There were some oddball things at the end of Voyage of the Damned that we wanted to correct. Like, the robots, their programming recognizes a stowaway as the highest authority? Really? And how did the Host know what he wanted? So, Authors Victorious to the rescue!
We love your reviews, keep em coming! Also, happy anniversary to my dear co-writer, Hawkerin.!
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"Time for a last minute rescue, eh Love?" the Doctor suggested, offering Rose his arm.
"Of course," she replied, taking it. She had no clue what his plan was, and he wasn't offering any details, but she was sure it'd be interesting if nothing else.
"Your authority has changed. Take us to the next highest authority, which should be the officer on the bridge," he ordered the angels.
Astrid and Bannakaffalatta watched as the golden angels took hold of their friends and started blasting their way through the decks of the ship towards the bridge. The computer was announcing the demise of the Titanic ominously around them.
"What are we going to do?" Astrid asked her companion.
"Have ship docked. You come?" Bannakaffalatta suggested hopefully.
"We could contact the others from there. Maybe they could teleport out as well?" Astrid thought as she took his hand. He nodded as they ran back to the area where passengers' vehicles were docked on the ship.
Rose clenched her eyes shut as the robots holding them broke through yet another ceiling into the floor of the bridge, where a very surprised Midshipman Frame was awaiting them.
"Deadlock broken," the computer announced.
"Ah, Midshipman Frame. At last," the Doctor greeted the shocked man.
"It's good to finally put a face to the name," Rose said.
"Er, but, but the Host," he stammered.
"With the controller dead, they divert to the next highest authority, and, to them at least, that's you," the Doctor explained.
"There's nothing we can do. There's no power. The ship's going to fall," he told them despondently.
"Don't give up. Never give up," Rose told him. The poor man looked terrified and it didn't help that he was covered in blood and obviously hurt.
"Titanic falling," the computer announced, as if they hadn't noticed that yet.
"What's the rest of your name?" Rose asked in an attempt to ground the man who was near panic.
The Doctor looked around the controls, familiarizing himself with them quickly while he set up whatever he was planning. "Rose, drag that black cable with the rings over here," he called.
"Alonso," the midshipman answered as she pulled the cable over.
The Doctor froze and stared at the man. "You're kidding me!" Rose stuck the end of the cable in his hand and he plugged it in.
"What?" Alonso asked. Rose was wondering that as well.
The Doctor dropped the cable and went behind the wheel, grinning. "That's something else I've always wanted to say. Allons-y, Alonso!"
"Really?" she asked, receiving a laugh and a wink as an answer. Suddenly, she remembered the moment he'd figured out he liked the word allons-y and how he'd liked the idea of meeting someone named Alonso.
The Doctor spun the ship's large steering wheel that was reminiscent of the ones used on sailing ships. Just about every alarm that could sound was blaring a warning. Rose could see the ship start burning from the heat of entry into the Earth's atmosphere. If she didn't know the Doctor as well as she did, she'd think he was crazy. Well, he was crazy, but she knew there was a reason why he seemed intent on crashing the ship even faster.
Adding to the insanity surrounding them was the fact that everything had seemed to slow down. Not really though, more like she was seeing and processing more faster. She thought it was adrenaline, but they'd been in dangerous situations before that moment, like when the angels were throwing their halos. Except she'd been sure they were going to survive that. She wasn't so sure this time, and that made all the difference.
"Rose, turn on that scanner!" he yelled over the roaring noise of entry and she hit the button. A map came up, showing where they were going, and if she was reading that right, they were about to crash right into…
"Buckingham Palace?" she gasped incredulously and the Doctor groaned.
He snatched up the handset from the communication system in front of him and started pressing a series of numbers. "Oh. Hello. Yes. Could you get me Buckingham Palace?" he asked whoever was on the other end of the line. After three seconds where she could feel his impatience and panic, he yelled, "Listen to me. Security code seven seven one. Now get out of there!" He slammed the handset down and held onto the wheel, keeping it steady.
"Come on, Come on, Ignite!" he yelled, all his focus on what he was doing.
The whole ship was shaking, threatening to come apart and the view outside the windows had become nothing more than fire streaming past. Suddenly, the Doctor's plan clicked in her mind. She hoped it worked. She couldn't pick anything up from the timelines, which was disconcerting, to say the least. She couldn't think of anything she could do and, for the moment. All she could do was hang on.
"Engines active. Engines active," the computer suddenly declared and Rose laughed. The engines had started.
But that was only part of the battle. The moment the engines started, the Doctor pulled back on the wheel as hard as he could. A few agonizing seconds later and, even with the ship's artificial gravity still online, the center of gravity shifted a little, then a little more and Rose could tell it was working. But the scanner still looked like they were going to hit Buckingham Palace.
They must have turned just enough so that the wind would catch more of the ship, because the whole ship echoed with the stress on the hull and they were almost thrown backwards with the shift as the ship finally pulled up and away from the Palace.
All three people on the bridge cheered and as soon as he could let go of the wheel, he was bragging. "Used the heat of re-entry to fire up the secondary storm drive. Unsinkable, that's me!"
