Chapter Three:

First Mate Adam Livi was taking his scheduled break in his personal quarters when he got the alert that someone else had been murdered; luckily he'd slept with all his locks on which included hand print, voice recognition and a passcode, the whole event had made everyone on the outpost overly precautious.

He'd rushed down to the technician's workshop where the technician's assistant, Aditi Patel, lay dead. She was a sweet girl, young, pretty and intelligent; yet fate had decided to snatch that away from her and have her killed off.

The door whooshed open and he stared at the blood stained floor; the method had been the same as before, multiple stab wounds into the chest that were far too precise for the amount of them.

The Captain, Paul Johnson, stood above him. Adam and Paul were the only Americans on the station so they shared a particular bond about their home. They also shared the duties of leadership and therefore had to watch over every single murder inquiry. The Head of Security, Nathan Smith, who was the only Brit on the station, stared at the body with a squint.

"Where's Han?" Adam asked, referring to the station's main Technician.

"He's having a rest in his quarters," Peter replied. "He's taking it badly."

"He would, those two were close," Adam sighed as the door closed behind him with a whoosh. He stared at the terrified expression frozen on the girl's face; it shook him to his core. "That's the second one in two days."

"It's the same killer," Nathan said. "My number one suspect is in the holding cells right now."

"Was he the cause of the disturbance in the storage unit?" Paul asked in an American drawl.

"Yes he seemed to have arrived in a blue box," Nathan replied.

"I want to speak to him before we shoot him!" Paul snapped.

The door opened and The Doctor entered, "I'm afraid not today gentleman but if you do try I'll break your arm like a twig."

"Who are you?" Paul barked as the man in the long trench coat walked to the dead body and crouched down beside it.

"That's the man who killed Aditi," Nathan informed him. "He should be in the cell but someone has let him out!" He glared at Kara who slowly moved behind The Doctor.

"Lies!" The Doctor barked, pointing directly at the man. "I haven't killed her but since you can't find the killer you're blaming me; fact!"

"Stop pointing at me!" Nathan ordered. The Doctor childishly shook his head and Nathan tried to swat his hand away but the Time Lord pulled the man in and pushed him backwards onto his rear end.

"Now where was I…ah yes," The Doctor sniffed in the air. "Sugary aroma mixed with the smell of…burnt metal; an hormone given after bodily transformation. So we're looking for an insect or amphibian type creature…possibly an Anomorphigon but then their incredibly rare in this time period…"

"What is he talking about?" Adam asked the group.

"He's The Doctor," Kara told him. "You know; the one from the old U.N.I.T files. The blue box is the T.A.R.D.I.S and he didn't kill anyone but just wants to help us find the killer."

"That sounds like the type of cover up only a psychopath would use!" Nathan snapped.

The Doctor glared at him, "I'm warning you, annoy me again and I will be a killer! Also I wouldn't be a psychopath, I'd be a sociopath, get the term right if anything!"

Nathan shut up; Kara already liked the strange alien but after that she liked him even more!

"Now clearly the killer will be giving off a distinct energy reading," The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a hand held scanner with a touch screen. He activated it and found the right setting, "So if I scan for it then I should find them."

The scanner lit up but the Time Lord looked instantly disappointed. "He's wearing a cloaking device. Well that makes things more difficult." He then reached into his pocket and produced the sonic screwdriver. He activated the device in an attempt to deactivate the cloaking device but had no luck. "A very good cloaking device."

"So what now?" Paul asked the ginger man.

"I need to see your ships records," The Doctor replied exiting the room. "Come on Kara you can show me the way."

The door whooshed shut behind Kara as she trailed behind the Time Lord. Nathan looked up at the Captain of the station, "I don't trust him."

"I don't trust them," The Doctor declared as they made their way down the corridor.

"Why?" Kara asked as she guided the man down a corridor.

"That Nathan guy is an arrogant idiot and the Americans are unintelligent and blunt tools used by the military," The Doctor replied. "Considering that, what are you doing out here in space? It's clearly not scientific research because that's clearly the cover up for the base."

"That's a secret, only me, Nathan, Adam, Paul and Han know what's really going on here."

"And that is?"

"We have a dimensional cannon which will suck in any threats to planet Earth and spit them out into another place within the universe; far from the planet below."

"So you're protecting Earth from space," The Doctor smirked. "Interesting."

"Through here," she said, directing him towards a set of shiny metal doors which opened automatically.

