Chapter 9
The last jump was especially painful. It seemed like the Doctor's control over the vortex manipulator was minimal and getting worse. When they arrived, the Doctor was the first one on the ground, retching and shaking just with the effort of breathing.
"Stop!" Jones took a few gasping breaths before she knelt by the Doctor. "Just stop," she said. The Doctor wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fell onto his backside, still clutching the white branched creature like a child against his breast.
"It's getting stronger," he said, coughing. He spat on the sandy ground.
"You're not," Jones replied. She looked over at Lee. "And I don't think either of us is, either."
Lee shook his head. He felt like he'd just run a marathon while hungover. The Doctor was sweaty and pale. Jones flopped back onto the ground and lay there, panting.
Lee rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on their surroundings. They seemed to be in some kind of forest; the trees had long, thin orange needles; many of which were pale grey and littering the ground. He pinched a few between his fingers and looked closer at them, then flicked them away. The trees were tall and thick enough so that he couldn't get a clear view of the sky, although it felt like twilight. Of course, that didn't mean much, since he had no idea what planet they were on.
The only thing he knew for sure was that they were not alone.
"Look," he said, and raised a heavy hand to point into the distance. There was a light, a tiny fire bobbing in the darkness, and it was coming towards them.
He jerked awake, startling a cat-faced woman in a white wimple. She hissed quietly, whiskers twitching. Then her face smoothed out and she gave him a serene, queenly look before adjusting a bag of intravenous medicine that, as he discovered when he flexed his arm, was connected to him.
"Where am I?" he asked. His throat was dry. The nurse held up a glass of water and waited patiently as he gulped it down.
"You are in the recovery ward," she purred. She had lovely green eyes.
Then, suddenly, a human face appeared on the other side of his bed.
"Jack!"
He gathered his wits as quickly as he could. "Didn't expect to see you again," he said.
Rose Tyler's mouth warped into a half-smile. "You nearly didn't. You were dead for a couple of minutes."
The nurse bowed her head politely. "Please call me if you need anything."
"Will do," he said, giving her a flirtatious smile. She turned her head bashfully and walked away.
Rose looked thoughtful. He considered asking her if she was okay, but she looked more than okay. There was colour in her cheeks, and despite the line of worry between her eyebrows, she looked like she was well-rested.
"How long have we been here, whereever here is…?"
"New New York. I reckon it's not one you've been to."
"What year?"
"Five billion," she said casually. "Give or take a few decades."
He gave her an incredulous look. "You brought us here?"
"I wasn't sure we'd make it, to be honest," she replied. Her hands were smoothing the creases out of the sheet where it spread over the edge of his narrow bed. He seemed to be suspended on a soft slab that hung at a forty-five degree angle. It gave slightly whenever he moved; it felt like there was some kind of anti-grav on it. "But I knew there was a hospital."
"We were in the twenty-seventh century, and the closest hospital you could think of was in the year five billion?"
Rose smiled. "You're just lucky that I was right."
'Lucky' didn't remotely cover it. That wasn't luck, that was Fortuna Herself taking them by the hand.
"How long have we been here?"
"Got here yesterday afternoon. They resuscitated you." She wasn't looking at his face, and he could see her hand twitching and clutching at the sheet near his hand, almost as if she was restraining herself. "I blacked out and woke up a couple of beds over, but they told me I could go, if I wanted."
That was when he looked down and saw the leather strap on her left wrist—it looked too bulky next to her slender hand. He remembered dying—or thinking that he was going to—and telling her to go home. Why was she still here? She must have known how to use it. (Fortuna must really have been looking out for him. He ought to try being more religious, just as a thank-you.)
"You could have left me," he said, watching her face carefully, looking for the tics and tells. Her eyes widened—she had big, warm hazel brown irises—and her pupils dilated slightly.
"No I couldn't," she said, tone cold. She was insulted. That was interesting. She probably thought of herself as incapable of such a selfish act. (People who thought that were often wrong. It was never good to be around when they figured that out.)
"Was she dead?"
A muscle seized in Rose's jaw. "Yes." She'd killed it, then.
"Good."
Rose did not like hearing that at all: in fact, she was disgusted. Ashamed too, probably.
"She would have killed you," he said, gently, surprising himself. He wanted the lines on her brow to smooth out, wanted her to smile. No one that beautiful should ever look that unhappy.
"I know," Rose replied. "I'm not stupid."
He was going to ask if it was her first, but he didn't have to. It was in her eyes. She was young, but not as young as he'd been when he'd joined the Holy Corps. He'd killed so many by the time he was her age that he had stopped bothering to count. (It had gone against the training to obsess like he had. Good soldiers didn't think. Maybe that'd been why he'd been so colossally bad at it in the end.)
"Sorry," he said. Again, the word was out of his mouth before he was able to stop it.
She pushed her straightened golden hair behind her ears and went to grab stool from the other side of the privacy curtain and sat down. He wondered what she'd look like with her natural hair colour.
"Don't you think it's time you told me the truth?" she said, settling in and crossing her arms over her white shirt. It looked like they'd given her something to replace her own clothes. Her trousers were loose and white, too, but she was wearing her own black boots. He could see the outline of her bra through the white material and he smiled. It was black; very sexy, yet practical. How very Torchwood.
