Rose Tyler: Earth Defense
(28/?)
They took her back to their home, and she almost cried with the familiarity of a good old British flat. All the Universes skewed the little things, the coffee grinder being used for tea instead, the toaster not being able to speak terrible prose. She stared around the area hungrily before hooking into the grid to see if she could find anything. It was still silent, the TARDIS still too far away to be felt.
Wilf, as he'd introduced himself, started talking to her, so she disconnected and brought herself back. "-but I can't get through. She's still with the Doctor, I know that much, an', an' the last time she phoned, it- it was from a planet called Midnight, made of Diamonds."
Rose stared at him, searching the grid. She located the planet then the event, a small transport carrier that had come back missing a few passengers and with a terrible story to tell. Sounded about right for her Doctor. He must have been devastated with the loss of innocents, he did so love it when everybody lives.
"What the 'ell are you two on about?" This woman could only be Donna's mother and Rose felt such a blazing dislike for fanciful tales and stories that it was like an irritation on her skin.
"She's out there, Sweetheart," Wilf said, loudly like he was speaking to someone deaf, and Rose had to hide a smirk behind her hand. She sometimes felt like that with her own mother and the woman had actually gone among the stars herself. Wilf continued, entreating, "Your daughter! She's travellin' the stars with that Doctor, she always has been."
"Don't be ridiculous." Donna's mother said, her voice condescending. Rose put her hand to her head and sat as the weary day began to take its toll in a heavy headache.
"Oh c'mooon." Wilf continued, "Open your eyes, look at the sky! Lookit th' Lookit th' Dahleks! You can't start denying things now!"
"You were m'last hope." Rose said, sliding down in the chair as she checked the hopper. She had maybe twenty minutes until the next hop was even possible, but to be fair, where would she go? No matter where she ran, she couldn't find the Doctor, no matter how far she went, she'd never escape. Now the charming little flat which had seemed so homey and welcoming was collapsing around her like a prison. She felt so helpless, as the golden presence in her head went silent. "If we can't find Donna, can't find the Doctor," She stopped and felt a surge of anger. She'd crossed parallel universe, tamed an age old presence in a head that wasn't meant to hold that much at once and put up with bloody Saxon's constant humming while he and she worked out the complex spacial dimensional equations and the stupid man didn't even show up in his Universe. She hissed through her teeth, "Where is he?"
She leaned on her head on the table, rubbing at the ache in her head as she cast it farther, stronger, searching for that telltale warmth, that glow, that happy hum. She could only feel the powerful psychic pressure of billions of human minds all thinking the same thought, "We're doomed."
Sometimes Rose found that Saxon had the right idea of it, it was as if the humans themselves had created the Archangel network in order to share that single, desolate thought. Rose continued to massage the bridge of her nose, searching and thinking for what she could do. What could she accomplish without going back to UNIT, which would surely be the first place the Dahleks destroyed. Ten minutes to hopper zone and she couldn't even think of something back at her lab that she could use.
The beeping startled her out of her catalogue that was making her more and more depressed. She heard the voice, tinny, but understandable coming over the computer she had set up to monitor the ships in the sky. The program Mickey had written would instantly analyze the fleet for a moment of weakness but so far it had found none, but apparently someone else may have.
"Can anyone hear me, the subwave network is open. You should be able to hear my voice." It crackled, but it could only be one person. That unsure, but strangely competent voice could only belong to one person, an exceptional MP from Flydale North that would show you a badge soon as look at you to make sure you understood she was no one to be trifled with. Rose moved round to see the screen and stared at the grainy image.
"I know that voice!" She turned the screen to see it better.
"This message is of the utmost importance, we haven't much time. Can anyone hear me?" There was a pause as if she were searching for something. Rose gave a great big smile at the next words. "Captain Jack Harkness, shame on you. Now stand to attention sir!"
"That's Harriet Jones." Rose identified, grinning from ear to ear. She could see Jack now, he'd be as affected as the rest of them by the Arkangel effect, and sitting in doldrums but that voice would wake him up out of lethargy. She ached with the need to see him, this Jack, her Jack, but the Hub ran too much interference for her to get through. "Oh, now we're cookin'."
"Harriet Jones, former Prime minister." She held out her badge as usual, and Rose had to put her head down on the computer and laugh hysterically. That woman would never change.
"'Ang on." Wilf said, peering at the screen. "'Aven't 'eard out of her in ages. What she doin' there?"
"She's using the subwave network to communicate. Harriet! Harriet, it's me! Oh, she can't hear me, 'ave you got webcam?" She desperately wanted to hear this conversation.
