The Last WarLord
Episode One: Devils in the Deep Blue Sea
"What is this place, anyway?" Yasmin wanted to know. "Some sort of aquarium?"
She was looking at a big glass window, beyond which large numbers of fish were swimming in crystal clear water without, apparently, a care in the world.
Ryan, who had gone closer to the glass, was now peering around at an angle.
"If this is an aquarium, that's a really big tank!" He told her.
"It's not a tank." Said the Doctor, who had been scanning with her sonic screwdriver. "We're underwater. This is some kind of structure on the seabed.
"Warm sea, those are tropical species out there. We're on Earth, but I'm not sure where or when."
"If it helps," Graham said from the other side of the room, "there's a plaque here on the wall. ProMarHab Three, it says. The date is 2027."
"That's it, then!" The Doctor said triumphantly. "Prototype Marine Habitat Three! The Marine Habitat programme started in about 2023. The first one was built in the Mediterranean, the second in the North Sea and this one's in the Caribbean!"
"What are they for?" Ryan asked. "Seeing if people could live under the sea?"
"Eventually, yes." The Doctor said. "With the global warming, sea levels were rising. Your scientists knew that even if they did get rid of all the things humans are doing to make it worse, the planet would still get warmer. That's a natural process that can't be stopped. Human activity is just speeding it up.
"So they were trying to find other places to live when the land started to flood. Marine Habitats were supposed to be easier and cheaper to build than space colonies, and more self-sufficient.
"But this is just a prototype. The people here study sea-life, monitor pollution levels and try to find ways to lower them, and experiment with seabed farming.
"But this one, Three, was destroyed in some kind of earthquake. No survivors.
"C'mon, the crew should be here somewhere!"
They found two of them in the corridor. Both dead.
"This one's been shot." Yasmin stated. "But the other one looks like something burned a hole right through him."
"I've seen that before." The Doctor said grimly. "An energy weapon, too advanced for human technology. I know who use them."
"Aliens?" Ryan asked.
The Doctor shook her head. "No. They were here before you were. C'mon!"
More corridors, more rooms, more bodies. One or two had been shot, but most carried the burn-marks of the energy weapon. Then...
"Doc! There's one here that isn't human!" Graham called.
Two arms, two legs, perhaps six feet tall and sturdy. Pale green, fine-scaled skin, a face that looked like a turtle, large eyes and fins at the back of the head. It was wearing a garment made of fine-mesh netting, belted at the waist. The right hand still clutched a disc-shaped metal device in its webbed fingers.
"What is it?" Ryan wanted to know.
"People call them different things." The Doctor said, sadly. "Mermen, Deep Ones - but the Deep Ones are a different species - or Sea-Devils. Homo Reptilia Oceanus."
"Where do they come from?" Yasmin asked.
"From here!" The Doctor snapped. "Humans aren't the only intelligent species to evolve on Earth! Back in the Mesozoic, there were two races of intelligent, civilised, reptiles. The Sea-Devils in the ocean, and the Silurians on land."
"So what happened?" Graham enquired. "Did they go extinct with the dinosaurs?"
"Yes and no." The Doctor told him. "They knew the asteroid was coming, and they thought it would wipe out every species on Earth. So they built underground bases and complexes all over Earth, and put as many of their people as they could into hibernation, to wait until the planet was habitable again.
"When the asteroid hit, millions died, and all their cities were destroyed. A lot of the underground bases were destroyed as well. The sensors they'd left on the surface to monitor the situation and wake them up when the time was right were either destroyed or buried or lost over time. Some of the hibernation systems broke down as well.
"But there are still a lot of them out there, sleeping, waiting. Sometimes they wake up, and that can cause problems. Either they can't accept that humans have as much of a claim to the planet as they do, or humans attack them out of fear.
"I don't know which happened here, but this one was killed by one of his own people! By a blaster, anyway."
"He wasss a traitor." The voice was a rasping hiss, and it came from the far door.
The figure standing there was also a Sea-Devil. But this one was taller and broader than the dead one. The skin of his face was a darker green, and he wore black metal armour. He was covering them with a rifle-like weapon, the barrel of which ended in a disc similar to the smaller one held by the dead Sea-Devil.
"He wasss an engineer." The Sea-Devil went on. "He wasss woken to exsssamine the ape technology and to sssee how bessst to desstroy it. He ssspoke with the apess we held captive, and he came to admire them.
"When General Tussq ordered the apess killed, that one releassed them, then fought with them. He met a traitorss death. You will die asss the animalss you are!"
"Wait!" The Doctor said urgently. "You don't have to do this! We can work this out! Just let me talk to the General."