"Truth is beauty," he said, "according to some people."
"I've read the poem," she said, brow furrowing. "Look, I'm not kidding around. This thing you stole… Where's the Rewtas Amalgam? Who did you take it from? Why?"
"I wanted it, so I took it," he said. He smiled and shifted on the bed, experimenting with leaning on his arm. The bed bobbed slightly and he felt the pitch shift slightly to balance out the movement. Nice.
"You wanted to get people killed, too? Is that part of the game for you?" Such disapproval! It was like getting a lecture from your mother.
He wiped the smile off of his face almost without thinking. "People die, Ms. Tyler."
"You came to my home," Rose said, narrowing her eyes. "You brought hell down on my friends—my family—and you kidnapped me. Not to mention the violence. And I still saved your life."
He looked at her fingers where they nestled in the crook of her elbow, waiting and curved like claws.
"So you expect a favour, then?"
"I was hoping that there might be some honour among thieves, yeah."
"I don't believe in life-debts," he said. He did; he sure as hell should. He had counted on favours and debts most of his life. Just, usually, they were his to collect.
Her smile said that she knew he was lying. (Lucky guess. He lied a lot.)
"Tell me why you took the Brindisi effusion, and I'll call it square."
"You call that a fair trade?"
She shrugged. "You could tell me where you get your hair gel. I'm sure the Doctor would appreciate it."
"You two are serious, then. Too bad. I was kind of hoping you'd sweeten the deal with a sponge bath."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "Serious as the plague."
"I know a cure for plague. One taste, and you're footloose and fancy free."
Rose raised an eyebrow. "Tell me where to go, and we'll see."
Not a flat no. That was a pleasant surprise. "Do you keep your promises, Rose Tyler?"
"Do you?"
"I don't make promises," he replied.
There was a long pause and he was dismayed to see pity in her eyes. "What happened to you, Jack?" she murmured.
"Sorry," he said. He felt his smile slipping. "I'm afraid that the going rate for my life story is one sponge bath."
She fell silent. To avoid the discomfort of her stare, he closed his eyes and lay back, hands behind his head, and pretended to doze.
Lee tried the silent guilt trip on him from time to time. He did it less these days, since they'd stopped jumping around time. He had less to complain about now; he liked being settled.
Problem was, he was starting to think that he did, too. Staying in the twenty-first century had seemed like a good plan—high populations to get lost in, busy and delicate political atmospheres that the Time Agency usually tried to stay out of. Maybe using the name 'Harkness' had been too much, but how were you supposed to resist the allure of famous names? It was just too much fun. Should have known it would attract attention, though. (Still, that wasn't as bad as Peter's choice. But then again, he had the equivalent sense of humour of a twelve year old boy.)
"I knew you," Rose said.
His eyes snapped open.
Rose's head tilted to one side and she had wistful affection in her smile. "Back in my universe," she went on. "The Doctor and I met him during the London Blitz. He tried to con us into buying a Chula warship from him. What he didn't know was that it was full of nanogenes. They were mutating people, turning 'em into these gas-mask-wearing zombies… He didn't mean to cause so much trouble, and he tried to help fix it. He thought he was just gonna play us and move on." She looked him in the eye. "But he didn't. He was better than that, when it came down to it."
"Different universe, different man," he said.
"Oh yeah?" she said, defiant. "You could have let that assassin kill me."
"I'm not that heartless."
Her hand found his and she squeezed his fingers tightly. "Let me help you," she begged. "Together, we can fix it."
"How? By saying, 'pretty please don't execute me'?"
"So you're just going to let them hunt you down like an animal?"
"As if I could stop them," he laughed. They wouldn't stop; they would never stop. He never should have stayed on Earth for so long. Shouldn't have let himself get comfortable.
Rose let go of his hand. "I should have left you, then."
He smiled darkly. "Now you're getting it." She'd known him—another him. They must have been friends, maybe even lovers. So it wasn't just her twenty-first century idealism that made her act so foolhardy. She cared about him, and she didn't even know him. How crazy was that?
The wrist-strap's proximity alarm sounded. Startled, Rose opened the flap and suddenly, she was afraid. He sat up and held out his hand. She showed him the alert.
Vortex activity, ten metres.
His chest clenched in fear. "Run," he said. "Just go!"
"Why do you want to die?"
He stared back at her, stunned. "What?" Of course he didn't want to die! What would be the point? He just needed to outrun them a little longer. But she was going to get herself killed if she stayed with him. He couldn't let that happen.
The strap beeped again. They were here. Shit.
But when they turned to see where the Shadow Man had appeared, they saw no one. It was an open floor, divided by white curtains and spotless glass. They should have seen or at least heard something.
Rose looked at the strap. "They're upstairs," she breathed. "C'mon, we've got time." She flagged down a passing nurse. "Sister Hame! We need his clothes! Quick!"
He wasn't entirely sure why he let Rose stuff his legs into his trousers, though he did like the look of her from that angle, crouched at his feet as she shoved his shoes on and hurriedly tied them. (When was the last time someone else had tied his shoes? He couldn't even remember.) Sister Hame shyly informed them that his shirt and coat had been defabricated during his treatment. He tucked the white hospital gown into his waistband and silently mourned the loss of his leather jacket.