"No, she won't let me." He pointed to his daughter. "She say's they're naughty."
Rose refrained from putting her head in her hands by only the barest of margins. She turned back to the screen with wide eyes, her mind racing. "Well, I can't speak to her then, can I?"
"Sarah Jane Smith?" Harriet continued. She'd done her homework. "13 Bannerman you there?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. That's me!" Sarah Jane said, and Rose clenched her hands as she so desperately wanted to be able to be seen, to interact with these wonderful friends that she had. She remembered Sarah Jane.
"Good." Harriet said, knocking on the table with relief. "Now let's see if we can talk to each other."
Rose looked at the screen hungrily as it split into three, leaving a snowy screen where she felt she should be.
"Fourth contact seems to be having some trouble getting through." Harriet said, clicking some more keys and showing far more aptitude with computers and technology than Rose ever would have given her credit for.
"That's me!" Rose said, wanting to shake the computer, force to accept her image, her voice. Something! She didn't have the parts or the time to create a camera, so all she could do would be to shout ineffectively at the screen. "Harriet, that's me!"
"I'll just boost the signal." She said, fumbling again. Rose knew exactly what she was doing. It would be the same thing she would be doing with the same tech, she cast the net upwards and felt the satellite tilt, giving them optimal subwave frequency. Her heart stopped as a fourth face popped into the screen. This face sparkled with the same energy and otherworldly intelligence as the others.
"Hello?" It was an unfamiliar face, one that made Rose pause and gather together.
"Hahaha," Jack laughed, his face lighting up with as much pleasure as it used to whenever he saw Rose, and she felt her heart break. "Martha Jones."
"Who's she?" Rose asked, her brow crinkling. Rose felt her entire world tilt and she felt herself get angry. "I wanna get through."
"Martha, where are you?" Jack asked, his voice serious.
"I guess Project Indigo was more clever than we thought." Rose rolled her eyes. Of course it was. She'd helped build it in the other universe. Made sense that the design plans would still make it through. The fact remained that they hadn't been sure. With hers, they'd been sure. "One second I was in Manhatten, next second, maybe Indigo tapped into my mind, cause I ended up in the one place I wanted to be."
"You came home." A woman said offscreen. It held that gentle quality of a woman to her daughter. "At the end of the world, you came back to me."
"I did that once." Rose said softly, remembering her first encounter with these creatures. She stared angrily at the screen. She turned to explain to Wilf and Cynthia which were watching her. "I came home at the end of the world and went right back out to stop it."
"You'll have to tell us that story sometime." Wilf said, looking her over as he noticed she was clenching the sides of the screen.
"But then all of a sudden, it was like the laptop turned itself on?" Martha said, confused. Rose shook her head, clearly the girl didn't understand what could be done with computers only in this century.
"It did." Harriet said, "That was me. Harriet Jones, former prime minister."
"C'monn Harriet." Rose moaned as the woman showed her ID again.
"Yes, I-" Martha smiled at the absurdity, trading a look with her mother. "Know who you are."
"I thought it was about time we all met given the current crises." Harriet continued. "Torchwood, this is Sarah Jane Smith."
"Oh god, here we go." Rose muttered as Jack said,
"I've been following your work. Nice job with the Slitheen."
"Yeah, well I've been staying away from you lot." There she was, the good old Sarah Jane that Rose knew. The one that had argued with her while they were hunting who had seen the worse monsters. She smiled to see the happy young face next to her. Sarah Jane had mentioned the last time they chatted that she felt she lost out on a lot from wallowing after the Doctor, and she looked at the young boy next to her with as much motherly affection as Rose has always seen from her own mother. "Too many guns."
"All the same," Jack continued. Here it came, there was Jack's smarmy face. It was the one that made Ianto hit him and Rose sigh. "Might I say, lookin' good ma'am?"
"Really?" Sarah Jane said and her son looked as though he was torn between looking disgusted and thoroughly amused. "Ooh."
"Not now, Captain." Harriet said, echoing all of their sentiments in a single, tired sentence. "And Martha Jones, former companion to the Doctor,"
"Oi, so was I!" Rose said defensively. She felt that feeling rise up again, and this time it was one of inadequacy she knew the companions that had been before her, this one clearly had to be after, as Jack knew her. She then realized she was staring at her replacement.
"But how did you find me?" Martha asked, concerned, because if Harriet could find her, then so could anyone else. Rose then blessed their lack of connection to the subwave as there was no way to trace it back to their house, she was connecting remotely. The Dahleks were right around the corner, one of them would have caught something on a scanner if she had actually been connected.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, this is the subwave network a sentient piece of software programmed to seek out anyone and everyone who can help to contact the Doctor." Rose tapped her chin. Looked like they had tweaked the software she'd created to find Donna and the point of impact last year, only this one was specifically searching for links to the Doctor, instead of the current timestream.