"The General would not deign to ssspeak with an ape." The Sea-Devil sneered. "Thiss will be worked out when every ape isss dead. I do not have to kill you, but I wisssh to!"
He raised his weapon, then another voice spoke from behind him. Human, male, crackling with authority.
"You will face me, sir!"
The Sea-Devil spun round, there were two sharp reports, and he stumbled back into the room to fall dead at Ryans' feet.
"Don't move, any of you!" Came the mans' voice. "And just for now, keep your hands where I can see them!"
"We're human!" Yasmin called out.
"Speak for yourself." The Doctor muttered.
"I can see that." Was the reply. "But there are traitors on both sides in this thing, so you can't blame me for being careful!"
The man came into the room, his pistol still trained on the Sea-Devil, but his eyes sweeping round all of them at regular intervals. He was tall and wiry, with a long, handsome face, short brown hair, brown eyes and a neat moustache. He was wearing urban camouflage and had some kind of goggles pushed up on his forehead.
He knelt to the armoured Sea-Devil and inspected him briefly. "Idiot!" He said sourly. "Liked his work too much, forgot to pay attention."
He stood up and holstered his weapon. "Alright." He said. "You aren't ProMarHab staff, SBS or Navy SEALs. Civilians, by the look of you. So how did you get here, and why did you come?"
"I'm the Doctor." Said the Doctor.
"Really?" The man said. "That's definitely a new face -a new gender in fact -but given your dress sense, or lack of it, and that space-age doodah you were waving about before, I'll take your word for it.
"The who explains the how and the why, of course. I take it these are the latest members of your time-hopping Scooby Gang?"
"Jinkies!" Yasmin muttered sourly.
"I'm Graham," Graham told him, This is Yasmin, and that's Ryan. What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't." Was the reply. "You can call me the Major."
"Major who?" Yasmin demanded.
"Major whatever name I'm using at the time." He told her. "My family would rather I didn't use my real name, what with one thing and another."
"How do you know about me?" The Doctor asked. "Are you in UNIT?"
The Major shook his head. "Not any more."
"Why not?" Ryan asked.
"Because I caught a man beating his wife, so I beat him, only harder." The Major answered.
"Well I don't blame you for that!" Graham noted.
"Neither did the court-martial, not really." The Major informed him. "But given that the man was my CO, they didn't have much option. He got prison, I got a dishonourable discharge. If it had been the civilian police, I'd have got jail as well, so I suppose I can't complain. I've been freelancing ever since, like the Doctors' old mate Mickey Smith and his missus."
"Freelancing?" Yasmin asked.
The Major shrugged. "Strange things happen from time to time, you know. Nothing big enough to attract the attention of SHIELD or UNIT or even the Doctor here. There are a few of us around who deal with them. Usually for a fee, admittedly, but sometimes you just don't want to call in the Avengers, do you?"
"So why are you here, now?" The Doctor asked.
"The MarHab Corporation uses contractors to work in these places." The Major explained. "But they always slip at least one of their own people in to make sure no contract violations take place and to stop industrial espionage. Their man here got a whiff of something offish, so they asked me to come and look into it. But by the time I got here, there was a running fight going on between the Sea-Devils and the crew.
"I say a fight, but it was more a drawn-out massacre. That one Sea-Devil was fighting alongside the humans, but one human was working with the Sea-Devils. I managed to reach a Security Room and get into the surveillance system for this part of the base. That's how I saw you lot. Then I spotted Jaws over there," he indicated the armoured Sea-Devil, "making his way here in a hurry and thought I'd better come and help out."
"Did you really have to kill him?" The Doctor demanded.
The Major sighed. "Plus il change, plus elle est la meme chose." He commented. "He was going to kill you, you know!"
"No he wasn't!" The Doctor said. "I was going to disable his blaster!"
The Major gave her a long-suffering look. "He was a Sea-Devil Warrior Vanguard. He could have, and would have, killed all of you with his bare hands. Well, maybe not you, but he'd have gone through these three like tissue paper!"
The Doctor looked about to argue, then thought better of it. "What kind of gun shoots straight through Sea-Devil armour?" She asked.
".44 AutoMag with Teflon loads." The Major replied.
"Non-stick bullets." The Doctor remarked dryly. "What else did you find out?"
"Not a lot." The Major admitted. "The Security Room I found only covers this section - the Wildlife Study Section. Whatever is going on has to be happening in the Control Section. Whoever is in charge there can override or control everything in the base, except the people."
"Then that's where we need to go!" The Doctor decided. Then she turned to the Major. "You can come with us if you like, but I'm in charge now. We do things my way. No charging in with guns blazing. We go there, we find out what's happening, and we sort it out. Without violence!"
