Chapter 10: The Truth Of The Toclafane

The Master fired over her head, burning a hole in the wall just behind her. "Say sorry."

"Sorry! Sorry!" She shouted with as much venom as she could.

As Tish hurried up to reassure her mother, the Master gestured to two guards. "Take them away." If the Joneses weren't so much use as hostages, he'd have had them plummeting towards the ground months ago.

The Master turned back to the Doctor, who was still lying where he'd landed, reeling from the punch. Suddenly compassionate, the Master gently lifted the Doctor up and placed him in one of the large black chairs round the conference table. "There you go, Gramps. Oh, do you know, I remember the days when the Doctor, oh, that famous Doctor, was waging a Time War, battling Sea Devis and Axons. He sealed the rift at the Medusa Cascade single handed. And look at him now. Stealing screwdrivers. How did he ever come to this? Oh yeah, me."

"I just need you to listen." Said the Doctor.

"No! No. Now it's my turn. It's time for a message. For Miss Martha Jones."

Tom cut through the wire mesh which surrounded the power station, then pulled it close together as the Toclafane which patrolled the site made another pass. But he'd been watching their routine for several weeks now, and knew it would be two minutes before they'd be round again. That was just time for him and Martha to sprint all the way to Docherty's workshop without being spotted in a restricted area.

The workshop looked like it had once been high tech. Now, in the absence of spare parts, Docherty had been forced to deconstruct all the equipment several times and cobble it together into whatever she was working on at any given time. The result was a lot of bare machinery, with the wires, working parts and duct tape on full display. There were also spare parts and abandoned tools lying everywhere.

Docherty herself was busy wiring up an ancient looking telly, with the casing completely gone.

"Professor?" Said Martha.

"Busy." She said without looking up.

"This is Martha Jones." Said Tom.

"She can be the Queen of Sheba for all I care. I'm still busy." She whacked some of the less important parts of the machine when her wiring failed again.

"Televisions don't work any more." Said Martha.

Docherty sighed. "Oh God, I miss Countdown. Never been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. What's the plural for Des? Desi? Deseen? But we've been told there's going to be a transmission from the man himself."

Finally, the screen flickered into life. A grainy, black and white image of the Master appeared. He was filming at an angle to create a further sense of unease.

"My people. Salutations on this, the eve of war. Lovely woman. But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there. Stories of a child, walking the Earth, giving you hope. But I ask you, how much hope has this man got? Say hello, Gandalf. Except he's not that old, but he's an alien with a much greater lifespan than you stunted little apes. But what if it showed? What if I suspend your capacity to regenerate? All nine hundred years of your life, Doctor. What if we could see them?"

The Master fiddled with some settings on his laser screwdriver, and then zapped the Doctor once more. The man's scream of agony were quieter than they had been when he'd first been artificially aged a year before. But that only made it even more horrible to listen to. His cries sounded strained and exhausted, and unable to comprehend why anyone would want to do this to him again. But the Master just stood over him, with a sadistic sense of glee.

The Doctor sunk down, below the view of the camera, but still the Master carried on. "Older and older and older. Down you go, Doctor. Down, down, down the years."

Finally he stopped. "Doctor?" He reached down and scooped something up, which he held for the audience to see, which included the Joneses and Captain Jack down in their cells. It was the Doctor. He was shrivelled to a foot high goblin-like creature. But still conscious.

"Received and understood, Miss Jones?" The Master said, and the transmission ended.

"I'm sorry." Said Tom.

But Martha was actually smiling. "The Doctor's still alive."

Some time later, Martha found herself looking through Docherty's technical notes. "Obviously the Archangel Network would seem to be the Master's greatest weakness. Fifteen satellites all around the Earth, still transmitting. That's why there's so little resistance. It's broadcasting a telepathic signal that keeps people scared." The professor explained.

"We could just take them out." Tom mused.

"We could. Fifteen ground to air missiles. You got any on you? Besides, any military action, the Toclafane descend."

"They're not called Toclafane." Said Martha. "That's just a name the Master made up."

"Then what are they?"

"That's why I came to find you. Know your enemy." Martha pulled a CD out of her jacket. "I've got this. No one's been able to look at a sphere close up. They can't even be damaged, except once. The lightning strike in South Africa brought one of them down, just by chance. I've got the readings on this."

Docherty put the disk in a computer which was less powerful than the average phone a year ago. Naturally, it took its time. "I never thought I'd miss Bill Gates." She muttered.

"So is that why you walked the earth?" Said Tom. "To find a weapon?"

"No." Said Martha. "Just got lucky."

"I heard stories that you walked the Earth to find a way to build a weapon." Said Docherty. "There! A current of fifty eight point five kiloamperes transferred charge of five hundred and ten megajoules precisely."

"Think you can recreate that?" Said Martha.

"I think so, easily, yes."

"Then lets get ourselves a sphere."

Tom stood at the end of the passageway between the two buildings and fired three times in the air. He didn't wait to see if anyone had heard, he just ran, keeping below the low overhangs and the criss-crossed support beams.

Up ahead, Martha saw him coming. As they'd hoped, a sphere was following along behind, picking its way through the obstacles. "They're coming." She said to Docherty. "Are you ready?"
"You do your job, I'll do mine." She replied, fiddling with a bundle of circuits in her hands.

Tom ran between the rows of inductor coils they'd set up on the walls of the passageway. "Now!" He shouted.

Docherty plugged the device in. Visible streams of lightning shot between the coils, catching the sphere in the middle. The moment she turned it off, it dropped to the ground.

