The Uncharted Dark

By Vanya

Part 2

"What's going on?" it was Haze's turn to ask questions was a wave of panic spread through the mess.

"Weapons system has been activated," Clem said, her voice carrying over the commotion, "Come on!"

Without a second thought she grabbed the stranger's hand, pulling her towards the sick bay.

xxxx

"My place is here," Jack said, taking his seat and quickly trying to process all the information flashing on the screen in front of him, "In a combat situation the entire internal communication system functions as a two way radio, wherever you are I can hear you. Now go, do what you do best."

With that the Doctor sprinted to the door.

"Doctor," Jack called out, causing him to pause and turn around, "You're going to need this." Jack removed a key for around his neck and threw it across the room. The Doctor caught it and continued through the ship.

xxxx

Helena was also running, her station was on the flight deck. She didn't know why the missiles had been fired, but she did know was that their position had been compromised and they would need to make a very quick getaway. As she tore into the cockpit she almost collided with a man in a Hawaiian shirt.

"Kreigler!" she exclaimed, "What's going on?"

"How the hell should I know?" the soldier replied angrily, "I heard the alarm and came here, just like you."

"You got here pretty damn fast." she muttered as she hunched over the main console. On the screen she could see the missiles approaching their target, getting closer and closer with every passing second. Her right hand reached over and flicked open a cover, revealing a small, lit red button which she pressed down hard. Nothing happened.

"Come on," she growled, as she jabbed the button repeatedly, before practically screaming: "Come on, work you piece of..."

"What's wrong?"

Helena and Kreigler both jumped at the sound of the new, unfamiliar voice, "Someone's triggered a missile launch and the kill switch isn't working." She said, reasoning asking more questions was going to slow things down.

"Out of the way!"

The newcomer, the Captain's mysterious friend, pushed her aside before dropping onto his knees and pulling the panel of the console, "I'm giving you a boost," he mumbled as the attacked the wiring, "Lets see if your destruct signal's any clearer at 500% efficiency. Try it now."

Helena hit the red button again, "Still nothing."

xxxx

From the work station in his cabin Jack could only watch. He could see and hear everything that went on aboard, every effort had been made to stop the missiles, but the efforts had been in vain. He looked on helplessly as the missiles collided its target, with one of the space stations of Velitrax. Through the vacuum of space the explosions made no sound, and the distance made the true extent of the damage impossible to make out. He had no idea what it had been used for, how many had died, what he did know was that they had just fired, unprovoked, on a completely unknown enemy. In situation like that there was only one thing to do.

"Attention everyone," he said as his voice carried all over the ship, "For reasons unknown we have just fired on Velitrax, severely damaging one of it's outlying space stations. The person responsible will be held accountable for their actions but for the moment we have just committed an act of war on behalf of the Empire. Helena, if you would be so kind as to get us out of here, maximum speed, I'm authorising the use of the hyper-charger device."

xxxx

"Great," Helena said irritably, "And how am I supposed to do that Jack?"

"What do you need?" asked the Doctor.

"It can only be activated after two keys are turned simultaneously, here," she indicated to one key hole on the console, "And here. I have one key, but Jack has the other."

"You mean this one?" the Doctor said.

"OK then, we're in business," they both inserted their keys into the appropriate holes, "Three, two, one, now!"

They both turned their key and a panel on the main console slid aside, revealing a large, green button. Helena took her seat at the controls and began to set the coordinates to return them to Earth and for the first time in months the ship moved, pointing back to the way they had come. Leaning forward the pilot pressed down the button with the palm of her hand, activating the hypercharger device. The ship lurched forward as the system triggered a great increase of speed, but slowed again quickly. Sparks flew from the pilot's console as Helena was flung across the cockpit by the force. Deep in space the ship just drifted onwards.

xxxx

"We need a stretcher team on the bridge now!"

