24. Dangerous Mission.
1. Objects that Fly.
A concrete ring sits astride high thin concrete pillars as Ommera walks past to her assigned accommodation. She has seen pictures of this structure. She will be working near here, and this is rumoured to be the testing area for a parallel project, though she isn't sure how it could be.
She dislikes her uniform intensely. She dislikes the emblem on the uniform. She dislikes the regime she must work for, and when she sees her accommodation she dislikes that as well.
"Oh, Doctor, what is so desperate that you need me to be here?" she asks herself as she enters her assigned room.
She sits on the edge of her bed and contemplates her four drab grey concrete walls.
At school, she had avoided this era of Earth history as being particularly distasteful. She takes some deep breaths and steels herself to carry on. She wonders who occupied the room before she arrived and what happened to them.
This is dangerous work. The Doctor had told her exactly when and where to meet him to get away at the end of her mission, and the importance of being on time. Her Earth history knowledge had extended enough for her to know that if she didn't meet the Doctor at the end of her mission, it was game over for her, even with her regeneration capability. The entire section of recruits who are new today would be replaced. She wonders what replaced meant.
Yet the job is well within her skill capability. As a trained spaceship engineer from a few millennia into the future, she feels she certainly has the knowledge for the job. She could surely run rings around them.
Ommera had met the Doctor a while ago when she had wandered into the Tardis thinking it was a museum (ref. 1). She had become distracted in the Wardrobe Section and discovered her mistake when she returned to the Control Room to find the Doctor. But he had been gentle and careful and had entertained her. She had enjoyed what appeared to be outings but increasingly had become adventures.
Her planet was called Slint, an Earth colony in the sixth millennium, where she had studied to become a spaceship engineer, a popular career on a planet dependent on interplanetary trade.
Now her skills are required to perform a specific design role.
"Fall in," a yell is heard throughout the block. Ommera emerges from the accommodation building along with many others wearing similar uniforms. They make two lines in front of a man wearing a sterner uniform. She is very glad of the translation provided by the Tardis!
It is briefing time for new recruits. A list is read out of what they can do and what they can't do; where they can go and can't go. As she listens to this, Ommera recognises that where she was supposed to meet up with the Doctor is out of bounds now and, by the sound of it, she will have to bypass a security building.
This hadn't been planned for.
Her stomach tightens.
"Is all that clear?" the man says.
Everyone in the group continues to stare straight ahead desperate not to be seen to step out of line as they answer, "Yes, sir".
This is a dangerous place to be at a dangerous time. Ommera does the same as all the other recruits.
Another man in uniform approaches the line of new recruits. He walks up to the first man in charge and asks something quietly. The first man shouts out, "Ommera Brown. Step forward."
Ommera has quite a shock. Singled out already! What has she done wrong? She steps forward as quickly as she can.
The quieter man walks up to her. "Follow me," he says. He turns on his heel and walks off. Ommera has to follow.
The man walks fast! She almost has to run to keep up. What is she getting into?
They enter a large building with a massive front door, the whole size of the building. Inside there are no floors or dividing walls despite its size.
Ommera gasps. In the centre is a perfectly round saucer-like metal structure, several metres across. Many men are working on it.
The quiet man takes her through a door near the back of the building into an office in a building beyond. There is a long table with blue-print plans on it. The man pauses by the table and gestures for Ommera to view the plans.
"What we have doesn't work," he says. Why doesn't he introduce himself? Ommera thinks.
"We have two powerful engines producing thrust," he says.
It is very obvious where they are on the plans. Ommera leans forwards to look at some of the detail. In the corner, part of two company names and crests are pristine clear, four quadrants in a circle for one and an arrow with wings for the other, the names are partly covered, B… of one and Sk... the rest of the names are covered so she can't read them! The precise date of the blueprint tells her that the year is 1941.
"Where did the plans come from?" Ommera enquires. She feels uncomfortable in case there may be any hint of extra-terrestrial activity. Hints of this phenomenon persisted into her own millennium even though other sentient lifeforms were known, they were never mysterious. It was all just human paranoia. But then, we like a bit of mysteriousness.
"We are merely progressing symmetry," the man says. "The circle is the perfect symmetry. Our leaders like perfection and symmetry. We're throwing a huge amount of development at this hoping that it goes somewhere. This craft scares everyone who sees it. What better way to scare our enemies?"
Ommera is unsure who the enemies are and knows she really ought to. Now she regrets choosing other options at school.
"Your job is to make it work," the man says demandingly.
Ommera is repulsed by the idea of making anything work for this regime. She recalls the Doctor's advice on this matter - to leave a small but significant defect that will take years for them to find. It will take a while for her to work out just what issue or issues to leave unresolved. The Doctor had told her the importance of the success of this mission. If her mission fails, billions of people will be subjected to harsh regimes for a century or more. She must get it right!
As Ommera views the blueprint she becomes aware of the man watching her intently. She turns towards him. "How does it react just now?" She wants to know how advanced the construction and testing are.
"It just flips over the moment it starts up. Most unsatisfactory. You must do better than your predecessor."
"What happ…" No, she mustn't ask that sort of question here. What happened to her predecessor she knows: End of game. These are dangerous times. To show weakness here might blow her cover. She must ask a different question.
"What happened before it flipped over?"
"Too short a time to tell," the man says. "You will know me only as V. Everything is on a strictly need-to-know basis. These plans are all you will have and all you must know. I must leave you to it now." He turns and leaves directly.
Poor Ommera, left to do a job that no-one else can do with so much history just happening all around her. It was maybe just as well she didn't know all about all of the history from school! She might be desperately scared just now!
A chair is nearby, and she pulls the chair up to the table, reaches a pen from a rack and starts to draw a possible next upgrade, synchronising the two engines. She is tempted to change it to three engines, but a momentary thought tells her that the stability would be too much enhanced with three synchronised engines.
This would become a part of the defect she would leave - the instability. Just enough stability for the craft not to flip over but not enough for it to fly far above the ground. It must rely on ground effects to stay in the air at all. Until they worked out her other deliberate defects.
A team of draughtsmen is sitting ready for her every word at the other end of the long table. She steps towards them.
"This is what I want," she starts off gently. She lists the changes they are to incorporate and leaves them to it.
Once out of the large building she breathes deeply of the fresh air, then she sighs. How many days does she have to be there for? It was so intense in that building.
Can Ommera fulfil her mission and save the Earth from a very harsh lifestyle?