Chapter 5: Voyage of the Damned

When I woke up it was with a jolt of pain and on the other side of the room. Pressed into a wall, in fact. Not to mention tangled in a blanket with the corner of some wooden chest I hadn't looked into yet stabbing into my side, the whole room shaking.

I tried standing up, but still half-asleep tripped on my blanket, worsening the tangle and flailing in a confused mess. For a second my body felt foreign and odd— the wrong height and weight— but I could vaguely recall feeling a similar sensation before. Some post regeneration adjustment issue. The room I woke up in, however, didn't feel familiar at all at first so I quickly backed into the nearest corner once I'd gotten free of the oh-so-dangerous blankie, eyes darting around and trying to assess the strange location and possibly find a cause for the earlier shaking. Only to feel completely ridiculous for panicking once my senses caught up with me and I remembered where exactly I was.

Or maybe not so much, considering the shaking had still happened. Takes a lot to rattle a transdimensional spaceship, after all. And now that I was paying attention there was an odd metal grinding sound added in the mix.

I rushed out to the console room, just in time to watch the tip of a ship's hull disappear behind the TARDIS's healing wall, a pile of rubble and a buoy ring with the word Titanic printed on it lying on the ground, stars and all.

It certainly helped sum up what point exactly in the show I'd landed, but also brought with it a whole bunch of questions. Did this mean that I'd crash landed on earth right in front of Martha's house? And no one noticed? And didn't The Doctor run into one of his past selves in some minisode right before this? Did I sleep through that? Was that even part of this cannon/reality? Ugh, the timing of it all was making me dizzy.

"Looks like you're up, then." The Doctor said, getting my attention. "Sorry about the rough alarm clock. Put her shields down to do some fiddling, but it looks like we've run into something interesting. Wanna see?"

I eyed the cheeky and completely non-apologetic grin that'd slowly overtaken his face suspiciously, "Is that OK?"

"OK?" He scoffed, "Of course it's is! Not exactly rocket science. Just open the door, look around a little."

He was completely missing the point and tip-toeing around the awkward tension in the room, probably on purpose knowing him, but I relented and held my tongue, instead shuffling towards the TARDIS doors and opening them to come face-to-face with the world's most exciting storage closet.

"Oooh, grandiose." I said sarcastically, before a hand grabbed my shoulder and nudged me forward.

"Got to explore a bit further than that," The Doctor rebutted, opening the closet door as we wondered out into the… I suppose lobby area of the ship, where all the guests where.

That was the odd thing, though. The entire room was packed, even as we edged towards the window and the Doctor realized we were on a ship. I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't help wondering how many people were even on this ship. More than a dozen at least, with its overall size and the amount of people just in the lobby. Maybe a hundred? Hundreds? A thousand was pushing it, surely.

And all dead with the exception of a handful by the time the clock struck twelve.

"So, what d'ya think?" The Doctor asked, turning away from the window that showed the Earth bellow.

I tore my gaze from the crowd and Hosts in the lobby to peer down at the planet. It'd been years since I'd last seen Earth. First time getting a view from space in person, too. Never could get approval on Galifrey to visit the more well-known planets. Especially not Earth, no matter how hard I'd tried, considering how much The Doctor mucked about on it. It felt nostalgic and new all at once, and despite the situation I found a small smile on my face.

"Not bad."

"Now that's more like it." The Doctor grinned, "Though, if this is a party, we've better get dressed—especially you. Is that camo?"

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" I frowned.

"So many things." The Doctor said, a tad bit too quickly and condemning. "But for now let's settle with the fact that everyone else is in a tux but us and we want to blend in."

I shrugged and followed him back to the TARDIS, taking whatever he threw at me and putting it on. Not the most comfortable clothing in the world, especially the bow tie, but I'd live.

"Much better," The Doctor nodded. "Now let's go see what the party's all about."