The three of them approached it cautiously, gun drawn. When it made no attempt to move, Docherty picked it up. "That's only half the job. Let's find out what's inside."

Down in their cell, the Joneses were handcuffed to their bunks. It made little difference, since the sleeping quarters barely had enough space to walk around in anyway.

"I'm going to kill him." Said Francine. "I'm going to kill the Master. One day he'll let his guard down. And I'll be there."

"No, that's my job. I'll swear to you, I'd shoot that man stone dead." Said Clive, sat in the bunk next to hers.

Francine wasn't sure why. But she kissed him at this point.

"I'll get him." Said Tish. "Even if it kills me."

"Don't say that." Said Francine.

"I mean it. He made us stand up on deck and watch the islands of Japan burn. Millions of people. I swear to you, he's dead."

On the bridge, the Doctor's tent had been replaced with a birdcage, hung from the ceiling. The Doctor was curled up there, dressed in a miniature version of his suit.

The Master had decided to pay him a visit, with his increasingly spaced out wife on one arm, and a Toclafane hovering above the other. "Tomorrow, they launch. We're opening up a rift in the Braccatolian space. They won't see us coming. It kind of scary."

"Then stop." The Doctor groaned.

"Once the Empire is established, and there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens, maybe then it stops. The drumming. The never ending drumbeat. Ever since I was a child. I looked into the vortex. That's when it chose me. The drumming, the call to war. Can't you hear it? Listen, it's there now. Right now. Tell me you can hear it, Doctor. Tell me."

The Doctor pulled himself up on the bars of his cage. "It's only you."

The sphere set itself down on the stand on the table. "Tomorrow, the war. Tomorrow we rise, never to fall."

"You see?" The Master waved at the sphere. "I'm doing it for them. You should be grateful. After all, you love them so very, very much!"

Docherty ran her scalpel down a gap between two of the panels on the sphere. "There's some sort of magnetic clamp... Hold on, I'll just trip the…"

There was a click and all the panels came open like the petals of a flower. Inside was a head, wired up to some sort of life support mechanism. It was even more shrivelled and wrinkly than the Doctor's up on the Valliant.

As they stared in horror, the eyes abruptly came open. Cold and milky eyes that had never seen the sun.

"Martha. Martha Jones." It said.

"It knows you." Said Tom.

"Sweet kind Martha Jones. You helped us to fly."

"What do you mean?" Said Martha, slightly baffled.

"You led us to salvation."

"Who are you?"

"The skies are made of diamonds."

"No! It can't be." She gasped.

"My mum used to say, the skies are made of diamonds." Creet grinned.

Martha smiled and ruffled his hair. "Aww. Go on, get your seat."

She carried on towards the lab, while Creet re-joined the line.

Gangways extended to all the entrances to the ship. And the passengers excitedly packed up the living spaces they'd made for themselves in the corridors.

"What's it talking about?" Said Tom. "What's it mean?"

"They're… us from the future." Said Martha.

Lucy was looking around the inside of the TARDIS for the first time, with a sense of wonder. The Master wondered if it was like this for all the humans the Doctor picked up. He decided to play the part until he could show her what she needed to see if she was to help him.

"So you can travel anywhere in time and space?" She said excitedly.

"Weeelllll… I'm a little bit limited at the moment. A friend of mine locked the controls. I can only visit two places. But I've found people who can fix all that. Like to meet them?"

Lucy heard the engines com to a stop. "So where are we then?"

"Oh, trillions of years in your species' future. Like to have a look at the future of the human race?" He opened up the doors and Lucy keenly followed him out.

The moment she stepped outside, her mood dropped… hard. She tried to run back into the TARDIS, but the Master grabbed her arm.

"100 trillion. All the stars have burned out. And the Utopia project is mankind's last hope. The last chance to escape the end of everything. But there is no solution. No diamonds. Just the dark and the cold."

She stared round the blackened landscape. The scores of furnaces burning. The last of humanity screaming at the dark. If you could call them of them had any human parts left. Most of them weren't even humanoid any more. Just spheres floating around. "It's horrible." She said. They were dying. Everything was dying. The whole of creation was falling apart, suddenly any troubles in her time seemed pointless. There was no point to anything. Not ever.

But the Master carried on relentlessly. "All that human invention that had sustained them across the eons. It all turned inwards. They cannibalised themselves. Regressing into children. But it won't work. The universe is collapsing around them. Which is why we're here to help."

"But then the Master came with his wonderful time machine to bring us back home." The sphere continued.

"But that's a paradox." Said Docherty. "If you're the future of the human race, and you've come back to murder your ancestors, you should cancel yourselves out. You shouldn't exist."

"And that's what the paradox machine's for." Said Martha. "To bring two points of time together, but not wipe the Toclafane from excistence."

"But what about us?" Said Tom. "We're the same species. Why are you killing us?"

"Because…" The sphere began. "Because it's fun!" It laughed manically, until Tom put an end to it by putting a bullet through it.

Up on the Valliant, the Master was busy gloating about his grand plan once more.

"But you're changing history." The Doctor gasped. "Not just Earth. The whole universe."

"I'm a timelord." He said. "I have the right."

"But even then… Why come all this way just to kill?"

The sphere answered that question for him. "We come backwards in time all to build a brand new empire lasting one hundred trillion years."

"With me as their master. Time Lord and humans combined. Haven't you always dreamt of that, Doctor?"

"Not like this. This is chaos… and destruction."

"It's how they are to survive. The human race. Greatest monsters of them all."

He turned away from the Doctor, and saw Lucy, staring at him with a look that could resemble pity. He roughly took her by the shoulders and pulled her away before the feeling could deepen.