Rose smiled with delight as she heard the Doctor's announcement.
Once again the Time Lord had pulled a genius plan out off thin air, just like a magician would remove a rabbit out of his top hat. Except this time the rabbit was the control of a massive fridge freezer currently hurtling towards a planet inhabited by millions of blissfully unaware humans that the thawed out martians wanted to destroy because of a war that had begun over five hundred years ago.
It didn't matter… the Doctor was still brilliant.
"Yes!" She cried out. "I knew it wouldn't take him long."
The next announcement was made solely for the benefit for Peter and Lorna. They must have heard the alarms and announcements by now, but neither one had been afforded the luxury of knowing about the escape plan the Doctor had created. The second shift in Coldstar's movement might have given it away a little bit, but they needed to know what to do next.
"Peter, you and Lorna need to get back to where we met the Voltas." He told them. "Rose and Callum are coming to meet you. The rendezvous point is the docking bay."
Callum thought it was a smart move not to identify the reception as the place where he and Rose were heading towards. If the ice warriors were still there then it would turn into a slaughter with them on the wrong side of the bloodshed. He could only hope that the commotion had pulled the aliens away from Peter and Lorna long enough for a rescue to take place.
"Right, Peter knows where to go now," Rose announced. "Don't worry, he'll find us. Or we'll find them, it doesn't matter either way."
"We still best be careful," Callum cautioned. "The ice warriors could find us too."
Rose simply smiled back at him. She had such faith in both of her travelling companions that it was impossible not to feel as though everything was going to turn out okay. That they might actually defeat the ice warriors and save the planet below. If they were going off sheer willpower alone, then they would have long since won the day.
"Oh, and one more thing, Lord Hasskar." The Doctor's voice announced. "I'd suggest you and your troops toddle along too. We're locked on course for the sun. No returns, it's going get toasty."
The communication ended with a bleep and was soon replaced by the alarms once again, warning everyone onboard of Coldstar's new one-way trip towards a fiery and fairly spectacular demise. At least the melting ice would no longer be a problem given that there wouldn't be anything left to keep cool as the tonnes of cargo burnt up alongside it.
"Is he mad?" Callum questioned. "What if we can't get away from here in time?"
"Don't worry, we'll be fine," Rose assured him. "Escape plan twenty-nine. Take control of the base and bluff that you're going to destroy it. "
She knew they were close to reception now because the walls of the corridor they were on were coated in a very thick layer of black grime, caused by the smoke that had billowed out of the room following the explosion. The damage only grew worse the nearer they got, and soon Rose spotted the doorway which led into the main room.
To Callum's immense relief no ice warriors were waiting to greet them.
"They've all gone." He breathed. "Look, they even left our guns behind."
It was a relief to have his pistol back in his hand once again. He felt much more securing having it whilst the threat of the ice warriors still lingered over them, and perhaps it would even the playing field a little bit now that they would go on the offensive. The Doctor's diversion of Coldstar was only going to make the aliens more desperate to finish their plans, even if it cost their own lives to do so.
"Peter?" Rose called out. "Lorna, are you here?"
They were nowhere to be seen, and given the situation that Callum knew he had left them in, it wasn't a promising sign that they were okay. At least there weren't any bodies…
"Ah!… Rose, is that you?"
Peter's voice was coming from behind the other side of the reception desk and the tone of it quickly made it obvious that something wasn't right. He sounded winded, as though it was a struggle to get the words out. Even before Lorna's muffled yelps followed after this, Rose and Callum were running over to the large control panel.
"Peter, what's wrong?" She asked. "What…"
Both the soldier and Lorna had been tied up, and the poor recycling girl gagged to prevent her from calling out for help. But despite her distress, it was Peter that Rose's immediate attention fell upon as she saw the gaping hole which now existed in the righthand side of his chest.
He had been shot.
"The ice warrior… Lord Hasskar." Peter tried to explain. "He came back with the other one… Gah! We ran into them."
Bending down next to him, Rose had to reassure herself by remembering that Peter could heal far more quickly than a human could. She had seen his leg being broken and mend itself within minutes, and even a fighting a werewolf twice his size hadn't kept him down for very long.
Even so, her hands were trembling as she carefully leaned over him and unfasten the cables that had been wrapped around his wrists.
Callum had stepped in to assist Lorna and removed her gag and bindings, and both then watched with some concern as Peter tried to sit himself up a little straighter with his left arm. But the effort of even this small movement quickly exhausted the soldier, and Rose could see the beads of sweat running down the side of his head. The silver flecks in his eyes flashed yellow as Peter's face grimaced with the discomfort.
"We tried to get the schematic I had left here," Lorna added. "But they caught us before we could."
"It's my fault," Peter admitted. "I should have heard them… Damn pipes sound just like them breathing."
Gently, Rose laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder.
"Hey, it's okay." She told him. "But we did get a bit worried when Callum arrived without you."
Callum squirmed as Peter's silver eyes darted up in his direction. This was it. He was going to be ratted out for abandoning them to the mercy of the ice warriors. He didn't deserve anything less, however.