It was the call Clem had been dreading. When the alarm had first sounded she had hoped she would have little to do, that they could make it through the crisis without any serious casualties. In one hand she grabbed a med kit, a short term solution until they could get the injured crew member back to sick bay and in the other she picked up a light weight folding stretcher. Some of the soldiers would have to do the actually carrying, finally get them to do something useful for the mission.

Clem made her way to the bridge as quickly as she could, with Haze closely behind her. The sight that awaited them was not a pleasant one. The pilot's console was badly damaged, displaying a large scorch mark down the centre. Some way away from it Helena lay sprawled on the floor with the Doctor kneeling next to her.

"I'm sorry," he said solemnly, looking up from where Helena was lying, "She's dead."

Clem ignored him, refusing to believe such a shocking diagnosis and needing to draw her own conclusions she focused on the unpleasant task in hand. She took hold of Helena's left hand to check her pulse, the right, where she had touched the console, was just a mass of charred flesh. When that yielded nothing she moved onto breathing, also nothing. She began fumbling with the med kit, trying to hook up the defibrillator while her hands trembled uncontrollably. The Doctor reached out and took her wrist, steadying her hand. Looking her straight in the eye he said "She took the full force of the blast, there's nothing you can do for her now. She's gone."

xxxx

Raven 16 had taken its first casualty. Helena Lake's body was loaded onto the stretcher, two soldiers, Bedford and Selway, took either end and carried her down to the cargo bay. While not a pleasant scenario the death of crew members had been planned for, a special storage area, nicknamed the mausoleum, had been prepared where the deceased could be kept safely until their return to Earth, where proper funerary arrangements could be made.

Hugo sat alone in in the cargo bay, staring at the place where the body was stored. The shock of her death weighed heavily on his mind, they had been living in working on that ship for so long it was hard to believe she was gone, that even though they were only separated by a thin piece of metal he would never see her again. He ran his hand against the cold metal door, there were so may things he wished he could have said to her, none of which mattered now.

"Attention everyone," Jack's voice boomed out, "Until further notice all crew are confined to their quarters, repeat all crew are confined to their quarters."

"Good bye Helena." Hugo muttered as, reluctantly he left the cargo bay.

xxxx

"So you're sure it was deliberate?" Jack asked.

"Nothing about this situation could have been accidental," replied the Doctor, "The missiles were a precision shot and whoever set it up had the foresight to disable the kill switch. As for that trick with the hypercharger, there are too many safe guards in place for it to kill someone on its own."

"So, hypothetically speaking, how would you have done it?"

The Doctor paused and took a deep breath, "The missiles normally receive their coordinates from the targeting computer right before the launch, but theoretically if I could get into the missile bay I could program them by hand and while I was there shut down the receiver so the destruct signal wouldn't work. You've been stationary for so long that this would actually be pretty straightforward. But whoever your saboteur is it's the hypercharger that really concerns me. If I was trying to sabotage it I would have disabled it from the engine room or vented the excess energy out into space, but instead they fed it back into the cockpit and that to me says malicious intent."

Jack nodded, for a captain this was the worst case scenario, the revelation that one of his crew as a cold blooded killer, made worse by the fact he had no idea which one, "Doctor I'd like you to take a look at the personnel files, see who you think has the skills to pull off such an act."

"Shouldn't you be out there, talking to your crew?"

"I've been with them ten years and I barely know any of them. Before today I didn't think any of them were capable of doing something like this. Right now Doctor you're the only one on this ship I trust."

"Oh, you can trust Haze."

"If she's with you I suppose I can," Jack said, then added, "Sorry, I meant no offense."

"Don't worry, none taken." Haze replied, having been sitting quietly the whole time.

The Doctor took the captain's chair, flicking through data-discs as he began to scrutinise each crew member, looking for some clue as to who was responsible.

"You're one short," Haze observed, "There's discs for a crew of ten, and that includes the captain, but there was definitely ten people out there so there's eleven of you in total."

