The Central Pawns

I wrote a good bit of the last chapter at an absurd hour of the night. Kelly Franklin was from 2001, not 1991. Her brother Jeffery was six THEN, because if he'd been 6 in 1991, in 2011 he'd be TWENTY SIX, not sixteen. Sorry for the mathematical error…it was like 1AM at the time.

Special kudos to Morzan's Elvish Daughter for noticing that the title of the last chapter was a chess reference; good job!

Rory did most of the digging. The Doctor, though he began by enthusiastically digging, wasn't very good at organized digging. He was like a kid trying to dig through to China—energetic, but not really realistic about the outcome of his digging. Also, he managed to stick the shovel through his shoe and bruise his toes. Despite her concern, River laughed her head off as he hopped about on one foot while shouting,

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"Sweetie, you're scaring the wildlife."

"But my toes, River!"

"Well go get some ice for your toes then...quietly."

Pouting, the Doctor stomped loudly and gingerly back to the Tardis, slamming the door to make his point. River rolled her eyes as Rory tossed the bag of alien technology into the hole and began to shovel dirt onto it.

"Wait!" River cried, and she reached down and opened the bag of parts, digging through it. "The transmitter's not in here, and that was the whole point of—oh no." She dropped the bag.

The Tardis began to dematerialize; Amy shouted in alarm and River ran up to it, trying to bang on the doors, demand to be let in. But the machine vanished, leaving her beating at empty air. Rory stood silently, watching it go before he dropped the bag of parts back into the hole and finished shoveling dirt over top of it, effectively burying the evidence.

River stood defiantly, shouting up at the sky, swearing in a dozen languages. Once her fury was spent, she dropped to her knees, sitting on her feet, one hand resting in the soft green grass.

"Come back," she whispered. "Come back you daft old man." She cried then, and hated herself for crying and hated the Doctor for making her and hated the Krillitanes for making him run off and do something dangerous to protect her.

"I hate you!" she shouted at the sky, and then dissolved into sobs. Amy rushed over to her daughter. Even as a child, River rarely cried. So as only a mother could, Amelia Pond wrapped her arms around her daughter and rocked back and forth, back and forth, until the sobs slowed and the tears stopped flowing.

Ashamed and hurt, River stood and turned to her father. Her voice low and angry, she looked at him accusingly.

"You knew."

Rory nodded once, accepting her anger. He had expected it.

"You knew and you let him do it anyways?" Her voice shook a little, just enough for him to wonder if he had done the right thing. But as soon as the doubt was there, it was banished. She was safe, and the Doctor had wanted her safe. That was all that mattered.

"Yes. He did this on purpose, River. He didn't want you and the baby in danger and he knew that you'd never stay behind if he asked you."

"Damn right I wouldn't! He's the Doctor! Someone needs to look after him! And he gets reckless when he's emotional, Daddy!" she slipped; she hadn't meant to call him 'Daddy'. She hadn't meant to sound like a little girl who needed comforting. But she did.

"Who's going to look after him? What if he gets killed and it's all my fault?"

Tears burned at her eyes, but she was not going to cry again. She had already cried enough and it had done her no good; it was time for another strategy. It was time for her to think her way out of this and to get back to the Doctor. Glowering at her father, River seized the shovel and began to dig.

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The Doctor watched her beat at the Tardis for a few seconds, and then the Tardis was gone and so was her image. He sighed, half-relieved and half-upset. She was never going to forgive him for this. Shoving that thought aside, he patted the Tardis,

"All right, Sexy. Let's get on with this."

The Doctor, despite the fact that he felt bad about tricking River, went along with his plan. He was the cleverest man in the universe, after all. It involved a bit of investigating, first. He set in the Praei moon's coordinates into the console and pulled a lever, causing the Tardis to lurch out of the vortex. He even put on the silencers so it wouldn't make any noise as he landed. After retrieving one of the perception-filters on a key-necklace, a tin lunchbox with smurfs on it, and his trust (fully-charged) sonic screwdriver, the Doctor patted the Tardis console, slipped on his necklace, and stepped out of his blue box.

The room he walked into was all silver and white—a lab then. Unshatterable beakers were on little stands and in clear cylindrical tanks swam…something. The tanks were all around the room, built into the walls and some in between lab tables. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the tank up and down, up and down. After taking readings, the Doctor looked at them and stepped back in shock. Not sure he believed them, he ran to the next tank, scanning it. Still in shock he scanned another tank, and another…and another…he ran about the room, scanning each tank. All but one had a little…something…inside of it.

"Oh you poor things," the Doctor murmured, "Taken from your mothers' wombs before you wanted to go. But I promise you, I'll get you back where you belong. I promise."

Every single tank had a fetus in it.

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River paced back and forth on the grass while her parents sat to one side, watching her. She silently inventoried all the parts she had, and then tried to work out how she could cobble them together. Ignoring the fact that she was currently really angry at her father and the Doctor, she turned to her parents.

"What have you got in your pockets?"

Amy pulled out her phone, but kept it in her hand, unwilling to give it up.

"Rory's parents have this number; I want Melody to be able to reach us if there's anything wrong."

"Mum, if there's anything wrong, there's nothing that you can do about it. We're stuck here."

Amy frowned, but slowly handed her daughter the phone. Rory, however, emptied out his wallet, keys, and work pager without any fuss.

"Mum, are you wearing an underwire bra?"