Rose checked the wrist-strap. "They're on this level. Hurry up, Jack. Give me the co-ordinates."
There was a moment there, where he refused and they both died when the Shadow Man came into the ward. Sister Hame died with a screech and a look of shock on her lovely face.
Blinking, he reached out for Rose's arm, and punched in a destination: 250814075106-1 Gemini 1-2Λ4
The man leading them through the forest was dressed in faded camo, like a soldier of the Church, and a dusky green jacket that had seen far better days. Lee knew, however, that Clerics had better boots.
They were being forced to walk single-file. The man who held the torch and had stripped them of the vortex manipulators led the column. His three compatriots each had a weapon pointed at their captives. Martha Jones walked between the Doctor and Lee, hands behind her head. The Doctor had refused to put his hands up, babbling something that sounded very important and frightening and complicated as a reason that he could under no circumstances let go of the coral. He clutched it to his chest, using both hands to guard it from the eyes of the man walking next to him. The Brindisi effusion was still in its make-shift sling. The glow of it was obscured by a flap of black material, which was probably a good thing. Their captors probably wouldn't have bothered keeping them alive if they'd seen it.
Lee was not a scientist, nor was he an historian or a time traveller by trade. He'd grown up on Tiree, a small colony on the edge of the Terran sector; a planet that was probably not too different from this one, whatever it was. Though it had been more grass than trees.
The minute he'd been old enough to leave, he'd made a break for it, hoping for the throngs of people in great cities, and dreaming of bright stage lights and intimate clubs like the ones he'd grown up watching on ancient vids from the time before the Flesh Wars and solar flares. He'd thought that they were romantic. Life had been gentler then, slower… Not slow like Tiree, with its long growing season, gentle hills, and endless sheep… There had been music everywhere. He wasn't foolish enough to think that people had really burst into song on a whim, engaging entire towns in melodies about trombones, or actually danced with reanimated corpses in the street. But it had been a musical time. Singers and dancers were called "artists" and there was money to be made, fame to win, and tumultuous love affairs to drown in.
Of course, when he had finally made his way to New New New York—third of the name, built over the ruins of the second one, sometimes in museum-perfect replica of its namesakes—he had found that Earth wasn't full of song anymore. Sure, there was music, but it was all advertisements, or background noise. The only ones who wanted to hear musicians play music in person were the aliens.
Being on Earth back in the twenty-first century, that was a gift unlike any he could have hoped for as he'd played his great-uncle's fiddle to bored sheep on the hillside.
If he'd been a scientist, he supposed that he would have asked Jack more questions than he had. He wasn't stupid enough to think that, even after five years, Jack would ever tell him the whole plan. That wasn't how he operated.
Still, he ought to have said, "Hey, Jack… I've been wondering: other than all those grifts and cons and the occasional maiming… and that Time Agent that you really shouldn't have killed… Is there anything in particular that you've done that might bring the wrath of the gods down on all of us?"
Of course, he would have been lucky to make it through the first sentence.
The forest thinned out as they were marched along. Eventually, the trees opened onto a clearing and a large camp populated by one, two hundred people. They were going about their business, dressed in rough-spun clothes or worn-out Church fatigues. Lee looked up and saw a gravity globe floating overhead, casting the tents and the ramshackle buildings in a bluish-white glow.
"Do you know where we are?" Martha asked.
Lee shook his head.
"No talking!" one of their captors said. He prodded Martha with the business end of his rifle.
"Oi, you leave her alone," the Doctor warned.
"Shut your face, or I shut it for you!"
"What are they saying?" Martha murmured.
Lee frowned at the back of her head. She must not have a translator. Still, she ought to be able to understand; she had understood him well enough. Maybe the man with the gun didn't have an implant, either. Lee had tried learning Pre-Colonial English even before he'd arrived in the twenty-first century, but it was clunky and inelegant compared to Galactic Standard. And the spellings were illogical and overly complicated. The two languages were related, if he remembered correctly, but three thousand years of colonisation and warfare did a lot to words.
"They're speaking a dialect of Galactic Standard," the Doctor said, probably in English. "Just keep calm and quiet for now. I'll think of a way out of this."
"No talking!" The Doctor's personal guard hit him across the face with the butt of his rifle.
Lee was impressed that the Doctor didn't go down, but he still spat a large gob of blood onto the ground. Luckily, the Doctor was smart enough not say anything else.
They were taken to the largest of the run-down buildings. Inside, it was all shipping crates and people with guns. Lee wondered what they'd landed in the middle of. The Doctor had said that he was tracing the path that the Brindisi effusion device had taken. Gods only knew how. He hadn't bothered to explain it.
A young man in an old Bishop's jacket was watching them approach. Lee supposed that he was probably the one in charge, though he looked much too young to be a Bishop.
"Who are these people?" he asked the Cleric with the torch.
"Found them in the woods, sir." He took the wrist straps from his jacket and handed them to the younger man. "Time Agents."
"We're not Time Agents," the Doctor said quickly.
The Bishop raised an eyebrow. "You certainly don't look like one." He opened one of the wrist straps and looked more closely at the manipulator inside. "But these are standard issue."
"We took them," the Doctor said, "from two agents we captured."
