Viking Invasion
Chapter 11: Answers and Alarms
Jack held his arm up above his face, clutching the fragment of his sword tightly in his fist. His other hand grasped frantically at nothing. Time seemed to trickle like honey through a soil sieve. Taylor was shouting in slow motion, Vikings were cheering in a distant, muted grumble, dying people were dying loudly but with a grotesque delay.
Jack would have said that his life passed before his eyes, but it didn't have the time. The heavy, vicious axe was coming down for another blow, this time a fatal one. The remains of his shattered sword were pointed high to try to defend himself. The sound of his blood pounding in his ears was the only noise Jack was certain he could hear.
He thought of the Doctor, he thought of Rose, he thought of having a home for the first time in as long as he could remember. He thought about running hand in hand.
His free hand convulsed once, twice. The blade whistled through the air. Jack's free hand closed around something hard and heavy.
There wasn't time for finesse. There wasn't even time to figure out what had just happened. Several strange shouts pierced the silence. Jack's hand, and whatever was in it, came up between him and the Viking about to kill him.
The spontaneous sword slid through the Viking's plate and leather armor like a needle through a bubble. The Viking staggered, his falling axe faltering.
Jack didn't question, just shoved the sword upward, hearing and feeling a sickening, tearing crunch. The axe slipped from Argin's fingers, clattered down toward Jack's fallen body. He shoved forward, pushing the dying Viking out of the way and, incidentally, off his sword.
The axe hit the deck right behind Jack's head with a clatter that sounded like thunder in the sudden, strange silence of the room. Jack blinked at the much smaller groups around him, almost expecting to find everyone dead.
The Vikings who remained standing had stopped fighting. The Americans and Jack's own set of Vikings were also staring at him. Even Greyhorse and the remnants of Starside's crew were gaping at him. Jack looked hard for the leader of his Vikings, only to find the old man dead near the Captain's chair.
He glowered through his single eye, more angry than he could remember being since the day he walked away from home. "This ends," he ordered. "Now."
Everyone else in the room threw down their weapons.
The beam of light ended just beyond the tip of Rose's nose and a man appeared. He reminded Rose a bit of Ian McKellan, older and distinguished but with a sort of dangerous bearing to him all the same. His clothes seemed almost exactly like Rose would have thought futuristic clothes would be - dark and shiny and freely flowing. His eyes, Rose was shocked to see, glowed even more brightly than the rest of him. He mostly appeared to be a television program or something, but his eyes were a sort of yellow that seemed to glow in the dark.
"Rose Tyler, Jastyn Arner," the Doctor introduced, softly. "Ambassador to Gallifrey and the Seven Systems, recalled after the War got started."
The man's voice, when he spoke, sounded like Sir Ian, too, all ponderous and of great importance. The only difference, as near as Rose could tell, was that he had a very, very odd accent, almost Greek, she decided after a moment. "Doctor, if you are receiving this message, then you will know that all of our plans have gone awry. Arcadia will have fallen by now. I do not know how you will survive. I do not believe you can survive." The tall man seemed slightly disturbed by this, but Rose wasn't sure if that was her opinion or not. She decided not to say anything, just clung tighter to the Doctor's hand, wrapping herself around his arm and hoping to give him some comfort by her presence.
The strange projection continued. "If the protocols you instated have failed, if all has failed, if there is any chance of Dalek incursion into this base, we have programmed a failsafe. We are not certain of the full extent of its capabilities, but our scientists hypothesize that our measures will take Eldest out of Time. Certainly, it will hold or destroy any time traveler who comes here. You will know all the details far better than I, Doctor."
Rose glanced up at the Doctor to find him white faced and shaking hard, his eyes wide and more than a little wild. His hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, his whole body was rigid against her arm. Rose held on tighter, not knowing what else to do.
"If by some chance the war was won, there may be ways to restart our systems and withdraw the fail-safes. None of us, not even our finest scientific minds, know what they are. The assistance you have given us has been our only salvation during this conflict. Therefore, I have left this message to do what I can. Doctor, if you have come here after the end, I have only one piece of advice for you. Run."
Very serious, intense eyes focused strictly on the Doctor for just a moment. Then, the projection faded and winked out of existence. Rose held the Doctor's arm, waited to see what would happen, the leather cool and nearly clammy under her fierce grip.
"Ya know what I said earlier?" the Doctor asked. "'Bout feelin' no pain?"
"Yeah," Rose agreed, tentatively.
"Got that bit wrong," he whispered.
Rose shifted her grip so that she could offer him open arms without letting go.
"Right, let's get started." Jack leaned his sword against the Captain's chair which he now occupied, to the protest of none. "It looks like we've got enough power to fire the auxiliary engines and get us out of the water, or enough power to get the scanners back on-line. Since this boat is water-tight, I vote the scanners."
