Manipulators, Warships.
As she stood in the TARDIS console room, occasionally glancing around the now circular room with the dome-shaped roof with the coral-like support struts and the grating covered flooring while the console itself now glowed green with temporal energy from the Heart of the TARDIS and the Time Vortex while the time rotor now reached to the ceiling, the Doctor had to hold back the urge to grin triumphantly.
So far everything she was doing was falling into place. She had access to another time machine. Soon her freedom was assured.
After she had changed and she had taken the opportunity to change the desktop theme of the TARDIS console room - she wasn't sure about the new coral theme of the console room; it was significantly better than the leopard skin and less tacky than the stupid crystal theme she had seen earlier, the one with that overlarge crystal set into the console as a new form of Time Rotor, she really despised that, but this console room was much better and she quite liked the simplicity of the console and the scanner mounted on the console itself rather than it being on a wall, and change was good especially since she had just regenerated although she was unsure how long it would last for - the Doctor couldn't help but smile at how easy it was to hack into the Chula warship's nav computer.
Sure, the security made it difficult to get in at first, but eventually the Chula ships' computer interface. The Doctor had discovered the ship was tethered to Big Ben under a holographic camouflage screen. Its weapon system was armed.
It was programmed to fire an EMP at the engines of any German plane that came close. She could understand the logic behind the precaution, but she didn't like the anachronism even if the pulse weapon wouldn't attract as much attention like a laser battery. Once she was inside the computer it was easy for the Doctor to reprogram the ship to come straight for where the TARDIS was. When she was sure the ship was moving towards the TARDIS, the Doctor reprogrammed its transmat system.
As the ship approached the Doctor gave into her curiosity to find out what was going on. The log record was fairly vague, but it seemed the pilot had been travelling around in the ship for some time, tracing Chula technology. There was a record of the ship locating a medical capsule of Chula design and then throwing it into the Time Vortex under a Mauve alert sign.
The Doctor's interest was piqued at that; mauve was the universally recognised call sign of danger. Whatever the traveller was doing, they wanted to get somebody's attention. Her interest was further roused when she read the traveller had apparently found the capsule and then dropped it into the Vortex, and the capsule had jumped through time tracks under a pre-programmed route through the vortex. The programming of the capsule was specifically to travel through the vortex, jump through the time tracks but arrive at the right point in time according to the programmer.
The Doctor stood up thoughtfully, her hands in her pockets while she rocked on her heels. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to pre-program a Chula medical capsule's time engine and dropped it into normal space and then made it jump tracks through the vortex to make it arrive here. She checked the navigational computer of the Chula warship. She nodded when she read what it said on the screen.
It was as she thought, the pilot had dropped the medical capsule in a certain point in space before they had jumped to this time zone, about a few months before the medical capsule appeared over London. They had known the medical capsule would arrive on Earth sooner or later, but there was nothing in the computer to tell her anything about what the pilot was doing or what their immediate plans were. But the pilot had been jumping in and out of different parts of history.
As the Doctor scanned the monitor, she noticed the Chula ship had stopped above the TARDIS. She sent the command to activate the transmat and she switched on the scanner and saw the TARDIS had been transmatted onboard the Chula warship; the cramped interior was stuffed full of junk, but she recognised the layout well enough.
The Doctor nodded, she reset the navigational computer, setting the ship up for a space and time jump into the 51st century, except she made sure to program the ship to leave Earth's atmosphere before jumping into hyperdrive to shoot towards the Oort Cloud before she jumped into the future. But just as she was about to engage the drive units and send the Chula ship into space to escape the Time Lord exile, she stopped. What if the Time Lords had a way of monitoring her biodata to stop her from doing exactly this? Pleased she had thought this part out, the Doctor went back to the TARDIS and with some hesitation, she flicked some controls. From the ceiling, a helmet-like device was lowered. The Doctor stared at it nervously.
It was the Chameleon Arch.
