As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. This month's November Challenges have been added because I like bewitching your minds and ensnaring your senses. If you'd rather do October's, please feel free! The new challenges will run through the end of November. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.
Response to ZephyrFox's challenge for July II!
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. However, I do not guarantee this to be a permanent condition.
Big hi and huggles to OV because I stole a fantastically brilliant phrase of hers! Borrowed, love, I'll give it back...
Double Crossing
Chapter 13: Breaking Through
"It was going so well, too," Rose whispered.
The Doctor nodded. He'd forgotten to scan this area with the screwdriver before they ducked inside to hide from Mevlin's Streerax and now they were surrounded by hypothetical crew people in this farce of a space ship.
"They really shouldn't be in here," she added.
"And they haven't even noticed us," he suddenly realized. They were under deep, just working, loading supplies onto a veritable flotilla of small landing craft. He would have taken the trouble to wonder what they were for, but at the moment getting through this room and down the corridor to Engineering was the imperative. "You know, I think... you might can just walk right through them, Rose."
She considered for a moment. "Mevlin may not have given them any updates," she decided. "Can you pop over to the other side of the room?"
He checked the shielding in this area with the sonic screwdriver before he answered. "Yes. I'll wait 'til you're through, though." He'd have to use the teleport; the bay was simply too large for a time dilation to get him through it without risking Rose's safety.
"I don't want to leave you," she said, suddenly. She seemed more and more his Rose every minute they spent together, but the link was still broken, a jagged wound inside the already damaged emptiness of his psychic centers.
"You won't be. But I'm not going to risk being in transit while you're vulnerable. Walk across the bay like you own the place..."
"I do own the place," she interrupted grumpily.
Honestly, she would make a decent ship's captain, but she was born too late or too early for that. He indulged briefly in an image of his Rose as a pirate queen, but it almost immediately tried to turn into a fantasy and he had to push it away.
When he got through with Mevlin... He shook his head sharply and carefully unclenched his fists. "Rose, just go, you'll be fine. Wait for me by the door, I won't... You know what, let's see if they notice me."
They walked together through the heedless crowd, careful not to disrupt the pattern of their movements. In the middle of the room, Rose muttered, "As you were," but she sounded very sarcastic. In the world in her head, she had every reason to expect these people to at least salute her if they weren't going to try to arrest her. Once they reached the far side, he remembered to scan the door and found it led to an empty corridor. They ducked through it, then Rose dragged him across the corridor and into a small, deserted briefing room on the other side of the hall.
"What?" he protested. "We've got to move." He watched as she paced up and down the length of the room and then glowered at the door.
"Something isn't right," she complained. "Several of those people are with security, they should have noticed me, even if the others were too caught up in their jobs."
"It's the telepathic field, Captain," he explained, grimly, leaning against the table between two chairs that were pushed underneath it.
"What, seriously?" she demanded. "But that's not what it's supposed to do."
Mevlin had programmed her with awareness of it? He blinked in surprise. "Go on," he said.
"Well, all it was supposed to do was make it possible for us to coordinate things easier, work together better."
"And it would if it were a real field. My people used something similar. But Mevlin's highjacked it and is using it to control everyone instead, forcing them to do his bidding and nothing else."
"That's what you did to the guards, then," she realized. "What all the blue light was - you caught them in his psychic field and, since there were no instructions for them, they just froze."
"Have I told you today how brilliant you are?" the Doctor asked her, grinning at her and reaching for her hand. She was out of his reach, so he let the hand fall before she turned to him.
"No, not today," she said, and grinned at him with her tongue poking out through her teeth. Then, she sighed and shook her head. "So why are we going to engineering?"
"Because I can over-ride the ship's controls there, disable the weapons, maybe disrupt the telepathic field, too."
"Will that hurt anyone?"
"If we turn it off, yes, probably." He thought about a ship load of panicking humans and aliens, caught in a fantasy that had suddenly turned nightmare. "Rose, we don't have time for this, now, we have to move."
"Fine," she agreed. "But I just want you to know... Mevlin wouldn't have been able to talk me into hurting you. I... I just thought you should know that."
"Thank you," he said, and his hearts ached in his chest as the emptiness of her absence swept over him. He was bleeding out slowly without her, and he had brought this on himself, but there was something painfully wonderful about knowing that, even mind controlled, she still cared for him so much. "Allonsy?" he offered, gesturing at the door.
"Before we go, I don't suppose you've got anything for a headache? My skull feels like my brains are trying to claw their way out."
He shook his head sympathetically. "I'm sorry," he said, and took her hand.
She shrugged. "Maybe that's a little better," she offered, and then led the way back out into the corridor.
Ace was just putting the finishing touches on the Doctor's instructions, setting up the time delays and finding the flags in the system. Everything should be ready for him if he would just...
The doors opened and the Doctor came in, Buttercup in tow, then he turned and sealed the doors behind him with his screwdriver. "Right," Buttercup began, striding over to the console Ace was working at, "what do you need, Doctor Q?"
"Weapons control, engines, shields if we can get them, everything. And the telepathic field, I need to reprogram that."
"All right, I should..." Buttercup looked up at the ceiling. "Computer, acknowledge Captain Rose Tyler."
The word "acknowledged" appeared on several screens. Buttercup - or, apparently, still Captain Tyler - glowered at the words. "Is she still out of it?" Ace whispered to the Doctor as he came over to her other side.
