The Fall of Arcadia

Hours later the Time Lords tried valiantly to hold the planet, but it was not going well, in Arcadia twenty saucers fired down on the cityscape as people ran, flak batteries fired on the saucers taking them down one by one, but it wasn't enough.

A group of soldiers desperately tried to move a group of civilians, children, into an old battered type fifteen TARDIS, anything to get them safe, however it wasn't to be, five Daleks flew over they cast a quick glance down before firing their weapons, the soldiers fired their ineffectual patrol guns up at the attacking creatures.

The Daleks moved on, less than a second after they'd seen them the civilians were little more than corpses.

Fifty Dalek saucers of the largest size, each eight kilometres in diameter fired their weapons of the glass dome of the citadel of Arcadia. Continuous blue beams and smaller pulses leapt forth, exploding against the invisible shields, instantly red beams of energy flowed back towards the Dalek ships.

As they blurred across the outer hull glowing spheres of white superheated gas formed along the end of the beam, dark black scorch marks showed the beams path. The beams were followed by a series of glowing blue null space torpedoes, on some of the ships they proved effective as the quantum fluctuations and super string vibrations stopped on detonation releasing a torrent of energy directly from dimensional de-sitter space, explosions ravaged the Dalek ships, but those with more power left in the shields merely took damage.

On the streets of the city Gallifrey burnt, soldiers deserted their positions an ran, through it all Commander Arla held onto her staser rifle, the battle had lasted for hours and showed no sign of letting up. As she raised her gun once more she felt a heavy object crash into her side, looking up she saw a red clothed figure raise a large artillery weapon, firing his gun, a zed-neutino catalyser, the beam of energy phased towards the Dalek, instantly cancelling out the Dalek as it dissolved into dust.

Turning around the Warking looked to Arla.

"If you want to get out of here alive follow me," his offered his hand to the soot covered Time Lady, she cautiously took the offered hand as he pulled her up while replacing her staser rifle. "Warking to Compassion; how many Dalek ships are inbound?"

TARDIS engines roared as masses of craft headed up to meet the never ending torrent of Dalek ships, Compassion lead the charge, torpedoes and red beams of energy sliced through space, in desperation she threw herself on kamikaze runs. Her 'skin' felt terrible as she smashed through ship after ship, she saw a trio of Dalek stealth ships come up behind her, the three ships began to generate a chronon loop while a phalanx of ships emptied their offensive payload at her. Despite her best efforts her shields were failing, 80%... 70%... 60%.

"Warking to Compassion; how many Dalek ships are inbound?"the embittered voice came over her communications systems.

"Mind your own business you overzealous Time Lord." Compassion sent back with as much venom as she could muster.

"Mind your own business you overzealous Time Lord."He Warking cringed at Compassion's tone.

"Warking," Arla brought him back to the present as a special weapons Dalek came around the corner, the Warking looked to the oncoming danger while pulling out a small controller, as the Dalek closed space began to shift and shimmer as the N-form materialised all over the Dalek instantly destroying it.

"You were saying," the Warking had a confident tone; his eyes alight with arrogance in a pose that would seem more like the Master to any previous Doctor.

"Nothing," Arla said surveying the devastation around them.

The Warking slipped the controller for the N-form back into his pocket while folding the blood red cloak backwards.

"Then I suggest we hurry up, a friend of mine has got something from the slaughterhouse that might just sway the balance." The Warking immediately began to run; Arla briefly looked back before following.

Compassion fell, a blue ring of chronons is a loop wrapped around her as she fell, all of her systems failed in succession, weapons, engines and shields were useless, she twisted and writhed throughout all of the dimensions she could as the ground rushed to meet her.

All her efforts began to pay off when she felt some power trickle back into her systems, diverting everything to her shields she pushed outwards, as the loop broke she reared up with everything she had.

The Warking and Arla ran through the streets, the Warking never stopped shooting, when the zed-neutrino catalyser took a hit the Warking just dropped it and fired off his two vortex guns.

