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Chapter 9 – Last of the Timelords

It had been nearly a year since the Master had taken power and the Valiant was gearing up for the launching of the rockets armed with black hole converters.

The Master was meanwhile walking into the lab where Rani was working on the new Timelords, she had been quiet recently and he was bored, so he decided to pay her a visit.

He found her inside sitting at her computer typing up notes on the progress of the babies, he walked over to her but she didn't divert her attention away from what she was doing. He sat on her desk and said lazily

"What you doing?"

She responded without looking up and kept on typing "Working"

"Well" he said snatching the keyboard away from her to get her full attention "Let's talk awhile" he grinned

She looked at him annoyed before signing in defeat "Ok, what do you what to talk about?"

"Well I just think I should congratulate you on your stellar work. After all you did all this with such primitive equipment" He said gesturing around them

"Appreciated, now do you really intend to use those black hole converters?" she asked

"Of course, one in enough to devastate a whole solar system" he said grinning

"Are you nuts? With that kind of weaponry no space going race with leave Earth intact. If they don't come along to steal the converters they'll band together and destroy Earth" Rani raged getting out of her chair quickly

"Not with an effective first strike" he said


Rani knew better than to argue the man wouldn't know sense if he was right up close to it. Both she and the Doctor had plans to break the Master's power and though she couldn't be sure, she had pretty much figured out what the plan was and it would work with her own.

All the pieces had been put in place some time ago.


The Doctor's attempt to steal the laser screwdriver went badly and now he was reduced to a small pigmy creature. Rani looked at him with sympathy and in her mind was already trying to devise a method to restore him to his former self. She walked up to his cage and said "I'm sorry, I will fix this"

"I know, we'll both fix this" he said back in his gravely voice

At that moment the Master came into the room accompanied by Lucy, sporting a new black eye. The Doctor and Rani turned to face him and glared

"Tomorrow they launch" he said with Lucy on his arm, he shook it off and came nearer "We're opening up a rift in the Braxatolion space, never see us coming. Kinda scary"

"Then stop" the Doctor said

"Once the Empire is established and there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens maybe then it stops" the Master said in response and he walked closer to the cage. Rani stepped forward between the Doctor and the Master as if to shield the Doctor from him

The Master ignored her and said to them both "The Drumming. The never ending drum beat" he paused and then continued "Ever since I was a child, looking into the vortex, that's when it chose me, the drumming the call to war. Can't you hear it?" he asked honestly surprised they couldn't "Listen its there right now" he looked to the Doctor and then Rani "Tell me you can hear it Doctor? Rani?" he asked "Tell me?"

The Doctor leaned against his cage "It's only you" to which the Master responded "Good"

"We are all different we three" the Master said backing away from the cage "The Doctor when he looked into the vortex, he ran away in terror. Rani who looked and was inspired by its power and majesty and me who was chosen by the drums"

But their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a Toclafane "Tomorrow the war, tomorrow we rise, never to fall" and landed on a small rod that emerged from the table

"You see, I'm doing it for them" the Master said gesturing to the Toclafane "You should be grateful, after all you love them, so very much"

He sank into a chair and told them how he recruited the Toclafane "I took Lucy to Utopia, the Timelord and his human companion" he said turning to face Lucy "I took Lucy to see the stars."

"Trillions of years into the future, to the end of the Universe" She said in a sort of mixed voice of awe and horror

"Tell him what you saw" the Master told her

"Dying, everything dying. The whole of creation was falling apart and I thought there was no-point. No point to anything, not ever" she said

"And it's all your fault" the Master told him but Rani surprising even herself jumped to his defence

"This is no-ones fault but the humans, they chose it"

"Oh you should have seen it though" the Master said pretending as if she had never spoke "Furnaces burning. The last of humanity screaming at the dark. All that human invention that had sustained them across the eons, it all turned inwards. They cannibalised themselves" he said while Lucy looked at the Toclafane with revulsion

"We made ourselves so pretty" the electronic childlike voice of the Toclafane said

"Regressing into children, but it didn't work. The universe was collapsing around them" the Master said and the Toclafane said "Then the Master came in his wonderful time machine, to bring us back home"

"The Paradox Machine" Rani said

"Oh my masterpiece" the Master said proudly "A living Tardis strong enough to hold the paradox in place, allowing the past and the future to collide with infinite majesty"

"But your changing history" the Doctor said struggling to get up "Not just Earth, but the entire universe"

"I'm a Timelord, I have that right"

"But even then" the Doctor said "Why come all this way just to destroy?"

"We come back, to build a brand new empire, lasting a hundred trillion years" the Toclafane said and the Master added "With me as their Master. Timelord and human combined haven't you always dreamed of that Doctor?"

"Not like this" the Doctor and Rani added her own two cents "This will only end badly"

The Master then rose from his chair and said "Human race the biggest monsters of them all" before leaving with Lucy in tow


That morning they all gathered on the main deck, the Jones family, Jack, Owen, Tosh and Ianto. The Rani with Miles and Sally and the Doctor alongside the Master and Lucy to observe what was to be Martha's execution

They all looked at the sombre young woman and gave what looks of encouragement they could

Once Martha had walked to the foot of the stairs the Master said "The teleport device, in case you thought I'd forgotten", she withdrew it from a pocket and tossed it to him

He caught it and said "And now Martha Jones, kneel" she did as she was told "And now, beneath us two hundred thousand ships, set to burn across the universe" he grinned turning to a communication device and asked "Are we ready?"