The Bishop looked intrigued. He was handsome, with dark hair, and there was something familiar in his smirk. "Captured?"
"We're looking for a man who calls himself Jack Harkness," the Doctor went on. "Please, I need to find him."
The Bishop's smirk faded. "You're kidding me."
"No," the Doctor said seriously. "I'm really not."
"Jack Harkness?" the Bishop repeated, incredulous. "What other name did he give you? Robin Hood? Da Vinci? Man's a myth."
Lee felt the Doctor looking at him. He shrugged his shoulders as best he could with his hands behind his head and a gun between his shoulder blades. Jack had an odd sense of humour. Lee hadn't got the joke at first, being from the Terran sector, and all. Captain Jack was a hero from children's stories out in the far colonies. He was about as real as the Big Bad Wolf.
The Doctor paused thoughtfully. "He might also be known as the Face of Boe."
That name worked on their captors like lightning. The Bishop charged the Doctor, who held the coral closer to his heart and stood a little bit straighter as the other man grabbed him by the lapel and snarled up into his face.
"How do you know him?"
The Doctor gave the other man an imperious look and put his left hand on the Bishop's straining fingers. "He got one of my friends shot and kidnapped the woman I love. How do you know him?"
The Bishop let the Doctor's jacket go and took a step back as he tried to reign in his temper.
"He's my brother."
Things got a bit more hospitable once the young Bishop ordered his men to put their guns away. The Doctor glanced at Martha and Lee, both of whom seemed to be unhurt.
"How is it you can understand him?" Martha asked him quietly.
He held the infant TARDIS up and inspected her. She'd grown another thirty-seven percent since they'd left the Warehouse. He'd worried that the travel would put a strain on her, but she seemed to be thriving on it. At this rate, she'd be mature in only a three or four hundred years time.
If only he had another few centuries in him, he thought dully.
Now you're just getting greedy, Donna sighed.
"I know a lot a languages, Martha Jones," he said. He looked at her. Her dark eyes were bright with curiosity and calculation. "I used to walk in eternity."
Lee quirked an eyebrow but remained silent. Donna, however, was chuckling at him. Oh, what a pair they would have made.
"Introductions," said the young man who'd tried to throttle him. He indicated at a few convenient crates. "And you're probably hungry."
"A bit peckish, yeah," the Doctor admitted.
Understatement of the millennium, Donna grumbled. His stomach didn't, this time.
They each took a crate in the circle and Jack's brother gave them a perfunctory smile before settling back into his serious leader face. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor," he replied. "This is Martha Jones, and Lee McCoy. He's a friend of your brother's, actually."
"Bishop Nicodemus." The Bishop looked at Lee. "You know my brother?"
Lee nodded. "For ab-bout five years."
Nicodemus processed the information and then turned to Martha. "What about you?"
"She doesn't have a translator," the Doctor said. "I'm afraid you're stuck on a one-way channel."
Nicodemus grimaced. "Well, she's in the wrong place to get one. We ran out of implants about five months ago."
"What is this place?" the Doctor asked. "Your people are—"
"Rebels," Nicodemus said simply. He looked over his shoulder at a group of men and women going through a weapons check. Out of the group of six, only two were apparent humans. When Nicodemus turned back, he had the hint of a smile. "I've got one hundred and eighty-two souls here, but there are over two million down in valleys."
The Doctor frowned. "Mind if I ask who you're intending on fighting?"
Nicodemus smiled wider, and suddenly the family resemblance was impossible to miss. "Buddy, we've been fighting. We were doing okay, too, for a while."
"Who are you fighting?" the Doctor insisted.
Nicodemus's forehead wrinkled. "You really don't know?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't ask!" he said testily. The coral shuddered in his hand.
Nicodemus shook his head. "And here I was hoping we'd get at least a little bit of media attention."
"They're n-nnnnot from around here," Lee volunteered.
Nicodemus looked at him. "What about you? That sounds like a Sanctuary accent."
Lee shook his head. "'M not from Earth."
"Outlier, huh?" Nicodemus nodded thoughtfully.
The Doctor was getting impatient. "The Time Agency's after Jack—your brother."
"Of course they are," Nicodemus said.
"Do you happen to know why?"
Nicodemus got to his feet. "Here comes Varna with the food. I hope you like rations."
The Doctor peered at the Bishop. "If I knew what you were doing, I might be able to help you."
Nicodemus shook his head. "You're pretty funny. The woman can't understand anybody, the Outlier no one can understand, and a dead plant?" He chuckled derisively. "You sound like a Sanctum-bred linguistics professor. I've got my own people to look out for."
The tethers on the Doctor's temper snapped. He shot to his feet. "I'm sick of playing games with everybody. Bloody River Song and Jack Harkness and Torchwood and that toad Owen Harper! Tell me what's going on."
Something flickered in Nicodemus's eyes. After a moment of what probably amounted to some sort of male posturing—Donna found the whole staring contest of wills to be tiresome—the young man shrugged.
"Fine. Let me show you."
The Doctor nodded at Martha and Lee to follow with him. Nicodemus led them through double doors to a command centre. The rebels were pretty well-equipped, technologically speaking, it seemed. Or at least, they had been a couple of hundred years ago.
Nicodemus stopped by a large holo-display table and activated it with a touch to the air. A three dimensional image of a planet appeared.