"Well spotted," Jack said, "The eleventh man is Joseph Rennes, he wasn't part of the original mission, we found him about three years ago."

"I'm sorry," Haze said, surprised, "You found him?"

"We'd picked up a distress call and followed it to cargo ship, stranded in deep space after it's hyperdrive malfunctioned. Joseph had been the only survivor having spent years alone, and since we were so far from Earth he was forced to remain aboard for the duration of our mission. Initially he was a bit shell-shocked, but he had integrated thanks largely to Dr Goscinny's counselling. Gordon even took him on as an assistant. We were able to pull the crew records from the freighter's central computer though, I have his service record on the system."

"Surely he's the most likely suspect then? Presumably everyone else had to get through some kind of selection process, thorough background checks and this guy just walks aboard? He's the one, I'd put money on it."

"Could be, could be," the Doctor muttered, "But I wouldn't wager too much at this point. I don't know about Rennes, but according to these files there's only two crew members who have the technical skill required for what we saw, chief engineer Gordon O'Rourke and computer specialist Caroline Nash. Gordon seems like a pretty upright an moral sort of fellow, at least based on what it says about him here, but Caroline seems a little more iffy. For one she's seriously overqualified, I can see you wanting the best, but come on, she invented half of these systems. Then there's the extended leave of absence, she was off work for more six months prior to her selection for the Raven project and no reason is given. She's definitely hiding something."

"Hardly conclusive though." replied Haze.

"True and I'm not ruling out anyone at this point. In my experience it's much easier to hide skills than it is to fake them. Any one of the soldiers could have picked up technical skills outside of their military training. The first rule in a situation like this is to suspect everyone, of course the second rule is to get out while you can, but I always ignore that one. Then again I think the third rule is something about not starting fires, which isn't all that relevant here..."

"Doctor!" Haze snapped.

Sorry," he then turned to Jack, "Right then Captain, that's the situation, what are your orders."

"We're stranded in unfriendly territory with a killer on board. Finding who's responsible is our top priority, but getting moving again is a pretty close second. I'm going to release Gordon and Rennes to work on the engines, Doctor, go with them, offer to lend a hand and find out what you can. I'll talk to Caroline and use my natural charm to find out what she's hiding, and Haze, talk to Clem, she's been performing continual psych evaluations of the crew, if anyone can offer us any insight it's her," Jack paused, "One more thing, my first priority is to this ship and it's crew. I will try and save both if I can, but we fired the first shot and I don't want this incident escalating. If things get too hot then I'm going to activate the self destruct, and with your permission Doctor, we use the TARDIS to get everyone to safety."

"OK, but only as a last resort, I'd rather not invite a killer aboard my ship."

With that the three left to take on their tasks.

xxxx

Dr Clemence Goscinny sat alone in her cabin, her head in her hands, her mind trying to sort out the mess that had just unfolded. She was in shock, that was obvious, even to her, but her conduct had been extremely unprofessional. Helena was clearly dead when she arrived, anyone could have seen that, the Doctor even told her so, so what was the point in even trying to save her?

Clem had been a doctor for nearly fifteen years, she had been sponsored through medical school by the armed forces and followed up her MD with field medic training. This was the only life she had known and yet she panicked at the first sign of a medical emergency. Ten years was a long time to go without seeing a body, or indeed a patient with anything more severe than a sprained ankle. Before the mission had departed they had discussed possible psychological effects of such a long time in deep space, cooped up with a small group of people for years on end and every effort was made to combat the negative effect. This was a scenario that had been discussed endless times, but Dr Goscinny had believed that by using reading material and practice techniques her instincts could stay sharp, but she had been wrong. Now Helena's body had placed into storage Clem fought to regain her composure. From that moment on she made a promise to herself, if the situation occurred she would be ready.

There was a knock at the door. She slowly rose to her feet, fully expecting to see Jack or AJ ready to give her a dressing down over the handling of the incident, instead it revealed the purple haired stranger.