"Yeah, we got separated," Peter replied. "In the smoke."
Leaning forward, he then tried to shrug himself out of his coat. But this only served to agitate the blast wound further. Hissing from the pain, he allowed Rose and Callum to help him out of the garment before the pirate leaned in to inspect it more closely. Underneath, Peter was only wearing a t-shirt, but the cold wasn't going to be the problem here even without his higher rate of body temperature. The hole was the size of a coin and there was still charred flesh on display that shouldn't have been, and it clearly wasn't something that was about to heal in a few minutes.
"That's one nasty looking blast burn." Callum winced. "But there isn't too much blood, so I think you'll be all right."
"It went straight through from the back… A clean exit at the front." Peter agreed. "I heal pretty quick, but I've got to keep it still for a while. Maybe a sling, or…"
Inhaling in deeply, he could feel that there was no longer a complete gap all the way through him as the burnt threats of muscle regenerated and bound themselves back together again.
But just as he was cursing his luck for not wearing a belt, Rose caught his attention as she unzipped her coat and removed the green scarf that was wrapped around her neck. The woolly stretch of fabric was long enough for her to gently nestle his arm within the folds of it before she tied both ends together neatly around the back of his neck.
"Mum's friend has a medical student lodging with her," Rose explained. "She showed me how to do this the last time I was home. There, how's that?"
Giving the makeshift sling a little tug with his good arm in order to test its durability, Peter nodded and smiled gratefully back at her.
"I think the Doctor might have to start worrying about his title being stolen." He told her. "Thanks, Rose. It'll do just fine."
With his arm now much more secure, he felt able to try and get himself back up onto his feet. Callum, Rose and Lorna all helped and made sure he was steady enough before stepping away from him, and he was glad of their support as the wound gave one or two short and sharp reminders of it being there as he regained his balance.
"I still don't know how you're both not dead," Callum. "But I'm glad you're not."
"Yeah, us too," Peter told him. "Thanks for coming back."
Still grateful that neither Peter nor Lorna had decided to rat him out for abandoning them in the first place, Callum chose not to say anything more on the subject. Besides, they had much more pressing concerns to be worrying about right now. The Doctor had said to get back to Volta's Pearl, and nothing sounded better than retreating to his ma's ship and getting off this massive floating freezer.
"We heard the Doctor," Lorna announced. "He said that we're heading into the sun?"
"Right, yeah," Rose replied. "Maybe he wasn't completely kidding about destroying this place."
For the third time, Coldstar shuddered beneath their feet. This was followed by the loud and steady humming of an engine that did not belong to the vessel, but it was one that Callum recognised at once. It was the sound of something which he had known for as long as he could remember because he had been born aboard the very craft that made it.
"That was the Pearl." He whispered. "My ship… Ma's ship, it's leaving."
"He can't have..." Rose gasped. "He'd wait, you'll see. Any second now, the Doctor will come through that door.
"I don't think anyone is coming, Rose," Lorna replied. "I think we're on our own."
Rose scoffed loudly in disbelief of such a notion and turned to face Peter so that he could back her up on her support of the Time Lord.
"The ice warriors could have got to him and Brona." He responded quite seriously. "Forced him to leave without us or the TARDIS."
Coldstar shuddered quite violently as its new course of action continued to near its destination. No longer heading towards Enyo, the moon-sized hunk of metal would not need to touch the surface of the sun before it began to disintegrate and fall apart. Anyone still aboard her would already be dead before any traces of the food transported melted into the searing gas giant. It wouldn't even be an end that they would feel coming, as one moment everyone would be stood trapped with the metal walls, and next they would be consumed by a mass of molten flares with enough energy to light a whole solar system.
"Coldstar is starting to break apart," Callum said. "They've all gone and left us!"
"Stop panicking, Callum." Peter snapped at him. "Remember what I said, panic and we are dead."
"We're dead anyway if…"
The look Peter gave him was enough to stop the young pirate from saying anything further on the futility of trying to escape their fate.
"Peter is right," Rose encouraged. "We need to help ourselves. Maybe there's a reverse on this thing?"
Looking over all of the controls laid out before her on the panels of the reception desk, Rose tried a few of them in the hope that one might actually be able to turn the ship around and away from the sun. But nothing happened. Either the damage inflicted to the machine was too great, or the Doctor had been too brilliant in diverting the override to Brona's control panel.
"Rose, face it. We're crashing and these controls won't do anything to stop us." Callum told her. "There's no point."
"What do we do now?" Lorna gasped. "Are we really going to sit here and wait to die?"
"No, we are not doing that." Peter insisted. "Look, there has to be a way out."
"Yeah, it might be a bad situation," Rose added. "Stuck on an out of control moon satellite thing that's about to crash into the sun.
But, you know what? I'm Rose Tyler, and the thing about us Tyler is that we won't lie down when we're beaten!"
Smiling as Peter gave her a complete look of confidence in response to her rousing speech, Rose really did feel as though they could do this.
"Then let's get going, Miss Tyler." The soldier told her. "There isn't a moment to lose."