Spoilers: Well, if you read the first two parts, I'm sure you're not worried about spoilers at this point.
Author's Note: Thanks again for the review. I hope that you continue to enjoy!
Disclaimer: All that stuff I said about not owning Doctor Who or Torchwood? Still true. Much to the BBC's pleasure, I'm sure.
It's kind of like when the steering goes out on your car… only worse.
Martha watched as the time rotor ascended and descended in its steady hypnotic rhythm. The TARDIS shuddered a bit as the Doctor and Jack tried to pilot it along the path of the quake. The journey was taking longer than usual… but longer was a very relative term when you were traveling many hundreds of years into the future.
She was thinking about her short time at UNIT, with Lucy and the baby. She remembered the circumstances of the delivery – Lucy screaming hysterically, fighting against her restraints, with armed UNIT personnel surrounding her. The whole scene had been positively barbaric. Amongst it all, a healthy baby girl had been born. Martha had been given the task of assessing the child medically. She would take the baby from Lucy's arms, promising each time this would be the last test, and each time knowing that was a lie.
The child was surprisingly human. Her temperature only slightly below normal, her body a little smaller than the average infant. The only clue to her unique parentage, aside from almost incomprehensible DNA results, was revealed by an MRI performed on her second day of life – the presence of a second, but not operational, heart. The child was also very bright and responsive, gripping Martha's finger when she was listening to her chest with the stethoscope, trying to grab onto anything bright and shiny dangled before her, and reaching towards things she wanted rather than just general fussing.
Martha remembered when the news came to Lucy that the baby was going to be taken away from her. It had been heartbreaking, Lucy begging Martha to let her hold the child one last time. Martha could only look at her sadly and shake her head. She had been ordered to put Lucy in restraints that night. With Torchwood's negotiations with UNIT failing, and the Doctor still absent, guilt had driven Martha to leave just one restraint a little looser than the others.
Tom had noticed a change in Martha over the intervening months. The sad look in her eyes, the effort it took her to get out of bed in the morning. So when she had told him that she was going on a trip, he didn't even ask why. He simply kissed her on the forehead. "I may not know everything about the great Martha Jones." He said looking at her fondly, "But I do know that she needs a vacation." Not much of a vacation, she sighed. But perhaps there would be some answers to salve her soul.
"Ground control to Martha Jones." Jack's voice broke through her thoughts. He and the Doctor were looking at her. She blinked twice.
"Oh, sorry. I was miles away." She said focusing on the two men at the console. Jack had resumed checking the readings on the monitors. The Doctor was watching Martha with concern.
"We're almost ready to materialize." Jack went on, "It's a little fuzzy exactly where though. That quake really kicked up a lot of interference. You might want to hold onto something." Martha gripped the rail surrounding the console. The TARDIS engines began their characteristic wheezing noise, and the console room shuddered. Finally, with a great jolt, the TARDIS landed and everything went quiet.
"Ow!" came Donna's voice from outside the console room. "How about warning the rest of us before you do something like that!" She and Gwen entered, Gwen rubbing her neck. They had all elected to accompany the Doctor to the 75th century – the calculated end of the quake's path of devastation. They hoped that they could cover more ground and get as much information from the locals as possible. This was Gwen's first trip in the TARDIS, and her initiation was typically turbulent.
"Are the landings always this rough?" she asked to no one in particular.
The Doctor was fiddling with a knob on the console, a perplexed look on his face. "Oh dear." He said.
"What?" asked Martha.
"The helmic regulator is… broken."
"And what does that mean?" asked Gwen.
"Welll… You know when the steering goes out on your car?" the Doctor asked.
Gwen nodded.
"It's like that. Only worse. The helmic regulator manipulates the gravitational forces in the vortex resulting in a non-zero dimensional shift which pushes the TARDIS from one time stream to another."
"Like steering a car? Or a boat?" Gwen asked.
"Yes! A boat. You're catching on Gwen Cooper, very good." The Doctor smiled. "Hasn't been this touchy since Harry Sullivan cranked it too far…" The Doctor drifted off into a momentary nostalgic silence, and then continued abruptly. "Basically, trying to pilot the TARDIS at the moment would be like trying to go to sea without a rudder." He caught everyone's worried looks. "Well, don't look so worried. We're in the 75th century, it can't be that difficult to find parts!"
Gwen looked at him dubiously. "Don't you have spare parts?"
"Nah. Ran out of spare parts a long time ago." He cocked his head towards the console. "Been cobbling together parts from various centuries for ages. Now, enough standing around and gabbing, you lot. Allons-y!"
The Doctor bounded to the TARDIS doors, flung them open, and stepped outside, Jack, Martha, Donna and Gwen on his heels. They nearly collided with him and each other as he came to a sudden stop.
They had stepped out onto a street that looked like it was eons earlier than the 75th century. Men wore top hats and carried walking sticks, women wore elaborate long skirts, and the air was grey with coal dust and steam. Gaslights illuminated the dim façade of the stone buildings, and somewhere in the distance a boy's voice cried, "EXTRA! EXTRA!"
"Oh dear." The Doctor breathed. Getting parts for the helmic regulator might prove to be a much taller order than he had originally thought.
Pretty in Pink
Winifred was cranky. It was three days since Uncle had burst into the shop with the news, and she had been up to her elbows in clockwork droid specs so she could at least be somewhat prepared when the contract finally took effect. To make matters worse, she had been unable to sleep for the past two nights – she lay in her bed listening to the hiss of steam and the ticking of clockwork on which the entire planet of Victoria Minor ran, and the steady drum beat of her own heart in thudding in her ears. Something was amiss, planting angst at the back of her mind.