"What if the Dahlek's can hear us?" Martha asked, echoing Roses concerns.
"No, that's the beauty of the subwave, it's undetectable." Harriet said, but Rose knew that not to be true.
"Unde-You invented it?" Sarah Jane aksed, staring through the screen at the woman so much like a reflection of herself.
"I developed it." Harriet said, her voice flat. "It was created by the Mr. Copper foundation."
Rose knew that foundation. It was the one that she pulled together after UNIT went down in the parallel world. She could only imagine it was something similar here.
"Yeah, but what we need right now is a weapon," Jack said, settling them to business. "Martha, back there, back at Unit, what did they give you? What was that key thing?"
Rose watched Martha's face carefully. The girl may rub her the wrong way but there was something important with her right, now, something dangerous. She could see it in the girls eyes and the set of her jaw.
"The Osterhagen Key." She said, her voice flat. She held up a small micro ship and Rose gasped. She knew exactly what that was, she had the only copy for her world coded to her exact DNA.
"That key is not to be used, Doctor Jones." Harriet commanded, "Not under any circumstances."
"But what is an Osterhagen Key?" Jack asked, being careful to say it correctly. Harriet looked like someone had shot her.
"Forget about the key, and that's an order!" She said, forcefully. "All we need is the Doctor."
"What is that Oster hagen thingie?" Wilf asked, and Rose sighed, rubbing her face.
"It is the worst idea that someone could have. Where I come from..." She stared hard at the two of them that were watching her with wide eyes. She knew the Doctor trusted them and that was good enough for her. "Where I come from, it is a self destruct sequence for the entire earth. Only to be used in times of extreme peril, when the thought of what could come is worse than the entire annihilation of our species. I can't imagine that it is much difference if that, out there, is what we are faced with and Harriet refuses to use it."
Cynthia gave out a terrified squeak, as if the force of her disbelief sat on her chest. Wilf's eyes watered, but he kept her eyes steady as she stared into them. He believed her. He believed that someone, somewhere had seen something so terrible happen that they ever thought that would be necessary. He didn't ask her what she had seen that she didn't immediately condemn its use.
She turned back to the screen to hear Martha saying, "The Doctor's got my phone on the TARDIS, but I can't get through."
"Nor me," Rose mumbled, casting out the grid again to get nothing. "An' I was here first."
"That's why we need the Subwave." Harriet said, "To bring us all together."
"Most of us, Harriet, most of us." Rose said. She turned to Cynthia, "Really so naughty?"
"That's what it said on the telly?" She said it as a question because she wasn't so sure of her own rational now that they were in danger. Rose gave a sigh and turned back.
"To combine forces. The Doctor's secret army."
"Wait a minute." Jack said, and she watched him as she saw a plan cook up in that pretty head of his. "We boost the signal, that's it."
Rose sat back. Torchwood. She'd only been there once, but transmitting the telephone number through itself, using the universe breaking power of the Rift, and well, Sarah Jane had to have something to connect to the subwave, and the woman had mentioned some sort of supercomputer the last time, and- Her mind stopped, as she realized she had no idea about Martha, but she did have her own cellphone. She no longer had the universal transponder as they had used that to get her here, but she had the grid. The grid could link her into the Rift and just calling the number would give it the direction it needed. After a moments thought, Martha must have a transponder in her phone so that was sorted, the'd need her link to the TARDIS to reach out to catch the console. Otherwise, it would be propelled out there with no direction.
"He can get the whole world to call the same number at the same time, billions of phones, calling out all at once." She minimized the screen briefly, typing furiously as she accessed the latent Archangel network, it was a subsection of her precious grid and she needed to make sure that it was linking without the biofeedback that Saxon had worked so hard to shield in on their Universe. It was a passive link, something had burned it long ago, but she could see there were still some undamaged pathways.
"Haha Brilliant!" She laughed, as Jack echoed her sentiments. "Who's the kid?"
"That's my son!" Rose laughed, as she had called that one, and then pulled out her phone.
"Excuse me, sorry." She knew that voice. Her head snapped to the screen as her eminant coffee boy stepped into the screen. Her lips quirked up as she realized now why she'd felt so strongly about Ianto and Jack.
"Sorry, hello. Ianto Jones. Umm, if we start transmitting, then this subwave network is going to become visible, I mean..." Rose closed her eyes. She'd seen that. She'd known that. There was always a chance that just the regular network could be seen. Harriet Jones could have been one of the bravest people she knew, and she wasn't a bit stupid. Harriet had also been banking on the fact that no one worked that out. "To the...Dahleks."