We spent more time exploring than I thought we would before investigating the actual purpose of the vessel. I had to admit for all it was a ship on the way to its own planned destruction, the entertainment and food was nice. I'd never been on a cruise before so I didn't exactly have any standards to grade it by but there was definitely lots of shiney gold stuff and ruby red things. Plus Christmas trees and lights. All the men were wearing black or white tuxedos, and the women a variation of dresses with lace and jewels embroidered into the material. There was a singer and band on-board as well as poker and various other gambling games alongside caterers that brought everyone food and drink.

And then, of course, those gaudy golden angles dressed in white robes and gloves, creepily standing to attention at various places in the room.

"Evening! Passenger 57." The Doctor greeted the machine smoothly. "Terrible memory. Remind me, uh, you would be?"

"Information. Heavenly Host supplying tourists information." The Host spoke, voice light and welcoming with a robotic lite and light whirring jaw. I could certainly see how no one would automatically assume the Hosts had been reprogrammed to eventually slaughter everyone on the ship. With maybe some exception to the blank dead eyes.

"Good." The Doctor continued. "So, um, tell me then— because I'm an idiot— where are we… from?"

"Information. The Titanic is on route from the planet Sto in the Cassavalian Belt. The purpose of the cruise is to experience primitive cultures."

The Doctor scrunched his face at that. "Titanic… who thought of the name?"

"Information. It was chosen as the most famous vessel of the planet Earth."

"Didn't they tell you why it was famous?"

"Information. All designations are chosen by Mr. Max Capricorn. President of—Max—max—MAX—" The machine stuttered, repeating the last word over and over at different pitches and volumes.

"Oh, bit of a glitch." The Doctor said, hands moving from his pockets to reach for his sonic before two workers walked up to interrupt him.

"Sorry, sir." One of them apologized, the machine still twitching and stuttering. "We'll handle this."

"Software problem, that's all. Leave it with us, sir." The man pressed a button on the back of the Host's neck, powering it down, before nodding towards us. "Merry Christmas"

The Doctor nodded in acknowledgement as I watched on, another man joining the two to help drag away the host, all three whispering amongst each other once they were out of earshot.

"That can't be good." I said.

The Doctor looked at me, skeptical and perhaps a bit harsh. "Never had a software problem?"

I glanced at him, wondered if he realized the implications he was making, but then brushed it off again. I didn't expect any of my warnings to work. I was used to people not believing me. I had different plans.

"Just being a bit paranoid. I'm going to explore the halls a bit more." I said, "I'll see you later."

"You want to separate?" The Doctor asked, giving me a weird look again.

But, to be fair, I was actually up to something this time.

"You can come with if you want to." I shrugged. "But I'll be back in a minute and figured you'd want to go chat."

"Nah." He relented. "Go have your fun."

I smiled at him. "You too."

It was depressing watching The Doctor walk away, dejected because of me, but regardless we separated through the crowd to opposite ends of the room. When I glanced back after hearing glass break to see a blonde server, though, I stopped worrying and started to get to work.

Once I'd actually gotten out of the lobby and into the halls, though, I didn't have much of a plan. Just a general idea of what I needed to do first- head to the bridge and knock the old Captain out before he could shoot me and go back to wrecking the vessel. Then put the shields up so that the meteors wouldn't damage the ship.

If I managed that, then from there it was an entirely different script. Max still had some sort of override in place, as well as his murdering angels, but most of his other plans would all end poorly and look nothing like the faked accident he wanted. If anything, he'd override control and shut down the engines to make it seemed like the machinery had failed while he killed off the witnesses. But there would be time before the crash to attempt to get the engine running and plenty of power with the lesser damage. Teleports would still work, and I had the Doctor and TARDIS on my side if everything worked how I hoped.

But, of course, there where tons of practical flaws in my flimsy 'plan'. Time was the biggest one. I didn't have it. A few minutes, maybe 10, at most 20, before everything went to hell, and I had to find and enter the Bridge without anyone asking questions. Dressed like a guest instead of an employee.

In an ideal world having physic paper would have been nice, or even just a map, but again, people love asking questions and being suspicious but also never believing you when you tell the truth because it's improbable.

