Symphony of Destiny
888
Miro walked the halls of the command offices of the resistance. Established upon the station over Heaven the offices oversaw the Time War from a distance, far from the tumult and the turmoil. The halls were filled with assortments of species, a few Nekkestani, their chitonous, thin slug-like forms slithering and clacking as they moved, a Monan, its mycosomal form inhabiting a felo-sapien, quickly moved as it conversed with a Sunari; the humanoid with its aquiline face nodding as they discussed strategic resource procurement. Humans and Navarinos talked to one another as they navigated the bustle. Phaidonians glided by in their saintly encounter suits, their form vaguely humanoid but with a bulb of glass containing their sentient spirits flickering and flashing with strobing lengths of plasma at the form's head. His own men and women, Thals of brave standing, patrolled the halls, weapons slung over their shoulders. Draconians, Ice Warriors, Karfellans, even a few Time Lords strode the halls, rushing from one meeting to the next.
Miro stopped a young, Thal woman, her blonde hair was tied up in a small bun. "Rebec, where is the general?"
"Where he always is when a battle is afoot." The woman said with a coy smile, as her eyes sliced to an unassuming blue box, standing at the end of the hall. "Listening to his symphonies." She looked up at Miro. "May I ask why?"
"I have been summoned." Miro replied, looking at the box quizzically. His eyes slipped down to Rebec. "By name, or so I'm told."
"Well, then you shouldn't keep him waiting." Rebec said and stepped away moving towards a Karfellan and trying to catch his attention.
Miro looked again to the blue box. The box was known to him, to all Thals. So long ago, at the beginning of the end, the box has come, and in its arrival it had ended the greatest threat to the universe. The tales of that old man, his granddaughter, and their human friends was a tale of great comfort and a source of resolve throughout Thal-dom. Miro walked to the box, and lifted his hand to gently rap upon the wooden surface, but as his hand moved to strike the wood, the door creaked slowly open. Miro took a step back and then took a deep breath and walked forward.
He stood slightly stunned as he passed into the inner realm of the box. He chastised himself at his response to the innards of the box; this was hardly the first Time Lord TT capsule he'd been in. He knew and even understood the concepts of dimensional transcendentalism. The Thals had known of time travel for generations by his birth, having scavenged information from the ancient Dalek records, after the fall of the Dalek city. The inside of this TT capsule was honeycombed with hexagonal panels with small circles indented upon them. The walls were dirty, damaged, wires were exposed. Around the center console, arches of what looked like coral and steel reached up to the ceiling like some massive mechanical claw. The console itself was half apart, and half put together, with wires sparking and snapping.
The man who had summoned him was sitting on the far side of a central control console. He was in a high-backed chair with red, faded upholstery. He was looking down as at small coral-backed pad, a pair of headphones slid over his ears. His aging face was contorted into a mild, unamused frown, his white moustache and beard slightly bedraggled. The man's heavy eyelids lifted, and his gray eyes looked upon Miro as the captain slowly walked forward.
"Captain…" The man said as he took the headphones from his ears.
"Sir, if I have come at a bad ti-" Miro started.
"Captain, we're fighting in a Time War, all times are bad…" the man said as he stood up from the chair and walked forward.
"Of course, general." Captain Miro said, as he stood to attention. The old man shook his head and waved Captain Miro to stand down; Miro relaxed slightly. "I only meant to say that if I was interrupting something then I could come back later…"
"No, no, the Time Lord advance across the Negratic Conflagration has begun…I was simply perusing the front line formations of their third battalion." The old man said as he laid the pad he had unceremoniously upon one of the console surfaces. "They are meant to be fielding the new Narvin-class heavy bowships…I wanted to see what we were up against."
"And?" Miro asked.
"The more things change the more they stay the same…." The old man replied, shaking his head. "Slightly faster, but with the same core problems; the Dalek twelfth armada is cutting through them pretty aggressively."
"Will we be making an intervention?" Miro asked as he walked to the console.
"Hmm?" The man replied as he flicked at some switches. He looked up, through the center column of the console unit. "In a way, yes…" The man turned a dial and turned. A view port opened on a far wall. "What do you know of the Second Dalek war?"
"A conflict in the early Humanian era, if I remember correctly, largely centered around a series of invasions and repulsions made by the Daleks into Mutter's Spiral, placing them against the forces of Earth, and the various Human empires and their Galactic Federation allies." Miro replied as he walked around the console and stood next to the man, watching the screen as it played images of battles being fought. "My people were still huddled and hiding in the wastelands of Skaro during this time, a few of us were chattel to the Daleks, but most of our society had regressed to almost prehistoric levels…hiding from the Dalek genocide in the mountains and caves."
"What do you know of a planet now named Zaleria?" The man gave Miro a side long look.