Martha's eyes widened. "Is that where we are now?"
"This is the Gemini system," Nicodemus said. He made a pushing motion and the little planet shrank and took it's place in a five planet system. There was a binary star, two small white dwarfs labelled Gemini 1-2. They were on the fourth planet, out at a distance of 1.52 AUs from the stellar centre.
"The first colonists settled here in 4778; they were passengers on the Kansas."
The Doctor frowned. "The Kansas? Is that one of the Ark Class ships?"
"You got it." Nicodemus manipulated the hologram again. Now it showed a nebula and a neighbouring cluster. It looked like the Gemini system was on the edges of the Rewtas Amalgam.
"What's going on?" Martha said pointedly.
The Doctor blinked. He switched over to English. Nicodemus probably had a translator, being the leader and all. "Oh. Right. Er… We're on a planet that was colonised by an Ark ship in the 48th century."
"An Ark ship? Is that what it sounds like?" she wondered.
He nodded. "In the twenty-second century there was a mass emigration from Earth. Solar flares, pollution, famine, plenty of reasons why, assuming this universe is as similar to mine as I think it is, of course. Most of the nation states built massive ships, meant to travel for decades, sometimes hundreds of years. At the time, faster than light was still pretty spotty, and not every country had access to the technology. Blame petty human politics for that one. Whole nations on enormous ships! All of Britain. Wellll… not Scotland. I'm sure they got their own ship."
Lee smirked. "My g-great-great… and more… grandmother was on the Alba."
The Doctor grinned at Lee and then he nodded at the display. "Anyway, the United States—what was left of them—had fifty-two Ark Class ships. Most of them stayed in a flotilla, colonised new planets… some of them even went back to Earth, once the radiation cleared up a bit."
Nicodemus crossed his arms. "How do you know all that?"
The Doctor gave him a look. "Time travellers," he said, hearing Donna in his tone. "Obviously. Though I admit, I might be wrong on some of the details. Tell us about the Kansas."
The Bishop shrugged. "The Kansas was one of the ships that found a new planet and settled in. Took them longer than most of the others. For almost two thousand years, everyone assumed they'd all died. Turned out they'd fallen through a wormhole."
The Doctor translated and Martha looked around them. "What about the aliens?" she asked in a hushed tone.
He shrugged. "It's the fifty-second century. The people on the Kansas would have met up with all kinds of different species, out here. Made things a bit easier, I'm sure. Humans have this, Trex have that, and on and on." He smiled. "I like a bit of teamwork, me."
Nicodemus pointed picked a bright spot in the neighbouring star cluster. "Meet the opposing players," he said.
The display zoomed through clouds of star dust and across star systems until it found a fiery looking red planet. The information clip to the side of the image called it Oa'we.
"The Oa'n Paldra have been petitioning for permission to colonise a new planet for the last twenty years," he said, voice flat and cold. "A year ago, the Sanctum, in its infinite wisdom, granted their request."
The Doctor translated for Martha. "So, what's that got to do with them?" she asked him.
He looked at the hologram. For a moment, Oa'we looked a bit like a smaller sister of Gallifrey after the ravages of the Time War. They were suffering from seismic instability, their atmosphere had turned to poison. The Oa'n Paldra had lost their home and more than a billion people were adrift in ships and low on resources. They weren't going to last much longer.
"The Sanctum gave them Gemini 4," Nicodemus answered.
The Doctor related the information and tightened his jaw.
Martha frowned at the display, taking in the little planet and the burning white stars. "And you don't want them here."
Nicodemus smiled sadly and shook his head. "If it were just a matter of scooting down the bench to let a few people have a seat at the table, do you really think we'd be fighting?"
Martha listened to the translation and her frown deepened. "People have killed over less."
"Yeah," the Bishop admitted. "But that's not what this is about." He brought the image of Gemini 4 up and put it next to the one of Oa'we. He pointed out the atmospheric statistics, the gravity ratings, the temperature differentials. "There's no way that the Oa'n Paldra could live here."
Lee looked deeply troubled. "The Sss-Sanctum didn't…?"
"What?" Martha demanded. "What did he say?"
The Doctor looked down at the TARDIS in his hand. "The Sanctum wants them to relocate."
Nicodemus shook his head. "Wrong," he said. He replaced the images of the planets with a block of text.
The Doctor read it and he could almost feel his blood pressure rise. That couldn't be right. "No!"
The young soldier nodded grimly. "We intercepted this message about three standard days before the Former was scheduled to roll out."
Lee looked like he wanted to be sick. Martha was looking at the Doctor, fear in her eyes. "What's wrong? What does it say?"
The Doctor swallowed. "The Sanctum ordered Gemini 4 to be terraformed to suit the Oa'n Paldra's recquirements."
Martha shook her head. "So?" Then it hit her and her eyes widened. "Wait… just like that? What about the people living here?"
He pointed at the salutation in the order. "This message was sent from directly from the highest council of the Sanctuary Government to the Former fleet." The Doctor met Father Nicodemus's eyes. "The colonists would never have known they were coming. They would have been reduced to their base atoms, reconfigured… recycled…"
Martha covered her mouth. Lee had his fists balled on the edge of the holo-table, and his head was bowed.