"Awaiting your order" the voice responded while the Master turned to his watch "Three minutes to align the black hole converters, counting down" turning to the clock to see it counting down from 180

"I could never resist a ticking clock" he said with a big smile before shouting out "My children are you ready?" he asked the Toclafane who replied "We are flying, blaze and slice" and repeated it again and again a few times

The Master then turned to face the main deck again "At zero to mark this day, the child Martha Jones will die. My first blood" he chuckled "Any last words?" he asked she just remained silent "Nothing" he said and turned to the Doctor

"Such a disappointment this one Doctor" he said "You had companions who could absorb the Time Vortex this ones useless" and he went to draw his laser screwdriver

But his pocket was empty

That was when two separate plans were activated

Martha explained what she had being doing and the Doctor healed himself using the human race's combined mental power focused through the Archangel Network while Rani sent a command through her PDA

All over the world while the people chanted "Doctor" the Toclafane fell from the sky and their inner works were disabled by the Rani gaining access to their combined neural net and Lucy walking to Rani's side pulling out from behind her back the Master's laser screwdriver while the Master looked on in betrayal

Rani grinned "You really shouldn't have left me with her so long" and Lucy smiled a very sane smile

"She used her psychic powers to correct the chemical imbalance in my brain that caused my madness, once I came too she told me what to do" Lucy explained while Master suddenly cowered against the wall from the Doctor saying "I forgive you"

The Doctor turned to face Jack and said "Captain the paradox machine" and he nodded gathering the soldiers on deck to race and disable the machine

The Master secretly went for the vortex manipulator and disappeared as the Doctor dived to stop him going with him

Jack rushed to the Tardis and shot the paradox machine.

And then the Valiant began to shake


On the main deck everyone clung to whatever they could as temporal waves hit the flying aircraft carrier. Martha went backwards towards the stairs only to land in the Doctor's arms.

The Doctor didn't waste time and kissed Martha deeply on the lips. Her surprise didn't last long and she started kissing back before the Doctor brought the kiss and told her while holding her close

"Martha I love you, I'm sorry I didn't say it earlier. I was afraid of losing you the way I lost everyone else" he said and her shock was soon replaced by a warm smile

"You'll always have me" she said and they kissed again as the world changed around the Valiant.

Rani grinned and shouted to everyone "Hold on to something, time is reversing"

The ravages of what the Master had done to the world started disappearing as time went backwards

After a short while the shaking stopped and the Earth reversed itself one year

While no-one noticed the Master grabbed a pistol that a guard had dropped during the shaking and aimed it at Martha, pulling the trigger.

The kiss abruptly stopped as Martha felt a bullet hit her, the guards quickly took aim and shot the Master, who smiled knowing that he had managed to hurt the Doctor one last time, before life left his body.

Martha felt to the floor as the Doctor held her and her family rushed to her side.

"No…No, I won't lose you" The Doctor said holding Martha close while the Rani grabbed a syringe from out of her pocket and moved quickly to them

"Listen" she told them quickly "I can save her, but she will have to give up being human, become a Timelord like us"

"Is there no other way?" Francine Jones asked and Rani shook her head

"There will be great pain, but it is the only way she can survive. And this choice has to be made now" they all turned to Martha who nodded her head

Rani put the syringe to Martha's arm and injected her


Two days later…

The Doctor and the Rani were in the Doctor's Tardis, undoing the damage that the Master had done; they had personally burnt the body and made the decision to cast everything that remained into a black hole. They could not risk him returning.

"What will you do now?" The Doctor asked

"Well I can hardly go gallivanting across the universe when I have 200 babies on the way can I? UNIT has agreed to give me sanctuary in exchange for my scientific help, besides Miles, Sally and Lucy decided to stick around. Lucy and Sally need to learn more about being a Timelord or Lady in their case, and Miles doesn't have anywhere left to go. His family were already dead before the Master turned on the Paradox machine, the Master was just playing with him"

"How's Martha doing?" Rani asked, finishing her repairs to the circuits under the grating

"Ok, she's still having trouble with having two hearts but everything else seems ok" The Doctor said while he repaired the centre column

"So what are you going to do now?" Rani asked

"Me and Martha are going to travel a bit more, see how it goes" The Doctor said

"Kinda cosy, just the two of you" Rani commented

"Well Jack decided to go back to Cardiff with his team" The Doctor said

Rani smiled a knowing smile "Well I left them a little surprise when they get back to the hub"

The Doctor looked confused "What surprise?"

"Wait and see" Rani said cryptically with a smile


The four Torchwood 3 personnel entered the tunnel leading into the hub, when Jack noticed a letter stuck to it, addressed to him.

They all looked at him as he opened it as read it out loud

"Dear Jack

It seems your team has been left a woman down, so I thought the least I could do is give you a replacement-"

Jack looked up and dashed into the hub to see on the sofa under the 'TORCHWOOD' writing on the wall

Gwen Cooper sleeping

Jack turned back to the letter

"-there was enough clone fluid left from the time babies to create one last clone. So I took the DNA that makes up my appearance and cloned a replica of my own body. But this one is human and using the chameleon arch I gave her the life, knowledge and general personality of Gwen Cooper.

Hope you like her

Rani

P.S. This Gwen doesn't have a relationship with Rhys Williams"

Jack looked from the letter to the Gwen on the sofa and gently shook her awake

Her brown eyes opened slowly and she looked at them with sleep filled eyes "Morning guys, why are you all looking at me like that?" she asked waking up a bit more

They all smiled and Jack assured her taking her small hand in his "Nothing Gwen nothing"


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