"First," the Major replied, "I'm coming whether you like it or not. Second, you're in charge of them, not me. Third, I'm all in favour of peaceful resolutions - most soldiers are, it means we don't get killed. Last, if there is no peaceful resolution, I reserve the right to take any measures I see fit to get us all out of here in one piece!"
Their eyes locked for a moment, then the Doctor shook her head. "You remind me of the Brigadier." Was all she said.
As they left, Ryan said quietly to Yasmin. "There's something off about that bloke. I failed French, what did he say to her?"
"I think," Yasmin said, "that it was 'the more he changes, the more she stays the same', which doesn't make sense, unless...I think he knows a lot more about the Doctor than we do. It's not the first time somebody's mentioned that she used to be a man!"
"We know she's an alien." Ryan pointed out. "Nothing stopping an alien being transgender!"
"I think it's a bit more complicated than that, son." Graham warned him.
XXXX
The door to the Control Section hung open. Not invitingly, not ominously, just halfway off its hinges.
"Somebody was really keen to get in here!" Yasmin remarked.
"Or out." The Major corrected. "That was done from the inside, with a blaster. Our late Sea-Devil engineer, maybe?"
"Probably, if he was helping the crew to escape." The Doctor agreed. "Let's see what's in there. If I can find a civilian leader, we might be able to stop this before things get worse!"
"Fingers crossed." The Major replied.
The corridors were well-lit and clear, for the most part, but there were occasional burn marks on walls and floor.
"This must be where the fighting started." Yasmin said.
They arrived in what had clearly been a conference room, but the large table had been propped up against one wall and the chairs stacked along the opposite one. Several human and two armoured Sea-Devil bodies lay dead on the floor.
"What happened here?" Ryan asked.
The Doctor and the Major shared a look.
"They must have brought the crew here for execution." The Doctor said softly. "Those two were the firing squad."
The Major nodded. "Both shot in the back with a blaster. The engineer again. Then he must have tried to lead the crew out. They had a head start, but nowhere to go. Tragic."
"Doc," Graham said, "are you sure we can do this peacefully? These Sea-Devils seem to be very aggressive, not to say racist about humans."
It was the Major who answered. "These Vanguards are just that, guards. If their systems saw this base as a threat, they'd have been woken first. To the Sea-Devils, humans are the alien invaders after all. Military thinking -assume hostility. That's why there are civilian governments over them."
"But when the cat's away, the mice play." The Doctor remarked. "Mice with guns! But the Sea-Devils are a civilised race, not warlike. Something must have happened to make them hate humans?"
"Maybe our skins are the wrong colour?" Yasmin asked with an air of patently false innocence.
Then the far door burst open and three armoured Sea-Devils charged in, firing their blasters. Fortunately, everyone was used to this sort of thing and the group immediately scattered, looking for cover. The Major, who had dropped flat, came up on one knee and fired three times. One Sea-Devil went down, another spun round, grabbing at a shoulder. The third swung his weapon up and fired into the ceiling, a large portion of which promptly fell into the room. The Sea-Devil retreated, supporting his wounded comrade.
After a few moments, there was some scrambling, coughing and a general emergence from rubble.
"Everybody all right?" Asked the Doctor, scanning with her sonic. "Good, it was just a partition. The hull's intact." She turned to the Major, who stopped her with a raised hand and a stern look.
"They were the ones who came in shooting!" He snapped. "I did what I told you I'd do, and they did what I'd have done in the same situation. They aren't used to armed humans, didn't know what they were facing, so they got out. Good soldiers. Now they know we can hurt them, they might be more ready to talk."
The Doctor stared at him for a moment, then asked. "Who are you? Really?"
"I've told you everything and anything about me you need to know." Was the reply. "As for the rest, you're the Doctor. You work it out."
"Guys?" Grahams' voice. "Could do with a hand here!"
The ceiling, and the floor above it, had been made from sturdy plastic panels, supported on a carbon-fibre grid, but the grid had been anchored to three steel girders, one of which now lay jammed across the room, with Graham beneath it.
"I'm not hurt." He assured them. "But I'm stuck! I can't go backwards or forwards. If I could move a couple of feet to that side, I could squeeze out, but I'm stuck too tight here!"
"Dammit!" The Major said. "The sonic won't help here, Doctor, the vibrations would just bring the rest of the ceiling down. We just have to shift this thing a couple of centimetres so Graham can wriggle sideways and get out.
"Ryan, that's down to you and me! Good job you're a big lad! You two need to watch the door in case the Sea-Devils come back." He looked at Yasmin. "What are you, military or police?"