Every TARDIS had one in order to disguise a Time Lord into any species so they wouldn't make too much of an impact on history. The Doctor had known this thing existed in her TARDIS from the start, she had just never seen the point of using it. Besides the process it used to transform its wearer into any life form was unspeakably painful and the Doctor had never wanted to endure that kind of agony. But if she was going to escape her exile, the chameleon arch might be what was needed.
Just…slip on the arch, set it the right way so she didn't lose any of her memories of how to time travel and who she was, and her biodata would be shaken up to the point where hopefully Gallifrey wouldn't realise what she was doing. The Doctor looked fearfully at the arch before she took a deep breath and steeled herself before she started setting the controls before she fitted in the fob watch. It would contain a large chunk of her Time Lord essence, but she would retain her intellect, some of her temporal senses, a long lifespan although it would be short by Time Lord standards, she would be nothing more than a partial Time Lord. She had set the controls to transform her into a human-Time Lord hybrid.
And that suited her fine.
The Doctor rechecked the settings while making sure the old girl did not mess this up. Finally, she slipped it over her head, shivering at the cold metal of the contacts and she switched it on.
X
"Computer, one glass of ice water," the Doctor grated as she sat painfully at the pilot's console after she had activated the programming she had put into the navigational system of the Chula warship.
"Confirmed." A glass of water appeared.
The Doctor took the glass and she took a deep sip, smacking her lips and sighing with relief when the water soothed her vocal cords. It had taken three hours for the chameleon arch to do its job, much longer than she would have liked since the moment it began she just wanted it to stop. But while she could recall her past on Gallifrey and everything that had happened to her and what she had seen over the last few centuries, the Doctor was no longer a Time Lord.
At least not entirely.
She still had two hearts. She still had a binary vascular system, she still had her temporal senses although it was more of a ghost than anything else, that was as Time Lord as her biology went, really. For all intents and purposes, she was more human than ever. But right now, the Doctor's mind was full of worrying questions.
She actually found some of them ironic, considering what she had just done.
How long was she going to be like this? Was she making life worse for herself by escaping Earth?
The Doctor scoffed to herself; how could it be worse? To her superiors on Gallifrey, she was a renegade. That was as bad as it could get for her. The thought actually calmed her mind down a touch, and as the Chula warship travelled at warp to the edge of the solar system, and there was no sign of the Time Lords interfering with her attempt to escape, the Doctor thought through everything that had happened and what she was going to do now.
She took another sip of her water to settle herself down in the pilot's chair, and after she'd checked the nav computer to see how long it would take to get there, she felt it would be a good chance to think and rest through the chameleon arch ordeal.
Ever since the trial and when she had taken in the sight of Jamie and Zoe's faces when the Time Lords had sent them back to their own times, the Doctor had wanted to escape, but now she had removed so much of her Time Lord essence, she wondered if what she was doing was even worth it. Thinking about it more, the Doctor shrugged her shoulders and loudly scoffed. The sound echoed through the console room. Of course, it was worth it.
Whatever had made her think anything differently?
She was gaining her freedom back.
The Time Lords had exiled her to Earth. They had changed the TARDIS dematerialisation code, and Rassilon knew what else before they wiped her brain of any relevant knowledge. They had force-regenerated her into a new body, although that was actually probably the only good thing about her new situation.
Granted, she didn't like the way she had gotten her new body, but so far she had to admit she liked the new look. It would take time for her to adjust, but she knew it wouldn't take long. The female body might be new, but as long as she was careful, the Doctor saw no reason why she couldn't adjust to being here.
As soon as the thought registered in her mind, the Doctor decided to think through her immediate plans and put a different spin on things. She knew there was a chance Gallifrey would realise what she was doing. And then there was Earth to think about. She didn't want to be stranded there again. But she could take a vortex manipulator from the Time Agency, hook it up to the TARDIS or wear it, and travel through time and space for a brief time before she returned to the 20th century to sit through her exile, so while the Time Lords believed she was on Earth, preferably working for UNIT where she would have a support net and facilities to report the TARDIS, she would in fact be travelling the universe.
And in secret.
The Doctor, surprisingly, saw nothing wrong with that.
