Part Two: Living on Borrowed Time
The pan-galactic diner tumbled round the face of Triton and into its shadow. The perpetrators had long gone since the shot was fired, but that wasn't going to stop a Time Lady bent on justice.
Aylish watched with fear and fascination as Clara employed some console features that she'd never seen her use, and one of the screens seemed to display rewinding footage of the space outside the marvellous ship she now called home.
Suddenly, a second ship appeared on the scanner: spherical, but with protruding arms that gave it a somewhat diamond-like shape.
'Sontarans,' Clara softly growled.
'Sontarans?' Aylish dared to enquire.
'Yes,' the Time Lady replied as she watched the beam withdraw into the main cannon and the spire like appendages change configuration. 'Small, and as angry as they are stupid. Kinda look like a Mr Potato Head in armour.'
The ship faded from view and the pilot stopped the scanner. She immediately reached for her pocket watch again and logged some unexplained data. 'Gotcha! That gives me twenty minuets,' Clara added with an emphasis on the 'me' part. 'Hold on to something you two, I'm taking us in.'
Darcy sat back in the chair and wrapped her limbs around the adjacent railing, but Aylish stayed by the Time Lady's side while she rapidly hit buttons and toggled switches. Clara then threw the lever again, but part way through it's wheezing dematerialization/rematerialization cycle it started to utter an awful stuttering noise and the whole vessel shook violently.
'Ooo, you don't like that, do you?' Clara empathised as she desperately tried to hold on and adjust controls at the same time. 'Hang in there girl...'
'What's going on?' Aylish asked as she clung to the railing for dear life, sensing the Tardis' distress.
'She doesn't want to land near the engineering decks,' the Time Lady yelled over the racket. 'I'm going to look for a place where she will.'
The intrepid justicar of the continuum continued to hold on and stare at the monitor patiently–even when her feet wholly left the deck–as the craft scanned for a pleasing place. The moment it located a stable patch she pulled the leaver back and normality was restored–at least for twenty minuets, and despite the miserable sound of the Cloister Bell.
'I'll deal with this,' Clara retorted as she paced toward the door. Halting before the exit, she span on her heals and pointed up at the tailing Aylish with a fierce little expression. 'Stay here.'
With that, she stepped out and shut the door behind her. The lass just stared at the threshold for a long moment with folded arms and a pout. She then strolled over to her sister and said, 'You know that place where I told you to hide?'
Darcy nodded.
Stay there until we come back.
'But Clara said to stay...' the wee lass quietly stated.
Sensing her fear, Aylish looked to the door in dilemma. Then an idea crossed her mind and she looked back at her sister. 'Clara is a clever lass,' she replied with a smile as she worked at the ornate ring on her finger, 'but she doesn't know when she needs help.' Pulling the ring free, she held it between her thumb and index finger. 'Do you know what this is?'
'It's mum's ring,' Darcy answered.
Aylish placed it in the palm of the little girl's hand and closed her fist around it. 'Whenever I go with her, I'll leave this with you, so I'll have to come back... See?'
Darcy nodded with an uneasy smile.
'I thought I told you to stay in the Tardis,' Clara hissed as Aylish caught up and the broom closet door shut behind her.
'Well I thought you might need me,' the lass chimed merrily, determined not to let her more timid side get the better of her.
The Time Lady just shook her head, but never stopped stalking onward with sonic screwdriver in hand.
'Clara?' Aylish added uneasily, looking around at the ill-lit surroundings, but the traveller just shushed her as she listened out for the slightest sound and paid heed to the tiniest detection. 'Where are we?' our lass then added–mouse-like–even if that's not what she wanted to say. Sure, her guide was a powerful Time Lady–despite the misleading package–but how could she not feel the sheer life pulsating around her?
'The barracks,' Clara mumbled. 'Coming up on the mess hall...'
'It's a bit, quiet...'
The Teacher noted her agreement with a nod.
'So, why didn't your pocket watch break?' the lass continued, trying to talk her way to calmer nerves, just as she had done in Shilya's Keep.
'Because it's not a pocket watch,' Clara added and gave the girl a furtive smile. She could correct this little problem... she had to correct this little problem... and even if she couldn't, the Doctor most certainly would, so there was nothing wrong with adding some levity to the situation. The small, taunting voice in the back of her head told her how terribly wrong she was though... again.
'Nice tee-shirt by the way,' the Time Lady quickly added in a bid to distract her mind.
Aylish looked down at the Japanese Led-Zeppelin print showing beneath her sleeveless denim jacket. 'Maybe we should go there tomorrow,' she miserably supposed.
'I think that's a very good idea,' Clara agreed as she turned her screwdriver to a door panel. Before opening it however, she turned to her companion with a finger to her lips. She then tried to smother a smile as she considered how the Doctor would simply have told her to 'shut up.'