"Police officer." She replied. "How did you know?"
"The way you carry yourself, the way you react to threats, and the fact that you don't ask damn fool questions." He told her. "Firearms trained?"
"Just the basics." Yasmin allowed.
"Right!" The Major slapped a new magazine into his gun. "Seven in the clip, one up the spout." He said, offering the weapon to Yasmin. "It's a 44 magnum, so expect some heavy recoil if you have to fire!
"Come on, Ryan!"
The beam was jammed at an angle -this room being slightly smaller than the one above it. One end rested on the floor under a pile of wreckage, the other was wedged against the opposite wall, about a metre above the floor. Graham was trapped closer to the low end, a move of a foot or so sideways was all he needed to get free, but the beam was wedged tight and he wouldn't be able to move without injury.
"OK," The Major told them both, "we only need to get a little bit of clearance. Ryan, get on that high end and get ready to lift..."
"I know!" Ryan said. "I used to work in a warehouse. Bend from the knees, keep my back straight!"
"Good lad!" The Major told him. He straddled the beam close to Graham. "I'll lift here. Graham, as soon as the weight comes off you, wriggle away from me until you can get clear.
"Ready Ryan? On three. One, two, three!"
The beam was heavy, and wedged firmly, but Ryan felt it give and heard metal screech in protest. Had it been enough?
Then Graham said. "OK!" And the Major said. "Nice work!"
"Are you all right, Grandad?" Ryan asked.
"I'm fine, son." Graham replied. "But I am wondering about going on a diet!"
The Major clapped Ryan on the shoulder. "Well done!" He said. "You're a strong lad, you know when to take orders and you're not scared to give it everything. Ever think about the Army?"
"They wouldn't have me." Ryan said. "I'm dyspraxic."
"Damn shame!" The Major observed. "But on the other hand, SHIELD and UNIT are less narrow-minded. You might want to give it some thought. People who've travelled with the Doctor learn things, and they're not so easy to shock. Makes them valuable assets, and the pay's better!"
While the men had been busy, Yasmin and the Doctor had gone over to the door, where the Doctor had promptly put out her hand.
"Give me that!" She had commanded.
Yasmin handed the gun over. The Doctor ejected the magazine and handed it back. "Take the bullets out of that." She said.
Yasmin did so while the Doctor worked the action to remove the chambered round. "Give me the bullets and put the clip back in." She ordered. "And don't tell him!"
"You don't trust him?" Yasmin asked.
The Doctor sighed. "He's a good man, I think. But he's a soldier. We've seen that. He'll shoot someone if he thinks it's necessary. I'm just making sure he can't."
"And what if it is necessary?" The police officer in Yasmin asked. "In self-defence or something?"
"Running away is always better!" The Doctor said firmly. "If you run away, you can always come back later. Once violence becomes necessary, everybody's lost. It's something my race found out too late."
XXXX
They met nothing and no one until they came to the main Control Room. Here, almost every square inch of floor was occupied by egg-shaped containers. The far wall was taken up with a number of monitor screens, all showing different views of the sea around the station. Below that was a control desk with a number of seats in front of it, only one of which was occupied.
"So you found your way here!" The voice was a rich baritone, the voice of a lecturer. The chair turned to reveal a short, rather pudgy figure, round face adorned with a thick black beard, carefully groomed in contrast to the untidy hair, hot brown eyes behind metal-framed glasses. In one thick-fingered hand was an automatic pistol, levelled at the newcomers.
"Please don't come any closer." He said. "I've already killed three people, and I won't hesitate to kill any or all of you if I'm forced to."
"Only if you can shoot faster than me, and I doubt that!" The Major had his gun out and aimed.
"He won't have to." The Doctor told him, holding out a handful of bullets. "I emptied your gun, there'll be no more killing!"
"Unfortunately, that isn't the case." Said the man at the desk.
"Who are you?" The Doctor asked. "And where are the Sea-Devils?"
"The Sea People have left." Was the reply. "They gave me what I needed and left me to do what must be done."
"I'm Doctor David Penton, I was Director of Research at ProMarHab Three. Now I'm the man who is going to save the world." No pride, no boast, just simple certainty.
"Just how do you plan to do that?" Graham asked.
Penton indicated the containers. "Each of those eggs is filled with sea-water infected with a virus created by the Sea People. In a few minutes I'm going to open all the vents and airlocks, and flood the base. The eggs will open and the virus will get out into the sea and multiply.
"For two years, that's all it will do, multiply and spread into every part of the water cycle, and into the body of every human being, because we all drink or swim or get rained on and all water comes from the sea. Then the virus will go active. It'll be fast, lethal and incurable. Every last human on the planet will die in hours. Then the Sea People and their cousins on land will emerge and repair the damage humans have done. Earth will be saved."