Miro's eyebrows bunched; the name was unfamiliar with him. He shook his head. "I've never heard of it…is it important?"
"Vitally, vitally…" The man said as he turned and flipped a switch, the viewport closed. He turned a knob, and the console room lights dimmed. The ceiling seemed to melt away and a vast specter of the universe unfurled above him. The man pointed and the sky seemed to warp inwards until a single star system filled the ceiling. "This is the ninth jurisdictional system of the Galaxy of Antares, Zaleria is the fourth planet in orbit of this small G-type star." The ceiling warped again as the planet grew in size and then engulfed the ceiling. "This planet has entered a hypertrophic phase, lush with phyto-active life, some of it carnivorous, much of it deadly. The life on this world is almost exclusively nocturnal as the star, despite its size, has an unusually large spike of radiation in the ultraviolet and x-ray bands." The man turned to Miro. "The Galaxy of Antares lies just outside of the Seraphia exclusion zone…"
"Is this world of interest to the Daleks…?" Miro asked, looking at the biology of the planet as a plant vomited a puff of spores upon a small furry animal that flew in the sky. The creature collapsed at the base of the plant, already some kind of fungal like growth was overwhelming the dermis of the creature as it squealed and flailed on the ground.
"Yes…" The man said nodding. "Then and now…there are life forms upon this world that can turn themselves completely invisible, they are known at the time they are native to as Spiridons, now they are known as Zalerians, as an attempt at stopping the constant attempts at acquiring their biological secrets. They can produce some kind of cancelling wavelength that negates any light reflectivity on their bodies, presumably a natural defense against the radiation from the star. It makes them virtually impossible to detect."
"And the Daleks would definitely want that capability…" Miro said, his arms crossing over his chest. He narrowed his eyes.
"Precisely-" the man replied. "In fact during the Second Dalek War, the Daleks sent a research contingent to the planet specifically for that reason. It met with some – let's say - resistance and the research was left incomplete."
"But the Daleks are now remembering this strategic factor-" Miro said as he leaned against the console.
"Yes, the plan is to restart the project." The man said as he walked around the console. A small table was stationed against a wall, and he picked up something from it, returning the man handed a small tablet to Miro. "They've tried this all before when Davros was around, but generally they tend to give up on it after a little difficulty, the invisibility factor is a bit toxic to their biology. But even with their continued failure on this front, I am getting a bit tired of them constantly invading Zaleria, especially now as they are bringing the entire Time War down upon Spiridon shores. I want you to take these selected Thal agents with you, see if you can't either A: stop the original research, and/or B: stop the new investigation. You will need to get pretty close to the front lines near the Negratic Conflagration. If you run into any Time Lord agents, even agents native to the time period, act as if you are Thals from the 26th century; feed them a Second Dalek War story about covert Thal resistance activity. Don't let on that you are from any other time zone, even if you're alone, assume others," The man pointed up to the sky, "are watching." He pushed a button on the tablet, and the image on the screen shifted to show the schematic of some ships. "I have procured a couple of time specific space vehicles, and suits for you to use on this mission, to help you with your cover story."
"These Thals, why these ones?" Miro asked as he looked over the list. "Isn't Taron stationed on Corvus minora? That's on the far side of the Dark Matter Atolls of Janse!"
"I have my reasons for selecting these specific agents." The man said as he walked back to his high backed chair. His gray eyes lazily fell on Miro as he sat back down. "It's need to know. And you don't."
"I rather think the composition of my crew is need to-" Miro started.
"Captain, are you questioning the orders of your commanding officer?" The old man barked, his gray eyes sparked with a savage fury, his bushy eyebrows tightening together.
Miro jumped to attention. "No, general, sir!"
"Good, I'm glad." The man said as he sat back. He took a deep breath. "You are dismissed, captain." Miro nodded and turned curtly and started to walk away. As he stepped towards the inner doors of the TT capsule he heard the man speak again. "Captain…"
Miro turned and looked to the man; he had the headphones hung around his neck. "Yes, general…"
"Thank you for your service…" The man replied quietly. His eyes seemed to soften slightly. "I'm – sorry that I couldn't help you more."
"It is understood, sir." Miro said giving the man a quick salute before turning and leaving the TARDIS.
The doors closed behind him. The man glowered slightly as he watched the doors close, and said to himself. "I rather doubt it is…unfortunately…"
He closed his eyes and slid the headphones over his ears. His eyelids twitched as he heard it. The screams, the unfettered bellows and castigations of innocent victims caught in the crossfire, a symphony of sorrow. A symphony he would conduct to its closure, even if he had to kill every musician playing in it.
AN: I've squared the circle I made way back in vignette 64 Victory. It's all continuity today I'm afraid…