Aylish had her head on a swivel as they entered the mess. Apart from the rows of tables and benches, it wasn't like any mess she'd ever seen. There was no kitchen or counter for instance, and a long hose dangled above each seating space. Something else felt off too, and her eyes widened as she came to a terrible realisation.
'Clara!' she whispered, but Clara just turned to her with finger against lips again and an even sterner expression than before.
In the next instant, the door they'd entered locked itself and several squads of short shock troops poured in through the other three doorways to surround them, rifles raised.
'Well... Isn't this peachy,' Clara retorted as she raised her hands and Aylish nervously followed by example.
'I am insulted that the Council send someone of such diminutive stature to face me,' a gravelly voice stated and several soldiers stepped aside to let their commander approach. 'But, a Time Lady is a prized catch none-the-less,' he added as he removed his helmet to reveal the ravaged visage beneath.
Clara wrinkled her nose. 'There's the pot calling the kettle black...'
'You're right about the Mr Potato Head thing,' Aylish sheepishly sniggered and the Time Lady smiled.
'You will be quiet while I address you, boy, or you will feel the back of my hand!' the commander growled.
'Hey! I'm not a boy!' Aylish complained.
'It seems you aren't half the enemy I thought they'd send,' the commander admitted in seeming ignorance of the lass, but then he pointed at her and said, 'even your companion lacks the wits of her usual ilk.'
Now it was time for Aylish to wrinkle her nose.
'Hold on...' Clara said and allowed a slight chuckle. 'Is this some ridiculously convoluted way of you saying that you expected the Doctor, and that I clearly don't measure up to him?'
'It is,' the commander replied.
'And you would be right,' she admitted to his surprise as she folded her arms. 'I still have a very long way to go,' suddenly, her cheerful expression darkened, 'but I'm just getting started, and you'd better spell 'Clara Oswald' correctly when adding this to your long, long list of defeats.'
'There will be no such defeat this time!' the commander roared like a good, old-fashioned pantomime villain. 'We will purge your self-righteous gathering from the annals of history, reclaim what is ours, and have a Time Lord stand witness as we take our place as the victors of the universe!'
'Although, that won't happen, you realise?' she informed. 'You're altering a fixed point, which kinda insures that there will be nothing left to rule.'
'Time Lord propaganda written to scare lesser races,' the commander dismissed to Clara's obvious indignation. 'Take them away! I do not wish to see them again until the time of our ultimate victory.'
'Thank God for that!' the Time Lady declared as a guard roughly grabbed her by the arm. 'And I was afraid you were going to give us an entire speech!' She then leaned over to Aylish and pretended to whisper, 'They normally go on a lot longer than that...'
The commander looked furious. 'Place the ship on full lockdown. Hand her sonic device to me,' he ordered his men. 'And the boy's bag too.'
The guard shoved Aylish into the cell after Clara and locked the door behind them. She tripped, and put her shoulder against the approaching wall.
'Well they're... mean...' she bemoaned as she paced, cuffs preventing her from rubbing her arm.
The Time Lady just watched her with an uneasy smile.
'I'm guessing part one of your clever plan is to get out of these restraints?' the lass guessed.
'Yes! It is!' Clara replied, leaping on the suggestion. She then turned her side toward the lass. 'In my pocket. Lipstick shaped thing...'
With great difficulty, Aylish fished through the pocket–which seemed to have the volume of a suitcase–past all manner of clutter, but found the object of interest none the less.
'This it?' she asked as she blindly placed it in Clara's hands.
'Yep,' the Time Lady replied as she awkwardly orientated it. 'Now, hold very still.'
It was a relief to have her hands free, but Aylish was horrified when she saw the small plasma blade that the Time Lady had wielded with vague spatial awareness.
'Are you ok?' Clara asked, noticing how ill the girl looked.
'Fine...' Aylish sighed. 'Let's just get those off you...'
Clara rung her wrists once she was slightly less detained. 'I knew that Svermine letter-opener would come in useful,' she mused. 'They're very militant when it comes to correspondence.'
'So, we use it to escape?'
'It would never cut through that door,' Clara said. 'Then there's the guard.'
'But you have a plan, right?'
The Time Lady looked blankly at the girl and, as always, Aylish could practically see the cogs turning. 'Err...'
'You said you always had a plan!'
'Well, I lied,' Clara painfully admitted. 'I do that from time to time...'
'I hadn't noticed,' the lass retorted, somewhat bitchily, as she pondered their predicament.
Clara shot her a glance that said, 'you are so in for it...' shaking her head. Then she popped into that little trance that people visit when a second engine clicks into place along the train of thought.
Aylish adopted the look too, and as both girls turned to each other they asked, 'Have you ever seen Star Wars?' in unison.
'Help!' Aylish cried as she banged on the door. 'My friend isn't well! Help!'
No response.
