Chapter Seven
"C'mon Doctor! We've got her coordinates, let's go!" shouted the Jack of that time.
"You can't just fly into the middle of a Dalek fleet," the Doctor scoffed. "We'd be killed before we could do anything."
"Unless you had a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator," the new Doctor said quietly. All eyes turned to him. "I mean, I'm just guessing."
"That's brilliant," his previous incarnation said. "What did you say your name was?"
"Tim." He cleared his throat. "Tim Latimer." Both Jacks looked at him admiringly. No one said a word.
"Shouldn't you get going?" Martha asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Right!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Jack, you come with me. I think it's best if the rest of you stay behind." Everyone nodded in agreement. The two men rushed through one of the many doorways into where the TARDIS was being kept. There was a faint sound of clanking, followed by the sound of the engines.
The Doctor noticed one of the workers grumble. "I don't have a good feeling about him or any of his friends," he muttered to the woman next to him, casting a glare in Jack and Martha's direction. The woman just nudged his arm and continued on with her job.
Apprehensive, the Doctor moved slowly across the room towards the man. He was greeted with a nod of the head. "Do you think we're safe?" He raised his voice by a few octaves, and hoped that the man would believe that the fear was real.
The man shook his head. "No. I think that they're," he gestured again to the couple in the corner, "involved in some sort of war, and they've dragged us all down with 'em. I'm Richard by the way." His strange introduction made the Doctor uncomfortable, a feeling that grew as he leaned in closer. "If you ask me, our only choice is to get them off of this ship, dead or alive."
Inadvertently, he backed away from Richard. He must have noted the look on the Doctor's face, because suddenly anger masked his features. "You're one of them! You're with them! I thought you knew too much." Richard looked as if he were about to murder the Doctor on the spot, but thought better of it at the last minute. The Doctor stared grimly at the man, trying to make it as clear as possible that violence was not an option. Finally, Richard turned away.
"Tim!" called Martha, jogging towards the Doctor. "I need to talk to you."
"Yeah?" he asked quietly, while walking her towards an empty section of the room, attempting to separate them from Richard.
"It's about Rose." Her voice lowered to match his.
"Mmhmm?"
"It's just," Martha paused, trying to find the right phrase, "she seems off. What exactly happened here, the first time?"
"Well, when the fighting started, I stent her back to her time. To get back to me, she looked into the heart of the TARDIS. She rescued me, disintegrated the Daleks, and brought Jack back to life. The power was too much though, and I had to absorb it into my body. All of the energy began to burn me up and I regenerated." He purposely didn't include his plan about the Delta Wave. Martha would find out soon enough, and he really wasn't proud of it.
She shrugged. "Or maybe she just misses her family. I kind of thought that you guys would have your hands all over each other for the first couple of days." The Doctor really hoped that he wasn't blushing. Martha's eyes widened, and she sighed, exasperated. "You didn't."
"What?" he asked defensively.
"You gave her the lonely Life of the Time Lord speech."
"I did not!"
"The girl that you're clearly in love with escaped an entire dimension just to see you again, and you decide to lecture her about how you can never settle down, and how we only have one life. Well, Doctor, you can't live without some heartbreak. Even if you are never romantic to anyone ever again, there will still be goodbyes that kill you inside. There's nothing that you can do about it. You're not cutting your losses; you're giving up an opportunity because you're scared. That's not fair to either of you."
The Doctor was struck by how passionately she argued about this. He wondered if she had met anyone since traveling with him. The echoing sound of the TARDIS stopped her from saying anything more, but she continued to look pointedly at him.
"Rose Tyler, meet future Rose Tyler," Jack said, leading a younger Rose, who was of course accompanied by the Doctor, into the room. She stared in disbelief at her older self standing next to Jack. The future Rose waved uncomfortably. "And This is Tim, Martha, and me, obviously."
"Are—Are the Daleks coming?" asked a male worker when the introductions were finished.
The past Jack nodded. "All half a million of them." The man let out an undignified squeak. The room broke out into mild chaos. "Hey! Over here," Jack shouted. "The Doctor has a plan." He nodded to the man next to him.
"Okay," the Doctor said. "The Daleks made a big mistake. They left me with this." He started pulling out pieces of equipment from the rooms computers. "A great big transmitter. If I can change the signal, fold it back, sequence it, we get… anyone?"
"A Delta wave," said both Jacks at the same time.
"Give the man a medal!" yelled the previous Doctor.
"Are you crazy?" asked past Jack.
"What's a Delta wave?" Richard interrupted.
"A wave of Van Cassadyne energy. It fries your brain, kills you dead," the future Doctor answered.
"And you're just going along with this?" he screamed. The other workers looked uncomfortable. "We're all going to die!"
"No, we're not," the Doctor responded coolly. "Hear him out." He tried to pay attention to the explanation that his past self was giving, but Richard's glares were becoming unsettling. The Doctor began to worry just how far that man would go to ensure his personal safety.
"This place can transmit a massive wave," carried on the ninth regeneration. "It'll wipe out the Daleks!"
"Well do it then," the younger Rose cheered. "Get started." A few cries of agreement rang out through the room.
"Trouble is," finished the Doctor reluctantly, "Wave this size, building this big, brain as clever as mine, that should take, ooh," he thought for a second. "Three days."
"We have 22 minutes," said a man at one of the remaining computers. The Doctor began yanking out wires and piping more quickly.
"Let's get started then," he grinned. Struck with an idea, the past Jack ran back towards the TARDIS. Future Jack followed. A few minutes later, the men came back out.
"We've got a force field," said one, the Doctor thought it was the younger man.
"They can't blast us out of the sky," the other explained. "But we're not protected from a physical invasion."
"Do they know about the Delta wave?" asked the man at the computer.
"They're probably working it out now," future Rose answered.
They continued to talk, and the Doctor joined his younger self on the floor. "Would you like help?" he asked. "I've been told that I'm very clever."
His past self gave him an odd look, but gestured to a pile of wires. "Get to work on the circuits." With a shiver of apprehension, he sat down. The end of the Time War was coming closer and closer, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