Rose grabbed the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and kissed him hard. "You're brilliant, you are," she told him, not caring if it inflated his ego. After the day they'd had, it was worth it. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer.
Then came a groaning noise that made them remember they weren't alone. They pulled apart and looked down guiltily at Alonso Frame, who they knew was badly hurt, but he was smiling.
"We made it," he said happily.
"Not all of us," Rose said, remembering Morvin falling to his death, the Steward before him, and all of the other people they hadn't been able to save. "Come on, let's take a look at you," she told Alonso.
Luckily, while the young midshipman was in a great deal of pain, the physiology of his people meant that the bullet that had shot him had missed major vessels and barely missed organs. The Doctor cauterized the wound and told him that they'd have to leave the bullet in him for the moment, that he could get better care than the Doctor could give on the ship when the rescue came.
After that, they went down to the reception room, where Mr Copper, Rickston Slade, and Foon were gathered. When they got there, they heard Astrid talking on the comms. "Bannakaffalatta is taking me to see more planets! We're so glad that you're all ok."
"Yes, well, it was rather exciting, wasn't it?" Mr. Copper replied, not sounding particularly happy with just how terrifying the experience had been.
"You two running off to elope then, Astrid?" Rose interjected.
Astrid giggled and Bannakaffalatta answered, "Explore first, married later."
"Sounds like a plan. Good luck to you both!" the Doctor called to them.
"The engines have stabilised. We're holding steady till we get help, and I've sent the SOS. A rescue ship should be here within twenty minutes. And they're digging out the records on Max Capricorn. It should be quite a story," Midshipman Frame told everyone.
"They'll want to talk to all of us, I suppose," Mr. Copper said despondently.
"I'd have thought so, yeah," Frame agreed.
"I think one or two inconvenient truths might come to light. Still, it's my own fault, and ten years in jail is better than dying," the older man admitted.
The Doctor, who had grabbed two of the teleport bracelets, one for himself and one for Rose, grabbed a third one and Rose grinned at him. She'd had the same thought as well.
Rickston Slade came up to the two of them. "Doctor, Rose, I never said thank you." The two time travelers nodded at the man.
"You're welcome," Rose answered. Maybe he was worth something afterall.
And then, of course, he spoke again. "The funny thing is, I said Max Capricorn was falling apart. Just before the crash, I sold all my shares, transferred them to his rivals. It's made me rich. What do you think of that?"
Rose had more than had enough of the man. "What do I think of that? I'll tell you what I think of that! I think a whole helluva lot of people just died, and you're smiling and bragging about having made a lot of money off of it!"
Slade's cell phone like device rang. He shook his head at her and pulled it out of his pocket. "Salvain. Those shares. I want-"
She grabbed it from him and tossed it across the deck as hard as she could throw it. It went a lot further than she expected and shattered.
"What do you think you're-" he started indignantly.
"I've known people like you, people who care more about money than life. Max Capricorn was one of them and I've known several others. Trust me, you do not want to end up like any of them did. Every single one of them were twisted so far as to have become something monstrous." As she spoke, she jabbed her finger at him and he slowly backed up as she advanced on him. "Don't think I didn't see that you were on this trip alone and conducting business while you were supposed to be on vacation. Forget your godforsaken shares and make a real connection with an actual person!"
She turned around and started walking back to the Doctor, who she noticed was barely suppressing his laughter. Mr Copper stood there next to him looking amused as well.
Rickston Slade seemed to have recovered his voice, because when she got nearly to the Doctor, he called out, "You will pay for that Vone, and all the contacts in it too!"
"Oh, yeah, I'd like to see you try!" she shot back and continued walking. The Doctor, who was wearing the teleport bracelet, held the second out to Rose. She took it and snapped it around her wrist.
"Of all the people to survive, he's not the one you would have chosen, is he?" Mr. Copper asked her. Rose shook her head, glancing at the now widowed Foon Van Hoff. "But if you could choose, Rose, if you decide who lives and who dies, that would make you the monster."
Rose remembered about the death she'd caused, and the man who could no longer die because she hadn't wanted him dead. Maybe she already was a monster.
She'd apparently projected her thought, because the Doctor took her hand, sent her a wave of assurance, and quickly changed the subject. He held the third teleport bracelet he'd picked up from the console to the older man. "Mister Copper, I think you deserve one of these."
No one objected to the older man escaping the ship. He'd be listed among the dead from the disaster and no one would ever know he'd lied. Just before Mr. Copper worked the controls for the last time, Alonso Frame saluted the three of them. They nodded in acknowledgement and disappeared.
The trio landed not too far away from the TARDIS, yet it might as well have been on the other side of the city, because they'd materialized on the other side of the water from the police box, which they could see from where they were.
As they were walking, Mr. Copper recounted what he could remember about this area of the Earth from his limited studies. "So, Great Britain is part of Europey, and just across the British Channel, you've got Great France and Great Germany."
"No, no, it's just, it's just France and Germany. Only Britain is Great," the Doctor corrected.