"It's a long story," he said.
"All right," Ace agreed.
"Computer, transfer primary weapons control to this station," Captain Tyler ordered.
"Unable to comply," printed across the screen.
"Transfer engines control," she suggested.
"Unable to comply," the screen repeated.
Captain Tyler looked frustrated. The Doctor reached over with his screwdriver and ran the blue beam along the console.
Panels of light all over the room suddenly flashed yellow. The Doctor stared at them, appalled.
"That's the yellow alert," Ace said. "Geez, Professor, what'd you do?"
"Dunno," the Doctor replied, looking at the sonic screwdriver in horror.
The Doctor glowered at the TARDIS console. The beam was breaking down the weave of the shields, but it simply didn't seem to be working fast enough. He searched frantically for a way to conjure just a bit more power for the TARDIS to use. The really ridiculous thing was, if he could get through the shield, the TARDIS could siphon off the energy being generated by the quantum drive. But then, if he had enough power to get through the shield, he wouldn't need the power of the quantum drive.
Alarms sounded abruptly. The Doctor flew to the panel that was shrieking at him and toggled the thermal buffers, venting a vast sheet of rapidly decaying tachyon particles into the quantum slipstream. The TARDIS dropped out of hyperspace right behind the alien vessel, without even a small hiccup to disturb the wave guide.
Overhead, the dome parted and revealed the vastness of space. An enormous orange sun filled the majority of one quadrant of the viewer, and he used the tip of his umbrella to flip on the filter, toning down the glare. The ship slowed, the TARDIS slowed with it, and a planet gradually swam into view. A soft, yellow green world sheathed in fluffy grayish clouds took precedence over everything.
Mdrestry.
The Doctor shook his head and, in a sudden fit of brilliance, set the TARDIS to borrow all the loose stellar radiation in the vicinity. The unravelling patch in the shield widened and finally, finally, started to thin.
"Yellow alert," the speaker grilles all announced in Mevlin's voice. "We will be making orbit at Mdrestry in ten minutes. All hands prepare for battlestations at the red alert."
Captain Tyler snorted in disgust. "Are we even at war with Mdrestry?" she asked Doctor Q. "Or is this all just some game his people have managed to manipulate into place?"
"No, there's no war," Doctor Q replied quietly. "But there will be if I don't get this finished." He chased Chief McShane from her chair and flung himself down.
Captain Tyler smiled. "Thank you for all your help, Chief."
"Eh, s'no big, Captain," she said with a small smirk. "But I reckon we need to deal with that lot."
The Captain turned in surprise to look at the crew people Chief McShane was gesturing at. The entire time since she'd arrived with the alien, no one had seemed to even notice them, but all of the sudden, some of the crew seemed to have realized they were here. "Not good," the Captain observed, and dove between the nearest aware engineer and Doctor Q. "Leave him alone," she ordered.
"Captain?" the Engineer asked, finally seeming to realize who he was looking at, "have you lost your mind? He's a threat."
"He's not," said the Captain. "He's trying to help us. Something has gone wrong and he's going to fix it before any one gets hurt."
She was so intent on trying to persuade the one man that she'd completely failed to notice another reaching for communications. "Security to Engineering," the woman snapped into the panel.
The Chief dove for her, but it was too late. In fact, it was all too late. The Chief and the Captain tried to hold of the two crew members, Ace with fists and rude threats, Rose with offers of court martial. But even though they tried, it seemed more people were becoming aware.
Then, abruptly, all the panels flashed red, and Captain Tyler hung her head as the ship shuddered. "Phasers," she announced, and it hurt so much to think about it. There were people on the planet below, innocent people, who were dying, and it was all her fault. "Get to your stations," she ordered the two engineers, though she was utterly astounded when they complied. She wondered how long it would last.
"Hah!" shouted Doctor Q triumphantly. "There's the bunny!" A force field sprang into life, cutting their part of engineering off from the rest of the room.
The phasers fired again. "Bugger this!" the Captain shouted. "I thought you were going to stop them!"
"Just one more second, Captain," he replied calmly.
The door he had sealed was suddenly being pounded on. "Oh, now we're in trouble," Chief McShane observed, her face furious. She snatched up a chair and looked ready to fight off the whole world if she had to do. The Captain was absolutely astounded at the ready strength the other woman exhibited.
The ship shuddered yet again and the doors flew open. "Doctor!" the Captain shouted, at the same moment Chief yelled, "Professor!"
Rose braced herself for disaster but, before it could happen, a song suddenly shouted against the nagging pain inside her head. She was nearly blinded as her headache abruptly intensified. Doctor Q came up beside her, snatching her close with one arm, Chief McShane with the other. Mevlin and his green Stryrax guards streamed into the room. The Captain suddenly felt as if not only her head, but her whole body was on fire. She screamed in pain and felt the Doctor tug her closer in his arms.
"I'll kill her, Time Lord, I swear I will!" Mevlin's voice rang. "Surrender right now, or your partner dies." Through her teary eyes, Rose could only just make out that he was holding the blue tricorder in his hand, a finger held threateningly over a button.
Rose screamed again as a fresh wave of agony washed over her. Then, over her screams and the thunderous protests of the alien who held her, another appalling din broke loose, a miracle. Between the huddled trio and Mevlin's team, Doctor Q's ship wailed Herself into existence.