'Tell him I'm on my last regeneration,' Clara grumbled.
'What?'
'Just say it...'
'Help! My friend isn't well!' Aylish continued with a roll of the eyes. 'You're Time Lady captive... On her last regeneration... Is ill!'
She stepped back with a start and quickly remembered to keep her hands behind her back as the door slid open with a hiss.
'What seems to be the problem?' the guard asked as he made motion to push Aylish aside.
'I don't know!' she said, hamming up the 'distraught'. 'She just started speaking gibberish like she normally does, but then she fell down!'
The guard looked at Clara who was indeed sprawled out at the back of the cell, but with an impish grin and her hands folded behind her head.
'You do not appear to be sick,' he noted, rifle trained on her.
'No,' she said sweetly, 'but you look a bit peaky.'
Aylish belted him on the back of the neck with the flat of her shoe and he staggered forward, choking, before passing out beside the prone Time Lady.
'Thanks,' she chirped as her young Scottish friend gave her a hand up. 'You made pretty short work of him... And no, that pun wasn't intended.'
Aylish hopped as she slide her shoe back on and gestured to the unconscious guard. 'Are you putting it on then?'
'Why do I have to get in the smelly armour?' Clara carped and folded her arms, sick of always being the one to be confined to small spaces.
Aylish just offered a raised eyebrow.
Now it was Clara's turn to role her eyes as she pulled the helmet off the soldier.
'Ow! Hay!' Aylish complained as the Time Lady marching behind jabbed her in the back with the muzzle of the rifle. 'Am not tellin' the commander nothin'!' she retorted. 'So there's no point takin' me to the bridge.'
It was an easy sell as they passed patrols and sentries. All it took was a little tripping and a bit of a protest. The armour, the rifle and the pass card did the rest. Although, Clara's prompts were a bit more... enthusiastic, than she would have liked.
Clara, on the other hand, was simply glad she was wearing her Trap Street outfit that day. She really should have been keeping it in pristine condition, but most of her other cloths would have ensured an even less comfortable situation than the one she was presently in.
Reaching the main service corridor of the central deck, she locked the door behind her and pulled the helmet off.
'Where to now?' Aylish asked as she helped her wiggle out of the armour.
Clara pointed the rifle at the blast door opposite the one they'd just left. 'That way leads to the bridge.' She then gestured to their right and the long passage leading off in that direction. 'Engineering's that way, but security is compartmentalised. The card won't give us access and we won't have time without the screwdriver.'
'How much time do we have?'
A quick check of the fobwatch cast a shadow over Clara's mood. 'Five minuets.' What could they do? It's not as if the last fifteen minuets could have been avoided.
'Do we still have time?' Aylish asked, expression bleak.
Clara nodded. 'Two minuets to reach the command centre and three minuets to do something drastic.'
'How do we get through the door then?'
Clara coolly aimed the rifle at the door panel they needed to use and blasted it. She then handed the weapon over to Aylish and pointed to a bedarkened alcove. 'Wait there.'
Moments later a guard emerged from the door to find the escaped Time Lady waiting for him with folded arms, tapping out the seconds on her elbow. He then found his probic vent being smashed by the butt of a comrade's weapon.
'You lot have no regard for the sanctity of time, do you?' Clara let rip as she marched onto the bridge.
Helmsman Vask went for his sidearm, but Aylish waved her hulking rifle at him and flexed her finger.
'Ahh! The little Time Lady!' Nix greeted as he turned from the sweeping planet-scape to face her. 'I was just about to fetch for you. And to answer your question: no, the Sontaran people do not share the simpering sentimentality of the dusty bureaucrats you represent. What is time but a tactical advantage to be exploited against our enemies? A tactical advantage, I may add, that I posses over you, now. The primary weapons system has already been programmed. The final countdown to victory has begun. Soon, the probe named Voyager will be within optimal position and we will strike from our place of concealment behind this moon.'
Clara's glare was something to behold, but her voice was light as she turned to Aylish and said, 'See what I mean about them going on a bit.'
'He doesn't talk as much as Agent Chase did,' the lass sang over her shoulder.
'This is true...' the Time Lady agreed.
'I see your insolence has not dulled,' Nix hissed, pointing her sonic screwdriver at her. 'It is valorous that you should face defeat with such a cavalier attitude.'
'This is also true,' Clara added and dug her hands into her pockets as she started to idly pace–a sure sign for Aylish that she was formulating something. 'Just as you continue to underestimate your opponent. We escaped because you underestimated me. This jacket, which you failed to confiscate, has pockets that are dimensionally transcendental you see.'
'It means they're larger on the inside.' Aylish contributed.