Luckily I'd mastered my bullshit confidence walk centuries ago and half the staff wasn't even present so I had no real issue being seen. Still no maps, so I spent most of the time rushing through halls wondering aimlessly with enough stress to kill someone, but when I heard a loud gunshot, it didn't take long to spot a thick door around the corner with those iconic window doors and know I was in the right place.

Once I was close enough to the door, I could hear voices muffled on the other side, which confirmed my suspicions. It wasn't even locked, the room. The door slid open to reveal the captain steering, his back turned, and a young man bleeding on the floor. They were so enraptured by their own conversation that they didn't even notice me.

"—six months? They offered me so much money." The older man spoke, tone somber. "For my family."

I suppose it was sad, misguided, and that perhaps I should have given him a chance to make the choice not to murder a bunch of innocent people himself, but instead I quickly hit the old captain on the back of the neck, hard and on the just right nerve. He crumbled to the floor and I caught his head before it hit the ground, moving him off to the side and patting him down for weapons, finding a pistol that I slide far away from him and over to the young man's side of the room.

"Shields?" I questioned the bleeding young man immediately, because I could probably figure out how to pull them up with time, but those meteors where way too close for comfort for me to try being smart.

"That panel, right there—" He pointed to the one above them, gasping in pain at the movement and voice strained. "You've got to redirect the energy, it's all been diverted."

Not exactly the level of detail that I wanted, but it worked. I moved over to him, looking at the panel with thankfully pretty intuitive controls and— well, spotted hole number one in the plan. Most of the energy was being diverted to room 31, Max's hidey-hole. He'd know what had happened the moment I'd done it, if I could siphon his power at all. Without it, though, I could make a thin shield, and focus what areas it covered. If I waited until the last minute or few seconds I might be able to put the shields up late enough that he couldn't override them in time.

I pulled up a screen that gave me a view of the life signs on the ship. A majority of the guests where in the lobby and center, the least in the back, where cargo and rooms where. I steered the ship, inching it as much as it would let me in the time that I had so that if the meteors did hit they would wreck the less populated areas. It was unbelievably slow, and if Max was paying attention might make him suspicious, but I did it anyway. And with one last breath, flipped the switches that would turn the shields on as the bright lights outside almost hugged the hull, closing my eyes as I bent down to brace for impact.

But instead of the explosion of metal and sparks and collapsing rubble I was expecting, all that I heard was the loud groan of metal as the ship shook like it had hit a particularly rough bought of turbulence.

Slowly, as the tremors lessened, I inched my way up to see through cracked glass the meteors diverted before peering at the life signs on the ship to see less than half as many casualties as I had been expecting.

I couldn't help the sigh of relieve that escaped me as I slumped against the controls.

"Do you have an intercom or something?" I asked the guy below me once I'd collected myself. He was still bleeding onto the floor, though he looked just as relieved as I did. "We should make sure people head back to their rooms. I doubt our window is the only one cracked, and I'd hate to see what happens if the shields drop again."

He nodded. "Same panel other end."

I pressed the button, unsure what exactly to say. "Testing, testing, can anyone hear me?"

A/N: I forgot how much I loved this episode. Maybe not quite as good in the first person POV of someone who already knows what's going to happen, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!

I took Emrys advice and now the timeline starts right after Martha's departure. Thinking on it I can't pass up the chance to write Donna, not to mention Jack's last appearance is when she leaves too so yes I caved and bended canon to my will. Mwhahaha. Still hoping to avoid too much script rewriting so I might skip over a few episodes in-story and add in some original adventures (if you like give me some planet ideas or historical locations, etc you might like to see!). Lucan himself will be proactive in making some changes when the TV plot pops up like he did this chapter, for better or for worse, so look forward to it.

Also thanks to shadowcaster01 for pointing out my issue with where/were. I've tried to do better this chapter, and will edit the other when I've got time, so hopefully it isn't as bad but I've got a nightmares worth of bad grammar habits lol Sorry.