"How did you get this?" the Doctor asked.
Nicodemus averted his eyes. His voice was rough with restrained emotion. "A friend intercepted the transmission and sent us a warning. Saved everyone."
"But that was a year ago," Martha said.
The Doctor looked at her. "Yes?"
She shook her head and pointed at the message. "This was sent a year ago, he said. Right?"
"Right…"
"So how is it that they're still here?" She looked at Nicodemus. "No offence to them; but a tiny paramilitary group like this couldn't possibly hold out against a fleet of ships capable of reducing them to nothing for an entire year. So how are they still here?"
"Good point," the Doctor mused. He gave Martha a proud smile. "Very good, in fact." He turned to Nicodemus. "Over to you, then, Bish."
Nicodemus brought up a picture of a grey slab of a ship. It was small, probably less than ten decks. The stern contained the bridge and engineering; the forward sections were dominated by a large lens-like apparatus. The ship appeared to be dead in space, adrift in orbit of the planet.
"That's where my big brother comes in. The Former ship, the one that does the actual terra-forming, has a top secret power source. It's tech beyond anything else the Sanctum's ever put out. We've heard stories that the Time Agency itself stole it from some point in the future."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
Those dirty, cheating bastards! Donna cried.
"If it's true, yeah," Nicodemus agreed.
The Doctor realised that he'd spoken aloud. Oops. He resisted the urge to clear his throat or smack himself and did a quick translation for Martha's benefit.
"Let me guess," she said, a wry smile spreading across her face. "Jack stole it."
Nicodemus frowned. "How do you know that?"
The Doctor gave Martha a tiny nudge with his elbow and hoped she'd get the hint before he translated this time. He wasn't ready to let them know that he was carrying the very thing that everyone was after until he was ready.
"There's a reason that the Time Agency's after him," she said.
"Five years," Lee said, suddenly. The Doctor looked at him. The other man was red in the face and trembling with what was probably anger. "He could have said! Those p-people, those fucking people… They're m-mmurderers. Why didn't he say?"
"He disabled the Former ship." Nicodemus looked at Lee and hesitated a moment. "Until today, I wasn't sure he'd made it out alive. I'd always assumed he'd died for us."
"Oh, he's alive all right," the Doctor said. "At least he will be, until I get my hands on him."
Nicodemus's face hardened. "Look, I don't know what all he's done—"
"Enough," the Doctor growled. "I'll admit, disabling that ship was a heroic move. I'm even a bit proud of him. But he…" He bit his tongue. Maybe it was all right. Wherever Jack was, wherever he'd taken Rose… If he was the kind of man who'd risk his life for more than two million people, maybe he… But he'd just run away, and he'd taken the one thing that could make being stuck in this stupid universe and this stupid body worthwhile.
I want her back, too, but there are slightly bigger things right now… murmured Donna.
Martha was looking at him. He started to turn his head away, but there was real sympathy in her eyes. He thought of Toshiko lying in a hospital bed and how helpless that must have made Martha feel… Probably as helpless as he had felt, standing on that platform, knowing that Rose was out of his reach and there was nothing he could do to help her.
Martha put her hand on his arm for a moment and then she looked back at Nicodemus. "Do you know where he might have gone?"
Nicodemus shook his head. "I always hoped he'd come back here. But with the Time Agency on his ass, this is probably the last place he'd ever come. He wouldn't want to lead them back here."
At that moment, the Doctor felt a jolt in his hand. It startled him so badly that he nearly dropped the TARDIS coral.
Nicodemus, Lee and Martha stared at the coral, eyes and mouths going wide as the white light pulsed like a firework. Nicodemus clutched the edge of the holo-table and the images flickered before going out completely. Must have blown the circuit. "What is that?" he demanded.
The Doctor didn't answer. He was too busy trying to figure that out himself. His right hand was burning from the inside out; the pain was almost unbearable. He could see traces of golden light—almost like regeneration energy rippling under his skin. The coral pulsed again and he heard a message, loud and clear.
He looked at Martha, filled with the completely irrational hope that she could make it stop, somehow. It hurt. It was wrong, and it hurt. But these weren't his own thoughts, and they weren't Donna's either. They must have come from the TARDIS.
He managed to swallow and speak before another wave of pain crested. "Somebody's coming."
They materialised on the deck of a ship. Rose was pretty certain that they were in space—something about the way her balance took a moment to settle in. Some ships' artificial gravity took some getting used to.
What she expected to feel and did not was the hum of engines. She looked at Jack, who was holding her arm for a better look at the manipulator.
"Perfect," he murmured.
"Where is this?"
He took her hand in his and mock-bowed. "You want to see?"
They walked through corridor after silent corridor. The air was stale, but they could breathe, so life support was working. Still, the only lights in the black tubes they were walking through were amber emergency lights. It was a few minutes before they reached the room that Jack seemed to be looking for.
"Where is everyone?" she asked.
"They abandoned ship," he said. He glanced at her as if he wanted to gauge her reaction.
"What kind of ship—"
"Terra-former," he said. "This is the Genesis. She was the flag ship of the Former fleet, sent here on a mission to make the planet ready for new colonists. Crew of 53, most of them scientists." Jack's smile was cold. He held out his hand.
"What?"