"Save the world by wiping everybody out?" Yasmin asked incredulously. "What's the point of saving the planet if you don't save the people?"
"The humans!" Penton insisted. "Just the humans! I used to wonder how and why we humans had managed to wreck our world so completely. Now I know. Because it isn't our world! It belongs to them, the reptile people. They were here first and if it wasn't for a cosmic accident, they would've been here to stop humans evolving, or to teach them to live properly. The only right thing to do now is to put an end to humanity and give the reptile people their world back!"
"Except for you, of course." The Major said. "How are you going to escape? Go and stay with your scaly friends? Or do you have a little hideaway somewhere, or a vaccine?"
"I'm not." Penton said. "I'm human as well. I have to die. I was going to be the first, now you'll all die with me. After I open the locks, I'll use this gun on myself if I have the nerve, or drown if I don't. You should start thinking about what you want to do, all of you."
"Wait!" The Doctor said. "Nobody has to die, not now! You've made contact with the Sea People. You must know they have scientists and engineers as well as soldiers. If they can repair the damage to the Earth without humanity they can repair it with you! The humans and the reptile people can work together, learn from each other. That's got to be better than killing people, right?"
"An incurable optimist!" Penton said. "You don't understand, do you? We are the problem, the damage! We don't belong here! We should never have existed. Humanity is the twisted result of evolution interrupted by astrophysics. The asteroid was an accident that threw life on this planet off its proper path."
"It wasn't an asteroid. The asteroid missed." The Doctor said. "It was an alien ship loaded with explosives, meant to destroy an important conference on Earth in 2161. It got sent back 65 million years in time and crashed into Earth. That's why the Silurians' plan didn't work."
"And how do you know all this, pray tell?" Penton replied with a pitying smile.
"I was there." The Doctor said. "In 2161. It was a friend of mine who took that ship back in time and was aboard when it crashed. His name was Adric. I'm the Doctor."
Penton laughed out loud, this time. "Wonderful!" He exclaimed. "Not an Illuminatus or the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, but the notorious time-travelling Doctor! I've read all the conspiracy theories, and that one's pretty niche, but a delusion is a delusion." He became serious again. "Look, I'm sorry, I really am. You seem like good people, even if you are completely mad, and there are a lot of good people out there. But not enough, not nearly enough. When you're cutting out gangrene, you have to take some healthy flesh as well, or it will just carry on spreading.
"But that's enough talk. Don't try to stop me or I will shoot you!"
He turned slightly in his chair, reaching for a switch. The Doctor called "Wait!", but he only smiled sadly and shook his head.
Then the Major fired once. Penton was pushed back in his chair, then slumped out of it to the floor, dead. Everyone turned to look at the Major. His face was drawn and grim as he holstered his gun.
"Surely you didn't think I wouldn't notice?" He said to the Doctor. "An empty weapon weighs less than a loaded one, anyone who handles guns regularly can tell the difference at once, and I always carry spare clips.
"But I played along, gave you every chance to do it your way. Only you never accept that some people have to be killed."
"Do they?" She asked bitterly. "Why, what gives you the right to decide someone is too evil to be allowed to live?"
The Major shook his head. "Evil?" He asked. "If that man had been evil, I wouldn't have had to kill him. An evil man would have had an escape plan, would have boasted about how he was going to get away and live like a King on his new Earth. Then all we'd have needed to do was sabotage his escape and he'd never have thrown the switch.
"But Penton was a good man, too good. He honestly believed he was doing the right thing for the planet, and he was prepared to die himself to do it. You couldn't have talked him out of it and if you'd disabled the locks he'd just have blown this place up. So I had to kill him, to save billions.
"Now despite what you might think of me, I don't find killing in cold blood either easy or pleasant. I need some time to process, so I'll thank you to take your self-righteousness out of my face and go and do something useful!"
The Doctor was oddly abashed. It wasn't like her, but something about the Major stripped her defences and made the morality and pacifism she held to so deeply seem like running away from reality. She could also see that what he had just done had cut him to the quick. He was no brutalised killing machine, but a man who fully accepted responsibility for his actions, even when it hurt him to do so.
She spun away. "Right!" She said. "We have to find a way to make sure that virus doesn't get out, no matter what happens to this base!"
It wasn't that hard. The locks on the containers were designed to open once the pods were fully submerged. The Doctor was able to seal them with the sonic so they would never open.
"Now we have to find out where the Sea-Devils are!" She said. "We can't leave this hanging, we need to sort it out with them!"