"That it is," Rose added with a grin.
"Oh, and they're all at war with the continent of Ham Erica?" the elderly man questioned, now unsure of his sources.
"What? No. Not unless something really surprising has happened since we've been away," Rose told him.
"No. Well, not yet. Er, could argue that one. There she is. Survive anything," the Doctor announced when they had finally reached the TARDIS.
The ground was slowly being coated in a thin layer of snow falling from the dark sky above them. It made Rose's hearts clench at the thought of the last time she and the Doctor had stood together in the falling snow after he had regenerated. They were telling her mum about the danger being just the bits in between and she gripped his hand tighter for support.
"You know, between you and me, I don't even think this snow is real. I think it's the ballast from the Titanic's salvage entering the atmosphere," Mr. Copper commented, reminding Rose even more about that night. That had been ash from the Sycorax ship rather than snow.
"Yeah. One of these days it might snow for real," the Doctor replied, sending a wave of love and support to Rose as he felt her sudden shift of emotion.
"So, I, I suppose you'll be off," Mr. Copper wondered.
"The open sky," the Doctor sighed.
"And, what about me?" he asked.
"Oh, you don't want to travel with a couple of newlyweds. No fun at all, really," the Doctor assured him.
"What am I supposed to do?" the man questioned. He was surely glad to be away from prosecution by the authorities, but he didn't seem to relish being abandoned on an alien planet either.
"Give me that credit card," the Doctor prompted.
"It's just petty cash. Spending money. It's all done by computer. I didn't really know the currency, so I thought a million might cover it."
"A million? Pounds?!" the Doctor asked incredulously.
"Oh my god!" Rose gasped.
"That enough for trinkets?" Mr. Copper questioned sheepishly.
"Mister Copper, a million pounds is worth fifty million credits," the Doctor explained.
"How much?" he breathed, sure that he had misheard the conversion.
"Fifty million and fifty six," the Doctor told him more specifically as he ran the calculations in his head.
"I've got money," the old man realized in shock.
"You've got a lot of money," Rose added.
"Oh, my word. Oh, my Vot! Oh, my goodness me. Yee ha!" Mr. Copper shouted excitedly as he danced in a happy circle.
"It's all yours. Planet Earth. Now, that's a retirement plan. But just you be careful, though," the Doctor insisted.
"I will, I will. Oh, I will," he assured them.
"No interfering. I don't want any trouble. Just, just have a nice life," the Doctor told him as they watched him skipping away from them happily.
"But I can have a house. A proper house, with a garden, and a door, and. Oh, Doctor, Rose, I will make you proud. And I can have a kitchen with chairs, and windows, and plates, and…" he called back to them.
"Mr. Copper! Where are you going?" Rose questioned.
"Well, I've no idea," he responded, but continued away, not bothered by the fact at all.
"No, neither do we," the Doctor said, taking Rose's hand and leading her into the TARDIS. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Copper."
Rose walked slowly up the ramp to the jump seat and sat there silently as the Doctor sent the ship into the vortex. He sat beside her and took her hand in his, waiting for her to start talking.
"Care to tell me what's bothering you, love?" he asked finally.
"Bunch of things, really," she began, picking at a tear in her dress. "The not-really-snow reminded me of that night after the Sycorax, with mum. I miss her so much."
"I know," he sighed, wrapping his arm over her shoulders. "I wish-"
"Don't. I love our life, Doctor. I wouldn't choose any differently. But I can't help missing her, yeah?" Rose assured him.
"Alright. Anything else? Something that I can help you with?" the Doctor wondered.
"What Mr. Copper said about choosing who lives and who dies," Rose admitted. She was still feeling like maybe she was a monster for making just those sorts of choices sometimes.
"We can't help those things, Rose. If you really think that the split second choices you've made would make you a monster, then what does that make me, hmm? You keep insisting that I'm such a good person, but Rose, I've been doing this for centuries. Have you ever made the choice about which civilian to bring into shelter or not based on whether you liked them? That's what he meant. You, My Love, are the most compassionate person that I've ever known in all my lives. It's one of the things that I love most about you," her husband insisted.
"What about Jack?" she whispered.
"You weren't entirely yourself in that moment, Rose. You saw everything, past and future, when making that decision. I can only assume that means that the universe is a better place for having Jack in it forever. Not sure how he rated getting that package over giving it to yourself, but it seems we found a way around that problem anyway," he answered, teasing a little in the hopes of shifting the conversation away from melancholy thoughts. The Doctor squeezed her a little tighter and kissed the top of her head.
"Guess so. At least I'll have plenty of time to redeem myself, now," Rose sighed, letting her feelings of guilt slide away for now.
"Rose, the fact that you are thinking about things like this so much, just goes to show that you have the strength of conscience to make the difficult decisions that we are faced with in our travels. You could never be a monster," he insisted, looking into her eyes and sending her telepathic waves of sincerity and assuredness.
Rose kissed him deeply in thanks before taking his hand and leading him toward their bedroom for a shower to wash away the sweat and grime from their most recent adventure.