"Hi, um... Haze wasn't it?" Clem began, unsure of what to make of the situation.

"That's right, mind if I come in?"

"Of course not, have a seat."

Haze looked around the cabin. Although it wasn't quite as nice or spacious as the Captain's it was still a huge step up from the confined cabins she had seen on the last spaceship she'd been on. Stylish plastic furniture filled the room and a sophisticated looking computer sat atop the desk, displaying what appeared to be a page from a medical textbook. One of the four walls was dominated by a giant screen, currently showing an image of vast green rolling hills.

Haze smiled, "Missing the outdoors?"

"A little yes."

"Same here, I grew up in Scotland, my family lived in Edinburgh but we always went out into the country for weekends. There's no way I could do what you've done, ten years in here I'd go crazy," then the seriousness of the situation returned to her, so she asked "How are you feeling?"

"Better."

"That's good. You seemed really upset earlier, were you and Helena close?"

"We got along, you pretty much have to here, the ship's far to small to nurse a grudge. But I liked her she was a nice person, had nerves of steel and a poker face like no one I've ever seen. I'll miss her."

"There's no easy way to say this," Haze sighed, "The Doctor believes, and Jack agrees with him, that there's no way any of this could have been an accident, the situation was designed to kill Helena. You know this crew better than anyone, is there anyone on board who you think could have done it?"

"No, in our time together there's never been anything more serious than a raised voice, let alone a threat of violence."

"What about Rennes?" having conducted many interviews in Haze usually avoided asking such a leading question, but in this case her suspicions were too strong to be ignored, and it was her first murder inquiry, "He's the only one of you that wasn't screened prior to the mission, and who knows what all that time aboard a derelict ship would do to a person?"

"No, he was a bit fragile when he came aboard but he's well adjusted now and he never seemed violent or unstable. It may have taken him a while to learn to trust us, but he never seemed to bare us any ill will, especially not Helena. Besides, we brought detailed files over from his ship, he doesn't have the skill to pull of something like this."

"Any chance they could have been tampered with?"

"No, Caroline went over them, they're genuine personnel files from his freighter."

"OK, lets look at this another way, there were ten of you aboard, it had to be one of you, do you have even the slightest suspicions over who it could be?"

"My opinions of the crew are formulated from both the psychological profiles and my interactions in the social settings, as limited as this has been in some cases. If I had to name a suspect it would have to be a soldiers, Kreigler. The other three were an existing military unit been serving together for years, but Kreigler's new, he was only assigned for this mission. He seems different somehow, he..."

But her words were cut off.

xxxx

Caroline's cabin had the basic shape and interior design were identical to those of Dr Goscinny's and indeed every other cabin aboard the ship. Each was decorated according to the taste of the inhabitant, in this case it was very sparse. Despite her vast fortune she had chosen to take very little with her, all but the most basic decorations and essential furniture adorned the cabin.

Captain Jack, sitting across the table from her, noted this. All the time they had been aboard this was the first time he had set foot in this cabin, or the cabin of any of the other crew members.

"So I'm a suspect then." Caroline said flatly, before Jack could even address her.

"Not one for small talk eh?"

"No."

"OK then, you're a suspect, everyone aboard is."

"What about your friends, the man and the girl that turned up out of nowhere right before the incident, are they suspects too? Are they locked up somewhere with Bedford and Selway putting their interrogator training to use?"

"The Doctor is assisting me with my inquiries."

"Are you even going to tell us who he is?"

"Right now he's the only one on board I can trust, which is more than can be said for you."

"Of course he is. I'm flattered you came to see me first though."

"Well you do have all the necessary skills."

"Oh Captain, you know what a girl wants to hear." she said mockingly.

"Did you do it?"

"Well if I did I wouldn't exactly admit to it would I?"

"Depends on why you did it?"

"Why do you think someone would?"

"I don't know."

"Oh dear, this isn't going very well is it, please tell me this isn't your first time."