X
The trip to the future was a risk; with the security systems of the 51st century, the Doctor knew she would need to work fast. She had used the TARDIS to hack into the security network despite being aware the communications system was one of a small handful of TARDIS systems that the Time Lords had locked down the communication systems of the old girl to limit what she could do.
But mixing the Chula warship's computer with the TARDIS, the Doctor was able to block off some of the Time Agency's net. The Doctor wasn't bothering with actually teleporting inside the Time Agency; she didn't want to get herself trapped by the Time Agency. While they were a form of temporal police which she instinctively didn't approve of given the Time Lords drumming it into the minds of everyone in the Academy to disapprove of anyone else with time travel, they were also dangerous and many of them were paranoid and obsessively cautious.
Hooking the TARDIS to the Chula teleporter wasn't difficult, all she needed to do in the end was program the teleporter to lock onto a crate full of vortex manipulators. She might only need one, but the Doctor had no intention of travelling through time and then finding herself stranded in some world with no way out. At the same time, having many more manipulators offered her other possibilities - she could wear one on her wrist and so if she were thrown back in time or was separated from her ship thanks to a teleporter or someone captured her, she could just tap in an activation sequence and…. Pop! She was teleported away.
As she finished her work, the Doctor's hands hovered over the switch. She hesitated for only a minute before she slammed the switch down. There was a brief blue flash but nothing too dramatic as the teleporter created the small wormhole that scooped the crate up and deposited it close to the Doctor's feet.
The Doctor looked down at the crate. It wasn't particularly large. It was a dull gunmetal grey crate with a security lock attached to it. The sight of the lock had the Doctor take out her sonic screwdriver and study it. The lock didn't budge. Annoyed and slightly frightened, the Doctor almost panicked but she got hold of herself when she realised the lock key was likely down there. After she took a detailed scan, the Doctor quickly discovered the energy signature for the key and she readjusted the teleporter to find something similar. Once she got a lock on it she transported it to the Chula ship.
The Doctor picked it up and examined it, seeing the key was capable of breaking through deadbolt seals with a combination sequence. Pressing the key against the lock of the crate, the Doctor opened the crate and looked inside.
Inside the crate mounted on leather straps were vortex manipulators.
The Doctor remembered the days when she had been at the Academy and she had used these time machines to jump from one class to another, becoming so addicted to them she had made herself sick. But while she knew these were crude, primitive time machines, they were good enough for what she wanted from them. The Doctor picked up the crate and took it with her into the TARDIS. As she was putting the crate on the floor by the base of the console, the Doctor saw the key was still attached. For a moment she was dismissive of it, but she realised the Time Agency would likely miss it.
Taking it off and putting it down on the deck plating of the Chula bridge, the Doctor reversed the teleporter settings and sent it back before she snapped the connection. After she returned to the controls, the Doctor reset the controls of the Chula warship to return to the 1940s through the navigational computer's version of the fast-return switch (she would need to modify the TARDIS console to have something a little bit more extensive). As the Doctor leaned back in the pilot's chair waiting for the Chula ship to finish its space/time jump and return to the spot where the ship had picked up her TARDIS, the Doctor looked with wonder at the leather strap of the vortex manipulator she had taken from that crate before she put it on. She flipped open the cover and started the boot-up mode, knowing it would soon be ready to use for time/space travel.
As the sight of 20th century Earth materialised in front of her, the Doctor guided the ship down and programmed it to teleport her and the TARDIS back down in the alley where it had originally picked them up before returning to the site at Big Ben. She checked the local relative time and discovered she had only been away for 5 minutes instead of 3 hours.
The ship passed through the atmosphere with the cloaking device switched on. The Doctor stood up and walked back to the TARDIS. When she walked in her eyes fixed on the open crate. She had work to do.
X
AU; The Doctor now has access to time travel, but it will be some time before she uses it. In the next chapter, she will meet Nancy and those kids. in case you are wondering, the Doctor's use of the chameleon arch was inspired by a story where the prime Third Doctor was coerced by the Monk into going to the 51st century with him to restore the Doctor's freedom, but apparently the Time Lords stopped them. I was hoping the scrambling of her DNA would be a good plotline.