Greyhorse, commanding a group of Vikings who were collecting the bodies together, turned to Jack with confusion etched on his face. "We won't have power to get out of the water later, if we do that. Besides, what good will the scanners do us, stuck in a place that defies all the laws of physics?"
"If we can get the scanners back on-line, I know what to look for to find the source of the anomaly. The teleport's still working, so all we need is a way to trace that..."
"But the Captain looked for it for months," Greyhorse protested vehemently. "We couldn't narrow it down and we certainly couldn't teleport into there. Obviously, you know a few tricks none of us understand, but..."
"Thor," Jack said, firmly. "The scanner will be able to isolate my friend - just trust me. We go to him and I promise you, he'll be right in the middle of this."
"I've a question," said one of the Vikings, wholly deferential now that they'd decided Jack was their god.
"Feel free to ask," Jack allowed. He couldn't tell if this was one of the Vikings from the dragon boat or one of the Vikings from this ship. They were apparently members of the same tribe, at war, and now reunited at the death of the two leaders.
"We've seen you, and some of us have seen Thor. Will we see the Valkyries? Will they even be able to find the souls of our kinsmen, or are they lost to the wilds of this mad place?"
Jack frowned. The after life wasn't his specialty. Some of the Time Agents had believed in one, just as some had believed in the Watch, or various gods. Jack wasn't sure what he believed, mostly. He rather thought that these Vikings had a few right ideas, though, that the best death was one that was worth it. Then, if there was an Afterlife, you'd probably earned the good bits, and if there wasn't one, you'd done what was right for you.
Still, it mattered to these people, at least to the Vikings and maybe to the Americans, and possibly even to the Synesthesians. "The only people who see a psychopomp, like the Valkyries, are already bent to go with them," Jack said. He stood, so that he could speak with his full power, so that he could look as impressive as possible. "I promise you, all of our dead today have earned their places."
"And the rites?" asked another Viking.
"The Chief's dragon ship remains here, with the Americans' ship. We'll use it. I believe cremation on water is customary, and there can be no better honor than to be burned in the places you died for." Jack frowned and dropped back into the Captain's chair. "Greyhorse, can you get me the numbers?"
"As you wish, Captain," the Synesthesian first mate said. "And I think it's a better fate for my captain than a one way trip to Davey Jones' Locker."
"Nice to know some things don't change," said Taylor, and followed Greyhorse to the console to watch and help if needed.
"Legends are forever," Jack said knowledgeably.
"Right, so first we take down the forcefields," the Doctor said. "Then, we get zapped by the computer, ow." He stuck his fingers into his mouth.
Rose told herself she didn't even notice that. She had the bland expression down pat, even. "Why the forcefields? Why not the weird stuff on the walls?"
"'Cuz it's gonna take temporal mechanics to unravel that lot, and I need access to the TARDIS." He bounded over to another bank of controls, stopped in front of it, and plucked up a small and in-the-way Stanley. "Here," he said, passing the boy to Eric. "You two stay over there, next to the door."
Eric twitched nervously for probably the thousandth time since the Doctor had called the kids inside and locked them all in. Eric obviously didn't like the technology. Rose saw him reach for his sword every single time anything beeped or squeaked or started whirring. Gently, she began, "There's nothing here can hurt me or the Doctor. Why don't you just try to ignore all of it? The Doctor'll have something that makes more sense for you in just a minute, I'm sure."
"Less than that, actually," the Doctor said, as a bank of controls erupted with alarms and jangling whistles.
"Look after Stanley," Rose ordered and darted over. "What should I do?"
The Doctor looked at the controls and grinned and Rose remembered that he was drugged and loopy. "Press the red buttons," he ordered.
Rose considered this carefully before she did what he said. Thankfully, the red buttons didn't do anything catastrophic, just shut off and reroutes the various alarms. "What does it mean?"
"Something's got a lock on the station," the Doctor said, toggling various switches and pulling open every other panel under the console. "The really loud one is a temporal incursion - assumin' that's us. The deep, constant one is a teleport lock. That kinda pretty one is a 'what the hell is going on' alarm, and the one that's makin' all the lights go off an' all is a 'nothing makes sense' alarm." As he talked, he took the screwdriver to various computer banks, monitors, light fixtures, and even the occasional bit of blank wall. Pretty soon, the computer room looked like the Console Room on the TARDIS, wiring and cabling strewn everywhere, parts scattered to the four winds.
The alarms finally cut out, only to erupt again seconds later in order to punctuate a high pitched whirring that reminded Rose of teleporting on Star Trek. The Doctor sighed in exasperation and turned off the alarms again. He was quicker this time from practice. "Let's go say hi," he suggested.
Rose wished she still had her sword. Eric passed Stanley to her and insisted on joining the Doctor between her and the door. The Doctor tapped the door panel open, and they suddenly had a face full of guns.