Growing impatient Jack slapped a file onto the table, the paper copy of Caroline's profile, "I have no idea why you would want to attack an unknown alien race," he began angrily, "But then again there's a lot I don't know about you. I accepted you onto my ship in good faith, but there are some very suspicious gaps in this file."

"You're one to talk, there may be gaps in my file, but at least I have a one. I tried to look into you before we left, I found nothing. If you know all about me then you'll know how good I am, and if I can't find anything on you then either you don't exist or your file is so classified that only the five most important people in the Empire have access to it. And for so long this didn't bother me, I just thought if they trust you enough to put you in command that should be good enough, but right now it isn't. You say that everyone's a suspect, maybe when we're done here we should turn this around, ask you and the Doctor some pretty probing questions, how does that sound?"

But Jack didn't get a chance to answer.

xxxx

"Blimey, this really is a mess." the Doctor muttered as he helped Gordon strip away the remains of the hypercharger device.

The device itself was a miracle of engineering, it's very creation made the whole Raven project viable. That was the problem with deep space exploration, even with the hyperdrive running at maximum it would take you as many years to return home as it would to reach your destination in the first place. Not so with the hypercharger, it's use pushed the hyperdrive to work a hundred time more efficiently and reducing the return journey to a fraction of the time. There was a side effect of course, using it would burn out your engines and when it did run out of power you were left stranded wherever you happened to be. All you could do then is activate a distress beacon and wait for a rescue ship. But in this particular case the charger had burned out while providing the ship with no real benefit and leaving them stranded in unfriendly territory.

"I don't think it's as bad as it looks," said Gordon, standing back to survey the engines, "It's prolonged use that burns out the engines all we had was a quick flash. OK, so the hypercharger is buggered, but I reckon we can get the main engines, maybe even the hyperdrive going again."

"Good man. So what do you think caused it?"

"Hard to say," he replied, examining the hypercharger, "Could be a production fault I suppose, but these things are rigorously checked. Some kind of power surge maybe, but I inspected everything here recently. So that just leaves..."

"Sabotage?" Rennes finished Gordon's sentence as he trailed off, "But how?"

"That's what I'm here to find out. Mind if I take a look over this?" the Doctor asked as they moved the remains of the hypercharger to a nearby workbench. To help pass the time Gordon had turned a corner of the engine room into a workshop where he had several small projects on the go.

"Go ahead," Gordon replied, "We'll start working on the engines."

As the two engineers set to work the Doctor began to dismantle the hypercharger looking for some clue as to what caused the fatal malfunction. This was definitely the first time the casing had been off, there was no doubt about it and whatever was done to it was certainly not achieved by physically tampering with the circuitry. This would leave only one option, programming. It wouldn't have been easy, there were dozens of safeguards and fail-safes to get past, but whoever was responsible would have had years to work on it, surly that was enough time.

"Find anything?" the Doctor looked up to see Rennes standing over his shoulder.

"Not yet, shouldn't you be helping Gordon?"

"Oh he's fine. I don't really do much anyway, juts hand him tools and hold the light. This was only ever supposed to be a one man job, he never needed an assistant. I'm more a charity case than anything else, he doesn't actually need me."

"Oh don't say that, it's always good to have another pair of hand, another pair of eyes."

"You always travel with your assistant, surely you must have recruited her for a reason."

"Yes, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking. She's not here because she's an engineer or a pilot or an astrophysicist. Well OK, technically she is an astrophysicist, but that's not why I invited her to join me. No, she's here because she wanted to see the wonders of the universe, to learn the truth about what was really out there. That desire is what drives us, it's more important than any qualifications. That and the ability to see what ordinary people miss."

"Speaking of which, what is that?" Rennes asked, reaching into the hypercharger.

"What?" the Doctor, replied, quickly pulling Rennes's hand out of the device, "I don't see...Oh"

A high pitched whine filled the air, something had just come to life.

"Down!" yelled the Doctor, knocking Rennes to the floor.