'And it means I can carry all kinds of things around with me, like...' the Time Lady continued as she produced a round, green object, 'a Tennis ball, for instance.' Clara started tossing the ball up and catching it as she went on to ask, 'Do you enjoy the sport? No. Of course you don't. Not enough blood in it... Although,' she added, tilting her head and snatching the ball permanently,' there was that one year... They called it the Red Wembley. I swear you'll never look at a racket in quite the same way...'
'You babble madam,' Nix accused. 'I know of your Time Lady wiles. You wish to stall me, so that you may gain some upper hand and humiliate me!'
'I confess that I do not,' she retorted, effortlessly adopting his cadence of refinement. 'You again underestimate me, sir! Time, as you say, is far too brief, and I rarely need to dally in order to best my opponents, so let us swiftly move on with the proceedings...'
With that, she hurled the ball at quite a speed, aiming wide by a matter of degrees.
'Ha!' Nix laughed as the ball ricocheted off the panoramic window. 'You miss, short sta-'
The next instant he was toppling to the ground, clutching his collar.
'One false move and I'll ventilate you,' Aylish growled at the fidgety Helmsman with a seemingly uncharacteristic fierceness that caused Clara some concern as she strolled to the fallen Nix.
'Again, underestimation,' she chipped with a wink to the fallen commander as she prised her screwdriver from his hand. 'Aylish, do you have you're laptop with you?'
'In my rucksack,' the lass said as she backed up to her side. 'Why? What are you going to do to it?'
'Relax,' the Time Lady dismissed as she rummaged through the bag. 'I'll get you another one. A Worm infected the Bios, so it isn't like it's any good to you now anyway,' she then admitted. 'But it might be exactly what I need.'
Setting it up on the primary command console, she first tried accessing the system the old fashioned way, then by sonicing it–both to no avail. 'Drastic measures, then,' Clara said and soniced the laptop instead before furiously clattering away on the keyboard, crashing through blue screen after blue screen as the seconds slipped away.
'Hurry, Clara,' Aylish prompted nervously, shifting from foot to foot.
'I don't...' Clara stammered with barely veiled desperation as she typed. Pushing loose strands of hair behind her ear, she tried to boost the signal with her screwdriver. 'There's no way this system can be this advanced.'
With desperation, the Time Lady took her 'letter opener' and sliced into the panel work. What she found shook her to the core. 'That's not...' she started as she stared down at the twine of cables she saw everyday since leaving Gallifrey.
'What's wrong?' Aylish said, glancing over her shoulder.
'No... They can't have,' Clara wavered. The vessel seemed to quake as she sliced through one of the thick conduits and reams of nerve-like wire, pulsating with turquoise light, spilled out. 'I can't-'
The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention as a pitched rifle shot rang out and she span to the room at large.
Back aboard the Tardis, Darcy watched with dread and wonder as the ring in her hand glowed and warmed briefly within her open palm.
'Clara...' Aylish gasped as she turned to the Time Lady, eyes wide, smoke pouring from the charred wound where her heart should have been.
Clara's own hearts shuddered to a halt as she watched her companion fall to her knees, the thin crimson trail from the corner of her mouth sickeningly bright against moon-pale skin. Behind the lass, the Sontaran soldier known as Zars stood in the entryway, his pistol smouldering.
His aim switched as Vask flourished his own pistol. Clara dropped and rolled between neon bolts as they fired again, snatching up the commander's handcannon and vaporising them both.
Scrabbling over to her fallen friend, she cradled her in her arms and tried blinking away the tears that welled up. 'I can't stop them, Aylish,' the young, failed, Time Lady confessed as she rocked her gently. 'You might have helped, Aylish. You might have found a way. But I couldn't-'
She'd broken her first rule. She'd taken a companion. The one thing she'd vowed never to do. And now a young woman lay dead, her entire life stolen from her because of it.
Events replayed through her mind at speeds faster than her mortal self could ever have achieved. Where had she gone so badly wrong? Where had she lost? At what point did she start toward this dead-end event?
As a brilliant green light cast the bridge in shadows, she knew, and her hearts started once again with a dark resolve. With all at a loss, she stole the commander's vortex manipulator, shoved the laptop back into the bag and swung it over one shoulder with no question of whether she had the right. After all, she was now a lady of time herself was she not?
The air filled with hot energy as squads of shock troops flooded through the door. 'You lose,' she grinned, fair and menacing as a concussion grenade landed at her feet and she activated the time device...
Clara pointed the rifle at the blast door opposite the one they'd just left. 'That way leads to the bridge.' She then gestured to their right and the long passage leading off in that direction. 'Engineering's that way, but security is compartmentalised. The card won't give us access and we won't have time without the screwdriver.'
'How much time do we have?' Aylish asked.
A quick check of the fobwatch cast a shadow over Clara's mood. 'Five minuets.'
The glass cracked, taking her by surprise.
'Clara...' a voice entirely her own urged, and the Time Lady looked up into her own eyes–a remnant of a dead-end future, stained with blood and smoke.