The databanks on board the satellite were stored in reasonably large computers stacked to create large upright cuboids. The Doctor analysed them with critical eyes, "I don't really like all this technology stuff," he admitted to Kara. "Prefer using my own senses and knowledge as computer are basically powerful idiots."

"Me neither," Kara replied. "I only really joined U.N.I.T for the violence but we don't get much out here."

"What's your last name?"

"Landy," she replied, watching him as he analysed the room with his almost mechanical eyes. "Kara Landy."

"Well Kara Landy, you seem like my kind of girl," he smirked as he made his way over to a large stack of computers out of the many and pulled out a draw which a microchip had been installed in. The Doctor produced his scanner and produced a wire and plugged it into the stack. "I'm guessing the data is stored here but sent back to Earth for a backup copy, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

The scanner showed endless reals of data but The Doctor's Time Lord mind worked rapidly to process it all. "You've got a lot of files up here." He then noticed a notification, "Oh, someone's opening up my file…I wonder who?"

He pressed the touch screen a few times before he came to answer, "Nathan Smith…head of security." The Doctor closed the menu and opened up another file which seemed to be encrypted; this body wasn't great with computer but all he to do was write a de-encryption program which was simple enough.

"So Kara, what's an Irish girl like you doing on a space station?" the Time Lord asked, focusing on writing the program.

"I was ordered up here and I followed my orders."

"So you joined U.N.I.T to fight, specifically to fight alien threats, but you decide to come up to a space station where you see minimal action."

"Well normally we're manning the cannon on the top of the station for any incoming threats."

"Ah, okay," The Doctor replied, finishing up the program. "I wanted to ask about this cannon. What are its main functions?"

"Well it opens up a portal into another part in space and sucks incoming objects in," she informed him. "It's a safer way of keeping the planet safe from alien ships and meteorites and things."

"What powers it?" He unplugged the scanner, as it now had a wireless connection to the system, and started the program to open up the encrypted file.

"I don't know, you should ask Han, he's the technician."

While the program was running, The Doctor opened up another function and began to go through the crews files, "I will do that in a second after I…" he rapidly skimmed through the files on the station's crew members; checking all the important data. It all read the same, they had all been together for over a years' worth of trainings and had never been apart. That meant the alien had to be there from the start or he'd jumped on just as they took off; either way he had taken on a human form, one of the crew's forms.

"Check the crew's data," he sounded deflated and slightly disappointed. "Oh well, that didn't help, so let's go see this Han guy."

Han Wu sat on his bed, his eyes were red and puffy after all the time he'd spent crying, thinking about how he was going to cope after losing the love of his life. He'd never told her his true feelings for her and he was going to ask her out and some point but had always chickened out…and now she was dead!

He began to sob again when the lock on his door beeped; someone wanted access to his room. "Enter," he snivelled. The door opened and Kara entered with a man with bright orange hair in a long black coat behind her. "Oh hi Kara and you are?"

"This is The Doctor," she told him. Han's face lit up like a light bulb.

"The Doctor?" he asked, completely flabbergasted. "The Doctor!"

"Yes the definite article you might say," The Doctor replied with a smirk, clearly the man had heard of him.

Han jumped of the bed and held out his hand; compared to The Doctor he was incredibly small. "You sir are a living legend! I can't believe I'm meeting you!"

"Yeah, good for you, now I'm not being rude but I need to talk to you about the cannon on the top of this station."

"Of course," Han replied excitedly. "I helped design it along with a team of four other people. Fire away."

"What powers the cannon?"

"A crystal that came to earth on an asteroid," Han replied. "We analysed it and realised it was giving off high energy readings that we'd never seen before. Once we aimed high energy lasers through its core we saw that it opened a portal. After that U.N.I.T gave us the task of giving it practical applications so we designed the cannon and we designed this place." He motioned about the whole of the space station.

"Okay and one final thing," The Doctor began. "Do you know where the portal leads?"

"Actually…no."

The Doctor reached into his jacket and produced the small scanner and watched as the data poured onto the screen. "Well I have all the data on your cannon here so I'm just going to give it a check over because I think I know who the killer is and why he did it."

"How did you get my files? Their encrypted!"

"Well it's very unlucky for you that I have a device here which has a decryption program which could break into your files regardless," The Time Lord replied. He skimmed through and found the equation for the cannon. "Ah my suspicions are confirmed." He closed down the device and turned to Kara.

"Kara could you call a meeting in the main seating area, I assume you have one, I want to solve this case with my final Agatha Christie moment."

"Sure," she replied.

"I want you there too Han, you're going to learn a lot from this!"