Perhaps it was the increased Luddite protests that were going on throughout the city. The Luddite's name derived from a similar movement in the distant history of their ancestors – a movement against technology because of its consequences on society. Where the law makers of New Oxford saw the use of traffic control droids as being the first step in truly objective law enforcement, the Luddite movement saw it as the beginning of a draconian legal system lacking the empathy and mercy of a human mind. But such philosophical disagreements rarely bothered Winifred, so it didn't seem likely that this was the cause of her new found restlessness. Rather, a feeling that something was about to shift on Victoria Minor… something bigger than a debate about clockwork droids issuing traffic tickets.
An east wind was blowing, it seemed.
She rested her elbows on her desk and peered through sleepy eyes at the materials list in her hands – the words and pictures completely ignored her attempt at concentration and opted to continue to swim around the page.
Just as Winifred had finally convinced the diagrams to straighten up and fly right, the door to the shop swung open and, in a rustle of pink taffeta, Ada Lovelace swept in followed by Joseph. She had been flitting around Morgan's Mechanical Shop, and around Joseph in particular, since he had let slip the news of the contract to her. Winifred glanced up, rolled her eyes at Joseph, and pointedly ignored Ada.
Ada, strategically oblivious to being ignored, glided over to Winifred's desk and leaned in, blond curls hanging over the paper that Winifred was attempting to read.
"Winifred, dear girl, what are you doing?" Ada asked. Winifred lowered the paper slowly and looked up at her. Ada stepped back eyes wide at the sight of the darks circles under Winifred's eyes. "Oh dear, Winifred, you look horrible. Have you been getting much sleep lately?"
Winifred put on a thin smile, "No. Someone has to make sure we're ready when those droids are deployed and start breaking down, so I am making sure that I am prepared." She glared at Joseph – because as much as Ada had been flitting around him, he had most certainly been flitting around Ada.
Ada raised an eyebrow at Winifred. Her father had been the brilliant mind behind the creation of these particular clockwork droids, designed to work in the harsh atmosphere of Victoria Minor. "You believe that there will be so many problems with them?" She asked, a slight edge to her voice.
Truth was, everything broke down at some point, either as a result of wear and tear or vandalism, and not necessarily a flaw in design. But Winifred had seemed to strike a chord in her rival and wasn't going to waste the opportunity to dig in a little farther.
"Well, the Mayor wouldn't have drawn up such an involved repair contract if he didn't think that there might be…" Winifred paused and looked away, making it look like she was choosing her words carefully, and glanced up at Ada again. "Problems."
Ada's lips pursed in annoyance and she sucked in her breath to say something, but Joseph intervened.
"Now ladies, I'm sure that there will be nothing wrong with these droids, and that all that will be required from us is routine maintenance." He deftly slipped a hand around Ada's tiny corseted waist and drew her closer to him. "Now, Freddie is obviously very tired, and I'm sure that she hasn't the slightest intention of taking out her poor mood on us."
Winifred's eyes went wide, and she felt the colour raise in her cheeks. "Right!" Winifred managed to choke out, standing up from her desk and grabbing her coat. "Now if you would excuse me, I'm going to go out and get some air. Joseph… Ada."
Winifred stomped out of the shop, leaving Ada and Joseph to their… flitting.
Breaking the First Law
Feet shuffled along the stone-lined tunnel of New Oxford's underground railway. A phlegm filled cough, a trip, and a harsh shhhhh could be heard in the otherwise silent darkness. Two dark figures made their way along the tracks, hugging tight against the wall of the tunnel.
"Don't drop it!" the first said, a tall skinny man with a cloth cap on his head. "You'll blow us up along with the tunnel."
"Why are we doin' this anyway?" said the other, shorter and plump. He tried to ignore the steady drip drip of moisture coming down from the wet ground of the city above. He really should have gone to the bathroom before they came down here.
"Because, if we blow up the tunnel, the trains will have to stop, right?" The plump man nodded, forgetting it was too dark for his companion to see him. "If the trains stop, more people will want to use the steam taxis." The skinny man went on anyway. "Which means, we'll get more customers, and we'll be in the money."
"But won't they realize it was us?"
"Nah. The Luddites have been raising such a stink that everyone will be looking at them before us."
"Ah, I gotcha. You're a smart one, you are." The plump man stopped abruptly. "Hey, you do know where we're goin', right?"
"Of course I know where we're goin'. Now keep walking. It's another yard and a half."
The two men hugged the wall tightly, pressed up against the stone for both guidance and support. They were both taken by surprise when the wall seemed to give way, and they stumbled into the black opening away from the tunnel.
"Uh… where are we?" The plump man asked, looking around but only seeing the inky blackness around them.
"Shhh!" The skinny one replied. They both listened intently, ears straining. The drip drip of the tunnel was now accompanied by another sound. An insistent tick tick tick tick tick.
"What's that?!" cried the plump one, fighting the urge to run.
"I…" the other began to answer, but the answer turned into a scream of pain. Just as suddenly as the screaming began, it ended with the sound of bones cracking and breaking. The plump man dropped to the ground, hoping that whatever it was would simply miss him. Feeling around he found the still form of his partner in crime. He patted his hand up the man's skinny torso, shoulders, neck… when he got to where the head should have been, his touch was greeted by a wet and gooey mess.
The plump man's eyes went wide with terror as his grip let go of the bomb and he shuffled on his belly back towards where he thought they had come. The ticking rang in his ears, followed by gears turning, and finally cold metal gripped the back of his neck, pressing his face down into the ground. He let out a sob as the grip tightened - not so much because of the pain as the knowledge of what was surely coming next. A sickening pop was the last thing he ever heard.