"Stop," the Warking whirled to face a Time Lord soldier.

"Maxil, is this enough bloodshed for you?" the Warking levelled one of the Vortex guns at the old guardsman, he still remembered back when he was the Doctor during the second Omega crisis.

"Bloodshed you could have prevented," Maxil coldly said, his staser pointed at the Warking's head. "You and the Commander will come with me to the Capital for temporal correction."

"No," the Warking said abruptly in a tone that wold have any sergeant major green with envy, for just a second Maxil hesitated, that was all the time Arla and the Warking needed surging forward.

The Warking grabbed the staser with a savage grip, without giving a second he dragged his arm around his back, Maxil cried in pain as his shoulder was pulled from its socket. While at the same time Arla took hold of his neck and twisted while the Warking pulled a dagger from under his frock coat and put it through his two hearts as the Time Lord fell down to the ground with no regeneration.

"Was that really necessary?" Arla asked looking at her erstwhile companion.

The Warking looked up at her.

"Maybe not, I just wish it was Rassilon," the Warking looked darkly at Arla, his eyes filled with guilt and shame.

As he started up Arla ran to keep up with the trailing cloak.

"What happened?" Arla asked as she ran to keep up with the taller Time Lord's stride. "Once you were the Doctor, a two term President of Gallifrey, I saw you with that scarf and the sash of Rassilon. What happened?"

"This is the 1,257th year of the Time War, Rassilon is now the President of Gallifrey, but do you remember what happened to President Romana?" the tone was full of melancholy.

"From what I remember the High Council gave her a vote of no confidence?" Arla asked unsure, all information of Rassilon's return was classified.

The Warking laughed, it was a hollow and humourless sound.

"Yes I expect that's how Rassilon would want people to think about it," turning to look at her he continued. "Rassilon and a group of three high council members arranged a meeting with President Romana and vice President Narvin. I accompanied them, I saw it, he assassinated her, a sword right between her hearts, the Doctor died in there, and I was what was left, the Warking."

Trailing off the Warking looked on in shame as the blue box of the type forty TARDIS materialised, the battered blue box was marred by scorch marks and many of the windows were smashed.

Opening the door the Warking rushed in followed by Arla.

"Master,"

The Warking smiled a little as the small robot dog came towards him, it gun moving out of his mouth.

"Alert intruder, Master, shall I eradicate her?"

"No K-9 leave her be," the Warking gave the simple instruction while crossing to the scared and buckled wood console, the hulk of the room once filled with memories; books, clocks and photos was now a place to hold wreckage and scars from the last thousand years of war. "Have you got it?"

"Affirmative Master,"K-9 said referring to the black cuboid wired into the console.

"What is that?" Arla asked looking at the device which was obviously a weapon of some kind.

"It's well, something called scorched Earth, the device generates an artron pulse through higher dimensional planes to a tachyon matrix that cycles in an overload phase." The Warking said absent mindedly as he adjusted the controls to open the PA.

"This is Arcadia command… we being…"the desperate sounding officer was interrupted by the sound of multiple shots from a Dalek weapon and the sound of bubbling and sizzling flesh.

"EXTERMINATE, ALL TIME LORDS IN THIS VICINITY, WE NOW HAVE A BEACHHEAD ON GALLIFREY."

The Warking swiftly cut the link and turned to Arla and K-9 in succession as he spoke.

"Arla, put us into temporal orbit. K-9 after you tell me how to activate the weapon contact Compassion and have the TARDIS fleet retreat."

Compassion pulled herself back up to the edge of the battle, her shields and weapons severely depleted when she heard K-9's signal, opening her telepathic circuits to maximum she called to the TARDIS fleet and pulled them back as the fires started.

The Fires burnt from the fabric of the universe itself, as charged pieces of the web of time ignited and fell from the sky. Daleks and Time Lords alike burnt in eternal agony, dying then living and dying again for the rest of eternity, Arcadia had fallen…