Amy started, looking confused,

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm going to need it."

"You're going to need my bra?"

"Just the wire," River said dismissively. "I'm not wearing an underwire right now, so we can't use mine. Dad, I'll need your shoelaces."

"River, the Doctor left you here to keep you safe," Rory began calmly, "And he'll be back to get us any minute now, just you wait."

"Yeah, but his timing has been off a dozen times before and I'm not taking the chance of us waiting here for a month or of him getting killed. Do you want me to be a single mother?"

Rory sighed and began unlacing his shoes as River pulled her laser pistol from its holster and her plasma blaster from another. She pooled her tools, then examined the pile of parts.

"I don't suppose either of you have a screwdriver?"

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The Doctor exited the lab after determining that the babies hadn't been harmed or altered, that they were merely there for now. He began attempting to piece together their plan as he navigated the corridors of the Praei compound. He went through what he knew:

Krillitanes conquered planets to obtain traits from them. The Praei couldn't do that because he stopped them. The Praei weren't happy with him because he stopped them. They now had fetuses in tanks in a variety of species that they considered 'elite.' There was an empty tank in the lab. The babies hadn't been tampered with yet. There had been a large casket of Krillitane oil in the corner, not blocked off or in any way indicated that it was dangerous. He didn't know the layout of the building he was in.

After going through what he knew, he went through what he could guess or deduce:

The Krillitane oil probably wasn't harmful to them anymore due to the fact that it wasn't indicated as dangerous. The empty tank was probably meant to house his child. The Praei had gotten this technology from somewhere, meaning that they'd developed a lot in the past hundred years or so. Due to the fact that they wanted his baby, they were probably still ticked at him for shutting down their (completely awful) way of life.

Taking all of the information he had and supposed, he then went through of what he didn't know:

He didn't know why the Praei wanted his and River's baby, other than because it was a Time Lord child. He didn't know where the babies' mothers were. He didn't know what their plan was. He didn't know exactly how he was going to stop them.

Excellent. With the informational inventory taken, he knew exactly where he stood. That figured out, he wandered through the halls until he found the central location and the front doors. The whole place seemed deserted…where WAS everyone? The transmitter couldn't have alerted them; he'd fed it to a recycler-bot on Chrissiline Five not half an hour ago. The bot wouldn't have even crushed it yet. The lab's lights had been on…but only the lab's lights. None of the others had been on.

He walked over to the console at the front desk, pointing his sonic screwdriver at it. It blinked on and the Doctor set down his smurfs-themed lunchbox on the desk and began scanning through the system, trying to work out where everyone was.

"Contaminant-breach," he muttered to himself. "All the environment checks came out all right; surely there's a mistake. There's nothing toxic in the air."

"That's because it was a clever ruse," said a voice behind him. The Doctor turned around to face a creature holding a gun.

"Fabulous!" he exclaimed happily, "I've been looking for someone. Take me to your leader and all that." He picked up his lunch box and the Krillitane pointed the gun at him,

"No treachery," it growled.

"Treachery?" the Doctor replied, aghast, "It's my box lunch!" He opened the lunch box to reveal a chicken sandwich, apple, bit of salad, and a bottle of Snapple.

"See? Not dangerous, just food."

The Krillitane scowled and motioned with his gun.

"Move."

"All right, you don't have to be pushy about it."

Closing up his lunch, the Doctor began to walk, the Krillitane with the gun behind him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

River welded with her laser pistol in the same way that would one day inscribe 'hello sweetie' on a home box. She had already tried calling the Tardis—the Doctor didn't pick up, of course. Rory and Amy looked on as their brilliant daughter constructed…something…out of the robot's parts.

"River, what are you making?" Amy asked.

"Psychic transmitting amplifier," River replied calmly, carefully melting the end of the wire from her mother's bra and connecting it to a bunch of the wires from the woman's brain nodes.

"And is that safe?" Rory asked.

River had abandoned her anger at her father for the moment to focus on her project—getting them off of this planet and back to the Doctor.

"What do you mean by safe?" Her tone was mildly aggressive anyhow, but he ignored it.

"I mean if you use that thing, will it hurt you or us or anyone?"

"Provided that it doesn't explode when I turn it on, it should be perfectly safe."

"Explode?" Rory shouted, "River, you're pregnant. You can't just fiddle around with exploding things!"

"Dad, I'll be careful. I've done way more dangerous things than this."

"River, you're pregnant. You can't carry on doing reckless things; you've got to think about your baby! The Doctor wouldn't want you two in danger!"

"If he didn't want me in danger, he shouldn't have left me on a planet while he went recklessly off to try and save our baby. He ought to know better than to leave me behind worrying. And the fact that he hasn't come back isn't really a strong sign, is it? They might have him right now and he might be in danger and I can't do anything about it here."

Setting the last wire carefully into place, she picked up Amy's phone and backed up a few steps, letting the wire uncoil a bit so she had some distance between her and the machine. Crouching on the earth, she held down the power button of Amy's phone. Wires crackled and hummed and the screen lit up; it was working.

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WHAT. WILL. HAPPEN. NEXT?

If you wish to find out, keep reading. If you would prefer not to, go have yourself a nice coffee…and then come back anyway. Thanks very much to all of you reviewing—I've gotten over 200 of them now and I read every single one. They're a huge motivator for me.

(Also, I have another 11/River oneshot out: 'The Winning and the Losing Game.' Hope you enjoy it!)