"The manipulator? I need it to boost the power. Then I can control the whole thing from here."
Rose hesitated. For all she knew he would try to run off again… But what could she do? She took off the wrist-strap and handed it over.
Without putting it on, Jack started punching in commands. Within moments, the deck lighting had come back on to full, and the computer consoles came to life with almost cheerful chimes. It was a command centre. All of the work stations were centred on a central chair. It looked a bit like the Enterprise bridge. Everything was dark grey and silver. Rose wondered how practical the arrangement really was.
Jack went up to the command chair and sat down. There was a small control station there; he pulled it in front of him and started to work. Rose looked at the large screen at the front of the room. It flickered and was translucent, like a hologram. It showed the edge of a planet. It was mostly green and brown, with long, thin stretches of turquoise sea.
"The planet's called Gemini 4," Jack told her, without looking up. "Current population… 2.3 million souls. Most of the original colonists were human, but over the last couple of centuries, other species have moved in. Plenty of room, good farmland in the valleys."
Rose turned to look at him. "So it was terra-formed."
"No." Jack concentrated on the wrist-strap, punched in a few more commands. "Gemini 4's always looked like that. There was some modification when the colonists arrived, but nothing major. A few local plant species were spliced with Terran ones to help get just the right carbon dioxide/oxygen mix, but other than that, it was already perfect."
"So why is this ship here?"
Jack pushed the controls to the side and went to the one that Rose assumed was the navigational station. "Because I brought it here."
Rose looked at him. "Why?"
"I was following orders." He glared at her, defiant, daring her to say something. "It was my job."
She glanced at the screen. "What happened?"
He didn't answer her at first, he just kept working. She looked past him at the display. She couldn't read it, but it looked like he was still just turning everything back on.
Then, with a pained look on his face, he settled back into one of the chairs. "I was in the military—well, you'd call it that. They called it joining the Holy Corps. The Church has kept the peace in the outer colonies for the last thousand years. I joined up when I was still just a kid, worked my way from Deacon to Cleric, until I had command of my own ship." He spun slowly in the chair. Cautiously, Rose took the chair next to him. "This ship, as a matter of fact. We were the crown jewel of the Former fleet. It was a good gig." He leaned on the console and held his hands in front of his face, moulding the air with his fingers. "We would take lifeless hunks of rock and make gardens out of them."
Rose waited. When he didn't speak again, she said, "What went wrong?"
"Got orders direct from the Papal Mainframe, passed down the Sanctum itself. They gave me the co-ordinates, and I brought my men here." He looked at the planet on the screen. "A whole colony that had been out of contact with the rest of humanity for more than two hundred years. Sanctuary fleets only rediscovered it fifty years ago. There were almost three million people living here. Citizens. They weren't enemies. They had homes and families. But my orders were to terra-form the planet.
"I sent back a message. I was sure that there'd been some mistake; the planet was already inhabited. They told me, no, no mistake, and I was to carry out my orders immediately."
"What about the people?"
"Somehow, they already knew." Jack smiled wanly. "I don't know how, but they'd gotten ahold of the order. When the Genesis arrived, we were hailed by the planet. They begged us to go, to leave them in peace." The smile died. "When the men heard what happened… You've gotta understand, most of my men were like those people. Born on far-flung planets, sons and daughters of farmers and traders… They only joined up so they could defend their homes, and here we were, supposed to wipe all those people from the face of their world, just so someone else could take their place. At first, I'd tried to keep the whole thing quiet, just do my job, but it… My men found out what was happening, and I had a mutiny on my hands, and not just on the Genesis. There were three other ships with us, escorts. Things got bad really fast. People fighting on the bridge. I had to…" He glanced at her. "Long story short, one of the escort ships took a defensive position between Genesis and the planet. There was a battle. We won."
The computers hummed in the sudden silence. Rose wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. If he'd already had doubts, why had he kept going? An officer didn't have to follow orders that went against conscience, did he? A captain on his own ship, he was supposed to have the authority to say no.
"And then Gemini started fighting back. They had their own regiment there, and fighters. I didn't blame them. It kept going like that. I should have just started the terra-forming, but I didn't. I should have followed my orders."
Rose put her hand out and touched his. After a moment of glassy-eyed staring, he shook himself and pulled his hand away. "I'm boring you with details. Suffice to say, I disobeyed my orders. The ship was badly damaged, and I sent a distress call out to the Mainframe, said we'd met resistance, and we'd incurred too much damage to go forward. And then I evacuated my men to one of the other ships. Course, there were a few who wouldn't go. Brother Nicodemus was a particular pain in my ass. He kept insisting that we had to keep them from going forward, that it was murder.
"Everyone who wanted to go, I let them teleport down to the surface. I let them take weapons, supplies, whatever they needed. And then I went down to the emitter array, and I took the one thing that makes the process work."
"The effusion device."
Jack nodded. "And then I ran. Didn't have a plan, I just… It was treason. But I'd already fired on my own men. What was theft compared to that?"
Rose blinked furiously at the tears forming in the corner of her eyes. "You saved all those people on the planet."
He looked at her, shame and curiosity and astonishment on his face. "And that makes it okay to you, doesn't it?"
"I don't mean that there weren't consequences," she murmured. "Just… You did the right thing."
