rose would say. She would say "save Astrid", without a second thought. That's the woman I fell in love with.'

Mr. Copper put a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'But she's your wife Doctor. What do you do, flip a coin? Leave it to Lady Luck?'

'I'm falling.'

'Doctor? I love you.'

With his eyes blurred with tears, he used his sonic screwdriver on the internal components of the console. There was another bang and puff of smoke. It looked like he would no longer have to make a decision, the equipment was failing.

'No!' he cried out. 'I just need to override the safety. I can do this. I can do it.'

Rose's image lost it's blue, ethereal glow, and took on a pure, golden shining light.

'What's happening?' Copper asked as Rose's body became less transparent.

'I . . . I don't know,' the Doctor said, which was quite an admission for him, because he usually knew everything.

He used the sonic to scan her form. 'Artron energy. But . . . But that's impossible! Where's it coming from?'

Before he could contemplate that mystery, Rose became fully restored, and fainted into his arms. He lowered her to the floor and cradled her in his arms. 'I've got you. I've got you my love.'

'Stop me falling,' the image of Astrid said.

'She's just atoms, Doctor,' Copper said. 'An echo with the ghost of consciousness. She's stardust.'

'Astrid Peth, citizen of Sto. The woman who looked at the stars and dreamt of travelling. Now you can travel forever.'

He pointed the sonic screwdriver at a window, which opened, as Astrid turned into specks of light. 'You're not falling, Astrid, you're flying.' The sparkles of light drifted through the window and out into space.

'Ooh, my head,' Rose said as her eyes flickered open. She looked up at the Doctor and smiled. 'Hiya. We were gonna teleport down to deck thirty one. Did somethin' go wrong?'

The Doctor realised that for the reconstructed Rose, she had never left the reception area in the teleporter. 'Er, yeah. There was a problem with the equipment . . . Rose, it's Astrid . . . she didn't make it.'

Rose frowned. 'What d'ya mean?'

'She died in the teleporter. I'm sorry.'

Rose grabbed him and hugged him for support. As far as she was aware, it could so easily have happened to her as well.

A while later, Frame returned to the reception area. 'The engines have stabilised. We're holding steady till we get help, and I've sent the SOS. A rescue ship should be here within twenty minutes. And they're digging out the records on Max Capricorn. It should be quite a story,' Midshipman Frame told them.

'They'll want to talk to all of us, I suppose,' Mr. Copper said.

Frame nodded. 'I'd have thought so, yeah.'

'I think one or two inconvenient truths might come to light,' Copper said, referring to his falsified qualifications and credentials. 'Still, it's my own fault, and ten years in jail is better than dying.'

Rickston Slade walked up to the Doctor and Rose by the bar. 'Doctor, I never said . . . thank you.' He hugged the Doctor, but the Doctor didn't return it. 'The funny thing is, I said Max Capricorn was falling apart. Just before the crash, I sold all my shares, transferred them to his rivals. It's made me rich. What do you think of that?'

Slade's vone rang, and he turned away to answer it. 'Salvain. Those shares. I want them triple bonded and locked.'

Copper wandered over to the Doctor and Rose. 'Of all the people to survive, he's not the one you would have chosen, is he? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies . . .' He was referring to the teleport dilemma. 'Would that make you a monster?'

The Doctor looked into Rose's beautiful, hazel eyes. Had she somehow taken that decision for him so that he didn't have to? He took a teleport bracelet and clipped it onto her wrist, kissing her lips as he did so.

'Hang on . . . is it safe?' Rose asked him, thinking that Astrid had died in the teleporter.

He picked a bracelet for himself. 'Yep. I've fixed it. It's perfectly safe. And . . .' He picked up a third bracelet. 'Mr. Copper, I think you deserve one of these.'

Midshipman Frame saluted them as they disappeared from the Titanic. They ended up on Hampstead Heath, near to the TARDIS, which had followed its emergency programme and landed on the nearest source of gravity, which happened to be the Earth.