A blinding flash filled the room. Gordon, who had begun to turn as the Doctor called out caught the full force of it, he collapsed to the floor screaming and clutching his eyes. After only a few seconds it was all over. The Doctor rushed to attend to the wounded man, but after a quick examination he concluded that there was nothing he could do here, best get him to the infirmary.

"Come on, up you get," he said, pulling Gordon to his feet, "Will you switch that off?" he added irritably to the alarm bells that were now ringing.

Rennes, shook his head, "Those aren't us."

xxxx

All three interviews were uninterrupted by the same alarm sound, there was a fire aboard the ship. Jack was first on the scene, extinguisher in hand. As the foam spray began to douse the flames the ominous truth hit him about the source of the fire. It was coming from the weapons locker, the fire was being fueled by the power cells of the blasters and assault riffles, and if he didn't get it under control soon there was a danger of the grenades contributing to the inferno. Footsteps thudded along the corridor, the alarm was drawing other to the scene. More jets of foam joined the stream and after a few tense moments the fire was under control.

Jack surveyed the situation. The two additional fire extinguishers had been wielded by Bedford and Selway, like good soldiers they had immediately rushed into action when the alarm had sounded. Kreigler had arrived moments later, he was fast, but not fast enough to be useful. But the fourth soldier lay sprawled on the floor having taken the full force of the explosion that led to the fire. Andrew James Warren, Jack's second in command, was dead.

xxxx

"So how's this for a theory: AJ sets off the missiles, sabotages the hypercharger and then tried to rig the weapons locker to explode, but it backfires and he's killed in his own inferno? What other reason could he have for disobeying orders and wondering round the ship?"

Once again Haze and Jack sat in the captain's quarters, chewing over the results of their respective interviews.

"Possible," Jack replied, "But it would be all too convenient and never really explains why."

"Nice try, but I don't think so," the both jumped as the Doctor entered the room, "You see, AJ's a soldier, there's a dangerous individual aboard this ship so naturally he goes for his gun, which safely locked away and he's the only one, other than yourself Jack, with access. No, I don't think he's responsible for what's been happening, he was just trying to arm himself and he fell into our killer's latest trap."

Haze nodded, "Makes sense, but all that does is eliminate one suspect from the pool, we're still no closer to catching the psycho who did this."

"Well, we're two suspects down, after what happened in the engine room there's no way Gordon was behind this."

"How is he?" Jack asked.

"There's nothing more I can do for him here, I've done all I can for the burns and the pain, but this is a man in desperate need of new eyeballs. For now he's totally blind."

"What exactly did happen in there?"

The Doctor quickly but fully recounted what happened with Gordon.

"Rennes," Haze said as soon as he'd finished, "All this happened after he touched the device, it has to be him."

"No, it was a discharge of residual energy, so unless he's capable of generating power surges like some kind of human battery there's nothing he could really have done."

"Fine, so where does this leave us with regards to the rest of our suspects? Dr Goscinny seemed to think that one of the soldiers, that Kreigler guy, was most likely ones to be behind this."

"I'm not done with Caroline yet," Jack added, "I know she's hiding something. I wouldn't be surprised if..."

His words were cut off by a buzzing noise, the intercom on his desk. Reaching over he flicked the switch and said "Go ahead."

"Captain,"said the voice on the other end, "It's Hugo, I think we have a serious problem."

"We have many serious problems Hugo, care to a a little more specific?"

"I've been trying to take my mind of things, off Helena so I've been going over the most recent set of communications we intercepted from Velitrax."

"Get to the point Hugo."

"There's a set of what appear to be numbers repeated numerous times in recent transmissions, I think they're co-ordinates and I've cross referenced them with some charts I intercepted earlier, and the outcome isn't good."

"What are they?" Jack asked, but a feeling of dread was building inside of him, he knew what was coming.

"They're us sir, those co-ordinates are our position. They've found us."

End of Part 2