"That's what Nicodemus said over the comm before he left. Said I was making the moral choice." He chuckled darkly. "Before that day, there wasn't anything in the universe that I would have run away from."
It was a long while before either of them moved or said anything. Rose became lost in thought, trying to imagine why a government would kill its own people for no reason. There must have been a reason.
Jack sat straighter in his chair and checked a light that was flashing on the console. "Shit."
Rose got out of her chair to look. "What is it?"
"There's a Host coming in. They've got ten ships, Avenger class."
She watched the display. It showed a flock of silver, streamlined warships coming out of warp. The computer said they were less than thirty minutes away.
"They followed us?"
"Possibly. Time Agency might have traced us again already. Or they were just waiting for me to come back."
"Do we have any weapons left?"
He looked surprised. "You want to fight them?"
She glanced at the screen. "Is there another option?"
"Die?" he suggested. "Even if I wanted to fight, this ship's been derelict for a year. And I don't have a crew. I could pilot her myself, but engage an enemy?" He shook his head. "No way."
"So we get more people."
Jack threw up his hands. "From where?"
"From the planet! You said yourself, you left men down there."
He hesitated. "Assuming any of them are left alive…"
"We find out!"
Jack shook his head, looking both annoyed and amused. He jumped out of his seat and went back to the captain's chair. "Gotta love a hopeless cause." He hit a panel and Rose heard a crackle, like a bad connection. Cursing, Jack threw himself over to another work station. After a minute's work, he tried again.
"Gemini 4 Colony, this is Starship Genesis, do you copy?" They waited for a tense moment. Jack repeated the hail.
"Genesis, this is Gemini 4," said a male voice cautiously.
Jack grinned. "Good to hear your voice, little brother."
"What the hell are you doing here, sir?"
"I don't know if you've noticed, but we've got ten avenging angels heading this way, ETA twenty-six minutes. I've still got a ship up here, but she's limping and I could really use a few helping hands."
There was a longer silence, punctuated by what Rose thought might have been whispering.
Another voice came on the speaker, and she almost passed out with relief.
"Jack, this is the Doctor. Have you still got Rose with you?"
She scrambled over to the comm. "Yes!" she cried. "Yes, Doctor, I'm here! I'm okay. What are you doing down there?"
"Long story. I'll have to fill you in later. We're actually a bit occupied ourselves. There are scouts reporting an outfit of Time Agency foot soldiers less than a kilometre from camp. Though, what the Time Agency needs foot soldiers for—" Someone in the background barked unintelligibly at him. "Yes, yes, all right! Jack, the Bish says he can't spare anyone, but I've got Martha and Lee with me. I can tele—" The line went dead.
"No!" Rose pounded buttons on the console. "Doctor!"
There was no response. Jack growled and hit the panel when it didn't respond to his fiddling. "Their comm signal's been blocked." He rubbed his face. "At least we know they're alive."
"Who was that man?" she asked. "The one who answered."
Jack went back to the nav panel. "Worst soldier this side of the Varas Nebula." He smirked. "He always did want to follow me everywhere."
"We've got to find another—"
There was a flash of light and the Doctor appeared, looking exhausted and a little bit bemused. Without even thinking, Rose went to embrace him, but the Doctor, overjoyed as he looked, stopped her before she could get her arms around him.
"Careful!" He was holding a funny ivory-coloured thing. It was the size of a biscuit barrel and had about a million branches. He held it aloft and winced. "That would hurt." He glanced at Jack and a dark shadow fell over his face, but it quickly passed.
"What is that thing?" Rose wondered.
"This?" The Doctor carefully set the thing down on the captain's chair. "Martha's pencil holder." He turned and grinned at her. "Okay, now."
Rose barely had time to react before he'd picked her up in an exquisite yet painful hug. All she could do was hold on until he finally put her down.
"I hate to interrupt," Jack said before she could snog the Doctor good and properly. "But we've got Avengers incoming?"
The Doctor looked torn. He glanced at her, raised an eyebrow that seemed to say, 'later', and then he straightened his jacket. He looked a fright. Rose worried, wondering how long he'd been chasing after them, how he'd found them. All these questions and more crowded together at the tip of her tongue. She couldn't decide between them.
"I love you," she blurted instead.
The Doctor and Jack both stared at her. Jack was incredulous, of course, but the Doctor was stunned. Pleasantly so, by the way his pupils dialated and his slack jaw slowly turned to a smile. Rose tried to pretend that she wasn't blushing.
"Twenty-three minutes," Jack said peevishly. "You kids are adorable, but seriously?"
"Sorry," she murmured.
"Right!" The Doctor cleared his throat. "Twenty-two minutes, forty-three seconds. Who do you need, Jack?"
"I need a fully trained crew crazy enough to go up against them."
The Doctor picked up Martha's coral paperweight and quickly kissed Rose on the lips. She grabbed his jacket, trying to draw it out, even though she knew they were in a hurry. She just didn't care: he had come for her. Let those ships come; they'd never know what hit 'em now that the Doctor was here. She almost laughed with relief.
"Oi, Jack give me your vortex manipulator," the Doctor said once she let him go. Jack took it off and tossed it over to him.
"Where are you going?" Rose asked.
The Doctor waggled his eyebrows. "Just a quick trip. Be right back."