"Yes," Harriet's voice shook only a little. Rose felt the tears that Harriet herself must be fighting prickle. "And they'll trace it back to me. My life doesn't matter, not if it saves the earth."
Jack sprang into his military stance, saluting her life and her sacrifice. Wilf, and Cynthia were watching the screen raptly, with tears already in their eyes. Rose wiped a swift hand over her cheeks to catch any tears that escaped and bit her bottom lip as she ground Harriet Jones' face into her memory. Wilf sat back down.
"Thank you Captain. But there are people out there dying, on the streets." She had the determined look of a woman that knew her sentence.
"Marvellous woman. I voted for 'er." Wilf said. Cynthia looked startled.
"You did not." She said, before glancing back at the screen.
"Now, enough of words, let us begin." The small squadron all rushed off to do their part, for they would not let that woman's sacrifice be in vain. Rose started sorting through their individual screens, trying to see if there was any way to help, but there was nothing left for her to do.
"Calling, the Doctor." She heard the sound of the tonal buttons and picked up her phone.
"So'm I." She said, standing up, away from the computer. As soon as she saw the Rift go, she tapped in the number, then popped the grid on top of the signal. She was too late so she only could catch the tail end, but she held her phone out, closed her eyes and Called The Doctor. She felt the grid connect, but there wasn't enough for him to trace, to follow.. She shared the number with Wilf and Cynthia then whispered, "Find me, Doctor. Find me."
She closed her eyes and the grid connected. Not a moment too soon, she could feel the Dahleks lock on to the signal as well, hearing Harriet speak to Jack in the back of her head as the golden fire began to unwind from her hands, acting as a tether to bring him here, bring him to his home. She wiped at tears, as that wonderful woman identified herself one last time, and that brave woman that she shared a nuclear explosion with in a doorway was struck down. She felt the TARDIS struggle, she felt systems rupture, but she felt it break through the hole that was created in the pocket of time that she had found.
Then she heard it. His voice, coming out of the subwave. She closed her eyes, released her link and put down her phone, staring hungrily at the face she thought she'd never see again. He couldn't see her of course, but she saw Donna and knew this was finally, finally after hundreds of worlds and times and universes the right one.
"It's Donna!" Cynthia exclaimed behind her and Rose felt her spirits fall. He was here now, but he couldn't see her. He didn't know she was here. As he spoke, she heard his familiar cadence, his incessant rambling, his happiness at his clever little family. She had to wipe the side of her mouth to keep from grinning too hard as Donna asked about Jack, and the Doctor, her Doctor, admonished.
"Doctor, it's me." She said softly, heartbroken that he couldn't feel her as she felt him. That instant knowledge that that person was in the same space. "I came back."
"Everyone except Rose," She heard him whisper, but it wasn't good enough. She wanted him there, with her now. She dropped her eyes to her phone and considered calling, but she had a much more secure way of finding him.
"What'll you do now?" Wilf asked, as Rose put the strap of her gun over her head, preparing to leave. She let her attention be pulled back to the screen for the moment when Davros explained who he was. She knew. She knew because she'd once looked into the mind of the Emperor as she destroyed him. She knew what had happened to him. She remembered the breaking of the time lock, the slimy sliding of him squeaking through a small hole like a pinprick. As soon as she saw him, she knew what he was. She didn't have any time to waste. She checked the timer, she'd missed the last open shift by hours.
"Call a friend." Rose said, standing up. She dialed her home number, and Saxon picked, up caroling into the phone.
"Rosie Posie, darling, blown anything up yet?" He would have been disappointed if her answer was 'No.'
"Few Dahleks." She shrugged.
"There's m'girl." He said, and she could hear his grin. There was a muffled scuffle and then she went over by the window as she got the best signal.
"Can't you keep that under control? I'm going to need another shift. Lock me onto the TARDIS, now."
She hung up on him and then realized that since the Doctor wasn't going to find her. She was going to find him if it took an entire world backing her with the Shift program. Saxon would be mildly annoyed at her shortness, but he'd do it anyway.
"Right, I'm gonna go find 'im. Wish me luck." She grinned at the thought of seeing his goofy smile.
"Oh, good luck!" Cynthia said, looking genuinely worried for her.
"Yeah, good luck, sweetheart!" Wilf said, shaking the phone in his hand at the blonde. Rose cocked to the side to off balance the weight of the gun and waited for the exact moment when the Shift was going to take her.