'So, Great Britain is part of Europey, and just across the British Channel, you've got Great France and Great Germany,' Copper said.

'No, no, it's just . . . it's just France and Germany. Only Britain is Great,' Rose told him.

'Oh, and they're all at war with the continent of Ham Erica.'

'No. Well . . . not yet. Er, could argue that one,' the Doctor said. 'There she is. Survive anything.'

'You know, between you and me, I don't even think this snow is real. I think it's the ballast from the Titanic's salvage entering the atmosphere,' Copper said, looking up to the sky.

'Yeah. One of these days it might snow for real,' Rose said. 'And without your atmospheric excitation thingy.'

'So . . . I . . . I suppose you'll be off.'

'The open sky,' the Doctor said, looking up.

Rose hugged his arm. 'It's all waiting out there, Mr. Copper . . . All those planets, and creatures . . . and horizons.'

'And, what about me?' Copper asked hesitantly.

'We travel alone,' the Doctor told him.

'What am I supposed to do?'

'Give me that credit card,' he said.

'It's just petty cash. Spending money. It's all done by computer. I didn't really know the currency, so I thought a million might cover it.'

'A million? Pounds?' Rose asked, surprise in her voice.

'That enough for trinkets?'

'Mister Copper, a million pounds is worth fifty million credits,' the Doctor told him.

'How much?'

'Fifty million and fifty six.'

'I've got money.'

'Yes, you have.'

'Oh, my word. Oh, my Vot! Oh, my goodness me. Yee ha!'

'It's all yours, planet Earth. Now, that's a retirement plan. But just you be careful, though.'

'I will, I will. Oh, I will.'

'No interfering. I don't want any trouble; just . . .' he thought about what Copper should do.

'Just have a nice life,' Rose said with a smile.

'But I can have a house. A proper house, with a garden, and a door, and . . . Oh, Doctor, Rose, I will make you proud. And I can have a kitchen with chairs, and windows, and plates, and . . .'

They watched Mr. Copper wandering off.

'Er, where are you goin'?' Rose asked him

'Well, I've no idea.'

Rose grinned. 'No, me neither.'

'But Doctor, I won't forget her,' Copper said, meaning Astrid Peth.

A streak of blue starlight zig-zagged across the sky.

Neither would the Doctor, he remembered everyone he had failed. Astrid was the latest in a roll call of the dead, joining Katarina, Sarah, Adric, Kamelion, his family and friends on Gallifrey.

'Merry Christmas, Mister Copper.'

'Merry Christmas,' Rose echoed.

They stepped into the TARDIS, walked up the ramp to the console, and the Doctor activated the time rotor. Rose was remembering what Mr. Copper had said.

['But I can have a house. A proper house, with a garden, and a door, and I can have a kitchen with chairs, and windows, and plates.'] It reminded her of a similar conversation she'd had with the doctor once, when they thought they had lost the TARDIS on Krop Tor.

['I don't know. Find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe,'] she had said.

['I'd have to settle down. Get a house or something. A proper house with, with doors and things. Carpets. Me, living in a house. Now that, that is terrifying.']

['You'd have to get a mortgage,'] she'd teased.

['No!']

['Oh, yes.']

['I'm dying. That's it. I'm dying. It is all over,'] he'd joked at the time.

['What about me? I'd have to get one, too. I don't know, could be the same one. We could both, I don't know, share. Or not, you know. Whatever. I don't know. We'll sort something out,'] she had ventured hesitantly at the time, never thinking that they would eventually get married.

'C'mon,' she said, nudging him with her shoulder. 'Let's get changed, and then you can take me somewhere for Christmas lunch.'

'Oh yeah. Christmas. How do you want to celebrate this year?'

She rubbed her body up against his. 'I'm sure I'll think of somethin'. After all, it's our first Christmas together as husband and wife.'

'Merry Christmas Wife,' he said, kissing her on the lips.

'Merry Christmas Husband.' She returned the kiss, and ran her fingers through his hair.